Here it is! The first patch of the upcoming Anniversary Update! For more info of the summer roadmap please see the previous announcement, today's changes are listed below:
Pirate Camps - beta version
First iteration of Pirate Camps brings up 8 coastal bases where pirate groups can settle. All the locations are designed inside forest or desert ruins (a new biom) to provide protection against long distance weapons. These regions will be populated with another portion of flora and fauna objects in the next patches. Similar works will be done to mountain slopes that are unreachable right now.
In development:
We also want to use such camps to populate ocean areas and make it worth for players to sail and search for 'lootable' pirates.
Pirate NPCs
Speaking of pirates, there are currently dozen of them and they are potentially able to develop different skills in the future. All of them will be based on behavior trees. Right now we've got melee fighters who draw weapons when player is close enough, chase him if necessary, search the area when player escapes, go back to protect treasure when out of combat or simply take a pistol and shoot on sight.
The islands are divided between areas that are possible to reach by different kind of enemies. Some of them can enter multiple sectors, some of them just one (like crocodiles). All of the mechanics together with plain code and behavior trees are rather complicated but it's already there working and waiting for further development:)
In development:
Apart of coastal and island camps, we will be working on pirate boats patrolling the oceans and engaging into a fight when they find something worth stealing, e.q. player's belongings.
Treasure Chests
Also treasure chests are taken into account when it comes to further development. In the 0.29patch, we divided chests into 3 levels.
The first one are simple wooden crates that can be found mostly in the ruin areas. Loot is unprotected and random.
The second treasure level are chests to be found on wrecked boats on the beach. They usually roll better loot than the first ones and have a chance to drop gold coins and a map that shows a place of the level 2 treasure.
The next level of chests are those in the old ruins, under heavy pirate protection. They drop the highest level gear, as well as gatherable materials like steel and obsidian.
In development:
Another level of chests and treasures. These will be able to find after the storm on rocky coasts, just next to the newly wrecked ships. This kind of 'event' will be announced to all the players and start a potential race for the best loot.
Other fixes and changes:
- New model for destroyed treasure chests including fracture and destroy physics.
- Destroyed treasures drop bags inside the chest now. Loot is random and divided into levels.
- Smoother rotation for boats
- Active shield blocking against bots (both animals and pirates). Player has chance to block certain amount of damage when fighting vs bots, based on shield level
- Fixed building components' damaged models having wrong assigned materials
- Quest notification on HUD informing about currently running quest/tutorial (will be improved in the next patches)
- Fixed item costs not displayed in certain conditions