(This started out as a forum post but got too big and became a blog post. The Fairy race blog post is about a week away, I expect.)
Let's Brainstorm About Housing
We're deep in the middle of coding the playable Fairy race, and after that we've got a new dungeon lined up, and after that there's a major city to add! So why talk about housing now? Because that city, Statehelm, is also where we'll introduce housing later in the year. Now is the time to brainstorm housing, to let the wild ideas percolate, to figure out what might be fun.
And if you're thinking "housing isn't fun", then that's exactly what I'm talking about. I'm not adding housing to check off a feature list. I'm adding it because I think it can be amazing!
Landscape vs. Instanced? Already Settled
First, let's get the landscaped-vs-instanced question out of the way: we won't be using landscape housing. That's when the houses exist in the regular, non-instanced world, and each house can be bought and owned by one player. This design seems the most immersive at first. Who wouldn't want to own part of your favorite game city? But in practice, landscape housing is always terrible. (Except in pure PvP games, where landscape housing has a different function and can work well... but this isn't a PvP game!)
The most immediate problem with landscape housing is that it doesn't scale. We'd start by adding hundreds of homes to the game, filling every nook and cranny of the existing world with houses... but that wouldn't even come CLOSE to letting every player have a house! It would only let the richest players buy one.
What about the thousands of other players? Well, everyone who plays must eventually be able to have a home, so we'd obviously need thousands more homes. We'd need to add new areas to the game just to have a place to stick their houses. You may have seen areas like that in other MMOs: for practical reasons, they're not very fleshed out. They're just places to stick houses. At that point, the houses might as well be instanced. It's not like their home is in the "real" game world anyway!
The second problem is that landscape housing eventually creates barren, empty game areas. At first, there's a decent chance that some of the homeowners will be in their houses while you log in, so the place might seem bustling and active. But after a year or two, that's never true. Players who own those homes will eventually stop playing... but they won't give up their homes. They'll log in just long enough to pay the upkeep costs of their house, then leave again. This creates ghost towns.
The only way to fix this is to force players to lose their homes if they don't keep playing - for example, by having arduous rental requirements or minimum play times. But that feels kind of like blackmail to me: "Keep playing every month or we'll take your pretend house away." This really isn't a great long-term retention strategy, either, because MMO players tend to take breaks from their favorite game before returning a year or two later. They'll log in to see what's new... but if they realize that their beloved house is gone, they're likely to just log back out again. I want returning players to feel welcome.
(Old-school MMO companies generally LIKED this design, because it meant homeowners had to keep paying a monthly subscription fee forever. But we don't have a monthly subscription fee. We'll eventually have an optional VIP plan, but I want it to feel truly optional, not something you'd need to own a house!)
The third problem of landscape housing is that it "locks in" parts of the game world. As these games mature and housing areas slowly feel more and more empty (due to all the homeowners who never log in), why don't game developers take steps to fix it? Because that would upset those homeowners!
Even adding monster-spawns to quiet areas will piss people off. If someone bought a landscape house because of its safety, they're going to feel betrayed if it stops feeling safe! There are a few other things that can be added, but for developers, it's mostly just too much work with too little reward. Instead of pissing off homeowners, devs are much more likely to create new areas instead. Those old barren areas are left to rot forever.
Instanced Housing Doesn't Have to Be Boring
We can side-step all of those problems by using instanced housing. Instanced housing is where the door to your home is in town, but when you go through that door, you appear in a private mini-area. Lots of players can use the same door in town, and each enters their own "instance" of the interior area.
Lots of games implement instanced housing, mostly just to tick off boxes on their feature list. They add the expected features: some storage, some decorations, maybe a crafting table. In other words, they're pretty boring, so you're forgiven for thinking instanced housing HAS to be boring. But it doesn't! In fact, this is a fertile area for new MMO designs, and I want to try some out.
I want housing to be integrated into the game's systems at a deeper level, so it can be a jumping-off point for high-level player adventures and goals. There are opportunities here for gameplay that wouldn't make sense otherwise. Here's some ideas:
Meet the Neighbors
Just because your house is instanced doesn't mean you can't have player neighbors. Quite the opposite! We can avoid the big barren areas of non-instanced housing by using the reality-bending power of instancing. For example, in an instanced neighborhood we could dynamically group players based on who's online.
Suppose that when you go out the door of your instanced apartment, it leads to a hallway with a bunch of other doors -- each one dynamically assigned to be the doors of other people who are in their homes right now. You can knock on any door and say hi, and maybe come in to visit and look around. Or maybe you can slip a note under the door. Or sneak into their homes...
Or maybe that hallway leads to players that have been online recently, and who have left their houses in "open" security mode, so you can wander in and visit.
Or maybe the hallway leads to other active members of your guild, so your neighbors are always guildmates.
Or maybe we organize housing based on skill choices, so if you move into Explosion Heights with the other wizards, you can expect to encounter wizards... and wizard-related problems.
Because instanced houses aren't on the 'real' landscape, we can hook them together in ways that aren't constrained by real physics -- ways that create new gameplay. For example...
The Front Door
Every house has a door, and we can use this to let adventures come to you. Imagine you come home just in time to hear a knock on your door. It's your neighbor: he asks you to deal with the foul odor coming from your basement. What odor? "The movers brought in those coffins yesterday, so I assume that's the stench!" What movers? What basement?! (Okay, discovering that you have a secret basement may be too far. Or maybe not... the basement door could teleport you to a different mini-dungeon depending on what quest is going on.)
Or perhaps your apartment in the Statehelm slums is plagued by a mob of rat-men. They knock incessantly, demanding payment in cheese... do you dare answer? What happens if you don't? Do they try to set your house on fire? Or maybe they let pests into your vents. Or maybe they just sneak in and subtly move the furniture to enrage you... "Notice anything different? This wouldn't have happened if you'd left Roquefort on the mantle!"
Or maybe the visitor is your old friend Rita from Serbule. She's in town to do some shopping and wants to fill you in on the latest gossip. She says Sir Coth has started talking about "invisible intruders" again; maybe you should visit Serbule and see what's up?
Or perhaps the visitor at your door is just a salesman with a magic mirror to sell. "It shows serene pictures of nature when you're trying to go to sleep!" says the merchant. But after you buy it, something else happens...
Marriage
One of the big benefits of instancing is that NPCs can be instanced too, and they can behave differently inside your home than they do outside. This means you can marry an NPC and unlock all sorts of new behaviors. We've seen the beginnings of fun marriage systems in games like Skyrim, but they're rarely very deep.
Marriage has actually been part of Gorgon's rough design plan since the beginning -- for instance, the internal Favor Level above "Soul Mates" is called "Married" -- But that doesn't mean I've figured out how everything will work. It'll take experimentation to learn what sorts of mechanics are fun and scalable.
Right now, the exact game mechanics are completely open. Marriage could have its own Marriage Mood Meter, and different moods could trigger all sorts of behaviors depending on the NPC you married. Tantrums, fights, sulking, subterfuge... or lovely gifts, cozying by the fireplace, making you a delicious meal...
Or your spouse may have their friends over for parties... which might lead to jealousy later if you paid too much attention to their friends...
Or maybe one of their friends has gotten into serious trouble. There's a mystery to figure out, and your spouse has stakes in the outcome.
Or maybe their friends bring over an exotic housewarming gift with some unusual properties...
I think different NPCs would have very different marriage experiences. Some would crave cozy domesticity; others might have freaky demands for new sex toys every week; some might suffer from depression and need extra support, while others keep inviting their friends over every night and insist that you keep the icebox stocked!
Rakshasa have only had non-arranged marriages for a few decades, so they may have a lot of trouble settling down. And surely some elves have difficulty marrying a non-elf... knowing that they're going to outlive their spouse by hundreds of years might make it hard to have real emotional bonding. And if you marry a mage, are they going to feel jealous of your skill when you inevitably out-level them? What are the repercussions?
Fertile Grounds for Fun Ideas
None of these ideas are especially well thought out, obviously. This is brainstorming! But I'm excited about the possibilities, and I'd like to hear what ideas interest you.
Of course, housing will also be an opportunity to decorate, to craft, to store items, all the usual stuff. But one of my goals with this game is to dig deeper than most MMOs do, and find the fun ideas that they don't reach. So what sounds fun to you? What outlandish thing do you want to do in your imaginary home?
PS - Most of these design ideas could apply to guild halls too! We plan to eventually add instanced Guild Halls, so that every guild can have a meeting spot. (A handful of the most expensive Guild Halls will also have non-instanced lobbies or exteriors, where the guild could set up vendors or signposts or things like that... but the majority of the place will be instanced.)
Dev Blog: The Life and Death of Charged Pig
[This blog post is from the developer, Citan]
[If you're looking for info about the upcoming Fairy playable race, stay tuned -- there'll be a blog post about that soon! This blog post isn't about upcoming features at all -- it's behind-the-scenes design notes about recent game updates.]
The Life and Death of the "Charged Pig" skill
Have you ever noticed that all the talking pig NPCs in the game mention that they obtained sentience after being struck by lightning? Probably not. But they do! And this is because of a skill I've long planned to add.
I've often used animal skills as an opportunity to experiment with game-mechanics ideas. The Pig skill was my first try at making a "bard" combat skill. It's been rewritten several times since I first added it, and it's evolved into its own unique group-support style -- one which doesn't step on the Bard skill too much. But it took lots of iteration and experimentation to figure out what would work, and I was able to apply some of those lessons to Bard.
