Throughout the history of Agon, civilized races and monsters alike have worshipped various deities. Inevitably, deities are slain and their empty positions filled, always ending in a maximum of twenty. Worship and following the tenets of each deity serves as a conduit that empowers them. This is especially true on holy days.
Recently, ancient Chaldean texts were unearthed, buried deep in Kasdim on the subcontinent of Cairn. The pages were frail but with diligence and patience, they were deciphered, unveiling a lost technology known as obelisks. Long ago, patrons of each religion erected wondrous obelisks capable of providing a constant stream of power to their respective deities. In return, gods and goddesses alike bestowed power upon their followers. As religion in Agon is a controversial topic, many fervently worship or oppose each deity, leading to widespread conflict. This, in part, led to the downfall of Chaldea.
Within the legendary Chaldean texts were the designs of obelisks and the secrets of magic and technology required to imprint and activate the holy symbols which must be etched onto the obelisk itself. In fear of the second known fall of civilization, it was decided that the texts must be sealed away forever. However, this secret would not last, as the agents of Valdazeer, the Malaut, used a combination of magic and subterfuge to steal these artifacts and spread their secrets far and wide. Now aware of such powerful tools of worship and the boons they would surely provide, the people of Agon created new obelisks, one for each deity, and the deadly cycle began anew. Already, tensions are brewing and long-ridiculed prophecies that spoke of widespread conflict linked to religious constructs have stricken fear in the hearts of Agonians.
Will you seek out the obelisks of your chosen deity and keep them out of the hands of your enemies? Or perhaps you’ll disregard all religious implications and covet the obelisks for their power and nothing more. One thing is sure: The balance of power will shift and carnage shall soon ensue.
Greetings Agonians,
Today we have the long-awaited Dayar Update, the main focus on this update is Obelisks, and bringing players back into their clan cities. Building and maintaining player-owned cities and sieging them is a major element of Rise of Agon. This patch is all about incentivizing the use of player cities and promoting pvp raids. The newly deployed Obelisks are powerful clan objectives that require player cities, and in some cases hamlets to store. Initially, we will have five obelisks with a focus on pvp benefits.
It's not all about obelisks though, we want to make player cities impactful. This includes craftable and destructible player city billboards and markets, the removal of crafting mastery items in NPC cities, rules changes to where players can port to lawless villages from, and more. If you like the idea of clan conflict and city raiding, this patch is for you!
Obelisks
Obelisks can be found randomly in the world, similar to how Chaos Chests and rare ore nodes work. They emit a noticeable sound and have an identifying visual effect to make them easier to spot:
They will currently only spawn in lawless lands, and there's a limit to how many can spawn in each area every day, as well as how many of each kind of obelisk can exist in the world at a time (regardless of whether they're on the ground, on a player, or on an altar). We're starting with a cap of 1 per type, and 1 per day for each region. The 5 regions are the subcontinents and center map.
An obelisk can be picked up by pressing the use key once found, but a player may only carry one at a time. Once picked up the item goes into the player's inventory and a new backpack is added to the character. Unlike other items, this has a special set of rules, however:
- The player may not teleport (including recalls).
- Obelisks cannot be placed in a personal or clan bank, sold, or destroyed.
- Obelisks drop on the ground if the player is incapacitated, ganked (ie decapitation or drowning), or logs out. This ignores capital tile status and PVP stances.
- Obelisks have no collision (can't run into them or get stuck in them).
- If the server goes down (scheduled or crash) while a player is carrying an obelisk, they will lose it and it may also be moved back to a previous position or destroyed entirely, depending on the cause and timing of the shutdown.
- The item may be dropped on the ground like any other item, and will not emit the sound or other special effects for 30 minutes that it does when found in the wild. Unlike randomly spawned obelisks, player dropped ones are persistent, meaning they will still be there after next server up.
The Obelisk Altar
Obelisk altars can be built in all player cities after upgrading the clan church to its max level. They can also be built in the hamlets of Bloodscar and Rehnagar, after the thaumaturgist (enchanting ring).
