Last Oasis News

And I should know - I designed it. And more than that, I played it - extensively.

When I say it sucks, I mean I’m not having fun for long when playing it. Not as long as other survival games I enjoy. And I’m not alone with that opinion.

We could argue back and forth why Last Oasis is objectively not fun and what needs to be changed to make it a great experience. We did, actually - for 4 Seasons, to be precise.

And while each season got rid of tons of problems, there was always that one fundamental issue remaining:

I, personally, am not having fun when playing Last Oasis for long.

After Season 4 it finally hit me. I’ve been on a wild goose chase. I’ve been trying to chase down the reason why players don’t have fun in LO. This is a fruitless exercise until I can answer why I am not having fun.

Suddenly, the question was no longer “what can I do to fix LO”. The question became “If I were to make LO from scratch, what would I do”.

And the answer to that question is Season 5 - LOverhaul.



First, the (slightly egotistic) good news: I’m having a blast playing it. In fact, I never, ever, had so much fun in LO by myself. It’s challenging, it’s surprising, it’s rewarding, and I want to keep playing.

Now, for the (slightly) bad news: A lot of you will not like it. The most common feedback was nearly verbatim: “I love it the way it is, but this is way too difficult for the average players”.

For the next few days, we shall put that theory to the test.

LOverhaul has a strong focus on PVE. And the PVE is brutal. The world is in every way trying to actively kill you. The sun will make you constantly struggle for survival. Water is precious. Massive, deadly sandstorms can catch you off guard. Aggressive Rupu are roaming the lands, not only attacking you, but also your structures and your walker - should you even get that far. And if you think those are hard to deal with, wait until you encounter the ones in camps or those manning siege equipment.



The difficulty in Last Oasis used to be non-existent - until you encountered another player, who could destroy everything you owned in under 3 minutes. Now, players will have to make a conscious decision to join PVP when they are ready for it, and the PVE teaches you, through trial and error, how to stay safe.

You will find tools to help you survive this harsh environment, but often you’ll have to make due with situational circumstances. Your tube spade will help you build a small base to keep you safe, but the moment you’re stepping outside - all bets are off.

For some players, this is great. You will have to carve out victory after victory, and each defeat will be a lesson in what you can do better. Every time you manage to come back to your base with some precious loot you feel glorious. Every time your greed gets the better of you, and you bite off a bit more than you can chew, the lesson will be painful but deserved. The game has a lot to explore, and many options become available as you learn the mechanics better.

For others, the experience will be awful. The game no longer holds your hands - at all. No protected slots, no tutorial, no linear missions that gently guide you through progression. Just you and a sandbox full of tools and deadly dangers, and if you don’t think ahead, the world will absolutely punish you.

I don’t want to sugarcoat that. LOverhaul is not a game for everyone. And that’s ok.

However, it’s important to establish a good baseline for those who like the general direction. There’s fun difficulty, there’s challenging difficulty, and there’s ridiculous ragequit difficulty.

I absolutely need your help to establish a good middle ground. Which finally brings us to:



Today we start a small beta test to establish a good baseline for the difficulty. It will be cradle maps in PVE mode and available for about 48 hours. The beta is available to download on a separate branch of your Steam app (right click app - Properties - Betas - betabranch) and the realm will open up about 8 pm CET / 2 PM ET / 11 AM PT. For the next 2 days we’ll be keeping servers up to gather data about the experience, then turn it off again so we can evaluate the result in peace. This will help us establish a baseline of difficulty that we want to see.

We absolutely need your feedback:

• Does it feel rewarding?
  
• Is it tough?
  
• Is it too tough?
  
• Is it fair?
  
• And most of all, are you having fun?
  

A word of advice - if you play it like you used to play LO, you will fail. Ironically, new players seem to fare better than the seasoned ones initially, because the experience is so vastly different. Have an open mind, enjoy, and let me know what you think of this direction.

- chadz

Hey everyone!

We’re very excited to announce we’ll be kicking off S5’s beta branch on July 5th. Let’s get into the details.

For anyone unfamiliar with these kind of testing phases, a beta branch is a separate branch of the game that has many of the changes intended to go in the game for the next season. It will be available through the betas tab in Steam, and will be open for everyone to join by simply switching to the proper branch.

