Our next stress tests are scheduled for:
What's new?
This week's update is a big one! We are bringing you revamped player stats, guilds, an overhauled chat window, and dynamic music tracks. Guilds & the new chat windows are very much incomplete, with glaring omissions and undoubtedly many bugs to be found so please pardon our dust!
We are moving closer to the wipe but I still don't have an exact date. The most likely scenario is within the next week or two.
REMINDER: the servers will be open for 4hrs Wednesday evening. The servers will open again on Friday @ 12pm central and close on Tuesday at 12pm central. See events in Discord for timezone translations.
Bug fixes / improvements:
Player Stat Refactor
Player stats have been revamped on the back end. This greatly simplifies things moving forward allowing for a much quicker iteration time and making it much easier to add/remove/modify existing stats. The most notable changes are that weapon damage has moved from Slashing/Crushing/Piercing to 1H/2H/Ranged. We have also added a "Flanking" stat which is a bonus to your weapon & role positional bonuses (this is currently reflected on weapon tooltips, but NOT role tooltips). The current list of visible player stats are as follows:
With this update comes a change to how resists work for both lasting effects (debuffs) and DOTs. Debuffs will now have their durations reduced based on the resist of the target. This means that a debuff duration will be cut in half if your target's resists are 50%. DOTs on the other hand will simply have their per-tick values reduced by the target's resists. As an example, if your DOT normally hits for 10 dmg/tick and your target has a 50% resist, then each tick will only hit for 5 dmg/tick. This logic applies to both NPCs and players - so get your resists up!
Note that we are still working through migrating the data for this change. This means that items may be off or have incorrect stats. And this is especially true for crafted items (crafting data still needs some fixing). You may also notice on some tooltips a count in red for specific stats - this is debug data put there so that we don't miss anything in the cleanup process and can safely be ignored for now (see the red text in the screenshot below).
Lull Tech
Tech for a new type of CC has been added: the "lull". This essentially negates the target's ability to acquire new targets via their normal sensors. NPCs that are lulled can still acquire targets via damage. No abilities currently utilize this tech - but now that it exists it should be integrated into the game soon.
Guilds
Guilds are comin' in hot this week! Rather than push it back another week, we've opted to just ship it and get testing and feedback underway. With this release you can create guilds, set up custom ranks with specific permissions, set a message of the day, manage your guild roster (promote/demote/invite/kick members), etc. There's a lot of logic involved in who can do what in a guild, this is all based on the permissions your rank affords as well as where your rank is sorted in relation to others (e.g. you cannot kick someone of the same rank or higher even if you have the "kick members" permission), so please, test all the things!
Improved Chat
Due to guilds placing new demands on our chat system, we're also shipping a new chat UI. You may notice that this new UI contains the start of a new feature: tabs! While there's still a ways to go to call this new feature complete (such as the ability to drag tabs off into their own windows), a lot of underlying work has been done to make way for a more flexible chat system.
You can set custom filters for each tab, toggle timestamps, and set the overall window opacity (this impacts all tabs).
The new chat window is currently experiencing some text overlapping issues when text is added. To resolve either resize the window slightly to force a recalculation or change the font size slightly. We are actively working on a fix for this.
Dynamic Music Tracks
A few months ago we asked our composer to start "decomposing" a handful of tracks from our soundtrack. He started splitting them up into different mood files that could all be played on top of one other. We came up with the following 6 layers for each track: base, day, night, peace, combat, and point of interest.
This week we are introducing one new dynamic track to Newhaven N/S, Central Veins, Meadowlands, and Redshore. While these tracks are playing the music will adapt to the game state and should yield a much more dynamic soundscape. The base layer is always playing, day or night plays depending on the game time, peace or combat plays depending on if your character is in combat, and the POI track plays while you are near an ember ring. We are very excited to bring this feature to you all and hope to continue migrating our current soundtrack to this more dynamic format.
Works in progress:
The ridgeback is a pretty hefty snapping turtle like creature that has a ferocious appetite for adventurers.
