Frozen Flame News

Wanderers, we’ve prepared for you the first event in addition to the main campaign that will be available for a limited time during the closed beta-test (CBT), planned for 15th of September 2020.

In the first event, called “The Keepers’ Secrets”, you will descend into the darkness of the ancient catacombs of the mysterious Order of Keepers. This adventure promises to become a truly challenging experience, as the artifacts and mysteries of the Order are firmly protected from unwelcome guests. Only the most skilled players will manage to reach the last stage of the catacombs and challenge the boss.







Furthermore, a series of events will be developed for future updates, which will be available as separate game modes, dedicated to introducing players to a new gaming experience and further develop the story behind the game’s world. The development of these events won’t hinder the release time of the main campaign, since it is performed by a separate subdivision.

Start your exploration of the Arkana dragon world today!

Wanderers, we’ve prepared for you the first event in addition to the main campaign that will be available for a limited time during the closed beta-test (CBT), planned for 15th of September 2020.

In the first event, called “The Keepers’ Secrets”, you will descend into the darkness of the ancient catacombs of the mysterious Order of Keepers. This adventure promises to become a truly challenging experience, as the artifacts and mysteries of the Order are firmly protected from unwelcome guests. Only the most skilled players will manage to reach the last stage of the catacombs and challenge the boss.







Furthermore, a series of events will be developed for future updates, which will be available as separate game modes, dedicated to introducing players to a new gaming experience and further develop the story behind the game’s world. The development of these events won’t hinder the release time of the main campaign, since it is performed by a separate subdivision.

Start your exploration of the Arkana dragon world today!

[h2]Greetings Wanderers,
[/h2]
We hope that you are all staying safe and are finding ways to enjoy your summer. We’re in the middle of a heatwave so we’re doing our best to stay cool while we work on Frozen Flame!

In the last month we’ve been hard at work listening to the feedback of our alpha players and have used your insights to help us focus our work. So, we are pleased to now lift the lid on our upcoming update.

So, without further ado, let’s dive into what we have been working on and what you can see in the update!

[h2]Gameplay[/h2]
Let’s start with the updates to our gameplay. For this part, we’ve focused on optimising the construction and building system to make it much more friendly and logical.

[h3]Construction System Reworks[/h3]
We’ve heard many of you comment that it was a real shame that the buildings could not be packed up and moved once you have placed them, so we’ve reworked our system. Now all the machines, workbenches, shutters and doors can be packed and moved, but the walls, foundation and roof can be disassembled and partially get resources for them back.
When it comes to storing your buildings, we’ve removed the specific building storage tab and have moved all of your buildings to your main inventory.

When it comes to the buildings themselves, you will now be able to pack up most of them, allowing you to move them to a new location.

Finally, we’ve made one (major) change to the crafting system. Players now will have the ability to craft armour of varying quality from ordinary all the way to legendary.

Check out the images below to see what they look like and how the modifiers affect the item stats!



Notice how when you attempt to craft an item, you are shown a probability chance that displays the various rarities.

You can see some examples of how rarity affects items in the examples below:







Here is the complete rarity list:

• Shoddy - no rank/colour the most basic.
  
• Common - white
  
• Refined - blue
  
• Superior -green
  
• Exquisite - purple
  
• Mastercraft - orange
  
• Legendary - yellow
  

[h3]Combat and PvP[/h3]
It’s only logical that you’ll want to use your new items once you have them, so lets look at the changes that we’ve made to the combat!

Who here has had a run in with our cursed system? If so, you’ll probably know that it does somewhat penalise PvP. Afterall, in the system once you’ve become cursed it doesn’t fade away. This has been discouraging people from engaging in PvP.

To fix this, we’ve made the cursed system a lot fairer. When you kill other players you will still gradually get cursed, however the curse will now fade away over time. This means that if you want to go PK’ing, you can do so knowing that once you’ve had your share of the action, the curse will gradually lift - provided to take a long enough break to let it fade away! So for all the red guild players, It’s showtime!

However, if you do become cursed, you may want to remain in your zone as players who are cursed will take damage if they enter the zone of a different Sentinel. This works as a balancing act so that we don’t make PvP too overpowered for those that want to avoid it.

