Last Oasis News

There was a bug related to unpacking and we decided to tackle that and finish out the last “Anti-Griefing” mechanic for unpacking. That’s the patch for today. In addition, we’ll be disabling base decaying while packed until we’re sure you can unpack in all cases. After that, we'll also start burning some of the tiles to condense the World Map for the current population.

We added what we’re calling the Clearance Phase. For the first 30s of unpacking, the structure checks to see if the area is valid. After 30s, all collisions are enabled at once and packing won’t be canceled by attempting to make the area invalid afterwards. This means that on a PvE map, after 30s a player cannot disable/pause your unpacking simply by standing in the area.

Changelog this time is not so big, as most of the changes we're working on are for the unreleased maps and updates, but they should have a pretty big impact nonetheless (at least the first two):

• Added Clearance Phase to Unpacking, which prevents most griefing with unpacking.
  
• Fixed a bug, which prevented unpacking bases in some cases.
  
• Fixed collisions on the Rupu Throne buildable structure.
  

As we stated in the last post, each week we’ll do updates on the state of our various lines of effort. Since we’re just starting now, this isn’t a list of everything that’s been done, but, rather, a selection of the most important and needed things we’ve worked on this week.

It's a new format we're trying out to keep you in the loop on everything important that's happening. Therefore, treat it more as a progress report than a full devblog for each part of the post and expect a larger post sometime soon.




One of the major efforts here has been working on a system that will allow us to more easily edit rigs. Editing existing rigs can currently cause a lot of issues, and there are quite a few problems with the existing rigs on some walkers, so this is, unfortunately, one of those “transparent” things which is happening in the background for us to work easier, rather than a change you'll immediately see. What it will allow, though, is an easy way to update any rig on any walker for us to put in an update.

Next week, we’ll also introduce some more quest changes - adding back some of the old quests that have been redesigned and rebalancing the existing ones to fit the current economy better.




The promised Quality of Life update is coming along.

Right now, we're actively working on fixing the issue with clan permissions not persisting (i.e. they get reset during server restarts, updates, etc), which is a more complex issue than might seem, since it requires both the work on our game code, the backend, and the database.

It's been a common complaint for some time now, so the fix should be coming in one of the next patches, instead of waiting for the full QoL Update to bring it in.




PvP Update is also on its way.

We finalized the detailed design for the "King of the Hill" feature and Schematic Learning/Crafting that we've discussed in one of the previous devblogs. They should provide a balanced experience, encourage active PvP for map control, and make Schematics more of a tool that requires less attention the more you progress, similar to Water or Torque.

We also concepted the KoTH POI model, which will be the main arena for those PvP battles, so it will take a few iterations to get to a good gameplay feeling. Our goal with it is to make it a mixed melee/walker fight. Meaning, that you will be able to impact the success using walkers, but to actually capture the point you’ll need people with their feet on the ground, so while it will be possible to capture solo if the competition is not too strong, but larger clans should be able to have proper fights for control and bonuses that it provides on the map.




The next map is one of our main priorities at the moment, so there's quite a bit about it.

As expected, tons of work here, but we don’t want to spoil the surprise too much, so this will probably be more vague than you’d want.

We've finished the overhaul of the map design, which will be entirely different from what it was before, except the main part that it's still an Ancient City, so you can expect completely new gameplay, new features introduced with the map, and much more.

When it comes to details, we've finished creating new Rupu variants, finished setting all of their weapons and projectiles. all of the Rupu camp encounters are set, including bosses that weren't present in the game at all before, finished all of the loot tables, and much more boring details.

Now, we're starting work on creating Rupu melee behavior variations, so that each new Rupu type feels unique when fighting, especially putting the focus on the new bosses.

One of the new features - Relic Hunter Reputation, which we won't spoil yet, has also been finalized, including a detailed design, all the models, and so on. That's what will make Ancient City an event map that won't stop being relevant as it was before and will provide almost limitless gameplay in that regard.

Today we’ll go over the patch and then a few updates on each of the major lines of effort and where we stand on them. The patch today is, mainly, focused on fixes and tweaks to Sleeping Giants and, most of all, closing out all of the packing bugs and improvements. There is one more feature we want to add that should prevent anyone using packing from getting griefed while trying to unpack on PvE tiles specifically, but will work on all tiles with the same rules and intention. Unfortunately, that will come a bit later in a separate patch, but we'll try to add it as soon as possible, without waiting for any large patch to include it, so expect one to come soon.

