Today we’re launching the final Test of Season 6. As some of you may already know, we’ve been working hard on the next iteration of the game with a complete overhaul of pretty much every aspect of walkers, progression, maps, crafting, content and balance, by listening to your ideas and feedback.
To make the right choice and ensure the stability of the season, we will be starting with a full test immediately using the official servers, iterating across all maps and plan to finish in around 5-8 weeks in May, with the full launch of Season 6 shortly after.
This test will be as close to the real content of the game as possible and we will be making sure to use this as an opportunity to take feedback from players in our Discord and Steam forums, as well as address any gamebreaking bugs or exploits we may find.
This update brings lots of new content, activities and features that should hopefully incentivize more PVP and player interaction, while giving more protection to new players and smaller groups. This is highlighted by new Points of Interest, tile based events, and an awesome new moving proxy walker tile claiming system. Many of your favorite features will return such as the offline lobby and Flotillan Grappling Hook.
For those that don’t know, we will be introducing a new map release schedule. Cradle (2 days); Canyon (7 Days, Static) and Ancient City (7 days, Event) Volcanyon (7 Days, Static) and Sleeping Giants (7 Days, Event) Kali Spires (Static), Asteroid (Event) and Worm (Event) maps until the end of the test.
All maps will have a different clan cap of
6 cap
12 cap
25 cap
50 cap (If needed)
We will try to keep the total number of tiles at bare minimum to enhance players' interactions. As a result, it might be possible early in the test to join a queue due to full tiles. We will monitor the situation closely and adjust as necessary. Fixed by spawning new maps on the fly.
So what has changed? Well, we’ve condensed down 15 pages of patch notes to the summary below. It’s pretty much everything!
WALKERS
Completely reworked rigs to allow building anywhere on the walker with structure limit based on type
Completely reworked walker armor, armor types, and made cargo, water and hatch of walkers unlocked at different Health
Added new ammo required to damage walkers below 25% HP and fully destroy them
Reimplemented packing system in all walkers
Completely reworked all weapons and ammunition damage and cost
Added missing unpacking errors
Limited max amount of remote weapons for each type
Fixed T3 and T4 placeables/walkers recipes, for the new progression system
Added walker crew and walker power caps: overcap temporarily decreases the walker engine power by 75%, by exceeding the max allowed crew size for that walker or the total number of walkers on the map owned by your clan. Automatons count as crew members too!
Completely reworked proxy walker claim system, consisting in a PvP walker fight and race around the center of the map.
Added buildable anti-personnel turrets to walkers
Rebalanced walker carry weights
Made firefly buildable on ground
Added walker packer to trade station, working as a prepaid on-map lobby
Re-enabled walkers offmap lobby system
Rebalanced and increased walker harpoon effectiveness
Reworked and standardized all walker modules
Reworked how Modules are obtained via component parts
Reworked firearrows/hellfires recipes
Added steering lever spot as a separate spot to all walkers rigs
Walkers in pvp cooldown and HP lower then 90% will stay tagged inside trade station, which means can't be repaired/packed until you go outside trading station to reduce the cooldown
Removed the option to craft quality walkers. Every walker can now be upgraded using quality schematics, items and modules.
Reduced Spinner ammo deviation from 3 to 1.5
Improved scattershot gun collisions
Allowed upgrading walker rig with the current one is compatible with the new rig
Implemented new walker rig placement info UI
Fixed slingshot and catapult trajectories
Added cargo and hatch to proxy walker, to work as PvP walkers
Increase ballista turn rate, capped rotation at 200 degrees
Increased upward look angle for repeater
Improved walkers center of gravity
Added momentum to walker pieces when zeroed
Set collision on dinghy balls to ProjectileOnly
Added sound and visual effects to charged boulders
Added Walker Destruction component to small walkers (allows you to "scuttle" walkers so they don't clutter the L/take up points)
Increased build radius blocker around steering levers
Increased automatons weight
Reduced Automaton reload speed
Fixed gunpod scattershot
Improved walker cap for each tile clan cap
Improved walker barrier placement collisions
PLAYERS
Allowed spawning in desert on all maps
Full rebalance of tech tree
New tech tree UI
Tech points accumulated by increasing character level
Fully rebalanced exp rewards from all sources
Completely rebalanced grapples, flotillan should now feel like Season 1
Added sheath/unsheathe animation
Set running state as default when enabling auto-run
Fixed glitch with techpoints being permanent when using wanderers potion
Fixed respawn button crash issue
Made all dyes cost 50 flots instead of special resources
MAPS
Reworked all maps lootsites
Rebalanced rupu behavior based on map tier
Reworked all maps foliage drops and tools
Adjusted recipes to coincide correctly with map tier
Added small volcanos to Sleeping Giants maps that occasionally erupt and spawns harvestable obsidian rocks
Allowed trading station spawn and player respawn on all tiles
Removed home tiles system
Added despawn timer to new POI’s
Added "Shaman's Pit" POI Event to Volcanyon map
Added "Ancient Towers" POI Event to Kali Spires
Added "Totem of Power" POI Event to Canyons
Added “Ancient Camp” POI Event to Cradle map
CREATURES
Added GoGo mob (Giant Crab)
Added Koa mob (Giant Elephant)
Added new mobs spawn locations
Reworked Phemke loot and AI
Added lot of new rupu camps variations
Added Lazaward (Giant Nurr)
Reworked all rupu camps including decreasing the number of ballista, removing gas and fire bomb throwers.
