News

Hi, fellow gamer and MMO enthusiast!

It’s been a while since we’ve closed the door of Alpha 1 – Test 2 and released the new store. August is always a complex month for us, torn between the preparation for Gamescom and the due summer holiday time.

Nonetheless, a new update is here, including the much awaited roadmap to Alpha 2 – which is sadly going to suffer a little delay. Read on for all the news!

Gamescom

Yes: for the first time ever, Dynamight Studios will have its own booth at Gamescom!

The booth is located in the business area, within the Italian Games stand (Hall 3.2, Stand D010 E019). It will be accessible from Tuesday, August 20 to Thursday, August 22.

We understand those of you who are not game devs, press or influencers, likely won’t have purchased access to the business area. We’ll be around until Friday afternoon though – this last day in the consumer area, and we’d be glad to meet some of you for a chat, so if you’ll be there, check out this thread!

Alpha 2 Delayed

We are sorry to announce that the start of Alpha 2 – Test 1 is officially postponed from Q3 to Q4 2019.

There’s just one factor behind this delay – our bad estimate of the time required to port Fractured from the old integration between Unity and SpatialOS, labeled UnitySDK, to the newest one, called UnityGDK. We expected the process to take a couple weeks, but we were dramatically wrong: it’s going to take at least one month, likely even longer.

The superiority of the new tech is already visible now, during the early stages of the porting. Once completed, our devs think they’ll be twice as productive under most circumstances! The faster coding won’t be enough to recoup the time lost by the end of September however – so Q4 it is. We hope we’ll be able to keep the launch within October, moving some of the planned content further down the line if needed.

Access to Alpha 2 can be obtained by purchasing a Legend pack in the Fractured store.

Alpha 2 Roadmap

The scope of the Alpha 2 development cycle is to bring all the missing core features of the game to life. The three big ones are:

• The Knowledge System;
• Player towns;
• Arboreus & Beastmen / Tartaros & Demons.

Of course, there’s also a mountain of minor features that still need to be implemented! Among them, three are a staple of any MMORPG:

• Party & guilds;
• Carts & wagons;
• Mounts;

So, what of the above is coming is Alpha 2 – Test 1? Let’s find out!

Knowledge System

The Knowledge System is likely to be the most important core feature missing from the game as of today. It’s about time we get to it!

The first implementation won’t be 100% complete, but it will certainly feature:

• The possibility to choose a background for your character during character creation. Each background provides a starter set of abilities and items, unrelated to attributes, and has no influence over character progression.
• A “personal encyclopedia” menu that tracks the character’s progression in all fields of knowledge. Fighting creatures, studying plants, crafting items, etc, unlocks new abilities and provides Knowledge Points that can be used to learn the abilities unlocked.
• The resting phase, that will allow you to choose a set of abilities to assign to your hotbar among the ones you’ve learnt.

For more information regarding the Knowledge System, check out this classic feature spotlight. It’s slightly outdated (menu screenshots in particular), but largely still valid.

Enchanting

Enchanting is one of the key parts of equipment progression and customization. It allows you to add modifiers to a piece of equipment in a predictable way, with a minor RNG component.

Let’s explain it in brief bullet points:

• Reagents are items that function as “fuel” for an enchanting procedure. They can be harvested from plants and trees, mined from mineral deposits, looted from monster corpses, or crafted from other materials. Each reagent comes with different properties, called “power aspects”, and an intensity for each property. There are three categories of aspects: “primal” (mind, body, soul), “manipulation” (create, destroy, negate, transform, transfer) and “universal” (air, earth, fire, water, death, life, chaos, order, time, energy, knowledge)
• To enchant a piece of equipment, the item must be put into an “enchanting station” together with up to 5 reagents. The combined type and intensity of the aspects of the reagents determines the modifier(s) assigned to the item. All reagents are consumed when enchanting.

Thanks to enchanting, all creatures and plants already implemented will finally have useful items to loot / harvest!

Heavy Material Carts

You’ve been very vocal asking for this long-planned feature – for good reasons! So, here it comes.

In Alpha 2 – Test 1 you’ll be able to build a handcart in your claim, carry it around and put heavy materials such as logs and stones in it. This will make building your home a lot less cumbersome than it was in Alpha 1 – a must, considering that larger houses will also be implemented.

World Building

Together with the new features, we’re going to keep working on world building.

Once again, we’ll be picking a biome / point of interest and populating it with unique art assets and groups of creatures, each one featuring specific characteristics, abilities, and loot. Last time it was the Deadwoods, this time it’s the Goblin Territories…

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…with their pesky inhabitants:

• Goblins
  • Cutthroat
  • Enforcer
  • Trapper
  • Warchief
  • Fire Shaman (Boss)
• Wolves
  • Trained Wolf
  • Warg

Goblins mostly use existing Warfare and Assassination abilities, with a few additions:

• Marksmanship
  • Net Trap
• Abjuration
  • Protection from Fire
• Conjuration
  • Totem of Wildfire
• Invocation
  • Firebolt

After the Goblin Territories, we’ll be working on the ruins of Heartwood, located in the very center of Myr.

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Once one of the most important temples of Tyros on Elysium, the mystical energy lingering in the air and in the earth still animates the ancient guardians of the holy place:

• Plants
  • Sproutling
  • Tangler
  • Treant
  • Whipping Vines (Summon)
• Elementals
  • Earth Elemental
  • Greater Earth Elemental
• Spirits
  • Woodland Whisp

As magical creatures, they come with a ton of new magic abilities too!

• Warfare
  • Battle Stop
  • Concussive Strike
•  Alteration
  • Entangling Roots
  • Petrify
  • Shroud of Thorns
  • Slow
  • Verdant Regrowth
• Conjuration
  • Acid Sphere
  • Relocate
  • Whipping Vines
• Illusionism
  • Confusion
• Invocation
  • Earthquake
  • Shocking Lash
  • Tectonic Outburst
• Restoration
  • Minor Healing

As mentioned before, it’s possible we’ll have to cut down on planned new content for this test, which means some of the creatures listed above might not be going live.

That’s it. We hope we’ve been able to give you a good overview of the exciting additions to come!

Got any comment? Let your voice be heard!

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