02 Nov 2020Developer postOriginal post (opens in a new tab)

Update 140, Devblog 2 and Halloween event 2020

Update 140

Halloween event 2020

The Halloween 2020 event is now live! For the next 4 weeks all creatures in Gran Skrea have a chance of dropping Halloween Crates, which contain various Halloween themed items, including a pet and furniture exclusive to this year's event. The chance of a crate dropping depends on the creature's level, and on top of that a certain type of creature is selected every hour to have its drop rate doubled. To know which creatures have their drop rates increased, players must interact with the Talking Pumpkin, obtainable from the crates.

This years Halloween event features a spooky reaper theme with a full reaper costume, a reaper themed scythe and the "Headless Reaper" pet, only available for a short time and never again!

Patch notes

NPCs
• New level 97 boss, the Elder Ent
‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‎‎‎‎‎‎o Peaceful by nature, he was last seen roaming the forests of East Athagos

Items
• New raid tier heavy armor set "Nature's Blessing"
‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‎‎‎‎‎‎o Can be crafted by a lvl 56 blacksmith
‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‎‎‎‎‎‎o Grants access to large amounts of health regen
‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‎‎‎‎‎‎o Grants access to large amounts of healing
‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‎‎‎‎‎‎o Heavily reduces healing received
‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‎‎‎‎‎‎o Weak against fire
• New unique amulet "Nature's embrace"
‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‎‎‎‎‎‎o Can be crafted by a lvl 56 carpenter
‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‎‎‎‎‎‎o Summons a root below your target when you perform a normal attack (Cooldown 60 seconds)

Added new unique item effects:
• Venomous amulet:
‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‎‎‎‎‎‎o Applies weak poison for 10 seconds to everyone attacking you
• Venomous ring:
‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‎‎‎‎‎‎o Shoots a venomous ball of ooze at your target when you perform a normal attack (Cooldown 60 seconds)
• Venomous quiver:
‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‎‎‎‎‎‎o The Ooze debuff now lasts 3 times as long and is 25% stronger. Removes the impact damage of Ooze.
• Ring of the Monastery:
‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‎‎‎‎‎‎o Regenerates health for 200% of damage taken by then next hit over 5 seconds (Cooldown 60 seconds)

• The "Dragon torch" can now be crafted by a level 56 carpenter
• The "Dark Tamer" armor set is now rarer and can be crafted by a level 56 tailor
• Increased grade of the "Dark Tamer" armor set to unique (from rare)
• Item value and insurance cost now scale exponentially with item grade

Pets
• Reduced flying follower buff
• New pet "Argo"
• New pet "Argus"
• New pet "Ent"

Skills
• Combustion
‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‎‎‎‎‎‎o Removed hidden multiplier to all damage taken
‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‎‎‎‎‎‎o Reduced scaling with damage stat, increased scaling with elemental grim level
• Reduced damage scaling of Fire wall and Fire storm
• Damage taken by a hit is now capped at 48% of maximum health (this includes energy blade)

Farming & Cooking
• Corn and roasted corn recipe
• Peppers and roasted pepper recipe

Housing
• Added new player housing to East Athagos
• Player housing now has transparent windows

Others
• Increased rewards for a lot of the starter quests
• Bank and inventory can now be arranged manually
• The healing spiderling of Nirish is now more visible to players

Bugfixes
• Fixed skills that were ignoring resistances
• Removed exotic signs that led to errors in display
• Fixed grammatical errors in the Quest "A Cook Book"
• Fixed an issue where guards were attacking players through walls in interior locations

Devblog 2

Much attention and focus has been devoted to framework, upcoming features, and content that will not be released in this next update (covered in the short-term road map below, may be over the course of several updates).

Since focus aimed at future content intended to move the game forward means less time spent on currently existing content, this next update will not be that exciting. We apologize for this, but if we only focus on current content, the game will not move forward with much momentum.

Short-term roadmap

Deepheart

Deepheart is the name given to an island that houses a collection of settlements, notably 3 family-dominated keeps, a port city, and a few sparsely-populated areas. Home to an ancient volcano, countless geological incidents have formed a sprawling cave system deep below the surface.

