Official Update Thread

[Cryptite]

Market 2.0 is out!
Place Buy Orders, Store your Shards, Sell ALL the things!

Neat Tech!​

While not a particularly glamorous feature, the new Market is certainly one of the more complex, thorough, and advance features we've made for Loka to date. There're a lot of tech improvements and backend changes to how the Market works that will trickle down to other features in the future. These backend changes will actually set us up for way more powerful and awesome stuff in the future, so there are a number of wins here beyond the obvious feature changes.

Buy Orders​

• The biggest addition in Market 2.0 is Buy Orders. They're the exact opposite of sales that you're used to in the Market 1.0. Where sales allow you to sell things you have, Buy Orders allow you to put up shards up-front to request things you want.​
  • We so often see people requesting bulk items in public chat for their various projects, and now Buy Orders allow them to formalize those requests by asking for them through the Market.​
• Buy Orders and Sales are the two options you are presented when interacting with Market Chests. You may shift-left and shift-right-click the chests to go straight to the two sections for speed's sake.​
• Buy Orders that have been on the Market for 2 weeks will automatically expire and your shards will return to your Escrow.​

Sales​

• Sales act in very much the same was as Buy Orders now, and they're used no different than in the old Market. Simply, the GUI has changed, and we stack both BO's and Sales in order to better fit things in the Market visually.​
• A new feature is that you can sell ANY item at ANY Chest. Your sale will automatically show in the proper chest, but just for ease-of-use, you can sell anywhere.​
• Sales that have been on the Market for 2 weeks will automatically expire and your sale items will return to your Escrow.

Shard Cores​

• Due to the increasing use of shards, we felt it necessary to add another shard-increment. Shard Cores (Heart of the Sea) are now an item that represents 64 shards. 8 shards = 1 cluster, 8 clusters = 1 core, etc.​
• Because of the new Shard Core item, and the greater use of shards around Loka as a whole, these changes led to the addition of...​

The Shard Pouch​

• As Loka makes more use of shards, we felt it necessary to facilitate using them in a nicer way without having to also juggle your inventory. Especially considering instances where buying shards led to clusters having to split into shards, clusters, etc. Knowing this would be another factor more complicated given Shard Cores, we wanted an easy, self-managing inventory just for Shards.​
• The Shard Pouch, accessible in /b, next to the Soulbound Bag, is an extra bag that can only store shards.​
• Anytime you close the pouch, it will automatically condense all the shards into Cores, Clusters, and then Shards respectively.​
• Any purchases that require shards will attempt to:
  1. Use any shards found in your inventory, then
  2. Use any shards from your Shard Pouch.
• The Shard Pouch will do a lot of things for you to make life easier. The following actions will automatically send shards to your shard pouch instead of your inventory:
  • Shard splits (Like when 1 core splits into some smaller subset of shards)
  • Ores converted at the Ore Exchanger will automatically send the shards to your pouch, rather than back to the chest.
  • Claiming shards from Escrow will auto-deposit into your pouch.
• Just for clarification, picking up shards off the ground, or getting them out of chests will NOT send them straight to your pouch, as people will still likely want to trade shards, etc.
• NOTE: The Shard Pouch is NOT A SOULBOUND BAG! If you are killed anywhere where keep-inventory is off (the wilds), and you have any shards in your shard pouch, they will drop!
  • When in Keep-inv areas like Conquest Battle Zones, etc, your pouch will not drop if you die.

Lastly​

• Items in your escrow are no longer permanent. Any items in Escrow that haven't been claimed within 30 days will be deleted​
• Most market items have been reorganized. Chests all look and feel the same now, and we can support any number of items in any chest now.​
• With enchantable items, there is a GUI to be able to define the enchants you are requesting on an item's Buy Order. Only items with the exact enchants can be used to complete the order (be crappy otherwise).​
• In the Heads Chest, you can now request:​
  • Any Player Head; simply put up shards to buy any (valid Lokan player) head that somebody wishes to sell to you.​
  • Specific Player Heads. You can type the name of a player's head you'd like to buy (maybe better than bounties?!).​
• Blood will work this way too once it's out (more below)
• Some players' previous Market sales and escrow are missing, but are recoverable. We will be restoring these items to your escrow in the coming day or so, so hang tight!

Coming Soon!​

• Historical Pricing Data will be tracked and used in exciting ways. We will track every single sale and buy order completed. With that data we will be able to calculate average prices for items on Loka, giving players a better understanding of the state of our Economy.
  • Once we have sufficient valid data about orders completed, we will begin to indicate the average price of items when you put up sales and buy orders. We could potentially even do some charts and graphs!!!
• Some chests, namely Alcohol and Blood, are still WIP and coming soon. Couple kinks to work out there but they'll likely be available in the coming days.
• As always, we look forward to hearing feedback, bugs, etc. Please make use of /report if you find anything funky!

