We are going to be releasing an update very soon, the PTR for which will be commencing this week on Friday September 5th, we hope to see you there!

What is in it?

This update we have been working on comes with a wide variety of changes.

An upgrade to the latest version of Unreal Engine 5, client-side performance improvements ranging from 5-25% depending on where you are in the world and what is happening around you, some fixes to a few long standing bugs and issues such as mounts ending up underground, plans to fix the in-game chat not auto scrolling to the bottom properly (this one is not guaranteed yet but hopeful), attributes affected by rings not being updated without needing to re-equip them, a fix for the “any broker” filter not showing any listings, reintroducing the Fishing Taskmaster, an important balance change affecting nearly all melee combat abilities, two new craftable pet armors, an enormous 100+ environment art fixes, and a long list of miscellaneous bug fixes and backend work.

See you on the PTR this weekend!

Quality Survey Results

As those of you who responded will know already, we opened up a “Quality Survey” questionnaire recently where we asked you to list what you believe is the most important bug that needs fixing, in addition to what you think would be the most impactful quality of life increase.

The results of this quality survey were quite clear, and are why the above mentioned bug resulting in your mount sometimes going underground or in the air was prioritized and fixed, with it being the most strongly mentioned technical issue by far.

Similarly, the most requested quality of life improvements were also rather distinct, with the foremost being an update to the experience and consistency of interacting with the banking mechanics, which encompasses town banks, player owned territory banks as well as house chests. The second most mentioned quality of life improvement relates to Etherworld travel, and specifically the time and attention requirements involved with doing something as simple as travelling around the world as a spirit.

Disclaimer

It is important to note that the following section of the post comes with no guarantee that the mentioned changes will make it into the game within any specified time frame or update schedule.

Until they are confirmed to be part of a coming update, this mention of them serves only to inform the community what our plans are and what some of the things are that we have been working on.

Banking Overhaul

It is not too uncommon that the older a system is, the more likely they will tend to have issues become apparent over time, and our banking feature, one of the oldest systems in the game, is no exception.

Organization Frustration

This issue largely stems, ironically so, from the sandbox nature of the game’s design.

Being able to place an item wherever you want within the available bank grid slots puts the organization and responsibility in the hands of the player, which although having the potential to really personalize your own bank, may and often does lead to one having a bank which is rather messy and cluttered, making it difficult and therefore time consuming to find what you are looking for.

This is exacerbated by being able to add bags with items in them to the bank, which due to not having an item limit per bank means the most optimal bank configuration in order to maximize available bank space is to place the largest bag in each available bank slot. This results in most seasoned player’s banks being a large grid of, despite being able to have names, identical looking bags which need to be individually opened and rummaged through in order to find what you might be looking for.

When combined with mechanical issues such as not being able to right-click add stacks of items to existing stacks without manually dragging them on top of the existing stack, the resulting experience can become rather tedious and time consuming, which is certainly not ideal for interacting with one of the game’s core systems which is used nearly every time you play.

To remedy these issues, we have made plans to completely overhaul the banking experience, with the core goal being for it to become something that you no longer pay attention to or think about, but that instead seamlessly fades into the background of your gameplay. You should be able to easily and intuitively find any specific thing you might be looking for within seconds of opening the bank UI.

The proposed changes will apply to Town Banks, Territory Banks as well as House Chests, as these should all use the same exact UI and interaction mechanics.

Currently, this is how we are planning to remake the banking system:

• Items will now be auto sorted when placed into the bank, and you do not need to choose the exact location an item occupies.
  • There are Primary and Secondary sorting categories, with the Primary categories visible on the left-hand side of the Bank UI. When a Primary category is selected (visible in the mockup in gold), the right-hand panel will display the associated Secondary categories.
  • These sorting categories are based around how an item is used in the game, rather than only their “taxonomical” groups such as with many skills.
  • The Primary category panel can be collapsed to only show the icons if you do not need to see their names in text and prefer a cleaner looking interface.
  • Secondary categories may be collapsed using the arrow button located next to the item count number, to hide their contents.
  • Empty Secondary categories will be hidden.
  • Items may appear under multiple different secondary categories depending on their usage, for example Calamine may appear under Magic & Arcana > Ecumenical Reagents as well as Mining > Catalysts and Alchemy > Ingredients. It is useful to think of these categories similar fashion to the Broker filters; If an item can be used in a certain way, it will appear under the associated category.
    • This also aids new players in being able to emergently learn about the game by simply depositing an item into their bank, as the category it ends up in will tell them what it might be used for.
• Banks will instead have a set and visible item limit, rather than an effective limit imposed by how many bags you have in the bank.
  • This item limit is currently planned to be 1000 per bank but may change as development progresses. House chests are planned to have individual item limits, with items deposited in a house chest counting toward both the limit of the chest as well as the overall item limit of the house itself.
• Items can no longer be placed inside bags when in the bank.

Please note that the following images are only mockups for the purpose of demonstration, and are not representative of the final appearance.

Beyond organizational issues, something we would hopefully like to tackle as part of this Banking Overhaul, is the time spent simply withdrawing items when “regearing” after resurrecting. Depending on your playstyle, this may involve at times manually finding and withdrawing 20+ different items consecutively.

To aid with this, we are experimenting with the idea of creating “Favored” item sets which after being set up, could be withdrawn with a single click to your inventory. An example use case for this might be a set of specific magic reagents of a specific quantity, or a specific set of armor pieces.

Exactly how this is implemented however or if it makes the cut will depend on many factors, including your feedback! As such we will be asking for your opinion about all of these changes in our latest feedback questionnaire found below.

In addition to the above changes, we would also like to fix various banking-related issues alongside this overhaul, such as being able to split items out of house chests, as this issue in particular was strongly mentioned in the recent Quality Survey. Fixing this issue would require a deceptively large rebuild of some of the core item-handling logic however, and so we can’t guarantee it would make the cut as part of this, although we would certainly love to do it.

Please note once again that this overhaul is not coming in the next patch, however the results you give in the feedback questionnaire will contribute to how much priority it is given when being considered for future updates. If you would like to see it sooner rather than later, make your voice heard by following the link below!

Feedback Questionnaire

If you have any thoughts, feedback or suggestions about the above mentioned Banking Overhaul, as well as the balance of Combat Abilities, please provide it using the link below to our new feedback questionnaire!

War & Sieging Changes

The previously mentioned and planned changes to Wars and Sieging are still being worked on, and you can read more about what our plans are for them in our previous Into the Vault development update here on our website if you haven’t already:
Into the Vault #148 | TC Overhaul Feedback Follow Up
These changes and the updates to them will be further discussed in a future development update.

Note

Please keep in mind that as development progresses, any details described above may change or be adjusted where necessary.

See you in Nave,

The Star Vault Team