Game updates/2015-12-14

December 14 Update

This is a bug-fix update with some new features slipped in. The new city area is still in development and is not in this update.

Bonus Gems from Surveying

- Experimental bonus reward system: if you complete multiple surveys in rapid succession, you will get some random bonus gem(s). Each area has different bonus gems possible.

- How quick do you have to be? It's random each time, but on average you will get the bonus if you complete surveys within 3 minutes of each other. That should be plenty of time even if you're slow, as long as the maps are relatively near each other.

- One goal is to encourage players to organize their maps by area and, ideally, trade maps with others, so for instance one person takes upper-quadrant maps and another takes the lower maps. (I realize trading and organizing maps can be a bit tedious given the GUI limitations of inventory management, but that will improve in time. GUI revamps are underway.)

- An additional goal is to sometimes give you gems that you don't personally need, which can either be sold or traded, thus facilitating the gem economy

- Serbule mostly gives blue and green bonus gems while Eltibule mostly gives orange and white bonus gems. Kur Mountains can drop all sorts of gems, including rare gems like Winterprize

- Surveyors, please play with this for a week or two. Live with it a little while to see how it grows on you (or doesn't), then give feedback. (I'll create a forum post requesting this feedback in a week or two.)

- We will likely make a similar change to Mining maps in the future, but will wait to see how this goes over first.

Spider Changes

The spider animal form has been tweaked a bit to give it more of a unique "planning" feel. Preparation is supposed to be the key to the spider's success. (But we're talking a second or two of preparation, not Machiavellian schemes.)

There are a bunch of new spider treasure effects, many of which play into the "planning" motif in various ways.

Spider's Scuttling Gait has been completely replaced with a new ability, Premeditated Doom.

Spiders, please play with these changes and new gear, then give feedback on the forums!

Also, these changes have been VERY poorly tested. Go go player QA department! Report the bugs and we'll get them fixed up.

Buckle Artistry

The new companion skill for the Hammer combat skill is called Buckle Artistry. This skill entails crafting gaudy belt buckles (which will probably have 3D appearance someday, but are currently invisible like other belts). The buckles give the hammerer various psychological benefits, which translate into buffs. See the new NPC named Jake in the druid camp in Sun Vale.

Note that this is a combat-companion skill, not a crafting skill. It uses some crafting mechanics, but it's intended to be used by the individual hammerer, much like calligraphy or meditation is done by the individual swordsman or unarmed warrior. For that reason, it should be comparatively easy to level up, and there are no craft-skill prerequisites – you just need to complete some favors for Jake. (The recipes require various ingredients obtained from other crafting skills, but these can simply be purchased from other players in the future. May need more players before that part works though.)

Crafted belt buckles can only be used by the crafter – they are deeply personal emblems that are useless to others.

Crafted belt buckles get damaged in combat and eventually break, requiring you to make a new one. The rate of decay is going to have to be experimented with. Theoretically the buckles will last for an average of 5 hours of combat (that is, being "in combat" for 18,000 seconds) before they break. But without any real-world data, it's likely that the calculations are off in one direction or the other.

If you're a hammer user, please play with this new skill for a week or two and then give us feedback about how you like it and what you'd change about it. We'll adjust things as needed.

(When you're testing it, I realize it may be impossible to trade for the raw materials you need (such as metal slabs) because there's so few players active at the moment. But keep in mind that it'll be easier to find this stuff for sale later on when more of the trade economy works. Right now you may end up having to make all the ingredients yourself, but hopefully that won't be the case forever.)

Ability Failure Fixes

Sometimes when you try to use an ability, the server rejects your attempt. These scenarios are supposed to be extremely rare and almost never happen during normal gameplay, but players are reporting that it happens semi-regularly. I don't know what is causing it. I've made changes to help debug the underlying cause, as well as changes that will smooth over the side-effects when it happens.

- When an ability fails on the server, more useful error messages are shown. Hopefully these messages can help us track down the underlying causes of ability failures. If you see the same message often, please report it!

- When an ability fails on the server, it no longer consumes consumable items

- When an ability fails on the server, the reset timer is immediately cleared so it can be used again. (This was partially implemented in the last update, but not for every case.)

- Previously, an ability failure would make it look like you had lost Power. (Your power meter would actually fix itself a few seconds later.) Now, the game client tries to refund you your Power immediately when an ability fails. Be warned: this is a bit of a hack. When you are lagging heavily, this hack can backfire and make it look like you gained more Power than the ability cost. This is just an illusion and the server won't actually let you spend the excess power.

- Also, all the above fixes were implemented very rapidly and haven't been tested all that well, so if something seems weird, let me know. Please don't automatically assume it's working as intended!

Other Fixes and Changes

- Fixed lore statue on island

- Revised the spawns and spawn positions of monsters on the newbie island

- Removed the Tutorial book hidden in a tree on the island (that was from a previous iteration of the island; you now learn it from a quest NPC)

- Fixed all known bugs with augmentation recipes: if something is still broken please report it (or re-report it)!

- Alravesa now sells Basic Shot 5 training

- Knocked off over 1000 health (and a bit of armor and damage) from Gajus ... how does he fare now against several equipped newbies?

- Certain items that were supposed to be nerfed in last update (e.g. Yagreet's Staff) didn't get nerfed due to a data typo. They are fixed now.

- Animal curse basic attacks (Stampede, Pummeling Hooves, Spider Bite, Bat Rip, Pig Bite) now have a 2 second reset time instead of a 1 second reset time. The purpose of this is to give more room for equipment to improve these abilities without creating "spam basic attack for free to win" scenarios like we've accidentally created in the past. We will likely end up making all basic attacks 2-sec eventually. Animal forms are just the guinea pigs.

- Some animal form treasure effects were improved as a result of above change

- Fixed scenarios where abilities would consume more-valuable prerequisite items than necessary (e.g. when First Aid 1 would consume a level 2 First Aid kit even though you had level 1 kits remaining.)

- Dig Deep is no longer affected by debuffs that raise Power costs (such as Brain Bug debuffs)

- Fixed floating animal form issues (such as player deer that floated two feet off the ground). Please report any remaining (or new) issues where a monster or player is floating well off the ground! (A few inches of floating is not worth reporting right now, but if it's floating by a foot or more, that's bad.)

- Fixed buggy door into goblin dungeon

- Fixed scenario where a monster's damage reflection could kill you many times in rapid succession, thus raising your death delay timer

- Armor Patching XP is now earned at the same rate as First Aid XP, so it should be significantly faster to level up