Update 29: Feedback & Preparations

Written By Shawn Lord

Hi all!

The big theme from last month involved our focus on the Friends & Family testing that we kicked off at the end of the year. Read more about that in last month’s update.

The testing has continued and we’ve stayed busy reacting to the feedback. While that’s been going on, we’ve also been steadily working on the assets, pipeline, and other changes needed for our Proof of Concept.

Our current goal is to get the game to a state that we’re comfortable showing during the Public Stress Test.

This test will be a very early in development look at the game, in which our focus will be technical stability.

It’s risky, because it’ll give everyone a firsthand view of the game as it is now, and not everyone will be able to frame their expectations accordingly - but the hope is that we’ll get technical information that’ll save us development time in the long run.

Our target for that is the end of March, but we’ll update everyone via the livestreams and Discord, should we need to push it until later.

Fingers crossed, and maybe we’ll see you in game before the next update.

 

Character Art & Concepts

  • Added a new artist to the team (more on that below)

  • Reorganized the player system, human male model, UV layout, and textures

  • Developed two Armor Prototypes for the new system

  • Modeled and implemented the Wererat

  • Small update to Horse model/texture

  • Mob & NPC Concepts

  • Weapon Concepts

 

Environment Art & Concepts

  • Continued developing the Sagesyde district

  • Continued building out interior spaces along the waterfront

  • Roughed out ideas for the Northern Newbieyard

  • Boundary Pass for Night Harbor and Shaded Dunes (seen below in fuchsia )

  • Water Volume fixes in Night Harbor and Shaded Dunes

  • Created ladder prefabs, and replaced many of the old ladders in Night Harbor

  • Created a new Concept for the Goblins’ Heap

 

Game Design

Content

  • The Lost Traveler in Shaded Dunes is on hiatus for now. He (and maybe others) will return later

  • The Frottage portion of Elrind’s quest now accepts “/rub carvings” as well

  • Typo fixed in Guard Jeskal’s dialogue

  • Jacobin’s quest text regarding necklaces at each stage should be clearer

  • Fixed exp exploit in Spellblade quest

  • Fixed some pathing errors linked to revisions to the city layout

  • Chompers feedback loop fixed. Chompers is now unique

  • Quartermaster now mentions the bounty quest if asked

  • Diseased Blood drop rates increased (for now)

  • Quest requiring Snake Poison and Venom Glands, now all take Venom Glands

  • Many existing starter notes updated for clarity

  • Buckmarr's list has been updated for clarity

  • a Wandering Ghoul's spawn rate has been adjusted

  • Multhele Root has been modified in several ways

  • Inquisitor quest instructions should be clearer

  • Old Rankle now mentions the bounty quest if asked

  • New secret cooking recipes

  • New cookbook added, dropped from particular enemy npcs

Itemization

  • Bucklers are no longer considered “small” items

  • Ornate Cultist Lamp shines a little bit brighter

  • Giant Fire Beetle Eyes can now be equipped appropriately

  • Blessed and Giant Fire Beetle Eyes now emit light as intended

  • Spell and Trade Skill (and a few other) Vendors should now buy back the items they sell

  • Aashir’s Journal’s description has been updated to reduce confusion regarding slots

  • Adjusted weight for Chain and Plate armor equipment

  • Fixed class requirements on certain Chain armor sets

  • Adjusted weight of all Robe items

Tomb of the Last Wyrmsbane

  • Several named can no longer have certain status effects such as Mez, Charm, etc. applied to them

Sungreet Strand

  • Added some placeholder base mob population

Vale of Zintar

  • Adjusted and added to placeholder base mob population

Abilities Changes

General Abilities

  • Most 40 Meter Range Abilities have been reduced to 30 Meters

  • Archer retains 40 Meter Abilities

  • All 20 Meter Range Abilities have been reduced to 15 Meters

  • NPC Shoot now has a cast time and cooldown of 2 seconds each

  • Flameburst damage reduced from 5 (L1) to 7 (L4) to 4 (L1) to 7 (L4)

  • Noxious Deluge damage reduced from 3 (L1) to 7 (L4) to 3 (L1) to 6 (L4)

  • New Abilities: Conjure Food and Conjure Drink

  • (Back) Stab, Round Kick, and Targeted Shot max damage variance reduced from 450%/400%/400% to 400%/350%/350%

  • Mind Surge can no longer be casted on yourself and now has cast messages

Archer

  • New Ability: Deadeye (Level 2)

Bard

  • Redesigned. More work on this to come.

