AoD v1.2.1 Major Patch
All of you currently enjoying v1.2 will surely love this. Finally, a big update that doesn't require your save data to be reset!
Core Game Changes
The Death Rework
- Death has been overhauled to be much less punishing, while still fulfilling its intended mechanics.
- You no longer lose a percentage of your gold and EXP. Now, each death is measured in gold value based on your total EXP. This value scales from 100 gold at minimum EXP to 150,000 gold at 1 million EXP. This value is capped at 150,000 gold; so players with extreme amounts of EXP can't lose monumentally large amounts of progress in a single death.
- When you die, gold you are carrying on you is spent to pay for your death cost; if you can pay the full death cost with your on-hand gold then you will not lose anything else.
- If you don't have enough gold, you will drop up to half of your inventory items at random, but you'll always retain at least three items regardless. Each item dropped this way will help pay more of the remaining death cost. These items become shop items on the ground where you died, so they must be repaid in order to be picked up again.
- Soulbound items such as Gram, chests, and curses are also applicable to this system and so are no longer automatically lost on death. Soulbound items which are randomly dropped cannot be recovered and will burn away moments after death.
- Finally, after dropping items any remaining death cost will be paid with EXP at a rate of 2.25 gold per EXP.
- You will get a popup box with a breakdown of your death cost a few seconds after each death.
Christmas Event
- Thanks to collaboration between Conan and Sentry, there is a simple christmas event to do which you can find the start of right in town!
- The town is temporarily decorated.
- Find quest items in the dungeon to claim an event-exclusive reward item!
Divine Crafting
- Added new 'crafting' prayer which can be used to obtain a couple ultra rare items.
- Using this prayer will check your inventory for compatible components and combine them if they match a recipe.
- Can you figure out any recipes? (Hint: All of them require a golden idol as a catalyst)
- The town music has been updated with a cover of Little Madra by Carbon Zypher.
- The floor portals have had their visual appearance updated by Carbon Zypher.
- The healing system has been modified to be more robust. This fixes a few longstanding issues with healing, especially for dungeon enemies themselves. Unfortunately the inconsistencies with healing spells seem to have not been entirely resolved with this. (We still have no idea why they're inconsistent. I blame Math Bad)
- All potions have been buffed and now grant much more of their respective resource than they used to. They also show exactly how much they grant when held. EXP potion prices have been increased accordingly for this.
- New coin sack items are now available in chests and drop tables. Use them to unbag a bunch of coins! Chests now drop coins less frequently to balance the existence of these.
Class Updates
Melee
- Spears are now obtainable melee weapons. These are the oddball of melee weapons, you have extreme range but cannot hit anything at point-blank.
- Spears have a backdash special ability when using melee class armor, use this to stay in appropriate combat range.
- Spears cannot be bought in town, but can be found anywhere else where melee weapons could normally be obtained (dungeon shops, drop tables).
- Axes are now much faster and have DPS more comparable to the other melee weapons.
- The forward dash axe special ability is usable when melee class armor is equipped.
- Longswords can now cleave multiple enemies, and now have a 'sweet spot' near the edge of their range which deals increased damage. Use good positioning and intuition to greatly increase your damage output.
- The throwing dagger special ability now throws three daggers straight in a row rather than in a fanning formation.
- The shortsword's shield now also reduces some incoming melee damage while active.
- Some DPS balance adjustments across the board.
- Gram can now only crit once every ten seconds, reducing its boss-fight DPS without affecting its power for general dungeon crawling.
- The Dragon Dagger (p++) and Feast & Famine have had their poison abilities reduced.
Ranged
- Bow/crossbow special attacks now scale up in damage based on bow tier. This should help make their power level less stagnant.
- Swiftbow base damage increased.
- Crossbow base damage increased substantially.
- Legendary bow base damage increased slightly.
- Poison modifier slightly nerfed.
- Fire Crystal modifier buffed.
- Arrow Bombs modifier replaced with Thermite Shrapnel modifier. Bomb arrows were not really good at fulfilling their intended purpose, so we got you an incendiary shotgun instead.
Magic
- New channeling orb model by Conan.
- Healing spell heal ratios have been nerfed. (Cauterize 40% -> 30%, manaStitches 60% -> 45%, auroraHealing 75% -> 60%)
- Cauterize and manaStitches now have more range for ally healing.
- Slightly buffed frostShards DPS.
- Awesome new VFX for sunBurst designed by Magus.
- Sunburst buffed substantially.
- A couple new spells designed by Carbon Zypher have been added.
Dungeon Enemies
Bosses
- Added the new Floor 4 boss designed by Carbon Zypher and Magus!
- Added the new Dark Wraith miniboss designed by Carbon Zypher!
- Decreased floor boss rewards across the board a bit, so boss runs consist of a similar amount of total reward as before.
- A floor 5 boss is mostly complete but is being pushed back to another update so that we can get this update out to you today!
- The overall difficulty level of the Cursed Knight has been reduced a bit to make it more accessible to players who would normally be able to clear floor 3.
- The Cursed Knight's absorption attack now duplicates each projectile it absorbs, making it a bit more relevant to the fight.
- The Cursed Knight has had some dialog changed.
- Fixed an unintended mechanic where the Cursed Knight said a line of dialog any time it absorbed a projectile with the absorption ability. This has been fixed such that the dialog is only used when a substantial amount of projectiles are absorbed.
