Update 45: November & December 2024

Written By Shawn Lord

Hi all!

2024 has been a blur for us. Looking back, we’ve accomplished a lot and hit some fun milestones:

  • Our Discord hit 10,000+ members

  • Our YouTube channel hit 5,000+ subscribers

  • The channel now has over 600 VODs

  • Our mailing list surpassed 7,000 subscribers

  • The project surpassed 10,000 GitHub commits

  • We ran 8 public testing sessions

…and we were nominated for some awards and even won a few. Plus, we’re on at least one “most anticipated MMO” list.

Thanks again for all of the support!

With Early Access ahead of us in 2026, it’s safe to say that 2025 is going to be even busier.

On to the good stuff. This update is pretty beefy, so grab a coffee, get comfortable, and enjoy!

Nov & Dec Stress Tests

 

Concept Art & UI

  • New weapons concepted

  • Additional armor sets concepted

  • Evershade Weald (formerly Evergrove) tone, features, and props concepted

  • Night Harbor’s Highpoint Terrace concepted

  • Night Harbor’s Underdocks concepted

  • UI work continued (see tech section for videos)

 

Character Art

  • Wasp model completed

  • Several new player armor textures in the works

  • Work continues on the Myconid model

  • Ratman continued and updated to wear gear for more customization

  • New weapons created

 

Animations

  • Drake rig

  • Drake animations

  • Wood elf animations

  • Human animation updates

  • Wasp rig

  • Wasp animations started

 

Environment Art

  • Wrapped up the <undisclosed area in Night Harbor> rework

  • Created a caravan and placed it in the Sojourners' camp in Night Harbor

  • Completed a rework of Sageside

    • New inn added and nearby buildings modified

    • Granary converted into the League’s bank

    • New plaza layout

    • Additional structures added to round out the district

  • Developed a new shader to highlight edges and darken corners for structures

  • Baked edge and corner maps for all of Night Harbor’s structures

  • Worked on locking down our new textures (almost there)

  • Evershade Weald (formerly Evergrove) and Faelindral (wood elf city) continued

  • Calafrey civilization ruins created for use in the region

  • Experimented with floor fog shader

  • Created the base terrain for Shallow Shoals

  • Shallow Shoals development progressed significantly (more in the next update)

  • Prop work for Sungreet Strand, Shallow Shoals, and other areas

 

Audio & Music

Additionally:

  • Evershade Weald now has 5 nature ambience sound layers for 5 custom-built time periods within the 24-hour cycle, replacing the default day/night states, which only had two

  • Water pipe & sewer sound effects

  • Flag fluttering sound effects

  • Gnome male & female swimming sounds added and footsteps repaired

  • Fountain & pond sound effects added in various locations

  • Added a “tension music region” in the basement beneath the Shaded Bloom Inn

 

Design

Systems

  • Abilities that critically fail now properly go on cooldown, play animations, VFX, etc.

  • Vision types slightly reworked (infravision improved)

  • Storage crates are now opened with left-click instead of right-click

  • Storage crates now properly spawn your items after a server reset

  • Storage crate duration increased to 6 hours, then all items inside will rot

  • Many NPC guards now have more aggressive aggro checks

  • Worked with tech to bring the Deities & Faiths: Devotion system online

Content

  • NPC appearance updates

  • Vale of Zintar population updates

  • NPC ability updates

  • Faction adjustments

  • Added more spawns to a low level Ashira camp in Sungreet Strand

  • NPCs no longer use the healer-unique line of spells (likely a temporary thing)

  • Sungreet Strand spawn volume adjustments

  • Monk newbie class quest fixes

  • Expanded on the Ashira faction quest

  • Revamped the “Bends” district within Night Harbor, where a ruthless gang war is raging, offering plenty of opportunities for adventurous souls

  • Design support for Shallow Shoals, Evershade Weald, and Faelindral

Itemization

  • Rare/named item pass

  • Item icon pass

  • Staves are now properly usable by all classes

Tradeskills

  • Mining nodes now have a minimum skill requirement to mine beyond the copper tier

  • New mining nodes added to Night Harbor

  • New mining nodes added to Sungreet Strand

  • Added a first pass of tin veins to the world

  • Tradeskills no longer use pattern items for recipes

  • Added tailoring recipes for Pouch, Satchel, and Backpack, for each tier of cloth

  • Added upgraded “Heavy Bandage" recipes for each tier of cloth as an additional upgrade step between each tier

  • Arm-slot recipes removed from game

General Abilities

  • “To Hit” modifier for physical melee abilities increased by 5%

  • Embers line AC reduction reduced by roughly half

  • Can now cast Feign Death while stunned

  • Pet size scaling now only applies to elemental pets, who have had their size reduced for all tiers