Our intention with this beta branch is to have a proper stress test where we can gather as much feedback as possible on the early game experience in the first two maps available, find any performance issues (or worse, crashes), and get these things ironed out before we move into Season 5 release.

As mentioned before, we already have internal playtesting going, though for the most part it’s us developers, and the staging testers in our Discord. So far the biggest focus has been on the bad crashes that could cause an awful experience for the beta branch, and coming up with a better balanced early game experience. We feel we’re pretty much ready to move into public testing now.

With so many changes comes a pretty big possibility of many of them ruining what we expect to be a pretty good impression of this update and what’s to come, so getting those out of the way early is what this internal testing has been for. Many of the new features and changed mechanics need a much larger amount of players for us to get proper feedback on how they add to the game, what kind of tweaks we need to make, etc.

As for Season 5 release, we’ll be sharing more details as we get nearer to its release, but as you probably already gathered from our previous devblogs, our development focus in S5 will shift toward a much more fitting Early Access style of development, something which we are fully committed to. We will be quickly iterating, changing and adding things as the season progresses, similar to the beta branch but at a much larger scale.

Keep an eye on our Discord and Twitter. More information about the beta test will be shared there next week

—Neon

This week’s devblog will be a lot shorter than usual, as we’re getting into a mechanic that is almost self-explanatory (and by popular demand), and the reasons we’re considering some changes to it are rather self-explanatory as well. Nevertheless, this is another major feature update that will be working together with the PVE maps and the travel changes, so we want to talk about it and to hear what you think of it.

For anyone not familiar with LO slang, “The Burn” is the mechanic where Oases decay and completely disappear from the world map. Any bases built on them are gone, any unprotected Walkers are destroyed, and pretty much the only thing that gets carried along is the contents of the Trading Stations.
As one of the major features of the game, the Burn is something that has received both much praise and much hate from players of the game, so it’s a sensitive subject to approach.

In addition to the travel changes and PVE maps, we’ve been looking into the Burn mechanic, and what it adds to the game (as well as what it takes away, especially now that travel has changed so much).

Season 5 is - very intentionally - a much more static experience. You will have a permanent main base from which you go on adventures with your crew on Walkers, and eventually have to return to it. With this approach, the Burn does very little to aid this experience - quite the opposite, we believe it would mostly just be frustrating.

Therefore, we’ve decided it’s best to disable the Burn mechanic, and use a mostly static world map. You get to know your neighbours on PVE tiles and enemies on PVP tiles. We think this is an important social aspect of Season 5. This is an aspect of the game that we enjoyed during S1, and now we have the possibility of bringing it back together with the travel changes and PVE Oases in a way that will enhance this new experience we’re going for.

In S5, the layout and spread of Oases across the world matters a lot more than before.
As we talked before, we want to have clear jumps in difficulty, from very peaceful Cradle Oases, to slightly more dangerous Canyons biome, to harder maps, eventually into hardcore event tiles.

This is another change that is meant to help us achieve a better pace of gameplay working alongside the travel changes. Travel is a very important part of the game, and having a balanced spread of Oases and a layout that makes sense design and balance wise is equally important. Having full manual control over the spread of Oases allows us to get exactly the gameplay we’re aiming for.

We may have to remove Oases every now and then for population reasons. It’s important to note that if we needed to remove any tiles from the world, there’d be many warnings before it burns and is removed, if it has a Trading Station all its contents would be transferred to the nearest one, etc. but Walkers and bases would burn when the map does. The same applies to when we add new tiles to the world, they would have an activation timer of a few hours as usual.

I want to make sure it’s pointed out that this is something that’s very much in the same category as packing and the walker hardpoints system: we want to be in the same page with our players before making very radical changes to how it works, and we want to also make sure that these changes are in line with the approach for the new season.

Next week, we’ll be going over our approach for the public testing phase of LOverhaul and showcasing some of our ideas for map layouts and the different possible static map iterations that we can try. I’m sure there’ll be lots of ideas for a variety of possible world map layouts, and we’d love to hear what you think about it.

— Neon

Hi Nomads!

