Starting tomorrow, 27th November at 5 PM CET / 11 AM ET, Ancient City will start appearing on the world map!
Explore the remains of a forgotten civilization in search of loot and treasures, but beware the rupu-infested ruins scattered around the city and other hostile wildlife overrunning the area.
Black market traders, who live on the fringe of the nomadic society, tend to avoid crowded oases and often prefer to do their dealings far away from the Flotillian trade stations. You'll find them setting up shops all around the Ancient City and may even encounter special merchants offering Strongboxes to their customers.
Keep an eye out for the event map appearing on the world map during your region's prime time, as they're more frequent then, and make sure to bring some Flots coins with you when venturing there to trade with local merchants. New lands await!
Hotfix incoming
Before launching Ancient City later in the day, we'll be patching the game with some fixes for VOIP, Stiletto textures, and other things around 11 AM CET / 5 AM ET. Nothing big this time, but expect a larger update next week!
Patch 1.4.33497
STRUCTURES / BALANCE
- Increased fragment drop from Rupu Camp effigies. - Reduced total tech cost to unlock Stone Bases. - Renamed roof structures to make tutorial clearer.
FIXES
- Fixed spawning of merchants on some oases.
Season 2
Season 2 is about to arrive! Servers will be up at 5 PM CET / 11 AM ET.
If you’ve been playing on BB, remember to switch back to the main branch!
[previewyoutube="zz8ySxXoXrA;full"]
One of the questions we’ve been asked is “How are you feeling about the current state of the game? Do you think it’s creating meaningful gameplay?”
This felt like a great topic to address, especially ahead of wipe and the start of Season 2.
From the desk of the one and only chadz:
With the next season about to start, I thought it would be a good moment to talk about how we see things, and what we learned from them. If you’re not interested in that, skip straight to the Season 2 changes.
What We Learned from Season 1
Let’s get that settled right away: a lot of things in the first season didn’t go as we expected they would. Many balance mechanics either didn’t work or backfired altogether.
We wanted to create a survival game in which PVP can be enjoyed by solos, small groups and large communities alike. Storing your belongings off-map, a territory system that encourages player-driven protection of nomads, a base that you can take with you anywhere you go, and many more - we thought it surely would make the game quite enjoyable for any playstyle.
Well, it didn’t. I could fill dozens of pages with our analysis, but I think it’s better to jump to some of the bigger conclusions.
Clan member numbers exponentially increase the power of a group. While this is expected and unavoidable to some degree, we accidentally made it much, much worse. The feature to respawn on different tiles was originally intended to let everyone play together more easily. Clans used it as a tactical tool - the community fittingly calls this “clown car-ing”. You see a walker manned only by a skeleton crew, and within an instant an army spawns on the deck. Many of the new changes make the gameplay more local and intimate, with actual travel being important again. No more clown car-ing.
Solos and small groups didn’t have the necessary tools to defend themselves. Last Oasis relied way too much on its inherent mechanics to give players a safety net, without giving players the proper means to make themselves safe. And many of those didn’t work out. For Season 2, a lot of content was added to bridge that gap, while also shifting more towards a base-driven gameplay that gives everyone a safe spot to rest.
Large clans bottlenecked the progression of smaller groups. For many solos, tablets became an impossible bottleneck - large clans practically had the monopoly on it. In Season 2, trading is now a viable alternative to experience the game fully, no matter if solo or as a clan.
The grind, omg, the grind. Season 2 is addressing this in many ways. Tools give substantially more resources, Walkers are quicker to build, commerce allows unlocking the tech tree faster, and many other changes to speed things up overall.
There is no denying that the last season did not manage to be good enough for many players. And players leaving is the most honest feedback we can get as developers. It became clear very quickly - Last Oasis doesn’t need tweaks. It needs a complete overhaul and radical changes. So we got our hands dirty, and here we are with the result: Season 2.
What We Changed for Season 2
For a full list of changes, see the changelog in the end. In here, I will go through some of the most game-changing ones:
Bind spawn to Walker
You need to pick a Walker beforehand and can only spawn on that Walker until you select another one. This stops clown-cars and allows players to estimate the strength of an enemy. Travelling to another tile will now involve actually travelling with your Walkers instead of teleporting around. For clans this means that the size of their territory will become more and more complex to handle the larger it becomes.
Founder Walkers and Bases
The Silur and the Balang are two new Walkers that fundamentally change the gameplay: Both have the capability to deploy into a stone base with the “solid” armor. This armor is incredibly hard to crack, making sure that any raider needs to carefully consider what target to attack - a balance known to work from other survival games that we felt would fit well in Last Oasis as well. The intention here is to move the gameplay away from the edge of the map and into the center where things are actually interesting, which is reinforced by disabling crafting in the desert logout zone and spawn protection bubbles. You will encounter a lot of bases and other player structures on the map, and you are no longer forced to take all your belongings to the lobby at the end of the day, making keeping them on the map a viable alternative.
Walker Damage
At the same time, we allowed any ranged weapons to damage Walkers and made Walkers easier to build by increasing the yield of tools. The gameplay will be more focused around a safe home base, while having Walkers that are more expandable than before. Losing a Walker will always be painful, but now you have a base on the map to fall back to and get back on your feet quickly.
Performance Improvements
A lot of effort went into improving performance, and it should be noticeably better in Season 2. This is an ongoing process and we will improve things constantly as we become aware of issues.
Burn Timer Increased
The time until an oasis burns up has been increased heavily, as constantly having to move became frustrating for many players. With the slower burn, you have more time to settle, learn your neighbors and the map, and feel like having a home. And once the time has come, the Founder Walkers allow you to pick up your base and move it to a new oasis.
Maintenance Cost
To help with performance and certain exploits, we added daily maintenance cost to bases. Each base consumes resources based on its size or starts decaying if not maintained. This will drastically reduce throwaway bases spam and allow different tactics to come into play.
Trading, Commerce & Flots
The Commerce Update completely overhauled the in-game economy. Not only are flots now highly valuable, they remain valuable throughout the game. You can use them to unlock technology and you can either earn them through quests or by smartly trading with other players. Furthermore, clans will always be in demand of flots, either for buying Proxy Licenses, or for using it to reserve slots for clan fights. This will allow every player to buy research tablets or other items and then sell those resources that are in high demand by clans for profit. Being a merchant is now an actual valid playstyle.
Clan Cap
Judging by the non-stop community discussions ever since it was announced, the added hard clan cap of 50 members is the most controversial addition in Season 2. Our goal with the clan cap is to stop the need to endlessly merge. Over time, more and more clans merged together because the exponential gains of doing so were just immense. We think that this change allows for a more diverse clan ecosystem, and more fair fights. We are, of course, aware that large clans can still split into sister clans, but it comes with an additional organisational overhead, and shared access to resources is very limited. Season 2 will help us in gathering more data and feedback to see where we take it from here. To all the clans screaming “bloody murder”, we love you and appreciate your feedback, but we will stick to it for Season 2 because we want to see the impact for ourselves before changing it again.
Proxy Changes
Proxy Walkers are now more expensive, have more health, and have an attack window of 3 hours compared to the previous 1 hour. These changes, together with the changes to spawning, will make it more difficult to hold multiple claims at the same time, and we think it will lead to a more diverse global territory map. We will see how this works out during the season and consider adjustments for Season 3.
Wide Range of New Weapons and Tools
There’s a whole lot of new structures to build, and many of them synergizing with new or existing mechanics. They will shake up the established meta and I encourage you all to be creative and use them to their fullest potential.
Removal of Visibility of Quality
This suggestion came from the community and we thought it was an obviously good idea. Enemies can no longer see the quality of your walkers and structures and you are, therefore, no longer painting a target on your back by improving them. Furthermore, destroyed structures no longer give resources back, reducing the incentive to fully destroy enemy Walkers.
QoL (Quality of Life) improvements
This is an ongoing process, but many QoL improvements were made as well. For example, increased chest sizes, improvements to the join-queue handling, renaming structures, and many other small things have been done. As always, please keep bringing in your suggestions.
Does that mean everything is perfect now? No - we are not naive enough to expect everything to be flawless at this point. There will be some balance issues, but we need to see them pan out before we can address them. A PVP game like ours will always be a ping pong game between players coming up with new metas, tactics and borderline exploits, and us trying to find a balance between all of it.
I hope Season 2 shows that we are committed, we take your feedback seriously, and we are not afraid to change things until the game is what you deserve.
