#giving everyone unique details in their armor that would indicate their personality

[somesmartsmarties]

Does anyone know of any reliable websites talking about medieval armor? I’m making a bunch of ocs all based off of multiple members of the round table and I wanted to make sure I made it looks somewhat faithful to the original tales

Albeit I haven’t really decided what version of the stories I will be using as reference, I know that there have been many authors who’ve written their interpretations of these characters, but I wanted to get a vague idea of what they’d wear at the very least

[betabites]

Schneeple

The simulacrum spell is a marvel of arcanery, imbuing a body of snow and ice with a shadowy reflection of life. The prevailing archaeothaumical opinion is that spell was originally developed via observation of the effects of a mirror of opposition. However, the effect has also been known to appear in nature. During the dark days of winter, when the Shadowfell and Feywild are both in close proximity to the Prime Material, icy reflections are cast, and people going out to the woodpile may meet themselves. Even whole cities have appeared in snow fields - replicas of existing cities, filled with people made of snow. People who are unaware that they are anything but normal. Most often, these illusions melt with the realization of their falseness, or at latest, when spring arrives. But not always.

Schneeple originate as reflections of people, but do not remain a soul-less reflection. Unlike the copies created by a mirror of opposition, they are not filled with loathing for the original. And unlike products of a simulacrum spell, they can learn, change, and grow. The only sure tell is that their body temperature is noticeably lower than the base creature's. In times of stress or disruptive magical conditions, they can revert to colors of ice and snow. Some Schneeple seek out such conditions, to mark themselves as different from the original.

As a rule, Schneeple tend towards the philosophical. They are aware they they are redundant, just a reflection of a 'real' person. That awareness drives them, be it to despair or great heights. And sometimes, they can co-exist quite happily with the original, not redundant at all.

Many Schneeple pursue the same class as the original did, but some are drawn to pursue different paths - either  to make a break with the original or to take advantage of their icy and illusory nature. Some make pacts with powers of shadow and ice - from the Archdevil Levistus to the Unseelie Court to the goddess Auril. Others simply explore their nature as illusionists or monks.

Play a Schneeple (Schneeson?) if you want to:

Have a standard character with just a touch of unreality.

Reinvent your character over the course of play, as they break away from their original.

Grapple with existential problems (’Who am I?’ ‘What makes me me?’), in addition to fell beasts.

Tie yourself strongly to an existing character (PC or NPC), or play with ideas about twins or non-shapeshifting dopplegangers.

Re-use your last character sheet.

Variant origins. The above Schneeple origin is designed to produce a ready population - not common, but recognizable. Some games may prefer more bespoke variants - produced by a slightly less cursed mirror of opposition, or a variant of the simulacrum spell that produces a learning illusion. Schneeple exist with the intent to tackle transhuman ideas like cloning, and fear of replacement. As a bonus, playing a Schneeple is free license for the DM to break out all the twin comedy hijinks.

As a more folkloric and less planar origin: It is said that in this world, every person has seven doubles. They all share a face, and perhaps a sliver of soul. If nothing else, they are born under the same moon, and die under the same moon. They rarely find each other, but are often mistaken for another.

Variant names. Schneeple, or Snow People, may be a touch too silly for some campaigns. Alternatives: Snowfolk, Living Snow, Snow Clones, Simulacras, Lossedaid (the elvish term), Nobashmônekik (the dwarven term), Simmies, Slushies.

Rules for D&D, D&D, and D&D (3.5, 4E, 5E)

D&D 3.5

Schneeple is a template that can be applied to any type of creature. It gains the following qualities:

+2 Constitution, +2 Wisdom. As creatures of shifting ice and snow, rather than solid flesh and bone, Schneeple are resistant to injury. The peculiar nature of their existence gives them a philosophical bent, and a certain level of detachment that may also be linked to their quasi-illusory status.

Living Snow. Physically, Schneeple do not require food, air, or warmth. However, their illusion of self does require all of those things, and they can only survive without them as might a normal person. Their physical make-up does give them resist cold 10. Their lack of an actual metabolism does mean that they are immune to disease and poison. Additionally, they have a 25% chance to negate any critical hit or sneak attack made against them, as per the light fortification armor property.

Illusion-sense. As creatures animated by illusion, Schneeple are unusually aware to the presence of other illusions. They receive a +4 bonus on any skill rolls to notice an illusion spell or effect, and a +4 bonus on any saves against illusion spells or effects.

Level Adjustment +1. Schneeple have several advantages over the base creature, and thus level slightly slower. I highly recommend using the LA buy-off rules. In short, a 3rd level Schneeple character may spend 3,000 XP to permanently remove their level adjustment (and catch up to their non-LA comrades).

Feats:

Icy Reason

Requirements: Bluff 12 ranks, Knowledge (religion) 6 ranks, Sense Motive 12 ranks, Spellcraft 6 ranks, Schneeple

Benefits: Your understanding of lies, illusion, truth, and faith result in complete control of your own consciousness. You are immune to mind-affecting spells and effects.

Living Ice

Requirements: BAB +6, Schneeple

Benefits: You are immune to critical hits and sneak attacks. You gain the [Cold] template, becoming immune to cold damage and vulnerable to fire damage.

D&D 4E

Schneeple is an available Theme for 4E characters. For more details on Themes, check out Heroes of the Feywild or Heroes of Elemental Chaos (among others). In short, a Theme is the Heroic-tier counterpart to Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies. Any character can take one Theme.

Starting Feature: Your origin becomes elemental. For the purposes of effects that relate to creature origin, you are considered to be an elemental. You gain resist cold 5. At 11th level, this resistance increases to 10, and at 21st level, this resistance increases to 15.

You also gain the living snow power.

Living Snow

Schneeple Thematic Power

The area around your injury is revealed as snow, and snow doesn't hurt.

Encounter ♦ Elemental Immediate Reaction ♦ Personal

Trigger: You are bloodied by an attack.

Effect: You use your Second Wind. You make a save against an ongoing effect.

Level 5 Feature: You have come to a greater understanding of your own nature, not just as a creature of snow, but one born of shadows. This manifests as a greater awareness of the world, of light and shadows, of reality and unreality. You have a +2 power bonus to Perception checks. If you make a saving throw against an illusion, you can roll twice and take the better result.

Level 10 Feature: You have come to the conclusion that, despite the falseness of your genesis, despite your memories that predate you, that you are still real and not just a dark reflection. This certainty brings with it confidence, and the ambition to prove your reality to everyone else. You have a +2 power bonus on your Will Defense.

Also, if you are affected by the dominated condition, when rolling saving throws to remove that condition, you can roll twice and take the better result.

Optional Powers: You have engaged in a deeper study of your own unique capabilities, rather than relying on those gained from your original’s heritage and training. You can take these powers instead of one of the usual powers you would gain at the listed level.

Level 2 Utility Power:

Icy Reflection

Schneeple Utility 2

You plunge your hand into the water, and draw out an exact replica of the item in your other hand.

Daily ♦ Elemental, Illusion Standard Action ♦ Personal

Prerequisite: You must e holding the item you wish to replicate. You must have access to water or snow, at least a waterskin's worth. Alternately, you can spend a healing surge to use yourself as a water source.

Effect: You create a replica of an item you can see. It has all the same properties as the original, including magical properties.

End Conditions: If the item is not in contact with you for 1 minute or if a daily power of the item is used, it melts back into water.

Level 6 Utility Power:

Mirrorstep

Schneeple Utility 6

You point, and another you appears on the battlefield.

Encounter ♦ Elemental, Illusion, Teleportation Move Action ♦ Ranged 10

Effect: You teleport to a destination within range, leaving a quasi-real illusion of yourself behind. Alternately, you create the illusion of yourself at the indicated point. The illusion has sufficient substance to engage in combat, making basic attacks, occupying a space, enable flanking, speak normally, etc, but cannot move, or deal any damage. At the start of your next turn, or once it has taken damage equal to your level, it disappears.

Sustain Minor: The illusion of you remains until the start of your next turn.

Level 10 Utility Power:

A More Perfect Reflection

Schneeple Utility 10

You wonder what your original would do here, and decide that whatever they would do, you can do it better.

Daily ♦ Shadow No Action ♦ Personal

Trigger: You make an attack roll, skill check, or saving throw, and dislike the result.

Effect: You add 2d6 to the result.

D&D 5E

To play one of the Schneeple, add the following features to any existing race:

Living Snow. Whenever you roll Hit Dice to recover, roll twice and take the better result. You have resistance to cold, but you are at disadvantage on any saves against fire damage.

Quasi-Real. You have advantage on saves against illusions. If a dispel magic spell is cast on you, you take 5d6 damage (Wisdom save for half) in addition to the usual effects. Also, if you enter an area of antimagic (such as created by antimagic field), you must make a Charisma save vs DC 20 or gain one level of exhaustion.

[sorio99]

Deltarune Chapter 1: The Official Undertale AU

At 6:00 AM PST, on Halloween 2018, the official Undertale twitter account released what is essentially a demo for the next game by Toby Fox, deltarune. Between the baffling intro, the odd relationship with the original Undertale, and the implied involvement of a certain missing doctor, everything about this game was shrouded in mystery.

And I loved it.

(Spoilers and Review below the cut)

Part 1: The Story

At first glance, most people assumed this mysterious new game would be a sequel (or possibly prequel) to Undertale. After all, it involves a number of shared characters, the titular rune was prominently featured in Undertale, and even the name “Delta rune” is an anagram for “Undertale”.

However, the relationship between the two is much stranger, and the plots are largely unconnected.

After creating an avatar and having the game unceremoniously throw it in the garbage, you play as Kris (that lovely person up there), the human child of Asgore and Toriel, and younger sibling to Asriel Dreemurr. Right off the bat, about a million questions are raised, especially since later conversations indicate Kris has at least been living with the Dreemurrs’ since they were too young to know their species, but we’ll come back to that.

Toriel drives you to school, though still get there late, and Alphys (who is your teacher here) puts you in a group with Susie, the only student to show up after you, to work together on a group project. However, when she realizes she doesn’t have any chalk, she sends the two of you to go get some from the school’s broom closet. You catch Susie eating chalk, she threatens to eat your face but doesn’t, and you head off to the broom closet.

Then things get weird.

After that, it sort of follows a plot line similar to the original: you fall into another world, there’s a bunch of monsters you can either fight or spare, and you just have to keep going up and to the left to fulfill a prophecy & get to the exit, all while dealing with ambiguously evil characters who are more silly than dangerous. It is, however, a bit shorter, with only about ten unique enemies and only three areas in the whole game. But hey, it is technically just the first chapter, so what do you expect.

Of course, what really makes an Undertale is the characters. Since you’re in a different world for most of the game, the returning characters from Undertale don’t have much of a presence outside the very beginning and very end. Instead, we focus on a handful of new characters, all of whom are pretty well-rounded and developed, with the exception of Kris, our silent, somewhat-ambiguously-gendered protagonist. Susie, in particular, goes through a pretty nice character arc, going from someone who’d casually threaten to rip your face off and eat it, to an actual antagonist at one point, before eventually working her way back to being a good guy and someone you can actually be friends with! It’s definitely the strongest arc in the game so far.

There’s also Lancer!

He’s a villain.

And not a skeleton.

Just trust me on this.

Part 2: Presentation

Just to get it out of the way, the music is fantastic. Of course it is. It’s an Undertale spinoff and, more importantly, it’s made by Toby “Radiation” “I could shit out a better soundtrack than most of you will ever even imagine” Fox.

I will however say that I prefer Deltarune’s sound design in general to Undertale, though. Don’t get me wrong, Undertale still has the better OST (for now at least), but Deltarune’s sound effects JUST beat it out in my books. In particular, I felt like the text sounds for most of the characters was, on average, less annoying than in Undertale. Again, don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate Undertale’s voices, but some of them could get a little ear-grating, especially for characters who talked a LOT throughout the game. Here, with the exception of one returning character (where the irritation was kind of the joke anyways), all of them work really well. There’s even a tiny bit of voice acting from a couple of the more important characters! So, big thumbs up there.

More pressingly, however, are the visuals. In case it wasn’t obvious from the above screenshots (aside from that second one of Lancer, maybe), the graphics have gotten a MAJOR glow up since the last game. Temmie Chang, aka “Most Precious Meme”, is still the main Artist for the game, and Undertale is by no means a bad looking game. However, in general, the games’ art went from “Beautiful and sometimes even breathtaking” to consistently “HOLY SHIT MY EYES ARE NOT EQUIPPED TO COPE WITH SUCH SHEER BRILLIANCE!!!”

You think I’m exaggerating, but I legit dropped my jaw at a lot of this game’s visuals. I mean, just look at this one End-game animation!

I think this one short scene has more detail and frame than Asgore’s overworld sprite got in the entirety of Undertale.

On the slight downside, however, we no longer get the full-body monochromatic battle sprites from Undertale, as enemies appear in battle almost identically to how they appear in the world. Still, with this much more detail in overworld sprites, it’s not even a slight loss.

Speaking of battle...

Part 3: Gameplay

Yep, the gameplay has gotten a major overhaul over the past three years. First, as the screenshot should make obvious, you have a team now! Yep, in addition to Kris, you can get up to three additional party members over the course of your adventure, including Susie! 

In general, what you can do in battles with Kris is mostly the same; you can Fight by hitting the button at the right time, Act in certain ways to make the enemies not want to fight you, use an Item really quick, or Spare an enemy who you don’t want to kill. You also have the option to defend, which will lessen the damage you take if you get hit during the obligatory bullet-hell attacks your enemies dish out.

Where things get really interesting, though, is the team mechanics. You see, every character is different, and everyone but Kris can use magic (although some of Kris’s ACT commands kinda seem like magic?). However, only Kris can directly ACT, with other party members only being able to preform certain set spells. So, instead, Kris can command the other party members to perform actions, or Kris can ACT while the others defend, use items, or attack. If you use a Team ACT, the other party member(s) involved won’t be able to do anything else that turn, but said Team ACTs are usually more powerful or potent as a result. The whole thing can set up for actually strategic choices in battle: In Undertale, since most enemies only had one or two ways to spare them, the most strategy you could use on a Pacifist play through was “Which enemy should I deal with first?” Here, you have to figure how you’re going to handle each encounter. Do you have Kris ACT first, then have another party member spare that monster in the same turn? Or do you act WITH that party member, and next turn be able to spare at least two monsters?

In addition to the battle system being reworked, there were a number of smaller, quality of life changes:

You now have three item categories: Items (your standard consumables), Gear (your armor and weapons), and Key Items (your cellphone and a couple other important things).

You can sell at pretty much every shop in the “Dark” world, which makes sense, since you’re mostly selling food, armor, and weapons-things people in this world would need to survive.

Each character in your party uses a different kind of weapon, but all of them use the same armor, and you can give them all two pieces of armor each, so you can stack defense and get extra boosts!

Choices are mostly presented in a cross pattern, so you just have to pick a direction and confirm to choose that option.

THERE IS NOW A RUN BUTTON AND IN THE OPTIONS YOU CAN CHANGE SO YOU AUTO-RUN AND THE RUN BUTTON IS JUST A WALK BUTTON!

And speaking of which, YOU CAN ACCESS THE MENU FROM WITHIN THE MAIN GAME! THANK YOU!

You can also have up to three save files at once, although I’ve heard each file has some minor differences in flavor-text across the game, so be on the look-out for that.

Overall, I feel like I honestly prefer the game play to Undertale. In fact, with the exception of the story (which is mostly underdeveloped because, again, this is basically just a very long demo), I honestly prefer most of Deltarune to Undertale. While it isn’t technically a sequel, per se, it does do what any good sequel should do: use the original as a starting point and just improve almost everything. It’s almost like the Bioshock Infinite to Undertale’s Bioshock, if that makes sense.

(Would that make System Shock 2 Homestuck? Am I over thinking this?)

Now, with the actual review out of the way, we can get to the main event.

Part 4: Co̞͞n̤̠͎̙̥̗n̸̰̜̳͚͓͇͍e̸͈͉̳̺c̭̮̬̖̭̗̳͠t͍͓͘i̖̺͙͇̟̫o̢̰̜̦n͈̮̼͈͎͖̦s͈͝ ̹̙̦͈̯̜A̡̟̥ņ̥͙̗d̛͙̤̦͈̹̪͚ ̺T͍̞h̡̜̝̟̬e͏̱̹̲ͅ ͕̯̰͍̜͇͍D͝oc̜t̸̺̱̯͙̠o̷̱r͈̟̣̤̯

As I mentioned before, this game isn’t technically a sequel to Undertale. None of the events of Undertale seem to have occurred in this universe, including (seemingly) things from before the game even began. This becomes especially apparent after you leave the “Dark” world and can explore town, talking to various people. Character relationships are almost universally reset, there is no mention of the “Underground”, and considering Asriel is still alive and in college, it’s safe to say there is no Flowey in this world. It could almost be passed off as a complete alternate continuity, or even a reboot, if it weren’t for a few...

oddities.

Yep, among the returning characters, Sans makes an appearance, having apparently just moved into town and never having met you before. Despite having apparently met Toriel the night before in the grocery store, and having a business relationship with your teacher, Alphys. Plus, there's the fact that what used to be Grillby’s and the Bone Brother’s house both look WAY too close to there original versions (no other building looks that similar), the fact that of ALL the returning characters, only Sans looks the exact same (no redesign, visible aging, or even new clothing), and the fact that some of Kris’s dialogue choices seem to reference things that haven’t happened in this universe, and other characters notice them acting...different.

Plus, you know, there’s Chapter 1′s ending.

Yeah.

(Plus, as you might have noticed at the top of this part, there’s a monster who is the only one in either game who looks similar to this Gaster Follower)

All of this seems to point to something much more sinister going on. And, for those who haven’t seen it, the tweets leading up to the demo’s release might just explain why.

Now, we aren’t quite sure who this is supposed to be, but judging by their vocabulary and how they type, it’s a pretty safe assumption we’re being chatted to by our favorite former royal scientist. And, sure enough, most people are assuming that this entity is at least some version of Dr. W. D. Gaster. Why is he doing this? What does it all mean? Why was the Delta Rune even slightly relevant to the plot of this chapter aside from there being three prophesied heroes?

Well, I suppose only time will tell.

Until then...

L̴͙̖̠̕è̘̝͚̯̩̘ͅt͔͎͖̝͎̼͘͢ ̷͎̮͘ù̴̹̘̮̰̙̮̮̘͝s̵̷̫̠͎̯͙̥͟ͅ ͍͍̤̟͇͕̺ͅh̨̼̼͕̠ą̶̛̦̫̼v̺͞e̸͎̭̱͍̭͞͠ ͖̩̳͕͔͚͚̝̱s̘̭̩͜͟ơ҉̥͖̯͟m̞̠͈e̷͔͖̭ͅ ́҉̤͔͎̫̣̥̱͚̲ḿ̶̩̼̙̪̻̝̥͟o̗͇̩͇̠͍͟r̡͖͇̤̗͔͈̕͠e̶̝̠͔͈̭̟ ̷̫̬̺̮͔̣F̢̗̘̟̯͈̜͖͕͈͞Ų̴͍̜͚̘̠̞͈͇̀N҉̡̣̺̝̩̘͓ͅ.̷̩̹͓̯͝

S̛̪̦͉͎̙̀h̴͇͈͡á̤̣̫̬l̷̬̤͓͈͟ͅl͚͚̙̦̙̣̱̺ ̳̗̩͍̱̤̦͈̣w̡͔é͔̝̹̻̜͎̞͝?͜҉̣̣̥̫͎͎ͅ

[vanceencounter-blog]

My Faves of E3:Part 1

Microsoft

Favorite Game: Cyberpunk 2077- I have been excited for this game based solely on the merits of the Witcher 3. CD Project Red left a great impression on me with that release  (I have never played Witcher 1 or 2, don’t @ me). I am typically not willing to fully sign off on a game until I see actual gameplay footage. While the general public did not get footage, we did get an awesome cg trailer that did a great job building excitement for the game. 

The world seems vibrant, colorful and unique. It also seems jam packed with many different locations, types of people and activities. We see the V(your customizable protagonist) riding a train, driving in a night rider esque car and while we didn’t see them flying, it seemed to heavily imply that was possible as well. People of various augmented varieties were seen throughout, allowing them to shoot hoops better, lay a beatdown on a sparring construct and even alter their facial appearance.

CDR did a great job with Witcher making a dark and interesting world while not making a game devoid of fun or humor. That tradition seems to carry on here, based on V’s exposition. He states that Night CIty is worst place to live in in America but everyone still wants to live there. More of a town of dreams where bad things happen, than a full on city of darkness a la Arkham City. This sets the tone of the game nicely, along with the pumping synth music, vibrant lights and even the font for the game itself.

I have learned that the game will be first person instead of third. This has caused backlash among the CDR faithful, hoping for a cyberpunk version of The Witcher. I am not at all shocked or appalled by this change. I like seeing developers be able to stretch their wings and make new types of games. If we kept devs locked into doing the same thing forever we would never get Horizon Zero Dawn or Child of Light. As an augmented human being in a futuristic setting, it makes much more sense from a gameplay perspective to be an fps. This allows you to have augmented vision and have better control over aiming your guns.

I can’t wait to hear more about this game. I fear that we won’t have a release date anytime soon but I appreciate CDR’s dedication to their craft. Witcher has bought them some well earned breathing room and freedom to take their time making a polished product. They have also promised to have continual post game free content, as is their tradition. For now I remain excited for the next glimpse they provide us.

Honorable mention: Gears of War 5- I have been a long time fan of the Gears series. I was unemployed and dropped out of school at the time of the first Gears, which meant I had a hell of a lot of time to myself. Time I spent playing a copious amount of GOW. My proudest achievement to this day is “Seriously”, which was presented to those who had 10,000 online ranked kills. It was one of the only online games I actually spent the time and energy learning the glitches to allow me to play on even footing. So you can understand how I may be interested in another entry to the series.

This Gears glimpse did not pick off right where the last game left off. Instead we see a JD with a messed up arm in some sort of incubator like device, with a shaved head and facial scar. Marcus and JD don’t seem to be getting along anymore. Even Kait and JD seem to be at odds. This leads to Kait and Del striking out on their own to find out the truth behind Kait’s newly acquired locust pendant. It was her grandmother’s which seems to lead us to believe Kait may be Queen Myrrah’s grand daughter.

I love the fact we are getting a game about Kait and Del. Marcus has had more than enough time in the spotlight and JD wasn’t terribly interesting. As a PR move, this is genius as well. The game’s main character has never been anyone but a burly white male marine.  By following Kait as the main character, it helps silence the criticism the series carries for being too much of a “bro shooter”.  This story seems personal and poised to offer many twist and turns. It seemed like there was some definite friction that was gonna happen between our two protagonists. I would be surprised if we didn’t at least play some of the campaign as JD and Marcus but would not be disappointed if that were the case.

From a gameplay perspective we didn’t get to see a tonne of new weapons yet. This is slightly disappointing given Gears’ track record of cool and unique weaponry. I do know a few people who would love to take up those bone sticks and bash people online. There were quite a few new enemies including the locust who gives up said bashing sticks, a leech like creature and some DBs, that seemingly have been taken over by a locust infection of some sort.

Cyberpunk gets the nod here for me, as it is a brand new property in the video game space.

 Ubisoft

Favorite Game: Assassin’s Creed Odyssey- I have been a long time Assassins Creed Die hard. The series has been a real roller coaster ride, with the highs of ACII and ACIV Black Flag and the lows of AC III and AC Syndicate.  I think Ubi made a smart choice putting the series on pause and reevaluating it’s direction after the general populace started to fatigue on yearly releases. AC Origins proved to be a triumphant return, albeit in a different form. A form which Odyssey seems to embrace and enhance.

Odyssey is even more of an RPG than Origins was. In addition to gear with levels and rarity distinctions, they have added dialogue trees and the the ability to choose your character at the start of the game. RPG elements have been blended into games for years now but I can not get enough of them. The ability to customize your character through their perks and your weapons of choice, lets the player fight in the manner that best suits their playstyle. Now the story can play out in a similar fashion by allowing you to direct character interactions however you please.

Another issue the franchise has had is the division between the life of the Assassins which is grounded in reality and history and the science fiction elements of their present/future story line. They seem to be leaning more into the scifi elements of the future in this entry. Rarely do we see any of the artifacts of the god like alien race. When we do, it tends to just be the apple and every now and then we catch snippets about the number or details of the remaining artifacts. Based on the abilities the spear of Leonidas grants you, it would appear that it is one such item.

I’m torn between the inclusion of this weapon. In terms of the modern day story it makes sense that the Assassin’s and Templars would come into contact with these items and use them to their benefit. The problem is the game is based in the real world so if these items were used frequently and openly in the past, surely we would know about their true power today. At this point I think it would behoove Ubi to either turn up the sci-fi in the past and finish out the story of the gods or drop the god storyline and make these period pieces solely. From a gameplay standpoint I like the idea of getting more interesting weapons. This would allow each Assassin to feel even more unique from game to game and the devs would have more game mechanics available to them.

Regardless of these concerns, I am excited by the freedom the gameplay and story provide. Being able to choose your gender and character without the loss of a defined character is great. Not saying Brodie was the best protagonist in Far Cry 3 but I prefer that over the silence of the Far Cry 5 hero. Any game where I can collect sweet loot and level up always has my attention and as such I remain hyped for AC.

Honorable Mention: The Division 2- The Division is back! Enough time has passed to be excited, especially because I never played any of the DLC. They are doing quite a few things that makes this look more than a rehash of the first game.

First off, the setting is summer time in D.C.. This gave us more variety in scenery, with a jungle environment shown off as well as the typical urban environments. The devs also had more freedom in the clothing options they provided to the player, as they now no longer have to worry about getting frost bitten.

Enemies look a little different this time out. There are now heavily armored enemies that signify they are going to be bullet sponges. This is a welcome change from the first game where a random high level enemy would be taking a hundred bullets to the toque before they would drop. Non-armored enemies do appear but are much easier to dispatch than in the first Division. The time to kill dropping I fully endorse and I appreciate them attempting to ground the game further in realism. Enemies had some new tricks up their sleeves, such as gooping a player to the ground causing them to need their team mate to release them. I hope this is indicative of an effort to have more unique challenges to face along the way.

