AoD v1.2 Major Update!
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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!
