New Lands Reveal Teaser
Last night during our latest development stream, we revealed which new continent we have been working on, check out the reveal teaser video below before reading the rest of this post!
New Continent Information
As you will have gathered from the teaser, the next continent being worked on is indeed the strange and enigmatic land of Sarducaa!
We will be releasing more information as we progress along the road to releasing this new continent, teasing various aspects of the new land and its mysteries and inhabitants.
There are a few key aspects that will come alongside the eventual release of the new continent, which we find rather exciting and will share with you below.
North American Server Location
As we have said in the past, this new continent will be hosted in North America.
We are currently testing locations in the US West region, as this allows for the most accessibility for regions which are outside the USA, such as SEA and Oceanic regions, while still providing a vastly improved latency for players within North America compared to Myrland.The final location is not set in stone however, and we will continue to run tests and evaluate different options with the goal in mind of facilitating the smoothest gameplay experience on the new continent for the highest number of players throughout the world.
Existing Character Access to Sarducaa
One of the most unique and fleeting opportunities is being there at the beginning of something new, struggling alongside everyone else in a desperate scramble to progress basic skills and gather resources. Although this blooming phase has since past for Myrland, we are excited to facilitate it once again for the release of Sarducaa.
In order to allow for this, we will be restricting access to Sarducaa upon its release so that only new characters may travel there from Haven. We are still evaluating whether or not characters created now on Haven will be able to access Sarducaa upon its release, or if you will be required to make a new character post-release with the goal being to ensure everyone starts on an equal level. If you have any opinions about this, don’t hesitate to let us know!Existing characters on Myrland will not be able to set foot on Sarducaa until the construction of the bridge of Tekton has been finished, which is currently planned to take multiple months.This means everyone beginning on Sarducaa for its release will be starting on equal terms, with no access to accumulated skills, wealth or items such as trinkets.
Additional Character Slot
Naturally this means players with both of their currently available character slots already occupied would not be able to participate in the beginning of Sarducaa without deleting one of them, which we obviously don’t want to unfairly force anyone to do.
As such, we are looking into possibilities for a third character slot, with more details on exactly how that will work to come in the future.
Next Patch Details
Alongside the new continent, we are also working on a few new updates which are planned to be released before Sarducaa, the first of which is planned to contain the following items:
Proximity Voice Chat Upgrade
VoIP is a core aspect of our game, as it facilitates the kind of immersive and personal feeling interactions that really thrive in a sandbox style game.
As such, we want to provide the best VoIP experience we can, and to that end we have committed to upgrading the in-game VoIP system to be even better, by converting player voices to exist inside the 3D space of the world rather than just as separate audio which changes in volume based on distance.After this upgrade, player VoIP should sound more natural and as though it’s taking place within the environment in which you are hearing it, in addition to improved falloff range so you can also hear people talking from further away rather than the sudden and rather close cutoff point we have now.
New Automated Event System
We have been working on adding support and creating the content for a new dynamic event system, which will serve to make AI encounters throughout the world less predictable and more interesting.
These events, at least initially, will come in the form of various types of AI groups that may spawn at and occupy many locations across the map, such as dangerous groups of individuals like deserters from the Tindremic military, profiteers from other continents, crazed lunatics, bandit outfits or even the Greedy Steintroll, equipped with a collection of shiny objects they have amassed. Essentially what we are implementing in this next patch is the foundation of a system that can be easily expanded on in the future to offer new dynamic content. These groups can spawn all over the map, at various POIs or locations in the world where you might run into them.The Greedy Steintroll specifically can spawn inside dungeons as well, so you’ll have to be on the lookout to not miss out on what he might have.These groups of AI will also naturally have quite the appealing loot table, so it will always be a good idea to detour from your travels if you happen upon one of them.Currently we plan to send a server message when one of these events has started, however we will not tell you the exact location of it, simply to convey that “something has happened”. However we are open to feedback about this, as there are not insignificant arguments to be made for alternative approaches here.
