Project: Gorgon News

This update is heavy on UI improvements. There's also some new things to discover in Sun Vale (which we won't spoiler here since it's exploration content). Plus a broad assortment of other stuff... read on!


We've made a lot of general tweaks and changes to the user interface in this update. Some are experimental while others are basically just bug-fixes.

• The "overhead labels" GUI options are now enabled by default. This change will override your old settings, meaning that if you don't want overhead labels on, you'll need to go into the Settings window and turn them off again. (Sorry about that.)
  
• The "avatar portrait" GUI option is now enabled by default. We've made a lot of improvements to the portraits in this update, and while there's still a lot to do, we asked ourselves "Would you rather have portraits enabled, or a pointless blank space in the UI?" And for the first time, we decided portraits were better than nothing. So they're enabled! (But you can still turn them off in the settings, of course.)
  
• The "Close Last Panel" keyboard command (default Escape key) no longer closes the Pet UI. (Experimental, feedback desired! The old behavior just felt wrong most of the time.) You can still close the pet UI by pressing the pet-UI key (default P) or pressing the pet icon on the bottom bar.
  
• Another experimental tweak to the "Close Last Panel" keyboard command (default Escape key): if no closeable panels are found, it tries to clear your current selection instead. If you have no selection, it shows the system menu, as before.
  
• The Recipe window now has back/forward history buttons (to let you view the previous recipe you were looking at)
  
• Floaty damage numbers that affect both health and armor at the same time have been combined into one number. If the damage was split between health and armor, it will be shown in orange. If the damage was applied entirely to health, it will be shown in red. (If you prefer the old format you can use the special GUI setting DualFloaties to get the old behavior back, at least for now. This may end up being obsoleted unless lots of players indicate that they prefer it.)
  
• Hide permanent effect icons: you can now remove clutter from your effect-icons bar by hiding your "permanent" effects (ones without a timer duration, such as Armor Bonuses and Curses.) There's a little "..." icon in the effect bar to turn them on and off.
  
• Some permanent effects that previously didn't have an effect icon (to avoid adding too much clutter) now have an icon. Most notably, Spawn Premonition buffs are now shown.
  
• Changed the visual effects for monsters who feel vulnerable. (Still a work in progress.)
  

• You can now customize the colors of each chat channel. These options are in the Settings window, in the GUI section. (You can also set whether the text is bold or italic, which is actually slated to be a feature of our VIP subscription plan, alongside a bunch of other fancy GUI options. We're not actually sure if this tiny feature will end up being VIP-only, but if it does, consider this a preview.) Known issue: if you join a new chat room while the Settings window is open, you will need to close and reopen the Settings window for that new chat room to appear in the color list.
  
• You can now share recipes in chat. On the Recipes window, right click the name of a recipe and choose "Share in Chat"
  
• When sharing items or recipes in chat, you no longer have to type a message. You can just say the item (or recipe) without further commentary if desired.
  
• In an attempt to make item/recipe sharing a little bit more comprehensible, there's a new "Send Chat" option shown when you click the "+1 Item" button on the chat window. The "Send Chat" option is the same as pressing Enter while typing chat text: it sends whatever's been typed, along with the chosen items/recipes.
  
• Made the Chat window behave a bit more like other windows in a few ways. Most noticeably, there is a close button on the window now. More subtly, the window is no longer in the "background" behind other windows. This means that it can now appear on top of other windows. It's hard to explain, and not that important, but if you're wondering "wait, did this change?" then you're not insane, yes it did.
  

To help cut down on "particle spam" in busy towns, there's now a rate-limiter on how many unimportant gameplay particle-effects will be displayed. The limit is determined by your graphics quality level, or you can manually set it in the Settings window: it's an advanced Graphics setting called "Max Low-Pri Particles Per Second".

What is a "low pri particle"? It's a particle-effect from a buff or ability that doesn't seem like it will directly affect you much: buffs and heals cast on other players (who aren't in your current group). Buffs and heals cast on you are never considered "low-pri", so even if you set the limiter to zero, you'll still see particles when people cast spells on you.

We hope that this automatic limiter will prevent framerate problems in busy areas. (After a few tweaks to its algorithm, probably.) But there's also a second tool at your disposal. This one is intended for use in VERY busy areas (such as during live events). Type /particlespam in the chat box to turn on an aggressive particle-blocker. It will block all buff/heal particles cast by any player aside from you and the people in your current Group. (Unlike the automatic limiter, this command WILL hide spells that are cast on you by other players. This can be confusing in combat situations, so we don't recommend leaving this on for regular play.)

You can return to normal by typing /particlespam in the chat window again. If you want to ALWAYS be in no-particle-spam mode, you can instead add the word NoParticleSpam to the Special Settings box in the Settings window. This setting supercedes the chat command.

Also, as a general optimization, we no longer render "low-pri" particles on players that are very far away (specifically, players that are far beyond your Animation Cutoff distance).

• High-level monsters have more health. The change starts at level 40, though it probably won't be noticeable until significantly higher level. By level 80, however, the change is noticeable, giving monsters around 20%-40% more Max Health. As an example, a level 77 fire spider's health increased from 2013 to 2898, gaining 885 health. Max Rage also increased proportionately. This change is aimed at solo monsters, although it also affects group monsters by the same amount. (e.g. if there were a Boss version of the aforementioned level 77 fire spider, it might have 20,000+ health, but regardless, this change would only add 885 to it, the same as if it were a solo monster.)
  
• Scray's delayed acid damage is a bit more painful.
  
• Bees and wasps with poison-DoT rage attacks now deal a bit more poison damage per second.
  
• Werewolf enemies whose rage attack is a healing-howl: the heal is now a meaningful amount, although still not especially impressive.
  
• Sharks were accidentally using generic forest-animal attacks (in fact, their bites could inflict lice!) They now have unique attacks: they have a crippling opener move, and their rage-attack is a bleed.
  

The "poke the hive" group encounters in the fae realm have been revised to be much easier. We still recommend a group of 5-6 level 70+ players, although it is possible for a very coordinated (or very well-geared) small group to handle some of them.

These encounters are not well-tested. That's your job! We'd love your feedback on these encounters after you've tried them out a few times. Since we need detailed balancing feedback, you'll need to know how things are supposed to work. So the rest of this section is a spoiler!

When you poke a hive, it spawns a first wave of solo enemies. After a few seconds, if your group is still alive and nearby, you'll see a note that more reinforcements are on their way. A bit after that, you'll see another note about more reinforcements. When you see those messages, it means the reinforcements are 10-20 seconds away from arriving, depending on their movement speed. They take a while to spawn in, and then have to travel to the hive. If you have the ability to perceive creatures before they spawn, you can detect these reinforcements before they spawn in.

No wave of enemies has more than one elite/boss creature in it. However, the waves are short and speed is still important to avoid monster pile-ups. Positioning is also important: the hive only summons reinforcements as long as 3+ players remain close to the hive (specifically within 30 meters). If there aren't enough (living) players in the area when it's time to call reinforcements, you'll instead see a message that they've been called off. (The already-spawned reinforcements will still fight to the death, however.)