On the combat itself, we’ve added in new animations for the creatures to show when they are stunned, player dodges are now shorter, and the ax strike on right mouse click has been disabled.

Check out the stun animation and new dodges in this video:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Quests[/h3]
Just a small one here, we know that PvP is not for everyone - some people want to focus on PvE and the general storyline. So, along with the changes made that we listed in the Gameplay section, we’ve also added in 2 new quests for Skull and the Blacksmith.

[h3]Changes to the World[/h3]
And finally we come to some of the changes that we’ve made to the world itself. Firstly, we’ve fixed several bugs with the tree colliders so they will react properly when they should be hit.

The visuals of ore has been updated to look much better


The position and animations of the blacksmith have been fixed.

The columns at Mithra and the Sanctuary of Times have been reworked to be more visually pleasing

And finally, the memorials have been moved to a new location on the map - good luck in your search for them!




In addition to the changes that we’ve described above, we’ve made several major bug fixes and UI changes. The list is as follows:

[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]

• Fixed: Sentinel gave extra resources when destroyed
  
• Fixed: Sentinel abusing resources by spawning
  
• Fixed: Christmas trees glow at sunset
  
• Fixed: Wrong lodes for pine branches
  
• Fixed: When a character is on fire - he may freeze
  
• Fixed: When respawning, the sound of receiving a quest is played several times
  
• Fixed: Cursor stays in the center of the screen
  
• Fixed: Altar is blocking other buildings
  
• Fixed: Position of the iron shield in the character's hands
  
• Fixed: Now all construction items can be destroyed
  
• Fixed: Information about window opening and shutters is displayed in one place
  
• Fixed: Boars get stuck on the map
  
• Fixed: Sentinel is not displayed on the radar
  
• Fixed: Bug in which the character cannot stand up while entering the server
  
• Fixed: Unable to repair and disassemble Bone and Rawhide armor
  
• Fixed: Some armor does not display stats
  

[h3]UI Changes[/h3]

• Added an icon to display the negative Sentinel effect
  
• Improved the death window
  
• Players can now hold E to collect all loot from monsters
  
• Improved how the friends list looks
  
• Smoother map zooming
  
• All markers are displayed on the map and radar
  
• Added the ability to use resources by double-clicking in composite crafting
  

And of course we’ve worked on a lot of server side fixes and improvements to make the game run smoother!

We look forward to seeing you in the world of Arkana!

Our social media

[h3]Hello wanderers,[/h3]

To celebrate this milestone, we wanted to write up a dev blog that looks at some of the changes that we've made to the game in our latest update. These changes are all based on feedback that we've received from our Founders Alpha testers, so thank you to everyone who is playing and testing our game, even in this early stage!

[h2]Introducing a New Enemy - The Elite Cursed![/h2]
A new and powerful opponent has been added to the game, meet the bloodthirsty Elite Cursed



When compared to the other monsters of the same type, these are much stronger and far more cunning (thanks to an improved AI), so it is advised that players upgrade their equipment and stock up on potions before engaging these monsters.



[h2]Improved AI[/h2]
The work that we've done on the Elite Cursed has also been trickled down to the other monsters. In general, many of the existing enemies have been improved, with a special focus on the behavior of their AI when in battle.

In terms of the AI, particular focus has been placed on the strategies that they pick when fighting and also the aggro targeting. This should mean that they will no longer make strange decisions mid-fight, making the entire combat experience a lot more enjoyable.

When looking at the enemy units, the two that benefit from these changes the most are the Stone Elemental and the Manticore. Let's look at the Stone Elemental to show you how these changes have improved it.

[h2]Stone Elemental[/h2]
The first thing that you'll notice is that the Elementals will now move much more actively, this means that the old tactic of attacking it from behind without it reacting will no longer work.



On the topic of the Stone Elemental, we have made things better for the players as well as the shells that it throws (its ranged attack), will no longer penetrate obstacles, giving players much more tactical options when they fight these monsters.

Earlier, we mentioned Aggro as an improvement to monsters so let's explore what this means for the Stone Elemental. Though we won't tell you exactly how it assesses threat (too many spoilers are also not fun), what we can tell you is that instead of being confusingly random, the Stone Elemental will target the player that it perceives as the main threat.

