PHYSICS MIDTERM

One thing before we get started…

…we didn’t want to have to do a player and world wipe so soon, but after you read this change list, I hope you’ll understand why we have to do so now. We changed way, way too much data for things to be backwards-compatible. We’ll leave it alone after this for as long as we can but keep in mind that it’s likely to happen occasionally, usually whenever we do things that dramatically affect balance. The wipes will get fewer and fewer as we go though, since coarse balance will lock in rapidly and then we’ll usually be doing more minor adjustments going forward.

WORLD UPDATES

Two major upgrades to the world sim were added in this update, neither of which might be obvious to you at first glance as you explore the worlds. These are described below.

ADHESION CHANGES

Some resources hang together well (like gems and metals) while other materials are brittle and tend to fall apart (like shale, dirt, or pumice).

What that means in-game is that when you are creating an underground cavern, some of those caverns are a LOT more likely to cave in if you excavate too large of an area without buttressing it somehow. (You can buttress by using the Deposit function of the Terraformer to throw up a pillar every so often.)

NOTE: You don’t typically have to buttress too much if you’re making a long narrow tunnel. If the tunnel isn’t wide, then the natural Adhesion of the materials is unlikely to collapse unless it’s a particularly unstable material (like dirt or mud). You’ll notice the Adhesion changes a lot more when you start to “go wide” with an area, like when you intentionally make a cavern for building, or if you’re mining out a really large mineral vein.

SOLID AND LIQUID DENSITIES

This is even harder to notice in-game, but the various densities of resources in our worlds are now balanced to be more like real-life. Heavy stuff tends to sink and lighter stuff rises to the surface. Some things have different densities while molten than they do when solid. We’ve always had this feature, but everything was set to basically “heavy” or “light” so we had some really odd sorting. Now the resources in the game have all been set to different densities and you may see different behaviors.

THE NEW OLD PLANETS

Because of these changes, the current roster of planets has been re-exported with the Adhesion and Density changes. Some of the large caverns in these worlds now have pillars added to prevent them from totally collapsing and these features are being added into the procgen system automatically for future world rollouts (which will start happening real soon!). There are many places now soil and rock falls have made the caverns much more organic to explore.

XP CHANGES

A rough pass was made to equalize the rate at which you gain XP across all the various methods of XP gain in the game. This is necessary to also start to equalize how fast you can climb up the various skill trees. NOTE: This is NOT completed. This is just a first pass.

However, you should notice that you gain XP a lot faster than you did previously in many ways. Mining XP was used as a benchmark to measure others by (because it was the fastest way to gain XP) and others were buffed up to (roughly) match.

On the other hand, Skill Node costs were also increased significantly to compensate. Changes will continue on both fronts in the next few updates until we start to achieve a good balance to build on going forward, but the mechanisms we need to judge/adjust these values were added this update and it should feel somewhat better already.

MINING RESOURCE RATES

The recent Hardness changes made gathering resources much slower than desired. We’ve buffed up the amount of resources you gain for each cell of resource you mine. Hardness does still have an impact, however, because (for example) you can mine Slate way faster than you can mine Diamond, so Diamond is slower to acquire. However, if you mine the same volume of Diamond as you do Slate, you’ll end up with approximately the same amount of resources from those areas of mining.

NOTE: The amount of material needed to make recipes was NOT increased. So this should result in recipes being much easier to create. This is intentional to encourage Artisan Crafting experimentation, but rates may be adjusted in the future if it feels too out of whack.

RESOURCE STATS

In preparation for Artisan Crafting, the plumbing for Resource Stats was enhanced greatly. There are now four stats on every resource you can gain.

• Potential (P): Ability to deliver, preserve or supply energy; the conductivity of a metal, energy produced by a fuel or calories in an edible, etc.
• Quality (Q): A general metric of resource fitness.
• Resilience (R): The ability for the resource to bounce back, withstand damage, or possibly, how elastic it is.
• Versatility (V): The substance's ability to change or cause change such as; the malleability and workability of solids, reactivity and the degree to which liquids can be used as solvents or emulsifiers, and the reactivity gasses.

These are not hard and fast descriptions. But they’re a general way we determine which areas of the resource are high, medium, low, or variable stats when we’re plugging in data. In general, we try to make the stats resemble real-world properties, but since every resource has a high, medium, low, or variable stat, and because sometimes that doesn’t match up perfectly with real-life, we opted on gamification instead in some cases. For example, pumice has a poor Resilience and uranium has a high Potential, but there may be other stats that don’t match up exactly.

Additionally, the stat categories are variable. For example, Gold will always have a “high” Quality stat on all worlds, but gold on Zaraxa may have a higher Quality stat than gold on Escarion.

This will come into play and be much more important when the Artisan Crafting game is rolled out in the next update and end-product stats will actually matter. Enterprising players may start thinking now about what resources to use in order to maximize other stats later on.

