News

Hi, fellow gamer and MMO enthusiast!

The first major release of the Spring Alpha has arrived, featuring:

• The Legends: 9 world bosses to be summoned at 9 altars in the continent of Myr. The reward? Precious loot and the Lost Tales, the only way to get to 60 Talent Points!
• A deep rebalancing of PvP following the suggestions of our PvP guilds. Thank you guild masters (and not)!
• Some changes to jails and bounty hunting.
• Fixes to a ton of bugs and exploits.

Let’s get to the details!

Legends

Introduced in the Fall Alpha and now heavily reworked, the Legends are back!

• Zephyr, Spirit of the Forest (Wisp)
• Groove, Shaker of Worlds (Earth Elemental)
• Lord Eoronn (Treant)
• Murag-Gul (Mountain Troll)
• Malakar the Devourer (Ghoul)
• Axfitmithiss, Frozen Plague (Spider Lich)
• Black Chief Utabogg (Goblin Shaman)
• Crimson Claw (Bear)
• Queen Xeretrixx (Giant Spider)

These 9 world bosses are each associated to an altar, which can be seen as a pin on the world map. Summoning the legend always requires 3 different items, in varying quantity. Once the summoning has begun, several different creatures will start spawning around the altar, heralding the rebirth of the Legend… which will spawn 10 minutes later!

(please note: the rebirth of the Legend is no longer announced globally!)

Each Legend has a difficulty rating (Easy, Medium, Hard) that determines its loot, how many Lost Tales it awards players with loot rights and their type. Unlike regular loot, Lost Tales are sent directly to the inventory of the player(s)!

So, what are these Lost Tales all about?

Lost Tales

Lost Tales are consumable items that when read give Knowledge Points to a character. 11 different tales exist, each one falling into a specific category:

• The Dark Ascension (Tales of the Vale)
• The Fall of Hollowgrove (Tales of the Vale)
• The Sacrifice of Neia (Tales of the Vale)
• The Shattering (Rise and Fall of Heartwood)
• The Righteous Flame (Rise and Fall of Heartwood)
• The Coming of Tyros (Rise and Fall of Heartwood)
• The Day of the Fracture (Histories of Ancient Myr)
• The Long Hunt (Histories of Ancient Myr)
• The Sack of Olissa (Histories of Ancient Myr)
• The Arrival of Men (Histories of Ancient Myr)
• The Clash of the Tribes (Histories of Ancient Myr)

Each Lost Tale has a rarity level (Common, Uncommon, Rare) and 8 different pages that can be collected. Each page can only be read once, and the KP it assigns depend on its rarity (common: 750, uncommon: 1500, rare: 2500). The Book of Knowledge contains a recap of all the Lore Tables acquired by a character and their pages.

Only by completing all monster, resource and location discoveries and reading all the 88 pages of Lost Tales a player can get the knowledge needed to learn all abilities and unlock all 60 talent points!

Unlike the rest of the Knowledge System, tablets are not account-bound but are regular inventory items, so… enjoy the hunt, or enjoy the trade! 😉

PvP Rebalancing

The balancing of PvP in Fractured so far has been problematic, mostly due to the 3 major issues:

• Mages being very effective without equipment (see: the effectiveness of “naked gankers”) VS warriors being only competitive with good gear.
• The very short Time-To-Kill at low levels, which would conversely become too high at high levels due to healing.
• The ease of exiting combat by mounting on a horse.

The following changes should be taking care of the situation, making competitive mages as reliant on equipment as warriors (and overall stronger than they used to be once properly equipped).

• Spell Damage from enchantment increased from [5%,10%,20%] to [8%,16%,32%] at tiers [1,2,3].
• Spell Damage from the Devastating talent increased from 4% to 8% per point.
• Cap on Spell Damage increased from 50% to 150% (like Weapon Damage).
• Healing from bandages decreased from CON*20 to CON*15.
• Base Human health increased from 500 to 1000.
• The damage of spells of the schools of Fighting (Warfare, Assassination, Hunting) no longer stacks with the Spell Damage modifier.
• Mage Staffs are now crafted directly with different types of wood, each one with unique properties and a variable number of enchantment slots, just like any other weapon.
• Primitive weapons now have 2 free enchantment slots by default.
• Mounting now takes 3 seconds instead of 2 and is interrupted when taking damage.

Ability Changes

The changes below are mostly a direct consequence of the increase in the power of the Spell Damage modifier and the Devastating talent, with a few exceptions.

Please note that not all spells have been changed equally – the most effective ones had their damage halved, while several historically underused others have just been nerfed slightly (so they’re now more powerful with good equipment).

