Last Oasis News

FIXES

- Fixed latest server issues resulting in lost connections.
- Fixed client crashes related to claiming.
- Fixed Ballista not taking ammo from Ammo Chests.

This will be the last patch until January! We want the game to be stable over the holidays, as many of us will be taking a few days off to eat gingerbread cookies with some wine, so this patch is focusing on fixes and improvements. If it turns out an urgent fix is needed before January, we’ll still patch that in though, so don’t worry.

We hope everyone has a safe, healthy, and happy holiday time!



[h2]CHANGELOG[/h2]

CLAIMING

-Forbid building above and below Proxy Walkers.
-Slightly reduced influence radius of Poaching Huts.

BALANCE

-Decreased Scattershot damage vs Hard and Soft armor.
-Rebalanced Ceramic Durability upgrades to better fit their tier.
-Made clay quality spots slightly more common.

INTERFACE

-Improved readability of Walker Upgrades text.
-Kick countdown for when clan affairs are happening now displays more and better information. The main message now requires the player to press ESC to close. The message with a timer now displays more information.
-Added a new option on Local Map to disable visibility of Bases.
-Trading Station withdraw/deposit interface now no longer flickers when attempting to withdraw or deposit any amount of Flots.
-Improved readability of map grid.
-Tweaks to Local Map icons.
-Tweaks to the game main menu.

VISUALS

-Assets (such as rocks, Killin nests, etc) on maps will now blend in with the visuals of the landscape.
-Continued work on improving visibility in shadowy areas.

FIXES & IMPROVEMENTS

-Fixed not seeing Scattershot ammo on Ammo Chests after reconnecting or similar.
-Fixed getting stuck in Walker Climbers.
-Fixed not being able to jump while holding an attack, or performing an attack operation, such as throwing a firebomb.
-Fixed sometimes not being able to harvest thornberries.
-Improved Panda Walker spawn point positions.
-Fixed some crashes.
-Improvements to character animations.
-Probably fixed connection lost issues.

[h2]COMMUNITY QUESTIONS[/h2]

Even if this is the last patch until January, keep sending in your questions for the devs! You can do so by checking #announcements in our Discord server. There's a link to our submission form there! Remember to take a look at our Living FAQ to see what's been asked and answered in the past.

Q: Have you considered adding in a seasonal leaderboard?
A: We're definitely considering some form of a leaderboard, not necessarily seasonal only, but other kinds as well - for dueling, hunting, and so on. Once the system is in place though, it could also be used to sum up all the top player achievements by the end of a season.

Q: When will the ability to change your character's appearance or name be added in? What about the option to delete your character? A: Deleting a character affects too many things like permissions, their ranks in a clan, and so on. At the moment, we're not planning to add an option to fully delete a character because of that. Changing appearance and name is definitely something we want to implement though, including more unique options that aren't available during character creation and can be either bought for Flots or earned (depending on the exact system we go with).

Q: When are you nerfing scattershot??? A: Literally now.

Q: Why is the spawn rate for event maps so low? A: Similar to how regular maps spawn, event maps appear mostly during a prime time window of a specific region at a rate that's affected by active players there. The more players there are, the more event maps will spawn and vice versa.

Q: Will you implement other fighting mechanics, like dodge rolls? A: Don't want to mention specifics until they're properly tested and approved to be added to melee combat, but expanding mechanics in new directions (like mentioned dodges and such) is something we'd like to go towards.

Q: The community could use some acknowledgement on the current and consistent bugs/glitches in the game. Is there anything that can be said on the process and priority of fixing server authentication issues, getting stuck in walker climbers, etc? A: We have a quite large internal team of QA testers who rigorously process every bug report and test to confirm them, then assign a priority based on factors like frequency and severity. After that, we try to fix as many bugs as possible for an upcoming patch. What exactly gets fixed depends on that assigned priority, but also difficulty of a fix. Some bugs are very bad, but can be fixed in a few minutes, and some are very rare and can take days to even find, let alone fix.

That said, bug fixes are as much of a priority for us as any new addition, since we're still in Early Access, and if there is a critical bug or a server issue that requires immediate attention, we try to communicate and address it as quickly as possible. On a more specific note, Walker Climbers should be fixed with this update and recent authentication issues were caused by roughly half of Steam servers being down at the time.

Q: Any update on Admin commands for private servers? When do you hope to roll those commands out? A: Actual cheat commands for server admins are still in the works, but we'll have significantly expanded config options available very soon. Those will include combat cooldowns, structure decay values, taxes, and many more.

Q: What was the reasoning behind pushing out iron maps so quickly? A: Our main intention of releasing map tiers in sequence is to spread out the content to allow everyone to catch up to the last available tier. Since we had quite a lot of new and returning players join for Season 2, we decided to spawn Hard maps a bit later than we originally planned, but we felt that progressing from Ceramic to Iron shouldn't take as much time, since those are both end-game tiers.

Also, since iron maps are so brutal and dangerous, they're mostly expected to be mined by either larger clans or smaller hardcore groups who progress at a much higher rate than everyone else, so we didn't want to artificially limit them much longer. We'll definitely take note and consider different timings for map releases in the future though, as we've gathered all your feedback on it already.

This week’s post is a bit shorter than usual, since we aren’t adding a feature that’s easy to show through video/GIFs.

Iron maps will start spawning once this update is live.

