Jul 24, 2018

Solace Crafting - Malkere

Now pushing the 0.2.1 branch to the public default build!

This patch brings in new animals, plants, and several new recipes, along with many new skills. With more skills and new expandable hotbars players should now be able to survive battles much easier than before. The reason for this being of course so that we can make battles much more interesting.

At present there are no enemy spells, stuns, or special abilities. In the coming weeks I will be working on a variety of things, as usual, including monster abilities and more points of interest. It's time I start laying the groundwork for caves, dimensional pockets, and floating islands.

For players not participating in beta this patch will reset your skills and attributes, so be sure to respec when you get back in game.

The complete list of changes is listed below, the last (0.2.1k) being several small fixes new to even the beta branch. Thank you for all the suggestions and to all the bug reports from the beta branch!

You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin.

v 0.2.1 - 2018.06.27
- Fixed a spelling error
- Increased carrot size/height
- Added wolves animated and vocal
- Added bears animated and vocal
- Added wolf and bear claws and fangs as drops (not used in recipes until tomorrow)
- Added mushrooms
- Added leeks
- Decreased cabbage and carrot fullness rewards
- Added tier based health, energy, and mana potions to known recipes (masonry tools for now) with visuals
- Fixed enchanting slot displays not turning off when lowering rarity in the recipe details interface

v 0.2.1a - 2018.06.28
- Inventory slots can now be dragged onto the hotbar creating a shortcut
- Consumables can now be used from the hotbar with inventory shortcuts
- Added Alchemy crafting profession
- Potions will reward 1 alchemy experience per ingredient used
- Added Furniture and Consumables as crafting categories
- Moved health, energy, and mana potions to consumables category
- Moved bed to furniture category
- Fixed leatherworking and masonry experience not saving properly

v 0.2.1b2 - 2018.07.01
- Animals are now spawned within the terrain generation system using biomes
- Wolves and bears are now mountain biome specific
- Pigs are now grass biome specific
- Arctic wolves now spawn in the snow biome
- Added snowy trees to the snow biome
- Rain will now turn into snow at higher elevations (wip)
- Fixed the majority of cases where monsters and animals get stuck near the player, running in spot and not attacking. Still possible if on the edge of two navigation meshes.
- Fixed monsters and animals from not ending their run animation after reaching the player
- Fixed map not redrawing after recentering
- Fixed a bug preventing new character creation on the beta build
- Stopped adding harvest to the hotbar on new characters
- Fixed new characters being added into old worlds at 0,0,0

v 0.2.1c - 2018.07.03
- Complete rework of combat, skill, equipment, potion, and enchant math
- Combat "skill", Dodge, Parry, Block, and criticals temporarily turned off
- Adventuring skills now add damage on top of weapon damage
- Attribute bonuses are now displayed in the attribute upgrade interface
- Monsters now scale from 50% difficulty to 100% between levels 0-35
- Enchants now take 1 slot regardless of rarity
- Fixed the available ingredients count in the enchanting interface not differentiating resource rarities
- Added health, energy, and mana regeneration rates (per 5s) to the adventuring stats window
- Added backpack slot count to the recipe details interface when crafting a backpack
- The help menu / getting started will now be enabled at startup by default unless "Show on startup" is toggled off
- Added Tabula Rasa potion to allow resetting of adventuring skills
- Added Void potion to allow resetting of attributes
- Attributes and skills can now be upgraded x10 by holding shift or x100 by holding control and shift while clicking upgrade

v 0.2.1c2 - 2018.07.04
- Fixed a bug causing difficulty to continue scaling beyond 100% past level 35
- Fixed a bug not applying attribute bonuses to melee/ranged/magic damage

v 0.2.1d - 2018.07.06
- Complete rework of the skill and attribute system
- Added several new skills to the apprentice archetype
- Jobs and classes are now locked until implemented
- Skill tree tiers unlock at 8 points per
- Changed tool stats and resources toughness
- Old items with enchants on them no longer still take up multiple slots