SECURE TRADE

Now that Crafting is a dedicated trade and not all players have to craft any longer, we need a Secure Trade system so that crafters can ask for things as compensation for their time. You can now stand near someone, put your cursor on them and hit “G to interact”. A menu will pop open giving you the “Gift” or “Trade” options. The new Secure Trade feature is the “Trade” option.

This feature allows you to each exchange up to five inventory slots worth of resources, items, etc. with each other. Long live the rule of barter!

NOTE: This is a precursor feature requirement for the Player Mission Boards that will be coming soon.

SKILL TREE OVERHAUL

A big part of this update is a massive overhaul of the current skill trees shifting all crafting requirements over into Crafting skill trees. The intention here is that crafters craft, and everyone else goes to crafters for the things they need.

Please note: (This is important.) In the majority of cases, you do NOT need to unlock a skill node to start using a tool or weapon or defense. In most cases, you can just acquire it from a crafter or another player and just start using it!

This is a really big change, and it sets us up for REAL impact in the next update beyond this one, but this first part is also impactful. Here’s what changes in this update:

SKILL TREES

Previously, we had Combat, Botany, Mineralogy, Ranger, Farming, Forestry and Civil Engineering. You earned the skill nodes and unlocked recipes to build stuff as you progressed.

Now, we’ve added Cooking, Artisan Crafting, Refining, Architect, Toolmaker, Weaponsmith, and Civil Engineering (in a new form) and they are all crafting trees.

Previously, all recipe discoveries you made were unlocked by acquiring skill nodes, finding new resources or killing creatures. Those have all been removed now.

Instead, ALL recipe unlocks are earned by climbing crafting skill trees. Let’s go through each skill tree (including the non-crafting trees) to let you know what each tree does (and doesn’t) do now.

NOTE: Currently, Cooking, Artisan Crafting, Refining, Architect, Toolmaker, Weaponsmith, and Civil Engineering all utilize the same Crafting XP pool. So if you make a ton of consumables, yes, that allows you to unlock things in the Weaponsmith skill tree. That’s temporary because we don’t have other mechanisms in the game to allow you to readily advance in those trees if you can’t share XP between the other crafting trees, but it will definitely change in the future.

You earn Crafting XP (currently) by completing recipes. You earn a small amount by collecting an item after Basic Crafting, and you earn a larger amount if you collect it after Artisan Crafting instead.

Cooking (uses Crafting XP)
This is the “first base” of crafting. You have three basic recipes unlocked at the start, Banana Plaster, Bellyache Relief, and Lemon Squirt. Making those recipes will earn you Crafting XP that you can use to start unlocking other recipes, and eventually, the Artisan Crafting skill tree.

Artisan Crafting (uses Crafting XP)
This is a large skill tree and it’s the gateway to many other crafting skill trees, including Refining, Architect, Toolmaker, Weaponsmith, and Civil Engineering.

In the next update, this skill tree will also unlock the Artisan Crafting update, and allow you to manipulate that game with skill unlocks so you can create Artisan-level end products with higher stats.

Refining (uses Crafting XP)
When you unlock this skill tree, you become able to refine the various Soils in the game, but you can then unlock the ability to refine other elements as well.

NOTE: Refining is the only way to make Oil and Plastic, which are common ingredients in many recipes.

Architect (uses Crafting XP)
All you builders out there are going to want to know an Architect. This is the skill tree that lets you build all Fabricator pieces and Instaformer block types.

When you unlock this skill tree, you’ll get access to a few Instaformer block types and Fabricator building pieces to get you started, but most of them are locked in skill nodes to acquire.

Toolmaker (uses Crafting XP)
This is the skill tree that lets you build ALL the tools. Whether that’s crafting stations, building, harvesting, or ranger tools, or even the grapple and grav mesh, this is the kind of crafter you need to make those things.

When you unlock this skill tree, you gain the ability to use the Drone Lights recipe automatically.

Weaponsmith (uses Crafting XP)
This skill tree encompasses the recipes for all weapons, shields, and also the Power Battery consumable that can restore energy to your devices during combat.

When you open this skill tree, you automatically earn the ability to craft the OmniBlaster.

Civil Engineering (uses Crafting XP)
This skill tree covers the Paver tool mostly, but it is also where you unlock the ability to Deposit terrain into the world via the Terraformer. (NOTE: This skill tree will be expanded upon in future releases and the unlock of the Terraformer will make more sense once that becomes the ability to build the Depositing feature into a Terraformer instead of just being an unlock as it is now.)

When you unlock this tree, you get the ability to make Stone Paver recipes for the Paver.

Combat (uses Combat XP)
These weapons are also temporarily using a shared pool of XP. So you can kill a bunch of creatures with the OmniBlaster and somehow get better with the Gravity Gun, but that will also change in the near future (like with Crafting XP).

For now, this skill tree is how you unlock specials for the Companion Orbs, OmniBlaster, and Gravity Gun.

