BitCraft Online News

Patch Notes: New Tier 1 Dungeon, Hunting Improvements, and Cargo Balance

[p]Hey everyone, I wanted to provide a bit of info behind the contents of this week's update:
[/p][p]New Tier 1 Dungeon,[/p][p]We've been happy to see people enjoying the dungeon content added over the last month and so it's been high on our list to provide an avenue for players earlier in the game to be able to access some more interesting and rewarding PVE content.
[/p][p]With this update we are adding a new type of dungeon which can be found and attempted very early in the game and is designed to be a players first combat encounter and solo-able (but also scaling with more players). In contrast to the Sentinel dungeon we are aiming to have this dungeon be more repeatable with a lower reset time. We will be incorporating it into the onboarding in an upcoming update.
[/p][p]It will take some time for these to be placed throughout the world but they should be available within a few minutes, with more being added over the day.
[/p][p]QoL and Improvements to Hunting (and beyond),[/p][p]We've heard your feedback and we agree hunting is in some need of improvements. We have some larger changes planned but in the mean time we had a few simple but powerful quality of life improvements which should make hunting especially smoother but also have positive impacts on other professions. These changes include:[/p]

[p]Mounts can now be toggled to follow you (context menu in vault). This makes mounts particularly useful for hunting since as you chase your prey, your mount will follow you preventing the need to run all the way back to your cart.,[/p]
[p]Hunted animal cargo can now go directly into nearby deployables like gathering from resources.,[/p]
[p]Added the option to have items and cargo go directly into deployables when nearby (instead of first filling inventory). This is also most useful in hunting (when combined with the above change) as having hunted animals go onto your back encumbers you and slows down the flow of moving onto your next target.,[/p]

[p]Deployable Cargo Balance,[/p][p]This has been long overdue but this update brings a massive rebalancing of the deployable cargo storage, increasing cargo storage by a significant amount for all deployables. This is the first step in a series of changes which are intending to make logistics, gathering and merchanting more viable.
[/p][p]What's Next - Monthly Update,[/p][p]Next week will be the monthly update which will be bringing some exciting new stuff focused around sailing and merchanting.

Patch-Notes
You will need to download the new build on steam.[/p][p]Added,[/p]

[p]T1 dungeon, items and cosmetics,,[/p]
[p]Ability to make mounts follow you,,[/p]
[p]Inventory setting to fill nearby deployables first,,[/p]
[p]Reply to direct messages using /r or /reply,,[/p]
[p]A new system that allows us to spawn new resources in the world,,[/p]

[p]Changed,[/p]

[p]Increased the amount of cargo that can be stored in deployables across the board,,[/p]
[p]HexCoins are no longer allowed to be listed in the marketplace,,[/p]
[p]Split up inverted camera setting into two settings,,[/p]
[p]Map now opens at the last used zoom level,,[/p]

[p]Fixed,[/p]

[p]Cleave VFX not always facing the right direction,,[/p]
[p]Another case of duplicate pillar-shaped terrain,,[/p]
[p]Dungeon boss telepgrahs being overly lit,,[/p]
[p]UI windows now always saving their position,,[/p]
[p]Dungeon markers not being visibile at the lowest zoom level,,[/p]
[p]Claim take ownership not validating distance to the player,,[/p]
[p]Inverted camera setting also inverting panning on the map using the keyboard[/p]

Single-world MMO Bitcraft Online ramps up dungeon difficulty and rewards

If you were to capture the feeling of playing out a small Minecraft server with your friends and smash it into the scale and scope of the best MMORPGs, I like to think the result would look something like Bitcraft Online. Taking place in a singular, shared world, it combines the inherent player-led creativity and worldbuilding of Mojang's sandbox with the spectacle of WoW and the long-form profession grinding of OSRS. Launched into early access in June, developer Clockwork Laboratories has been building on that groundwork since, and its new patch notes hone the design of its first dungeon and introduce some key combat changes.

Read the rest of the story...

