Project: Gorgon News

Winter is here, and humans and their friends across Alharth have begun celebrating the winter festival dedicated to Ri-Shin, god of plants and trees. Many towns and communities are looking for help to make their areas a little more festive, and you may find that your NPC friends have New Years' gifts for you as well!



When we opened the Red Wing Casino a few updates back, we introduced blacksmithing recipes to "dangerously improve" some types of weapons. This was a bit of an experiment for us as we looked at different ways to meet our goal of helping level-40 players improve their gear.

After watching the recipes in action and tweaking them a bit, we've realized that this implementation will probably never meet our goals: it just requires too many resources for level-40 players to afford. And since "dangerously improved" weapons were overpowered in the hands of higher-level players, it didn't make sense to leave them in the game as they were.

We apologize for having to remove this experiment. We're still prototyping replacement systems that will meet our goals better, and when we've chosen that new system, we'll attempt to update your equipment in whatever way seems to make sense. We'll do our best to preserve the time and effort that you've put into your "dangerously improved" weapons and translate that into the new system.

In the meantime, we've left the non-working enhancements encoded into your weapons; you may seem them listed as "Do Nothing +X". Similarly, the recipes are still in your recipe list, labeled as "OBSOLETE", until we decide how the new system will work.



Several treasure effects were misconfigured, making them unavailable on randomly generated items. These have never actually been seen in the game before. So really, it's like they're brand new effects! Other treasure effects were only available in some of the locations or on some of the objects they were intended to cover.

Bard:

• Some treasure effects for main-hand weapons could only be found on Lutes, and some effects for off-hand weapons could only be found on Horns.
  

Battle Chemistry:

• "Toxic Irritant boosts your Nice Attack Damage +X for 8 seconds" is now available on rings and main-hand weapons.
  

Druid:

• "Toxinball Damage +X%": This was intended to be findable on necklaces and main-hand equipment, but couldn't be found on main-hand equipment.
  

Ice Magic:

• "Tundra Spikes deals +X% damage, gains +Y accuracy, and lowers targets' Evasion by Z for 20 seconds": This mod comes on two equipment slots, but the evasion-debuff aspect of the mod did not stack with itself.
  
• "Ice Spear heals you for 46 health after a 15 second delay": This was intended to be findable on gloves and off-hand items, but couldn't be found on off-hand equipment.
  

Knife:

• Many treasure effects for main-hand weapons could only appear on Daggers. Now that dirks can be wielded in the off-hand, it's now reasonable to have a sword with Knife effects!
  
• "Poisoner's Cut boosts indirect poison +X per tick" is now available on pants and off-hand weapons.
  
• "Gut deals +X% damage and reuse timer is -1 second" is now available on shirts and necklaces.
  

Pig:

• "Grunt of Abeyance restores X Power to all targets": This was intended to appear on necklaces and main-hand equipment, but couldn't be found on main-hand equipment.
  

Staff:

• "Phoenix Strike deals +10% damage and triggers the target's Vulnerability" is now available on staves.
  

Werewolf:

• "All Werewolf attacks have a X% chance to deal Y Trauma damage over 8 seconds": This was intended to appear on helmets and main-hand equipment, but couldn't be found on main-hand equipment.
  

Unarmed:

• All main-hand treasure effects could not be found on daggers (but could be found on other weapons such as swords).
  

Other:

• Fixed several dozen Feet-slot treasure effects that could not be found on animal shoes (such as Deer Shoes).
  
• Fixed a handful of other cases where certain treasure effects could not be found on certain specific types of equipment.
  

Several skills have gotten a bit of holiday love! For the following skill changes, we've tried to avoid turning gear "Legacy". (Legacy items are invalid items; they stop working and have to be replaced after 30 days.) To do that, retired treasure effects have been replaced with new effects that use the same equipment slots as the old. As a side-effect of squeezing new effects in wherever they can fit, it's possible that your gear will have effects for entirely different abilities than it had before! Sorry about that. We try to avoid that, but sometimes it's unavoidable.



