Last Oasis News

We're currently in the middle of iteration on Sleeping Giants, making internal patches, putting hours into testing, and making sure to both use your feedback from existing maps, and also the experience we got iterating on them using the same method.

Hopefully, we should have more and, especially, concrete information sometime soon on when SG is coming out and what exactly will it have in terms of features, new content, progression, new mobs and encounters, and so on. Not gonna lie, it's getting pretty hot here, especially with more testers joining SG iteration.

In the meantime, we've prepared an intermediary patch that combines some fixes and improvements that, mainly, came to be from working on Sleeping Giants. As we work on the new map, some changes are required, as they're present on previous maps as well, so we can put them into a patch that benefits both maps without having to reveal the new map itself yet (not that we don't want to, tho). That and other incidental changes that turned up from iteration and your feedback and we've got a Monday patch to present. Take a look:

- Fixed Light Wood Foundation and Door not protecting from Sandstorm properly.
- Added Scroll Rack to a Small hardpoint and Ammo Scroll Rack to a Medium hardpoint.
- Made Woodworking Station Output container have 100 stack size for all items.
- Improved bulk crafting for various items like Wooden Darts.
- Added a T2 Toboggan rig to one of the harder Canyon camps.
- Added more new armors to various Rupu types to distinguish them better.
- Replaced multiple temporary icons with proper ones (Thumper, Grappling Hook, etc.).
- Slightly tweaked Sterile Bandage drop from Canyon camps.
- Fixed various issues with being stuck on loading while traveling.
- Possibly actually improved the HDR situation on Xbox this time.
- Fixed orange glow on some of the Light Walls sometimes appearing for no reason.
- Fixed more weird ways that you could've damaged bases in PvP.
- Increased Papak respawn timer, so there is time to loot in their basin after a fight.
- Slightly updated recipes for stomping various fruits into pulp for making water.
- Made Papak gas spitting location anatomically correct.
- Fixed some of the schematics not being allowed in schematic-specific containers.
- Added Tree Sap appearing after cutting down some Redwoods, but no uses before SG comes (soon).
- Added a few new items to the Herbalist trader straight from Sleeping Giants (really, soon).
- Added Salt rocks to salt flats of the canyons, but no uses before SG comes as well (please be patient).
- Updated Bone Repair Hammer to use Bone and Rope in its recipe.
- Fixed Bone Upgrades making Walkers vulnerable to melee in some cases.

- Added some admin commands and removed some admin commands from private servers.

Thanks to BryanTheHacker from our Discord for finding some exploits that allowed to get access to every possible item in the game on private servers using some intricate admin commands, including completely unobtainable dev items that are used to make systems work and are never supposed to be in a possession of a character. Thankfully, it was reported early after being found on the official discord, so we managed to quickly fix it to avoid any issues down the road (even potential data corruption of private servers wouldn't be out of the question, depending on the item).

But we didn't only remove commands with this patch. We also added a few new commands to make your life a little easier over on private servers. Hope they help!
- GiveItemToWalker - will add an item to a walker you're currently looking at, making it much easier to add water, torque, equipment, ammo, and large amounts of items into cargo without having to spawn it into your own inventory and move it over that way.
- IncreaseCarryCapacity - will increase your carrying capacity to crazy amounts, so you can easily move whatever you need in situations where admin commands left you with amazingly heavy items in way too large amounts.

- Temporarily increased disassemble resource return to 100%.

As promised in the last update post, we're increasing disassembling rate to a full 100% resource return. That means that you'll receive all the resources you paid for when building something, allowing you to disassemble all the structures on rarity maps and not losing resources on more expensive structures.

The disassemble return rate will be set back to 50% during the rarity update, so make sure to use it while you can. But we have a small update on the burn itself as well. We're also considering to increase the burn time by a few days to give you a little more time to move your belongings, since the disassembling feature didn't come into effect at the same as the tiles starting to burn. We'll give you the final decision by how many days we increase the burn within a few days, most likely Monday.

If you’ve been playing on rarity tiles today or opened the World Map and looked around, you might have noticed that some of the tiles are set to be burnt in around 8 days. “What’s up with that?”, you might ask, since we don’t have burning tiles anymore. And you would be right - we don’t have map burning in a general sense, but the feature is still available for us to use in order to get rid of any tiles on the World Map.

If you’ve read the previous post, you probably already guessed the reason for burning some of the tiles and if you’ve taken a closer look at which specific tiles are being burnt, it gets even easier to guess what’s happening. In 8 days we’re introducing the changes to the rarity system that we’ve discussed in the last large update post.

Going back to the tile burning - we’re getting rid of the vast majority of the static rarity maps. They will be completely gone from the World Map, which means that everything built on them, any characters or walkers will be completely destroyed. When it comes to your character, you’ll be able to respawn on another tile, but will lose anything you had on the rarity tile that’s been burnt. You’ll also notice that some of the tiles, mainly low rarity ones that were more populated, are not being burnt. Those tiles, instead, will be turned into regular common maps, meaning that, while everything on them will be kept as it was - all the bases will stay, all the walkers and players will be kept alive, and so on, the rarity of all the foliage, camps, and mobs will be downgraded to common. Those tiles, however, will stay being PvP, as we’ll have both PvE and PvP static common maps from now on. For now, the main benefit of settling on common PvP tiles will be a higher clan cap than the average on the PvE ones, so it will be lucrative for any larger clans to consider building their base there. However, we're also working on additional features to incentivise going, and, especially, staying on PvP tiles as opposed to safe PvE ones. We’ll be addressing PvP in a whole separate update dedicated to the overhaul of the PvP in Last Oasis.

