OrbusVR News

We're six weeks into the Explore the Realm event, and while the progress bar toward unlocking the island is slowly but surely ticking up, we have decided to give the community a boost by uncapping the weekly points max. Starting August 4th, you can now turn in endless amounts of resources and kill as many monsters as possible (as long as they're featured on the weekly list, of course), and every point will count toward unlocking both personal progress rewards and the new island. We are excited and curious to see how quickly the community can rack up points toward unlocking the island—more details of which are to come in future blog posts!

Today we wanted to cover a couple of other items that will be releasing in the next patch along with the island, including the long-awaited answer to an often-asked question...

[h2]Bracers[/h2]

If you’ve ever wondered what the blank slot below the gloves on the character screen is for, we finally have an answer for you. With the next patch we’ll be introducing bracers—a new piece of gear that provide short-term stat boosts when equipped—to fill that slot.

There will be three different kinds of bracers:

• Bracer of Health: increases out-of-combat health regen
  
• Bracer of Wisdom: increases super regen
  
• Bracer of Stamina: increases maximum stamina
  

Each bracer will be available in three levels. The higher the level, the stronger the effect will be.

Level 1 bracers can be created through Tinkering. Blueprints will be available for sale in the Tinkerer shop in the underground market of Highsteppe.

Level 2 bracers will only be available through overworld treasure chests—a feature currently only available in the DLC, but coming to the main game in the next patch.

Level 3 bracers, the highest available, will drop exclusively from elite monsters on the new island.

Each level of bracer will have either no border (Level 1), a silver border (Level 2) or a gold border (Level 3) on the icon displayed in the inventory. When equipped, the bracers will appear as regular buffs on your weapon and above the heads of other players. As there is only one bracer slot available, only one bracer can be equipped at a time. Note that while there is a 3D model of the bracers for the Tinkering table, there will be no 3D representation on avatars when the bracers are equipped.

As mentioned above, bracers will only provide short-term stat boosts. Bracers begin to downgrade as soon as they are acquired and will eventually expire, with higher-level bracers downgrading to lower levels as time passes. Downgrading will happen in real time, not game time. A Level 3 bracer will downgrade to Level 2 in five days of real time, and from Level 2 to Level 1 in 10 days of real time. Level 1 bracers will expire after another 10 days of real time. If you hover over the item in your inventory, you should be able to see how much time is remaining on the bracer before it downgrades or expires.

Bracers will be tradeable, however, and there’s no limit to how many you can get each day. Meaning you could, for example, farm the island to get a Level 3 bracer for running a Raid, then sell it on the auction house once it downgrades to a Level 2—or farm multiple Level 3 bracers in a day and sell the surplus on the auction house to players who aren’t quite end-game ready.

[h2]Overleveling Perks
[/h2]
Another thing we’ll be releasing with the next content patch is new overleveling perks. After reviewing ideas from the community on what they'd like to see, we decided to add the following three perks:

• Dram cap increase: From 5 to 6 million (available in tiers of 200K increments)
  
• Fishing boost: Up to 15% chance to catch double fish (available in tiers of 3% increments)
  
• Cauldron speed boost: The cauldron cycles between colors 30% faster (available in tiers of 5% increments)
  

We'll have details on a few more things coming out in the next patch in upcoming blogs over the following weeks.

Don't go it alone! This week's list for Explore the Realm features two enemies from the Crypt dungeon: the Lich King and his Undead minions. Players looking to form pick-up groups to tackle the Crypt dungeon should meet in-game on the plaza outside the Critter Capture shop and Player House.



Note: This will be a community-led event.

Don't go it alone! This week's list for Explore the Realm features two dungeon bosses: the Minotaur and Gorgon. Players looking to form pick-up groups to tackle the Broken Halls dungeon (home to both these monsters) should meet in-game at the Highsteppe Tavern from 2-4 PM Central Standard Time.



Note: This will be a community-led event.

Today around 12 PM CST (Noon), we will release the patch that starts the Explore the Realm and the Summer Festival. This will be a client and server side patch that requires a download.