Necromancy has never been especially powerful at high-level, in large part due to a bunch of buggy treasure effects. You could build some interesting "darkness blaster" necromancers, but at high-level the pets were generally useless. We started out just fixing the bugs, but then decided to go a lot further: the majority of Necromancy's treasure effects have been altered with an eye toward creating interesting pet-oriented playstyles and skill combinations.

Ability Changes:

• "Create Super Zombie": This ability has been removed! It is now merged into the Raise Zombie ability (which was previously called Create Shambling Corpse).
  
• "Create Shambling Corpse" was renamed "Raise Zombie". (It was already called in some parts of the game.) You can now use Raise Zombie even while you have a zombie alive, in which case it buffs and heals the existing zombie. The reuse timer on Raise Zombie is increased to 60 seconds and the Power cost is higher. All gear pertaining to zombies has been revised, and many new gear effects have been added for zombies.
  
• Wave of Darkness: Changed from a 20m burst to a 10m burst. Changed base reuse time from 30 seconds to 18 seconds. All treasure mods that affected Wave of Darkness have been rebalanced as a result.
  
• Provoke Undead: The inherent damage boost is slightly larger. Also, all treasure effects that were supposed to boost the damage from Provoke Undead were bugged and did (almost) nothing. These effects have been fixed and significantly revised, and new effects were added as well.
  

Since there were almost no Necromancy treasure effects that were entirely unchanged, this just lists the ones that changed significantly in function. Many other effects were rebalanced but not fundamentally changed, and a bunch of other Necromancy effects were entirely removed to make room for new ones. (See below.)

• "Provoke Undead causes target undead to deal +X% damage for 10 seconds" => was bugged and did not work. It has been refactored to deal +X% damage but also deal Y damage to your minions over a 10 second period.
  
• "Provoke Undead causes target undead to deal +X% damage for 10 seconds, but also take Y Health damage after a 10-second delay" => also did not work correctly. It has been refactored to deal damage immediately, not after a delay.
  
• "Provoke Undead causes target undead to deal +X% damage with their Fire/Ice/Electricity attacks (if any) for 10 seconds" => also didn't work correctly. It has been refactored into a flat global damage bonus instead of an elemental percentage bonus.
  
• "Life Steal targets all enemies within 10 meters and deals +X damage but reuse timer is +3 seconds" => was tweaked a bit because the +X flat damage wasn't useful. It is now: "Life Steal targets all enemies within 10 meters and steals +X health, but reuse timer is +3 seconds and Power cost is +Y".
  
• "Wave of Darkness heals you for 66 health" => was replaced with a new effect: "Wave of Darkness damage +X and reuse timer is -1 second".
  
• "Rebuild Undead restores X health/armor to your undead after a 15 second delay" => now has a 10-second delay.
  
• "Summoned Skeletons deal +X direct damage with each attack, but take Y% more damage from any cold attacks" => damage bonus is a percentage instead of flat.
  
• "Summoned Skeletal Archers and Mages deal +X direct damage, but take +50% more damage from any slashing, piercing, or crushing attacks" => damage bonus is a percentage instead of flat.
  
• "Summoned Skeletal Archers deal +X direct damage with each attack" => now also applies to Skeletal Mages.
  
• "All Summoned Skeletons deal +X damage with each attack, but are instantly destroyed by ANY Nature attack" => damage bonus is a percentage instead of flat, and this effect no longer applies to skeleton swordsmen.
  
• "Death's Hold causes target to take +X% damage from Slashing for 15 seconds" => was quite overpowered, or would have been if it worked. It works now but has reduced efficacy.
  
• "Rebuild Undead restores X health/armor to your undead after a 10 second delay" => accidentally healed the necromancer, not the undead minions.
  

All of these have been replaced with entirely new effects.

• "Death's Hold deals +X damage and Stuns target after a 15 second delay": This effect was almost always useless. It has been replaced.
  
• "Necromancy Base Damage +%": The skill actually had two of these mods for a total of 4 slots' worth. This didn't seem to fit the Necromancy skill as it is currently envisioned, so two of those slots have been repurposed to boost Skeleton pet damage instead.
  
• "Summoned Skeletal Archers and Mages regenerate +X health every update, both in and out of combat": Most tiers of this ability did not work on the right kinds of skeleton. It was fixed, but then completely replaced with a new effect.
  
