Hey, everyone! We've made a few changes to the tutorial and made it easier for everyone to access. We also made a few optimizations that should help the game run better and should get rid of the crashes some people have been experiencing. Some of the calculations have been adjusted, as well, which should make gameplay feel a bit more organic. Enjoy!

Hey, everyone! We've made a few changes to the tutorial and made it easier for everyone to access. We also made a few optimizations that should help the game run better and should get rid of the crashes some people have been experiencing. Some of the calculations have been adjusted, as well, which should make gameplay feel a bit more organic. Enjoy!

I have not posted in a while, but I want everyone to know that much progress is being made. A new update, later this week, will address a few bugs, but also introduce some new content for Star Explorers.

I will provide a complete list of features and fixes once it is ready for release.

I have not posted in a while, but I want everyone to know that much progress is being made. A new update, later this week, will address a few bugs, but also introduce some new content for Star Explorers.

I will provide a complete list of features and fixes once it is ready for release.

Greetings enlighten Community, even our haters that gave us a negative review, we will hopefully, in time will meet your expectations and then in return your review will become a Positive. As it may sound like a Conspiracy theory, although, why do we only have 23 reviews and how little sales we had since our Launch date over a year ago. Sale or coverage, barely anything, most games get more coverage and exposer in the first Month or so. It's almost like something more NEFARIOUS is going on here, such as suppression of information amongst other antics. I'm not blaming Valve or any company, as we don't have any evidence other than usually low traffic. Maybe in part due to our lack of indie marketing experience, still seems odd from this perspective. Almost like a shroud of media blackout, or perhaps something more sinister, manipulating and pulling the strings...?

Joking aside, It's Actually all part of a more complex charade, meta-connectivity to the Psychological Sci-Fi Thriller motive, rather than attempting cheap, cheesy Horror jump scares. I encourage the Community to startup conversations about types of Psychological storytelling seen in Eternal Darkness and Metal Gear Solid. We have some different ideas on where we take the characters and the different types of relationships they can have with each other, and how they can be socially engineered and manipulated, against or together to achieve goals. Nothing is final in the game, we can adapt and make changes.

NDi's team and work Philosophies are similar and inline with the likes of Valve's leaked Employee's Handbook and Blizzard's credo.


Hence we are still in Early Access, and will continue to be in this stage until myself, NDi Crew and the NDi Community are ready to Launch, be proud of what we made together as a combined united collective to improve the Quality of ARM Planetary Prospectors EP1 making it a smashing hit, with a chance to win some Awards.

As our small Indie Developer Spacecraft, pivots and and readjusts calibrations, sets a final coarse and destination for our road map to Final Launch EP1.

Some of our devs are teaching or working FT at other developers, thus making our progress much slower only being able to work PT at this point in time. We are looking to spread the workload around more, so we can have ARM completed to spec, sooner. We are reaching out to fill roles within the company, that we are sharing with the founders, and the future founders.

NDi is looking for the following Developers to help finishing ARM Early Access, and work on the secret project(s)

Graphics Shader Programmer
AI Programmer
Physics Programmer
Gameplay Programmer
VR Programmer
2D/3D Artist
3D Animator
FX Unity Artists

We are looking to fill Lead roles, including a CTO role which we can discuss shares and other options.

We are trying to be a social, super flat democratic company and Community:)

Send us your Resumes or message info@NefariousDimensions.com

Currently NDi has some investors and moving forward with a government grant.

We are going to be more transparent with the community, opening up a message board on Trello, where the Road Map, Bugs, Suggestions and chat about this and that can help improve the final version of ARM, so that we can win some Awards and be apart of that team that won!

https://trello.com/b/6dByRD5r/arm-planetary-prospectors-ep1-road-map

Unfortunately NDi has suffered some impacts from false DMCA claims, and invalid Copyright infringement claims, that led to legal matters that unknowingly took way from our development time and resources. Financially due to low sales and lack of exposer, making our sales very low and unable to pay the developers at this time. Instead stock, and IOU's were arranged. Some devs had to take other positions at other companies, plus many other issues that nearly grounded ARM indefinitely. Once our sales increase we will then be able to pay our developers and produce future sequels and other projects in the works.


