The time has come to ring out the old, dying world, and ring in a new in its stead. Changes are as follow:
CHARACTER & COMBAT
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- Reworked hunger
- There is now only one tierless hunger meter, rather than one with seven distinct tiers. The new meter holds 1000 units of hunger, wheras the old meter tiers combined held 700. The hunger values on food dishes will thus be presented as ‰, rather than %.
- Rate of Decay of the hunger meter, and Food Efficacy (FEP% bonus), is determined by where on the continuum of the meter you currently are, rather than by tier.
- Hunger decays by the cube of the current effect level, rather than the square of it.
- Maximum Food Efficacy is x3, and minimum is x1/3, a FEP bonus span from 300% to 33.333...%.
- By removing the discrete tiers, since every piece of food eaten will now slow you down to some extent with no "freebies", we believe it will become a more nuanced question what the optimal hunger level is, hopefully abolishing the psychology of feeling that one has to always operate at the 300% level.
- Nerfed Salt such that it removes hunger equivalent to a certain duration of hunger decay, rather than a fixed percentage value.
- Reduced armor penetration of Hirdsman's Sword from 12.5 to 7.5%. Aiming to restore a bit of the B12 combat meta.
INDUSTRY
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- Made changes aiming to significantly reduce the early world gain from hunting big game animals.
- Reworked the mining industry to provide for more graceful progression through content.
- Restored metal spiraling precisely as it used to be. But there's a twist.
- "Bloom" now turns to "Dross" if it cools, rather than "Slag".
- Rebalanced food and curiosities, attempting mostly to buff underutilized recipes.
- Reworked the whale spawning mechanic, aiming to reduce the reliance on simply seeing ocean tiles to find infinite whales.
- Reworked crop qualiy gains so that all crops should gain quality relatively uniformly, with some geographically local variance still applied. Aiming to break the reign of turnip tyranny.
SIEGE & REALMS
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- Added "Siege Boost" to claims.
- For each level of a new ancestral worship spell cast on a claim, the claim gains one point of "Siege Boost".
- Siege Boost acts as a multiplier on the amount of time a Siege Engine needs to effectively attack targets on the claim, where each point is an additional x0.5. E.g. a battering ram would need to wait 36h, rather than 24h, to attack a claim with one extra point of "Siege Boost".
- The first five points of "Siege Boost" are permanent, and remain forever once added. The latter five points are transient, and decay away over a few days.
- In summary: You can boost the siege defense of any claim, causing it to require up to 5x longer drying times on siege engines before it can be attacked.
- Aiming to make siege of an established base significantly more difficult.
- Significantly reduced the effect of most realm buffs by factors varying from ~6 to ~2.5, aiming to reduce the necessity of a well managed realm.
- Backwater: Decreased max effects from 24% to 6%.
- Center of Learning: Decreased max effects from 15% to 6%
- Fecund Earth: Decreased max effects from 30% to 6%
- Founding Mythos: Decreased max effects from 30% to 15%
- Gamekeeping: Decreased max effects from 45% to 15%
- Heraldic Swan: Decreased max effects from 225% to 150%
- Land of Milk & Honey: Decreased max effects from 15% to 6%
- Local Cuisine: Decreased max effects from 15% to 4.5%
- Marriage of the Sea: Decreased fish quality bonus from 45% to 15%. The speed bonus effect to ships now applies to all ships while actually in the Realm, rather than always to ships built in the Realm. Ships in the realm now travel (up to) 24% faster, quite simply.
- Mountain Tradition: Decreased max effects from 15% to 3%
- Myth of the Bull: Decreased max effects from 30% to 6%. (Update text: Specific animals -> Livestock)
- Woodland Realm: Decreased tree/bush growth speed bonus from 15% to 3%. Decreased quality bonus to forest animals and forage from 7.5% and 15% to 6% flat.
MISCELLANEOUS
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- Reworked the Mulberry leaf mechanic. Mulberry leaves now have a number of "uses" when silk worms eat them, ~50. Aiming to normalize the amount of leaves provided by a single tree.
- Switched the "Plant" and "Empty" flower menu options on the Treeplanter's Pot so that "Plant" has hotkey 1, and "Empty" has hotkey 2, rather than the other way around.
- Reduced the speed of "Knarr"s in shallow water. Aiming to balance them somewhat relative to "Snekkja"s.
- The speed bonus from quality that "Knarr"s and "Snekkja"s used to get, has been replaced by a bonus to HP instead. The speed bonus from quality is no more.
- "Parry" and "Shield Up" now actually match their documented effect, increasing their block weight with the μ-factor. Unsure as to why they didn't before.
- Several changes, fixes, and new implementations left to the joy of discovery.
SUBSCRIPTIONS
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- All subscriptions are, effective immediately, paused until the launch of World 14.
We are hoping that the changes to mining and industry can provide longevity to the new world, and are excited to see how they play out.
Do note that this list is not necessarily final or exhaustive. If you have pet peeves you'd like to see fixed before launch, or if there is some change stated above that you disagree with, feel free to opine!
TLDR: We will aim to launch the...
W14 server @ 19:00 UTC, Friday August 12th, 2022
Enjoy!
UPDOOT: While these two interim weeks last, the eye of Sauron livestream will be jumping around between various random logged in players over at: https://twitch.tv/dolda2000