Added Mountable Nurr (Tile Owners only, not persistent with server restarts)
Added more rigged mob variations for Papak, Okkam and Gogo
Adjusted AI behavior of Nurr Raiders to be easier to combat on a walker
Reduced rupu javelins damage by 50%
Nerfed papak gas damage by 60%
Removed feathers and Kllins mob
Fixed Papak AI
Fixed Okkam and GoGo aggro range
Reduced big mobs cull distance to 150m
Reduced roks damage to big mobs by 2 times (was too op)
Reduced Papak aggro and shooting range
Nerfed nurr tail attack and boosted leap attack
CRAFTING
Rebalanced all weapons, armor, and crafting recipes/costs
Added schematics of previous tiers on all quality mobs (T3 rupus can drop T3, T2 and T1 schematics)
Added crafting bench, to craft Tier 2 and 3 items
Added Blacksmith station, to craft Tier 4 items
Added T2 and T3 stomping stations (more efficient and faster)
Added scroll list on building screen
Enabled quality sand
Added ability to merge items of different rarities
Added nibirian harpoon and bolt
Rebalanced all potions costs and effects
Fixed Race Dust
Completely reworked base building, stone walls buildable only on balang/silur. Wood walls buildable and packable anywhere.
Buffed giant walls for better effectiveness in base building
Added some bulk items crafting for rope, fiber weave and fiber
Changed lava fuel icon
Added new Nibirian Armor set
Re-added wooden slabs to woodworking stations
Increased charcoal generation chance
Adjusted bed spawn recipes and construction level for hammock and bed.
Allowed dyeing weapons and grappling hooks
Adjusted base building collisions so doors can now be built near other doors
Added clan vault (medium armor, 5k hp, medium slot, 500 stack size, only holds resources)
Removed ceramic nails and starch cement
Reduced cloth bandage cost
Increased base decay rate when out of maintenance
Added Tier 3 Fiberworking station
Fixed repair station
MISC
Fixed many crashes
Improved LODs to reduce GPU load
Added Hotspot event and treasure chests in all main maps
Added Treasure Maps (lootable from big camps)
Added base’s walls decals
Made all customizations cost flots instead of resources
Fixed walker parts spawning in the center of the map
Fixed desert clam not spawning with quality
Fragments are now used to gain exp
Added parkour POI
Added new rupu POI
Reworked meteors to include important higher tier resources
Added some utility buttons to chests for quick sort/merge functions.
Optimized cached assets loading time
Many optimizations to LODs
Added new in-game wiki for all item descriptions and details
Reduced performance impact of sandstorms and disabled damage to structures
Changed rupu sandals icon
Changed iron pickaxe icon
Reworked all trade station quests
Added XP info to trade station quests
Added multiple auctions to trade station
Added ping and FPS info to watermark screen
Added new game music
Improved target HP & unlock UI
Fixed custom names not showing properly on map icons after server restart
Disabled damage and physics interactions on trade protected walkers/players
Replaced Steam icon with a PC icon in server list
MODKIT
Explosed almost all variables and functions to blueprints
Added blutility assets for many different actions
Added some example maps and their WorldMachine source project
Season 6 Test
Greetings, Nomads!
Prepare yourselves.
We’re beyond happy to finally announce the plan for Last Oasis.
This Wednesay March 26, 2025 at Midnight (00:00 EST) we will be taking the official servers down for maintenance. We expect this to last until Thursday March 27th, 2025 at 2pm EST when we will make the official servers live for the final Season 6 test. During this test, you should expect bugs, crashes, poor balance, and general unpleasantness. This test will also be available to all console players on Xbox.
We expect the test will last for 5-8 weeks but this may vary.
Season 6: Chapter 1
As many of you know, Season 6 is the product of the players. Between the three of us primarily responsible for the design and implementation of Season 6, we have well over 10,000 hours in the game, and many more thousands discussing it with and amongst you on Steam and Discord. Season 6 will be the most heavily tested season ever, with tons of changes directly influenced or suggested by you. We believe Season 6 is a great first step towards making Last Oasis the best version of itself.
The full list of changes for Season 6 is too expansive to even summarize properly, so instead, we want to talk about our vision, our guiding principles, and what you can expect in Season 6 and beyond.
Out with the Old In with the .. also Old?
Many things have changed over the past few years and we wanted to clarify the state of some of our core features going into Season 6. This includes content that was removed or never released as well as some new fresh ideas to expand upon. Here are some key points that may be familiar.
Lobby - The Lobby returns! There is one small change, which is that the interaction to travel/go to the lobby is now only at the center of each edge, rather than the whole length.
Schematics - Schematics were repurposed into an input in quality crafting recipes. Now, to unlock new technologies, you simply have to level up and get tech points, and you can craft basic versions of anything once unlocked.
Hardpoints - We’ve removed Hardpoints and players can once again build in any location on the walker. Instead as softpoints with a structure limit associated with their rig.
Grappling Hooks - The lock out and stamina regen nerfs were removed and replaced with a lock-out on block. And of course the stamina/length/reeling power were all rebalanced to be more like prior seasons. This should help to remove some of the worst combat offenses associated with grappling while still keeping it enjoyable to use.
PvE - PvE tiles were removed and replaced with an expanded trade zone safety protection zone/timer. PvE encounters were overhauled and rebalanced. Season 6 will see the introduction of the Koa and GoGo, in regular and warmob form. (Unfortunately Killin will have to sit this season out.)