Otherwise, the patch today focuses on continuing to improve the Sleeping Giants experience, through fixes, and implementing new features, or tweaking existing features in new ways. The main feature we've been working on, though, is packing. Since its release we've received quite a few reports regarding it, like difficulty to unpack or other issues, especially with Hangar Walls, and tried to address them all in this patch. Overall, once we’re sure that all of these packing changes didn’t introduce any new terrible catastrophic bugs, we’ll start burning some tiles to condense the World Map, as we've talked previously. The burn will have a timer of at least 7 days prior to the actual decay of the tile, so you'll have plenty of time to pack and move to another tile that's not being burnt. You'll see a timer above a tile that's being burnt on the World Map and if a map doesn't have one, it will not be burnt.

We'll keep monitoring gameplay with the new changes and the lower number of tiles on the World Map and keep adjusting the numbers if we see that there are still too many tiles or that they're all to crowded without an ability for someone who wants peace and quiet to go to a less populated oasis.

Changelog. This time, in the beginning of the post:

• Made unpacking use the same allowed distance to other bases as building allowance.
  
• Fixed an issue with an error that says a base is too close when it actually isn't.
  
• Increased Lathe Torque inventory to 1,000.
  
• Added packing information and decay timers to Walker HUD to see them while driving.
  
• Reduced Stamina use for Long and Sturdy Grappling Hooks.
  
• Allow raising and lowering unpacked base to allow for an easier unpacking experience.
  
• Made unpacking ignore the owning player when checking for obstructions to make it easier.
  
• Fixed bugs with dirty and toxic water being treated as normal water - autoconsumed in bottles, used for repsawning, etc.
  
• Made toxic water on maps damage only players who are inside it, not mobs or structures.
  
• Improved visuals of toxic water on maps to make it look more dangerous.
  
• Increased Falco HP to 34,500 from 24,500. Did not increase current HP, so need to repair.
  
• Increased sap drop rate from saw blade harvesting.
  
• Fixed sap not dropping with proper loot and quality when using a sawblade.
  
• Made windmills and excavator not decay on the ground.
  
• Made all other structures decay when placed on the ground without a foundation and maintenance chest.
  
• Added Repair Station (small hardpoint on walkers).
  
• Made Repair Station take damage on repairing items, as it's considered heavy workload. Requires repairing the station or rebuilding it. Higher quality Repair Stations last much longer.
  
• Rarity Items can be repaired with the use of rarity resources and a schematic of any rarity, including non-rarity schematic of that item.
  
• Common items can be repaired with common resources without any schematic.
  
• Updated and improved delivery merchant quest to make it more clear.
  
• Replaced Delivery Merchant model to look different from any other Merchant, so it's instantly visible that it's unique and stealthy (as they're smugglers).
  
• Added Medium Water Bag to store more liquids in (small hardpoint on walkers).
  
• Fixed not being able to pack small gates.
  
• Prevented using unpacking to build sky bases. This is not a challenge! Floating bases are subject to be deleted by divine intervention at any moment and the owners banned as per the ToS.
• Added highlighting the invalid part when unpacking to make it easier to figure out what is preventing placement.
  
• Made it easier to place bases on uneven terrain.
  
• Added packing period multipliers configurable in server settings for private servers owners.
  
• Separated weapon, tool, and armor rarity durability multiplier. Increased tool and armor durability scaling, slightly rebalanced Weapon durability.
  
• Added tool tier rarity multiplier. Rare items now have higher tool tiers and will harvest higher quantities. Low tier tools like early Axes might be able to harvest Redwood when rare now, and so on.
  
• Added Lathe and Curing Station to a Medium Hardpoint on Walkers.
  
• Fixed Magma Seed not being harvestable by Scythe-type tools.
  
• Overhauled Event Tile spawning feature.
  
• Made it a much lower probability that Event Tile maps with the same settings will spawn back to back (to prevent 1 Clan Cap Canyon after another). Added some other tweaks to settings to make it more balanced.
  

