Hello Mercians, Today we have a update with some fixes and polish.

Most notably a fix for a server crash that was occurring when events were being cleared and a rework to how shields are used. We found having shields equipping through the quickslots was causing issues and lacked fluidity, so we adjusted the system to instead work like how arrows and armour do. You now have one shield slot (in your inventory top right). Whenever you equip a single handed weapon your shield will automatically equip with it.


Here are the patch notes in full:

• Shields now have an inventory slot (like helmets and other armour) instead of being equipped through the quickslot bar

• Updated drop animation/system, now does left/right hand if you have a weapon out
  
• Updated pickup animations/system, now does left/right hand if you have a weapon out
  
• Updated the player open door animations, now does left/right hand if you have a weapon out
  
• Longsword animation base poses have been switched over to the One handed anim base pose for now
  
• Updated drink, eat and heal animation/system, now does left/right hand if you have a weapon out
  
• Builder placement actor arrow fades out as building gets to 100%
  
• Right clicking on the inventory item in shops you now get an option to sell all stack as well as selling singularly
  
• Foraging animation now uses the pickup low animation
  
• Added a popup to character create screen to explain that you can't customise the beggars appearance
  
• Added highlight to doors to help show they are able to be interacted with
  
• Updated resources that require a tool interaction timers so that they line up with the animation hits better

• Fix for server crash caused by events clearing
  
• Fix added for launching custom servers through our launcher
  
• Fixed bug where the HUD ability icons wouldn't update when you were using a weapon
  
• Fixes for shields and weapon equipping
  
• Fix added to make sure you get correct XP if crafting multiple items at once
  
• Fix added to stop lag/jittering if you login encumbered
  
• Fix to stop siege ammo being used as ammo for the bow
  
• Fix for relic multiple spawning in events
  
• Fixes to house collision
  
• Fixed tools context sensitivity bug. You will now do an attack animation unless looking at the correct resource in which case it will play a gather resources animation
  
• Fixed some tool gather resources animations that were not playing correctly
  
• Fixed missing collision/physics assets on spades, fishing rods, sickles and animal feed
  
• Fixed a bug causing some doors to not play sounds when open/closing

• Optimised building placement actor
  
• Optimised networking for doors

As always, thanks for all of your bug reports and thanks for playing!

// The SIG Team

WARNING: A WIPE WAS REQUIRED FOR THIS UPDATE THERE MAY BE LOSS TO YOUR CHARACTER PROGRESSION AND BUILT STRUCTURES

Good day everyone and welcome to another massive update to The Black Death. This update brings huge quality of life improvements to all areas of the game, including much needed fixes to disappearing walls and also the return of fan favorites, the Beggar and the Knight. These new professions come alongside an improved profession system which include exclusive passives, a stunning new character selection screen and profession unlocking/progression much like the old days of The Black Death.

Here are the patch notes in full:

New:

• The Beggar profession - Start as a down on your luck poor person with restrictive but unique player visuals. Beg for survival and learn skills to unlock the profession of your choice
  
• The Knight profession - Unlocked by gaining level 5 in all skills. Knights have a passive ability that provides you with bounty payments when you kill infected A.I, the bigger the better
  
• Profession passives - Gather double resources as a Peasant, sell items through your own shop as an Artisan, be rewarded with double loot from animals as a Hunter, craft double food items as a Cook, repair weapons as a
• Blacksmith, befriend bandits but have guards as an enemy as an Outlaw and build faster as a Mason
  
• Profession unlocking - Each profession requires a certain skill level in order to be played, such as level 5 in farming to unlock the Peasant
  
• Events - Use your map and compass to locate procedural events around the map and take part in fights with unique deadly NPCs, loot valuable items and claim relics before other players do. The current active event appears in the top left corner of your HUD
  
• Animal husbandry - Owning animals makes a return with a new more intuitive system. Buy animals from a farmer shop and place them on your land, use animal feed on them to gain items such as milk and eggs
  
• Localisation - Partially complete, an early version of French and Russian translations (if you spot mistakes, let us know!)
  
• New starting animation on spawning in to the world
  
• Partial controller support - Most of the game is now working with a gamepad, some menus such as guild and settings, are still being worked on
  Coal resource

Choose your newly unlocked professions in the new character creation screen

Updated:

• New Game Launcher - Improved visuals and functionality, including a news feed, patch notes display and server settings
  
• Updated main menu cinematics
  
• Overall style/mood of menus and UI have been improved and are more consistent
  
• Profession/character creation screen - Now displays professions with a unique scene, animation and uniform. The character creation process has also been adjusted
  
• Only doctors can perform dissections and only beggars can beg for gold
  
• Tutorial Quest - The old quest has been removed and replaced with an extendable tooltip quest on the top right of your HUD. This is more helpful for learning core gameplay without being intrusive and should help new players greatly. Currently can take up to 3 hours to complete and will be expanded further in the coming months
  
• Atmosphere - further improvements have been made to the graphics of the game to improve mood and provide a unique experience
  
• Resources now have improved effects and provide more gameplay feedback
  New enemy types
  
• The map screen has more information on it. Your own location, points of interest as well as event locations can now be seen. You can now also show/hide elements as well as being able to zoom in and out for a better view
  
• Building system - now provides more freedom with better control for snaps and rotations. The building effect has also been improved. A new camera position is now active when building to make it easier to see placement of structures
  
• Hitting wooden structures should now provide accurate feedback
  
• Combat - Hit registering has improved including a subtle short slow motion effect when a hit has been successful to provide more gameplay feedback
  
• Shops - Far more items available from a larger range of shops
  
• Skills have been renamed to prevent confusion with professions. Such as
• Medical skill instead of Doctor, Survival skill instead of Hunter and Cooking skill instead of Cook
  
• Your screen now desaturates more the lower your health gets
  
• New craftable quality types for stick helm, stick greaves, stick chest armour, stick gauntlets and cooked meat. Example is burnt meat and sturdy stick helm. These have varied durability amounts
  
• A.I. Spawn balancing, rats and other infected A.I. shouldn't spawn close to player spawns
  
• More echo volumes have been placed around the world, for example can be heard when you are in churches
  
• Different rain sounds will be different when you are under cover on out in the open
  
• Infected A.I. now have a red X icon above their heads
  
• Shop A.I. now have trading icons above their heads
  
• Heavy Gambeson armour can now be crafted through the banditry skill
  
• Fog will now move around the world
  
• World - Large amount of new raidable areas have been introduced. Also new larger stable ground plots
  
• Updated version number
  
• Barricades now have destroying effects
  
• Loading screen art has been updated and improved
  
• Adjusted the way animations play (emotes, sickness, weapon holding) so they can only play on specific parts of the body helping to keep things more fluid
  
• Adjusted location of crafting progress tab within the inventory screen to make it easier to read
  