Ride the Walker
We remember the first time we learned about Last Oasis. It’s probably an experience many of us share. Messing around in Steam and the Last Oasis Steam Announcement trailer pops up. Giant wooden walking machines. A herd of them, rolling through the forest, chasing an even larger one. Seeing tons of them, of all scales, traveling across various biomes, until an epic final clash.
This was the Last Oasis that captured our imaginations.
This inspired us to re-center the walker as the core part of gameplay. For a long time, the risk-reward balance of walkers resulted in stale, risk-averse strategies.
To remedy this we’ve added multiple new POIs and event maps which will encourage players to use walkers in a much more spontaneous way, while balance changes around walker weapons and walker and base raiding will make the risks easier to manage and the rewards far greater.
Hearing all the positive feedback around how walkers feel important, meaningful, and powerful was our favorite result from all the testing so far.
Scheduled Chapters
You might notice the use of “Chapter 1”. As we previously announced, we intend to move forward with planned wipes approximately every 8 weeks.
We think this is an important change for at least the foreseeable future. The reasons for this are numerous, but most importantly it will allow us to iterate more quickly and new things without being committed to them for months or years at a time.
Between Chapters you should expect balance changes, bug fixes, and some experimentation. New content and features that take more time will be released when it’s ready as a new Season.
Accessibility
Last Oasis is a skill-based directional melee full loot MMO survival game. A niche within a niche within a niche. Within a niche? We're not sure you could even make a venn diagram to represent such a thing. We know that all those elements are important to the charm of Last Oasis. However, the simple fact is that we have to become more accessible to players.
This is across the entire game - the grind, the features, the balance. The previous version of Last Oasis was simply not sustainable.
To that end, we’ve added many new features, mechanics, and balance. These include the anti-personnel turret, the walker crew and cap limits, reworking essentially every recipe and crafting loop, restoration of the off-map lobby, making fully destroying walkers significantly more difficult, expanding the trade station safe zone, and the list goes on.
Fully achieving this goal will take some time, but we think we are on the right track.
A full list of changes will be included in the next announcement, but we strongly encourage you to join the Discord, find a community, and experience this version of Last Oasis for yourself; that’s whether you played the most recent test, haven’t played for years, or have never played.
See you in the wastes!
Devblog: Season 6 Development Update
Greetings, Nomads!
We’ve recently wrapped up our second Season 6 test and are excited to share our thoughts with you. Season 6 has been our most collaborative season yet, bringing both great opportunities and unique challenges. We deeply appreciate everyone who has taken the time to test, provide feedback, and adapt as we navigate the bumps along the way.
Our Vision for Season 6
In our last post, we said that S6 would be a return to the PvP roots of Last Oasis. our aim is to capture the spirit of what made the game special while moving it forward. To us, forward means improving the games accessibility while keeping the core.
We want to share a personal anecdote from our time playing that demonstrates the gameplay we’re trying to achieve. Our clan was debating between jumping into a proxy fight, trying to loot an asteroid event, or contesting the Ancient Rupu Camp, while also considering the event tile that was going to spawn soon.
These are the exact type of situations we want - various events all over the map, both local and world, that groups of various sizes can contest, that provide valuable things, and generate opportunities for player-versus-player conflict at various commitment levels.
Let’s talk a little bit about how we got there and how we intend to continue developing along this path.
Season 6, So Far
Walkers have always been part of what sets Last Oasis apart from other games, especially those in its genre. As part of Season 6, one of our major goals was to restore walker-centric gameplay, which we achieved in many ways
Most testers seemed to agree Walkers are critical for quickly getting to asteroid and Ancient Rupu camp events, which are timed POIs that provide critical progression and competitive advantages. Since event tiles currently prevent building or unpacking, taking a walker prepared to engage in combat is critical for protecting yourself on the event tiles, which again are crucial for progression.
In addition, we added the Anti-Personnel Turret, which is an automated walker weapon that targets enemies on or grappled to your walker. In the past, it was common for highly skilled players to simply eschew using walkers, undermining core gameplay loops and defeating players who had committed a much larger investment of time and effort. We observed that the APT was massive in leveling the playing field against nomads trying to circumvent the use of a walker while still making it possible to board walkers and fight when in large combat.
At the same time, just as many people have had the experience of running into a much larger, more experienced, and more prepared force. We made several changes we hope will result in a more competitive experience.
First, we have made it much harder to fully destroy walkers. At 25% HP, the armor value of walkers changes to “Heavily Damaged”, which can only be damaged by Charged Boulders, crafted from Meteor Cores, which are harvested from asteroid events. Given the limited nature and more involved process, this should reduce the frequency of fully destroying walkers, while still allowing enemies to impact the logistics of one another.
Second, we’ve massively increased the soft cap water consumption, while only spawning maps at 6, 12, and 25 caps. We think this is a better system than a hard cap - as we experienced in Season 2 there are significant issues with a clan hard cap - while still keeping the amount of people that can be brought into the fight at a reasonable level.
We found that during our tests, our walker crew and walker power limits were not quite restrictive enough. For the next test, we’ll have much more restrictive limits, which should help to make walker combat more about tactical gameplay and be more skill-based.
Further Improvements
Largely, these changes have worked out to create a fairly dynamic experience, with frequent PvP at small and large scales. But there are some things that aren’t yet working.