The encounter ends after the third wave -- the reward is the loot from the monsters themselves. The solo monsters have higher-than-normal chances for honeycombs, even for creatures that normally don't drop honeycomb. The elite monsters have high chances of dropping Royal Jelly (although not as high as in the earlier incarnation of these encounters).

We want these encounters to be frantic, and feel dangerous, but not feel insane. In other words, they should be fun. The hives nearest town are intended to be relatively easy, and the later ones should be more difficult. One of the biggest unknowns is how much time should elapse between each round of reinforcements. If your feedback indicates that certain hives are too hard, we can slow down the reinforcements, or reduce the number of enemies per round.

One other thing -- the elites in these encounters now have a chance to drop Fairy Soul Anchors. They are rare and drop as a bonus item (meaning that they don't reduce the amount of "regular" loot received). Fairy Soul Anchors are useless to non-fae, and always will be, but they drop for players of all races to allow fairies a way to purchase them from other players.


After receiving your detailed feedback on this casino game (thank you!), we've revised it to have more choices, more diversity, and a bit faster playing speed.

• when your Gaming skill is 15, you can now tip your game master. Game masters provide hastier service for big tippers.
  
• when your M&M character reaches XP level 2, 3, and 5, you'll pick a Perk from a random selection of Perks. Perks are small buffs and benefits.
  
• when your dice-roll ends in death, you no longer receive your tickets and rewards before the dice are finished rolling. Instead, press the "Continue" button to receive your rewards.
  
• the ante for playing the regular game has increased from 500 to 650, and Pro tables increased from 750 to 900. Expected average earnings for skilled players are still a bit higher than before, though.
  
• the ability Prey deals +2 damage and heals -1 health (at all tiers)
  
• the ability Lurk deals -1 damage (at all tiers) to injured enemies
  
• the code for the random-encounter system was rewritten in this update, and all the encounters were converted to a new system. It's possible there are bugs -- if you find them, please report them!
  
• there are some new random encounters, with more to come
  

• All beehives in the fae realm now have a quest available to fairies. (Previously, most of the hives were "coming soon".) Each hive can now be completed once every 5 days instead of every 1 day. The item rewards are also tweaked: they now sometimes give valuable items (such as royal jelly) instead of fairy Soul Anchors, although the most common reward item is still a Fairy Soul Anchor. All 12 of the hive quests give 200 Fae racial XP upon completion.
  
• Most items made of ice now melt less quickly. (Raw ice is about half as likely to melt each tick.)
  
• Using the Fairy Wing Potion was much more tedious than intended because the potion chose randomly between 30+ different wings. There are now five different fairy wing potions, each covering only one or two styles of wing. This way, when you know which shape you want, you can more easily find it in the color you want by brewing the appropriate potion. These new recipes are unlocked by raising Fey racial skill.
  

We're working on a complex system for breeding and selling pet animals. It's not ready yet, so we've "turned it off" for this update. However, there are lots of little details (and bugs) that still made it into the update.

• The Stable window has been rewritten in preparation for the upcoming Animal Husbandry system. You'll notice that the new version indicates whether your pet is male or female. This will be important for breeding purposes, but won't have any other effect.
  
• The Stable window will say that your pets are "Unregistered" -- this can be ignored for now
  
• The Item Info window has a new tab labeled "Preview". This will be how you examine a pet who's stored in a travel-cage item. For now, it does nothing.
  
• Some animals are currently using genetics internally. This includes cats, wasps, bees, deer, and a few others. These genes can affect the creatures' stats: they may have more or less max health than normal, or have evasion, toughness, etc. However, the genomes these animals are using are junk genes, intended only for testing.
  
• Two types of creatures, deer and bees/wasps, not only use genetics internally, but externally as well: their genes affect their visual appearance. You'll notice that different individuals have unique colors, sizes, and (in the case of bees), deformities, particles, or other strangeness. Again, these animals' genomes aren't permanent, they're just for testing the system. (Especially the deer's appearance genes, which currently generate rainbow-colored deer.)
  
• Pets are NOT using genes at this time, so when you tame a wasp (for example), you'll get a standard wasp, ignoring the genes of the creature you tamed.
  
• Some animals have the wrong colors (e.g. Hissy isn't red). This is temporary and will be fixed.
  

• Worked around a Unity UI bug that could cause your mouse cursor to get "stuck" in the center of the screen whenever it touched the edges of a GUI window.
  
• Basic ambient sound-effects added to Fae Realm
  
• Some words of power that said they lasted 15 minutes only lasted 5 minutes
  
• The crossbows "Hunting Crossbow" and "Double Crossbow" were incorrectly flagged as having a necromancy gem; the gem is now removed.
  
• Archery ability Snare Arrow's description indicated that it used 5 arrows, but only actually needed 1. The description was incorrect and has been fixed
  
• Food item "Gobbledygook" was incorrectly marked as a meat dish
  
• The "Bridge Bully" has been relocated to a more recognizable bridge
  
• Velkort's pet flame now acts as a waste disposal service for the town of Serbule: you can discard junk in it.
  
• Fixed bugs that could cause the wrong icon to be shown on the "casting" progress bar
  
• Fixed exploitable bug: high-level Fairy Magic abilities could be used even when paired with a very low-level skill (It didn't honor the max-25-level-difference cap between your active skills.)
  
• Tamed Blinding Wasps' special abilities were both named "Wasp Ranged Debuff" -- one of them is now renamed "Wasp Burst Pierce". Behavior is unchanged, only the label was wrong
  
• Fixed bugs where Objective Orienteering abilities could report "The quest objective is not anywhere in this zone" when they were, in fact, in the zone, just very far away. This bug could happen for quests in Sun Vale or Ilmari Desert.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused Combos to be aborted when you triggered a Combat Refresh
  
• Tweaked spawn range of motherlodes in Kur to prevent spawning off the map
  
• Fixed display errors where your Friends list would occasionally show incorrect amounts of time since your friends were last online.
  
• Some types of clothing did not show up in the "paper doll" in the Persona window (and some still don't... still working on it)
  
• Changed the default LOD Bias value for the graphics level "5: Amazing". It is now 3 instead of 1000. (3 sounds small, but it's actually quite dramatic: it's a 300% increase in how far away the game will render things in their highest level of detail.) The value of 1000 was only intended for "6: Ultra", which still uses that default. 1000 is so high that it essentially turns off the level-of-detail system entirely, always rendering everything at max resolution, even if it's miles away. This is dumb, but Ultra.
  
• Fixed login issue: if you were disconnected due to internet problems, then tried to reconnect, you could get a message telling you to try again, but no means of trying again (forcing you to restart the game). If this happens now, the client waits a few seconds on the "try again" error screen, then switches back to the login screen so you can try again.
  

This update had a short timetable because we wanted to release these fairy bug-fixes ASAP. Even so, we were able to fit in a few other changes and rebalances. We'll be back soon with more content for fairies and non-fairies alike!