Now that many of the new features and changes have been revealed (though as you will soon see, it’s not quite the last of it), we feel much more confident talking more about and giving you more insight into this new direction for the game.

This week’s devblog will be all about the upcoming Base Building & Packing changes, and also an extension of our very first post back in early April. Now that there’s so much more information about the next season out, we feel like it’s a really good time to get into some of the more drastic changes and making sure we are keeping you in the loop in regard to our vision for the game, the approach we’ve chosen for this new season and generally the direction the game will be taking for the future.

As we talked about before, some of these changes come from a very simple place: many previous systems clash with our vision for Season 5, and that can mean we either disable them temporarily, or rework them entirely if they don’t work with this new direction.

Season 5 in many ways is intended to have very lean gameplay experiences, no unnecessary stuff, even if they are things that back in the day took us massive amounts of effort to implement - if they don’t work with the new season, they shouldn’t be in the game at all. Everything has defined intentions and purposes and in many cases, is re-designed from the ground up when needed.

This also means that for our S5 testing phase and release, we won’t be immediately releasing everything, every map, with every new POI and mobs, etc. we’re gonna start with the content we feel the most comfortable about, and see how it plays out in real scenarios with real players.
We’re players too, but there’s obviously not enough devs for playtesting to be at the scale the game is designed to be played, so seeing how you play with it in the public tests is still something we’re looking forward to and something that will provide us with massive amounts of invaluable feedback.
Afterwards, the plan is to rapidly drop more and more content through Season 5, as well as rapidly iterating and balancing whenever we see it’s not working how we want it to work.

With all that said, let’s get into the main topic of this devblog - Base Building, PVP balance for bases, and how these base building changes play into the removal of lobby mechanic.

[h2]Base Building & Lobby[/h2]

First thing we talked about when it came to PVE oases was quite simple: they are not meant to be a lobby, because we don’t think the lobby mechanic fit the game at all anymore.
PVE oases come with many threats, constant sandstorms roam the map and destroy unsupported structures and abandoned Walkers and stations over the oasis. Bases are more than convenience, they are a big requirement for safekeeping Walkers and other belongings from the weather, hostile creatures and hostile players. Everything not built on properly supported structures is going to decay naturally, if it’s not first destroyed by these roaming sandstorms and other weather events.

The base building changes we’re getting into are not only implemented to counteract the weather balance and generally clean up maps now that everything is something physical in the world, but rather they are now a much bigger part of the new Last Oasis, mainly because there’s always been a major issue with the pace of gameplay in LO.

In most survival games, there’s a sort of natural pace; there are moments of intensity, and moments of peace where you can relax and do things normally in your base or collect common resources in peaceful areas.
In Last Oasis, you don’t have that most of the time, there is a weird contrast in that regard. Most of the time you can even be chilling on your Walker, but somewhere in the screen there is a timer ticking down letting you know that maybe the oasis is about to burn, or that it will be gone soon and you need to be very prepared and careful, or decaying structures, or just straight up a player ganking you already because you got distracted for a minute or two.

That last example is very much part of playing a PVP game, but we don’t think it should happen 100% of the time, at any time, anywhere.
We think some places in the world should be safe, that you should be able to have moments of peace and quiet that aren’t immediately interrupted. Initially, the lobby was meant to be that, but it clearly didn’t work out for a myriad of reasons we already explored - among them and related to our changes to base building, there’s just no homely feeling about a bunch of UI, a lot of icons for Walkers and maps, etc.

Ever since our first days developing and playing Last Oasis, and even more now that we’ve changed so much of it and we get to playtest it internally, we always felt there was this “homely” feeling missing from LO, and that can’t be replaced by abstract, intangible things like the lobby (even if they look like amazing ideas in theory, which is one of the reasons we stuck with it for so long). There is very little fun in that, very little interactions you can have (even simple stuff like managing inventory of Walkers, or checking packed bases, that kind of thing). There is no fun in escaping from great dangers, for example, and suddenly getting thrown into some UI where you just see some Walker icons, other map icons, and it’s all interactions with a bunch of buttons.
That’s not fun.