  • Added abilities: Camouflage and Greater Camouflage

  • Hit bonus for melee abilities increased from 35% to 40%

  • Added abilities: Dark Embrace and Sacrificial Embrace (Necromancer and Shadow Knight)

  • Taunt cooldown increased from 6 seconds to 8 seconds

Archer

  • Added ability: Scatter Shot

Bard

  • Screaming Vocalization cooldown increased from 6 seconds to 12 seconds

  • Screaming Vocalization damage changed from 2 (L1) to 5 (L4)

  • Fleshed out Screaming Vocalization line with abilities: Dissonant Vocalization, Cacophonic Vocalization, Wailing Vocalization, Discordant Vocalization, Chaotic Vocalization, and Thunderous Vocalization

  • Bard instruments now grant song modifiers

Cleric

  • Added ability: Holy Strike

  • Added abilities: Supplication, Supplication II, Supplication III, Supplication IV

Druid

  • Removed ability: Invisibility (now has access to Camouflage and Greater Camouflage)

  • Eth-ehm's Shroud moved to L55

Elementalist

  • Reclaim Essence now restores 25% of your pet's remaining health in mana

  • Fire damage shields now cause fire damage instead of physical damage

  • Fire pets now apply a conditional debuff when hitting a target with their Elemental Fire nuke

  • When using Blast of Air against a target that has the Elemental Fire debuff on them, it now creates a backdraft effect, knocking back the target and consuming the debuff

Enchanter

  • Enchant Metal Bar line cast time greatly reduced

  • Now has access to the Mana Drain line with abilities: Mana Drain, Mana Drain II, Mana Drain III, Mana Drain IV, Mana Drain V, and Mana Drain VI

  • Enchant Ally's Shadow Spike damage increased and now scales with level

  • Fleshed out the Runeskin line with abilities: Runeskin II, Runeskin III, Runeskin IV, and Runeskin V

  • Fixed a bug which caused all abilities in the Tranquility line to have the same mana cost as Tranquility

  • Enchant Ally tooltip updated

  • Enchant Ally now also grants a 10-25% bonus to maximum health which scales with the Enchanter's stamina

Fighter

  • Offensive Stance now properly gives a 10% damage increase to physical attacks; tooltip updated accordingly

  • Fixed a bug which required a melee weapon to activate stances

  • Rend damage increased from 1 (L1) to 50 (L60), to 1 (L1) to 60 (L60)

Monk

  • Can now block, and do so without a shield

  • Now have access to stances with abilities: Way of the Earth, Way of the Flame, Way of the Water, and Way of the Wind

  • Celestial Strike is now empowered by your active stance, with each granting it unique benefits

  • Way of the Wind now passively grants 10% movement speed

Necromancer

  • Now has access to the Health Drain line with abilities: Health Drain, Health Drain II, Health Drain III, Health Drain IV, Health Drain V, and Health Drain VI

  • Added abilities: Covenant of Life, Covenant of Darkness, Covenant of Shadow

  • Added ability: Corporeal Embrace

Ranger

  • Removed ability: Invisibility (now has access to Camouflage and Greater Camouflage)

  • Added abilities: Shroud and Greater Shroud

Rogue

  • Incapacitate and Sap now automatically turn off auto attack when successful

  • Added ability: Nimble Evasion

  • Vial of Smoke moved to L12

  • Stab front damage increased from 1 (L1) to 50 (L60), to 1 (L1) to 60 (L60)

  • Stab back damage increased from 3 (L1) to 90 (L60), to 3 (L1) to 100 (L60)

Spellblade

  • Can now purchase Root from the spell merchant

Wizard

  • Mark of Magic no longer has a DoT component

  • Mark of Magic now increases damage done by spells to the target by 1%, stacking up to 5 times

  • Translocate LOS requirements updated

 

Tech

  • Game moved to Unity 6

  • Made zoning much faster

  • Network code optimizations

  • Server optimizations

  • General code refactoring and cleanup

  • Refactored zoning while on a vehicle (such as boat)

  • Smoothed camera while on a vehicle (such as boat)

  • Updates to our build pipelines

  • Fixed point-blank AOE abilities

  • Fixed clicking in the chat input box and enabled highlighting

  • Fixed some sound colliders in Wyrmsbane that were blocking LOS

  • Fixed ability/inventory hot buttons not updating properly after a /reload

  • Fixed an issue where stealthed NPCs would become visible when moving

  • Fixed an issue where the player’s appearance would not update upon changing equipment