• Removed UI cooldowns for attacks
  
• Blocking - You can now block with your fists, however only prevents a small amount of damage, not effective against weapons. Blocking NPCs causes a full body reaction. Blocking is now a toggle and can be held rather than a short parry
  
• Relics - Multiple relics can now be acquired
  
• Punching now spawns trail effects
  
• Enemy NPCs now have accurate names for clarity e.g. Club Bandit
  
• Weight amount in hud and in inventory is now displayed in decimals to give a more accurate reading
  
• You can now move items in and out of storage even if it puts you over weight
  
• Player spawn/start locations are now scattered along beaches and no longer concentrated in Freeman’s port
  
• Claim zone now controls more area above and below to help with elevated placement
  
• Interaction outline - objects you can interact with are now displayed with an outline, this should help the player see content easier such as a stick resource in a forest
  
• You can now attack with tools
  
• Camera animation upon death
  
• Ranged weapons used by the player can now aim your throw more effectively

Combat has been improved again, you can now block with your hands

Balancing:

• Decay system - the decay system is now half the damage and ticks every
• 3 days rather than every 3 hours, repair less often for less cost
  
• Claim zone size has increased by 200%
  
• Durability on all tools has been increased
  
• Durability on all iron and silver weapons has been increased
  
• A.I. gold drop amount has increased
  
• Crate spawn rate for items has increased
  
• Boars now have increased chance of dropping bones
  
• Wood Axe recipe has been re-balanced
  
• Lower tier enemies such as bandit beggars have had been re-balanced to be less difficult
  
• Thread and String are available sooner through the artisans profession instead
  
• Stone arrows are now lighter weight
  
• Mason profession now has an additional starting bonus of 1 for the merchantry attribute
  
• German Battle Axe has now the correct damage amount
  
• Chamomile resource now provides more items per node
  
• All types of bandages including the cotton swab have had their recipe requirements re-balanced
  
• All Ingots now require coal to craft

Take part in procedural events that can spawn around the world

Fixes:

• Built structures should no longer disappear
  
• Mesh skinning improved to prevent clipping on clothing and bodies
  
• Items in player storage should no longer duplicate when removed after a server restart
  
• The player being infected should now spread to another player when they cough, sneeze or throw up near them
  
• Player storage that has been destroyed should no longer respawn after a server restart
  
• Map locations and points of interest should be more accurate
  
• A.I. should no longer spam ranged weapons and throwing rocks at players behind cover/walls. They should either retreat or find a better position.
  
• Player Head LODS have been fixed which should prevent harsh LODs at a short distance for the entire body.
  
• A.I. now ragdoll more realistically rather than drop in an idle pose.
  
• Blunt weapons/fists should no longer cause gibs and beheadings
  
• Bandit arrows should no longer fall to the ground immediately after being fired
  
• Fix to stop crosshair info staying up when looking at the ground after having looked at an object
  
• Removed old stamina out of breath audio which could play when you were attacking sometimes
  
• Fixed a bug with wet clothing which would make it flicker to full wetness for a second
  
• Destroying a standard table now has a destroying effect
  
• Animals now drop animal fat again
  
• Secret “Bookcase Door” now shows a name again when you are looking at it
  
• One handed swords should no longer have a two handed animation set
  
• Culling - various objects around the world should no longer cull at short distances
  
• Distance colours/textures for the landscape should no longer be bright
  
• Misc spelling mistakes fixed in the UI

Optimisations:

• Optimised and deleted UI textures

Known issues

• Destroying/Killing farm animals that are placed by the player will drop debris loot

Thanks everyone for playing and we hope you enjoy this update as much as we have!

See you in Mercia

The S.I.G. Team

Greetings plagued ones and welcome to Dev Blog #62!

We apologise for the long break between Dev Blogs, we realise that it has been almost 2 months! We have been super busy and now it’s time to take a look into what we have been working on in this issue.

This Dev Blog features a lot of media in the form of galleries and video playlists to show off what we have been working on for The Black Death. Be sure to check out our comparison sliders too, these allow us to show off our new visual changes in a nice format alongside our information.

In this issue, we dive into our Dev Updates, our shiny new main menu cinematics, character creation overhaul, game polish, new world events system and loads more.

Dev Updates

For our usual segment on Dev Updates we will be focusing on our Localisation progress, changes to the decay rate system and our controller support progress.

Localisation Progress
If you have been playing on our Beta branch recently, you may have noticed the addition of the option to switch Languages, amongst other features too, more on these later! We have been working in our Engine to get Localisations working in The Black Death. This has taken some time due to the sheer workload involved. We have implemented new fonts into our Engine for specific language character sets, as well as translating text and feeding this back into our Engine.



We are currently working on getting French and Russian into The Black Death. Some of you may have seen that German was also in a previous Beta build. Sadly we have had to take out our German localisations for now, although it may be added back in at a later date.

Those of you wanting to try these out can switch to a preferred Language in our Beta Builds. You can change languages by selecting the language Flag in the bottom left hand corner of the initial Main Menu when booting up the game, with the Beta client.

If you happen to spot a translation that you think is incorrect, submitting a report using our Google Bug Form is the best way of letting us know.

When these make there way into a Live build we will be announcing there arrival in a formal post on our Steam News feed as well as on our social pages and of course here on our website.

Changes To the Decay System

We have been gathering your feedback and have been reading your forum discussions too. We have been devising a way of tweaking the current decay rate of player placed structures and buildings in the world.

Decay is now on 3 day intervals instead of 3 hours to prevent such regular repair being needed. damage has been increased to 225 from 18 however now the interval has increased greatly is means your structures will last around 200% longer. Less repairs, Longer Life.

An example of this is the wattle wall which use to last 6 to 7 days now lasts between 13 to 14 days and the kingdom wall can last up to 60 days instead of 30 and will only require 20 repairs throughout that period rather than 200 (if you want to keep it at 100% health of course).

Controller Support



To go with our current work on our Localisations for French and Russian, we have also been working on adding our controller support back into The Black Death. We are currently testing out our mapping setup and input for use with a Xbox 360 Controller for Windows PCs, this configuration should also work with the new Xbox One Controllers for Windows PCs as well as they share the same layout. Currently in our Beta builds the controller settings that are currently in are partial. Some of the menus are not quite functioning as they are still being worked on.

New Main Menu & New Cinematics

Main Menu Changes

We are proud to introduce our new main menu for The Black Death! As we progress forwards in shaping The Black Death, this is a change that we wanted to make some time ago to unify the overall themes and tones of The Black Death, across all elements of the game. Notice the addition of the language flag in the left corner.



These changes are also reflected in the new in game menu. All of the features, settings and options have been retained as our UI has been given a fresh coat of paint. Technical information is now in a more compact form in the bottom left hand corner too, when in game.