The enemies aren’t the only ones with a few new tools in their belt though. There were some new gadgets like a device that split into little bee-like things and heat sought an enemy before exploding.  The biggest and baddest additions to your armory come in the form of high level special weapons. Once you hit the end game you will be presented the option to wield a grenade launcher, a 50 cal sniper or a torque bowesque cross bow. I am always up for more differentiation between party members and players, so I think this is a great change.

The raids will be launching soon after the release of the game in order to give players a chance to gear up and get high enough level to participate. The raids are 8 players and will require good gear and high level play to conquer. Personally I find this sort of end game content much more interesting than grinding endlessly in the dark zone. We didn’t get much about the dark zone but this first look at the game was more than enough to sate me for now.

 In this instance Assassin’s Creed wins based on the hooks it has had in me for years. Division I enjoyed but has a lot to prove. I am hoping they have heard the player’s feedback and are able to turn that into a game with a deep end game, diverse enemies and characters that feel like your own.

Sony

Favorite Game: The Last of Us 2- This is one of those games I think you could release nothing about and still have people lined up outside of their local game store on day one. I think they have done a good job so far giving us just enough information to tantalize without overloading though.

We started on a scene where Ellie is at a dance and life seems to be going a lot better for her these days. Joel isn’t seen but is eluded to by a fellow community member. This seemed like a very deliberate decision to leave him out of the spotlight and make Ellie the focus. In fact in the whole trailer he never showed up once. The developers have stated that this is her story but I would not be surprised if we had the inverse of The Last of Us and have one or two Joel levels. The trailer continues with Ellie dancing with another woman and ends up kissing her. People who never played the The Last of Us dlc may not know Ellie was a lesbian but the devs have stressed this is a part of who she is, making it important to display this. I am all for getting more diverse characters in games over having the 100th old grizzled army vet character. Unfortunately for her life isn’t all kissing girls and dances though.

We quickly cut from her at the dance to being out in the dark, shanking an enemy from behind. The cut scene looked great but in true Naughty Dog fashion the in-game graphics were just as impressive. The first thing that struck me was the visuals but as the trailer progressed it was the movement that stuck with me. Everything Ellie does seems realistic and once she engaged with a group of enemies it became clear the level of immersion we will be experiencing.

The melee combat seems much more refined and interesting in this game. Any weapon an enemy holds Ellie can pick up. Even if it’s a heavy one handed weapon it will just become a slow two handed weapon for her. The melee kills were so detailed and unique they seemed like pre-scripted quick time events. When she killed an enemy their arrows clattered to the ground and Ellie would physically pick them up rather than having them just pop into your inventory when stepping on them. This was a lot to take in before even factoring in the exploration.

There is a jump button now included in the game. This sounds like a game changer when it comes to traversal and the ability to sneak up on enemies. Speaking of sneaking they have significantly increased the nuance of hiding in tall grass. It is no longer a simple “I’m in the grass so I’m invisible” situation. Enemies can now spot you if they are close enough which makes things much more harrowing. You can now duck under cars as well but the enemies will search under them for you. In a section of a supermarket they also showed her squeeze in between shelves to flank her enemies. This breadth of options makes simple scenarios have many different ways to tackle them. In that super market section you will notice enemies tell one another to spread out and search for you. This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to their AI.

Each enemy knows that you are in a given space once alerted. This leads to them searching for you until they find you and not giving up like in other stealth games. They also have individual names, which their compatriots will call out. Changes like this make every grunt seem like a real person rather than a nameless thug. They also do not have patrol routes but move with a sense of purpose based on contextual clues they have. All in all it seems like Naughty Dog is poised to raise the bar for gaming yet again.

Honorable Mention: Ghost of Tsushima- This is a game we knew next to nothing about but it blew me away with its impressive showing. From the get go it was visually striking and unlike anything else we have seen. The use of color was striking with very muted tones at the start which easily drew the eye to the red tree matching the leaf that the main character, Jin, picked up.  Apparently this is very much an open world game and the focus of the demo was a side quest. The fact that there was this level of detail in an open world game is impressive to say the least.

Once the titular ghost arrived on the scene of the crime he runs into three mongols terrorizing the locals. In typical Samurai fashion they square off before he one shots the opposition. The combat seems more involved than something like Arkham Asylum. It reminded me of For Honor where blocks and parries will be vital to survival.

Once Jin got closer to the temple it became a stealth section or so I thought. The devs confirmed he could have went in the front door swords blazing but he probably chose the smarter option. By using his grappling hook he was able to sneak in through the temple roof and dispatch of the enemies silently. The grappling hook is only one of many weapons that our protagonist will unlock throughout the game. It shows the necessary transformation he goes through from samurai to something more, in order to overcome the tremendous threat the mongol hordes pose. There was a section where he stabbed an enemy through a sliding screen door which was very cinematic but was not scripted. The end result would have been the same with backup being called but it would have come to fruition differently based on how you tackled the enemies. As I have mentioned time and time again, I value this level of player agency very much and can’t wait to see all the options available to the player.

In the end he had to confront his ally as she was threatening to kill the proprietor of the temple. Jin states that we should be fighting the mongols rather than out own country men. She chooses to rebutt with steel. Once again the swordplay seems very intense with slow mo dodges and sword clashes. Flaming arrows rained down around your battle and started a blaze as your duel waged on. The fact that this was not a main mission but had such a memorable set piece bodes very well and earned it my honorable mention.

[ganymedesclock]

Any predictions/headcanons so far on what Lotor's relationship with his generals is like? He's very obviously their leader, but he also seems to have a great deal of respect for each one. Do you think that they have any personal connection with each other? Like, do they sometimes joke around when not on a mission? And are the generals aware on some level of Lotor's trauma and want to help him with it?

I think Lotor and his generals are going to get along very well, actually.

First, there’s just the general fact of, this is how we’re shown them- standing together, operating and communicating as a group.

Let’s compare this to Zarkon. The only person permitted to stand near Zarkon while speaking to him is Haggar. Everyone else, and especially Zarkon’s subordinates either address him from the other side of a screen (and notice that every time, those screens are positioned so that it looks like Zarkon is standing over his subordinate talking downward) or while kneeling.

Here, Lotor’s subordinates are standing right next to him. No one’s posture is tense or militaristic. Pink Ears is staring stonily ahead, and Orange has her arms folded behind her back in a kind of ‘at ease’ stance but it’s very informal. WG just looks like she’s pretty much just hanging around. Lotor is grinning back at them, not threatening or haughty, but easily. It’s kind of a slightly-dorky nonthreatening grin, honestly, and the look WG is giving him makes me think he’s just cracked a really lame joke or something. 

And all of them are standing very close to one another- Lotor out in front, but even that’s significant: even in a casual situation, Lotor is turning his back to these people. They’re literally watching his back. Considering we’re promised Lotor is going to be highly deceptive, cognitive, and trying to constantly outsmart and outmaneuver his enemies- I would watch very closely any indication of Lotor letting his guard down, and exactly who he seems to do it around. Because so far, in trailers and promotional material, Lotor has seemed very performative.

But here’s another element I’m putting in here that I think this picture expresses to me- and it’s the language conveyed by armor.

Consider the paladin uniforms are all identical, differentiated only by color. Shiro, the leader of Voltron, does not have more detail or any real indication of rank. You have to either look to the Lions, or just know offhand what the colors mean to identify the leader.

Let’s also consider the Blade of Marmora’s uniforms. Consider that Kolivan has some unique detailing on his uniform, enough to suggest that he is a person of rank- he can be picked out from his subordinates for his robe, unusual mask and the equally unusual holster of his weapon. However- at a glance, Kolivan blends into his allies. The Blade is a sea of blue and violets and in that sea, Kolivan disappears.

Conversely, Zarkon and Haggar obviously stand out among their respective subordinates. Haggar’s druids are all completely uniform and drab-colored, with only her having more detailed, vibrantly-colored robes. Zarkon’s wine red armor is completely distinct from any of the other ranks in the fleet. We can tell these people are working for Zarkon but while it’d be pretty easy to mistake Kolivan for an unmarked Blade operative if he dropped the robe and was just in his armor- Zarkon sans cape would never be mistaken for a common foot soldier.

This is significant given Kolivan and Shiro are both people who are much more responsive and empathetic to their organizations, while Zarkon operates with the attitude that he is entitled to his soldiers’ labor, and even their lives.

Let’s look at Lotor and his generals. First, in line with what I’m saying before: Lotor’s dress code fits much more closely to Kolivan’s than Zarkon’s. He wears the same colors and lines his subordinates do. His is a little more embellished, a little more detailed, but seeing them all with helmets on it would be hard to pick Lotor out of his generals.

The other thing here is: Studio Mir created Avatar: The Last Airbender, and Lotor’s appearance as a new antagonist a ways into the series is comparable to Azula’s appearance in A:TLA.

However, Azula was meant to be a strong contrast to the person she was replacing- Zuko, who at that point was shifting out of his antagonist role. Zuko, who was a little more noble and encumbered, who had a positive relationship with his main ally, Iroh. To contrast this, when Azula was introduced, what was emphasized was her ruthlessness, cunning, and willingness to rather blatantly threaten even old friends to make them follow her.

It’s pretty obvious Lotor is not going to make that introduction, ironically for the same reasons Azula did.

Because Lotor is supposed to be somebody new. To drive that home, the writers are going to frame him in a way that highlights how much he operates unlike his predecessor, Zarkon. Part of this is, like Azula, Lotor seems to be largely moving away from masses of soldiers- he focuses on a specialized, handpicked team.

However, unlike Azula, given the prior antagonists VLD has featured, having Lotor be callous and vicious to his subordinates would not make him stand out. Rather, it would make him blend in- because we’ve already been consistently seeing that kind of disregard from Zarkon, Haggar, and even the commanders themselves.

Rather- in order for Lotor to stand out and be unique, the way that the writers have repeatedly emphasized about him- it would actually make Lotor far more striking if he legitimately gets along well with his subordinates and operates closely with them.

This would be reinforced not only by the uniform and by statements by the writers in interviews, but also by the fact that Lotor and his generals are all half-galra; which means that Lotor didn’t just pick specific specialized people, he also picked people he could immediately relate to. People who the main empire probably would look down on.

It suggests way more than subordinates or assets to carry out his agenda, Lotor was looking for friends. Possibly even foster family figures- since his relationship with his parents is very unlikely to be good.

The other interesting implication behind Lotor and his generals’ armor? Is that while it’s very cohesive within itself… it has very little in common with the rest of the empire. And Lotor’s subordinates are all ranked as generals.

In the past, we have not seen any link in the chain of command below Zarkon but above the commanders. Just Zarkon disseminating his orders directly to them. Prorok appears to have been a kind of ‘alpha commander’ especially close to the main fleet and commanding it, and Throk seems to have taken his place- but that’s the highest non-Zarkon rank.

Lotor takes the stage, and the first thing he does is bring in all of his own people, and, by ranking, ensure that the generals’ words will be heard. His speech about allies and enemies takes on a decidedly threatening tone to his audience: he’s making changes here, and you have the option to go with him, or go against him.

So it makes sense Lotor’s people are very visually distinct from the empire. Lotor’s making it very, very clear who’s already in his circle from the start.

This gesture of solidarity, considering Lotor and the generals are all, to a degree, what would appear to be a disgraced minority in the eyes of most of the fleet, also would seem to be a gesture of protection.

Think about it- there’s no way to isolate and challenge any one of the generals. They’re all tied together and they’re all tied to Lotor, as obviously and plainly as their uniforms alone. An affront to one is an affront to all, and even if Lotor’s an exiled prince and not pure galra- he’s also Zarkon’s son, and not many people who’ve spent years under Zarkon would so quickly pick a fight with someone from Zarkon’s immediate lineage.

But by far the most interesting implication to me is, it suggests Lotor is going to be newly dangerous as an antagonist because he’s actually using Voltron’s virtues and strategies against them: “We are always stronger together” and disparate pieces uniting into a larger whole. Personally I’d expect the generals to operate in much tighter knit circles than the commanders have in the past.

[kentucky-the-fried]

Imperium: Chapter 4

Featuring @killerdraco ‘s Draco

Chapter 4: Og Jeg Kan Vaere Sterk

(And I Can Be Strong)

The sun has only just begun to rise, paving the way for the red hued sunrise. For anyone walking in the districts, the city walls are too high up for anyone to see its glory. But at high points like the top of BLADE Tower, the view is amazing. Sometimes I go up there just to watch the sun peek over the horizon, but on a day like this, I cannot waste my time like that.

Today will be the day I meet Draco.

I lean against one of the numerous crates near the scouting console, watching each BLADE pass me by. One of them will be Draco, I just know it! I just have to keep an eye out for someone who wears shades - which is quite a general detail. Anyone could wear shades! Why did I not ask Cain or Athena about his appearance? His hair, his gear, I asked about none of it! So quietly, I pray that I will know the man when I see him.

I never expected so many people near the scouting console this morning. It seems a morning just like every other, and yet here everyone is, looking to scout or be scouted. If Draco is anything like Cain and Athena described, he will be here, ready to scout. I keep a sharp eye out for him, excited to try this amazing plan. At the same time, though, I feel my heart beating faster and faster. I am nervous, for sure. Why should I not be? Draco appears to be one of the strongest BLADEs around, and in comparison to me, I am just...well, me. What will he think of someone like me?

Maybe he will not think anything. And if that is the case, then I do not blame him.

I force myself to breathe, realizing that I had not taken a single breath since the console grew busy. My hands twitch; I had skipped my morning coffees, and my entire body screams at me to run down to the Commercial District, to grab something quickly and then come back. But I know my luck is terrible, and that if I went, Draco would come and I would miss him. So I wait.

And wait.

And wait.

This is stupid. He will not talk to you even if you find him, so why have you been standing here so long?

Disheartened, I straighten my spine, pushing my back off from the wall of the crate. I suppose it was too much to wish. I start to walk into the mass of people around the scouting console. There is the opportunity to try scouting him, but my heart does not feel up for it. Besides...that was not my first plan.

I wanted to buy him coffee.

I continue to pass the scouting console, heading to the BLADE Concourse. Maybe I could pick up a mission or two and head out. The city has a way of making me feel cramped, after a while, and getting some fresh air will do me some good. Hopefully this will calm me down -

“Oof!”

“Eh!”

Being so lost in thought, I did not realize I was on a collision course with someone, and so I bump into an unfortunate soul, shaking my head. At least it was not too rough of an impact. Unexpected, since most BLADEs tend to wear heavy armor, and yet upon impact, I could tell that this person was wearing some sort of light fabric. Curious, I look up.

And I meet a pair of dark shades.

“Sorry about that,” Draco - yes, it has to be Draco, he has a very Draco look about him. And oh gods, he is...he is handsome. Like, holy shit. The voice, the shades, the neatly spiked yet fluffy hair - and the hint of freckles cascading over the bridge of his nose. Holy guacamole. Just. I. Wow.

“...you okay?”

Oh gods, how long have I been standing here?! I jump to attention, giving a quick response. “Oh, me? Y-yeah! I am okay! Are you? Well, of course you are, you look fine as hell - oh my gods.”

I cover my face with my hands, trying to hide the obvious blush. Yep, this was not the plan, and now I am suffering. What else is new?

“Thanks?...” Draco says. I can tell, he thinks I am weird, oh gods I screwed up I screwed up -

“Hey, wait a minute. Mind looking up for a few seconds?”

What a strange question. Does he want to watch me turn into a human tomato? Probably. Just my luck, too. I slowly raise my head, looking into his shades. For a brief moment I wonder what color his eyes are, but the thought is quickly pushed away.

Draco’s eyebrows raise. Oh great, he looks surprised. I really screwed up.

“...your name wouldn’t happen to be Pongo, would it?”

Now it is my turn to look surprised. “Pongo? Yeah! Me! Pongo!”

“I’ve heard of you,” He tells me with a gentle smile, “You know Cain? Well, I scouted him the other day, and he told me about this adorable, indigo-eyed kid who wanted to meet me.”

“....” Did I really say that? Maybe I did. It would not be anything new.

“Though I’m not sure why. I’m just another BLADE.”

...oh fuck no.

“No! You are definitely not allowed to say that because it breaks some sort of rule and it breaks your self-esteem and you have to know how wonderful of a person you are because you are amazing and strong and handsome and people look up to you and cherish you because you are a role model for them and -”

Draco raises his hands, trying to get me to calm down. “Take a deep breath there. I didn’t mean it like that.”

I frown, thinking that he is just trying to make me feel better, but either way, he is different - exceptionally different. If that is the one thing I have learned from my time here on Mira, we all have something that makes us special. All we need to do is find it and hold on to it, because on the darkest days, knowing that you are unique is one of the greatest feelings in the world.

...Wow, that sounds cheesy. And yet, it is equally true.

“So since I’ve got nothing to do, why don’t we take a job?”

I perk up. “Um, r-really? That would be an honor, actually! Did you have anything in mind?”

“Hmm...well, I’ve heard reports of a tyrant out on an island off of Primordia.” He puts a thoughtful fist to his chin as he ponders. “BLADE named him Sven, the Sturdy. He’s supposedly unkillable thanks to his hard exterior, but I’ve always wanted to try fighting it.”

I nod slowly. It has been a long while since I fought a tyrant, and even then, I never meant to engage in a fight with it. How was I supposed to know that there was a giant worm underneath the Sylvalum plains?! Regardless, that ended poorly. I got launched pretty far, now that I think about it.

“So what kind of indigen is it? Or, Ganglion?” I ask.

“It’s a forfex.”

...wow.

“Oh...heh, I engaged in a fight with quite a few forfexes just the other day. It was pretty brutal, but we handled it well in the end!”

Draco frowns. “We?”

“Oh, ah, I had a few scouts with me. Jaynix, Scarlen, and Aeviann.”

His mouth forms an ‘o’ shape. “You chose good teammates. I’ve had the pleasure of working with them before, and they all have their strengths.”

“Definitely!” I agree, “Jaynix with her strength, Scarlen with his healing, Aeviann with her sharpshooting - man, they were all so great!”

I smile widely, remembering the three scouts and how we fought. Sure, I was pretty useless in the majority of the fighting, but they all fought like true warriors! But even though I ended up enjoying our time together, it scares me to try scouting them again. They must have better things to do than watch me get launched.

“So since we’re headed to an island, I’ve got to ask: do you have a Skell?” Draco asks.

“Oh! Y-Yes, I have one!” I respond, “A Lailah Queen model. I named it Eros after this god from back on Earth who ruled over love! - at least, that is what one of my friends thinks.”

He starts to walk forward, and I turn to follow him, coming up on his left side. “Okay, good. I could lead the way, since I’ve got the coordinates on my comm. Are you okay with that?”

“Sure thing!”

I spot my Skell near my usual parking spot: near the tent set-up in the East Gate. The BLADEs who reside there never stay for long, as it is only an area to get supplies, but the head of the area kindly allowed me to park my Skell near it. It stands neatly next to the wall, and as I jog over to it, Draco stops to look at it. Painted with reds and blacks, it stands out in the dull gray of its surroundings, and I know that as soon as I hop in and power it up, the visor lights will make it stand out even more. Gods, I love this Skell. It is irreplaceable and I love it with all my heart and soul!

“Heh. You parked it nicely,” Draco comments.

Raising an eyebrow, I say, “T-Thanks?”

“Sorry if it seems like a strange thing to say, but I’ve had my fair share of friends who are notorious for parking their Skells in terrible, unpredictable locations. For instance, if you ever run into a woman named Elysia, you’ll see what I mean.”

Elysia is a pretty name. I bet she is pretty too…

NO. STOP THAT.

“I will be sure to keep an eye out for her - or both eyes! That would probably be better in the long run, finding someone with only one eye sounds difficult - not impossible, but difficult! Since, well, peripheral vision and all, so if the person was on your bad side - wait, no one has a bad side, everyone has two good sides because everyone is really pretty and beautiful and -”

“Pongo.”