One of the most disliked systems in Season 6 is the quality system. Survey respondents felt that it didn’t provide good incentives for progression, it creates challenges for inventory capacity and base management, and being locked to events provides some planning challenges for a lot of players. We don’t anticipate making major changes to this system prior to Season 6, but we did want to let you know we were hearing the complaints and we’ll continue to monitor and consider how it can be altered.
Another major complaint was walker PvP. While we largely like the impact of rigs, weapons were a bit too weak considering the limitations. We suspected weapons would need a buff, but prior to making major changes we wanted to see combat with larger walkers like Buffalo, Hornet and Falco. We’ll continue to monitor and tweak this until we get a result that is fun and competitive.
Our experiment with the Trade Station—providing infinite invulnerability and crafting—was met with criticism. This was an initial test to explore its potential as a social hub and safe zone. We believe the Trade Station can play an important role in Season 6, and we’ll keep refining it to achieve the right balance of risk and reward.
Looking Ahead
Season 6 is still very much a work in progress, but we’re starting to see glimpses of our vision come to life. As we prepare for the next test, our focus will be on:
Fixing critical bugs and crashes from the last test.
Finalizing map preparation.
Tuning balance adjustments based on player feedback.
Continuing development on new POIs and events.
Thank you for joining us on this journey. Your feedback and enthusiasm are what make this possible. Stay tuned for updates on the next test, and we look forward to seeing you in the Oasis!
Calling All Testers For S6
We’re excited to announce that we’re opening applications to participate in testing for Season 6 of Last Oasis. Nearly every part of the game has been modified in some way, and we want to approach testing in a different way than we ever have before. We’ve already begun internal testing, but as you all know that can only get us so far. Our plan is to have some phases of invite-only testing to test balance and gameplay at a larger scale, before eventually having a Beta Branch which will be open to the whole community. If you are interested in participating in testing, please complete the application below.
https://forms.gle/bdPwSDAcxcv7hCkf7
As for what Season 6 is - well, as I mentioned, we’ve adjusted nearly every part of the game in some way. And, more importantly, everything is still subject to change. Since the game is so different, testing will be critical and we are committed to working with the community to consider all feedback and make adjustments.
Player-versus-Player
First and foremost, Season 6 is a return to the player-versus-player roots of Last Oasis, particularly with a focus on emergent gameplay. We all believe that Last Oasis is at its strongest and most enthralling when the world is dynamic and unpredictable. Many of the features that have been introduced throughout the years undermine this and have resulted in stale, predictable gameplay. We have rebalanced everything that goes into raiding - from weapon damage, wall health and armors, ammunition types, etc. We will no longer have PvE tiles. The offmap lobby was replaced with a walker packer at the trade station that will cost flots after a certain amount of walkers. Our goal is to generate more frequent and spontaneous PvP, while still leaving enough safety that it doesn’t feel like you need to make the game a full time job.
Progression
Progression has received a major overhaul. Technology will be unlocked by leveling up your character. This should resolve a lot of the issues that were present in both tablets/fragments, as well as the schematics system. We thought strongly before that progression should be linked to exploration, but we’ve decided at least for now to simplify the base system and add complexity on top. And secondly, quality crafting will require schematics. Quality will only be available on event maps, which should help to prevent many of the issues that existed in previous seasons, as well as contribute to more spontaneous PvP. Lastly, rather than maps being added to the pool of possible maps, the whole world will progress through each map at a linear rate. So, everyone will be on the Cradle together at first, then Cradle maps will burn and we will all move to the Canyons, and so on. The season is designed currently to last for 8 weeks.
Walkers
Walkers are, of course, one of the most unique aspects of Last Oasis. The flexibility that walkers provide is unmatched in pretty much any survival game. However, with great flexibility comes significant opportunity for exploits and unfair and unsatisfying gameplay. Our attempts to put some guardrails on in Season 5 were misguided and I believe we’ve settled on something that has the potential to be a lot better in Season 6. The rig system has been overhauled to allow you to freeplace structures anywhere, and only limits the amount and type of structures you can place. This will let you customize your walker however you want, while requiring more thoughtful decision making when it comes to outfitting your walker. In addition, we’ve added crew limits to each walker, so that small walkers can no longer be overloaded with players. And finally, each clan has a Total Walker Power, which is a cap on the walkers that can be on a tile at any given time, with each type of walker having a unique value against that cap.
Exploration
One thing that the fragment/tablet system did very well early on was to encourage you to go out into the world, take risks, and run into other players, which is the genesis of emergent gameplay. In Season 6, we’re attempting to emulate that with a few different mechanics. The previously existing asteroid mechanic has been repurposed, providing some scarce resources not available on the current map, potentially allowing you to progress faster. We have added a new Rupu Camp event, which will also provide unique rewards. And lastly, we are continuing to expand the number of creatures in the world, as well as continuing to improve the behaviors of existing ones, that will provide unique resources critical to progression.
Territory Control
If emergent gameplay is the soul of Last Oasis, territory control is the engine. Claiming tiles has always been a way to measure your clan against another and we want to embrace the competition. We have overhauled the proxy mechanic so that it is no longer about racing your Proxy Walker to the center of the tile. Rather, claiming a tile is now accomplished by driving your walker a certain distance. This means that your enemies can try to deny your claim by attacking your Proxy Walker as you try to complete its journey.