Some pieces are still missing, some content not complete, with bugs to fix, however, now a clearer, more precise creative vision is developing based on constant community feedback and developer iterations.

Our company NDi's Goal is to succeed in making a memorable gaming Masterpiece that will withhold the test of time, and be mentioned as a Future Classic, in the Smithsonian next to other Video Game works of Art. If you want to be a part of this, and help save ARM....Join NDi and become a hero for the Community!


Thanks Community, and reach out to your developer friends to see if you or they can contribute to this WIP work of art.

CMDR
USSC Nefarious



(NDi)) Nefarious Dimensions

Greetings enlighten Community, even our haters that gave us a negative review, we will hopefully, in time will meet your expectations and then in return your review will become a Positive. As it may sound like a Conspiracy theory, although, why do we only have 23 reviews and how little sales we had since our Launch date over a year ago. Sale or coverage, barely anything, most games get more coverage and exposer in the first Month or so. It's almost like something more NEFARIOUS is going on here, such as suppression of information amongst other antics. I'm not blaming Valve or any company, as we don't have any evidence other than usually low traffic. Maybe in part due to our lack of indie marketing experience, still seems odd from this perspective. Almost like a shroud of media blackout, or perhaps something more sinister, manipulating and pulling the strings...?

Joking aside, It's Actually all part of a more complex charade, meta-connectivity to the Psychological Sci-Fi Thriller motive, rather than attempting cheap, cheesy Horror jump scares. I encourage the Community to startup conversations about types of Psychological storytelling seen in Eternal Darkness and Metal Gear Solid. We have some different ideas on where we take the characters and the different types of relationships they can have with each other, and how they can be socially engineered and manipulated, against or together to achieve goals. Nothing is final in the game, we can adapt and make changes.

NDi's team and work Philosophies are similar and inline with the likes of Valve's leaked Employee's Handbook and Blizzard's credo.


Hence we are still in Early Access, and will continue to be in this stage until myself, NDi Crew and the NDi Community are ready to Launch, be proud of what we made together as a combined united collective to improve the Quality of ARM Planetary Prospectors EP1 making it a smashing hit, with a chance to win some Awards.

As our small Indie Developer Spacecraft, pivots and and readjusts calibrations, sets a final coarse and destination for our road map to Final Launch EP1.

Some of our devs are teaching or working FT at other developers, thus making our progress much slower only being able to work PT at this point in time. We are looking to spread the workload around more, so we can have ARM completed to spec, sooner. We are reaching out to fill roles within the company, that we are sharing with the founders, and the future founders.

NDi is looking for the following Developers to help finishing ARM Early Access, and work on the secret project(s)

Graphics Shader Programmer
AI Programmer
Physics Programmer
Gameplay Programmer
VR Programmer
2D/3D Artist
3D Animator
FX Unity Artists

We are looking to fill Lead roles, including a CTO role which we can discuss shares and other options.

We are trying to be a social, super flat democratic company and Community:)

Send us your Resumes or message info@NefariousDimensions.com

Currently NDi has some investors and moving forward with a government grant.

We are going to be more transparent with the community, opening up a message board on Trello, where the Road Map, Bugs, Suggestions and chat about this and that can help improve the final version of ARM, so that we can win some Awards and be apart of that team that won!

https://trello.com/b/6dByRD5r/arm-planetary-prospectors-ep1-road-map

Unfortunately NDi has suffered some impacts from false DMCA claims, and invalid Copyright infringement claims, that led to legal matters that unknowingly took way from our development time and resources. Financially due to low sales and lack of exposer, making our sales very low and unable to pay the developers at this time. Instead stock, and IOU's were arranged. Some devs had to take other positions at other companies, plus many other issues that nearly grounded ARM indefinitely. Once our sales increase we will then be able to pay our developers and produce future sequels and other projects in the works.


Some pieces are still missing, some content not complete, with bugs to fix, however, now a clearer, more precise creative vision is developing based on constant community feedback and developer iterations.

