Last Oasis News

We're continuing to iterate on the new Sleeping Giants map with your help. Please keep sending your feedback and bug reports, they're really helping us get the new content to the best shape possible. In addition to that, we're testing ourselves, focusing on specific features to get the feeling for what needs to be done to improve the new map and all the content that comes with it, as well as actively using statistics and looking at how you play the game in real time, as we noticed long ago that often real experience is different from the written feedback after the fact.




Our plan right now is to continue improving the content that we released, while working on the new PvP Update that's aimed at players who prefer hardcore battles against other Nomads out there. The main idea is to make permanent PvP tiles an actualy important part of gameplay and the in-game World as a whole. Meaning that PvP tiles will be much more desirable for settling on them to gain special something that will be worth the risk of encountering other (often hostile) players. Our goal with this update is to finally make PvP and, especially, permanent PvP tiles a part of the main gameplay loop, which will significantly incentivize staying on them and actively engaging in PvP, while maintaining the ability to play as a PvE-only player through the use of economy and Trade Stations in particular (which we're looking into improving and revitalizing as a part of this update and Season 5 as a whole).

In other important news, the next map is on its way as planned. It will be developed at the same time as the PvP Update, since the majority of work on the map will require Game Design, while the PvP Update will be heavily dependent on new features and mechanics that require code once they're designed. Same as the previous map releases, the next map will be completely different in its purpose and gameplay than in the previous seasons, so expect big twists and entirely new experiences when it finally comes out!




Another small topic that was a point of discussion before Sleeping Giants released was if it should have PvE tiles at all. As we discussed already on Discord (btw, join it if you haven't, we often discuss the game and specific features there, and drop exclusive news and sneak peeks), we want to first see how the new map performs with both PvP and PvE and will make a decision whether to keep PvE tiles once Base and Walker Packing is out to allow anyone who settled on tiles that might be burnt to easily move their belongings to another tile. That doesn't mean that we made a decision yet, though. The process of observing the gameplay on both types of the tiles is still ongoing and we'll announce the final decision only after the Packing feature is out.

Update: Since there was a wave of confusion about removal of PvE tiles, I'll just say that it was a big discussion on Discord about not spawning PvE Sleeping Giants maps, so we had to address it and discuss internally. We still released those tiles to have a proper test and see the results first. So far, we don't see any reasons to remove PvE tiles, as they're populated and we see players on them enjoying themselves every day (including myself). We'll announce the final decision after a bit more observation, but as I said, we don't see any reason for removing any PvE tiles from the game, so it's extremely unlikely that we'll go that route, especially with a heavy focus on PvE this season.


Now, finally, to the changelog:

• Fixed Hoist not allowing liquid items to repair new Walkers.
  
• Fixed most cases of Falco Walker shaking and glitching.
  
• Added proper loot for Okkam. Had way too low rewards for such a beast.
  
• Fixed Ceramic Darts not being allowed in Ammo Box.
  
• Significantly lowered Lobber damage vs Hard armor.
  
• Slightly lowered Lobber damage vs Reinforced armor.
  
• Slightly increased War Okkam health.
  
• Increased Okkam collision damage vs Walkers.
  
• Improved War Okkam Rupu Platform (Howdah) visuals and gameplay.
  
• Slightly decreased War Okkam attack damage vs Walkers.
  
• Added new tier of Rupu Rok ammo with high damage. Don't get hit!
  
• Made Fortified Rupu Rokkers use new tier of Rupu Rok ammo.
  
• Fixed Rupu sometimes getting stuck inside meshes in camps.
  
• Reduced random deviation for Flint Orb ammo when shooting.
  
• Made fire range of Rupu Lobber the same as the camp aggro range.
  
• Fixed a bunch of outdated icons for new structures and items.
  
• Possibly fixed Ceramic Nails crafting (please test, as they do work for some, so we're at a loss wtf is happening).
  

A thing to try if Ceramic Nails still don't work for you is to try building a Lathe yourself, not use one built by someone else. Please let us know if that makes them work for you if the fix itself failed.