The new settings for private server owners regarding packing decay are:

• PackingDecayGracePeriodMultiplier
  
• PackingDecayPeriodMultiplier
  
• PackingPreparePeriodMultiplier
  

There are still several outstanding issues we’re continuing to work on. Your bug reports and feedback are incredibly valuable here. We have lots and lots still to do to make Sleeping Giants as high quality as we want. From improving loot tables, to fixing Okkam aggro, adding and balancing quests, balancing the rarity upgrader, and so on. Basically, lots of tweaks and fixes left to be done. But little by little we’re whittling all of the issues and inconsistencies down, and we think the end is in sight here. Keep sending your feedback and we’ll keep up the drumbeat of adjusting things regularly.




We recently grouped a bunch of features that have been hanging around as good ideas into a focused plan we’re calling the “Quality of Life” Update. This includes many of the things we’ve talked about publicly, like how we want to implement features that replace some of the functionality of the lobby, like a “Vacation Mode” that would allow to safely log out of the map into a lobby with your walker at a Trade Station, a “Teleport to Home Tile” feature that would allow to build a Portal, much like the ones at the edges of the map and travel directly to your Home Tile, as well as Base Walker Packers that would allow to pack Walkers you don't use daily in a compact packer instead of having a gigantic Hangar.

Other than that, we've listed some ideas for other features that we either discussed ourselves or the ones that you suggested to us directly, which we'll discuss in another post when we flesh them out a little more to be presentable and worthy of your discussion.




We promised a Q&A here, but we’re going to need a rain check on that one. We had a lot of great feedback and questions posted by all of you, so not wanting to make it just a small post with a few handpicked questions, we'll try to make a proper Q&A without shying away from difficult questions and sharing as much information as we can through that post.




The Ancient City is coming along nicely and we’re, actually, really excited about how it is shaping up. It is going to be a completely new experience that hasn't been possible in Last Oasis before, with many pieces and parts hand-placed into the map, rather than spawned randomly. Meaning that we can design the experience in a much more specific way to make it both visually stunning and gameplay-wise exactly as we want it.

We’ll also be creating a completely new player-progression mechanic tied-in to exploring the Ancient City. Through finding and looting Relics, you’ll be able to improve your reputation when sharing them with the Flotillian Historic Society, unlocking the ability to buy high rarity schematics directly from one of their representatives, and, also, some unique rewards that will only be available by having a high reputation with the guild.

Overall, our current plan is to spawn Ancient City as an Event Map, separate from Rarity Event Maps, so you'll have 2 possible Event Tiles to go to at most times. We'll most likely be spawning the map both as a PvE and a PvP experience, where the PvP map will have rarity like any other Rarity Event Map that's PvP, while the PvE one will have no rarity, but all the same features and mechanics across the board, including the Relics.




Each week our devblogs will be giving updates on the current status of each line of our efforts. As we’ve said many times, setting deadlines and ETAs are just recipes for disappointment, but we are endeavoring to attempt to be as transparent as possible and provide frequent status updates as we work on each update going forward. Expect more details on the newly announced Quality of Life Update, the PvP Update, and the Ancient City map release, which might be coming earlier than you expect.

Thank you for reading this post and, in general, supporting us through this development with your feedback, Steam reviews, daily discussions, and many more ways to make it easier for us to make Last Oasis better.

We thank everyone for all the discussion and feedback about the PvP changes we posted about last week, as well as helping us sort out all of the bugs with Balang. Today’s patch should fix most of the remaining issues with packing and add a few other improvements.

Currently, we can't name an exact release date for either the PvP Update or the Ancient City map. As we continue to work through development and all the new features, there is a possibility we’ll release the PvP update in parts, rather than all at once, but that’s to be confirmed and finalized. We know there was some confusion about that coming from Friday, but our goal here is to release a fun and, most importantly, working improvement to the PvP part of the game. We'll have to see if releasing it in parts will still maintain the fun gameplay every individual update or we'll need all the components together to make it work as we intend it to.

For our full devblog later in the week we’ll do a Q&A with many of your questions that were brought up as a result of the PvP Update devblog and all the discussions about the future of the Packing feature, and try to answer any other lingering questions out there. Again, a lot of good discussions that are helping us very much to refine the design and improve the gameplay around it that we're very grateful for.

Changelog for today:

• Fixed packing restrictions regarding some specific pieces like Hangar Roof.
  
• Fixed Clay Lump not being allowed in Quality Upgrader.
  
• Increased clay pot healing radius from 12.5 to 25.
  
• Made canceling pack/unpack a Hold action to avoid accidents.
  