• "Summoned Skeletal Mages deal +X direct damage with each attack": This effect has been merged with a different one (above), so it was repurposed for a new effect.
  
• "Create Super Zombie also heals yourself for 192 health, 192 armor, and 38 power": This has been replaced with a new effect that buffs Raise Zombie.
  
• "Create Zombie also heals yourself for X health": This has been replaced with something that actually makes zombies better.
  
• "Provoke Undead causes target undead to recover 66 Armor": Although it was one of the only Provoke Undead treasure effects that actually worked, it was thematically inappropriate for the ability. It has been replaced.
  
• "Heal Undead restores +X Health/Armor and boosts targets' Slashing damage +Y for 8 seconds": The amounts here were so small as to be useless. Replaced.
  

Cows' gear configuration posed a slightly thornier problem. While it was possible to build robust tanky builds, it required a lot of gear before it started to work: there were separate treasure effects for crushing, slashing, and piercing protection, and a typical "tank" would need all three -- and at high level they would probably want two of each. And since all six of those effects appeared on only Hands and Feet gear, cow gear ended up feeling pretty uninspired. We've changed those effects around, and also tried to address some other problematic play aspects and build limitations.

• "Chew Cud boosts Crushing Mitigation +22 for 10 seconds" => "Chew Cud boosts Crushing/Slashing/Piercing Mitigation +14 for 10 seconds". In addition, this effect is now available on 4 slots instead of 2.
  
• "Chew Cud boosts Slashing Mitigation +22 for 10 seconds" => was replaced with a new effect.
  
• "Chew Cud boosts Piercing Mitigation +22 for 10 seconds" => was replaced with a new effect.
  
• "Stampede Damage +X" => "Stampede Taunt +X" (for a much bigger X).
  
• Ability "Tough Hoof" has been revised. "If the target attacks and damages you within 5 seconds, you regain X health" => is now "Each time the target attacks and damages you within 8 seconds, you regain X health". The ability's damage is a bit lower and reuse timer is 12s instead of 10s. Treasure effects have changed also.
  
• There is also a new ability for Cows, as well as a bunch of new treasure effects. The new ability can temporarily be learned from Raul in Animal Town. (Although not permanently, as he finds it extremely uncouth.)
  

• Cuteness Overload is now marked as an Epic Attack for purposes of equipment that boosts Epic Attacks.
  
• "Summoned Deer deal +X damage" => damage is now percentage-based instead of flat.
  
• "Deer Kick deals X armor damage and reduces target's rage by Y" => accidentally dealt Health damage instead. It has been refactored to just deal regular damage.
  
• "Deer Kick implants insect eggs in the target. Future Deer Kicks by any deer cause target to take X Nature damage over 5 seconds" => didn't work. It now works as intended. In addition, all attacks made by player-summoned deer are now considered "Deer Kicks" for the purposes of this treasure effect.
  
• "Deer Bash heals X health" => accidentally restored Armor instead.
  
• Plus a new ability and a number of new treasure effects! The new ability can temporarily be learned from Jumper in Animal Town.
  

The rabbit skill was unfinished: it had basic treasure effects but the selection was very shallow, which especially caused problems at high level. We've added two new abilities and dozens of new treasure effects to give Rabbit players a wider range of builds. Rabbits are the only animal form that can access Ice Magic, so some of the new rabbit treasure synergizes with it. We've also deepened the possibilities for melee rabbits (when combined, presumably, with Unarmed) and added more tools to build supportive Mentalist rabbits.

We've also worked harder to make Carrot Power the defining feature it was meant to be. Rabbits love veggies and we want rabbit players to love veggies too, thanks to their powerful game effects! There were two problems with carrots: they was too expensive to use routinely, and the effects didn't really justify that hassle. So we've tackled the problem from both directions, making rabbit abilities consume far fewer carrots (especially with gear effects), as well as buffing up the potency and versatility of the ability's treasure options. (And remember that the ability's requirement for "carrots" can also be met with carrot-flavored rabbit treats, which can be bartered in Animal Town. This is how you turn other veggies into "carrots"!)

Other changes:

• Reuse timer of Hare Dash changed from 30 to 25.
  
