State of the Game: January

[Drindin]

What happened in January, 2023​ Welcome to 2023, drifter! Let’s take a look at what happened in January. First off we want to say thank you to all our players for supporting our indie studio. Your feedback has been great and we truly appreciate the dialogue we have with our players. We can truly say that this dialogue has produced good fruits in Embers Adrift and we are following a measured process in implementing things without compromising the pillars of our design in Embers Adrift. We have a number of community inspired adjustments either already implemented or coming down the pipeline. We held our first Free Weekend at the end of January and had a strong response. Lots of players were able to visit Newhaven over the weekend and we got a lot of great feedback from all the new players. Thanks for showing up and checking out Embers Adrift! Your support means very much to us as a small company made up of a few people with a dream to fit a missing piece of the puzzle into the MMORPG market. Remember we have a simple purchase + subscription model; no other monetization in the whole game. No cash shops, no microtransactions. You can support us by buying the game HERE for yourself or for a friend and subscribing as time goes on. We are a small, but mighty team and we hope to continue to impress you all with what we’ve got planned for the rest of 2023 in Embers Adrift.

January: We had a lot of fun getting new and exciting features and content in for our players. Zones: We had a new dungeon implemented in the Redshore Forest Region. It is a level 40+ outdoor dungeon and one of our best yet judging by the feedback. The Exile Freehold, as it is named, is the final outpost of the Exile’s in our game. Soon our players will be able to confront the Exiled King and conclude a storyline that has it’s beginnings in the earliest levels of the game. We also implemented another Ember Drift (45+) in the Redshore Region as well. Balance: Resist adjustments - A player’s resist stat used to simply reduce the effect of a debuff. Now we’ve added a chance for all abilities to be completely resisted based off 20% of their resist score and if that fails, the debuff is still resisted as before. Abilities - We tuned several abilities in the favor of the players. From the Shadows should now always Crit. Provoke range was increased from 8m to 10m. Serration can no longer stack multiple times on the same character. Stim was updated to give Stamina to the target directly. Disengage increased the threat reduction amount at higher levels. Hemorrhaging strike’s chance to proc first stages of damage increased. Stifle haste reduction was increased. Energizing Battle Chant was updated to give an extra stamina tick on tiers that were stopping at 28s (Note that the buff will now last 32s at these level ranges). Threat - Defenders rejoice! Threat has been adjusted to scale with your level in some cases as well as bonuses given to abilities when you are not at the top of the threat list. We are maintaining a fine line where all players have to manage their threat levels and defenders have a truly strategic role to play where threat is concerned in group combat situations. Active Defense - Parry, Block, and Avoid got a facelift. We find the new adjustments are much more interesting. The decision space has become much more nuanced. Ashen Monsters - Ashen Monsters became a bit of a burden for players and the feedback was that they were a bit of a chore. We have adjusted that so they now spawn with half their health instead of full and they no longer decrease in difficulty (chevron count). This seems to be much more fun for players. Chevrons - To better communicate difficulty levels and experience gains on our mobs we added a light-blue chevron color between green and dark blue and boosted the experience from those light blues. Enjoy grouping with lower level players while still getting good experience gains. QoL: Combat Log - We’ve added additional info to the combat logs as well as reduced the ‘other combat’ text by 20% to make it easier to differentiate. Here is a handy guide to the new info found in the log: DIS: the attack had a disadvantage ADV: the attack had an advantage that was cancelled by a disadvantage RES: the application was resisted PRES: the application was partially resisted DIM: the application was impacted by diminishing returns ABS: the value absorbed by armor THR: the threat value ADV: the attack had an advantage OT: the value done by over-time effects (DOTs/HOTs) Exit Delay - We’ve added a 10-20 second delay when exiting the game depending on your combat status and location. This may not seem like a quality of life feature, but this does help with griefing and also solves some exploit issues the devs have been witnessing. Cosmetic Improvements - Everyone’s fan favorite. Hair has received a makeover! We’ve redone all the hair pieces and gotten rid of that pesky transparency. Don’t forget, you can change your character’s appearance at any time at no extra cost in the selection screen by right-clicking. As we iterate from patch to patch, adjusting current content and adding new content, we are asking our community to keep the feedback coming and to please be patient with us as we make adjustments. Thank you all!

What’s Next: We have been testing a new zone internally, Grimstone Canyon! There are several new creatures to be found in this zone. New abilities will soon enter the game. The QA server is here - come test the higher level content once a week if you have an active account. A slew of new quests will be launched with the final patch of the month of February as we move to a monthly content patch with weekly patches for balance passes, hotfixes, and systems tweaks. Dueling will soon be making its way into Embers Adrift, but it’s not what you think! Stay tuned for more - we have an announcement on pricing coming soon!

If you want to know more about our game check out our YouTube content which will showcase lore and story elements, and even more in the future. Stay tuned into our YouTube channel and our DISCORD server for the notifications about our weekly community show hosted by Elloa to stay up to date with all the latest news. You can also take a look at our patch notes on the Embers Adrift forums.