June 25th, 2024

Patch Notes: June 2024

Source: Official Forum Thread - June 25th, What's New

This month's patch adds a new type of Monolith to the City, VFX/SFX updates for abilities, a revamp to the health regen stat, a revamp of dense resource nodes, and expanded storage options. There are also a number of performance tweaks and loading routine updates.

Tech / NPCs

• Upgraded Unity engine from version 2021 to 2022.
• Enabled Instance Indirect vegetation rendering on macOS builds (performance improvement).
• Fixed an issue with NPC pathing around some roads.
• Fixed an issue causing nameplates to fade in and out when in first person mode.
• Fixed a navigation issue in Mammoth's cave.
• Fixed screenshot & hide-UI binding from triggering when text input was active.
• Fixed a bug that allowed non-subscribers to split stacks from subscriber-only slots.
• Fixed an issue where when trying to execute ability while unconscious it would say "Invalid Role" when it should have said "Not Awake".
• Clamped vegetation rendering distance to view distance (minor performance improvement with reduced view distance).
• Skull boss respawn timers are now saved to the database and will no longer be impacted by server restarts and/or maintenance.

Environment / Art

• Fixed a number of cart objects not having proper collision.
• Fixed stuck spots in Grizzled Peaks.
• Reduced bow shooting volume.
• Improved texture resolution and appearance of many rugs.

UI

• Added a new column to both the adventuring and gathering bag. This results in +5 bag slots, and +4 gathering bag slots.
• Added a new subscriber-only column to personal stashes and shared banks. This results in a potential of +8 bank slots for subscribers when all rows are purchased.
• Added "Reset Position" context menu option for target-of-target nameplate.
• Added a better description of where money was added when selling to a merchant (bag or personal stash).
• Added "Pause Adventuring Experience Gain" toggle to your skills window. When activated, you will no longer gain adventuring experience from NPC kills or task completions. When active, a pause icon will be shown on the XP bar under your action bar if your adventuring role is being tracked.
• Added an option to disable world space player context menus while weapons are drawn.
• Added Newhaven City label to the world map.
• World map labels for Newhaven Valley and Newhaven City now show their full name.
• Updated combat tutorial to include the light blue con.

Design

• Reduced the cooldown for deploy portable crafting stations to 30m (down from 60m).
• Adjusted spawns near Northreach hallow.
• Relocated stalker mobs near Monoliths in Meadowlands, Highland Hills, and Grizzled Peaks.
• Increased drop rate of sword from Snatchscale Brutes.
• Increased presence of Ridgebacks along the Meadowlands' River.
• Bootlegger's Brew has a chance to drop off of all Smugglers.
• Converted some Quillback camps in Meadowlands to be solo or small group friendly (1^ and 2^ camps).

Quests / Dialogue / Tasks

• Reduced the number of Spider Tasks from bulletin boards.
• Updated Ranger Alden dialogue.
• Updated Wishing for a Well objective text.
• New Quests added:
  • A Veins Odyssey
  • Infiltrate the Fortress
  • The Enemy of my Enemy
  • Of Monsters and Mayhem

New Stuff

Newhaven City's Ley Pylon

Many of you have requested a Monolith be placed in the city for quite some time. We have always been open to the idea but wanted a city Monolith to be a bit different from the other more naturally occurring ones throughout the world. Otherwise, what is to stop creatures and exiles from just invading?!

Enter the Ley Pylon. Thanks to their recent work on the Taproot, The Academy believes they have found a way of tapping into the Monolith network. Activating the Ley Pylon, however, will take a coordinated effort from everyone on the server. Rumor has it that once activated, travel through the network becomes more efficient for a period of time.

With the new low overhead synchronization tech added last month, we were able to implement a system that requires the server to periodically work together in a sort of mini-event. Players of all levels can participate in the activation of the Ley Pylon. When active, it will provide a benefit for all Monolith travel for a few real-life days. For further details, please speak with Philosopher Gelwyn Bolswithle in the city.

Note that the activation data of the Ley Pylon is stored in the database. This means that the active status will persist through server restarts and/or maintenance. To indicate if the Ley Pylon is active, the map icon (upper right) will have an Ember colored highlight active.

Ley Pylon

Ley Pylon

Ley Pylon

Ley Pylon

Ley Pylon

Damage Target Offsets for VFX

We have added a positional offset for VFX application. Previously, VFX would trigger "inside" of an NPC, resulting in only a small bit of the VFX visible; this was obviously worse on larger creatures due to their size. Each creature now has a custom offset which moves the VFX towards the source, ensuring that most of the VFX is no longer shown inside of the NPC when triggered. In addition, many of the larger creatures now have additional VFX damage targets to improve VFX placement (i.e., feet, tails, etc.).

Non-Alchemy Ability Visuals

Added Visuals and Sound Effects for all Non-Alchemy abilities. These effects are more minimal in comparison to the Alchemy effects, but help improve overall game feel and skill identity.

Health Regen Revamp

To make +Regen more impactful, we have revamped when and how it is applied. +Regen now allows you to regenerate health at all times, including combat. While the amount you can regen in combat is not huge, it is certainly an improvement over previous configurations. The real benefits of health regen will be felt outside of combat where it will give you a leg up on your "fully rested bonus"; this is the boosted regen rate that gets larger the longer you spend outside of combat. +Regen essentially accelerates the internal clock that keeps track of how long you have been out of combat. In other words: +regen will allow you to gain a larger out-of-combat regen rate faster. In our internal testing, it has reduced downtime significantly for large health pools.

Gathering Updates

We have smoothed out the Gathering profession progression with changes to Dense nodes. Dense nodes have been repurposed to add additional tiers of progression. Experience gained from gathering is determined by the difference between your level and the required level of the node. This meant that certain levels (lvl 19 skinning lvl 10 required corpses, for example) were slower than desired to progress. This change adds a step between here so that at 19, killing mobs 15-19 would have a lvl 15 skinning required corpse to skin. These "dense" versions all have increased yields over the earlier tier versions, but still provide the same items.

Dense Resource Node changes:

• Dense nodes have been given updated visuals to make them more distinct from their non-dense counterparts.
• Dense nodes have had their required level increased by 5.
• Dense nodes will now spawn in locations with similarly leveled mobs.
• Dense nodes provide additional resources.
• Similar to the nodes, skinning requirements now increment every 5 levels with additional resources awarded for the higher required skill level.

Scene Loading Improvements

Scene loading routine has been overhauled to reduce the likelihood of the client locking up. Previously, we were doing a lot of work in a single frame; this included loading in your character, loading in remote characters, and initializing all of the UI elements required to run the game. Normally, this is not an issue since the client is sitting at a loading screen. But as we continued to add new UI elements and other things, this process has gotten longer and longer. Recently, this has started causing the application to become unresponsive on some machines.

To mitigate this issue, we have spread the above work out over multiple frames, which basically allows the client to breathe in between intensive initialization operations. This is not guaranteed to resolve the issue, but we are hopeful this will reduce the frequency of occurrences. If it continues to happen, please send us your logs as we have also improved the logging around the loading routine so that we can make further changes if it becomes necessary.