- The Spider Boss's healing mechanic now makes sense due to a fix in the healing code.
- The Spider Boss should now more consistently stay visually flipped over while walking or eating on the ceiling.
- Fixed some weird behaviors with the Troll Boss.
General
- Enemies now regenerate 1% of their max hp every two seconds while completely out of combat. This also applies to bosses.
- Enemies now track who/what is dealing damage to them, and will sometimes prioritize their targets accordingly.
- Enemies now support fighting each other in the right circumstances.
- Enemies no longer lose the ability to fight players while in town, they're dangerous!
- Town guards now automatically attack enemies that enter town. They're no longer useless!
- Fixed human enemies (bandits, etc.) not understanding how walls work and trying constantly to walk through them instead of looking for new targets.
That's all! Servers should soon be online again with this patch. Thanks for all your patience!
(PS: Unless otherwise specified most changes made in the 'class updates' section were done by Conan. It would have looked rather visually cluttered if I specified that he did each of those changes. Thanks for doing so much work on AoD this month Conan :) )
All of you currently enjoying v1.2 will surely love this. Finally, a big update that doesn't require your save data to be reset!
Core Game Changes
The Death Rework
- Death has been overhauled to be much less punishing, while still fulfilling its intended mechanics.
- You no longer lose a percentage of your gold and EXP. Now, each death is measured in gold value based on your total EXP. This value scales from 100 gold at minimum EXP to 150,000 gold at 1 million EXP. This value is capped at 150,000 gold; so players with extreme amounts of EXP can't lose monumentally large amounts of progress in a single death.
- When you die, gold you are carrying on you is spent to pay for your death cost; if you can pay the full death cost with your on-hand gold then you will not lose anything else.
- If you don't have enough gold, you will drop up to half of your inventory items at random, but you'll always retain at least three items regardless. Each item dropped this way will help pay more of the remaining death cost. These items become shop items on the ground where you died, so they must be repaid in order to be picked up again.
- Soulbound items such as Gram, chests, and curses are also applicable to this system and so are no longer automatically lost on death. Soulbound items which are randomly dropped cannot be recovered and will burn away moments after death.
- Finally, after dropping items any remaining death cost will be paid with EXP at a rate of 2.25 gold per EXP.
- You will get a popup box with a breakdown of your death cost a few seconds after each death.
Christmas Event
- Thanks to collaboration between Conan and Sentry, there is a simple christmas event to do which you can find the start of right in town!
- The town is temporarily decorated.
- Find quest items in the dungeon to claim an event-exclusive reward item!
Divine Crafting
- Added new 'crafting' prayer which can be used to obtain a couple ultra rare items.
- Using this prayer will check your inventory for compatible components and combine them if they match a recipe.
- Can you figure out any recipes? (Hint: All of them require a golden idol as a catalyst)
- The town music has been updated with a cover of Little Madra by Carbon Zypher.
- The floor portals have had their visual appearance updated by Carbon Zypher.
- The healing system has been modified to be more robust. This fixes a few longstanding issues with healing, especially for dungeon enemies themselves. Unfortunately the inconsistencies with healing spells seem to have not been entirely resolved with this. (We still have no idea why they're inconsistent. I blame Math Bad)
- All potions have been buffed and now grant much more of their respective resource than they used to. They also show exactly how much they grant when held. EXP potion prices have been increased accordingly for this.
- New coin sack items are now available in chests and drop tables. Use them to unbag a bunch of coins! Chests now drop coins less frequently to balance the existence of these.
Class Updates
Melee
- Spears are now obtainable melee weapons. These are the oddball of melee weapons, you have extreme range but cannot hit anything at point-blank.
- Spears have a backdash special ability when using melee class armor, use this to stay in appropriate combat range.
- Spears cannot be bought in town, but can be found anywhere else where melee weapons could normally be obtained (dungeon shops, drop tables).
- Axes are now much faster and have DPS more comparable to the other melee weapons.
- The forward dash axe special ability is usable when melee class armor is equipped.
- Longswords can now cleave multiple enemies, and now have a 'sweet spot' near the edge of their range which deals increased damage. Use good positioning and intuition to greatly increase your damage output.
- The throwing dagger special ability now throws three daggers straight in a row rather than in a fanning formation.
- The shortsword's shield now also reduces some incoming melee damage while active.
- Some DPS balance adjustments across the board.
- Gram can now only crit once every ten seconds, reducing its boss-fight DPS without affecting its power for general dungeon crawling.
- The Dragon Dagger (p++) and Feast & Famine have had their poison abilities reduced.
Ranged
- Bow/crossbow special attacks now scale up in damage based on bow tier. This should help make their power level less stagnant.
- Swiftbow base damage increased.
- Crossbow base damage increased substantially.
- Legendary bow base damage increased slightly.
- Poison modifier slightly nerfed.
- Fire Crystal modifier buffed.
- Arrow Bombs modifier replaced with Thermite Shrapnel modifier. Bomb arrows were not really good at fulfilling their intended purpose, so we got you an incendiary shotgun instead.
Magic
- New channeling orb model by Conan.
- Healing spell heal ratios have been nerfed. (Cauterize 40% -> 30%, manaStitches 60% -> 45%, auroraHealing 75% -> 60%)
- Cauterize and manaStitches now have more range for ally healing.
- Slightly buffed frostShards DPS.
- Awesome new VFX for sunBurst designed by Magus.
- Sunburst buffed substantially.
