January 30th, 2024

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One of our primary goals in 2024 is to deliver more structured gameplay for those who begin their adventures alone. We hope that by providing more tangible goals with meaningful rewards to solo adventurers they will stick around longer increasing the likelihood of forming a group to tackle a dungeon or complete a quest. To start the year off we are launching three new EV solo loops and our new Bulletin Board System!

Tech

• Fixed an issue with in-game leap years spamming exceptions on December 31st. Did you know that the year 1680 was a leap year?!
• Reduced the speed at which NPCs back up during combat and adjusted navigation target calculations to be more accurate. This should reduce the frequency of large mobs backing up too far while adjusting and then moving forward too quickly getting stuck in a forward-backward loop. More fixes are in testing and should be on QA next month.
• Fixed a bug that allowed players to select targets through walls with mouse clicks.

Environment / Art

• Fixed stuck spots in Forgotten Depths, Grizzled Peaks, Newhaven City, Newhaven Valley, Northreach, Dryfoot, Redshore, Redshore Ridge, Grimstone Canyon, Meadowlands, and Ember Veins.
• Fixed a nav mesh issue in Redshore's fishing village and some mobs spawning under ground.
• Fixed a nav mesh issue in Dryfoot.
• Fixed a nav mesh issue in Forgotten Depths.
• Fixed a nav mesh issue in Highland Hills.
• Fixed some collider issues near Meadowlands' north western thicket.
• Fixed some collider issues in Forgotten Depths.
• Fixed some minor environmental issues in Newhaven Valley.
• Removed a rogue collider in Newhaven Valley.
• Removed a duplicate banner in Grizzled Peaks.
• Added new visuals for some crossbows. More to come.

UI:

• Added a time indicator to the upper right of the character select screen which shows a day or night icon. The tooltip of this icon displays further time information.
• The Map is now closed automatically after teleporting to an Ember Ring from the Monolith.
• Added the LFG icon to /who results if the player is currently looking for group.
• Armor calculation on the equipment UI is now consistent with nameplates.

Design:

• Adjusted respawn volumes in Forgotten Depths II cave rooms to reduce the chances of a group splitting. Once you leave the brick hallways and venture more into the cave-like section your respawn point will be near the Grimstone Entrance.
• Moved the Forgotten Depths II egress point to the Ember Ring at the bottom of the spiral stairs.
• Moved Ember Drift entrance locations for Torchbug Tunnels to be more Central to Northreach
• Added anvils to Redshore Ridge east and west camps.
• Re-itemized stats for Dark Chitin & Carved Leather.
• Mob Adjustments

3^ mobs now award more experience.

2^ mobs deal more damage and have less health.

1^ Mires can now correctly turn Ashen

1^ Spiders can now correctly turn Ashen

Hungry Wolf no longer goes Ashen

Increased Mire health to compensate for lack of armor.

Reduced Ashen Bear ability damage slightly.

Reduced damage over time on low level Deep Bat bleeds.

Prevented Ashen Muckripper ability "Mud Bath" from re-triggering VFX.

Ruin Rats in Northreach will now spawn both day and night.

Increase Fetid Elk/Raccoon spawn rates in Highland Hills

Increased 1^ Snatchscale Forager and Hunter spawn rates in Redshore Ridge

Eastern Ruins 2^ spawn in Redshore replaced with 1^ spawns

Additional cleanup of mobs wandering into solo loops.