• Revised the newbie fairy quest lines to be a little more intuitive. New fairy players will have an overarching quest that directs you to other NPCs you need to help, and some of the quests have been revised to be less annoying. If you were currently working on fairy quests when you last logged out, you may need to speak with the relevant NPC to re-get the quest.
  
• Limited the number of Troll Honeytenders that spawn in the fae realm.
  
• Increased number of deer that spawn in Sun Vale -- there's an area on the large island where they like to congregate
  
• The "Stuff to Do" tab for fairies no longer includes tasks that are irrelevant for fairies (like "Learn Mentalism from Echur").
  
• Fixed fairy animations when strafing and swimming.
  
• Fairy Soul Anchors could not be used; they can now.
  
• Fairy Magic abilities could be used from the sidebar; they can't now.
  
• Fairy Magic abilities on your bar now correctly get replaced by higher-level versions of those abilities (when you unlock them).
  
• Marrowchomp doesn't attack fairies.
  
• Fairies now learn Sword abilities like other races do.
  
• Resuscitating a dead pet with fae energy now actually consumes the energy. Cost is lowered from 30 to 20 fae energy.
  
• Treasure effect "Astral Strike deals +85 damage and resets the timer on Pixie Flare (so it can be used again immediately)" did not reset the timer on Pixie Flare.
  
• Recipes for Fairy Cake and Fairy Stew consumed 10 more fae energy than listed.
  
• When large stacks of Crystal Ice melted, too much of the stack melted at once. The number of items melted at once has been reduced by half (to a minimum of 1).
  
• Pixie Flare's sound was playing in 2D instead of 3D.
  
• Reduced the volume of a particularly loud fairy light.
  
• Fixed exploit that let fairies respawn outside of the fae realm if they closed the game client at the right moment.
  
• Fairies gain a fae-only version of Recall Beginnings when they reach Fae Racial 24. It's like the level 20 Teleportation recipe except that it costs a Fairy Dust and doesn't need an amethyst.
  
• Added a few more hangouts to fae-realm NPCs, with more to come!
  

We're working on more fairy content, as well as more fairy-specific NPC text, for the next update.

• Prevented "empty" augments from dropping in loot.
  
• Phoenixes remembered they have wings!
  
• When taming a Fae Ocelot, it turned into a fae panther in your stable. (It was named "Fae Ocelot" by default, but was otherwise a panther.) This has been fixed so that newly tamed ocelots are ocelots. For now the only difference is their size, but they may have stat differences in the future. Already-tamed pets are unchanged; they will permanently remain fae panthers.
  
• Improved animations for butterflies.
  
• Fixed selection box sizes for some monsters.
  
• Improved performance of floaty damage numbers when there are an insane amount of them (more than 30) on-screen at once.
  

When a monster (or player) is stunned multiple times in rapid succession, the latter stuns have a shorter duration than normal. (In MMO jargon, this general concept is referred to as "crowd-control diminishing returns.") Project: Gorgon already had diminishing returns for stuns, but in this update, we've made 'em diminish faster and more predictably.

Previously, a stun couldn't be shortened to less than about 2 seconds duration. Now if you get stunned enough, the duration can go all the way to 0 seconds.

Monsters have a faster rate of stun-reduction than players do, but both players and monsters have significantly faster stun-reduction than in the previous update.

Elite/boss monsters with stun attacks are special: their stuns are never reduced below 2 seconds duration, no matter how often their target has been stunned.

Flat-Footed Debuff Duration: Stuns also apply the "Flat-Footed" debuff, which disables all Evasion. Previously this debuff lasted for 8 seconds and now lasts for 6 seconds. (Note: it lasts 6 seconds regardless of the length of the actual stun; even a 0-second stun leaves you Flat-Footed for 6 seconds. We may scale the duration in the future.)


We've rewritten the system that determines if a monster is being "perched", meaning that it can't possibly reach you due to geometry or pathing issues, while you sit back and safely whale away on it.

We've also revised how monsters react when this happens. Previously, the monsters would either try to run away, or some monsters could use special ranged attacks they normally don't get to use. But that's much too complicated and error prone. For now, the monster response is very simple: if a monster is being exploited to death, it just magically heals to full, with a chat message indicating what happened.

The code should be more reliable now, but this sort of system usually needs some fine-tuning. So if you get false positives, don't take it personally! Just let us know so we can tune the code.

• Fire magic treasure: "Super Fireball deals +40% damage and reuse timer is -1 second, but generates 50% more total Rage" => "Super Fireball deals +90 damage and reuse timer is -1 second"
  
• Fire Magic treasure: "Ring of Fire Damage +32%" => "Ring of Fire Damage +152"
  
• Fire Magic treasure: "Indirect Fire Damage +57% when Fire Magic skill active" => +40%
  
• Druid treasure: "Cosmic Strike deals +51% damage and reuse timer is -5 seconds" => "Cosmic Strike deals +115 damage and reuse timer is -5 seconds"
  
• Poetry Podium: earn less Oratory XP when reciting poetry to large groups.
  
• Bard: "Song of Discord" no longer affects targets that can't see you.
  

There was some complex code involved in fixing Song of Discord, as well as the related perching fixes. And with fancy code comes fancy bugs. Please be on the lookout for monster AI problems that may have been introduced in this update. We're a tiny team and your bug reports are very valuable to us! Thanks!

This is a big update with a lot of changes, and these update notes are pretty in-depth. The big news is the playable fairy race, but we also have major Animal Handling changes and a big set of monster rebalancing, plus more smaller tweaks, additions, and bug fixes than you can shake a wing tassel at. Buckle up!


This update introduces our first 'advanced' playable race: fairies. Before you can make a fairy character, you need to unlock the race by completing a quest for Fazzi called "Free Tortured Fairies". (It's not a new quest, but it previously gave no reward for completion. If you've already completed the quest, you can now repeat it to receive the quest-unlock reward.)

The quest is pretty short, but it's in the Winter Nexus, which is a very dangerous area, so a group is recommended. To reduce crowding, the imprisoned fairies are temporarily set up to respawn every 60 seconds instead of every 5 minutes. (Some monsters respawn faster, too, so be prepared for chaos!) The quest has also been revised to support groups: when you free a fairy, everyone in your group gets credit. So remember to group up with others!

Please note that this is a "soft launch" of fairies - which means that while the mechanics are in place, you'll see some places where quests are "Coming Soon!", or where NPCs don't yet recognize that you are a fairy when you talk to them. We're working on these elements for release later in the month, but we didn't want to delay getting feedback on the basics.

For more information on the fairy race, see our recent blog post. (Also note: fairies wearing too much metal armor receive a penalty to their damage. Fairy armor does not count for this purpose. This was a late addition to the fairy details described in the Fairy blog post.)


Animal Handling was revised to make it more powerful at high level. To do that, we now expose more game-mechanics about your pet. This also makes it possible for us to differentiate pets more, and will make it easier to buff/nerf individual pets in a future update.