What to Expect in the Future
Our plans at this moment are to focus much more on the PVE experience, new and additional content, and, in particular, end-game content. On the technical side, performance and privately self-hosted servers remain big things on our to-do list.
However, an early access game is a living, breathing thing. We read every bit of feedback we can get our hands on and take it into account. And while we can’t implement all suggestions, we try to look at the meaning of them - what is it that the player wants? We don’t claim to always get everything right, but we are not afraid to make big changes if some of our ideas don’t work out. We have a vision of where we want the game to go in the next few years, both during and after Early Access, but we need your feedback and input to get it right.
So please, keep the feedback coming!
COMMERCE
- Added Flots withdrawal/depositing at Trading Stations. - Added wandering merchants with unique trade orders (tablets, etc.). - Moved permanent Trading Station orders to wandering merchants (claiming license, etc.). - Added Flotilla quests to Trading Stations. - Added Flotilla auctions to Trading Stations. - Added listing tax when placing an order, and sale tax when succeeding in selling an item. - Added bidding on reserved slots for any tile. - Added clan bank used for bidding on slots. - Added global Flots vault to claim acquired money from any Trading Station. - Made trade orders migrate automatically when a map burns. - All trade orders which migrate to another Trading Station when a map burns will now have a lower price. - Added Flot drops from lootsites. - All items in the game can now be bought and sold at Trading Stations by players, including grappling hooks, tablets, etc. - Made World Map show best prices for trading. - Removed quick selling from Trading Stations. - Made trading station menus clearer. - Added a Dueling Arena to all Trading Stations - Initial implementation, it will be vastly improved in the future. - Trading Station protection will now refresh after every meaningful action (such as trading, interacting with Vault, auctions, etc.).
WALKERS
- Added Silur Walker - allows packing solid bases. - Added Balang Walker - Low tier Founder type Walker, allows packing of small solid bases. - Added Hercul Walker - Torque! Now in industrial amounts! - Made Walkers Robust - damageable by everything except melee. - Added Armored and Heavy legs for Buffalo and Hornet. - Added Armored legs for Stiletto. - Forbid building wings and legs if they're blocked by hanging structures (gun pods, etc.). - Overhauled Walker repair system to encourage repairs out of combat. - Made it possible to only spawn on 1 selected crew Walker. - Added logging out enemy Walkers (to prevent griefing with cheap Walkers). - Increased max Walker crafting level cap to 20. - Made Walker crafting level price increase quicker. - Traveling with a Walker will automatically assign all the crew on board to the Walker Crew.
OASES
- Added Ancient City event map - Unique merchants, new lootsites, new rupu camps, new everything. - Added Flot requirement and cooldown for teleporting to other tiles. - Added 15 minute penalty forbidding spawn on beds and Walkers after teleport. - Redeployment from event maps is now free, to avoid players becoming stuck in them. - Added an option to spawn in the offmap lobby. - Added an option to redeploy from the offmap lobby - No more getting stuck in the queue.
CLANS
- Added a hard clan cap of 50.
BALANCE
- Attack window for claimed oases is now 3 hours. - Buffed Proxy Walker health to 100k. - Increased ammo capacity of Remote Ballista to 20. - Increased yield of high tier tools. - Lowered Cluster Bomb radius and increased weight. - Decreased effectiveness of improvised explosives such as “Nomadness Bomb”. - Buffed Catapult and Small Boulder damage by ~50%. - Made combat timer dynamic based on damage. - All weapons except Beatstick can now damage Soft armor. - All non-base structures with no previous armor rating will now have Soft armor. - Characters now have their own weight, which impacts Walkers they stand on. - Increased Rupu Turret activation time from 15 to 180 seconds. - Made it possible to only have 1 sandbed per player. - Added Hardened Hellfire Bolt - It has Soft armor and burns 3 times faster. - Increased damages to Walkers from all projectiles from 5% to 10%. - Reduced lava damage to Walkers. - Increased HP of all Hullbreaker bolts. - Increased Torque Backpack capacity to 3000. - Buffed Scattershot - Improved aiming, penetration increased, buffed amount of pellets, breaks grappling hook tethers on hit, and more. - Increased stack sizes of all medium and high tier chests. - Decreased water storage sizes of beds. - Increased redeploy cooldown to 12 hours. - Increased redeploy cost to 500 flots. - Removed spawning close to death location. - Made Defensive Tower constructions decay if not built. - Rebalanced costs of ceramic Walker upgrades. - Forbid crafting in Trading Station areas. - Forbid crafting in travel zones and protection bubbles. - Buffed Javelins. - Removed Grappling Hook stun mechanic. - All equipment in the game now has durability - Exception for Grappling Hooks. - Modules have been rebalanced - Some which didn’t see much use during the first season will now be usable. - Lowered effectiveness of “ground ballista” meta. Harpoons shot from a ballista on the ground will have a less durable tether. - Reduced Wingsuit tech cost from 50 to 20. - Increased max quantity of Lifeforce Modules from 20 to 50. - Made Mobility stat increase in cost at high levels. - Made rupu camps respawn slower after looting.
TUTORIAL & FIRST STEPS
- Updated tutorial and first steps. - Improved some tutorial steps (missing text, improper descriptions, etc.).
STRUCTURES & BASES
- Buffed Clay and Concrete bases. - Rebalanced Clay and Concrete structural cost. - Added Stone bases. - Made ammo chest get disabled when netted. - Made Sawblades require torque to operate. - Added Battle Fan. - Added Small and Large Base Walker Packers. - Bases will now decay if they do not have maintenance. - Added Maintenance Chest for bases - Large stack size for all your maintenance needs. - Improved base combat timer to avoid in-combat building abuse. - Added structure renaming. - Added moving/packing mechanic to the maintenance box. - Doors will now unlock at 50% HP. - Unlocked doors can now be kicked open.
ITEMS
- Allowed to unequip grappling hooks. - Buffed Obsidian Flask capacity - Added new Infused Obsidian Flask.
INTERFACE
- Added confirmation to region selection at the start of the game. - Restructured Walker Tech Tree.
CREATURES
- Improved and adjusted Killin behavior all around. - Added Killin Nests as Killin spawn points. - Several fixes and improvements to Nurr behavior. - Several fixes and improvements to Okkam behavior.
POINTS OF INTEREST
- Pyramid POIs will now appear in maps correctly.
