What's new
Embers Adrift

Register a free account today to Ignite your Adventure! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate with the Embers Adrift community. Your active account will also be the same account used to purchase, download, and login to the game.

November 17th; what's new?

Undone

Codemaster
Stormhaven Studios
What's new?
This week's patch is a bit lighter than previous patches but still includes a number of fixes. After last week's multi-patch fiasco on Thursday & Friday we are adjusting our deployment schedule and putting a bit more focus on our internal QA builds (see below for more details). Make sure to check out the WIP section below for a quick rundown of upcoming zones you can look forward to in the coming weeks.

Server Memory Leak Update
Last week we deployed code to address our previously mentioned memory leak on the server. As many of you might have noticed these changes resulted in some stability issues that took a day or two to work through. The end result is that all of the code previously written to address the leak has been commented out - meaning that the memory leak is back. Given that we went the weekend without a single server crash I am forced to conclude that freeing this memory is causing random server dead-locks at the engine level. If this is indeed the case then it's entirely outside of our control until I can reproduce it locally and send the bug to Unity. Which leaves us with the only workable solution of increasing the amount of memory in our server. Memory has been ordered and should arrive within a few weeks. In the mean time we will continue asking you to swap instances from time to time so that we can shut down the bloated executables. We appreciate your patience while we work through this - but we feel that swapping instances is a lot better than random crashes!

Deployment Schedule Update
After last week's issues we have decided to make some adjustments to our deployment schedule. For years we have been deploying patches on Wednesdays so it only seemed natural to deploy live patches on Thursdays after our internal tests. However, if something goes wrong (as it did last week) that gives us very little time to correct it (Thurs+Fri), not to mention it makes our week of content development a bit awkward (Thurs/Fri/Mon/Tues). After this week's patch we will be moving our live deployments to Tuesday; this should allow us plenty of time to correct any issues and normalize our work week a bit. Due to this transition there will be NO patch next week (barring any game breaking bugs). Thankfully this coincides with the American holiday Thanksgiving where a good portion of the team will be taking some much needed family time.

tldr: live patches will be moved to TUESDAYS. The next live patch (following this one) will occur on November 29th, 2022.

QA Update
Within the next few weeks we will be putting more time into our QA process to ensure that content delivered is better tested and less prone to errors. We are shifting gears slightly and aiming to let new content be present on QA for at least a week before it gets deployed to live. This means that it will take slightly longer to deliver content to live, but in the end we feel that this is the best move to ensure things are up to the quality you all deserve. In the near future we hope to invite the community back to the QA server for testing once we get back into the groove of things.

Bug fixes / improvements:
  • Tech
    • Improved inventory validation on player initialization. We are now checking for items stacked on top of one another, invalid items, and items in a slot that do not exist. If you find an item is no longer where you expected it to be check your Lost & Found in Newhaven City.
    • Fixed an issue preventing NPCs in the water from knowing that they could indeed hit a player on the land. This should significantly reduce the occurrences of wrath & npc avoids in Meadowlands while attacking an NPC in the water from the land.
    • Fixed a visual issue causing the wrong weapons to show equipped.
    • Fixed a rare issue that could cause our spawn controllers to get stuck in a loop not spawning anything.
    • Added a suffix to a number of multi-scene zones. For example: when you enter the Undercroft it will now show as "The Aquifer: Undercroft". This should also be indicated on door tooltips as well.
  • Environment / Art
    • Removing remaining turnip heads from Newhaven Valley
    • Fixed visual issue on Wolfsbane Greaves
    • Fixed some holes in the The Aquifer's walls
    • Fixed some navigation issues with NPCs near the island docks in Meadowlands.
    • Misc. bug fixes for Newhaven Valley, Northreach, Dryfoot, Redshore, and Meadowlands overland zones. Nav meshes for each of these have been rebaked.
  • UI:
    • Fixed an issue where another player's overhead nameplate name/guild colors would occasionally be blue even if they were not a member of your group/guild.
    • World and Trade slow mode time increased to 20s.
  • Quests:
    • Fixed a typo in Khym's dialogue.
  • Design:
    • Fixed Arc to ensure number of targets always increases on higher level versions of the ability.
    • Quillback Spines will no longer enable auto-attack on ability use.
    • Fixed stat type on Stolen Emerald Necklace from +ChemicalDamage to +Healing
    • Fixed recipe icon on Imbued Heater Shield from Weaponsmithing to Armorsmithing
    • Respawn rate of world resources increased globally
    • Updated Dryfoot resource spawns to better match resource density of other areas.
    • Reduced Daze resists on named mobs. We want the Daze ability to still have value but not lock down a Named mob's unique abilities for the entire duration of the fight.
    • Fixed a typo on Provoke.
Works in progress:
To see a full list of what is currently in progress head on over to this thread. I will do my best to update this list on a weekly basis and highlight the differences from the previous week with bold font. Below I will highlight some of the upcoming changes in more detail.