Our company NDi's Goal is to succeed in making a memorable gaming Masterpiece that will withhold the test of time, and be mentioned as a Future Classic, in the Smithsonian next to other Video Game works of Art. If you want to be a part of this, and help save ARM....Join NDi and become a hero for the Community!


Thanks Community, and reach out to your developer friends to see if you or they can contribute to this WIP work of art.

CMDR
USSC Nefarious



(NDi)) Nefarious Dimensions

Click here for help on accessing the Unstable branch!

"Hey wait, didn't you just release a patch?!" Yes, I did! But you're getting a nice little bonus patch before I dive into the next batch of new towers! :)

This patch introduces 3 new game modes to Rise to Ruins. Nightmare, Peaceful and Custom. This patch also rebalances Traditional mode and tosses in a bunch of minor bug fixes and tweaks.

Check out the change log for all the juicy details!

You can report bugs over at the official website's Support and Bugs Forum, or on the Steam Discussion Board. :)


Game Modes

• New Game Mode: Custom. This mode lets you set a whole manner of difficulty settings, allowing you to create a game mode to fit your play style.
  
• New Game Mode: Nightmare. This mode is insanely, over the top difficult. Designed specifically for masochistic veteran players. There's no spawn delay, the spawn rates are higher, monsters are pre-spawned and full moons are less frequent.
  
• New Game Mode: Peaceful. While this mode carries the same name as the old removed Peaceful Mode (that was retooled into Traditional Mode), this mode is truly peaceful, with no monster spawns what so ever.
  
• Traditional mode is now a bit harder, but is still fairly easy.

Miscellaneous Changes

• "Level up" sound is slightly quieter.
  
• Can now move the map father out along the outer edges.
  
• Equipment storage can now store water bottles.
  
• Water Bottler building now provides refining speed bonuses.
  
• Rain particles are now slightly larger.
  
• The hidden "interfaceScale" setting in settings.properties can now be set to fractional values, like 1.2, 1.3, etc.

Bug Fixes

• Arrow keys now work on the world map.
  
• Fixed an issue with almost out of range Attract Towers stealing items from each other.
  
• Fixed a possible extremely rare crash in a situation where you happen to load a game while it's raining before all of the sounds have completed loading.
  
• Fixed a bug where if a villager died from blight and was brought back as a zombie, their previous job's total worker count would erroneously be reduced by 1.
  
• Typing "Reset" into the Doom World input box no longer moves around the map or activates other hotkeys.
  
• Fixed a minor bug where the last used game mode from one profile would be set in the next, if you changed profiles after playing and have not restarted the game.
  
• Fixed a rare crash on load if an elemental bolt was en route to hit a monster that was killed and completely removed from the game before it arrived.
  
• Elemental bolt splash damage is now working correctly.
  
• Fixed missiles pointing the wrong direction when firing at buildings.

Towers

• New Tower: The Spray Tower, a slightly more powerful variant to the Bullet Tower, very inaccurate, but has high rate of fire.
  
• New Tower: The Recombobulator. Will heal nearby golems. Does not work on the Holy Golem.
  
• New Tower: The Attract Tower. Will pull nearby equipable items to it. Useful for fetching item drops out of a monster heavy area.
  
• New Tower: The Banish Tower. A very expensive, short range tower that will banish an enemy that gets near it.
  
• All towers can now be paused, allowing you to stop certain towers from firing all together.
  
• Completely rewrote the entire missile system's firing mechanics from scratch, creating a more dynamic tower system for future content.
  
• Rewrote the Ballista Tower's damage and firing mechanics. It now fires at the farthest target, and will stop when it hits it, but will pierce anything along the way.
  
• Decreased energy requirements for the max upgraded Bow Tower.
  
• Adjusted elemental bolt physics a bit to look more magical.
  
• Crystal motivator completely rewritten into the tower code.
  
• Crystal motivator now costs energy to fire, and only fires at harvested crystal tiles.

Sound Effects

• Nearly all of the original sound effects have been replaced or changed.
  
• Ambient background sound based on the size of your village has been added.
  
• Tons of new sound effects for all the towers, combat, harvesting and much more have been added.
  
• Game world sound is now quieter the more zoomed out you are.

