Endless Online 0.4.24 : Dev Post
Content update / Craft update / Shop update
|
|
Dev Post:
|
About: Shop & Craft Rework
|
As previously mentioned in devpost 4.22, our next update focuses on restructuring the crafting chain system. We're simplifying it from a 6-step tree (fabric-fabric-textile-textile-textile) to a much shorter tree with more varied raw ingredients. This is a significant effort that should make things more interesting in the long run. Additionally, some items need a small rebalance, such as the Tech Bow being renamed to a 'Fluon Bow' with improved stats and upgraded locker storage.
There's a lot to talk about, so let's get right into it:
|
|
|
'' Seeking a better craft chain ''
The original craft system was promising, using leather, fur, and fragments to make textiles. However, as more armors were added, we observed a growing need for cotton and six crafting steps to produce the only viable material for new armors: refined textile. With the release of more armors, this monotonous process became increasingly repetitive and tedious.
So it's about time to change that: Over the last weeks and in the upcoming weeks, we have been preparing and planning a new system with two goals: versatility and scalability. We managed to simplify the process by reducing the number of steps from 6 to max 3. Also, we made each step more interesting by adding different fabrics, materials, sewing kits, glue, and more.
|
|
|
The growing issues with the OLD system
The initial crafting chain was centered around three components: leather, fur, and cotton. With the limited possible combinations of these materials, the craft process had already extended to six steps. The only foreseeable future seemed to involve demanding even more refined textiles or introducing another textile or asking for more and more additional cotton etc. This approach is unlikely to make the game crafts more interesting, enjoyable, or diverse.
|
The opportunities of the NEW system
By introducing new sub-fabricated materials (such as thread spools and sewing kits) into the chain, we significantly reduced the number of steps in the process. This change opened up major opportunities for greater variety in crafts, with plenty of room to incorporate more sub-fabrics over time. Additionally, the new system enables NPCs to directly sell spools for Eons and offers other options that we are currently researching.
|
|
|
Challenges of the new system
The new system has changed current crafts. A lot of crafting processes have been updated. With old items being removed and new ones added, we're going through a major transition. These changes aim to create a flexible, future-ready and more fun crafting system.
We need all players' feedback to balance the system. Your input is important as we fine-tune it and develop tools that use smart formulas to evaluate crafts better. Those tools haven't been created yet because there's always a lack of time.
|
|
|
Everything summed up
In summary, the recent changes include:
- Addition of more types of fur and leather.
- Introduction of additional types of textile and spools.
- Reduction in total crafting steps, with an increase in sub-fabricates.
- Transitioning fur crafting to utilize fibers or direct drops.
- Transforming leather into a sub-fabricate.
- Introducing sewing kits initially, followed by melting molds later.
- Implementation of machines and workshops.
- Aeven-wide shop gfx upgrades/layout changes.
|
|
|
There's more to the changes mentioned above. The world and database are now set up to handle additional raw materials like Essence, Powder, and Oil, along with a more complex Ore crafting process. We don't anticipate any existing items becoming obsolete due to these changes, as most of the new items for these systems are entirely new and more focused on magic- and metalworks.
Future craft upgrades probably won't make more items deprecated.
|
|
About: New Craft Example 1
|
'' Thieves Clothes ''
Let's delve into the new system and create some fresh Thieves Clothes. The initial observation reveals that we'll need to gather 1 Sewing Kit, 1 Budget Textile, and 1 Fragile Leather.
These are essentially three sub-fabricates that require a bit of gathering a lot more different raw materials. The aim of this new craft system is to keep this process diverse without making it feel too much like a chore. By introducing groups of fur and hide, as well as various thread spools, the combinations can be endless. We'll carefully balance the quantities to control the difficulty level. We want to steer clear of having hundreds of the same items to keep things interesting, yet ensure that some items need a little bit of a grind to keep them more special.
|
|
|
- Leather is made from 3-4 raw materials.
- Textiles are made from a combination of thread spools.