• Reuse timer of Play Dead now gets faster with each tier of the ability.
  
• "Carrot Power Boosts Direct Cold Damage" => now boosts direct and indirect cold damage.
  
• Fixed effect-ordering bug where the Play Dead effect that boosted Psychic damage did not apply to the Play Dead effect that dealt Psychic damage.
  
• Plus two new abilities and a large new assortment of new treasure effects! The new abilities can temporarily be learned from Cinnamon in Animal Town, although they will be taught by a different NPC in the future.
  

Abilities:

• Incubate is no longer marked a Nice Attack. Spit Acid is now a Nice Attack.
  
• Incubate can now be placed on the sidebar.
  
• Baby spiders' rage attacks now have significantly better poison DoTs, and the spiders have smaller rage bars so they can use their poison a bit more often.
  
• Spit Acid now destroys more armor on immediate impact.
  
• Inject Venom's poison DoT deals more damage in a much shorter time window (12s instead of 20s).
  
• Premeditated Doom reset time changed from 40s to 20s. Durations of various treasure effects adjusted accordingly.
  Treasure:
  
• "Incubated Spiders deal +X direct damage with each attack" => now boosts damage by a percentage instead of a flat number
  
• "Spider Bite has a 50% chance to deal +X damage" => now works for both Spider Bite and Infinite Legs, and it boosts damage by a percentage instead of a flat number.
  
• "Combo: Gripjaw+any+any+Inject Venom deals +X damage and +Y over 20 seconds" => now deals +X% damage instead of a flat boost. The Damage-over-Time aspect has been dropped, but it was awful and you won't miss it.
  
• "Spider Bite deals +X% damage" => has been replaced with "Combat Refresh restores +Y Power while Spider skill active".
  
• "Premeditated Doom restores X health" => restores health after a 10-second delay.
  
• "Premeditated Doom restores X armor" => restores armor after a 10-second delay.
  
• "Infinite Legs restores X health" => now also applies to Spider Bite.
  
• "Spider Bite restores X health" => was made obsolete because the Infinite Legs version now applies to both abilities. So it has been replaced with a completely new effect, one that buffs Premeditated Doom.
  
• "Infinite Legs restores X armor" => has been replaced with "Infinite Legs deals +X% damage and reuse timer is -0.5 seconds".
  
• "Grappling Web causes the target to take +X% damage from Poison attacks" => now correctly stacks with itself when the effect is present on two equipment slots.
  
• "Poison Mitigation +X while Spider skill active" => now also mitigates Acid.
  
• "Acid Mitigation +X while Spider skill active" => has been replaced with a new treasure effect for Spit Acid.
  
• Plus various rebalances and new treasure effects to flesh out the spider's arsenal.
  

• Abilities that summon pets now list the treasure effects that will apply (just as other types of abilities do).
  
• You can now click on your pets in-game and examine them to see a rudimentary report of their combat stats at that moment. (Previously this was only available to Animal Handling pets.)
  
• Sammie Grimspine in Serbule Hills sells Skinning Knives to her Friends. (This is a backup method for demo players who lose the knife they get from Ivyn's favor reward.)
  
• Fixed equipment-crafting bug where using two of the same gem could generate Legacy items.
  
• Fixed bug preventing Rabbit treasure mods from being extracted into Malachites.
  
• Equipment-crafting recipes are changed so that using two of the same gem now usually results in gear for that skill + generic enhancements (rather than being for that skill + a randomly-picked skill) .
  
• Fixed a bug where Death Avoidance gear did not always take your remaining armor into account before activating.
  

This is a quick touch-up to last week's update.

• Inventory window: did not show the special overlays shown on top of quest items and broken hardcore items.
  
• Practical Summoning: manually typing a number did not always correctly change the number summoned.
  
• Recipe Sorting: the "Sort by Times Used" option did not work in some situations
  
• Inventory window: showed incorrect status messages in the chat history when locking/unlocking a folder.
  
• Fixed the level requirement on about two dozen work orders. These work orders' rewards are unchanged, only the level requirement was incorrect.
  
• Fixed physics bug that could cause oversized monsters to fall through the world
  
• Miscellaneous very minor data tweaks.
  