Optimizing and Big Fixes

• Fixed some lightning generation positioning issues when new lightning is created.
  
• Completely rewrote the map tileset loader, reducing memory usage and optimizing code flow.
  
• Fixed an issue where sometimes a Twitch user's name in your stream could pop up twice.
  
• Sound loading is now multithreaded.

Miscellaneous Changes

• Essence Collector's first build phase no longer requires cut stone, allowing you to build it much earlier in the game.
  
• Golem combobulators now require an Essence Collector to function.
  
• Added a new Earthquake spell to the game, that will damage any mobs or buildings nearby, but can generate new rock in the epicenter of the quake.
  
• Particles can now vary in sizes.
  
• Many particle, projectile and spell effects have been adjusted.
  
• Changed restore hunger to restore needs button in sandbox mode, healing thirst, hunger, energy and balancing body temperatures.
  
• Can now fire missiles in sandbox mode until the miscellaneous tab.
  
• Holy Golem now does magic damage.
  
• Added some particles to the console banners.
  
• Increased spawn rates slightly.
  
• Villagers can now trade food, water and bandages if they need them.
  
• The console banner messages now have some particle effects.
  
• Lightning Rod range reduced.
  
• Lightning Rod range now appears when it is selected.

Buildings and Towers

• The kitchen is now upgradable.
  
• The clinic is now upgradable.
  
• New tower: The Ballista. The ballista is a mid-late game large bow tower, with extremely long range, high damage, and a slow firing rate. It can also shoot over anything in the game (Including terrain).
  
• New building: The Lightning Rod. This building will attract nearby lightning to it, protecting your walls and other buildings from damage. But it also has the added bonus of converting those lightning strikes into energy that can be used to power your towers and recharge your essence collectors.

Twitch Integration

• You can now input your Twitch channel name when you create a new profile, or in the settings menu. When your channel name is input, the game will pull your viewer's list off Twitch and use it to generate random names for your villagers based on your current viewers.

Optimizing and Big Fixes

• Fixed a typo in the blight death message.
  
• Optimized out some unused data in the map tile loader, speeding up tile data searching and lowering memory usage slightly.
  
• Fixed overlapping data on the building priority list GUI.
  
• Fixed harvest food and water shortcut assignment in the settings menu.
  
• Fixed a few minor shadow and collision map issues on various buildings.
  
• Energy no longer resets when upgrading a building.
  
• The "No water production" tip no longer pops up when all water buildings are being upgraded or under construction.
  
• Optimized golem combobulators resource search system.
  
• Fixed a bug where the charge level of golem combobulators would reset on reload.

Miscellaneous Changes

• You can now hit escape in the world map to bring you back to the main menu.
  
• You can no longer escape out of the game mode selection screen when you visit the world map for the first time after creating a new profile.
  
• Added status effects to villager pop out panel (Bottom panel, when you click on a villager).
  
• Removed lightning "branching" that could cause very excessive damage in some cases.
  
• Lightning can now charge whatever it hits, if the building can store energy.
  
• You can now move the map in-game with the arrow keys, as well as WASD.

Tower Upgrades and Damage Types

• All 4 base towers can now be upgraded, increasing their damage, firing rates and sometimes range. Their final upgrades all offer additional elemental damage of some kind. For example, the final stage bow tower can be upgraded into a fire, ice or poison bow tower.
  
• The fire bolt tower has been replaced with a very similar elemental bolt tower, that can later be upgraded into a fire, ice or electric bolt tower.
  
• Every damage in the game now has an assigned "type". Some types, like blight or poison, have residual status effects.
  
• Towers can now target a new monster before the old target is dead, if the new target is closer or more vulnerable to the tower's damage type.
  
• Mobs can be resistant or vulnerable to damage certain damage types. For example, the skeleton is now highly resistant to piercing damage from the bow tower.
  
• Zombies now do "Blight" damage, and can turn a villager into a zombie if they die while blighted.
  
• Slimes can now poison villagers.
  
• Being poisoned, on fire, frozen or blighted is now factored into fight or flight.
  
• Medics can now heal blight and poison.
  
• Healing aura now heals blight and poison.

