Project: Gorgon News

[This blog post is from the developer, Citan]

[If you're looking for info about the upcoming Fairy playable race, stay tuned -- there'll be a blog post about that soon! This blog post isn't about upcoming features at all -- it's behind-the-scenes design notes about recent game updates.]


Have you ever noticed that all the talking pig NPCs in the game mention that they obtained sentience after being struck by lightning? Probably not. But they do! And this is because of a skill I've long planned to add.

I've often used animal skills as an opportunity to experiment with game-mechanics ideas. The Pig skill was my first try at making a "bard" combat skill. It's been rewritten several times since I first added it, and it's evolved into its own unique group-support style -- one which doesn't step on the Bard skill too much. But it took lots of iteration and experimentation to figure out what would work, and I was able to apply some of those lessons to Bard.

The Charged Pig skill was also intended to prototype something. In this case, it was prototyping "combat sub-skills". The Charged Pig skill didn't have its own combat bar; instead, you could mix-and-match Pig and Charged Pig abilities on the Pig skill bar. This would give the Pig skill some needed solo viability.

(Sidebar: You may be thinking "why bother?" Why not just add more abilities to the existing skill? Adding too much content to a skill makes it harder for players to use. That sounds counterintuitive, but consider treasure-effects: right now the Sword skill has a dozen or so combat abilities, and there are unique treasure-effects for all of them. Since you only use 6 of the 12 abilities on your skill-bar at once, half of the Sword effects you find in loot aren't useful to your particular build. if I added a bunch more abilities to Sword, along with new treasure-effects, it would get harder and harder to find treasure that worked for your specific combat style. When its broken up into sub-skills, the game only gives out sub-skill-specific treasure if you're actually using the sub-skill. That's one benefit; there are similar "compartmentalization" benefits with training, unlocking, crafting, and base-items.)

So I implemented Charged Pig, allocating a full month to work on it since it would need lots of experimenting. I created a handful of unique abilities, added some treasure-effects, worked out all the logistics of how the skill interacted with XP-earning and loot tables and so on. Then I created a pig character and started testing it, and realized I was missing a bigger opportunity. Charged Pig did add more soloing power to the Pig skill, which was nice... but since I could only use a total of six abilities, I ended up losing too much of the fun stuff from the Pig skill. What Pig needed was a new partner skill, something more solo-oriented that could synergize with the skill.

So I turned Charged Pig into a regular combat skill. That way, you could use six Pig abilities and six Charged Pig abilities at the same time. That made a lot more sense! In fact, all of the animal-form combat skills could use another viable partner skill, so Charged Pig evolved into Warden, which is a combat skill usable by any animal.

But a full combat skill requires a lot more work than a sub-skill: it needed more abilities, a LOT more treasure, and unique content to go with it. The earlier experiments used up a lot of the time available for the skill, though, so I crunched to create all the new abilities and treasure, while Sandra created the Wardens' special home, the Sacred Grotto. (We came up with some fun content ideas for the grotto that couldn't be implemented in time, so this is just the first version of the place.)

The Warden skill has one other unique mechanic: special daily quests. This would have been impossible to fit into our schedule, except that I'd already written most of it in an earlier prototyping session. That session resulted in adding gardening almanacs, oddly enough. Which is why, internally, the daily warden quests are driven by their own hidden almanac! But even with the technology handy, we still had to actually write the quests that used the feature.
So, in short, we worked really hard to flesh out the Warden skill, and I think it turned out pretty well, especially for the first version of a major combat skill. Of course, we'll continue to improve and iterate on it over time.

The Charged Pig skill, on the other hand, is dead. It remains in the data files, but it'll only be used for internal testing now. It did its job as a prototype sub-skill, though, and the first "real" sub-skill will show up soon! The first one will probably debut with the playable fairy race. Later, I expect to use sub-skills to provide some weapons diversity, among other things. For instance, the Axe skill will tentatively be a sub-skill of Hammer; Spear will be a sub-skill of Staff; there might eventually be a Greatsword skill which is a sub-skill of Sword. Each sub-skill will add a few new abilities to an existing skills' repertoire, as well as unique requirements, unique treasure, and unique training.


