Last Oasis News

We’re approaching our major revision to one of the mechanics introduced in Season 5 and wanted to take this week’s devblog to lay out its full design and our plan for it. As it happens with large overhauls like this, the full update will require a few more days in the oven, so we’ll be rolling out parts throughout the week, with the final bit scheduled for early next week. Meanwhile, we’ll continue this week with some balance changes and further iteration, as well.




From watching your community videos and various streamers, and reading your feedback, we quickly realized that the rarity implementation wasn’t resulting in the gameplay we had hoped that it would and quickly set to work redesigning how the system functioned and how we wanted players to interact with it. We’ve written a few devblogs with some of our ideas to gauge reception and receive feedback, and we’ve settled on an iteration we’re now comfortable implementing. Throughout this devblog we’ll lay out the full design and plan for the coming week.

First and foremost, a reminder of the current plan. Maps are currently set to burn on the 7th of September - we will keep that date, burn the maps as scheduled, and then set all maps to common. In addition, we’ll be setting some cradles to start burning today, which will burn on Monday, as we’ve spawned a lot of them on release and now they’re being unused with everyone moving out to Canyons. Tiles will keep their current clan cap as is, but will only have common resources and mobs. To answer a common question - we will also be wiping all rarity, including equipment, resources, Walkers, and so on. We understand this is frustrating for those players who have continued playing and grinding rarity, but it’s important to test these changes with everyone starting on even footing. Then, early next week, we will patch and rarity event maps will start spawning.

To clarify: Rarity wiping will happen by changing all the items into common, not by deleting them!




At that time, rare maps will start spawning similar to event maps in previous seasons, with a few major differences. We’ll be implementing traveling to these maps in a much different way. You will be able to craft a portal anywhere on a map that instantly takes you straight to these maps and then brings you back to the edge of the map you traveled from when coming back. We understand that not everyone has hours every day to spend traveling around hoping to run into other players and, hopefully, this will help avoid having to spend so much time to get that gameplay. We believe that the current implementation of travel is healthy for the open world, but we understand that many of you want to be able to play the game in either a more casual way or by going straight into action, and this is one step in that direction.

Once you’re on the map, rarity will be similar to what it is now (with the exception of fixing some obvious issues like creature rarity, rupu vines, and tools not harvesting R+1). Another important change is that every map will have a random distribution of all rarities for both mobs and resources. We hope that it creates an entirely new gameplay around rarity - "What are the schematics and resources I was able to get during the event and how do I most efficiently use them?". Our intention isn’t for everyone to have everything Legendary - it will be much more rare than that. Rather, you’ll have to decide what are the most important things to invest your Legendary schematics and resources in, and settle for the next best rarity for the rest, depending on your ability to find and farm it. In addition, we’ll be implementing a wandering merchant that allows you to spend flots to instantly upgrade the rarity of your resources in exchange for Flots.

On the difficulty front - we understand that the current implementation of rare mobs (primarily increases in health and damage) isn’t all that exciting, but further than that we understand in general PvE isn’t as fun as we want it to be. One of our major focuses right now is improving current and future encounters to make them more than crafting and spamming darts, and we’ll be able to ultimately leverage some of those changes to improve rarity camps. On a case by case basis we’ll be addressing some mobs (looking at you, legendary Papak) that verge on impossible without some heavy doses of cheese. We’re also working on implementing different weapons actually having different functions, making encounters more dynamic, as you’ll need to think what to use against the weapons, Rupu, their structures, and so on, and switch between your weapons during the fight or even pre-fitting your Walker with specific weapons depending on the encounter you’re preparing for.




Originally, when rarity was meant to be more of an iterative progression mechanic, we said that we intended to have PvE rarity maps. However, the design of rarity has changed in a way that we believe makes it a progression loop that would be less rewarding to PvE players and more rewarding to risk-taking PvP players. For that reason, at least in their first implementation, rarity maps will be PvP-only. PvE-only players will still be able to engage in the rarity loop, but, primarily, through the marketplace and the quality upgrader merchant. Also, if we see enough demand, there is a good chance we will consider expanding the rarity resource upgrading mechanic to include the ability to upgrade schematics as well. Let us know below how you feel PvP and PvE should work in Last Oasis:

https://strawpoll.com/polls/kogjva5D8g6




In short, we agree with SkyKevin and recommend to watch his video on this topic (and thank him for his contribution):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwFNojO0SB4

We’ll also be enabling base raiding this week as a part of one of the planned patches. We’ll be talking more about our plans for PvP over the coming days and weeks, but essentially, we’ll be rolling out some systems to make base raiding a more interesting and fundamental mechanic for the game. In the meantime, as we’ve mentioned, we agree with SkyKevin’s assessment on how it could impact the game (and also, overall about his impressions on the gameplay we’re aiming for).




It is our impression that schematics are probably the most controversial system implemented in Season 5. Feedback on schematics seems all over the place, to say the least. Some of you think it’s a great improvement over tablets and fragments, some absolutely hate it, and all the possible things in between. So, as promised in one of the previous posts, we’re running a survey that will stay open through the week, asking a few questions about schematics and your thoughts on them. We'd really appreciate if you took part in it, as it will greatly help us improve the system:

https://take.supersurvey.com/Q652VC1Y4




And finally, we’re continuing to work on Sleeping Giants - the next map in progression. We know that everyone is pretty tired of Canyons, but as we said at the beginning of the season, we will continue iterating until we believe it’s appropriate to move on. With the current state of rarity, it would simply be backwards and pretty much irresponsible to introduce a whole new set of technology before figuring out the existing one, so the focus of our coders has been on improving rarity while our game designers have taken that time to continue iterating on Sleeping Giants, which will introduce a whole new set of challenges for players to face, including the War Okkam, many new types of camps, including special ones like melee-only, and other dangers and rewards that we’ll talk about in a future post.