  • Fixed a null ref when entering a zone with the See Invisibility buff

  • Ghosts have regained their ghostly appearance

  • Underwear can now be shown under other armor textures

  • Client corpses are no longer automatically the Fighter class

  • Fixed ability and book related UIs not refreshing after client initially receives data

  • Fixed some issues with abilities from traded or dropped spell books

  • Fixed stat display when under a +stat percent buff

  • Fixed a camera glitch when hitting the right mouse button while holding the left mouse button

  • Fixed underwater filters

  • Fixed the order of messages and effects when dying

  • Finally fixed the eating and drinking priority so that it consumes items logically

  • Reconnecting after a disconnect is now more consistently successful

  • Fixed the Cauldron tradeskill item

  • Fixed how belts and undershirts load when wearing very complex gear

  • Fixed skeleton animations

  • Fixed skeleton ribcages

  • Can now interact with campfires again

  • Remote clients once again animate properly when swimming

  • Improved performance when rendering the paper doll in the inventory window

  • Reduced coloration in ultravision and made infravision slightly more effective

  • Reduced visual artifacts from screen space ambient occlusion

  • When using Bind Vision or Enchant Ally, you'll now get proper movement updates from the area around your target

  • Improved how movement of remote clients is animated

  • Tweaked position updates from client to server to improve fast moving clients and clients under knockback and charge effects

  • Added drowning sound, animation, chat, and vfx cues

  • Added/improved some chat commands for GMs and designers

  • Added more icon options to macros

  • Added variable player corpse decay duration based on level and contents

  • Added LD to the name tag for “link dead” clients

  • Added more resolution to corpse decay time in consider message

  • Added a designer option for underwear to be shown underneath other armor textures

  • Added martial block functionality for monks

  • Added support for buffs that flatly increase dodge/block/parry chance

  • Mana cost is now only deducted at the start of channeling an ability, not per tick

  • Ability effects can now fire conditionally based on a buff on the caster or target

  • Added support for customizing how items are attached to the character on a per-race basis

  • Added initial system for changing audio state when in buildings in an outdoor zone

  • NPCs can now swim

  • Bard instruments can now have an instrument bonus that improves songs that use that instrument

  • Created a system to make combat and level scaling formulas easier for designers to iterate on

  • Added shader support to reduce texture tiling

  • Modifier stack: all buffs, items, and skills now go through a unified character modifier stack for all types of entities, hugely simplifying the creation of complex effects

  • Changes to hate and threat

  • NPC zone spawn command to force casting

  • Changed how ability critical failures work

  • GM cross-zone corpse summoning for helping scrubs who lose their corpses

  • Improved posture sync (sit, stand, crouch)

  • Changed how buffs extend when reapplied

  • Adjusted campfire behavior and model

  • New posture: kneeling for looting

  • Adjusted NPC melee ranges

  • Adjustments to night sky

  • Adjustments to NPC damage range over levels

  • Added Shallow Shoals zone

  • Added Keeper's Bight zone

  • Additions to Plane of Meat

  • Ensured player corpses are properly visible

  • AC changes for players

  • Chests and campfires now properly reload their contents when the zone reloads

  • Water, navigation mesh, and occlusion updates for Tel Ekir, <zone name redacted>, <zone name redacted>, Night Harbor, Shaded Dunes, Vale of Zintar, and Sungreet Strand

  • The meat spins!

  • Throttled server joining to avoid mass entry situations, for example, at the start of a stress test, which can stall the server for extended periods of time

  • Added support for multiple pets

  • Removed “Link All" when looting your own corpse

  • Alt + left click on an item now opens the item description window

  • Hotbar slots expanded from 10 to 12

  • Pressing Enter will no longer accidentally accept party or guild invites

  • Alt+O now opens the Options menu (alternative to ESC)

  • Added profanity filter/checks while naming characters and pets

  • Animals can now be tamed and will be permanent pets that stay in world if you log out, though they must be stabled and fed

  • Implemented initial groundwork for the Devotion system, allowing for the worship of multiple faiths, as well as tithing items and currency

Added a starting location selector to character creation

Added support for multiple pets

 

In Closing

We’ve added a new team member over the holidays, but more on that in the next update.

Be sure to keep an eye on our Discord and Team page this year for potential open roles. You never know what we’ll need as we march towards Early Access.

Thanks again for making 2024 amazing for us and for helping us reach the milestones mentioned above!

Expect more updates and playtests this year. As always, if you want to help us out, the best way to do so is to keep spreading the word:

See you in the next update!

Shawn Lord
Next

Update 44: September & October 2024