Many animals can be druids, but pigs can't. There's nothing explicitly preventing pigs from being druids, mind you, there's just no equipment for it. Druids need to be holding a wooden item, and pigs don't have hands. Other animals have workarounds: for instance, cows can get wooden "cow shoes" made for them by a player carpenter. But I intentionally didn't give pigs an item like that because I knew they would eventually be getting the Charged Pig skill. Druid and Charged Pig don't play the same, but they cover a lot of the same ground, and they weren't designed to stack.

Then Charged Pig evolved into Warden, which is usable by any animal. So now several animal forms can use Warden and Druid together. And yep, it's unbalanced. They share too many of the same tricks, and those tricks stack, and it's too much. It's not "oh crap shut everything down now" levels of overpowered, mind you, but it's something that needs to be addressed during balancing.

Keep in mind that the goal of the Warden skill is to give the animal-specific combat skills (like Cow, Pig, Spider, etc.) a new partner skill, to make those skills more useful and interesting, especially for solo play. If the best partner skill for Warden ends up being Druid, then Warden is a failure at its goal!

So right now I'm leaning toward disabling the Warden+Druid skill combination for balance reasons. I'm not yet sure what game mechanic will prevent the pairing, though. (The silver lining is that once that's done, I can add druid activation-items for pigs.)


(Important background info you may or may not know: the game takes place on the continent of Alharth, where the druids are run by the god Dreva. But on the distant continent of Fosulf, the druids are run cooperatively by Ri-Shin and Au-Shin together. They're much older gods than Dreva, and although they're technically allies of Dreva, there's also a bit of hostility. Dreva is a young hotshot god who has decided to "police the gods", and that doesn't always make you popular with other gods.)

The Charged Pig skill also had its own storyline. It was fairly silly, because we're talking about flying pigs with electricity powers, and that seemed like it should have a lighthearted storyline. The story was that Au-Shin, the god of Animals, got into a huge fight with his brother Ri-Shin, the god of Plants, over who had dominion over fungi. Both gods felt that mushrooms should be in their domain! This debate had been going on for millennia, and it was slowly destroying their friendship.

Due to this impasse, mushrooms had been considered "off limits" by both gods. But then Ri-Shin declared himself God of Mushrooms, and created Mushroom Treants (tentatively those might have ended up being the Myconians, or they might have been a new variety of treant... I didn't get that far into the details).

Au-Shin was outraged at his brother's betrayal, but in public he had to continue to support his brother. It would be devastating for all of nature if animals and plants became enemies! So Au-Shin worked in secret. He created a covert team of intelligent animals to fight these fungi. Pigs are great at sniffing out mushrooms, so Au-Shin chose them as his secret agents. His friend, the god Lo-Maj, helped him bestow powerful electricity powers on them which could even let the pigs fly for short periods.

Like I said, it was a silly storyline. It's basically just enough of a story-hook to create some quests and rewards and so on. But when Charged Pig turned into Warden, the story also shifted. As soon as I started writing the Warden NPCs, I realized I needed something more serious in tone, because it was feeling too silly: I couldn't create any story tension at all. The new storyline still involves Au-Shin (with a little help from Lo-Maj), but all the other details have changed.

In the new storyline, Au-Shin decided to gain more influence on the continent of Alharth. He created dozens of magical lakes and springs that could give animals intelligence and powers. These worked well for a few hundred years -- a very short time by godly standards -- until Norala, the god of the hunt, decided to put an end to it. Her influence is very strong on Alharth and she refused to let other gods move in on her territory. So she directed her werewolves to stamp out the Wardens and destroy their magical springs. She was very successful, and Au-Shin was forced to abandon the project.

The Wardens you meet in-game are some of the last of their kind. After suffering terrible defeats from the werewolves, they've retreated to the Hidden Grotto, one of the last remaining sacred springs. And it's precious! There's a secret community of intelligent animals that use the grotto to give their children human-like intelligence. If the werewolves win and the grotto is destroyed, all future offspring will remain normal animals. So the Wardens are fighting for their survival, as well as the happiness of their children and their children's children.