“...oops.”

~~~

The sun is high in the sky by the time our Skells reach NLA Waters. Draco takes the lead as said, and I follow closely, watching as the water splashes around the feet of our Skells. A trail of bubbly water indicates our path for a few brief moments before the ocean settles again, and so we can see the best of both worlds: the calm, and the excited. The ocean is beautiful, no matter what state it is in, and every time I head into the ocean, I feel strangely at peace.

“So, Pongo.”

I jump up in surprise, letting go of the controls of the Skell temporarily at the sound of the voice of Draco over the speaker. He must have found a way to connect the voice channels to each other. “Yes! Hi!”

“What division are you with?”

Oh, simple conversation. Easy there, Pongo, you can answer this one without making a complete fool of yourself. “Interceptors. Always have been, always will be.”

“I’m with the Reclaimers. Seems strange, how we haven’t worked together before. I’m often paired with an Interceptor or two on the particularly risky missions I take.”

“Mm. Strange indeed…”

Yeah, I am not going to tell him about how I only just got on the scouting console. That would be a huge factor into us not meeting before, I think.

I continue to carry the conversation, “But yeah, I get assigned to a bunch of risky missions. Interceptors are widely recognized as the ones who protect people, and I want to protect people, I always wanted to, but…”

I trail off, looking off to the side. Being an Interceptor was my calling, and I feel at home with the division, but at the same time, Interceptors are supposed to defend and protect. I want to believe that I can do both, but how can I protect people when I am obviously weak? There are better candidates than me to protect people, in the end.

“But what?” Draco presses.

I sigh. Draco is strong, really strong - wait a minute. My plan from before! My plan that got completely ruined because of my stupidity! I can carry on with it! All I have to do is ask, just ask…

“But I am not strong. Not nearly as strong as other BLADEs. I really want to become better, and I was hoping…” Say it. Say it. Say it.

“...I was hoping someone like you could teach me some things?.........about getting stronger, I mean………….”

Yay! I said it! Go me!

I wait for an answer, my shoulders tensing up. What will he say? Will he reject this? I mean, he probably will. I am just proud that I was brave enough to put the thought out there.

“Stronger, how? Like in battle, in mind?...”

“Yes.”

“....”

Oh gods, he has been silent for a while. I know he will reject me, but with every passing second, his silence has only given me hope. I do not want to be given hope if there is none, but I still cling on to the slim chance there is. Why do I do this? Why do I tell myself that there is a chance when there is none?

The silence lasts so long, in fact, that we approach the island with no further conversation. Draco lands his Ares Skell near the shore, and I do the same, shutting off the power before sliding out of the cockpit and landing on the sandy floor. I adjust my footing to the new terrain, taking in the familiar scent of salt water. The waves quietly splash the shoreline, and as I watch Draco exit his Skell, I also take into account the number of forfexes that I assume inhabit the island. It is a small number for a small island, but I still keep my guard up. Any one of them could launch me right into the ocean if I take one wrong step.

But as I continue to observe our surroundings, I notice one forfex that appears slightly larger than all the rest. It digs at the ground, stirring up some small rocks as it crawls around, looking for its next meal. It behaves just like a normal forfex, and yet the size indicates that it must be different somehow. I wonder if this is Sven. If so...I am totally getting launched.

“I want you to attack it.”

The voice behind me startles me, and as I spin around in confusion, I stutter, “W-What?!”

“I want you to engage in a fight with Sven, on your own.” Draco explains, crossing his arms over his chest. The sheath of a gold and black longsword hangs on his back, a glaive - the Receding Rust? Seems like everyone has one nowadays. I wonder where they come from. Is there a Receding Rust factory? Does an arms manufacturer make them?

...wait, how did I completely skip over what Draco told me?!

“WHAT?!” I cry, stepping back. “No, that would be insanity! I cannot fight a tyrant on my own!”

Draco takes a deep breath. “Look, it’s not like you’ll be fighting on your own. All I want you to do is fight Sven for a bit, and if things get hairy, I’ll cut in. Does that sound okay?”

I look away towards the rippling sea. “I, ah...why?...why make me fight him alone?...”

“Like I said, you won’t be alone. But if you really want me to help you, I’ve got to know where you’re at. For all I know, you’re just blind to your own abilities and just need a confidence boost.”

I am not quite sure about that last part, but it seems logical. I want to become a better fighter above all else, and how can he know about my current abilities without showing them in battle? Even so, for some strange reason, I feel scared fighting alone. I have taken most missions alone before, and I felt comfortable then...at least, I thought I did. Now that I look back on those times, I remember an empty feeling deep inside my heart. I had always pushed it aside then, but now…

I think I know what caused it. I had no one to talk to, no friends to fight alongside. And I suppose that is my own fault, in the end. I never took initiative to fix my scouting information, and in the instances that my friends were free, I never asked them to join me. I felt so inferior, asking for their help. I still feel that way, but now that this void has been filled, I understand something.

Perhaps the most important part of growing stronger is asking for help.

...oh look at me, rambling like Bozé. He must have rubbed off on me more than I thought.

I look towards Draco again, a gentle smile on my face. “Alright, then...I can try.”

Draco gives me an approving nod. “Then get out there. Sven’s the big one. I’ll be a few yards away if anything goes wrong.”

I mimic his nod, turning to face the massive forfex. Its back faces us, so I could easily run over and deal a preemptive slash to the back. I draw my saber from my belt, pressing a button on the hilt to ignite the blade. A blue-green light envelops the newly formed beam, and for a split second I feel like one of those Jedis that L’Cirufe told me about. I start moving forward, my steps light and my breathing even lighter. I have no idea if this tyrant is sight or sound specific, but it is wise to be cautious in case it has one of those heightened senses, or both.

As I near it, it suddenly spins in my direction, screeching as it raises one lone claw in the air. My eyes widen in shock; did it hear me? I thought for sure that I was being quiet...either way, I get into a fighting stance, bracing myself for an attack. Sven charges forward, and I do the same. It moves its pincer to slash me, but I quickly use my momentum to fly up into the air, landing on top of its shell. A quick spin towards its face and I swing at the pincer, expecting it to come flying off. But instead, my saber bounces off of it, hardly making a dent on the pincer. I scowl in confusion, but I am unable to think too much of it, for Sven bucks me off like a monoceros. I am thrown through the air and I take a rough landing, feeling some sand hit my face. I close my eyes in time for them to not be affected, but my mouth unfortunately takes a mouthful of sand and dirt. As I sit back up, I cough a couple times, spitting out tiny rocks and sediments. Thankfully my saber is still in my hand, so as I stand back up I prepare myself to charge back into the fight. Sven has a lot more to him than I thought, and if I am to defeat him - if I am to show Draco my skills - I have to fight with everything I have.

From this range, Sven initiates a common attack for forfexes: the ether bubble. From its mouth, a series of small purple bubbles ejects, and they home in on me all at once. I dodge a few with quick footwork, and the rest I deflect with my saber. Gritting my teeth, I reach for one of my dual guns, strapped to the back of my vest. With one click of a button I activate a buff for myself: Ghost Factory. It should grant me decoy long enough to get some hits in, and at the same time it helps Draco just in case Sven changes his target. Though, now that I look around, Draco is nowhere to be seen...did he leave? No, I still see his Skell parked next to mine. Where is he?!

Another screech fills the air and interrupts my thoughts, and I have to react quickly to another slash Sven throws my way. I use my saber to block the blow from overhead, and I push it away just as quickly. Running under its body, I try to slash at its underbelly, but I find that the same thing happens: rebound. I groan, sliding to a stop at its backside and slashing at a hind leg. Same thing. Gods damn it, how can I defeat this thing?!

Sven keeps attacking, but thanks to my decoys he knows not where I actually am. As he attacks one of the decoys in front of him, I use the opportunity to unleash a powerful melee art: Starlight Duster. My saber pulses with energy as I swing with all my might, slashing away at the back of the forfex. The momentum lifts me into the air, where I spin diagonally to deliver the final slashes of the art - oh, and a kick for good measure. But as I land, and as the decoys fade, I notice that the art has had no effect. The forfex is not bleeding, injured, bruised; it is standing on all its legs, perfectly unharmed. As it turns to face me, my shoulders slump.

This is going to be a really long battle.

But I know I have to show Draco that I can do things, that I am worthy of his teachings, so I strike again and again and again. Sven gives the fight just as much energy as I do, and though I land most of the hits, Sven knocks me around a couple of times. There is nothing that my Astral Heal cannot fix, but I only have so much TP, so as I apply it, I glance down at my TP bar on the hilt of my saber. 3000. The perfect amount for Overdrive. As Sven beelines for me, I quickly activate my Overdrive, acting upon impulse and the desire to win. A new sort of energy courses through my body, a sort of drug, a feeling of pleasure. I can see so much clearer now. I can feel my hands shaking, I can control them stopping. The familiar circles of light envelop me, and I charge forward again, determined now more than ever to claim my victory.

Time fades away. There is only Sven and me. The Overdrive powers me in ways I cannot explain. Every art I use now, every decoy and melee attack and aura, all of it grants me more TP to keep using more arts. I grin as I lash out, striking every target I plan in my mind. The face. The body. The underside. The legs. I hit them all. Gods, this power feels so good. My thoughts run wild with shouting voices, telling me just where, when, and how to strike. They tell me to kill. I want so badly to listen to them. Kill Sven. Kill Sven. Kill him. Kill him. Kill him, and the other forfexes on the beach too. Kill them all. Every single one of them. None of them will be spared. I am strong now, I am so very strong, and they will pay for wronging me. They thought they could defeat me, take away my power?! They thought wrong.

I will win.

“Pongo!”

That voice. Who dares call out to me?! Can they not see that I am focusing on -

Oh.

I feel the breath knocked out of me as Sven delivers a blow to my chest, knocking me off the ground and into a large boulder. The Overdrive fades away upon impact, and as my back slides onto the ground, I feel my entire body quivering, unable to cope with the sudden loss of Overdrive. Sven raises his pincers, congratulating himself early for this seemingly earned victory. But even though my entire body is screaming in pain, I force myself to stand. I feel blood trickling down my forehead, and some catches on my lip. Licking it unconsciously, I face Sven again, glancing down at the TP bar.

13 TP.

Well, crap.

My knees wobble as I step forward, gritting my teeth. Stupid crab. It is really rude to launch people like that! My saber still drawn, I prepare to enter the fight again, but before I can take another step, a figure jumps out and strikes Sven. Six consecutive swings of a longsword. Blossom Dance. I recognize the art that Secretary Nagi demonstrated to me one time, perhaps the most powerful melee art of all. Sven screams, and to my surprise, blood gushes out of various wounds on the creature. It falls over, reaching out one last time towards its killer before issuing one dying breath. Eyes wide, I look at the figure, realizing that Draco had finally reappeared. He is okay! Thank goodness! I chuckle, staring at him with a tiny grin.

“You okay?”

Draco faces me, a concerned expression on his face. “I’m fine. But you…”

“Heh, I will be alright,” I tell him, despite feeling pain literally everywhere. Best not to let on that I feel like dying right about now, because that would be bad. Like, my gods, everywhere hurts. Everywhere.

“Pongo...do you know how much damage you did to Sven?”

I shake my head at the question. “No, not really. Hard to tell.”

Draco sheaths his longsword and replaces it with his comm device, pulling up some statistics on the screen. “Sven has 152,932 hit points, according to BLADE. Every time you hit him, you dealt one point of damage, even when you were in Overdrive.”

...one damage per hit. I cannot believe this.

My grin fades away, and I sigh. “I guess I should not be surprised…”

“You didn’t let me finish.”

I blink, remaining quiet so Draco can tell me even more bad news. Draco pushes his shades further up the bridge of his nose, putting his comm device away to address me directly. “Many BLADEs have tried taking down this tyrant before. I’ve seen the reports. All ended in failure because they were incapacitated after a few minutes of fighting. It’s why Sven was classified as a tyrant - because he’s so durable. But...well, Pongo, do you know how long you were fighting Sven for?”

“Um...not very long, it feels like.”

I know as soon as I say that that this is not the answer he is expecting. I look up towards the sky - wait, it was just past noon when we arrived on the island, and now, the sky is painted with dark reds and oranges as the sun rises over the horizon. Okay, I am so confused. And puzzled.

...confuzzled. Yes, that is the word L’Cirufe used! I am really confuzzled.

“Pongo...you fought Sven for sixteen hours.”

Oh heck, that is a veeeeeeeeery long time. I will probably need to stock up on coffee once I return to the city - well, if the fatigue does not kill me first!

I feel my smile returning, but at the same time, the way Draco stares at me now is unnerving. He looks surprised - but why? Oh, is he surprised that in sixteen hours, I was unable to make a dent on something he killed in seconds? If that is the case, then...then I let him down. I clench my left hand into a fist, retracting the saber with a flick of my right thumb. Of course I let him down. Of course I did. I am weak, just as I thought. No Overdrive could help me.

“S-sorry...I failed…” I mumble, my head drooping down. My hair falls in front of my eyes, a dark curtain to hide the first signs of tears. Did I really believe I could do this? Did I really give the both of us this false hope? No…

I lost.

“Pongo, look at me.”

His voice is so calm. How? I force my head up to meet his gaze, and start to ponder the reason behind his smile. “Mm?...”

“Sven has taken out most BLADEs in mere minutes, according to the reports. But you...you fought him for sixteen hours and managed to stay in one piece. And if I hadn’t stepped in, I would’ve bet that the fight would’ve lasted much longer.”

He takes a deep breath. “What I’m saying is, your endurance is incredible. I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it before. You should be proud of yourself for lasting so long.”

My brow furrows. Wait. He thinks I did well? No way. No way.

“But...but I did not kill it...I fought it for sixteen hours and did pretty much nothing!” I cry.

“You can always improve on the strength of your melee attacks - though, a photon saber isn’t necessarily built for strength.” He observes. “But having endurance like that? I’d say you’re much stronger than you thought you were - just not in the way you imagine.”

I tilt my head to the side. “I cannot say that I understand.”

“What do you think makes people strong?” He asks me.

What a strange question. I open my mouth to answer, set on what to say, but before I can utter a single word my consciousness doubts itself. I want to believe that strength is defined by battle skill, by defeating enemy after enemy without breaking a sweat. I want to believe that strength is defined by intelligence, by thinking ahead and planning how to engage in a fight, and quickly changing their plans if things go wrong. I want to believe that strength is a measure of who you are, what you have been shaped by, the experiences you have had. Compared to many, I am just another BLADE. Another face. I am not skilled in battle, I am not the smartest, and I have few experiences to go off on. Do I explain this to Draco? No, I do not think he would understand or agree. So I open my mouth again, intending to make things short and sweet.

“Having good biceps.” Alright, that sounds go - WHAT DID I JUST SAY?!?

“Nonononono that is not what I meant to say I just - agh!” I spin away to hide the blush, though at this point it is pretty pointless. I should just accept that everything I do will end up in me blushing.

“...I won’t ask why you said that,” Draco responds slowly, coming up behind me, “But I think I know what you’re getting at. You should understand that there’s many ways for someone to be strong. Your strength is in your determination and your ability to take a hit. But you do have some weaknesses, just as everyone does. And I, for one, would be happy to help you improve.”

I swivel my head to my right to look into his shades, bewildered. “You...you are willing to help me grow stronger?”

“Well, I am, but I would have to teach you a few things beforehand that I believe you’ll need,” He explains. “But for now, I think that fight was enough. I’ve got a good gauge of where you’re at thanks to that, but honestly...I’m starving.”

At the mention of food, my stomach grumbles, and I laugh. “Same here. I also need to grab more coffee when we get back - maybe I will grab a cappuccino? Actually, make that cappuccinos. Need to make up for all the ones I could not get before!”

And with that, we depart for our Skells as the sun continues to rise. Though every part of my body still aches, my heart is warmed. Perhaps this is the start of a nice friendship! That would be pretty amazing, if we could be friends.

...and maybe we already are.

<- Chapter 3 || Chapter 5 ->

[ciathyzareposts]

Planet’s Edge: Two Seasons

The Moonbase commander congratulates us on retrieving one of the eight artifacts.

            As several commenters have noted, Planet’s Edge has shaped up to have a real Star Trek feel, with the quest titles obvious analogues for episode titles. In fact, it’s safe to say that without budget constraints for things like costumes and special effects, Planet’s Edge‘s scenarios are considerably more imaginative and innovative than the typical Star Trek episode (particularly the Original Series). Like their counterparts on Starflight II, the authors here clearly don’t believe in convergent evolution. We’ve seen aliens based on birds and plants and lizards, some with no mouths, some with multiple arms, although all exhibiting fairly human-like personalities and flaws. I just wish the game had given us more portraits for these creatures; there’s only so much you can tell from the icons.

I remarked last time that their stories were “a bit silly and trite,” and I’ll back off a bit now. At the time, I was thinking primarily of the princess looking to escape her arranged marriage, but the subsequent stories have been a little more interesting.

But while I concede that this game could be fun and interesting, I still don’t like it. There’s nothing in it that I particularly like about RPGs. A certain quality of narrative and variety of quests are important to me, yes, but only when accompanied by meaningful character development or tactical combat. Still, I think the thing that bothers me most about Planet’s Edge is not what it lacks but rather a particular quick unique to me: I don’t like to know exactly how long something is going to last, or exactly how much time I have left. When I have to do a long, boring chore, I typically find a way to hide the amount of work I have to do or how much time I have remaining. For instance, when I decide to walk on the treadmill for two hours, I put a magazine over the display so I never know exactly how much time I have left. If I have to clean 200 data records, I’ll write a process that feeds them to me one at a time without showing me my overall count. I prefer the unknown even when making it unknown makes a task longer or require more effort. If I have to drive somewhere, I’ll often take a longer route with an unknown time rather than stick to the empirically shortest route. Yes, I know I have issues. Irene tells me all the time.              

Planet Edge’s sin was telling me that I had to recover exactly eight pieces, then giving me a map that shows the galaxy divided into eight roughly-equal sectors with similar numbers of stars, so that I know each part is going to require about the same amount of time–and that means a 40-hour game at least. I want to know I’m facing a 40-hour game at Hour 37, not Hour 10. This is why I always insists that quests that are about assembling n parts of something always vary the length and difficulty of finding each part. Some you should just be able to walk up and grab. Ultima VI did that particularly well.            

I had to get rid of all my weapons just to get six cargo units on board.

          My final complaint, though, is that I don’t particularly enjoy blogging plot-heavy games. It’s a bit exhausting. If I ran The Adventure Gamer, I probably would have given up already. There’s always a question of how much I should include and how much I should summarize. Challenge of the Five Realms was a recent challenge; in blogging that game, I erred on the side of describing nearly every plot point. Other times, I’ve tried to summarize large sections of plot. My readers don’t seem to have a strong preference either way. I’ll try to take a middle path here.                

When I left off last time, my crew was in Sector Algieba, where we managed to get ourselves appointed as emissaries from the Magin to President Ishtao. The president was on Ishtao station, orbiting Algieba, and I couldn’t even scan the planet until I’d paid 6 cargo units to the orbiting platform. I had to go back to Moonbase, remove all weapons from my ship, and load up with cargo.

Upon my return, I donated the units and the crew was able to beam down to an episode titled “Inauguration Day.”           

On television, this would have been a two0-parter.

         It was the best scenario so far. The Algiebians are a reptilian race fond of extra-long “s” sounds in their speech, which would normally make them evil, but they don’t seem to be here. They were in the midst of a celebration for the second inauguration of their president, Ishtao. The festivities had been infiltrated by the Geal A’nai, the Algiebian faction that had also tried to kill the princess in my previous session. They also plotted to cripple Ishtao’s space yacht and drive it into the sun, killing all of the visitors to the inauguration, and using a body double of Ishtao to give the order. It was a complicated plot. There were signs that the Geal A’nai may not in fact be the “bad guys” of the scenario, and that Ishtao had been mercilessly persecuting them, but it wasn’t fully explored.            I ended up on the yacht almost immediately after entering the palace, owing to my order of exploration, but I think the events could have been done in any order. The inhabitants of the yacht were obsessed with a card game called, probably, “Chasqua.” I say “probably” because the natural speech of the Algiebians put a variable number of letters “a” and “s” in the name. It involves a group of five cards, each aspected to a particular color, which must be inserted into a number of slots in a defined order–specifically, red, yellow, green, orange, and blue. The problem is that there’s no objective way of telling which card goes with which color. They all look the same to humans, I guess. You have to show the cards to other denizens in the station and get their opinions. They look at them and say things like, “I’m pretty sure this #2 card is blue,” but they give no indication how they’re coming up with that information. In any event, they’re often wrong, so you have to take notes to whittle it down and go with the highest probability.           

I’m going to get a second opinion.

          In the midst of this exploration, a bomb went off on the ship, crippling the engines and the electrical system. The engineer explained that to fix the doors and teleporters, he needed a “gravity bar,” which happens to be the prize for winning Chasqua. President Ishtao’s doppelganger came over the P.A. and announced that he had ordered the yacht to plunge into the sun so that the Geal A’nai saboteurs would die, trusting everyone else would be willing to sacrifice themselves for such a noble end. The ship’s captain, shaking his head at such an out-of-character moment for Ishtao, begged us to get the ship’s engines back online and return with the command code so he could override the order. Meanwhile, the fake president demanded the command code for himself.

In due order, I figured out the Chasqua sequence, gave the gravity bar to the engineer, used the now-functioning teleporters to move around the otherwise-inaccessible parts of the yacht, and got the engines back online. Re-starting the engines involved inserting Chasqua cards in a particular sequence; one of the NPCs remarked that the game had been “designed by engineers as a mnemonic for complicated tasks.”         Although a bit more of an adventure game than an RPG, at least Planet’s Edge doesn’t put you in a lot of “walking dead” moments. There’s a lot of backtracking, sure, but I’ve found that if I simply stick to an exploration pattern, talk to everyone, and search everything, I’ll eventually get what I need.        There were several battles with Geal A’nai during the exploration, and combat isn’t any more exciting than it was last time. A lot depends on luck. So far, I haven’t found a battle that wasn’t easy enough to win by reloading. I’ve found a few weapon and armor upgrades, which I’ve been distributing according to skill. It also makes sense to keep a couple of different types of armor on you because certain armors defend better against certain weapons. Each item comes with a detailed item description, incidentally, which is something that few RPGs have done thusfar in my chronology.           

A description of Reflec Armor.

           Once I had the command codes, I tried both potential endings. If I gave them to the fake president, he continued the ship’s course into the sun, rejoicing that, “News will soon reach Algieba IV that a ship full of innocents were killed and they will believe that Ishtao was responsible!” Giving the codes to the commander saved the ship. Either way, my party was allowed to escape in a pod. I decided to go with the “good” outcome (save the ship) because it’s my natural tendency, but it occurred to me while writing this entry that 90% of players probably do that. Since I’m not really that excited about the game anyway, why not spice things up by taking the evil path? Maybe you’ll see that reflected in the next entries.            

The party gets the command codes after inserting more cards in those slots.

            Anyway, the Geal A’nai weren’t done. They had also infiltrated the kitchen staff and other key positions in the presidential palace and had plotted to kill Ishtao through a mechanism I completely didn’t understand. It somehow just involved pulling a lever. I found a Geal A’nai in a prison cell, and when I showed him one of the amulets I’d looted from a corpse, he thought we were part of his faction and told us where we could find the “sixth key” in a crate in the kitchen. Using it on the lever somehow resulted in the president’s death–which I tried, then reloaded.             

The causal mechanism escapes me here.

           The “good” path involved getting to see Ishtao by pretending to be reporters (one of his minions assumed we were and gave us a press pass). He wanted proof that the Geal A’nai had infiltrated the palace, which we provided in the form of the amulet. He then wanted us to find the sixth key, which apparently isn’t just a key, but the “holiest of relics from the ages of darkness!” Fortunately, we already had that. He rewarded us with an amulet that would grant us passage to the depository on Koo-She Prime.            

The party enables the president’s self-destructive war.

         I had originally thought I would finally find the sector’s quest item–Algiebian Crystals–at Koo-She Prime, but they actually turned up as the result of an innocuous side quest in the presidential palace. One of the rooms housed a museum of Algiebian history–each of the exhibits making that history sound all the more brutal. The curator hinted that she was thirsty, so we bribed her with a bottle of wine we’d received from a bartender. She wandered away from her post, allowing us to throw the switch that controlled the force fields over the exhibits. By now accustomed to searching everything, I searched each exhibit and serendipitously found the crystals in one of them. To solve this quest if you already knew where the crystals were, you’d just need to beam down, get into the palace, and kill the curator.              

Search everything, kids.

               Koo-She Prime kicked off an episode called “Solitaire.” Shortly after we arrived–and got in with the presidential amulet–we tripped a trap that caused three of the party members to get beamed away and held in stasis. William had to solve the area by himself, some of which required referring to clues from random NPCs back on Algieba. There were a lot of traps, hostile beasts, and reloading. After puzzling his way through a series of caves, he arrived in a science facility, where he had to switch bodies with a four-armed creature to operate four levers at once. Ultimately, he released his friends and found some technical plans that allowed for better weapons and ship parts back at home.     Back at Moonbase, Commander Polk congratulated us for getting the Algiebian Crystals and suggested we explore Sector Kornephoros next. I was unhappy with being told where to go, so after I scrapped the Ulysses for an upgraded ship–which the game named Calypso–I headed for Sector Caroli for no other reason that it was clockwise from Algieba.               

Outfitting my second ship.

           Caroli had a lot more stars than Algieba, most with absolutely nothing to do, not even elements for my higher-capacity starship. One planet–Zavijava Prime–had an orbital platform occupied by those goons again, and it was here that I fought and (badly) lost my only attempt at ship combat this session.            I stumbled on the sector’s quest at Alula IV, in an episode called “Desolation.” It soon transpired that Alula IV was the agricultural planet of a species called the Eldarini. I never found a description of them, but the species apparently goes into hibernation for long periods of time and then awakens ravenous, killing and eating anything nearby if there’s no other obvious source of food. Alula IV and its “Iozam” grain was supposed to be that food, but both the harvester and the transport ship had broken down. The place was also swarming with hostile carnivores that we had to kill.              

