Greetings, Warriors!

We're planting another sapling that will help the game economy to grow. By introducing a new character development tree today – Forestry, we're adding further goals and achievements to accomplish in the game. With the full rebalance of the wood resources around the map, and common usage of them in the ingame economy, this branch has an impact on multiple systems, so let's check what's hidden in the forest!

Additionally, thanks to your feedback and reports, we're delivering fixes and improvements to other features and systems. You can also find new cosmetics in the supporter Shop: Duke's Guardsman skin set, and two short spear skins, for Battleborn and Legion’s Legate sets.

Enjoy!


The screenshot’s authors have been awarded. Siegbert, and Ant (Spearhead), and Shalltear Bloodfallen 夏提雅 – check your Ambers!

Changelog v.0.9.9.2 Beta

Character Development – Forestry

Progression tree

Another profession is being redefined and updated! Our designers observed and analyzed the game economy, and it became clear that game economy focused around wood resources can be simplified, and at the same time improved to be more interesting, and have more meaning in the game.

Following the success of the most recent mining profession changes, we are introducing a new character development tree, along with significant changes and new features.

First, from now on you can progress in Forestry tree, which – as similar systems introduced earlier – will grant you significant bonuses during collecting and processing wood and create long-term goals for you to accomplish. The main nodes of the tree will be unlocked based on your level in the Forestry and Farming profession. First mastery will be granted to players with levels between 11-34 in the mentioned profession, second mastery for levels 35-59, third for levels 60-79, and all mastery nodes will be unlocked for players whose level in Forestry and Farming is between 80-100.

The left side of the new character development tree will be dedicated to tools used to harvest wood – axes, the right side will determine your mastery in harvesting types of the wood. Unlocking side nodes will give you bonuses, for example, increasing the amount of harvested resources, reducing the time of harvesting, and decreasing the durability burn of the tool while harvesting.



Changes in items and recipes

Wood spawners in the game will be now assigned with tiers and will change their names, respectively from tier I to V: Pine – Common Wood, Elm – Decent Wood, Ash – Quality Wood, Yew – Great Wood, and Oak – Excellent Wood.

We are removing planks, poles, and handles from the game. From now on, each tier of crafted item that required those will use its tier of wood respectively. This will simplify and make crafting faster, as you will not need to create semi-finished products, which were taking space in the inventory unnecessarily.

We have found that the economy is much more dynamic when the items have their terms of validity. It is a very good feature of the game, giving players more things to do in the game, and making the gatherer/crafter gameplay always viable. This is why wood will decay after 30 days, and after that time become Decayed Wood which can still be used as fuel, like Wood Billets. You can also preserve your resources as long as you want, by using a newly added player-placed workstation called…

...Carpentry table!

This new workstation will give you the ability to process your wood stocks to make them resistant to the passage of time. By finishing wood using oils and suet, you can finish acquired wood logs, which will, like said – prevent them from decaying, and also increase theirs’ worth, as the best items recipes will require finished wood, and lower-tier recipes will use it as a substitute to not finished wood, but in better ratio.

As this crafting will introduce new recipes to the game, here are the ways to obtain them: The recipe for Finished Common Wood will be unlocked for every existing and new character by default. Tier II recipe can be bought at the merchants in Capitals, Tier III can be found in Temples merchant stock, and tiers IV and V can be bought for Contribution points, or obtained from Misc recipes chests.

To prevent your wood stocks from decaying, all wood in your depots and inventories is being transformed to finished wood, with a ratio of 2:1, as finished wood is much more valuable. Same for poles and handles, those will be transformed into finished wood with a ratio of 5:1 rounding up. Planks are being transformed too, in ratio 4:1, with the exception of elm’s planks, which will be transformed in ratio 8:1.



Rebalance on the map and other changes.

– It seems players like the idea to automatically process resources, so we are introducing more and more player-placed workstations. We took some time to improve the UX of them and unify the windows and systems. From now on, the Fish trap is also a workstation, and will now require bait to be used to catch fish.
– All wood spawners in the game were checked and some changes were made in the accessibility of top tier two wood resources. Great and Excellent wood should be understood similar to Siderite and Magnetite in Metallurgy – rare resources, giving access to the best items.
– The resource cost of buildings and defensive structures was rebalanced and adjusted to the changes. Some of the buildings will now also require finished wood to be built.
– Guild Castles’ storehouse chances and amounts of the created resources were adjusted. Great and Excellent wood will have the same chances to be added to storehouses as Saffron for the Farms.
– We also adjusted all the chests, loot pools, and rewards that were granting wood resources to drop the new items.

Graphic improvements and new cosmetics

Our graphic artists were able to add more nice touches to the existing equipment in the game. More of the items will now be animated, and react to your movement and wind. We know that such small details are dramatically changing the visuals of the game for the better, and we appreciate that you like them!

In the Supporter Shop (hotkey [K]) you can find a new skin set for medium armor: Duke's Guardsman skin set. This armor was inspired by eastern Slavic warriors from the 10th to 12th centuries. Those armors were heavily influenced by southeast heavy mamluks, but we wanted to make it look better by adding some additional detail, and less overwhelming by adding more cloth instead of armor to it. We hope you will like it!



Additionally, we are introducing two brand new skins for short spears. Battleborn Short Spear and Legion’s Legat Pilum will add even more immersion to the battlefields, and complete the looks of two of the most popular cosmetic armor sets in the game.

Quality of life improvements and Fixes

– Quest where we had to kill some boars was too difficult in the early stage of the gameplay, as players were not sure if they should block animal attacks, which was obvious in the case of humanoid NPCs. The number of boars in the area was reduced, along with the requirements to complete the quest.

Fixes:

– Multiple fixes for various User Interface issues.
– Fixed the issue causing gold to not be properly displayed in the trading window, along with the buttons Trade and Cancel.
– Fixed the reported issue causing the possibility to receive ghost hits.
– Fixed an issue, where animals were able to slow down mounted players.
– Fixed found issues with NPC armors meshes and textures - some of them were broken, observed from different ranges.