These grubs will likely be hunted by other creatures, but who is to say that they won't hunt you?
Crafting Updates (timeline: 1-2 weeks)
A large chunk of these tasks are finished on a different branch of the code. If all goes well we should be able to push these changes within the next week or two. The current changes we are aiming for are:
Reagent Upgrade System (timeline: after the above tasks)
Ember essence collection and spending is on the list of things to do SOON, but is taking a back seat until we can iron out crafting, Unity 2021, and reorganizing and prepping of the new dungeons. The first step for getting this in will be allowing you to collect ember essence. Now that we have something for you to spend it on there is more of a reason to get this in the game.
Unity 2021 upgrade
We are nearing the point of finalizing our move to Unity 2021. This weekend the server will be a Unity 2021 executable so keep an eye out for any oddities. If all goes well, I should be able to upgrade the whole team soon. (WEDNESDAY NIGHT TEST SERVER IS STILL USING 2019)
Known Issues:
Wed. June 8th @ 8pm central
(Thurs. June 9th @ 1am UTC)
The developers will meet in Discord and test for approximately one hour. However, the servers will remain open for roughly 4 hours. The most up-to-date client can be retrieved via the patcher found on your account page.(Thurs. June 9th @ 1am UTC)
What's new?
This week's update is a big one! We are bringing you revamped player stats, guilds, an overhauled chat window, and dynamic music tracks. Guilds & the new chat windows are very much incomplete, with glaring omissions and undoubtedly many bugs to be found so please pardon our dust!
We are moving closer to the wipe but I still don't have an exact date. The most likely scenario is within the next week or two.
REMINDER: the servers will be open for 4hrs Wednesday evening. The servers will open again on Friday @ 12pm central and close on Tuesday at 12pm central. See events in Discord for timezone translations.
Bug fixes / improvements:
- Tech
- Detection distances have been reduced for gray mobs.
- Fixing DOTs & HOTs not always applying their final tick
- Bears, Boars, Wolves, Does, and Stags can now swim.
- Gathering and Crafting levels are now capped at your Adventuring Level + 10
- Increasing Redshore shoreline audio volume (still needs work)
- Fixing volume issues for one of Redshore's music tracks.
- Art / Environment
- Fixing environmental & vegetation bugs in Redshore & Dryfoot.
- Rebaking nav mesh in Redshore & Dryfoot
- UI:
- Off hand slot to the right of the action bar now shows 2 handed weapons.
- First pass at a Redshore map has been implemented. We are trying something slightly new with this map: the fog of war is uncovered simply by traveling to that area - you no longer have to find a specific POI to uncover that part of the map. Each individual POI will be its own discovery (when more get added), but the uncovering will happen more organically as you traverse the land. Please let us know how you feel about this style compared to having to find a specific region or poi.
- Adding Ember Monolith to maps. This includes N/S Newhaven, Meadowlands, Dryfoot, and Redshore.
- Design:
- Flash Powder stun now correctly breaks on hit.
- Fixing naming of some logs and gems which mismatched node and item names.
- Pushed back spawns around monoliths
- Redshore coastal cave should be populated again
- Fix daggers which were missed in 1H delay reduction
- Fix issue where doom spiders stopped dropping their special venom
- Fix issue where Emberfly "Glow" ability was too strong.
- Reduction to newbie area Doe/Quillback dodge rates.
- Updated abilities, equipment, and consumables for new stat and resist system.
- Leather has been given innate Flanking bonus to give it additional value compared to metal armor.