With this update, our main intention was to fix an issue that came up with Windmills being available to be put on Walkers, as they would allow to easily push any Walker disregarding the physics. It allowed for easy griefing, as it would push a Walker with no option to retaliate and even allowed to push Walkers through objects in some cases. That should be fixed now.

In addition to it, we've included some small changes we've been working on to make the patch a little more interesting than just a small fix. One of the most significant changes is that Windmills now only generate torque while in the strong winds of a Sandstorm. What we're hoping for with this change is that Windmills will be put on special Sandstorm-chasing Walkers and driven directly into a Sandstorm like daredevil Nomads. Of course, it should also work with static Windmills, but then you're hoping for an accidental Sandstorm passing through and have to keep the Windmill exposed to other dangers.

It's currently an early version of the feature and we'll definitely be tweaking it based on the feedback, but it should make Torque generation, which is a high tier resource, more active and interesting, rather than placing some windmills inside a base and passively generating torque at a slow pace. We're currently aiming at around a minute spent in a sandstorm to produce enough Torque to power your machines for some time. It can be amplified by using larger walkers to put more Windmills on them, but we're also planning a better Windmill with a more advanced mechanism for Sleeping Giants that would produce low amounts of Torque without strong winds of a Sandstorm and produce much large amounts while in one. Also, we're considering various protections for being in a Sandstorm, both for your character and the Walker you're driving.

- Fixed Windmills pushing walkers being broken.
- Made Tier 1 Windmill work only in Sandstorms.
- Updated Tier 1 Windmill description to mention use in Sandstorms.
- Very significantly increased torque generation of Tier 1 Windmills.
- Slightly decreased torque generation of Walkers to promote Windmill use.
- Significantly increased Tier 1 Windmill HP to withstand Sandstorms.
- Fixed Sandstorms sometimes damaging things inside large bases.
- Fixed wrong interaction prompt on Papak harvesting.
- Fixed dead Papaks still producing sounds sometimes.
- Lowered Trade Station Light Wall Schematic sale cost, considering increased drop rate.
- Fixed Sandstorm particles flying in wrong direction.
- Fixed duplicate entries in Schematic unlock list.
- Fixed Scattershot sometimes not damaging players.
- Fixed Purification Station being buildable on some walkers.
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HOTFIX

The new hotfix should fix the issues with existing windmills being turned on by default (without having to check if there's a sandstorm, which is how we didn't spot it during testing, since we tested by building new windmills). We've also increased the torque production speed, at least until we add more tools to counter the sandstorm on your walker, but as implied by the previous changelog, we have another tier of a Windmill coming with Sleeping Giants map that will allow both idle generation and very high speed generation inside a sandstorm, so it's mainly a temporary measure until it's in. We'll keep monitoring feedback and how you play to adjust all of those values, though. As we've said from the beginning of S5, this is a highly iterative season, where we try seemingly drastic features to see how they will play out in the game, so it might seem like a gigantic change in direction with torque generation, but we'd like to try it out to see how a more active way of generating a high tier resource like torque will feel instead of having it fully passive by placing a generator and just waiting while staring at a wall.

We've also increased the Windmill capacity to 1500, so you can store more in them while generating, since the rate of generation increased, so you'll fill it up rather quickly. Meanwhile, we managed to also add a quick buff to the quests for bringing items to the Trade Station in terms of the payout per item. The idea is to make quests a little more lucrative as opposed to dumping schematics you don't want into a quick seller and, partially, to add a bit more flots into the system from lowering the cost of Light Wood schematics.

- Fixed existing windmills generating torque without a sandstorm present.
- Increased Windmill generation rate per second to 5.
- Increased Windmill capacity to 1500 Torque.
- Buffed payout on Bring Items quest at the Trade Station.

A small hotfix after the yesterday's patch incoming. Some of the new issues came to be from the changes made during the Sleeping Giants iteration, which we now fixed and included a few other improvements like fixing infinite aggro range on mobs, especially Papak being the culprit number one in that matter. We've also temporarily disabled XP gain on placement of structures until we switch back to 50% return rate on diassembling and fixed merchants seemingly taking over the tiles.

You've also probably already noticed, but we've extended the burn for 6 more days. It's a bit longer than we've originally planned, but we've also reworked some design ideas in the process, so we'd like to make sure we have enough time to implement them as well as possible for the best rarity experience since the invention of rarity in LO. Without revealing too much, those might include potential creatable portals and other fun things. We might also have an interesting announcement around that time, so make sure to follow the news to find out more.

- Temporarily disabled XP gain for placement of structures.
- Fixed merchants spawning all over the place.
- Fixed mobs, especially Papak, not deaggroing when you leave their area.
- Fixed some other various issues with deaggroing properly for mobs.
- Changed Rupu Fur Armor recipe to use Hide instead of Leather.
- Reduced Wooden Shaft cost back to 2 Wood.
- Removed Player Unstuck feature to prevent abuses.
- Fixed mob patrol distance
- Removed broken bulk recipe for Wooden Dart.
- Removed duplicate recipes for Bone Glue.
- Added back Gelatinous Goo to Bone Glue recipe.

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.