Project: Gorgon News

Today's update is a big one. There's a new high-level zone, several new skills to find, and a metric tonne of UI fixes and improvements. Please keep in mind that with as many changes as are in this update, we are really relying on you for feedback to help us identify problems and bugs. Thank you!


Povus is a new high-level outdoor area for players with combat skills from 75 to 85. (We haven't raised the level cap past 80 yet, but you can reach 85 with synergy bonuses.) The town in this area has an event every night where they need your help! Monsters invade from 8pm to 7am game time (NOT real time!). But a series of quests can help put things right.

As you complete these town quests you'll help "level up" the town, unlocking more NPCs and amenities as you go. Visit the bulletin board in town for more information. This is an experimental design that we'd like your feedback on!

There are other somewhat-experimental game mechanics in Povus which we invite you to discover. There are also a couple of mysteries to solve. (And there's a few unintentional red herrings: places on the landscape where we intend to add content, but haven't yet. But we're confident you'll figure everything out quickly enough!)

There are also some new non-combat skills to discover in Povus, but since they're integrated into the area's quests, we'll leave them for you to find.

Of course, with this added complexity comes the added chance for bugs. There's sure to be some to find, so please report them and we'll get them fixed.

Povus is conceptually west of Rahu and north of Gazluk, and can be reached from those two areas. The temporary portals that previously connected Gazluk to Rahu now connect these areas to Povus. (This makes the portal location in Rahu a little weird, since it's on the southern edge of the map, instead of the western edge -- we'll address this when we do the Rahu art revamp in the future.)


One new skill you can learn in Povus is Animal Husbandry. This skill lets you breed the pets in your stables to create new baby pets. Once you have the skill, speak with a qualified stablemaster to begin breeding. You'll receive an in-game document giving you more information on how it works.

Note that there's a limit on the number of pets you can breed at once, and this limit is per-account, not per-player, similar to limit on player workorders. (The limit increases as you raise
Animal Husbandry, but the total across all your characters can't exceed this character's current limit.)

One of the fun things about breeding pets is selling or giving away the babies to interested parties. For this reason, we've added a way to "store" pets, turning them into items which can be given to other players. These players can then use the item to add that pet to their stable.

But there are caveats! First, only pets that were born in your stables can be sold. Pets that you capture in the wild can never be sold to others. (This means, for instance, that you can't capture and resell Hissy.) Second, you'll need to obtain a Pet Cage item -- and this will require a gadgeteer player who knows the recipe. And lastly, pet cages can't contain a pet forever! Each type of pet cage has a maximum lifespan. If the pet isn't taken out of the cage (and put into somebody's stable) before that time runs out, the pet escapes and is lost forever. (In other words, the cage item self-destructs.)


Also in this update we've started our rollout of pet genetics. Right now, only bees and wasps have a genome, but we'll be adding genomes to the other animal families (bears, cats, rats) in the future.

We simulate the pets' genome using simple Mendelian genetics. (If you don't remember that from high school, you might want to google it!) Their simulated genome has hundreds of genes that control their appearance as well as seven new pet traits: Ferocity, Toughness, Ruggedness, Friendliness, Enthusiasm, Intelligence, and Virility. They range from 1 (abysmal) to 100 (perfect) and affect things like your pets' health, damage, and so on.

The seven pet traits can be viewed on each pet in your stable, provided you have moderate skill in Animal Handling. Rather than explain all these traits here, we'll direct you to an in-game document. You'll receive this document when you learn Animal Handling. Players that already know Animal Handling can get this document by talking to Gisli in Serbule. (Ask him for tips on animal handling, then ask him to explain combat stats.) Once you have it, you can find the document again in the Books and Lore tab.

Also note that we no longer model the Happiness of your pet -- we just assume the pet is pretty happy all the time. The stuff Happiness used to affect (such as XP-earning rate) is now controlled by the aforementioned seven genetic traits.

If you had a pet bee or wasp in your stable -- surprise! It probably looks different now. In the past, each type of bee or wasp had a fixed appearance, but now that's determined by their genes. Your pet's stats are also probably different, too. But to avoid too much heartbreak, we've used a mulligan system for existing pets: if any of their genetic traits came out below 30, or if more than 3 traits came out below 40, we re-rolled the genes a few times to try to get better stats. This means pre-existing pets are probably better than average, and at the very least, they're definitely "playable" in quality -- they have no devastatingly low trait scores.

We also use this mulligan system for fairy starter pets, to ensure that they have nice stats. But we have another concern here: since fairies get free pets, and you can generate as many fairy characters as you like, it would be too tempting to re-roll hundreds of fairy characters to get good pets for breeding. To alleviate this problem, all starter fairy pets are marked as "Dormant". The in-game fiction is that these fae creatures are so ancient that they've entirely forgotten about sexuality.

We may add a way to make dormant pets breeding-ready in the future, if there's demand for that feature. However, it will require a high-level item and/or quest to complete, and it will only work after your pet is at least a real-world year old. That means fairy characters created today would need to wait a year before they could breed their starter pets. (But we've back-dated pre-existing starter pets to be the age of your fairy character.)

Sages say that there's a way to peer into the genetic code of a creature, to "read" it, and to partially understand what each gene does. And the sages are right! But we'll leave it to you to discover this well-kept secret.

[h2]Free Bees[/h2]
Bees/wasps are the first pet with genetics, but we realize that not every Animal Handler uses them. To help us test Husbandry, you can get a free male and female insect added to your stable. Here's how it works: first, learn Animal Husbandry. Second, have at least two slots free in your stable (one for each free pet). Then view your Redemptions in-game (there's a button on the Persona window.) You'll see choices for two males and two females. You can pick one of each, and they'll be added to your stable. These free bees have been given "mulligans" on their genetics to ensure their stats are pretty decent.

Note that this redemption is per account, not per character. The free bees will be available until the end of this year, so you have a few months to unlock Husbandry and claim them.


In this update we've avoided making changes to the Animal Handling skill, or to individual pets' abilities and base stats. Our focus has been on genetics specifically. It's much easier to understand how it works (and make sure it's working right) if we don't change too many things at once. We DO plan to make changes to Animal Handling in the future: it needs a treasure revamp and probably a new ability. But for now we've made only minimal changes:

• Fixed a data problem that gave AH pets two opportunities to perform a critical-hit. This caused high-level pets to crit more often than we desired.
  
• AH pets no longer gain automatic crit-damage boosts as they level up.
  
• One treasure effect directly changed the pet's Enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is now controlled by genetics and can't be meaningfully enchanted, so we've replaced it with an effect that is vaguely similar to the old one. We'll revisit this effect when we make deeper revisions to AH.
  
• "Animal Handling pets have +80 Enthusiasm (which boosts XP earned and critical-hit chance)" => "Animal Handling pets deal +20% damage when they critically hit"
  
• Pet bears whose Special Trick dealt crushing damage actually dealt slashing damage. This has been fixed.
  