To give more details on the tile burning, especially for anyone who never experienced it, you will be able to see the timer when the tile will be burnt, so you know how much time you have left. You’ll see it when you join the map, on the World Map if you hover over the tile, and, close to the burn itself, you’ll see a constant timer on-screen reminding you about it. Once the timer runs out, the tile will be completely destroyed, together with everything on it. If you have any bases, walkers, or characters on those rarity maps, you have to move them before the timer runs out or you will lose them forever.

While with walkers and characters it’s pretty straightforward - you just travel to a regular permanent map and you’re safe, with bases it’s a little more tricky, as you’d have to disassemble it and move over all the resources in it. To address it, we’ll be doing a small hotfix update allowing you to disassemble any structure for a 100% return of resources. That means that when disassembling base walls or stations, you’ll get all the resources that you spent building them back instead of the normal 50% return. This should allow you not to waste any resources that you’ve invested into rarity tiles and just disassemble all the bases and move the leftovers away on your walkers.

This change is not yet in and will be added in a small patch later this week, so don’t try to disassemble your bases just yet, unless you don’t mind losing half the resources. The burn is set to last around 8 days, so there is plenty of time to do it.

When it comes to larger clans moving, we'll be transforming uncommon PvP tiles to common, but large clan cap PvP tiles that will not burn and will be the perfect place to move to with your clan. The switch should happen at most within a day since this post.

We’ve discussed the rarity changes in the previous post, but things weren’t set in stone yet, so we’ve collected some more feedback and, finally, have the full list of changes pinned down and are actively working on them right now. As we’ve done previously, we’ll go in detail and explain every change to the system, the reasoning behind them, and what we expect out of the changes in the post that will come together with the update later next week. So stay tuned for it and make sure to move your belongings in time!

To give you a small update on what's going on since the last update - we're currently collecting feedback on the latest changes and preparing a survey on the whole season in general, as we've mentioned. The work on the next map in progression as well as the overhaul of the rarity maps and PvP mechanics that we've described in the last post is going at full speed, so expect another big update post in near future!

For now, we've prepared a small patch to address some issues, mainly regarding performance, as we've seen quite many reports about it recently. If you notice improvements after the update or find other issues to report, please let us know.

• Made Light Wooden Walls have less holes. Should both improve performance and fix potential issues with sandstorm going through.
  
• Slightly updated Medium Wooden Walls visuals to make them more distinct from Light Walls.
  
• Optimized Humidifier particles to not affect performance.
  
• Temporarily removed walker dust particles until optimized better.
  
• Fixed performance issues regarding walker legs and wings not stopping movement when a walker is stopped.
  
• Fixed a crash related to server debugging.
  

As planned, we’re continuing with the iteration on Season 5. Not without your help, of course, so we’d like to thank you again for sending all the feedback, bug reports, and just playing the game. All of it is invaluable for us to make better decisions when it comes to the season’s direction and the whole gameplay experience.

It’s not a secret that we’re currently working on the next map in the roster to continue the progression - Sleeping Giants. It will unlock Clay tier and will add a lot of new content to the game at the same time. Remember the Okkam with the Rupu shooting on its back from the trailer? You’ll spot it right away when the map comes out (unless it spots you first).

It will also bring a new and improved Rupu behavior and classes, including an entirely new support class of Rupu that help their fellow warriors in battle instead of rushing you all together with wooden sticks, intended to make camp encounters more varied and interesting. Same as we did with Cradle and Canyons for Season 5, Sleeping Giants will be an entirely new experience, only this time we have your feedback to guide us towards a better version from the very start.



For today, we’ve prepared a smaller patch to address some more urgent issues. The main change is the traveling system.


We’ve heard a lot of complaints about the current system and how it is more of a chore than a challenge. It’s difficult to plan routes because the traveling tunnels close too soon, which might put you in a dead end if the tunnel you were hoping to use closed while you were traveling through another map. We’ve seen some routes suggested by the system being so long that it can sometimes take literal hours to get to the tile you’re aiming for. That, and a whole lot of other suggestions on how to improve rarity and PvP were submitted, but more on that below.

To be clear from the start - we’re nowhere near done making improvements to the traveling and the more we hear about what you like or dislike about it, the better and quicker we can rework it. For now, to address some of those issues, we’ve come up with solutions that are both quick and, hopefully, super effective. First thing that you’ll notice when you enter the new update is that there are a lot more tunnels now. And I mean A LOT more. That should address the issue where you had a dilemma - go by the suggested route and hope the tunnels will open on the same sides as they were, so you can continue your journey as planned from the start, or wait and do nothing until a new set of tunnels opens up on your own map.