The Charged Pig skill was also intended to prototype something. In this case, it was prototyping "combat sub-skills". The Charged Pig skill didn't have its own combat bar; instead, you could mix-and-match Pig and Charged Pig abilities on the Pig skill bar. This would give the Pig skill some needed solo viability.
(Sidebar: You may be thinking "why bother?" Why not just add more abilities to the existing skill? Adding too much content to a skill makes it harder for players to use. That sounds counterintuitive, but consider treasure-effects: right now the Sword skill has a dozen or so combat abilities, and there are unique treasure-effects for all of them. Since you only use 6 of the 12 abilities on your skill-bar at once, half of the Sword effects you find in loot aren't useful to your particular build. if I added a bunch more abilities to Sword, along with new treasure-effects, it would get harder and harder to find treasure that worked for your specific combat style. When its broken up into sub-skills, the game only gives out sub-skill-specific treasure if you're actually using the sub-skill. That's one benefit; there are similar "compartmentalization" benefits with training, unlocking, crafting, and base-items.)
So I implemented Charged Pig, allocating a full month to work on it since it would need lots of experimenting. I created a handful of unique abilities, added some treasure-effects, worked out all the logistics of how the skill interacted with XP-earning and loot tables and so on. Then I created a pig character and started testing it, and realized I was missing a bigger opportunity. Charged Pig did add more soloing power to the Pig skill, which was nice... but since I could only use a total of six abilities, I ended up losing too much of the fun stuff from the Pig skill. What Pig needed was a new partner skill, something more solo-oriented that could synergize with the skill.
So I turned Charged Pig into a regular combat skill. That way, you could use six Pig abilities and six Charged Pig abilities at the same time. That made a lot more sense! In fact, all of the animal-form combat skills could use another viable partner skill, so Charged Pig evolved into Warden, which is a combat skill usable by any animal.
But a full combat skill requires a lot more work than a sub-skill: it needed more abilities, a LOT more treasure, and unique content to go with it. The earlier experiments used up a lot of the time available for the skill, though, so I crunched to create all the new abilities and treasure, while Sandra created the Wardens' special home, the Sacred Grotto. (We came up with some fun content ideas for the grotto that couldn't be implemented in time, so this is just the first version of the place.)
The Warden skill has one other unique mechanic: special daily quests. This would have been impossible to fit into our schedule, except that I'd already written most of it in an earlier prototyping session. That session resulted in adding gardening almanacs, oddly enough. Which is why, internally, the daily warden quests are driven by their own hidden almanac! But even with the technology handy, we still had to actually write the quests that used the feature. So, in short, we worked really hard to flesh out the Warden skill, and I think it turned out pretty well, especially for the first version of a major combat skill. Of course, we'll continue to improve and iterate on it over time.
The Charged Pig skill, on the other hand, is dead. It remains in the data files, but it'll only be used for internal testing now. It did its job as a prototype sub-skill, though, and the first "real" sub-skill will show up soon! The first one will probably debut with the playable fairy race. Later, I expect to use sub-skills to provide some weapons diversity, among other things. For instance, the Axe skill will tentatively be a sub-skill of Hammer; Spear will be a sub-skill of Staff; there might eventually be a Greatsword skill which is a sub-skill of Sword. Each sub-skill will add a few new abilities to an existing skills' repertoire, as well as unique requirements, unique treasure, and unique training.
Warden vs. Druid
Many animals can be druids, but pigs can't. There's nothing explicitly preventing pigs from being druids, mind you, there's just no equipment for it. Druids need to be holding a wooden item, and pigs don't have hands. Other animals have workarounds: for instance, cows can get wooden "cow shoes" made for them by a player carpenter. But I intentionally didn't give pigs an item like that because I knew they would eventually be getting the Charged Pig skill. Druid and Charged Pig don't play the same, but they cover a lot of the same ground, and they weren't designed to stack.
Then Charged Pig evolved into Warden, which is usable by any animal. So now several animal forms can use Warden and Druid together. And yep, it's unbalanced. They share too many of the same tricks, and those tricks stack, and it's too much. It's not "oh crap shut everything down now" levels of overpowered, mind you, but it's something that needs to be addressed during balancing.
Keep in mind that the goal of the Warden skill is to give the animal-specific combat skills (like Cow, Pig, Spider, etc.) a new partner skill, to make those skills more useful and interesting, especially for solo play. If the best partner skill for Warden ends up being Druid, then Warden is a failure at its goal!
So right now I'm leaning toward disabling the Warden+Druid skill combination for balance reasons. I'm not yet sure what game mechanic will prevent the pairing, though. (The silver lining is that once that's done, I can add druid activation-items for pigs.)
Evolution of Game Storylines
(Important background info you may or may not know: the game takes place on the continent of Alharth, where the druids are run by the god Dreva. But on the distant continent of Fosulf, the druids are run cooperatively by Ri-Shin and Au-Shin together. They're much older gods than Dreva, and although they're technically allies of Dreva, there's also a bit of hostility. Dreva is a young hotshot god who has decided to "police the gods", and that doesn't always make you popular with other gods.)
The Charged Pig skill also had its own storyline. It was fairly silly, because we're talking about flying pigs with electricity powers, and that seemed like it should have a lighthearted storyline. The story was that Au-Shin, the god of Animals, got into a huge fight with his brother Ri-Shin, the god of Plants, over who had dominion over fungi. Both gods felt that mushrooms should be in their domain! This debate had been going on for millennia, and it was slowly destroying their friendship.
Due to this impasse, mushrooms had been considered "off limits" by both gods. But then Ri-Shin declared himself God of Mushrooms, and created Mushroom Treants (tentatively those might have ended up being the Myconians, or they might have been a new variety of treant... I didn't get that far into the details).
Au-Shin was outraged at his brother's betrayal, but in public he had to continue to support his brother. It would be devastating for all of nature if animals and plants became enemies! So Au-Shin worked in secret. He created a covert team of intelligent animals to fight these fungi. Pigs are great at sniffing out mushrooms, so Au-Shin chose them as his secret agents. His friend, the god Lo-Maj, helped him bestow powerful electricity powers on them which could even let the pigs fly for short periods.
Like I said, it was a silly storyline. It's basically just enough of a story-hook to create some quests and rewards and so on. But when Charged Pig turned into Warden, the story also shifted. As soon as I started writing the Warden NPCs, I realized I needed something more serious in tone, because it was feeling too silly: I couldn't create any story tension at all. The new storyline still involves Au-Shin (with a little help from Lo-Maj), but all the other details have changed.
In the new storyline, Au-Shin decided to gain more influence on the continent of Alharth. He created dozens of magical lakes and springs that could give animals intelligence and powers. These worked well for a few hundred years -- a very short time by godly standards -- until Norala, the god of the hunt, decided to put an end to it. Her influence is very strong on Alharth and she refused to let other gods move in on her territory. So she directed her werewolves to stamp out the Wardens and destroy their magical springs. She was very successful, and Au-Shin was forced to abandon the project.
The Wardens you meet in-game are some of the last of their kind. After suffering terrible defeats from the werewolves, they've retreated to the Hidden Grotto, one of the last remaining sacred springs. And it's precious! There's a secret community of intelligent animals that use the grotto to give their children human-like intelligence. If the werewolves win and the grotto is destroyed, all future offspring will remain normal animals. So the Wardens are fighting for their survival, as well as the happiness of their children and their children's children.
That's a little more meaty! Abandoned by their god, they're fighting for more than just their lives... they're fighting for their whole way of life! That's good stuff! But the Warden NPCs still ended up being more light-hearted than I intended. I just can't manage to write talking animals that aren't a little silly. It's harder than it sounds! But the new backstory took the silliness down a few notches, and gave them a lot more depth than they would have otherwise had.
And when I step out of my "game writer" role and step into the "game producer" role, I can see that the backstory does its job: it provides some interesting quest-hooks, story locations, tangible god-politics, and a jumping-off point for additional systems in the future.
Next Blog Post: Fairies!
I originally intended to end this blog post by revealing that the playable fairy race was coming soon. But then I forgot and tweeted that info a couple days ago, ruining the surprise.
So... you may have already heard, but: the playable fairy race is coming soon! This is an advanced race. It's a more difficult game experience than the existing three races, especially at first, but it also offers new benefits and opportunities. My goal is to create a different game experience than humans, elves, and rakshasa have. Not "better", or "worse," but "different". That's a pretty ambitious goal, though, so in the initial launch, the balance will probably be shit. But it's beta, so we're gonna beta-test it!
Since fairies add even more complexity to an already-complex game, you really need to understand some of the game's basics first. So the fairy race is "unlockable": you'll need to use a different character to complete a level 40 quest, which unlocks the ability to create fairy characters.
I have a lot more info to convey about playable fairies, and they deserve their own blog post. I'm working on that now, but the game-mechanics are still in development, and I need to get a few more details locked down first. In the meantime, I answered a few questions about the fairy race here: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2384-Some-General-Fairy-Questions
This is a smallish update with bug fixes and design iterations. We've also added Treasure Cartography to Sun Vale.
Sun Vale Treasure Cartography
Preta in Sun Vale teaches the recipes for creating Sun Vale treasure maps from found clue items. As for finding the clue items, that's for you to figure out... but if you've unlocked Treasure Cartography in Eltibule you'll have a pretty good idea of where to look.