Discuss this update on our forum!

Today's update contains a huge array of new features, bugfixes, and quality of life improvements.

Practical Summoning: You can now learn "Practical Summoning", an advanced teleportation technique that allows you to teleport recipe ingredients from nearby storage vaults into your inventory while you are crafting.

When you learn Practical Summoning, it adds a special feature to the Crafting UI. If you don't have an ingredient on hand, the Crafting UI will display a "Summon" button. Pressing this button will attempt the teleport. You can also right-click a recipe ingredient and choose Summon Ingredient.

To learn this technique you will need Teleportation level 12. For now, Irkima in the Red Wing Casino teaches this to his Friends for a price of 10,000 councils. (It will likely be moved in the future when more practical summoning techniques are added.)

Auto-Repeat & Recipe Delay: We've tweaked auto-repeat crafting: the "repeating recipe" progress bar, which is displayed to give players a few seconds to cancel the recipe, will no longer be shown if the recipe already has a suitable built-in delay. For instance, carding cotton at a cotton gin takes 3 seconds, so the "repeating recipe" progress bar isn't needed -- there's already time for you to abort the auto-repeat.

We've also removed the inherent recipe delay from many intermediate recipes, including most tool-creation recipes and all textile-creation recipes except for carding cotton. In addition, the inherent recipe delay of in-the-field decomposition recipes changed from 5 seconds to 3.

Other:

• You can now sort your recipe list in three ways: alphabetically, by recipe level, or by most-used recipes. There is no button for this UI feature yet; to access it, just right-click the name of a recipe in the list in the Crafting UI.
  
• You can now mark recipes as Favorites by right-clicking the recipe name in the list. There is a new drop-down option at the top of the list to show only favorite recipes.
  
• When crafting an enchanted item, the crafting window now shows info about the base item (the unenchanted version of the resulting item).
  

Vendor Lock: If you've unlocked at least 1 extra inventory folder, you can now right-click the folder and choose "Vendor Lock" to keep the contents of that folder hidden from the vendor sales screen. Items from vendor-locked folders simply won't be shown in the sales list at all, just as items used in a Loadout are not shown.

Inventory Hints: The inventory panel now offers you hints about items that are useful for your current situation. For example, when you are giving a gift to an NPC, the UI will highlight appropriate gifts in the inventory window with an animated overlay.

Similarly, when you are viewing a storage vault that can only store certain types of items, items you are allowed to store in that vault are highlighted. Likewise with consignment: the items you are allowed to consign with that vendor are highlighted.

Sorting Tweaks: We've refined the Inventory Sort button to automatically recognize new categories of items. The goal is for similar types of items to clump together when sorted. For example: mushrooms now sort next to each other, different stages of cotton sort together, silk sorts together, skinning knives appear near other tools, throwing knives sort together, and many more.

Other:

• Added an "Update this Loadout" button to loadout window; this button just replaces the contents of the loadout with the currently-active abilities and gear.
  
• Added a spot on the inventory window that you can drag items onto to get More Info. This is the same as right-clicking the item and choosing More Info.
  
• Fixed several subtle mouse-click bugs with the inventory window. Most notably, you couldn't drag items around in inventory while you were "in combat".
  
• Cleaned up confusing error messages and sometimes-buggy behavior with the Split Stack window. (BTW, did you know you can quickly split a stack of items by clicking the inventory item while holding down the SHIFT key?)
  

Drag Lock: If you want to prevent accidentally messing up your ability bars, there's a new option for you in the Settings window under the GUI tab. Just disable the option "Allow dragging things off of ability bars". You'll still be able to drag icons from the Abilities window ONTO your bars; you just won't be able to drag them OFF of the bars.

Effect Wiggle: Beneficial effects that last more than 5 minutes will now "wiggle" when the effect is nearly over. This is intended to alert you that important buffs (such as Food) are wearing off, and that you had probably better do something about that.

Other:

• Added a new setting to let you turn off the player stats bar that's usually in the top-left corner. This is for players who would prefer to just use the stats globes to track their health/armor/etc.
  
• The sidebar now has a right-click menu item to bring up the Special Abilities list, similar to the option already available on the bottom bars.
  