• Fixed packing wall count calculation (for bases that weren't packable even when under the limit)
  
• Increased Base packing distance of the Balang from 30 to 100 meters.
  
• Increased Walker and Maintenance Chest packing distance from 30 to 70 meters.
  
• Lowered Walker unpacking time from 20 to 10 minutes.
  
• Lowered Walker packing time from 2 to 1.5 minutes.
  
• Lowered Hangar piece cost from 4 to 2.
  
• Lowered Hangar packing/unpacking time from 4 to 2 seconds each.
  
• Made Automatons give back 100% of the cost on disassemble, since they're not packable.
  

This post will be rather short, since we had a very long one just last weekend and it's more of a follow-up update, so the focus will be on the new packing changes and the similarities with the previous version of it. We'll expand on other parts of the development later this week, as we promised, and answer the most pressing questions in a Q&A format in just a few days.



Packing is finally back in a new and slick packaging! We're happy to announce that you'll be able to freely move your base and walkers around your own tile and between them, something that truly has a nomadic spirit to it and allows to resettle on new territories or move into a better spot for convenience or just a picturesque view from your base.

Please take note that I emphasize the word move here because this is now the main focus of the packing feature in its current form, rather than storing bases or walkers for long periods of time, as it was before. Our goal with this update is to allow complete freedom of movement and settling on a different map. What isn't our goal is to make Hangars obsolete or make it an abusable mechanic for deploying forward operating bases or using it to store a small base at all times to quickly deploy to take advantage of an opportunistic situation with regard to PvE or harvesting as it was often used previously.

What it means in practice is that the packing will now have a timer until decay that will take 2 hours with the current balance, after which anything packed into that slot will start slowly taking decay damage, similarly to how it works without a Maintenance Chest. The full time to decay any packed base or a walker is 6 hours, on top of the first 2 that we call a Grace Period. We hope that this new mechanic will promote usage of the packing for moving and resettling, essentially, packing up your base and walkers, moving to another place, and unpacking as soon as possible not to take any decay damage.

In addition to this, another measure in vein will be the minimal time to pack and unpack structures and walkers, which is 2 minutes of packing and 20 minutes for unpacking. It means that before each piece of the packed base or a walker starts packing or unpacking, the Preparation Phase needs to finish before it actually starts. Another, maybe obvious, thing to point out is that our goal for the packing is to make it usable out of combat as much as possible, for that reason the Packing feature will work only when out of combat, but unlike before when it would instantly cancel packing as soon as someone is in a way or a rupu attacks and crosses the place of unpacking, the process will pause and give you 20 seconds to clear the area, at which point it will continue unpacking. If the area is not cleared in that time, the system will assume that it's a larger-scale attack and cancel the packing, both to prevent its use in combat as a FOB and to protect the base from attacks.

On that note, the Balang Walker is a real beats when it comes to Walker strength. It stayed Solid as it was previously, even thought it's not limited to a core as before and allows to pack regular bases. In addition to it, the Walker will have 50,000 HP to make sure your possessions are completely safe from the outside interference or an accidental Okkam attack. The only thing to worry about in that case will be the decay timer, but we hope that 8 total hours that a base or your walkers can be packed for will be enough to safely move and unpack in any conditions or even if you have to suddenly leave for some time and come back in a few hours. Your packed structure might endure some damage and will require repairs, but it will maintain structural integrity and you can be sure that no one will steal your things.

When it comes to how much you can pack, we decided to go a bit above our original estimation and allow 300 base pieces per Balang Walker. Keep in mind that it's the only limiting factor for packing, but also worth mentioning that Hangar pieces count as 4 walls and will take 4 seconds to unpack, as opposed to a single wall or other structure that will take a second and only actual base pieces like foundations, walls, roofs, and so on will count in this limit. In addition, the Balang Walker will allow to pack up to 3 Walkers of any size, except, of course, another Balang. That means that most players should be able to easily pack their entire base together with the garage and the Walkers inside, as we estimated that players who own more than 3 Walkers in addition to a Balang are likely player at least with a couple of friends, who each can drive their own Balang and pack as much into their mobile homes.

Those Values are in no way final and will definitely be tweaked and balanced as we keep observing the gameplay on servers and collecting your feedback, so please let us know what you think after you try it yourself. We specifically ask you to try it yourselves first before passing any judgement, as words often don't describe the actual experience well enough to imagine how it is to actually use. With that, hopefully, there shouldn't be any issues, as Balang Walker Schematics will drop from both the new Sleeping Giants and Canyons to allow its use from early gameplay soon after Cradle.

