Good afternoon, Wizards of Ignus!
Now that the holidays are over and we’ve all settled back into the routine of fixing bugs and balancing the game, we’ll be resuming our regular schedule of Wednesday patches. Today’s patch is focused on cleaning up some major bugs and removing one of the most frequently abused exploits. Let’s get right to it:
Exploit Fix: Using Dragons to Grief Structures
This week’s biggest fix targets a major raiding exploit that a number of players have sent to us over the last few weeks. Before today’s update, it was possible to use enemy NPCs to raid another player’s base without Siege Spells. Griefers were able to agro high level dragons and manipule their AI to have them do significant damage to another player's structure. Toxic players have been using this exploit to easily destroy the hard work of other players, even on PVE servers.
While we do want monsters to be able to harm structures, we don’t want players to be able to exploit this for griefing purposes. Our solution involves two changes: First, enemies can only damage a structure if the owner is the same as the player it is currently agro’d on, which should prevent this exploit from working in the future. If you upset a Pyrant and run for shelter, it will still break in and come after you. On the other hand, if someone is baiting a dragon into shooting fireballs at your structure you will see no damage.
Secondly, we’re also fixing a bug that causes dragons to never drop their agro. This bug made it very, very easy for a player to drag a dragon extreme distances, as they’d never give up their hunt. Now, dragons will behave like all other monsters and eventually give up fighting you after a certain amount of time has passed.
Bug Fix: Decay on Throned Structures
We’ll also be applying a fix to prevent owned pieces from appearing as unclaimed and decaying. Before today’s patch, some structure pieces would display as “Abandoned” despite being connected to a Throne, causing them to start decaying when they shouldn’t be. This has caused a lot of confusion and frustration for many players, and today’s patch will fix this issue.
Much More
We have plenty of other fixes to share today, including a fix to have the UI always show the proper name of your tames, a fix to stop players from harming other players while in a Safe Zone, and much more. Check the full list below for the complete details of today’s patch.
Patch Notes
- Enemy NPCs can now only damage structures owned by the player they are agro’d on
- Fixed a bug that caused some throned structure pieces to become Abandoned and start decaying
- Fixed bug stopping Dragons from losing agro when the player is fleeing
- Fixed bug allowing mounted players to be harmed in Safe Zones
- Fixed an issue causing the build menu to sometimes get stuck in Material Swap mode
- Holiday items (Reindeer, Candy Canes, Santa Hats, Milk & Cookies) have been removed
- Fixed a bug causing corpse markers to not properly appear in Custom Games
- Fixed a bug causing tamed NPCs to not display their proper name on the HUD
A Word About Crystal
As many of you have may have noticed, Crystal – one of our more populous servers – has been down for the last little while. The issue facing this server is a little more complex than the ones that others have faced in the past, and we will require the assistance of the support team at Epic games. This, unfortunately, could take some time.
We will continue to work toward a permanent solution to the problem, but for now we’ve decided to make a small roll back in order to get the server up and running again. Following this patch, Crystal should be back, though you may notice a small amount of lost progress (roughly a day’s worth). We’d like to apologize for this inconvenience, and hope it doesn’t disrupt your gameplay experience too significantly.
NOTICE: Removal of Cave Blocking & Glitched Structures Under Map
In case you missed it, we recently posted a notice about the removal of structures that are either glitched or block other players from exploring and raiding the game’s caves and dungeons. This change will occur in two weeks. Check out the relevant post for the full details.