The alien explains what’s going on with his species.

         We had to get the local boss, Agricol, to take us on as field hands before we could explore the place. This involved a puzzle where he put us in a room with seven items and said they could all easily fit into a pack, but I should select the one that he wouldn’t want to take with him. They were an industrial badge, a levitator, a stone, an assault laser, a gold wire, ceramic armor, and a rifle. I chose the stone because it was the only item that had no real utility, and it turned out I was right. I’m just not sure I was right for that reason. As he welcomed us aboard, he gave us tickets for the “life gallery” on Merak I.       Solving the quest required us to go to two other planets–Denebola IV and TK–for the parts for both the vehicles. Denebola IV was the Eldarin homeworld, and its episode was titled “Forsake the Wind.” Exploring the area, we had to be careful not to brush against sleeping Eldarins, or they would wake up and try to kill us. The surface of the planet was filled with hostile sandworms erupting from pools of lava. They occasioned enough reloading that we were definitely here a bit too early. Still, I pushed through.           

These worms were no fun at all.

         We had to solve a variety of navigation puzzles not worth recounting to get the part for the harvester. Returning to Alula IV, we fixed the harvester, which promptly went out of control when we turned it on and bashed through a fence. This allowed us access to a new area and ultimately the station commander, who gave us the requisition form to take to Oortizam Labs on Cor-Caroli Prime.           

The next episode.

          Cor-Caroli Prime’s episode was “A Small Matter.” The core part of it involved the party being shrunk to microscopic size and having to navigate our way through the circuit board of some computer while battling hostile nannites. I either missed or didn’t record the encounter text or NPC conversation that explained why or how this happened. We had to switch a couple of computer chips and pull a lever to get out. When we did, one of the items enlarged along with the party was the Gravitic Compressor, needed for the Centauri Device.          

Navigating the circuit maze.

            Eventually, we were able to get the requisition form notarized, at which point an engineer gave us the “ComNav” needed for the ship on Alula IV. We returned, got that ship repaired (thus saving the Eldarins from famine), and were given a note to give to the supervisor on Denebola IV. He in turn allowed us access to the “rare treasures room” and suggested he’d look the other way if anything went missing. The room held two more sets of technical plans.            

Good. My newly-evil party is going to need better weapons.

           Overall, Sector Caroli’s quests were the first that didn’t seem to have any “evil” or otherwise alternate options, except I suppose just killing everyone instead of actually solving the quests.           Before I ended this session, I was interested in checking out this “life gallery” on Merak I, also in the Caroli sector. But when I visited, I found it guarded by hostile blue aliens who killed me when I resisted, so we went back to Moonbase with our tail between our legs.              

His assessment of our capabilities was, alas, accurate.

           Expect a change in tone in future entries as my party loses patience with this increasingly hostile and irrational universe.             Time so far: 15 hours  

         source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/planets-edge-two-seasons/

[thomasroach]

Cyberpunk 2077: The Game of the Decade

The post Cyberpunk 2077: The Game of the Decade appeared first on Fextralife.

Recently we were given the opportunity to check out an updated build of Cyberpunk at E3 2019 (now with more Keanu Reeves) though we did see 2 demos last summer. The game looked better than ever, and in this article I want to tell you why Cyberpunk is the game of the decade. Sit back, jack-in and let me explain why you probably won’t see another game like this for a long time based on everything we’ve seen so far.

Cyberpunk 2077: The Game of the Decade

Cyberpunk 2077 gives nearly unlimited freedom in the way you handle quests and characters, which really reminds me of the Fallout games during their heyday. However, Cyberpunk 2077 takes this concept of player choice and brings it home on an unprecedented scale. It isn’t simply that you can follow a quest line, changing your mind about who to help and how to handle it (just about as many times as you could in real life). It’s also about the variety of ways you can approach each quest that will be highly determined by your character Build.

You Don’t Have to Kill

I always felt in Fallout that you could make an intellectual (or charismatic) character, that didn’t focus on violence, but that you were always at a disadvantage in doing so. This is because the game has a moderate amount of combat, and getting into a fight was simply inevitable. This created periodic hardships for this type of character Build. However, in Cyberpunk 2077 this doesn’t seem to be the case.

Much of this issue is rectified by the gunplay of Cyberpunk, but also because of things like Hacking. Hacking allows the player to take control of enemies or objects and turn them against other enemies. This allows them a way to “fight” without being experts in combat themselves, and makes this style of play more accommodating. One particularly interesting thing to note, as well, is that it is entirely possible to beat Cyberpunk 2077 without killing a single person. Or so CD Projekt Red says anyway…

Polished to the Max

Another really amazing aspect to Cyberpunk 2077 is the amount of polish the game already has. Now this may be downgraded at release, and many people suspect that it will, but if it isn’t…forget about it. The closest thing I’ve seen to this type of polish in a game is the recent God of War or maybe Last of Us, and both of those games won Game of the Year. If CD Projekt Red can keep the level of refinement and detail they have shown in their 2 uniquely different demos then I can’t see this game getting less than a 10 from most major outlets. In fact, it’s the only game I can think of that is likely to receive a perfect score by more outlets than it isn’t. Queue Kotaku and Polygon complaints here…

The graphics of the game are excellent, and though not the best I have seen in a game, the level of detail is outstanding. Things run smoothly, characters look and feel realistic, nothing ever jumps out at you to pull you from the immersion. Take The Outer Worlds, which is probably the most similar game releasing within 6 months of Cyberpunk, and it’s a totally the opposite.

While the gameplay looks very good, the poor character animations and odd graphical design choice, leave much to be desired. This detracts heavily from that sense of immersion, and that is a game being developed by Obsidian, which has a relatively stellar track record within the gaming community. I’d wager that Cyberpunk will be 2 to 3 times better than The Outer Worlds at launch, which is staggering…

Freedom and Customization

As mentioned earlier, players will have an unparalleled amount of freedom when it comes to playing Cyberpunk 2077, and they can be the hero or villain. And that can change at the drop of a hat, as players acquire new information that may sway their decisions, or make them have a change of heart.

The main protagonist, V, is very much a neutral character by design, only doing what is necessary to survive. This allows for you to take control, and really determine if what he/she is doing is enjoyable, or loathed, and decide if you wish to change that or not. This isn’t something that is new in gaming, but is certainly a must have for any game to be considered mind blowing.

In addition, players can customize their appearance separately from their equipment, so you can look as badass as you want, without having to worry about which gear to wear. Gear works very similarly to other RPGs with slots for each type of equipment, allowing players to change gear on the fly, with many different types of weapons, but little in the way of Armor. This is one area that is still very much a mystery, as not much has been shown in this regard. However, assuming they don’t do anything too drastic, it will likely be good enough.

Keanu Fucking Reeves

Hollywood and the gaming industry have been on a collision course for some time now, but no one has managed to implement a celebrity in the manner that Cyberpunk 2077 does. Destiny featured Peter Dinklage as the Ghost that helps the Guardian, providing modestly witty dialogue, and Cyberpunk 2077 takes it to a whole new level.

Not only is Keanu Reeves the “Ghost” of Cyberpunk 2077, but you see him constantly in all his “excellence” when he speaks. While this is certainly not a “reason” to purchase the game, and I would never recommend the game simply because of this one aspect, this sort of thing creates even more hype and interest. And if I must say, it works exceptionally well within the gameplay of Cyberpunk, and doesn’t seem like a forced addition in the slightest. I honestly look forward to seeing him more in my own playthrough, while I look at pictures of him on my phone from E3.

Final Thoughts

There is a lot of hype surrounding Cyberpunk 2077, and it’s very easy to get caught up in it and overlook the game’s faults. Objective journalism is becoming a thing of the past, and when you start adding celebrities to the mix, this only becomes more true. Everyone wants to make friends with rising stars, and Keanu Reeves, and so it becomes difficult to criticize games. I have always tried to maintain some semblance of objectivity, though difficult. Witness my recent shredding of The Outer Worlds, which I’m sure didn’t win me any brownie points with Obsidian. So when I say this game may be the best in the past 10 years, it doesn’t come lightly.

Time will tell if I’m right or not, but all indications are that it will be even better than what we’ve seen, and that is something that is frankly hard to fathom. If you have not got caught up in the hype yet, or you are holding out until you see more gameplay, I fully understand. However, just let me say, you will be eventually. Fucking help us in April of next year, because it will absolute mayhem.

Stay tuned for more Cyberpunk 2077 content as we explore how a board game becomes a video game, and be sure to check out the Cyberpunk 2077 Wiki for all information that is currently known.

The post Cyberpunk 2077: The Game of the Decade appeared first on Fextralife.

Cyberpunk 2077: The Game of the Decade published first on https://juanaframi.tumblr.com/

[gamingtipsandtrickshacks]

Fortnite's v3.5 Update Brings Back 50v50 Mode, Adds Replays System, Port-a-Fort Item, and More

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past several months, Fortnite and its standalone Battle Royale mode have taken over everything from consoles, to PC, and most recently to mobile, and now the game’s latest update is sure to bring a little something for everyone with new items and more.

Developer Epic Games announced that update v3.5 for Fortnite has been released for the game across all platforms, and the update itself is a hefty one with plenty of content updates alongside more general bug fixes and changes.

Specifically, the patch notes include details on the brand new Replays system that’s tailored perfectly towards those looking to share their gameplay clips on YouTube. The Replays feature will be available for the game’s Battle Royale mode and will include “a suite of cinematic settings” that allow players to create gameplay clips highlighting epic Battle Royale moments.

In addition to the Replays features, Epic Games also has added new content to the game, such as a new Port-a-Fort item that allows players to build forts on-the-go, and has brought back the 50×50 mode for a limited time with a few updates and changes. Players in the game’s Save the World mode will also be getting new items, such as cyberpunk themed neon weapons and armor.

Fortnite is available now on PS4, Xbox One, PC, Mac, and iOS – for a closer look at the new update, you can check out the below video highlighting the new Port-a-Fort item, along with the full patch notes:

General

Wood, Stone, and Metal resources will now always be the first items in the inventory list (e.g. instead of Traps).

Purchased V-Bucks are now shared between Xbox One, PC and Mobile.

Login Queue Improvements:

During wait periods, login will now remember your place in line if you quit out of the game and return.

Mobile devices will not enter the login queue more than once per login attempt.

Two-Factor Authentication challenges will not put you back into the login queue.

Bug Fixes

Adjusted the Login screen layout to better support varying screen sizes and safe zones.

Fixed a rare crash that occurred during logout.

Fixed PS4 players leaving their party after a match where they are playing with players on other platforms.

Fixed Survivor and Hero squads being locked after switching to Save the World from Battle Royale.

On PC, fixed PS4 controllers showing Xbox buttons, even after the controller type was changed in the settings.

Fixed rare cases in which character parts would stretch unnaturally.

(Example) Ears of the Rabbit Raider outfit.

Fixed the inability to rotate elements in the Battle Royale Locker after buying a Llama in Save the World.

Battle Royale

REPLAY SYSTEM

Save your matches and watch them from any angle!

Speed up or slow down the action.

Help tell your story better with player outlines and name plates.

Several Camera Modes to choose from:

Third Person

Follows and orbits around the selected player.

3 different follow modes; Off, Auto, Lazy.

Drone Follow

Drone style camera that always keeps the selected player in frame.

Drone Attach

Drone style camera that is loosely attached to the selected player.

Drone Free

Drone style camera that is free to fly around the island.

Gameplay

This camera shows what the selected player saw during gameplay.

Adjust cinematic camera settings

Exposure

Aperture

Focal Length

Focus Distance

Currently available on PC and console only.

WEAPONS + ITEMS

Port-a-Fort added.

Epic rarity.

Drops in stacks of 1. Can stack up to 5 in inventory.

When the Port-a-Fort is thrown, a pre-made fort is constructed instantly at the impact point.

The Port-a-Fort is made out of metal and is three stories tall.

The bottom floor is 1×1 with a door for entry. Tires inside allow for easy access to the roof.

Decreased Guided Missile maximum turn rate by 75%.

Reduced Guided Missile movement speed by 15%.

Added a short equip time to many weapons (particularly, those with a slower rate of fire).

This will reduce the effectiveness of quickly switching between weapons for high burst-damage.

Removed the reloading animation on the Pump Shotgun.

Weapons affected are:

Rocket Launcher

Hand Cannon

Revolver

Tactical Shotgun

Pump Shotgun

Heavy Shotgun

Bolt-Action Sniper Rifle

Hunting Rifle

Crossbow

Adjusted item availability in Vending Machines.

Reduced chance of Chug Jug by 50%.

Increased chance of Medium Ammo weapons in Rare Vending Machine by 100%.

Reduced chance of Explosive Ammo weapons in Rare Vending Machine by 50%.

Reduced chance of Explosive Ammo weapons in Epic Vending Machine by 25%.

Increased chance of Heavy Ammo weapons in Epic Vending Machine by 25%.

Reduced chance of Explosive Ammo weapons in Legendary Vending Machine by 25%.

Increased chance of Heavy Ammo weapons in Legendary Vending Machine by 25%.

Reduced drop rate of Remote Explosives in floor loot by roughly 33%.

Updated Medium Ammo inventory icon to make it more easily identifiable.

Bug Fixes

Fixed weapons floating in the air under certain network conditions after quickly switching between items.

Guided Missile weapon fixes:

Eliminating a downed player with a Guided Missile no longer reports as a self elimination.

Picking up an item at the same time as firing a Guided Missile will no longer cause the picked up item to disappear.

Firing a Guided Missile prior to the victory screen displaying will no longer prevent the player from returning to the lobby.

Players will now correctly spectate the player that eliminated them instead of spectating their own active missile.

While spectating a player that fires a missile, you will now follow the missile instead of the player.

Fixed an issue that caused the player to spectate a floating Guided Missile weapon on the starting island if they were eliminated by a missile during the match.

Fixed an issue preventing the player from firing a guided missile while riding a guided missile.

Fixed an issue causing the player’s name plate to display over the guided missile while controlling it.

Fixed an issue where the Rare Scoped Assault Rifle was incorrectly giving an Epic version in Vending Machines.

Fixed an issue causing the Loot Llama to be empty in Limited Time Modes.

GAMEPLAY

Limited Time Mode: 50V50 v2

Two teams of 50 fight to the finish!

Due to this being a “large squad” mode, Profile Stats will not be tracked. Daily & Weekly challenges will still work, with the exception of the Squad-based challenges (‘Place Top 6 in Squads’, etc.).

Storm & Map

Each team has a bus, approaching the island from opposite directions. On the map, the friendly bus has a blue outline, enemy has red.

Final storm circle visible on minimap at start.

Players have 10 minutes to loot the map as the storm closes in on the circle, then 5 minutes to fight, and another 5 minutes as the storm shrinks to the end.

Supply drops come in batches of 3-6, fall every two minutes, and only land in the final storm circle.

Added dotted line to map, which indicates the “battle lines” between the two teams. Crossing the line will make running into enemies more likely.

Loot

Farming resources increased 75% over default.

Increased floor loot spawn likelihood by 15%.

Floor Loot spawns double ammo.

Ammo boxes spawn triple ammo.

Chests spawn double ammo & consumables.

Supply drops spawn double ammo, and an extra consumable, resource drop and trap.

Bug Fixes + Mode Improvements

Fixed a bug that created uneven teams where one side could have more than 50 players.

Downed players lose health more quickly than normal (10 health per tick).

New ‘Builder Pro’ controller configuration

This configuration is similar to “Combat Pro”, but optimized for fast placement of building pieces.

Wall, floor, stairs, and roof have designated buttons on controllers.

The first button press will switch to the mapped building piece, then every press after will place that piece.

To switch between materials or traps, press the Left D-Pad button.

New Squad Comms wheel

This allows you to communicate quickly without voice.

The following callouts are currently available: Enemy Spotted, Need Meds, Need Shields, Need Materials, Need Weapon (context-sensitive), and Need Ammo (context-sensitive).

Defaults to ‘V’ key, Right D-Pad on controller, or in the Emote menu on Mobile.

The Loot Llama can now be opened through destruction as well as an interaction.

Added a blue tint to friendly traps to help distinguish them from enemy traps.

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue preventing players from editing their own structures.

Supply Drop fixes:

Fixed an issue preventing players from opening supply drops in rare cases.

Fixed an issue causing supply drops to jitter as they fall if a player destroys the object that it landed on.

Fixed an issue causing supply drop loot to spawn in the air after the drop had been shot down.

Fixed an issue causing players to be pushed under the map if they stood under a falling supply drop.

Fixed an issue causing players to launch out of the map after landing on a supply drop.

Fixed an issue where building would be blocked for 3 seconds at a time under poor network conditions.

Fixed an issue causing controllers to vibrate during the skydiving phase when vending machines loaded into the world.

Fixed an issue that would hide structure health bars when the player aimed their weapon.

Fixed toggling aim down sights not returning to its previous state after reloading.

Fixed an issue where poor network conditions could prevent buildings from streaming in.

Fixed an issue where you could not select the same Banner Icon and color combination in Battle Royale that you have in Save the World.

AUDIO

Added unique equip/reload sounds for the following weapons (all others remain the same):

Epic/Legendary Assault Rifle

Heavy Shotgun

Pump Shotgun

Bolt-Action Sniper

Hunting Rifle

Added more variation to the Tactical SMG fire sound.

Added more variation to the medium-range Epic/Legendary Assault Rifle fire sound.

Bug Fixes

Remove the second “insert magazine” sound during the grenade launcher reload animation.

UI

Bug Fixes

Fixed the controller button label for Toggle Map not shown after being eliminated.

Fixed a bug in the Locker that made skydive previews appear without the correct animation.

Fixed text on the minimap that was too small.

Fixed the map marker not retaining its location when zooming in and out.

Fixed an issue with map markers not pinning at your cursor when placing them while zoomed in.

The controller analog stick can now be used to scroll the map while zoomed in.

Fixed an issue causing the eliminated player count displaying as zero when spectating a Guided Missile.

ART + ANIMATION

Tweaked the object pop in animation so objects ease in rather than pop in.

Bug Fixes

Fixed inconsistent Battle Bus position changes that could occur every few seconds.

Fixed the Rock Paper Scissors emote so that it replicates properly in the lobby.

Fixed the Rainbow Smash and Candy Axe harvesting tools not always activating.

Fixed the Guided Missile firing animation so that it plays properly while spectating the player that is firing the weapon.

Reduced the size of Mushrooms that were too large.

PERFORMANCE

Major optimizations + improvements made to console load times and CPU performance.

We’ve made some data layout optimizations in order to improve load times and performance. Load times reduced by 25-30 seconds as a result of these changes on Xbox One and around 10 seconds on PS4. On both platforms, we expect to see fewer issues with geometry or cosmetics failing to load in time, and FPS drops during skydiving. The Xbox One download will be larger than normal in this release as a result of these optimizations. We’re working to minimize the impact of this type of optimization in future releases. – Developer Comment

Reduced download and patch size for players who just have access to Battle Royale (PC only).

Fixed various issues causing the game to freeze up/hitch while loading assets, especially on console. These assets are now preloaded before the game starts.

Optimized servers to reduce network lag when firing weapons and taking damage.

MOBILE

Audio indicator no longer shows silenced weapons, crouched footsteps or ally pickaxes.

Multiple graphical improvements were made to the skybox, vegetation and anti-aliasing.

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue that caused input to continue when no longer touching the screen.

Fixed an issue where the message about jailbroken devices being unsupported wasn’t being shown

Attempting to play using a jailbroken device will result in being kicked.

Fixed various interacting actions, including:

Icons not showing properly on lower-end devices

Supply Drops not being able to be opened.

Doors not consistently opening and closing.

The Map not being able to be zoomed & panned.

Instances where accidental button presses would occur.

Fixed an issue causing Revolver and Grenade Launcher ammo to float outside the gun.

Save the World

GAMEPLAY

Enabled environmental damage for ranged weapons.

Percentage of damage done to the environment varies by weapon.

Environmental damage scaling for ranged weapons should remain consistent relative to the health of the environment, taking into account the rarity and alterations on the weapon.

NOTE: Environmental damage increases with tier and rarity only and is not multiplied through Offense.

Ranged weapons can not damage structures you or your team have built.

[Rework] Outlander Fragment

Fragment abilities, other than the Loot Llama, no longer require equipped Fragment ammo to activate.

Fragment abilities now have a cooldown and Energy cost, as other abilities do.

Fragment abilities are now improved when the Outlander expends Fragment ammo in their activation.

Fragment Ammo capacity has been dramatically increased.

[Rework] Melee Weapons + Environment

Melee weapons (aside from Pickaxes) can no longer damage structures that you or your team have built, and have had their environmental damage increased.

Environmental damage scaling for on-level melee weapons should now feel more consistent, relative to the health of the environment

NOTE: Environmental damage increases with tier and rarity only, and is not multiplied through Offense.

Axes do increased damage against wood. Hardware does increased damage against stone.Swords, Clubs, Scythes, and Spears do not favor any material type.

[Rework] Anomaly

Anomaly rewards increased, changed from BluGlo to mission rewards.

Anomaly shards will take full damage from the Pickaxe, reduced damage from other melee weapons, and can no longer be damaged by projectiles (Throwing Stars, Rockets, etc).

Crafting queue size increased from 10 to 20 (this means 1 in production and up to 19 pending).

Cozy Campfire no longer grants any Utility score for healing and instead grants more for placing the trap.

Falling Damage has been adjusted so that damage occurs at higher heights.

Players now first take damage after falling 1300+ units instead of falling 850 Units

(Example) You can now walk off a 3 story building, but you can’t jump off.

Initial fall damage increased from 5% max HP to 10% max HP.

Next Damage Threshold is now 20% max HP at 3 tiles.

Next Damage Threshold is now 50% max HP at 3.75 tiles.

Next Damage Threshold is now Knockdown at 4.5 tiles.

Farther than 4.5 tiles will also result in Knockdown.

Enemy fall damage values have been adjusted to be in line with these changes.

The vehicles that Survivors stand on top of will no longer take damage from ranged or melee weapons.

Only the Pickaxe can damage them.

Increased wood, stone, and metal stack size and carry limits.

The default building resource capacity has been increased from 999 to 2000.

Building Resource Capacity nodes have replaced the previously existing Weapon Skill nodes in the Skill Tree. These new nodes allow players to upgrade their resource carrying ability by 1000 apiece to a maximum of 5000 per type.

Weapon Skill has been effectively uncapped since v3.3, which allowed us the opportunity to remove and repurpose their nodes in the skill tree. So don’t worry – your ability to use weapons of all levels remains unchanged! – Developer Comment

Existing items will not automatically restack.

You can condense stacks by dropping and picking up items or transferring between backpack and storage.

Economy Tuning

Increased Hero and Schematic Quest XP for Stonewood, up to Mid Plankerton.

Players who have already completed these Quests will be awarded the difference.

Challenge Quests have been extended to 20 Stages.

The ‘Leave No One Behind’ Challenge Quest now awards Survivor XP, scaled based on stage.

Players who have already completed Stages 1-10 of this Quest line will be awarded the Survivor XP.

Bug Fixes

Fixed a long delay that occurred when joining a party when first loading-in on PS4.

Fixed an issue that could cause BluGlo pylons to spawn on top of one another.

The buff from BluGlo pylons is no longer lost after 10 minutes.

Fixed an issue that would cause players to pick up items much slower than normal.

MISSIONS + SYSTEMS

New Questline: Into the Storm: Opening Act

Accompany Lars and Ray on their journey into Lars’ past in the brand new questline, ‘Into the Storm’!

Brand new Survive the Storm map – Thunder Route 99.

For more details about Thunder Route 99, head here.

Into the Storm Llama is available in the Loot Tab.

Cost: 1000 Storm Tickets

Event Llama guarantees at least one Epic (or higher) Neon Weapon or Cyberpunk Hero

Every 1000 Firecracker Tickets will be converted into a Spring Llama.

Quest Rewards:

Choice of Legendary Ranged Neon Weapon (Pistol, Shotgun, Assault).

Survive the Storm returns!

Improved rewards.

Added Spring It On! Gold, scaled by difficulty and number of days completed.

Improved the amount of Hero / Schematic / Survivor XP earned.

Increases more with difficulty and number of days completed.

Increased the rarity of items (Survivors, Schematics, Transform Keys, etc.) that drop from Survival mode, especially at high difficulties.

Reduced the number of low-rarity items that drop.

Mission Alerts award between 300 and 1500 tickets, scaled based on Survival length and difficulty.

Quota: Three 3-Day Survivals per 24 hours.

Quota: One 7-Day Survival per 24 hours.

Added side quests with new banner rewards!

Power 15 Event Themed Banner + 1000 Storm Tickets.

Power 40 Event Themed Banner + 1000 Storm Tickets.

Power 70 Event Themed Banner + 1000 Storm Tickets.

Changed the Survival Mode vote to skip the day to majority vote (from unanimous) to keep consistent with all other voting.

Mutant Storms

Mutant Storms are more active during this event and award between 100 and 240 Storm Tickets, scaled based on difficulty.

Repeatable Quest to complete 2 Mutant Storm Mission Alerts that awards 100 Spring It On! Gold

Opt-in difficulty boost and group missions do not award tickets during this event.

Mini-boss Mission Alerts can no longer be selected if you have not unlocked the mission the alert is attached to.

This will prevent low-level players from attempting Mission Alerts that are too difficult for them, unless they are invited into a group by a higher-level friend.

Mimic Reward Updates:

Mimics will always award the equivalent to at least a Level 3 (Blue) Treasure Chest.

Some Mimics will instead award the equivalent to a Level 4 (Purple) Treasure Chest.

‘Evacuate the Shelter’ adjustments:

In non-group missions, the number of enemies needed to be killed after reaching the shelter has been reduced to 10 per players in zone instead of 35

The final encounter in non group missions has been reduced to 6 minutes from 8

‘Repair the Shelter’ adjustments:

See-Bot will no longer be attacked on arrival.

See-Bot will now arrive with a 5 minute counter. After 5 minutes it will leave to recharge and then return later to a different location on the map.

The Husk attack now begins when a player deploys the See-Bot. See-Bot is safe before then.

Players have 5 minutes to start the scan and then defend See-Bot.

Husk attack difficulty has been reduced for first two attacks.

Shelter will now automatically start diagnostic scan when player reaches the shelter instead of having to interact with it.

Decreasing the difficulty of the mission and initial combat encounter allowed us to double down on the mission core: scrambling to rescue a sieged shelter and creating a time pressure. -Developer Comment

With the automatic diagnostic scan the length of time until first raid occurs has been increased to 8:30 minutes after diagnostics are complete to allow more time to prepare, used to be 6:30 minutes.

Progress for the quest ‘Air Quotes’ is now given when the first 25 enemies have been successfully eliminated after activating the Storm Chest. Rather than having to eliminate all waves of enemies before the timer is up.

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue where some players were locked out of their Storm Shield.