We've revised Psychology a bit in this update:

• "Psychoanalyze restores 143 Health to you after a 15 second delay" => after an 8 second delay
  
• "Psychoanalyze restores 224 Armor to you" => 212 armor
  
• "Psychoanalyze causes the target to take +20 damage from Psychic attacks for 60 seconds" => +78 damage for 15 seconds
  
• Soothe ability now deals a small amount of direct Health damage.
  
• Soothe ability is now eligible for phrenology critical hits.
  
• "Soothe, But I Love You, and Cause Terror Damage +86" => damage +205
  
• "Inspire Confidence / Positive Attitude Healing +83" => +98
  
• The effect "Inspire Confidence increases all targets' Accuracy +20 for 10 seconds" now stacks with itself.
  
• "Inspire Confidence restores +205 Health after a 25 second delay" => restores +150 Armor to all targets
  
• "Soothe Damage +128" => Soothe and Psychoanalyze damage +167 and range +5 meters
  
• "Ridicule deals +57 health damage and taunts +525" => Ridicule taunts +800 and target's next attack has a 25% chance to automatically miss
  
• "Mock deals +125% damage and taunts +500, but reuse timer is +2 seconds" => Mock deals +125% damage, taunts +500, and hits all targets within 20 meters, but reuse timer is +1.5 seconds
  
• "Strike a Nerve deals +168 armor damage" => 236 armor damage
  
• Some Psychology treasure effects did not correctly scale past level 80; this has been fixed.
  

There are some werewolf skill/treasure changes in this update:

• "Future Pack Attacks to the same target deal +100 damage" => +610 damage
  
• "For 8 seconds after using See Red, all other Lycanthropy attacks deal 148 Trauma damage over 8 seconds" => Effect now lasts for 10 seconds after using See Red.
  
• "Sanguine Fangs deals +280 trauma damage over 8 seconds" => +360 trauma damage
  
• New treasure effect: Chest/Feet: "Pack Attack deals +100 damage and causes target to be 12% more vulnerable to Trauma damage for 10 seconds"
  
• "Sanguine Fangs suddenly deals 350 Trauma damage after an 8-second delay" => 450 trauma damage
  
• "Sanguine Fangs causes the target to take +15% damage from Slashing attacks for 15 seconds" => +18% damage
  
• New treasure effect: Legs: "For 10 seconds after using Sanguine Fangs, all other Lycanthropy attacks deal 180 Trauma damage over 8 seconds"
  
• "Werewolf Claw, Double Claw, and Pouncing Rake Damage +62" => +81
  
• Replaced treasure effect: Legs: "Double Claw Power Cost -21" => "Double Claw deals +40 damage and reuse timer is -2 seconds"
  
• "Pouncing Rake deals +220 Armor damage" => 304 armor damage
  
• Some werewolf treasure effects did not scale past level 80; this has been fixed.
  

• Crafted Werewolf armor has been rebalanced to have less Armor and more offensive buffs. It also has a potent new sidebar ability that can be used when wearing a full set. (Equip a chest-piece to learn the ability.)
  
• The recipes to craft Werewolf Armor are no longer Blacksmithing recipes. They're Armorsmithing recipes now. If you previously had any of these recipes, you still have them, but you'll need to earn the appropriate level of Armorsmithing skill before you can actually use the recipe again.
  
• Solgribue in the Fae Realm now trains the recipes for level 80 wooden cowshoes and deershoes.
  
• Added level 80 versions of various other animal armor (but the recipes must be found).
  
• Revised Werewolf Armor recipes: high-level versions now require slightly fancier ingredients.
  
• To make Werewolf Armor work like the other prestige metal armor sets, you now need to forge it in a spot consecrated to Norala. There is a new forge for this purpose in the Kur wolf cave.
  
• Recipes and stats for crafted Snail Armor, Cow Barding, and Cow Champrons have changed.
  

We're still evaluating the efficacy of the defensive combat skill changes made earlier in the year. We aren't ready to evaluate their use in solo combat (because solo monsters may still become more powerful in the future) but they definitely seem overpowered in terms of Elite monsters. One culprit is that we gave out too much percentage-based Elite invulnerability, so we've nerfed/replaced some of those effects. We'll continue to evaluate these skills as we move forward.

[h2]Staff[/h2]

• "Blocking Stance costs -20 Power and mitigates +10% of physical damage from Elite attackers for 30 seconds" => "Blocking Stance increases your Max Health +63 for 30 seconds (and heals you for 63)"
  

[h2]Shield[/h2]

• Bulwark Mode 3 previously granted +27% direct invulnerability => now +17%
  

[h2]Cow[/h2]

• "Max Power +37 and Vulnerability to Elite Attacks -10% when Cow skill active" => now -5% vulnerability
  

• Players gain a new bonus level to Shamanic Infusion when reaching Psychology 70 and Skinning 70.
  
• Fixed bug that prevented players from gaining the intended synergy levels to Sushi Preparation when reaching Fishing 55 and Knife Fighting 60.
  
• Gain a new synergy level of Sushi Preparation upon reaching Fish Anatomy 31.
  
• Gain new Mining synergy levels by reaching Hammer 24 and Hammer 46.
  
• Gain new Surveying synergy levels by reaching Calligraph 35, Calligraphy 55, and Nonfiction Writing 25.
  
• Gain a new Calligraphy synergy level by reaching Nonfiction Writing 15.
  
• Gain new synergy levels in Gardening when reaching these levels: Flower Arrangement 57, Nature Appreciation 55, Plant Anatomy 20, Carpentry 45.
  

• Fixed bugged Knife treasure effect: "When wielding two knives, all Knife Fighting attacks have a 33% chance to restore 41 Power". This did not work at all.
  
• "Signature Debuffs deal +29% damage and also deal 156 Armor damage" => 220 armor damage
  
• "Many Cuts deals +172 armor damage" => 236 armor damage
  
• "Wind Strike and Heart Piercer deal 164 armor damage" => 224 armor damage
  
• "Unarmed attacks deal +42 Armor damage" => 52 armor damage
  
• "Tundra Spikes deals 290 armor damage and taunts +750" => 380 armor damage
  
• "Marking Cut deals +80 armor damage and does not cause the target to shout for help" => 146 armor damage
  
• "Blast of Fury deals 200 Armor damage and restores 43 Armor to you" => 276 armor damage
  
• "Spit Acid deals +240 armor damage" => 360 armor damage
  

We consolidated our camera-FX stacks, so now all areas use the same camera system. And this camera-stack has new color tuning and other features which hopefully make the game look better.

We are also using a new sky system in most zones. Each area has its own weather setup ranging from clear skies to heavy clouds to fog (although never rain or snow).

Again, please report any bugs or weirdnesses you see with these new systems!


