The Black Death News

Good day Mercians!

We are aware that the original date set for the rebellion update has not been met, we apologize for the delay and the frustration this has caused.

We were trying our best to get this update complete for a soon as possible but have internally become unhappy over it's contents. So we are now adding more drastic changes since this is the biggest update ever, we wanted to make it truly special.

We hope you can understand this but we are hopeful that the update will be coming in weeks rather than months.

As soon as a playable beta is live we will post an announcement!

See you in Mercia

The S.I.G, Team.

Good Day Mercians

We are now proud to announce our upcoming update which is officially named Update V0.39 - Rebellion. To be released January 2020! If you missed the previous information about this update you can find it HERE


First of all I would like to express our sincerest apologies to the community for having to wait so long for this announcement we understand this is the largest time between updates in our history but we couldn’t be more focused on getting the black death to the finishing line!

In other news, our contract with the publisher Green man gaming has ended, Green Man Gaming were crucial in a great marketing push pre-early access and of course during it, so we would like to thank them for getting our message out and aiding in the community. We wish Green Man Gaming the best and a great future.

Now let’s get behind the scenes on more content to look forward to in the next black death update….. Rebellion


Harvestable Trees.



Yes! That’s right, finally we will have every tree throughout Mercia harvestable, once cut down they also grow back overtime to give an immersive experience of medieval logging. This will come with some re-balancing to the value and weight of wood and the amount of wood required in recipes.

Character Level



In an attempt to address issues with skill point distribution, especially with mid-game progression, we have now built a robust leveling system that provides a set amount of skill points earned at each level, this is a system popular amongst most RPGs and fits well within the black death, currently there are no plans to have a level cap but who wouldn’t love bragging about being level 1000…..

Inventory UI Refurbishment



We’ve noticed a large amount of confusion when dealing with items especially when equipping them in our current system. In the next update we will have all items displayed in a tidy square format which is immensely intuitive to place those square items into square equipment slots. Another huge benefit is being able to display A LOT more items within your inventory!

Player Built Stables



One of the largest bits of feedback we’ve had in the expedition update was horses being too rare or simply impossible to find, in the next update we will be providing players the ability to build a stable which will spawn a single horse. This horse can be taken wherever your heart desires but will return to the stable after being idle for too long.

Plagued Zones



In addition to our current expanding plague area we have now built permanent plagued zones in the dangerous south of Mercia, this is to provide new experiences and environmental storytelling about the disease. New enemies, loot and structures will be found throughout, however tread lightly and bring a mask.

Rebels

As previously mentioned this update will contain a new siege/raid map which will offer players a chance to squash northern rebels encroaching in the north however new rebel groups will also be spotted throughout Mercia so take them on and earn some valuable loot in the process.

Post update information

We originally planned to come out of early access by the end of the year however we now would like to develop/experiment with a few more elements to the game before doing so. (but also fix all those pesky bugs!) These elements are incredibly early still but we would like to share our thoughts. These are the following:

• Mod SDK (Allow for user created content)
  
• Full Controller Support
  
• Achievements
  
• Expanded Character creator (More options)
  

When we do finally come out of early access we will be increasing the price with an additional 15% , we felt it was important to keep the game affordable to grow the player base but also reward players with something that increases in value if they purchased it within the early access time period. We hope you can understand this and we greatly appreciate everyone’s support.

That’s all folks, we look forward to delivering this beast of an update! But we will make sure to provide more details closer to the updates launch/completion.

See you in Mercia.

Good day Mercians!



We apologize for the radio silence on steam however we have been busy getting our new content stable including a large engine update, we also wanted to let everyone know the current progress being made on the beta which is being updated frequently and is free for everyone to try out in the “the black death” properties setting.