- A couple new spells designed by Carbon Zypher have been added.
Dungeon Enemies
Bosses
- Added the new Floor 4 boss designed by Carbon Zypher and Magus!
- Added the new Dark Wraith miniboss designed by Carbon Zypher!
- Decreased floor boss rewards across the board a bit, so boss runs consist of a similar amount of total reward as before.
- A floor 5 boss is mostly complete but is being pushed back to another update so that we can get this update out to you today!
- The overall difficulty level of the Cursed Knight has been reduced a bit to make it more accessible to players who would normally be able to clear floor 3.
- The Cursed Knight's absorption attack now duplicates each projectile it absorbs, making it a bit more relevant to the fight.
- The Cursed Knight has had some dialog changed.
- Fixed an unintended mechanic where the Cursed Knight said a line of dialog any time it absorbed a projectile with the absorption ability. This has been fixed such that the dialog is only used when a substantial amount of projectiles are absorbed.
- The Spider Boss's healing mechanic now makes sense due to a fix in the healing code.
- The Spider Boss should now more consistently stay visually flipped over while walking or eating on the ceiling.
- Fixed some weird behaviors with the Troll Boss.
General
- Enemies now regenerate 1% of their max hp every two seconds while completely out of combat. This also applies to bosses.
- Enemies now track who/what is dealing damage to them, and will sometimes prioritize their targets accordingly.
- Enemies now support fighting each other in the right circumstances.
- Enemies no longer lose the ability to fight players while in town, they're dangerous!
- Town guards now automatically attack enemies that enter town. They're no longer useless!
- Fixed human enemies (bandits, etc.) not understanding how walls work and trying constantly to walk through them instead of looking for new targets.
That's all! Servers should soon be online again with this patch. Thanks for all your patience!
(PS: Unless otherwise specified most changes made in the 'class updates' section were done by Conan. It would have looked rather visually cluttered if I specified that he did each of those changes. Thanks for doing so much work on AoD this month Conan :) )
INFO: Forum registration is permanently broken
It will not be fixed. Blockland authentication changed and it is no longer trivial to verify blockland login information, so this forum really just exists for posting bulletins now. If you had a pre-existing account registered, you can continue to use it like before.
For everyone else, please simply join the Discord for discussing the game: https://discord.gg/rWcufUZ
It will not be fixed. Blockland authentication changed and it is no longer trivial to verify blockland login information, so this forum really just exists for posting bulletins now. If you had a pre-existing account registered, you can continue to use it like before.
For everyone else, please simply join the Discord for discussing the game: https://discord.gg/rWcufUZ
AoD v1.2 Major Update!
Hello everyone, been a while since I last wrote an update post. After over seven months of consistent work, we finally have the long-awaited v1.2 update ready for you! This is truly a massive update, but without further ado, let's dive into the changes! For brevity I've left out a lot of the overwhelming nitty gritty details, as this list is already way too long to comfortably read.
The Core
+ All save data has been reset. This gives the game a clean slate and a new vision for sensible progression. It also gave me the opportunity to completely rewrite the saving system to be Better™.
+ PvP IS GONE
- All PvP related mechanics have been removed.
- This includes karma, bounties, and the old alignment system. (A new prayer system has been added to replace it, read on)
- A dueling system for friendly PvP is planned, but did not quite make the cut for this update. Expect it in an upcoming minor update.
- You can finally see players' death messages in chat due to there being no reason to hide them anymore.
- Town guards no longer serve any purpose, but have been left in for decoration. A few of them are missing though, I wonder where they've gone.
+ Penalties for dying have been further reduced.
+ Reduced EXP curve for more satisfying game progression.
+ Nearly all sources of permanent bonus Max HP and Max Mana have been removed.
+ You now always automatically buy a new recall scroll after recalling to town.
+ You can no longer recall during any combat! Decide when it is time to call a dungeon quits based on your remaining resources.
+ A number of new legendary items for you to find have been added!
- Featuring contributions by Conan, Magus, and Yuutryn!
+ Switched most large SFX files to ogg format, which has substantially reduced the download size of the game's sound effects.
- As a side effect, Blockland's dumb download system will interpret these sound files as music files. Enable music downloads to ensure you hear the game's various SFX!
+ Added item icons to many items which have long lacked them!
- This was a short-lived win as Conan has added tons of new items which now also lack icons. You win some, you lose some.
+ Innumerable bugs fixed.
- Related but also not related: Scale-based damage modification has been removed.
- This fixes a number of inconsistencies (especially with minibosses) which made HP and damage not make nearly as much sense as it should have.
- Feast & Famine still increases your player scale, but the damage bonus from doing so is now a separately tracked value. This is an objective nerf to the sword since you no longer increase your effective HP with player scale.
+ Many exciting new bugs to discover!
Achievements & Rewards
+ Added an achievement system with over 100 different achievements to unlock!
+ Unlocking achievements increases your 'influence', which is represented as a number next to your name in chat.
+ Each 25 influence you gain will trigger an achievement reward!
- The first couple rewards are predetermined to give new players things they need, but switch to an achievement reward droptable afterwards.
- All cosmetic rewards (such as instruments) have been moved from the legendary droptable to the achievement reward droptable.
- Has a chance to contain a Golden Idol, an item very useful for prayer (but can be alchemized for a substantial payout). Model by Magus!
- Also has a chance to contain a bank upgrade voucher, which can be consumed for a single free bank upgrade. Model by Irrel!