Everything Else
These are some of the major beats of the update, with some explanation about our guiding philosophy for how we want Last Oasis to develop, but it isn’t even close to everything. As we said, nearly everything in the game has been adjusted in some way. Gear balance, grappling hooks, crafting recipes, vitamins, experience, traveling, the list goes on.
We'll start with closed testing for now and then move forward with a more solid S6 release when we're confident players are having fun and the design is working as intended. Please keep in mind everything here is subject to change based on the feedback we receive.
Moving Forward
Greetings, Nomads!
It’s been an exciting few months for us with the release of the Last Oasis Modkit and Bellwright. We’ve been thrilled to see the incredible creations from our talented community using the modkit. Bryan has been diligently improving the modkit to provide you with the tools needed to create your desired experiences. To support this, we’ve decided to merge all current S6 changes into the Modkit branch. While these changes might break some mods, we believe it’s better to address these issues now rather than later. Please note that these changes are a work in progress. They don’t represent the final state of S6 and many are still prototypes. However, they aim to address significant issues from S5 and offer a better foundation for modding. Here are some of the key changes:
Walker Cap: Each walker has a specific amount of "walker power." The total max walker power on each tile can be 100, 200, or 300 based on the clan cap. Walkers stop moving if the walker cap is exceeded.
Crew Cap: Each walker can carry a specific number of clan members. If the max crew size is exceeded, the walker stops moving (automatons count as players too!).
Base Rarity Craftings: These do not require schematics, which can only be obtained on event maps.
New Tech Progression: This system is based on map and level progression. Some items/resources cannot be obtained until the next tier map is available (Cradle > Canyon > Sleeping Giants > Kali Spires).
Improved Grappling Hooks
Decreased Stamina Consumption
Grappling Hook Cooldown: Added cooldown after receiving damage.
Trade Station Packing: Walkers can now be packed inside trade stations by renting personal or clan-shared packing slots.
Reduced Sandstorm Damage
Reduced Rupus Aiming Accuracy
Redesigned Foliage for Each Map Tier
Re-enabled Rarity Merging
Re-enabled Walker Packing
Increased Packing Decay to 14 Days
Ammo damage against each armor type to make them more specialized.
Tool Rebalance: Rarity tiers overlap so that a Rare tool is equal to the Base tool of the next tier.
Today, we also want to start a series of “Modkit Showcases” where we talk directly to creators and share what they’re working on and what they hope to achieve. This week we speak to Xanjis, creator of Oasis Adrift!
Modkit Showcase: Oasis Adrift
Today we speak with Xanjis, developer of the Oasis Adrift modpack. His modpack adds airships, completely changing the way the game is played.
What is your vision for your mod?
“Ultimately I want the airship system to be an entire parallel progression path to regular walker progression with its own maps, recipes, stations, weapons, and harvesting systems. It would then be up to the player to either focus on walkers, airships, or both at the same time. Realistically being able to fly is always going to be a huge advantage but walkers will always be more durable, have more firepower, carry more players, and there will be no airship versions of the base utility walkers such as the camelop. Additionally there will be tools to even the odds such as the flak ammo and the heavy ballista. Currently the mod is completely playable on the oasis adrift server however its current state is a mere shadow of what I have planned.”
How do you think this changes or improves the base game experience?
“Fundamentally Last Oasis has a huge amount of core issues, however players tend to be able to see past those problems for the first weeks of a wipe until suddenly they don’t and then the population starts its seasonal decline. In my opinion this is because the players run out of content. Either due to reaching iron tier, waiting for the devs to drop the next tier of map in a season, not having a large enough group to tackle the remaining content (capital walkers, quarry, large utility walkers), or not being able to progress to new content due to endless ganking/zeroing/raiding. Oasis Adrift seeks to massively expand the quantity of content in the game in order to give the player base something to do beyond harassing each other. Additionally it seeks to improve the quality of content by experimenting with types of content that can be more engaging long term such as skilled Rupu AI and AI controlled enemy ships.”
How can we learn more about your mod?
All discussion about the Oasis Adrift mod, modpack, and server can be found at our discord. https://discord.gg/HK8cCw2NpR
Announcing the Last Oasis Modkit
Greetings, Nomads!
It has been some time since we last gave an update, but today, we are thrilled to unveil the release of our long-awaited Modkit! This opens up a world of possibilities, allowing for complete customization within Last Oasis. With access to these powerful tools, players will have the ability to craft experiences tailored to their wildest imaginations. From tweaking all game mechanics to creating entirely new items, weapons and creatures, the Modkit empowers you to shape the game how you want it.
Key Features of the Modkit:
Modding capabilities that enable extensive customization.
Tools and resources for crafting unique gameplay experiences.
Play in editor to test new features locally.
Documentation and support channels to assist players with any troubleshooting.
We invite players to post their mods on the Steam Workshop page, where fellow Nomads can share and modify everything they’ve been working on.
To ensure stability and compatibility prior to merging everything into the main branch, we’re releasing the client/server with Mod support on a separate branch. Playing on or hosting a modded server requires you to be on the “SDKTest” branch.
Right click on the Last Oasis application in your Steam library and select properties > Betas
For any help or assistance, please visit the Last Oasis Discord where we have set up new channels for ModKit assistance and mod development, as well as documentation.
Modkit documentation can also be found on our Discord: https://discord.gg/lastoasis
Additionally, the Modkit branch will have a few sneak peeks from Season 6.
