A New World: New California Colony
The New California colony is a small, poorly-defended colony of miners hiding on an empty world, deep inside Nagdellian-controlled space. Sending civilians into Nagdellian territory is insanely risky and generally illegal, since the colony will surely be massacred and looted eventually. But agents of an evil empire managed to sneak onto the world and set up a teleporter, aiming to mine its rare and valuable ores. Their reluctant laborers were snuck in and supplied by teleporters - a very expensive travel method, but profitable in this case.
Now the FHS Justice's network of informants has detected the colony... but so have the Nagdellians. The empire has abandoned its civilian miners to their fate, so the FHS Justice has connected to their teleporter to provide them with an escape route. While the first waves of Nagdellian raiders are beaming down from orbit, brave heroes race through the colony to rescue as many innocents as possible.
They're also tasked with destroying anything that cannot be evacuated, denying the Nagdellians resources for future battles. Every enemy defeated and every heroic action confuses the Nagdellians, buying time before they can reorganize and deploy an unstoppable force inside the colony!
The mayhem style event has 8 individual public event areas, some of them interconnecting. Each player has a personal scoreboard while the event is active. And at the end of the event, players will all be teleported to safety aboard the ship. It will then reset and be available for another run.
You can access the New California world from the same terminal that you use to open up the Snow Lair, between City Hall and the Hero Statues.
The terminal calling portals to other worlds and its location on the minimap.
Content in New California features something for all players. There is solo, group, and raid content. Come and explore!
Halloween Event
As promised, Halloween has come to Apotheosis City. Head for the Science Park district to trick or treat. These doors could give you a free treat or reveal a trick in the form of an ambush. You can collect new Halloween Treat items and turn them into a new Treat Collector for a Halloween themed badge and title.
The Treat Collector in Science Park
And there are multiple Halloween monsters to be defeated as well!
A Halloween mission contact, just south of the Arch, in the little graveyard is offering several missions. It’s amazing how those trans-dimensional energies are manifested in the 25th century!
The Occult Researcher is the Halloween Mission Contact
And in housing, a new Halloween themed Slithering Pillar object can be obtained by completing the Incident Investigation mission, which will only be available during the Halloween event.
The Berserker Invasion under the Arch
In the last few weeks, devs have led this invasion. Now, players can trigger an invasion at any time.
This event is initiated by speaking to the Arch Watchmen when they are on duty. They are located up the steps near the Arch. You must have a raid formed to initiate this event. This event will feature multiple waves of invaders, culminating with the appearance of a massive Nagdellian Berserker. At different points, destructible portals will spawn. Nagdellians will continue to enter through those portals until they are destroyed. The Arch Watchmen will go off duty once this event has been initiated. The length of time before he returns will be determined by whether or not players successfully completed the event.
The Night Watchman is located on the platform next to the Arch
There are four difficulty levels to choose from. The default difficulty requires a minimum of 3 players and will scale for a much larger number if desired. Players of any level can participate and will be sidekicked for the duration of the invasion, to one level below that of the leader, unless they are already at the same level. The invasion scales to the level of the leader and the size of the league.
The higher difficulty levels require 4 to 6 players in the league at a minimum and will be selectable only if the league size has the minimum size required for this difficulty level. This is to avoid automatic failure.
The Berserker Invasion has been shown in several recent videos on our YouTube channel. The first, simpler, prototype was first shared in a beta test in August 2020.
A Winter Raid
The Winter raid was originally intended to be a seasonal event. It is now available to any player who can form a league of at least 3 players. The raid is activated from the same terminal as the portal to the Snow Lair. This terminal is located on the lawn in front of City Hall and slightly East of it. It appears on the terminal screen after a raid team of 3 or more is formed. The Winter Raid has 4 difficulty levels, similarly to the Arch Invasion event. The upper difficulty levels require at least 4 or 6 players and will only be selectable if the league minimum size for this difficulty is met.
In this event, you must first defeat the Queen spawning at the ice castle then prevent the King and his army from crossing the bridge into the city.
Crafting
We have expanded a crafting line: Advanced Healing. This line specializes in creating items which you can activate from inventory or the action bar. These items have clickable charged effects, similar to infusions, but do not take your normal infusion slots. Advanced healing features heals, buffs, and at higher crafting levels AoE effects.
Crafting has been available since launch by completing the first Dr Strikewell mission arc. You visit a crafting trainer to select your crafting skill. Advanced Healing Trainers will give you a Support Pack recipe upon training Advanced Healing. After training, right click on the Advanced Healing Station to craft items from components which can be harvested or obtained as loot. Higher quality items and higher crafting levels will result in higher quality results.
At the request of players, we have added crafting locations around the city to make it easier to craft between missions: Advanced Healing Trainers and healing stations can be found outside and inside the hospital and the Snow Lair.
New harvestable resource spawners can be found in Apotheosis City, the Snow Lair and the New California Colony worlds, and in the Winter League map. Right click on these nodes to scavenge them for new recipes or harvesting materials. Each harvestable node has 3 uses before it is consumed. Once harvested, they will respawn later in random locations.
Crafting recipes are also often for sale in the Auction House (Ivar & Sons).
An increased rate for gaining crafting experience makes it easier to level up your crafting skills. A new crafting related Steam Achievement and title have been added.
Supergroups
Supergroups were added shortly after launch.
QoL
Over the last month we have added a host of small, QoL improvements at the request of players, and fixing bugs as they appear. This is your chance to jump in and see for yourself and tell us what you’d like to see in the future.
Here are three examples among many QoL improvements:
· Raid leaders now have access to /mark and /unmark commands. /mark will create a 3d mission marker at your current location. /unmark will remove the marker.
· Added a Reset Key bindings button to the Key Bindings window. This will reset all of your key bindings back to the default state.
· Current title is now displayed on the Character Sheet as well as under the character name above its head.
· Many "Talk-to" missions previously appeared to be incompletable when a player did not debrief the previous mission before taking a new one. This has been changed.
· Players on raids can now use the Regroup power that enables them to teleport to their team leader in regular missions. In a raid, Regroup teleports you to the raid leader location if you are lost.
One month of updates. What will the next month bring?