Three families left the confines of Yorkhill long ago in order to start a life of their own. While heading to the mainland, a storm forced them to wash up on the shores of the island. Their ship was destroyed in an area rich with an ocean fish food supply, they were forced to settle in. Eventually, gold was discovered. Keeping it to themselves, a trade hub rich in jewelry sprung up, and led to the creation of companies to help transport materials and finished products to all of the regional coastal cities. In turn, Deepheart went from an isolated island with a few ancient ruins of interest, to becoming a thriving trading hub ran by the wealthy and influential families. Despite the island’s outward illusion of elegance, it is getting harder to contain the sinister activity that resides within...

This may be a staggered release in that the overworld map and interiors will be released first, and then the cave system will be implemented afterwards. The progress on the map is nearly complete – it needs more points of interest, npcs, mobs, and quests as well as the skills associated with the map release. Expect it to be fleshed out more after release.

User Interface rework

UI rework has been in the works and is progressing nicely, expect things to look differently and function better.

Notable benefits of the new UI

Significantly better performance especially on lower-end machines
Fully scaleable - no more tiny UI on high-resolution monitors
Cleaner and more consistent art-style

Some work-in-progress previews of the new UI:

Improved skills interface to view skill abilities, crafting recipes, milestones and item stats.

Inventory with improved item tooltips, also a right-click menu has been added to see more options.

Updated NPC dialogue, right-click menus have also been added to NPCs.

Housing decay

Decay timers will be activated again once a proper method has been completed that does not lead to a character’s loss of gear and furniture upon decay (Loss of items is why it has been currently paused). When a house's decay timer reaches zero, it will enter a "Decaying" state. In this state the plot goes back on the market, meaning another player with the required building materials will be able to build their own house on the plot. All stored items and a percentage of building materials of a decayed house will be sent to the owner's bank account. Until a decaying house is replaced by another player's house, the original owner will still be able to enter the house any time to reset the decay timer.

Skill rework and additions

It makes little sense to have the gathering and potion making component for Alchemy to be the same skill, as most life skills involve 2 components – for example, mining and blacksmithing, fishing and cooking, woodcutting and carpentry, etc. This means there will be a new skill starting out at level 1 that is associated with gathering the natural materials used for making potions.

Alchemy involves the harvesting of tailoring ingredients other than cotton, which is farming. Changes will make the tailoring gathering component associated with farming instead - as farming and fishing both contribute to cooking already. This gives more usefulness to the farming skill as flax, jute, and ramie are gathered using the alchemy skill and are unrelated to potions.

Cooking buffs will be made more useful, as they are short-lived and redundant. Recipe complexity will be increased for better meals.

A new jewelry skill is in the works that allows people to craft powerful jewelry with unique effects out of gems. We will also add new effects to the existing jewelry to make them feel more unique and distinct from each other.
New mining nodes will be added for use in jewelry smithing, to be added in the Deepheart cave system.

Mages guild

Introducing the Mages Guild - a (work in progress) place where mages and scholars from all over congregate in order to better understand and master the arcane arts. Here, players can join the guild and eventually increase in ranks after performing various quests, allowing for training into other elemental types and magics. Players will have the ability to research additional spells beyond what they unlock through leveling. Higher ranked members will have access to additional privileges - including special furniture, alchemical recipes, and even access to a restricted teleportation network.

Numbers rework

Rework of equations associated with balancing and compressing level associations with skills, abilities, health, buffs, mobs, bosses, gear, etc – this will help us moving forward in that it gives scalability and makes it easier to implement new content based on target character levels. This will make it easy to create new spells, abilities, gear, and recipes to flesh out skills. In order for us to create progression beyond level 65 that feels fluid and adjust current gameplay, we need to create a more viable standard.

New character and gear models

Character models will be replaced with new ones, offering greater flexibility in character creation as well as reducing overhead. The main problem with the current models is that we haven't had the resources to keep up the quality, resulting in varying quality, inconsistent art styles and lack of new content. A stylized approach makes it much easier for us to add new armors, hairstyles, and aesthetic clothing designs, instead of heavily relying on re-coloring existing models.