+ New reward system!
- When you get an achievement reward or defeat a boss, the rewards are consolidated into a special chest item that is added to your inventory.
- A single chest item will represent all rewards you get, even if you get multiple in a row without claiming them immediately.
- If your inventory is full, the chest item will be added to your inventory after you recall to town. It can also be added if you end up having inventory space later on.
Dungeon Floor Portals
+ After one of the major floor bosses is defeated (Troll, Spider, Knight...), a portal that can teleport you to the floor below that boss will open up right outside town!
+ The portal transports you to a random location on its designated floor.
+ Using the portal within 10 seconds of another player using it will teleport you to the same location as the previous player. Use this to follow your group into the dungeon!
+ VFX by Magus!
Parties
+ Added a new party system! Simply do /party to invite everyone around you into a party!
+ While in a party, nearby party members will share EXP with each other. Total EXP yield is also slightly increased to encourage group play!
+ Any player of a party can do /party to invite addition nearby people to the party.
+ You will remain in your party until you leave the game or all other players leave the party.
+ Parties have no leadership. If you want the ability to manage members, you should make a guild instead.
+ Unlike a guild, parties also have no team chat channel. Their purpose is primarily just for sharing EXP as a group.
Food
+ Uh yeah I guess you can like, eat food now or something.
+ No you don't need it to survive that would be stupid.
+ Food is a cheap health regeneration source which can be found commonly in the dungeon.
+ Eating a piece of food will regenerate a fixed amount of indicated HP over the span of a few minutes.
+ This regeneration can stack with multiple foods eaten.
+ Discover the strange intricacies of the overeating meta!
+ Food models all by Conan!
AI Upgrades & New Enemies
+ An assortment of upgrades to the basic enemy AIs, making them smarter and slightly more interesting to fight.
- Basic melee bugs now jump backwards and stop for a moment after damaging players.
- Flying bugs now can perform path corrections similar to ground based bugs
- Ranged bugs will now ensure their line of sight is clear before attacking, making it much more difficult to safespot them
- Ranged bugs no longer will snipe you from super far away. They now must first move into a reasonable range to attack you from.
- Removed the infuriating 'fast' melee bugs from all standard spawning.
- Added a new ranged bug type which will leap from location to location when approached at melee range. Only appears on floor 6.
+ Substantially reduced the number of enemies that spawn per-room, shifting the focus away from fighting constant hordes of weak enemies and more towards fighting stronger individual enemies.
+ Brand new human enemies which appear in different variations on most floors.
- These enemies will switch between ranged and melee weapons depending on range.
- Human enemies obey FOV, and will not detect you until you're in their line of sight. Sneaking up behind them to attack is possible.
Bosses
+ Boss HP is now displayed on text attached to the boss itself rather than in centerprint.
Knight Boss
+ Brand new floor 3 Boss to fight!
+ This fight is no joke. Level 20 is suggested as a minimum to fight this Boss. Level 30 recommended for better safety.
+ You'll need most of the server participating in this fight to stand a chance.
+ I'm going to have to leave out most of the details to not spoil it, but this fight is awesome (if you're prepared for it!)
- Featuring a weapon by Carbon Zypher!
Minibosses
+ Brand new AI and unique combat styles for the Scorpion and Mantis Bosses!
+ Most miniboss rooms no longer spawn any standard monsters, to make the room's focus the miniboss itself rather than a zerg horde.
+ A couple new secret minibosses! One of these minibosses is now key for acquiring a certain powerful sword we all know and love...
- Featuring some new models by Gunny and Irrel!
Everyone else
+ Some minor improvements to the Spider and Troll bosses.
+ The center of the web in the Spider Boss chamber now collapses shortly after defeating the Spider Boss, allowing for immediate access to the floor below (But don't expect to be able to climb back up!)
Class Updates
Melee
+ Brand new melee weapons by Conan!
+ Melee weapons are now search-based, allowing for much more leniency with aim as well as more realistic effective hit areas.
+ All the standard melee weapons now have cool animations and attack states, with some satisfying VFX by Carbon Zypher to wrap it up.
+ Each type of melee weapon now has distinct behavior
- Daggers are fast and have the highest DPS per tier. Their short range makes playing defensively very difficult, but can be equipped very quickly.
- Shortswords are the jack of all trades. They cleave enemies, have a medium DPS, and have medium range.
- Axes are unique in that they alternate between a lower damage cleave swing and a high damage crush swing.
- Longswords are slow and cannot cleave enemies, but have enough range that it is easy to play defensively. They take a long timme to equip.
+ Some melee weapons also have attached special skills, only usable when wearing melee armor.
- Shields completely block projectiles from the front when raised (right click), but slow you to half your speed. You can still attack while holding them up!
- Dagger holsters hold throwable daggers, right click to throw them! The holster indicates whether or not the skill is ready.
+ Melee weapons that can 'cleave' will hit all enemies in range of your swing.
+ The legendary melee weapons' code have been updated to use this same system for better hit detection, although visuals are largely unchanged.
+ Brand new melee class armor models, by Conan!
Ranged
+ Completely revamped, also by Conan!
+ Arrows are now obtained by using quiver items, which contain unlimited arrows. No more buying arrows!
+ Arrow recovery has now been changed to arrow consumption chance.
+ Added bow types
- Swiftbows fire quickly, but do somewhat damage per hit and are not perfectly accurate.
- Swiftbows have a special ability allowing them to rapidly fire off multiple shots every so often.