Optimizing and Big Fixes

• Fixed some minor sprite coloring issues.
  
• Improved some of the mob search algorithm. Improving update logic speed game wide.
  
• Reduced overall mob aggressiveness, making them search for combat less, reducing CPU usage.
  
• Reduced how often the tick to look for food or water when hungry or thirsty runs, reducing CPU usage.
  
• Reduced how often mobs wander aimless, to reduce CPU usage.
  
• Added a slight targeting buffer/delay to tower target searching to reduce CPU usage.

Spawn Rebalancing

• The global spawn rate has been reduced by about 15%.
  
• Skeletons no longer spawn until day 4.
  
• Regular sized slimes can no longer spawn until day 3. But small slimes can still spawn by day 2.
  
• Fire elementals will not spawn until day 6. (Formally day 5)
  
• Greatly reduced spawn rate of spawners, but increased the rates spawners themselves spawn. (Meaning more spawners, but the same amount of monsters)
  
• Increased spawner build time, resource requirements and hit points.

Miscellaneous Changes

• Increased the chance mobs will wake up from being knocked out/incapacitated.
  
• Reduced how often villagers stop to chat.
  
• Decreased the speed that body temperature adjusts, allowing villagers to stay out in the hot or cold longer.
  
• Rebalanced start stats and level up amounts for all mobs.
  
• Mobs run away more often when low on health.
  
• Removed 2 erroneous names from the villager name list.
  
• Increased flame spell damage.
  
• Slowed down thirst decay rate for children.
  
• Added some new death messages and new death message subtitles.
  
• Essence Collector has been slightly rebalanced and can now be upgraded.
  
• Generic wood GUI buttons are no longer in all caps.
  
• Completely removed "Stun" effects from the game's AI.
  
• Live stream message now pops up on the main menu when live streaming.
  
• Twitch link added to main menu.
  
• Reversed changes made that prevent building roads before the way maker shack is completed.
  
• Fixed the abandoned crystal harvestry in map Enchanted Shoreline.
  
• When resurrected, villagers no longer start with 0 energy, hunger, and thirst.

• Tips are not updated.

Click here for help on accessing the Unstable branch!

"Hey wait, didn't you just release a patch?!" Yes, I did! But you're getting a nice little bonus patch before I dive into the next batch of new towers! :)

This patch introduces 3 new game modes to Rise to Ruins. Nightmare, Peaceful and Custom. This patch also rebalances Traditional mode and tosses in a bunch of minor bug fixes and tweaks.

Check out the change log for all the juicy details!

You can report bugs over at the official website's Support and Bugs Forum, or on the Steam Discussion Board. :)


Game Modes

• New Game Mode: Custom. This mode lets you set a whole manner of difficulty settings, allowing you to create a game mode to fit your play style.
  
• New Game Mode: Nightmare. This mode is insanely, over the top difficult. Designed specifically for masochistic veteran players. There's no spawn delay, the spawn rates are higher, monsters are pre-spawned and full moons are less frequent.
  
• New Game Mode: Peaceful. While this mode carries the same name as the old removed Peaceful Mode (that was retooled into Traditional Mode), this mode is truly peaceful, with no monster spawns what so ever.
  
• Traditional mode is now a bit harder, but is still fairly easy.

Miscellaneous Changes

• "Level up" sound is slightly quieter.
  
• Can now move the map father out along the outer edges.
  
• Equipment storage can now store water bottles.
  
• Water Bottler building now provides refining speed bonuses.
  
• Rain particles are now slightly larger.
  
• The hidden "interfaceScale" setting in settings.properties can now be set to fractional values, like 1.2, 1.3, etc.

Bug Fixes

• Arrow keys now work on the world map.
  
• Fixed an issue with almost out of range Attract Towers stealing items from each other.
  
• Fixed a possible extremely rare crash in a situation where you happen to load a game while it's raining before all of the sounds have completed loading.
  
• Fixed a bug where if a villager died from blight and was brought back as a zombie, their previous job's total worker count would erroneously be reduced by 1.
  
• Typing "Reset" into the Doom World input box no longer moves around the map or activates other hotkeys.
  