Visual level of Survival mission reward chest increased (so it reaches max-level chest appearance at 7 days).

HEROES

Cyberpunk Heroes added, available in the new ‘Into the Storm’ event Llama.

Bullet Storm Jonesy (New Soldier Subclass) Bullet Storm: Uses high magazine weapons to build up attack speed and mow down enemies.

New Perks:

Start Up – Firing with a ranged weapon increases rate of fire by 1.2% per shot for up to 20 shots. Resets on reload or weapon switch.

Start Faster – Increases ‘Start Up’ rate of fire bonus to 2.4% per shot.

Harvester Sarah (New Ninja Subclass) Harvester: Close range scythe Ninja who uses Smoke Bomb and Shadow stance to survive on the battlefield.

New Perks:

Scythe to Meet You – Scythe attacks apply a 30% snare for 1 second.

Late Arrival – Scythes deal 48% increased damage to slowed or snared targets.

Heavy BASE Kyle (New Constructor Subclass) – Heavy BASE: Constructor focused on taking down enemies within BASE to charge up a great energy nova.

New Perks:

Feel the BASE – BASE generates energy when enemies die within the area affected by BASE. After 30 kills BASE emits an explosion that knocks husks back and deals damage in a 3 tile radius.

Turn Up the BASE – Increases the radius of ‘Feel The BASE’ by 2 tiles and damage by 80%.

New Tactical Perk:

Feel the BASE – BASE generates energy when enemies die within the area affected by BASE. After 30 kills BASE emits an explosion that knocks husks back and deals damage in a 3 tile radius.

T.E.D.D. Shot Jess (New Outlander Subclass) T.E.D.D. Shot: Deploys T.E.D.D.Y. to provide cover fire while sniping foes from a distance.

New Perks:

Quick Scope – Increases sniper rifle rate of fire by 35%.

Precision Handling – Hitting a headshot increases the speed of your next reload by 7% (Max 35%). Resets after reloading.

Eye on the Prize – Getting 15 headshot kills grants 1 Charge Fragment.

New Support Perk:

Sure Shot – Increases sniper rifle critical hit damage by 35%, 53%, 70%.

Outlander

Shock Tower

No longer requires a Fragment to operate.

Cooldown has been set to 60 seconds.

Stamina cost has been set to 50.

Using a Fragment will reduce the cooldown by 30% and reduce the stamina cost to 0.

Damage has not been adjusted.

T.E.D.D.Y.

No longer requires a Fragment to operate.

Cooldown has been set to 60 seconds.

Stamina Cost has been set to 50.

Using a Fragment will reduce the cooldown by 30% and reduce the stamina cost to 0.

Damage has been unadjusted.

Impossibility Matrix

Now increases the cooldown reduction for ‘Shock Tower’ and ‘T.E.D.D.Y.’ to 50% when using a Fragment.

Fragment Ammo

Cap has been increased to 25 + Llama fragment.

Llama Fragment

Acquiring a Llama Fragment now immediately resets the cooldown of all your Fragment abilities.

Constructor

Recycling

Increased the maximum storage capacity of BASE Recycling from 150 to 450.

Hyperthreading

Increased the maximum storage capacity of BASE Hyperthreading from 300 to 900.

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue where the ‘Plasma Pulse’ tooltip wouldn’t reflect the current ‘I.F.F. Coding’ functionality.

Fixed an issue with Fragment Flurry Jess and Shamrock Reclaimer’s support bonus ‘Energized’ not scaling correctly across multiple star levels.

Fixed an issue where ‘Dragonslash’ caused Ninjas to lose collision against Heroes and Enemies.

Fixed an issue where ‘Decoy’ wasn’t taking damage from Husks.

Fixed an issue that could cause ‘Mantis Leap’ to stack velocity infinitely.

WEAPONS + ITEMS

Neon Weapon set added, available in the new ‘Into the Storm’ event Llama.

Ranged Weapons:

Argon Assault Rifle

Helium Shotgun

Krypton Pistol

Melee Weapons:

Argon Axe

Krypton Sword

Neon Scythe

Impulse Grenade

Doubled the knockback distance against enemies.

No longer affects allies.

Easter Egg Launcher Eggs no longer detonate when a player is downed but are cleared when a player respawns or disconnects.

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue where crystal Scavenger melee weapons had the same durability as ore Scavenger melee weapons.

Fixed an issue where the Vacuum Tube Spear and Axe knocked enemies back instead of stunning them in place.

Dragon’s Might shotgun projectiles no longer bounce off of deep water.

Fixed an issue where Dragon’s Might shotgun projectiles weren’t exploding on contact with enemies.

Bullet tracers shot from other players single shot weapons no longer travel through walls.

Fixed an issue where the Boost Trap would give more resources than intended from recycling.

UI

Added an option to show a Collection Book indicator on items in the Armory menus.

Added an option to toggle whether or not ‘Favorite’ items are grouped together in the Armory menus.Added tooltip text for the cinematics volume setting in the audio settings tab.

Items in the Armory that don’t have stats no longer display a stats panel.

Replaced references of the word “Vault” with “Armory” in skill tree nodes.

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue where players using the Combat Pro control scheme would see “Unable to Edit Building” when pressing the button to get on their Hoverboard.

Fixed an issue where the ‘Place Trap’ controller button icon was missing when using the Combat Pro control scheme.

Updated reward summary cards to no longer be selectable once they move off screen.

Fixed an issue where damage return values for Traps that deal elemental damage were not indicating what type of elemental damage was dealt.

Updated Electrical Wall and Ceiling Trap descriptions to mention their elemental damage traits.

Fixed a spelling error in the Mythic Wukong Berserker description.

Fixed an issue that prevented players from selecting options (mute, add friend, etc.) in chat.

Fixed an issue where the camera would jump when zooming in on a skill tree tier.

Fixed the ‘Import Friends’ button not being selectable with a controller.

Fixed 4-player level difficulty being cut off in the in-zone objectives screen.

Fixed the ‘Research’ purchase button’s cost icon being offset when using a controller.

Fixed BluGlo having the ‘Equip’ button active in the in-zone inventory.

Fixed a crash that occurred when typing a comma while naming your Homebase.

Updated player revive screen text.

AUDIO

Metal toilets now plays a metal sound when destroyed.

Unsearched shopping carts now have impact sounds.

[gothrapxxx]

8 Beautiful Details About PUBG Mobile Hack

PUBG Mobile (as the game is formally understood) is unlike the PC and console variations right off the bat because it's free which it includes a brand-new way to make cosmetic benefits. You still make BP from playing matches, and you still utilize those indicate open randomized loot dog crates, now you also earn Vitality and EXP points. Vitality climbs up as you total special daily objectives, like playing a certain number of matches or killing a specific variety of people. At numerous thresholds, you open a totally free loot cage. EXP is made the same way, and it unlocks irreversible account features, such as unique avatar icons, and goes toward increasing your account level. PUBG currently does not have any form of monetization, so you can't purchase BP with real money, but this should alter in the near future as the game ends up being more commonly available across the globe. Aside from everyday missions and events that hand out points, there's also a seasonal ranking system, with seven skill tiers and distinct cosmetic benefits for making progress before a season is out. Seasons last about two months. Personalized controls The touch-screen controls work remarkably well for a video game as complex as PUBG. Utilizing the default setup, you move with a virtual control stick, utilizing your other thumb on the ideal half of the screen to control your objective. You fire, aim down sights, crouch, go prone and access your backpack with virtual buttons on the ideal side of the screen. When you're comfortable with the design, you'll find you have access to all of the very same actions as on the PC version, including leaning and free-looking.

You can personalize the design of the virtual buttons totally by moving them around and changing their size and transparency. You can even conserve numerous layout presets. The default layout is extremely user-friendly, so I discovered it didn't need much tweaking. Using car pickup An extremely cool idea that Player Unknown's Battlegrounds Corp. must think about for every variation of the game is the mobile version's auto-pick-up feature, which smartly gathers weapons, ammo, accessories and recovery products as you walk over them. It'll get ammo only for weapons you're using, and it'll auto-equip attachments. MORE: 100+ Great iOS Games for iPhones and iPads This system even auto-swaps lower-tier body armor, backpacks and helmets for higher-tier ones that you run near. All of this automation helps minimize how much you require to by hand arrange your inventory, and if you don't like this procedure, you can totally disable it. Visual feedback To make up for the truth that most gamers do not use headsets, PUBG Mobile gives you a lot more visual information that would be conveyed through noise in the PC and console versions. A hit marker on the center of your screen shows the direction you've been shot from, something notoriously excluded from the initial version to require gamers to count on sound lines. The minimap will likewise display a bullet icon in the general area of nearby shooting from other players, making it much easier to track down other players. You still require to keep an ear out for footsteps, so you ought to utilize a good set of earbuds. You will encounter AI bots According to Kotaku and The Edge, Player Unknown's Battlegrounds utilizes bots for new gamers based on their EXP level and will begin gradually filling out the 100-person match with more real gamers as you get levels. This implies your very first outing is quite likely to be effective. I put fourth with a massive eight kills in my first match, and I chalked it approximately the video game having plenty of inexperienced gamers. Turns out, it might have been the presence of witless AI bots offering me a confidence boost. The precise information of how many bots the game utilizes isn't clear at present. When you first delve into PUBG mobile you will get to create your character, it's not the inmost character development system we have actually ever seen, however the genuine customisation comes through cosmetic clothes unlocks even more down the road. So there is no factor to spend too much time on this. After developing a character you will select your experience level with shooters and battle royale games. This setting will dictate if you play with bots for your very first couple of matches, or with actual people, so select carefully, although a couple of warm up matches with bots is a strong concept for beginners. To actually delve into your first game you will want to strike the big "START" button in the leading left of the primary lobby screen. Nevertheless, by tapping package listed below that you can choose which type of match you want to play, teams, duos or solo and very first individual or 3rd individual. As soon as you have actually hit level 5 you can also pick which of the two currently available maps, Erangle or Miramar, you want to play, and at level 10 you can choose to play in a few of the game modes such as War or a Quick Match which is restricted to eight minutes. Once you struck start button you'll be tossed into a match and from thereon out its fight royale as you understand it. Drop from the airplane, find some loot, eliminate some fools and stay in the circle up until you either meet an early end, or leave with a chicken dinner. While Fortnite is the specific very same video game on mobile as it is on PC and console, the very same can not be said for PUBG. PUBG Mobile is its own thing, and there is no way to carry over development from the PC and console versions to the mobile variation. This is mostly because there is many differences between the variations. The most obvious is the significantly different content offered. Only 2 of the 3 maps PC gamers have are available on the mobile variation, with Sanhok nowhere to be viewed as of yet. The same can be said with a variety of weapons, and there are a couple of very small differences on the maps. Then there are the very different cosmetics. With PUBG Mobile being complimentary to play their main income source is cosmetic items, so as you may expect there's a lot more in the mobile than in the PC and Xbox versions. A few of the mobile only cosmetics are really quite cool, and we would like to see them make their method to the other platforms eventually. We currently have guides for all three PUBG maps, which are properly recreated on PUBG mobile. For the a lot of part if you are great on PC or console then you need to be able to translate that success into PUBG Mobile, as it's effectively the exact same video game. However, with that being stated there are a couple of things you ought to know when playing. On PC and console leaning becomes second nature. Being able to stick your head out however keep the rest of your body safely behind cover makes it a lot harder to strike you, and is a core mechanic. However on mobile it can be more difficult to use this strategy as you'll need to move your thumbs away from moving and aiming to do so. This does make it a little harder to utilize well, however with some practise you can master this and stop putting your whole body at danger. Oh, and ensure the buttons are in fact triggered in the settings menu. Having fun with sound is always going to be preferable, as it will allow you to hear what is going on in your area, however if that isn't possible then there is another method to work out where those shots are coming from. The direction of any shots in your direction, or those near to you, will be shown on the mini map. You can then spin to that position and dump a spray of bullets at whoever thought they had actually caught you off guard. + Among the manner ins which PUBG Mobile runs smoothly on lower end gadgets is to only render the yard and foliage close to the player, so that suggests if you believe you are being a sly snake in the lawn, you in fact simply look like a muppet crawling through a field to anybody with a 4x or better scope. Always adhere to tough cover if possible. Crawling through the turf just actually works in the very late game circles.

Sure, some individuals might state auto-aim is for noobs, however when it assists this much there really is no factor to turn it off, unless you want to go professional. The auto-aim on PUBG Mobile is insane proficient at times, and you must assume that all your enemies will be using it too. Ensure to keep this on, and you will barely ever miss out on a shot again. PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds-- or PUBG as it's known by fans-- is lastly offered on mobile. The PC, Xbox One, and now Android and iOS blockbuster may have lost some ground to Impressive Games' Fortnite in the 'fantastic battle royale war', however Bluehole's sandbox kill-fest rules supreme on Android sitting on top of the Play Store with over ten million downloads. For those brand-new to the game, the very first thing you must know is that Player Unknown's Battlegrounds is all about making it through up until the bitter end in a 100-person free-for-all or as a team by any methods required. Yet whether you're the type of player that likes to get the best weapons you can find and go all guns blazing, or you opt for a more stealthy method, there are some gameplay basics that apply to everyone that goes into the battlefield. In this guide, you'll discover some vital suggestions and techniques that will put you ahead of the pack in PUBG mobile and assist you bag those sweet, sweet chicken suppers. A video game of PUBG can last as long as half an hour or, if things go terribly incorrect, it can all be over in a couple of seconds. One surefire method of leaving early is by misjudging your preliminary landing area. As a general general rule, you want to aim for the best loot areas in the video game's Erangel map (the desert map, Miramar, will release in a future update) while also preventing as lots of other players as possible. There are some specific areas that regularly spawn the best weapons and armor such as the military base, power plant, or the numerous significant towns, however bare in mind that other experienced players will be heading there too. Editor's Select 15 finest Android games of 2018! Once you've jumped out of the freight plane, watch out for swarms of other gamers heading to a single place and avoid those locations like the plague. Likewise, don't simply aimlessly drift once you're in freefall-- identify a safe adequate location, ideally with structures so you can get some loot, and push forward to speed your method there. Buildings will show up as white blocks on the tiny map, so make certain you're heading in the ideal instructions. If you can't see one you can constantly open your parachute early and coast over to a decent landing zone. Just understand that every second you spend in the sky is a 2nd your challengers will be utilizing to scoop up loot. Let me re-emphasize this one last time-- if you pass away in Player Unknown's Battlegrounds you are dead. In solo play, there are no 2nd opportunities, and in squads you'll be putting your team's possibilities of success at risk if you keep coming down early. When you struck the flooring, your very first priority is preparing so you don't get clipped in any preliminary skirmishes. You'll discover essential loot scattered around in structures and supply dog crate drops. The latter include the most sought-after weapons like the insanely effective AWM sniper rifle however remember you will not be the only one hoping to grab the spoils.

The most important loot in the early stages is a half-decent weapons, ammunition, and some sensible armor, in addition to a knapsack upgrade (up to level 3) so you have space for better gear as you begin checking out. Any gun is better than your fists and even the famous PUBG fry pan, so grab any nearby firearms prior to engaging a foe. Armor is also important so you can take more hits in a firefight. Like the backpack, head and body armor is graded from level 1 to 3, however level 3 armor is fairly rare. Go for level 2 armor prior to choosing a scrap, or level 1 at a bare minimum. Health products are also a top priority. First aid sets are more suitable, but plasters, painkillers, and the like will all help in a pinch. Thrown items like grenades will end up being more important in the future as an offending or interruption tool once the player count has actually reduced, but do not be afraid to toss an explosive surprise if you come across an unsuspecting group early on. This is the ultimate rookie mistake and it'll get you eliminated more than anything else in PUBG Mobile. Choosing when to conceal and when to attack is a challenging balancing act, however you ought to never ever open fire unless you know your weapon has a possibility of striking the target. While knowing when you're in variety will take some practice for total newbies, if you have any experience with PvP shooters you'll currently have a reasonable understanding of the basics. Shotguns (specifically the incredible S12K) and SMGs are useful for up-close burst damage, attack rifles and handguns are good for mid-range battles, and sniper rifles are ideal for cross country pot shots. If you're shooting at a far-off opponent with, state, the otherwise relatively strong Tommy Gun, all you're doing is distributing your position which is a deadly error. Attachments can extend the variety of some weapons-- assault rifles with scopes can often be better than sniper rifles-- but some guns are just helpful in particular situations. Shotguns, for instance, are a great tool for cleaning out a structure but are practically ineffective exposed fields. Where possible, try to keep complementary weapons on hand and do not carry 2 weapons that meet the same purpose. It'll take a reasonable couple of video games to discover the design of specific areas of the PUBGmap, let alone the whole thing. While you're getting utilized to the landscape, make certain you're taking notice of the mini map and keeping an eye on the diminishing play area. In PUBG, the only safe area lies within "The Circle". This circle will start to shrink at choose times throughout the match and if you find yourself outside of it for too long, you'll ultimately pass away. The damage you take in this amazed blue field will increase as the circle shrinks. Early on you'll be fine for a couple of minutes, while in the very last you won't last more than 10 seconds. Each brand-new circle will reveal on your map as a white outline, so if you see your map you'll constantly understand where to go next. There's no requirement to enter the early stages, however towards the end you'll need to get transferring to prevent death while likewise trying to avoid other players who will be doing the same thing. You must constantly be trying to remain in cover where possible, however if you do need to move, move quickly and with purpose.

The tiny map likewise has one last trick up its sleeve that you definitely need to keep an eye out for-- a fire sign. If you hear gunfire in your vicinity, have a fast glance at the map and it'll reveal exactly where it's coming from. Required to get somewhere fast? Then you need a vehicle, my friend. Automobiles are cluttered all around Erangel but you'll discover them most commonly near the larger cities and on the main roads. Regrettably, while there are a lot of cars to go around, there's likewise up to 99 other players possibly aiming to get behind the wheel too, so make certain it's safe prior to approaching. The motorbike and buggy are both terrific for zipping to the next play area however will leave you fairly exposed. Larger vehicles like the jeep will be slower but are excellent for carrying around four gamers with a good amount of defense. PUBG Mobile's touchscreen controls can be a bit fiddly at the best of times, so you can picture how difficult it is to deliver a lethal blow to a challenger when they're driving directly at you. The downside, however, is the quantity of attention you'll draw thanks to those loud engines. PUBG games generally end with a small group of fighters lying around on the flooring hoping someone else pops their head up first. That individual generally gets domed immediately, by the way, so make sure it isn't you. Going fully vulnerable in PUBG is an important maneuver, so much so that it has its own dedicated button. It's likewise a double-edged sword, nevertheless, as while you'll get a good recoil and precision increase and generally be a little bit more hidden, movement is practically non-existent. If somebody approaches you from behind while you're on your chest, you're practically definitely going to end up dead-- especially if you're checking out a scope at the same time. Keep an eye on your mini map and the surroundings prior to striking the floor, and do not hesitate to flank your opponents when they're resting. When visible, making the most of rocks and the sides of structures for cover can be a much more secure alternative. What PUBG does not tell you is that you can actually peek around the side of cover without exposing your squishy limbs, but to do that you'll need to take a quick trip to the Settings > Basic menu. Simply toggle Peek & Fire to "Make it possible for" and you'll have the ability to peer around corners. Simply understand that you're far from invulnerable when doing this, as your head will lean with you, but you'll be a much smaller sized target. One final point on controls: remap the buttons if you require to. There are three presets for both basic and lorry controls to choose from, however if you can tweak these even further by striking the Customize choice. You can move every aspect of the HUD to your preference, boost button sizes, and modify icon openness, and you can likewise reset everything to default if you mess up. Erangel can be an extremely lonesome location when you're crouching in a field somewhere all alone, simply waiting for a possibility to strike. That all changes in duo or group play where strategic play and constant communication are key to success. Practically every aspect of Player Unknown's Battlegrounds Mobile changes in co-op, be it choosing a location to land, deciding who takes what loot, choosing a target, or perhaps calling who gets to ride shotgun in a car. Attacking in numbers is far more secure than splitting up, but similarly, you'll need to keep a little distance from your allies from time to time to flank opponents and hold viewpoint. The Good News Is, PUBG Mobile supports native voice chat using your gadget's speakers and microphone, although you will have to enable the latter in Settings > Audio. Additionally, if you have a couple of pals, you can constantly utilize voice and chat apps like Discord.

[artsymess]

Board

The game uses two 6-sided dice, but can use one.

The Character Cards give the Players abilities.

The Terra Cards help choose the planet of the adventure.

The Runes represent each character.

The Shield represents the order in which each Player will fight in the Battling System.

The Tokens represent the number of Health Points each character and villain character possesses.

Encounter Disks represent the possibility of encountering enemies in the dungeon.

Player Character Selection:

The game begins with a single dice roll. Highest roll gets to choose their character first. They will then select a face down Terra Card and roll the dice again. The number and the planet on the Terra Card will correspond to the adventure in the Story Booklet that the team will embark on. Then in order of highest roll to lowest, everyone else gets to choose their character. If a team is experienced, they may skip this part and select the character they are best at.

Interaction System:

The person who is a resident of the planet and thus a local is Team Leader.

(On Maru? Jez of Maru is Team Leader.)

When navigating the local area, the team will be prompted to choose between two options per interaction. Either the leader will be individually asked, or the team will have to decide. When they decide, they skip ahead in the Story Booklet to their choice and continue the interaction until their next choice.

Some choices lead to conflict which will activate the Battling System (see below).

Battling System:

Reconnaissance

If the Battling System is activated in reconnaissance, it will hinge on a success or failure system, and players are welcome to retry the encounter at their own risk.

Dungeon

First, all Players must roll for initiative. Highest roll gets initiative, and the players must put their corresponding runes on the battle shield, which maintains the order in which the group will fight for the entire encounter. You must roll for each initiative.

The Villain will always strike first with or without minions. The team will take damage, then go as a whole.  Weak attacks of through automatically, all other attacks require a +3 roll to go through.

A successful roll adds the roll to the attack of the Character and deals damage to the minion of the Player’s choice. The Boss cannot be directly attacked by anyone by Sabwa of Holt who possesses the ability Iron Skin. When all minions are defeated, all Players may attack the Boss.

If fighting a boss, the Players must take down the minions by the fourth turn or the Boss goes into a secondary power state. The Boss also goes into secondary state if health drops below ½.

Balancing the Stats

Initial Abilities and Stats:

1st Iteration

Basic Blocking Out of the Differences in Strength and Durability

STAT BALANCING CHART

1st Iteration 2nd Iteration Current Iteration (4th) Sabwa:

HP 50

Attack: 15+

Sabwa:

HP 50

Attack: 15+

Skills: Impenetrable & Absorb, 2nd Negotiate

Sabwa: HP 40

Light Armor: +10

W: Long-Sword Close Range

Weak Attack: 4

Skill Attack: +12

Rune: Justice, Leader, Authority

Jez:

HP 20

Attack: 18+

Jez:

HP 20

Attack: 18+

Skills: Spellbind & Seduce, 2nd Flirt

Jez: HP 30

Arcane Armor: +15

W: Fire Whip Long Range

Weak Attack: 4

Skill Attack: +5

Rune: Sexuality (Wild Ox)

Sapphire:

HP 40

Attack: 20+

Sapphire:

HP 40

Attack: 20+

Skills: Rage & Scathe, 2nd Intimidate

Sapphire

HP 40

Reinforced Fur: +10HP

W: Double Scythe Close Range

Weak Attack: 5

Skill Attack: +15

Rune: Disaster & Loss, Hailstone

Mam:

HP 80

Attack: 10+

Mam:

HP 80

Attack: 10+

Skills: Poision& Empower, 2nd Chase

Mam:

HP 30

Enchanted Shawl: +20HP

W: Staff Mid Range

Weak Attack: 3

Skill Attack: +7

Rune: Protection, Defense

Welf:

HP 60

Attack: 8+

Welf:

HP 60

Attack: 8+

Skills: Drain & Scapegoat, 2nd Sneak

Welf:

HP 30

Steel Breastplate

W: Throwing Daggers

Weak Attack: 3

Skill Attack: +9

Rune: Need

2nd Iteration:

Problems: Jez keeps dying too easily. The strategy has not yet been implemented in tactics unique to each character. The reconnaissance stage is not interactive aside from two choice decisions.

Solutions:

Created a skill set for each character and a secondary skill that would help the Reconnaissance stage feel less passive and more an active investment in the mission. Secondary skills are used to get information. Characters specialize in specific abilities and those abilities if used are automatic, but a one-shot only. All other characters have to roll +3 to do that specific skill. I let the stats be, but created abilities that would help the team shield the weaker players and stronger characters do more damage, dividing them into melee and arcane classes

3rd iteration:

Problems: No way to refill health in dungeons unless you’re Welf who has Drain.

–          No ability to attack multiple enemies. Jezebel keeps dying.

–           Welf has no cap on her drain.

–           Mam’s health never dips 65 HP.

–           Actions are overly dependent on +3 rolls.

–           Nothing happens after death.

Solutions:

Divided HP between standard Health Points and a New Armor class. The Armor is the first to take damage, but can be replaced with armor picked up in dungeons or fixed in local towns. Welf can now give the health she drains to other team members.

Jezebel’s skillset is updated and makes her primary Fever, which attacks multiple targets.

Welf’s drain cap is no longer necessary now that she can share, the Players are more likely to heal than horde the HP.

Mam’s health is dropped to 30HP, but her Armor is 20, giving her the highest durability, but a manageable amount. Redesigned Mam’s skillset to include Empower which sacrifices 5 HP to give an ally +10 attack or defense (on armor) permanently. This is helpful strategically, but also encourages Mam to lower her HP.

Weak Attack implemented which is an automatic attack, and all rolls are strong attacks, however the villain card interacts encourage strong attacks. This was players are still required to roll for the best outcomes.

After death, two states introduced: Dead Man’s grip (After 3 turns come alive with double your base attack to take one last swing at the enemy, rendered inactive at the end), and Resurrection, after 5 turns (return to the field with ½ revived HP). The decision of which state to enact is up to the deceased Player and cannot be discussed

4th iteration:

Problems:

Turn based system is weak

Characters need stronger identities

Secondary skills require little strategy and don’t relate to the character’s world’s and personalities

Solutions:

Each character is assigned a Rune which is a personal identifier to their personality and way of thinking. Runes are made playing pieces and mark using a shield the position of engagement, which resets each encounter. Each character also receives a personal quote, so Players get a snap shot of who they are.

Characters colors translate into a banner that is the same as their home world.