We've added our first gift specifically for VIP members: the recipe "Dye Making: Dye My Rabbity Fur Blue". You don't need to actually log in and claim this reward immediately -- as long as your account has VIP at some point (from now until the end of October), the redemption will be available any time. This is a cosmetic recipe only: you must be a rabbit already to dye your fur blue. It requires blue dye.

This special appearance will become available to non-VIPs in the future (via a learnable recipe), after a period of VIP exclusivity.

• We no longer randomly remove your "Who's Online" status.
  
• The display of active buffs on other players would often disappear when changing zones. This is now fixed.
  
• In the Friends panel, long quotes will no longer overlap other fields.
  
• The volume of quest sounds can now be controlled separately from other types of sounds.
  
• Items in locked inventory folders will no longer be affected by the 'Stow' commands.
  
• We now handle character turning via mouse during large framerate drops better.
  
• Using mouse-look, you can now look vertically when both left- and right-mouse buttons are clicked simultaneously.
  
• There is now a search bar on the recipe panel. You can search by name ("baked potato"), by type ("meal", "snack", "instant-snack"), by level ("L 10" for level 10 items), or by some combination of those.
  
• You can now specify how many times you'd like to craft a recipe.
  
• Headers in the quest list now indicate when one of that area's quests is being tracked, to more easily locate tracked quests.
  
• We've added a search bar to the list of skills.
  
• Non-integer effects now display their real value, so "+0.5" instead of "+0".
  

• The number of unread notes you have waiting for you in your player shop is now included in the text of the "Read Notes From Customers" button.
  
• You can now reserve items to be bought only by members of your guild. This requires a minimum guild level of 5.
  
• You can now mark items in your shop "Accepting Offers", which prevents the item from being purchased and instead allows shoppers to "Make Offer" and leave a shop note with the owner, indicating the price they are willing to pay.
  

• Many animations have been fixed or improved.
  
• Many ability particle effects have been fixed or improved.
  
• There is a new Graphics setting called "Realistic Foot Placement" which improves animation quality in exchange for a small performance penalty.
  
• When you take damage to Health, the screen now only flashes red if you have below 25% health remaining.
  
• When you take damage to Armor, the screen now only flashes yellow if you have below 25% armor remaining.
  
• Fixed a bug where an ability's particle was not played on the target if they didn't take direct damage from the attack.
  
• Sometimes a creature with a 'crown' quest would display their own texture over their head instead of a crown. This has been fixed.
  
• Deer now consistently fall over when killed.
  

• You can now raise the Cheesemaking level cap to 80; see Bendith in the Fae Realm.
  
• You can now raise the Blacksmithing level cap raised to 80; see Solgribue in Fae Realm.
  
• The level cap of several other skills can be raised by NPCs in Povus.
  
• Bard instrument recipes that require a Perfect Conch (meaning "Great Musical Conch", "Amazing Musical Conch", and "Astounding Musical Conch") are now guaranteed to have a minimum rarity of Exceptional, and have improved chances for higher rarity. (This only applies to newly-crafted items.)
  
• The level 45 item "Great Arachnid Harness" has been nerfed from +8 inventory slots to +6. There are new higher-level arachnid harnesses with increased buffs up to +10 inventory slots. (The toolcrafting recipes drop as rare scrolls.)
  
• The recipe ID for the obsolete recipe "Legacy Bat Belt" has been reused. If you had this old alpha recipe, congratulations: you now know how to craft the "Amazing Arachnid Harness" (but you can only use the recipe when you have the necessary Toolcrafting level).
  
• Fixed some recipes that were supposed to require a Forge but didn't, including: various utility knives, armor stakes, and tool hammers. (Note that metal throwing knives are intentionally omitted from the forge requirement.)
  Improved the error messages when you try to use a recipe but aren't in the right place. e.g. "You must be near a TanningRack" became "You must be near a tanning rack."
  
• "Gazluk Plate"-type armors are now dyeable (up to 2 colors). If you were wearing Gazluk Plate when you logged out, your character will show up incorrectly in the character-select screen the first time. This is normal, and will fix itself when you log in.
  
• Moving, jumping, and Escape all cancel recipes with a crafting time.
  
• You can now summon partially-used items from storage.
  
• Items that cannot have work orders can no longer be sold in player shops, and now have the tooltip: "This item cannot be sold to other players." If you have an item like that in your shop, you'll get a notification to remove it.
  
• An internal numbering problem requires us to change the ID for Firkins of Sour Cream. If you had any of these in your inventory or storage, they are now marked as "Firkin of Sour Cream (OBSOLETE)". Please use these ASAP as they will disappear in the next update.
  
• The recipe for gold dye has changed.
  
• "Snail Plate Armor" is now Organic armor, like other snail armor.
  

• Certain skills are now explicitly marked as "umbrella skills". The max level for these skills is 0, so the only way to earn levels is via synergy bonuses. The following skills are umbrella skills: Anatomy, Phrenology, Performance, Augmentation, and Genetics. Players who had inadvertently earned XP in these umbrella skills (through content bugs in alpha) have had their levels recalculated.
  
• Goats (regular goats, not scapegoats!) have a new AI profile and use knockback attacks.
  
• Revised all non-Elite healing monsters so that their heal amounts are more meaningful (typically about 15% of their max health, but it's not actually a percentage-heal, so the amount varies per monster). This change was done individually per monster, so some monsters may have been missed. If you notice a monster that heals for a negligible amount (like a monster with 1000 max health healing for 50) please report it as a bug!
  
• Increased the damage of scray monsters' acid attacks, and higher-tier scray acid needs higher-tier First Aid to dispel.
  
• You no longer earn Gourmand XP for eating additional raw cantaloupe or fairy nuts beyond the first consumption. (It previously earned 1 and 2 XP respectively.)
  
• The results of treasure maps, such as motherlodes, should now correctly spawn on top of the ground and not embedded into it.
  
• The debuff "Spore Coating" used by certain fungal enemies no longer keeps you in-combat. Using First Aid 2 or higher now removes one stack of the debuff.
  
• Jace Soral now succumbs to his nature when the moon is full.
  
• Item Dispensers and Item Rafflers are no longer subject to premature item-cleanup. They will last for 2 hours starting when they are placed in the world, or until they run out of items/tickets. High-end rafflers can have explicit durations up to 2 hours (instead of 90 minutes).
  
• Previously, wild deer had junk genetics for testing. They still have junk genetics for testing, but it's different junk now. They should be less Evasive overall.
  
• Changed "Tremor"'s boss curse: instead of permanently disabling Basic Attacks, it now gives the attacks a 15-second reset timer. As a side-effect, players with the old version of the curse will be automatically cured.
  
• A few monsters (that are supposed to be extremely evasive) are slightly more evadey.
  
• The world now goes gray when you are dead.
  