FIXES & PERFORMANCE
- Improved performance across the board. - Fixed vitamin requirement inconsistencies for high tier tech. - Fixed quarry issues after server restart. - Fixed various issues with opening/closing wingsuit. - Fixed being able to build Walker constructions on Walkers. - Fixed issues with Hornet Walker wings. - Fixed a bunch of VOIP issues. - Fixed being able to abuse foundations built on different heights. - Fixed all kinds of issues with calculating weight. - Fixed players and exoskeletons standing on sawblades. - Fixed sawblades having enormous containers for some reason. - Fixed Torque Windmill having too large collisions. - Fixed Net Thrower aiming and camera. - Fixed small Walkers sending players to space. - Fixed Walker camera going through stone walls. - Fixed quest packages being tradeable. - Fixed canyon mushrooms eating loot dropped on them. - Fixed lakes eating loot dropped in them. - Fixed sometimes not being able to sell items to merchants. - Fixed exploit with rupu camp clearing quest. - Fixed Nurr leaping forward behavior. - Fixed not being able to disassemble - Fixed Silur Walker Core meshing into terrain. - Fixed some issues with the rupu weapon stick. - Fixed netting issues for various structures. - Fixed sometimes going through things when climbing. - Fixed sometimes seeing wrong combat animations. - Fixed quality spots changing after server restart. - Fixed quality state resetting to 0 on all foliage after server restart - Quality on all resources now persists after a server restart. - Improved performance around lakes. - Improved clarity of some descriptions. - Fixed a crash related to merchant interactions. - Improved performance in a bunch of places. - Fixed broken rupu camp allowing abusing rupu gel harvesting. - Fixed buying too many items from merchants. - Fixed Vitamin merchant sometimes not buying. - Fixed large lootsite chest not requiring Hullbreakers. - Fixed Redwood trees not giving more wood with high tier tools. - Fixed some missing tooltip texts. - Fixed incorrect repeater shooting trajectory. - Fixed wrong sell order max quantity in UI. - Fixed slot auction not showing local times. - Fixed building a ton of Water Bags close to each other. - Fixed building a ton of Clan Flags close to each other. - Fixed some incorrect Tech Tree icons. - Fixed lava collecting sounds missing. - Fixed Silur Walker Core being nettable. - Fixed getting high like planes by kicking with wingsuit. - Fixed chairs pushing players through walls. - Fixed Gun Pod meshing. - Fixed not being able to open doors while packing. - Fixed not being able to ungrapple while packing. - Fixed some more incorrect icons. - Fixed some issues with Killin spawns. - Fixed some missing nibiran ore on hard maps. - Fixed Cluster Bomb sounds making ears bleed. - Improved Gas Bombs visuals, optimization pass. - Fixed missing textures on the Lumbermill. - Fixed Rupu Slings not working after being unpacked. - Fixed issues preventing the player from reeling in and out, and cutting his grappling hook rope, after receiving damage. - Fixed issues with Guard Rail structural part. - Fixed issues with Camelop Walker not pumping lava. - Fixed issues with some ammo not being usable on Gunpods. - Fixed Firefly and Spider Walkers having some upgrades already crafted after being just built. - Fixed being unable to grapple to some parts of Base and Armored Walker Legs. - Fixed being able to bypass rupu turret activation timer. - Fixed several texture issues with lakes on Sleeping Giants map. - Fixed sandiness module calculation. - Fixed fog effects in Pyramid POIs. - Fixed issues with Walker Packing Compartment not allowing to pack small Walkers. - Fixed an exploit allowing to flip on top of the edge of the map. - Fixed a crash related to bombs landing on structures. - Fixed and improved sandstorm visual effects. - Fixed some issues with camera behavior inside Trading Station. - Fixed issues with camera behavior when climbing on structures - no longer clips through them. - Fixed some issues with shadows on specific materials on flags and cloth on Walkers. - Fixed some issues with storage UI for Proxy Walkers. - Fixed some incorrect values on harvesting resources such as mushrooms, small rocks, and more. - Fixed players being able to clip through Walkers when being pushed by Sawblades. - Fixed improper travel messages when Walker is combat tagged. - Fixed duel knockouts disabling claim tax. - Fixed Gas Mask. - Improved climbing animations in general. - Fixed several issues with Cobra Walker - Targeting issues and performance related ones. - Several improvements to the PoI spawning system. - Harpoons got an optimization pass, which should help improve client performance during large battles. - Improved rupu turret collisions. - Fixed some structures being able to push Walkers as if they were weightless. - Fixed animation issue with Advanced Fiberworking Station. - Fixed the first cutscene playing more than once. - Temporarily removed Defensive Tower. - Fixed being able to pull some harpoons from behind doors. - Some fixes for Walker safe logout checks. - Fixed respawn boost module max quantity. - Fixed various VOIP issues. - Fixed creative usage of javelins. - Fixed javelins sometimes not dealing damage.
This round of Community Questions will be a bit shorter, but we’ll tackle more in the Community Devlog at the end of the month! Remember, check out our Living FAQ to see all the past Q&As we’ve done in these posts, plus our Reddit AMA.
If you have questions you want to ask the devs, join our Discord and look at the latest post in #announcements for a link to the submission form.
Q: Why would you wipe the servers a day before the Shadowlands launch? A: It seemed like the best date for the beginning of a new season, and while some of you, understandably, might prefer to play Shadowlands, our games are not related very closely, so we didn't want to disturb the wipe plans over it. Also, we still have some exciting things we want to bring in before the end of the year!
Q: Why rush the launch onto Xbox? A: We've mentioned that we wanted to bring the game to consoles even before our Early Access release on Steam, so it wasn't a rushed decision. Since the premise of Last Oasis is the big living world where all oases are interconnected, we want to bring as many players as possible into it, and making it available on other platforms is a big step towards it.
Q: What about PlayStation? A: We’re absolutely interested in bringing Last Oasis to PlayStation in the future! Right now, though, we don’t have an estimate for when that will happen. The main reason we chose Xbox as the first console to launch on is because they have Game Preview that’s easy to work with. PlayStation doesn’t have a convenient program for EA games, so it’s more difficult.
We also want to ensure availability of crossplay on every platform as soon as the game is available on them. Our intention is to bring every Nomad together in the same world of Last Oasis.
Q: Who helped with Xbox port? You better not have taken devs away from working on the game to focus on this. A: We partnered with another team to make the Xbox port happen, so none of the PC version development plans were disturbed by it. As you've seen, we've maintained regular weekly patches together with larger updates all this time. Still, we can guarantee that both version will be as fair and close to each as possible.
Q: Since you are releasing on Xbox are there plans to support Xbox controller defaults on the PC version? A: Yes. Controllers will be fully supported on PC alongside an optional controller-specific interface to make sure you have a smooth experience whatever controls you prefer.
Q: If we’ve already bought the game on Steam, will we need to buy it again on Xbox? A: Yes. However, if you simply prefer to play with a controller and already own the game on Steam, we'll have full controller support available on PC as well.
Q: How will Microsoft's certification process for new updates to games affect development? Will the devs be able to react quickly to bugs or unforeseen meta changes? A: Certification doesn't take months, as many seem to believe, so we don't expect any big changes in our development process. What it does mean is that we'll be putting more focus on our internal testing to make sure none of the updates have any immediate critical bugs in them, while all other adjustments and tweaks that might be needed afterwards shouldn't be a problem to add.
Q: When are you putting the game on sale? I want to buy it now that the wipe is happening. A: There’s policies in place through Steam where we aren’t able to announce sale dates early, but you can check when sales happened in previous years to get a rough idea.
COMMUNITY FEATURE
If you haven't been around since the end of Season 1, BenJMinotaur has made a pretty cool video about the highlights of the latest updates coming into Season 2, aka the Commerce Update. If you'd like to see more of his content throughout S2, or have any other questions, you can find him on Twitch.
Check out his Season 2 video:
[previewyoutube="BvFq13Wbu10;full"]
Thanks for reading, Nomads! See you in the Oases!
Base Walker Packers
We’re doing one last content push to the Beta Branch before everything is brought over to the main servers during the wipe this Sunday (which happens at 5 pm CET / 11 AM ET).
This post is just going to cover what’s in this push, and we’ll have a more in-depth post on Sunday.
To repeat a few important points:
-This is a full wipe of the main server and private servers.
-BB will be closed for the time being, but will open again in the future.
-Season 2 does not mean a full release. Xbox is also not a full release.
This week, alongside many other additions and improvements, we’re introducing a Small and a Large Base Walker Packer - allowing you to pack small Walkers and Walkers of any size respectively. They can be built only in bases due to their structure and should allow for more convenience and utility when owning a base, both for switching between Walkers and when moving to another oasis.
CHANGELOG
BASE WALKER PACKERS
- Added Base Walker Packers - Small and Large, allows players to easily organize Walkers on their base. (Prototype model at the moment!)
STRUCTURES & OASES
- Improved Stone structural parts, now they actually look pretty. - Increased max duel wage - now you can lose up to 10.000 flots in a single duel! - Made doors open at 50% health and kicking them out. - Every meaningful action will refresh Trading Station protection.
WALKERS & TRAVEL
- Traveling with a Walker will automatically assign you and your crew to the Walker Crew. - Added an option to redeploy from the off-map lobby, to avoid players being unable to enter oases due to long queues. - Added warning in UI for players packing Walkers (removes the Walker from Favorites). - Added logging out enemy Walkers. - Forbid crafting in Logout zone and protection bubble.
BALANCE
- Buffed Proxy Walker health to 100k. - Buffed Catapult and Small Boulder damage by ~50%. - Decreased effectiveness of improvised explosives such as "Nomadness Bombs". - Rebalanced several Walker modules, and fixed some that were simply not working as intended. - All equipment items have durability now. - Buffed javelins. - Increased ammo capacity of Remote Ballista to 20. - Restructured Walker Tech Tree.
PLAYERS
- Improved climbing animations in general. - Improved camera behavior inside Dueling Arena. - Removed grappling hook stun.
FIXES
- Fixed rupu turrets no longer working after unpacking. - Fixed loophole to rupu turret activation timer. - Fixed several issues with Cobra Walker - Targeting issues and performance. - Several improvements to the PoI spawn system. - Fixed issue with Sandstorm effects on Volcanic biome. - Fixed Camelop Walker not pumping lava. - Fixed some issues with ammo not being usable on Gunpods. - Fixed being unable to grapple some parts of Armored and Base Walker Legs. - Harpoons got an optimization pass, which should help improve client performance during large battles. - Optimized bomb effects. - Fixed incorrect rupu turret collisions. - Fixed Scattershots being able to push Walkers as if they were weightless. - Fixed respawn timers for some Wandering Merchants in the Ancient City event map. - Fixed Founder Walker Core health not being in sync with the Walker itself (Silur and Balang). - Fixed Killins not respawning properly. - Some fixes to animations - Not all fixed yet. - Fixed a small passage in which players could get stuck in an Ancient City event map. - Fixed gas mask. - Fixed duel knockouts disabling claim tax. - Fixed animation for Advanced Fiberworking Station. - Fixed camera clipping through structures when climbing. - Fixed crash caused by chalk bombs hitting structures.