And that is why one of the main goals for bases - whether they be very large, semi-permanent places you can call “home”, or temporary, nomadic settlements - to be somewhere you can build up to create peaceful areas to have that contrast in pacing that’s so important for us. Having this gameplay be just some UI is something that’s so far away from what we consider a good experience - for example, I (Neon), can say it’s so much more fun to have pretty much the same experience, but instead of dealing with all the UI stuff, it’s all happening entirely in the game world. And it’s not just very specific situations like getting away from danger into the safety of your base, it’s also something as simple as logging off for the night. When playtesting this myself, it felt so much better that the place I call “home” in-game is somewhere I can physically go to when logging off the game, instead of getting into this UI screen that was the lobby, I find it a lot of fun and full of more interactions to travel to my base, opening the gates that lead to where I keep my Dinghy, it just feels so much more real and fun compared to old LO.

[h2]Base Building & PVP Balance[/h2]

While our current vision for Last Oasis is very much PVE focused, the PVP continues to be a major part of the game, but our approach is quite different from last time in this regard.

PVP is a core part of Last Oasis, and it will never stop being a core part of the game, but PVP is no longer meant to be the core gameplay of Last Oasis (meaning, the only thing “worth doing”, or the thing that everything leads to eventually).

We want combat with other players to be part of the emergent gameplay aspect of the game, and base building changes are one major step towards achieving a better balanced pace of gameplay for PVP and PVE.

Last Oasis always struggled trying to keep a balance where it remained a full loot PvP game, but it was also not extremely harsh, and that’s a compromise that was very difficult to maintain with some of our mechanics, especially things like the lobby.
PVE oases not only allow us to make the safe parts safer - they paradoxically also allow us to make the PVP parts more ruthless. Bases in PVE regions for quick recovery from defeats. On the other hand, PVP oases are providing the player a choice on whether they want to expose themselves to usually pretty brutal PVP, or not. We expect that eventually most players will base off near PVE oases, but for the most part will play around and from PVP oases - that is how it’s balanced to be, and how we’ll continue to iterate to improve it to achieve a properly balanced pace of exciting PVP situations, and moments of tranquility.

We want these moments of intensity, whether you’re fighting difficult PVE threats, or more emergent situations like facing off against other players, to be very intense and always a fun experience, but we also want there to be moments of peace and quiet that aren’t immediately interrupted.

Practically speaking, what this means is that for the early stages of PVP battles you need mid-tier structures to really get that protection against attacks from hostile players, whereas low-tier bases are mostly meant to protect against PVE threats and weather events.

To allow storing walkers inside of bases, many new basebuilding pieces will be introduced in Season 5, in particular hangar walls, ceilings, and gates, allowing you to build comfy little places for your Walkers. Furthermore, the base building system has been overhauled to finally allow much more freedom in vertical building.

Since we’re on the topic of bases, we’d also like to address a point of confusion regarding last devblog and schematics balance - and that’s related to balance and quality of life.
Many schematics in the game are meant to be very rare, and very valuable.
What this means is that building a giant clay or cement fortress will take much longer than it used to, now that it’s not simply unlocking the technology and then pouring resources into it.
What it doesn’t mean is that the majority of essential schematics will be dropping as a single consumable, but rather as several per loot drop.

Most schematics that are practically impossible to live without will be available in moderate quantities and at common POI, but as you progress and advance to higher tier buildables, Walkers, base parts, etc. more advanced versions of those schematics will become rarer and more valuable. For example, it will be moderately easy to arrive at an oasis and construct early wood and sand-based structures as temporary refuge, but much more difficult to achieve the same using clay and cement structures.

[h2]Base Building & Packing[/h2]

For our first version of the public test, we have been heavily considering the removal of the packing mechanic. There are many reasons why we think that’s a good idea, but before I get into that, I want to say once again that the promise me made back in May is still very much in our minds when we talk about these changes internally: There is undoubtedly other solutions that are far less drastic than complete removal of the mechanic, and we want to hear these. We want to know more points of view on how packing benefits the game overall, so, if you have suggestions, let us know.

With that said, right now we see the possibility of removing the packing mechanic as a good thing, because it fits the balance and approach of the new season perfectly. Right now, we see the game heading in a much more roguelite direction, blended with the survival and open world mmo aspects that it already has, and we really like an experience like that.

