Patch Notes: January 2025

Patch Notes: January 2025

Source: Embers Adrift Forums - January 28th; what's new?

This month's patch includes a number of QoL updates in the form of separate Alchemy I/II cooldowns, a UI compass, the /follow command, a macro bar, a revamp of crafting, adventuring experience curve adjustments, and more easily identifiable placeholders.

Reminder that the game has TEMPORARILY gone completely free to play for everyone including all subscriber perks. For further details on the reasons why please read our most recent press release.

Tech / NPCs

• Fixed player respawn issues in Toadee's room.
• Target reticles are now rendered on water surfaces.
• Added a "/resetskybox" command. This will disable the skybox for 1s and re-enable it. Try this if you encounter visual issues (mainly macOS).
• Increased movement speed interpolation rates. This should result in a slightly snappier feeling without sacrificing animation transitions.

Environment / Art

• Fixed stuck spots in Dryfoot, Grimstone Canyon, Grizzled Peaks, Highland Hills, and Newhaven Valley.
• Fixed some floating vegetation in Redshore.
• Fixed some Ley Compasses from clipping through the ground in Redshore.
• Adjusted torch light position so that the torch itself more appropriately casts shadows.
• Large 2H weapons now use the locomotion animations (movement) from the Longsword. Idle and attack animations remain as they were.

UI

• Fixed an issue where if you cannot speak in a chat channel it would clear your chat input. When typing quickly this could cause you to send a message to a channel you did not intend.
• Fixed an issue where interacting with some UI elements would cause character movement to stop.
• Fixed a typo in Quick Strike Alchemy description.
• Doubled the number of items visible for loot rolls from 4 to 8.
• Improved role descriptions at character creation.
• Added specialization icons and tooltips to character creation for each role.
• Increased the font size of guild names and titles on overhead nameplates.
• Lightened the gradient on nameplates (both overhead and UI space) to make them a bit easier to read.

Design

• Fixed loot tables for high level frogs dropping invalid flask items.
• Increased respawn rates in Blightroot Grove and Torchbug Tunnels solo loops.
• Increased the Warden's innate +Hit per level.
• Non-alchemy Viperid toxins now have a trigger count limit of 10.
• Adjusted Toadee fight and VFX.
• Adjusted spawn rates on some mobs in Dryfoot (Welcome back Wolfsbane and Tracker).
• Snatchscale Snatcher has returned to Redshore.
• Ley Compasses move a little faster.
• Changed the name of the back slot to "Utility".
• Juggernaut Revenge, increased Alchemy version damage.
• Doubled the loot roll timer on boss drops.
• Placeholders for most named mobs will now show with an * in front of their name for easier identification. One of the issues with named mobs having multiple spawn points is that the positive feedback loop of dungeons runs is not always present. This change aims to add an indicator to placeholders so that groups have a better idea if they are killing the right mobs to trigger named to spawn. Placeholders for mobs that drop legacy gear will remain obfuscated.
• Adventuring XP curve has been adjusted.
  • The overall number of kills required to reach max level has been reduced by 10%.
  • The curve has been adjusted to reduce the kills required for levels 14-44 to varying degrees (some levels will see up to a 30% decrease in kills required).
  • Levels 45-50 will see a slight increase in kills required with level 45 only being about 5% and level 50 about 10%.

Separate Alchemy Cooldowns

Alchemy I and II now have separate cooldowns. This took a bit of refactoring on the back end along with some UI magic to make work. If only a single cooldown is active that will show along the outer edge of the ability as per usual. If both are active however, it will show one cooldown nested within the other like so:

Alchemy I and II cooldowns nested display

When one cooldown expires the other will return to a single cooldown around the edge. More details on the individual timings can be found on the ability's tooltip for both Alchemy I and II.

UI Compass

A rudimentary compass has been added to the UI. It can be unreliable at times due to the varying magnetic fields around Ember elements but should provide a bit of direction. Note that this UI element can be disabled in the interface options, and moved while holding the "Move UI" keybind. We will likely be iterating on the size/position/layout of this in the coming weeks.