Finally, if you leave combat, the Stone Elemental will no longer teleport to its original position, but instead, it will walk there on its own!

Check out this short video to see how the Stone Elemental now works.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]Manticore[/h2]
We do want to mention the manticore as well, as this was a monster that proved to be quite difficult to fight. So as well as improving their AI, their health pool has been decreased in order to make them



[h3]Character Customisation[/h3]

Giving players more customization options is always a good thing, so we've added new styles for hair and beards. We'd love to see what your favorite combination is.

On the bug fixing front, specific male characters had a rather humorous bug where their beard and eyebrows would vanish as if the player had visited a barbarian hairdresser. Well, you'll be happy to know that hair will now remain in all the places that you want it to remain!



[h2]Improving the Buildings and the Environment[/h2]
When a player destroys their own building (we hope intentionally) a part of the resources spent on it will be returned to the player. What's more a particularly nasty bug that prevented players from being able to improve and/or remove their buildings has been sorted out.

On the environmental front, our level designers have worked very hard to create new locations and new content with all new environmental elements.



As part of this push for new content, we took the time to work in improving the regular everyday terrain as well. So objects such as rocks, trees, and the general landscape have all had a much-needed quality uplift!

And so this brings us to the end of the more detailed look at the most important parts of this update. That said, we have fixed a lot more bugs, and added in quite a few new features as well.



Thank you for your attention!

Our social media

Hello everyone,

One month has passed since our crowdfunding campaign on FIG campaign has ended and the atmosphere in our studio has been electric, thanks in no small part to the confidence that our amazing backers have placed in us!

To keep the momentum going, we’ve decided to give you a quick round of what we’ve done in our first post-crowdfunding month!

Proper management of player feedback is what makes or breaks a game, afterall, though we put the game together, it is you - the players - who ultimately keeps it alive. So it’s a good thing that for many of us this is not our first rodeo and we know the importance of managing feedback.

To briefly touch on the feedback, the main points that were brought to our attention were:

• Improving the game animation
  
• Making the UI more intuitive
  
• Polishing the rough edges around our game
  
• Fixing the mobs
  
• And working to improve the game map
  

[h2]New Features and Animations[/h2]

A continual stream of new features is vital to any MMO, and naturally we are no different. Based on the feedback that we received from our play testers, we highlighted two important additions for us to work on, a new weapon and a new skill.

[h3]The Two Handed Axe[/h3]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

This will be the weapon of choice for players that prefer to dish out massive amounts of damage in a single, powerful blow. That said, to balance it out the attack speed is rather low, so players will need to be skilled in the arts of timing and coordination to land a hit. But the reward will surely be well worth it!

[h3]The Trap Spell[/h3]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

The second major addition is the trap spell. Core to our game is the use of strategies to overcome the monsters that roam our game. In keeping with that mindset, we’ve added in a new support/debuff skill that locks a monster in place. Players who prefer a supporting role in large fights, or players that regularly want to explore solo will want to make use of this as it has the ability to turn the tide of a fight, or give you the precious few seconds to make a daring escape!

[h3]The Art of Polishing![/h3]

What do we mean by polishing the game? That’s quite an easy one, much like the animation improvements, we revisited some of our older models, textures, maps and gave them a much needed touch up to bring the quality up to a standard that we are happy with!



Though the changes are very subtle, take a close look at the character model and also the weapon that he has, then look at the trees and even the grass. Hopefully you’ll notice what we’ve worked on!

When it comes to the trees, we even went as far as to redesign them in zBrush, giving the trunks and branches a new feel altogether.



Take a look at how this all came together when working in Unreal.



So we guess that you can now see and understand what we mean when we say that we’ve been working on improving the game.

For those of you that are more interested in the actual tasks that we’re working on, did you know that you can track our development progress in our public roadmap? Check it out here.

That brings us to the end of this quick update! Of course there are many more things that we have been working on that we mentioned earlier, so do keep checking back with us as we’ll be going over some more of them in a future article.

Follow us on our various Social Media Channels!