That's it for today! We'll continue iterating on the new content and keep an eye out for any changes needed for the old one. Your feedback and bug reports speed up this process by a lot, even if you just discuss them on Discord or Steam forums. We're always listening (that sounded creepy, but you get the point).

Keep those reports coming!

As we've discussed, we expect to spend the next days hotfixing Sleeping Giants, doing improvements and fixing up any bugs, as well as implementing packing via the Balang Walker and addressing issues with base maintenance.

Something that didn't make it into this hotfix which will also come soon is an improvement to Falco handling that should help against its jittering and many more balance changes that will be added in the next update.

- Changed Mollusk and Stiletto Wing Recipes to allow to be crafted on Canyons
- Fixed Swampwood Galoshes not working properly.
- Improved lava/insect throwing bombs.
- Buffed sawblade harvesting of wood and bone
- Increase sawblade torque container interaction distance.
- Decreased Lobber fire radius and added some deviation.
- Hopefully fixed ceramic nails. Probably.

As mentioned in the update post on Friday, we expect the next few patches to focus on improving the experience on Sleeping Giants. This first hotfix addresses some of the key issues that have been identified so far, but please keep sending your feedback so we can get the SG to the most stable state as soon as possible. The primary focus of this specific patch is fixing usability of some of the new features and also exposing the new content to private server owners.

This coming week we'll be patching in the Balang Walker with its new base and walker packing functionality. In addition, we hope to address a few other issues that were already reported for SG, like maintenance requirements becoming quite a bit more unwieldy.

- Fixed rarity Hangar pieces not working properly.
- Fixed wrong Curing Station name and description.
- Updated Rupu Plainstrider loot items.
- Rebalanced Forester and Brittle Bone Armor sets durability.
- Ceramic Dart removed from inventory crafting.
- Added Sap harvesting when using Sawblade.
- Set all SG content to allow spawning and freebuilding on private servers.
- Fixed various reported issues with Ceramic Nails
- Significantly buffed Chitin harvesting from Okkam.
- Rebalanced Gunpod building cost.
- Added Gunpod Stingers to loot tables.

The Sleeping Giants map is finally here!

This post will be mainly focusing on the Sleeping Giants itself, keeping the details of our plans for the future for later. Our main priority right now is to give as much attention to SG as possible first, since we’ll want to heavily focus on its iteration using your feedback and from playing on it ourselves.

An important question many will ask right away, since it came up multiple times already when the map was discussed is will it have both PvP and PvE versions on release. The answer is - for now, yes and then we’ll see. Instead of theorycrafting and imagining how the game will be played by doing polls and thinking about all the possible things it will lead to by having the map as either PvP-only or PvP and PvE, we decided to just try it first and see in practice how it plays out.

We’ll be monitoring the gameplay on both server types after release and gauge the sentiment towards the map on the different versions. Most likely, we'll still be making a poll afterwards to get an even clearer picture of the gameplay on both versions, but based on the real gameplay first, instead of pure imagination of how it will be played without trying it first at all. Considering that we’re also adding base packing back, it should be very easy to remove any tiles that we need with an easy way to move your belongings if it won’t be working out as well as we expect, but the main point of this experiment is to give both versions of the map a try and then see how they perform.





Now, when it comes to the main event of this update - Sleeping Giants map, we don’t want to spoil too much in the post and let you experience it on your own. Keeping that in mind, we won’t give out too many details, but will mention the biggest changes that are different from the previous version of the map that you know from older seasons.

Keeping with the idea of the season heavily promoting PvE content in the game that was lacking in the past, you can assume that everything in that regard changed on the map. Regular Okkams got an upgrade in terms of their behavior and how to fight them tactically and will roam the deserts, greeting newcomers into the unforgiving lands of the Sleeping Giants. On the other hand, War Okkam - a heavily fortified Rupu town on top of its back full of guns, will be roaming the center of the map in the ash wastes. While both of them might seem similar at a glance, each requires quite different approaches when it comes to defeating them. What those are is up to you to figure out.