Patch-Notes Dungeon Sweep-up: Enemy Scaling and Non-Weighted Contribution Loot

[h2]Dungeon Sweep-up,[/h2][p]This week we are tackling some of the outstanding things from the dungeon update that didn't make it in for the version 1 release, as well as some issues that you helped us discover in the testing.[/p][p]Bossing in a shared (non-instanced) world,[/p][p]Despite in many ways the dungeon looking like a traditional MMO dungeon, the fact that it is not instanced actually makes it closer to an open world boss or open world dungeon in terms of the design it requires. The core aspect of this is that both the gameplay and the rewards should not be negatively impacted by having other players join. [/p][p]Something that was on our radar before we launched the update was that there were two further things that would bring the system closer to this ideal:[/p][p]Enemy Scaling - the enemy should be able to get stronger as more players join the encounter to prevent it from being trivialized. It’s also important that the way in which the enemy scales does not negatively impact the EXP gained or the contribution which goes towards rewards (both of which are calculated based on damage done)[/p][p]Non-weighted contribution loot - Within the contribution loot system there are two main ways of giving rewards, either a fixed amount of loot is given for a contribution threshold being reached (non-weighted), or loot is given based on the volume of contribution (weighted). We opted to ship with the latter due to the lack of enemy scaling system at the time of release but our goal was to move over to the former once we were able to add enemy scaling. Ultimately both are useful and have varying limitations - non-weighted essentially requires scaling, otherwise the enemy can be killed so quickly in large groups that no player is able to meet the minimum threshold for loot, whereas weighted introduces more competition between players preventing some players from being able to get meaningful amounts of loot. You can see both of these systems at play in other games with open, mass player, boss encounters such as Meta Event Bosses in GW2 (non-weighted) or Mass worlds for bosses like Hueycotl or Zalcano in OSRS (weighted)[/p][p]With this week’s update we are adding both of these which should hopefully bring the design of the dungeon more inline with our original goals and will function in the following way:[/p]

[p]The Sentinel Boss (and likely all bosses going forward) will scale a new damage reduction stat which reduces damage taken,[/p]
[p]This Damage reduction happens after EXP and loot contribution values are calculated meaning that while your effective damage to the boss health is lowered the rewards are not,[/p]
[p]Loot for the boss will now be based on non-weighted thresholds. By reaching certain discrete levels of contribution during the fight players will receive a given loot roll, once the top threshold is met that player will not receive additional loot. Our goal will be to balance these loot thresholds to a point where there is enough motivation to do your best, while also not fretting about the presence of other players.

Other Issues being fixed,[/p]

[p]We’re also fixed some other things that were causing problems such as:[/p]

[p]The Boss (and all enemies for that matter) will now correctly not regenerate hp while in combat,[/p]
[p]Players can no longer rush through the various rooms of the dungeon. Now all enemies need to be cleared before you can go to the next room,[/p]
[p]Made some improvements to the camera collisions with walls in the dungeon,[/p]
[p]Fixed some visual issues in the dungeon causing some visual effects to receive too much bloom post processing and some instances of z-fighting with the floor,[/p]

[p]Conclusions and Next Steps,[/p][p]We hope that these changes bring the dungeon to a much better place. We will be keeping an eye on how this impacts things and will be listening to your feedback on whether this takes the dungeon systems to a stable place. Going forward we plan to focus on balancing the content (difficulty and rewards) as well as introducing new dungeons and bosses in the near future.[/p][p]The next aspect of the game which is going to be getting some love is Hunting, then some big improvements to Sailing and Hauling. I’ll be looking forward to sharing more on that next week!

-- Patch Notes --

Added,[/p]

[p]Improved VFX for all player combat actions,[/p]
[p]Tier 7-10 food,[/p]
[p]Various stats to weapon tooltips,[/p]

[p]Changed,[/p]

[p]Players and enemies no longer passively regenerate health while in combat,[/p]
[p]Feral Sentinel now gains increased defenses when fighting more players,[/p]
[p]Feral Sentinel will now drop loot using a new (non-weighted) contribution system,[/p]
[p]Dungeon portals to the next room are now locked unless all enemies in the current room are defeated,[/p]
[p]Terraforming dig-sites are now walkable in order to prevent griefing,[/p]
[p]Lowered intensity of the vignette when taking damage,[/p]
[p]Dungeon enemies regenerate health while out of combat again,[/p]

[p]Fixed,[/p]