Player Stat Refactor
Player stats have been revamped on the back end. This greatly simplifies things moving forward allowing for a much quicker iteration time and making it much easier to add/remove/modify existing stats. The most notable changes are that weapon damage has moved from Slashing/Crushing/Piercing to 1H/2H/Ranged. We have also added a "Flanking" stat which is a bonus to your weapon & role positional bonuses (this is currently reflected on weapon tooltips, but NOT role tooltips). The current list of visible player stats are as follows:
| Resists | Offense | Defense | Misc. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Physical Damage | Hit | Resilience | Health Regen Rate |
| Mental Damage | Penetration | Avoid | Stamina Regen Rate |
| Chemical Damage | 1H Weapon Damage | Block | Movement |
| Ember Damage | 2H Weapon Damage | Parry | Combat Movement |
| Physical Debuffs | Ranged Weapon Damage | Riposte | Haste |
| Mental Debuffs | Mental Damage | Safe Fall | |
| Chemical Debuffs | Chemical Damage | ||
| Ember Debuffs | Ember Damage | ||
| Movement Debuffs | Flanking | ||
| Confuse | |||
| Daze | |||
| Stun |
With this update comes a change to how resists work for both lasting effects (debuffs) and DOTs. Debuffs will now have their durations reduced based on the resist of the target. This means that a debuff duration will be cut in half if your target's resists are 50%. DOTs on the other hand will simply have their per-tick values reduced by the target's resists. As an example, if your DOT normally hits for 10 dmg/tick and your target has a 50% resist, then each tick will only hit for 5 dmg/tick. This logic applies to both NPCs and players - so get your resists up!
Note that we are still working through migrating the data for this change. This means that items may be off or have incorrect stats. And this is especially true for crafted items (crafting data still needs some fixing). You may also notice on some tooltips a count in red for specific stats - this is debug data put there so that we don't miss anything in the cleanup process and can safely be ignored for now (see the red text in the screenshot below).
Lull Tech
Tech for a new type of CC has been added: the "lull". This essentially negates the target's ability to acquire new targets via their normal sensors. NPCs that are lulled can still acquire targets via damage. No abilities currently utilize this tech - but now that it exists it should be integrated into the game soon.
Guilds
Guilds are comin' in hot this week! Rather than push it back another week, we've opted to just ship it and get testing and feedback underway. With this release you can create guilds, set up custom ranks with specific permissions, set a message of the day, manage your guild roster (promote/demote/invite/kick members), etc. There's a lot of logic involved in who can do what in a guild, this is all based on the permissions your rank affords as well as where your rank is sorted in relation to others (e.g. you cannot kick someone of the same rank or higher even if you have the "kick members" permission), so please, test all the things!
Improved Chat
Due to guilds placing new demands on our chat system, we're also shipping a new chat UI. You may notice that this new UI contains the start of a new feature: tabs! While there's still a ways to go to call this new feature complete (such as the ability to drag tabs off into their own windows), a lot of underlying work has been done to make way for a more flexible chat system.
You can set custom filters for each tab, toggle timestamps, and set the overall window opacity (this impacts all tabs).
The new chat window is currently experiencing some text overlapping issues when text is added. To resolve either resize the window slightly to force a recalculation or change the font size slightly. We are actively working on a fix for this.
Dynamic Music Tracks
A few months ago we asked our composer to start "decomposing" a handful of tracks from our soundtrack. He started splitting them up into different mood files that could all be played on top of one other. We came up with the following 6 layers for each track: base, day, night, peace, combat, and point of interest.
This week we are introducing one new dynamic track to Newhaven N/S, Central Veins, Meadowlands, and Redshore. While these tracks are playing the music will adapt to the game state and should yield a much more dynamic soundscape. The base layer is always playing, day or night plays depending on the game time, peace or combat plays depending on if your character is in combat, and the POI track plays while you are near an ember ring. We are very excited to bring this feature to you all and hope to continue migrating our current soundtrack to this more dynamic format.
Works in progress:
- Zones: 3x additional overland zones have had an initial art pass completed
- Grizzled Peaks - accessed via Highlands, Redshore, and Gorge. Mountainous region with a number of tunnels. High level range (40-50). Has a one-way exit to Newhaven North. This is the snow capped mountains you can see from Redshore.
