First Time User Experience
Our goal for this patch was to improve the new player experience from the very moment you start the game in the land of Ambros. To facilitate this, we’ve completely overhauled the start of the game and how you will be introduced to Coreborn. Firstly, you will help rebuild Pipers Whistle. While doing this, you will get introduced to various Jibblings, Hedonists & others, learning more about what they’re doing there. Hopefully, This will familiarize you with the game's core systems while we bring other rebuilding steps later.
- After Character Creation, players will now start in Ambros with some basic equipment.
- Character Creator now shows the starting equipment.
- You will be greeted by an NPC and asked if you want to go through the tutorial.
- This tutorial will teach you the game's basics while briefly introducing the world narrative and some NPCs.
- You will see many visual changes in Pipers Whistle and all over the map.
- The path into Pipers Whistle is clearer when approaching it from the Coreheim gate.
- Certain wheat fields have been destroyed, buildings throughout the world are damaged, and many buildings in Pipers Whistle will need to be rebuilt to shine
- There are now map & world markers to help you find your way to the objectives.
- We have added a quest journal in the menu where you can track and see your quests.
- We added a system that evolves certain buildings depending on your quest progression.
- There’s now UI highlight effect to quest-relevant building pieces, items, and recipes.
- Wooden Axe and Pickaxe are now Schematics that you learn during the Tutorial.
- Vendors can now have different stock depending on quest progression.
- Introduced a brand new conversation system.
- There is a new option in Settings that hides the HUD during a dialog.
- Added more NPC talking animations (Jibbling, Juristograph & Molian).
- We’ve introduced the concept of public crafting stations. You’ll rebuild these as part of rebuilding Pipers Whistle and can use them without building a town first.
- Public crafting stations are, in fact, public. If you leave your items behind, others can pick them up; we’ve added a warning about this for now.
- Town Permits are now used to build a lvl 1 town. You can get these from specific Jibblings (Nib in Pipers Whistle or Tibbs on the map) for free after a quest or craft them manually.
- We’ve made the very first town attack you encounter a bit easier as a way to ease players into it and set expectations.
- The first town now automatically sets the player's spawn point to the town.
- The town gate and jibbling maintenance system cost was reduced, and they now take 2 Lightwood to build.
- The town page in the building menu now shows the town icon.
- We placed a new Juristograph in the Tavern of Pipers Whistle, which allows you to exchange resources for Condensed Crystals at the same rates as the one in Coreheim.
- We removed some of the dressing in Pipers Whistle to clean up the Marketplace.
- We changed Fraudo’s name to Broglio.
- Also, the ‘Wanted: Molian’ Sign got a visual update ;D.
St.Gibbs
We have also included a temporary “St.Gibbs” event! You can find a special NPC near the Tier 2 hunting vendor. He’ll be happy to give you all the details, but we’ll also give you a small sneak peek here.
During this event, you can collect clovers in various locations on Ambros, and you’ll have to find some clues to figure out the exact locations. Once obtained, you can trade these for unique schematics for decorative and other useful items.
Combat
We adjusted the timings and animations of every creature to better suit the new combat system. This is still an ongoing task and represents the first pass on this topic.
We hope you enjoy the adjusted combat timings:
The adjustments contain:
- There have been universal changes to all creature attack telegraphs. They now propagate, have more consistent behavior, size, and timing across creature types, and are better timed with animations.
- Changes to creature attributes across the board: Most early-game creatures now have less Life. Mid- and late-game creatures have increased Life or Attack.
- Changes to creature animation lengths on certain attacks for consistency and alignment to the new player combat.
To gain more control over the character, we have added diagonal dashes and reduced the frames where you can’t dodge out of an attack (this is only blocked in Arial frames now).
Survival / Shelter
We introduce our first attempts to enhance the survival aspect of our game. You will be able to receive new status effects through interiors and also will notice new effects if your character gets wet:
- We introduced a new survival mechanic: the shelter system.
- You obtain a new ‘wet’ build-up effect from rain, snow, and water bodies.
- When sheltered, you will be protected from wet weather.
- While in a player-built shelter, you will be able to get a comfort buff based on the quality of the interior pieces nearby. This will passively regenerate health.
- You will get a well-rested buff in a comfortable area for some time. This buff lasts longer based on comfort levels and will help against the wet effect.
- We adjusted some existing decorations, changing unlock requirements, costs, and looks to accommodate their new functionality.
- The cozy furniture looks new and is now made from dark wood. Some of the lightwood furniture is now made of shrivelwood. The basin got a new look and recipe.
- We added two new building pieces: the clay Griz Hearth and the Metal Hearth.
