It's been a moment since the last development blog, apologies for the delay. You see, it's been very busy behind the scenes getting Update 10 ready for everyone. Let's dive into some features you can expect when it finally lands:
Mounts
We collected names from Reddit and Discord, then added our own little twist to each name we picked out of over 30+ entries for each new mount! Then we voted on them. This was a very exciting process that we hope to repeat soon.
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There will be future votes! Consider joining the ToA Discord
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- Spee Ru here is so fast currently that we've started work on designing a system to keep your mounts running in tip top shape. She's like a sports car, very expensive and VERY fast. When Update 10 drops do not be shocked if the mounts get future refinements.
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- Subba Bo is almost the polar opposite of Spee Ru. Strong and tough he may help you fight or harvest in the future. We're still working out the details of what we can include or how we're going to aim for balance between these two mounts, and future ones as well.
Multiplayer
This is the big one. We've heard your call for a more complete experience to cooperative play. We're still hard at work on the Multiplayer revamp. We're also weighing our options internally. There's a potential we can launch Multiplayer alongside Update 10 next week, or we might have to launch Update 10 with Multiplayer
briefly turned off to get everything up to speed.
The work continues! We QA and Bug Test until it is done!
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James, Cora, and Marnelli testing the Bridge Cutscene
Inventory Rework - Grabbing Your Old Loot
The New Inventory system is significant to say the least. For returning players they will have to take a trip back to the shipwreck off the Amani coast, where this whole adventure began. Anything that isn't equipped will be showing up on the beach.
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Inventory Rework - Unlocking New Slots
Expanding your player inventory has been decoupled from storyline progression and now is attached to scrap and coins (now called Kip!) for unlocking additional slots. What this means is both scrap and gold have become immensely valuable. The more you have, the quicker you can unlock even more player inventory.
Overall, even new players have more room to work with in general. There will be less trips back to Town as you scoop up resources AND It's up to you which categories of loot you want to expand first.
Depending on your play style your priorities will change.
- Materials ( Think resources )
- Consumables ( Potions & Food )
- Weapons
- Equipment ( tools, armor, gliders )
- Seeds
- Placeables ( finished building pieces )
Additionally we have six slots per row now instead of four. You can see more inventory all at once.
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Say goodbye to Gold, Hello to Kip!
Gold has been made MOSTLY obsolete, in its place is Kip. The main way players can acquire Kip is through trading resources like Farm Goods, scrapping excess items and then trading scrap at the various new traders at the Farm, Midhaven and the Mining Town. It's the beginnings of a real Shimu economy. As we're able to implement them, more and more traders will be showing up in Midhaven to compete for your hard earned Kip as well as trading for rare resources that you bring back to town. For the gold farmers out there with piles of legacy gold, make sure to visit your Mining Town.
The first pass of this new economy is undergoing tuning to make it feel rewarding without adding to a feeling of excess grind.
While this also might feel like a bit of a departure from the Ecosystem focused gameplay we also want to do the same added gameplay pass for Ecosystems and their Ecology as soon as we're able to.
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Farming is a great way to get Kip!
Building Changes
We've been upgrading our building experience, the blue glow around pieces has been reduced, the beginnings of something resembling grid snapping is becoming more of a reality day by day, and we've relaxed the build limits even more than before. If you're having issues while building high off the ground try the new Free Mode. Give all the new building options a good look, you might be surprised at what you can create now.
Additionally we've included the much requested MEGA building camera, so now you can see around all but the biggest structures while placing objects.
The intention is to get building right so everyone can deep dive into making their own cozy towns and locations that they really want to show off to their friends and the rest of the world.
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Optimization
During the past few weeks there's been a breakthrough of sorts. You see, Towers of Aghasba often instances the objects that are placed into the world. What this means is the Graphics Processor has to process one model once, then every other model of the same object is copied nearly instantaneously and redrawn in a slightly different way with very little compute overhead. Unreal Engine 5 takes great use of this feature so much so that they called it Nanite for their game engine.
What was discovered is that not all models were instancing correctly. So when update 10 lands everyone should have a much smoother game experience. Time between frames is more consistent as well so even how it feels when you press a button or move your joystick should feel a bit more responsive. PS5 users should, at the very least, experience less issues when they've built up their worlds as well. The same goes for PC users with less powerful GPUs. High end PC systems will enjoy less limits than ever before. Like most things, this is an ongoing process.
This isn't finalized so expect a little more performance gains in the future as well.
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Treasure Chest Tuning
Loot wasn't showing up as often as we'd like. So values have been changed, more loot locations have been added to the world and Blueprints should be making more of an appearance again with the increased loot discovery.
Anja Rise and Moyo Vale have gotten their second loot pass. Treasure Chest size and appearance has gotten an upgrade, as well as Storage Boxes. This helps make spotting the loot much easier as well.
We've even added in an audio clue for when you get close to an undiscovered box of loot, so we can still get pretty sneaky with some devious locations to reward the extra diligent curious loot hunters.
There's a new UI loot experience as well seen below! This should help you understand what it is you've just picked up. Loot chest music is also TBD, but I hope it's half as good as Ocarina of Time. You know the one.
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Two New Side Quests
Patihoon and Jabari both have short but impactful quests for you as soon as you've constructed your Farm. If you see them, give them a hello and learn a bit more about their troubles.
With luck we will be adding a lot more side quests very soon.
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Patihoon the Cook and kind Jabari
Carnivore Changes - Feeding Instead of Fighting
Overall there's more carnivores in the world and they've received a behavior pass to make them less outright aggressive towards the player. Most carnivores will be well fed when you first spot them, so they won't make a mad dash to bite you at first sight. It is more worthwhile to carry carnivore treats than ever before.
The Carnivores also are getting more organized. It might not be worth picking a fight with them on their home ground.
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Ecosystem & Amity Balances
Ecosystems have undergone a tuning pass on Amity and Dung Generation. In addition to these changes, Cross Pollination pods now are more useful and not only support farming, but ecosystem development as well. If you see a Cross-Pod, stop by and check them out, their outputs change based on what region you find them in.
We might return to this topic in a second blog post before Update 10 drops specifically. Lots of changes are brewing.
In the future, we hope to re-visit ecosystems like we did with gold, rolling out a dramatic rework of the Ecosystem experience.
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Ruins and Nighttime Visual Pass
Many ruins, including T0-T2 Midhaven, have undergone a visual pass as well as update to world lighting at night. You should experience a less severe change of lighting right before dawn as well.
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Midhaven Level 2 Requirements Reduced
The requirements to get Midhaven to Level 2 have been reduced in some areas and made more expensive in other areas. Culture is a lot harder to generate than before but instead of needing to always meet a certain God, your quest is more open ended.
Additionally, a new Iron Tools and weapon vendor has moved in once get get Midhaven to Tier 1, they accept coin for incredibly useful wares, helping you to combat the Withered on your terms sooner.
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Bug Smashing and Smaller QoL Changes
We're continuing work on refining this Early Access adventure. Bugs of course are getting smashed, and small quality of life improvements like secondary quests are displayed on screen a touch longer than before are now a thing. A few details have been excluded from this blog on purpose, but keep your eyes open you may spot them in your adventures. We also might deliver one more blog ahead of Update 10!
It is an honor to share the world of Aghasba with you. Thank you so much for your support so far!
- The Dreamlit Team