Main Menu Cinematics Reel

When booting up The Black Death you will now be greeted with cinematics that play in the background of the menu! Here are shots from the Plague Doctor and Hunter Professions. To view the full gallery jump to this Dev Blog over on our website:

Dev Blog #62





Below is a video playlist link to this Dev Blog over on our website of all our new cinematics on our Main Menu. Each one represents key elements of The Black Death and a taster for gameplay and the setting of Mercia.

http://www.small-impact.com/BlackDeath/dev-blog-62-dev-updates-game-polish-atmospheric-overhaul-world-events-system-teaser-more/

Even our loading screens have been given a rework with our new golden title branding. Tooltips are now displayed in the centre for visibility and concept art for The Black Death is now used as opposed to in game screenshots.


One of our new Beta loading screens...


One of our current V0.29 Live loading screens...

New Profession Character Creation Menu

Our Character Creation menu has been given a new coat of paint and has been reworked with a new style. Each Profession is now shown off in their full glory. Selecting a Profession will show your character in that Profession’s clothing or armour, giving you a feel for what they are all about.

http://www.small-impact.com/BlackDeath/dev-blog-62-dev-updates-game-polish-atmospheric-overhaul-world-events-system-teaser-more/





Down at the bottom of the screen just above the Profession description you will see a set of arrows. Clicking on these will spin the camera around your character, giving you a full view of their attire. As the camera pans around you will be able to see the details in each environment that make up the themes and characteristics of each Profession in their natural habitat.

To check out our video playlist of all of these Profession turntables, jump over to this Dev Blog over on our website to watch them all and see all of the new environment scenes for each Profession. http://www.small-impact.com/BlackDeath/dev-blog-62-dev-updates-game-polish-atmospheric-overhaul-world-events-system-teaser-more/

Polish Overhaul

Highlights

We have been focussing on a lot of areas of The Black Death recently. One of these has been polishing up existing systems and elements of the game. We wanted to give clearer but subtle hints for interactable elements, such as NPCs, resources and lootable containers. When approaching these elements in game they will be outlined with a white glowing effect to help guide players around the world of Mercia.

Quest System Revamp

The tutorial that was featured upon creating your first character has been removed and replaced with a more intuitive system. This new system was created to help guide new players around the world and help introduce them to the various gameplay elements found in The Black Death. The UI for the Quests tracker below is a placeholder and will be changed later.



Each quest is broken up into 3 tasks. These can vary from gathering resources to craft an end product which then helps the player, or can guide the player into engaging in hand to hand combat with a infected Beggar and even housing tasks too!

There are around 60 new quests that have all been hand written as part of our new system!

New Church Pillage Areas

The Monk fanatics have been busy, Church areas have been popping up all around Mercia. These feature breakable barricaded doors, loot for the taking, and of course infected enemies!

An extra addition that comes with these new Church areas is an “echo” audio effect when you are inside these new areas. Swinging your sword or throwing punches around is amplified in the form of a new echo effect when in these plagued halls. Even the calls from enemy Bandits and Monks that you may find camping within these Churches are also echoed!

Atmospheric Effects & Mood Overhaul

You may have noticed with our most recent update V0.29 Loyalty that we have started to create a more gloomy and deathly atmospheric environment, which we feel is more suited to the Plague and the themes of The Black Death. We are continuing with this over on our Beta, factoring in many different elements to tie everything together to create intense visuals for the dreary and deathly setting of the Plague.

We wanted to create an atmosphere of death, using heavy fog, rain effects, more gravestones, a darker day and night cycle, strong moonlight, low moody lighting, more dead vegetation and the addition of depth of field. With all of these elements complimenting each other together, we feel so far that we have achieved this with the changes we have made to our Beta build so far.

To show our new changes, here is a shot of Freeman’s Port from our new Beta (top) compared with a shot from our current Live build (bottom) of The Black Death. These screenshots instantly show the differences explained above.

We have slider tools for the below images in our full Dev Blog over on our website. If you would like to see our slider tools, jump over there at the link here http://www.small-impact.com/BlackDeath/dev-blog-62-dev-updates-game-polish-atmospheric-overhaul-world-events-system-teaser-more/

The Beta images featured below have an additional element to them. You may notice that there is an almost “haze” to these images. This is a part of our new World Events System. We go into more details of this later in this Dev Blog!

Here are some comparisons from a shot of Freeman's Port.


Environment changes on our Beta...


The environment on out current V0.29 Live build...

Here is another set of comparison shots, this time from the new low lighting effect changes.


Lighting changes on our Beta...


The lighting on our current V0.29 Live build...

Following on from our aforementioned information regarding our new changes to The Black Death’s mood and atmosphere, here are some more screenshots taken from our Beta that highlight these changes to our environments and scenery across Mercia.

World Events System Teaser

As mentioned earlier, we are excited to unveil our new World Events System! We will be showing you all a teaser of this system, our progress so far and how it will work across the world of Mercia. This system is still being worked on and implemented with each Beta build that goes out.



The screenshot above shows an encounter during one of our new World Events. As we work on shaping this system we look forward to you all taking part in these events around the world and working together to fight and cleanse the Plague.

The World Map will play a very important part in our new World Events system. Just to note, the preview featured below is not the final version! We will be tweaking the map alongside our world event system as progress continues.



To start with, you may notice that there are new icons strewn across the Map. These icons are represented in the form of a legend/key on the far right. You will be able to see which cities and towns across the map feature different types of merchants and world utilities for you to use. There is also a small icon shown as a character icon, this shows your characters location in the world!

The element on the World Map that your eyes have probably focused on is the large black smog like element, this circle of smog denotes a World Event area. The red crosses on the world map show areas that need to be cleansed of the Plague. The smog like area on the map will grow over time if the area is not cleansed and will spread further across the map.



These two screenshots above show some of the enemies that you will encounter during these world events. Notice how some of the enemies have red crosses above their heads, including the rat in the second image! These enemies are marked for the plague and are infected. Being in a close proximity to these fellows will be sure to give you the Plague and you will become infected, if there are multiple victims close to you it will intensify.



Another major feature of these world events are Plague Carts and infected corpses, we will be showing these off in full in a future Dev Blog. Plague Carts will be scattered all over the affected event area. These carts are highly dangerous, they have bodies stacked of plague victims in them and emit a black smog like substance. Getting close to these carts will infect your character, on top of enemies lurking around the area. Fire is a key tool here in cleansing these areas, throwing a torch at these Plague Carts will burn them and help to cleanse the area within the event.

That’s all for now, thanks for reading and we will see you next time!

// The SIG Team
——————————————

To keep in the loop, follow The Black Death on our social and news sites!

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The Black Death on Green Man Gaming

Hello Mercians,

we have a hotfix for our newest update V0.29 Loyalty!

Here are the fixes and updates for the Hotfix.