• The 'Stuck Report' is intended to get your character free of being stuck in something like a tree or cow. It is not to be used for free transportation. There is now a highly visible warning when you file a Stuck Report making that very clear for those players who have been using it for teleportation. Don't worry if you get stuck a few times; just don't use Stuck reports dozens of times a week!
  
• We've added the ability to use '/e' or '/em' to perform custom emotes (no animation, you supply the text). You can also use '%t' to include the name of your target. Emotes display in their own chat channel, so you can decide which chat tabs you want to include them.
  
• Guild quests now display in the guild audit log when they are started, canceled, or completed.
  
• Flying enemies will now stay at roughly the same elevation as their target, to prevent being unable to attack them with melee.
  

We've rolled out some quick-fixes for bugs that arrived with yesterday's major update. (A couple of these were fixed last night, consolidated here for convenience).

• Recipes with no ingredients (such as some teleportations) can be crafted again
  
• You could get multiple notifications for completing Povus night quests
  
• Fixed Grakelsput's quest "Cleanup Duty: Triceratops"
  
• Povus lamp logic no longer considers player pets to be "monsters"
  
• Augments can once again be sold in shops
  
• Swamp Gourd item tooltips now have a line indicating whether they've been eaten before
  
• Changed an additional Psychology treasure effect: "Inspire Confidence restores +151 Health after a 15-second delay" => restores 104 Health after an 8-second delay
  
• Fixed error in ability-tip text for Psychoanalyze's delayed-heal buff
  
• Fixed typo in names of "Hexameat Wraps" and "Superb Parchment"
  
• Corrected the start time in Povus instructions (it starts at 8pm, not 7pm)
  
• More orcs spawn in the Povus orc camp
  
• Correctly limit the reassembly of [redacted] to Povus
  
• Fixed Povus vegetation that had no collisions
  
• Arianna Fangblade no longer tries to sell you a stable slot when you ask for a hot betting tip
  
• Could not correctly train Armorsmithing from Tremmond in Povus
  
• The nightly Povus invasion system was bugged and did not correctly advance to harder quests
  

We'll be back soon with more fixes and improvements!

We've got a quick and dirty update for you today -- a smorgasbord of bug fixes and improvements that we've put together in the background while we continue to work hard not only on Animal Husbandry, but on a whole new high-level zone! But while those features are in active development, they aren't ready yet -- and we didn't want to wait any longer on fixing these annoying bugs. Here's the list:

Animations

• Improved locomotion animations of both flying and non-flying creatures.
  
• Female humanoids slouch less. (But more tweaks still to come, especially for rakshasa females.)
  
• Updated Sword ability animations.
  
• Updated Shield ability animations.
  
• Updated Bard ability animations.
  
• Tweaked Archery animations. In particular, all Archery animations should now aim toward their target.
  
• Bard abilities no longer have a delay before their damage or healing is applied.
  
• Fixed animation problems with Deer that caused certain attacks to take a very long time to trigger.
  
• Changing gear, then flying, no longer causes your character to use walking animations instead of flying ones.
  
• Limited how far your character will crane their head while looking at something.
  
• Disabled headlook while dead.
  
• Sword slash particles now face toward the attacker and not the attackee.
  
• While loading into a zone, you will no longer appear to other players as if you were falling.
  
• Ghosts now float again.
  
• /cry cries. Improved many other emote animations also. Note that some animations, such as /wave, have become full-body emotes for now, meaning that you cannot move while waving. We plan to make them upper-body-only emotes again in the future, so that you can e.g. walk while waving.
  
• Wings should now stop flapping when a fairy dies.
  
• More improvements to sitting and lying animation sequences.
  
• Hags in the character introduction screen are still creepy, but no longer 'sink into the ground' creepy.
  

UI Improvements

• Player Vendor UI Improvements:
  
  • Items can be moved up & down with buttons instead of right-clicking.
    
  • Items can be moved to the top & bottom of the list via right-clicking.
    
  • Saving an item will no longer revert unsaved changes of other items.
    
  • Text colors change to indicate whether item is or is not currently shown in shop.
• Loadouts can now be renamed.
  
• If an NPC likes a gift but you don't know that yet (because they only share that info at higher Favor levels), they will now show up in the "Item Info" -> "Gifting" window as a "person who hasn't told you they like it." For example: "This item is a good gift for 2 people you haven't met yet, plus 1 person who hasn't told you they like it."
  
• Current vs. required favor levels are now taken into account when showing gifting highlights. In other words, if your character couldn't "know" that an NPC likes an item, the item doesn't show with a purple border as a gift.
  
• Gifting an item to an NPC no longer causes the highlights of other items to disappear.
  
• Selecting group members via nameplate in the mini-group UI will no longer intermittently fail.
  
• If you are the last remaining player in a group, you will no longer receive an extraneous "You are now the leader" message right before being disbanded.
  
• GUI window resizing now properly responds to locking the GUI with a hotkey.
  
• Better resizing of Quest Rewards when the Quest Log is tiny.
  
• Replaced the inventory folder lock icon with an outline around the bag instead, in order to let the bag itself to be more visible.
  
• Buff durations in tooltips now update in real-time when you leave the mouse over the effect icon.
  
• Map pin labels now place above their respective pins instead of overlapping.
  
• NPC shops could show the wrong price for certain multi-buy items like Salt, Flour, and Sugar. This has been fixed.
  
• Tooltips should no longer occasionally get stuck to your cursor.
  
• Combat numbers and speech bubbles should no longer appear in the wrong place.
  
• If you're disconnected to the main menu with the cursor hidden -- for example, while holding right-click -- your cursor should now properly reappear.
  
• Tweaked the item-pickup floating animation to be quicker & no longer centered on the player. There are two new Special Settings to control the floating start point: PickupItemsStartX & PickupItemsStartY

Other Changes

• When examining a corpse, if you have an autopsy kit and no chance to fail the autopsy, the corpse is instantly auto-autopsied.
  
• Deposit All will now only attempt to store stackable items and not, for example, non-stacking items like equipment that shares the same name.
  
• Added the word "unlocked" to Deposit All wording, to clarify that items cannot come from locked inventory folders.
  
• Stow Items now works properly for the Warden Chest when in Kur Mountains.
  
• Mobs will no longer knock you into the air if you are very close to them.
  
• When at negative max HP -- for example, due to anti-regeneration -- the player can no longer: Respawn, Eat items that require you to be dead (Eternal Greens, etc.), or be affected by abilities that require the target to be dead (Resuscitate, etc.). This brings gameplay behavior in line with our intention: if you lose literally all of your Max HP due to debuffs, you can't come back to life until those effects wear off. The main way this can happen is by consuming too much deadly iocaine powder, and we recommend that you don't do that!
  
• Lycans should now be able to survey at the bottom of water.
  
• Fixes bug where player sinks to bottom of water when interacting with something.
  