• Fixed bugs with the sidebar's contents getting changed or lost when using potions and effects that increased the number of sidebar slots (such as Gur-Horta)
  
• Fixed bug where changing the horizontal/vertical layout of the ability bars was not always saved in the settings for the next time the game started.
  
• On the character selection screen, if the character is not Hanging Out with someone, it instead shows the area the character is in.
  

Steam Family Sharing: We no longer support Steam's Family Sharing feature, which lets other family members "borrow" your games while you aren't playing them. This was being used by a few people to create extra "mule" characters for free.

Very few players are affected by this change, but if you are affected and you need help sorting things out, just drop us an e-mail at [email protected]. (And remember that if you want to let someone try out the game, you just can point them at the free demo!)

BookSaveToFile: Remember the old save-reports-to-file feature that was lost when we replaced the UI? No? Well, we've re-implemented it. If you add BookSaveToFile to your special settings, the "book" UI window will have a button that saves the contents to a file on your hard drive. This feature is intended to let players save reports such as the results from '/isearch' or '/guild who' so they can reference this information outside of the game. (Please note that this convenience feature may eventually be restricted to people who have the VIP subscriber plan.)

Other:

• At the Guild Management Sign, the Roster option can now be sorted by rank/name (the default, as before) or by Last Time Online.
  
• When using the Eject Guild Members option, that popup list is sorted by Last Time Online. (We assume that if you're making room in the roster, you probably want to eject people who haven't been online recently.)
  
• Fixed a bug with Dwarven Fixer: It did not correctly block the bright-lights screen effect of Delerium Tremens (the nastiest withdrawal state of an alcoholic). If you have Dwarven Fixer in your system already, you may need to drink another dose to get the fixed effect.
  
• Dwarven Fixer now lasts 3 hours instead of 1.
  
• Fixed several scripted scenarios where the game said you were lit on fire, but you weren't actually lit on fire (such as when trying to break into Ivyn's chest or when giving the wrong answer to the creepy crystal).
  
• Fixed various scripting bugs that caused players to receive items with impossibly-high stack sizes instead of receiving multiple stacks of the item.
  
• Fixed bugs when using the /leave command to leave a chat room that was in use in more than one chat channel.
  
• Improved the heuristics for closing chat tabs automatically.
  
• Fixed bug that caused the Group window to sometimes lose track of a party member (showing blank health/armor/power bars for them).
  
• Miscellaneous performance optimizations related to the user interface.
  
• Added new icons for resource items that are commonly confused with other resource items.
  
• Added missing titles from player packages. If your account still doesn't have a title and it should, please e-mail [email protected] ASAP so we can get you sorted out.
  

I wanted to give you an update on our plans for near-future game updates. But first, let's talk about the demo!


We're happy to announce that the "demo" version of Project: Gorgon is available. This has taken a while, but we knew it was important for this game. Project: Gorgon is pretty unusual, and you can't really tell if it's going to be your thing until you try it. So now you can! (You can download it from our Steam store page here -- just click "Download Demo" on the sidebar.)

I wanted to make sure the demo encompassed more than just the tutorial area, to really give demo users a feel for how the game plays. So the demo lets players explore Anagoge (the newbie island), Serbule, and Serbule Hills, as well as most of the dungeons in those areas. Demo characters can unlock new skills as usual, and they can raise any of their skills up to level 15. This gives demo'ers a broad sampling of the game's content to explore. Once they buy the actual game, demo characters automatically become "real" characters without any restrictions, so it's quick and painless to transition from the demo to the regular game.

We also worked hard to prevent "demo abuse". Since players could theoretically create as many demo characters as they want (limited only by the number of Steam accounts they want to create), there are a lot of potential abuse scenarios, such as harassment, market-manipulation, muling, even power-leveling. (Power-leveling? Really?! Yes... at least, in limited forms. Imagine someone using in a bunch of demo characters to play music for their main character's garden -- that's technically power-leveling, since music makes plants grow faster!)