Surviving needs you to invest in an area, you can’t bring everything with you and be completely self-sufficient. You go out in what’s essentially an expedition out of the comforts of your base - whether it’s in a PVE tile or a PVP map doesn’t matter - and you bring with you what you need, water, weapons and tools, extra armor sets, some materials for either a temporary base to protect against the weather or some small initial production stations for crafting ammo and other necessities.
You can stay there for as long as you can, or rather for as long as you survive there, and if you feel like you’ve accomplished what you went to do, you find a path through the sandstorms, and return home with your loot.
There are no certainties that you will return with more than you brought, or that you will return at all, and that is very much where this rogueliteness aspect comes from.

With that kind of gameplay in mind, packing comes into heavy scrutiny from us, both in terms of balance, and what it brings to the new design.
Whereas before it felt very nomadic to have the ability to travel somewhere new and basically plop down a whole massive base wherever you wanted to settle, right now we’re not very happy with that concept. From our point of view of the new season, to have the necessity of building temporary settlements (that eventually need to be abandoned if you don’t stay in that area for long) fits the nomadic aspect of the game a lot more, while also helping the balance and design stay in check.

There’s lots of small changes, and many larger changes that are all meant to work together to transform the game into an entirely new version of itself. We know that for many, this means some things that were once considered core parts of LO, those things not being in the game anymore or being completely changed to fit this new approach, it may not sound great, and that’s okay.
We have no doubt that for some (especially our oldest, veteran players of the game, the ones who participated during the alpha, the beta waves, and also including the Early Access peeps), when they launch Season 5 public testing and they start their journey in a new oasis, they will not feel like they are playing Last Oasis anymore. And we can very confidently say if you feel that way, that is a good thing, that’s perfectly okay, the game is changing completely, and if when playing it you could do the same things as you did during Season 4 or earlier seasons, and have the same results, then we wouldn’t be doing a good job.

For us, now that we are getting to the point where we can see these changes realized and can playtest them internally as a full game, instead of testing individual parts of the update, we think it looks amazing, and we can’t wait to have more people playing it, testing the new version of the game, and most importantly letting us know whether we’re achieving a much better Last Oasis, with the fresh, fun, completely new experience that we ourselves see when we boot up the internal testing client.

A final decision will be made during the beta test and, regardless of which option we end up deciding for the official realm, private realms will have the option to turn these individual features on and off as wanted. As mentioned before, for us, Season 5 is a massive change in direction - if you want “LO Classic”, private realms have the ability to turn off most of these changes.

— Neon

For the past few weeks we’ve done a great deal of references to a reworked progression system that would enhance and be deeply connected with other features and changes we’re introducing to the game in Season 5 - features such as PVE maps, rarity system, siege weapon changes, the new creatures and their Rupu War Howdah variations (also known as Battle Mobs internally), and last but definitely not least, Walkers. It’s time to finally get into all the juicy details.

To get this out straight away so we focus entirely on the new system, we are completely removing fragments and tablets from the game and the associated progression. Our replacement system is to be schematics.

I will also touch some of the points that I failed to explain properly in our Rarity System devblog, such as for example, how an epic rarity Point of Interest differs from a common rarity POI, or what kind of bonuses would an item like a simple Bandage get from being crafted at a higher rarity, and most importantly for the good old “quality grind”, how it affects tools.

[h2]Schematics System[/h2]

For Season 5, advancing through different types and tiers of Walkers, siege weapons, base parts, melee weapons and armor, etc. is going to be a major gameplay element of the game, and the vast majority of that will be done through battling Rupu tribes in their camps, hunting wild, dangerous creatures, raiding new POIs, and facing off against fearsome Rupu combat platforms on top of tamed beasts.

One of the biggest reasons we decided to completely remove fragments/tablets progression is the issue of such a core gameplay element of the game becoming very irrelevant, very quickly. After one player in a clan learned anything, everyone in that clan would have access to it. Both for PVP and trade aspects, it quickly removed value from fragments and tablets, and stopped that major part of game progression extremely early on, if it was a big clan, and rather quickly for an average sized group.