That's a little more meaty! Abandoned by their god, they're fighting for more than just their lives... they're fighting for their whole way of life! That's good stuff! But the Warden NPCs still ended up being more light-hearted than I intended. I just can't manage to write talking animals that aren't a little silly. It's harder than it sounds! But the new backstory took the silliness down a few notches, and gave them a lot more depth than they would have otherwise had.

And when I step out of my "game writer" role and step into the "game producer" role, I can see that the backstory does its job: it provides some interesting quest-hooks, story locations, tangible god-politics, and a jumping-off point for additional systems in the future.


I originally intended to end this blog post by revealing that the playable fairy race was coming soon. But then I forgot and tweeted that info a couple days ago, ruining the surprise.

So... you may have already heard, but: the playable fairy race is coming soon! This is an advanced race. It's a more difficult game experience than the existing three races, especially at first, but it also offers new benefits and opportunities. My goal is to create a different game experience than humans, elves, and rakshasa have. Not "better", or "worse," but "different". That's a pretty ambitious goal, though, so in the initial launch, the balance will probably be shit. But it's beta, so we're gonna beta-test it!

Since fairies add even more complexity to an already-complex game, you really need to understand some of the game's basics first. So the fairy race is "unlockable": you'll need to use a different character to complete a level 40 quest, which unlocks the ability to create fairy characters.

I have a lot more info to convey about playable fairies, and they deserve their own blog post. I'm working on that now, but the game-mechanics are still in development, and I need to get a few more details locked down first. In the meantime, I answered a few questions about the fairy race here: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2384-Some-General-Fairy-Questions

(Discuss this blog post on the forum! https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2385-Dev-Blog-The-Life-and-Death-of-Charged-Pig)

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This is a smallish update with bug fixes and design iterations. We've also added Treasure Cartography to Sun Vale.


Preta in Sun Vale teaches the recipes for creating Sun Vale treasure maps from found clue items. As for finding the clue items, that's for you to figure out... but if you've unlocked Treasure Cartography in Eltibule you'll have a pretty good idea of where to look.

A tip: we had the new selection-box changes (explained below) in mind when creating this content. If you're finding it difficult to click on massive things, turn on the experimental option!


Previously, players were slightly buoyant underwater, meaning they slowly floated to the surface. This was intended to be helpful, but it's annoying to float out of range while fighting or interacting with things underwater, so it's been removed.

Buoyancy was originally added for one specific reason: it helped make jumping from the water's surface more intuitive. If you jump out of the water and splash back in, you might end up underwater, at which point you start losing breath until you get back to the surface. This can be very surprising for new players who don't expect to drown by pressing the jump key.

We've replaced buoyancy with a more subtle technique. Now when you jump out of the water and splash back in, the game automatically simulates pressing the "Up" movement key for a fraction of a second to push you back to the surface. (Unless you're pressing the "Down" key at the time.)

This new solution is supposed to be unnoticeable, so it doesn't last very long. If your character's jump-speed is magically enhanced, you may land too far underwater and will need to press the Up key manually to reach the surface. This is annoying, but it's the best compromise solution so far.


We've tweaked how the selection-box works when you've selected something very large, very close to the camera, or partially off-screen. The box size is more accurate and should move more predictably when you turn the camera around. This is a small iterative improvement, not a massive change. The only time it will be really noticeable is when you've selected massive entities such as giants, statues, or dungeon doors.

For just this update, the change is disabled by default. To enable this change, open the Settings window. In the Graphics screen, check the box labeled "Experimental Optimizations", then press Save. You can turn it off again later by unchecking that box. (If you had previously checked this checkbox for the last experiment, it's been unchecked automatically so that you aren't accidentally opted in to this new experiment. And no, this experiment isn't actually an "optimization", that's just a handy checkbox that we're reusing for this purpose.)

If these changes cause new problems, please let us know! It's easiest for us to keep track of opinion-type feedback if you post it on the forum, but please use the in-game bug reporter for bugs like "the new selection-box goes insane when I select this portal" or similar problems. In-game bug reports automatically include your game coordinates so we can quickly locate the problem.