- Additional sewing kits may be introduced later, such as the Master Sewing Kit or Expert Sewing Kits.
|
|
About: New Craft Example 2
|
'' White Robes ''
The new upper floor of Daisy's clothes store in Aeven Town now sells more exclusive armors. One of the most expensive old crafts is the 'White Robes'. The new craft system will ask the player for 3 basic ingredients: 4 sewing kits, 3 pieces of casual fabric, and 2 soft leathers.
This example shows that making the White Robes still uses low-tiered materials but in larger amounts, making it more valuable, still craftable by new and old players. In the past, the old craft for White Robes needed over 600 pieces of cotton, which was a lot but made the process a bit tedious.
|
|
|
- The soft textile is using 2 soft thread spools
|
|
About: Thread Spool Examples
|
The armor crafting system now revolves around Thread Spools, which always require a combination of at two (or more) raw materials: Plant fibers, Furs, and Hides. Textiles are then made from one or more spools, allowing us to create unique combinations and give every NPCs more unique drops over time.
Some more examples:
- Textiles can be combined in endless ways, making them future-proof.
- Spools can use one or more plant fibers, such as jute, flax, bamboo, cotton, or silk.
|
|
About: Item Compensation **
|
'' Josand Old Merchant ''
After using the old system for almost 8 months, it's clear that several items are no longer working out. These items played a crucial role in trading and making many early-game items accessible, and we appreciate the effort that went into creating them. That's why, after this patch, players can trade/exchange their old items with the old merchant situated at the Josand Town market. The merchant buys back most of the higher valued items at a substantial ammount of Eons.
The merchant will remain for a minimum of three months.
|
|
|
|
|
With a more versatile craft chain coming, it's logical to slightly upgrade the locker as well.
The next update will make your locker better in a few ways: you'll see more items on the screen, have more room to store stuff, and find things faster with new filters. Everything you're used to, like dragging and dropping items, will still work just fine.
Summary of all improvements:
- base capacity: from 20 to 25 items.
- columns visible: from 4 to 5 per row.
- upgrades: from +4 to +5 per upgrade.
- max capacity: from 60 to 90 items.
- quick views: all, arms, gear, jewelry, buddies, potions, materials.
|
|
About: New Player Quest Pack (6)
|
Hello everyone! In this patch note, we'll talk about the six new quests added to Aeven, specifically for new players.
We've noticed that some new players cannot find enough quests and face difficulties to hit the chickens without a bow. So we created six new quests that should offer various ways to reach level 10+, introducing the 'Coin system' and rewarding the new players with a Broken Bow. Some npcs have been moved like the Fallen Warrior.
|
|
|
New Quest: Happy Delivery
Quest Giver : Happy Berry Picker
Map : Aeven Mine Entrance
Reward : 420EXP, 50Eons
The "Happy Berries" quest helps players learn about gathering resources. It's now extended with a short courrier quest "Happy Develivery" to guide new players towards the Aeven Town first. Completing this small quest earns players 50 Eons, which they can use to start the "Shady Toolshop" quest right away. This quest helps new players find their way to the market, and learn about Shady from Happy Mike.
|
|
|
New Quest: Bat Bash (REP)
Quest Giver : Mine Chief
Map : Aeven Mine
Reward : 600EXP, 20Eons
To ensure there are plenty of activities throughout Aeven Town, we've introduced a new quest called "Bat Bash" in the cave. This quest is aimed at helping new players find more purpose in killing the bats inside the Aeven Mine. Additionally, we're transforming a small area between the mine and deep mine into a miner hub with even a small miner shop in time (under development)
|
|
|
New Quest: Rare Rocks (REP)
Quest Giver : Rock Collector
Map : Aeven West
Reward : 1200EXP, 33Eons
We've added a new type of quest called "Rare Rocks." In this quest, the game will keep placing random (not very valuable) rare rocks all over the map for new players to find. We're adding this quest to make the west part of Aeven Town more interesting. If the quest turns out to be fun, we might introduce this new quest type in other areas too.