- Highlands - accessed via Meadowlands. Hilly region with sparse vegetation and water features. Mid level range (approx 30-40, likely to come after Redshore and Grizzled)
- Gorge - accessed via Dryfoot. Large canyon-like area. Mid level range (approx 30-40, likely to come after Redshore and Grizzled)
- Dungeons: All of central veins has been delivered from the art team and is now awaiting integration into the game. This includes the starter dungeon currently found in S. Newhaven, and a larger more difficult area for N. Newhaven. Spawning tech for dungeons is mostly complete so we just have to iron out the details in the spawning workflow. Will likely need to reorganize all of the dungeon prefabs for easier usage moving forward. Will likely start this soon.
- NPCs: Most NPCs have been converted to a "universal" model that includes the base + ashen variants. This brings us one step closer to getting the ashen variants in the game. They are currently awaiting a VFX and lighting pass.
- Quests: a number of quests are in the queue for implementation/testing. Quest data structure and likely needs a refactor. This is slated to happen after guilds are deployed.
- Tech: npc improvements, npc merchants.
- UI: quest dialog redesign, tooltip improvements
- New clothing & armor is still in the works.
The ridgeback is a pretty hefty snapping turtle like creature that has a ferocious appetite for adventurers.
These grubs will likely be hunted by other creatures, but who is to say that they won't hunt you?
Crafting Updates (timeline: 1-2 weeks)
A large chunk of these tasks are finished on a different branch of the code. If all goes well we should be able to push these changes within the next week or two. The current changes we are aiming for are:
- improve progression by unlocking recipes as you level up rather than giving them all to you right away. this can have the added side effect of not giving you a bunch of gear to wear at low levels when you maybe cannot equip it all due to armor weight limitations.
- add an augment system for equipables
- make some equipment slots only obtainable via crafting, and some only obtainable via adventuring (at least during the early levels, this may change at higher levels)
- if the we implement the above point, then we can bring regular crafted gear (no flux) back up to par with common drops. the issue has always been crafting stepping on adventurer's toes and vice versa - so by segregating the slots (again, at least at early levels) then we can avoid this and allow non-flux crafted goods to be roughly equivalent to dropped gear.
- make the experience of a craft proportional to the number of materials required to craft it
- increase the number of materials required for some items (which would also increase the xp gain)
- re-evaluate the role of "quality" in the make of an item - this will likely be converted to only impact the durability.
Reagent Upgrade System (timeline: after the above tasks)
Ember essence collection and spending is on the list of things to do SOON, but is taking a back seat until we can iron out crafting, Unity 2021, and reorganizing and prepping of the new dungeons. The first step for getting this in will be allowing you to collect ember essence. Now that we have something for you to spend it on there is more of a reason to get this in the game.
Unity 2021 upgrade
We are nearing the point of finalizing our move to Unity 2021. This weekend the server will be a Unity 2021 executable so keep an eye out for any oddities. If all goes well, I should be able to upgrade the whole team soon. (WEDNESDAY NIGHT TEST SERVER IS STILL USING 2019)
Known Issues:
- Terrain textures have a bit too much tiling. This will be resolved when we finalize our move to Unity 2021
- Character creation & editing camera on Apple Silicon MacOS is bugged. I isolated the issue and submitted a bug report with Unity.
- Not all ember rings and/or POIs are proper map discoveries. This is especially true in Dryfoot, Dryfoot Stronghold, and Redshore. Discoveries and map uncovering is a WIP and will be revisited soon.
- Deconstructing crafted items returns junk 100% of the time.
- cannot roll on loot while unconscious
- not all clothing/armor has visuals
- Dragging a group-nameplate in the group window will set the wrong pivot point for the group window and the whole thing will drag a bit weird.
- typing chat text may occasionally become invisible. unfocus your chat window and trying again a few times typically resolves this.
- Sometimes when you respawn you don't end up at the proper Ember Ring --> if this happens please report the position where you died via the "/report" command or "/debugposition" (if using debugposition you'll need to paste the value here)
Last edited:
I don't remember posting it. Wait... I definitely couldn't have posted it with debug info. I've been spied on! I am amused that the screenshot is dated June 3rd at 10:23 AM before server opens, and I was at work at the time.
