Well we’re still working away on the next large content drop known as the Secrets of Star Island which adds the majority of the remaining main quest, a new landmass, new top tier mobs, crafting and equipment.
We are saying Q1 at the moment, but its going to be late Q1 with a possibility of slipping into Q2. There’s a lot of parts here and will be the biggest single content drop since TADO launched.
Unlike with the Ice Kingdom, where we added the zone, monsters and some new drops with the quest line and crafting coming later, we want Star Island to be much more complete on launch and won’t be putting it out until there’s more to do than just exploration and grinding.
We have a few things carried over from last year where we didn’t land them when expected with other content being prioritised in places. This list also isn't exhausted, there will be more events, dungeons, unique items and continued focus on polishing up some of the current areas, improving champions and bosses around the world and generally making everything feel more useful.
February
Demonology;–
The latest skill addition to TADO will see this hybrid summoner opening rifts and having demons spill fourth to crush their enemies.
The Rogue Town Stockade;–
Shown off quite a long time ago, the Rogue Town Stockade provides a place for adventurer’s who have found themselves already in the Great Sea, but struggle with Convergence Point Alpha. There’s riots, bad magic, new items and skill gems to be found down below.
Additional Character Slots - A long time requested feature, we will be adding additional character slots into the Token store so those of you who want to go beyond 5 characters have a way of doing that on the same account.
Guilds – We built the tech to form guilds with a plan to push them last summer, but aside from having a shiny nameplate they didn’t really do anything / have purpose so we didn’t launch them.
When we introduce guilds towards the end of February players will find activity from guild members contributes to a guild power bar, the power can be used to force desired events to start on demand. Its not something that can be done often, but it will give an opportunity for groups to be able to do events when they are all online rather than having to wait on particular events to be active or available.
March
Character Customisation Updates;-
Intended to come in last year, we have new hair, make up and tattoos along with an in game method of changing these post customisation. None of your characters will change automatically but the old / current hair styles are likely to find themselves unable to be selected for new characters beyound this point.
AOE and Cleave changes;-
Before we head into Star Island AOE damage is getting some significant changes. Melee weapons rather than doing full damage to all targets hit in the swing will start doing less damage to targets beyond the first. Some weapons will cleave better than others and some will keep more of their damage when doing so.
Magic AOE is getting similar treatment but to a much lower degree, most spell based AOE’s will continue to do there full damage in most situations but they will also be influenced by damage reductions over certain numbers of enemies depending on the spell. Aura’s / Ground Targeted AOE’s which stay in place for long durations will be the most affected by these changes
This should allow us to have more space for high powered single target attacks which can be competitive with attacks that hit multiple targets, It also should bring up the relative power of things like bows which have less access to large cleaving attacks.
The Secrets of Star Island;–
We maybe a bit optimistic here, but this is the target for The Secrets of Star Island currently.
April
Also the Secrets of Star Island;-
Regardless of if we push the large content drop in March or April there will inevitably be quite a few changes and updates required shortly after, so we’ve blocked out some time for enhancements here.
May – June - July
[Redacted];-
Following the events which unfolded on Star Island Adventurers are faced with a [redacted]….. back in .. [redacted] for the end of the main quest chain (for now least!).
The Great Sea Awaits;-
There’s quite a few islands remaining underdeveloped in the Great Sea, and limited quest content. Here’s where a few changes will come in which will introduce some different ways to play for people who want a break from doing their favourite loops along with some additional side stories.
Bounties:-
Picked up in Rogue Town bounties provide forced level appropriate champion spawns on various islands in the Great Sea. You’ll be directed to the Island and you’ll have to find and incapacitate the target (I’m sure they’re still alive!) before transporting them, similar to cargo, back to the Rogue Town stockade for level appropriate rewards.
Trade:-
We have a system in TADO where you can craft cargo packs, stick them on a ship and transport them for profit. We don’t make much use of this at the moment and this is when we’re going to bring this up to date. Trade gives you access to unique item enhancements, ships, mounts, consumables and the odd interesting item. Trade boards can be found around the world at every location which accepts trade and the current desirability of those items. Load up you’re ship with as much as you can make or find and take it to the optimal place for maximum reward.
Along with the Trade system there’s some polish for ships in general, particularly focused on controls which will come in at the same time here.
Fishing;-
Fishing will be expanded at this point to require is own skill; gained like other gathering types and the world will be covered in new fish to find. We have some special events related to fishing including a competitive fishing competition and along with providing things like treasure maps and consumables fishing feeds into the trade system.
Champion fish spawns too!
Lairs:-
Lairs will be added to every continent containing post main quest level content, these contain high level group focused monsters and resources, the more people fight in them, the stronger they get. You’ve already bumped into places in Genmire and the Ice Kingdom where these will be formed and we have a real want to make sure all four main continents/areas sees continued usage by our high level players.
World Map:- The world map will be made available and will show details on ongoing events, lair's current power, types of resources and difficultly level of mobs, the branches of the world tree and target destinations for the main quest.
Beyond July
Since launching into Early Access we've delivered many new pieces of content and systems but we have some relatively large technical debts during rapid development we do need to pay down.
The second half of the year will have a focus on updating and improving a lot of the underlying technology, some of which is now many years old.
With this we aim to improve a lot of how moment to moment gameplay feels with expected improvements in fluidity of attack animations/movements, falling, general network performance along with some performance and fidelity issues. A lot of these backend improvements are part of piece that will take us towards launching out of Early Access.
This is not to say there won't be any post July content, there certainly will be! And we will come on to looking at that later in the year.
For now Adventurers, safe hunting!