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Crowfall: MEET THE DRUID

Sandbox MMO's

MEET THE DRUID

As many of you super-sleuthed while watching the Tiger Chat video, we’ve begun work on our next archetype, the Druid! Our goal is to bring the Druid into both the Hunger Dome and Siege Perilous maps before the next major milestone.

We’re solidly “in a whirlwind” of development now, not only refining Siege Perilous and letting more backers in, but we’re also ramping up the mid-stage development on the Druid. She is really starting to look great! The base equipment set is done, the character is all rigged and ready to start integrating into the game. That means we’ve started creating all of her alternate armor sets, designing her powers and crafting both her unique animations and her spell FX.

I know I’ve said this every time we make a new archetype, and I will continue to say it: the Druid is looking like she will be the most versatile archetype that we’ve designed so far, with:

  • Multiple new types of healing mechanics,
  • A healing and a nuking powers tray!

That’s right! The Druid will blend between a ranged healing tray and a ranged nuking tray as the situation warrants. “But wait, Blair!  I thought you didn’t have any dedicated healers!”

Not exactly. I said we don’t have any “firehose” healers, the kind that a party might need to take on a boss monster at the end of a dungeon raid. However, we do have support classes, like the Legionnaire, that can be instrumental in helping your team be more effective once deployed on the battlefield.

The Druid is a lot more versatile then your traditional PvE firehose healer. When we were designing her power kit and thinking about her thematically, having two trays made the most sense. (Todd will go into the lore at a later point but it is all tied up with the Gaea the Earth Mother being dead and as a result the Druids have a much more difficult time harnessing the power of Earth Magic.)

The theme of the Druid is very yin and yang, ebb and flow, whichever way you like to look at it. Her resource mechanic is tied up with this idea in mind, but with a twist.

Using healing will generate her resource; however, accumulating too much will cause her to ignite herself, and she continuously takes damage until purging it from her body or dying. “How do I get rid of my resource, Blair!?” Just swap over to the nuking tray and start blasting away with Nature Magic!

We think this will create some super interesting tactics without unleashing a 100% uptime firehose healer into Crowfall. Instead they will need to balance the use of both healing and damage/support spells and we suspect that having the two modes will have Druids making interesting choices about when to keep healing (at a risk of self-immolation) and when to swap to nuking and start laying waste.

In terms of healing mechanics, we have a nice array of options planned: healing orbs, regeneration fields, health projectiles, and some other surprises. Beyond the healing powers tech, we are also getting a bunch of new statistics dedicated to healing. (And yes, some of this will bleed back into making the Legionnaire more interesting as well!)

Here are a few quick renders to show great she looks!

Druid_Concepts_Watermarked

Druid_Render_Color_Watermarked

…And as a reminder for those who don’t read our site as often:

That’s it for today! Keep an eye here for more information about the Druid’s power and playstyle!

Thomas Blair
Design Lead, ACE

 

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Black Desert: MEDIAH EXPANSION

Sandbox MMO's

MEDIAH EXPANSION ARRIVES TODAY!

30 March 2016 14:00

Today, Black Desert Online will be expanded with the huge Mediah region, featuring tons of new quests, fierce bosses, and more. With the Mediah Expansion, players can rise to new levels of power and achieve greatness like never before. From tranquil farmsteads to busy ports where tradesmen thrive, Mediah will enchant both newcomers and seasoned travelers. Take a look at the beautiful new vistas in the trailer below.

Black Desert Online players can access the Mediah Expansion at no additional cost.
Mediah Expansion Features:

  • + World size increased by 30%
  • + Over 1,000 new quests
  • + Kzarka – An enormous boss that can take on hundreds of players at a time
  • + New guild missions, including special bosses that drop formidable weapons
  • + Crimson Battlefield – Instanced 40v40 skirmishes that players can queue for in groups of five or solo
  • + New weapons and more powerful armor set
  • + Craftable Alchemy Stones allow players to apply Attack, Defense, or Life bonuses to their equipment

Full patch notes will be made available on the official forums after the maintenance.

Gloria Victis Weekly Update – New dynamic events, numerous improvements to AI and interface

Sandbox MMO's

Changelog v.0.5..9.2 Alpha

Greetings from the battlefield!

This weekly update introduces, among other things, new dynamic events, as well as numerous improvements for interface and AI.

New dynamic events, designed for the new players, engage Ismirean players to stop the Midlandic partisans attack at the Mereley fort. This event chain guides the newcomers through the very first moments in game and helps them to learn the basics of gameplay.

There are also numerous improvements for the experienced players as well, such as implementation of the inventory context menu. It allows to choose precisely an action which a player wants to perform with selected item or even to display a list of recipes in which such item can be used! This change greatly improves comfort of the inventory management and learning the crafting system.

We have also greatly improved the AI as well, so now the fights between NPCs look much better and they can perform various immersive actions, such as cutting woods, harvesting crops, mining or sitting on benches.

See you in battle!

Changelog v.0.5.9.2 Alpha

Gameplay:

– Implemented new chain of dynamic events near Mereley – attack of the Midlandic partisans at a Northern gate of the fort and chase after them to the camp – and slightly redesigned events occuring in this location
– Improved behaviors of the NPC mercenaries who support players in the PVP tournament “Valley of Death”
– Added spawning the NPC mercenaries of a losing team during the “Valley of Death”, even if such team doesn’t control a flag
– Improved behaviors of the NPCs, such as fighting the other NPCs, sitting or gathering resources
– Replaced animation of blocking with shield by a player
– Increased loading speed and slowed down unloading speed of the blocking power bar for shields
– Balanced the resources harvesting times
– Made the stagger time dependent on the power of attack and current stamina of an attacker
– Added safezones around the camps of exiled players

Interface:

– Implemented the guild ranks system – leader, besides of the current permissions, can now nominate guild members to an officer or recruit and pass their function, officer can invite and remove recruits, recruit doesn’t have any additional permissions
– Added context menu in the inventory window, after clicking RMB on a chosen item – it greatly improves comfort of using the items, showing their exact purpose
– Added transition between the inventory and crafting windows – after clicking RMB on a chosen item and selecting a specific option in a context menu, available recipes in which the item can be used will be displayed in a separate window , therefore significantly improving comfort of the inventory management and learning the crafting system
– DIsabled ability to consume crafting materials in order to avoid confusion

Fixes:

– Fixed an issue causing that leaders couldn’t manage their guilds
– Fixed an issue causing displaying animation of falling down when walking up or down the stairs
– Fixed an issue causing that animation of blocking with fists was blocking a controller
– Fixed an issue causing that some informations about a character were saved after removing it and passed to the next character with the same name
– Fixed an issue allowing to duplicate items when looting players