- Crossbows have long cooldowns, but do substantially more damage per hit. They also suffer significant accuracy reduction when moving.
- Crossbows have a special ability which fires multiple shots at once in a fanning formation.
+ Added bow special abilities
- Special abilities can only be used if wearing archer armor.
- All bows share the same cooldown, but each ability has a different cooldown.
+ Added arrow modifiers
- Modifiers are applied using special items, like a poison bottle or a bomb satchel. Each item has its own cooldown.
- Only one modifier can be active at a time.
- Archer armors give bonus modifier count when using a modifier item.
+ Brand new ranged class armor models, by Conan and Irrel!
Magic
+ Removed all the old heal spells (Read on)
+ Added all-new health restore spells
- There are multiple tiers, but the main spell you'll be using is Cauterize
- Cauterize allows you to restore health equal to 40% of the damage you've taken recently
- Cauterize and spells like it can be used on other players who are very close by. No need for a separate spell!
- This change addresses a major game design fail where players would stand around doing nothing in order to wait for mana so they could cast heal spells to restore themselves in the dungeon. Now the whole game has been rebalanced around actually needing to manage health as a resource rather than constantly assuming players will be at full health.
+ Added mana crystal items by Conan!
- Mana crystals can only be used when wearing magical armor.
- Clicking and holding will channel the mana crystal, which will rapidly increase your mana regeneration rate.
- You're unable to move or attack while channeling the mana crystal.
- Removed the mechanic where you can stand still a long time to increase mana regeneration.
+ Brand new magic class armor models, by Conan!
Prayer System
+ Alignment is no longer a weird arbitrary stat related to PvP!
+ Altars to the three gods are now scattered throughout the dungeon, and can be found on any floor.
- These altars become slightly more common the deeper you are in the dungeon.
- You may drop items on the altars to sacrifice them.
- Sacrificing items will increase your piety to the god of that altar.
- Sacrificing to any god will slightly annoy all the other gods you have piety with, but not so much that it isn't possible to slowly build up piety with multiple gods. (This is just very inefficient)
- Clicking the altar will restore your connection to the gods, allowing you to pray for things. Restoring your connection costs a tithe of gold which scales based on your current piety.
- The altars feature interesting new models by Gunny!
+ Like before, each god represents an alignment between Lawfulness and Chaos.
+ The god you have the highest piety with will represent your alignment stat.
+ You can /pray for various things at a cost to your currently aligned god's piety.
- You can /pray for food, healing, cure/cure for poison, curse removal, and crowning
- Each god specializes in different types of prayers, and can be exceptionally worse at some.
- Law specializes in curse removal and frequent prayers. Additionally, Law has the highest crowning cost.
- Neutral specializes in food, healing, and poison removal.
- Chaos specializes in crowning, with the lowest crowning cost. Additionally has the longest prayer cooldown.
+ Each prayer will drain your connection to the gods, varying by prayer type. As a rule of thumb, you'll never be able to pray more than 4 times without reconnecting at an altar.
+ You can reconnect with your god by clicking any altar and paying a tithe which scales based on your highest piety.
- The tithe increases your piety with the god of that altar, which will annoy your god a small amount if the altar doesn't match your alignment.
+ Despite being able to sacrifice to and hold piety with multiple gods, only the god you currently have the highest piety with will represent your alignment and handle your prayers.
API Updates
+ Rewritten saving system!
- Allows us to properly save lots more data without a headache.
- Better user feedback from the API and better error management.
+ Donors will now receive their donor status within 10 seconds of donating, without needing to rejoin a server.
+ Player profiles now contain 'badges' for certain accomplishments.
- Players who were in the top 100 players in v1.0 and v1.1 respectively have received badges appropriate for their progress which commend their achievement in the previous versions!
This update will become available Saturday afternoon (PST). The actual release time will depend on how quickly I can complete a relatively complicated checklist of server-related stuff. I am planning to host three worlds to start, US-Central, US-Eastern, and EU-Netherlands. If we get over capacity I'm planning to have another world at the ready beforehand. Hope to see everyone there!
Hello everyone, been a while since I last wrote an update post. After over seven months of consistent work, we finally have the long-awaited v1.2 update ready for you! This is truly a massive update, but without further ado, let's dive into the changes! For brevity I've left out a lot of the overwhelming nitty gritty details, as this list is already way too long to comfortably read.
The Core
+ All save data has been reset. This gives the game a clean slate and a new vision for sensible progression. It also gave me the opportunity to completely rewrite the saving system to be Better™.
+ PvP IS GONE
- All PvP related mechanics have been removed.
- This includes karma, bounties, and the old alignment system. (A new prayer system has been added to replace it, read on)
- A dueling system for friendly PvP is planned, but did not quite make the cut for this update. Expect it in an upcoming minor update.
- You can finally see players' death messages in chat due to there being no reason to hide them anymore.
- Town guards no longer serve any purpose, but have been left in for decoration. A few of them are missing though, I wonder where they've gone.
+ Penalties for dying have been further reduced.
+ Reduced EXP curve for more satisfying game progression.
+ Nearly all sources of permanent bonus Max HP and Max Mana have been removed.
+ You now always automatically buy a new recall scroll after recalling to town.
+ You can no longer recall during any combat! Decide when it is time to call a dungeon quits based on your remaining resources.
+ A number of new legendary items for you to find have been added!
