MarcusFromOz
Well-Known Member
Yes we all know we are going to get asked this, so I thought I'd summarise
Locations
New Ember Drift
A new high level (45+) Ember Drift has been spotted in Redshore Ridge!
Grimstone Canyon Phase I
Grimstone Canyon is a level 30+ zone located to the north east of Dryfoot. This zone is currently segmented into three "phases" with this first release being Phase I only. The second phase will be the higher altitude portion of the canyon, while the third phase will likely be a new zone released farther down the line.
Forgotten Depths Phase I
Deep within the halls of the Forgotten Depths, Ember is bent toward a dark purpose. A long forgotten sect of disgraced philosophers from the earliest days of the Academy in Newhaven have found sanctuary in these ancient caverns. Banished from Newhaven for horrific experimentation upon their fellow citizens, this Cabal of alchemists sought a new home to push the boundaries of what Ember can do.
Grimstone Canyon Phase II
With hordes of new creatures spilling out from the Forgotten Depths and the Stonecoats dominating this part of the Canyons it's no wonder the Grimstone Marauders have only a tentative grasp on this territory. Come explore the higher ground of these canyons to see what new challenges await.
Forgotten Depths Phase II
After exploring the upper corridors of the Forgotten Depths, passages that lead even deeper have now been discovered. Drifters are greeted with the tormented shrieks of a never before seen creature. The darkness grows deeper in this new set of ancient halls as the Cabal and their cultists hungrily seek more ways to seize the power of Ember at the expense of their victims. Delve into this new section of the Forgotten Depths to see what horrors lay withing.
New Ember Veins
Two new Ember Vein zones have been added with new treasures to be found. The first is located in Redshore and caters to levels 25-26, while the other can be found in Grimstone (part II) and caters to levels 48-49.
Mechanics
Threat Scaling
New tech has been implemented that allows for a dynamic threat bonus on Provoke, Roar, and Fading Strike. The purpose of this tech is to allow the players to more effectively "close the gap" between themselves and another player on the threat list.
Dueling
Have you ever wanted to face off against another player? Well now you can, with dice! Our game is strictly a PvE game and the back-end system are designed with that in mind. Enabling any sort of player vs. player combat would require significant engineering time which we are in short supply of. Given that our game is heavily based on dice we thought it appropriate to add duels by dice rolls in place of actual player vs. player fighting.
Group Elevated Level (GEL)
Today we introduce a new feature that should make it a bit easier to form groups with a larger range of player levels called GEL. GEL automatically raises a player's "effective" level to the highest group member's level with a few limitations. What we mean here by "effective" level is the value put through the combat calculations. When the player hits an NPC or an NPC hits the player we look at the level difference to determine a few things such as: higher level resists, advantage/disadvantage, and level-adjusted armor class. GEL allows lower level players to group with higher level players and bypass any disadvantages they may have previously had going up against higher level NPCs.
First Person Camera
Embers Adrift now supports a first person camera. This option however, is disabled by default and must be enabled in one of two ways. The first is a new key bind called "First Person Camera"; activating this key bind will toggle you in and out of first person mode. The second is enabling a new toggle in the gameplay options called "Enable Zoom to First Person" which will allow you to zoom in to enter first person and zoom out to exit. It should also be noted that this camera perspective is not fully featured and has a few minor quirks (i.e. your body is not rendered, but weapons are).
Bag Dragging
This month we have added chat commands that will allow you and your group mates to drag your bag. Bags can be dragged if the owner is online in the same zone as the bag, the dragger is within 5m of the bag, and if the bag is not your own you must be grouped with the owner.
Weapon Positional Changes (note that Flanking has been renamed Positional!)
Weapons have a Primary and Secondary positional, typically denoted by a reduced base positional value. For example Maul's have +5DMG from rear (Primary) and +3DMG from the front (Secondary). This was meant to offer a less optimal but still useful way of using weapons with positional bonuses. We have changed this system so the Primary direction will now get a bonus to the positional stat, but the Secondary will only receive the base value of the positional stat.
Resilience Update
Resilience currently serves as a "saving throw" when your health drops to zero. We have expanded the functionality of Resilience to now also reduce the damage bonus of incoming heavy and critical hits. Reminder that resilience only works in combat stance!
Loot
Loot Table Fix
For the past several weeks the community has raised the alarm about our loot tables failing after a period of time; and I am both happy and sad to announce that they were right! Albeit only partially right - they were indeed failing but it had nothing to do with the passage of time.
Merchant Buyback
Merchant's of Embers Adrift have finally come to their senses and will allow you to buyback items that you had recently sold to them. When selling items to merchants they will appear in the "Buyback" tab of the merchant UI for the next 30 minutes allowing you to buy it back for the price sold. Each item will show the time remaining before expiration on the tooltip.