The latter, though, would still be futile, as the time the tunnels stay open was sometimes so short that you couldn’t even travel through a single map and would already need to change the course because of the tunnels closing right in front of you. This problem should also be fixed now by increasing the timer on each tunnel to a whole 12 hours. That’s right, not 15 minutes, but half a day, during which you can plan routes and actually complete them without having to backtrack or wait mindlessly for another tunnel to open to travel to a tile right next to you.

Together, those changes are aimed at making traveling much more streamlined and less restrictive, but still interesting and challenging at times, as you still need to plan your routes and still need to actually travel through the maps instead of hopping around them in a game about big nomadic wooden machines. At the same time, you’ll get to choose where you want to go and when, instead of the game setting strict rules as to which direction you may go towards and which are forbidden for no apparent reason.

In addition to this, there are a whole lot of fixes of bugs and crashes, there are Quality of Life improvements like an increased size of the Hoist inventory and a better experience with Base Maintenance that many new players reported they have been struggling with. Other pretty big changes like an improved Papak and better melee behavior for all the Rupu are also coming with this patch - check the changelog for the full list.

If you have other suggestions or feedback for this change, we’re all eyes and ears on Discord and other official social media, so let us know what you think once you’ve tried it!

We’re compiling a little survey about your experience in Season 5 so far and would love to see the results. We'll share the survey as soon as it's ready!



Now to what we’re planning in the very near future. Small improvements to general traveling is only the beginning of the overhaul of the World Map. Next on our list is redesigning completely how both PvP and Rarity tiles work. From what we gather, some enjoy the current system as it is, even though, not without its quirks, but there wouldn’t be a person to say that the system we have in place is perfect and needs no changes. Us included.

So what we’d like to do about it based on the feedback and our own perception of the system? A lot, actually. Firstly, as chadz already revealed on Discord a few days ago, we’re considering switching all rare maps to use a similar system to the event maps. What it means in practice is that at certain times, in each region, maps with all kinds of rarity and clan caps will be popping up around the World Map, then stay up for anyone wanting to experience it for some time, and, by the end, burn out like the old event maps did. What we want to achieve with this is a much more diverse experience when it comes to rarity and progression in the game. We’ll have both PvP and PvE rarity maps, ranging from tiny clan caps to big clan sizes, spawning randomly all around the world. This will ensure that anyone interested in going to a rare map and getting some sweet loot will have this opportunity, regardless of whether they prefer PvE or PvP, how large their clan is or if they even have one - everyone, equally, will have a chance to experience every map at every rarity.

When it comes to the details, we’re still ironing them out and some parts might be changed by the time this change comes to the game, but we wanted to share with you what we’re working on at the moment aside from the next progression map. In addition to this change though, there are many more planned for rarity and pvp specifically. For example, we’d like the rarity event maps to be accessible from any distance over time, as the size of their influence slowly increases, giving priority to the lucky few who are stationed on the maps close to it, but still providing an opportunity to everyone in the region who wants to join the map later, unless they’d like to travel and get there quicker.

“But doesn’t it mean you can jump across the whole map in one move?” - we asked ourselves. No.With the current idea, rarity maps are more akin to raids in MMORPGs - you go there to fight some difficult enemies, either PvE or PvP, but then can only return back to the tile you came from, resulting in a periodic “rarity rush” with a simple way to return to your home tile afterwards.

Additionally, we’re considering features like forbidding building on rarity maps, not to put anyone in a situation where they build a base, but can’t bring it back from a tile that’s supposed to last only a limited amount of time. Traveling to those maps will also, most likely, be limited only to walkers of equal and one rarity below the one on the map. Meaning, that with a Common Stiletto, you won’t be able to join a Legendary map. You just wouldn’t have a chance at that progression level. Instead, we’d like to make sure that everyone joining rarity maps is up to the challenge by checking at which progression step their walker is.

We’ll be talking more about those changes as they will be getting closer to release, but we’d love to hear your opinions and thoughts so far! You can also read the full changelog for the update below:

- Added more traveling tunnels to every map.
- Increased tunnel duration to 12 hours.
- Increased Hoist container size from 10 to 20 slots.
- Improved Base Maintenance UI by adding notifications, tooltips, etc.
- Added Merchants to Canyons map that allow trading for currency.
- Improved Papak behavior.
- Improved Rupu melee system, making ranged rupus worse at melee, etc.
- Reduced Sterile Bandage crafting from 5 Gel to 2.
- Moved Hoist to Walker Tools category.
- Fixed wrong percentages being shown on Hoist repair screen.
- Made Humidifier slightly smaller, so it fits in every base.
- Added new effects and sounds to Humidifier.
- Fixed Automatons using rupu sounds on being hit.
- Made Throwstone available in Ammo Chest.
- Reduced Papak size to its intended scale.
- Fixed some specific projectiles still damaging player bases.
- Added various armors to Rupu types to distinguish them.
- Fixed a crash related to the World Map.
- Fixed a crash related to traveling to an invalid tile.
- Fixed a crash related to opening some game screens.
- Fixed a whole lot of other crashes I'd need an engineer to explain.