We have aimed to place the altars in spots away from clan banks but also not right next to outer walls, and with other factors in mind such as visibility of the portal exits from the altars. The goal is to not give the defenders every advantage possible while also not making it too easy for attackers, and we will likely need to adjust this based on feedback. Since cities vary significantly in their layouts, it was not possible to find an ideal spot for each and every one of them. Additionally, some cities had their altars placed in more defensive locations and/or have multiple altars to give them more value.
An obelisk may be placed on an empty altar by double-clicking the obelisk in the player's backpack, as long as the altar is not vulnerable or disabled. The player must be in the clan that owns the altar and have the Construction Manager role. Once placed, the obelisk will grant the owning clan global unique buffs (more on those below), and cannot be removed by anyone, including the owning clan, unless it is made vulnerable first.
In order to make an altar vulnerable, the player must use a Usurper Wand on it (double click it in inventory while looking at the altar) outside of the owning clan's invulnerable activity window. This will start a 3-minute countdown that cannot be reversed, after which the altar will lose any remaining hitpoints, become disabled, and enter vulnerable mode.
When vulnerable, anyone can press the use key on the altar to reclaim the obelisk, which will be notified to the owning clan. If the altar is sufficiently repaired, it will enter a 30-minute restoration timer. Obelisk buffs will be restored immediately (if the obelisk is still there), but the altar will continue to be vulnerable until restoration time passes.
Obelisk buffs
Each of the obelisks has a new unique buff. One thing to keep in mind is that obelisks placed in lawful altars get a diminished effect. Players will be able to know what Obelisks effects are active on another player when targetting them.
The Obelisk buffs are as follows:
- Obelisk of Jisune: reduces gank cast time. Note that the gank animation itself after the cast time is unaffected, and some of it must go through before the gank is considered successful.
- -50% (lawless)
- -10% (lawful)
- Obelisk of Myrthai: reduces revive cast time.
- -25% (lawless)
- -5% (lawful)
- Obelisk of Ashaka: grants a chance to decapitate when killing someone with a power attack.
- 100% (lawless)
- 20% (lawful)
- Obelisk of Ur Khamset: reduces potion drink cooldown.
- -34% (lawless)
- -8% (lawful)
- Obelisk of Melek: delays system proximity messages (ie player has entered/left city). Note it does not affect other system messages such as structures being disabled, mounts being spotted, etc.
- 90 seconds (lawless)
- 18 seconds (lawful)
Performance Updates
- Particle system textures are now persistent in memory so they do not get constantly unloaded/reloaded this will should have a positive effect on the amount of load lag that players feel.
- Reduced the CPU time of the physics system by 5-10% (with around 10 mobs around), the more dynamic moving mobs/players the more.
- Particle Systems will now have less CPU usage
- Resource Management System less CPU usage.
- FPS limiter added to Video Options
Other changes
- Players can no longer port to lawless villages from NPC Cities
- Players can no longer craft mastery items in NPC Cities
- Markets are now buildable and destroyable in Player Cities
- Billboards are now buildable and destroyable in Player Cities
- Billboards added to 4 island chaos cities, Jan'Halek on Ruby.
- Market added to Jan'Halek chaos city on Ruby.
- Siege weaponry will always drop no matter the area type
- Updated mage killer description to be 20% (Visual UI only)
- Updated destroyer description to be 40% (Visual UI only)
- Fix guardsman reducing stamina drain for the person attacking the guardsman
- Fixed odd characters in UI targeting indicator (when looking at house tax flags, graves, etc.).
- The system message for attempting to drink a potion before it's off cooldown now indicates the time remaining, and is also shown as large on screen text.
- Clan vault tab has been added to new Clan Window
- Added a holdings tab to the Clan Window showing population and current mayor. Clicking the population of a city will open a bindstone management window allowing you to remove players from that bindstone.
- News reel added to Clan Window
- Guard Towers in clan holdings should now be more consistent with their damage
Thank you to everybody for the continuous support, and we expect to have more news about the Asia Server in the near future.
Sincerely,
The Big Picture Games Team