A tip: we had the new selection-box changes (explained below) in mind when creating this content. If you're finding it difficult to click on massive things, turn on the experimental option!
Swimming Tweaks
Previously, players were slightly buoyant underwater, meaning they slowly floated to the surface. This was intended to be helpful, but it's annoying to float out of range while fighting or interacting with things underwater, so it's been removed.
Buoyancy was originally added for one specific reason: it helped make jumping from the water's surface more intuitive. If you jump out of the water and splash back in, you might end up underwater, at which point you start losing breath until you get back to the surface. This can be very surprising for new players who don't expect to drown by pressing the jump key.
We've replaced buoyancy with a more subtle technique. Now when you jump out of the water and splash back in, the game automatically simulates pressing the "Up" movement key for a fraction of a second to push you back to the surface. (Unless you're pressing the "Down" key at the time.)
This new solution is supposed to be unnoticeable, so it doesn't last very long. If your character's jump-speed is magically enhanced, you may land too far underwater and will need to press the Up key manually to reach the surface. This is annoying, but it's the best compromise solution so far.
Experimental UI Tweaks to Selection Box Logic
We've tweaked how the selection-box works when you've selected something very large, very close to the camera, or partially off-screen. The box size is more accurate and should move more predictably when you turn the camera around. This is a small iterative improvement, not a massive change. The only time it will be really noticeable is when you've selected massive entities such as giants, statues, or dungeon doors.
For just this update, the change is disabled by default. To enable this change, open the Settings window. In the Graphics screen, check the box labeled "Experimental Optimizations", then press Save. You can turn it off again later by unchecking that box. (If you had previously checked this checkbox for the last experiment, it's been unchecked automatically so that you aren't accidentally opted in to this new experiment. And no, this experiment isn't actually an "optimization", that's just a handy checkbox that we're reusing for this purpose.)
If these changes cause new problems, please let us know! It's easiest for us to keep track of opinion-type feedback if you post it on the forum, but please use the in-game bug reporter for bugs like "the new selection-box goes insane when I select this portal" or similar problems. In-game bug reports automatically include your game coordinates so we can quickly locate the problem.
Removal of Channeling for "Pre-Combat" Abilities
A few abilities have a channeling time specifically because they're intended for use pre-fight, and they're supposed to be more dangerous to use in the middle of combat. That's a reasonable goal, but it's annoying to have to wait for the channeling time between every fight. So in this update, the relevant abilities no longer have a casting time when used out of combat (but still channel when used during combat). Affected abilities are:
Shield: Rapid Recovery
Shield: Strategic Preparation. (Casting time in-combat went from 1.5 to 2 seconds)
Spider: Premeditated Doom
Warden: Stun Trap
Sushi Changes
Following up on the previous update notes, we're going to try the "nigiri is basically like potions" approach and see how that feels. Nigiri changes:
Nigiri items have lower item levels than before, so they heal less health and power when eaten
Nigiri items no longer have a usage delay, allowing them to be eaten in combat
Nigiri recipes now require an herb or lettuce of various types (e.g. dill, swamp weed, oregano... you know, classic sushi ingredients)
Nigiri recipes now require less vinegar
In an attempt to make sushi recipes more predictable, we've changed Sushi Roll recipes to use the same herb needed by the corresponding nigiri recipe. For instance, Eel Nigiri now requires Oregano, so Eel Sushi Roll also requires Oregano (instead of Seaweed).
Also, Cavefish Sushi Roll became level 40 food instead of level 35.
Other Instant-Snack Changes
It seems best to be consistent with the idea that instant-snack foods have no usage delay. (In fact, loot items like Rattus Root and Raw Oyster were supposed to be instant already.) The following instant-snack foods are now truly instant:
Raw Oyster
Cleaned Shrimp
Shark Chew
Cavefish Sticks
House Cat
All Candy Canes
Fried Potato Sticks
Laura Neth's Famous Tart
Pepper Venison
Fairy Honey
Rattus Root
Cactus Juice
Bottle of Sugar Water
Large Strawberry
We expect there will be further changes to instant-snack food as we continue to iterate on the design.
Other Changes
Kelp armor has a new appearance
Kelp armor can now be dyed (with the Organic 1-Color Dye recipe)
Live Event boss kraken "George" now has a boss curse
Certain (non-event) Kraken now deal less damage with their rage attacks... but they still deal more than 1,000 damage per rage attack, so for most players the change is irrelevant
Squidlips has a few new recipes for amberjack
Animal Town inhabitants are now able to differentiate between players killing their guardians vs. killing actual enemies of Animal Town
Fixed the Cotton Gin in Sun Vale
A bug in Khryulek's crystal communication device prevented her from correctly talking about weird items you presented to her
Gazluk plate leggings were unintentionally dyeable; this has been fixed. (The armor material isn't set up for dyes yet, so it looks extra-special terrible when dyed. It'll become dyeable eventually.)
Fixed bug in treasure effect "Armor Received from Patch Armor +X" : it incorrectly restored bonus health instead of armor
Fixed bug that prevented Norbert from finishing the Warden intro sub-quest "The External Resource Coordinator"
Improved equipment rarity in various loot chests, most notably high-end chests dug up with treasure cartography
For technical reasons the game previously allowed you to unearth treasure maps and surveys while swimming at the surface of water, even though it explained that you must be "standing on solid ground" to use a map. Now you must actually be standing on solid ground as intended. In some cases this means you'll need to swim to the bottom of a body of water to reach the ground.
Update Notes: December 20, 2019
Holiday Event The Holiday event has begun! Talk to any NPC that you have "Friends" or higher Favor with to receive a present from them. In addition, each city (and some non-city areas) have a Ri-Shin tree that needs decorating. Look for the NPCs with red hats on to get started.
Sun Vale 2.0
This update includes a big change to the Sun Vale map. It has the same content and connections as before, but it looks quite a bit different. (And larger.) This is a 'soft launch' of the new Sun Vale. There's a lot of missing props and some odd graphical issues left to fix, but you can see the bones of the new place and how things are supposed to work together, and we need feedback on that! Sun Vale is for players in the 30-40 level range, so hopefully you can find things worth doing in any level of that range. (But as usual, you may have to explore around a bit to find them.)
There are some new things to do, and the "Things to Do" list in your quest journal has been updated to get you started.
We'll be doing another pass on Sun Vale soon to incorporate the upcoming playable fairy race. In the short term some Sun Vale NPCs have definitely had a downgrade of their homes -- in fact a bunch of the fairies no longer even have a roof over their heads, let alone any possessions -- but that's temporary. In this particular update we're most interested in game-mechanics feedback: is the combat is survivable? Is it worthwhile? How well do the new mechanics work, and are you able to figure out how everything fits together? That sort of thing.
Stun Trap Nerfs
Stun Trap was too overpowered and has been nerfed a bit.
Ability change: Stun Trap has a casting time of 2 seconds; being hit during the casting time aborts.
Ability change: Stun Trap cannot be reused while previous Stun Traps are still active. (You can manually dispel unneeded traps from the Pets window.)
Treasure change: "Stun Trap deals +85% damage to all nearby targets (when it activates)" => now +45% damage
Treasure change: "Stun Trap reuse timer is 16 seconds faster" => now 10 seconds faster
Sushi Roll Nerfs Sushi Roll items have been reduced in effective food level. They’re intentionally higher-level than their ingredients would suggest... but they went too far, being so overpowered that they made most other cooking recipes irrelevant. They've been toned down a bit while still trying to retain their purpose:
Eel Sushi Roll: went from level 40 to level 30
Cavefish Sushi Roll: from 50 to 35
Shark Sushi Roll: from 60 to 45
Green Vexfish Sushi Roll: from 65 to 50
Crelpin's Sushi: from 72 to 60
Note that the Nigiri recipes from Sushi Preparation have not been changed at this time, although they're also MUCH higher-level than their ingredients would suggest. (Nigiri is instant-healing food which is so good that it basically obsoletes healing potions at high level.) There are pros and cons to having a food item be better than healing potions. One of the cons is that we don't really have room to give Alchemists the ability to brew healing potions. Those potion recipes couldn't possibly be easier or more convenient than "slap two fish slices on storebought rice"! But on the other hand, it's fun flavor for sushi to be the best in-combat healing item. We're still considering the options, and leaving it alone for now.
Other Changes
Fixed a bug that caused Electricity Elementals and Cold Elementals to have the same damage-type vulnerabilitites/strengths
Fixed a bug that caused Fire Rats and Pumpkin Mimics to have the same damage-type vulnerabilities/strengths
Giant bats can once again fly inside the Red Wing Casino
A few types of loot swords that were supposed to have holy symbols did not
Rugen in Rahu now trains Fishing up to level 70 (although note that the highest fishing recipe/req is currently 65)
Sushi Preparation now goes to 30 instead of 25. (And for technical reasons Ice Conjuration also goes to 30 instead of 25, although there are no new recipes for it yet)
Rabbit: the ability Long Ear can now be placed on the side ability bar
Newbie Island: added a gentle deterrent for new players who decide to try swimming off the island (which is a reasonable idea, but not successful here)
Ranalon lose their resistance to Nature damage
Higher-level Ranalon loot profiles improved
Added a few "Things to Do" entries for Sun Vale
Cow: new treasure: Head: Chew Cud increases your mitigation versus all attacks by Elites +14 for 10 seconds
Cow: new treasure: Necklace: Stampede boosts your Slashing/Crushing/Piercing Mitigation vs. Elites +6 for 30 seconds (stacks up to 5 times)
Cow: treasure change: "Stampede has a 50% chance to deal +56 damage" => "Stampede boosts the damage of future Stampede attacks by +38 damage for 60 seconds (stacks up to 15 times)"
The archery ability Acid Arrow is no longer taught by The Wombat. It's now taught by Squidlips.