New Quests
Runty's Revenge
The Circle Expedition
In the Forest of Madness
Stone and Bones
The Hunt
The Great Hunt
Eye in the Sky
The Fight for the Freehold
Restoring a Legacy
Fit for an Outfitter
Brewing Up History
Tinker's Tailor-Made Supplies
The Blade Remade
The Woodshaper's Request
Social
Social window improvements
To increase visibility (and hopefully usage) of the LFG/LFM tool we have split the social UI into two separate panes. In the left pane you will find the LFG/LFM tools, while on the right you will find the friends/block/guilds management section. The window can now also be resized vertically.
Art and Landscape
Dynamic Cloud Coverage
The first step in implementing any sort of weather system is adding dynamic cloud coverage. Up until this point the amount of clouds present in Embers Adrift has been static. Clouds will now dynamically adjust their coverage (lots of clouds vs not many clouds) based on the date, time, and location. Right now this is mostly randomized but in the future we plan to involve a much more complex relationship with different weather patterns.
Faction Banners
New banners have been sighted throughout the land! These represent the different factions in the game and can be seen in various places in the different zones. Each one also comes with an accompanying tooltip so you can more easily familiarize yourself with who they represent.
In the gameplay options a new toggle has been added labeled "Enable Cloth Sim". When checked these new banners will enable their cloth sim for a little extra visual detail. This option is disabled by default to avoid any potential performance or crashing issues that cloth can notoriously cause.
Performance
DLSS
Support for NVIDIA's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) has been added in this patch. For those of you with an NVIDIA graphics card a new option will be found in your Video options allowing you to enable it and adjust the quality parameter. If you run the client at greater than 1080p resolution with a NVIDIA graphics card it is recommended you enable this option for increased performance.
Shadow Performance Updates
This month's patch brings a few critical performance improvements to shadows. Embers Adrift's day/night cycle requires that our directional lights cast real time shadows - which are very expensive to render. When night falls many point lights turn on (torches, lanterns, candles, etc) which impose even more of a performance cost for some graphics cards.
Added new code into the game, fixed some bugs, and adjusted some settings which should drastically reduce the rendering cost of shadows for certain systems.
New Players
Tutorial Log
The quest log has been extended to include tutorial information. Tabs have been added to the top of the window to allow you to switch between "Quests" and "Tutorial", and the window has been renamed "Log". The new tutorial section serves as a place to revisit previously viewed tutorial tooltips. We hope this new resource will help new players more easily navigate the early game.
Equipment
Tooltip Renovations
Tooltips play an important part in Embers Adrift by providing you with all the juicy details about abilities, equipment, weapons, and consumables. For the longest time our tooltips have been a bit lacking in the "clarity" department as they are procedurally generated based on the data. In other words: they were hastily put together by programmers who just wanted to verify what data was present and ignored the need for readability.
Locations
New Ember Drift
A new high level (45+) Ember Drift has been spotted in Redshore Ridge!
Grimstone Canyon Phase I
Grimstone Canyon is a level 30+ zone located to the north east of Dryfoot. This zone is currently segmented into three "phases" with this first release being Phase I only. The second phase will be the higher altitude portion of the canyon, while the third phase will likely be a new zone released farther down the line.
Forgotten Depths Phase I
Deep within the halls of the Forgotten Depths, Ember is bent toward a dark purpose. A long forgotten sect of disgraced philosophers from the earliest days of the Academy in Newhaven have found sanctuary in these ancient caverns. Banished from Newhaven for horrific experimentation upon their fellow citizens, this Cabal of alchemists sought a new home to push the boundaries of what Ember can do.
Grimstone Canyon Phase II
With hordes of new creatures spilling out from the Forgotten Depths and the Stonecoats dominating this part of the Canyons it's no wonder the Grimstone Marauders have only a tentative grasp on this territory. Come explore the higher ground of these canyons to see what new challenges await.
Forgotten Depths Phase II
After exploring the upper corridors of the Forgotten Depths, passages that lead even deeper have now been discovered. Drifters are greeted with the tormented shrieks of a never before seen creature. The darkness grows deeper in this new set of ancient halls as the Cabal and their cultists hungrily seek more ways to seize the power of Ember at the expense of their victims. Delve into this new section of the Forgotten Depths to see what horrors lay withing.
New Ember Veins
Two new Ember Vein zones have been added with new treasures to be found. The first is located in Redshore and caters to levels 25-26, while the other can be found in Grimstone (part II) and caters to levels 48-49.
Mechanics
Threat Scaling
New tech has been implemented that allows for a dynamic threat bonus on Provoke, Roar, and Fading Strike. The purpose of this tech is to allow the players to more effectively "close the gap" between themselves and another player on the threat list.
Dueling
Have you ever wanted to face off against another player? Well now you can, with dice! Our game is strictly a PvE game and the back-end system are designed with that in mind. Enabling any sort of player vs. player combat would require significant engineering time which we are in short supply of. Given that our game is heavily based on dice we thought it appropriate to add duels by dice rolls in place of actual player vs. player fighting.