Added the ability to merge rarity resources
Rigs not don’t limit the location of structures, only the type and number.
Reduced water consumption
Added walker fleet cap Each walker counts a certain number of points and each clan has a cumulative total allowed on map at any given time.
Add walker crew limit Each walker has a maximum number of crew members and will stop moving once exceeded. Automatons count towards this limit.
Grapple changed to prevent use for 3 seconds after being hit, rather than in combat stance
We are extremely grateful to the community for sticking with us and we hope these new tools and changes will lead to a brighter horizon for Last Oasis.
Season 6
In addition to the release of the ModKit, we’ve commenced work (and some closed testing) on Season 6. While it's still early to talk about too many specifics, we want to get the philosophy guiding Season 6 out there and share a few of our thoughts.
As we started to talk about what Season 6 should be, we knew we needed to consider the role that official servers would play now that the community has its hands on the ModKit. We believe the official servers have to provide a unique experience that cannot be replicated on a private server and we believe that role is emergent PVP in a large scale world.
This focus brings with it a certain set of assumptions about things like pacing, gameplay loops, persistence, safety mechanics, etc. For example, starting with Season 6, we will start regular periodic wipes, and balance the game around that duration, which is currently planned to be two months. We are also carefully considering all of the safety mechanics that have been put into Last Oasis throughout the seasons, such as stone building, removal of the lobby, and how to balance competition between clan sizes, just to name a few.
We are excited to share many more details with you as the development of Season 6 unfolds. Our goal is to do extensive public beta testing at each step along the way, so stay tuned for more information. To apply for participation in closed and open testing, be sure to join the Last Oasis Discord.
THE FUTURE OF LAST OASIS
Greetings Nomads,
We want to give you an update on the project status and what you can expect coming on the horizon. Our main priority in Last Oasis development right now is adding full modding support that will allow creators to modify all existing features and maps, adding new content as well as completely new features using Unreal Engine Blueprint scripting. We believe that this is a necessary step to unleash the full potential of LO and allow every nomad to find or create the experience they are looking for in our game.
Related to the news above, we are happy to announce that the author of “LO Classic” mod BryanTheHacker has joined our team. With his experience in modding Last Oasis you can be sure that our tools will provide all the freedom that modders will need to implement their ideas.
As for the status of official servers - active development and preparation for Season 6 will continue with the release of modding tools. We will share more information and details as it gets closer, but we can promise to reconsider features from Season 5 that didn’t work out as well as expected and also to implement multiple ideas invented by our community (some of which have or will be tested on modded servers).
Best wishes and stay hydrated, LO Dev team
Secrets of the Ancient City
A little later than we planned, due to some final touches that we wanted to do in order to bring this update to a properly final state and try to avoid multiple hotfixes, learning from the previous experience with the packing update. You can consider this few days delay as a better reassurance that we won't need them (or, hopefully, not that many, at least).
Get ready to enter the mysterious city of the forgotten civilization!
Welcome to the Ancient City!
The Ancient City is an oasis that contains the decaying remains of an ancient civilization. Little is known about who or what lived here, or, even, how long ago, but clues litter the landscape for Nomads to find. It is said that intrepid explorers, brave enough to explore the Ancient City, stand to find untold riches, while the Flotillan Historic Society will gladly accept new members, who help them research the ancient technology with a member-only benefit of an access to their Schematics Store at each Trading Station.
That is, if they can survive the Rupu claiming the ruins as their own. The Ancient Cities around the globe became a haven for Rupu, where they build various fortification to protect their Matrarchs. The most ferocious and powerful of their warriors reside in the ruins and the fortifications against the invading Nomads will be no easy feat to overcome on the road to riches and glory.
Map Overhaul
Now, backing off from the lore towards the technical side of this update.
The map received some pretty significant changes, as you might've guessed. Both literally - with fortified walls, now covering entrances to the city and a giant palace, featuring the most brutal melee-only PvE experience we've introduced to date, and from a conceptual standpoint - with the map's place within the progression being more defined and permanent, where going to the Ancient City will always be a rewarding experience.
All other maps in Last Oasis are built on a procedural spawning system, where Rupu camps don’t spawn entirely randomly, but they have a set of rules and pre-defined locations that can result in a significant seeming randomness. However, for the Ancient City, we wanted to go in a different direction. As an event map that introduces a whole new system of progression called "Relic Hunter", we iterated and tested various approaches, and realized that it would be much more interesting to have a more intentional and thoughtful design, rather than leave it all up to procedural spawners. In the end, it ended up providing quite a bit more of a deliberate gameplay, somewhat similar to how dungeons are played in other MMO games.
In addition, with the introduction of the newly designed Rupu structures that attempt to prevent incursions by Walkers, you will likely have to travel on foot quite a bit more, including the already teased melee-only camps and PvE experiences.
Relic Hunter
In the Ancient City, you will be able to find Relics and Forebear Coins, which are ancient coins that are, technically, also relics of the same civilization, but in a much higher abundance. These relics can be turned into the Trade Station for Relic Hunter Reputation, which is its own new progression system.
As you gain more Reputation, you’ll start receiving new Ranks within the Flotillan HIstoric Society, unlocking access to progressively higher rewards offered by them, as a token of gratitude for your efforts. The first mechanic that we're introducing with it is a Society Schematics Store, which allows you to buy schematics of any tier and rarity for Forebear Coins, depending on your Rank.
