Feudals, this patch marks the transition of “Seasonal Arden” to Age 3! Let’s revise which modifiers will become active in the “seasonal” world:
- Starting from Age 3, players will receive a seasonal modifier called Blacksmith’s bonus, which will speed up all blacksmith actions.
- Starting from Age 3, players will receive a mining-focused seasonal bonus called Miner’s Bonus, which boosts ore logistics and encourages active mining during mid-to-late season. It also reduces carried weight of all mined ore types by 25%.
Along with the “Age” change, the patch includes some completely new features. Many in the community mentioned that they wish the game would give more reasons to venture beyond the walls of guild strongholds, make the world feel more responsive and facilitate engagement between players through competition over points-of-interest (POI). With today’s expansion, we strive to make the first step in answering that call.
Treasure chests
This update introduced a new feature to the Seasonal Arden - Treasure chests! The chests are designed to be an important source of valuable resources, thus becoming a new POI on the map.
There will be several different kind of chests:
- Small treasure Chest
- Medium Treasure Chest
- Large Treasure Chest
- Epic Treasure Chest
To claim the treasure, players must venture into the big knoll camps on s82 or s52.
Come prepared! The chests are protected by a new kind of knools - the “brutes”. Those are the toughest of warriors charged with protection of the natives’ valuables. They won’t venture too far away from their post.
A player won’t be able to claim rewards until all defenders of a chest are defeated. Upon using the ability “Open chest”, the game will add a reward to your character’s inventory. Mind the weight, or you risk being overburdened! After the reward is collected, a player won’t be able to interact with the treasure chest for a while. The cooldown is player-specific, not chest-specific, meaning a player can interact with a chest right after another player, but only once over a set period of time:
- Small Treasure Chest - once every 3 hours
- Medium Treasure Chest - once every 6 hours
- Large Treasure Chest - once every 12 hours
- Epic Treasure Chest - once every 24 hours
We are excited to finally deliver this feature into the game! Apart from serving as a new POI, it provides a strong foundation for further mechanics that can be built around the chests - some of them you will see below. We will closely monitor how the feature blends into the LiF gameplay, and we will try to be prompt to address any shortcomings. Treasure chests will first come to Seasonal Arden” and we plan to introduce them to regular Arden in our future updates.
Outpost fuel system
Guild outposts have proven to be reliable production facilities for otherwise finite map resources. Perhaps, too reliable…Such structures strip players of incentives to venture beyond guild claim and risk foraging for much-needed wood or steel. We intend to challenge the status-quo by introducing a resource unique to Treasure chest and necessary to make the outposts run effectively - Work Rations!
Outposts now require “Food Points” to produce resources.
During each maintenance cycle (in-game day change), the game will check whether an outpost has enough “Food points” to generate associated resources. The “Food points’” consumption depends on the level of an outpost and the number of slaves assigned to it. The fuel is represented by:
- Basic Work Ration (10 Food points)
- Medium Work Ration (20 Food points)
- Reinforced Work Ration (30 Food points)
On Seasonal Arden Work Rations can be obtained as a reward from the Treasure chests. Guilds in the orange zone of non-seasonal Arden can obtain Work Rations from the roaming knools and knools in the camp.
Mind you that the outposts have the max.number of "Food points" they can keep at a time:
- T1 - 100 Food points max
- T2 - 200 Food points max
- T3 - 300 Food points max
Base Consumption per Level:
- T1 - 1 Food point per cycle
- T2 - 2 Food points per cycle
- T3 - 3 Food points per cycle
Food consumption is multiplied by the number of slaves currently assigned to an outpost. This means that a T3 outpost with 5 slaves will need 3x5=15 "Food points" per cycle to operate.
The new mechanic applies to the following outposts:
- Mine Shaft
- Herbalist's Hut
- Lumber Mill
- Quarry
- Forager's Hut
- Mill
- Knackery
- Geognosy Pit
- Slave Camp
- Military outpost
If an outpost does not have enough “Food points”, it won’t generate any resources. In the case of the Military outpost, no NPC archers will spawn on the tower to help during an attack.
Outposts’ UI was reworked to incorporate the new “Food points” mechanic: an outpost menu will show the current “Food points” value, while the new “Add food” button will open a corresponding menu.
The idea of “Food points” addresses several aspects of the game we wish to further develop. First of all, it further raises the importance of Treasure chests as an important POI, thus incentivising players to go outside the guild claims. Moreover, the new outpost fuel system is aimed to further enhance the strategic level of the game. We want players to actively make choices depending on the situation in the game and shifting priorities. “Which resource do we need more of right now? Which resources will we need to attack/protect this position?” Outposts management becomes an integral part of this decision-making process.
New crafting resources
Treasure chests come with new crafting resources, which will now be required to create profession-specific outfits. All the resources below are exclusive to the Treasure chests:
- For Blacksmith's outfit - Blacksmith's Precision Tools
- For Carpenter's outfit - Carpenter's Precision Measuring Set
- For Herbalist's Outfit - Herbalist's Distillation Set
- For Engineer's outfit - Engineer's Precision Blueprint Tools
- For Cook's outfit - Cook's Professional Kitchenware
- For Stonecutter's outfit - Stonecutter's Precision Chiseling Set
- For Breeder's outfit - Breeder's Animal Husbandry Kit
Skill level requirement to equip an outfit is reduced from 60 to 30 for all outfits. All outfits have been moved to the Household skill.
Crafting
- New: the team has introduced a new dynamic crafting system interface. Previously when a player attempted to craft an item, the game presented 5 resource slots regardless of the recipe’s complexity and the number of required resources. Now the interface will present the number of slots corresponding to the number of different components.
- Fixed: we have corrected the Oil press recipe so that it reflects the appropriate input of each crafting element to the final quality result.
- Fixed: Oil press now has the “Mass produce” option for Linen oil.
Farming
New: introducing new building - Large barn! The structure becomes available at Masonry 90. It has the following specs:
- Animal cap: 60
- Feeding box cap: 800
- Breeding pens: 4
Combat
- New: in Age 1 we noticed that certain player groups adopted a new practice of attacking enemy fields to dwindle their resources. As such, the practice was deemed acceptable. However, the players did so by using an exploit that allowed “Lowering ground” on fields by performing a certain sequence of actions.
Starting this patch, we adjusted permissions in a way that allows players to “Lower ground” level on crop fields during JH/HJH on enemy claims on Seasonal Arden. It will only be possible on crops that are in stage 1 (just planted) and stage 2 (medium grown) of their growth cycle. - Changed: in our previous patches, “Destroy” ability was put in dependence on whether there was an enemy MOP on an adjacent fief. We further specify this mechanic by tweaking the rule:
“Destroy” ability allowed out of Judgment Hour (JH) with enemy MOP on adjacent fiefs. - Changed: hitbox for “Bec De Corbin” has been corrected.
Technical
- Fixed: there was a situation when a character could keep accumulating their luck stat when travelling between Arden and Seasonal Arden thanks to the bonus items (ex.jewelry). This problem has now been fixed.
- Fixed: the game will now keep UI/video settings between sessions.
- Fixed: Power hour(combat) now provides the correct exp.bonus.
UX/UI
Localization for certain items have been improved.
Performance
The team continues to implement additional tools to research the ways to improve performance. With this patch, we implement a profiler aimed at providing in-depth analysis of traffic and net-related parameters. This data will help us better locate the points of growth and potential optimization bottlenecks.