Nighttime Update! Level 60 Skills!

Posted by Citan on Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Looks like I've neglected the blog again! I was originally planning to post the weekly patch notes here, but I don't think we need another place for those -- you can always find those in-game in the news box, and we periodically post them to the News forum, and volunteer scribes diligently copy them into the wiki. So that's pretty much covered! Instead, I'll try to use the blog to give people some general news about what's going on.

Day/Night Cycles

Yesterday's patch added day/night cycles! It's still a bit primitive, but this is just the first update -- it will get fancier in time. Right now, each day/night cycle lasts 90 minutes. I'm not quite sure what the best day duration is. I don't want the game-day to match the real-time day (that is, an in-game day lasting 24 real-time hours) because that'd mean people who can only play in the evenings would always be stuck playing in the dark. That's stupid! But if the virtual day is too short, it feels a little weird. And if it's too long, the night can drag on and the darkness can be annoying. So we'll probably try out a few different day lengths over the next months, and you can let us know what you like best.

Players have asked how much of the game will be choreographed with the day schedule. For instance, will townsfolk close up shop at night? Will mushrooms only spawn in the dark? Will deer frolic in the day and sleep at night?

For the most part, I want to avoid stuff that's super annoying. For that reason, most shops will be open around the clock. Unlike a single-player RPG, where you can speed up time, in an MMO it's really not fun to have to wait 30 minutes or more for your favorite shop to open! But aside from shopkeepers, other NPCs will soon be able to behave differently at night. Townsfolk that wander around town will go home at night. Some of them might head to the bar for a few hours first -- that sort of thing.

Monsters and item spawns will mostly be the same at day and at night, but there will be special things that spawn at special times. There were two special spawns added in this update. In the freezing Kur Mountains, a certain kind of flower only grows in the morning, and at night it freezes and dies out (if it hasn't been picked already). And similarly, in the Ilmari Desert there's a kind of flower that only blooms at dusk. The pounding sun wilts them out of existence pretty quickly.

We'll have more of that sort of thing over time, and we'll eventually have certain special monsters that only appear at night or day, too.

Level 60 Cap

We've been raising the level cap of skills from 50 to 60. (Each update will raise a few more skills until we get all of them done.)

The final game's level cap is 125, so the first 50 levels are actually the newbie levels. Those levels are pretty straightforward -- you learn the skill, then you use the skill to raise it all the way to 50. But to get from 51 to 60, you'll need to seek out another trainer who can help you. Each skill has a different trainer who can raise your level cap -- for a fee, and only if they like you enough! Each level range beyond 50 will have a similar requirement -- you'll need to complete a task to get from 61 to 70, 71 to 80, 81 to 90, and 91 to 100.

After level 100, you can still raise skills, but only indirectly. Each skill has "synergies" that give you free levels in other skills. By raising other skills, you can raise each skill all the way up to 125.

But that's still far down the road! Right now we're just focusing on levels 51 to 60. We're also still fixing some missing content spots earlier in the game -- for instance there's not enough monsters in the 40-45 level range.

That's about it for now! Oh, there's also some great discussions about high-level balance happening in the forums! If you're interested in the nuts and bolts of the game's advancement, loot, and crafting, you should definitely drop by and give your opinion.

Until next time!