Secondary skills are translated into “Non-Battle Skills,” and instead of all characters having to roll +3 for a skill that is not their specialty, they now have varying degrees or ease and difficulty depending on their personality and strong suite with of the skills. Also, no skills are automatic, now the better you are at the skill, the lower your roll requirement. +1 is the lowest roll requirement. (Each character has +1 req for their “specialty”, then a +2,+3, or +4 stat for the other skills. Teams must now decide who should roll for what based on their character’s strengths.

EXTRA: Specified the weapon each character carries and the range in which they can act in confrontations that occur during the Reconnaissance stage.

–           Example: Welf has Long-range Throwing Daggers, which means she is more useful to attack a fleeing opponent than Sabwa who can only yield her Long Sword Close Range, (though she’s got great reach).

Current iterations:

Implementing Custom art. Artist Angie Guevara currently redesigning the Characters.

Raa Saga is being written.

Maru Saga is being converted to audio.

Stats remain the same for now (Maru is the easiest planet, Raa is the hardest, so after Raa missions I’ll have a good indication of the weaknesses and strengths of the current balancing system.

Current Abilities and Stats:

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Sabwa: HP 40

Light Armor: +10

W: Long-Sword Close Range

Weak Attack: 4

Skill Attack: +12

—

Jez: HP 30

Arcane Armor: +15

W: Fire Whip Long Range

Weak Attack: 4

Skill Attack: +5

—

Sapphire

HP 40

Reinforced Fur: +10HP

W: Double Scythe Close Range

Weak Attack: 5

Skill Attack: +15

—

Mam:

HP 30

Enchanted Shawl: +20HP

W: Staff Mid Range

Weak Attack: 3

Skill Attack: +7

—

Welf:

HP 30

Steel Breastplate

W: Throwing Daggers

Weak Attack: 3

Skill Attack: +9

All Iterations

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—

Rules/How to Play:

STEP ONE: SETUP

Shuffle the Terra Cards and place them face down, and spread out the Character Cards face up.

Begin your quest by rolling to determine who chooses their Character Card first, second, and so on. The player with the highest roll chooses their character first, then second highest goes next, then third, until all players have a Character card.

Once this is done, the Player who chose the first Character card must choose a face down Terra card. That will be the location of the adventure. Discard the rest of the Terra Cards.

TERRA CARDS NOTE: Terra Cards effect the player’s environment. You can only fight in one environment at a time, and each environment will have its own set of struggles, boss, and storyline.

Once the Terra card has been selected, select the Terra Mat that goes with your world. (Ex: If you selected Maru, use the Maru Terra Mat), then, open the Story Booklet to the corresponding adventure, and have either an additional player or an active player read the journey.

STEP TWO: Gameplay 

Standard:

Each character has a specific set of skills that are activated through dice rolls. The game is divided into three parts: Reconnaissance, Dungeon, and the Boss Battle.

The Reconnaissance stage details the events leading up to your team’s arrival on the planet, what your mission is, and forces you to make choices that will lead you to where the Boss is located. While some fighting may ensue, more likely skills like Negotiate, Sneak, Insight, Intimidate, and Chase will be used. Players will be promoted to roll to determine the success of their actions. Each character has a different requirement for a successful roll.

The Dungeon stage takes place in the lair or hideout of the Main Villain. In this stage players will work together to battle lesser enemies through the dungeon while trying to find the boss.

The Boss stage: takes place once the party has found the boss. Now the group must work together to defeat the all the boss’ minions and the boss themselves in order to win the game.

Accelerated: In accelerated mode, the players can skip the prologue and go straight for the confrontation with the dungeon and confrontation with the final boss.

  STEP THREE: How to Fight:

Acronyms:

HP: Health Points

How much health you have or additional health your armor gives you

Roll req: Roll requirements

For a successful attack you must roll over the roll requirements. Ex: +3 equals must roll over a three. 

Weak Attack: An attack that needs no roll.

Atk: Attack Points

W: Weapon

Useful for throwing and close range situations

Each player card will have an amount of health points, attack points, and a circle indicating which planet they are from. Their planet of origin will always be where they are strongest. In order to attack, the players will have to roll their dice and add the score to their attack points.

Non-battle SKILLS: Skills that can only be used in the prologue.

MAIN SKILLS:

WEAK ATTACK: Requires no roll, is an auto attack.

TO SKILL ATTACK: Players must roll a minimum 3, in order to have a successful hit on the enemy targets, and then roll again to determine the attack power. Attack power is calculated with a card attack plus the roll. If the roll is unsuccessful, the player must wait a full turn for their next opportunity, IF they survive the enemy’s attack.

TO CHARM:

To cast a charm, the player must roll a minimum 3. If successful, the charm goes through, but the player must specify how they will use it.

ON COMA:

If a player’s health drops below zero, they fall into a coma where they can do one of two moves. They cannot discuss their decision with their teammate.

  Dead Man’s Grip: After 3 turns. allows the character to use the the last of their strength to deal a blow to the enemy that is double their attack points, and then become inactive for the rest of the game.

  Resurrection: After 6 turns. She’s alive! Return from the dead with half your health points and all your attack points.

TO WIN:

The players must find the boss, defeat their minions, and defeat their boss. The game end when either the boss is dead, or all players are rendered in a coma or inactive.

—For more information about the Process please check out these links!

First Iterations:

Week 1, Week 2, Week 3,

Design:

Art and Character Design

Fabrication

User Testing:

Feedback

Academic Thoughts

Awards:

Parsons School of Design: Design and Technology,  Best in Show (2016)

Parsons Playtech: USB Key Recipient for “Funnest Game” (2016)

Game Mechanics Board The game uses two 6-sided dice, but can use one. The Character Cards give the Players abilities.

[thomasroach]

Cyberpunk 2077: The Game of the Decade

The post Cyberpunk 2077: The Game of the Decade appeared first on Fextralife.

Recently we were given the opportunity to check out an updated build of Cyberpunk at E3 2019 (now with more Keanu Reeves) though we did see 2 demos last summer. The game looked better than ever, and in this article I want to tell you why Cyberpunk is the game of the decade. Sit back, jack-in and let me explain why you probably won’t see another game like this for a long time based on everything we’ve seen so far.

Cyberpunk 2077: The Game of the Decade

Cyberpunk 2077 gives nearly unlimited freedom in the way you handle quests and characters, which really reminds me of the Fallout games during their heyday. However, Cyberpunk 2077 takes this concept of player choice and brings it home on an unprecedented scale. It isn’t simply that you can follow a quest line, changing your mind about who to help and how to handle it (just about as many times as you could in real life). It’s also about the variety of ways you can approach each quest that will be highly determined by your character Build.

You Don’t Have to Kill

I always felt in Fallout that you could make an intellectual (or charismatic) character, that didn’t focus on violence, but that you were always at a disadvantage in doing so. This is because the game has a moderate amount of combat, and getting into a fight was simply inevitable. This created periodic hardships for this type of character Build. However, in Cyberpunk 2077 this doesn’t seem to be the case.

Much of this issue is rectified by the gunplay of Cyberpunk, but also because of things like Hacking. Hacking allows the player to take control of enemies or objects and turn them against other enemies. This allows them a way to “fight” without being experts in combat themselves, and makes this style of play more accommodating. One particularly interesting thing to note, as well, is that it is entirely possible to beat Cyberpunk 2077 without killing a single person. Or so CD Projekt Red says anyway…

Polished to the Max

Another really amazing aspect to Cyberpunk 2077 is the amount of polish the game already has. Now this may be downgraded at release, and many people suspect that it will, but if it isn’t…forget about it. The closest thing I’ve seen to this type of polish in a game is the recent God of War or maybe Last of Us, and both of those games won Game of the Year. If CD Projekt Red can keep the level of refinement and detail they have shown in their 2 uniquely different demos then I can’t see this game getting less than a 10 from most major outlets. In fact, it’s the only game I can think of that is likely to receive a perfect score by more outlets than it isn’t. Queue Kotaku and Polygon complaints here…

The graphics of the game are excellent, and though not the best I have seen in a game, the level of detail is outstanding. Things run smoothly, characters look and feel realistic, nothing ever jumps out at you to pull you from the immersion. Take The Outer Worlds, which is probably the most similar game releasing within 6 months of Cyberpunk, and it’s a totally the opposite.

While the gameplay looks very good, the poor character animations and odd graphical design choice, leave much to be desired. This detracts heavily from that sense of immersion, and that is a game being developed by Obsidian, which has a relatively stellar track record within the gaming community. I’d wager that Cyberpunk will be 2 to 3 times better than The Outer Worlds at launch, which is staggering…

Freedom and Customization

As mentioned earlier, players will have an unparalleled amount of freedom when it comes to playing Cyberpunk 2077, and they can be the hero or villain. And that can change at the drop of a hat, as players acquire new information that may sway their decisions, or make them have a change of heart.

The main protagonist, V, is very much a neutral character by design, only doing what is necessary to survive. This allows for you to take control, and really determine if what he/she is doing is enjoyable, or loathed, and decide if you wish to change that or not. This isn’t something that is new in gaming, but is certainly a must have for any game to be considered mind blowing.

In addition, players can customize their appearance separately from their equipment, so you can look as badass as you want, without having to worry about which gear to wear. Gear works very similarly to other RPGs with slots for each type of equipment, allowing players to change gear on the fly, with many different types of weapons, but little in the way of Armor. This is one area that is still very much a mystery, as not much has been shown in this regard. However, assuming they don’t do anything too drastic, it will likely be good enough.

Keanu Fucking Reeves

Hollywood and the gaming industry have been on a collision course for some time now, but no one has managed to implement a celebrity in the manner that Cyberpunk 2077 does. Destiny featured Peter Dinklage as the Ghost that helps the Guardian, providing modestly witty dialogue, and Cyberpunk 2077 takes it to a whole new level.

Not only is Keanu Reeves the “Ghost” of Cyberpunk 2077, but you see him constantly in all his “excellence” when he speaks. While this is certainly not a “reason” to purchase the game, and I would never recommend the game simply because of this one aspect, this sort of thing creates even more hype and interest. And if I must say, it works exceptionally well within the gameplay of Cyberpunk, and doesn’t seem like a forced addition in the slightest. I honestly look forward to seeing him more in my own playthrough, while I look at pictures of him on my phone from E3.

Final Thoughts

There is a lot of hype surrounding Cyberpunk 2077, and it’s very easy to get caught up in it and overlook the game’s faults. Objective journalism is becoming a thing of the past, and when you start adding celebrities to the mix, this only becomes more true. Everyone wants to make friends with rising stars, and Keanu Reeves, and so it becomes difficult to criticize games. I have always tried to maintain some semblance of objectivity, though difficult. Witness my recent shredding of The Outer Worlds, which I’m sure didn’t win me any brownie points with Obsidian. So when I say this game may be the best in the past 10 years, it doesn’t come lightly.

Time will tell if I’m right or not, but all indications are that it will be even better than what we’ve seen, and that is something that is frankly hard to fathom. If you have not got caught up in the hype yet, or you are holding out until you see more gameplay, I fully understand. However, just let me say, you will be eventually. Fucking help us in April of next year, because it will absolute mayhem.

Stay tuned for more Cyberpunk 2077 content as we explore how a board game becomes a video game, and be sure to check out the Cyberpunk 2077 Wiki for all information that is currently known.

The post Cyberpunk 2077: The Game of the Decade appeared first on Fextralife.

Cyberpunk 2077: The Game of the Decade published first on https://juanaframi.tumblr.com/

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Fortnite's v3.5 Update Brings Back 50v50 Mode, Adds Replays System, Port-a-Fort Item, and More

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past several months, Fortnite and its standalone Battle Royale mode have taken over everything from consoles, to PC, and most recently to mobile, and now the game’s latest update is sure to bring a little something for everyone with new items and more.

Developer Epic Games announced that update v3.5 for Fortnite has been released for the game across all platforms, and the update itself is a hefty one with plenty of content updates alongside more general bug fixes and changes.

Specifically, the patch notes include details on the brand new Replays system that’s tailored perfectly towards those looking to share their gameplay clips on YouTube. The Replays feature will be available for the game’s Battle Royale mode and will include “a suite of cinematic settings” that allow players to create gameplay clips highlighting epic Battle Royale moments.

In addition to the Replays features, Epic Games also has added new content to the game, such as a new Port-a-Fort item that allows players to build forts on-the-go, and has brought back the 50×50 mode for a limited time with a few updates and changes. Players in the game’s Save the World mode will also be getting new items, such as cyberpunk themed neon weapons and armor.

Fortnite is available now on PS4, Xbox One, PC, Mac, and iOS – for a closer look at the new update, you can check out the below video highlighting the new Port-a-Fort item, along with the full patch notes:

General

Wood, Stone, and Metal resources will now always be the first items in the inventory list (e.g. instead of Traps).

Purchased V-Bucks are now shared between Xbox One, PC and Mobile.

Login Queue Improvements:

During wait periods, login will now remember your place in line if you quit out of the game and return.

Mobile devices will not enter the login queue more than once per login attempt.

Two-Factor Authentication challenges will not put you back into the login queue.

Bug Fixes

Adjusted the Login screen layout to better support varying screen sizes and safe zones.

Fixed a rare crash that occurred during logout.

Fixed PS4 players leaving their party after a match where they are playing with players on other platforms.

Fixed Survivor and Hero squads being locked after switching to Save the World from Battle Royale.

On PC, fixed PS4 controllers showing Xbox buttons, even after the controller type was changed in the settings.

Fixed rare cases in which character parts would stretch unnaturally.

(Example) Ears of the Rabbit Raider outfit.

Fixed the inability to rotate elements in the Battle Royale Locker after buying a Llama in Save the World.

Battle Royale

REPLAY SYSTEM

Save your matches and watch them from any angle!

Speed up or slow down the action.

Help tell your story better with player outlines and name plates.

Several Camera Modes to choose from:

Third Person

Follows and orbits around the selected player.

3 different follow modes; Off, Auto, Lazy.

Drone Follow

Drone style camera that always keeps the selected player in frame.

Drone Attach

Drone style camera that is loosely attached to the selected player.

Drone Free

Drone style camera that is free to fly around the island.

Gameplay

This camera shows what the selected player saw during gameplay.

Adjust cinematic camera settings

Exposure

Aperture

Focal Length

Focus Distance

Currently available on PC and console only.

WEAPONS + ITEMS

Port-a-Fort added.

Epic rarity.

Drops in stacks of 1. Can stack up to 5 in inventory.

When the Port-a-Fort is thrown, a pre-made fort is constructed instantly at the impact point.

The Port-a-Fort is made out of metal and is three stories tall.

The bottom floor is 1×1 with a door for entry. Tires inside allow for easy access to the roof.

Decreased Guided Missile maximum turn rate by 75%.

Reduced Guided Missile movement speed by 15%.

Added a short equip time to many weapons (particularly, those with a slower rate of fire).

This will reduce the effectiveness of quickly switching between weapons for high burst-damage.

Removed the reloading animation on the Pump Shotgun.

Weapons affected are:

Rocket Launcher

Hand Cannon

Revolver

Tactical Shotgun

Pump Shotgun

Heavy Shotgun

Bolt-Action Sniper Rifle

Hunting Rifle

Crossbow

Adjusted item availability in Vending Machines.

Reduced chance of Chug Jug by 50%.

Increased chance of Medium Ammo weapons in Rare Vending Machine by 100%.

Reduced chance of Explosive Ammo weapons in Rare Vending Machine by 50%.

Reduced chance of Explosive Ammo weapons in Epic Vending Machine by 25%.

Increased chance of Heavy Ammo weapons in Epic Vending Machine by 25%.

Reduced chance of Explosive Ammo weapons in Legendary Vending Machine by 25%.

Increased chance of Heavy Ammo weapons in Legendary Vending Machine by 25%.

Reduced drop rate of Remote Explosives in floor loot by roughly 33%.

Updated Medium Ammo inventory icon to make it more easily identifiable.

Bug Fixes

Fixed weapons floating in the air under certain network conditions after quickly switching between items.

Guided Missile weapon fixes:

Eliminating a downed player with a Guided Missile no longer reports as a self elimination.

Picking up an item at the same time as firing a Guided Missile will no longer cause the picked up item to disappear.

Firing a Guided Missile prior to the victory screen displaying will no longer prevent the player from returning to the lobby.

Players will now correctly spectate the player that eliminated them instead of spectating their own active missile.

While spectating a player that fires a missile, you will now follow the missile instead of the player.

Fixed an issue that caused the player to spectate a floating Guided Missile weapon on the starting island if they were eliminated by a missile during the match.

Fixed an issue preventing the player from firing a guided missile while riding a guided missile.

Fixed an issue causing the player’s name plate to display over the guided missile while controlling it.

Fixed an issue where the Rare Scoped Assault Rifle was incorrectly giving an Epic version in Vending Machines.

Fixed an issue causing the Loot Llama to be empty in Limited Time Modes.

GAMEPLAY

Limited Time Mode: 50V50 v2

Two teams of 50 fight to the finish!

Due to this being a “large squad” mode, Profile Stats will not be tracked. Daily & Weekly challenges will still work, with the exception of the Squad-based challenges (‘Place Top 6 in Squads’, etc.).

Storm & Map

Each team has a bus, approaching the island from opposite directions. On the map, the friendly bus has a blue outline, enemy has red.

Final storm circle visible on minimap at start.

Players have 10 minutes to loot the map as the storm closes in on the circle, then 5 minutes to fight, and another 5 minutes as the storm shrinks to the end.

Supply drops come in batches of 3-6, fall every two minutes, and only land in the final storm circle.

Added dotted line to map, which indicates the “battle lines” between the two teams. Crossing the line will make running into enemies more likely.

Loot

Farming resources increased 75% over default.

Increased floor loot spawn likelihood by 15%.

Floor Loot spawns double ammo.

Ammo boxes spawn triple ammo.

Chests spawn double ammo & consumables.

Supply drops spawn double ammo, and an extra consumable, resource drop and trap.

Bug Fixes + Mode Improvements

Fixed a bug that created uneven teams where one side could have more than 50 players.

Downed players lose health more quickly than normal (10 health per tick).

New ‘Builder Pro’ controller configuration

This configuration is similar to “Combat Pro”, but optimized for fast placement of building pieces.

Wall, floor, stairs, and roof have designated buttons on controllers.

The first button press will switch to the mapped building piece, then every press after will place that piece.

To switch between materials or traps, press the Left D-Pad button.

New Squad Comms wheel

This allows you to communicate quickly without voice.

The following callouts are currently available: Enemy Spotted, Need Meds, Need Shields, Need Materials, Need Weapon (context-sensitive), and Need Ammo (context-sensitive).

Defaults to ‘V’ key, Right D-Pad on controller, or in the Emote menu on Mobile.

The Loot Llama can now be opened through destruction as well as an interaction.

Added a blue tint to friendly traps to help distinguish them from enemy traps.

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue preventing players from editing their own structures.

Supply Drop fixes:

Fixed an issue preventing players from opening supply drops in rare cases.

Fixed an issue causing supply drops to jitter as they fall if a player destroys the object that it landed on.

Fixed an issue causing supply drop loot to spawn in the air after the drop had been shot down.

Fixed an issue causing players to be pushed under the map if they stood under a falling supply drop.

Fixed an issue causing players to launch out of the map after landing on a supply drop.

Fixed an issue where building would be blocked for 3 seconds at a time under poor network conditions.

Fixed an issue causing controllers to vibrate during the skydiving phase when vending machines loaded into the world.

Fixed an issue that would hide structure health bars when the player aimed their weapon.

Fixed toggling aim down sights not returning to its previous state after reloading.

Fixed an issue where poor network conditions could prevent buildings from streaming in.

Fixed an issue where you could not select the same Banner Icon and color combination in Battle Royale that you have in Save the World.

AUDIO

Added unique equip/reload sounds for the following weapons (all others remain the same):

Epic/Legendary Assault Rifle

Heavy Shotgun

Pump Shotgun

Bolt-Action Sniper

Hunting Rifle

Added more variation to the Tactical SMG fire sound.

Added more variation to the medium-range Epic/Legendary Assault Rifle fire sound.

Bug Fixes

Remove the second “insert magazine” sound during the grenade launcher reload animation.

UI

Bug Fixes

Fixed the controller button label for Toggle Map not shown after being eliminated.

Fixed a bug in the Locker that made skydive previews appear without the correct animation.

Fixed text on the minimap that was too small.

Fixed the map marker not retaining its location when zooming in and out.

Fixed an issue with map markers not pinning at your cursor when placing them while zoomed in.

The controller analog stick can now be used to scroll the map while zoomed in.

Fixed an issue causing the eliminated player count displaying as zero when spectating a Guided Missile.

ART + ANIMATION

Tweaked the object pop in animation so objects ease in rather than pop in.

Bug Fixes

Fixed inconsistent Battle Bus position changes that could occur every few seconds.

Fixed the Rock Paper Scissors emote so that it replicates properly in the lobby.

Fixed the Rainbow Smash and Candy Axe harvesting tools not always activating.

Fixed the Guided Missile firing animation so that it plays properly while spectating the player that is firing the weapon.

Reduced the size of Mushrooms that were too large.

PERFORMANCE

Major optimizations + improvements made to console load times and CPU performance.

We’ve made some data layout optimizations in order to improve load times and performance. Load times reduced by 25-30 seconds as a result of these changes on Xbox One and around 10 seconds on PS4. On both platforms, we expect to see fewer issues with geometry or cosmetics failing to load in time, and FPS drops during skydiving. The Xbox One download will be larger than normal in this release as a result of these optimizations. We’re working to minimize the impact of this type of optimization in future releases. – Developer Comment

Reduced download and patch size for players who just have access to Battle Royale (PC only).

Fixed various issues causing the game to freeze up/hitch while loading assets, especially on console. These assets are now preloaded before the game starts.

Optimized servers to reduce network lag when firing weapons and taking damage.

MOBILE

Audio indicator no longer shows silenced weapons, crouched footsteps or ally pickaxes.

Multiple graphical improvements were made to the skybox, vegetation and anti-aliasing.

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue that caused input to continue when no longer touching the screen.

Fixed an issue where the message about jailbroken devices being unsupported wasn’t being shown

Attempting to play using a jailbroken device will result in being kicked.

Fixed various interacting actions, including:

Icons not showing properly on lower-end devices

Supply Drops not being able to be opened.

Doors not consistently opening and closing.

The Map not being able to be zoomed & panned.

Instances where accidental button presses would occur.

Fixed an issue causing Revolver and Grenade Launcher ammo to float outside the gun.

Save the World

GAMEPLAY

Enabled environmental damage for ranged weapons.

Percentage of damage done to the environment varies by weapon.

Environmental damage scaling for ranged weapons should remain consistent relative to the health of the environment, taking into account the rarity and alterations on the weapon.

NOTE: Environmental damage increases with tier and rarity only and is not multiplied through Offense.

Ranged weapons can not damage structures you or your team have built.

[Rework] Outlander Fragment

Fragment abilities, other than the Loot Llama, no longer require equipped Fragment ammo to activate.

Fragment abilities now have a cooldown and Energy cost, as other abilities do.

Fragment abilities are now improved when the Outlander expends Fragment ammo in their activation.

Fragment Ammo capacity has been dramatically increased.

[Rework] Melee Weapons + Environment

Melee weapons (aside from Pickaxes) can no longer damage structures that you or your team have built, and have had their environmental damage increased.

Environmental damage scaling for on-level melee weapons should now feel more consistent, relative to the health of the environment

NOTE: Environmental damage increases with tier and rarity only, and is not multiplied through Offense.

Axes do increased damage against wood. Hardware does increased damage against stone.Swords, Clubs, Scythes, and Spears do not favor any material type.

[Rework] Anomaly

Anomaly rewards increased, changed from BluGlo to mission rewards.

Anomaly shards will take full damage from the Pickaxe, reduced damage from other melee weapons, and can no longer be damaged by projectiles (Throwing Stars, Rockets, etc).

Crafting queue size increased from 10 to 20 (this means 1 in production and up to 19 pending).

Cozy Campfire no longer grants any Utility score for healing and instead grants more for placing the trap.

Falling Damage has been adjusted so that damage occurs at higher heights.

Players now first take damage after falling 1300+ units instead of falling 850 Units

(Example) You can now walk off a 3 story building, but you can’t jump off.

Initial fall damage increased from 5% max HP to 10% max HP.

Next Damage Threshold is now 20% max HP at 3 tiles.

Next Damage Threshold is now 50% max HP at 3.75 tiles.

Next Damage Threshold is now Knockdown at 4.5 tiles.

Farther than 4.5 tiles will also result in Knockdown.

Enemy fall damage values have been adjusted to be in line with these changes.

The vehicles that Survivors stand on top of will no longer take damage from ranged or melee weapons.

Only the Pickaxe can damage them.

Increased wood, stone, and metal stack size and carry limits.

The default building resource capacity has been increased from 999 to 2000.

Building Resource Capacity nodes have replaced the previously existing Weapon Skill nodes in the Skill Tree. These new nodes allow players to upgrade their resource carrying ability by 1000 apiece to a maximum of 5000 per type.

Weapon Skill has been effectively uncapped since v3.3, which allowed us the opportunity to remove and repurpose their nodes in the skill tree. So don’t worry – your ability to use weapons of all levels remains unchanged! – Developer Comment

Existing items will not automatically restack.

You can condense stacks by dropping and picking up items or transferring between backpack and storage.

Economy Tuning

Increased Hero and Schematic Quest XP for Stonewood, up to Mid Plankerton.

Players who have already completed these Quests will be awarded the difference.

Challenge Quests have been extended to 20 Stages.

The ‘Leave No One Behind’ Challenge Quest now awards Survivor XP, scaled based on stage.

Players who have already completed Stages 1-10 of this Quest line will be awarded the Survivor XP.

Bug Fixes

Fixed a long delay that occurred when joining a party when first loading-in on PS4.

Fixed an issue that could cause BluGlo pylons to spawn on top of one another.

The buff from BluGlo pylons is no longer lost after 10 minutes.

Fixed an issue that would cause players to pick up items much slower than normal.

MISSIONS + SYSTEMS

New Questline: Into the Storm: Opening Act

Accompany Lars and Ray on their journey into Lars’ past in the brand new questline, ‘Into the Storm’!

Brand new Survive the Storm map – Thunder Route 99.

For more details about Thunder Route 99, head here.

Into the Storm Llama is available in the Loot Tab.

Cost: 1000 Storm Tickets

Event Llama guarantees at least one Epic (or higher) Neon Weapon or Cyberpunk Hero

Every 1000 Firecracker Tickets will be converted into a Spring Llama.

Quest Rewards:

Choice of Legendary Ranged Neon Weapon (Pistol, Shotgun, Assault).

Survive the Storm returns!

Improved rewards.

Added Spring It On! Gold, scaled by difficulty and number of days completed.

Improved the amount of Hero / Schematic / Survivor XP earned.

Increases more with difficulty and number of days completed.

Increased the rarity of items (Survivors, Schematics, Transform Keys, etc.) that drop from Survival mode, especially at high difficulties.

Reduced the number of low-rarity items that drop.