Dang, look how nice those stones look 👀
Xbox and Wipe Announcement
Well, Nomads, the day has finally arrived: We’re announcing the date for wipe, plus sharing our plan for Xbox release!
[previewyoutube="3wEl0LQWwis;full"]
XBOX RELEASE
Since our Early Access release back in March, we've been showered with requests to make the game available on consoles and today we're finally ready to announce that by popular demand, Last Oasis will be coming to Xbox One as well as the next generation Xbox Series X and Series S in Q1 2021.
More so, the game will support cross-play from day one, allowing everyone to play together regardless of the platform on both official and private servers. Whether you prefer keyboard and mouse or a trusty controller, you'll be able to experience the game equally and with fully synchronized updates across the board.
We'll keep you updated on the details of the Xbox release as it's getting closer. Feel free to ask any questions you have meanwhile and we'll try to answer them as soon as we can!
SEASON 2 AND WIPE
The question we’ve gotten the most since releasing the BB has been “When is the wipe??”.
Today, we’ve got an answer for you: this Sunday, November 22nd at 5 PM CET!
That’s right, in less than a week, we’ll be bringing the changes from the BB over to the main branch, officially starting Season 2 of Last Oasis!
We’ve mentioned in the past that this will be a full wipe, both of the official and private servers. Beta Branch will be closed for the time being, but we'll likely bring it back later on, as it proved to be very useful when it comes to testing and feature iteration. As promised, private servers will also be allowed to host multi-tile realms once the update is live.
This will be a very large update, so extended server downtime might be expected on official as well as private servers. We'll try to maintain the experience as smooth as possible following the wipe, and will do our best to adjust the number of tiles on the fly. Please let us know if you find any issues at the start of the new season and we'll address them as soon as possible. The fastest way to reach us is through our Discord. If you haven’t joined it yet, we encourage you to do so!
If you plan on using up your existing resources in a blaze of glory before they’re gone and have some fun, be sure to share videos or screenshots with us!
COMMUNITY QUESTIONS
We aren't answering any community questions in this post, but definitely ask through the form in #announcements on Discord and we'll try to answer anything critical ASAP!
You can always find answers to community questions on our Living FAQ.
Balang Walker
This week’s content push introduces another new Walker: the Balang Walker!
Base decay is now active, so make sure your Maintenance Chests are filled!
CHANGELOG
BALANG WALKER
- Added Balang Walker.
OASES
- Added dueling arena to Trade Stations.
STRUCTURES
- Added structure renaming. - Added moving/packing to the maintenance box.
BALANCE
- Overhauled all the loot in Ancient City. - Made scattershot hits ungrapple players. - Made Defensive Tower constructions decay if not built. - Rebalanced costs of ceramic Walker upgrades. - Reduced free redeploy cooldown from 24 to 12 hours. - Increased claim vulnerability window from 1 to 3 hours. - Rebalanced costs of all Clay and Concrete base structures. - Made empty Founder Walker cores require maintenance.
FIXES
- Fixed VoIP. Definitely. - Fixed chairs pushing players through walls. - Fixed Gun Pod meshing. - Fixed not being able to open doors while packing. - Fixed incorrect Hercul Walker icon. - Fixed some issues with Killin spawns. - Fixed some missing nibiran ore on hard maps. - Fixed Cluster Bomb sounds making ears bleed.
- Broke animations while optimizing. Fixing. - Optimization all around.
BALANG WALKER
[previewyoutube="CeEOzGuDw00;full"]
Balang Walker is a Founder Walker type, similar to Silur. It's the first tier of Founder Walkers that allows nomads to feel safe in a small stone base and bring it with them on their journey early on. It functions similarly to Silur, but allows it to pack much smaller bases and can be powered by simple wings rather than requiring torque to move.
COMMUNITY QUESTIONS
Got something you want to ask the devs? Join our Discord and check #announcements for a link to our submission form! To see what we've answered in the past, check out our Living FAQ.
Q: Will you be adding more PVE challenges such as smaller sand worms to keep players lively and out of the map corners? A: We've got lots of ideas for more PvE content in that vein, so they're definitely coming. More developed rupu interactions, new types of encounters, more meaningful camp raiding, new kinds of monsters and animals to hunt, more quests, and so on. Small worms back from early beta might also have a comeback in a revised form.
Q: Why is your new content taking away from the best part of the game which is the melee combat, rather than improving and expanding upon it? A: As we've mentioned before, it might seem like this because Early Access development is very incremental and some features just come out before others. We're actively working on melee combat as well as all other features you've seen coming out. When it comes to melee-related features, we're currently working on stat rebalances for the majority of weapons and armors, adding usable nomadic shields, looking into expanding on character progression, and considering many more additions and improvements.
Q: Will the ability to enter first-person while driving Walkers return at some point? A: Definitely. It had to be temporarily disabled due to the changes in the Walker camera, but we'll be bringing back the option to switch between the two.
Q: Are you going to balance the wingsuit? A: We're bringing durability to all equipment in the Beta Branch, so wingsuits will be naturally balanced by decaying on death, as now they're practically never lost. We wouldn't want to make the experience of using a wingsuit itself worse though, but we've been considering potential cost changes.
Q: Will other continents (i.e. Africa) ever get designated servers? A: At the moment we're covering every continent with the official servers except Africa and Antarctica and if we see enough interest from players in those regions, we'll definitely consider adding servers there as well. If any of the current regions get very large playerbases from more specific areas, say Russia or Central America, we could consider adding servers there as well.
Q: Will you increase the spawn rate of hard maps? A: The rate at which maps are spawned is automatic for the most part, so it will increase naturally as more players start playing in a specific region. We're definitely still not set on the number of maps per amount of players and specific settings for different map types, so we'll continue tweaking them until each oasis is constantly active, but not overcrowded.
Q: Why did you implement base maintenance, especially for Silur bases, since this adds an ongoing chore to the game? Isn't the burn mechanic already in place to prevent cluttered persistent servers? A: There were multiple reasons for us to try this feature on the Beta Branch. A simple one is to prevent base and foundation spamming, as it was very cheap and easy to just block off areas on the map. Another is that we've significantly increased the burn times, and since bases now play a much more significant role, maintenance allows balance and finetune it a much more precise degree. Since this feature is still on BB though, it's very possible that there will still be changes and adjustments.
Hercul Walker & Ancient City Event Map
This week, we’re introducing the new Ancient City event map, plus the Hercul Walker!
CHANGELOG
OASES
- Started spawning Ancient City event map.
WALKERS
- Added Hercul Walker - Torque! Now in industrial amounts! - Made it possible to only spawn on 1 selected crew Walker. - Increased max Walker crafting level cap to 20. - Made Walker crafting level price increase quicker.
BASES
- Added bases decaying without maintenance (starting early next week). - Added Maintenance Chest for bases. - Improved base combat timer to avoid abuse (walls, floors, etc.).
CHARACTERS
- Increased redeploy cooldown to 24 hours. - Increased redeploy cost to 500 flots. - Added an option to spawn in offmap lobby. - Removed spawning close to death location.
BALANCE
- Added Hardened Hellfire Bolt - Soft armor and burns 3 times faster. - Increased damages to Walkers from all projectiles from 5% to 10%. - Reduced lava damage to Walkers slightly. - Increased HP of all Hullbreaker bolts. - Increased Torque Backpack capacity to 3000. - Slightly buffed Scattershot. - Increased stack sizes of high tier chests. - Decreased water storage sizes of beds.
COMMERCE
- Added Modules Strongbox to auctions. - Added hatchets to Tools Strongbox. - Made World Map show best prices for trading. - Made trading station menus clearer. - Removed quick selling from trading station.
FIXES & OPTIMIZATION
- Improved performance in a bunch of places. - Fixed broken rupu camp allowing abusing rupu gel harvesting. - Fixed buying too many items from merchants. - Fixed Vitamin merchant sometimes not buying. - Fixed large lootsite chest not requiring hullbreakers. - Fixed Redwood trees not giving more wood with high tier tools. - Fixed some missing tooltip texts. - Fixed incorrect repeater shooting trajectory. - Fixed wrong sell order max quantity in UI. - Small improvements to VOIP. Working on it. - Fixed slot auction not showing local times. - Fixed building a ton of Water Bags close to each other. - Fixed some incorrect Tech Tree icons. - Fixed lava collecting sounds missing. - Fixed Silur Walker Core being nettable. - Fixed getting high like planes by kicking with wingsuit.