• Fixed a minor bug where the last used game mode from one profile would be set in the next, if you changed profiles after playing and have not restarted the game.
  
• Fixed a rare crash on load if an elemental bolt was en route to hit a monster that was killed and completely removed from the game before it arrived.
  
• Elemental bolt splash damage is now working correctly.
  
• Fixed missiles pointing the wrong direction when firing at buildings.

Towers

• New Tower: The Spray Tower, a slightly more powerful variant to the Bullet Tower, very inaccurate, but has high rate of fire.
  
• New Tower: The Recombobulator. Will heal nearby golems. Does not work on the Holy Golem.
  
• New Tower: The Attract Tower. Will pull nearby equipable items to it. Useful for fetching item drops out of a monster heavy area.
  
• New Tower: The Banish Tower. A very expensive, short range tower that will banish an enemy that gets near it.
  
• All towers can now be paused, allowing you to stop certain towers from firing all together.
  
• Completely rewrote the entire missile system's firing mechanics from scratch, creating a more dynamic tower system for future content.
  
• Rewrote the Ballista Tower's damage and firing mechanics. It now fires at the farthest target, and will stop when it hits it, but will pierce anything along the way.
  
• Decreased energy requirements for the max upgraded Bow Tower.
  
• Adjusted elemental bolt physics a bit to look more magical.
  
• Crystal motivator completely rewritten into the tower code.
  
• Crystal motivator now costs energy to fire, and only fires at harvested crystal tiles.

Sound Effects

• Nearly all of the original sound effects have been replaced or changed.
  
• Ambient background sound based on the size of your village has been added.
  
• Tons of new sound effects for all the towers, combat, harvesting and much more have been added.
  
• Game world sound is now quieter the more zoomed out you are.

Optimizing and Big Fixes

• Fixed some lightning generation positioning issues when new lightning is created.
  
• Completely rewrote the map tileset loader, reducing memory usage and optimizing code flow.
  
• Fixed an issue where sometimes a Twitch user's name in your stream could pop up twice.
  
• Sound loading is now multithreaded.

Miscellaneous Changes

• Essence Collector's first build phase no longer requires cut stone, allowing you to build it much earlier in the game.
  
• Golem combobulators now require an Essence Collector to function.
  
• Added a new Earthquake spell to the game, that will damage any mobs or buildings nearby, but can generate new rock in the epicenter of the quake.
  
• Particles can now vary in sizes.
  
• Many particle, projectile and spell effects have been adjusted.
  
• Changed restore hunger to restore needs button in sandbox mode, healing thirst, hunger, energy and balancing body temperatures.
  
• Can now fire missiles in sandbox mode until the miscellaneous tab.
  
• Holy Golem now does magic damage.
  
• Added some particles to the console banners.
  
• Increased spawn rates slightly.
  
• Villagers can now trade food, water and bandages if they need them.
  
• The console banner messages now have some particle effects.
  
• Lightning Rod range reduced.
  
• Lightning Rod range now appears when it is selected.

Buildings and Towers

• The kitchen is now upgradable.
  
• The clinic is now upgradable.
  
• New tower: The Ballista. The ballista is a mid-late game large bow tower, with extremely long range, high damage, and a slow firing rate. It can also shoot over anything in the game (Including terrain).
  
• New building: The Lightning Rod. This building will attract nearby lightning to it, protecting your walls and other buildings from damage. But it also has the added bonus of converting those lightning strikes into energy that can be used to power your towers and recharge your essence collectors.

Twitch Integration

• You can now input your Twitch channel name when you create a new profile, or in the settings menu. When your channel name is input, the game will pull your viewer's list off Twitch and use it to generate random names for your villagers based on your current viewers.

Optimizing and Big Fixes

• Fixed a typo in the blight death message.
  
• Optimized out some unused data in the map tile loader, speeding up tile data searching and lowering memory usage slightly.
  
• Fixed overlapping data on the building priority list GUI.
  
• Fixed harvest food and water shortcut assignment in the settings menu.
  
• Fixed a few minor shadow and collision map issues on various buildings.
  
• Energy no longer resets when upgrading a building.
  