- Featuring contributions by Conan, Magus, and Yuutryn!
+ Switched most large SFX files to ogg format, which has substantially reduced the download size of the game's sound effects.
- As a side effect, Blockland's dumb download system will interpret these sound files as music files. Enable music downloads to ensure you hear the game's various SFX!
+ Added item icons to many items which have long lacked them!
- This was a short-lived win as Conan has added tons of new items which now also lack icons. You win some, you lose some.
+ Innumerable bugs fixed.
- Related but also not related: Scale-based damage modification has been removed.
- This fixes a number of inconsistencies (especially with minibosses) which made HP and damage not make nearly as much sense as it should have.
- Feast & Famine still increases your player scale, but the damage bonus from doing so is now a separately tracked value. This is an objective nerf to the sword since you no longer increase your effective HP with player scale.
+ Many exciting new bugs to discover!
Achievements & Rewards
+ Added an achievement system with over 100 different achievements to unlock!
+ Unlocking achievements increases your 'influence', which is represented as a number next to your name in chat.
+ Each 25 influence you gain will trigger an achievement reward!
- The first couple rewards are predetermined to give new players things they need, but switch to an achievement reward droptable afterwards.
- All cosmetic rewards (such as instruments) have been moved from the legendary droptable to the achievement reward droptable.
- Has a chance to contain a Golden Idol, an item very useful for prayer (but can be alchemized for a substantial payout). Model by Magus!
- Also has a chance to contain a bank upgrade voucher, which can be consumed for a single free bank upgrade. Model by Irrel!
+ New reward system!
- When you get an achievement reward or defeat a boss, the rewards are consolidated into a special chest item that is added to your inventory.
- A single chest item will represent all rewards you get, even if you get multiple in a row without claiming them immediately.
- If your inventory is full, the chest item will be added to your inventory after you recall to town. It can also be added if you end up having inventory space later on.
Dungeon Floor Portals
+ After one of the major floor bosses is defeated (Troll, Spider, Knight...), a portal that can teleport you to the floor below that boss will open up right outside town!
+ The portal transports you to a random location on its designated floor.
+ Using the portal within 10 seconds of another player using it will teleport you to the same location as the previous player. Use this to follow your group into the dungeon!
+ VFX by Magus!
Parties
+ Added a new party system! Simply do /party to invite everyone around you into a party!
+ While in a party, nearby party members will share EXP with each other. Total EXP yield is also slightly increased to encourage group play!
+ Any player of a party can do /party to invite addition nearby people to the party.
+ You will remain in your party until you leave the game or all other players leave the party.
+ Parties have no leadership. If you want the ability to manage members, you should make a guild instead.
+ Unlike a guild, parties also have no team chat channel. Their purpose is primarily just for sharing EXP as a group.
Food
+ Uh yeah I guess you can like, eat food now or something.
+ No you don't need it to survive that would be stupid.
+ Food is a cheap health regeneration source which can be found commonly in the dungeon.
+ Eating a piece of food will regenerate a fixed amount of indicated HP over the span of a few minutes.
+ This regeneration can stack with multiple foods eaten.
+ Discover the strange intricacies of the overeating meta!
+ Food models all by Conan!
AI Upgrades & New Enemies
+ An assortment of upgrades to the basic enemy AIs, making them smarter and slightly more interesting to fight.
- Basic melee bugs now jump backwards and stop for a moment after damaging players.
- Flying bugs now can perform path corrections similar to ground based bugs
- Ranged bugs will now ensure their line of sight is clear before attacking, making it much more difficult to safespot them
- Ranged bugs no longer will snipe you from super far away. They now must first move into a reasonable range to attack you from.
- Removed the infuriating 'fast' melee bugs from all standard spawning.
- Added a new ranged bug type which will leap from location to location when approached at melee range. Only appears on floor 6.
+ Substantially reduced the number of enemies that spawn per-room, shifting the focus away from fighting constant hordes of weak enemies and more towards fighting stronger individual enemies.
+ Brand new human enemies which appear in different variations on most floors.
- These enemies will switch between ranged and melee weapons depending on range.
- Human enemies obey FOV, and will not detect you until you're in their line of sight. Sneaking up behind them to attack is possible.
Bosses
+ Boss HP is now displayed on text attached to the boss itself rather than in centerprint.
Knight Boss
+ Brand new floor 3 Boss to fight!
+ This fight is no joke. Level 20 is suggested as a minimum to fight this Boss. Level 30 recommended for better safety.
+ You'll need most of the server participating in this fight to stand a chance.
+ I'm going to have to leave out most of the details to not spoil it, but this fight is awesome (if you're prepared for it!)
- Featuring a weapon by Carbon Zypher!
Minibosses
+ Brand new AI and unique combat styles for the Scorpion and Mantis Bosses!
+ Most miniboss rooms no longer spawn any standard monsters, to make the room's focus the miniboss itself rather than a zerg horde.
+ A couple new secret minibosses! One of these minibosses is now key for acquiring a certain powerful sword we all know and love...
- Featuring some new models by Gunny and Irrel!
Everyone else
+ Some minor improvements to the Spider and Troll bosses.
+ The center of the web in the Spider Boss chamber now collapses shortly after defeating the Spider Boss, allowing for immediate access to the floor below (But don't expect to be able to climb back up!)
Class Updates
Melee
+ Brand new melee weapons by Conan!
+ Melee weapons are now search-based, allowing for much more leniency with aim as well as more realistic effective hit areas.