Instead of thinking of pet damage as one monolithic number (which was boring and hard to balance), treasure effects now focus more heavily on buffing each of the pet's three abilities: their Sic 'Em attack, their Special Trick, and their "basic attack" (which they use when not directed to use something else).

All pets' Sic 'Em and Clever Trick abilities now deal more damage. Most pets' basic attacks deal more damage, too, especially those pets whose special abilities aren't very damaging. Bond Levels now increase pet damage more, also.

Pets Hastened: Animal Handling pets are now better able to match the speed of their owners. Every few seconds, they recalculate their speed to be equal to their owner's speed. They can still fall behind for various reasons, but they're generally much more sticky.

Pet UI Rewrite: We've received a bunch of bug reports about the pet window (the window that shows pet stats and lets you set the pet's mode), but haven't been able to reproduce those bugs, so the code for the pet window was rewritten to make it more robust. It's unclear whether this actually fixed any bugs, or indeed if it added new bugs in exchange. If you encounter a bug with the pet window, whether old or new, please report it!

Changes to Pet Examine Screen: When you examine an animal handling pet, it now shows more information about its specific abilities. It shows info about your pet's basic attack, Sic 'Em ability, and Clever Trick, and tells you how much of each ability's damage comes from buffs, from Bond Levels, etc. (Note: this is implemented with the NPC dialog system, for now, so those stats aren't automatically refreshed!)

(An important thing to remember about gear buffs: pets only get buffs from the gear you were wearing when you summoned the pet. If you take that gear off, the pet loses the buff. It doesn't get new gear buffs until it's resummoned.)

Aggro Bug Fixed: We've fixed a bug that prevented pets from causing as much aggro as intended. Your pet will get enemies' attention much more easily during fights.

Other Pet Changes:

• Pet bond levels now increase base damage a bit more. This affects all levels. For example at Bond level 40, base damage increased from +41 to +56. At bond level 80, it increased from +101 to +157.
  
• Pet bond levels now also boost the damage of pets' Sic 'Em and Clever Trick abilities. At Bond Level 80 this amounts to about a +150 damage bonus (which stacks with their base-damage bonus).
  
• Increased the base damage of nearly all pets' Sic 'Em and Clever Trick attacks. At max level, this increases their special-attack base damage by several hundred (for most pets).
  
• Increased the potency of several pets' Sic 'Em and/or Clever Trick abilities (heals, buffs, debuffs, DoTs).
  
• Fire Rats: these pets' Clever Trick accidentally dealt the full DoT damage with every tick. Since it ticked 4 times, it effectively dealt 400% of the intended damage. This has been fixed. (Complicating the math, however: the base DoT damage was approximately doubled during rebalancing, so the new DoT is about half of the old value, not 1/4th. And there are new treasure effects which can increase it above the old value.)
  

Pet Treasure Changes:

• "Animal Handling pets' healing abilities, if any, restore +27% health" => restore +45% health
  
• "Sic Em boosts your pet's Crushing attacks (if any) +26 damage for 10 seconds" => +80 over 10 seconds
  
• "Sic Em boosts your pet's Slashing attacks (if any) +26 damage for 10 seconds" => +80 over 10 seconds
  
• "Animal Handling pets recover +24 Armor every five seconds (whether in combat or not)" => +17 armor
  
• "Unnatural Wrath causes your pet to bleed for 160 trauma damage over 10 seconds, but also deal +54 damage per attack during that time" => now deals +144 damage per attack during that time
  
• "Animal Handling pets gain 16% melee evasion" => "Nimble Limbs gives pet +19% melee evasion for 30 seconds"
  
• "Animal Handling pets gain +5 Armor Absorbency." => new effect: "Animal Handling pets absorb some direct damage based on their remaining Armor (absorbing 0% when armor is empty, up to 20% when armor is full)"
  
• "Animal Handling pet attacks bypass 33 mitigation derived from armor" => "Animal Handling pets' damage-over-time effects (if any) deal +130% damage per tick"
  
• "Animal Handling pets deal +36 direct damage with each attack" => "Animal Handling pets' Sic 'Em and Clever Trick attacks deal +100 damage"
  
• "Get It Off Me heals you for 95 Health after a 15 second delay" => 160 Health
  
• "Feed Pet restores 90 Health (or Armor if Health is full) to your pet after a 20 second delay" => 140 Health (or Armor if Health is full)
  
• "Animal Handling pets deal +20% direct damage with each attack" => "Animal Handling pets' Sic 'Em attacks deal +16% damage"
  
• New treasure: (chest, off-hand): "Animal Handling pets' Clever Trick abilities deal +245 damage"
  
• New treasure: (hands, main-hand): "Animal Handling pets' Clever Trick attacks deal +16% damage"
  
• New treasure: (chest): "Direct Cold Damage +16% while Animal Handling skill active"
  
• New treasure: (necklace, legs, main-hand): "For 17 seconds after using Clever Trick, pets' basic attacks have a 15% chance to deal double damage"
  
• New treasure: (ring, off-hand): "Animal Handling pets' basic attacks deal +13% damage"
  

In this update, Elite and Boss monsters have more health and armor. They also have larger Rage bars, which means they can't perform their Rage Attacks as often.

The changes are most dramatic in the high-level areas outside of Gazluk Keep and the Fae Realm. For instance, the level 65 boss called the Ratkin King previously had 18k health and now has 23k health.

Elites in Gazluk Keep and the Fae Realm already had special boosts to their stats, so they didn't receive much buffing compared to monsters in other high-level areas. We've removed those "artificial" boosts, and given all monsters comparable benefits.

We've also made some other systemic changes that affect monster balance (both for regular monsters and elites), which are described below.

A note about Gazluk Keep: I mentioned recently on the forums that I feel Elites/Bosses drop a bit too much high-rarity loot, and I'm considering lowering them a bit, but that didn't happen in this update. However, when removing the hacked-in artificial boosts for Elites in Gazluk Keep, we found several bugs where Elites received the boosts intended for Bosses instead of Elites. This meant they were proportionally a bit tougher than intended, and they also dropped much more Exceptional, Epic, and Legendary gear than intended. These errors have been fixed as part of the clean-up process. (This primarily affected Elite orcs in hallways.)


Some monsters have Regeneration. The way this works has changed. Previously, regeneration happened only every 5 seconds, so if a fight was shorter than that, no regenerating happened. Monsters now regenerate every second. At higher level, monsters regenerate more overall, too.

To counter regeneration you can use indirect damage, such as damage-over-time effects. This was always the case, but the formula has changed to make damage-over-time more effective in countering regeneration.

Another problem with regeneration was that it was difficult to tell when it was happening. So this new system of regeneration uses healing. This way you can see the healing numbers coming from the monster, and at least know what the heck is going on.


When a monster makes a Rage attack, it has a chance to "critically hit" and receive extra buffs.

The behavior for non-elite monsters is unchanged: a Rage Crit for a regular monster restores 25% of their health instantly.