• Destroying built objects no longer crashes the server
  
• Tool meshes are now correct on the players back
  
• Mining Camp and Lumber Yard Peasants should no longer duplicate
  
• Rain should no longer be invisible in certain areas around the world
  
• All Tabard variants are now craftable through the Artisan Profession
  
• New Saving system to help prevent item duplications
  
• Mining Peasants no longer use Wood effect audio

Please note, you may need to Quit Steam and restart in order for the new Hotfix to start downloading. You can also set The Black Death to download updates before other titles in your Steam games library. Right click on The Black Death and navigate to the "Updates" tab, then click on the drop-down menu for "Automatic Updates" and select "High Priority".

As always, thank you for all of your Bug Reports, emails Steam forum posts and new screenshots on our Steam community hub!

Thanks for playing, and we will see you in Mercia!

// The SIG Team

Hello Mercians, Today we have a new update focusing on optimising and addressing issues with lengthy connection times and also some new content to enjoy such as guild colour player clothing, lumber mills and throwable torches. Here are the patch notes in full:

WARNING! THIS UPDATE HAS A NEW SYSTEM FOR BUILDING SO UNFORTUNATELY YOUR BUILT STRUCTURES WILL BE WIPED HOWEVER PLAYER SAVES ARE UNAFFECTED

New:

• Increased server stability and optimisations
  
• Reduced loading times for entering server
  
• Atmosphere enhancements:
  
• Day and Night Mood
  
• Fog Effects
  
• Rain ambience
  
• Certain military clothing items will change colour depending on your guild colours
  
• Weapons in your quickslots show up on your body
  
• New industry buildings added: Lumber mill, store house and mining camp
  
• Player built objects now have decay applied to them over time
  
• Ability to set servers as PVE
  
• New rat animations
  
• New movement animation for tools and torches
  
• New attack weapon trail VFX on single handed weapons
  
• You can now throw torches which create fire areas that cause damage

Not only have connection issues and loading times been addressed but the building feature has been greatly optimised allowing for much large cities without affecting performance

Updated:

• Plague masks now prevent infection if worn
  
• When you hit a profession level with no more recipes to unlock, it will say “MAX”
  
• Main menu has been smoothed out and online/Lan games are now more simple to join
  
• Player built lights (e.g. candles and braziers) lights are now always on
  
• Updated UI across the board with tweaks to help increase flow/smoothness (e.g. recipe size has been increased, so easier to read)
  
• Updated and smoothed out some blends on player movement
  
• English warhammer and long sword are now craftable
  
• Tweaks to aim offsets to help with aiming weapons and punching
  
• Increased the size of the debris pickup
  
• Adjusted the context wheel so it doesn't accidently popup as much (when no context)
  
• Updated hangable housing objects backend so they are easier to place
  
• Updated version number
  
• Updated collision across a range of assets to make object placement more accurate
  
• Updated and polished numerous areas across the land of Mercia

Hire peasants and build them a lumber mill or a mining camp to provide yourself much needed building materials

Fixed:

• Fixed crow material not correctly loading
  
• Fixes added to crafting at utility flow/UI
  
• Fixed drop object sound having no attenuation
  
• Fixed bug in combat mode where the character would slowly rotate in the opposite direction from the direction you were running if running at 45 deg angles
  
• Fixed start jump effort sound not playing
  
• Fixed bug that caused a double landing sound to play after some jumps
  
• Fixed current ‘screen resolution’ filling in incorrectly in the settings menu
  
• Fixed bug causing old stamina bar system UI to pop up when you are blocking
  
• Fixed bug where equipping a spade caused a fullbody animation with no movement on your legs
  
• Fixes added to ai to stop them ignoring you when you hit them from distance
  
• Fixed bug where crafting item amounts would not update when you dropped something
  
• Fixed a bug where the stone wall corner would build a stone wall
  
• Fix added to stop tooltip/options menu staying up after you press craft
  
• Fix to wooden spikes missing name when you look at it on hud
  
• Fixed a bug where friendly ai heavy hit reaction directions were the wrong way round
  
• Fixed a bug where the settings menu wouldn’t close when you are in-game
  
• Fixed the wrong icon for the storehouse item
  
• Fixed LODs for pickaxe, bone club and stick club
  
• Fixed small bread roll icon so it is no longer mouldy
  
• Fixed stone altar collision so relic will now spawn
  
• Fixed for bandits so now use the appropriate idle rather than a sword and shield one
  
• Fixed a landscape texture bug

Build yourself a large external store house for mass storage!

Balancing:

• Trophies and tapestries now stack
  
• Reduced the weight of clay
  
• All tapestries now require a loom to craft
  
• Throne, bookshelf and wooden chair now require wooden planks and nails
  
• Player built wells will now spawn water up to 60% faster
  
• Rebalanced health of buildings, walls and doors
  
• Seeds are around 75% lighter and have less gold value
  
• Balanced the cost of NPC contracts
  
• Flour now requires two wheat
  
• Ai have decreased amount of delays to prevent them so easily being spammed/beaten or caught in reaction anim loops
  
• Balanced weapon recipe costs
  
• Increased durability on all pickaxes and wood axes

Optimised:

• Optimised player buildable lights (candles, braziers)
  
• Fixed some errors that were slowing down the cooking process

That's all of it! Hope you enjoy the new features, see you around Mercia and thanks for playing.

The S.I.G. Team

Greetings Mercians,

The new update V0.29 will incur wipes, after numerous rounds of testing we discovered we cannot avoid loss of player built structures due to a refactoring of how the system works, on the bright side it has had further optimisations and stability that will hopefully allow many players to build much larger kingdoms without affecting connection times. We have brought some connection times down from 240 seconds to 25 with some of our latest internal testing.


Community featured build: HouserVT (Kingdom day time)


Community featured build: HouserVT (Kingdom night time)

We understand this is frustrating so we will be also implementing some new content to ease the pain such as player clothing matching their guild colours. Buildable mining camps that require NPC peasants for mass production and of course more recipes. This update will also include a decay system and new PvE servers that will allow more peaceful citizens of Mercia to build and grow without fear.


Buildable Mining Camps will be coming soon...

We hope you are excited about the improvements made to The Black Death as we are and we plan to make this update live on the 3rd of May.

Thanks everyone for playing.

// The S.I.G Team

Hello Mercians, Today we have a much needed bug fix for server connection issues (stuck in loading screen) and a bug fix for collision remaining behind when certain built objects are destroyed. We also have new content including a new range of cosmetic items for your home/kingdom. This update includes the introduction of more complex recipes for late game structures like hammering nails, cutting planks and baking bricks. Here are the patch notes in full!