v 0.2.1d2 - 2018.07.07
- Fixed disciple and apprentice skill counts showing backwards
- Fixed mining speed icon using the skinning speed icon
- Fixed recall not working
- Fixed harvesting skills not loading properly
- Fixed skills with a maximum level being able to go over it using shift(+10) or control+shift(+100)
- Fixed heals not showing their healing amount on use
- Fixed heals not updating the player health bar instantly
- Reduced the x/z positioning noise on lightning strike

v 0.2.1d3 - 2018.07.08
- Fixed harvest strength upgrades not accepting points

v 0.2.1e - 2018.07.09
- Skill damage and costs are now based on cooldown, skill tree, and tree tier, with exceptions for AOE/Utility skills
- Melee type attacks now pull targets from a 2m long 90 degree cone originating from the player prioritizing distance over angle
- Ice spikes will now climb/lower themselves up to 1m from the last spike
- Monsters/animals can now be stunned with shield bash
- Added stomp graphics and audio
- Fixed new characters on the beta throwing errors
- Fixed the character select window hiding the "create" option when enough characters exist

v 0.2.1f - 2018.07.10
- Skills work on demons now
- Demons now have health bars
- Heal is fixed from doing about 1/4 it's intended healing
- Fixed Meteor, Comet, and Lightning Strike not casting properly in certain situations

v 0.2.1h - 2018.07.12
- Reintroduced dodge, parry, block, and resist with updated math
- Armor, dodge, parry, block, and resist will now show their estimated chance for success when moused over in the stats interface
- Attributes will once gain add to armor, dodge, parry, block, and resist
- Physical, ranged, and magic skill are in once again, though magic is not yet using the stat
- Monsters can now be frozen
- Frozen monsters will break free if damaged
- Fixed a bug causing mana to reduce when spending energy
Added new Apprentice skills:
- Frost Nova, sends out a freezing wave from the caster
- Mud Skin, increases armor and magic resist
- Flame Glyph, area based damage over time
- Clarity, increases mana regeneration
- Fireball, projectile that explodes on impact

v 0.2.1g - 2018.07.11
- Added new Squire skills:
- Dashing Strike, runs towards enemy and attacks (15m)
- Shout, temporarily grants increase max hitpoints
- Thrust, causes damage over time
- Guard, temporarily inceases armor
- Staggering Blow, reduces enemy attack speed
- Battle Cry, temporarily grants bonus strength, stamina, and agility
- Charge, rushes towards enemy and stuns them (25m)
- Triumphant Heal, heals for a percentage of your maximum hitpoints after each experience rewarding kill (pigs don't count)
- Ice Missle now slows monsters 50%
- Fire Burst now causes damage over time
- Meteor, Comet, and Lightning Strike now work indoors and only hit enemies near the point of impact

v 0.2.1i - 2018.07.20
- Fixed parry, block, and resist stat tooltips displaying only the dodge percentage
- Fixed harvesting skills not adding tool strength to final damage
- Fixed killing blows with Frost Nova causing monster animations to "freeze" >_>
- Added new Squire, Scout and Disciple skills

v 0.2.1j - 2018.07.23
- Improved navmesh generation around foundations
- Opening and closing doors will now carve the navmesh in real-time preventing and allowing monster passage
- Improved monster line of sight checks for attacking
- Added black outlines to the hotkey numbers and the version text
- Added 3 more hotbar extensions available via the arrows on the right of the 1st and 3rd hotbars
- Hotbar labels will now update to reflect which buttons are actually bound to them
- Stopped the controls window from closing when pressing escape while waiting for keybinding input
- Fixed an error preventing some keys from being able to be combined with shift, alt, and control
- Fixed an error preventing use of more than one of shift, alt, and/or control with a single keybinding
- Added item descriptions to the crafting recipe details interface
- The main attack hotbar slot is now slot 0 (was 10)
- The hotbar slot after 9 (default binding: 0) is now slot 10 (was 0)

v 0.2.1k - 2018.07.24
- Additional hotbar expanded/contracted status will now save across play sessions
- Fixed an error when clicking buildings in the town interface
- Fixed an error thrown when looting a fire elemental when all recipe drops are already known
- Fixed an error in the terraforming interface

Jul 24, 2018

July 24th Update: Weapon Case Keys for Credits, Obsidian Operative Skyhammer and Fine Tuning

Dirty Bomb® - shoe.

