News

Hi, fellow gamer and MMO enthusiast!

We’ve been silent during the month of August, but we are bringing great news today: we’ll soon be back on Steam Early Access, and with plenty of new content!

Our aim is to have a bug-free build with a solid end-game and long-term character progression, suitable to be used for a relaunch without planned future wipes.

Most systems are already completed or close to completion, so worry not – we are expecting the relaunch to take place in 3-5 weeks (exact date to be announced).

Let’s dive into all the chances then, shall we?

Alchemical Potions

The last piece of alchemy – potions – are coming!

Potions can only be drunk while resting (more on resting later) and provide long-lasting bonuses ranging from attribute and modifier boosts to more unique effects.

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The amount of potions you can drink is limited, since each active one increases toxicity, a new character bar. High levels of toxicity lead to a strong malus to health regeneration (based on current health) that won’t kill you but pretty much make you unable to engage in combat.

A couple upcoming talents can reduce toxicity generation, but only up to a point. Overall, you’re not meant to have more than 2-4 potions active at the same time, depending on their power (stronger ones are more toxic).

Simple Rest

You can now sit and rest anywhere, even without being close to a source of fire, just by pressing a new dedicated hotkey.

Resting this way gives a large boost to your health and mana regeneration and allows you to drink potions, but can’t be started in combat and is instantly interrupted when taking damage.

Resting in front of a campfire also allows you to memorize ability and talent presets, while resting in a home or tavern also allows you to cleanse the max health debuff generated by being knocked out. These mechanics are unchanged.

Bye Charisma, Welcome Wisdom

Charisma, that damn attribute almost no one cared about, is officially gone, replaced by Wisdom (WIS), which increases Max Mana, Willpower, and the effectives of the spells of the following schools:

• Leadership
• Illusionism
• Abjuration
• Restoration
• Necromancy
• Part of Witchcraft

While the purpose of CHA was vague, WIS is definitely a support-oriented attribute.

Please note that no attribute now influences Luck, which we are considering removing from the game.

Talent Tree Completion

It’s been incomplete for a long time, and many of you hated that. With the switch from CHA to WIS, it’s time for us to get it done!

Here’s a table visualization of the talent tree:

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As you can see, several talents have been added and many others moved around. A move that’s sure to shake the meta!

Legends Rework

The rework of legends is part our plan to add a ton of new mid to end-game PvE challenges to Fractured Online.

The current legends are only a handful, and they are all summoned the same way. We are adding plenty more, with different mechanics and power levels. They give gold, reagents and more as loot, but the real highlight are divine rewards (more on this later)!

Here’s a recap of the new types of legends (names are not final) and how many different ones we’ll have of each:

• Resident Legends (11). Spawn in fixed locations on the map. Once killed, they respawn after X minutes, like a normal monster. They give the lowest loot relative to their power level. Early-Mid game.
• Wandering Legends (11). Spawn as events in random locations within certain areas of the world. They give slightly better loot compared to resident legends (given the same power level). Early-Mid game.
• Summonable Legends (8). Can be summoned bringing reagents to their specific Altar in the world – same mechanic as the current legends. They give considerably more loot than the first two categories. Mid-End game.
• Ultimate Legends (6×2). Summoning requires activating Altars that generate waves of monsters that become stronger over time. You must kill these monsters quickly enough to progress and reach the point where the legends are spawned, which requires a substantinal group of players engaged in the activity. End-game.

Enchanting

Enchanting is back! An enchanted item gains the text “+1/2/3/4” after its name (e.g. “Longbow +2”) and increases its power according to the enchantment tier reached.

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Each tier of enchantment raises the base damage of a weapon by 5% and the Physical Armor and Magical Armor of a piece of armor by 15%. This means that the base damage of a “Longbow +2” will be 6.6 x PER instead of 6.0 x PER (+10%), and the Physical Armor of a “Knight Armor +4” will be 1920 instead of 1200 (+60%).

Back when the system was first implemented, enchanting a piece of equipment used to cost gold (a pure gold sink, not transferred to the city). The gold cost is staying, although much lower, while the main requirement to enchant is now the Enchanting Dust. The amount of dust required to enchant an item depends on the type and tier of the item itself, and grows twice as large with each subsequent level (e.g. 1/2/4/8).

Divine Rewards

Monsters no longer drop crafting recipes or orbs of proficiency directly. Instead, they now have a chance to drop divine rewards.

There are 5 different types of devine rewards (Valiant, Heroic, Fabled, Epic, Legendary), given by creatures of different CR (Challenge Rating). They all can be activated by right-clicking on them and will transform into either X gold, X enchanting dusts, a random recipe or a random orb (only 1 of the 4!). They can be traded like regular items.

Please note that divine rewards are not found in the corpses of fallen creaturse. Instead, they are sent directly to the player(s) with loot rights. For instance, if a monster has a 20% drop chance and 2 players have loot rights over it, each player has a 10% chance to obtain a reward.

Rebalacing

We’ve done plenty of iterations here but we’re not done yet: the values of armor, weapons and most spells have been changed!

Overall, battles between end-game characters (i.e. those with leveled-up ability schools and advanced armor / weapons) should now last longer, the use of Tier 3 abilities is more expensive, and the damage output of abilities that also inflict CC is lower. This should open the meta to a lot of spells that were previously overlooked.

We are aware this likely won’t be the final balancing update, but we hope all future ones will be just minor corrections.

NPC City & Tutorial Visuals

Last but not least in this plan, we are making the tutorial island and the 2 NPC cities in each continent much more interesting visually with the introduction of new decorative elements (including NPCs) and a more sophisticated layout for the cities themselves.

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This one may seem irrelevant to you if you’ve already played and enjoyed Fractured Online, but don’t forget those places are the first ones a new players sees, and where he/she is likely to spend the first hour of gameplay. A strong visual impact goes a long way for new player retention!

This was all for today. Yes, there’s a lot of new content here!

Are you excited by our return on Early Access? Is there anything else you’d like us to prioritize development-wise? Let your voice be heard!

DISCUSS