Let's go over the CANs and CANNOTs of the demo. Demo users:

• CANNOT join a guild
  
• CANNOT trade with other players
  
• CANNOT send or receive money via /tip
  
• CANNOT pick up items dropped on the ground (except items they themselves dropped)
  
• CANNOT milk other players (or be milked, if they become a cow)
  
• CANNOT listen to poetry orations or recite poetry
  
• CAN unlock and use regular storage
  
• CAN sell items at vendors, but CANNOT buy other players' used items
  
• CANNOT buy consignment items or place their own consignments
  
• CANNOT purchase from player stores or open their own stores
  
• CANNOT play any instrument, but CAN listen to performances
  
• CANNOT place or complete player-work-orders
  
• CANNOT use deployed gadgeteering items such as vending machines and rafflers
  
• CAN add friends (it prompts the other player to confirm, as normal)
  
• CAN join hunting groups (and can chat in hunting group chat)
  
• CAN speak in Local chat, and in Group chat (when they're in a group)
  
• CAN speak in a new chat room called Demo
  
• CAN listen, but CANNOT speak, in all other chat rooms (including Global, Trade, and Help)
  
• CANNOT send private messages (PMs) unless both the sender and recipient are in the Demo chat room (see below)
  

We want to let our amazing community help Demo players if they get stuck or have questions, but it has to be easy to opt in and out. That's why we've tied private messages to the new Demo chat room. If you want to help Demo players, simply join this chat room. (Right-click a chat tab, choose Edit Chat Tab, and add "Demo" to the tab's channels. Or you can type /join Demo to quickly create a new chat tab for it.) While you're in the Demo chat room, you'll also be able to communicate via PMs with demo users. If you leave the Demo room (by closing the Demo chat tab), demo users will be unable to PM you further (and vice versa).

Demo users are still bound by the same code of conduct as regular players, and demo users that are abusive will be gagged or banned as usual. And you can always use /ignore to ignore obnoxious users. But since it's so easy to create new demo characters, we wanted this extra layer of abuse-protection for our community. To sum up: If you're happy to help demo users, join the Demo chat room. If it becomes too distracting, just leave that chat room.

No design is ever perfect on the first try, so I'm sure we'll need to tweak these rules after we see what problems demo users run into. But I think this is a good first version.


We've talked before about the next big engineering task, which is rewriting the animation code to use Unity's newer 'Mecanim' system instead of our current home-brewed system. This coding work has been outsourced to our partners, who are developing it in a separate code branch. Unfortunately, it's taking longer than anticipated, and I'm not yet sure when the new animation system will be ready to integrate into the game. That also means horses are delayed, because the mounts need Mecanim.

In the mean time, we're working on other parts of the game: improving the UI, fixing bugs, adding missing content, and revising game systems. Plus adding a few more new game systems to keep it interesting.


The next update has some iterative improvements to the UI. For instance, it seems that a lot of players never find the "More Info" feature for items. (You currently find it by right-clicking an item and choosing 'More Info', and it can tell you things like who to gift the item to... no note-taking necessary!) I'll be adding an alternative way to get to that info so that it's easier to discover.

More substantively, there's a new little feature called Practical Summoning. This is designed to make it a little easier to manage crafting ingredients. I can't count the number of times I've been trying to craft something and realized I forgot an ingredient and have to run and get it from storage.

Once your character masters Practical Summoning, there's a new button in the crafting window to summon missing ingredients. (As shown by the "Summon..." link in this in-development screenshot.) Clicking that button lets you summon items from nearby storage areas -- all the storage in the current town you're in, more or less.


There are a few caveats -- namely, it only works on fixed ingredients, not ingredients that you drag and drop into recipe slots. And it can't help you put stuff away after you're finished crafting. But I'm enjoying it and I think it'll be a nice little quality-of-life improvement. You'll be able to learn this trick from a mantis in the casino -- it costs a few thousand Councils and requires Teleportation level 12.

The next update also fixes a bunch of annoying UI bugs, and there are some other new UI features that I don't want to talk about yet (because they may not work out... they're still being prototyped as I write this). And there are, of course, many more UI improvements to come in the future, too.