Recipes for Cavefish Sticks and Spicy Cavefish now use Cavefish Fillets (rather than un-fileted cavefish)
Water Lung Potion: this potion now boosts your Max Breath +10 seconds, instead of reducing your breath-consumption. The recipe now requires oyster meat instead of wool. (The potion's old effect is now granted by a new potion, the "Water Breathing Potion".)
Trollbane Oil: cash value reduced
Swimming Potion: this potion now requires Alchemy level 25 instead of 40. Duration is 30 minutes instead of 60. Recipe no longer requires flour or shark fillet, instead requiring an eel fillet
You now earn synergy levels in Fishing by reaching the following levels in other skills (previously only Knife Fighting 22 provided a synergy level):
Knife Fighting 22,
Knife Fighting 55,
Cooking 35,
Foraging 22,
Foraging 65,
Animal Handing 22,
Animal Handling 55,
Skinning 25,
Fish and Snail Anatomy 22,
Surveying 25,
Druid 65,
Nature Appreciation 22,
Sushi Preparation 25,
Psychology 22
Daisy now trains the recipe for Trollbane Oil. (It is also still dropped as a loot recipe)
Fixed bug that prevented Bounceweed from giving Giant Bats bonus flight speed
Fixed some base-stats of items (which were statted for the wrong level range):
Un-Tal bow: Archery Damage +10% -> +8%
Quality Cestus: Unarmed Damage +2 -> +5
Thanks! Thanks for helping us make the game better with your feedback! If you type "/redeem DevGift2019" into the chat box (without the quotes) you'll receive a unique title and some XP potions. This is our way of saying thank-you for your patience and support! (If you've been around for many years you may have an additional novelty title to redeem; use "/redeem" to see a list of available redemptions.)
Update Notes: November 22, 2019
This is a bug-fix update, more or less. (The Fae Realm changes might not be "bug fixes" exactly, but close enough!)
Water Fixes
Fixed water in Serbule Sewers not reaching far enough
Fixed some unexpectedly swimmable areas in Wolf Cave dungeon
Removed some places in Eltibule where cows could graze underwater
The river in Sun Vale doesn't work well with our new deep-water system, so for now it's using our older "puddle" system. The entire river is now treated as a giant puddle, which means you can splash in the river, and fill bottles from it, but you can't drown... even if the water goes over your head. (The new terrain for Sun Vale is in development, so this is a temporary band-aid for the existing terrain.)
Flight Changes
Flight Potions, Flight Words of Power, and all other forms of flying no longer work in dungeons. (The flight effect is suppressed indoors but will resume when you go back outdoors.)
Giant Bats can no longer fly indoors. (But they still retain other wing-related benefits such as turning mid-jump and not taking damage from falls.)
Fixed flight-behavior anomalies for giant bats that turn into ravens
Fae Realm
Lethargy Puck gives Notoriety XP on first kill (or your next kill, if you've already killed him before)
Felmer in the Fae Realm now teaches recipes for Astounding Winter leather gear
There are now a bunch more milkable Fae Molluscs in the Fae Realm (10 total instead of 4), but the timeout before you can re-milk is now a day instead of an hour. The intent is to make "slime-collection runs" more practical
UI Fixes
UI: fixed bug where the "Combat Refresh Ready" icon would flash and beep at incorrect times
UI: fixed bug where the blue border around basic attacks would not reappear when combat refresh was ready again
UI: fixed situations where mouse cursor could get stuck as a resize-handle cursor if a window closed while the mouse was over resize-grips
UI: fixed bug where an Effect tooltip would get "stuck" on the mouse cursor if the cursor was over the Effect icon right as the Effect ended
Other Fixes
Fixed typo that caused the Guild Quest "Fox Outpost (25-member)" to require slightly more grapes than intended
Fixed spurious "blank" error message when using the ability Rotflesh
Fixed bug where you could lose your empty bottle if you were interrupted while collecting Dirty Snow Water from a Snow-Covered Rock
Fixed typos in a few recipe names
Fixed a few quest directions which were inaccurate
Fixed a few recipe descriptions that claimed they served 2 when they serve 1
Amazing Venison is now interpreted as raw venison for gifting purposes
Increased maximum number of temporary entities allowed in the Red Wing Casino (to prevent vegetables from disappearing when a bunch of players are farming simultaneously)
Update Notes: November 8, 2019
This update brings some changes and experiments to the game. There's new Fall foods, changes to swimming, and changes to the stats of food.
New Seasonal Content Experiment
In this update we're experimenting with new kinds of seasonal content. Here we're using "Fall foods" as the experimental base, but we might expand this idea to many other types of crafting (and other "seasons") in the future. Or we may change this design dramatically, or even throw it all out, depending on your feedback. After you've had a few weeks to play with this, please let us know what you think!
There are two new seasonal ingredients available for a limited time. Cranberries and turkeys can be found in Serbule, Serbule Hills, and Eltibule, among other places.
In addition, the pumpkin seedlings (which dropped from undead during Halloween) continue to drop from a wide range of herbivorous and omnivorous animals in the 25-55 level range. This includes ferocious boars, many types of slime, most rhinos, polar bears, tundra deer, mountain sheep, Gaz-Uraks, and many others. (And even a few sentient creatures such as trolls.)
There are 21 new food recipes that involve the new seasonal ingredients. These recipes can be found on a broad range of animals (with the best chances being from herbivorous/omnivorous animals).
In addition to the new recipes, the handful of pumpkin recipes from Halloween can also still be found in loot, although the chances are much lower than during Halloween. (And the other Halloween items no longer drop.)
There are also new Work Orders for all of the new foods (and the Halloween pumpkin foods). These work orders will only show up during this "season", and they have a much larger cash reward than normal work orders of their level. They can also be completed every 5 days instead of every 30 days. You can find these work orders at the work-order signs in Serbule, Redwing Casino, and the Fae Realm. (They won't always show up, but when they do, they will be at the bottom of the work-order list.)
A few of the Halloween pumpkin foods already had work orders (such as Basic Pumpkin Pie). They've been turned into "seasonal" work orders
Swimming Changes
In preparation for upcoming content we've made improvements/changes to how swimming works. Please play with these changes and give us feedback and bug reports!
Changed how we emulate gravity underwater. Previously you would instantly sink in deep water, but now you are slightly buoyant: you'll very slowly float upwards toward the surface. This means that if you wish to reach the bottom of a deep body of water you will need to use the Down movement key (default F) to swim down. To swim up for breath use the Up key (default R) -- or you can use the jump button underwater as a "swim up" button.
You now recover your breath automatically when you are swimming on the surface of the water, and breath recovers much more quickly than via the old "hopping in and out of the water" technique. (But still not as fast as when standing on solid ground.)
"Breath" meter is more granular while losing breath
Fixed various problems, bugs, and glitches in the swimming system
Fixed problems with indoor water pools
Note: the river in Kur continues to behave oddly; this is a known issue that will be addressed when the final art for Kur is ready. All OTHER water should behave reasonably sanely now
Food Changes
We've rebalanced food a bit to make Meals more useful. This mainly involved moving some of the power of Snacks into Meals.
Snacks once lasted only 15 minutes, and so were much more potent than meals. But in a previous update we changed Snacks to last as long as Meals (and even receive the Gourmand bonuses that Meals receive), and we're pretty happy with that change. And the total potency of Meals+Snacks combined was in the right ballpark -- it's just that most of that potency was coming from the Snack, and the Meal was largely irrelevant. This is obviously dumb and needed fixing.
We've also made other small rebalances to food stats, including some changes to Cheese stats. Cheese received both minor nerfs and minor buffs. (And since eating a Cheese Meal plus a Cheese Snack was already often over-healing while out of combat, nerfing those numbers isn't as noticeable as buffing the in-combat regen. But the in-combat regen buff was small... so... basically it's a wash.)
Explaining the overall changes is tricky. The changes affect food at all levels, but we'll use some hypothetical level 80 food as an example. That will show the changes the most dramatically.
Tldr: For players that already ate both a meal and a snack, the changes will probably not be very noticeable. If you only ate Snacks before, though, you will definitely notice how empty your stomach is now.
