Archmage Rises News

It's been 1 day since the release of Update 1: Townsfolk, and already we're here with a boatload of fixes including ones reported from players today.

Here's what's been fixed in this update.

[h2]Improved:[/h2]

• Fixed performance issue causing lag when talking to NPCs. Got it from 7,000ms down to 10ms. It's noticeably better. ːshockedstar2022ː
  
• NPCs now respond appropriately if you ask them the same question over again
  
• Added tooltip on subject picker so you know what categories each icon represents
  

[h2]Fixed:[/h2]

• Issues with fluctuating inn prices
  
• Fixed economy and buff modifiers causing other pricing issues
  
• Disabled heroes in the game working at the inn, which is weird
  
• Fixed gift icons for NPCs who don't have a job
  
• Fixed issue where save and quit would overwrite the previous game
  
• Fixed display of settings in World Select screen
  
• Fixed various bad greeting text
  
• Fixed display of buff text for armor and weapons
  
• Fixed issue where player knows about a lot of towns immediately
  
• Fixed incorrect descriptions of outfitter items
  
• Fixed an issue that could cause the leaving buildings (particularly the market) to freeze the game
  
• Fixed bug with the spell slider quest
  
• Fixed issue with some players getting a 14K bounty placed on their head when they haven't committed a crime
  
• Fixed a bug with NPCs not knowing about the town they are currently in
  
• Fixed a bug causing some people to experience games and saves failing to load
  
• Fixed a bug with turn orders in combat, which also fixed a bug that broke shield spells that could also crash the game
  

Known Issues:

• Because NPCs now move around it is possible for them to get stuck in places you can't reach. This is a problem in quests. We're looking into it and will hotfix immediately on finding the resolution.
  

Hello fellow adventurers!

Our first major content update is now available. We worked hard to bring the people of Vaelun to life for your enjoyment! Please see note below about previous game worlds and save files.

• Relationship Perks - Building relationships with NPCs offers new relationship perks as you increase your friendship level with them, giving you perks such as discounts on goods and services, etc. This is a significant system we can expand on going forward.
  
• NPC Job Skills - Now several of the vendors have a new job skill stat that indicates how good they are at their craft. As their job skill increases, the quality of their goods and services will increase as well. This is a big system and lays a foundation we can build further from. For now it is implemented for Innkeeper, Outfitter, Weaponsmith, and Armorer. This is why we call this "Part 1".
  
• Job Skill Quests - New job skill quests are now available that will significantly boost an NPC's job skill, allowing them to level up.
  
• Ask NPCs Questions - NPCs know a lot more about their world. You can ask questions about specific subjects such as people, places, resources, services, etc. They give more in depth responses such as what they know about the subject, how they feel about people, where to find things, how long to reach certain destinations, how safe it is, etc.
  
• Known vs Unknown NPCs - When encountering NPCs in buildings, known NPCs will have fully visible portraits, while unknown NPCs will show up as silhouettes.
  
• Gifts - NPCs who have become your friends may now possibly send you gifts via letter
  
• New NPC Portraits, with Emotions - We updated all of our NPC portraits with high quality art, adding the range of emotions for reaction to what you say and do
  
• NPC Schedules - NPCs are now no longer static in their workplaces. They can move around throughout the day off hours, grabbing something to eat or hang out at the inn, study at the conclave, run errands around town, etc.
  
• New NPC Trait System - NPCs have traits and opinions of those traits in others. This creates consistent reactions between NPCs. This is just the tip of the iceberg, we can do much more with this.
  
• Improved quest system - we had a technical constraint where a quest chain could only track killing something OR collecting something. Now we can do both, allowing for more interesting quests.
  
• 15+ New Quests - enhanced with emotional responses and additional trackers
  
• Revised Relationship Screen - Hey, it actually works! It is cleaner and shows more valuable data: people's jobs, hometown. It also provides filtering options - current town, friends, enemies - and sorting alphabetical or by relationship score high/low
  
• New World Creation Screen - updated to the new UI look and feel. You will see several new tabs and settings (disabled for now) allowing us to add more options later
  
• Revised Relationship Tiers - It is easier than ever to make friends in Vaelun. The new values are:
  Casual Friend 75
  Good Friend 225
  Close Friend 450
  Best Friend 900
  
• Time Stands Still In Conversation - Time no longer passes during conversation. You're welcome. ːhappystar2022ː
  
• Town Economic Themes - Towns and their economies are now categorized into themes based on their geographic locations and the available surrounding resources, which also affects trade with nearby towns.
  
• New Items - like enchanted pickaxes, armor padding, weapon wraps, and fluffy towels.
  
