A.7.0
21/06/2024
21/06/2024
Firstly, I just wanted to apologise for the lack of developer updates this month. I've been finishing up with all sorts of IRL, so it's been a bit hectic. But I promise, the wait was worth it! Plenty of new and awesome stuff in this update.
Gameplay:
- A massive combat overhaul has been released! This revamp comes with it a lot of additions and changes. Although there are far too many things to mention, I'll go through a few: damage types have been introduced to provide an idea of how different weapons or different types of damage may impact something; status effects have been introduced which provide a unique effect based on the type of effect, its tier, and the environment; a minor rework on weapon classes and class factors; a whole rework on how Armor Class works; a rework on general roll combat (such as attacks of opportunity, saving throws, and so on); and finally, 'downed states' such as what happens when hitting 0 HP. We hope this new system should be more natural to players and also provide a fair and engaging way to do roll combat. You can read more about the combat system on the Wiki under 'Mechanics' > 'Combat System'.
- Bug Catching has been added! A new World Activity has been added, bug catching, which involves buying or crafting yourself a bug net, finding a bug site, and trying to catch as many as you can to sell! Some bugs are evasive, some are hostile, and some are just waddlin' about. You can also keep some bugs and display them in craftable habitats. The gold yields are being monitored and tweaked as we test out our new world activities, so expect some changes. As always, please give us any and all feedback. You can
- Added the Lockpicking System! This is a more official system that has been added for lockpicking and breaking locks, following the use of it during some events and other roleplay activities. Now, you can craft lockpicks with 3 iron. These lockpicks can be used to gain a significant advantage in breaking the locks on doors and trapdoors, and also stealthily. This provides an additional way to prepare for certain events, expeditions, voyages, and so on. You can read more about this in the Wiki under 'Mechanics' > 'Locking and Breaking Locks'.
- Added some new pets! Following the monthly pet voting winner, the Cornflower Calf was added. You can now purchase this pet in-game through the /tokenshop for 25 tokens. The other pets added will be used in a variety of upcoming competitions and so on, so keep an eye out for those!
- New liquids added! A bunch of new, coloured liquids that will also be given difference effects can now be utilised for building and events. This should help provide some immersion for, say a blood-soaked room that can now display red liquid rather than imaginative blue water.
- Pet nametags have finally been fixed! There was a persisting problem with a bunch of pets not being able to be renamed. This was due to the lack of a name anchor when the models were made in Blockbench. It took a bit of trial and error, but one little bit of code in the right spot, in the .json file managed to fix it. All pets should now be able to be renamed successfully. If you encounter any issues (including with new pets or anything of the sort) let me know!
- Calendar has been fixed! There was a minor bug where during some months / seasons, the /cal display would have the title show out of the inventory panel. This was due to the excess information being displayed. Some less relevant information was omitted, so now all information should display within the inventory panel. Though I could not test this for every month / season, so if you see this become an issue again, let me know!
- Rolling got a minor fix. I'll be honest, I wrote this down in the developer log weeks ago but I kind of forgot what I fixed with it. There was some issue and it's been sorted now. So yay?
- Bandit gold gain has been adjusted. This is following some balancing across each of the World Activities. At the moment, the bandit gold gain is not optimal. We will be re-analysing all gold gaining methods and adjusting all activities accordingly (based on the equipment required, time consumption, effort / difficulty, cost, etc.) So expect some changes / buffs to bandit gold yield and a bunch of other activities within the coming weeks.
Website / Lore:
- A new concept has been added: Geneal Alchemy. This is some funky subsect of alchemy that allows you to dive deeper into the power of mutagens. You can view this on the Wiki under 'Concepts'!
- Following the implementation of the Lockpicking system, as mentioned above, a Wiki article has been made regarding how locking, lockpicking, and breaking locks works (still a bit of a work in progress, and will be updated soon). You can view this on the Wiki under 'Mechanics'.
- Following the implementation of Bug Catching, a new section has been added in the wiki article World Activities pertaining to Bug Catching. You can view this on the Wiki under 'Mechanics'.
Building:
- Several new event sites have been added. Like always, I won't be revealing exactly what these are, but you will be able to see them in some upcoming event lines! Excited to see some reactions to these.
- 'Duskport' has been added, as apart of the Blackened Shores eventline. Players will be given the opportunity to take this over if they want to.
- Some amenity templates have been made, leading up to the (eventual) release of land claiming.
Other:
- Some of you may have noticed that we transferred to a new host recently. This was to address some issues with subpar support and services with our previous host. In finding our new host, we have managed to not only reduce cost but also increase available resources and support. This is a massive improvement that will likely not affect many, if any, of you - but it makes our backend jobs a lot easier! This was a bit of a tedious job, as we had to go through a few days of ups and downs to sort it all out and get us to a stable state. So, hopefully no more issues pertaining to our host (fingers crossed).
- Several plugins have undergone massive updates, some of which included some core changes. While this may not affect gameplay there may be the occasional oversight that we might have missed in change logs (but hopefully this is not the case). This should improve overall performance and command fluidity. But if you encounter any issues, please let us know straight away!
Known Issues:
- The issue with show item still remains where if you show an item, there is a small period of time (a couple minutes) before you can show a different item. Struggling to fix this one. I have to recode the functionality directly into our existing chat system. So may take a lot longer than expected - but I am working on it!
- The spider pet has some unusual behaviour. This should be fixed by the next developer log.
Coming Soon:
- PvE / mechanical representation for magic users is coming very soon... Super excited to be showing this off. The implementation of it will also allow us to adapt it to other magics and increase our pool of available kits when facing PvE.
- Mining / woodcutting world activities... As we approach releasing land claiming, we want to ensure that amenities are usable. With this, it requires mining and woodcutting nodes to be available.
- Getting Started is getting a bit of TLC... One of our teams are currently working hard on revamping the Getting Started guide to ensure it is consistently up to date, with easy to read information.
- Staff applications... We are currently working on creating a more official way to join the staff team. We hope this should encourage some more helping hands!