Level 80 (Non-Cheese) Meal: (arrows indicate changes in this update; no arrow means no change)
Out-of-Combat Health Regen (per tick): 273
Out-of-Combat Power Regen (per tick): 222
In-Combat Health Regen (per tick): 48
In-Combat Power Regen (per tick): 32
Metabolism Regen (per tick): 5 -> 6
Max-Health Boost: 0 -> 160
Max-Power Boost: 0
Level 80 (Non-Cheese) Snack:
Out-of-Combat Health Regen (per tick): 273 -> 193
Out-of-Combat Power Regen (per tick): 160
In-Combat Health Regen (per tick): 32
In-Combat Power Regen (per tick): 32 -> 48
Metabolism Regen (per tick): 0 -> 2
Max-Health Boost: 160 -> 0
Max-Power Boost: 80
Level 80 Cheese Meal:
Out-of-Combat Health Regen (per tick): 273
Out-of-Combat Power Regen (per tick): 222
In-Combat Health Regen (per tick): 48 -> 80
In-Combat Power Regen (per tick): 48
Metabolism Regen (per tick): 5 -> 3
Max-Health Boost: 113 -> 220
Max-Power Boost: 0
Level 80 Cheese Snack:
Out-of-Combat Health Regen (per tick): 273 -> 193
Out-of-Combat Power Regen (per tick): 268 -> 160
In-Combat Health Regen (per tick): 32
In-Combat Power Regen (per tick): 48 -> 64
Metabolism Regen (per tick): 0
Max-Health Boost: 160 -> 80
Max-Power Boost: 160
Other Changes:
Items removed from storage vaults now auto-stack with compatible items in your inventory
Fixed bug that prevented carrots from receiving garden bonuses during carrot-specific events
Fixed a Deer combat particle that played at full volume no matter how far away you were from the Deer player
Spriggan Nuts now stack (to 99)
Treasure effect "Stun Trap reuse timer is N seconds faster" was bugged (it actually lowered Power cost by N instead of reset time)
Treasure effect "Lethal Force deals +N damage and reuse time is -3 seconds" was also bugged in the same way (it lowered Power cost instead of reset time)
Treasure effect "Stun Trap deals +N damage, and there's a 50% chance you'll place an extra trap" was bugged and never generated an extra trap
Iceheart Sustenance Oil counts as a Max-Health potion for gifting purposes
The Sacred Grotto is now marked as a cave for craft purposes
Meat-eaters in the Sacred Grotto are now a little more aware of what's being stored by their fellow Wardens
Update Notes: October 24, 2019
This is a minor bug-fix patch:
Fixed bug that prevented the "fireworks" particles from playing when you level up a skill
Fixed a bug in the favor quest "Checking in on Trekker"; the quest incorrectly had you checking in on a different NPC. The quest's version has changed, so if you were on the quest, you will need to re-get it from Tangle. (If you already completed it, you don't need to complete it again.)
Some tiers of Masquerade Masks and Bat Hats were misnamed, using the wrong descriptive adjective. (In most cases, they skipped over the adjective "Quality".) So the "Decent Masquerade Mask" became "Nice Masquerade Mask", "Great Masquerade Mask" became "Quality Masquerade Mask", etc. This was a naming fix only, the stats on all the items are unaffected.
Warden ability "Privacy Field" did not cause as much damage as indicated. (The ability's base reflect damage was not included, although treasure bonuses worked.)
Certain skeletons in the fae realm didn't count toward the Halloween quest "Kill Skeletons in the Fae Realm"
Fixed erroneous error messages when using Giant Bat's Confusing Double or Warden's Stun Trap
Milton only liked green peppers; he now also likes red peppers
Tangle didn't show a Favor progress bar
Added a level-80 Event Loot Chest (it's behind the Serbule inn, with the other Event Loot Chests)
Fixed some exploitable scenarios involving flight
When a Rakshasa who is under the influence of Telka's Teeth turns into an animal, the positive benefits of the drug are immediately aborted (loophole fix)
The "Dye Placeholder" NPC is now completely gone, and Larsan in Serbule has graciously volunteered to be the Dye Making trainer for now. He teaches the skill at Comfortable favor level (still requiring Gardening 25). He also trains various dye recipes when you reach higher favor levels with him.
Fixed bugs in the chat window where the chat-channel indicator could show the wrong channel. This bug mainly showed up when deleting partially-typed chat commands. For instance, if you typed a command like "/r hi" (to reply to someone) but then deleted that text without actually sending it, the chat-channel indicator would keep showing the Tell channel, but the next message you typed could be sent to some other chat channel. We've fixed this bug and some related bugs. If you run into any other situations where the chat-channel indicator is wrong, please let us know!
Fixed name of Calligraphy recipe "Goblin+" to "Mangle+"
Various typos and small issues addressed
Update Notes: October 17, 2019
Happy Halloween! The Halloween event has begun! You will receive a quest when you log in to get you started.
There's also some fun new stuff for animals in this update. Animals, if you're friends with the Suspicious Cow in Eltibule, Norbert in Sun Vale, or Red in Kur Mountains you should pay them a visit. Plus, the Giant Bat skill has gotten a major makeover.
General Changes
The Serbule work order sign has been moved from the docks to Serbule Keep itself, near the player work-order sign. (You still turn in completed work orders on the docks)
The "Dye Placeholder" in Eltibule has sailed off to the east. (His clone, also named "Dye Placeholder", continues to live in Serbule.)
For new players, Lawara's chest has a few partially-random items in it when first opened. (Bug fix.) (This is not retroactive; if you've already opened the chest, its contents are unchanged!)
When you right-click an inventory item and choose "More Info", there is new information shown. The "Find" tab now lists vendors who sell the item in their "Buy New" tab, and barterers who trade for the item in their "Barter" area. This only lists permanent ways to obtain the item, so it can't search the "Used" tab of vendors, nor does it search player-hired vendors, etc. But if you've ever wondered "which vendor in town sells nails?" you can now check under More Info.
Jesina the Fairy no longer sells strawberries. (Once strawberries could only be found in loot, so Jesina was an expensive alternative... but now that strawberry bushes exist, this is no longer needed.)
Missing level 74 Deer ability "Cuteness Overload 5" can now be learned from Noita the Green
Missing level 75 Necromancy ability "Raise Skeleton Mage 6" can now be learned from Bendith the Banished
AI tweak: pets summoned during combat now figure out what's going on slightly faster. (Previously they would sometimes need a few seconds before joining a fight already in progress.)
Fixed erroneous message "Error: you can only use that ability on yourself!" that was sometimes shown when a Combat Refresh triggered
Some modest changes to spawn locations in Kur (more monsters in the northeast corner, and more yetis east of the Yeti cave entrance)
Giant Beetles now have a small chance to drop food Beetles as bonus loot. (There are other ways to obtain beetles during Halloween, but this is a permanent way to obtain a small number of them year-round)
New Rabbit treasure effect (Hands and Main-Hand Weapons): "While Rabbit skill is active, any Kick ability boosts Melee Evasion +6.5% for 10 seconds"
Recipe "Amazing First Aid Kit (Combo Method)" no longer has a prerequisite to know "Amazing First Aid Kit", as they are for different skills
Recipe "Astounding First Aid Kit (Combo Method)" now has a prerequisite of " Amazing First Aid Kit (Combo Method)", not "Amazing First Aid Kit", as they are for different skills
Sour Cream now stacks to 5
Bottles of Sugar Water now stack to 5
The "Icy Feet" debuff used by Battle Chemistry's Toxin Bomb was intended to reduce movement speed by 75% (as indicated in effect description), but actually reduced it by 100%. "Icy Feet" is also used by various monsters and traps, so the fix applies there as well
Giant Bat Changes
This skill had a lot of abilities with different damage types (piercing, slashing, darkness, nature, electricity), and treasure that involved yet more damage types (mostly trauma). This wide spread of damage types meant Giant Bat could take advantage of a lot of different monster weaknesses, but made it difficult to "stack" damage-type buffs. We think the "sweet spot" is a little smaller, so we've consolidated some of these, and also added a bit more treasure that can change damage types.
Ability category changes: We've also had to reorganize the skill's ability tags (e.g. Core Attack, Nice Attack, etc.) This has several effects -- most obviously, things that affect a certain category will benefit different abilities. But these changes also change the "treasure budget" for these abilities. For example, Smouldering Gaze switched from a Nice Attack to an Epic Attack, allowing the loot to be more powerful. (This also has down sides, notably Power cost increases.)
Tear: Core Attack. (Was nothing special)
Screech: Was a Core Attack; now a Nice Attack.
Virulent Bite: Wasn't in a category before; now a Signature Debuff
Smouldering Gaze: Was a Nice attack; now an Epic Attack. In addition, this ability has been renamed. (See below.)
Ability Changes
Drink Blood now deals a moderate amount of direct-health damage, in addition to draining health. (The bite is Piercing damage, and the health-drain effect is still a Darkness attack, meaning that undead are immune to that part.)
Drink Blood 8 now steals 84 health instead of 68 health. (Bug fix.)
Screech became a Nice Attack, which involved stat-changes: reset time is now 10s instead of 9s; base damage is increased (e.g. 289 damage is now 401 damage); Power cost is increased (e.g. 47 instead of 33); all treasure rebalanced.
Smouldering Gaze became an Epic Attack named Deathscream, which involved stat-changes: base damage is increased (827 instead of 588); Power cost is increased (87 instead of 68); all treasure rebalanced. Damage type is now Nature instead of Electricity.
Treasure Changes
"Drink Blood deals 96 damage over 12 seconds, and 50% of the damage becomes health for you" => all of the damage becomes health for you. This is now Darkness damage (not Trauma).
"Drink Blood restores 19 Power and 19 Armor" => "Drink Blood costs -27 Power"
"Confusing Double Reset Time -11 seconds" -> -13 seconds, and is available on a second slot (necklace).
