Character movement is designed to work fairly intuitively but it can occasionally be useful to understand what decisions are being made under the hood.
Characters move slower when they are carrying a large quantity of goods. When walking on unimproved land, a character can carry up to 200u without it slowing movement. Then every 200 over that movement is slowed according to the following steps
Inventory size: Movement speed
200: 1 action points,
400: 2 action points,
600: 3 action points,
800: 5 action points,
1000: 6 action points,
1200: 8 action points,
1400: 11 action points,
1600: 14 action points,
1800: 18 action points,
2000: 22 action points,
2200: 27 action points,
2400: 33 action points,
2600: 41 action points,
2800: 50 action points,
3000: 61 action points,
3200: 74 action points,
3400: 89 action points,
3600: 108 action points,
3800: 130 action points,
4000: 157 action points,
4200: 190 action points,
4400: 228 action points,
4600: 275 action points,
4800: 331 action points,
5000: 398 action points,
5200: 479 action points,
5400: 576 action points,
5600: 692 action points,
5800: 831 action points,
6000: 999 action points,
6200: 1200 action points,
6400: 3000 action points
When walking on footpaths, character movement is sped up by three steps - eg if you would have taken 11 action points per step, you would now take 5.
Characters try to find the shortest route to their new location. There are a few things to bear in mind with this:
There are two ways to cross panels
m selection cursor to the edge of the screen. If you keep pressing in that direction you can move your character up to nine panels in that direction.m twice and walking to a named locationPress
ato name the panel you are currently on
Unless you have built footpaths, when moving across panels characters will prefer to walk north or south to east or west. Let's say you are three panels north and two panels west of your target location. The character will go south first, then east to reach the new panel.
Be warned! Characters will blunder into unknown panels with monsters in and try to walk right through them if you are careless with your move orders
The most simple footpath is a wooden floor. Footpaths can help to speed up character movement within a screen, but importantly they also change a character's logic when moving between screens. They do this in two important ways
If a footpath is on the edge of a screen and the character is crossing that edge, they will prefer cross into the new screen on the footpath over any other way across the screen, even if the footpath is further away. Once they enter the target screen they will then walk back to the exact location they were instructed to move to. This can be useful if for example there is a dangerous creature on a panel on one side of the river - you can use the footpath to ensure the creature enters on the other side of the river.
If a character is moving multiple screens away (say for example, three north and three east), the logic on how to reach that screen is altered. The character won't simply walk north first and then east - they will check at each screen if there is a footpath pointing east. If so, they will go that direction first, otherwise north. This is extremely useful if there are dangerous animals or otherwise undesirable locations on your route.
Sign posts will override footpaths or default pathing when travelling from panel to panel in the following conditions:
<New Delphi>, <Parneossos>If those conditions are met, the character will head in the direction of the sign post instead of their usual behaviour.
Characters will recognise if they are being lead in circles by signposts and cancel their order when they first re-enter an already visited panel.