In other aspects, the Balang Walker stayed pretty much the same, as we felt that it was a fair balance compared to other walkers, with regard to its Armor type and Health. It means that the Walker will not have a usable deck that allows placing anything on it and neither does it have a storage or a gear container. What it will have is a Water container to allow respawning on it with the first tier unlocked by default to allow immedaite respawning on it as soon as you fill it with a bit of clean water, so that once you pack your base and Walkers to move away, you have a safe walker to respawn on from the get go, without the need to additionally unlock the water container. Of course, if you want to increase the capacity of the water container or unlock the ability to use Torque in case of the Wing failure or just to run away from danger when the most precious things are packed inside, you're free to do so by upgrading them manually.




As promised, in addition to Balang Walker with the ability to pack bases and other Walkers, we're also adding packing and moving functionality to Maintenance Chests of all tiers. As opposed to the Walker, packing in Maintenance Chests is limited to individual structures like crafting stations, chests, humidifiers, and so on.

Essentially, this is a way for you to move your structures within your base, on your walker, or even between the two. It should work seamlessly with the rig system and hardpoints, so you can easily move a structure from your base to any of the acceptable points on any of your walkers or vice versa. The distance at which you can pack and unpack is limited to 30 meters, which, similar to all other values mentioned, is a subject to change and we'll likely be tweaking it once we get the first feedback. As most Maintenance Chests are usually near the entrance to a base, it should be more than enough to move the structures between your base and your walkers or just neatly place down the chests that someone threw around the base like they're garbage bins. Basically, it's the dream of any home renovator.

Using the same system as the packing on the Balang Walker, Maintenance Chests will have decay period assigned to them, which, in this case is much shorter and takes only minutes. The reason for this is, essentially, the same - we designed this feature to be used for moving and not storing. I can just say that from our tests, none of us needed more than was given by the chests to move some chests around or exchange a weapon on a Walker.




As we talked previously, we want to continue developing this feature moving forward. We've already established that we'll keep iterating over what's here now and will be tweaking the numbers and improving the mechanics using your feedback. What else is on the horizon for packing then?

Well, we already mentioned that we're considering a special walker that would do the opposite of Balang and could actually be a mobile fort used for combat. In that case, it will mot likely be similar to what Balang was originally. As in, having a special core part as its main foundation to create a sort of a mobile War Tower that you can deploy around your base for protection, next to a PvE camp to use as a respawn and gearing outpost when taking on an especially vicious camp or a monster, or even in PvP to get the benefits of a base on the go and attack others having a safe place to fall back to in the heat of combat. It could be especially useful once we start getting into more detail on the PvP Update and start testing out mechanics and ideas.

To be clear, this is just a rough idea at this moment and more of an example of what we could consider for the future of packing in general. Another, much more tangible thing, would be the second tier of a packing walker - the Silur. This one is most likely a done deal at this point, as it would be a direct improvement over Balang, same as it was previously, just with more packing pieces, more Walker packers, and maybe some more interesting deviations from the original design.

For now, we'll stop here with speculations about where the packing feature could go. Let us know what you think about those ideas and send us your own. We read Discord and other platforms on a daily basis and will surely read your discussions about anything related to packing, so even if you don't send an official feedback report, we'll take note and take it into account when making decisions on future planning.

That's it for today! Keep an eye out for the next big post later this week and we'll most likely do some kind of a smaller update too, but will mainly depend on how the current update will go and what we'll plan for the upcoming weeks.

You can find the changelog for the today's update below. Thanks for reading and supporting us through this (quiet turbulent) season.


Full Changelog:

• Added Balang Walker able to pack a large base and 3 Walkers.
  
• Added packing to all Maintenance Chests to move structures easily.
  
• Overhauled Packing System entirely. Packing now only possibly with special Packing Walkers, there is a decay timer that pushes you to use packing for moving instead of storing, completely remade the UI, made it more clear, overhauled packing restrictions to only count walls. Basically, read the post.
  
• Fixed dead mobs like Okkam dealing damage after being dead if you ram into them.
  
• Fixed Furnace not crafting quality items. All recipes should now craft quality.
  
• Fixed Sap and Sulfur Pebbles not being the same Rarity as the original foliage.
  