• Custom NPC portraits - customize a person's portrait by right clicking the portrait and selecting a local image from the "%appdata%\LocalLow\Defiance Game Studio\ArchmageRises\CustomPortraits" folder.
  

To make all the new stuff above, we had to significantly change the file format for NPCs. Sorry, there was no way to migrate data across. We try very hard to maintain file compatibility within minor versions but will likely change it significantly across major versions.

A prompt will appear when you start the game asking to delete your incompatible files for you.

• Some of the pricing is wacky. Will hotfix it tomorrow, didn't want to hold up the whole release for that.
  
• We're investigating a performance / lag issue sometimes when talking to certain people. It seems to be based on quest pool selection behind the scenes. We're working on it right now will patch soon as we can.
  
• This is a big update, we probably introduced bugs we didn't catch. Thanks for your time and reporting in advance. We appreciate it!
  

Thanks so much for being on this adventure with us! We really hope you enjoy this update!

PS. It's still Jun 28 EST when I published this. 4 minutes more and we would have been late. ːlaughing_yetiː

Hey everyone!

This is a quick stability patch before the latest update releases. Here's what is new in this patch:

[h2]Fixed:[/h2]

• solves issue with save games not loading due to dungeons being destroyed while player is being serialized as being inside that destroyed dungeon.
  
• fixed issue with dungeons being duplicated in world files, which caused several world and dungeon related bugs (like entering a dungeon in one part of the world and exiting the dungeon in another part of the world, black hexes appearing below lairs, etc)
  
• fixed issue with player data not being cleared after dying or quiting a game and starting a new world in the same play session, which can cause worlds and games to break.
  

IMPORTANT NOTE: Due to the nature of the changes coming up in the Townsfolk update releasing this week, save games will no longer be compatible and will not load in the upcoming Townsfolk Update release.

It's time for another patch!

This patch addresses some of the biggest dungeon bugs that some people have been experiencing lately. Some issues that (while rare) happen on world gen that create duplicates of dungeons that are existing at the exact same co-ordinates, which is causing some strange bugs to dungeons.

[h2]NEW:[/h2]

• Added setting default resolution on Steam Deck
  
• Added triggering onscreen keyboard automatically when entering text in text fields when playing on Steam Deck
  

[h2]FIXED:[/h2]

• Bug at world gen that, in rare cases, generates multiple lairs in multiple locations for a single dungeon. This was causing multiple bugs, including dungeons not appearing on a map after following tracks, disappearing dungeons, entering a dungeon in one part of a map and exiting in another, and in some cases save games not being able to load properly.
  
• Fixed bug that caused zooming into dungeon doors instead of travelling through them
  
• Fixed issue with player and NPC portraits not displaying properly on the relationship screen
  
• Fixed issue with NPC portrait bug breaking quest log screen
  
• Fixed issue with enemies dodging acid pools and similar environmental damage
  
• Fixed issue preventing old worlds from being deleted properly
  

With the new update, and the new save file format (which should help with a lot of the disk usage issues from having very large save files), your old save games are no longer compatible with future versions of Archmage Rises starting with version 0.0.13. The newer save file format is leaner which will not only help cut down significantly with the amount of disk space older save files consumed, but also boosts performance in load / save times.

So what are you do to with the old save files? Well, the game doesn't automatically remove them from your hard drive, so you are welcome to go ahead and delete your old saves in order to save some space.

Here's where you can find your old incompatible save games (and worlds) to trash if you want to reclaim some of that disk space:

NOTE: If you've already updated to patch 0.0.13, in these folders you'll find both files directly inside the GameSaves / Worlds folders as well as folders inside these folders. Those new folders contain your new saves/worlds so you'll want to retain those, but you can delete any of the files that are directly inside the GameSaves / Worlds folders.



WINDOWS:
C:\users\yourusername\AppData\LocalLow\Defiance Game Studio\ArchmageRises\GameSaves
C:\users\yourusername\AppData\LocalLow\Defiance Game Studio\ArchmageRises\Worlds

MAC:
/Users/[username]/Library/Application Support/Defiance Game Studio/ArchmageRises/GameSaves
/Users/[username]/Library/Application Support/Defiance Game Studio/ArchmageRises/Worlds

LINUX / STEAM DECK:
/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compdata/506480/pfx/drive_c/users/[username]/AppData/LocalLow/Defiance Game Studio/ArchmageRises/GameSaves
/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compdata/506480/pfx/drive_c/users/[username]/AppData/LocalLow/Defiance Game Studio/ArchmageRises/Worlds

That's it! That should get rid of your old incompatible saves and give you some of your disk space back!

Phil