Hello Beasts!

The Public Test will be on the 21st of September

We’ve been hard at work with lots to show you on what the team has been up to. In this DevBlog we’re going to show off some map changes, technical information about Zupay and its implementation. We’ll also be showing off some new mechanic concepts later in this blog, so strap tight, grab a drink, and take a quick read with us!

ZUPAYSAURUS

Zupay has been coming along since we last showed them off in our previous blog. The animations have been finalised, and we’ve got some fabulous skins from the art team ready for when the dinosaur is released. As of current, the main system we’re working on is Zupays Mimicry.

Zupay's ability to mimic will allow it to ‘copy’ certain abilities from other dinosaurs for short periods of time. This includes things like Utah’s Brutal Blows attack, Acro’s Intimidating Roar, Para’s Alarm Call, Sai’s Spiky Shield, and more. All these abilities will be muted versions of the originals and become available for a duration of time. They must be relearned to use again once they’ve been activated. Zupay will only be able to learn up to three abilities at a time.

We’re also working out the balance of Zupay. A lot of the community are quite worried about the creature being another mid-tier. We’d describe it more along the lines of being a small tier; significantly smaller than the likes of Megara but a bit bigger than Changyu and Velo. Its primary place in the ecosystem is intended to be a pesky scavenger, who cleans up the ecosystem, who can still deal a bit of a punch if its kit is used correctly.

As of now, balance testing is going well and considered nearly finished. QA is having fun playing with its numbers and creating combat tests to ensure it isn’t doing more than it should. However, as we all know with the implementation of new dinosaurs, we’ll get a better understanding of where Zupay stands after we conduct its first public test.

Here's a goofy clip of our QA team messing about.

Concern was raised in our last blog about the Zupay’s ability to rot gores. We do want to let you know that these concerns have been heard and can ensure that the ability for Zupay to rot gore is based on the size of the Zupay and the size of the gore. If a gore is large and Zupay is small, it will take an astronomical amount of time for it to rot anything by itself. The rotting ability costs quite some ability power to perform, so anyone looking after their prize can easily scare off the naughty buggers.

TITANIA

Titania has undergone some subtle changes that we hope will help how players traverse the world. We’ve heard a lot of feedback about the lack of aquatic vs land dinosaur interactions in Titania and have made an attempt to improve this a little.

Some areas have been given new sandbanks and crossing points that make for ideal locations when traversing through the world at the risk of being possibly snatched up by an aquatic lurking in the depths. Other areas have been made a little more accessible for larger aquatics too.

The feedback about a lot of caves in Titania being inaccessible for larger aquatics is unfortunately something we cannot fully solve, but we’re making an effort to ensure there are new accessible areas for these larger aquatics.

We’re also updating and adding new PoI’s. Drymouth Puddle has now become Drymouth Oasis; a HUGE lake that can comfortably house a 3.0 Mosa without it even being seen, along with access caves to the location. Beautiful rookeries for flyers and little critters to hide out and observe and an abundance of food for hungry herbivores. We hope this updated location adds some spice to the previously deserted part of Outlands/Desert.

We’ve also deepened a lot of the larger lakes on the map and made access points for the larger aquatics. Impact Lake is now much wider and much deeper, allowing for semi-aquatics and aquatics to call it home. We’ll be taking feedback on these locations when they’re presented in the public test we’ll be conducting.

FAVOR STORE

We’ve finalized a lot of aspects of the Favor Store since our last blog. The exact stats of how you gain Favor has been tested and set to what we believe are some good numbers. Along with this, a previous comment we made on the Blog about ‘unlocks per species’ has been changed to ‘unlocks per character’ with how the Favor gain now works.

With the Favor Store comes some interesting new World Event items you can purchase with Weather Towers. These include Rainstorm, Dry lightning, and Wind storm towers. Weather towers are purchased by individuals online. Five towers may be purchased at a time by players and towers spawn at the nearest possible event spawn that is not currently occupied by a world event. Storm towers cannot be purchased during a currently active storm.

Once a storm tower is purchased, a special storm world event with the tower inside it spawns. It remains inactive until a player enters the storm world event radius, then begins a ten minute timer to succeed or fail. Players may roar using 1-5 calls in support of a storm, or damage the tower to veto a storm. Towers have 50,000 health.