• Fixed Automatons not dropping their ammo inventory on destruction.
  
• Fixed Automatons sometimes getting destroyed when netted.
  
• Buffed Automatons from 500 to 900HP at default Rarity.
  
• Made Automatons use Soft Armor instead of none.
  
• Fixed Xbox/Controller navigation in some menus and containers.
  
• Fixed all placement issues on Buffalo Walker.
  
• Fixed some collisions on Trading Station. Made it easier to pass in some places, patched up holes where there was no collision.
  
• Fixed Purification Station evaporating Water (won't do it again).
  
• Made furniture light sources not craft items.
  
• Improved furniture light sources UI to be more clear, added names and tooltips.
  
• Added Wooden Slab as an optional source for fueling furniture light sources.
  
• Increased burning time of items in furniture light sources. Basically, improved light sources.
  
• Fixed Humidifier not having proper name and tooltip when opening the screen. Lots of UI improvements this patch.
  
• Made containers always show the correct name of the structure when renaming them.
  
• Disabled renaming containers inside them. Made it more consistent to rename through building menu.
  
• Removed Rarity from Flots. That was confusing.
  
• Removed Flots from some Rupu loot tables. They were giving way too much.
  
• Changed Buffalo and Falco T3 legs from Reinforced to Medium.
  
• Fixed Rupu Throne rotation, position, and available poses.
  
• Maybe fixed Rupu getting stuck in Ash Region Fortress camp on Sleeping Giants (please report if it happens again).
  
• Fixed Papak, Okkam, and Nurr sometimes respawning instantly after death.
  
• Fixed Contaminated and Toxic Water not evaporating when dropped like clean one.
  
• Made Insect Bomb damage not stack the timer, but work the same as grappling hook snapping by extending the timer.
  
• Lowered Insect Bomb damage from 0.9 to 0.5 per tick.
  
• Fixed Gunpod Stinger not having Bone and Chitin ammo allowed like normal Stinger.
  
• Fixed Gunpod and Gunpod Stinger sounds not playing when in use.
  
• Added new icons for Gunpod Stinger to make it different from regular Stinger.
  

First, we’ve got a few things this week that should improve balance and quality of life on Sleeping Giants. In general, we believe that the new map is about where we want it to be, but we’ll continue to monitor how you play and continue to address all issues if they arise. Specifically, we know there are quite a few rarity bugs that still persist and we’re working on cleaning all of them up as soon as possible.

Slightly bad news first - we decided to delay Balang Walker packing feature until Monday, just to ensure that it goes as well as possible. Packing is inherently a very dangerous feature, with huge potential for abuse, and even critical truly game-breaking bugs. Historically, pretty much every duping bug and most of the critical issues that forced us to revert came from packing, so we're extra cautious when bringing it back.

Changelog for today's patch:

- Increased durability for all ceramic tier equipment and later tools.
- Removed deviation from Ballista shooting.
- Excluded items from daily maintenance if their total is less than 10 a day.
- Decreased Ballista reload time from 7s to 4s.
- Implemented new Sulfur harvesting mechanic. Sulfur rocks in lakes can now be demolished with Scattershot, then turning into harvestable pebbles on the ground.
- Fixed Soil Excavator not being placeable on Event Tiles. It can now be placed to mine Clay or other resources.



This change to maintenance should improve the situation a little bit, but we don’t consider it the final answer with respect to Maintenance in the least. With the Packing Update on Monday, we’ll also be adding back the ability to pack and unpack items in the Maintenance Chest to move them around your base. We'll also continue to improve Maintenance as a feature using your feedback.

Overall, packing will work quite a bit differently than before. We’ve teased it a little bit, but in order to help you plan we thought we’d go into a bit more detail before patching it in. The Balang will not have a core as it did before, rather it will be able to pack any base on the ground, including hangar pieces and any other structures, and will be able to pack even quite large-sized bases. The piece limit will include only walls and other base pieces, rather than all of the stations and other structures in your base.

Packing will take a similar amount of time as previous iterations, but unpacking will incur a significant time cost on top in a form of a set minimal unpacking time. We want this mechanic to be used to move and resettle, not to have mobile FOBs, creating sky bases or performing other exploits, and the time to unpack is added to limit such abuse cases. In addition, we don’t intend for this feature to be used to keep a giant protected base packed into a walker hidden inside another base. For that reason, when something is packed, after a grace period that should be long enough to move and resettle, it will cause your entire base to begin taking decay damage. To increase the ease of moving all of your belongings at once, we’ll be including walker packers integrated into a Balang Walker as well, but they will also be subject to the decay penalty. Accidental canceling of packing has also been removed - it will simply pause during damage - which will limit the potential abuse of zeroing someone’s base because they can’t unpack it.