• The "No water production" tip no longer pops up when all water buildings are being upgraded or under construction.
  
• Optimized golem combobulators resource search system.
  
• Fixed a bug where the charge level of golem combobulators would reset on reload.

Miscellaneous Changes

• You can now hit escape in the world map to bring you back to the main menu.
  
• You can no longer escape out of the game mode selection screen when you visit the world map for the first time after creating a new profile.
  
• Added status effects to villager pop out panel (Bottom panel, when you click on a villager).
  
• Removed lightning "branching" that could cause very excessive damage in some cases.
  
• Lightning can now charge whatever it hits, if the building can store energy.
  
• You can now move the map in-game with the arrow keys, as well as WASD.

Tower Upgrades and Damage Types

• All 4 base towers can now be upgraded, increasing their damage, firing rates and sometimes range. Their final upgrades all offer additional elemental damage of some kind. For example, the final stage bow tower can be upgraded into a fire, ice or poison bow tower.
  
• The fire bolt tower has been replaced with a very similar elemental bolt tower, that can later be upgraded into a fire, ice or electric bolt tower.
  
• Every damage in the game now has an assigned "type". Some types, like blight or poison, have residual status effects.
  
• Towers can now target a new monster before the old target is dead, if the new target is closer or more vulnerable to the tower's damage type.
  
• Mobs can be resistant or vulnerable to damage certain damage types. For example, the skeleton is now highly resistant to piercing damage from the bow tower.
  
• Zombies now do "Blight" damage, and can turn a villager into a zombie if they die while blighted.
  
• Slimes can now poison villagers.
  
• Being poisoned, on fire, frozen or blighted is now factored into fight or flight.
  
• Medics can now heal blight and poison.
  
• Healing aura now heals blight and poison.

Optimizing and Big Fixes

• Fixed some minor sprite coloring issues.
  
• Improved some of the mob search algorithm. Improving update logic speed game wide.
  
• Reduced overall mob aggressiveness, making them search for combat less, reducing CPU usage.
  
• Reduced how often the tick to look for food or water when hungry or thirsty runs, reducing CPU usage.
  
• Reduced how often mobs wander aimless, to reduce CPU usage.
  
• Added a slight targeting buffer/delay to tower target searching to reduce CPU usage.

Spawn Rebalancing

• The global spawn rate has been reduced by about 15%.
  
• Skeletons no longer spawn until day 4.
  
• Regular sized slimes can no longer spawn until day 3. But small slimes can still spawn by day 2.
  
• Fire elementals will not spawn until day 6. (Formally day 5)
  
• Greatly reduced spawn rate of spawners, but increased the rates spawners themselves spawn. (Meaning more spawners, but the same amount of monsters)
  
• Increased spawner build time, resource requirements and hit points.

Miscellaneous Changes

• Increased the chance mobs will wake up from being knocked out/incapacitated.
  
• Reduced how often villagers stop to chat.
  
• Decreased the speed that body temperature adjusts, allowing villagers to stay out in the hot or cold longer.
  
• Rebalanced start stats and level up amounts for all mobs.
  
• Mobs run away more often when low on health.
  
• Removed 2 erroneous names from the villager name list.
  
• Increased flame spell damage.
  
• Slowed down thirst decay rate for children.
  
• Added some new death messages and new death message subtitles.
  
• Essence Collector has been slightly rebalanced and can now be upgraded.
  
• Generic wood GUI buttons are no longer in all caps.
  
• Completely removed "Stun" effects from the game's AI.
  
• Live stream message now pops up on the main menu when live streaming.
  
• Twitch link added to main menu.
  
• Reversed changes made that prevent building roads before the way maker shack is completed.
  
• Fixed the abandoned crystal harvestry in map Enchanted Shoreline.
  
• When resurrected, villagers no longer start with 0 energy, hunger, and thirst.

• Tips are not updated.

Hello, Everyone!

We have an announcement of Regular Server Maintenance schedule.
Please refer to below information.