Group Elevated Level (GEL)
Today we introduce a new feature that should make it a bit easier to form groups with a larger range of player levels called GEL. GEL automatically raises a player's "effective" level to the highest group member's level with a few limitations. What we mean here by "effective" level is the value put through the combat calculations. When the player hits an NPC or an NPC hits the player we look at the level difference to determine a few things such as: higher level resists, advantage/disadvantage, and level-adjusted armor class. GEL allows lower level players to group with higher level players and bypass any disadvantages they may have previously had going up against higher level NPCs.
First Person Camera
Embers Adrift now supports a first person camera. This option however, is disabled by default and must be enabled in one of two ways. The first is a new key bind called "First Person Camera"; activating this key bind will toggle you in and out of first person mode. The second is enabling a new toggle in the gameplay options called "Enable Zoom to First Person" which will allow you to zoom in to enter first person and zoom out to exit. It should also be noted that this camera perspective is not fully featured and has a few minor quirks (i.e. your body is not rendered, but weapons are).
Bag Dragging
This month we have added chat commands that will allow you and your group mates to drag your bag. Bags can be dragged if the owner is online in the same zone as the bag, the dragger is within 5m of the bag, and if the bag is not your own you must be grouped with the owner.
Weapon Positional Changes (note that Flanking has been renamed Positional!)
Weapons have a Primary and Secondary positional, typically denoted by a reduced base positional value. For example Maul's have +5DMG from rear (Primary) and +3DMG from the front (Secondary). This was meant to offer a less optimal but still useful way of using weapons with positional bonuses. We have changed this system so the Primary direction will now get a bonus to the positional stat, but the Secondary will only receive the base value of the positional stat.
Resilience Update
Resilience currently serves as a "saving throw" when your health drops to zero. We have expanded the functionality of Resilience to now also reduce the damage bonus of incoming heavy and critical hits. Reminder that resilience only works in combat stance!
Loot
Loot Table Fix
For the past several weeks the community has raised the alarm about our loot tables failing after a period of time; and I am both happy and sad to announce that they were right! Albeit only partially right - they were indeed failing but it had nothing to do with the passage of time.
Merchant Buyback
Merchant's of Embers Adrift have finally come to their senses and will allow you to buyback items that you had recently sold to them. When selling items to merchants they will appear in the "Buyback" tab of the merchant UI for the next 30 minutes allowing you to buy it back for the price sold. Each item will show the time remaining before expiration on the tooltip.
New Quests
Runty's Revenge
The Circle Expedition
In the Forest of Madness
Stone and Bones
The Hunt
The Great Hunt
Eye in the Sky
The Fight for the Freehold
Restoring a Legacy
Fit for an Outfitter
Brewing Up History
Tinker's Tailor-Made Supplies
The Blade Remade
The Woodshaper's Request
Social
Social window improvements
To increase visibility (and hopefully usage) of the LFG/LFM tool we have split the social UI into two separate panes. In the left pane you will find the LFG/LFM tools, while on the right you will find the friends/block/guilds management section. The window can now also be resized vertically.
Art and Landscape
Dynamic Cloud Coverage
The first step in implementing any sort of weather system is adding dynamic cloud coverage. Up until this point the amount of clouds present in Embers Adrift has been static. Clouds will now dynamically adjust their coverage (lots of clouds vs not many clouds) based on the date, time, and location. Right now this is mostly randomized but in the future we plan to involve a much more complex relationship with different weather patterns.
Faction Banners
New banners have been sighted throughout the land! These represent the different factions in the game and can be seen in various places in the different zones. Each one also comes with an accompanying tooltip so you can more easily familiarize yourself with who they represent.
In the gameplay options a new toggle has been added labeled "Enable Cloth Sim". When checked these new banners will enable their cloth sim for a little extra visual detail. This option is disabled by default to avoid any potential performance or crashing issues that cloth can notoriously cause.
Performance
DLSS
Support for NVIDIA's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) has been added in this patch. For those of you with an NVIDIA graphics card a new option will be found in your Video options allowing you to enable it and adjust the quality parameter. If you run the client at greater than 1080p resolution with a NVIDIA graphics card it is recommended you enable this option for increased performance.
Shadow Performance Updates
This month's patch brings a few critical performance improvements to shadows. Embers Adrift's day/night cycle requires that our directional lights cast real time shadows - which are very expensive to render. When night falls many point lights turn on (torches, lanterns, candles, etc) which impose even more of a performance cost for some graphics cards.
Added new code into the game, fixed some bugs, and adjusted some settings which should drastically reduce the rendering cost of shadows for certain systems.
New Players
Tutorial Log
The quest log has been extended to include tutorial information. Tabs have been added to the top of the window to allow you to switch between "Quests" and "Tutorial", and the window has been renamed "Log". The new tutorial section serves as a place to revisit previously viewed tutorial tooltips. We hope this new resource will help new players more easily navigate the early game.
Equipment
Tooltip Renovations
Tooltips play an important part in Embers Adrift by providing you with all the juicy details about abilities, equipment, weapons, and consumables. For the longest time our tooltips have been a bit lacking in the "clarity" department as they are procedurally generated based on the data. In other words: they were hastily put together by programmers who just wanted to verify what data was present and ignored the need for readability.
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