New:

House items:
• Bookshelf storage
  
• Wardrobe storage
  
• Candle
  
• Wall mounted torches
  
• Boar, stag and wolf animal trophies
  
• Basic, Large and Royal tapestries
  other items:
  
• New Clay resource scattered across Mercia
  
• Wood Planks item and recipe
  
• Stone Brick item and recipe
  
• Forged Brick item and recipe
  
• Nails item and recipe
  
• Mortar item and recipe
  
• Clay Tiles item and recipe
  
• Purchasable Tavern Merchant

Plenty of new cosmetics to decorate your house

Updated:

• When typing your passwords into text fields it will now hide the actual word
  
• Honey in the world now has a chance of giving beeswax (for making candles)
  
• Boars, Wolves and Deer now have a chance of drop their heads (for making trophies)
  
• All Paintings can now be hung up
  
• Updated version number

Fixed:

• Fixed a bug which caused you to get stuck in the loading screen indefinitely
  
• Fixed bugs that were affecting connection to the server
  
• Fixed bugs which saturating the server with network traffic
  
• Fixed bug which meant when destroying some items you own the server side collision of some building objects would not get destroyed
  
• Fixed bug which mean you couldn't destroy the anvil if you were the owner
  
• Fixed bug which caused you not to be able to destroy contract NPC that you had made/owned
  
• Fixed steam authentication client registry issues (to give more accurate numbers)
  
• Fixes added to steam api related to server numbers (client to server handshaking)
  
• Fixed a bug so server now uses steam client dll to fix crashes
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause LAN servers to not work correctly
  
• Fixed bug which caused Large campfires, Stone Mill and the Mortar & Pestle to not show health bars and were not be able to be destroyed
  
• Fixed bug which caused the furnace to have very little health
  
• Fixed bug which caused the Mortar & Pestle not to save
  
• Fixed bug where you couldn't make a standard chair
  Inventory recipe items amounts now refresh when you open the inventory (you don't have to click on the recipe again anymore)
  
• Fixed a bug with stone gatehouse which stopped some door types fitting in it

High level Masonry recipes are now more complex

Balancing:

• Adjusted Stone gatehouse gold value to be in line with its rarity
  
• Standard chair recipe renamed to “Wooden chair”
  
• Wooden chair now requires a workbench to craft
  
• Campfire and Large campfire now under the filter type “House items”
  
• Traps have been rebalanced for a more realistic spawn timer for caught animals
  
• All stone wall variants recipe resource costs have been updated with new items
  
• Wood and Reinforced Door recipe resource costs have been updated with new items
  
• The Wooden Tower recipe resource costs have been updated with new items
  
• The Small house recipe resource costs have been updated with new items
  
• The Large house recipe resource costs have been updated with new items
  
• The Manor house recipe resource costs have been updated with new items
  
• All Castle wall variants recipe resource costs have been updated with new items
  
• All kingdom walls variants recipes resource costs have been updated with new items
  
• The Kingdom Keep recipe resource costs have been updated with new items
  
• Crafting Braziers now require level 19 artisan to make
  
• Iron, Silver and Gold Ore resources now have a population cap however their respawn rate remains the same

Purchase tavern merchants from your local town earl and build your own pub!

Optimised:

• Optimised steam tags for server registry

That’s all for now, thanks for reading and we will see you next time!

// The SIG Team

Welcome Mercian's to our V0.27 update!

This update adds a lot of fixes and additions to The Black Death. We are introducing an engine upgrade, to the Unreal Engine V4.19, this brings with it increases to performance and fixes to help with the recent connection issues. We have also included much needed additions to the building mechanics such as being able to destroy your own constructions with a single click!

The Unreal Engine update may clear server side data.

A Note For Admins Of Community Hosted Servers

If you own a Community Server please note that you will need to update your server with the latest update. To do this you will need to update the folder/files on your Server or update using our Steam Server Build in SteamCMD.

If you do not have the latest update to The Black Death your server will not appear in our in game Server Browser.

Declare War On Guilds!

In this update we have introduced a new Guild feature, which we teased in our Patch notes for V0.26 as an upcoming feature. You will now be able to Declare War with another guild on your server!

You can now gain Clan points and climb the ranks on your server by killing players in your enemy Guilds that you have declared war on and be the top Guild on the server.

Select guilds to attack or make peace with recent foeEnemy guilds that you are at war with will be highlighted red including their NPC guardsHold "E" on your constructed objects and click "Destroy" to remove them, they'll even be some debris loot left over with some of the material cost it took to craft them

Here are the patch notes in full:

New:

• Declare war on other guilds
  
• Gain guild points and climb the ranks by killing enemy guild members
  
• Now using latest version of the Unreal Engine 4.19 for better performance and access to more features
  
• Ability to destroy built items (if you were the person who built them, does not cover pre V0.27 update buildings)
  
• Destroying buildable objects have a chance of dropping items called “debris” loot
  
• New tooltip while hovering over an inventory profession gives you a list of recipes that you will unlock at the next level

Updated:

• You can now use the right click options menu on your gold coin to take/stash specific amounts of gold into storage chests
  
• If you sleep in a new bed then that becomes the new place you will spawn at
  
• Removed the “Peasant Contract” reward from the tutorial as it is no longer used in-game
  
• Updated the siege/catapults rotate and tilt controls allowing you to hold down the direction instead of having to click repeatedly
  
• Each guild now has a cap to how many guards they can create
  
• Doors Adopt the current rotation and automatically snap to door frames
  
• Added a tooltip when you hover over a quick slot in inventory, which shows you the name of the item
  
• Garlic resource now spawns throughout the world
  
• Updated version number

Fixed:

• Fixes added to stop players getting kicked back to main menu/infinite loading screen bug
  
• Fix added for door problems: including being visually out of sync and defaulting to open after a server restart/relogging
  
• Fix added to stop a bug where if you slept in a bed placed in bad place (collision wise), when you try to respawn the character would fail to spawn
  
• Fixed a bug/exploit that let you get double items from shops
  
• Fixes added to utility crafting to stop a periodical problem where a craft would take the ingredients but would not give you the resulting item
  
• Fixed a bug where you couldn't build in the same place as an object that had been destroyed
  
• Fixed a bug where building a “Stone Gatehouse” would give you a “Large Wooden House” instead
  
• Fixed a bug which caused a “Palisade Wall Corner” to actually craft a “Palisade Wall”
  
• Fixed a bug which caused the cross-hair to stay up in the dissection screen
  
• Fixed a bug which caused building objects to take a while to update e.g. constructing, showing health damage, destroying etc
  
• Fixed a bug with the weapon shader
  
• Fixed a bug that made planted crops float
  
• Fixed A.i sitting on no benches in starter town
  
• Fixed issue that stopped your steam name being filled in across the UI
  
• Fixed a bug that meant the manor house didn't have health and couldn't be damaged
  
• Fixed shader problem with the underwater post material
  
• Fixed the network cull range of the siege weapon/catapults so that they don't visually pop in as much any more
  
• Fixed the network cull range for beds so that they don't visually pop in as much any more
  
