Oh so good Horses to ride in a beautiful world !
Since you will be working on npcs, if you think this could be done, it will be soo good to have some specific/eating/rest stences for animals, like cows laid down, seated pigs (as shown on the picture bellow), instead of being continuously wandering which is not very natural. It will be so immersive and cool
Also was wondering in order to complete hostile's challenging, do you plan to introduce a skills based system evolving, with skill points or so, to gain on the long-term, things like, longer stamina bar, more strenght, etc... IMHO I think that could be an interesting way to encourage people to be continuously looking for improvements, challenges, etc