Here is a quick breakdown of current beta and upcoming features in the next update for the black death:

Engine Upgrade

Utilizing the new unreal engine version has aided in stability for the black death and increased performance greatly. Some of our lower tier machines are reporting a solid 60 FPS (45 FPS previously) This has also addressed some crashes that were occurring in various siege maps. If you are curious about the unreal engine version we have implemented you can read information HERE



Master Professions & Profession Redux

In an attempt to make professions more essential to the games core mechanics we are altering attributes to be hard bound to professions (rather than being leveled up separately) and including new professions that provide a larger variation of gameplay. We will also be removing renown and having profession purchased using skill points, we found renown was lost on some players and added an unnecessary wall/block to obtaining professions. We are especially excited to announce master professions which is designed to be mid to late game content. Here is a breakdown of how some of them work:

• Master Peasant (higher attribute levels and triple item forage passive ability) Unlocked after level 20 peasant. 5 Skill Points to select
• 
  
• Master Blacksmith (higher attribute levels including cheap item repair and faster building passive abilities) Unlocked after level 15 blacksmith and level 15 Mason. 6 Skill Points to select
• 
  
• Master Outlaw (higher attribute levels including bandits are friendly, guards are enemies AND double loot from hunting passive abilities) Unlocked after Level 10 Bandit and Level 10 Hunter. 4 Skill Points to select

New Siege Map

A lower difficulty/cost map set in celtic territory, fight your way through barbaric defenses and cleanse the area of unlawful clansman.



Integrated Custom Server Hosting

You will be able to host custom servers of Mercia (PVP or PVE) from within the game for you and your friends to enjoy the black death in full publicly or privately including seamless travel between our own servers.

Blast destruction technology

All player built structures will now fall apart accurately using Nvidia’s blast plugin. You can learn more about it HERE

Here are some GIFs taken of it in action with various structures:


We greatly appreciate the patience the community has shown and we are understanding of the frustration the lack of recent updates has caused however we will continue to strive to build the black death to a full release and look forward to getting it to the standard you expect. This next update will also include large amounts of bug squashing, one step closer to the visceral medieval survival experience we envisioned.

Thanks for reading.

The S.I.G Team

Hail adventurers. In this latest update we bring you some exciting new features as well as fixing some issues which we know have been plaguing you.

Below are the patch notes in full:

New:

• King/Queen of Mercia - Rule over all of Mercia, let the people hear your name!
  
• Major revamp to the Arena map - Battle your way through for gold and glory!
  
• Gladiators A.I. (Arena Map)
  
• Gladiator weapons (Arena Map)
  

Fixes:

• Fixed a bug which could cause your homestead to wipe
  
• Fixes added to armour recipes which were not crafting correctly
  
• Fixed a bug that would cause some weapons to do 300% damage when in first person
  
• Fixed an issue that prevented loot spawning in raidable locations around Mercia
  
• Fixed server crash to do with chest armour UI event
  
• Fixed server crash to do with House serfs begin play on network
  
• Fixed server crash on AI end swing null pointer while dying
  
• Fixed duplicate AI weapon loot spawning
  
• Fixed bugs relating to degrading over time not working correctly
  
• Fixed a ui bug which stopped storage chests number of items updating when you put in/take out items
  

once claiming the throne in ravens reach you will be known throughout the land as the ruler of Mercia but be careful your position will be known on the map

Updated:

• Updated tooltips to be in line with the recent content changes
  
• Updated HUD and map to reflect the kings/queens changes
  
• Added additional tooltips for new features within the game
  

Balancing:

• Increased the damage output for primitive weapons such as the crude hammer, stick club and crude spear to make them more viable than punching
  

Optimising:

• Optimised game icons
  

Thanks again to everyone helping us find these issues, we are continuing to see an increase in activity which is great, we hope you enjoy these fixes and brand new content.

The S.I.G. Team

Good day everyone!

First we wanted to thank everyone for playing (highest player count in 5 months!) and letting us know about your issues, we are going to release another content update and hotfix this friday! This update will include the following:

• King/Queen of Mercia - Use your royalty status to fight and claim the throne, allowing you to build in raven's reach as the single leader of Mercia.
  
  
• New Arena Map (replacing the current one) - compete in multiple arenas to earn loot and gold.
  
  
• Recipe armour fixes - multiple weapon parts are currently not crafting correctly we will address all of these items.
  
  
• Tooltip Quests - currently players are unable to progress due to recent changes of content, we will address these issues.
  
  
• New Tooltip Quests - we will add more quests to provide more opportunities of learning and XP rewards.
  
  
• Crashes - we will be addressing reports from the community to eliminate existing crashes.
  

Thanks again to everyone and we look forward to getting you this new update.

The S.I.G. Team