State of the Game: July

[Drindin]

State of the Game: July​ Welcome to the Embers Adrift newsletter. We’ve got some really exciting news for you today. First off, our Worldbreaker II stress test is happening on August 13th; sign up by clicking the link provided below if you’d like to have a look at the game during that test window for free. There is “limited” availability, but we’re opening it up much more than our first stress test, so sign up soon and share the sign up link with anyone you’d like to invite to join you: https://www.embersadrift.com/Worldbreaker. We’ll be stress testing the servers when they open at 10 am Central (U.S. time) on Saturday the 13th. Don’t miss out, go sign up now. I’m also very excited to share the news that we’ve brought on MorrolanTV as a Narrative Designer. This is a partnership that developed gradually and it was very evident that it was a great fit. Check out his announcement video to get an idea of how it all went down over the last few months and why he chose to join the team. You can follow him at these links on Twitter and on Twitch. Check out this video, Embers Adrift in 60 Seconds, for a brief overview of what Embers Adrift is and share it to others as an introduction to our MMORPG! Our normal test window opens starting Fridays at noon CT/6pm UTC through Tuesday at noon CT/6pm UTC for our pre-order players. You can also join the devs in our Wednesday night session at 8pm CT/1am UTC. If you like classically inspired MMORPGs with deliberate gameplay, rewarding progression, and no cash shops, please visit our website to pre-order, join the fun, and support our indie dev team! Embers Adrift can also be purchased as a gift; nab it for friends and/or family so they can join you in game. July was a crazy month chalk full of things we’ve all been waiting for: While we continue to work on new equipment, zones, quests, and monsters we are actually making big progress on getting some of those things waiting through the development pipeline. We’ve also got our new servers infrastructure up and running, hence the Worldbreaker II event I mention above. The quest and dialogue system is one area we’ve been highly focused on in July and the fruits of that labor are starting to grow. We’ll see our first pass at NPC dialogue, merchants, and quests enter Newhaven Valley (the starting zone), with more to come soon thereafter. Once we have that in we’ll continue to implement the quests we have written beyond the ‘Old Wall’. There has been a lot of hard work put into all the different goals we have for our quest system and we are really looking forward to utilizing all the new tools we’ll have at our disposal to tell you all some great stories in Embers Adrift.

Dungeons have also been a huge focus in July’s development. We’ve spent a lot of time getting the tech right to make the process easier and faster in the future. We’re beginning to utilize that tech; we’re implementing our first dungeon beyond the ‘Old Wall’ now and players will be able to test it out very soon. What will you find in the Veins of the world? New creatures? New treasures? You’ll have to come and find out…

We continue to tinker with our crafting system in order to get it just right. We’ve added a material bag to go along with our adventuring bag, and we’re allowing players to learn a 3rd profession upon reaching level 12 in harvesting or crafting. This should make things a bit easier for players to accomplish their crafting goals when they aren’t out grouping and exploring the world.

Another area we’ve been able to take a look at is the balance between utility abilities that are lifesavers in certain situations or popular out of combat vs. abilities that are highly useful in every combat encounter. We’re iterating on this a bit by expanding the action bar to 8 slots. This allows players to have a little more wiggle room as they plan out their kit for different zones or combat situations.

Our death mechanic has had a tech pass. You are now able to utilize your stash and it’s funds to accomplish certain things like repairing your equipment and purchasing consumables making it all the more important to visit your stash frequently. You’ll also be able to check loot and equip or swap out items in your inventory even while your bag is missing. Check the July 27th patch notes for more details.

There has been a lot more accomplished in July, but we hit all the major points in this newsletter - stay tuned into our YouTube channel for new videos coming up and for the 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 or head over to Alicebluu’s YouTube channel and listen to her read the patch notes and comment on them. We want to thank our testers for their involvement and feedback. Your patience is appreciated as our small indie team works to bring more content and polish into Embers Adrift. If you would like to support us and our launch we would greatly appreciate it; visit our store to pre-order or purchase for a friend today! Pre-order customers will be getting early access to the live servers when launch rolls around later this year. Thanks for following our development; we really appreciate your support and interest! Join our discord server to share your feedback & ideas, and to interact with the dev team & community, and then head over to our forums to dive deep into the news, lore, and discussions about Embers Adrift. If you don’t have a previous account, please sign up!