Welcome to yet another Dirty Bomb update! In this update we're making tweaks across the board, including making Weapon Case Keys available for Credits, adding the option to Recycle both Weapon Cards and Special Edition Loadout Cards, and we've also made a plethora of balance updates. So check out the release notes below and enjoy the updatey goodness:

WEAPON CASE KEYS FOR CREDITS

That's right! Weapon Case Keys now have a Credit price so everyone can enjoy Weapon Cards without needing to spend a single RAD. We made this change as many of our long-term players have been asking for more items to spend their Credits on. We've also increased our Weapon Case drop rates by roughly 70 percent so you can make the most of this change:

Weapon Case Keys now cost 14,500 Credits
Increased Weapon Case drop rates by 70%

WEAPON CARD AND SPECIAL EDITION RECYCLING

Since Weapon Cards were added to the game we've been working on increasing their level of functionality to equal that of Loadout Cards and with this update we've made another step towards this. Now you can Recycle Weapon Cards in the same way that you can Recycle Loadout Cards. Weapon skin quality (Scarred, Pristine, etc.) do not effect the amount of Fragments you'll receive:

Bronze: 135
Silver: 540
Gold: 2,150
Special Edition: 2,150
Cobalt: 13,000

Not only can you Recycle Weapon Cards, but if you've got some Special Edition Loadout Cards gathering dust you can now Recycle those too! They'll provide you the same number of Fragments as Gold Loadout cards, so for each one you'll receive 2,150 Fragments.

It's important to note that while not confirmed when Steam Trading is live we may later down the road add the ability for you to Trade and/or put Special Edition Loadout Cards up for sale on the Marketplace. We'll give you more information on this a little later down the line, but due to the nature of these updates we don't know for sure just yet if/when this will happen.

OBSIDIAN OPERATIVE SKYHAMMER

"The party starts here" - Skyhammer, 2015

You've seen his foot. You've seen his other foot. And now, here's the rest of him. The thunder. Has. Come.

If you want to look like a badass when calling in an Airstrike or supplying teammates with ammo then this is the Loadout Card for you. Available now in-store for 3,650 RADs.

BALANCE UPDATES

Assault Rifles

The Stark AR, BR-16 and Dreiss AR are currently the weakest Assault Rifles and needed some improvement. They're all intended to be longer-range weapons so we've made changes to make them more accurate and more consistent at long distances:

Stark AR
- Reduced Maximum Spread by ~15%
- Reduced Spread Increase Rate by ~15%
Reduced Vertical Recoil by ~20%
BR-16
- Reduced Maximum Spread by ~15%
- Reduced Spread Increase Rate by ~15%
Dreiss AR
- Reduced Maximum Spread by ~10%
- Reduced Spread Increase Rate by ~10%

Shotguns

A common complaint about Shotguns is how effective they are when used while jumping. Due to their pellet-based nature our standard jumping penalties aren't as impactful when applied to them. With this in mind we've made a few changes to make jumping mid-combat with Shotguns significantly more punishing:

Hollunds 880
- Increased Jumping Spread Penalties by +150%
Remburg 7
- Increased Jumping Spread Penalties by +150%
Ahnuld-12
- Increased Jumping Spread Penalties by +150%

Sniper Rifles

When using Bolt-Action Sniper Rifles players often get frustrated by the delay after firing before they can switch to another weapon, so we've reduced this timing while keeping the overall fire-rate the same:

MoA SNPR-1
- Reduced 'Firing' duration to 0.5s (from 0.7s)
- Increased 'Bolt-Action' duration to 1.0s (from 0.8s)