The behavior for elites/bosses has changed: previously they healed 25% of their health and 100% of their armor. Now, they recover no health and only 25% of their armor. But in addition, they gain a "Rage Shield" buff which increases their damage by 10% and shields them from 50% of direct attack damage for 7 seconds.

(We're trying different mechanics to see what may work best; expect more changes in the future. Also remember that since elites have larger Rage bars now, they have fewer Rage attacks and thus fewer Rage Crits overall.)


Some monsters have "thick armor". This is when a monster's armor reduces the damage it receives more than normal. Monsters like rhinos, uraks, and snails get this feature. The intent is to make these monsters MUCH tougher to just blast away at. This makes armor-removal abilities more valuable, as well as making damage-over-time and direct-health-damage abilities more interesting. But it's never really met that goal, and it needs to. In fact, all monster armor needed some improvement.

The old system used small flat mitigation boosts. The new system uses percentage mitigation. This applies to all monsters -- and makes all monsters a bit tougher.

Normal monsters now mitigate 20% of all direct damage when their armor bar is full. This mitigation drops as their armor is removed, so when they're at half armor they mitigate 10%, and when their armor is gone they have no extra mitigation at all.

Monsters with "Thick Armor" mitigate 50% of direct damage at max armor, scaling down to 0% as their armor is removed.

Elites/bosses have a bonus to this, between +10% and +20%, depending on the tier of eliteness. This stacks with thick armor, so a thick-armored Elite can have as much as 70% resistance when their Armor bar is full.

Attacks that directly lower health or armor aren't mitigated. So an attack that removes 500 armor always removes 500 armor.


We've tweaked the formula for armor-damage from treasure, which caused various treasure effects to change (mostly very slightly). Treasure changes:

• Staff: "Lunge deals +102 armor damage" => 121 armor damage
  
• Sword: "Many Cuts deals +110 armor damage" => 132 armor damage
  
• Sword: "Wind Strike and Heart Piercer deal 108 armor damage" => 124 armor damage
  
• Unarmed: "Unarmed attacks deal +18 Armor damage" => +32 armor damage
  
• Unarmed: "Hip Throw deals +192 armor damage" => 226 armor damage
  
• Mentalism: "Strike a Nerve deals +113 armor damage" => 132 armor damage
  
• Werewolf: "Pouncing Rake deals +152 Armor damage" => 172 armor damage
  
• Ice Magic: "Tundra Spikes deals 120 armor damage and taunts +600" => 220 armor damage
  
• Ice Magic: "Blizzard deals 128 armor damage and generates -120 Rage" => 248 armor damage
  
• Knife: "Marking Cut deals +48 armor damage and does not cause the target to shout for help" => 52 armor damage
  

Damage-reply effects ("thorns") no longer bypass armor when dealing instant damage. This does not apply to Damage-over-Time effects, only instant damage. The following abilities and items are affected:

• Acid Shield Potion
  
• Fire Shield Potion
  
• Molten Veins
  
• Fire Shield
  
• Toxic Flesh
  
• Brambleskin
  
• Phoenix Strike
  
• Privacy Field
  
• Acidic Shield Wax
• (already worked this way)
  

• Fill With Bile: all tiers of this ability now boost direct Poison damage a bit more
  
• "All Druid abilities have a 20% chance to restore 15 Power to you" => now a 30% chance
  
• "Your Healing Sanctuary heals every 4 seconds (instead of every 5) and heals +16 health" => the speed-up feature of the old effect didn't work due to technical issues, and Healing Sanctuaries didn't really need more buffing anyway, so it's been replaced entirely: "Fill With Bile boosts target's direct Poison damage +51"
  

• A bunch of shields were incorrectly tagged as "metal armor", which caused them to count toward the metal-armor-suit bonus (for having 3 pieces of metal armor on). This also means NPCs that like "Metal Armor" do not like these shields anymore. But note that shields are still considered "weapons" for gifting purposes.
  
• Stalwart Targe: is now a Holy Symbol
  
• Thentree Shield: is now a Holy Symbol, and is Elvish (for gifting purposes)
  
• Dream-Keeper's Shield: is now a Holy Symbol
  
• Elven Shield: is now Elvish (for gifting purposes)
  
• Finesse Targe: is no longer indestructible nor antique
  

• "Redirect deals +84 Trauma damage over 15 seconds" => deals 448 over 8 seconds
  
• "Phoenix Strike restores 126 Health to you" => "Phoenix Strike deals +189 Fire damage to melee attackers"
  
• "Phoenix Strike deals +21% damage and reuse timer is -8 seconds" => "Phoenix Strike deals +36% fire damage to melee attackers, and reuse timer is -7 seconds"
  
• "Strategic Thrust and Lunge damage +61%" => +31% (this fixes a formula error)
  
• "For 30 seconds after using Blocking Stance, your Mentalism attacks deal +16 damage" => "For 30 seconds after using Blocking Stance, your Mentalism Base Damage is +12.5%"
  
• "Smash, Double Hit, and Heed The Stick Damage +18" => +69
  
• "Nice Attack Power Cost -22 when skill Staff active" => Power cost -30
  

Augments can now be found in loot from monsters. Augments are much more likely to drop from animals (e.g. bears and wolves) than from sentient enemies such as goblins. The skills you have active will influence the types of Augments you find (e.g. you'll find more Ice Magic augments while using Ice Magic), but there is also a large randomness factor.

The goal of adding augments to loot is to make augments more available to low-level players. For this reason, augments are more likely to be found on low-level monsters than high-level monsters. (At higher level we expect player-augmenters to make up the difference; the plan is that when we eventually have level 125 monsters, they won't drop augments at all -- only player augmenters will be able to make max-level augments.)

For the non-Augmenters out there: augments are items that contain a random treasure effect, like you'd find on a piece of magical equipment. They can be installed into a piece of equipment to add their power to the item. If you find an augment, you can take it to any equipment-shop NPC who can install it for a fee. Both crafted and loot items can have augments installed into them. (Installing an Augment costs 100 crafting points, and all items have at least 100 crafting points.)

Player Augmenters can install augments, and they can also destroy the augment currently in your item and restore the item's crafting points, allowing you to install a new augment. This option is not yet available from NPC shopkeepers, who can only install them. At low-level, though, our advice is not to worry about removing augments: you'll soon outgrow that level 20 sword, so if you find a level 20 augment that's useful, install it now, and expect to replace the sword (and the augment!) with better stuff soon.

In conclusion, you should use augments. Augments are powerful.


Ice Throwing Knives have been removed from the game. Instead, knife-throwing abilities can now use either regular throwing knives or clumps of Crystal Ice. Crystal Ice is no longer sold by vendors; instead, there is a new Ice Conjuration recipe that turns any food item into Crystal Ice. You can learn this recipe from Ichin in Rahu. (If you already knew how to craft Simple Ice Throwing Knives, you automatically know this new recipe instead.)

Fairies have their own alternate methods for creating crystal ice. (They can use the Ice Conjuration recipe if they want to, but their method also generates fae energy, so is better for fairies.)