• Polished a number of projectiles, most noticeably the "darkness ball" used by several necromantic abilities and necro-monsters.
  
• Fixed bug in particle from Death's Hold: it could leave behind orphaned zombie arms.
  

We'll be back soon with more bug-fixes and new content!

This update has a lot of different stuff. In it we've added... wait, let's just do a bullet list. That'll be easier. In this update, we have:

• Soft-launched our long-awaited VIP program.
  
• Added lots of UI features -- like the ability to lock the UI!
  
• Bumped up the difficulty of high-level solo monsters.
  
• Revised the Unarmed skill.
  
• Added a new crafting skill, Non-Fiction Writing.
  
• Introduced a new player messaging service: Pigeon Mail.
  

This update introduces our new VIP Membership program. We've been talking about VIP for years -- all the way back to the Kickstarter campaign -- so we are very excited to get it going!

VIP is an optional monthly subscription plan that helps players support the game's development while getting useful benefits in return. The most notable benefits are extra slots: more character slots, inventory slots, and transfer slots. Read all about the VIP plan, and the reasons for it, in our blog post (see the news links above these patch notes for a button that jumps to the blog post.)

As of this patch, the VIP Program is "soft-launched". We're still waiting on final Steam store-page approval, so it may be a week or two before it's possible to subscribe via Steam. But if you have VIP time as part of a backer package, or if you own a VIP Token, you can access VIP now.

If you have a backer package, you can redeem your time from the redemption window -- look for the icon on the bottom right of the Persona window.

If you have a VIP Token, just use that item in-game to receive 30 days of time.

A note about "package upgrading": in the past we've often been able to help players upgrade their backer packages (e.g. by paying more to switch to a fancier package). We can still offer this service in some cases, but keep in mind that if you Redeem any features from the package (such as VIP time), it will definitely not be possible to swap it for a better package.


You can now send mail to other players via 'pigeon mail' -- hard-working and well-trained carrier pigeons that can fly all over the world delivering messages. And you can even attach an item to your message! The mail will be delivered in about 60 seconds if the player is online, or the next time they log in if they are offline.

Speak with Irkima in the Red Wing Casino to send a pigeon. The cost to starts at 100 Councils, and increases if you send multiple messages too close together. (The birds get tired!) Attaching an item costs an additional 100 Councils, but Irkima will waive the fee for his Close Friends. If an item isn't delivered after 7 days, it is returned to you.

You can't send messages to people who are ignoring you, of course, and you can turn off receiving mail entirely if you prefer in the 'Social' window, under 'Restrict'. ('Social' is the icon on the right-hand bar that looks like three little people.)


We've talked in the past about various potential changes to the Unarmed skill, but now that we've taken a closer look, it doesn't really need a major overhaul: it's got a good mix of tanking, damaging, and controlling abilities which lets it pair successfully with multiple skills, and there are some interesting choices to make when building Unarmed loadouts.

So there aren't many huge changes here. Mainly, we've added new options to make some build styles work better. There's also a few damage changes (both up and down). After these changes there are still a few underwhelming treasure effects, but most of those, like the damage-over-time effects, are earmarked for future game-mechanics changes, so they've been left alone for now.

The following changes use numbers from (currently hypothetical) level 100 gear.

• Changed treasure mod: (Head, Chest) "Infuriating Fist generates no Rage and instead reduces Rage by 910" => "Infuriating Fist damage +73 and for 10 seconds all Elite attacks deal -8% damage to you."
  
• Changed treasure mod: (Head) "Bodyslam deals +47% damage and slows target's movement speed by 45%" => "Bodyslam deals +100 damage and grants you immunity to direct damage for 3 seconds"
  
• Changed treasure mod : (Head, OffHand) "Slashing Strike and Claw Barrage boost damage from Epic attacks +98 for 10 seconds" => "Slashing Strike boosts your Melee Evasion +5.25% for 5 seconds"
  
• Changed treasure mod : (MainHand, Necklace) "Slashing Strike deals +150 Trauma damage over 6 seconds" => "Slashing Strike and Claw Barrage deal +150 Trauma damage over 6 seconds"
  
• Changed treasure mod: (Hands, Necklace) "Hip Throw deals +286 armor damage" => "Hip Throw deals +200 damage, plus Armor-specific damage equal to 15% of the attack's total regular damage"
  
• Changed treasure mod: (Head, Off-Hand) "Mamba Strike Damage +67%" => "Mamba Strike Damage +59 and Reuse Time -1 sec"
  
• New treasure mod: (Necklace): "Cobra Strike Damage +100"
  
• New treasure mod: (Chest, Feet): "Claw Barrage Damage +147"
  
• Adjusted treasure mod: "Barrage costs -14 Power and restores 31 Armor to you" => now -16 power
  
• Adjusted treasure mod: "Kick Damage +78" => now +100
  
• Adjusted treasure mod: "Mamba Strike and Front Kick Damage +100" => now +84
  

For several patches we've been working toward being able to upgrade solo monsters' stats. We're finally ready to start doing that! In this update we've changed the health and armor of all creatures over level 40.

Previously an "average" level 70 solo monster had 1163 armor and 2373 health (total of 3536 health+armor). That "average" creature would now have 1588 armor and 2922 health (4510 health+armor). So an average level 70 creature gained about 1000 health+armor.

Since group monsters are implemented as superpowered solo monsters, they are also affected by this change. (An "average" level 70 group monster would also have 1000 additional health+armor.)

This is just the first pass, and although it's definitely a noticeable change (at high level), the numbers still probably need to go higher. But before we increase these numbers further, we need to play with these changes and get feedback on what skills are breaking down, what's (still) insanely overpowered, what's newly frustrating, etc.
In the future we'll be making more changes to solo monsters: we'll (probably) raise their health and armor even more, and we'll also be taking a look at individual monsters' special attacks, XP values, Max Rage, and damage-type vulnerabilities. We're also considering some mechanics changes (such as revisions to DoT damage), and possibly new AI combat tactics to react to perching and AoE-camping. And, of course, we'll also be revising player combat skills and loot effects in tandem with these changes. In other words, there's lots more balancing work to do! Your feedback has been and will continue to be extremely valuable.


One of the benefits of the VIP program is the new Autodidacticism skill, which lets players slowly earn XP while offline. This is done by performing a Hangout with a textbook instead of with an NPC. This isn't a fast way to earn XP compared to just playing the game, but it's useful for players who can't play often, or who want to level an "alt". As you can imagine, there are many limitations to this skill, and one of them is that VIPs must find the necessary books to hang out with.

And where do these textbooks come from? The new Non-Fiction Writing skill! There are new NPCs in Rahu (Hirochi and Wintria) who can help you unlock the skill, provided you have at least level 50 in Calligraphy. Non-Fiction Writing is done via offline hangouts, each of which takes two real-time days. The resulting books can then be used by VIP players who meet the requirements of the book.