HERCUL WALKER / ANCIENT CITY EVENT MAP
[previewyoutube="8I87ALLRarY;full"]
Alongside a new way of efficient torque generation via the Hercul Walker and a brand new Ancient City event map, full of new lootsites, rupu camps, and merchants, we're also introducing some experimental changes to BB this week.
Most important one to mention is that all bases will now decay over time if not maintained. If you have a base that you want to properly use, you'll need a Maintenance Chest and a steady supply of resources to it. Depending on how large your base is and what's it made of, you'll need different quantities and types of resources.
PLEASE NOTE: Bases will NOT start decaying until early next week to allow you to build Maintenance Chests and properly fill them. Do it as soon as possible!
COMMUNITY QUESTIONS
Remember to join our Discord and submit your questions to the devs through the form in #announcements! Keep the questions coming, but be sure to check out our Living FAQ before submitting!
Q: Do all the current Walkers fit into the roles you envisioned for them, or are you planning any changes to them? A: As the game changes and new features get introduced, some older concepts and mechanics might get outdated or not fit into the meta with their balance, so changes to current Walkers is definitely always on the table. It would more likely be adjustments rather than full overhauls though, as, at this point, we might as well add a fully new Walker.
Q: Have you considered not having a trade station in every map that spawns? This would concentrate activity to certain markets and make claiming certain tiles much more lucrative (perhaps having these trade stations in medium tiles?) A: It's an interesting idea that we'd love to explore, but we'd like to approach it a little "softer" than fully removing stations from some oases. That alone might make some of them either too useless to be visited or so popular that there will be hundreds of players constantly trying to get in. Instead, we'll think about ways of making either trade stations or oases themselves more unique from each other, so each has a value, but it's a different value for every player based on their own playstyle.
Q: Have you considered evolving the Cradle Server experience, or even having PvE zones where less experienced players can stand more of a chance to experience the full content of the game? A: Expanding the cradle gameplay is something we would definitely consider if there are significant changes to the early mechanics of the game. Early gameplay is something we all really enjoy in the team, especially the intricate starting oasis and how it navigates you towards interesting places around the map. We've been considering some ways of incorporating the map itself or some form of it into the later game, so you might see it again some time with a little twist.
When it comes to pure PvE experience though, we still have no plans for introducing it to the official servers other than, possibly, with non-combat maps like the Flotilla in the future. Last Oasis is a PvP game with PvE elements, and while we value those PvE mechanics highly, as they diversify the game and provide more things to experience, disabling PvP would be like removing Mario from Super Mario.
Q: As a starting point for the future, have the changes to the trade system been working as well as you had hoped? A: With all the new Commerce changes, trading has been going really well with the current population. It takes some trial and error to finetune the values, as we've seen rapid inflation for example, so we've been doing it with the updates on the Beta Branch to have a more stable economy once it's available on the main branch. Overall, the economy still continues to grow as we monitor the market, so it's been a very positive change so far. More players try to get into it by undercutting their competition, personal trading (tax evasion!!) is spreading, and so on.
Q: Will the Flotilla / Sandworm be released in the Beta Branch or is that a project that’s still in the making? A: Current Beta Branch is mainly used to test changes related to Commerce and some more experimental meta changes, so it will be put on the main branch as soon as those are properly balanced and tested. Other large additions like the Sandworm or the Flotilla might also be put on the Beta Branch before they're available officially in the future.
Community Devlog
We’d like to remind you that all the changes on the Beta Branch are experimental and in relatively early states, so it’s entirely possible that there will be significant changes to one aspect or another before the update goes live on public servers. We’re constantly reading your feedback and discussions, and checking statistics on everything that’s going on in the game to potentially balance or even overhaul some of the features.
There’s some exciting things coming in November and beyond, and we can’t wait to share more soon!
To kick things off, we wanted to say Happy Halloween, Nomads! We have two treats for you:
First, Last Oasis is available for 34% off until November 2nd!
Second, we have a new narrative cinematic to share: Possession.
Jakub, our video editor, made this just for fun. It is not a teaser related to development.
[previewyoutube="KPaq_JWxuAE;full"]
Some Clarifications
Performance, Lag, and Other Unpleasant Things
To clarify once again why you might experience more stuttering on BB than on public servers - we're using a development version of servers that allows us to test and profile them at any time. Unlike the version that public servers have, this one is much more performance heavy on average, but it means that we can identify and fix issues much easier, which helps with iteration speed and will ultimately bring the Commerce Update to public servers sooner and in a more stable state.
We're currently focusing on many aspects of optimization overall and we're confident that there will be a noticeable difference between the current public version and the one coming with the wipe. After that, we're still planning to continue optimizing over time to make sure the game runs as stable as possible on the majority of hardware.
Clan and Tile Caps
Regarding the clan/tile caps, we're still assessing their impact on the game during BB. We've had an overwhelming amount of requests to add clan caps in the past, and while we weren't convinced on paper that they'll solve all the issues, we decided to try them out, since it's a testing Beta Branch. When it comes to hard tile caps though, while they might have a larger impact on the zerging issue itself, it would likely introduce significant issues to the travel, make queues much more punishing, and in general cause many additional problems. That said, we're still considering different options and collecting more information on how the current solutions actually affect the game, so it's possible there will be some changes coming in the future.
BB and Private Servers
Private servers will be getting the Commerce Update and all other changes from BB as soon as they're available on public servers. Together with those, all private server owners will be able to host multi-tile realms at the same time.
This week: Our Merciful Lord and Savior, pogosan, Blessed be His Name:
We’ve seen a lot of positive feedback so far regarding the changes to the game meta introduced with the Commerce Update, but also quite a few questions about the gameplay intentions behind some of them. While we wanted to give you time to experience all the changes on your own for the first week of the Beta Branch, we’d like to explain some of the ideas behind the two most significant balance overhauls that we didn’t mention in the original Commerce post.
Bases and the Silur
One of the biggest shifts in the meta that occurred due to the Commerce changes must be the gameplay surrounding bases. By making it possible to build a home you feel secure in early on, many decided to invest in a base and store some of their belongings there.
The idea behind making bases a more viable option in a moving world revolved around multiple problems we’ve seen in the game. The main one was such a heavy focus on the edge gameplay, where a large portion of the game happened in the travel zone, as it’s much safer and every player would have banking Walkers there at any time to conveniently use. This resulted in tedious and boring interactions that didn’t require much thought or had any potential consequences. Other issues included most of the oases being always empty and lifeless, as there were no man-made structures around, and, as a side effect, almost every possession in the game was always safe, making exploration rather boring.
With the introduction of the Silur Walker, allowing packing of solid bases and moving them when oases decay, and affordable stone base structures, it is now much more convenient to have at least some form of a base deployed in the oasis. Even though it’s somewhat less secure than banking everything in a lobby, it’s a tradeoff of a little bit of security for convenience of having a place to spawn and store your loot right in the gameplay area. That results in the world being much more diverse and interesting to explore, since each oasis will now have unique bases and structures all around it. Some might be fortified and not worth attacking, some have glaring security issues, allowing to steal some things. In the end, it’s more convenient for everyone who wants to store things closer to where they play and more fun for those who want to try to attack it.
When it comes to balance of solid bases though, we’d like to achieve situations where they’re sieged only when attackers have a good idea that it’s worth the loot inside. If there’s a 2x2 stone box with a firefly nearby, it’s better to leave whoever is inside alone, as it’s likely just some wood and fiber, but if there’s a fortress with Cobra Walkers on alert, it might be a good idea to try to get inside.
Walker Combat and Farming
Another significant change that came with the Commerce Update is making all Walkers less sturdy, allowing to damage them with any kind of a projectile or even the environment itself. While hullbreakers still remain the obvious choice for battles due to their high damage over time, now every shot in a battle counts, which goes both ways.
What this change means is that every Walker engaging in a battle will likely be damaged and, potentially, destroyed. Whether it’s a small Mollusk going about its day farming bone or a large war Falco attacking it for some loot, both will likely end up with damages that need to be repaired and accounted for.