Trinket Re-Balance
A longstanding balance concern has been the gap in power available to newer players when compared to veterans who have, through either immense luck or accumulating enough wealth to purchase them, obtained trinkets which offer substantial advantages in offensive and defensive potential.
This was largely due to the rarity and stat scaling of lower tier and more commonly available trinkets being substantially lower and worse than higher tier and rarer ones, which has been unfortunately inverted when compared to the desired and optimal balance for them.
As such, in the next patch we have rebalanced T1 and T2 trinkets (Cuprum & Silver) and their gems (Red Coral & Amethyst) to be able to reach notably higher values compared to before, which effectively means a decent trinket will now be much more accessible to all players, while a substantially rarer trinket will still offer an increase in potential power, albeit a much smaller one.
For example focusing on potential damage gained from Rings, previously T1 and T2 gems could only reach as high as +2% for Red Coral and +5% for Amethyst, whereas the T3 gem (Topaz) and higher were capable of reaching +11% damage. This has been rebalanced to allow for a maximum of +5% on a Red Coral and +9% on an Amethyst, while Topaz and higher remain unchanged at +11%. This rebalance applies not only to damage bonus effects, but all possible trinket and gem effects on T1 and T2 trinkets.
This buff to lower tier trinkets should also ensure that they are not simply deleted as worthless loot anymore, as each one now has the potential to roll very respectable stats, even if doing so still requires some luck due to the low chances on rolling the highest possible stats.
The main benefit from increasing in trinket tier now comes from the addition of more effects being rolled.
Additionally, we want to take this opportunity to clear up a few things about how trinket stats are rolled, and mention a possible renaming of one of the trinket effects to be more clear as to what it actually does.
When a trinket is identified, or rerolled using Flux, it rolls a certain budget of “power” that it can spend on the rolled effects, and this power budget can roll to be larger in size as the tier of trinket and gem increases. Trinket effects and Gem effects also have separate power budgets, which is how you can have a lower tier trinket metal with a higher tier trinket gem (such as a Silver Ruber), and roll a high stat value for the gem effects.
When a stat is then rolled, the trinket rolls how much of this budget of “power” it will spend on the stat, such as Slashing Damage, which determines how high the stat value will be out of its maximum. It can be helpful to think of this as the stats stealing the available power from the trinket metal or gem in order to increase their value.
This happens for each stat rolled.
When you use rings which offer you “Gem Effect Luck %” and “Trinket Effect Luck %”, you are additively increasing this power budget when the trinket is identified or re-rolled using Flux.
This means that it is always more beneficial to roll a trinket while having high values in these stats, as it is essentially increasing the potential power for the trinket to roll higher stats, or multiple stats higher than you would otherwise be able to.
Note “potential power”, not guaranteed power, as each stat can still roll a low value on a trinket, and waste the remaining power budget, however rolling high values while having these effects active will almost always be more beneficial.
As such, we are considering renaming these stats from “Trinket Effect Luck” and “Gem Effect Luck” to “Trinket Effect Potential” and “Gem Effect Potential”, as it represents the higher potential you have for better stats when rolling a trinket, however it must also be noted that these “Effect Potential” stats do not allow you to roll beyond the maximum strength value for any given stat.
We have also replaced all of the not-yet implemented skills which appear on Amulets with new ones that were not previously available on a trinket.
These are the skills we changed and which ones they have been swapped to:
Snooping > Scribing
Pilfering > Anatomy
Lockpicking > Mounted Magery
Animism > Elementalism Spells
Brawling > Poleaxes
Unarmed Techniques > Poleswords
These skills will recalculate to the updated skill once equipped.
We have also adjusted the maximum amount of Stamina which can be rolled on a Ring, as previously Stamina used the same stat range as Health and Mana, which meant it was comparatively a lot lower in value as a stat due to the player Stamina pool being so much higher numerically on average compared to Health and Mana. Now it will be possible to roll a decent amount of Stamina on a Ring such that it doesn’t feel like a waste or a bad roll.