+ All the standard melee weapons now have cool animations and attack states, with some satisfying VFX by Carbon Zypher to wrap it up.
+ Each type of melee weapon now has distinct behavior
- Daggers are fast and have the highest DPS per tier. Their short range makes playing defensively very difficult, but can be equipped very quickly.
- Shortswords are the jack of all trades. They cleave enemies, have a medium DPS, and have medium range.
- Axes are unique in that they alternate between a lower damage cleave swing and a high damage crush swing.
- Longswords are slow and cannot cleave enemies, but have enough range that it is easy to play defensively. They take a long timme to equip.
+ Some melee weapons also have attached special skills, only usable when wearing melee armor.
- Shields completely block projectiles from the front when raised (right click), but slow you to half your speed. You can still attack while holding them up!
- Dagger holsters hold throwable daggers, right click to throw them! The holster indicates whether or not the skill is ready.
+ Melee weapons that can 'cleave' will hit all enemies in range of your swing.
+ The legendary melee weapons' code have been updated to use this same system for better hit detection, although visuals are largely unchanged.
+ Brand new melee class armor models, by Conan!
Ranged
+ Completely revamped, also by Conan!
+ Arrows are now obtained by using quiver items, which contain unlimited arrows. No more buying arrows!
+ Arrow recovery has now been changed to arrow consumption chance.
+ Added bow types
- Swiftbows fire quickly, but do somewhat damage per hit and are not perfectly accurate.
- Swiftbows have a special ability allowing them to rapidly fire off multiple shots every so often.
- Crossbows have long cooldowns, but do substantially more damage per hit. They also suffer significant accuracy reduction when moving.
- Crossbows have a special ability which fires multiple shots at once in a fanning formation.
+ Added bow special abilities
- Special abilities can only be used if wearing archer armor.
- All bows share the same cooldown, but each ability has a different cooldown.
+ Added arrow modifiers
- Modifiers are applied using special items, like a poison bottle or a bomb satchel. Each item has its own cooldown.
- Only one modifier can be active at a time.
- Archer armors give bonus modifier count when using a modifier item.
+ Brand new ranged class armor models, by Conan and Irrel!
Magic
+ Removed all the old heal spells (Read on)
+ Added all-new health restore spells
- There are multiple tiers, but the main spell you'll be using is Cauterize
- Cauterize allows you to restore health equal to 40% of the damage you've taken recently
- Cauterize and spells like it can be used on other players who are very close by. No need for a separate spell!
- This change addresses a major game design fail where players would stand around doing nothing in order to wait for mana so they could cast heal spells to restore themselves in the dungeon. Now the whole game has been rebalanced around actually needing to manage health as a resource rather than constantly assuming players will be at full health.
+ Added mana crystal items by Conan!
- Mana crystals can only be used when wearing magical armor.
- Clicking and holding will channel the mana crystal, which will rapidly increase your mana regeneration rate.
- You're unable to move or attack while channeling the mana crystal.
- Removed the mechanic where you can stand still a long time to increase mana regeneration.
+ Brand new magic class armor models, by Conan!
Prayer System
+ Alignment is no longer a weird arbitrary stat related to PvP!
+ Altars to the three gods are now scattered throughout the dungeon, and can be found on any floor.
- These altars become slightly more common the deeper you are in the dungeon.
- You may drop items on the altars to sacrifice them.
- Sacrificing items will increase your piety to the god of that altar.
- Sacrificing to any god will slightly annoy all the other gods you have piety with, but not so much that it isn't possible to slowly build up piety with multiple gods. (This is just very inefficient)
- Clicking the altar will restore your connection to the gods, allowing you to pray for things. Restoring your connection costs a tithe of gold which scales based on your current piety.
- The altars feature interesting new models by Gunny!
+ Like before, each god represents an alignment between Lawfulness and Chaos.
+ The god you have the highest piety with will represent your alignment stat.
+ You can /pray for various things at a cost to your currently aligned god's piety.
- You can /pray for food, healing, cure/cure for poison, curse removal, and crowning
- Each god specializes in different types of prayers, and can be exceptionally worse at some.
- Law specializes in curse removal and frequent prayers. Additionally, Law has the highest crowning cost.
- Neutral specializes in food, healing, and poison removal.
- Chaos specializes in crowning, with the lowest crowning cost. Additionally has the longest prayer cooldown.
+ Each prayer will drain your connection to the gods, varying by prayer type. As a rule of thumb, you'll never be able to pray more than 4 times without reconnecting at an altar.
+ You can reconnect with your god by clicking any altar and paying a tithe which scales based on your highest piety.
- The tithe increases your piety with the god of that altar, which will annoy your god a small amount if the altar doesn't match your alignment.
+ Despite being able to sacrifice to and hold piety with multiple gods, only the god you currently have the highest piety with will represent your alignment and handle your prayers.
API Updates
+ Rewritten saving system!
- Allows us to properly save lots more data without a headache.
- Better user feedback from the API and better error management.
+ Donors will now receive their donor status within 10 seconds of donating, without needing to rejoin a server.
+ Player profiles now contain 'badges' for certain accomplishments.
- Players who were in the top 100 players in v1.0 and v1.1 respectively have received badges appropriate for their progress which commend their achievement in the previous versions!