A few abilities have a channeling time specifically because they're intended for use pre-fight, and they're supposed to be more dangerous to use in the middle of combat. That's a reasonable goal, but it's annoying to have to wait for the channeling time between every fight. So in this update, the relevant abilities no longer have a casting time when used out of combat (but still channel when used during combat). Affected abilities are:

• Shield: Rapid Recovery
  
• Shield: Strategic Preparation. (Casting time in-combat went from 1.5 to 2 seconds)
  
• Spider: Premeditated Doom
  
• Warden: Stun Trap
  

Following up on the previous update notes, we're going to try the "nigiri is basically like potions" approach and see how that feels. Nigiri changes:

• Nigiri items have lower item levels than before, so they heal less health and power when eaten
  
• Nigiri items no longer have a usage delay, allowing them to be eaten in combat
  
• Nigiri recipes now require an herb or lettuce of various types (e.g. dill, swamp weed, oregano... you know, classic sushi ingredients)
  
• Nigiri recipes now require less vinegar
  

In an attempt to make sushi recipes more predictable, we've changed Sushi Roll recipes to use the same herb needed by the corresponding nigiri recipe. For instance, Eel Nigiri now requires Oregano, so Eel Sushi Roll also requires Oregano (instead of Seaweed).

Also, Cavefish Sushi Roll became level 40 food instead of level 35.

[h2]Other Instant-Snack Changes[/h2]
It seems best to be consistent with the idea that instant-snack foods have no usage delay. (In fact, loot items like Rattus Root and Raw Oyster were supposed to be instant already.) The following instant-snack foods are now truly instant:

• Raw Oyster
  
• Cleaned Shrimp
  
• Shark Chew
  
• Cavefish Sticks
  
• House Cat
  
• All Candy Canes
  
• Fried Potato Sticks
  
• Laura Neth's Famous Tart
  
• Pepper Venison
  
• Fairy Honey
  
• Rattus Root
  
• Cactus Juice
  
• Bottle of Sugar Water
  
• Large Strawberry
  

We expect there will be further changes to instant-snack food as we continue to iterate on the design.

• Kelp armor has a new appearance
  
• Kelp armor can now be dyed (with the Organic 1-Color Dye recipe)
  
• Live Event boss kraken "George" now has a boss curse
  
• Certain (non-event) Kraken now deal less damage with their rage attacks... but they still deal more than 1,000 damage per rage attack, so for most players the change is irrelevant
  
• Squidlips has a few new recipes for amberjack
  
• Animal Town inhabitants are now able to differentiate between players killing their guardians vs. killing actual enemies of Animal Town
  
• Fixed the Cotton Gin in Sun Vale
  
• A bug in Khryulek's crystal communication device prevented her from correctly talking about weird items you presented to her
  
• Gazluk plate leggings were unintentionally dyeable; this has been fixed. (The armor material isn't set up for dyes yet, so it looks extra-special terrible when dyed. It'll become dyeable eventually.)
  
• Fixed bug in treasure effect "Armor Received from Patch Armor +X" : it incorrectly restored bonus health instead of armor
  
• Fixed bug that prevented Norbert from finishing the Warden intro sub-quest "The External Resource Coordinator"
  
• Improved equipment rarity in various loot chests, most notably high-end chests dug up with treasure cartography
  
• For technical reasons the game previously allowed you to unearth treasure maps and surveys while swimming at the surface of water, even though it explained that you must be "standing on solid ground" to use a map. Now you must actually be standing on solid ground as intended. In some cases this means you'll need to swim to the bottom of a body of water to reach the ground.
  

Holiday Event
The Holiday event has begun! Talk to any NPC that you have "Friends" or higher Favor with to receive a present from them. In addition, each city (and some non-city areas) have a Ri-Shin tree that needs decorating. Look for the NPCs with red hats on to get started.



This update includes a big change to the Sun Vale map. It has the same content and connections as before, but it looks quite a bit different. (And larger.)
This is a 'soft launch' of the new Sun Vale. There's a lot of missing props and some odd graphical issues left to fix, but you can see the bones of the new place and how things are supposed to work together, and we need feedback on that! Sun Vale is for players in the 30-40 level range, so hopefully you can find things worth doing in any level of that range. (But as usual, you may have to explore around a bit to find them.)

There are some new things to do, and the "Things to Do" list in your quest journal has been updated to get you started.