These changes keep the total time between shots at 1.5s

FEL-IX
- Reduced 'Firing' duration to 0.5s (from 0.8s)
- Increased 'Bolt-Action' duration to 1.2s (from 0.9s)

These changes keep the total time between shots at 1.7s

Fletcher

Fletcher is our main offensive Objective Specialist and is filling that role nicely, however his Sticky Bombs can be very difficult to avoid. To combat this we're reducing their explosive damage radius:

Sticky Bomb explosive radius decreased to 3.76m (from 4.16m)

Guardian

Guardian's Sky Shield ability is mainly used by defenders to hold choke points and is often not appealing enough to use for the attacking team when there's no EV to escort. This is why we've increased the power of the Sky Shield as an offensive ability while slightly reducing the power as a defensive one. This includes increased health and a decreased cooldown, allowing players to use it more often and in more offensive areas. The up-time of the Sky Shield has been decreased to make it less appealing for defenders, taking the overall down-time between Sky Shields to 10s (from 8s):

Sky Shield health points increased to 90hp (from 60hp)
Sky Shield lifespan decreased to 8s (from 12s)
Sky Shield cooldown decreased to 18s (from 20s)

With having one of the most effective Revives in the game, Guardian does lack the ability to heal her teammates once they are up. So that her revived teammates aren't sometimes left on scarily low health we've increased the minimum amount of HP her Bionic Pulse can give to revived players:

Minimum health given on Revives increased to 50hp (from 30hp)
Maximum health given on Revives remains the same

Hunter

To improve Hunter's utility to his team we've reduced his EMP Arrow cooldown so he's able to utilise it more frequently to disable defences:

EMP Arrow cooldown decreased to 12s (from 16s)

Javelin

While we've gradually improved the Rocket Launcher's balance, it's still felt that Javelin's a bit too good versus players and not quite good enough versus Objectives. These changes make her Rockets less frequent and more valuable when used against Objectives, reducing the number of times she uses it to purely kill players:

Rocket Launcher cooldown increased to 35s (from 30s)
Rocket Launcher objective damage increased significantly

Rhino

While Rhino is always going to be our tankiest Merc, over time he's gradually become more powerful and more frustrating to play against. We've decided to make him a little easier to kill, but have also shaved off the edges of his hitboxes so you have to be a little more accurate when fighting against him:

Health Points decreased to 180 (from 200hp)
Reduced the size of Rhino's body hitboxes by ~2%

Turtle

Playing against Turtle can be a struggle for two reasons. First, if you don't have any explosive damage dealers his Deployable Cover is very difficult to destroy, and even when it gets to low health he can often replace it with a brand-new one very quickly. To compensate for this we've increased the damage bullets do to the Deployable Cover so everyone can kill it a little faster, and we've made reclaiming his Deployable Cover return much less cooldown than previously.

Bullet damage multiplier to Shield increased to 100% (from 90%)
Turtle Shield Reclaim cooldown reduction has been decreased to 35% (from 65%)

BUG FIXES

General

Fixed issue where key binds set in the front end could reset to default once in-game
Fixed issue where destroying a Bushwhacker Turret while stood on top of it could teleport the player around the map in community servers
Fixed various text a localisation issues

Want to chat about it some more? Head on over to the [official forums](https://forums.splashdamage.com/t/july-24th-update-weapon-case-keys-for-credits-obsidian-operative-skyhammer-and-fine-tuning/232651), or check out our social channels.

Jul 24, 2018

Alpha 8.0: A New Winter - now live!

Goblins of Elderstone - Lost Goblin

Hey all you wonderful goblins!
A new winter has arrived in Elderstone and it's prettier than ever!

We have been super hard at work and outdid ourselves yet again with the biggest update to the game yet, even bigger than the previous update. All the suggestions and feedback and bugs reports have been taken in an listed and although we obviously can't address every single issue with each update, we certainly are working our way through them. A few key highlights we have added in this new Alpha are a brand new and much improved UI for the goblin stats and moods, these should be much more clear to you now and will help you better understand what affects the goblins’ mood and behaviour.