Go Forth and Buy!​

 

[Cryptite]

• Escrow should be fixed in terms of claiming shards from it.
• Completing Buy Orders should work a little better. Additionally, when attempting to fulfill a Buy Order, if you have the exact item, then the sell will go through immediately. If, however, the market is "unsure" which item you could potentially use (think same item, but has town lore, etc), it'll prompt you to pick exactly which item you'd like to use to fulfill the order.
• This also should fix general bugs trying to complete buy orders for weapons, etc.
• Items like Enchanting Books for sale now properly show their extra metadata (for enchanted books, this means showing their enchant like Mending, etc).
• Fixed XP Bottles not working
• #market has had some general cleanup and fixes. This is something we'll probably continue to polish over time so it's as readable as possible, while also fixing missing icons for things.
• Some chests are still in-progress. Alcohol is being weird at the moment.

 

[Cryptite]

• You can now spam-buy from Vendors at will. We finally narrowed down and fixed the bug where buying things like Ancient Ingots would charge you for 16, but give you amounts less than that at times.
• Fixed a bug where players could login extra-special-like and become fully invisible to all players online at the time.
• Fixed a loading-bug when shift-clicking to access market chests quicker.
• Whitelisted breaking shulkers in beacon areas. Dunno how this still sometimes breaks for people, but it at least shouldn't for shulker boxes anyway.
• When buying things with shards from your pouch, we now show you how many shards are left. Just felt you should know.

 

[Cryptite]

Some PvP (Duel) Fixes and Love

• We have added some new PvP Stats and now track things like Duels won/lost, Ranked Duels won/lost (both barebones and potion). Regrettably, most of this cannot be retroactively filled out. At least with the current Arena Season having lasted awhile, we're able to migrate those wins/losses to the respective ranked stats. But, all Duels Stats are at 0 for everyone.
  • You can view these new stats in your PvP Stats (/profile, or click the prowess item in /pvp).
• Barebones Duel kit now properly has Splash Healing I and 2x Splash Damage II instead of the accidental drinkable uncraftable potions
  • Other places uncraftable potions come into play (VotA talents, etc) should now also properly give you real potions.
• When you die in a duel, you can no longer do things like pickup items, punch your opponent, interact with things etc. You should be dead!
• Everybody's now well aware of who built the arenas and proving grounds by now. As such, we no longer show that info in a big giant title in your face. It is now a casual chat-message.

 

[Cryptite]

• There is now a shortcut for selling at the Market. If at any point viewing a Market Chest you shift-click something in your inventory, you will automatically go into selling-mode with that item auto-added to the gui. (Old market used to be this way).
• Market Orders in #market on Discord will now update to reflect the latest state of an order (quantity left) and will more accurately delete themselves when an order has been fully bought-out.
• Fixed being able to not actually buy anything from the Custom Items chest.

 

[Cryptite]

Announcing Achievements 2.0!
A greatly-needed overhaul of our system, Part 1​

• Our /achievements menu has been greatly overhauled and modernized with our latest Inventory Tech.​
• This update helps pave the way for more content in the future of Loka. There are lots of things like rewards we want to gate behind achievements and this helps set the stage for those kinds of things. Additionally, we have hundreds and hundreds of achievements planned for the future and we needed to get some organization going for them.​
• Current achievements have been reorganized between categories, rarities, etc.
• So what's new?​
  • Achievement Points - All achievements now count for points based on their rarities. The more rare the achievement, the more points it's worth. As a result of being worth points, we can now rank players' achievement efforts!​
    • There are plans to reward Players based on certain AP thresholds, but that is likely to be a bit down the road.​
  • You can link Achievements to your current chat channel. Just like /link, you can link an achievement, whether it's locked, in-progress, or completed so you can brag!​
  • Achievement Leaderboard - Top left of the Achievements screen!​
  • Achievement Sets - Better visual organization for achievement groups. They come in two forms:​
    • Series - Complete achievements in a logical order, like increasing Ranked Potion Arena Rating.​
    • Sets - Complete all of a set (in no particular order) to unlock the parent achievement (Winning the Fishing Tournies, for example)​
• Go get some Achievement Points!​

Other fixes

• Fixed lored items with the word "air" somewhere in the word not displaying correctly (I know).
• Lingering and Slow Modules will no longer target players flying with elytra (although it can be hilarious).
• Lingering and Slow Modules will try to search down better so they don't fail to convert blocks below as often (not 100% confident about this one)

 

[Cryptite]

Loot Bundles!
...not treasure knives

​

• In our various preparations for All That Content We're Working On, we have introduced one of a few ways in which we're looking to give out loot.​
• Loot Bundles are small Bag-Lookin'-Things™ that come in any of 5 rarities that we have on Loka. Upon breaking one, you get loot, stats, achievements, and FUN!​
  • From a technical perspective, we're moving almost everything we handle with content to data (so, less server restarts). Loot Tables are an internally-defined list of things we can reward with various weights (this is how all games do it, really). What this allows us to do in the future is more swiftly implement dropping shinies for you folks in various and sundry neat ways.​
  • When a Loot Bundle is dropped/spawned, they remain there permanently until broken and persist server restarts.​
• Presently, Loot Bundles can only be found by purging Shrines in the Nether. However, we have plans to use this All Everywheres, including replacing the chest rewards for defeating bosses like the Ender Dragon and the Wither King, etc.