"Confusing Double restores 71 Power after a 10-second delay" => 112 Power after a 10-second delay
"Confusing Double restores 90 Health" => 123 Health
"Smouldering Gaze damage type is changed to Nature. 7 seconds after use, it deals 384 additional damage" => "Deathscream deals an additional 594 Trauma damage over 12 seconds"
"Sonic Burst has a 60% chance to deal +60% damage to all targets" => "60% chance to deal +100% damage"
"Combo: Rip+Tear+Any Melee+Rip: final step hits all targets within 5 meters and deals +85 damage" => Combo is now Rip+Any Melee+Any Giant Bat Attack+Tear. Also, this effect was previously found on both Feet and Necklace gear. It is now only found on Feet gear; necklaces with this effect have become Legacy.
"Combo: Screech+Any Melee+Any Melee+Virulent Bite: final step stuns the target and deals +100 damage" => Combo is now Screech+Any Giant Bat Attack+Any Melee+Virulent Bite.
New Treasure
Legs, Ring: "Your Confusing Double deals +55% damage with each attack"
Main-Hand, Necklace: "Confusing Double summons an additional figment. Each figment deals +61 damage with each attack"
Hands: "Rip and Tear deal +33 damage and hasten the current reuse timer of Drink Blood by 1 second"
Chest: "Deathscream deals +45% damage and Power cost is -32, but the ability's range is reduced to 12m"
Main-Hand, Off-Hand: "Screech, Sonic Burst, and Deathscream deal 256 Nature damage over 8 seconds"
Main-Hand, Off-Hand: "Screech deals 240 Trauma damage over 12 seconds"
Chest, Necklace: "Indirect Trauma Damage +57% when Giant Bat skill active"
Off-Hand: "If Screech, Sonic Burst, or Deathscream deal Trauma damage, that damage is boosted +75% per tick"
Update Notes: September 20, 2019
This update brings a smorgasbord of new mechanics, new content, tweaks and fixes. The Fae Realm gets some more polish, there are new recipes and new treasure effects to check out, armor sets are a thing (sort of), and lots more. So let's get to it!
Combat Refresh Boost
In this update we focused on providing players with more survivability options, and one part of the game that wasn't pulling its weight (in terms of importance to players) is the Combat Refresh.
Every 15 seconds, your Basic Attack triggers a "Combat Refresh" that restores extra health, armor, and/or power. The amount you recover is partially based on the level of your Basic Attack, but the biggest increases come from your armor: every piece of armor increases the health, armor, and/or power recovered from a Combat Refresh. The amounts are based on the material the armor's made of: cloth, leather, metal, or organic. In this update, we've boosted these numbers quite a lot.
For purposes of comparing old to new values, we'll imagine a hypothetical set of level 80 armor of each material. First we list how much this hypothetical set added to your Combat Refresh before this update, then we list the new amounts for this update. Cloth:
Old: 96 health, 144 power
New: 320 health, 280 power
Leather:
Old: 160 health, 48 power
New: 240 health, 240 armor, 96 power
Plate:
Old: 60 armor
New: 320 armor
Organic:
Old: 36 health, 36 armor, 36 power
New: 96 health, 96 armor, 96 power
Just to make sure it's clear: your armor doesn't need to all be made of the same material to get Combat Refresh bonuses! We're just using the "full suit" numbers to make it easier to understand what's changed. Each individual piece of armor adds a portion of the above numbers to your Combat Refresh, so if you're wearing a mixture of different materials, your total Combat Refresh bonus will be a mixture of the numbers shown above.
But what if you ARE wearing a full suit made of the same material? In that case, see below...
Armor-Material Set Bonuses
In this update, we're experimenting with bonuses for players who wear all (or mostly all) of the same type of armor. There are five main armor slots: head, chest, legs, feet, and hands. If at least three of these are made of the same material (cloth, leather, metal, or organic), your Basic Attack has a special bonus:
3+ Cloth Items: If your power is below 20% of max, your Basic Attack restores Power equal to 20% of your Max Power. (Max once per minute.)
3+ Leather Items: If your health is below 33% of max, your Basic Attack restores Health equal to 33% of your Max Health, plus your Combat Refresh Healing amount. (Max once per minute.)
3+ Plate Items: If you are out of armor (below 10% of max), your Basic Attack restores Armor equal to Combat Refresh Armor amount. (Max once per minute.)
3+ Organic Items: Your Combat Refresh happens every 12 seconds (instead of every 15 seconds).
The game doesn't tell you about these set bonuses anywhere at the moment -- so it's a good thing you read these patch notes! Once you have enough pieces for the bonus, the bonus shows up on the ability description for your Basic Attack like normal, but nothing in the game tells you that wearing 3 pieces of same-material gear will give you that bonus. This reflects the fact that this system is extremely experimental and may be removed or dramatically altered. Keep that in mind as you try it out, and tell us what you think about it!
New Skill-Agnostic Treasure Effects
In this update we worked to improve skill-agnostic (a/k/a "generic") treasure effects. We've added new treasure effects, mostly focusing on defensive and support options that can be easily worked into existing skill builds.
It may be worthwhile to check the ability tags on the skills you use, because sometimes the categorization can be surprising. For instance, the Deer skill's Minor Heal is also an attack; Battle Chemistry's Major Heal is an area-effect group heal; the sidebar ability First Aid is a Major Heal; almost all combat skills have a Signature Debuff, even if they're not particularly debuffy; etc. Due to the diverse nature of these abilities, in a few cases the treasure won't be useful to a particular skill -- for instance, Mentalism's Signature Debuff deals no direct damage, so the treasure that boosts Signature Debuff damage by +25% isn't helpful. (But the armor-damage still applies.)
The numbers shown below are for the level 80 version of each effect:
Main-Hand: "Core Attacks deal +32 damage and hasten your current Combat Refresh delay by 1 second"
Main-Hand: "Basic Attacks restore 12 Power"
Off-Hand: " Nice Attacks deal +64 damage and hasten your current Combat Refresh delay by 1 second"
Head: "Nice Attacks deal +40 damage and cause the target's next Rage Attack to deal -25% damage (debuff cannot stack with itself)"
Head: "Major Healing abilities also restore 112 Armor"
Hands: "Signature Support abilities restore 80 Armor to all allies within 20 meters"
Chest, Waist: " Signature Debuffs deal +80 damage and restore 96 Armor to you after a 10-second delay"
Legs, Off-Hand: "Minor Heals restore 71 Armor"
Legs, Feet: "Major Healing abilities have a 65% chance to restore an additional 152 Health"
Feet: "Core Attacks deal +41 damage and reduce the Power cost of your next Minor Heal ability by -22"
Necklace: "Signature Debuffs deal +25% damage and also deal 108 Armor damage"
Ring: "Minor Heals restore +33 Health and reduce the damage of the next attack that hits the target by 20%"
Ring: "Signature Support abilities restore 32 Power to all allies within 20 meters"
In addition, we tweaked the potency of some existing generic treasure effects and added level 80 versions of some effects that didn't have any. Notable changes include:
"Patch Armor restores +77 Armor" => +110 Armor
"First Aid restores +55 Health" => +74 Health
Mentalism Changes
Mentalism didn't receive the full "revamp" treatment in this update: we experimented with some new ideas, but they haven't panned out so far. But there were a number of buffs and revisions. Abilities:
Electrify is no longer taught by Mu. Instead, mentalists automatically learn the first two tiers (at levels 22 and 36), and the next tiers are trained by Rohina in Sun Vale, with the highest tier (Electrify 5) trained by Raina in the Fae Realm.
Armor Wave now restores armor every 3 seconds (instead of every 4 seconds), effectively boosting armor restoration by 25%.
Power Wave now restores power every 8 seconds (instead of every 10 seconds), effectively boosting power restoration by 20%.
"Psi Armor Wave 6" now restores 18 armor/tick instead of 15 armor/tick. (This effect was bugged and used the value for Armor Wave 5.)
Treasure effects:
"Psi Armor Wave and Psi Adrenaline Wave restore 90 armor to all targets after a 25 second delay" => 158 armor
"Psi Health Wave and Psi Armor Wave instantly restore 76 armor to you" => 84 armor
"Psi Power Wave and Psi Adrenaline Wave restore 34 power to all targets after a 25 second delay" => 54 power
"Psi Power Wave and Psi Armor Wave cause all targets' melee attacks to cost -6 Power for 20 seconds" => -8 power. (This effect was bugged and the level 60 variant was used for levels 70 and 80 as well.)
"Psi Health Wave, Armor Wave, and Power Wave grant all targets +6 Psychic Damage for 60 seconds" => +42 psychic damage
"Psi Power Wave instantly restores 28 power to all targets" => 31 power
"Psi Power Wave and Psi Adrenaline Wave instantly restore 26 power to you" => 32 power
"Revitalize restores +20 Health and removes ongoing Trauma effects (up to 22 dmg/sec)" => (up to 26 dmg/sec)
One thing that the in-game text doesn't do a good job of explaining is that most of Mentalism's heals, including the health/armor/power waves, are subject to phrenological "critical heals". This works similarly to phrenological "critical hits" for damage: if you're healing an elven player and your Elf Phrenology skill is 50, you have an 8% chance to "critically heal" that player. (Note that this applies to Psychology's heals as well!)
By default a critical heal increases the healing by 25%, but treasure effects can boost this number very dramatically. Since every "tick" has a separate chance to critically-heal, high-level Mentalists who use stacked Healing Waves (for instance) will see a big improvement to their total group healing by using gear with "Psychology/Mentalism Critical Hit Damage +X% when skill Mentalism active". (And, of course, by raising their phrenology skills to 50.)