|
|
|
New Quest: Runaway Piggy
Quest Giver : Billy Farmhand
Map : Aeven West
Reward : 600EXP, 1 BuddyCoin
We've added a small quest to assist Billy Farmhand in catching a runaway piggy that's roaming around the Aeven Outlet map. Bringing back the piggy will unlock a new REP quest and reward both new and existing players with 1 buddy coin. This buddy coin introduces players to the midgame coin system, encouraging them to think about how to use it. The REP quest aims to reduce competition from high-level players who are still hunting piggies.
|
|
|
New Quest: Stinky Carrots
Quest Giver : Billy Farmhand
Map : Aeven West
Reward : 420EXP, 30Eons
The "Stinky Carrot" quest is a newly added quest designed for new players. It gives the stinky carrot more purpose and is easy to pair with the Piglet Panic quest to make up for new players being outperformed by higher-level players at the piggy site. Also because of this the reward has been set to a lower value (420Exp)
|
|
|
New Quest: Broken Bow
Quest Giver : Quickshot
Map : Aeven Stronghold Forest
Reward : 420EXP, Broken Bow, Broken Arrows
We saw that it's tough for new players to defeat chickens, and not easy to obtain enough Eons to craft the Small Aeven Bow. So, we added a new one-time quest to get a Broken Bow and Arrows. We figured the best way to do this was by adding a friend to the Aeven Hunters site. We'll need more graphics to make it look nicer in the future (still being worked on).
Just like the Broken Dagger, the Broken Bow holds no decent stats or selling value.
|
|
About: Optional New Client
|
From Wednesday May 15th, there is also a new optional client download (4.23A) that fixes 3 issues:
- Damage number glitch, happens when sitting down and taking damage
- Render splash position, when sitting down on water tiles
- Invisible item glitch, when quest injects items (like lost wallet quest)
|
|
About: Other hotfixes made
|
Various hotpatches have been applied in the days after the 4.23 release:
- Quest : stormdamage - blueprint spawn locations fixed
- Quest : garden patrol- npc target (Shroom) fixed (now counting again)
- Quest : superinvader - now mentions super proto is on the 4th floor (for more guidance)
- Quest : Aeven Hunter - now always rewards a Hunter Coin
- Maps: floor1-2-3 will spawn player outside factory on death, instead of Aeven
- Maps : factory reactor renamed to 'factory basement'
- Maps : factory Lair renamed to 'factory Floor F-4 lair'
- Maps : factory Lair super proto spawn fixed
- Ore item : iron ingot renamed back to Iron , etc
- Item rename : neon blade -> fluon blade
|
|
About: Dark Edura / Dark Veil
|
The update will introduce the Dark Tailor, who lives deep in the Hallows:
|
|
About: Development Future Focus
|
With the new crafting system now fully implemented, we can focus on developing the next areas: the Shadow World, Underworld, and Atlantis. Meanwhile, the remaining balance and design tools for the new crafting system should be developed and integrated into the Pub Studio.
|
There's a new outfit you can choose to buy at the newly opened deep miner shop. The miner hub should get more improvements in future updates.
|
"The new craft system is a significant and rough change to the economy. Nothing is final, and everything is subject to change in the upcoming weeks."
We're hopeful that everyone can recognize the significant efforts that have gone into bringing the new crafting system to life. Every aspect has been meticulously planned, migrated, and refined to the best of our abilities. However, achieving perfect balance in a single pass without all the necessary supporting tools and formulas has proven challenging.
Given this, we're reaching out to our community for support. We've decided to roll out the update with the understanding that Endless Online has always been an open development, relying on player feedback. Your understanding and patience during this process are greatly appreciated. Your feedback will be crucial as we navigate this transition and work towards developing the tools needed to automatically balance items in the future. Thank you for being a part of this journey with us.
|
- ** decapitated items like pile of fur, fabric and sellable textiles are still sellable to all npcs for the normal eon price.
- - fur frag, furs, leather frag, leather are swappable for basic fur and basic hide for a limited time as well.
- - fabric, woven fabtic, textile, woven and refined textiles are sellable for a high guaranteed eon price for a limited time.
Update 4.24 is rolls out this weekend (May 31th, June 1st)
Click here to find out who is contributing awesome artwork.
|
|
|
|
