Greetings Agonians,
Today we begin testing for our long awaited ‘Dayar Update’, the main goal of this update is to encourage clans to live in and defend their player holdings. The main focus is Obelisks which should encourage back and forth battles between holdings and also the limits on billboard porting and mastery crafting from NPC cities. The PTS notes are as follows:
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 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. In order to make hiding them indefinitely a little more challenging, however, after server up they will emit the same special effects as wild obelisks until they are picked up again.
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 an 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. They 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.
- 50% (lawless)
- 10% (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 not 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.
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 (WIP not fully functional)
- Billboards are now buildable and destroyable in Player Cities (WIP not fully functional)
- Siege weaponry will always drop no matter the area type
- Updated mage killer description to be 20%
- 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 (WIP not fully functional)
Developers will be engaging with testers through discord and forums where you will be able to get tester roles and the forum thread for this news post.
Join our discord by using this Discord Link
Download the PTS launcher by using this Download Link
**You can copy the data .sfad files from the live version to the PTS folder, this will save you the hassle of downloading them again.**
Use this app made by the player Dagon Raysler to backup your character folder from live to save your keybinds and bank sorting. Click on Backup before logging into PTS and click on restore after logging out of PTS! Download Link You can view the source code for it here https://pastebin.com/jNCkfLxJ
Sincerely,
- The team at Big Picture Games