Let's take a look at some of the larger changes in 15.8.1. The combat and skills system received another round of improvements in this patch. This includes some important changes and bug fixes with regards to how timers are used, and general balancing. The Skills and Abilities section of these notes has a complete run down on each of the changes. We also introduced a new Two-handed Tactics skill which is designed to give those who do not wish to dual wield or use a shield some additional benefit. This skill will increase the damage bonus and chances of buffs or debuffs to stick when using a single weapon. We adjusted how boss resistance and penetration values work to provide additional benefit to buffs or item modifiers, made adjustments to the damage bonuses vs. different armor types, and tweaked or fixed many areas of both Action Mode and RPG Mode combat.
We'll be showing a preview of the new siege system to some members of the press at PAX, and a number of moves were made in preparation for sieges addition to the live servers in this build. This includes the addition of energy generation and storage in player cities. Energy will play an important role in providing shielding during sieges. Crafters can now create modules for the siege camps and power storage. Major NPCs also include new Power Storage Facilities where you can charge your batteries, but it will be cheaper to do this in player created cities using the Power Storage Facility that is used to store energy. Some energy can also be produced passively using energy generating structures such as solar panels. Cities will also have a weekly energy maintenance based on their size. Currently, if the maintenance is not met the cities will stop growing so be sure to check out the system if you have a city as the maintenance will be collected automatically in a week.
To go along with the introduce of the new energy system a new item was introduced: Magnetite. Magnetite can be found randomly when extracting from npcs. It is also found in larger forms in harder npcs with many of the larger bosses now having a chance to drop the larger shards and chunks. They yield a significant amount of energy and will be wanted by nations. Most raw resources such as calibrite ore and some creature harvestables including some meat and tissue from creatures can also be converted into energy as well.
While sieges themselves won't appear on the live servers until 15.9.1 (and only in testing mode at that time), we have introduced several additions specifically designed for PvP. The first of these is a new engagement in Griefclaw Bluffs which pits the three factions in battle with one another. OWON's goal is to protect a downed ALT transport ship and its sensitive cargo from the other two factions, whose goal is to steal and extract the content. In practice this works similar to a game of capture the flag for FPR and Rogue forces, where OWON's goal is simply to prevent it from being stolen. PvP kills should now always result in an insignia from the victim, as well as a very small chance at additional generated loot. Open World kills are now tracked, in addition to the previous tournament kill tracking, and we've introduced several new PvP oriented achievements and titles. We also made a number of tweaks to the new PvP based contested resources.
Many of the items in game now feature a View button on their information window which allows you to view what the item would look like in 3D. Other improvements include map improvements, channel specific chat preferences, offline nation roster manipulation, and much more. You can read the complete build notes below.