Greetings adventurers, and welcome to the first installment of The Archos Herald! The Archos Herald will be a regular series in which we’ll be sharing details on the state of Dark and Light’s development, preview upcoming patches, share some of the coolest community-created content we’ve seen throughout the week, and more!
The Launch
We hit a few bumps straight out of the gate on our launch - we weren’t prepared for the number of players that were coming in, and we didn’t quite have enough servers to handle everyone, resulting in heavy lag and desync. Now, official servers are launching globally at a rate of 18 per day, and we’re getting ready to deploy some larger patches to address a number of the bugs and localization errors pointed out to us by the community, as well as starting to implement some interesting new items and features!
Upcoming Patches - What We’re Focusing On
We’ve been addressing some of the most major issues one at a time with small patches and hotfixes since launching last week. Now, we’re getting ready for our first major patch aimed at crushing a large number of bugs, fixing up localization errors, and improving server stability.
Some of the fixes you can expect to see include:
- Overall server health improvements: We’ve received a lot of reports from players on delays in gathering, attack registration, and rubberbanding. While this patch won’t immediately resolve all of these issues, it’s a step towards better server health across the board. We’ll be closely following player feedback on official server latency and making additional improvements over time.
- Reduced load times: Load times are unacceptably long right now, especially for players running the game from a HDD. Future patches will help reduce load times a bit, and we’ll be working to further optimize over time.
- Fixes to bugged quests: Earning 100 gold from selling items will now complete the quest wherein you have to earn 100 gold from selling items. Seems pretty obvious in hindsight...
- Fixes to a number of missing / inaccurate text strings: At the moment, we’re specifically focusing on information found in the Knowledge / Skill UIs, which you’ll be able to see in our next patch.
- Dedicated Server Hosting Tools: We’re currently developing a tool that will make hosting private servers much more convenient for players, with features that will allow them to easily manage their servers, track server status, and automatically update to the latest client version. It’s not ready for the public quite yet, but we’ll be getting it in players hands in the very near future.
- Community-Driven Features: This is a big one - we’re serious about our dedication to Dark and Light’s community, and we aim to prove it. We’ve already started a discussion on offline raiding, where we’re looking for your feedback on offline raiding, and working to implement the best (and most realistic) suggestions from community members. We’ll be holding additional discussions regularly to address various hot topics within the community.
The first of these major patches will be launching soon. Our team is doing extensive testing to make sure the build is stable before we deploy it. You can check out the full patch notes here.
Archos’s Fledgeling Adventurers
We’ve been checking out Twitch streams, YouTube videos, and screenshots on the Steam Community Hub since launch. We’ve seen some pretty awesome moments from the community already, and we wanted to feature a few of them here!
New Player Info - a helpful guide to the world of Archos by Xenoit
That’s not a Rock - hilarious clip from Thadrius’s RP stream
An excellent shot of the mighty gates of Ironfast by [AuPG] Hosse -
Tausret gives us a look at Talos, stronghold of Humanity, in all its glory -
Kraken121 may one day fulfill their dream of reaching the mysterious floating islands -
大琪琪 explores the ancient rope brides around the massive tree in the center of The Sacred Path -
Thanks to the entire Dark and Light community for making this first week such an enjoyable ride - we’re looking forward to what’s to come as we continue to expand Archos!
A Home Fit for a King - Our First Community Event!
We’ve seen some amazing player-built homes, bases, castles, taverns, and more since our launch last week. Now, we want to find the best of the best.
We want to see the most incredible structure you can make on Archos! No matter if you’re on an official server, private server, or in single-player, we want to see the most impressive structure you can build (to keep things fair, we’ll offer bonus points to anyone who can verify that they’re on an official server, and everything they built was gathered with their own two hands (or magic staff or massive dragon, whatever suits you)).
Architects can submit a screenshot or video showing their work in all its glory to:
[email protected] with the subject line - A Home Fit for a King.
Submissions must include a screenshot or video showing your creation in Dark and Light with no mods, as well as a link to your Steam profile. Entrants are limited to one submission each, additional submissions will not be accepted.
We’ll be accepting submissions from now until Thursday, 8/10 at 11:59PM PST.
Timeline, Judging, and Rewards
It wouldn’t be much of an event without proper rewards. We’ll be selecting a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winner from all eligible submissions, and announcing them right here in a Steam Announcement on Friday, 8/11 at 12:00PM PST.
- 1st Place - $50 Amazon gift card
- 2nd Place - $25 Amazon gift card
- 3rd Place - $10 Amazon gift card
Good luck to all of our architects - we’re looking forward to seeing your finished creations!
Dark and Light Basics - A Series!
We know that Archos is a pretty unforgiving place, which is why we've just launched the first episode of our Dark and Light Basics series, where we'll go over some of the most important things to know when starting your adventure. Check out our first episode at the link below, and be sure to leave us some feedback in the comments on what you'd like to see next!
Final Notes
That does it for this week’s Archos Herald. To stay up-to-date on everything Dark and Light, be sure to like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and join the discussion on our Steam Discussions page or our official Reddit page, /r/DarkandLight.