We're considering replacing this system with something that's more intuitive... and a little easier to balance. The current system doesn't do anything at low level, when you probably haven't even discovered Phrenology, and yet by very high level, it starts to become too powerful. (In fact, this is one of the reasons we've held off on raising Phrenology skills above level 50.) So it's possible this entire system will change, but that's how it works right now!
Fae Realm
We've fixed a bunch of bugs and made some tweaks to content in the Fae Realm. We have more content in the works for the area in future updates, and we're still actively evaluating and tweaking the combat and training details, so please keep sending in the feedback and bug reports!
Lethargy Puck's warning screen was not reliably activating.
Fixed recipes for "Dinobites" and "Rustic Meatsterpiece" to use the type of dinosaur meat found in the Fae Realm.
Changed pear and peach trees to drop higher-tier wood; this also increases the level requirements to chop the wood.
Increased the number of special lootable items that spawn only during the day or only during the night (such as certain butterflies, flowers, and mushrooms). There are now 300% to 400% as many of these items in existence at any given moment. This is largely a "bulk" change, and more individual tweaking is likely needed. Play with it for a while and if something seems excessively common or extremely rare, please let us know!
Dramatically increased the chance to find rare level 80 recipe scrolls. (They're still pretty rare, but this fixes a bug that made them INSANELY rare.)
Trolls' auto-healing has been nerfed a bit. (This applies to trolls in all areas.)
In addition, there is a new work order board near Solgribue's work station. The NPC who accepts completed orders is not in town, however -- he appears during nighttime at the second mushroom circle.
Other Changes & Fixes
Carpentry:
Solgribue now trains Carpentry levels 71-80, along with recipes for various carpentry items.
Jara in Serbule no longer trains recipes for chairs. (They were already also trained by Paul Vaughn in Serbule Hills.)
A couple of high-level Carpentry recipes that were taught by Jara and Paul Vaughn are now taught by Amutasa in Rahu.
Mining:
Urzab now raises the level cap for Surveying and Mining to 70, and has new recipes for motherlodes in Gazluk.
The new resource "Semi-Real Hassium" can be found as a rarely-occurring resource all throughout Gazluk, and can also be bartered for with Fluffikins.
Fluffikins now has identical barters for both glowy yellow crystals AND safety-coated glowy yellow crystals.
Awesome Metal Slabs are now called Superb Metal Slabs. (We are renaming "Awesome" items to "Superb" because we have too many other descriptors that start with "A"!)
Superb Metal Slabs can now be located outdoors in Gazluk or in various Gazluk caves (albeit quite rarely).
Removed physics from motherlodes so that you cannot get stuck inside them when they spawn.
"Expert Metal Nodes" can no longer be found randomly spawning in Gazluk or associated caves. (They are junk metal at that level, and there's already enough junk spawning.)
Other: <*> More recipe-book cash values have been normalized (in this case, generally making rare recipe books more valuable). <*> Added right-click shortcuts to turn animal skins into leather rolls (assuming you know the appropriate Tanning recipe). <*> A new rare-drop recipe allows you to combine gold nuggets into gold ore. <*> Solgribue has a new blacksmithing recipe to melt golden acorns. <*> Solgribue has a new ring-crafting recipe available. <*> Solgribue has new blacksmithing recipes to add pockets to metal and organic armor. <*> Added new code to prevent items that enable Necromancy from randomly having Priest treasure effects, or vice versa. <*> UI: When you right-click the sidebar and choose "Choose Special Abilities", the ability list previously only showed abilities that can ONLY be on the sidebar (such as, say, Dig Deep). But there are other abilities that can OPTIONALLY be on the sidebar, such as Raise Skeletal Archer or Hunter's Stride. Now when you right-click the sidebar and choose "Choose Special Abilities", these abilities are now listed, too. (These abilities are also listed under their specific skill, as before.) <*> Nightshade now trains a new recipe to augment wands. This recipe can augment the only two wands in the game, "The Galvanizer" and the Fairy Wand of Cold. (We're still in the process of figuring out how wands will work and how they differ from the staves; these wands are prototypes.) Previously neither of them could be augmented. <*> Added "acidic shield-wax" recipes to Armor Patching trainers: Tyler Green, Arlan, and Pegast. These were intended to be added last update, but weren't, so now they are.
Update Notes: August 25, 2019
The Fae Realm
A new explorable area has been added to the game! It's for those hardy adventurers who can already survive the dangers of Gazluk. Being another plane of existence, it's not especially easy to reach. There is an entry method via the Winter Nexus dungeon, and there is also a way in via one of the caves in Gazluk.
This area is a work in progress -- it will eventually also be the starting location for the playable fairy race, so you'll notice a few empty shop stalls, some suspiciously empty ruins, etc., which will be filled in later.
(There's other things to discover, but we've stayed deliberately vague in these update notes to avoid spoilers for those of you who want to explore the new area fresh.)
IMPORTANT: Given the sheer number of things added in this update, the odds of bugs are pretty high. Please report bugs ASAP so that we can triage and fix them quickly! If serious issues arise, we'll do another update within a day or two. Thank you for helping to beta-test Project: Gorgon!
We also need your feedback about the new area's difficulty, both in terms of soloing and group content. We've experimented with different monster densities, monster-listening ranges, and monster varieties. It could be we got it just right on our very first try... but we probably didn't. Your feedback will be very important!
Shield
We try to revise a combat skill in each major update, and this time around it's Shield. Normally we'd use this time to refine the balance of the skill, but Shield was in a relatively good place balance-wise. Instead, we're trying to inject more fun. The Shield skill was already extremely good at keeping players alive, but much of the treasure felt dull. Shield has a lot more potential to be exciting and engaging!
So in this update, we've experimented with a bunch of new treasure effects, just to see how they play. Most of the new effects replace existing treasure that's been underused by players.
Since these changes are more experimental than usual, they run a higher-than-normal risk of needing to be nerfed later if we overshot the mark, or being replaced entirely if they just don't work out. Your feedback is important in helping us shape the skill! Seriously! We don't hear a lot about the Shield skill, and when we don't hear from you then there's always the danger that something you love could get scrapped. If you play with this stuff and find something to be really fun or really annoying, let us know on the forums or in-game feedback.
Armor Repair and Shield Wax
Armor Repair is the Shield skill's "auxiliary skill", much like Calligraphy is for Sword, or Meditation for Unarmed. There are new Armor Repair recipes that allow you to enhance your shield in a few ways. Tyler Green teaches the basic shield wax recipes. (And if you're wondering why there's a bunch of Acid-buffing gear, it's because of the new acid-based Shield Wax recipes.)
"Infuriating Bash deals +40% damage and taunts +330" => +36% damage (This was a spreadsheet error; the low-level versions are stronger but the high level is a little lower.)
"Fight Me You Fools and Finish It boost Core Attack Damage +146 for 6 seconds" => +200 Core Attack Damage
"Shield Team causes all targets' Survival Utility abilities to restore 64 Armor to them. Lasts 20 seconds" => 100 Armor
Replaced (Hands): "Reinforce Power Cost -32" => "When you are hit by an attack, all Shield abilities taunt +182 for 20 seconds (stacks up to 15 times)"
Replaced (Chest, Off Hand): "Stunning Bash restores 35 Health" => "When you are hit by a monster's Rage Attack, the current reuse timer of Stunning Bash is reduced by 1 sec and your next Stunning Bash deals +80 damage (stacks up to 10 times)"
Replaced (Ring): " Fight Me You Fools grants you 33% damage reflection for 10 seconds" => "All Shield Bash Abilities deal +50 damage and hasten the current reuse timer of Fight Me You Fools by 2 seconds"
Replaced (Chest, Off Hand): "Fire Shield and Elemental Ward restore 57 Armor" => "Elemental Ward boosts your direct and indirect Electricity damage +40 for 30 seconds"
Replaced (Legs): "Strategic Preparation hastens the current reset timer of Emergency Bash by 10 seconds" => "Strategic Preparation boosts your Indirect Acid Damage +25% for 20 seconds"
Replaced (Off Hand, Ring): "Strategic Preparation boosts your in-combat Health regeneration +18 for 20 seconds" => "Strategic Preparation causes your next attack to deal +130 damage if it is a Crushing, Slashing, or Piercing attack"
New (Main Hand): "When you are hit by an attack, Finish It damage is +64 for 20 seconds (stacks up to 10 times)"
New (Hands): "All Shield Bash Abilities deal +50 damage and hasten the current reuse timer of Finish It by 2 seconds"
New (Head, Legs): "When you are hit by a monster's Rage Attack, Reinforce restores +42 Armor for 60 seconds (stacks up to 10 times)"
New (Off Hand, Necklace): "Infuriating Bash deals +48 damage and boosts your Indirect Acid Damage +54 for 7 seconds"
Shield Ability Change
In addition, there is one Shield ability change:
Elemental Ward: Power cost has increased, and the first tier of the ability lasts 9 seconds (instead of 10). Second tier lasts 10 seconds (unchanged); there is a new third tier of the ability taught by Gorvessa that requires level 55 and lasts 11 seconds.
Level Cap Increases
All combat skills can now be raised to level 80 (plus bonus levels). Additionally, many auxiliary-combat skills and non-combat skills have higher level caps. Most of these caps can be raised by training with the fairies of the Fae Realm.