=================================================
■ Date : 25th May, 2017 (Thursday)
■ Time : ASTA Time 00:00 ~ 01:00 / GMT 08:00 ~ 09:00 (1H)
■ Description : Regular server maintenance, update, bug fix and etc.
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※ You guys are unable to connect to game server during the server maintenance.

※ Regarding to the server maintenance conditions, servers can be opened earlier/later than the schedule.

Thank you.

Avatars,

Thank you for being a loyal backer of Shroud of the Avatar. Release 42 access for all Early Access backers begins this Thursday, May 25, at 10:30 AM US Central Daylight Time (15:30 UTC).

Release 42 (R42) is another significant step forward in progress with a staggering amount of new content as well as a ton of balance and polish. The Path of the Oracle is finally revealed, along with the Oracle herself, starter scenes have seen an amazing amount of polish, more gear can be placed as decorations, Mail is seeing its first iteration, many weapon decorations are now able to be placed on both walls and floors, combat got lots of balancing including additional functionality for Locked Decks and adjustments to Experience Decay, and enemies have been beefed up with new abilities and smarter behaviors!

The Path of the Oracle: For intrepid Avatars that have succeeded in the Paths of Love, Truth, and Courage, an audience can be sought with the Oracle herself. What awaits as you approach her throne in the heart of Brittany? R42 will set the Avatar upon the final path to untangle the meaning of the Dire Prophecies and discover the Avatar’s purpose in New Britannia.



Starting Scene Polish: We have continued to focus on steady improvements to the new user experience by polishing the three primary starter scenes: Battle of Solace Bridge, Blood River Massacre, and Battle of Highvale. Players exploring these scenes for the first time will experience significant improvements to quest flow, task management, NPC behaviors, Points of Interest, and enemy encounters.



Decoration Additions and Improvements: We have expanded the list of available decorations this release to include nearly 120 pieces of gear that can now be placed as decorations. This includes all Chain, Plate, Bone, Clockwork, and Founder’s Heavy Armor sets as well as many equipable offhand items and miscellaneous cloth gear missed in R41. Additionally, many weapon decorations can now be placed on BOTH walls and floors, rather than just one or the other. We are also introducing Ceiling decorations in the form of chandeliers and hanging light decorations. We are excited to see how players will use this improved flexibility to decorate their homes in a variety of new and interesting ways!



Mail: It’s finally here! After countless feature requests, we’re excited to show off the initial iteration of our Mail system. With Release 42, players will be able to receive mail notifications based on vendor transactions. When a vendor item is sold, expired, or removed, players will receive mail that notifies them of the event. The mail will also include the proceeds or refund from the transaction. Mail can be accessed at mailboxes, which are located at all banks throughout New Britannia. Mailboxes can also be crafted and placed at your house. Work is ongoing to eventually allow players to send mail to each other in future iterations.

Combat Balance: Significant improvements were made to combat systems in R42. Locked Decks now support the successive use of the same skill/spell based on the number of available glyphs determined by skill level. This will be balanced with the addition of a new Locked Deck “Heat” system, which will build up after rapid use of the same skill and cause increased focus consumption. Noteworthy changes have also been made to Experience Decay and Boss Loot tables.

Enemy AI: A lot of work this release has gone into fleshing out enemy AI behaviors, as well as arming enemies with new abilities. Most mages will now have an increased arsenal of spells, including roots, buffs, debuffs, and teleportation. Additionally, enemies will no longer stand idly by as their friends are attacked or killed. Most NPCs will now properly react, panic, and investigate the area of the kill and actively search for the aggressor.

Click here for the complete Instructions and Game Update Notes.

WARNING: THIS GAME IS EARLY ACCESS. PLEASE DO NOT PURCHASE IT UNLESS YOU WANT TO ACTIVELY SUPPORT DEVELOPMENT OF THE GAME VIA CROWD FUNDING, BUG TESTING, AND FEEDBACK. PLEASE ONLY PURCHASE IF YOU ARE ALSO PREPARED TO HANDLE SERIOUS ISSUES AND INCOMPLETE CONTENT. PLEASE READ THE NEGATIVE REVIEWS PRIOR TO PURCHASE, MANY OF WHICH WARN YOU OF THE CURRENT UNFINISHED STATE OF THE GAME.