All of this can be found and explained in the Stats Menu (P) by scrolling to the Relic Hunter page, which will show your current Ranking within the society, your reputation, current bonuses, and what the next rank will unlock. Both donating Relics for Reputation and buying Schematics for Forebear Coins can be done at any Trading Station and the list of Schematics is unique for each member, refreshing the list every time, which can be found in the store itself.
Currently, Ranking up will increase the tiers of Schematics that can be purchased, their maximum possible rarity, the number of schematics offered on each level, and how quickly the offers refresh. Also, some lucky Hunters might find unique cosmetic Schematics offered only by the Historic Society.
But don't be so hasty to donate all of the Relics you find on your adventuring. The store only accepts ancient Forebear Coins as currency, which you'll need to also find at the Ancient Cities. Luckily, some black market merchants will gladly trade you those coins if instead of donating your Relics to the Historic Society, you sell them to those shady Nomads.
What else?
We buffed all the grapples, as we've mentioned we'll do for quite a while now. Longer range, more balanced reeling speeds, lower torque consumption, and other tweaks have been applied to every grappling hook type.
A bunch of changes to quests were also included. We've added some quests to kill various creatures and updated existing ones with better balance and clarity. For example, the quest for bringing items, rather than a delivery for specific armors and weapons, the quest will now request an “Armor Shipment” or “Weapon Shipment” which is crafted at a new station available within the Simple Constructions from a collection of equipment pieces.
We've also rebalanced some loot drops to work better with the addition of the new map, improved Rupu behaviors across the board and added some new ones that made sense to use outside of AC as well, and also a ton of small tweaks like removing the rated all-time-most-hated walker wing from the general items merchant, optimized performance where we could, and so on. And, as customary, a few packing fixes. Now, definitely last ones.
As we've been talking about multiple updates, such as the PvP Update, Quality of Life Update, and hinting at more, what you'll see this patch is an effort regarding, primarily, the addition of the Ancient City map and all the related features, while everything else that we've been working on in parallel like the King of the Hill feature and so on, will be coming separately. How we've already explained many times, a lot of those features only make sense when released together and won't have the desired effect or could even make things worse if added one by one, so we hope you'll be having fun with the new experiences for quite some time, while we'll have time to work on the massive overhaul of PvP and other planned changes.
We won't be including the bulletpoint changelog this time, as hundreds of changes can be summarized as "Added Ancient City" and many more are still in the works as explained above, so fishing for specific small tweaks on top of it that got in won't make much sense when everything critical was already explained above. Everything that's important has been described in great detail in this post already and what hasn't been, would be a great way to ruin your first experience on the new map, so try it and see for yourself!
More Content When
We’re still hard at work developing the things we’ve talked about and will be trying to release them as soon as we can. We're expecting to monitor how this new update is working and fix any issues if they appear, as well as release smaller updates when it makes sense, as we've done before. However, taking into account the size of the planned updates (we're talking overhauling literally the entire PvP experience here and more), and considering the upcoming Holiday season (with the international team being away at very different times in the upcoming months), we expect that it’s very unlikely that we’ll be able to deliver those full scale overhauls at least within a month. As mentioned, some parts might come out as separate smaller updates, but not the gigantic overarching overhauls.
Meanwhile, we hope you enjoy the new update, the completely changed map, the new progression system, and much more that we've got up our sleeve in this patch (and I'm sure you'll find at least a few surprises we haven't talked about). We'll try to keep you updated and announce any concrete info on what's coming next whenever we have it. We're also discussing some new ideas that we'll be sure to put to a poll as we've got used to doing by now if they get some traction on our side first.
Don't get lost in the ruins and happy hunting!
Ancient City Next Week and The Q&A
Discovered: An Ancient City
Early next week, we will introduce the Ancient City back into the game. It will be an event map that spawns in both PvP and PvE form, with only rarity available on the PvP version. Next week with the release we’ll have a full post that lays out the new experiences available on the Ancient City, as well as the brand new gameplay mechanics.
Today we’ll introduce another small packing update which should improve unpacking and resolve all the known issues. We’ll monitor over the weekend and then begin burning additional tiles when we patch Ancient City.
Patchnotes:
Improved unpacking checks to finish with the packing for good and start burning tiles.
Fixed all the remaining known issues with packing.
Q&A
We’ve been promising a Q&A for a while. Originally it was in regards to the planned PvP update, but since we’ve talked about several other things since then, we figured we would open it up to anything. Based on the questions, it seems like a lot of the devblogs weren’t read fully. If you have any questions, there is a lot of good transparent information in them and we recommend going back through them. Either way, we’ll answer a few of the questions in each devblog until we get through them.
Question 1: Are you going to revert back to S1/2/3/4?
Short answer, no. The big changes we made when we started designing S5 were for reasons that we considered fully over long periods of time and we still believe in those reasons. That isn’t to say that features won’t ever come back individually, or even more likely, that we’ll bring individual functionalities back in some way that mitigates the previous problems we saw while still giving most if not all of the benefit.
In the QoL devblog we talked about many of the features that are often mentioned when referring to past seasons, like the lobby, traveling, nomadism, etc.
Question 2: Are you going to improve dedicated servers? For example, things like dedicated UI, updated command list, new commands, etc.
Yes, these are some of the things that we will eventually do, but unfortunately, at the time, they're on the backburner while we work on getting all of the features we want into S5.
Question 3: Will the wingsuit come back? Are you going to revert the grapple?