With the meta formed in the previous balance, it was clear that those with more resources will always have the means to pirate Walkers, no matter how much more difficult it is to obtain hullbreakers. While the new balance ideology doesn’t address this specific part, what it does is it puts the pirates at risk as well, no matter how well-defended their Walker is or how much ammo the nomad being attacked has. There will almost always be some losses on the side of the attacker, and the more they attack, the higher the risks.
The changes to the combat timer and the Walker repairs play hand in hand with the Walker balance overhaul as well. Combat timer makes it more dynamic based on how serious the attack is, while the new repair system encourages careful planning before a battle, as you won’t be able to repair your Walker until after a battle is fully completed and you’re able to stand still for repairs.
Since Walkers are essentially more vulnerable now and are likely to be lost more frequently than before, harvesting balance has been changed as well to accommodate rebuilding Walkers more often. While it won’t be noticeable early on, as low tier tools still harvest similar amounts of resources, once you start progressing towards larger Walkers, requiring more structures on deck, and have more items to lose, higher tier tools will provide much larger quantities of resources, allowing you to rebuild quicker and get back to your regular activities.
Remember to join our Discord and submit your questions to the devs through the form in #announcements! Keep the questions coming, but be sure to check out our Living FAQ before submitting!
Q: Will there be new mechanics added to the combat system? A: As we've mentioned in the Commerce Update post, we're currently working on a melee shields mechanic, which should provide some more diversity in combat. We're also considering some other features regarding that like new moves for nomads during combat and unique attacks for different weapon types.
Q: Why add the 3 day period where you are unable to join a clan after leaving one alongside adding a 50 man cap? A: The main reason for this is to prevent switching between clans to avoid soft cap penalties and other potential clan system abuses. That said, we'll likely make this mechanic somewhat less punishing pretty soon.
Q: Are you thinking of adding any color blind settings? A: Definitely. We'd like to add as many ease of access settings as we can to accommodate all kinds of players in the future.
Q: What sort of content do you have planned for small groups/solo players? A: To add to what we already have in the Commerce Update, we'd love to make quests and other similar mechanics something that solo players and small groups can excel at more than large clans, essentially fueling the economy together with those large clans, who instead focus on wars and territory control for the most part. In general, we want to separate goals of different types of players to avoid confrontation between them, while encouraging symbiotic gameplay.
Q: Will the Main Branch wipe be a full one? When is that going to happen? A: Yes, the main public branch will have a full wipe like we've announced before. It will happen once we're happy with all the changes and balance on the Beta Branch that we're doing at the moment. As we've estimated at the start of BB, it will likely take around a month of time in total.
Q: Could you add an option to leave the queue from a full server to return to your previous server? A: Improvements to the queue system, including leaving the queue, are something we're working on right now and it will be available in BB before the wipe.
Q: Will private servers get multi-tile access before or after the commerce update phase testing? A: Both the Commerce Update changes and multi-tile realms will be available on private servers as soon as they come to the public servers after the testing period.
Q: Can we get community events or play against devs at some point? A: We can definitely look into community events in the future! As for playing with the devs, you may have already played with them and not known :eyes:
Q: How about introducing a leaderboard at the trading station? The clans that put the most proxy, burned them, or own a large number of oases? A: We were mostly considering leaderboards for individual players, as clans are very often dynamic - they split, combine, dissolve, and so on. It even happens that a clan that once started with a group of players will change their roster so much that it'll be a completely different group, so any kind of statistics for a clan could be quite misleading. We'll definitely consider it though, and try to find a good solution.
Battle Fan & Hard Maps
Post will be short since there will be a Community Devlog tomorrow!
Coming this week to the Beta Branch: the Battle Fan!
Hard maps are also being added. Event maps, including the Ancient City, will be added next week!
CHANGELOG
BATTLE FAN
- Added Battle Fan that sucks and blows.
COMMERCE
- Made all Tablets tradeable. - Made auctions prolong when someone bids. - Increased all auction starting prices. - Made all scouting quests more difficult. - Slightly buffed rewards for bringing items quests. - Tweaked prices and quantities of items at merchants.
WALKERS
- Actually added Heavy Legs to Buffalo and Hornet. - Actually added Armored Legs to Buffalo, Hornet and Stiletto. - Made Silur Walker top hatch easier to enter.
BALANCE
- Made all non-base structures have Soft armor. - Made all weapons damage Soft armor (except beatstick). - Increased Rupu Turret activation time from 15 to 180 seconds. - Made it possible to only have 1 sandbed per player.
FIXES
- Fixed VOIP again. Still improving. - Fixed Torque Windmill having too large collisions. - Fixed Net Thrower aiming and camera. - Fixed small Walkers sending players to space. - Fixed Walker camera going through stone walls. - Fixed quest packages being tradeable. - Fixed canyon mushrooms eating loot dropped on them. - Fixed lakes eating loot dropped in them. - Fixed sometimes not being able to sell items to merchants. - Fixed exploit with rupu camp clearing quest. - Fixed Nurr leaping forward behavior. - Fixed not being able to disassemble - Fixed Silur Walker Core meshing into terrain. - Maybe fixed Stone Doors shifting around. - Fixed some issues with the rupu weapon stick. - Fixed netting issues for various structures. - Fixed sometimes going through things when climbing. - Fixed sometimes seeing wrong combat animations. - Fixed quality spots changing after server restart. - Improved performance around lakes. - Improved clarity of some descriptions. - Fixed a crash related to merchant interactions.
BATTLE FAN
[previewyoutube="ugZgTpRuUX8;full"]
If you watched the trailer for the Commerce Update last week, you probably noticed the “booster” on the back of the Walkers. Say hello to the Battle Fan: this can act as a gas disperser by blowing the air out by default, but it can do much more with a little torque added. It can Superblow by charging up with air and releasing a strong gust that pushes the Walker it's on, deflects projectiles like cluster bombs, and sends unfortunate nomads that were too close flying. Adding some lava while Superblowing, however, will ignite everything on its path, unleashing a fiery hell. Last but not least, the Battle Fan can perform a Supersuck that sucks in all the gases in its vicinity and stores them in a container that allows to blow those gases out with a Superblow.
COMMUNITY QUESTIONS
Check out the Devlog tomorrow for some community questions! If you have something to ask the devs, join our Discord and check #announcements for a link to our submission form. To see what we've answered in the past, check out our Living FAQ.
Commerce Update: Available Now on Beta Branch
The BB is going to be continuously updated. This means fixes and changes could be implemented at least weekly. We know that there are going to be bugs in the Commerce Update that’s available on the BB, and that there’s room for polish. Everything in the BB is subject to change. Keep that in mind when you launch the branch!
The BB will be up for around a month. We want to do plenty of testing before we bring the update and changes over to the main branch, and that will take some time.
To access the Beta Branch:
-Right click Last Oasis on Steam -Select Properties > Betas -Choose betabranch from the list.
It will switch to the new branch and update the game.
KEEP IN MIND: There are things shown in the trailer that may not be available in-game just yet. For example, the Ancient City map will roll out in the same way as medium and hard maps.
[previewyoutube="zcPvpojaca4;full"]
NOTE: We’ll be releasing the changelog over a few posts, since there was so much that went into this update and this devlog is already long enough. This portion focuses on some of the major components.
COMMERCE
- Added Flots withdraw/deposit at trading stations. - Added wandering merchants with unique trade orders (tablets, etc.). - Moved permanent trading station orders to wandering merchants (claiming license, etc.). - Added Flotilla quests to trading stations. - Added Flotilla auctions to trading stations. - Added listing tax when placing an order, and sale tax when succeeding in selling an item. - Added bidding on reserved slots for any tile. - Added clan bank used for bidding on slots. - Added global Flots vault to claim acquired money from any trading station. - Made trade orders migrate automatically when a map burns. - Added Flot drops from lootsites.
WALKERS
- Added Silur Walker - allows packing solid bases. - Made Walkers Robust - damageable by everything except melee. - Added Armored and Heavy legs for Buffalo and Hornet. - Added Armored legs for Stiletto. - Forbid building wings and legs if they're blocked by hanging structures (gun pods, etc.). - Overhauled Walker repair system to encourage repairs out of combat.
OASES
- Added Ancient City event map - new lootsites, new rupu camps, new everything. - Added Flot requirement and cooldown for teleporting to other tiles. - Added 15 minute penalty forbidding spawn on beds and Walkers after teleport.
CLANS
- Added hard clan cap of 50.
BALANCE
- Increased yield of high tier tools. - Lowerd Cluster Bomb radius and increased weight. - Made combat timer dynamic based on damage.
STRUCTURES
- Buffed Clay and Concrete bases. - Added Stone bases. - Made ammo chest get disabled when netted. - Made Sawblades require torque to operate.