In a lot of cases, this made it so technology progression wasn’t even a part of the gameplay for most players, which from our point of view is a design issue in and of itself.

Whereas before it was possible to simply “feed” all the fragments and all the tablets to one player in the group, and thus unlock a vast amount of technology very early on if you had many players in that group that were grinding for it, that won’t be possible with this new system.
With all the major rebalance and redesign that LO is undergoing across the board, having a system where you can essentially get to end-game technology by visiting merely the first three maps and just farming for a few days, that’s something that is completely incompatible with our approach for the game, and would completely invalidate the impact of the rarity system and the introduction of scarcity to the game.

I want to start by describing how you will first interact with the system, what schematics are in practice, and how many other features and gameplay are changed through them - for example our Wandering Merchants, or the acquisition methods for valuable raid ammo such as Hellfire, and even smaller things such as building a simple wood base. Everything in the game is connected to, and interacts with this new system, paired with the scarcity changes we’ve finally introduced to the game, and the rarity system we talked about two weeks ago.

Schematics are essentially items, loot drops like any other, but they are at the center of almost every recipe in the game, and can greatly benefit from rarity bonuses. In our initial implementation, some items will be the exception to that rule, there is player equipment that will drop as a crafted item, rather than as a schematic.
For example, our first iteration will have farming tools of tier higher than Bone not be craftable, but rather be findable in the world as a low drop rate loot (by tier here we are talking about Stone, Bone, Ceramic, etc.).

Some examples of what this means: to build a Walker, you will first need to find a schematic for that specific Walker. In order to upgrade the Wings and the Walker Legs, you will need schematics for that as well. To switch Walker Rigs to a higher rarity variation, you will both need to have crafted a Walker of that rarity, and to find a Rig schematic of the same rarity (or lower).

If you want to build large clan bases wherever, be it PVE or PVP maps, you will need to find structural schematics - if you want to have large factories producing ceramics, or cooking iron into ingots, or weaving massive amounts of cloth, you will need to find schematics to build them in the first place.

[h2]Schematics & Rarity[/h2]

In order to showcase how rarity and schematics interact with each other, I’ll first get into how rarity changes things like Points of Interest and creatures.

Rarity is going to affect how POIs are spawned. Depending on the map, POIs such as Rupu Camps, pyramid, abandoned trading stations, ancient crafting site (fabricator), rupu fortresses, and creature lairs, these will have different rarity, and thus different loot tables with more exciting rewards based on the difficulty of the map. Do keep in mind that a rarer POI also implies higher difficulty. Some POI will not be clearable by melee, for example, and will require Walkers armed with siege weapons to take them out, or weapon platforms nearby.

As it applies to resources and other general loot in a higher difficulty map, this also applies to schematics. When looting Nurr camps in an Easy/Medium difficulty oasis you will very rarely have an uncommon or a rare Stiletto, or Mollusk schematic drop - but if you head on out to higher difficulty oases such as Sleeping Giants, or Ancient City event maps, you will face off against rarer mobs which have increased chances of dropping higher rarity schematics.

While early on you will start off your journey riding a common Firefly and will eventually reach the point you find a Dinghy schematic, you will most likely still be in these early game, low difficulty maps, so unless you get lucky or raid a high rarity, high difficulty POI, or fight rare creatures in that map, you will find yourself riding a common Dinghy.
But that’s just the start of the adventure. Once you advance onto larger Walkers and more advanced gear, you will be ready to cross the sandstorms toward higher difficulty oases where many creatures, Rupu fortresses and various POI await you.

It is at this point that after overcoming these new challenges, uncommon, rare, and sometimes epic rarity schematics will be up for the taking. PVE threats won’t be the only challenges you will face in these higher difficulty maps, there will be other players and clans just like you, seeking to advance and progress toward larger Walkers, more powerful siege weapons, and sturdier bases to protect them.

[h2]Balance & QoL[/h2]

It’s not news that both the rarity and the schematics systems are massive balance tools for us, but I still find it difficult to properly emphasize how much greater their impact is compared to our old systems.

