We are happy to announce that the A26 "Pragmium War" Update is now live!
The update has received a lot of positive feedback on the experimental servers over the course of the past two weeks while this update was in the testing phase, which is really great!
Now, what does this update introduce? Let’s find out!
Let's start with something simple. This update finally introduces achievements to the game. You will be able to unlock almost two dozens of different achievements liberally sprinkled throughout your experience in the game. And in the long run, our plan is to add even more.
Now something more interesting! The biggest change of this update is the introduction of world events! You can expect to see several event types such as boss fights, crashing meteorites, fall of space debris, native life form migrations, etc. We will keep adding more events in future updates as well. The goal is to have something happening in the world at all times, so you and your friends will get a perfect distraction from your regular loop of building the base and exploring the world.
The world events were one of the most requested features in our public roadmap (Trello page) for a long time, essential to open a new dimension of the gameplay, especially in PvE as it lacked such challenges before. Coincidentally, this update finally introduces mechs in PvE as they would be handy to fight the new boss!
Next, we have also completely changed most of the technology trees and groups, streamlining the progression and removing unexpected dependencies. Tiers 3 and 4 especially were heavily rebalanced to ensure smoother progression with significantly less grind to research, craft, and build stuff. The highest technology tiers are perfectly attainable even by solo players now.
The all-new Completionist menu will keep track of all things you have discovered in the world and the things you tried so far. For every new discovery, you can acquire a small amount of bonus LP (Learning Points) which will make your progression feel more rewarding.
The decorative objects received an update too! There are many more of them now—and they are all in separate groups, 100% non-mandatory so they will not hinder your progress. Just a little extra for those who want it. See the image above for some examples.
You will also be pleased to know that we have finally introduced grenade launchers and the crossbow along with several new long-range rifles and other small things! You can build these new grenade launchers and grenades when you reach Tier 3. The crossbow, on the other hand, is available from the very start of the game and you can craft it without using a workbench which makes it a very convenient starter weapon, though not as powerful as firearms.
Another small change was a reworking of character faces and bodies. While this change is not a major one it still makes the game look substantially better! We hope you will enjoy this change as well. Most importantly, it lays down the foundation for us to introduce skin tone and hair color changes in the future updates as these new sprites are already designed to work with this new system in mind.
Some other major changes and new features include:
- Reworked map with new areas, bridges to connect parts of the map across the water, new points of interest, decorations, etc.
- New "Well rested" status effect which gives a bonus to those players who can't play the game 24/7 and helps them to stay competitive with more active players. Basically, it's a daily bonus which provides a small buff to the gained LP and skill XP.
- Clan tags! Yes, you can now add a tag to your party which will be displayed next to your username in the game. For now, it is only a small taste of the proper clan system coming in the future.
- New quests and reworked existing questline to make progression more logical.
- Reworked food, electricity, mineral extraction, and many other areas of the game.
- Storage chest tags. Now you can set icons on your chests to indicate what's inside.
- Minimap! No need to open the full map every time you want to check your surroundings.
- And much, much more!
You can read the complete patch notes on Official Forums.
The game really does feel completely different compared to previous versions and we'd love for you to try all of these new changes and new content! Join all the new newly started servers with a fresh economy for this A26 update!
Don't forget to join our discord to be aware of all news and updates. We post a lot of upcoming content art and other interesting things there regularly.
https://discordapp.com/invite/cryofall
That's it for now! See you in the game!
Ohhh wait! If you're a PvP player, please keep reading!
There are three important changes for PvP gameplay and mechanics:
1. As the game was heavily rebalanced to ensure smoother progression, it's clear that experienced players can reach higher tech tiers unreasonably quickly like they're competing for the CryoFall Speedrun World Record :) but it's ruining the game balance!
A26 introduces a new time-gating system specifically for the official PvP servers to solve this problem: progression to T3/T4 will be temporarily time restricted when the server starts. These technologies will unlock and become available for research sequentially after a few days, giving all players an opportunity to advance in the game and ensuring much more balanced gameplay with a lot more time to appreciate different stages of PvP combat progression with low tier equipment and weapons! It's incredible fun, trust us! (If you're hosting a community server you can customize this feature as you want by editing ServerRates.config or disable it altogether)
2. We know that the lack of substantial alternative ways to acquire oil and Li in PvP was a problem for many of you for the longest time. Race to capture resource deposits led players to create massive teams. Not only it hindered tech progression for everyone else, but it also caused a snowball effect with the strongest clan becoming even stronger.
To solve this problem, in A26 players can build oil and Li extractors in their primary bases (similar to how it works in PvE though with a distance requirement so you cannot just place extractors near each other). While this source of oil/Li is unlimited, the extraction is reasonably slow and inefficient—only good enough to sustain the needs of small teams and solo players. The large oil and Li deposits are still spawned as before—and they still provide a fast and more efficient way to extract these resources so they're still pretty valuable in PvP.
3. While we certainly understand that the full loot system has its thrills, we believe that it's time to experiment with it. You are likely aware that crafting good armor requires a lot of effort and most players feel discouraged when losing it, while the more successful players accumulate tons of trophy armor sets stacked in their chests…
A26 introduces an experimental change on the official PvP servers—the equipped armor and devices will not drop in case of death (they will take a 15% durability penalty instead). The rest of the items (such as the content of the hotbar with weapons and tools such as axe/pickaxe; also the inventory) will drop as usual (NO changes here). The argument here is that players will be more willing to take on the risks as they will at least save the expensive armor in case of death. It's just a bit easier to recover so we believe it will facilitate more PvP fights overall while not being as devastating for the losing side. The change will be live on all the official PvP servers on the wipe day and we will gather players' feedback by the end of the first wipe in 4 weeks. (If you're hosting a community server you can disable this feature by editing ServerRates.config)
See you in the game!