https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1dYjBaOTEY
THE ISSUE: YOU LIVE TOO LONG!
When we launched Unexplored 2, we expected the average run to last no more than a few hours, after that the Wayfarer was supposed to die. In some ways the game is pretty difficult. It is a roguelite, after all. However, once people got into the right groove, they managed to keep their characters alive much longer.
This was a problem. Players accumulated too much gear during their prolonged runs. Worse, the game never got a chance to advance the world between runs. This way the empire, and other adversaries never really got into play.
THE SOLUTION
Over the last couple of months we have made multiple adjustments to the difficulty and the balance, but it never was sufficient. So we also added a different solution: dynamic world events that can occur during a run.
As time passes while you travel, the world gets a chance to react. This can be that imperial troops who advance, wolves that attack a settlement, clans clearing out bandits from a ruin, or new enemies appearing at an abandoned site. It makes the world much more responsive to your actions.
Possibly the biggest advantage of this new dynamic world events is that it shortens the feedback loop between your actions and their consequences considerably. Taking the root sigil that once powered a root singer suddenly has an effect almost immediately. Messages and animations alert you to these events and, sometimes, of their causes. The new system delivers much better on an important promise the premise of Unexplored 2 makes: that you are exploring a living, simulated world where you have to carefully consider the consequences of your actions.
At the same time we hope it addresses some of the imbalances we had. Longer runs are now less of a problem because at least the world has an equal amount of time to respond and evolve during that run. Although, addressing balance issues like this will likely take some time, as we can only start to observe the long term consequences of these changes now. So we fully expect there will be changes and additions to the dynamic world event system over the next months.
NOTE: most of the new features will only work in a new work, but the most important you can activate in an existing one by using this code (ingame menu > pray for help): WakeForces.
In other news: Unexplored 2 Soundtrack is now available on Spotify!
https://open.spotify.com/album/4Aam6mDVlR7n2UFeNH7PZf
Update Notes
New features
- Dynamic World Events allow the game to pass time and have factions act or appear during a run
Improvements
- More interactions are available in bandit camps and kobold settlements.
- Monsters and enemies can be spurred into action if you do not deal with them appropriately.
- Interacting or disabling machines like root singers, scrying stones, and magic hearths can trigger world events.
- Leaving arcane rifts unattended can trigger a world event.
- Raids on towns and minor settlements have much more drastic effects.
- Clans more actively repopulate farms, roadhouses, trading posts, and strategic locations.
- More interactions are available when interacting with clan garrisons.
- Improved Conversation Camera
- Number of bug fixes