• Fixed a bug where you could get stuck unable to look around after reading a book and closing it
  
• Fixed a bug with the A.I.bowmen where they would not play a reloading animation
  
• Fixed a bug in the context wheel where if you look at another player who is part of a clan you would get a random weight/gold value and their clan logo would be a white square
  
• Fixed a bug that made names that were too long for inventory items wrap badly (e.g. “Archer Guard Contract”). They will no longer overlap other elements
  
• Fixed bugs with crafting timers across the UI which made their formatting incorrect as they counted down
  
• Fixed a bug that meant you could continue to send invites to someone who was already in a clan
  
• Removed a white floating cube floating in Dunstead
  
• Fixed a bug which stopped footsteps sounds playing when you turn on the spot
  
• Fixed a bug which caused the Ballista to not visually tilt up and down (animation wise) as you change the angle of firing
  
• Fixed harsh lods on loot bags
  
• Fixed character movement update errors: UpdateMovementSettingsOnServer, UpdateMovementSpeedOnServer
  
• Put in some fixes to help stop the wrong skills showing when you level up and it shows you what you unlocked
  
• Fix added for a bug that could cause you to get kicked back to main menu when using the inventory button via the context wheel
  
• Fixed a bug which would let you (when you should not be able to) place down a guard without being part of a guild
  
• Fixed a bug which caused guild guards clothing not to be the colours of the guild after a relog

Balancing:

• All Recipes/Craftable Items have had their XP rewards re-balanced so its more gradual
  
• Gold Ore now spawns more regularly throughout the world
  
• Increased XP reward for killing harder A.I.
  
• XP rewards for days survive is now more gradual
  
• Rebalanced enemy Monk A.I and resources around the Bywick area
  
• Rebalanced tutorial rewards
  
• Rebalanced the amount for Xp required for a single skill point
  
• Reduced the simple bed health
  
• Removed a duplicate catapult ammo recipes
  
• Increased the damage done by Catapults/siege weapons
  
• Renamed catapult shot to Mangonel shot

Optimised:

• Optimised bone LODS for all skeletal meshes
  
• Removed skeletal mesh crows and replaced them with cheaper VFX version

Known Problems:

• Guilds that have been declared war with will sometimes provide a white highlight instead of a red one
  
• Killing enemy guild members sometimes does not provide guild points
  
• Collision being left behind on some destroyed player built structures.
  
• Sometimes the automatic door snapping to door frames on houses will be off and give a red error it just needs to be re-equipped to correct itself
  
• All Built Objects prior to this update are subject to severe bugs, them being destroyed and re built will address these issues.

Unreal Engine Upgrade To V4.19


Previously, we were using version 4.18 of the Unreal Engine to craft The Black Death. This brought with it an issue with intermittent server connection issues, which arose from a bug in the Unreal Engine itself. Check this thread link if you would like to learn more about this. Part of the issues with logging into a server is to do with PC memory being overloaded by the Unreal Engine. This upgrade should address some of the connection and lag issues that are being experienced by some players

With this update, V0.27, we have now migrated to the Unreal Engine V4.19. You can read the release notes from Epic Games at this link.

We also plan to do this again to version 4.20 later this month, as there are optimisations that have been found from the game Fortnite implemented into the newest version of the Unreal Engine.

That’s all for now, thanks for reading and we will see you next time!

// The SIG Team

09/04 Hotfix-V.0271

[New] Doors will be destroyed if Attached building is destroyed
[Fix] Doors can take damage again
[Fix] Door creator can destroy door with context menu
[Fix] SERVER CRASH Steam non Authenticated clients crashing server on game exit
[Fix] SERVER CRASH Steam not supporting IpNetDriver issue
[FIX] SERVER CRASH Steam, Playerstate Crash on login
[FIX] SERVER CRASH Steam, SteamNetConnection InValid ID
[FIX] Steam Players not registering correctly on server player numbers

Welcome Mercian's to our V0.27 update!

This update adds a lot of fixes and additions to The Black Death. We are introducing an engine upgrade, to the Unreal Engine V4.19, this brings with it increases to performance and fixes to help with the recent connection issues. We have also included much needed additions to the building mechanics such as being able to destroy your own constructions with a single click!

The Unreal Engine update may clear server side data.

A Note For Admins Of Community Hosted Servers

If you own a Community Server please note that you will need to update your server with the latest update. To do this you will need to update the folder/files on your Server or update using our Steam Server Build in SteamCMD.

If you do not have the latest update to The Black Death your server will not appear in our in game Server Browser.

Declare War On Guilds!

In this update we have introduced a new Guild feature, which we teased in our Patch notes for V0.26 as an upcoming feature. You will now be able to Declare War with another guild on your server!

You can now gain Clan points and climb the ranks on your server by killing players in your enemy Guilds that you have declared war on and be the top Guild on the server.

Select guilds to attack or make peace with recent foeEnemy guilds that you are at war with will be highlighted red including their NPC guardsHold "E" on your constructed objects and click "Destroy" to remove them, they'll even be some debris loot left over with some of the material cost it took to craft them

Here are the patch notes in full:

New:

• Declare war on other guilds
  
• Gain guild points and climb the ranks by killing enemy guild members
  
• Now using latest version of the Unreal Engine 4.19 for better performance and access to more features
  
• Ability to destroy built items (if you were the person who built them, does not cover pre V0.27 update buildings)
  
• Destroying buildable objects have a chance of dropping items called “debris” loot
  
• New tooltip while hovering over an inventory profession gives you a list of recipes that you will unlock at the next level

Updated:

• You can now use the right click options menu on your gold coin to take/stash specific amounts of gold into storage chests
  
• If you sleep in a new bed then that becomes the new place you will spawn at
  
• Removed the “Peasant Contract” reward from the tutorial as it is no longer used in-game
  
• Updated the siege/catapults rotate and tilt controls allowing you to hold down the direction instead of having to click repeatedly
  
• Each guild now has a cap to how many guards they can create
  
• Doors Adopt the current rotation and automatically snap to door frames
  
• Added a tooltip when you hover over a quick slot in inventory, which shows you the name of the item
  
• Garlic resource now spawns throughout the world
  
• Updated version number

Fixed:

• Fixes added to stop players getting kicked back to main menu/infinite loading screen bug
  
• Fix added for door problems: including being visually out of sync and defaulting to open after a server restart/relogging
  
• Fix added to stop a bug where if you slept in a bed placed in bad place (collision wise), when you try to respawn the character would fail to spawn
  
• Fixed a bug/exploit that let you get double items from shops
  
• Fixes added to utility crafting to stop a periodical problem where a craft would take the ingredients but would not give you the resulting item
  
• Fixed a bug where you couldn't build in the same place as an object that had been destroyed
  
• Fixed a bug where building a “Stone Gatehouse” would give you a “Large Wooden House” instead
  