This update will become available Saturday afternoon (PST). The actual release time will depend on how quickly I can complete a relatively complicated checklist of server-related stuff. I am planning to host three worlds to start, US-Central, US-Eastern, and EU-Netherlands. If we get over capacity I'm planning to have another world at the ready beforehand. Hope to see everyone there!
Give Chaotic some more
Hey Ive been bored at grinding and so started doing some murdering but there is just about no real positives other than Shadow Bolt(and its kinda bad) Like some new weapons that need a level of chaotic to use or even a bandit town to spawn at or just walk to so i can buy arrows and scrolls without having a mental clock of the unkillable npc shooting a minigun of arrows at me . I get that "Killing is bad!" but this ain't like Undertale where you gotta be all nice to everyone. There needs to be a balance of good and evil. If only the good gets cool stuff and bad gets nerfed and deleted every second. It kinda ruins the other side of the fun.
Hey Ive been bored at grinding and so started doing some murdering but there is just about no real positives other than Shadow Bolt(and its kinda bad) Like some new weapons that need a level of chaotic to use or even a bandit town to spawn at or just walk to so i can buy arrows and scrolls without having a mental clock of the unkillable npc shooting a minigun of arrows at me . I get that "Killing is bad!" but this ain't like Undertale where you gotta be all nice to everyone. There needs to be a balance of good and evil. If only the good gets cool stuff and bad gets nerfed and deleted every second. It kinda ruins the other side of the fun.
Game updates March 24th
This is a relatively small patch half of which is just documenting the hotfixes since the last patch.
Minor changes
- Added new coin models by TheArmyGuy
- Fixed a bug with a legendary weapon.
- The Spider Boss now switches to its ceiling phase sooner than before.
- The Spider Boss now spends less time in its ranged phase.
Hotfixed last patch
- Added a new legendary weapon.
- Fixed an issue where lawful altars would transform all applicable armors in your inventory rather than just one.
- Fixed Badspot being banned.
This is a relatively small patch half of which is just documenting the hotfixes since the last patch.
Minor changes
- Added new coin models by TheArmyGuy
- Fixed a bug with a legendary weapon.
- The Spider Boss now switches to its ceiling phase sooner than before.
- The Spider Boss now spends less time in its ranged phase.
Hotfixed last patch
- Added a new legendary weapon.
- Fixed an issue where lawful altars would transform all applicable armors in your inventory rather than just one.
- Fixed Badspot being banned.
Game updates March 13th
Thank you pecon for this
Thank you pecon for this
Game updates March 13th
In light of the national emergency, some of you may have found yourselves with more free time than expected. For this reason, I have restarted AoD early to give people more things to play during this time. This is a minor update, and the current save data will continue to be used since there are no major changes to the game.
Minor changes
- Added new original music to the overworld composed by APX. (So make sure you have music downloads enabled!)
- Lawful players can now decline having their armor transformed.
- Fixed a bug where the Piety spell would protect their casters from self-damage. This was completely unintended.
- Major performance enhancement on the server side that should reduce server lag when opening large rooms such as boss chambers.
Servers will be going up soon. Hope to see you all here, I promise you can't get sick through the internet!
In light of the national emergency, some of you may have found yourselves with more free time than expected. For this reason, I have restarted AoD early to give people more things to play during this time. This is a minor update, and the current save data will continue to be used since there are no major changes to the game.
Minor changes
- Added new original music to the overworld composed by APX. (So make sure you have music downloads enabled!)
- Lawful players can now decline having their armor transformed.
- Fixed a bug where the Piety spell would protect their casters from self-damage. This was completely unintended.
- Major performance enhancement on the server side that should reduce server lag when opening large rooms such as boss chambers.
Servers will be going up soon. Hope to see you all here, I promise you can't get sick through the internet!
AoD Hiatus
In case you're out of the loop I'll be leaving this info here as well. AoD is on hiatus until this summer when I'll likely do another large update and reset. Also, there will be a minor cosmetic reward based on your progress during this and the previous AoD hosting sessions.
See you all this summer! In the mean time, I will probably host Boss Battles on and off. Join the discord for notifications on when that will be hosted, as well as updates on when AoD will be hosted again in the future.
In case you're out of the loop I'll be leaving this info here as well. AoD is on hiatus until this summer when I'll likely do another large update and reset. Also, there will be a minor cosmetic reward based on your progress during this and the previous AoD hosting sessions.
See you all this summer! In the mean time, I will probably host Boss Battles on and off. Join the discord for notifications on when that will be hosted, as well as updates on when AoD will be hosted again in the future.
Minor suggestions/issues thread
Late reply.. Yep that seemed to fix all the problem's listed thank you Pecon. =)
Late reply.. Yep that seemed to fix all the problem's listed thank you Pecon. =)
Minor suggestions/issues thread
Yes, this is a symptom of the server being up for too long. I restarted the server last night so this should stop happening.
Quote from: TheLolAge
Sorry if it's on the forum's already,Not having a dig but the server seem's to be really struggling the last few day's. IE: Lag spikes, Lag in the HUD not showing current health/stat's etc. NPC's glitching (Some taking a long time to attack) / odd movements / weird game play in general. Door's taking forever to open. Not sure if the server need's to be reset or if it's something more. I'm not the only one experiencing these issue's either. A few of us don't even attempt to go for the spider boss as there's a high probability that something will glitch and you will end up dead because of it.
Prior to this I've been loving the server and hope to see more updates with new bosses etc.
Yes, this is a symptom of the server being up for too long. I restarted the server last night so this should stop happening.