Greetings Agonians,
Today we have a small patch with mostly tweaks for existing game mechanics. We have some tweaks to rare nodes so they take longer to empty, improvements to the weapon bar, minion adjustments, and more. Outside of this patch, we are making significant progress on the Relic System. The notes are as follows:
General
- Rare mines and groves have been adjusted so they provide normal materials such as iron ore and timber so they will take a longer time to empty giving more opportunities to fight.
- Auto-equip tool should now work for rare nodes
- Minions have been adjusted to be more consistent to acquire rare materials, we are first doing a small test with leenspar and theyril golem to gauge activity. The minions on these mobs have a chance to drop rare leenspar/theyril nuggets which can be crafted into ore. This will allow for a more consistent and rewarding loot. The tasks for these minions have been adjusted to require fewer kills.
- Trade chat has been re-added, Can be accessed with /say_trade.
- A new icon has been added for void powder
- Fish icons have been adjusted
- Divine Ascension title task previously had a kill requirement of 1000 eodrins, which has been reduced to 250.
- Some capital tiles around Sandbrook/Hammerdale have been changed to Lawful
- Grand Tikoloshe spawn has been adjusted to prevent normal monsters from spawning while the champion is active
- Support for Simplified Chinese characters has been enabled in chat
- Halloween items have been added to monster loot tables
Weapon Bar Improvements
- For any weapon bar slot that has auto equip enabled, whenever the character's inventory changes, it will use a set of rules to determine whether a new item should be put in that weapon bar slot.
- Added extra slot to weapon bar
- The weapon bar entry options dialog now has a checkbox called "Enable auto equip", disabled by default. When enabled, this feature is turned on for that slot.
- If there is an empty or missing auto equip config, it'll attempt to generate a suitable configuration based on the current item.
- While auto equip is enabled, the following options are also available in the dialog:
- Load presets: Allows the player to choose from a number of presets, such as fast staffs, damage staffs, or fastest two-hander. A confirmation prompt is displayed prior to loading the preset since it will erase any previous configuration for that slot. Among these presets is "Auto generate", which is the same one that is used to generate a config for newly enabled slots.
- Add manual filters: Allows the player to add manual filters (Eg highest speed, highest damage, specific weapon types only) to build a custom configuration.
The way auto equip works is by checking the character's inventory and applying a set of filters in a specific order in order to determine the best candidate for a slot. For example, let's take the Long weapons, prefer Greatswords preset as seen in the screenshot below:
This creates two filters.
- The first one, Only these weapon types, in this order, will weed out anything that isn't one of those (In this case, GS/GC/GA/PA), and then prioritizes those weapon types from left to right. This means if there are greatswords and polearms in the inventory, it will discard the polearms.
Weapon types sorting is a bit special case in that it will treat starter weapons as second class citizens, meaning they can become an auto equip candidate, but they'll be the last resort.
The player can drag and drop the weapon types on top of each other to reorder them and change priorities or drag them away onto the main Darkfall window to remove them. They may also right-click to add more weapon types. - The second one is applied to the items that weren't discarded by the first filter and has the highest damage. It will only take the item with the highest damage, although it's possible for it to find multiples if there's a tie. If this happens, one will be chosen (First one in the list) unless there is another filter to apply afterward.
- Note the player can also drag and drop the filters to reorder them and change which one's applied first.
When a one-handed item is equipped, this feature will take the opinionated approach of assuming the player would like a shield and also throw one in the slot, if there is one in the inventory. The only filter here is by shield rank and will be invisible to the player.
When a new item is manually dropped onto a weapon bar slot, it will disable auto equip. However, the config is still there and will be recovered if the player turns it back on.
Closing Thoughts
With development primarily focused on relics, we wanted to take some time to clean up some areas of the game to enhance the user experience. Please send your feedback as we always love to hear your thoughts! Stay safe and Happy Halloween!
The team at Big Picture Games