Goblins now also all have randomised faction attributes known as the WTF levels. These are levels in War, Trade and Faith and influence the goblins stats in various and important ways. High War attribute give a goblins more hit points and damage, while high trade will make the goblin a harder worker and a high faith score will mean more healing and magic if they are assigned to faith jobs such as priest and shaman.
On top of that goblins can now occasionally be born with traits that affect them in either positive or negative ways. These traits include “lazy”, “berserker”, “worker” and some other with more to come.

The big new art upgrade is a new snow shader and particle system. Winter will now look even better with falling snow and the snow slowly collecting on the ground and on all the buildings and rocks and terrain. The goblins also make deep paths in the snow as they wade through it. We worked really hard on making this look nice and still be performant so we hope you enjoy this updated winter look - more improvements like this will come over time.

Some of the smaller but equally important improvements include new loading screen hints to help you, slower day and night to give you more time to prepare for each winter, lots of small balance changes to make the beginning of the game easier and many more small changes.

We have fixed a lot of bugs and goblins behaviour issues and improved performance overall. Of course this is still Alpha and there will always be bugs and issues as we develop the game, every time we add new features or improve something, there is a risk of breaking something else, this is how development works and we will keep doing our best to make sure the bugs are low but also not stop from pushing forward and adding exciting new content and features.

I want to take a moment to thank our amazing community of fans, players and testers, especially the clan on discord who have been invaluable in providing feedback, suggestions and bug reports. Please join us there to help us if you haven't already and make some wicked new friends.

New Features:
- Added Goblin Traits which change a goblins job stats and can affect their moods.
- Random faction levels, the goblins are now born with predispositions to War, Trade or Faith based roles. ( WTF levels xD )
- Update to the Goblin Stats menu to reflect the previous changes and more easily get this information across to the user.
- New path following setup for goblins. Should be less stuck goblins and smoother movement.
- SNOOOOW!!! Snow Drifts during winter + snow particles.
- Added loading screen hints.
- Grass and Post Processing changes to improve framerate.
- Improvements to the Goblins perception and reactions to enemies.

Balance Changes:
- Increased the time of a daynight cycle from 300 to 400 seconds.
- Increased the number of goblins in a warrens and grandhall to 10 and 12 respectively.
- Important notifications will now slow down time to normal speed.
- Scavenger Hut and War Hall now requires Planks.
- Temple now requires logs so you can built it earlier
- Faith Hall now requires Cloth.
- Brewery now produces Ale also (from Berries)
- Council goblins no longer need Meat
- Productive Condition now reduces Laziness, several other small balance changes to conditions.
- Tool needs reduced on goblins by increasing their lifespan.
- Tutorial no longer on by default + Tradehall moved to be last in the chain.

Bug Fixes:
- More rebalancing to the breeding values for goblins, Copperface also now offers Fertility instead of Moneybags as his neutral god power.
- When a goblin successfully burns down a building all rioting goblins gain the catharsis buff.
- Temporarily removed the End of Season report while we give it a revamp.
- Fixed building resources to not change colors.
- Fixed the sleeping icon to not stay present when cycling through goblins.
- Fix for goblins not going all the way up to buildings to interact with them in some cases.
- Updated the Clan Create screen to reflect the new traits and show more of the relevant goblin stats req to select a goblin for your tribe.
- Fixed some news feed text colors.
- Crash fix from loading a save with a Goblin Under Attack notification active.
- Buildings can no longer be placed on inclines.
- Updated collision volumes on some trees which were not blocking building placement correctly.
- Increased the frequency paths/walkways are generated to more likely have the displayed path equal the final result.
- Updated multiple items tick functionality so that building placement while paused works correctly.
- Several updates to sound volumes.
- Fix for a crash from one of the story moment results.

Coming Soon (some not so soon):
- More buildings and resources
- Improved needs and feedback for not fulfilling needs
- More enemies
- More gods
- Region map gameplay with raiding and traiding
- Heroes
- Diplomacy with other races and the gods