We'll be doing another pass on Sun Vale soon to incorporate the upcoming playable fairy race. In the short term some Sun Vale NPCs have definitely had a downgrade of their homes -- in fact a bunch of the fairies no longer even have a roof over their heads, let alone any possessions -- but that's temporary. In this particular update we're most interested in game-mechanics feedback: is the combat is survivable? Is it worthwhile? How well do the new mechanics work, and are you able to figure out how everything fits together? That sort of thing.


Stun Trap Nerfs

Stun Trap was too overpowered and has been nerfed a bit.

• Ability change: Stun Trap has a casting time of 2 seconds; being hit during the casting time aborts.
  
• Ability change: Stun Trap cannot be reused while previous Stun Traps are still active. (You can manually dispel unneeded traps from the Pets window.)
  
• Treasure change: "Stun Trap deals +85% damage to all nearby targets (when it activates)" => now +45% damage
  
• Treasure change: "Stun Trap reuse timer is 16 seconds faster" => now 10 seconds faster
  

Sushi Roll Nerfs
Sushi Roll items have been reduced in effective food level. They’re intentionally higher-level than their ingredients would suggest... but they went too far, being so overpowered that they made most other cooking recipes irrelevant. They've been toned down a bit while still trying to retain their purpose:

• Eel Sushi Roll: went from level 40 to level 30
  
• Cavefish Sushi Roll: from 50 to 35
  
• Shark Sushi Roll: from 60 to 45
  
• Green Vexfish Sushi Roll: from 65 to 50
  
• Crelpin's Sushi: from 72 to 60
  

Note that the Nigiri recipes from Sushi Preparation have not been changed at this time, although they're also MUCH higher-level than their ingredients would suggest. (Nigiri is instant-healing food which is so good that it basically obsoletes healing potions at high level.) There are pros and cons to having a food item be better than healing potions. One of the cons is that we don't really have room to give Alchemists the ability to brew healing potions. Those potion recipes couldn't possibly be easier or more convenient than "slap two fish slices on storebought rice"! But on the other hand, it's fun flavor for sushi to be the best in-combat healing item. We're still considering the options, and leaving it alone for now.


Other Changes

• Fixed a bug that caused Electricity Elementals and Cold Elementals to have the same damage-type vulnerabilitites/strengths
  
• Fixed a bug that caused Fire Rats and Pumpkin Mimics to have the same damage-type vulnerabilities/strengths
  
• Giant bats can once again fly inside the Red Wing Casino
  
• A few types of loot swords that were supposed to have holy symbols did not
  
• Rugen in Rahu now trains Fishing up to level 70 (although note that the highest fishing recipe/req is currently 65)
  
• Sushi Preparation now goes to 30 instead of 25. (And for technical reasons Ice Conjuration also goes to 30 instead of 25, although there are no new recipes for it yet)
  
• Rabbit: the ability Long Ear can now be placed on the side ability bar
  
• Newbie Island: added a gentle deterrent for new players who decide to try swimming off the island (which is a reasonable idea, but not successful here)
  
• Ranalon lose their resistance to Nature damage
  
• Higher-level Ranalon loot profiles improved
  
• Added a few "Things to Do" entries for Sun Vale
  
• Cow: new treasure: Head: Chew Cud increases your mitigation versus all attacks by Elites +14 for 10 seconds
  
• Cow: new treasure: Necklace: Stampede boosts your Slashing/Crushing/Piercing Mitigation vs. Elites +6 for 30 seconds (stacks up to 5 times)
  
• Cow: treasure change: "Stampede has a 50% chance to deal +56 damage" => "Stampede boosts the damage of future Stampede attacks by +38 damage for 60 seconds (stacks up to 15 times)"
  
• Cow: treasure change: "Stampede Taunt +310" => +440
  
• The archery ability Acid Arrow is no longer taught by The Wombat. It's now taught by Squidlips.
  
• Recipes for Cavefish Sticks and Spicy Cavefish now use Cavefish Fillets (rather than un-fileted cavefish)
  
• Water Lung Potion: this potion now boosts your Max Breath +10 seconds, instead of reducing your breath-consumption. The recipe now requires oyster meat instead of wool. (The potion's old effect is now granted by a new potion, the "Water Breathing Potion".)
  