Mission Alerts award between 300 and 1500 tickets, scaled based on Survival length and difficulty.

Quota: Three 3-Day Survivals per 24 hours.

Quota: One 7-Day Survival per 24 hours.

Added side quests with new banner rewards!

Power 15 Event Themed Banner + 1000 Storm Tickets.

Power 40 Event Themed Banner + 1000 Storm Tickets.

Power 70 Event Themed Banner + 1000 Storm Tickets.

Changed the Survival Mode vote to skip the day to majority vote (from unanimous) to keep consistent with all other voting.

Mutant Storms

Mutant Storms are more active during this event and award between 100 and 240 Storm Tickets, scaled based on difficulty.

Repeatable Quest to complete 2 Mutant Storm Mission Alerts that awards 100 Spring It On! Gold

Opt-in difficulty boost and group missions do not award tickets during this event.

Mini-boss Mission Alerts can no longer be selected if you have not unlocked the mission the alert is attached to.

This will prevent low-level players from attempting Mission Alerts that are too difficult for them, unless they are invited into a group by a higher-level friend.

Mimic Reward Updates:

Mimics will always award the equivalent to at least a Level 3 (Blue) Treasure Chest.

Some Mimics will instead award the equivalent to a Level 4 (Purple) Treasure Chest.

‘Evacuate the Shelter’ adjustments:

In non-group missions, the number of enemies needed to be killed after reaching the shelter has been reduced to 10 per players in zone instead of 35

The final encounter in non group missions has been reduced to 6 minutes from 8

‘Repair the Shelter’ adjustments:

See-Bot will no longer be attacked on arrival.

See-Bot will now arrive with a 5 minute counter. After 5 minutes it will leave to recharge and then return later to a different location on the map.

The Husk attack now begins when a player deploys the See-Bot. See-Bot is safe before then.

Players have 5 minutes to start the scan and then defend See-Bot.

Husk attack difficulty has been reduced for first two attacks.

Shelter will now automatically start diagnostic scan when player reaches the shelter instead of having to interact with it.

Decreasing the difficulty of the mission and initial combat encounter allowed us to double down on the mission core: scrambling to rescue a sieged shelter and creating a time pressure. -Developer Comment

With the automatic diagnostic scan the length of time until first raid occurs has been increased to 8:30 minutes after diagnostics are complete to allow more time to prepare, used to be 6:30 minutes.

Progress for the quest ‘Air Quotes’ is now given when the first 25 enemies have been successfully eliminated after activating the Storm Chest. Rather than having to eliminate all waves of enemies before the timer is up.

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue where some players were locked out of their Storm Shield.

Visual level of Survival mission reward chest increased (so it reaches max-level chest appearance at 7 days).

HEROES

Cyberpunk Heroes added, available in the new ‘Into the Storm’ event Llama.

Bullet Storm Jonesy (New Soldier Subclass) Bullet Storm: Uses high magazine weapons to build up attack speed and mow down enemies.

New Perks:

Start Up – Firing with a ranged weapon increases rate of fire by 1.2% per shot for up to 20 shots. Resets on reload or weapon switch.

Start Faster – Increases ‘Start Up’ rate of fire bonus to 2.4% per shot.

Harvester Sarah (New Ninja Subclass) Harvester: Close range scythe Ninja who uses Smoke Bomb and Shadow stance to survive on the battlefield.

New Perks:

Scythe to Meet You – Scythe attacks apply a 30% snare for 1 second.

Late Arrival – Scythes deal 48% increased damage to slowed or snared targets.

Heavy BASE Kyle (New Constructor Subclass) – Heavy BASE: Constructor focused on taking down enemies within BASE to charge up a great energy nova.

New Perks:

Feel the BASE – BASE generates energy when enemies die within the area affected by BASE. After 30 kills BASE emits an explosion that knocks husks back and deals damage in a 3 tile radius.

Turn Up the BASE – Increases the radius of ‘Feel The BASE’ by 2 tiles and damage by 80%.

New Tactical Perk:

Feel the BASE – BASE generates energy when enemies die within the area affected by BASE. After 30 kills BASE emits an explosion that knocks husks back and deals damage in a 3 tile radius.

T.E.D.D. Shot Jess (New Outlander Subclass) T.E.D.D. Shot: Deploys T.E.D.D.Y. to provide cover fire while sniping foes from a distance.

New Perks:

Quick Scope – Increases sniper rifle rate of fire by 35%.

Precision Handling – Hitting a headshot increases the speed of your next reload by 7% (Max 35%). Resets after reloading.

Eye on the Prize – Getting 15 headshot kills grants 1 Charge Fragment.

New Support Perk:

Sure Shot – Increases sniper rifle critical hit damage by 35%, 53%, 70%.

Outlander

Shock Tower

No longer requires a Fragment to operate.

Cooldown has been set to 60 seconds.

Stamina cost has been set to 50.

Using a Fragment will reduce the cooldown by 30% and reduce the stamina cost to 0.

Damage has not been adjusted.

T.E.D.D.Y.

No longer requires a Fragment to operate.

Cooldown has been set to 60 seconds.

Stamina Cost has been set to 50.

Using a Fragment will reduce the cooldown by 30% and reduce the stamina cost to 0.

Damage has been unadjusted.

Impossibility Matrix

Now increases the cooldown reduction for ‘Shock Tower’ and ‘T.E.D.D.Y.’ to 50% when using a Fragment.

Fragment Ammo

Cap has been increased to 25 + Llama fragment.

Llama Fragment

Acquiring a Llama Fragment now immediately resets the cooldown of all your Fragment abilities.

Constructor

Recycling

Increased the maximum storage capacity of BASE Recycling from 150 to 450.

Hyperthreading

Increased the maximum storage capacity of BASE Hyperthreading from 300 to 900.

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue where the ‘Plasma Pulse’ tooltip wouldn’t reflect the current ‘I.F.F. Coding’ functionality.

Fixed an issue with Fragment Flurry Jess and Shamrock Reclaimer’s support bonus ‘Energized’ not scaling correctly across multiple star levels.

Fixed an issue where ‘Dragonslash’ caused Ninjas to lose collision against Heroes and Enemies.

Fixed an issue where ‘Decoy’ wasn’t taking damage from Husks.

Fixed an issue that could cause ‘Mantis Leap’ to stack velocity infinitely.

WEAPONS + ITEMS

Neon Weapon set added, available in the new ‘Into the Storm’ event Llama.

Ranged Weapons:

Argon Assault Rifle

Helium Shotgun

Krypton Pistol

Melee Weapons:

Argon Axe

Krypton Sword

Neon Scythe

Impulse Grenade

Doubled the knockback distance against enemies.

No longer affects allies.

Easter Egg Launcher Eggs no longer detonate when a player is downed but are cleared when a player respawns or disconnects.

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue where crystal Scavenger melee weapons had the same durability as ore Scavenger melee weapons.

Fixed an issue where the Vacuum Tube Spear and Axe knocked enemies back instead of stunning them in place.

Dragon’s Might shotgun projectiles no longer bounce off of deep water.

Fixed an issue where Dragon’s Might shotgun projectiles weren’t exploding on contact with enemies.

Bullet tracers shot from other players single shot weapons no longer travel through walls.

Fixed an issue where the Boost Trap would give more resources than intended from recycling.

UI

Added an option to show a Collection Book indicator on items in the Armory menus.

Added an option to toggle whether or not ‘Favorite’ items are grouped together in the Armory menus.Added tooltip text for the cinematics volume setting in the audio settings tab.

Items in the Armory that don’t have stats no longer display a stats panel.

Replaced references of the word “Vault” with “Armory” in skill tree nodes.

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue where players using the Combat Pro control scheme would see “Unable to Edit Building” when pressing the button to get on their Hoverboard.

Fixed an issue where the ‘Place Trap’ controller button icon was missing when using the Combat Pro control scheme.

Updated reward summary cards to no longer be selectable once they move off screen.

Fixed an issue where damage return values for Traps that deal elemental damage were not indicating what type of elemental damage was dealt.

Updated Electrical Wall and Ceiling Trap descriptions to mention their elemental damage traits.

Fixed a spelling error in the Mythic Wukong Berserker description.

Fixed an issue that prevented players from selecting options (mute, add friend, etc.) in chat.

Fixed an issue where the camera would jump when zooming in on a skill tree tier.

Fixed the ‘Import Friends’ button not being selectable with a controller.

Fixed 4-player level difficulty being cut off in the in-zone objectives screen.

Fixed the ‘Research’ purchase button’s cost icon being offset when using a controller.

Fixed BluGlo having the ‘Equip’ button active in the in-zone inventory.

Fixed a crash that occurred when typing a comma while naming your Homebase.

Updated player revive screen text.

AUDIO

Metal toilets now plays a metal sound when destroyed.

Unsearched shopping carts now have impact sounds.

[gamingtipsandtrickshacks]

Fortnite's v3.5 Update Brings Back 50v50 Mode, Adds Replays System, Port-a-Fort Item, and More

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past several months, Fortnite and its standalone Battle Royale mode have taken over everything from consoles, to PC, and most recently to mobile, and now the game’s latest update is sure to bring a little something for everyone with new items and more.

Developer Epic Games announced that update v3.5 for Fortnite has been released for the game across all platforms, and the update itself is a hefty one with plenty of content updates alongside more general bug fixes and changes.

Specifically, the patch notes include details on the brand new Replays system that’s tailored perfectly towards those looking to share their gameplay clips on YouTube. The Replays feature will be available for the game’s Battle Royale mode and will include “a suite of cinematic settings” that allow players to create gameplay clips highlighting epic Battle Royale moments.

In addition to the Replays features, Epic Games also has added new content to the game, such as a new Port-a-Fort item that allows players to build forts on-the-go, and has brought back the 50×50 mode for a limited time with a few updates and changes. Players in the game’s Save the World mode will also be getting new items, such as cyberpunk themed neon weapons and armor.

Fortnite is available now on PS4, Xbox One, PC, Mac, and iOS – for a closer look at the new update, you can check out the below video highlighting the new Port-a-Fort item, along with the full patch notes:

General

Wood, Stone, and Metal resources will now always be the first items in the inventory list (e.g. instead of Traps).

Purchased V-Bucks are now shared between Xbox One, PC and Mobile.

Login Queue Improvements:

During wait periods, login will now remember your place in line if you quit out of the game and return.

Mobile devices will not enter the login queue more than once per login attempt.

Two-Factor Authentication challenges will not put you back into the login queue.

Bug Fixes

Adjusted the Login screen layout to better support varying screen sizes and safe zones.

Fixed a rare crash that occurred during logout.

Fixed PS4 players leaving their party after a match where they are playing with players on other platforms.

Fixed Survivor and Hero squads being locked after switching to Save the World from Battle Royale.

On PC, fixed PS4 controllers showing Xbox buttons, even after the controller type was changed in the settings.

Fixed rare cases in which character parts would stretch unnaturally.

(Example) Ears of the Rabbit Raider outfit.

Fixed the inability to rotate elements in the Battle Royale Locker after buying a Llama in Save the World.

Battle Royale

REPLAY SYSTEM

Save your matches and watch them from any angle!

Speed up or slow down the action.

Help tell your story better with player outlines and name plates.

Several Camera Modes to choose from:

Third Person

Follows and orbits around the selected player.

3 different follow modes; Off, Auto, Lazy.

Drone Follow

Drone style camera that always keeps the selected player in frame.

Drone Attach

Drone style camera that is loosely attached to the selected player.

Drone Free

Drone style camera that is free to fly around the island.

Gameplay

This camera shows what the selected player saw during gameplay.

Adjust cinematic camera settings

Exposure

Aperture

Focal Length

Focus Distance

Currently available on PC and console only.

WEAPONS + ITEMS

Port-a-Fort added.

Epic rarity.

Drops in stacks of 1. Can stack up to 5 in inventory.

When the Port-a-Fort is thrown, a pre-made fort is constructed instantly at the impact point.

The Port-a-Fort is made out of metal and is three stories tall.

The bottom floor is 1×1 with a door for entry. Tires inside allow for easy access to the roof.

Decreased Guided Missile maximum turn rate by 75%.

Reduced Guided Missile movement speed by 15%.

Added a short equip time to many weapons (particularly, those with a slower rate of fire).

This will reduce the effectiveness of quickly switching between weapons for high burst-damage.

Removed the reloading animation on the Pump Shotgun.

Weapons affected are:

Rocket Launcher

Hand Cannon

Revolver

Tactical Shotgun

Pump Shotgun

Heavy Shotgun

Bolt-Action Sniper Rifle

Hunting Rifle

Crossbow

Adjusted item availability in Vending Machines.

Reduced chance of Chug Jug by 50%.

Increased chance of Medium Ammo weapons in Rare Vending Machine by 100%.

Reduced chance of Explosive Ammo weapons in Rare Vending Machine by 50%.

Reduced chance of Explosive Ammo weapons in Epic Vending Machine by 25%.

Increased chance of Heavy Ammo weapons in Epic Vending Machine by 25%.

Reduced chance of Explosive Ammo weapons in Legendary Vending Machine by 25%.

Increased chance of Heavy Ammo weapons in Legendary Vending Machine by 25%.

Reduced drop rate of Remote Explosives in floor loot by roughly 33%.

Updated Medium Ammo inventory icon to make it more easily identifiable.

Bug Fixes

Fixed weapons floating in the air under certain network conditions after quickly switching between items.

Guided Missile weapon fixes:

Eliminating a downed player with a Guided Missile no longer reports as a self elimination.

Picking up an item at the same time as firing a Guided Missile will no longer cause the picked up item to disappear.

Firing a Guided Missile prior to the victory screen displaying will no longer prevent the player from returning to the lobby.

Players will now correctly spectate the player that eliminated them instead of spectating their own active missile.

While spectating a player that fires a missile, you will now follow the missile instead of the player.

Fixed an issue that caused the player to spectate a floating Guided Missile weapon on the starting island if they were eliminated by a missile during the match.

Fixed an issue preventing the player from firing a guided missile while riding a guided missile.

Fixed an issue causing the player’s name plate to display over the guided missile while controlling it.

Fixed an issue where the Rare Scoped Assault Rifle was incorrectly giving an Epic version in Vending Machines.

Fixed an issue causing the Loot Llama to be empty in Limited Time Modes.

GAMEPLAY

Limited Time Mode: 50V50 v2

Two teams of 50 fight to the finish!

Due to this being a “large squad” mode, Profile Stats will not be tracked. Daily & Weekly challenges will still work, with the exception of the Squad-based challenges (‘Place Top 6 in Squads’, etc.).

Storm & Map

Each team has a bus, approaching the island from opposite directions. On the map, the friendly bus has a blue outline, enemy has red.

Final storm circle visible on minimap at start.

Players have 10 minutes to loot the map as the storm closes in on the circle, then 5 minutes to fight, and another 5 minutes as the storm shrinks to the end.

Supply drops come in batches of 3-6, fall every two minutes, and only land in the final storm circle.

Added dotted line to map, which indicates the “battle lines” between the two teams. Crossing the line will make running into enemies more likely.

Loot

Farming resources increased 75% over default.

Increased floor loot spawn likelihood by 15%.

Floor Loot spawns double ammo.

Ammo boxes spawn triple ammo.

Chests spawn double ammo & consumables.

Supply drops spawn double ammo, and an extra consumable, resource drop and trap.

Bug Fixes + Mode Improvements

Fixed a bug that created uneven teams where one side could have more than 50 players.

Downed players lose health more quickly than normal (10 health per tick).

New ‘Builder Pro’ controller configuration

This configuration is similar to “Combat Pro”, but optimized for fast placement of building pieces.

Wall, floor, stairs, and roof have designated buttons on controllers.

The first button press will switch to the mapped building piece, then every press after will place that piece.

To switch between materials or traps, press the Left D-Pad button.

New Squad Comms wheel

This allows you to communicate quickly without voice.

The following callouts are currently available: Enemy Spotted, Need Meds, Need Shields, Need Materials, Need Weapon (context-sensitive), and Need Ammo (context-sensitive).

Defaults to ‘V’ key, Right D-Pad on controller, or in the Emote menu on Mobile.

The Loot Llama can now be opened through destruction as well as an interaction.

Added a blue tint to friendly traps to help distinguish them from enemy traps.

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue preventing players from editing their own structures.

Supply Drop fixes:

Fixed an issue preventing players from opening supply drops in rare cases.

Fixed an issue causing supply drops to jitter as they fall if a player destroys the object that it landed on.

Fixed an issue causing supply drop loot to spawn in the air after the drop had been shot down.

Fixed an issue causing players to be pushed under the map if they stood under a falling supply drop.

Fixed an issue causing players to launch out of the map after landing on a supply drop.

Fixed an issue where building would be blocked for 3 seconds at a time under poor network conditions.

Fixed an issue causing controllers to vibrate during the skydiving phase when vending machines loaded into the world.

Fixed an issue that would hide structure health bars when the player aimed their weapon.

Fixed toggling aim down sights not returning to its previous state after reloading.

Fixed an issue where poor network conditions could prevent buildings from streaming in.

Fixed an issue where you could not select the same Banner Icon and color combination in Battle Royale that you have in Save the World.

AUDIO

Added unique equip/reload sounds for the following weapons (all others remain the same):

Epic/Legendary Assault Rifle

Heavy Shotgun

Pump Shotgun

Bolt-Action Sniper

Hunting Rifle

Added more variation to the Tactical SMG fire sound.

Added more variation to the medium-range Epic/Legendary Assault Rifle fire sound.

Bug Fixes

Remove the second “insert magazine” sound during the grenade launcher reload animation.

UI

Bug Fixes

Fixed the controller button label for Toggle Map not shown after being eliminated.

Fixed a bug in the Locker that made skydive previews appear without the correct animation.

Fixed text on the minimap that was too small.

Fixed the map marker not retaining its location when zooming in and out.

Fixed an issue with map markers not pinning at your cursor when placing them while zoomed in.

The controller analog stick can now be used to scroll the map while zoomed in.

Fixed an issue causing the eliminated player count displaying as zero when spectating a Guided Missile.

ART + ANIMATION

Tweaked the object pop in animation so objects ease in rather than pop in.

Bug Fixes

Fixed inconsistent Battle Bus position changes that could occur every few seconds.

Fixed the Rock Paper Scissors emote so that it replicates properly in the lobby.

Fixed the Rainbow Smash and Candy Axe harvesting tools not always activating.

Fixed the Guided Missile firing animation so that it plays properly while spectating the player that is firing the weapon.

Reduced the size of Mushrooms that were too large.

PERFORMANCE

Major optimizations + improvements made to console load times and CPU performance.

We’ve made some data layout optimizations in order to improve load times and performance. Load times reduced by 25-30 seconds as a result of these changes on Xbox One and around 10 seconds on PS4. On both platforms, we expect to see fewer issues with geometry or cosmetics failing to load in time, and FPS drops during skydiving. The Xbox One download will be larger than normal in this release as a result of these optimizations. We’re working to minimize the impact of this type of optimization in future releases. – Developer Comment

Reduced download and patch size for players who just have access to Battle Royale (PC only).

Fixed various issues causing the game to freeze up/hitch while loading assets, especially on console. These assets are now preloaded before the game starts.

Optimized servers to reduce network lag when firing weapons and taking damage.

MOBILE

Audio indicator no longer shows silenced weapons, crouched footsteps or ally pickaxes.

Multiple graphical improvements were made to the skybox, vegetation and anti-aliasing.

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue that caused input to continue when no longer touching the screen.

Fixed an issue where the message about jailbroken devices being unsupported wasn’t being shown

Attempting to play using a jailbroken device will result in being kicked.

Fixed various interacting actions, including:

Icons not showing properly on lower-end devices

Supply Drops not being able to be opened.

Doors not consistently opening and closing.

The Map not being able to be zoomed & panned.

Instances where accidental button presses would occur.

Fixed an issue causing Revolver and Grenade Launcher ammo to float outside the gun.

Save the World

GAMEPLAY

Enabled environmental damage for ranged weapons.

Percentage of damage done to the environment varies by weapon.

Environmental damage scaling for ranged weapons should remain consistent relative to the health of the environment, taking into account the rarity and alterations on the weapon.

NOTE: Environmental damage increases with tier and rarity only and is not multiplied through Offense.

Ranged weapons can not damage structures you or your team have built.

[Rework] Outlander Fragment

Fragment abilities, other than the Loot Llama, no longer require equipped Fragment ammo to activate.

Fragment abilities now have a cooldown and Energy cost, as other abilities do.

Fragment abilities are now improved when the Outlander expends Fragment ammo in their activation.

Fragment Ammo capacity has been dramatically increased.

[Rework] Melee Weapons + Environment

Melee weapons (aside from Pickaxes) can no longer damage structures that you or your team have built, and have had their environmental damage increased.

Environmental damage scaling for on-level melee weapons should now feel more consistent, relative to the health of the environment

NOTE: Environmental damage increases with tier and rarity only, and is not multiplied through Offense.

Axes do increased damage against wood. Hardware does increased damage against stone.Swords, Clubs, Scythes, and Spears do not favor any material type.

[Rework] Anomaly

Anomaly rewards increased, changed from BluGlo to mission rewards.

Anomaly shards will take full damage from the Pickaxe, reduced damage from other melee weapons, and can no longer be damaged by projectiles (Throwing Stars, Rockets, etc).

Crafting queue size increased from 10 to 20 (this means 1 in production and up to 19 pending).

Cozy Campfire no longer grants any Utility score for healing and instead grants more for placing the trap.

Falling Damage has been adjusted so that damage occurs at higher heights.

Players now first take damage after falling 1300+ units instead of falling 850 Units

(Example) You can now walk off a 3 story building, but you can’t jump off.

Initial fall damage increased from 5% max HP to 10% max HP.

Next Damage Threshold is now 20% max HP at 3 tiles.

Next Damage Threshold is now 50% max HP at 3.75 tiles.

Next Damage Threshold is now Knockdown at 4.5 tiles.

Farther than 4.5 tiles will also result in Knockdown.

Enemy fall damage values have been adjusted to be in line with these changes.

The vehicles that Survivors stand on top of will no longer take damage from ranged or melee weapons.

Only the Pickaxe can damage them.

Increased wood, stone, and metal stack size and carry limits.

The default building resource capacity has been increased from 999 to 2000.

Building Resource Capacity nodes have replaced the previously existing Weapon Skill nodes in the Skill Tree. These new nodes allow players to upgrade their resource carrying ability by 1000 apiece to a maximum of 5000 per type.

Weapon Skill has been effectively uncapped since v3.3, which allowed us the opportunity to remove and repurpose their nodes in the skill tree. So don’t worry – your ability to use weapons of all levels remains unchanged! – Developer Comment

Existing items will not automatically restack.

You can condense stacks by dropping and picking up items or transferring between backpack and storage.

Economy Tuning

Increased Hero and Schematic Quest XP for Stonewood, up to Mid Plankerton.

Players who have already completed these Quests will be awarded the difference.

Challenge Quests have been extended to 20 Stages.

The ‘Leave No One Behind’ Challenge Quest now awards Survivor XP, scaled based on stage.

Players who have already completed Stages 1-10 of this Quest line will be awarded the Survivor XP.

Bug Fixes

Fixed a long delay that occurred when joining a party when first loading-in on PS4.

Fixed an issue that could cause BluGlo pylons to spawn on top of one another.

The buff from BluGlo pylons is no longer lost after 10 minutes.

Fixed an issue that would cause players to pick up items much slower than normal.

MISSIONS + SYSTEMS

New Questline: Into the Storm: Opening Act

Accompany Lars and Ray on their journey into Lars’ past in the brand new questline, ‘Into the Storm’!

Brand new Survive the Storm map – Thunder Route 99.

For more details about Thunder Route 99, head here.

Into the Storm Llama is available in the Loot Tab.

Cost: 1000 Storm Tickets

Event Llama guarantees at least one Epic (or higher) Neon Weapon or Cyberpunk Hero

Every 1000 Firecracker Tickets will be converted into a Spring Llama.

Quest Rewards:

Choice of Legendary Ranged Neon Weapon (Pistol, Shotgun, Assault).

Survive the Storm returns!

Improved rewards.

Added Spring It On! Gold, scaled by difficulty and number of days completed.

Improved the amount of Hero / Schematic / Survivor XP earned.

Increases more with difficulty and number of days completed.

Increased the rarity of items (Survivors, Schematics, Transform Keys, etc.) that drop from Survival mode, especially at high difficulties.

Reduced the number of low-rarity items that drop.

Mission Alerts award between 300 and 1500 tickets, scaled based on Survival length and difficulty.

Quota: Three 3-Day Survivals per 24 hours.

Quota: One 7-Day Survival per 24 hours.

Added side quests with new banner rewards!

Power 15 Event Themed Banner + 1000 Storm Tickets.

Power 40 Event Themed Banner + 1000 Storm Tickets.

Power 70 Event Themed Banner + 1000 Storm Tickets.

Changed the Survival Mode vote to skip the day to majority vote (from unanimous) to keep consistent with all other voting.

Mutant Storms

Mutant Storms are more active during this event and award between 100 and 240 Storm Tickets, scaled based on difficulty.

Repeatable Quest to complete 2 Mutant Storm Mission Alerts that awards 100 Spring It On! Gold

Opt-in difficulty boost and group missions do not award tickets during this event.

Mini-boss Mission Alerts can no longer be selected if you have not unlocked the mission the alert is attached to.

This will prevent low-level players from attempting Mission Alerts that are too difficult for them, unless they are invited into a group by a higher-level friend.

Mimic Reward Updates:

Mimics will always award the equivalent to at least a Level 3 (Blue) Treasure Chest.

Some Mimics will instead award the equivalent to a Level 4 (Purple) Treasure Chest.

‘Evacuate the Shelter’ adjustments:

In non-group missions, the number of enemies needed to be killed after reaching the shelter has been reduced to 10 per players in zone instead of 35

The final encounter in non group missions has been reduced to 6 minutes from 8

‘Repair the Shelter’ adjustments:

See-Bot will no longer be attacked on arrival.

See-Bot will now arrive with a 5 minute counter. After 5 minutes it will leave to recharge and then return later to a different location on the map.

The Husk attack now begins when a player deploys the See-Bot. See-Bot is safe before then.

Players have 5 minutes to start the scan and then defend See-Bot.

Husk attack difficulty has been reduced for first two attacks.

Shelter will now automatically start diagnostic scan when player reaches the shelter instead of having to interact with it.

Decreasing the difficulty of the mission and initial combat encounter allowed us to double down on the mission core: scrambling to rescue a sieged shelter and creating a time pressure. -Developer Comment

With the automatic diagnostic scan the length of time until first raid occurs has been increased to 8:30 minutes after diagnostics are complete to allow more time to prepare, used to be 6:30 minutes.

Progress for the quest ‘Air Quotes’ is now given when the first 25 enemies have been successfully eliminated after activating the Storm Chest. Rather than having to eliminate all waves of enemies before the timer is up.

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue where some players were locked out of their Storm Shield.

Visual level of Survival mission reward chest increased (so it reaches max-level chest appearance at 7 days).

HEROES

Cyberpunk Heroes added, available in the new ‘Into the Storm’ event Llama.

Bullet Storm Jonesy (New Soldier Subclass) Bullet Storm: Uses high magazine weapons to build up attack speed and mow down enemies.

New Perks:

Start Up – Firing with a ranged weapon increases rate of fire by 1.2% per shot for up to 20 shots. Resets on reload or weapon switch.

Start Faster – Increases ‘Start Up’ rate of fire bonus to 2.4% per shot.

Harvester Sarah (New Ninja Subclass) Harvester: Close range scythe Ninja who uses Smoke Bomb and Shadow stance to survive on the battlefield.

New Perks:

Scythe to Meet You – Scythe attacks apply a 30% snare for 1 second.

Late Arrival – Scythes deal 48% increased damage to slowed or snared targets.

Heavy BASE Kyle (New Constructor Subclass) – Heavy BASE: Constructor focused on taking down enemies within BASE to charge up a great energy nova.

New Perks:

Feel the BASE – BASE generates energy when enemies die within the area affected by BASE. After 30 kills BASE emits an explosion that knocks husks back and deals damage in a 3 tile radius.

Turn Up the BASE – Increases the radius of ‘Feel The BASE’ by 2 tiles and damage by 80%.

New Tactical Perk:

Feel the BASE – BASE generates energy when enemies die within the area affected by BASE. After 30 kills BASE emits an explosion that knocks husks back and deals damage in a 3 tile radius.

T.E.D.D. Shot Jess (New Outlander Subclass) T.E.D.D. Shot: Deploys T.E.D.D.Y. to provide cover fire while sniping foes from a distance.

New Perks:

Quick Scope – Increases sniper rifle rate of fire by 35%.

Precision Handling – Hitting a headshot increases the speed of your next reload by 7% (Max 35%). Resets after reloading.