You now gain a bit more armor-restoration from Hoplology at low-level, and the rewards also now scale past 50. (It's always been possible to raise the skill higher than 50, but there were no rewards above level 50.) At level 50 Hoplology, you regain 24 Armor with every Staff attack (up from 15). At level 90, you regain 52 Armor with each Staff attack. There are not yet rewards above level 90.

It now takes more XP to level Hoplology above level 30. Already-earned levels are unaffected, but your next level may need more XP than before.


To help alleviate "tombstone spam" in crowded areas, players can now bury other players' tombstones after their grave has been mourned enough. Here's how it works: if you mourn a tombstone and it's been mourned by enough other players before you, you'll be asked whether you want to bury the corpse or not. If you do, the tombstone will go away and you'll receive a small amount of Compassion XP (but not more than once per gameplay hour, to prevent abuse). You will only be asked if you want to bury a corpse if you have a shovel.

The number of people that need to mourn the tombstone (before it can be buried) depends on several factors, including some randomness. Spammy deaths (such as "Suicide by Poison") can be buried after only a few mourners, whereas unusual deaths require more mourning.

Hardcore deaths (by non-suicidal means) require more mourners than non-hardcore deaths. But in any case, hardcore players should remember that their tombstone is just a convenience: you can still repair your items even if the tombstone is gone. Just stand in the general area where your tombstone was and double-click your broken items to repair them.


The "set bonus" for wearing 3+ pieces of metal armor has changed. It now gives a point of universal direct mitigation for every 50 points of Max Armor. So a player with 600 Max Armor would reduce all attacks by 12 damage.


There's new benefits for raising your Anatomy skills: when you reach level 25 in any anatomy skill, you can see any active buffs/debuffs on monsters of that anatomy type. For now, this info is displayed in the Combat Info window (the same place that the monster's vulnerabilities are shown).

When you reach level 50 in an anatomy skill, the Combat Info window also shows a few extra stats.

This information is also available when you examine another player, as long as you have at least 25 of the relevant anatomy type. e.g. you need 25 Elf Anatomy to see the effects on an elven player. (If your relevant anatomy skill is less than 25, the window is disabled for that player, since there's no info to show.)

• The /behaviorreport command now has "fake badges" for each equipment slot if you've NEVER used any item in that slot slot before. (There were already "real" badges for long-term refusal to use an item slot, which come with in-game titles, e.g. "Shoeless", but these "real" badges take much longer to earn and aren't as useful for behavior reports.)
  
• /behaviorreport also now includes the information from /age (e.g. # of attacks made, time online)
  - Players now have an anatomy type appropriate to their race. (For instance, elves have Elven Anatomy, humans have Human Anatomy, etc.) This has minor ramifications for certain abilities and powers. It also means that in PvP, players are subject to archery critical hits from their anatomy type.
  
• Skeleton Ice Mages had varying levels of cold resistance/immunity. They now have a uniform 50% cold resistance at all levels. They also now have less resistance to Trauma.
  
• Skeleton Fire Mages and Skeleton Darkness Mages had varying levels of fire resistance, typically having 100% (immunity). These skeletons now have a uniform 50% resistance to fire, and gain a 25% vulnerability to cold as well. Note that these changes do not affect summoned skeleton mages (which never had fire resistance anyway)
  
• You can no longer fly upwards when overburdened. (In the strange event that you become overburdened during flight, you can still fly forwards or down.)
  
• The teleportation platform in Animal Town incorrectly bound you to a different island in Sun Vale.
  
• Preta's favor "Powedered Mammal" was intended for Agrashab (the one in Sun Vale). If you've not completed the quest before, it is now given out by (and generates favor for) Agrashab. If you already completed the quest, nothing has changed.
  
• Amberjack now appear more frequently in the deep waters off of Sun Vale
  
• Battle Chemistry: mini-golems now auto-match to your movement speed, allowing them to keep up with you better
  
• Energy Turrets (used as part of traps) are no longer worth XP
  
• Knife abilities Surprise Throw, Hamstring Throw, and Fan of Blades no longer technically require you to be wielding a dirk or dagger, as long as you have appropriate throwing knife ammunition and hands to throw it with. (This has little practical benefit, but it seemed more reasonable.)
  
• Ability Fire Shield 6 did not do as much damage as listed (it used the base damage from Fire Shield 5 instead)
  
• Treasure effect for Castigate that made it deal Fire damage did not also increase Rage generated.
  
• Recipes for turning bones into bone meal no longer give extra XP after the first usage (too spammable for XP)
  
• The item "Fairy Wand of Cold" has been renamed to "Grand Fae Wand of Cold".
  
• Fixed a lightning-bolt projectile whose sound effect played in 2D instead of 3D
  
• Fixed several monsters whose reactive combat sounds played in 2D instead of 3D
  
• Fixed "floating" animation when firing a bow
  
• Added server buttressing to prevent Steam lag from impacting in-game performance
  

We've long planned to add three "advanced" character races to Project: Gorgon: Fairy, Orc, and Dwarf. Unlike the standard races (Human, Elf, and Rakshasa), the advanced races are unlocked by completing quests in-game. This is important because these races are harder to play. They require more experience and knowledge than the other races and aren't suitable for brand new players -- you at least need to understand the basics of the game first.

The next update includes the soft launch of our first "advanced" character race: fairies! Why a soft launch? Because my plan is to create a different play experience for each of these three races. Each will have different trade-offs and new opportunities, and that's going to be tricky to get right the first time.

Fairies in particular are fragile and small, but magical and dangerous. As true immortals, they have a very strange relationship with death. Their experiences are very different from the other races - and so are their game mechanics.

Let's look at the unique game mechanics for fairies.



First off, fairies are significantly smaller than the regular races. They can't carry much, but they can fly. We've modeled this with a couple of attributes:

• They can fly with a default speed about the same as other basic flight, e.g. raven flight.
  
• They have reduced inventory space -- 16 fewer slots than other races.
  
• They are slightly more susceptible to knockbacks. (They are knocked slightly farther away.)
  

It's useful to think of these as "physical attributes" because they're tied to physically being a fairy. If a fairy gets cursed and turns into a cow, for instance, these things go away, replaced with whatever physicality the new form has. In other words, fairies turned into cows do not naturally fly!



When fairy characters physically die, they respawn at their lifestone in the fae realm. In game terms, this means that when fairies press the "Respawn" button after death, they respawn in the fae realm, not in whatever area they died in. They also can't "Enter the Light."

This ironically makes fairy deaths more punitive than other player deaths. Story-wise, other races don't "really" die: they're saved from death at the last instant by a mysterious force. (You meet him when you Enter the Light. The mysterious force's name is Richter.)

But story-wise, fairies aren't prodigies and don't have this protection. When fairies die, they really do die -- except being immortal, they're reborn at their lifestone. This aspect of being a fairy is true regardless of what physical form the fairy has. A fairy turned into a cow is reborn as a cow in the fae realm.