[h2]CHANGELOG[/h2]

[h3]WALKERS[/h3]

-Introduced dynamic module slots on all Walkers built with quality or upgraded with Flots. Allows for more diverse Walker builds and customization.
You can stack as many modules in a single slot as the module type allows, which consumes a Walker level. Alternatively, you can always spend a level on unlocking another module slot to diversify your build.
-Enabled ownership transfer for Proxy Walkers.

[h3]BALANCE[/h3]

-Decreased Flotilla trade tax to 2% from 5%.

[h3]INTERFACE[/h3]

-Added a grid overlay to the local map.
-Tweaks to Graphics Settings UI, all options should show up normally now.

[h3]POINTS OF INTEREST[/h3]

-All rupu camps should now properly sink into the sand.

[h3]OASES[/h3]

-Re-introduced Killin to the Asteroid Crash Site event map. Now with Killin nests included!

[h3]FIXES & IMPROVEMENTS[/h3]

-Fixed ghost/invulnerability exploit.
-Continued optimization of structures and assets in general.
-Fixed issues with reconnecting inside the Trading Station Arena.
-Fixed not being able to buy items from the Trading Station if the price to pay was not an integer.
-More fixes to prevent players from going through walls of bases.
-Some adjustments to distant horizon visuals to better blend in with the desert on the edges of the oases.
-Tweaked collisions of some mannable structures.
-Tweaked collisions of some static structures.
-Improved Dinghy Walker collisions near the Steering Levers.
-Fixes to small Walkers going through Ancient Earth Drills(also known as Ancient Windmills) in the Ancient City event map.
-Fixed spawning issues on Hornet and Balang.
-Fixed Hercule being upgraded with Buffalo upgrades.
-Fixed protected inventory (in Cradle) spawning on the ground.
-Fixed structure and Walker health sometimes reverting on server restart.
-Fixed UI issues with some clan screen elements.
-Fixed various outdated or wrong descriptions.
-Fixed some debug things being visible when effects appear.
-Fixed a bunch of crashes.

[h2]COMMUNITY FEATURE[/h2]



Check out this shot of the Ancient City by Korno!

[h2]COMMUNITY FEATURE[/h2]

Remember to join our Discord if you haven't yet! You'll find a link in #announcements where you can send in your questions for the devs. Check out our Living FAQ to see what we've answered in the past!

Q: Are there any walker mechanics you would like to expand upon in the future?
Ex, replacing wings with torque batteries (making a walker function like the Silurs), leg variants that do different things like higher traction/speed. A: While the more broad and accurate answer is yes, specifics are obviously harder to be... specific about. One of the systems we're improving now and planning on working on in the near future, is Walker Modules. It's something the players interact with pretty much every day, something they make use of for the majority of the Walkers they utilize, so it's only logical that we improve it.

Q: Have you considered making job specific clans? For example Pirate clans, for people who like pvping, Merchant clans, for people who like selling. A: We wouldn’t want to make it a forced selection and instead expand the game in directions that allow more specialized clans. Even right now, we’re seeing that there are some clans that prioritize trading or territory control, raiding, and so on.

Q: Will there be a “creative mode” of sorts that wouldn’t be restricted to just private servers? Unlimited materials, unlimited health etc. A: It’s not out of the question, but we don’t have any specific plans for that. We’re definitely planning on expanding admin possibilities on private servers as well as allowing hosting your own servers, so it will definitely become closer to reality in the future.

Q: Are you planning to rebalance the cost of weapons, so other weapons beside the bonespike are affordable? A: You can definitely expect multiple rebalances before the game is out of Early Access. Some take more or less time to get right, some get their balance changed because of new feature additions, and so on. That goes for costs, damages, and everything else.

Q: Why are the tiles with caps all over the place and not in a row? A: The tile spawning system is automatic and decides which tiles to spawn based on many things like the number of players in a region, what kind of map types there are around, and so on. We might be tweaking the values here and there based on the feedback though, so changes to the system can be expected over time.

Q: Where did the grass go?????? A: Phemke infestation. Working on a fix.

Q: Will you change the clan cap from 50 to something else anytime soon? A: Not before Season 3, which should happen some time next year. We’ll be assessing all the feedback and other information from Season 2 closer to its end and will decide in what direction to go with clan caps.

We're releasing a content push tomorrow (Dec 10) at the usual time, 2 PM CEST / 8 AM ET! This will introduce iron maps, plus a few other additions, fixes, and improvements that will be discussed in their own post. Server downtime should be about an hour.





Screenshots by Korno

Look up to the sky and spot an approaching asteroid full of iron ore in its core! Once it hits the surface, make sure to be prepared, as you surely won't be the only nomad trying to snatch some metal from the crash site.

Iron is one of the strongest and most advanced types of resources nomads use in their crafting, allowing them to create extremely durable equipment, various reinforced structures, and other valuable things.

INTERFACE

- Added an option to toggle audio when minimized.
- Added 1st/3rd Person perspective FOV sliders.
- Added FOV scaling option to enable fisheye. This time the popular demand was too strong to resist.


BALANCE

- Added Fiery Concoction to the game, a resource that's only obtainable through rare Wandering Merchants that specialize in dealing with ammunition.
- Hellfire Bolts will now require Fiery Concoction to be crafted.


FIXES & IMPROVEMENTS

- Fixed meshing through walls with Scattershots.
- Fixed characters jittering on moving Walkers.
- Fixed player numbers display on World Map UI.
- Fixed Furnaces not being locked when above 50% HP.
- Fixed items disappearing from Walker containers after unpacking (tied with server restarts).