Fae Realm trainers require a substance called Royal Jelly in addition to cash. For the most expensive training, this pricing works in players' benefit: e.g. instead of charging 500,000 Councils to raise a combat skill level-cap, they charge 400,000 Councils and 3 Royal Jelly -- and 3 Royal Jelly is easier to come by than 100k councils. However, in other cases the fairies have simply added a Royal Jelly cost without significantly reducing the cash cost.
We have explained to the fae that this is not how prices are expected to work, but fairies are ancient, stubborn creatures who are immune to Haggling. They insist that "mortals will be fine" and "this Royal Jelly is really important" and "you need to stop being so greedy, human".
We will continue to monitor the cost issues, but our advice for high-level players is to carefully choose your training priorities. Of course, you were doing that already.
Some NPC trainers already taught abilities in the mid-70s level range. These abilities are now learned via new 70-80 trainers in the fae realm. The NPCs continue to train them also, but the favor requirement is Soul Mates, which is extremely difficult to achieve. The design intent is that any ability training that requires Soul Mates can also be learned from some other method.
Other level cap increases:
Foraging level cap can now be raised to 70 by Jesina in Eltibule.
Ashk in Rahu can now raise the level cap of Pathology to 70.
Nishika and Rugen in Rahu can now raise the level cap of Skinning to 70.
Nishika and Rugen in Rahu can now raise the level cap of Butchering to 70.
Jake the Buckler in Sun Vale can now raise the level cap of Buckle Artistry to 60.
New Bonus Skill Levels
You earn a bonus level of Lycanthropy when reaching Howling level 25.
You earn a bonus level of Spider when reaching Animal Handling 50, Arthropod Anatomy 41, or Survival Instincts 37.
Fire Magic now grants bonus Fire Mitigation into higher levels. (Previously the final bonus point was at level 45.)
You now gain bonus levels of Sushi Preparation at Fishing 55 and Knife 60.
You now gain bonus levels of Armor Patching when reaching Blacksmithing 50, First Aid 25, Endurance 20, Anatomy 20, Anatomy 40, and Toolcrafting 35. (This is in addition to the previously-existing bonus level at Blacksmithing 35.)
Players earn an additional bonus level of Leatherworking when reaching Tanning 60.
Training Changes
Fletching: Some fletching recipes have new requirements. You learn the recipe for Precision Fletchings automatically at level 50 Fletching. (If you are already that level, it will be in your recipe list when you log in.) This recipe creates the feathery bits for Amazing and Astonishing arrows; some of the types of Amazing arrows already existed and those have had their recipe changed accordingly.
Mittens now teaches Toxic Flesh 8 at Soul Mates; it can also be learned in the Fae Realm.
Some of the very-high-level cheese recipes that Braigon previously taught have been moved to a different trainer.
The level 66 hammer ability Rib Shatter 5 was missing from the game; it is now trained by Falkrin Overstrike.
Furlak no longer trains Knee Kick 5 or 6. (Knee Kick and Jab are alternate powers that are only learnable from loot scrolls.)
Health & Power Advancement
Previously, you received +1 Max Power for each level above 50 in your active combat skills. You now receive a point every other level in the 50s, then receive no further Max Power increases after level 60. For a player with two level 70 combat skills, this amounts to a change of -30 Max Power in total, counting both skills.
Most animal-form skills (except werewolf and bat) are a special case: they use a different power advancement curve, and their Max Power starts dropping off in the 60s instead of the 50s.
Lycanthropy now grants bonus Max Health into higher levels. (At low levels it gives an average of 2.5 Max Health per level, but previously it changed to 2-per-level after level 60. It now gives an average of 2.5 at all levels.)
Previously, the Pig, Spider, and Rabbit skills gave slightly more Max Health and less Max Power than normal combat skills (following the "tanky" pattern of the Lycanthropy skill), but this doesn't really fit the nature of those skills very well, so they now gain max health and max power at the regular rate. (Total change is +10 power and -15 health at level 50.)
The Cow and Deer skills now give slightly more Max Health than before (a total of +15 Max Health at level 50).
Recipe XP Drop-off
When you complete a recipe that is significantly lower than your skill level, you will now earn less than the full XP for that recipe. This is a pretty gradual process: for most recipes, the XP doesn't drop to 0 until your skill level is more than 50 levels above the recipe's level.
The Recipe window now shows you how much XP you'll earn for repeat completions. (Note that this number doesn't include weird one-off XP awards, such as the Teleportation XP bonus for binding to a new teleport spot -- it just shows the basic XP earned from the recipe.)
Not all recipes work this way because it just doesn't make sense in some cases. And a few recipes have slightly different drop-off rates. The intent isn't to make it super-hard to level up, just to push players away from using way-too-easy recipes at very high levels. If you feel a skill is now much too hard to level up (perhaps because of a lack of recipes in a particular level range), please let us know so we can address it!
This doesn't apply to the first-time use of a recipe, which intentionally awards a large bonus. That large bonus is always the same regardless of your skill level.
Other Skill & Ability Changes
Most abilities cost a bit more Power at very high level. A typical level 70 ability costs 1-4 more Power than before. The most dramatic change can be seen in the Epic Attacks; for example, Decapitate 5 (the level 72 Sword Epic Attack) previously cost 72 Power, and now costs 80 Power.
Animal Handling: "Sic 'Em" ability boosts the pet's speed and damage for a few seconds, but the in-game description was bugged and the damage bonus wasn't shown.
Animal Handling: Feed Pet/That'll Do: minor reduction to heal amounts at high level. (formula fix)
Archery: Blitz Shot 3, 4, and 5 each consumed an arrow that was one tier lower than intended for that level.
Armor Patching: Levels 2-6 restored more armor than they said they would. This has been fixed to match ability description.
Battle Chemistry: Several tiers of Summon Minigolem summoned a golem with lower-than-intended health/armor/rage stats.
Cold Magic: The description of Ice Armor indicated that it reduced movement speed by 33%, but actually reduced by 25%. The ability description was incorrect and has been fixed.
Druid: Healing Sanctuary 5 restores 55 per tick instead of 60 per tick. (data fix)
Druid: Energize 2 and 3 restored 20 Health more than indicated in the ability description. (data fix)
Fletching: Recipe for Amazing Snare Arrows now consumes Expert Wood Glue instead of Advanced Wood Glue.
Fletching: Recipe for Precision Fletching now consumes Expert Wood Glue instead of Advanced Wood Glue.
Hammer: Way of the Hammer 2 and 3 did not buff crushing damage by as much as listed in the ability description.
Knife: The description of Hamstring Throw indicated that it lasted 5 seconds at all levels, but high-level versions last up to 10 seconds. The ability description was incorrect and has been fixed.
Pig: "Grunt of Abeyance" ability has a stronger innate heal. (formula change)
Rabbit: Carrot Power indicated that it consumes 1 carrot, but actually there is only a 33% chance of consumption. The ability description was incorrect and has been fixed.
Staff: Blocking Stance 3 now mitigates 35% of all damage (reduced from 40%).
Staff: Phoenix Strike now causes melee attackers to suffer significantly more fire damage (more than double the previous values).
Survival Instincts: All tiers of Toxic Flesh are now more potent (dealing about 2x more damage to melee damagers). Ability has been changed slightly: it now harms "melee damagers" instead of "melee attackers". This means the attacker must do at least 1 point of damage to you in order to qualify. (This is not normally a problem.)
Other Changes & Fixes
Trade Window
Fixed errant gold icon floating in middle of window.
Made the green "accepted" overlay click-through-able; this has the important benefit of letting you mouse over the items and see their tooltips. (Previously the green overlay prevented the tooltips from showing up.)
Fixed race-conditions that could cause the trade window to get out of sync, making the trade incompletable and requiring players to start the trade over.
Monster Vulnerabilities Note that only changes are listed here, not full vulnerability/resistance lists.
Summer and Autumn fairies are now vulnerable to darkness but not psychic.
Giant scorpions are now vulnerable to darkness.
Hippogriffs are now vulnerable to darkness.
Gargoyles are now vulnerable to acid.
Hippos are now vulnerable to acid.
Treants are now resistant to trauma and psychic, but vulnerable to darkness and acid.
Misc
Pet AI tweak: Pets in Assist and Defend mode ignore 75% of the aggro they would normally generate due to attackers hitting them. This is to ensure that pets continue to assist/defend you even when being attacked by other foes. (This also applies to mini-golem AI.)
Notoriety: raising Notoriety above level 50 now has stat rewards.
The previous update notes said that some orcs now have bonus Accuracy, but due to an error this change didn't actually make it into the game until now.
The chance for monsters to drop "Telka's Teeth" items has been lowered dramatically. (The chance is approx. 1/4th of its previous chances in desert rakshasa junk loot, and approx. 1/10th of previous drop rate in war caches specifically focused on Telka's Teeth.)
Fixed bugs with the guild quest "Fox Outpost (25-person)". If your guild was actively on this quest, you will need to re-obtain it.
Borghild: Fixed some spawn-positions for loot items and acid sigils; they spawned on shelves where they could not be interacted with.
The cash value of recipe books (found in loot) now follows a simple formula instead of being completely arbitrary. Some scrolls are worth more than before, some less.
NPCs who like "artwork" (Sir Coth, Lawara, Eveline Rastin) considered poetry books to be about twice as nice a gift as intended. This has been fixed.
