Release 30 Instructions

[Balandar]

Darkstarr just posted the massive R30 changes over on the SoTA forums.

Sample changes:

Maximum Durability:

The biggest change of course is the change to maximum durability, which can no longer be repaired at crafting stations unless you use a Crown of the Obsidian (see below for details). I understand that this change to durability so that items eventually break permanently feels challenging to process right now. On top of that, the amount of time to gather materials and the sheer amount of materials it takes to make items seems daunting to say the least. Our goal has always been that it takes specialization and time to become a crafter and the goods you sell should have real value. If we tune gathering to be fast and items to use only a few materials, then everyone could make their own goods and there would be no economy and no demand for crafters. If items continued to be in good repair indefinitely, then crafters would have no demand to fill once players got a favorite set of gear.

We believe that all of these designs are necessary to have a truly player-driven economy where effort is rewarded and the amount of time to make items is relatively commensurate to the time it takes to fight and advance through enemies. With all of that said, the entire experience needs to balance entertainment with effort and we will be carefully tuning the experience over the next few releases (and forever for that matter).

Masterworks:

Crafting is finally also expanding with new skills including Masterworks; which allow Smiths, Carpenters, and Tailors to add new abilities to items they create. This works exactly like the Enchanting we introduced for Alchemists in R29, although both of these systems now balance the power of the abilities added with reductions in durability. Our goal for the system is to create interesting choices between power and convenience. We also envision scenarios where Avatars might have specialized sets of powerful gear that they use for boss fights and PVP tournaments versus their everyday adventuring gear.

Targeting System:

Finally we spent time iterating and polishing the new targeting system we introduced in Release 29. Our goal was to provide the same level of functionality we had before we added the new system while still enjoying the advantages of the new system. To that end, we have added back in target selection and target cycling amongst a host of other changes (see below for details).

The Path of Courage:

In Release 29 Avatars were able to follow the Path of Love from beginning to end for the first time. In Release 30 the story again greatly expands with the Path of Courage now being playable. To support that, Valhold can be visited for the first time and various other scenes have been filled out with supporting story including Skrekk, Demig’s Battlecamp, Ferig’s Battlecamp, and Estgard. This makes two of the three Paths of Virtue playable, with only the Path of Truth left to implement in the game (which we will start in Release 31). We also have added the first of our three Companions who will adventure with you in Offline Mode.

Novia Overworld Rework:

When we first built the overworld map for Novia we strayed a bit too far from the original design as laid out in the cloth map. This resulted in a lot of discrepancies including some major geographical mismatches, rivers that looked like oceans (or which were missing entirely), roadways that were as wide as mountains, misplaced points of interest, and other such oddities. In Release 30, we begin the effort to correct all of these errors and have brought Novia back into alignment with the contours and geographic features of the cloth map. During this process, all coastlines and areas throughout the entire, expansive interior of Novia were honed. Consequently, we were required to temporarily remove a lot of the props and decorations from the scene, but we will be putting those back in steadily over the next two releases. This work also required us to re-position some of the towns and other points of interest. Additional changes include the addition of boat teleporters for every Player-Owned Town island, as the proper method for travel to them. Please note that the locations of a few POTs have changed during this work. If your town location changed during this process and you are unsatisfied with the new location please post as a bug in the bug forums with a requested new location and we will do our very best to accommodate your request at no charge.

Performance Manager

There is now a Performance Manager in the game that works to maintain a constant framerate by actively turning up and down various features and levels of detail.

New Female Avatar

As many of you saw in a recent weekly update and Dev+ forum post, we have done a complete overhaul of the female avatar just like we did for the male avatar. Now that she is complete, we can focus on hair and improving the customizability of the faces of both the male and female avatar. NOTE: Morph targets for the female face have changed. This means that previously created female characters will likely look strange until you make a new character, especially in the chin area. Our apologies for the inconvenience.

Scene Chat Channel

We have added a new chat channel to the game that includes all players in the scene you are currently in. Please note that this defaults to off.