Each textbook is for a certain skill and a certain level range. To write the book, your level in the book's skill needs to be 25 higher than the book. In addition, your level in Non-Fiction Writing has to be at least as high as the book's level. So to write a level 11-20 Sword book, you'd need level 11 in Non-Fiction Writing, and level 36 in Sword.

Because of this requirement to be 25 levels higher than the book, it won't be possible to create the highest-level books right now. Most skills don't go higher than level 80 or 85-ish (depending on how many bonus levels are available for each skill), so the highest textbooks would be for level 55 or 60. This limitation will naturally disappear as we raise the level cap.

If you aren't a VIP, you won't be able to use the books you create, but you can gift them to NPCs or sell them to other players. (Remember to check the player work-order boards for book requests!) Books lose durability when used in Autodidactic hangouts, and are used up after 20 days of use.

Tips on rarity: your first books will probably be terrible, and will have crappy stats (namely a penalty to earned XP). But as you level up in the skill, it's possible to create higher-rarity books which have XP bonuses. These range from Uncommon (green) books with a 5% XP bonus, all the way up to (extremely rare) Legendary books with a 25% XP bonus. Your chance of a bonus is based in part on your Non-Fiction Writing level: the higher it is above the book's level, the better, capping out at 25 levels above the book's level. It's relatively easy to create Uncommon and even Rare books (with a +10% bonus) but higher-rarity books require both high skill-level and random luck.

Limited book options: in this first launch of Non-Fiction Writing, we've only implemented books for a few dozen skills. This is just due to the sheer amount of data-wrangling involved -- we'll add textbooks for the other skills when we're more confident that we've got the XP numbers right. Right now, you can write books for any combat skill, as well as for any auxiliary combat skill (such as First Aid), and a small number of crafting skills (like Carpentry).

To figure out what books you're able to write, just use Hirochi's Non-Fiction Writing Table (after learning the skill). This table will list all the books you're eligible to write given your skill levels (and which books have been implemented).


If you've just enabled VIP, all of the features will be pretty obvious, with one exception: Autodidacticism. This is a new skill which only VIPs can use. It allows you to earn XP while you're offline. (With many caveats, such as a limit of two characters on your account at once -- see the blog for all details. Key restrictions are also explained in-game.)

You don't need to explicitly unlock Autodidacticism - you can automatically use the skill while you're a VIP. However, your level in the skill will start at zero, so at first you'll only be able to read beginner's books -- books for the lowest levels of a skill. For instance, if you've never leveled up the Sword skill, you can buy the "Sword Levels 0-10" book from Hirochi. It requires Autodidacticism 0, so you can read that book. To do so, use Hirochi's study nook. This will begin a Hangout lasting for a specified number of days. Once that many days of offline time has elapsed, you can log in and receive your XP.

But what if you are a long-time player and have already leveled every skill? You can't use the "Sword Levels 0-10" book if your Sword skill is higher than 10. How do you earn Autodidacticism XP? Hirochi comes to the rescue! Hirochi has a sequence of hangouts which will give you Autodidacticism XP. You can repeat these hangouts as often as necessary.

Hirochi sells books for many combat skills, up to level 30. Wintria Irasce sells books for a few non-combat skills. All other books have to be created by players using the new Non-Fiction Writing skill.



The recently-added experimental optimizations seem stable, so we're enabling these optimizations by default for new installations. If you already had the game installed there is no change, although we recommend you go and manually turn on these optimizations if you haven't already done so. (It's in the Settings window, Graphics sub-section, "Experimental Optimizations" checkbox. The optimizations won't fully kick in until you log out or teleport to a new game area.)

These optimizations give a noticeable framerate upgrade for most computers, but there is one visual side-effect: creatures more than 100 meters away are not rendered at all. If you find this limiting, you can just disable the Experimental Optimizations checkbox in the settings, or you can change the max-distance with a custom setting: in the Settings window, click on "Special", then add the line AppearanceRange=200 to the text field. This will render creatures up to 200 meters away, which is usually plenty far.


We've added a button to the bottom right of the storage UI labeled 'Deposit any items that are already stored'. Clicking this button checks to see if any items in your inventory are also in the storage (stacks of apples, for example) and if there is room for those items to fit in the storage -- and if so it deposits all the items for you. It first tries to fill up any partial stacks that are already in the storage, then uses empty storage slots.

In addition to this new feature, there are other improvements:

• Any items in your inventory that could be deposited with 'Deposit any items that are already stored' will be highlighted in your inventory with a green border.in your inventory.
  
• Shift-clicking an item while the storage UI is open now deposits/withdraws a specific amount, instead of just splitting the stack.
  
• While the storage UI is open, you can also now right-click an item to split a stack into or out of storage.
  

And many bug fixes:

• Ri-Shin Shrine Storage is now accessible from other storage NPCs in Kur.
  
• Bookshelves now allow direct access to nearby storage selections (like other storage NPCs do).
  
• Summoning items via practical summoning will now update the "More Info" menu properly.
  
• When withdrawing an item from storage, the tooltip will now update properly.
  
• Storing items after summoning a stack of another item will no longer cause visual weirdness.
  
• When using Practical Summoning, and the storage that you're summoning from is open, stack numbers will now update properly.
  

Many other areas of the UI also received attention in this update:

• You can now promote a member of your party to be party leader.
  
• There is now an option to lock your UI windows in place. You can find it in the Settings window, on the GUI tab, in the Features section. There is also a hotkey.
  
• There are 3 new settings to control the display of tooltips: "Tooltip Delay", "Instant Tooltip Duration", and "Use Tooltip Animation". You can find these in the Settings window, on the GUI tab, in the Features section.
  
• There's a new option on that screen as well, under the "Chat Behavior" section: "Close Chat With Hotkey".
  
• The "Jump to Recipe" functionality now extends to work orders and quests.
  
• You can now give NPCs an item by single-clicking instead of dragging.
  
• It's now harder to accidentally close an official admin message. And if you do, there's also a line in chat to explain how to see it again.
  
• You can now collapse and expand the list of quests for an area in the Quest window.
  
• (Most of) the rewards for a quest are now displayed as part of the quest in your quest log.
  
• Made some improvements to the quest tracker presentation.
  

And of course many UI bugs needed squishing:

• You can (once again) select your target's target.
  
• Players can no longer receive friend requests when their friends list is full.
  
• Note: you can now have a maximum of 150 friends (up from 100).
  
• Quotes in the friends list will no longer disappear after relogging.
  
• Players with long names in the friends list will no longer screw up the display formatting.
  
• The first time using an item on the hotbar now updates its stack size properly.
  
• Opening the recipe window will no longer sometimes show the incorrect required number of an ingredient.
  
• The pet information screen no longer has overlapping text and icons.
  