ITEMS
- Allowed to unequip grappling hooks.
CREATURES
- Improved and adjusted Killin behavior all around.
FIXES & PERFORMANCE
- Improved performance across the board. - Fixed vitamin requirement inconsistencies for high tier tech. - Fixed quarry issues after server restart. - Fixed various issues with opening/closing wingsuit. - Fixed being able to build Walker constructions on Walkers. - Fixed issues with Hornet Walker wings. - Fixed a bunch of VOIP issues. - Fixed being able to abuse foundations built on different heights. - Fixed all kinds of issues with calculating weight. - Fixed players and exoskeletons standing on sawblades. - Fixed sawblades having enormous containers for some reason. - Fixed Pyramids not appearing on maps. - A ton of other additions, improvements and bugs.
Maps will be rolling out gradually, similarly to how it worked on release. First Easy and Medium oases, then Hard, and then event maps. It will allow for a more balanced initial progression, letting clans and players to catch up before moving forward.
serr wanted to take a moment to talk a bit more about the development of the Commerce Update:
Currently, when working on commerce update we had multiple goals in mind:
Make flots valuable: no more flotilla trade orders where you had to bring any resources to the trading station in any quantities to make money - from now on trading is only done by real players. Instead, for earning flots we are adding flotilla quests - tasks that can be taken from a trade station. For spending flots we are adding small traders scattered around the world like ruins where you can buy valuable items like tablets, modules, claiming licenses, etc and flotilla auctions at trade stations. That is not the only thing that makes flots more valuable, there is another one, more important (in particular, for clans), but we’ll talk about it later in this post.
Make trading between players easier and more convenient. Previously, placing sell orders wasn’t always a good idea - it required maintenance - you would need to manually transfer all the items before the tile burnt and you would need to visit tiles where your orders are placed to collect flots. Combined with the fact of how easy getting flots from AI orders was, no wonder it wasn’t very popular. With this update, we make player orders at the trade station migrate to the next tile automatically when oasis burns. Additionally, when someone accepts your order you can collect the flots from any trade station in the world.
This however would make an exploit of using trade stations as free safe storage for items even more powerful. To counter this, from now on you will need to pay upfront payment when placing a sell order, proportional to the price you set.
Improve clan gameplay. First, let's talk about the controversial decision of introducing hard clan caps. This was not in our initial plans or our vision of the game. We don’t consider the existence of large clans a problem and our intention always was to have large fights, politics etc. However the problems that we’ve seen during season 1 go beyond that. Large clans are naturally stronger than the smaller ones, but they are also more efficient, and that created the situation in which a lot of smaller clans started merging into zergs, in many cases considering it the only way to have fun in the game. That is a very serious problem for us. We are fully aware that having hard clan caps will lead to large clans creating lots of “sister-clans” and that is perfectly fine. Our goal is for the power of clans to increase linearly with more members instead of exponentially and for smaller clans to not lose their individuality.
Another addition that should help us achieve that is making it more difficult to reinforce your allies. Previously you could ambush a small squad of your enemies only to have their clanmates and allies instantly redeploy to that tile across the whole world, spawn on the walker you are attacking, thus making all your efforts pointless. We considered removing the redeploy feature completely, but that would make a lot less convenient, in particular for smaller groups. Instead we are adding a penalty period of 15 minutes after redeploy, during which players won’t be able to respawn on walkers or beds. That should give you enough time to finish the fight and get away with the loot before the reinforcements arrive.
Server capping. In Season 1 fights between large clans often revolved around getting a majority of slots on the server filled with your players, thus preventing your opponent from even being able to show up. Nothing is more frustrating than preparing your battle walker for a fight and being stuck in the queue instead… Well, maybe except cluster bombs, but even that is arguable.
With commerce update we will introduce “slots auction” - ability to pay flots in advance to reserve slots in the oasis for a period of time, making sure that your players can join the fight. Why is it called “auction”? Very simple - when multiple clans are trying to reserve slots for the same time interval - slots will be distributed proportionally to flots spent, so if you have a stronger economy - you can gain numbers advantage on the battlefield. Alternatively, if your opponent spends a lot on slots - he gains advantage for this particular fight (for which you may still choose not to show up at all), but it hurts his economy long term. Obviously, not 100% of slots can be reserved in this way and also the oasis owner has some slots reserved as before.
This feature should create a constant demand for flots from clans, encouraging them to trade their resources, items, tablets/flots and maybe protection to smaller groups (which don’t have the need to constantly spend flots on warfare)
Optimization. We are currently doing massive work on analyzing and improving performance in the game. For those interested in details, there are many different areas with room for improvement - walker physics, structures built on top of walkers, different meshes, foliage… But some of them are worse than others, we are prioritizing those where we can get the biggest improvements with the least amount of time spent and we are planning regular optimization updates in Beta Branch until we are satisfied with results.
Other improvements planned. This includes lots of bugfixes, removing different exploits and, by popular demand, and fixes to the queue system.
Keep in mind that a lot of these things are still work in progress, all of them are not balanced properly yet and probably have annoying or critical bugs. That is the reason why we are opening the beta branch - we want to test new mechanics together with you, making changes without being too worried about fucking thngs up and in the end make sure that Season 2 will be fun and won’t have the same problems as Season 1 had.
Dev Spotlight: The Art Team and How They Designed the Ancient City Map
Ancient City is the new event map for Last Oasis.
It tells a story of an abandoned port city that centuries ago served as a trading hub. Once home to an ever-busy bazaar teeming with merchant families and financiers, with gigantic trading Walkers docked to its massive piers, the city is now in ruins, infested by rupus and pillaged, left to a slow decay.
The opportunistic Nomad traders are scouring the land, drawn by the rumors of ancient wind-powered pylons, looking for remnants of the long-forgotten technology and trying to piece together what was left of it.
Similarly to the previous event map Asteroid Crater, the Ancient City is a limited-time randomly spawned 'tile' with a strong focal point in the center - the port city ruins.
Like with each new map, we're trying to push the boundaries of game and level design while offering a brand new look to the player’s environment.
With Ancient City, the main innovation comes in the form of introducing static geometry to compliment our predominantly procedural map creation process and adding new forms of interaction with the environment.
The static architecture of the city helps us guarantee smooth moment-to-moment level flow in constrained spaces and makes it possible to add small and micro scale features in a more controlled fashion. As one of the consequences, there's a lot of treats hidden around for curious and observant players to discover.
One part of the city that stood the test of time relatively well is the pipe system that long ago served as transportation means for the goods and packages to be moved around the city. Now, although in a state of disrepair, it can still be used by nomads piloting smaller walkers. With the proper use of some of the upcoming Walker-mounted weaponry, it might lead to some fan...tastic results :)
—Tomasz, Lead Level Designer
THE DESIGN OF THE MAP When creating the new map, we wanted to create the next installment of the Last Oasis world. The distribution of the existing maps was based on a layout that assumed several areas with more difficult terrain and filling the free space with flatter terrain, allowing for free travel and exploration. For this map, we wanted to focus players' attention around one area.
The map also differs with a new stylistic idea, represented by architecture that is a remnant of a forgotten civilization. The map is supposed to be a place that arouses curiosity with a hint of mystery, which the architectural ruins emphasize. The city itself was very important to us in terms of fresh style and new solutions. The new forms, colors, and structures was a challenge, but also provides a respite from the ubiquitous wood in the game.
MOOD AND ATMOSPHERE During long discussions about the mood of the map, we thought about how to achieve this new feeling. Space plays a huge role for us because it doesn’t only please the eye of the player, but also reflects and intensifies emotions. In addition, it serves the primary purpose of making the gameplay possibilities cleared. I really wanted to combine strong contrasts, but also to convey the impression of passing time and a forgotten place. The colors and the variety of forms definitely helped to achieve this feeling. Juxtaposing our very heavy brutalist forms, with the idyllic and soft landscape we want to express a past of strong but lost civilization, and a romantic nature, unmoved by the passage of time.
The colors of the trees played a very important role on the map. On the one hand, I wanted to refer to an important era of development, but at the same time to show a certain forgotten era of this world. The golden trees speak of prosperous times and transience at the same time. This is after all the Commerce Update.
When designing a map, I always try to look at individual elements in an abstract way and assess the relationship between them. Various elements need some tweaking, changing, or additions, for the map to achieve an aesthetic balance as a whole. I am looking for contrasts in color and forms so that the eye and the player himself can find themselves surprised and astonished.
