I am ecstatic to announce that Founder's Pack #1 is set to release tomorrow - August 3rd, 2020! If all goes according to plan, one founder's pack will release each week starting tomorrow and ending on September 7th for a total of 5 item packed DLCs!
Alright, enough with the sales pitch - let me tell you what to expect from the Founder's Packs. Each of the first four founder's packs will give one of the main four characters at least one weapon, one accessory, and several pieces of the 30-point "Ignis" set. Each of these weapons and accessories grant access to at least one new skill or magic ability for the equipped character. Additionally, you can expect some gold, mystery coins, and restorative & damaging items to come along with these weapons and armor.
Founder's Pack V functions a bit differently and has a different price tag. Instead of housing a weapon, it brings to the table every piece of the new 255-point "Hardy's Founder" set with enough cloaks and rings to go around as well. While the first four FP's are meant to give players something different to use in the early game, the FP-5 is meant to add to your experience later in the game. Basically, these items outshine everything else currently in the game. Currently. That brings me to my next point...
None of the Founder's Packs are necessary to play or be successful in Cross of Auria. They are simply meant to enhance or even change the experience a little bit. Everything can be done without making any FP purchases.
Finally, I'm sad to say that I won't be releasing DLC for MAC at this time. We'll cross this bridge again once I discover a proper method for deploying it.
Enough about the Founder's Packs - let's move on.
Upcoming Story Content
As you probably know, the Orc War storyline has been under construction for some time. This is in part due to the writing of it, but also due to my real life situation of a new baby. I'm still working on it. Due to the nature of what happens, I can't drop it piece by piece over time like I have with some other parts of the game because of certain zone restrictions that will be in place. I've also been slightly distracted by one major piece of the game... the Quest Log!
If you were playing CoA when it first released, you may remember the Quest Log that used to sit above Items in the menu. This was eventually removed (almost) entirely from the game when a bug arose that hid the text in the upper-left corner of the Quest Log sub-menu. I'm happy to say that I've finally found the source of this bug and have begun to re-enter the quest log plugin commands throughout the game. Because of how intertwined the quest log is with all main and side story events, there's likely to be some hiccups with deployment for current save files, but it is my hope that all new save files will function flawlessly. Since this is effectively a UI update, don't worry - you won't miss any loot by not having the quest log active until the Orc War starts. However, a sizeable chunk of extra dialogue is contained within the QL that isn't found anywhere else, so it may be worth restarting the save file regardless if lore is your kind of thing.
Upcoming DLC, & The An'ura Recon Event
These five founder's packs are currently the only DLC on my radar to include a direct exchange for items. DLC that comes later will feature full side-story content and questlines for DLC owners as well as updates to the Pit for all players. Details are not fully fleshed out yet, but the current expectation is each future DLC will have a playtime of at least 3 hours, open a 'dungeon' style event (more on that later), and grant access to a new event inside the Colosseum which will function the same as the current public An'ura event - with drops inside the rift and a vendor outside.
The An'ura Recon Event is my first idea with doing side-story content to add a new character to the game. Due to the focus on the quest log and the orc war storyline, progress is still ongoing. This event currently ends where you first see the mysterious archer but it will begin to progress again soon.
Well, that was a lot, and I think that's it for now, so if you made it this far - congratulations and thank you! I'm so happy to have some extra time to work on CoA again and I can't wait to deploy 4.0 when the Quest Log is finally fully back into the game. I don't have any exact estimates for when this will be, but I'm aiming for two weeks tops from right now. Ideally, I'll have it finished much sooner than that.
Thanks for stopping by. Hardy out >.>