COSMETICS

We also would love to show off some of the amazing work Orison has been doing for this upcoming patch. We’ve finally started on the backlog of work of missing morphs for some of the dinosaurs in-game. Incest morphs, elder morphs and small edits and fixes here and there to current morphs we already have.

Below are some screenshots of our artists favourite morphs she wanted to show off this devblog. We’re excited for everyone to experience how skrunkly and scrimblo they are in-game and look forward to creating more in the future for the favor store too!

Elder Ory, Incest Icthy, Incest Lurdu, Incest Apato

Showing off another new feature for the next patch regarding our leaderboard system in Gauntlet Gamemode: Leaderboard Skin Overlay Rewards! Players can compete each month to earn a top spot on the monthly leaderboard and earn a Gold, Silver, or Bronze Stone Armor overlay cosmetics on Gauntlet and Free Roam Gamemodes!

• The 1st Place takes gold, 2nd and 3rd take Silver, and 4th and 5th are awarded Bronze.

• Players winning the Gold tier armor will also be rewarded silver and bronze rewards. Likewise, winning the Silver tier will also award the Bronze Armor.

• Leaderboard Overlay Rewards are server specific and species specific, but permanently owned on that server by the recipient once awarded.

• Winners are calculated at the end of each month just before the board resets.

• We may start looking at implementation options for Combat gamemodes for these overlays as well! This is just our first pass at leaderboard reward implementation.

Big thanks to Nonyapie and Korvinox for making these overlay cosmetics for us!

Additionally in unrelated news: the fan favorite Contagen Para skin will be making a comeback next patch as well!

We do want to apologise for the lateness on the next event skin. It got a bit caught up in the middle of this big patch we’re cooking up. It will not be available during the upcoming public test however, only once the full patch is ready and released.

Meet the Krustallos Oryctodromeus!

The Event will be standard to our usual formula: lasting one month and requiring the collection of 50 Oryctodromeus Idols to unlock its use on all servers. All previous Summer Skins will be obtainable as well. This includes WaveRider Lurdusaurus, Summer Fern Pteranodon and Summer Lily Elasmosaurus.

• The skins all have a glowing, bioluminescent layer.

• The skins all unlock equippable cosmetic overlays. The overlays can go on any skin of their corresponding species.

• Event skins for Elasmosaurus, Pteranodon, and Oryctodromeus come with equippable mesh objects.

• Krustallos will have several different colored crystal cosmetics to choose from! In addition to Bright Crystals shown above, you can choose from: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Cyan, Violet, Sky Blue, Blue, Pink, Cherry, & Dark Crystals!

How to earn:

• The newest skin released will cost 50 idols to unlock

• The older event skins will only cost 35 idols to unlock

Happy Holiday and happy hunting!
Concepts by A.L & Valhalla; Skin & Overlay made by Orison; Crystal Equips made by Kari

COMMUNITY SUBMISSIONS

Questions & Answers

Name: WolfenDen

• Question: Will there be a lot more herbivores added to balance out how many carnivores there are?

• Answer: There will definitely be some herbivores queued up for the future. We have a surprise to show off in the coming weeks so be prepared ;)

Name:Skudde

• Question:Are there any plans for further server config customization? I'm referring to things such as adjustable penalty on death or adjustable grouping limitations.

• Answer:We will be looking into server config controls to further the control a server owner has on their end. However, at the moment our focus is going to be attempting to stabilize servers and possibly bring migration to the community servers where two server owners can peer to peer connect their servers together :D

Name:Guppy

• Question:I don't think Zupay will be particularly strong or durable, so how will it hunt larger dinosaurs when it would likely die from two Para stomps? Will it have Wing Tear talent? What will save it from Pachy?

• Answer:One would be surprised what a small dinosaur can do with a pack! … You’ll just have to test it out on the upcoming live test![[/p]

Art & Media

Art by:
Archaeologon: Devastator(Commissioned, done by A.L)

Art by:
Little Fang: Solo Wieh (Art by Fort)
Varcer: Stormchaser Para

Screenshot by:
Overhoard: Rex
Clumsy Dana: Icthy
Red: Acro

Screenshot/Meme by:
Strawberry<3: An IQ too high?
Clumsy Dana: Pachy Escaped
Overhoard: Snek Chomp