Have you seen those population counters in the map? I’ve always assumed that the islands were downscaled, but I wonder: How much could the sea carry? We have like a thousand per island, although there are a metric shit ton of outlaws so IDK. We also got the sky islands, and got to account for food. Plus, it’s implied a lot of this sea is artificial (Frostmill mostly).
What do you mean, artificial? The only artificial (not natural) place I can think of is the Sailor’s Lodge.
Frostmill is just an iceberg… That’s not artificial.
Honestly I always assumed lore wise the islands would be wayyyy bigger but are smaller for gameplay reasons
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This HAS to be the case. Ravenna has one farm, it could not possibly support 10,000 people there and thousands on forts elsewhere and encampments at Shell, not to mention the next upcoming fort. Palo town has 1,000 people and not one farm. Societies surviving off of fishing and harvesting isn’t completely unreasonable, but I find it hard to believe the palo town residents wouldn’t try to convert harvest island or limestone into some sort of farm/plantation to get food for their population.
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why is food the unreasonable part of palo and not the 12 tiny houses that 1000 people live in
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Even if you enlarged the island to properly accomdate 1000 people, the geography for the rest of the enlarged island is basically ‘mountainous jungle’. Therefore, where can they get the food to feed that many people daily? Massive human populations can’t exist without a steady supply of food mostly brought about by agricultural advances. Every population boom in history we can attribute to advances in agriculture. Like Fertilizers invention. Even if the oceans are plentiful, the fish populations would be gradually bled dry close to the island itself, and Palo town residents would have to rely on exports to trade for food. (I also have graph to prove how important crops are to a population).
Palo town COULD exist, but the problem is Redwake doesn’t really do trade, and Frostmills primary export is ice to the south, so the only food they could get is from Ravenna, which also doesn’t seem to have many farms.
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Bro I appreciate your attention to detail it’s really nice reading about this 
Thank you. I don’t know why I decided to grab a graph though.
honestly i just assume we’re playing on a massively scaled down version and the actual islands are way, way bigger than what we see ingame. And a lot more structures that we don’t see like farms and stuff. Especially animal farms.
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If I wrote an AO story I would scale up the islands. Even Sandfall would be big enough where you couldn’t see the shores if you stood in the middle. Just makes sense for how many people exist in the world.
agreed
also it’d be really cool if you wrote stories because the way you write is really intriguing, it keeps people hooked
Palo town probably lives off of fruit on the island and such, as well as trade.
I mean in game that is exactly what they do, but I think a real civilization would have at least cultivate nearby islands to have surplus food for trade/emergencies.
Wait you have read something I wrote? I didn’t think that many people saw that story.
I actually havent but im reading it right now as i just found it. Seems pretty damn good though
Well thank you. Might really give writing another shot on the forum then.
You know I wonder if ice is the key. Think about it: Ice preserves food, and Frostmill got loads of it. Redwake has a metric shitton of it, and considering how much they hunt, makes sense to use it. Maybe Palo as well with fruit.
Frostmill is very likely key in the storage and transportation of perishable goods like fish and fruit.
frostmill is 100% really rich from ice exports
Ice was REALLY valuable before refrigeration
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I never really took into consideration of the geography due to AO being, well, a video game, but goddamn this has got to be one big eye opener. The map says an island holds a decently sized population, but the island itself feels like it belongs in an turn-based RPG game due to how small it is, how we only see people in double digits despite the island claiming to house over 100 or 1,000 residents (the only “accurate” population count is Whitesummit, but it still feels like less people are there than what the map says).
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they eat fish. all da fish get eaten.