We wanted to kick this post off by saying we’re excited to be part of the Steam Summer Sale! Starting now (June 25th) until July 9th, Last Oasis will be available for 20% off.
Now, to get into some details about the Volcanic update:
We wanted to touch on some of the changes and additions we made, and give some insight into how things were designed and developed! Check out the full patch notes here.
Domus Walker
We plan on releasing more and more Walkers throughout future content patches. When we design new types of Walkers, we take a look at what areas of gameplay aren’t currently covered and see what you have been requesting. For Domus, we wanted to elaborate on the idea of protected Walkers that we started with Mollusk, but on a much larger scale. It may not be fast or very good at hauling cargo, but it does offer protection for the people and structures inside.
The name Domus, meaning “a house” in Latin, was suggested by Chralex, one of our backend programmers. Pretty fitting for all of the cozy rooms it has inside! Chralex initially wanted to name it “Geobukseon”, the Korean turtle ship from the early 15th century.
Killin
The work on Killin started a while ago with tons of designing and prototyping through a variety of ideas. We knew that we wanted to add a creature that would be categorically different from what’s currently in the game, and a flying type felt like a good approach. Killins may be very different from the other creatures, but they do share the same core purpose: being fully physically interactable with the world. This allows you to come up with your own tactics on how to fight and interact with these flying monsters. Need a few ideas? Try shooting them with a weapon, or tethering them with a ballista to keep them in place. Want to get a little more creative? Try using one as transport by grappling on, or have them pull (or fly, if you want a challenge!) your Walker through the oases with tethers.
Volcanic Biome
We’ve always planned to add in a hot and dangerous biome that was more than just the sands of the oases, where the environment poses the biggest threat to its inhabitants. Initially, we added small volcanic areas to hard maps, but knew that it wasn’t enough to create a true sense of danger. We hope to remedy that with the full volcanic map. It has vast green fields inspired by Icelandic plains and lowlands, and intricate mazes formed out of volcanic rocks and scorching hot lava lakes, swallowing anything and anyone who falls into them.
While we had small lava pools on hard maps already, which are now inactive with the introduction of these new maps, we wanted to expand their mechanics to a larger scale. The lava lakes burn all living things and Walker parts, so don’t fall in! Lava has become a resource for Nomads to use in various productions. We overhauled obsidian harvesting to make it a little more challenging by requiring significant amounts of water to cool the lava down. During testing, we’ve seen some interesting ways of using lava lakes to gain an advantage in battles or get away from pursuers.
Furniture Packs
We want the world of Last Oasis to be alive and built by players. This means that we won’t always focus on adding to or improving gameplay. We want to expand on the details of what already exists in the world: the feeling of the Walkers, bases, and more. Furniture allows you to make your Walker or base truly yours, furnished however you want. Yes, this is mostly cosmetic, but many furniture pieces have a useful side to them. A fire goblet or a lamp could light up the place, and sitting in a chair while riding a Walker makes it a much more relaxing experience than having to make sure you don’t fall down on the next hill. We plan on expanding this part of the game to allow everyone to express themselves however they like.
New Ammo and Combat Changes
This patch includes new ammo and melee weapons! These weapons are mainly to bridge a gap between tiers, but the new ammo can be used to change the way battles are fought. Explosive ammo is designed to push Nomads and creatures away when it explodes while not having very high damage. This will allow you to choose whether you want to shoot to kill or if you want to try to inhibit enemies by keeping them away from weapons or pushing them off Walkers. Lava bombs, on the other hand, create an area of fire when they explode, damaging everyone who steps into it. The main purpose of these bombs is not to attack enemies on foot, as their area is rather small, but to prevent them from using certain structures. If you shoot a repeater with a lava bomb, the repeater will catch fire. This forces the shooter to get away from the weapon until it stops burning or until someone puts out the fire with a water hose. The last new ammo type, floating mines, stay in the air after being shot and slowly descend before exploding on collision. They’re geared towards creating obstacles on the battlefield and forcing Walkers to change course to avoid them, or face the risk of being hit by a wall of explosives.
Reserved Server Slots for Proxy Owners
With the update, we’re also adding something many of you have been asking for for a long time: reserved server slots for proxy owners. This means the clan that has a proxy walker in an oasis will always have reserved slots to have their Nomads on that map. It will allow them to always have a fighting chance and prevent total server cap by their enemies. The number of reserved slots on any given oasis is either 20 or the number of server cap, whichever is lower. So an oasis with no clan cap or 50 cap would have 20 reserved slots, but a server with 5 cap would have 5. This may not solve the server cap issue, but we want to make things a bit more fair for defenders. This is the first of many changes towards removing server cap tactics completely.
We have more new content and changes coming up in the near future with part two of the volcanic update!