- We introduced the refueling system for campfires (they can be fueled with twigs).
- If a campfire runs out of fuel, it will be destroyed instantly.
- Shelter information was added to the Town Page in the F1 Menu.
New Features
All the small things!
Next to the big categories, we added a lot of smaller things or worked on different areas of our game to improve your experience:
- Meet Oblivion - You can delete your character by visiting the NPC Oblivion next to the Gate to Coreheim!
- You can now double-click on items with a ‘use’ functionality, such as mystery bags and schematics.
- I added auto-sorting functionality to the crafting menu, and it now prioritizes craftable items and shows them on top.
- Storage Chests will now display the first three slots of the inventory.
- Incense Updates! Geo, Wood, and Natural incense will now give EXP in their skill category.
- Two new nighttime soundtracks for the Forest & Hills biomes were added.
- When you build a JMS station for the first time in a new town, you will start with many resources. Only available resources at the current town level will be shown in the overview.
- The JMS has different lights and SFX now if you get under a specific amount of Resources to warn the player.
- Improvements to the loading of the game.
- Performance improvements are due to the game's loading and unloading elements.
- When you hide the HUD, you will no longer see the small crosshair.
Bug Fixes
We fixed the following bugs to help improve the game experience:
- Made the Interaction area of Flax bigger.
- Fixed some culling issues with building pieces (this should help improve performance).
- Fixed a performance issue that was caused by candles.
- Backend stability improvements.
- Fixed SFX alert on low Stamina to align with the visual marker.
- Fixed a bug that caused players to continue sprinting after death.
- Fixed a bug where the white dot in the middle of the screen vanishes.
- We fixed a bug that visually caused the stone doorframe to change to a granite doorframe when changing the mesh with shift+scroll.
- Changed Darkwood Beams to only use the long variant to avoid stability issues.
- Players can’t dodge anymore with a hammer drawn to prevent multiple issues.
- Fixed an animation issue that was caused by switching to the hammer.
- Fixed an issue with the rotation of the shrivelwood and darkwood sword while stowed.
- Added missing icon and recipe for the sword decoy.
- Added correct pinning icon of the Stone Wall.
- Added correct icon for Simple Wooden bench in pinning and recipe unlock.
- Bandits & Griz only attack Nocturnal Oropalas and they fight back.
- Fixed a bug that caused creatures to use two different slow effects.
- Fixed a bug that caused Corrupted Feydveers to deal damage to everything between them and the town center after spawning sometimes.
- Fixed visual issues with the character's hand placement when moving with the sword drawn.
- Fixed some visual issues where the feet weren’t on the ground on stairs.
- Removed Combat Finisher from the Keybindings.
- Target Lock on Hotkey can now be changed.
- We added Regular Resin to dark wood Trees so you can build dark wood planks more easily.
- Fixed a bug where there were 2 Refined Resin recipes.
- Fixed the Recipe for Tier 3 Woodworking station, instead of 2x shrivelwood timber it now needs shrivelwood timber and lightwood timber.
- Fixed issue that caused workbenches to still count towards the town if moved out of a town.
- Fixed an issue that prevented the player from repairing building pieces that don't belong to any town (planks, campfire).
- Made improvements to how building pieces are checked for overlap. Now you should be able to place building pieces like tables next to each other regardless of rotation.
- Fixed an issue where the general workbench ignored skill requirements for recipes.
- Fixed a bug that caused the level-up town button not to show up sometimes.
- Adjusted the visuals of the trading UI to be more in line with other UI.
- Fixed UI issue with the Town Management window.
- Removed an Item from a mystery pouch that was there on accident.
- When another player is using a station you will get a notification now.
- We added a notification that makes guests aware that they can’t place blueprints.
- Fixed an issue that caused the gathering animation to not be visible to other players.
- A Fix related to when a draw happens in a town attack: if you draw now, you lose 10% crystals and 10 wrath.
- Fixed certain areas in the map where town attack creatures could spawn inside rocks.
- Fixed missing destroy SFX on some of the items.
Localization
We’ve updated the localization again. We appreciate all the help, if you see any issues please let us know.
Huge thanks to CdriX for helping out with the French translation!!
Known Issues
Sometimes you will get an Error when trying to delete a character, if this happens please just restart the game and try again. If the problem persists please create a ticket.
In rare cases, you will see repair bars instead of the required resources when doing the More Workstations optional quest. If this happens to you, please log back; this will fix it.
If the Tool/Weapon wheel doesn’t show the right weapon you are currently equipped with, please switch the tool with your hotkeys 5,6,7,8; this should bring it into sync again.
