We've been developing for far longer than what is really kosher, and here's what's new:
As you all know we will with this update be making a complete reset, with a new world and updated character development systems. The changes that have gone into this patch are too numerous to really make explicit mention of each and every one of them -- there is a fair amount of new graphics, stuff, clothes, terrains, and whatnot -- but some major changes of note do deserve mention.
Inspirationals & ProficienciesStudying inspirationals now requires a certain amount of 'Inspiration', which is passively generated by your character over time, regardless of whether you yourself are online or not. Your rate of inspiration gain is determined by your maximum level of Black Bile, combined with slight bonuses from the learning skills (Literacy, A Formal Education, Aristotelian Logic). Many inspirationals now also have multiple uses, and can thus be studied several times over.
There is now an invariance penalty to inspirationals in that; when you study an inspirational type that you have previously studied since your last level up, your proficiency pools are increased by 10%.
Gluttony & FoodThe goal of consuming food in gluttony mode remains to gather enough points to reach the cap determined by your single highest Humour value, in order to thus trigger a level up of that particular Humour; however, the time-decay of the Humour meters, and the accompanying invariance penalty have been removed. Apart from adding points to the gluttony meters, consuming a food item in gluttony mode also adds a certain amount of the "Full & Fed-up" debuff, as well as reductions to certain categories of future food items consumed during that same gobbling "session".
The points gained from consuming a food item are reduced by all category debuffs relevant for the food item in question. If you have received some category debuffs, hovering over a food item will light up the debuffs that are applicable to the item hovered over. Notice that food items can belong to several categories. (For instance, "Wortbaked Wartbites" have the types "Slugs, Bugs & Kritters", "Flowers & Herbs", "Forage" and "Food".)
The 'Full & Fed-up' debuff lasts for a certain while -- depending on what types and how much food you ate -- and prevents you from entering gluttony mode again while it exists. This is the only effect of being 'Full & Fed-up'. The debuff ticks down and disappears regardless of whether you are online or not.
All category debuffs vanish when you exit gluttony mode. While gobbling, you cannot have any container open other than a table (and no other character can have the same table opened at the same time).
Many food items now also have multiple uses, but these are only relevant when eating to restore Humours. A food item needs to be completely unused to be possible to be consumed in gluttony mode, and consuming the item in gluttony mode will consume the item entirely, regardless of how many uses the item still has left.
Siege & PvPThe Crime debuff has been changed in several ways.
- The crime debuff now increases as you commit crimes against private claims. You have one crime debuff per claim you have committed crimes against.
- The crime debuff disappears after a certain fixed time, determined by how many crimes you have committed (being one day per crime, up to a cap of 14 days).
- Committing a new crime when you have a crime debuff against the claim in question will reset the countdown on the crime debuff.
- The cost of each crime you commit is scaled up with the size of your Crime debuff. (The more crimes you commit, the more expensive crimes become)
- You can now regenerate Humours and log out even with a Crime debuff.
- You can only ever have five crime debuffs at any one time.
- You cannot select a new Homestead while you have a Crime debuff.
- If you have evidence against a perpetrator, you can use those "scents" to reduce the crime buff versus the private claim upon which said perpetrator has his homestead.
Defensive installations have also been changed in that each defense now deals Base damage * (1/N) damage, where N is the number of clustered defenses. The point being that your defenses are 'saturated' from the first installation on, and that their total damage dealt does not increase with the number of defenses built. The idea is to remove or reduce the incentives to spam defenses everywhere.
Defenses located on a private claim do not react to crimes committed on an overlapping village claim.
Walls are significantly cheaper.
Previous Purchases & PromosAll previous purchases should be available at the bank/post office respectively as soon as you log in.
Promotional items may or may not be reissued at our leisure.
Closing ThoughtsWe are very happy to have been able to destill and provide something to you from our many thoughts and discussions and trials and errors, that we think might be more playable and palatable than the first iteration of Salem ultimately turned out to be. This is our first playable patch since God knows when (April? May?), and loftar and I are extremely happy to be able to deliver it to you. Notice that all values and numbers that went into this redesign are guesstimates, and there might be plenty of problems and/or broken interactions. Should you come across any, feel free to report them.
Anyhoo. For better or worse it feels good to be here where we now are. Thank you all for your support, for being here, and please consider throwing the store a dime or two if you can.
Welcome to Providence
Enjoy!
EPT
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