Template:Personal caravan initiation

Personal caravan deployment radius in Alpha-2.^[1]

Deploying a personal caravan in Alpha-2.^[2]

It's important for me to find a place that's relatively obscure so as not to attract any unwanted eyes.^[2] – Steven Sharif

Personal caravans prepared and launched at caravan master NPCs located at caravansary service buildings that are present at Dorf (Stufe 3) or higher nodes.^[3]^[1]^[4]^[5]

When you want to launch a caravan you have must first have a caravan that's constructed at the caravansary.^[4] – Steven Sharif

Once a caravan is constructed it will be hosted at that caravansary. Players will be able to select from a list of available caravans via a UI screen, which will show the available storage compartments for each caravan.^[3]^[4]

Cargo for shipment is stored at the caravansary, not in a player's inventory. Stored cargo is visible via the warehouse UI.^[6]

All types of cargo can be shipped in caravans. The only constraint is available size (in the Tetris inventory system).^[7]

Once a caravan is constructed and loaded with cargo, it is in a launch-ready state and can be launched in the caravan master UI whenever the caravan owner is ready. Launching the caravan will place a caravan item in the owner's inventory.^[3]

You're going to have a little caravan item and when you right-click it you're going to be in deployable mode for you to be able to place that- it's a representation that you're summoning the caravan so that people around you know that you are launching a caravan.^[3] – Chris Justo

Once launched, caravan owners will see a visible radius around the node, beyond which the owner can begin deployment of their caravan.^[3] Deployment takes approximately two minutes by default, but can hastened through upgrades to the caravansary building.^[8]
- Previously the concept for launching a caravan involved an overhead map UI of the node.^[4] The developers moved away from this in favor of a more immersive in-world approach.^[9]

Personal caravans can also be summoned in the open-world from caravansaries in nearby nodes. This will also begin a deployment process that will take an amount of time based on the distance from the caravansary, the caravan's components, and any benefits or buffs from upgrades, node policies, or relics.^[10]