Over the next few months we'll be taking a look at the higher-level areas: Kur, Ilmari, Rahu, and Gazluk. These areas all need more points of interest, more things to discover, most stuff to do! There are also a bunch of unfinished NPCs in these areas, and even entire storylines that just haven't made it into the game yet, plus some missing dungeons (a few larger ones, but mostly smaller soloable ones).

Some areas will also see heavy revision for technical reasons. In particular, the terrain of Rahu will probably need to be remade. It was created via a different method than the other outdoor areas, as an experiment. We'd hoped this new method would work better than it did. (But hey, that's what experiments are for.) We'll be revising it to use the technique we used in other outdoor areas.

I'm not sure what new content will be in the very next update yet (if any!). But I wanted to give you an idea of what we'll be working on for the next couple of updates. (Plus, of course, there's the Christmas event! It will be based on last years' alpha event, but with more stuff.)


This game has a lot of game systems. A LOT of game systems. Many are pretty nicely fleshed-out, but some are basically just prototypes that need a lot of revision. I have a long list of systems that need to be improved. Some of those systems include mushroom farming, "dangerous improvement" recipes, guild features, and several combat skills.

Some of these things just need tweaks and refinement, while others may go back to the drawing board entirely.


I don't want to give the idea that all of this stuff will happen in the very next update, which is only about a week away. The next update is mostly UI stuff. We like to work in short sprints of two or three weeks, so we'll be rolling these changes out piecemeal over several months. This way you get access to the features ASAP, and we get timely feedback.

A big advantage of this work style is that we can pivot to new priorities very quickly. And we often do just that! When the new animation system is ready, it'll probably be higher-priority than a lot of these tasks, so unfinished tasks on this list may go to the back burner. However it goes, I'll keep you posted!

Thanks for supporting us!

- Citan (Eric)

PS - we could really use your help getting word out about the demo. It can be downloaded via the "Download Demo" link on our Steam store page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/342940/Project_Gorgon/

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This is a small bug-fix update. The Halloween event is NOT over yet -- it will run through the middle of the week (Wednesday or Thursday).

• Fixed navigation issues with the boardwalks in Serbule and Anagoge Island
  
• Fixed bugs that prevented the thick green "queued ability" overlay from showing up on a queued ability
  
• Fixed bug where the faces of some male elves were lighter-colored than their bodies
  
• Fixed bug with human and elf female eyelashes (they looked creepy in some light conditions)
  
• Tried to work around weird behavior with Windows 10 firewall: if you log out or disconnect due to being AFK too long, the firewall would sometimes decide the game wasn't allowed to use the internet anymore and constantly break any connections to the server, requiring you to restart the game to log back in. The cause of this is unknown (Microsoft does not document much of anything about how their firewall app works or why), but we've made some changes based on hunches and we'll see if it helps.
  
• Worked around Unity 2017 bug that caused the lowest graphics tiers (Bad, Abysmal, and Retro-Terrible) to be less efficient than they should be
  
• Partially worked around a Unity engine bug involving shadows (where performance gets worse at certain times of day when facing certain directions outdoors). This is a partial fix, meaning the issue persists but is reduced. There is a side-effect, though: interactive elements such as monsters, NPCs, signs, lamps, chairs, etc., are no longer lit by the sun or moon. Usually this is completely unnoticeable, but sometimes it can be really surreal: "why is that lamppost not casting a shadow?!" If it's distressing, you can disable this fix by opening Settings and adding EntityShadows to the special-settings box. (There are better ways to address this problem in bleeding-edge versions of Unity, so we anticipate that this workaround is temporary.)
  
• We'd like players to test out a new experimental graphics feature: spherical culling. To enable it, open the Settings window in-game and add SphereCull to the Special Settings window. Normally the game uses frustum culling, meaning anything that's not right in front of the camera isn't rendered. This is theoretically optimal: why render stuff that's not on the screen? But it has side-effects. One problem is that when you spin around in a circle, a lot of art assets have to be swapped in and out of video memory, which can cause framerate to drop momentarily. Spherical culling means everything in a circle around you is rendered. This may have a lower framerate overall, but it will greatly reduce "turning lag". Please try it out and report your experiences with it (especially bugs, such as missing water or other things being invisible)! And remember: you may need to lower your settings to effectively use this, especially if you've overridden settings like view distance or animation distance!