I hope you’re all enjoying levelling up your characters and playing with the progression system.
As you may know, the plan for the final game is to have increasing difficulty across the worlds, so that as your character progresses, and you get better at the game you can move to more hostile worlds for more challenge and bigger rewards. The beginning of this system is in the game at the moment, with the “Home” worlds (Therka, Solum, Berlyn and Vena V) having the least dangerous creatures and basic resources, the “Moon” worlds (Septerfon, Epsilo, Elopor and Andooweem) having more dangerous creatures and better resources, and the “Ring” worlds (Munteen, Vulpto, Nasharil and Alturnik) having the most dangerous and the most powerful resources. The difference in the creatures between these worlds is pretty small at the moment though, and once you have a half-decent weapon you can survive on any of them.
Now we have the first pass of the progression system in, it is possible to level up your character to make them much more powerful than they are the at the beginning, so we are going to take a step towards balancing the creatures to be much more challenging on the harder worlds. This will mean that if you are on a “Moon” world, or a “Ring” world you will find the creatures a real challenge unless you have levelled up and equipped yourself correctly. This could be quite harsh, so for example, creatures on a “Ring” world may kill a starting player with one blow. Also, creatures will become very resistant to damage from tools, so if you don’t have a weapon you will struggle to kill them. This won’t be a problem for new players because they all start on “Home” worlds, but those of you who have moved will have to be prepared.
This is an important step in making a game where there is challenge and excitement, and there’s real purpose to having a good character setup, and good gear.
I’m not sure when this change will make it into the live version, most likely a couple of weeks, but maybe a little more. As always the balance of the game will swing back-and-forth, so please bear with us if it’s not exactly right first time.
Though, could you make Wildstock on starter planets friendly again? I loved those cute guys, once… now they’re more annoying than Hoppers and Cuttletrunks.
I miss the passive Wildstock, not because I don’t like a challenge, but because… they were my friends.
Yeah, or have their mood change based on the weather or time of day? Something like the Beefalo from ‘Don’t Starve’; they were awake during the day, asleep during the night, would attack you if you attacked them, or during seasons where they were on heat.
The aggro system needs another pass, the intention for the Wildstock is that they will mostly be passive, but if you anger them they’ll kick-off. There will be some who are aggressive though just to keep you on your toes! I’m hoping to look at that in the next few weeks.
But… didn’t the T4 Bomb-Bunnies already do like 700+ damage if they asploded at point blank range? Hmmn. At least they are the easiest creatures to deal with.
Thanks for the hard work!
