Black Skylands News

As you may remember from our previous posts, we promised to release the ICE KRAKEN Update this month. As a matter of fact, we are ready to announce the date: December 21st!

Now that you know the day, let's talk about another new feature this big update will introduce: Aerial Events. These events are random, meaning that any event can trigger at any time while you are sailing across the sky.

Let's take a look at the Boarding event.

[h2]BOARDING[/h2]

You may encounter heavily armed enemy skyships at random points of the map. These skyships have powerful anti-aircraft weapons and well-trained crews. If you manage, upon boarding, to wipe out the crew, you gain access to treasure that shyship is carrying: mods, capsules or resources.

There you have it, captains! See you all next week!

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May you have fair winds!
Yours truly,



• • •

Join our community to give us feedback and chat with other captains:

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As you may already know, we will introduce you to new Active Abilities for your skyships in the upcoming ICE KRAKEN Update that's due in December. A new slot will be added that you will be able to place those abilities in. Just like the main character's abilities, they have cooldowns and can be bound to certain keys. As we have already said before, you will have to construct a Laboratory on the Fathership and use a new resource to craft skyship abilities.

Let's take a look at one (perhaps the most destructive) of them.

[h2]BEAM[/h2]

Upon activation, shoots a powerful energy beam.

• Heavily damages enemies and their vessels;
  
  
• Can destroy debris in your path ⬆;
  
• Can be leveled up to increase its damage.
  

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What do you think about this ability? Let us know in the comments, captains!

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May you have fair winds!
Yours truly,



• • •

Join our community to give us feedback and chat with other captains:

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In the upcoming ICE KRAKEN December Update, we will introduce new Abilities. You will be able to acquire them for Eva (active and passive) and your skyships (active only). The new abilities have cooldowns for you to manage and can be bound to certain keys. We are also planning to introduce a new resource which you are going to use to "craft" abilities in the Fathership Laboratory. Solving various puzzles across the world will let you obtain this valuable resource.

Let's take a look at two of Eva's new offensive powers.

[h2]1. TURRET[/h2]

Upon activation, Eva places a turret that shoots upon enemies who enter its radius.

• The turret has a life span and hit points. If its life span ends or health is depleted, it will explode, damaging nearby enemies;
  
• Enemies will target the turret when fired upon by it;
  
• Can be leveled up to increase its damage and HP.
  

[h2]2. LIGHTNING[/h2]

Shoots a lightning bolt at enemies.

• Deals moderate damage;
  
• Has a chance to stun an enemy for X seconds;
  
• Stun chance can be decreased by enemy armor;
  
• Can be leveled up to increase its damage and critical hit chance.
  

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What do you think about these abilities? Feel free to let us know in the comments, captains!

[hr][/hr]
May you have fair winds!
Yours truly,



• • •

Join our community to give us feedback and chat with other captains:

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THE STEAM AWARDS have started and we would like to ask you to nominate Black Skylands. We're suggesting the Outstanding Visual Style category. Please use the Awards widget above to vote for us.



[h3]Also, the game is 20% off for the duration of the Steam Autumn Sale:[/h3]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1143810/Black_Skylands/

Today we are sharing our first details about our next big content update scheduled for release in the second half of December. We have named it "The Ice Kraken"!

But before that, we want to thank you for all the fantastic feedback you provide. We carefully read everything you share with us on our social media, Discord, and the Steam forums. In addition to that, we have had a lot of food for thought after analyzing the latest survey results. Based on all this info, we have decided to tweak our plans slightly.

You asked us to enrich some aspects of the game, so we decided to do just that: the next update will focus on improving core gameplay with aerial encounters and artifact-based combat abilities.



We've developed a brand new random aerial encounters system, which will trigger different event scenarios while you traverse the skies on your mighty skyship in search of adventure. In the next update, we will include several of them, including long-requested escort missions and the opportunity of boarding enemy transports. So please take what you can and give ‘em hell! But beware of the beast below…



This new system will allow us to gradually increase the number of possible events while also working on other content. Feel free to share your ideas in our Discord server: we take a lot of inspiration from them.

'The Ice Kraken' update will bring artifacts to the game as well! Note that these are no simple trinkets. Instead, each will grant you access to passive perks or active skills upon installion in equipment slots. Need some extra firepower? Set up a turret. Tired of being followed? Surprise pursuers with a mine while passively regaining health. And this is not limited to just Eve. Ships will also have their own abilities now.

A little sneak-peek for you!



Moreover, we will add many Quality of Life improvements, New Year content, and squish some nasty bugs with fixes. We plan to share more details on all of the above in the upcoming weeks, giving each significant update its own post to shine.

With the release of the update, we will also post a new survey.Based on the results, we will work on updating our roadmap early next year. So please, take your time to fill it in. It helps us to shape Black Skylands together with you.

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May you have fair winds!
Yours truly,



• • •

Join our community to give us feedback and chat with other captains:

Discord Reddit Twitter Facebook Instagram