UI Compass display

Follow Command

This patch introduces the /follow chat command. This sets your character to follow a member of your group with the following conditions:

• Subscriber only feature
• Only works on group members
• An icon will appear next to the target group member's nameplate while follow is active.
• Cancels:
  • on any movement
  • on execution or consumable use
  • on being stunned or confused
  • if you get too far from your target

Macro Bar

A macro bar has been added to the UI which allows you to send predefined chat messages. Up to five macros can be stored on the bar, which adapts in size based on how many are present. There is also a button to change the orientation of the bar between vertical and horizontal. Any usages of "%ot" and "%dt" in the macro will be replaced with your offensive and defensive target names respectively.

Macro Bar overview with add button and orientation toggle

Right-click menu for editing or deleting a macro

Macro editing dialog

Things to keep in mind:

• Macros are stored on your machine on a per-character basis. In other words: they are not stored in the database, so will not follow you from machine to machine.
• This UI element is disabled by default as to not confuse new players. It can be toggled in the interface options.
• Can be moved by holding the "Move UI" keybind.
• Macros 1-5 can be bound in the keybind options.
• The current replacements are %ot and %dt for offensive and defensive targets respectively. We may expand functionality in the future and are open to suggestions.

Crafting Updates

The long-awaited itemization-v2 update to crafting has been completed. It brings better crafting coverage across all levels and materials, better stacking for consumables, more uses for flux, a new type of flux, ammo improvements, additional positional bonuses, and more consistent access to recipes.

Goals: Along with rebalancing crafting to bring it in-line with the current dropped gear, we wanted to offer mechanisms to work towards higher quality gear with additional benefits. As well as creating more distinct differences between various material types which better align with character stat preferences.

At a Glance: Here's a few examples of what the new crafting outputs look like. Advanced, Imbued and Radiant Imbued:

Examples of Advanced, Imbued, and Radiant Imbued crafted items

List of Crafting changes:

• Bring crafted consumables and gear in line with current itemization.
• All basic crafted gear is now Advanced (Green Items) with their associated material bonuses.
• Reworked Arrows and Bolts for better stacking and improved innate stats with not having an offhand.
  • Arrows increase +ranged damage
  • Bolts increase +healing
• Reworked Crafted Food/Drink
  • Normalized durations for Food/Drink
  • Regular versions last 30 minutes
  • Smoked Meats and Sap Teas (new recipe) last 60 minutes
• Added new "Enhanced" versions of Potion recipes
  • Use flux similar to Imbued gear
• Added recipes to have full coverage of primary material recipes:
  • Silver/Iron Recipes
  • Elm/Oak Recipes
  • Silk/Mandrake/Mangrove/Noble Equipment Recipes
• Corrected base damage balance for crafted weapons.
• Updated crafted Leather Armors to match dropped progression of +Positional values
• Changed how creature-resource recipes are obtained (Mandrake, Mangrove, Noble Elk)
  • Basic Recipes (Gathering Refinement, Food/Drink, and non-Imbued) will be found more readily from the source creatures around the level of the recipes.
  • Advanced Recipes (Imbued Equipment, Enhanced Food/Drink) are rare drops from the same creatures types.
  • Boss drops for these Gathering Refinements have been replaced with the rare Imbued/Enhanced recipes.
• New Recipes added for Crab Meat.
• Updated Throwing Knives
  • Higher level knives add additional threat to the hit.
  • Imbued Knives will add a short snare to the target to assist with pulling.
• Reworked all material bonuses (materials may give bonuses to different stats.).
• Two-handed items now take 2 flux to craft.
• Added new tier of flux called "Radiant Flux". Gathering professions can obtain a new recipe at their recipe merchants. Radiant flux requires 20 normal flux to create, but is capable of outputting Mythical level (Purple) crafted Equipment.

Due to the way our crafting system works this upgrade touches just about all crafted items in some way. A few important things to note:

• This change impacts nearly all current crafted gear. The majority of crafted items are built "at run time" based on some stored data about the raw components used to make that specific item. Since we are altering the raw component attributes the products made with these raw components are also modified.
• Current crafted weapons will have the same base stats (damage dice) as before. However, if these weapons are made again they might be slightly better. This is because weapons are handled slightly differently than other crafted items.
• If there are any items you believe to be totally out of wack please let us know in Discord so we can further evaluate. However, please keep in mind that some items were extremely unbalanced and required reigning in (we simply did not have the resources to scale the rest of the game up to bring them in line, so these items were scaled down). It is recommended that the radiant versions of crafted equipment are used for more apt comparisons to these items.