• Text in vendor shops is now correctly sanitized of HTML tags (no more color codes)
  
• When using Automatically Select Chat Channels, the channel you change to will now persist when changing zones.
  
• Backspacing after using chat shortcuts with Automatically Select Chat Channels on no longer leaves the shortcut in chat.
  
• Placing unusable gear in persona window will no longer cause it to show an empty slot.
  
• Better updating in general of entered social texts, such as your friend status or party name.
  

• We've revised how "knockback" works (which also covers "pull forward" attacks such as Snare Arrow or Grappling Web). The effect happens faster and is more accurate, knocking enemies in a more predictable direction.
  
• Slowed down the respawn rate of golems in the goblin dungeon's "red room" crystal encounters.
  
• "Live Event Token" items are being replaced with a new pseudo-currency, "Live Event Credits". Tokens can be converted to Credits by using them. Riston in the Casino now sells items for credits instead of tokens.
  
• You no longer need to hold the Dive Down key while surveying underwater, you only have to be at the sea floor.
  
• Fire Magic's Cold Protection ability no longer hurts you when you use it.
  
• All of the mods for Triage and Shadow Feint will now display on the ability tooltip.
  
• Clearing an inventory slot will no longer disable Bulwark Mode.
  
• Frostball is now cold & snowy instead of electric.
  
• Added missing animations for main-hand knife attacks.
  
• The option for a Hot Tip will no longer disappear on NPCs in the Casino.
  
• In Match-3, 'Possible Moves:' text will no longer show up when it's not unlocked.
  
• Percy Evans will no longer accept your Barter item for an Animal Nexus key if you already have one.
  
• Fixed a bug where right-clicking an object to auto-move to it would never actually reach it. You would just run around the entity in circles.
  
• Added a troubleshooting command /zapgolemprogram which erases your current golem program. This is to help players who, for instance, program their golems to "Self-Destruct: Always", making it difficult to reprogram the golem since it instantly self-destructs.
  
• The performance in Gazluk Keep has improved.
  
• Birds and Crickets in Serbule and Serbule Hills are now properly affected by the Ambient Sounds volume slider.
  
• The selection boxes for things like a Fire Wall should no longer jump around.
  
• Fixed non-animating water textures in Eltibule's waterfall.
  
• Improved the behavior of the camera during bad FPS dips. (This is especially noticeable in areas with many players.)
  
• Sitting in chairs works somewhat better.

Monday's game-patch will launch the Project: Gorgon VIP Membership program! This program gives players extra benefits while they are a VIP member. The intent is to give players another way to support the game's development while getting useful benefits for doing so -- kind of like becoming a Patreon patron. First, we'll discuss how to become a VIP. Then we'll cover the benefits.



You can gain VIP membership in a variety of ways:

• Purchasing a Steam subscription
  
• Claiming VIP time from a backer-package you purchased
  
• Using VIP Tokens in-game
  

Steam Subscription: You will (soon) be able to buy a VIP Membership subscription from Steam. Due to Steam's approval process, subscriptions will not be available immediately on Monday -- it may be a week or two before they can be purchased.

We'll have several price points depending on whether you pay monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or annually. Here's our planned pricing:


Backer Plans: Many of our backer plans, such as the Kickstarter backer plans or the plans we sell on our website, include VIP time. Players who have this benefit can use the Redemption window in-game to claim the included VIP time. (Look for the button on the bottom right of the Persona window.)

Once you've redeemed the VIP time, it will start ticking down daily. (So if you want to save your VIP time until the game is out of beta, just don't redeem the VIP time until then!)

This VIP time is non-transferable: only the account who has the special package can claim the VIP time from the backer package they purchased.

If you purchased a backer package and don't see a redemption (after Monday's update): don't panic, we can fix it! We probably need a bit of info from you to connect your account to your package. Email us at [email protected] and we'll figure it out.

VIP Tokens: These tokens are in-game items that can be consumed by a player to claim 30 days of VIP membership time. The tokens themselves can be used on your own account or given to others. VIP tokens can come from various sources in-game.

Overlap: What happens if you have VIP time from several sources? What happens if you have a Steam subscription *and* time from a VIP token? Do the days from your VIP token keep counting down? Can you lose any time? (Short answer: No.)

When using up your VIP membership time, Steam subscriptions are counted first. While you have a subscription, you are not using time from any backer packages or VIP tokens that you may have claimed. That VIP time will be applied if your subscription lapses.


An account with an active VIP plan gets the following:

• Four extra character slots -- for a total of 8!
  
• 15 extra inventory slots -- for each character!
  
• 25 extra slots in each item-transfer chest! There are four such chests now (100 extra slots) and two more coming (for a total of 150 extra slots).
  
• Access to offline advancement via the Autodidacticism skill! (You can read all the details about this benefit below.)
  
• Access to special in-game reports, such as a "character sheet" that lets you view all your character's stats in a simple spreadsheet.
  
• Extra saddlebag slots for mounts (when mounts are implemented) (mount not included).
  
• And more benefits to come! We're exploring ideas like giving VIPs custom chat colors, unique emotes, and monthly gift-redemptions that give out amusing trinkets.
  

With a VIP membership, you gain access to all sorts of slots: character slots, inventory slots, and item-transfer-chest slots. Those extra slots are not permanent, so if your VIP plan ends, they go away. But you never lose stuff permanently! If those slots were in use, they become "overflow" slots, meaning that you can't access them, but they're still there. As you free up space, they become visible.

Inventory: if your VIP plan ends and leaves your character carrying too much, you'll be "overburdened". (This is exactly the same as if you had drunk a potion of inventory-expansion, and it wore off while you were carrying extra items.) You'll be able to access the normal number of items, and the rest will be hidden until you make space. As you drop, sell, or otherwise remove items from your inventory, the "overflowing" items appear automatically.

Transfer slots: just as with regular inventory, if your VIP plan ends and leaves your transfer slots overflowing, you will only be able to see the regular number of items in the chest -- the rest will be hidden. As you remove visible items, the hidden items reappear one by one. (You cannot add items to a chest while it's overflowing, so all you can do is remove items until it stops overflowing.)

Character slots: if your VIP plan ends and leaves you with more than 4 characters, only the 4 most-recently-played characters will be accessible. The others will be hidden. If you choose to delete any of those characters, one of your hidden characters will appear in the now-empty slot. (In Monday's patch we've revised the UI to make it obvious which characters are in "regular" slots and which are in VIP slots. So if your VIP is going to lapse, you'll be able to easily plan and organize which characters should stay visible.)

Summary: You never permanently lose access to your extra items or characters. They're still hidden in the background until you make room for them -- or until you have a VIP membership again!


Autodidacticism - in addition to being a hard word to spell - is a new skill available only to VIP members that lets you gain XP while offline. It's intended to help players who can't play as often as they'd like, or who want to slowly level "alt" characters.

