Greetings Realm Warriors. Season 5- Shadow Wield – is now LIVE!
As we are still in our search for stability, smooth game flow, and a bug free world, this season includes a lot of fixes and quality of life changes. Some are minor but have been requested by players, and some are massive, like stabilizing the data saving and loading system.
As we are progressing fast, we are constantly “breaking” the game from season to season. It also makes it very hard to keep a detailed change log of all changes. We are also unsure if we want the players to obsess with every meta-gaming mechanic from season to season.
We are constantly trying to make the game more fun every season. Some changes will be left up to the community to discover. Below are the major ones we will announce:
- Major change in the 4 stances. One of the things we would like to test this season is a proof of concept that different playstyles are viable and people enjoy them. Before we go on a new crusade to rebuild stances, add archery and magery, and add many skills - we decided to give each stance a different variation with the current tools the game already offers. So we added an end game skill to each stance skill tree. Have fun testing them out and reporting changes and suggestions. (Minor balances to these changes might be introduced mid season!)
- Items. As a long journey to keep balancing items, making them both exciting and viable, major changes into the item generation system have been made. Although most of them should be transparent to the players, we hope this season you will definitely see more changes. Crafting also took a small step into becoming a little bit more viable strategy. It is also important to note that the crafting system still needs a lot of work and will also get a strong overhaul after the new skill system.
- Progression. This is a very tricky subject. On one hand for some players progression seems extremely easy and fast, while for others we hear that it's extremely slow and hard. The bottom line is, if you put in a lot more time you will obviously progress more as in every game in this genre. There is simply no way to unlock all game mechanics and enter “god mode” with just a few hours of gameplay. To balance this lower ruptures will now yield significantly less books than higher level ruptures.
- Data. We have separated the save flow into 2 different critical flows. One for the character and one for the world. This will hopefully reduce the size of the character data to be much smaller and a lot more consistent. We hope this will cause players who suffered from data loss to experience this much much less. But as was stated before, it is only a small step on the way to keep all data backed up and saved on the server side which will eliminate cheating and data loss forever. (As a side effect, your map table, workbench, mortar and furnace state in the home fort will now be saved if you leave and return! woohoo)
On the topic of cheating and exploits. All cheating, exploits and meta breaking bugs should be reported instantly. If you are using an exploit to gain an unfair advantage that is clearly not a viable strategy you are mature enough to be aware of it. You are only cheating your friends, the community, and yourself - and you will be banned unless you report it right away.
If you have messed around with the save file or decided to try and cheat and you have been banned -> and you would like to compete fair next season, please message us in discord and we will evaluate and unban you if needed.
If you are in the top players for last season and for some reason don’t see your new mount a few hours after the new season starts, please message us on Discord!
Next Seasons:
- As our resources and time are very limited and there is literally a roadmap for at least 2 years we need to focus our efforts effectively. The plan for the upcoming weeks:
- We will focus on building a versatile skill tree which will require more decision making by the player. This will also include changes to how skills are unlocked and opened. It will also include 2 (hopefully 3?) new stances. Magery and Archery. It is extremely important to us to make these mechanics fun. If they are, they will be balanced and if not we will remove and try something new.
- Large World bosses. Bosses with unique mechanics and abilities that will actually require a lot more versatile game play to defeat.
- Crafting system. Once the items make sense and end world content is balanced we will revamp the entire crafting system. We want the elements of grind, survival with various loot to open up a progression of crafting more unique items and modifiers.
- Data. As stated many times before. We will not rest until data is consistent and stable for everyone forever.
- GPU/CPU and FPS rate. This is more of an art than a science. The game needs to be examined under a microscope until every performance and optimization option has been thoroughly tested and improved.
- New end game maps dungeons.
- Fixing all current ruptures. This includes environmental issues, look and feel, spawners and more.
- Moving to 3 weeks seasons. As more content is added and the game is more stable we would move into 3 weeks seasons. This will allow players to spend more time with their character and progress, while giving us a lot more room to push meaningful content and changes.