• Trollbane Oil: cash value reduced
  
• Swimming Potion: this potion now requires Alchemy level 25 instead of 40. Duration is 30 minutes instead of 60. Recipe no longer requires flour or shark fillet, instead requiring an eel fillet
  
• You now earn synergy levels in Fishing by reaching the following levels in other skills (previously only Knife Fighting 22 provided a synergy level):
  
  • Knife Fighting 22,
    
  • Knife Fighting 55,
    
  • Cooking 35,
    
  • Foraging 22,
    
  • Foraging 65,
    
  • Animal Handing 22,
    
  • Animal Handling 55,
    
  • Skinning 25,
    
  • Fish and Snail Anatomy 22,
    
  • Surveying 25,
    
  • Druid 65,
    
  • Nature Appreciation 22,
    
  • Sushi Preparation 25,
    
  • Psychology 22
    
• Daisy now trains the recipe for Trollbane Oil. (It is also still dropped as a loot recipe)
  
• Fixed bug that prevented Bounceweed from giving Giant Bats bonus flight speed
  
• Fixed some base-stats of items (which were statted for the wrong level range):
  
  • Un-Tal bow: Archery Damage +10% -> +8%
    
  • Quality Cestus: Unarmed Damage +2 -> +5
    

Thanks!
Thanks for helping us make the game better with your feedback! If you type "/redeem DevGift2019" into the chat box (without the quotes) you'll receive a unique title and some XP potions. This is our way of saying thank-you for your patience and support! (If you've been around for many years you may have an additional novelty title to redeem; use "/redeem" to see a list of available redemptions.)

This is a bug-fix update, more or less. (The Fae Realm changes might not be "bug fixes" exactly, but close enough!)

• Fixed water in Serbule Sewers not reaching far enough
  
• Fixed some unexpectedly swimmable areas in Wolf Cave dungeon
  
• Removed some places in Eltibule where cows could graze underwater
  
• The river in Sun Vale doesn't work well with our new deep-water system, so for now it's using our older "puddle" system. The entire river is now treated as a giant puddle, which means you can splash in the river, and fill bottles from it, but you can't drown... even if the water goes over your head. (The new terrain for Sun Vale is in development, so this is a temporary band-aid for the existing terrain.)
  

• Flight Potions, Flight Words of Power, and all other forms of flying no longer work in dungeons. (The flight effect is suppressed indoors but will resume when you go back outdoors.)
  
• Giant Bats can no longer fly indoors. (But they still retain other wing-related benefits such as turning mid-jump and not taking damage from falls.)
  
• Fixed flight-behavior anomalies for giant bats that turn into ravens
  

• Lethargy Puck gives Notoriety XP on first kill (or your next kill, if you've already killed him before)
  
• Felmer in the Fae Realm now teaches recipes for Astounding Winter leather gear
  
• There are now a bunch more milkable Fae Molluscs in the Fae Realm (10 total instead of 4), but the timeout before you can re-milk is now a day instead of an hour. The intent is to make "slime-collection runs" more practical
  

• UI: fixed bug where the "Combat Refresh Ready" icon would flash and beep at incorrect times
  
• UI: fixed bug where the blue border around basic attacks would not reappear when combat refresh was ready again
  
• UI: fixed situations where mouse cursor could get stuck as a resize-handle cursor if a window closed while the mouse was over resize-grips
  
• UI: fixed bug where an Effect tooltip would get "stuck" on the mouse cursor if the cursor was over the Effect icon right as the Effect ended
  

• Fixed typo that caused the Guild Quest "Fox Outpost (25-member)" to require slightly more grapes than intended
  
• Fixed spurious "blank" error message when using the ability Rotflesh
  
• Fixed bug where you could lose your empty bottle if you were interrupted while collecting Dirty Snow Water from a Snow-Covered Rock
  
• Fixed typos in a few recipe names
  
• Fixed a few quest directions which were inaccurate
  
• Fixed a few recipe descriptions that claimed they served 2 when they serve 1
  
• Amazing Venison is now interpreted as raw venison for gifting purposes
  
• Increased maximum number of temporary entities allowed in the Red Wing Casino (to prevent vegetables from disappearing when a bunch of players are farming simultaneously)