The wingsuit will return, later in progression. We’ll be implementing some changes to the grapple next week with the AC update.
As we all know, the grappling hook is a ton of fun, but anyone who has played for any length of time in PvP knows the downsides.
When first designing S5, PvE maps were not meant to be all of the progression. This obviously changed over time as we considered things, but we didn’t reconsider that since players will have entirely safe from PvP options through most or all of the PvE progression, that we could live with a grapple that allowed a bit more skill expression.
We won’t be completely reverting the grapple. Obviously grappling in combat had quite a lot of bugs, so the changes ultimately fixed a lot of the most egregious problems in mutual PvP, but also we believe the stamina cost on grapple is a good balancing tool that needs to be adjusted more. But we will be buffing/rebalancing the grapples across the board in various ways.
Question 4: Schematics?!
Most of our plans for schematics are detailed in the PvP devblog. Tl;dr is you’ll be able to learn how to craft most schematics with the PvP update and the AC update will allow to buy schematics at the Trade Stations.
We know there are still some pain points, like inventory management, etc, and we’ll continue to monitor those as we go along.
Question 5: When will modding be supported?
As with everything, an ETA is just not something we can commit to. But it is something we want to do. The issue is that it will require a ton of mostly transparent work and we want to get to a point where the base game is fun to play before we commit that time. Most likely, we'll dedicate a long stretch of time for it after full release.
Fixing and Improving Packing Even More
Okay, so it wasn’t the last Packing update
There was a bug related to unpacking and we decided to tackle that and finish out the last “Anti-Griefing” mechanic for unpacking. That’s the patch for today. In addition, we’ll be disabling base decaying while packed until we’re sure you can unpack in all cases. After that, we'll also start burning some of the tiles to condense the World Map for the current population.
We added what we’re calling the Clearance Phase. For the first 30s of unpacking, the structure checks to see if the area is valid. After 30s, all collisions are enabled at once and packing won’t be canceled by attempting to make the area invalid afterwards. This means that on a PvE map, after 30s a player cannot disable/pause your unpacking simply by standing in the area.
Changelog this time is not so big, as most of the changes we're working on are for the unreleased maps and updates, but they should have a pretty big impact nonetheless (at least the first two):
Added Clearance Phase to Unpacking, which prevents most griefing with unpacking.
Fixed a bug, which prevented unpacking bases in some cases.
Fixed collisions on the Rupu Throne buildable structure.
As we stated in the last post, each week we’ll do updates on the state of our various lines of effort. Since we’re just starting now, this isn’t a list of everything that’s been done, but, rather, a selection of the most important and needed things we’ve worked on this week.
It's a new format we're trying out to keep you in the loop on everything important that's happening. Therefore, treat it more as a progress report than a full devblog for each part of the post and expect a larger post sometime soon.
Sleeping Giants Improvement Plan
One of the major efforts here has been working on a system that will allow us to more easily edit rigs. Editing existing rigs can currently cause a lot of issues, and there are quite a few problems with the existing rigs on some walkers, so this is, unfortunately, one of those “transparent” things which is happening in the background for us to work easier, rather than a change you'll immediately see. What it will allow, though, is an easy way to update any rig on any walker for us to put in an update.
Next week, we’ll also introduce some more quest changes - adding back some of the old quests that have been redesigned and rebalancing the existing ones to fit the current economy better.
Quality of Life Update
The promised Quality of Life update is coming along.
Right now, we're actively working on fixing the issue with clan permissions not persisting (i.e. they get reset during server restarts, updates, etc), which is a more complex issue than might seem, since it requires both the work on our game code, the backend, and the database.
It's been a common complaint for some time now, so the fix should be coming in one of the next patches, instead of waiting for the full QoL Update to bring it in.
PvP Update
PvP Update is also on its way.
We finalized the detailed design for the "King of the Hill" feature and Schematic Learning/Crafting that we've discussed in one of the previous devblogs. They should provide a balanced experience, encourage active PvP for map control, and make Schematics more of a tool that requires less attention the more you progress, similar to Water or Torque.
We also concepted the KoTH POI model, which will be the main arena for those PvP battles, so it will take a few iterations to get to a good gameplay feeling. Our goal with it is to make it a mixed melee/walker fight. Meaning, that you will be able to impact the success using walkers, but to actually capture the point you’ll need people with their feet on the ground, so while it will be possible to capture solo if the competition is not too strong, but larger clans should be able to have proper fights for control and bonuses that it provides on the map.
Ancient City
The next map is one of our main priorities at the moment, so there's quite a bit about it.
As expected, tons of work here, but we don’t want to spoil the surprise too much, so this will probably be more vague than you’d want.
We've finished the overhaul of the map design, which will be entirely different from what it was before, except the main part that it's still an Ancient City, so you can expect completely new gameplay, new features introduced with the map, and much more.
When it comes to details, we've finished creating new Rupu variants, finished setting all of their weapons and projectiles. all of the Rupu camp encounters are set, including bosses that weren't present in the game at all before, finished all of the loot tables, and much more boring details.
Now, we're starting work on creating Rupu melee behavior variations, so that each new Rupu type feels unique when fighting, especially putting the focus on the new bosses.
One of the new features - Relic Hunter Reputation, which we won't spoil yet, has also been finalized, including a detailed design, all the models, and so on. That's what will make Ancient City an event map that won't stop being relevant as it was before and will provide almost limitless gameplay in that regard.
