Next PTR Date
Our next Public Test Realm will be opening on Wednesday the 25th of September.
Henrik previously gave a tentative date during his stream of the 18th of September, however we are giving it another week to ensure everything is in proper order for accurate and hopefully smoother testing.
UE 5.4 Upgrade
During the PTR you will be able to test out the migration to Unreal Engine version 5.4, which has required a significant amount of reworking to get in a functional state, but could offer us some performance gains in the future. There won’t be much in the way of visual differences for this update, however the new version of UE contains some substantial changes to many areas behind the scenes and we are happy to have made the move now rather than later.
Pet Experience Overhaul
You will also be able to test out the new changes to the pet gameplay experience, such as the new leveling system which allows your pet to earn a chunk of experience every time you kill something that gives you Glory, so taking down higher Glory foes with your pet by your side will reward you with more experience.
The passive gain of experience while out of combat remains, and is still affected by the Animal Care skill, however the active bonus to that passive gain while in combat has been removed and replaced with this new system for more active leveling.
There have also been several changes to pets and Beast Mastery as a whole in this update:
- The damage of “passive” non-focus tamed / dominated pet attacks has been reduced by 50% to promote using the pet’s active damage dealing abilities.
- The focus cost and damage amounts of all damage dealing abilities has been rebalanced to make their use more appealing.
- The need to tell your pet to attack a target before using a beast mastery ability has been removed, now your pet will automatically start attacking your target and attempt to use the triggered ability when you use a beast mastery ability while targeting something.
- The effect of your current focus percentage on your pet’s passive non-focus attack damage has been removed, now all pet passive attacks will deal full damage regardless of your current focus percentage.
- All pets now have their own amount of required experience per level, so weaker and easier to obtain pets level up faster than stronger and rarer pets.
There are more changes here, but these are the key ones.
Fledgling Flag
We are also introducing the Fledgling flag with this update, which after further refinement will be included in a much simpler and safer form than as Henrik described during his recent dev stream.
The Fledgling flag will now simply serve as a visual marker to indicate that a player’s account is new, and will not come with increased penalties for killing a yellow flagged Fledgling.
We may explore additional incentives for helping Fledglings rather than killing them in the future, however for now this flag will simply serve as proof that their account is new, and that they very likely could benefit from assistance and guidance in our harsh world of Nave.
Dungeon Logging Prevention
This upcoming patch also comes with a new system to prevent player characters from exiting the world after crashing inside a dungeon.
The groundwork support for this was added in the last patch, and we are now finally able to make this long time requested change. After the next update, if a player crashes while inside a dungeon, their character will remain in the world for a couple hours before being killed by the server. If a crashed player is a spirit, they will instead be teleported to the nearest priest.
We know this has been a frequently requested item for far too long, so we are very happy to finally be able to do this.
Clade Gift Balance
This PTR will also include the introduction of a new mechanic, currently only utilized by the Alvarin Clade Gift “Runner’s High” as an additional effect; When activating Runner’s High, all of your clean attacks (hits with the weapon head and not a handle or arm hit) will penetrate your target’s armor by a certain percentage.
We will be setting a “safer” initial value for this on the PTR, so we can’t wait to hear your feedback about it!
This new mechanic is intended to play off of and enhance the Alvarin’s natural affinity for chasing down targets and finishing them off.
The armor penetration mechanic also works with bows, as well as when hitting a target’s equipped shield on their back.
We also have a smaller list of potential balance changes to other Clade Gifts for clades other than Alvarin, however they are still slightly in flux at the moment and so we may talk about them at a later date.
New Game System
During his stream Henrik teased a new game system we will be including in this patch. We don’t want to reveal too much about it just yet, but it should be a good bit of fun to engage with in town when you aren’t busy going on adventures.
Whether you’re a longtime fan of Mortal Online 2 or a newcomer in the world of Nave, dive into the vault with Henrik once a month at 8:00 PM CEST to get your questions answered by the CEO and lead game designer.
See you in Nave,
The Star Vault Team