Once the patch is live and you have updated the game you can speak with the Festival NPC to start the festival quest line, along with opening you player journal to see the Explore the Realm monsters and resources for the first week. If you want to learn more about the mechanics of the ETR you can check out this blog post HERE where we outlined how it will all work, and HERE where we go over the personal rewards (will update once our blog post goes live), and check how far the community has come towards the server wide goal of unlocking the new island HERE.

If you still have existing Spring Festival quests inside your journal you can speak with the Festival Farmer outside Pierre Cenn’s shop to clear those quests.

We are excited to see the community band together and accomplish this goal!



Patch Notes:

• Updated terrain textures and some models for the start of Summer Festival
  
• Added Summer Festival props around the overworld
  
• Updated the way mobs reset when activating a shard dungeon
  
  
• Updated price of repairing gear
  
• You can see more in depth information HERE
  
  
• Added new Odds N Ends Mounts, Teleportation Devices for sale
  
• Added a new Mount and Teleportation Device to the in game cash shop
  
• Added Player purchased Server wide Boost bombs to the Odds N Ends shop for purchase with Dram
  
  
• Added 2 new slots that can be purchased in the Player Chest (main vault) inside the player house (these will be the 3rd and 4th slot that can be purchased) to help with maxed out inventory space
  
• 250,000 for 3rd slot
  
• 500,000 for 4th slot
  
  
• Added in new achievements for the ETR and Summer Festival
  
• Added in the rewards for the ETR, Summer Festival
  
• Added in 4 new monsters to the overworld (Necro monsters), which re-use existing abilities of other monsters
  
• Updated the rank positioning of the Scoundrel to on top of the Scoundrel gun to make it easier to see at longer distances
  
• Updated the Mount Speed server boost to to 12% from 5%
  

We're kicking off summer at OrbusVR in a big way! Next Tuesday, June 23rd, we're launching two in-game events that will run for the entire summer, as well as introducing several economy updates. With so many updates, there's a lot to unpack! See below for high-level details, or check out the full-length blog post for more in-depth information.



[h2]Summer Fest[/h2]

As previously mentioned, Summer Fest will be fishing themed. Visit the Festival NPC at the usual spot outside the gates of Highsteppe to pick up the first quest. For those who haven't played the Mini Story Pack, Summer Fest will provide your first chance to experience an escort quest in the overworld!

Fishing can be a relaxing learn-as-you-go activity, but if you want some pointers to be prepared for the festival, be sure to check out our Fishing Tutorial video ahead of the launch date.

[h2]Explore the Realm[/h2]

On June 23rd we’ll also be launching Explore the Realm, a collaborative community event to unlock both individual and server-wide rewards that will run through October.

Each week during the event you'll receive a new list of resources to harvest and monsters to kill, with each resource or monster worth varying point levels. You can earn up to 2,000 points per week per character to count toward unlocking cool rewards.



Personal rewards will operate on a tiered system so that even players who join the event during the last few weeks will still qualify for a reward of some kind.

In addition to personal goals and rewards, we're also offering one big server-wide reward for the community to collaboratively unlock: a new zone! The new zone will be an island filled with elites and aberration packs that together should create challenging end-game group content for players in the overworld.

There will be no extended waiting period for personal or server-wide rewards, meaning the sooner the community gathers those points, the sooner the aberration island will unlock. For more detailed info on how the event will work, check out our Summer Fest & Explore the Realm blog post.



[h2]Economy Updates[/h2]

Finally, we'll also be rolling out some economy tweaks with the June 23rd patch. The biggest change we'll be making is adjusting the cost of gear repairs to be scaled to not only the level of the gear, but also the additional level of the gear. Starting at level 20 there will be an additional price increase, which caps out at level 30.

We'll also be introducing several new items for sale through the Odds N Ends dram shop, including the server-wide XP, Luck, and Mount Speed boosts, as well as a few new additional mounts and tool belt item skins—including an awesome dragon head mount!



Again, for more in-depth information on economy tweaks or either of the events, check out the full blog post. We hope you are as excited as we are about the upcoming events!

We'll see you in game!