These are a lot of significant core changes so we’ll be monitoring how it works in real gameplay, and adjust and iterate whenever necessary.




For a while now, but definitely since the start of S5, we’ve seen the prevalence of the “Crack and Drop” meta.

See a community member’s video here to see what we mean:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Fire arrows originally were an attempt to address this, but we were never completely satisfied with this solution, which is why you’ve seen a lot of changes in the way walkers are employed, trying to promote and emphasize the gunboat gameplay.

With the upcoming PvP Update, we’ll have some more changes should significantly improve the way walker fights play out. As we said in a previous devblog, we want to encourage crew member gameplay. Having the driver more actively involved was something we wanted to achieve, but we also want there to be something to be gained by having some clan members on your walker in a fight, rather than having all walkers operated by a solo driver, while maintaining that option as well, just less effective. Our goal here is to encourage team play, while keeping the promise of the solo experience.

First, we’ll be removing the current combat timer and replacing it with a new system, which encourages continuing to defend your disabled (but not zeroed) walker and return it to service if your defense is successful in the end. Rather than the whole walker being held up by a combat time and kept there by continuous damage, individual parts that are broken will create a cooldown for that specific part, which can be replaced after the timer has passed. In addition, combat repairing will be possible, though less effective than repairing out of combat, while also not stacked based on the number of people repairing.

To address the “crack and drop” meta directly, damaging the walker in combat will no longer be the method for opening the walker storage. Rather than requiring fire arrows, you will have an equippable item that does hull damage while used on an enemy's walker deck, which can also be interrupted by getting damaged.

During the battle itself, we will be implementing some new mechanics that should make the fight a bit more dynamic and interesting. At certain hull HP thresholds, certain walker “subsystems” will become non-functional, requiring some coordination and teamplay by the captain and the crew members to restore the functionality. Some of the options for these components will be things like active Torque use, control of remote weapons and/or automatons, automatic reloading, water container leaking and used for respawning, and so on. Captains will be able to restore these systems themselves without letting off the steering levers, but a team will gain certain benefits from having a crew member assisting in the task of repairs.

There are a lot more details and pieces and parts, like adding more control groups to weapons that will change the way both PvP and PvE walker fighting works, and we’ll likely expand on this later, since we’re continuing to actively design new and improved mechanics for this update, but this devblog is probably already going to set the mark for most words yet, so that’s all we'll say for now. Let us know what you think and keep suggestions coming!




I think it’s very important to address upfront the constant debate among the community about the focus of the game. We know that some people will see the upcoming patch focusing on PvP as a pivot “back to PvP” or “giving up” on the PvE vision that was promised as the main focus of S5, but we assure you that it's not at all the case.

We’re still very much excited about and committed to the PvE components of the game. Our next map, which will be a completely overhauled Ancient City map, will be almost entirely PvE-focused experience. We aren’t ready to tease too much about it, but we hope that it will be a unique experience that hasn’t existed in Last Oasis so far in any form, and bring with it some new mechanics and features. In addition, we’re interested to know which other types of PvE gameplay loops you would be interested in seeing, so we plan to conduct a poll soon regarding these matters.

However, fundamentally, Last Oasis is a Sandbox PvPvE game. The conflict part is an incredibly important one and while we know some players don't want to engage in PvP at all, most of the community is interested in taking part in PvP at least some of the time. So creating a healthy PvP environment is also an important part of the future of Last Oasis. In the past, the sands were a bit too lawless, and we hope our planned changes will help create a healthier environment for competition.

Okay, let’s get into what we’re planning for this update.





With the PvP update, territory control will be receiving a major overhaul. Rather than proxies claiming entire maps and providing resources, they will claim only a portion of a map and provide a “Sphere of Influence” (SOI). This SOI grants all bases of the owning clan inside of it an ‘offline raid protection’ (similar to Trade Stations before) for the majority of the day, while everything outside of this SOI on that PvP map will be still unprotected.