Addressing Griefing Issues
It is no secret that along with the benefits, freedom and virtues of a sandbox style game, often come difficult scenarios to deal with and work around.
One such area is the ability for players to “grief” others in various ways, seemingly without consequence at times. This can manifest in various ways, however we have addressed a few common ones in this coming patch which we believe needed the attention.
Lootbag Opening Priority
In the next patch there will be a “Lootbag priority” mechanic in place whenever a player kills an AI.
This ensures that only the player who actually contributed the most to killing the AI is able to open its Lootbag once it dies. The way it works is that only the player who earned the most Glory from a kill, typically achieved by contributing the most damage toward the AI, will be able to loot the bag for the first 10 seconds after it spawns.This ensures it is no longer possible for someone to run up and “last hit” an AI in order to quickly steal the loot and then run away, especially as lootbag spawning can at times be slightly affected by large differences in latency to the game server, resulting in a less than optimal situation where it can feel like you aren’t even able to loot the things you are killing if someone persistent is nearby.Lootbags which are “Locked” to you will appear tinged purple (this may change as development progresses), and will swap to their normal color and appearance as soon as they are free to be opened by anyone.Guild members are still able to open each other’s lootbags or lootbags of AI killed by other guild members freely without restriction.
Better Murder Count Identification
We have also made some adjustments to how murder counts are identified after a player dies, with the goal being to lessen the ability for players to hand out murder counts to other players that had relatively nothing to do with them actually dying. The intention here is that only the players who actually played a notable role in your death should appear on the murder reporting list.
As many of you in the community will be aware, some common tactics for abusing this would include being hit by another player, even if for zero damage, and then jumping off a cliff or running into aggressive AI in order to get yourself killed and be able to report them for “murder”.These kinds of abuses of the system which subvert how it is intended to function and result in excess and at times superfluous murder reports being handed out are exactly what we are targeting with the following changes:
You must have been hit by another player within 2 minutes of your death to murder count them.
You can’t murder count someone if you die to fall damage.
You can’t murder count someone if you die to non-player-controlled AI.
Pushing AI
Another issue many people will be familiar with, is one that can often happen by accident and without malice. I am referring of course to pets being used to block doorways, entrances or really any smaller space or opening. Outside towns this can often result in seemingly the only remedy being to attack and kill said pet, which would have allowed the owner to report you for murder using one of the previously mentioned abuses, had they not been resolved in this patch.
Still, you should not be required to attack a pet or risk going criminal in order to move through a doorway, and so in this next patch you will now be able to push AI out of the way if someone “parks” their pet in an annoying spot, and it will return to its original position after a few seconds. There is no risk of turning criminal if you push a pet many times at once, as the pet can only be pushed once before returning to its original position, at which point it may be pushed again if necessary.
Counter Armor Increase
Ways to combat the inherent disadvantages of fighting outnumbered in order to give the few better odds against the many are always close to the surface of conversation surrounding game balance, and although we have various avenues of affecting this, one existing mechanic that we have not touched in a long time but is highly relevant to the topic is Counter Armor, the mechanic responsible for the [Counter Reduced] combat message you may be familiar with.
This mechanic works by reducing the damage taken while you are performing a riposte after you have parried. Conceptually what is happening here is that your attack is interrupting or intercepting those of your opponents, such that they lose efficiency and lower their resulting damage.Gameplay-wise, this mechanic exists primarily to allow players to perform attacks after parrying while outnumbered and be able to dish out some damage without fear of taking several full damage hits as they do so. It allows for the outnumbered player to still be aggressive and take the initiative, which is often necessary to performing favorably in such scenarios.And so, we have increased the damage reduction for Counter Armor from 60% to 80%, to better allow for it to perform its duties and offset the advantage afforded to larger groups of players.
We will be announcing the PTR date for this next patch as we get closer to its completion, and we are eager to show you more about Sarducaa in the coming weeks as well!
Note Please keep in mind that as development progresses, any details described above may change or be adjusted where necessary.
See you in Nave,
The Star Vault Team