News

Hi, fellow gamer and MMO enthusiast!

Alpha 2 – Test 1 has come and gone last November/December, and has been (by far!) our longest and most populated testing phase ever.

In order to keep you all more engaged and receive more frequent feedback, we’ve decided to shorten the time between each testing phase. That is why we’re glad to announce that we are targeting the end of February for the start of Alpha 2 – Test 2!

Some of the most requested features in the history of Fractured will be going live then – and you’ll have the chance to preview a few of them even earlier in a new open test!

Read on for all the details!

Social Features

Parties

Even before guilds, parties are the base of social interaction in the world of Fractured. They allow players to:

• Share kill rights to monsters (influencing both loot rights and knowledge gains);
• Share a private global chat with other party members;
• See the location of other party members on the minimap;
• Allow other party members to loot their own corpse;
• Enjoy the effect of beneficial AOE spells cast by other party members;
• Not be affected by offensive AOE spells cast by other party members.

As of today, each party can hold a maximum of 20 members, but this number could change in the future.

Guilds

Unlikely parties, guilds are persistent social structures. They allow players to:

• Share a private global chat with other guild members;
• Share access to houses and house items such as containers;
• See the location of other guild members on the minimap;
• Form alliances with other guilds;
• Wage war to other guilds.

We have no plan to limit the amount of players that can be members of the same guild, but this is something we might reconsider in the future.

Claim Management

This has always been one of the most frequently requested features, so we’re really glad to finally deliver it.

In Alpha 2 – Test 2, you will be able add other players as friends or co-owners of your land parcel. Then, you’ll be able to set the access level of your house door, your crafting stations and your containers – including your handcarts!

Access levels are set singularly on each world item by choosing one or more of the following:

• Co-owners;
• Friends;
• Guild;
• Party;
• Everyone;

Land sharing in Fractured will finally be a thing!

Enchanting

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This feature was already announced in the roadmap to Alpha 2, but we didn’t have time to complete its implementation in time – so let’s go through it again!

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. One unit of each reagent is consumed when enchanting.

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

Vale Of Shadows

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After the Deadwoods in Alpha 1 and the Goblin Hills + Heartwood in Alpha 2 – Test 1, our focus for world building has now shifted to the Vale of Shadows!

More than just a region, the Vale of Shadows is a large-scale open-world dungeon, filled with points of interest such as the Goblin Camp, the Cursed Battlefield, the Ruined Necropolis, the Graveyard, the Temple of Babilis, the Dead Forest and the Hidden Camp.

Want to find out more about how it came to be? Have a look at the paragraph below!

Lore

Long before the Fracture, the area where the Vale of Shadows now lies was inhabited by demons and humans devoted to Babilis, the Goddess of Chaos. Within their city, they erected a great temple to the evil goddess, where they performed unholy rituals – including sacrifices, or so is whispered in the old tales – to further develop their necromantic powers and please their patron.

Over the years the once small community grew in numbers and power, until Babilis decided to reveal to her twisted followers the secrets of the Dark Ascension, an ancient and forbidden ritual that could turn everyone deemed worthy into an immortal being with enhanced magical abilities and affinity for necromantic powers.

The aim of Babilis was to create her own invincible army to spread her cult over Elysium, but she was not to follow her plans unchallenged. Tyros, the God of Light and Justice, knew about his sister’s machinations by virtue of the prophecies of Oxos contained in his Book of Knowledge, and immediately made his move to stop her.

As quickly as mortal times allowed, Tyros assembled his own army of humans, beastmen and sky dragons – rare and powerful creatures which strive to cleanse the world from any trace of evil, and sent them to eradicate all the followers of Babilis within the Vale. What Tyros didn’t know was that the ritual was fueled by the blood of the living, and he was but a piece of her sister’s scheme.

The battle raged for days, with every death in the army of Tyros contributing to the completion of the Dark Ascension. The effects of the ritual started to show on the third day, as a dark wave of shadow and blood started to raise and spread all over the Vale. Dead bodies began twitching, showing the signs of an imminent return to life as undeads.

Once Tyros understood the trap he had fallen for, he knew he had to stop the ritual right away. Thus, he bestowed to his followers the Righteous Flame, a powerful blessing that allowed the recipient to exceed its limits, becoming a true champion of Light for a limited amount of time – fearless, resolute, and enveloped by a bright white flame that banishes all evil.

Now feeling invincible, a good portion of the army charged through the enemy lines, right to the entrance of the temple of Babilis. Many fell in the effort, but enough of them reached the site of the ritual. In a matter of minutes every every dark priest was covered in blood and flames, sealing the victory of Tyros over Babilis.

While the plan of the dark goddess was averted at large, the end of this story is not a pleasant one. Silencing everyone in shock and terror, a feminine lough echoed through the Vale, releasing the remainder of the dark energy accumulated by the ritual, spreading death and decay for miles. The lives of all creatures, Good and Evil, were taken that night, their spirits trapped in a never-ending war in the now-cursed region know as the Vale of Shadows.

Creatures & Abilities

As the background story above clearly suggests, the Vale of Shadows is mainly undead and ghost-themed. These are the creatures that populate the terrifying region:

• Goblins
  • Archer
  • Shadowdancer
  • Death Shaman (Boss)
• Undeads
  • Ghoul
  • Felghoul
  • Haze Fiend
  • Restless Spirit
  • Shadow
  • Shadow Dragon (Boss)
  • Shadow Fiend (Boss)
  • Skeleton
  • Skeletal Knight
  • Skeletal Warrior
  • Skeletal Dragon (Boss)
  • Zombie
• Primordials
  • Blight Wisp

Not all of them will see the light in the next test, but we’ll try to implement as many as possible.

As always, with new creatures come plenty of new abilities to learn! Our aim is to raise the total available in the game from 40 to 55-60 – a hefty 40-50% increase!

You’ll be able to manipulate the minds of your opponents through the all-new magic school of Illusionism, hide in the shadows with new Assassination spells and steal the energy of your opponents thanks to several additions to Necromancy… and this is just to name a few!

Others

Shields

Another frequently requested feature and a must for many warrior builds, shields offer additional defensive capabilities by increasing the user’s armor ratings and allowing the use of a few dedicated abilities.

Shields are split in three categories: Light, Medium and Heavy. Light shields (such as bucklers) are less protective but allow the user to cast spells of all schools aside from Invocation and Conjuration!

Terrain & Water Shaders

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From day one, we’ve always considered our terrains and water bodies (rivers, lakes, seas) to be some of the weakest-looking components of the game. Worst of all, they weren’t only less-than-average looking, but also heavy on framerate!

We’ve rewritten them both from scratch, and now:

• Terrain textures look more 3D, crisp and detailed;
• We can use up to 16 different terrain textures for each continent instead of 8 without any performance hit…
• …actually, Fractured gained about 10 FPS at Ultra settings in every world location on our default benchmark machine (equipped with a GTX 970)!
• Water looks more realistic and different water bodies blend better with each other;
• There’s no longer any framerate loss when having water in sight!

Server Issues Fix

As many of you likely know, our latest stress test generated way more interest than expected and crashed the servers real good. We’ve got good news in this regard: a new open test is coming soon, and it should work way better!

We’re so optimistic because…

• The SpatialOS engineers quickly figured out the wrong setting we were using in our server configuration that was the main culprit of the game server issues we’ve suffered;
• We’ve overhauled our web APIs to sustain high loads;
• We’ve implemented a login server to properly queue up logging players instead of featuring the previous “the one who spams the login button the most gets in first”.

Stay tuned for the announcement then – the open test will also feature part of the new content listed above!

See you soon in game!

DISCUSS