• Fixed a bug which caused a “Palisade Wall Corner” to actually craft a “Palisade Wall”
  
• Fixed a bug which caused the cross-hair to stay up in the dissection screen
  
• Fixed a bug which caused building objects to take a while to update e.g. constructing, showing health damage, destroying etc
  
• Fixed a bug with the weapon shader
  
• Fixed a bug that made planted crops float
  
• Fixed A.i sitting on no benches in starter town
  
• Fixed issue that stopped your steam name being filled in across the UI
  
• Fixed a bug that meant the manor house didn't have health and couldn't be damaged
  
• Fixed shader problem with the underwater post material
  
• Fixed the network cull range of the siege weapon/catapults so that they don't visually pop in as much any more
  
• Fixed the network cull range for beds so that they don't visually pop in as much any more
  
• Fixed a bug where you could get stuck unable to look around after reading a book and closing it
  
• Fixed a bug with the A.I.bowmen where they would not play a reloading animation
  
• Fixed a bug in the context wheel where if you look at another player who is part of a clan you would get a random weight/gold value and their clan logo would be a white square
  
• Fixed a bug that made names that were too long for inventory items wrap badly (e.g. “Archer Guard Contract”). They will no longer overlap other elements
  
• Fixed bugs with crafting timers across the UI which made their formatting incorrect as they counted down
  
• Fixed a bug that meant you could continue to send invites to someone who was already in a clan
  
• Removed a white floating cube floating in Dunstead
  
• Fixed a bug which stopped footsteps sounds playing when you turn on the spot
  
• Fixed a bug which caused the Ballista to not visually tilt up and down (animation wise) as you change the angle of firing
  
• Fixed harsh lods on loot bags
  
• Fixed character movement update errors: UpdateMovementSettingsOnServer, UpdateMovementSpeedOnServer
  
• Put in some fixes to help stop the wrong skills showing when you level up and it shows you what you unlocked
  
• Fix added for a bug that could cause you to get kicked back to main menu when using the inventory button via the context wheel
  
• Fixed a bug which would let you (when you should not be able to) place down a guard without being part of a guild
  
• Fixed a bug which caused guild guards clothing not to be the colours of the guild after a relog

Balancing:

• All Recipes/Craftable Items have had their XP rewards re-balanced so its more gradual
  
• Gold Ore now spawns more regularly throughout the world
  
• Increased XP reward for killing harder A.I.
  
• XP rewards for days survive is now more gradual
  
• Rebalanced enemy Monk A.I and resources around the Bywick area
  
• Rebalanced tutorial rewards
  
• Rebalanced the amount for Xp required for a single skill point
  
• Reduced the simple bed health
  
• Removed a duplicate catapult ammo recipes
  
• Increased the damage done by Catapults/siege weapons
  
• Renamed catapult shot to Mangonel shot

Optimised:

• Optimised bone LODS for all skeletal meshes
  
• Removed skeletal mesh crows and replaced them with cheaper VFX version

Known Problems:

• Guilds that have been declared war with will sometimes provide a white highlight instead of a red one
  
• Killing enemy guild members sometimes does not provide guild points
  
• Collision being left behind on some destroyed player built structures.
  
• Sometimes the automatic door snapping to door frames on houses will be off and give a red error it just needs to be re-equipped to correct itself
  
• All Built Objects prior to this update are subject to severe bugs, them being destroyed and re built will address these issues.

Unreal Engine Upgrade To V4.19


Previously, we were using version 4.18 of the Unreal Engine to craft The Black Death. This brought with it an issue with intermittent server connection issues, which arose from a bug in the Unreal Engine itself. Check this thread link if you would like to learn more about this. Part of the issues with logging into a server is to do with PC memory being overloaded by the Unreal Engine. This upgrade should address some of the connection and lag issues that are being experienced by some players

With this update, V0.27, we have now migrated to the Unreal Engine V4.19. You can read the release notes from Epic Games at this link.

We also plan to do this again to version 4.20 later this month, as there are optimisations that have been found from the game Fortnite implemented into the newest version of the Unreal Engine.

That’s all for now, thanks for reading and we will see you next time!

// The SIG Team

09/04 Hotfix-V.0271

[New] Doors will be destroyed if Attached building is destroyed
[Fix] Doors can take damage again
[Fix] Door creator can destroy door with context menu
[Fix] SERVER CRASH Steam non Authenticated clients crashing server on game exit
[Fix] SERVER CRASH Steam not supporting IpNetDriver issue
[FIX] SERVER CRASH Steam, Playerstate Crash on login
[FIX] SERVER CRASH Steam, SteamNetConnection InValid ID
[FIX] Steam Players not registering correctly on server player numbers

This update has a lot of new features, systems and changes to The Black Death. We have a brand new Building System, New Siege Equipment, a Guild System and lots of other features and fixes as part of this update.



WARNING! THIS UPDATE WILL INCUR A CHARACTER WIPE AND HOUSING WIPE

As stated in our last weeks Dev Blog, this update will incur a wipe of ALL characters and ALL player houses, including Kingdoms.
A Note For Admins Of Community Hosted Servers
If you own a Community Server please note that you will need to update your server with the latest update. To do this you will need to update the folder/files on your Server or update using our Steam Server Build in SteamCMD.

If you do not have the latest update to The Black Death your server will not appear in our in game Server Browser.

NEW BUILDING SYSTEM

Our new Building system is an overhaul from our Player housing system. You can now build without needing a Land Contract. You will need to find Buildable Land to be able to place structures down in the world.

Our new Building System is a complete overhaul from our previous Player House System. Players no longer need to find a House Plot and then use the Land Deed at the house workbench to obtain a house.

Players can now build anywhere in the lands of Mercia that is flagged as "Stable Ground". You will see this icon on the left of your Quick Slot Bar to indicate that you can build on this land. The ground is also clearly marked with a brick like floor texture.



Purchasing a Land Claim (previously known as the Land Contract) from a Town Earl will ensure that your land cannot be touched by other players, this also protects access to your doors to keep others out!

When placing a Land Claim a large white hologram will appear along with the workbench itself. Adjust this within the Stable Ground and then place it down to "claim" the land as your own.

You can also join Land Claims together, much like a grid system, to expand your ownership if you have built structures that extend the radius of your Land Claim.

If your structures are damaged such as your House walls you can repair them. Simply highlight the structure you want to repair, hold down "E" and then use the Context Wheel to select "Repair" the Gold cost will be shown based on the amount of damage that was caused to the structure.



An Introduction To Building A Basic House

Here is an example of a basic house in different stages. Showing how to place a Small House, 2 Braziers, Decorative Carpet, Wooden Door, Land Claim, Simple Bed, Wooden Chest and Dinner Table!

This is the Small House recipe which can be found in the Housing tab in your Inventory is learnt through the Mason profession. Here we place a small house on some Stable Ground. The arrows here show where the door frame is for this structure.