[p]Feral Sentinel being able to move while performing Ground Smash,[/p]
[p]Enemies spawning too close together inside dungeons,[/p]
[p]Camera being rotated in a random direction after entering dungeon portals,[/p]
[p]Siege engines being invisible when 'Hide unused deployable's setting was enabled,[/p]
[p]Tier 8-10 fertilizer recipes using the wrong inputs,[/p]
[p]Tier 8 diamond ring recipe using the wrong input,[/p]
[p]Quantity slider not going beyond 1 when crafting cargo,[/p]
[p]Crafting animations sometimes freezing,[/p]
[p]Visuals inside dungeons being too strong in certain lighting conditions,[/p]
[p]Floor z-fighting in some parts of the dungeon,[/p]
[p]Potential fix for UI not showing when interacting with a project site,[/p]
[p]Potential fix for UI not showing when trading another player,[/p]
[p]Potential fix deployable inventory UI not showing when opening the player inventory[/p]

The BitCraft Podcast: Episodes 1-2

[p]Hello everyone;[/p][p]We have two amazing podcast episodes for you to enjoy. The first episode covers Teloril of the Ottoman Empire, one of the BitCaft content creators and an empire ruler! [/p][p]Episode two covers Monthly Update Q&A.
[/p][p]BITCRAFT BULLETIN EP. 1: Teloril of the Ottoadman Empire![/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p]BitCraft Bulletin Ep. 2: Monthly Update Q&A (VOD)[/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p]You can also listen on:

Episode 1
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5XHY529...
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...
Official Website: https://bitcraftonline.com/podcast

Episode 2
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5XHY529...
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...
Official Website: https://bitcraftonline.com/podcast [/p][p][/p]

Message From The Game Director!

[h2]State of Item Transportation and Future Plans,[/h2][p]First off I want to apologize for this announcement coming out after yesterday's update. I know our communication about the game design intent for recent changes hasn't been awesome and that falls on me. I am looking to make some process changes so that we can improve this going forward.
[/p][p]Problems with Logistics in BitCraft,[/p][p]One of the major selling points of BitCraft is the single non-instance world where distance matters. The reason we don't have a central marketplace in BitCraft is because we think the movement of items throughout the world should be meaningful and provide an activity for players who love the idea of being a merchant who moves items for profit. This profit, however, only exists if moving items across the world is not trivial/instant.[/p][p]I believe we've made this intent clear across our past blogs and stream Q&As, but I think the state of the game over the last weeks since the housing update has led players to lose sight of that while we were working in the background to address the issues.[/p][p]Our goal with the house movement changes was to make housing moving with the goal of item transportation not viable. I'm aware that in some cases it was actually made easier and with the hotfix we just released I believe that will be addressed.[/p][p]Additionally our intent was never that players were transporting raw gathered cargo over huge distances, but that refining outposts/towns would be incentivized to allow the condensing of raw cargo -> items -> packaged cargo to make shipping much more effective. We understand that the cost of setting up these mid tier outposts is too high on the research side and have plans to address this as well.[/p][p]With that I want to share a bit more about our vision and also what changes are coming down the pipe over the next few weeks.
[/p][p]Vision for the future,[/p][p]We want merchanting and even the hauling of gathered/processed goods home to your local settlement to be both viable and rewarding. To do this we need to make sure that this is the best way to do logistics and that this "job" in the world of BitCraft is both valued by other players and rewarded by us as the game developers.
[/p][p]What we are aiming to do other the following weeks is:[/p]

[p]Remove any unintended mechanics allowing for "cheese" ways of mass moving items,[/p]
[p]Drastically rebalance the stats of carts, boats and mounts to make transportation more viable,[/p]
[p]Add more packing options to give more items the ability to be shipping easily,[/p]
[p]Provide engaging gameplay and rewards for doing the act of hauling (want to save some surprise here, but I think we have something cool),[/p]
[p]Reintroduce ways of leveling sailing by actually being out on the ocean sailing,[/p]

[p]Other changes which are coming a bit later (likely within next 2 months):,[/p]

[p]Gondolas (Basically BitCraft's version of bridges that fit in a 2.5D world) will allow traversal over more complex terrain,[/p]

[p]Ability to make more specialized towns/outposts easier so that raw cargo can be refined closer to where it was gathered and package reducing it's size by an order of magnitude or more.

Thank you.
Game Director: Minch[/p]