Item Linking (timeline: next patch)
Item linking in chat is 99% complete. To make sure that things were properly accounted for (performance and usability wise) this feature was pushed until the next patch. Once deployed, if your chat is active you will be able to hold shift+click on an item, ability, role, specialization, or crafting recipe (inside of the crafting UI) to add a link to chat.

More Ashen! (timeline: one to two patches)
We have received ashen textures for Crocs, Raccoons, Rats, and Wolves. These will be implemented shortly to expand our ashen variants.

Repair Cost (pending further discussions on the exact implementation)
We are looking into improving how repair costs are calculated to mitigate repair costs at higher levels. Still some work left to do but just wanted you to know we are working on it! We should have this updated by the time players get to high enough levels where this starts to become a pain point.

Recently released and upcoming zones:
The following table does not include all in-progress zones; only the ones in our most immediate future. Redshore Ridge's first pass made its way to QA this week and has developer eyes on it. We have already found a few small tweaks that need to be made but this zone should be available in the next patch.

ZoneNotesStatus
Meadowlands Emberdrift AAdded 10.20.22
Dryfoot Emberdrift AAdded 10.20.22
The Aquifer: KarstMeadowlands smaller static dungeon.Added 10.27.22
Dryfoot Emberdrift BAdded 11.03.22
The Aquifer: UndercroftMeadowlands larger static dungeon with solo/small/full group content.Added 11.10.22
Redshore RidgeA higher level zone considered more of an extension to Redshore located in the north eastern part of the zone.In QA
Redshore FortA higher level zone occupied by a faction of humanoid NPCs in the north western part of the zone.Name pending.
Content & quest design in progress.
Base layer of spawns and configuration is complete.
Redshore DungeonA very large custom dungeon located below Redshore.Name pending.
Initial layout and prop placement complete.
Awaiting cleanup and initial spawns and design.
Dryfoot FortressA higher level zone located in the middle of Dryfoot.Name pending.
Content pending.
Design pending.
GorgeA higher level zone offering a bit of overlap in content with Redshore.
This zone is a large canyon with arid terrain similar to Dryfoot.
Name pending.
Zone layout and design nearing completion.
Awaiting integration into the game and initial content pass.

New Humanoids?
The art team has continued to explore how ember experimentation affects humans. Here's a quick tease.
ZfKLLSI.png


Known Issues:
  • Occasionally a loot roll may be skipped entirely and a carcass will be given. When this happens please provide any relevant details as we are still trying to track this one down.
  • Not all ember rings and/or POIs are proper map discoveries.
  • Deconstructing crafted items returns junk 100% of the time.
  • 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)
  • MacOS:
    • Zooming the camera while holding the right mouse button can cause your chat window to scroll. This is not intended behavior.
    • At some camera angles the sun may go dark. This should not happen frequently but is readily reproducible at some locations. Investigating a fix.
 
Last edited:
Safe moves, something to get the EA Team and their family (hopefully) through the holidays and re-introduce the previous level of stability as you work through the core of the memory issues. Sounds like the right thing to do, even if not the one everyone might want. Good luck! I hope that the memory "leak" is just growth due to population and reaches a stopping point before the planned, new physical memory threshold.

Great QoL fixes.

LOVE the new humanoid Ashen variant tease. This is a great idea.
 
Fixed a rare issue that could cause our spawn controllers to get stuck in a loop not spawning anything.

Pretty excited to see this. I have a static group of friends that dont really enjoy killing monsters for named spawns and seeing 1 every 6 hours. Hopefully that is what this is referencing.
 
Pretty excited to see this. I have a static group of friends that dont really enjoy killing monsters for named spawns and seeing 1 every 6 hours. Hopefully that is what this is referencing.
That's not a bad time for an old school type game, EQ2 had named mobs (Stormhold springs to mind) that spawned every 2 days lol.
 
That's not a bad time for an old school type game, EQ2 had named mobs (Stormhold springs to mind) that spawned every 2 days lol.
Most of us know what it was like and are here because of it. Imo named farming is one of the most enjoyable experiences ever. Some of them had week long spawns or things +/- days.

What I/we are talking about trash named essentially not spawning correctly. An example would be that you would never go through 10-15 hours of strait clearing in guk and not see one named while clearing the whole zone out. Sure Raster might not be up, but that isnt the comparison.
 
Most of us know what it was like and are here because of it. Imo named farming is one of the most enjoyable experiences ever. Some of them had week long spawns or things +/- days.

What I/we are talking about trash named essentially not spawning correctly. An example would be that you would never go through 10-15 hours of strait clearing in guk and not see one named while clearing the whole zone out. Sure Raster might not be up, but that isnt the comparison.
Tbf I was being facetious.
 
Was grizzled peaks done away with? Didnt see any mention of it in the list of upcoming zone additions
 
Was grizzled peaks done away with? Didnt see any mention of it in the list of upcoming zone additions
> The following table does not include all in-progress zones; only the ones in our most immediate future. Grizzled is alive and well.
 
Very nice!!
And I have to give you guys props on the progress you've made with all the new content.
Definitely like seeing the love that has been given for support gear/weapons as well.

The graphics on the staffs and offhand are pretty sick!!
 
Back