Greetings Mortals,
After every summer season, the people of Myrland begin preparations for autumn. Many things that accompany this time of year are a cause for celebration, such as certain root vegetables like karotons often swelling to an enormous size—but the season does not come without its curiosities and dangers.
The oversized vegetables are often carved into lanterns with faces, with many holding the belief that these will ward away otherworldly wisps that possess the dead and cause a strange, orange mist to leak from their brightly glowing eyes.
What might one find if one chooses to brave the mists and scatter the spirits controlling the dead?
Alongside these eerie developments. Many more things await you in this week’s update.
For starters, five new creatures have been spotted roaming the lands. Tamers and explorers should keep their eyes peeled. Who knows what these new creatures are and where one might find them?
If hunting for beasts isn’t your thing, then maybe exploring new and exciting locations is more suitable? With this update, several new locations have appeared in the world. Though it is best to exercise caution, not everyone you meet may be keen on visitors.
The aiming of bows has been overhauled and mounted archery in particular is now affected by the gait of the mount. Several archery related skills now affect your handling of a bow both on foot and while mounted.
In addition to all of this, you can expect the usual slew of fixes and improvements affecting all aspects of the game. For instance, we have made some big optimizations to the server thanks to the data that we gathered during one of Henrik’s streams. Thank you to everyone who participated and helped us get some invaluable data.
Have a look at the full list below and let us know what you think!
See you in Nave,
The Star Vault Team
Added
- Five new creatures have been added to the world.
- Several new point of interest locations have been added to the world.
- Two new seasonal titles and achievements.
- New seasonal mobs have been added to the graveyards.
- You can now bind dedicated left and right attack keys. Similar to the existing overhead and thrust attack buttons.
Changes
- Replaced several systems on the server to remove the major bottleneck that caused large fights with several hundred players to slow the server to a crawl, causing seconds of delay. Simulations show promising results but we want to run another group fight to confirm it in a real world scenario.
- Replaced the game time synchronization routine to improve longrunning desync issues.
- You can no longer report someone for murdering you if you die due to self inflicted damage. (Such as fall damage or spells you cast on yourself)
- The combat item deletion block timer now only triggers when you are receiving PVP damage. Meaning you can still delete items from your inventory freely while fighting AI creatures.
- The criminal timer no longer resets when you receive a murdercount.
- Increased the VOIP range.
- You can no longer place buy orders for trinkets.
- We have replaced the first person procedural animation system to be able to add skillbased adjustments to for example archery. The animation should be more stable with less physics hitching and some improvements have been made to reduce the stiffness in some scenarios, like when missing a swing.
- You will now be able to move out from nonplayer characters if you get stuck inside them.
Archery Changes
- Stationary aim instability (when standing still) has been added to archery when on foot.
- Stationary aim instability is now scaled by both Archery and Controlled Aiming skills when on foot. Archery contributes 40% and Controlled Aiming 60% of the total. With maxed skills the instability will be reduced at most by 95%.
- Movement aim instability is now scaled by both Archery and Controlled Aiming skills. Archery contributes 40% and Controlled Aiming 60% of the total. With maxed skills the movement sway will be reduced at most by 80%. Controlling your movement is now important for a stable aim.
- Movement aim instability is reduced during jumping and falling and is likely to change in the future.
Mounted Archery Changes
- Mounted stationary aim instability (when standing still) has been added to mounted archery.
- Mounted stationary aim instability is now scaled by both Mounted Archery and Controlled Aiming skills. Archery contributes 40% and Controlled Aiming 60% of the total. With maxed skills the instability will be reduced at most by 95%.
- Mounted archery aim instability while moving has been added. This is based on the gait of the mount and is separate from stationary aim instability.
- Mounted archery aim instability while moving is now scaled by Mounted Archery and Controlled Aiming skills. Mounted Archery contributes 60% and Controlled Aiming 40% of the total. With maxed skills the interference from the gait of the mount is reduced at most by 80%.
- Mounted archery aim instability while moving is reduced while aiming sideways in relation to the mount. This is likely to change in the future.
Fixes
- Reduced startup, shutdown and loading screen delays by improving voip initialization and shutdown routine.
- You should now be able to see players attacking in melee and ranged from further away. This will alleviate issues with players charging their weapons from far away and running up to you. Often resulting in you not being able to see that they are charging their weapon until they attack.
- Pets will now play their attack animations for their target even if they are far away from their owner.
- Shoulder armor should now be hidden in first person while riding a mount.
- Refactored player equipment and armor updates on the client to narrow down the “hidden weapons” issue where AI or players sometimes don’t hold their weapon in hand. Please keep sending us reports if it still happens in this patch.
- Fixed missing hit sound effects for various creatures.
- Fixed a minor bug where other players would not look in the right direction momentarily when loaded in or logging off.
- Fixed bug causing UI elements like criminal buff UI to not appear on login.
- Fixed wolves sometimes having the incorrect number of pet points.
- Fixed being able to unequip pet armor/bags while dead.
- The Alvarin Thaumatage clade now consumes reagents as intended when raising strong walkers.
- Fixed being able to shoot arrows and spells through the gap between the doors on player owned strongholds.
- Resolve an issue with the attack pattern of dire wolves.
- Fixed players not appearing in the bounty hunter pool until they relog.
- Fixed an issue where attack modifiers could get stuck if you exit combat while holding down the assigned key.
- Fixed an issue with creature turn animations being turned off by accident that made them stiff while rotating.
- Fixed missing idle pose for players when mounted with a spear.
- Fixed an issue with fleeing AI where they initially looked like they were running at walk speed.
- Fixed a bug in the broker buy order panel when using the editable page text.
- Multiple improvements to the way items can be manipulated.
- Potential fix for items disappearing in houses.
- Fixed an issue where attempting to stash items in a house chest wouldn’t reload them in your inventory if the transfer somehow failed.
- You can now right click items into the last slot of a house chest.
- Fixed an issue that would cause Spirits orbs to sometimes not be considered destroyed.
- You are no longer able to perform a ritual with criminal actions disabled.
- You no longer take massive fall damage if you stay too long on top of a character and fall down.
- Fixed an issue where spirits on a floor different from the one you are on can be interacted with when you should not be able to.
- Several environment art fixes.
- You can no longer push players in Haven.