NOTE: Shields are no longer unlocked here. You don’t need to unlock a skill node to use a shield! Just get one from a crafter and you can use it.

You earn Combat XP by defeating creatures in combat.

Medical (uses Medical XP)
This is where you earn the Healix specials. This skill tree will get more attention soon, and is very basic at the moment. But you earn Medical XP by using the Healix to heal damage and remove status effects.

Botany (uses Botany XP)
You unlock the Forestry and Farming skill trees through this tree and you can also increase your Harvesting yield this way.

You can earn Botany XP by harvesting bushes/flowers, but also by discovering them in the first place. You can also discover tree types as well.

Farming (uses Farming XP)
When you unlock this skill tree, you gain the ability to plant bush and flower seeds with the Harvester. Currently, you can only earn Farming XP by planting bushes/flowers.

Additionally, you can start to unlock Farming skills, but most of those have not yet been released.

Forestry (uses Forestry XP)
When you unlock the Forestry skill tree, you also unlock the ability to use the Xyloslicer, as well as to plant Trees with the Xyloslicer.

Here you can increase the effects of the Growth Pod when placed, as well as increase the yield of any trees you cut down.

You can earn Forestry XP by cutting down trees and planting them.

Mineralogy (uses Mineralogy XP)
This tree lets you unlock many features of the Terraformer, including Prospecting, Chronophasing, better extraction yields, and hopper size increases.

You earn Mineralogy XP by mining. The more you dig, the more you earn. But you can also earn XP by discovering new stone, metal and gemstone resources.

NOTE: Prospecting is now unlocked by default. Therefore, you can discover new minerals and assay for minerals right away.

Ranger (uses Ranger XP)
You can use the Trailblazer and Pathfinder tools in this skill tree and it unlocks the ability to place camps and increase the duration of those camps.

However, it also has other important functionality to unlock, including the ability to find and reveal the Makers so they can be destroyed, set up waypoints, create a survey map, shoot up flares, and freeze or burn the environment or creatures.

You can earn Ranger XP by discovering new types of creatures, finding survey nodes (a feature of the Pathfinder tool), or whenever other people craft items in your camp. (NOTE: The ability to gain Ranger XP by just standing in someone else’s camp is now removed from the game.)

MISCELLANEOUS FIXES

• If you plant a bush that yields fruit, it will yield fruit multiple times, but you can only harvest from it once every 10 minutes. (Previously, a planted bush yielded only once and disappeared, like the ones in the wild do.) This should allow farms to be useful if you plant and cultivate them currently.
• Mushrooms now drop individual types of mushrooms (Brown Shimeji, Chanterelle, etc.)
• Food recipes no longer require bone to create (making them much easier to make).
• Camp Kit recipe now takes more resources to make, but creates five Camp Kits instead of one. (quality of life improvement)
• Damage projectiles have been visually upgraded! Enjoy!
• Creature health was lowered in the yellow and orange creatures to make them more entertaining to solo.
• Creature kill XP was significantly increased.
• The Healix, Gravity Gun, and Companion Orbs now all have audio attached.
• Harvesting, Hunting, Mining, and Lumbering loot drops have been approximately equalized so you gain doobers at about the same rate, regardless of which activity you are pursuing. There are many variables in this, so it's only approximate.
• Maker spawning strategy has been revised so that lower encounter rating Makers spawn fewer creatures (no more giant herds of fawns and bunnies).
• Bosses now drop Anti-gravium (and much more other loot), but Dark Wizard mushrooms do not. (They drop Antimatter Gas now instead.)
• Meteors are now visible from much further away (to make it easier to see Meteor events when they occur).
• Boss events don’t occur as frequently now.
• PowerCell recipe now requires Reactive Gas instead of just Gas.
• Fruit Jam recipe is now Stimberry-specific and can only be made with those berries.
• Drone Lights no longer require Antigravium to make so they’re easier to craft.
• There is a new model for the Paver tool!
• Makers now drop loot when destroyed, mostly gas and voxel blocks for now, but this will improve over time. Still, way better than the previous nothing!

BUG FIXES

• You should be able to craft the Pathfinder again.
• Makers were only spawning initially at the edges of the zone. This has been resolved and they should spawn over more of the zone now.
• Beam weapons now properly hit creature shields.
• Tree populations are more varied now, so you should see more of each type on a world.
• Anti-gravium meteors now drop round deposits instead of table-like mesa shapes.
• Waypoints should no longer change to the wrong kind of waypoint any longer.
• Fixed issues with the seeds for Duskleaf, Podwalker, and Blue Veil trees that broke the Harvester.
• Bosses will no longer time out in mid-fight. They stick around until their event ends.
• The issue with tools floating outside of character hands should now be dead. For real this time. (We think.)
• A long-standing bug that made it difficult to interact with the Stove, player corpses, the Homesteader object, etc., has been fixed.