—Robert G is a lead artist in DC and has a background in production design, his role in the new map was to lead the mapping team and provide the principal artistic direction.
The architectural structures that we introduce on this map were created to stimulate the imagination of our nomads. We’ve designed mysterious, monumental forms that together with the light and the environment form into a harmonious whole. We used simple shapes to create a basic style that would not reveal its history at first glance. We left room for the players, encouraging them to use their own imagination and decide what the story would be.
We deliberately made objects with missing pieces so that players can finish what we’ve started, fill in the gaps with their ideas and therefore become part of our artistic team.
Personally, I take great pleasure in working on an element that must become part of the existing composition, as it was with the new lootsite for this map. Creating a model that fits the rest of the environment is a very complex task. You need to work with different team members to fully absorb their ideas and understand the importance of what you are doing. You have to analyze the location where this element will be placed in order to finally create a piece that will become part of the existing whole, using the knowledge and tools you have acquired. It is a very fulfilling task.
—Caro, Environmental Designer
Working on environments is a multi-stage process. It includes taking the concept of a map and designing layout, map creation and distribution of masks for separate features, adding materials, grass, foliage, POI and optionally static objects. All goes in the iteration cycle divided by testing. A lot of testing. Bringing the map to the end of the pipeline is a result of close cooperation between all team members. A lot of ideas come during work, so sometimes we adjust our plan to new interesting concepts or we stick to the original plan.
For the Ancient City map we agreed on a lush forest on the hills with golden birches as we are approaching fall season. We wanted to combine white cliffs with the green of dense grass and old ruins overgrown with moss.
We wanted to distinguish several separate zones differing in flora to obtain areas with specific feeling, accessibility and distribution of resources. So on AC map you can find golden birch forest hills, misty willow lakes, stone pillars, pipe ruins and ancient city- or what's left of it. Also across the map were scattered merchants, new lootsite and rupu camps.
In Last oasis foliage is done using a procedural approach. Map consists of multiple masks with assigned ground materials and grass. Foliage is also spawned on specific masks adjusted additionally using variation masks. Each object needs to have a customized distribution, density of occurrence in groups, distance from each other and other objects. This specification results from the assumptions of the concept and balance of resources, which we have to keep in line with regulations of game design.
Using a procedural approach we can easily iterate subsequent versions of the map, because we don't have to place everything manually. Thanks to that we are able to combine different biomes together, like in the Volcanion map where we combined some areas of the Canyon and Volcanic map. This creates an opportunity to have much more diverse environments.
—Kasia, member of the Mapping Team responsible mostly for the foliage in Last Oasis.
Remember to join our Discord and submit your questions to the devs through the form in #announcements! We’re anticipating the need for more clarification on the Commerce Update, and will try to have a video Q&A for the Community Devlog at the end of the month. Keep the questions coming, but be sure to check out our Living FAQ before submitting!
Q: What happened to the pyramids? I never saw them again after a few weeks. I kinda miss those POIs. A: Pyramids were having some issues, but they're coming back to all high-tier maps in BB!
Q: Will you ever release a public API for things like Tile statuses, kill logs, item data, etc. so some of us savvy Web Devs can make some cool community tools/content? A: We've been trying out some data output back in beta and added a clan log based on it since, but a proper public API is something we'll definitely be looking into in the future. Letting players customize tools for themselves is important to us, similarly to how we feel about mods as well.
Q: Will you improve current maps? Like hard maps with roads? A: Being able to update maps and bring them in and out of rotation was always one of the major reasons for the existence of the dynamic world map. You might not have noticed it, but we've been updating maps multiple times by now, just not in major ways like moving whole mountains or adding new biomes. Those small improvements will continue and it's also likely that we'll be replacing current maps with better versions altogether.
Q: How many types of maps are you planning to make? A: The sky's the limit! We don't have a definitive number of maps that there will be, but we also don't have any intention of stopping developing new types over time, even after full release. You can be sure that variations of existing maps, event maps, as well as entirely new types will continue coming out with most if not all major updates. In fact, we're already working on a completely new map type, while also preparing a full-sized oasis based on the Ancient City from Commerce Update.
Q: In this stage of Last Oasis's development, what is your plan for the future of the end game content for this game? A: We're hoping to accommodate all kinds of players and make sure Last Oasis is fun for those with different interests. Our main focus with end game content at the launch of Early Access was clan combat - large war walkers, claiming lands, and everything else that appeals to clans who like a good fight. While we'd like to expand on that and add more branching options of things to do for larger clans, we'd love to provide more diverse experiences as well - new creatures and bosses to fight in groups and solo, exploration-based maps, even more opportunities to make trading a core concept of the game, and more in-depth features and systems that allow to enjoy the game for extended periods of time, including end-game progression levels.
Q: With every new update it seems like there are new farmer Walkers and ways to counter melee combat with a no-skill approach. Will melee combat remain a pivotal function of Last Oasis? A: There will always be a split between personal and walker combat, and melee will always remain the focus of the former. The reason it might seem like we're moving away from it is just a side effect of Early Access - new features are added over time instead of having all related features together, so when a new powerful walker weapon is added, it may detract from other combat metas until it's balanced or some counter is added.
As an example, we'll be adding a Battle Fan next week, which will allow you to push away gases and bombs. This functionality will mean that using a powerful projectile (let's say Cluster Bomb) can easily backfire by having it fly back at your own walker. To say a bit more about melee specifically though, it's a much more complex system, so changes and additions to it are often more rare than other features, as they need much more balance and tweaking. We're absolutely still working on it though, despite the discord memes. Currently working on shields!
Q: How does Donkey Crew come up with Walker designs and ideas? I really love every design in the game, and I'm curious how they were came up with! A: This is a question that is not so simple to answer, and we should probably do a more comprehensive section about this one day. Almost every walker has its own story and path to completion! Usually however, the first step is game design that has a new idea for a walker, (without a strong idea how it should look), but it’s properties and function should be defined. Sometimes there exists a blockout prototype and sometimes not. In the art department we ask ourselves what is the essence and most important feature of this new walker. Is it quick or slow? Expensive or cheap? What is it meant to do? Any specific gameplay requirements here? We meet and discuss potential solutions and try to give the concept artists a framework to work with. Creativity can live or die with constraints, and the trick is to find a good balance with constraints and freedom to give to concept artists. Presupposing too much of the design can be uninspiring for them, while having too much freedom can lead to taking wrong paths or getting lost in possibilities.
Concept artists usually do several iterative steps going from many sketches, before we select those that speak to us the most. This is the most fun and explorative stage, where we try to not hold back. In the end we choose one sketch and start designing it properly, solving 2ndary problems and improving. Once the drawings are done, we do final testing and adjustments working together with 3d artists, animators and game designers to finalize the walker asset. As a last step (when time allows) we do what we call “pimping” which basically means adding small flavorful assets in the editor.
Q: Are there any plans on expanding the lore? I found the world to be very interesting during the tutorial, but it feels like all the world building stops immediately after leaving the cradle. A: Everything you see in the game is deeply rooted in our lore. From rupu behavior and materials used in crafting to the way event maps spawn and how chairs look. We didn't have much time to make it more prominent and out in the open yet, partially because we're still actively working on expanding it as new features are coming out, but you can be sure to see a lot more in the future. Even now, you could start making some guesses and assumptions by looking at how the world functions. Why is there a glow when an eclipse happens? How are apes so evolved? And what's the year the in-game events are happening in?
Q: When will the Ancient update come out? Will it be this year? A: The timeline for the Ancient Update largely depends on how BB and Commerce goes. It's not impossible that it might still happen later this year, but it's more likely it'll be early next. We'll be announcing it properly once everything is properly assessed though, so take this prediction with a grain of salt.
Q: Are you planning to make the travelling more interactive so we can appreciate oases? A: We're currently not considering a mechanic to require actually traveling through empty desert tiles to reach different oases, as we find it detracting from other aspects of the game. We want to make sure that it's possible to quickly jump into fun or productive gameplay experiences when you launch the game.
That said, we do want to encourage traveling around oases and spending more time on them in general. Coming with BB changes, bases are now much more desirable in addition to storing bank walkers offmap, promoting settling and exploring maps. Similar incentives are provided by the new quest system and other Commerce Update features. With all that, we'll be continuing adding new mechanics to make traveling around oases more appealing and interesting.
Q: Are there plans to add in dailies? A: New quest system works somewhat similarly to dailies already - you get to pick a quest at a trading station and once completed, you can choose the next one. We'd love to expand on this feature though, and actual daily quests with bigger rewards is something we'll be considering.
