Thank you both! I completely forgot about the merchant NPC, I do indeed have a lot of fighter orbs from defeating those guys so that's definitely the most reliable way for me.
Try to keep an eye out on personality likes/dislikes on top of the morale value, being around follower NPCs they hate will cause them to go mad at each other. Tried doing a lewd dance with succubus-geared Yona for fun, all the females around were cheering her or dancing except for the ones who hated each other's personalities, those ones attacked the crazy dancers making them mad right after that lmao.
If you have a really large follower count with lots of personalities, maybe try to edit it in the XML file if you find the params. Also, NPCs have different stat growth so maybe try capturing high level big guys if you have the patience to bonk them (they're a bit slow at 0.80 speed but their HP/ATK/Stun Res scale like crazy). If you do get there somehow, there should be a hard cap on movement speed at around 2000LV in speed (iirc, each point gives 0.005 speed and it doesn't seem to go higher than 10). That's a damn lot of stat points to burn in speed though, and I don't recall any NPC with speed higher than 2.
For a large base, one technique suggested
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is to plant acorns (the drawback is it visually looks awful) as trees will block NPCs so you don't have to waste too much time repairing barricades but yeah, AI pathfinding is a pain. I can't really thnk of a very large defendable space, I honestly just stick with the homebase and build all of my stuff inside of stone houses so they can't mess with it.
Yeah, by the Gate, I meant the door where you put all three gemstones. I believe there are a few level 70 campsites around this place, might want to put a flag if you find the exact location and
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. One amusing fact is you don't have to clear the map again if you ever lose your saves or they stop being compatible, just use the saved map and rename it to match another saveslot, it will reveal the same area for that saveslot. (I wish you could do this from the XML file, if the map itself changes it might no longer work.)
I think the old man by the bridge (if that's the one you meant) is one-time only, if all else fails you can /friend 101 (if I'm not misremembering the ID) and then banish him, depending on what you wanted to do with him. The man's workbench you unlock from his recipe is used to make stuff such as knives.
Thanks for the detailed guide to the dungeon!