Dragon saddle (Patreon)

It hasn't been shown yet, but we've been working on a dragon saddle behind the scenes for a while now. The design has changed quite a bit over time but is finally coming together into something that looks cool and makes sense. In terms of inspirations we've borrowed some ideas from the amazing saddle designs in House of the Dragon, while also adding some original additions that you'll see eventually.

One big design dilemma was whether to include reigns or not for steering the dragon. On the one hand it looks pretty cool and makes the design stand apart from the one in HotD more, but on the other hand would you even need that when the rider and dragon share a strong soulbond? I decided to go with reigns that you need at the start of the game, with an unlockable option to remove them once the bond level is high enough. To differentiate the reigns from other designs, an idea I came up with this week is to use a so called block and tackle on the reigns, a genius device dating back to antiquity and used even to this day to provide a mechanical advantage for pulling heavy loads. This effectively makes the rider several times stronger when pulling the reigns to help mitigate the immense power imbalance between the tiny rider and the huge dragon.

Another consideration is what functionality the saddle will have besides the visual aspect. Since dragons are so large, they turn into a kind of mobile flying base and can serve a similar purpose as a ship in terms of logistics. The most straightforward use case is additional inventory space and storing camping gear. We have also experimented with adding a general cargo area on the back of the dragon behind the saddle, where you could strap certain kinds of cargo for transportation. Then there may be transportation quests where you need to move something from one location to another by physically strapping it to the dragon and flying it to the target. Or, if we end up adding dungeons where you can find valuable loot, then certain treasures may be too large for the regular inventory and you need to carry it to the saddle and strap it to the cargo area to bring back to a city and sell. The cargo area would grow as the dragon grows, allowing you to transport more and potentially larger things in one go. In the same vein, we've looked at how you could bring NPCs onto the dragon as passengers or even prisoners. Then you could have quests where you are tasked with saving someone and flying them back to safety, or tracking down an outlaw and physically bringing them to a nearby town to face justice.