There are many ways for fairies to prevent this. Fairies can benefit from all the regular resurrection methods available to anyone, such as the Resuscitate ability from First Aid, or eating Eternal Greens. Fairies can also use their Fae racial powers to create an item that lets them respawn in the local area like other races would.



That covers most of the bad stuff involved in being a fairy. Let's look at some of the good stuff!

Story-wise, new fairies have had a convenient memory-wipe like new-player humans, elves, and rakshasa. But thanks to thousands of years of practice, fairies still retain some combat memories.

Fairies start with four combat skills at level 30: Ice Magic, Knife Fighting, Animal Handling, and Mentalism. They also get special bonuses for each of those skills -- some bonuses are small, some large. Let's go over each.

Ice Magic: Since the fae realm is controlled by the Winter Court, fairies are currently very in-tune with Ice Magic. It comes quite naturally to them. For game purposes, this means fairies don't have to perform research to learn new Ice Magic spells. Instead, they automatically learn a new Ice Magic spell each time they level the skill, and a few spells are learned from fairy trainers.

Knife Fighting: Fairies can create "crystal ice" with their racial skill (see below) and use it in knife-throwing abilities like Hamstring Throw and Fan of Blades, so they don’t need to carry metal throwing knives. They also learn an alternate version of the ability Slice which uses thrown ice. There are also a few new treasure effects that may be useful to knife-fighting fairies, although those are available to all races.

(Note that the in-game prototype skill "Ice Conjuration" has been obsoleted; fairies don't have to turn their crystal ice into "Ice Throwing Knives"; they just throw the ice directly. Less inventory hassle.)

Animal Handling: Fairies start the game with two free pets already in their stable, a bee and a wasp. These pets weren't mind-wiped like the fairy was, and they still remember how to fight! They are level 100 pets with maxed loyalty Bond Levels. (Animal Handling pets are capped to the player's Animal Handling level, so at first they behave as level 30 pets, since fairies start with level 30 Animal Handling. But they don't need any training or bonding time; whenever the fairy levels up, the pets can immediately be re-summoned at a higher level.)

The bee and wasp pets are similar to ones that are found in the fae realm. So other races CAN tame these pets, but not until they reach a pretty high level.
In addition, fairies can choose to resurrect dead Animal Handling pets using their fae racial magic instead of needing to use First Aid Kits.

Mentalism: Saving the best for last, perhaps: there's a new combat sub-skill for Mentalism called Fairy Magic. (Note: "Fairy Magic" isn't the same as Fae racial magic!) Fairies can put both Mentalism abilities and Fairy Magic abilities on their Mentalism bar, mixing and matching as desired. Fairy Magic has new abilities such as Fairy Fire, Astral Strike, and Fae Conduit, plus new treasure effects. Fairy Magic adds more diversity to the types of builds possible with Mentalism.



Lastly, there is a new racial skill for fairies, representing things that only fairies can do. This involves several new mechanics. Fairies have a new energy meter for Fae Energy, similar to the Metabolism meter. They can use Fae Energy in several ways, usually in conjunction with two new material resources, Crystal Ice and Fairy Dust.

Fairies learn how to turn junk items into Crystal Ice, and how to turn unwanted magical equipment into Fairy Dust. As a side-effect, these transformations also generate Fae Energy to fill up their energy meter.

Fairies can use Crystal Ice directly as thrown weapons (with the Knife Fighting combat skill). They can also directly consume Fairy Dust, which acts as an instant healing item and a flight-speed buff. But the most impressive fairy tricks involve combining ice, dust, and fae energy together. Fairies eventually learn how to create temporary items such as health kits, utility knives, short-lived food, and more. This "fairy stuff" is made partially from ice and so eventually melts if not used, but can act as sources of common items, or at least backups.

The fae racial skill is also where we've stashed other "fairy things" ... powers and abilities that magical beings like fairies ought to have. Some powers are basically cosmetic, such as summoning colored lights or changing the color of their wings. Others are precious convenience features, such as being able to teleport without needing expensive materials.

Fae can also craft a few unique items that other races may want, such as potions that randomly (and permanently) change hair color or beard shape.



All told, fairies have to be more careful when fighting, and they have to travel a bit lighter than other races. But these negatives are offset by positive benefits and unique combat tricks. My hope is that playing a fairy feels like a fresh way to play, with different things to think about and consider. There are a lot of different aspects to the race's balance, so it's likely to be a bit bumpy at first. But we'll work out the kinks over time.

Being a low-level fairy is also notably harder than being a high-level fairy. That's just sort of how it goes, I'm afraid: since fairies get new tricks as they level up, they can eventually take more risks and have less downtime. I'm trying to counterbalance that a bit by giving low-level fairies some extra gifts from quests. For instance, some "pocket pants" help newbies cope with reduced inventory space, and there are alternative ways to unlock a few skills early on (such as Transmutation).

But even after unlocking the later tricks and features, fairies will always need to be more careful than other races. So if playing a fragile yet powerful spellcaster -- or a tiny flying knife-wielding maniac -- sounds fun, then this is the race for you!



There are also a bunch of combat-mechanics changes coming in the same update as fairies. This includes changes to pets, to monster stats, and to monster behaviors and traits (such as the "Thick Armor" monster trait). I'm working on a blog post about those changes which should be ready soon!

The actual update will be ready "soon" too, though, so if the update arrives before the blog, I'll just work some of the background info into the patch notes. (I'm hoping to get both things done by the end of February, but testing and tweaking is taking a while, and the patch may end up being in the first week of March instead.)

[This blog post is from the developer, Citan.]

Discuss this blog post on our main forums here!

(This started out as a forum post but got too big and became a blog post. The Fairy race blog post is about a week away, I expect.)


We're deep in the middle of coding the playable Fairy race, and after that we've got a new dungeon lined up, and after that there's a major city to add! So why talk about housing now? Because that city, Statehelm, is also where we'll introduce housing later in the year. Now is the time to brainstorm housing, to let the wild ideas percolate, to figure out what might be fun.

And if you're thinking "housing isn't fun", then that's exactly what I'm talking about. I'm not adding housing to check off a feature list. I'm adding it because I think it can be amazing!



First, let's get the landscaped-vs-instanced question out of the way: we won't be using landscape housing. That's when the houses exist in the regular, non-instanced world, and each house can be bought and owned by one player. This design seems the most immersive at first. Who wouldn't want to own part of your favorite game city? But in practice, landscape housing is always terrible. (Except in pure PvP games, where landscape housing has a different function and can work well... but this isn't a PvP game!)

The most immediate problem with landscape housing is that it doesn't scale. We'd start by adding hundreds of homes to the game, filling every nook and cranny of the existing world with houses... but that wouldn't even come CLOSE to letting every player have a house! It would only let the richest players buy one.

What about the thousands of other players? Well, everyone who plays must eventually be able to have a home, so we'd obviously need thousands more homes. We'd need to add new areas to the game just to have a place to stick their houses. You may have seen areas like that in other MMOs: for practical reasons, they're not very fleshed out. They're just places to stick houses. At that point, the houses might as well be instanced. It's not like their home is in the "real" game world anyway!