  • Siren's Call now properly charms (hotfixed)

  • Songs now work while sitting

Druid

  • Moonflame damage reduced from 4 (L1) to 7(L4) to 3 (L1) to 6 (L4)

Elementalist

  • Pet abilities Elemental Fire and Bolt of Water damage changed from 225/175 Damage (L60) to 125 (L60)

  • Fire and Water Pets do 50% less physical damage and are now Wizard class

  • Earth Pets do 25% less physical damage

  • Air Pets are now Monks

Enchanter

  • New Ability: Runeskin (Level 12)

Necromancer

  • Blood Pact is now beneficial and self casted only

Shaman

  • Malady now correctly does 3 Damage Per Tick, up from 2

  • Consume now only works on yourself

  • Healing Spores line now has a 30 Meter Range, up from 20 Meters

Spellblade

  • Can now use Shoot (Archery)

 

Tech

  • NPCs no longer attempt to cast buffs on friendlies if the target already has a more powerful buff

  • Fix for charmed pet not re-aggroing former master after charm fades

  • Fixed issue where current target became bugged if you had a charmed pet targeted when charm faded

  • Gnomes have returned to character creation menu

  • Bard song target now maintains the target even if you change targets.  The song will continue to be sung against the initial target at the time the song was started.

  • Bard songs now end if the song can not affect the target (song target dies, goes out of range, etc)

  • Fixed an issue where bard song target rules were being applied on songs that didn't require a target

  • Fixed an issue where bard song skill-ups could happen even if the song didn't affect the target (out of range, etc)

  • Now when opening the ability book UI, if the character has a spell book equipped it will default to it (rather than innate abilities)

  • Fix for looting item from NPC corpse showing "your" corpse

  • Removed some GM command from being displayed in normal player help message

  • GMs can now summon players from any zone

  • Chat messages for activity (abilities, hits, misses, etc) by NPCs and other players can now be filtered separately, so you can have them in different chat windows

  • Fixed an issue where you could single pull mobs with abilities that missed

  • Fixed an issue where if a player died while disconnected and re-connected fast enough, they would be stuck forever as a corpse

  • Added support for NPCs to be defined as having mez or stun immunity

  • Player name plate size and color has been adjusted

  • Fixed sound for procs and instant cast abilities

  • Fixed pet not defending player when the player is hit by a NPC's harmful ability

  • Pets will now assist the player on player's melee/ranged auto attacks

  • Receiving items when trading with a player can no longer overflow to your cursor.  So you must have enough inventory space now.

  • Various fixes around our new database transactions with player trades

  • Bugfix: spell haste not working properly

  • Display lore blurbs with any random background during loading screen

  • Prevent players from logging into the same world with multiple game clients

  • Logging into the game world will now not instantly kick out other characters of the same account, preventing instant escape exploit

  • Attachments added to the dressing room functionality

  • Generate DB string for dressing room functionality, better doll loading logic

  • Bugfix: playing chest close sound effects at the incorrect times

  • Bugfix: Allow players to connect to another server when a server goes down without having to restart the game client

 

In Closing

As mentioned above, this month we also welcomed Patrick (vgfx) to the team. We’ll get a bio added for him on the Team page, but for now:

Patrick is a senior character artist within the games industry, who has also worked on MMOs in the past. He brings close to 20 years of experience with him, and has been following the project for quite a while now. We’re excited to have him on board!

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So, to wrap things up - we’ll continue to be focused on driving towards a public playtest this month. You can follow that progress via our new Twitch category and the VODs we post on YouTube.

Join the Discord and Mailing List if you haven’t already. And we’ll get word out on the upcoming playtest as soon as we know more.

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Thanks again for reading this far and for being a part of the community!

Shawn Lord
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Update 30: Stress Test Info & March’s Progress
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Update 28: The year begins with Friends