This week we were focused on the quality and health of the game, as well as adding the "Solo Darklands" which makes PvP combat in the Darklands limited to 1v1 on select servers. Solo Darklands
We want players to partake and have a fair chance in the Darklands even if they're playing solo. To address this, we are enabling "Solo Darklands" on Server 1. Solo Darklands will have some draw backs to its normal counter part in order to encourage groups to still play together on normal servers. If this is popular we will roll it out to more servers such as a second EU server.
Here are the specific changes in Solo Darklands.
Player combat limited to 1v1
Darklands NPC respawn rate is 2x slower.
Darklands rock refresh rate is 2x slower.
Darklands key drops are 20% less common.
Inspect Dropdown Menu
Inspecting (Default Right Click) now provides a list of all interactable actions under the cursor. This is especially nice when rummaging through large loot piles.
Music
Thanks to your support we are working with a pair of wonderful composers at @OpenSkyStudios on the sound track for Winds of Valen.
This week the main Winds of Valen theme music was finished, which will now play on the main menu. This turned out amazing and we cannot wait for you all to hear it.
Currently, we are working on ambient tracks for different areas throughout the world, and this is being implemented very soon. We are excited to have been able to do this. Thanks again to @OpenSkyStudios for the epic work you have completed.
PvP Targeting
We have made some improvements to how target limiting works in PvP. First of all, targets you are currently engaged with will be indicated with a white circle. You are now awarded a grace period after killing another player in PvP. This will count towards one target 'engagement slot' which can prevent players from attacking you. This effect can stack, however, if you attack someone new, the grace you had, will then be consumed and you will be attackable again.
To prevent players attacking their friends with a basic weapon in order to avoid combat with other players, we have implemented a dynamic engagement system. If you do not deal sufficient DPS to your target you will no longer be considered engaged with them. Polls
We are intending on running two polls this week, the first being 'The Next Skill' and the second being 'The Next Major Game Improvement'. We aim to have these out early next week with full details.
Balance
Un negated hit 'slow' is increased to 15% from 10%.
Removed one of the Cavern Goblin Hunter boss's health-based special attack trigger, and increased time between special attack and next normal attack. Some of the larger scenery will now be automatically hidden when it is in the way of the camera.
Added Cloth/Leather to Darklands chests. This should now allow players to more easily replace the armour they lose in the Darklands.
Pickaxes now scale damage and accuracy 50% based on your mining level.
The harvesting fish and knife station now has more logical level requirements.
Broken sword stats are buffed to be similar to an iron sword.
Improvements
Upgraded engine version to 5.8.2. This should hopefully come with performance, fidelity and networking stability improvements.
Improved network performance of multiple systems.
Improved performance of Player Saving, this was causing server hitches when auto-saving players on the server.
Updated map to correctly show new content in the Darklands.
Health bars now disappear after targets death.
Shop buy amounts and Bank withdraw amounts remembered between play sessions.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an item visuals issue which would leave the item slot invisible until relog/restart.
Items now automatically resync when visually out-of-sync on client.
Fixed server memory issues.
Fixed voting UI not showing vote option's descriptions for the completed votes.
Fixed cavern sending network events to an unnecessary large radius, e.g. to a player at the Burning King boss.