When it comes to balancing different types, PVP and PVE tiles for example, schematics are the main tool for us. Our intention with PVE maps has been laid out already, but I think it’s okay to get into it once again with the added context of schematics that wasn’t available before.
Hanging out and farming early game up to essentially bone tier tech is perfectly okay, but staying beyond that is simply not worth it.

PVE tiles will always be there as safe havens for social interactions, for dedicated trading, and in a lot of cases, for bringing your banged up Walkers, garage them up, repair, refit, rebuild, and go back out into the dangerous areas of the world. As we said before, they’re not meant to be somewhere to live off of, farm and build up, resources respawn slower and are scarcer, schematics are limited to very low rarity, it’s - and with your help we will achieve a good balance where weather events, increased maintenance costs and PVE threats dissuade players and clans from creating banks and bases far too large for the intention we have.

While many schematics are considered very special loot with either low drop rates or requiring you to defeat large, dangerous PVE threats across different biomes, in the other extreme we have some of the very early schematics, which are required to progress through the early game at a decent pace and have a good experience in the first maps, so a few of them will always be unlocked or very easily accessible.
We don’t want situations where you can never get to water purification tech because there’s no campfire schematics to be found, or not having any bandages to heal at any point, etc. We also don’t really want a constant overflow of useless schematics, so this will be a very delicate balance to work on.

We don’t usually talk about numbers and balance a whole lot, other than to say that it’s up in the air, because that’s usually the case with new features and fresh changes in need of proper testing.
This continues to apply here, as we’ll need to carefully balance what drops from where, what are the chances for it to drop, etc. This is something that we will work together with you, the players, during our public testing phase of the overhaul.

A major focus for overall balance of schematics is to avoid excessive amounts of prayers directed at RNGesus. After hunting for Nurr and getting a Stiletto drop, you would probably expect similar results in the future, instead of having a Stiletto dropped from a random Rupu Forerunner in the middle of the desert.
I’ll give you some examples below on how you can expect specific items and buildables to come from similar sources.

• Walkers: The vast majority of our battle mobs (Rupu-tamed creatures) will be the main sources of Walker related schematics. For example, untamed Nurr will have chances to drop Stiletto, while Rupu Nurr Raiders will drop Mollusk Walkers. Larger Walkers like the Falco and the Buffalo come from more dangerous sources, in this case variations of the Papak creature.
  
• Raiding the Rupu in their villages is a great way to make better use of the ammo they store for their defenses.
  
• Exploring and looting Ancient POIs can earn you rarer and useful items such as Automata, Wingsuits and Exosuits.
  

On the topic of quality of life: since our rarity system devblog, we’ve seen a lot of concerns regarding item clutter, and with schematics being unique items that also go in player inventory, that is still a concern we have. The much more simplified rarity (1-5, instead of 1-100) items replacing old quality items has had a great impact on reducing the amount of clutter items in the inventory, and we want to keep it that way.

For that reason, many schematics will be “group schematics” - what this means is that we'll be grouping some schematics under a single one, so for example, finding a single schematic for Baskwood Armor will allow you to craft 1 piece of either gloves, chest, legs - instead of having to find Baskwood Bracers, Boots and Chest separately. Another example would be structural pieces. Finding a Clay Structure schematic will let you build any Clay base piece, as long as you have the necessary resources and the schematic itself.

Similarly, ammo schematics will have big stacks so as to not fill your chests too quickly when the resources needed to craft the ammo aren’t available to you.
We’ve considered items such as schematic bags and backpacks (similar to our fiber bags), but it remains to be seen whether it will be necessary. Testing will give us more information on this.

In regards to cheating and exploits such as dupes: We fully understand that some of these things will not work at all if there’s things like dupe exploits going rampant at any point during the season, or if cheaters are allowed to get away with essentially robbing the grind off other players.

Our stance for this has not changed, and will be heavily enforced at the start of Season 5. Whereas in the past we focused a lot more on fixing the exploits as soon as possible, than banning the exploiters straight away (even temporarily), this time our approach is much more of a middle ground. While we are focused on fixing the exploits, our support team will be focused on handing out punishments to anyone found in violation of our Code of Conduct, be it a lone player or a large clan, that is found to be greatly benefiting from exploits and cheaters in their group.

— Neon