All the camps are brand new, heavily featuring architecture of ancient civilizations as the base for their fortifications. Each will require a unique way of fighting it, some having more focus on using specific guns or ammo, some being more opened to melee combat, some forcing you to be quick by having Nurr Raiders circle you with explosive javelins, and some making you to take it slow not to get accidentally caught on fire by a supporting Rupu type.

Overall, each camp is a very unique experience that is designed to create a ton of fun by figuring out the approach for each of them and, also, creating a level of unpredictability that sometimes puts you in a random situation that requires quick thinking and experience.

The technology found on the map unlocks a whole new world of possibilities from a Curing Station to a Lathe, allowing you to craft completely new items and unlocking a whole new tier of equipment - Clay Tier. To name a few new things that will be found on the map - there are Medium Wooden Walls as well as Clay Walls, dozens of new weapons and armor pieces, new siege weapons and ammo types for them, which all have their own uses and designed ideal targets, new walker types, of course, as well as new rigs and walker parts for old walkers to upgrade them, new tiers of existing technology that has a brand new way of interacting with it like a new Windmill that generates torque passively without a Sandstorm like before, but also becomes an insanely fast generator when in an active Sandstorm, and tons of other new things that would take hours to mention them all in a post.

As already mentioned, we’ll be closely monitoring both your direct feedback and how you play on the map in the first place, and continue iterating on Sleeping Giants as we did with the previous maps. Once Balang Walker becomes available next week, we’ll also be able to burn some of the permanent maps, so if we do decide to stick to PvP-only Sleeping Giants, as suggested by some of you, that will absolutely be a possibility at that point if we see that it would make the gameplay much better. When it comes to Rarity Even Maps, Sleeping Giants will be added to the pool of available maps to be spawned, but we won’t be spawning more Event Maps at the same time just yet, not to divide the community between too many maps. That said, adding more than one Event Map at a time is a matter of a few minutes, so that’s certainly on the table as we keep monitoring the gameplay.

Now a bit about base packing, since it was brought up.




Balang and Silur Walkers will be the only walkers that can pack regular bases from now on. The biggest difference from the previous version, however, is that they will not be packed and unpacked into a special Base Foundation to build your base on afterwards, but instead, will allow to just pack any base into them, similar to how it worked with regular walkers before, with restrictions only by the size of the base, not anything inside or its artificial weight.

What it means is that when you finally get yourself a Balang Walker on SG, you’ll be able to just pack your base on Canyons and move it anywhere you want, as long as it’s not incredibly large, which would require to either make it smaller or cut it into pieces and use multiple walkers or multiple trips. From other details, the packing and unpacking will be taking quite a lot of time and, one of the main differences, it will not allow storing the base in the walker for long periods of time, as it will start decaying the packed base after a grace period, making it very important to unpack as soon as you can.

Another thing with the packing that’s new to the system is that, in addition to packing bases, you’ll be able to pack other Walkers into the same Balang Walker. That means that with a single Balang Walker, you’ll be able to move all your belongings to a new place and settle down for good. A small catch, however, is that the decaying mechanic applied to the packed bases, will be used for walkers as well, so our goal with the packing walkers is to provide an ability to move your bases and walkers to a new place you can call home, and not a way to store them in a safe walker hidden deep in your garage.

An additional idea we also have for a new walker, which we’ll discuss in more detail a bit later, is a walker that’s specifically designed to be packing war structures like forward operating bases. In those cases, we’ll actually allow you to store your FOBs in the walker for some time and make it possible to deploy them to use in combat as a designed mechanic, instead of an abused regular packing mechanic that’s not designed for it in the first place.

When it comes to Packing Walkers, however, they will start being available in the update after the one we're having today, aiming at the next week. Since it’s a quite large change in the mechanic to begin with, and packing bases is an extremely delicate matter, where we don’t want to leave any room for errors not to lose any of the player bases to bugs, we decided not to rush it and give it at least a few more day in the oven until it’s out. Once it’s available, you’ll be able to find Balang Walker on SG as a regular loot drop, while the other new walker we talked about is still in a design phase and will take some time to arrive, possibly together with the next map.