Of course, we're worried about this skill giving VIP players too big of a gameplay advantage over non-VIP players. We don't expect that to be a problem due to the many limitations and restrictions on the skill (see below), but even so, we'll keep an eye on the rate of advancement. We want Autodidacticism to be a "secondary" way to level skills, so if it ends up feeling like the easiest or most efficient way to level a skill, we'll fix it.

Autodidacticism is a non-combat skill. To use the skill, you basically hang out with a book. You can visit an in-game library -- in Rahu, and eventually Statehelm -- where there are study tables to hangout with your chosen textbook. This is a real hangout, so you cannot hangout with an NPC at the same time -- it's one or the other.

You can choose whether to hang out for one, three, or five days. But the duration isn't too important, since -- just like a regular hangout -- you can interrupt these without penalty: the hangout timer will stop while you're logged in, and resume when you log out again.

So where do you get these textbooks? Well, NPCs sell books for some skills, but books for most skills (and most level ranges) come from players who write them. There's another new skill called Non-Fiction Writing which is used to make these books.

Non-Fiction Writing
Non-Fiction Writing is not a VIP-specific skill. Any player can learn this skill and create textbooks, provided they have at least 50 levels in Calligraphy to unlock the skill. (And they need time, since writing a textbook is done via a multi-day hangout as well.) But the resulting textbooks can only be used by VIPs.

Each textbook is for a certain skill and a certain level range. To write the book, your level in the book's skill needs to be 25 higher than the book. In addition, your level in Non-Fiction Writing has to be at least as high as the book's level. So to write a level 11-20 Sword book, you'd need level 11 in Non-Fiction Writing, and level 36 in Sword.

Because of this requirement to be 25 levels higher than the book, it won't be possible to create the highest-level books right now. Most skills don't go higher than level 80 or 85-ish (depending on how many bonus levels are available for each skill), so the highest textbooks would be for level 55 or 60. This limitation will naturally disappear as we raise the level cap.

Limitations to Keep in Mind
There are other wrinkles to using Autodidacticism:

• Autodidacticism is a skill that has to be leveled up! You can't read a textbook for a skill level that's higher than your Autodidacticism level, so you'll need to practice by studying low-level books first.
  
• Only two characters on your account can participate in Autodidacticism hangouts at a time.
  
• With few exceptions, you can't unlock skills via Autodidacticism. For instance, if you don't know the Knife Fighting skill yet, you can't read the newbie Knife Fighting book. You must unlock the skill normally first.
  
• You still need to raise your level cap in the normal way: you need to unlock level caps at level 50 and every 10 levels thereafter.
  
• You need to obtain the books themselves, and as explained above, very-high-level books won't be available for a while.
  
• Books lose durability when used in autodidacticism hangouts. Most books will last for about 20 days of offline hangouts before disappearing.
  
• At first launch, only a subset of skills can have textbooks. This is just due to the sheer amount of data-wrangling involved -- we'll add textbooks for the other skills when we're more confident that we've got the numbers correct.
  

The amount of XP you earn depends on the skill. At low level, the books are very efficient, but as you level up (and the XP curve gets steeper), books become less efficient. In general, combat skills earn XP faster than non-combat skills, much like they do in-game.

In fact, you can easily out-level the low-level books: it might only take one 5-day session to raise your Sword skill from 0 to 10, so your skill will be higher than the book's level-range before the textbook is used up. (You can then sell it, give it away to someone else with VIP, or use it with another character.) Whereas for high-level textbooks, 20 days of offline time may not be enough to out-level the book's range: in some cases you may need multiple high-level textbooks for the same level range.

These skills are brand new, and as with all new skills, you should expect changes while we experiment with them. Again, the goal is to make Autodidacticism a useful auxiliary leveling mechanism... but not TOO useful, and not TOO annoying to use, either! We'll find the sweet spot eventually, though it may take some iteration.


VIP players can access special reports, including:

• Character Sheet: generates a .csv (comma-separated-value) text file of all your character's stats. This file can be loaded in any spreadsheet app.
  
• Inventory Dump: lists every single item that one character possesses (including the stuff in various storage chests) as a text file. This file can be loaded into any word processor.
  
• Combat log: records every hit your character takes or deals to others in a text file. This text file is too verbose ("spammy") to be useful to most players, but it's being provided as a way for 3rd-party tools to generate new kinds of reports.
  
• With more reports added in the future!
  

These reports are actually available to all players right now, VIP or not, so that we can test them and gather more feedback about them. They will continue to be available to everyone for another patch or two, and then they'll become VIP-members-only.


Releasing the VIP service is a huge milestone for us, because it represents a new stage of the game's development.

We've talked about the VIP plan for years, but didn't want to implement it until we were in a solid place technically, where we could leave the "prototype" stage and enter the "production" stage. And we're finally ready to enter that stage! That's super exciting for us, and hopefully for you!

We've been extraordinarily careful with the funds we've earned from backers and purchasers, and it's let us develop the game slowly for many years -- and in fact we can continue to make the game at our current rate of development indefinitely.

But we're finally in a place where it makes sense to hire several more people and widen our production capacity. This is incredibly exciting: we're talking about better graphics, more content, and lots more polish. (We're honest with ourselves and know this will never be as polished as a "AAA" game... but we can eventually come pretty close!)

Not Mandatory But Useful
In terms of game systems, we have two goals for VIP:

• Although we talk about it as "patronage", the benefits of VIP should be worthwhile. We aren't asking for charity here, so VIP should be useful!
  
• But it needs to be entirely optional -- we expect most players won't be VIPs, and that's fine. VIP should never feel "mandatory" at all.
  

These goals are somewhat in conflict, so our first attempt at the VIP feature-set may not work out. If we don't meet both of these goals initially, we'll keep working on VIP until we do.

Thank you for everything you do to help us make this crazy game. We'll have more details about VIP (and book-writing) in the patch notes of Monday's update.

This is a quick bug-fix patch to address some issues in the March 25 update:

• NPCs will no longer appear to be dancing even after they have stopped.
  
• The Redemptions window will no longer tell you about redemptions that you are not eligible for.
  
• Your mouse cursor will no longer sometimes stay locked and hidden after you change zones.
  
• The Quest Tracker will no longer refuse to remove certain quests after they are completed.
  
• The Trade window will no longer fail to disappear after a trade.
  
• Sandstorms no longer use the new distance optimization, meaning they can once again be seen from more than 100m away.
  
• Fixed animation issues when interacting with things that have a usage delay (such as mining, meditation, and chopping lumber).
  
• Fixed bugs with head-look when looking at certain in-scene entities (such as wells, item workbenches, and inscription tables).
  
• Tweaked movement animations a bit.
  

Lastly, a reminder: enable Experimental Optimizations in the Settings->Graphics window to turn on a significant new optimization! (Even if you had enabled Experimental Optimizations before, you will need to re-enable it, because you are "opted out" of new experiments.)