Stage two, here we add two Braziers to the outside of the small house. Placing on either side of the stairs for some nice lighting at night time. These can be turned off and on too.



Stage three, we add one of our new craftable recipes here. This is the Decorative Carpet. This is added to give some colour and a homely feel to the outside of our house. These can also be placed inside structures too.



Stage four, we add a Wooden Door to the front of our small house. The arrows here show which side the hinges are for how the door opens once it is built. Note: You MUST build a Land Claim in order to have your doors automatically lock. This message pops up when opening and closing doors that have no Land Claim in their radius.



Stage five, we add a Land Claim to our house. Note, you can place a Land Claim down, and then start building if you wish too. You do not need a Land Claim to build on stable ground. The Land Claim allows you to control who can build on the designated land by adding your name to the Land Claim, much how our previous player housing workbench worked.



Stage 6, we add a Simple Bed to our home and set it as a re-spawn point. This works just like the previous system did.



Finally Stage 7 we build a table and storage chest for our home to complete the basic needed objects to survive in the black death.




Maybe next time we will build a kingdom....




SEIGE EQUIPMENT

Siege Equipment comes to The Black Death with our V0.26 Update!
We have 3 different types of Siege Equipment to introduce with this update. The Trebuchet, Catapult and Ballista. Each of these have their own Ammo. When you have learned the recipes for each machines ammo, once in your Inventory you can then drag this to the "Ammo" slot on your Equipment Slots at the top of your Inventory, on the right of your armour.

Be careful as the ammunitions for these siege weapons are heavy! You may need to add some attribute points into Strength, share the load with Guild members and keep plenty stashed in your storage chests.

When placed these structures can be rotated for positioning, but they cannot be moved around and will be static when placed.




GUILD SYSTEM



You may have noticed that when you press the Context Wheel and select Guild you will see a "Guild Placeholder" screen appear. This is finally being updated with our new Guild System! Please note that a Guild that you create will be bound to the server that it is created on, this is not a cross server system. The Guild system comes with some features that players may feel familiar with, along with some new ones too.

You can also choose to destroy the guild. Doing so will kick all of the members out of the Guild, this action cannot be reversed! When another one of your Guild members is close by, if you highlight their character, under their health bar it will show your Guild name and crest!



There are three different features that you can change when creating a Guild. Firstly is the name, choose a good one as this can't be changed! Secondly is the Guild emblem and thirdly is the message of the day.

Within the Guild Emblem settings there are a lot of customisation options. There is a dice icon if you would prefer to see what the randomiser comes up with, or you can opt for selecting these options yourself. Ideas for how you can theme your Guild Emblem are: basing it on your favourite colours, or perhaps something more traditional for an RP Guild, or even something reflected in your Guilds name, if you want to be feared!

The Pattern changes the backdrop design, the Main Colour and Secondary Colour control the backdrop colours for the pattern, the Icon is the crest in the centre and the Icon Colour controls the colour of the crest in the centre.



You can also send Guild invitations to fellow players. This will be done through use of the Context Wheel. Other players within the same guild will appear with a white outline.

Seeing all the Guilds in the Clans On The Server list, a point scoring system for Guild rivalries and even the option to “Declare War” against another server and have enemy guilds to battle against are all features that we will be adding in a future update for the Guilds system.

Guards (which are bought from Town Earls) require you to be in a guild before placing on stable ground(so they know who their enemy is) they also adopt your primary and secondary guild colours! They will regard any other guild members as friendly.

The Kingdoms of Bywick & Frostfall Depart From Mercia



We are sad to report that the Kingdom Of Bywick and the Kingdom Of Frostfall have been removed with our V0.26 update. The reasoning behind this is because our new building system has features that allow players to build houses, farm plots, shacks, Keeps, Castles and Kingdoms for themselves and their Guilds too. Players will now be able to custom build their own Kingdoms on the space where Bywick Kingdom once resided and anywhere there is room for that matter.

Here are the patch notes in full:


New:

• New building mechanic implemented
  
• New land claiming mechanic implemented
  
• New Guild mechanic implemented
  
• New Mason profession recipes
  
• New Siege weapon/catapults have been added: Trebuchet, Mangonel,
• Ballista
  
• New emote set while crouching
  
• Anti-Speed Hacking Third Party Software

Updated:

• Now using hardware cursor making mouse movement faster and smoother in menus
  
• Added speed hack preventions
  
• Player owned guards require guild membership to place and will adopt your guild colours, they will regard anyone not in the same guild as the enemy
  
• Updated item interaction. Pressing “E” will interact with it and holding “E” will bring up contextual menu of options you can perform
  
• Updated icons for emotes
  
• Updated settings UI to include guild menu (which is key “O” by default)
  
• Updated map to show the top scoring guilds on that server
  
• Now mouse cursor changes look when you hover over certain elements (buttons, text input etc)
  
• Seeds are no longer place via the context wheel, instead they are placed like building items (via the quick slot bar)
  
• In character create made per profession attribute increase gold to stand out more
  
• Made profession increase on attributes in the inventory easier to read
  
• Updated version number
  
• Updated attenuation radius of some sounds to hear things from further away
  
• Updated and improved metal shader
  
• Updated and polished numerous areas across the land of Mercia

Fixed:

• Fixed bug with Heavy Crossbow recipe
  
• Fixed bug with Cloth Tabard recipe
  
• Fixes added for hitches when opening inventory screen
  
• Fixed bug which meant if crouching with a weapon and you put it away you would be stuck in that previous weapons crouch anims rather than the unarmed poses
  
• Fixed missing UI sounds in the main menu
  
• Fixed a bug that caused players to occasionally be unable to interact with anything in their inventory after levelling up
  
• Fixed bug where objects could get profession prefix if you hover from a person the directly to an object
  
• Fixed bug which stopped attributes profession increase for Mason to not show
  
• Fixed selecting Mason profession in character create filling in at the top with “Militia”
  
• Fixed misc spelling mistakes
  
• Fixed misc errors that slowed down cooking

Balancing:

• Flamberge recipe was moved from Mason to Smith profession
  
• Utilities have been removed from the world, players can now build their own via the building system
  
• Earls now sell more land contracts for cheaper as well as selling a larger variety of peasant contracts: hunters, chicken farmers, wheat farmers and food merchants.
  
• All Wood Axes and Pickaxes have had their durability largely increased

Optimising:

• Optimisations for networking
  
• Optimisations for rendering
  
• Optimisations for game thread
  
• Optimisations to textures
  
• Optimised server performance
  
• Optimised UI
  
• Optimised meshes

Known Problems:

• Sitting on chairs/using stocks doesn’t work correctly at the moment
  
• Built Objects currently do not decay

As always thank everyone for playing and enjoy the largest update so far in THE BLACK DEATH.

The S.I.G. Team