The second problem is that landscape housing eventually creates barren, empty game areas. At first, there's a decent chance that some of the homeowners will be in their houses while you log in, so the place might seem bustling and active. But after a year or two, that's never true. Players who own those homes will eventually stop playing... but they won't give up their homes. They'll log in just long enough to pay the upkeep costs of their house, then leave again. This creates ghost towns.

The only way to fix this is to force players to lose their homes if they don't keep playing - for example, by having arduous rental requirements or minimum play times. But that feels kind of like blackmail to me: "Keep playing every month or we'll take your pretend house away." This really isn't a great long-term retention strategy, either, because MMO players tend to take breaks from their favorite game before returning a year or two later. They'll log in to see what's new... but if they realize that their beloved house is gone, they're likely to just log back out again. I want returning players to feel welcome.

(Old-school MMO companies generally LIKED this design, because it meant homeowners had to keep paying a monthly subscription fee forever. But we don't have a monthly subscription fee. We'll eventually have an optional VIP plan, but I want it to feel truly optional, not something you'd need to own a house!)

The third problem of landscape housing is that it "locks in" parts of the game world. As these games mature and housing areas slowly feel more and more empty (due to all the homeowners who never log in), why don't game developers take steps to fix it? Because that would upset those homeowners!

Even adding monster-spawns to quiet areas will piss people off. If someone bought a landscape house because of its safety, they're going to feel betrayed if it stops feeling safe! There are a few other things that can be added, but for developers, it's mostly just too much work with too little reward. Instead of pissing off homeowners, devs are much more likely to create new areas instead. Those old barren areas are left to rot forever.



We can side-step all of those problems by using instanced housing. Instanced housing is where the door to your home is in town, but when you go through that door, you appear in a private mini-area. Lots of players can use the same door in town, and each enters their own "instance" of the interior area.

Lots of games implement instanced housing, mostly just to tick off boxes on their feature list. They add the expected features: some storage, some decorations, maybe a crafting table. In other words, they're pretty boring, so you're forgiven for thinking instanced housing HAS to be boring. But it doesn't! In fact, this is a fertile area for new MMO designs, and I want to try some out.

I want housing to be integrated into the game's systems at a deeper level, so it can be a jumping-off point for high-level player adventures and goals. There are opportunities here for gameplay that wouldn't make sense otherwise. Here's some ideas:



Just because your house is instanced doesn't mean you can't have player neighbors. Quite the opposite! We can avoid the big barren areas of non-instanced housing by using the reality-bending power of instancing. For example, in an instanced neighborhood we could dynamically group players based on who's online.

Suppose that when you go out the door of your instanced apartment, it leads to a hallway with a bunch of other doors -- each one dynamically assigned to be the doors of other people who are in their homes right now. You can knock on any door and say hi, and maybe come in to visit and look around. Or maybe you can slip a note under the door. Or sneak into their homes...

Or maybe that hallway leads to players that have been online recently, and who have left their houses in "open" security mode, so you can wander in and visit.

Or maybe the hallway leads to other active members of your guild, so your neighbors are always guildmates.

Or maybe we organize housing based on skill choices, so if you move into Explosion Heights with the other wizards, you can expect to encounter wizards... and wizard-related problems.

Because instanced houses aren't on the 'real' landscape, we can hook them together in ways that aren't constrained by real physics -- ways that create new gameplay. For example...



Every house has a door, and we can use this to let adventures come to you. Imagine you come home just in time to hear a knock on your door. It's your neighbor: he asks you to deal with the foul odor coming from your basement. What odor? "The movers brought in those coffins yesterday, so I assume that's the stench!" What movers? What basement?! (Okay, discovering that you have a secret basement may be too far. Or maybe not... the basement door could teleport you to a different mini-dungeon depending on what quest is going on.)

Or perhaps your apartment in the Statehelm slums is plagued by a mob of rat-men. They knock incessantly, demanding payment in cheese... do you dare answer? What happens if you don't? Do they try to set your house on fire? Or maybe they let pests into your vents. Or maybe they just sneak in and subtly move the furniture to enrage you... "Notice anything different? This wouldn't have happened if you'd left Roquefort on the mantle!"

Or maybe the visitor is your old friend Rita from Serbule. She's in town to do some shopping and wants to fill you in on the latest gossip. She says Sir Coth has started talking about "invisible intruders" again; maybe you should visit Serbule and see what's up?

Or perhaps the visitor at your door is just a salesman with a magic mirror to sell. "It shows serene pictures of nature when you're trying to go to sleep!" says the merchant. But after you buy it, something else happens...



One of the big benefits of instancing is that NPCs can be instanced too, and they can behave differently inside your home than they do outside. This means you can marry an NPC and unlock all sorts of new behaviors. We've seen the beginnings of fun marriage systems in games like Skyrim, but they're rarely very deep.

Marriage has actually been part of Gorgon's rough design plan since the beginning -- for instance, the internal Favor Level above "Soul Mates" is called "Married" -- But that doesn't mean I've figured out how everything will work. It'll take experimentation to learn what sorts of mechanics are fun and scalable.

Right now, the exact game mechanics are completely open. Marriage could have its own Marriage Mood Meter, and different moods could trigger all sorts of behaviors depending on the NPC you married. Tantrums, fights, sulking, subterfuge... or lovely gifts, cozying by the fireplace, making you a delicious meal...

Or your spouse may have their friends over for parties... which might lead to jealousy later if you paid too much attention to their friends...

Or maybe one of their friends has gotten into serious trouble. There's a mystery to figure out, and your spouse has stakes in the outcome.

Or maybe their friends bring over an exotic housewarming gift with some unusual properties...

I think different NPCs would have very different marriage experiences. Some would crave cozy domesticity; others might have freaky demands for new sex toys every week; some might suffer from depression and need extra support, while others keep inviting their friends over every night and insist that you keep the icebox stocked!

Rakshasa have only had non-arranged marriages for a few decades, so they may have a lot of trouble settling down. And surely some elves have difficulty marrying a non-elf... knowing that they're going to outlive their spouse by hundreds of years might make it hard to have real emotional bonding. And if you marry a mage, are they going to feel jealous of your skill when you inevitably out-level them? What are the repercussions?



None of these ideas are especially well thought out, obviously. This is brainstorming! But I'm excited about the possibilities, and I'd like to hear what ideas interest you.

Of course, housing will also be an opportunity to decorate, to craft, to store items, all the usual stuff. But one of my goals with this game is to dig deeper than most MMOs do, and find the fun ideas that they don't reach. So what sounds fun to you? What outlandish thing do you want to do in your imaginary home?


PS - Most of these design ideas could apply to guild halls too! We plan to eventually add instanced Guild Halls, so that every guild can have a meeting spot. (A handful of the most expensive Guild Halls will also have non-instanced lobbies or exteriors, where the guild could set up vendors or signposts or things like that... but the majority of the place will be instanced.)