When it comes to our future updates, our first priority is, obviously, to make sure that Sleeping Giants is as stable as can be. We’ll be releasing updates iterating on the map and the game in general to make sure that it’s in the best shape possible. Releasing the Balang Walker and some other additions and mechanics next week is another thing we already mentioned we’ll be doing, so that's also one of our priorities for the moment.

After that, as we said a few times, we’ll be looking into releasing a special PvP Update, similar to how we did the Rarity Update - a separate patch, unrelated to any map or progression step in the game, but heavily overhauling existing mechanics and features. In that case, our main goal will be to make PvP maps an important part of the game, especially by rewarding staying on permanent PvP maps and engaging in PvP combat. We’re still in the design phase of that update, since we’ve been focusing on Sleeping Giants for quite some time, making it as fun as possible, but we’re getting close to overhauling that aspect of the game as well.

Other than that, we’ll be starting to design the next map in the progression, similarly to Sleeping Giants in terms of how different we want to make it compared to the previous experience. Our goal is not to just slightly tweak the parts of the game that are not yet out, but to reimagine the whole thing and create a fun and engaging experience on every map available through interesting mechanics, new systems, and many other improvements and complete overhauls.

That said, we’ll keep you informed on everything we’re working on as we continue to do so, so make sure to keep an eye out for next posts, detailing our future plans.

For now, check out some of the Relics infused with Nibiran Ore we're designing as a part of a new mechanic of gathering Ancient Relics and selling them to collectors, pushing the economy forward through exploration and travel.



The changelog might not seem that big, since the literal thousands of changes we did for the Sleeping Giants are put into a single line, but we’ve mentioned quite a lot of changes in the post already and we’d like for you to find all the new mechanics and features on your own. In addition to that, we’ve added some improvements and fixes for the existing mechanics since the last update, which you can read below.

• Added Sleeping Giants as a permanent map and a Rarity Event Map
  
• Added thousands of changes that come with adding a new map that would be impossible to write in a single post, so just play it yourself.
  

• Overhauled UI of Schematics learning in Shrines, added lock/unlock icons for learned tech in all the menus, added visible elements showing which tech can be learned.
  
• Added damage on walker hit for large animals like nurr, papak, and okkam, based on their size and speed.
  
• Made scattershot rotate before you can man it.
  
• Made Ballista a sniper-like weapon. Long reload time, but high damage.
  
• Fixed wrong materials for brittle bone pieces, fixing dyeing them.
  
• Set disassembling return rate to 100% for Soil Excavator to allow to reuse it for Clay.
  
• Slightly increased Mollusk reverse speed.
  
• Disabled foliage, POI, and Camp respawning on Event Tiles.
  
• A whole ton of other things we missed when reading through thousands of changes.
  

We hope you’ll have fun discovering the new map! Sands can be harsh there, so take care, Nomad!

With the previous update, the Winged Helmet shown in the last post got accidentally left out as available for crafting from our dev testing, which we, unfortunately, missed by testing with dev tools. Since it wasn't finished and had quite big issues due to that fact, we had to remove the item temporarily from the game in any capacity. Meaning, that any crafted item of this unfinished dev item was removed, especially because of how easy it was to obtain and even if we kept it and fixed the issues and crafting, the balance would've been completely ruined, as it's supposed to be an extremely rare special item that's dropping from bosses and the hardest camps. It will be back later this week together with Sleeping Giants with proper balance, wearing position, and drops.

To make this hotfix a little sweeter, we also increased HP of almost all siege weapons. Poor Scattershot that got nerfed last time got a buff from 700HP to 1050HP, Lobber from 750HP to just 850HP, as it's the new meta weapon, Ballista from 700HP to 1000HP, and so on. Similar to player weapons, though, rupu had their weapons buffed in terms of HP as well to make it a little more challenging, considering how powerful the new Lobber is.

• Fixed new Winged Helmet being craftable before finished and dropping from bosses on SG.
  
• Removed Winged Helmet as an item, since it had multiple bugs related to it due to not being finished yet.
  
• Increased HP of most of the siege weapons, both player and rupu-owned