• Acid Arrows: bonus Acid damage reduced from INT*4 to INT*2 (-50%).
• Acid Breath: Acid damage per second reduced from INT*10 to INT*8 (-20%).
• Acid Shell: Acid AOE damage reduced from INT*20 to INT*12 (-40%).
• Acid Sphere: Acid AOE damage reduced from INT*10 to INT*6 (-40%).
• Assassinate: Spell Damage Increase no longer influences damage.
• Bone Barrage: Piercing damage reduced from INT*10 to INT*6 (-40%).
• Cursed Grounds: Pure damage per second reduces from INT*2 to INT (-50%). It’s now influenced correctly by the Spell Damage modifier.
• Deep Freeze: Ice damage per second reduced from INT*8 to INT*6 (-25%).
• Earthquake: Crush damage at origin reduced from INT*20 to INT*12 (-40%). Damage at max range is still 25% of that at origin.
• Fireball: Fire AOE damage reduced from INT*30 to INT*15 (-50%).
• Firebolt: Fire damage reduced from INT*10 to INT*8 (-20%). It’s now influenced correctly by the Spell Damage modifier and can be Critical.
• Frost Blast: Ice damage reduced from INT*20 to INT*15 (-25%). It’s now influenced correctly by the Spell Damage modifier and can be Critical.
• Ice Spikes. Bigger rework here. Each spike no longer deals 50 Piercing damage but only Cold damage, which is now INT*6 instead of INT*10 (-40%). Additionally, targets hit by multiple spikes within 1 second take half damage from each spike after the first one.
• Infectious Burst: base Poison damage reduced from INT*6 to INT*5 (-17%).
• Magic Missiles: the number of projectiles shot is now INT*0.3 instead of 1+INT*0.25. The damage of each projectile has been reduced from 140 to 80 (-43%), is now influenced correctly by the Spell Damage modifier and can be Critical. Cooldown has been increased from 6 to 10 seconds.
• Minor Healing: healing reduced from 280 to 220 (-21%).
• Poison: the INT thresholds for the tier of poison applied have been changed from [0,15,20,25] to [0,12,18,24] and the cooldown reduced from 10 to 5 seconds.
• Relocate & Battle Jump. The max height that can be jumped has been reduced from 5 to 2 meters.
• Shocking Lash: Shock damage changed from 50+INT*5 to INT*6. It can now be Critical. Mana cost has been reduced from 120 to 80.
• Skeletal Dragon Breath: Slash damage per second reduced from INT*16 to INT*12 (-25%).
• Static Discharge: Shock damage at max load reduced from INT*40 to INT*30 (-25%).
• Tectonic Outburst: Crush AOE damage reduced from 50 + INT*20 to INT*10 (-50%).
• Word of Power: Silence: duration of Silence reduced from 10 to 5 seconds.

Bounty Hunting

Following a heated discussion on the forums, we decided to tweak the jail and bounty hunting system, introducing a few reasonable changes that were mostly agreed on by PvE and PvP players:

• Only characters with +10,000 Karma can now sign up as bounty hunters. It’s fair that only expert and committed Good characters can become bounty hunters, and that switching back and forth from PK to BH should be absolutely impossible. All current bounty hunter titles belonging to characters below the threshold have been reset.
• Evil characters with 0 Karma are no longer sent to jail. Moreover, exiting jail now resets the Karma of the criminal to 0 and its alignment to Good. However…
• …gaining Karma through PvE for an Evil character is now twice as hard, and Karma loss for murder has been raised considerably.
• Only characters with a minimum of 50,000 Knowledge Points collected can now become Evil. All current Evil characters below 50,000 KP have been set to Good.
• Bail value changed from 2000-6000 to 500-5000 at 0-10000 Karma.
• Jail time changed from 24-48h to 12-48 at 0-10000 Karma.

Misc Balancing

A couple small yet very significant changes:

• Marketplaces are now available in the 2 starting areas.
• The numbers for Prestige and Residents required to rank up cities have been lowered to account for the Alpha population and the lack of buildings that raise prestige.
• Weapon durability loss has been decreased considerably.

Bug Fixes

…and here to the bug fixes!

• Various issues with Stealth have been fixed.
• Fixed a bug that would allow damaging players with the Young status.
• Fixed access rules for Smelteries in personal land parcels.
• The Advanced Smeltery is now correctly available for personal land parcels.
• Fixed a bug that would sometimes prevent players from being able to place palisades.
• Fixed a bug that would allow attacking players inside of their house in their land parcel.
• Banks in player cities are now correctly available to everyone.
• Stealing carts is now functional again.
• A monster dying no longer completes the casting of its current spell.
• The Starving status no longer prevents players from interacting with the world.
• Fixed a bug where a specific combination of city Quality bonuses would yield a 900% chance to craft Exceptional items.
• Fixed an issue with switching to a new target when holding down LMB against a creature.
• Fixed an issue that could make a monster die immediately after respawning in some circumstances.
• Fixed a bug that would allow building chests and tanning tubs on top of each other.

Well, this was a lot of work for 3 days… We shall pass… out.

Let us know what you think and… enjoy Fractured!

DISCUSS