The proxy itself will always be invulnerable, unless another clan decides to declare a war on it, which will provide some vulnerability time during which the proxy can be damaged and destroyed, which will, naturally, remove the offline raid protection for all contained structures in its zone.

Wars will be declared by blind bidding against a specific proxy at any Trade Station, operated by the Flotilla. The defenders will then have an opportunity to counter-bid to attempt to stop the attack.

There are a lot more details to it, of course, especially technical ones, which will likely evolve as we work through the development of this feature, but we’ll leave it more basic for now just to take feedback and hear your responses to this idea.




On PvP maps, we will be adding POIs that are King of the Hill PvP events. Every hour, these POIs will become contestable, and the winning clan will receive some sort of a bonus from a list of possible ones while on that map for the remainder of the hour.

Examples include things like increased harvesting rate, schematic drop rate, crafting speed, decreased water consumption rate, and so on.

In addition, some of the options will actually be debuffs for the other residents of the same map, so that enemy clans and other players are encouraged to go and attempt to counter-raid the POIs, rather than simply turtling on their own tile and collecting all of the bonuses.

Lastly, holding all of the POIs on a map will provide a set bonus, which right now we’re considering to be the previous Proxy Walker mechanic of having an automatic generation of a percentage of resources harvested on that map by all the players.

Let us know what types of bonuses you’d like to see as a player and what set bonuses would encourage you to engage in such a mechanic, and we’ll put them on the list for consideration.



[h3](or, as I like to call it, The Secrets of the Rupu)[/h3]

We will be introducing another new mechanic, which will allow you to permanently learn the ability to craft schematics across the game, which will be different from the current Rupu Shrine feature.

On PvP maps, POIs will spawn that will be some kinds of walker wreckages or archaeological dig sites, containing bits of knowledge. These sites will allow you to input a piece of equipment, which harvests the knowledge over the course of several days, limited to 1 machine per clan at any given time, before they’re fully used and respawn somewhere else. These POIs will be designed for players to build bases around them and protect the POIs from other clans and players, which, of course, will be targets for counter-raids.

The bits of knowledge will be non-physical, similar to stat points, and will be generated over a long cycle, with most being produced at the end. So, how this is intended to play out, is that you can take the knowledge out of the machine frequently, to be very safe, but reset the recycle and therefore have slower progression, or you can take risk and let the cycle complete, leaving yourself vulnerable to enemy attacks, but gaining much more knowledge. By making them non-physical we hope to avoid any strong pressure to constantly depot them into PvE maps for safe-keeping and focus on learning and fighting aspect of the feature.

Once you have these knowledge shards (and a copy of the schematic), you will go to Event Maps, which will have POIs, similar to previous iterations, like the Ancient Crafting Site, the small fabricator, and such, which allow you to unlock the ability to permanently craft that schematic. Unlike previous iterations, when you unlock something, all members of the clan will learn how to craft that schematic to avoid having a single clan member who learns all the progression. In addition, due to their non-physical nature, you won’t lose them all if you take a risk, and we hope that will be a healthier state than in previous seasons.

Crafting schematics will only require a single input - a new resource called Drafting Paper, which will drop from all PvE encounters, and will be available from other sources as well.

Overall, we believe that this will go a long way towards resolving many of the issues with the schematics system, while still preserving the purpose of the feature. Again, there are a lot more details, but this will be a devblog by itself when we have all of them pinned down, so we’ll end it here for now. However, we are interested in your specific feedback, like whether you think all tech should be learnable or high-end things should be crafted using schematics only, or whether you think one clan should be able to learn everything or what is learned should be limited either by balance or hard-locking parts of the tech tree depending on the decisions, so you can branch and create a specific set of knowledge.





That was a pretty long post, so I’ll keep it short now. I want to reiterate that we are sharing all these details in advance so that we can receive your feedback and iterate on our designs before completing their implementation. Nothing we've described is set in stone, and we’re interested in hearing both from PvP and PvE players about these mechanics. There is a good chance we’ll find that one of the discussed features isn’t something that moves the needle for some of you, or that we find a way to introduce the same or a similar mechanic as discussed to suit the PvE-side of the game without disrupting its ability to be a fun mechanic for PvP players.

It’s likely that this devblog will create a million questions, so expect a follow-up next week with a Q&A that covers any and all major areas that you have questions about or just discuss on any of our platforms, and that adds more details that I didn’t have room for in this post.