Eye on the Prize – Getting 15 headshot kills grants 1 Charge Fragment.

New Support Perk:

Sure Shot – Increases sniper rifle critical hit damage by 35%, 53%, 70%.

Outlander

Shock Tower

No longer requires a Fragment to operate.

Cooldown has been set to 60 seconds.

Stamina cost has been set to 50.

Using a Fragment will reduce the cooldown by 30% and reduce the stamina cost to 0.

Damage has not been adjusted.

T.E.D.D.Y.

No longer requires a Fragment to operate.

Cooldown has been set to 60 seconds.

Stamina Cost has been set to 50.

Using a Fragment will reduce the cooldown by 30% and reduce the stamina cost to 0.

Damage has been unadjusted.

Impossibility Matrix

Now increases the cooldown reduction for ‘Shock Tower’ and ‘T.E.D.D.Y.’ to 50% when using a Fragment.

Fragment Ammo

Cap has been increased to 25 + Llama fragment.

Llama Fragment

Acquiring a Llama Fragment now immediately resets the cooldown of all your Fragment abilities.

Constructor

Recycling

Increased the maximum storage capacity of BASE Recycling from 150 to 450.

Hyperthreading

Increased the maximum storage capacity of BASE Hyperthreading from 300 to 900.

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue where the ‘Plasma Pulse’ tooltip wouldn’t reflect the current ‘I.F.F. Coding’ functionality.

Fixed an issue with Fragment Flurry Jess and Shamrock Reclaimer’s support bonus ‘Energized’ not scaling correctly across multiple star levels.

Fixed an issue where ‘Dragonslash’ caused Ninjas to lose collision against Heroes and Enemies.

Fixed an issue where ‘Decoy’ wasn’t taking damage from Husks.

Fixed an issue that could cause ‘Mantis Leap’ to stack velocity infinitely.

WEAPONS + ITEMS

Neon Weapon set added, available in the new ‘Into the Storm’ event Llama.

Ranged Weapons:

Argon Assault Rifle

Helium Shotgun

Krypton Pistol

Melee Weapons:

Argon Axe

Krypton Sword

Neon Scythe

Impulse Grenade

Doubled the knockback distance against enemies.

No longer affects allies.

Easter Egg Launcher Eggs no longer detonate when a player is downed but are cleared when a player respawns or disconnects.

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue where crystal Scavenger melee weapons had the same durability as ore Scavenger melee weapons.

Fixed an issue where the Vacuum Tube Spear and Axe knocked enemies back instead of stunning them in place.

Dragon’s Might shotgun projectiles no longer bounce off of deep water.

Fixed an issue where Dragon’s Might shotgun projectiles weren’t exploding on contact with enemies.

Bullet tracers shot from other players single shot weapons no longer travel through walls.

Fixed an issue where the Boost Trap would give more resources than intended from recycling.

UI

Added an option to show a Collection Book indicator on items in the Armory menus.

Added an option to toggle whether or not ‘Favorite’ items are grouped together in the Armory menus.Added tooltip text for the cinematics volume setting in the audio settings tab.

Items in the Armory that don’t have stats no longer display a stats panel.

Replaced references of the word “Vault” with “Armory” in skill tree nodes.

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue where players using the Combat Pro control scheme would see “Unable to Edit Building” when pressing the button to get on their Hoverboard.

Fixed an issue where the ‘Place Trap’ controller button icon was missing when using the Combat Pro control scheme.

Updated reward summary cards to no longer be selectable once they move off screen.

Fixed an issue where damage return values for Traps that deal elemental damage were not indicating what type of elemental damage was dealt.

Updated Electrical Wall and Ceiling Trap descriptions to mention their elemental damage traits.

Fixed a spelling error in the Mythic Wukong Berserker description.

Fixed an issue that prevented players from selecting options (mute, add friend, etc.) in chat.

Fixed an issue where the camera would jump when zooming in on a skill tree tier.

Fixed the ‘Import Friends’ button not being selectable with a controller.

Fixed 4-player level difficulty being cut off in the in-zone objectives screen.

Fixed the ‘Research’ purchase button’s cost icon being offset when using a controller.

Fixed BluGlo having the ‘Equip’ button active in the in-zone inventory.

Fixed a crash that occurred when typing a comma while naming your Homebase.

Updated player revive screen text.

AUDIO

Metal toilets now plays a metal sound when destroyed.

Unsearched shopping carts now have impact sounds.

[gamingtipsandtrickshacks]

Fortnite's v3.5 Update Brings Back 50v50 Mode, Adds Replays System, Port-a-Fort Item, and More

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past several months, Fortnite and its standalone Battle Royale mode have taken over everything from consoles, to PC, and most recently to mobile, and now the game’s latest update is sure to bring a little something for everyone with new items and more.

Developer Epic Games announced that update v3.5 for Fortnite has been released for the game across all platforms, and the update itself is a hefty one with plenty of content updates alongside more general bug fixes and changes.

Specifically, the patch notes include details on the brand new Replays system that’s tailored perfectly towards those looking to share their gameplay clips on YouTube. The Replays feature will be available for the game’s Battle Royale mode and will include “a suite of cinematic settings” that allow players to create gameplay clips highlighting epic Battle Royale moments.

In addition to the Replays features, Epic Games also has added new content to the game, such as a new Port-a-Fort item that allows players to build forts on-the-go, and has brought back the 50×50 mode for a limited time with a few updates and changes. Players in the game’s Save the World mode will also be getting new items, such as cyberpunk themed neon weapons and armor.

Fortnite is available now on PS4, Xbox One, PC, Mac, and iOS – for a closer look at the new update, you can check out the below video highlighting the new Port-a-Fort item, along with the full patch notes:

General

Wood, Stone, and Metal resources will now always be the first items in the inventory list (e.g. instead of Traps).

Purchased V-Bucks are now shared between Xbox One, PC and Mobile.

Login Queue Improvements:

During wait periods, login will now remember your place in line if you quit out of the game and return.

Mobile devices will not enter the login queue more than once per login attempt.

Two-Factor Authentication challenges will not put you back into the login queue.

Bug Fixes

Adjusted the Login screen layout to better support varying screen sizes and safe zones.

Fixed a rare crash that occurred during logout.

Fixed PS4 players leaving their party after a match where they are playing with players on other platforms.

Fixed Survivor and Hero squads being locked after switching to Save the World from Battle Royale.

On PC, fixed PS4 controllers showing Xbox buttons, even after the controller type was changed in the settings.

Fixed rare cases in which character parts would stretch unnaturally.

(Example) Ears of the Rabbit Raider outfit.

Fixed the inability to rotate elements in the Battle Royale Locker after buying a Llama in Save the World.

Battle Royale

REPLAY SYSTEM

Save your matches and watch them from any angle!

Speed up or slow down the action.

Help tell your story better with player outlines and name plates.

Several Camera Modes to choose from:

Third Person

Follows and orbits around the selected player.

3 different follow modes; Off, Auto, Lazy.

Drone Follow

Drone style camera that always keeps the selected player in frame.

Drone Attach

Drone style camera that is loosely attached to the selected player.

Drone Free

Drone style camera that is free to fly around the island.

Gameplay

This camera shows what the selected player saw during gameplay.

Adjust cinematic camera settings

Exposure

Aperture

Focal Length

Focus Distance

Currently available on PC and console only.

WEAPONS + ITEMS

Port-a-Fort added.

Epic rarity.

Drops in stacks of 1. Can stack up to 5 in inventory.

When the Port-a-Fort is thrown, a pre-made fort is constructed instantly at the impact point.

The Port-a-Fort is made out of metal and is three stories tall.

The bottom floor is 1×1 with a door for entry. Tires inside allow for easy access to the roof.

Decreased Guided Missile maximum turn rate by 75%.

Reduced Guided Missile movement speed by 15%.

Added a short equip time to many weapons (particularly, those with a slower rate of fire).

This will reduce the effectiveness of quickly switching between weapons for high burst-damage.

Removed the reloading animation on the Pump Shotgun.

Weapons affected are:

Rocket Launcher

Hand Cannon

Revolver

Tactical Shotgun

Pump Shotgun

Heavy Shotgun

Bolt-Action Sniper Rifle

Hunting Rifle

Crossbow

Adjusted item availability in Vending Machines.

Reduced chance of Chug Jug by 50%.

Increased chance of Medium Ammo weapons in Rare Vending Machine by 100%.

Reduced chance of Explosive Ammo weapons in Rare Vending Machine by 50%.

Reduced chance of Explosive Ammo weapons in Epic Vending Machine by 25%.

Increased chance of Heavy Ammo weapons in Epic Vending Machine by 25%.

Reduced chance of Explosive Ammo weapons in Legendary Vending Machine by 25%.

Increased chance of Heavy Ammo weapons in Legendary Vending Machine by 25%.

Reduced drop rate of Remote Explosives in floor loot by roughly 33%.

Updated Medium Ammo inventory icon to make it more easily identifiable.

Bug Fixes

Fixed weapons floating in the air under certain network conditions after quickly switching between items.

Guided Missile weapon fixes:

Eliminating a downed player with a Guided Missile no longer reports as a self elimination.

Picking up an item at the same time as firing a Guided Missile will no longer cause the picked up item to disappear.

Firing a Guided Missile prior to the victory screen displaying will no longer prevent the player from returning to the lobby.

Players will now correctly spectate the player that eliminated them instead of spectating their own active missile.

While spectating a player that fires a missile, you will now follow the missile instead of the player.

Fixed an issue that caused the player to spectate a floating Guided Missile weapon on the starting island if they were eliminated by a missile during the match.

Fixed an issue preventing the player from firing a guided missile while riding a guided missile.

Fixed an issue causing the player’s name plate to display over the guided missile while controlling it.

Fixed an issue where the Rare Scoped Assault Rifle was incorrectly giving an Epic version in Vending Machines.

Fixed an issue causing the Loot Llama to be empty in Limited Time Modes.

GAMEPLAY

Limited Time Mode: 50V50 v2

Two teams of 50 fight to the finish!

Due to this being a “large squad” mode, Profile Stats will not be tracked. Daily & Weekly challenges will still work, with the exception of the Squad-based challenges (‘Place Top 6 in Squads’, etc.).

Storm & Map

Each team has a bus, approaching the island from opposite directions. On the map, the friendly bus has a blue outline, enemy has red.

Final storm circle visible on minimap at start.

Players have 10 minutes to loot the map as the storm closes in on the circle, then 5 minutes to fight, and another 5 minutes as the storm shrinks to the end.

Supply drops come in batches of 3-6, fall every two minutes, and only land in the final storm circle.

Added dotted line to map, which indicates the “battle lines” between the two teams. Crossing the line will make running into enemies more likely.

Loot

Farming resources increased 75% over default.

Increased floor loot spawn likelihood by 15%.

Floor Loot spawns double ammo.

Ammo boxes spawn triple ammo.

Chests spawn double ammo & consumables.

Supply drops spawn double ammo, and an extra consumable, resource drop and trap.

Bug Fixes + Mode Improvements

Fixed a bug that created uneven teams where one side could have more than 50 players.

Downed players lose health more quickly than normal (10 health per tick).

New ‘Builder Pro’ controller configuration

This configuration is similar to “Combat Pro”, but optimized for fast placement of building pieces.

Wall, floor, stairs, and roof have designated buttons on controllers.

The first button press will switch to the mapped building piece, then every press after will place that piece.

To switch between materials or traps, press the Left D-Pad button.

New Squad Comms wheel

This allows you to communicate quickly without voice.

The following callouts are currently available: Enemy Spotted, Need Meds, Need Shields, Need Materials, Need Weapon (context-sensitive), and Need Ammo (context-sensitive).

Defaults to ‘V’ key, Right D-Pad on controller, or in the Emote menu on Mobile.

The Loot Llama can now be opened through destruction as well as an interaction.

Added a blue tint to friendly traps to help distinguish them from enemy traps.

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue preventing players from editing their own structures.

Supply Drop fixes:

Fixed an issue preventing players from opening supply drops in rare cases.

Fixed an issue causing supply drops to jitter as they fall if a player destroys the object that it landed on.

Fixed an issue causing supply drop loot to spawn in the air after the drop had been shot down.

Fixed an issue causing players to be pushed under the map if they stood under a falling supply drop.

Fixed an issue causing players to launch out of the map after landing on a supply drop.

Fixed an issue where building would be blocked for 3 seconds at a time under poor network conditions.

Fixed an issue causing controllers to vibrate during the skydiving phase when vending machines loaded into the world.

Fixed an issue that would hide structure health bars when the player aimed their weapon.

Fixed toggling aim down sights not returning to its previous state after reloading.

Fixed an issue where poor network conditions could prevent buildings from streaming in.

Fixed an issue where you could not select the same Banner Icon and color combination in Battle Royale that you have in Save the World.

AUDIO

Added unique equip/reload sounds for the following weapons (all others remain the same):

Epic/Legendary Assault Rifle

Heavy Shotgun

Pump Shotgun

Bolt-Action Sniper

Hunting Rifle

Added more variation to the Tactical SMG fire sound.

Added more variation to the medium-range Epic/Legendary Assault Rifle fire sound.

Bug Fixes

Remove the second “insert magazine” sound during the grenade launcher reload animation.

UI

Bug Fixes

Fixed the controller button label for Toggle Map not shown after being eliminated.

Fixed a bug in the Locker that made skydive previews appear without the correct animation.

Fixed text on the minimap that was too small.

Fixed the map marker not retaining its location when zooming in and out.

Fixed an issue with map markers not pinning at your cursor when placing them while zoomed in.

The controller analog stick can now be used to scroll the map while zoomed in.

Fixed an issue causing the eliminated player count displaying as zero when spectating a Guided Missile.

ART + ANIMATION

Tweaked the object pop in animation so objects ease in rather than pop in.

Bug Fixes

Fixed inconsistent Battle Bus position changes that could occur every few seconds.

Fixed the Rock Paper Scissors emote so that it replicates properly in the lobby.

Fixed the Rainbow Smash and Candy Axe harvesting tools not always activating.

Fixed the Guided Missile firing animation so that it plays properly while spectating the player that is firing the weapon.

Reduced the size of Mushrooms that were too large.

PERFORMANCE

Major optimizations + improvements made to console load times and CPU performance.

We’ve made some data layout optimizations in order to improve load times and performance. Load times reduced by 25-30 seconds as a result of these changes on Xbox One and around 10 seconds on PS4. On both platforms, we expect to see fewer issues with geometry or cosmetics failing to load in time, and FPS drops during skydiving. The Xbox One download will be larger than normal in this release as a result of these optimizations. We’re working to minimize the impact of this type of optimization in future releases. – Developer Comment

Reduced download and patch size for players who just have access to Battle Royale (PC only).

Fixed various issues causing the game to freeze up/hitch while loading assets, especially on console. These assets are now preloaded before the game starts.

Optimized servers to reduce network lag when firing weapons and taking damage.

MOBILE

Audio indicator no longer shows silenced weapons, crouched footsteps or ally pickaxes.

Multiple graphical improvements were made to the skybox, vegetation and anti-aliasing.

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue that caused input to continue when no longer touching the screen.

Fixed an issue where the message about jailbroken devices being unsupported wasn’t being shown

Attempting to play using a jailbroken device will result in being kicked.

Fixed various interacting actions, including:

Icons not showing properly on lower-end devices

Supply Drops not being able to be opened.

Doors not consistently opening and closing.

The Map not being able to be zoomed & panned.

Instances where accidental button presses would occur.

Fixed an issue causing Revolver and Grenade Launcher ammo to float outside the gun.

Save the World

GAMEPLAY

Enabled environmental damage for ranged weapons.

Percentage of damage done to the environment varies by weapon.

Environmental damage scaling for ranged weapons should remain consistent relative to the health of the environment, taking into account the rarity and alterations on the weapon.

NOTE: Environmental damage increases with tier and rarity only and is not multiplied through Offense.

Ranged weapons can not damage structures you or your team have built.

[Rework] Outlander Fragment

Fragment abilities, other than the Loot Llama, no longer require equipped Fragment ammo to activate.

Fragment abilities now have a cooldown and Energy cost, as other abilities do.

Fragment abilities are now improved when the Outlander expends Fragment ammo in their activation.

Fragment Ammo capacity has been dramatically increased.

[Rework] Melee Weapons + Environment

Melee weapons (aside from Pickaxes) can no longer damage structures that you or your team have built, and have had their environmental damage increased.

Environmental damage scaling for on-level melee weapons should now feel more consistent, relative to the health of the environment

NOTE: Environmental damage increases with tier and rarity only, and is not multiplied through Offense.

Axes do increased damage against wood. Hardware does increased damage against stone.Swords, Clubs, Scythes, and Spears do not favor any material type.

[Rework] Anomaly

Anomaly rewards increased, changed from BluGlo to mission rewards.

Anomaly shards will take full damage from the Pickaxe, reduced damage from other melee weapons, and can no longer be damaged by projectiles (Throwing Stars, Rockets, etc).

Crafting queue size increased from 10 to 20 (this means 1 in production and up to 19 pending).

Cozy Campfire no longer grants any Utility score for healing and instead grants more for placing the trap.

Falling Damage has been adjusted so that damage occurs at higher heights.

Players now first take damage after falling 1300+ units instead of falling 850 Units

(Example) You can now walk off a 3 story building, but you can’t jump off.

Initial fall damage increased from 5% max HP to 10% max HP.

Next Damage Threshold is now 20% max HP at 3 tiles.

Next Damage Threshold is now 50% max HP at 3.75 tiles.

Next Damage Threshold is now Knockdown at 4.5 tiles.

Farther than 4.5 tiles will also result in Knockdown.

Enemy fall damage values have been adjusted to be in line with these changes.

The vehicles that Survivors stand on top of will no longer take damage from ranged or melee weapons.

Only the Pickaxe can damage them.

Increased wood, stone, and metal stack size and carry limits.

The default building resource capacity has been increased from 999 to 2000.

Building Resource Capacity nodes have replaced the previously existing Weapon Skill nodes in the Skill Tree. These new nodes allow players to upgrade their resource carrying ability by 1000 apiece to a maximum of 5000 per type.

Weapon Skill has been effectively uncapped since v3.3, which allowed us the opportunity to remove and repurpose their nodes in the skill tree. So don’t worry – your ability to use weapons of all levels remains unchanged! – Developer Comment

Existing items will not automatically restack.

You can condense stacks by dropping and picking up items or transferring between backpack and storage.

Economy Tuning

Increased Hero and Schematic Quest XP for Stonewood, up to Mid Plankerton.

Players who have already completed these Quests will be awarded the difference.

Challenge Quests have been extended to 20 Stages.

The ‘Leave No One Behind’ Challenge Quest now awards Survivor XP, scaled based on stage.

Players who have already completed Stages 1-10 of this Quest line will be awarded the Survivor XP.

Bug Fixes

Fixed a long delay that occurred when joining a party when first loading-in on PS4.

Fixed an issue that could cause BluGlo pylons to spawn on top of one another.

The buff from BluGlo pylons is no longer lost after 10 minutes.

Fixed an issue that would cause players to pick up items much slower than normal.

MISSIONS + SYSTEMS

New Questline: Into the Storm: Opening Act

Accompany Lars and Ray on their journey into Lars’ past in the brand new questline, ‘Into the Storm’!

Brand new Survive the Storm map – Thunder Route 99.

For more details about Thunder Route 99, head here.

Into the Storm Llama is available in the Loot Tab.

Cost: 1000 Storm Tickets

Event Llama guarantees at least one Epic (or higher) Neon Weapon or Cyberpunk Hero

Every 1000 Firecracker Tickets will be converted into a Spring Llama.

Quest Rewards:

Choice of Legendary Ranged Neon Weapon (Pistol, Shotgun, Assault).

Survive the Storm returns!

Improved rewards.

Added Spring It On! Gold, scaled by difficulty and number of days completed.

Improved the amount of Hero / Schematic / Survivor XP earned.

Increases more with difficulty and number of days completed.

Increased the rarity of items (Survivors, Schematics, Transform Keys, etc.) that drop from Survival mode, especially at high difficulties.

Reduced the number of low-rarity items that drop.

Mission Alerts award between 300 and 1500 tickets, scaled based on Survival length and difficulty.

Quota: Three 3-Day Survivals per 24 hours.

Quota: One 7-Day Survival per 24 hours.

Added side quests with new banner rewards!

Power 15 Event Themed Banner + 1000 Storm Tickets.

Power 40 Event Themed Banner + 1000 Storm Tickets.

Power 70 Event Themed Banner + 1000 Storm Tickets.

Changed the Survival Mode vote to skip the day to majority vote (from unanimous) to keep consistent with all other voting.

Mutant Storms

Mutant Storms are more active during this event and award between 100 and 240 Storm Tickets, scaled based on difficulty.

Repeatable Quest to complete 2 Mutant Storm Mission Alerts that awards 100 Spring It On! Gold

Opt-in difficulty boost and group missions do not award tickets during this event.

Mini-boss Mission Alerts can no longer be selected if you have not unlocked the mission the alert is attached to.

This will prevent low-level players from attempting Mission Alerts that are too difficult for them, unless they are invited into a group by a higher-level friend.

Mimic Reward Updates:

Mimics will always award the equivalent to at least a Level 3 (Blue) Treasure Chest.

Some Mimics will instead award the equivalent to a Level 4 (Purple) Treasure Chest.

‘Evacuate the Shelter’ adjustments:

In non-group missions, the number of enemies needed to be killed after reaching the shelter has been reduced to 10 per players in zone instead of 35

The final encounter in non group missions has been reduced to 6 minutes from 8

‘Repair the Shelter’ adjustments:

See-Bot will no longer be attacked on arrival.

See-Bot will now arrive with a 5 minute counter. After 5 minutes it will leave to recharge and then return later to a different location on the map.

The Husk attack now begins when a player deploys the See-Bot. See-Bot is safe before then.

Players have 5 minutes to start the scan and then defend See-Bot.

Husk attack difficulty has been reduced for first two attacks.

Shelter will now automatically start diagnostic scan when player reaches the shelter instead of having to interact with it.

Decreasing the difficulty of the mission and initial combat encounter allowed us to double down on the mission core: scrambling to rescue a sieged shelter and creating a time pressure. -Developer Comment

With the automatic diagnostic scan the length of time until first raid occurs has been increased to 8:30 minutes after diagnostics are complete to allow more time to prepare, used to be 6:30 minutes.

Progress for the quest ‘Air Quotes’ is now given when the first 25 enemies have been successfully eliminated after activating the Storm Chest. Rather than having to eliminate all waves of enemies before the timer is up.

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue where some players were locked out of their Storm Shield.

Visual level of Survival mission reward chest increased (so it reaches max-level chest appearance at 7 days).

HEROES

Cyberpunk Heroes added, available in the new ‘Into the Storm’ event Llama.

Bullet Storm Jonesy (New Soldier Subclass) Bullet Storm: Uses high magazine weapons to build up attack speed and mow down enemies.

New Perks:

Start Up – Firing with a ranged weapon increases rate of fire by 1.2% per shot for up to 20 shots. Resets on reload or weapon switch.

Start Faster – Increases ‘Start Up’ rate of fire bonus to 2.4% per shot.

Harvester Sarah (New Ninja Subclass) Harvester: Close range scythe Ninja who uses Smoke Bomb and Shadow stance to survive on the battlefield.

New Perks:

Scythe to Meet You – Scythe attacks apply a 30% snare for 1 second.

Late Arrival – Scythes deal 48% increased damage to slowed or snared targets.

Heavy BASE Kyle (New Constructor Subclass) – Heavy BASE: Constructor focused on taking down enemies within BASE to charge up a great energy nova.

New Perks:

Feel the BASE – BASE generates energy when enemies die within the area affected by BASE. After 30 kills BASE emits an explosion that knocks husks back and deals damage in a 3 tile radius.

Turn Up the BASE – Increases the radius of ‘Feel The BASE’ by 2 tiles and damage by 80%.

New Tactical Perk:

Feel the BASE – BASE generates energy when enemies die within the area affected by BASE. After 30 kills BASE emits an explosion that knocks husks back and deals damage in a 3 tile radius.

T.E.D.D. Shot Jess (New Outlander Subclass) T.E.D.D. Shot: Deploys T.E.D.D.Y. to provide cover fire while sniping foes from a distance.

New Perks:

Quick Scope – Increases sniper rifle rate of fire by 35%.

Precision Handling – Hitting a headshot increases the speed of your next reload by 7% (Max 35%). Resets after reloading.

Eye on the Prize – Getting 15 headshot kills grants 1 Charge Fragment.

New Support Perk:

Sure Shot – Increases sniper rifle critical hit damage by 35%, 53%, 70%.

Outlander

Shock Tower

No longer requires a Fragment to operate.

Cooldown has been set to 60 seconds.

Stamina cost has been set to 50.

Using a Fragment will reduce the cooldown by 30% and reduce the stamina cost to 0.

Damage has not been adjusted.

T.E.D.D.Y.

No longer requires a Fragment to operate.

Cooldown has been set to 60 seconds.

Stamina Cost has been set to 50.

Using a Fragment will reduce the cooldown by 30% and reduce the stamina cost to 0.

Damage has been unadjusted.

Impossibility Matrix

Now increases the cooldown reduction for ‘Shock Tower’ and ‘T.E.D.D.Y.’ to 50% when using a Fragment.

Fragment Ammo

Cap has been increased to 25 + Llama fragment.

Llama Fragment

Acquiring a Llama Fragment now immediately resets the cooldown of all your Fragment abilities.

Constructor

Recycling

Increased the maximum storage capacity of BASE Recycling from 150 to 450.

Hyperthreading

Increased the maximum storage capacity of BASE Hyperthreading from 300 to 900.

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue where the ‘Plasma Pulse’ tooltip wouldn’t reflect the current ‘I.F.F. Coding’ functionality.

Fixed an issue with Fragment Flurry Jess and Shamrock Reclaimer’s support bonus ‘Energized’ not scaling correctly across multiple star levels.

Fixed an issue where ‘Dragonslash’ caused Ninjas to lose collision against Heroes and Enemies.

Fixed an issue where ‘Decoy’ wasn’t taking damage from Husks.

Fixed an issue that could cause ‘Mantis Leap’ to stack velocity infinitely.

WEAPONS + ITEMS

Neon Weapon set added, available in the new ‘Into the Storm’ event Llama.

Ranged Weapons:

Argon Assault Rifle

Helium Shotgun

Krypton Pistol

Melee Weapons:

Argon Axe

Krypton Sword

Neon Scythe

Impulse Grenade

Doubled the knockback distance against enemies.

No longer affects allies.

Easter Egg Launcher Eggs no longer detonate when a player is downed but are cleared when a player respawns or disconnects.

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue where crystal Scavenger melee weapons had the same durability as ore Scavenger melee weapons.

Fixed an issue where the Vacuum Tube Spear and Axe knocked enemies back instead of stunning them in place.

Dragon’s Might shotgun projectiles no longer bounce off of deep water.

Fixed an issue where Dragon’s Might shotgun projectiles weren’t exploding on contact with enemies.

Bullet tracers shot from other players single shot weapons no longer travel through walls.

Fixed an issue where the Boost Trap would give more resources than intended from recycling.

UI

Added an option to show a Collection Book indicator on items in the Armory menus.

Added an option to toggle whether or not ‘Favorite’ items are grouped together in the Armory menus.Added tooltip text for the cinematics volume setting in the audio settings tab.

Items in the Armory that don’t have stats no longer display a stats panel.

Replaced references of the word “Vault” with “Armory” in skill tree nodes.

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue where players using the Combat Pro control scheme would see “Unable to Edit Building” when pressing the button to get on their Hoverboard.

Fixed an issue where the ‘Place Trap’ controller button icon was missing when using the Combat Pro control scheme.

Updated reward summary cards to no longer be selectable once they move off screen.

Fixed an issue where damage return values for Traps that deal elemental damage were not indicating what type of elemental damage was dealt.

Updated Electrical Wall and Ceiling Trap descriptions to mention their elemental damage traits.

Fixed a spelling error in the Mythic Wukong Berserker description.

Fixed an issue that prevented players from selecting options (mute, add friend, etc.) in chat.

Fixed an issue where the camera would jump when zooming in on a skill tree tier.

Fixed the ‘Import Friends’ button not being selectable with a controller.

Fixed 4-player level difficulty being cut off in the in-zone objectives screen.

Fixed the ‘Research’ purchase button’s cost icon being offset when using a controller.

Fixed BluGlo having the ‘Equip’ button active in the in-zone inventory.

Fixed a crash that occurred when typing a comma while naming your Homebase.

Updated player revive screen text.

AUDIO

Metal toilets now plays a metal sound when destroyed.

Unsearched shopping carts now have impact sounds.