• Fixed Rockmender Hammer dropping from higher level mobs/chests.
• Removed unused Ramie leaves from level 50 chests.
• Fixed duplicate resists on Lab Barrier Shield.
• Potion of Unnatural Growth no longer prevents the usage of health potions.
• Fixed issue where lvl 1 Assailing Strike was not enabling Auto-attack
• Assailing strike A2 armor damage increased (more armor damage adjustments coming)
• Sentinel abilities Replenish, Treatment, and Overprovision cooldowns reduced by 25% (20s -> 15s)
• Increased range of Defender A1/A2 First Strike, Perforate, and Crushing blow to be 16m up from 12m
• Marshal adjusted Alchemy Abilities:

Halt A1/A2 range increased

Halt A2 root is changed to a Stun, targets struck when stunned take extra damage

Pressure A1 duration increased

Pressure A2 all offensive stats of the target are reduced instead of just haste

Pursuit A1/A2 range increased

End Around A1 additionally stuns nearby targets

End Around A2 stun is a hard stun

Quick Strike A1/A2 execute type mechanic added (bonus damage multiplier the lower the target's health is)

Parry A1/A2 additionally adds stamina regen

• (more Alchemy refinements to come. keep the feedback flowing!)

Quests / Lore:

• Fixed an exception in a Study In Ember quest.
• Fixed misc. typos.

New Stuff

New Solo Loops

Three new Ember Vein solo loops are coming online. Each comes with new 1^ named and unique loot. These can be found in Torchbug Tunnels, Watcher's Folly, and Flooded Ruins. This brings our total to 6 out of 12 EVs having solo loops - expect more to come in 2024!

Bulletin Boards

Bulletin Boards can be found in each overland zone near high traffic areas and outposts. The residents of these zones have requested help from Drifters to deal with their troubles in the form of Bulletins. These are bite-sized adventures that whet your appetite for larger excursions. Clicking on a sealed envelope will accept a randomized Bulletin which provides a brief note from a local detailing the request, the appropriate level range, and the objective to complete. A single Bulletin may be active for each zone and you will be unable to obtain another until it is completed.

Bulletins are tracked within your log on the "Bulletins" tab. While all Bulletins are designed to be completable by a solo player, objectives can also be completed with group content within the same zone, or nearby Ember Veins. Once completed, the Bulletin can be handed back in at any Bulletin Board within that zone for some experience and the "Warm Welcome" buff (which provides a bonus to health regen) in thanks for their service to Newhaven.

Currently Bulletin Boards only serve simple Adventuring Bulletins in the form of kill requests. In the near future we will be expanding this system by adding exploration, discovery, and activity bulletins; these might include something silly like "go to the top of this mountain and dance" or "go scout this area for baddies". You may have also noticed a number of "Coming Soon..." blurbs in the above screenshots - these are placeholders for Gathering and Crafting bulletins which will help you progress your trade skills.

It is also important to note that these are not dailies; there is no limit to how many you can turn in which allows you to do them at your own pace. Each Bulletin is drawn randomly from a pool and must be completed before you can acquire another within a specific zone (they cannot be dropped). As mentioned above we will be expanding the Bulletin pool in the coming months with a variety of different objective types. The experience rewarded for each turn in is proportional to the Bulletin's level range; in order to maximize the benefit from turning in a Bulletin try to do so while you are within its level range.

Server Memory Leak Fixes

Many of you may remember past efforts to curb a server side memory leak in late 2022. Unfortunately, those efforts led to some nasty server dead locks which resulted in us quickly reverting our fixes. Rather than continue risking the stability of our live servers we opted to double our server's memory which in essence "kicked the can" down the road. This problem never really went away and has merely been managed through our weekly maintenance. However, with more zones coming online and our focus on growing the community this issue needs to be revisited sooner than later.

This month we are implementing server memory leak fixes a bit more carefully. Previously, the code was hard wired and could not be easily enabled or disabled without performing a server build, which can take upwards of 2 hours (during which time the servers may become unstable). Switches for this code have all been moved to the database which allows us to toggle individual fixes without much effort. These have been on QA for the past month and have had no adverse effects thus far. But given that the QA environment is far less active than LIVE there is no real way to know if things will be stable for an extended period of time. The current game plan is to launch with all of these fixes enabled and closely monitor active zones for issues. If one crops up we will start disabling individual fixes until we reach a stable state - which should give us further insight into the problem. We are hopeful that everything will be fine and no one will even notice. But if a zone stops responding please let us know so we can catch it as soon as possible. We appreciate your patience in this!