Meanwhile...

• As with above, Shrines now spawn a Loot Bundle when they are purged. Breaking one drops any of a large variety of items from common to Legendary rarity!
  • It is not intended for these to be extremely valuable most of the time (RNG can always surprise you though!). Specifically with Shrines, you're already there generally grinding for nether-specific items, so it's not the intent for the vast majority of Shrine Bundles to be highly valuable.
  • We'll add way more valuable Loot Bundles around Loka in the future.
• The mobs specific to Shrines now have unique names that show over their heads (so you can tell which blaze is the Shrine one, etc).
• Shrines will now give you a little information on the state of the shrine (recently purged, inactive, about to reactivate, etc).
• The Shrine Health boss bar will now show to nearby players, rather than just to the players who have killed a Shrine Warden.
• Achievements were generally fixed up over the weekend. We continue to fix old achievements as reported.

 

[Cryptite]

October Conquest Updates
Revisiting Conquest Locks and lots of backend fixes/optimizations​

• October's update is a big one internally (plugin-wise), but isn't significant from a player's perspective. The real big focus was rewriting a couple core systems that simply were poorly written and had built up a bunch of code rot over years of changing the rules of Conquest. Now that we're making "more final" decisions on how the system works, we felt the systems needed some rewrites.​

Conquest Locks
Gotta be locked to your town/alliance​

• This is the system that was confusing most people at the end of last month. There were misunderstandings between how it actually worked (and has worked for months) and how it should work. This led us to revisit its mechanics as well as how it was written.
• We will be adding a very detailed page on the Wiki on the exact mechanics of locks, and exactly when/where they apply. In the meantime, the logic of locks is basically the following:
  • In order to go to any non-reins fight, you MUST be locked to the same town you live in, or its alliance.
  • In a reins fight, if you have an "Invalid Lock", you have to request to fight for either side. This is sort of how it was, but the difference is, if you manage to be in a situation where you're "on both sides" (Locked to one side, live in the other), you have to request to fight for either side. Previously you were kind of allowed to just go for one side weirdly.
• We've added more scenarios where you have to lock to do a Conquest-related action. These are basically thought of as any time you would do an action that is like picking a side, or doing something for a town for Conquest, you have to lock. New actions that require locking include:
  • Calling reins (this was already the case).
  • Accepting reins requests from players.
  • Accepting reins beacon warp requests from players.
  • Installing TGen Modules.
• Additionally, any time there is a reins fight and you have an invalid lock, you must use the beacons at Spawn. You will be unable to use your town's beacon to go to reins fights unless you have a valid lock.
• If you have an invalid lock, you cannot go to neutral fights on your same continent.

Other Changes
Nerfed TnT a bit​

• TnT Module - Rate of Fire has been increased from 5s -> 7s.
  • TnT can be a divisive module, but the real kicker is that it can either be very powerful (in bigger fights, and with certain terrain), or extremely useless (in small fights, or with big flat terrain). The damage it is doing is inaccurate if you're looking at EB logs. That's not yet fixed from a log-perspective, but it is doing correct damage.
    
    The only real problem we agreed was that it fired too quickly. In certain circumstances you could be hit twice if you unluckily managed to fall right where the next one had been shot at. So the nerf here is minor, and we'll be keeping an eye out.
• No players may enter Town-Starting fights except real Nomads
  • There were all these weird rules and complex combinations of permissions on who could go to these fights, what side of the fight they were on, etc.
  • We decided it was in the best interest of the server and new players that they effectively have to do the fight for themselves. For the most part, people like to help new players setup towns. This is still possible in a way (stand on the edge of the battlezone to give them supplies, etc), but we felt that there's a learning-experience and a sense of accomplishment of truly doing a whole Conquest fight by yourself in order to start a town that helps players get a feel for Loka.
  • The old rules still apply to nomads trying to start fights in town-owned territories, etc. But, if they're starting up a town on a neutral, they get the fight to themselves. If you want to prevent nomads near you, you'd better capture some territories.
• Tons of performance updates and fixes. Unfortunately these are mostly tiny and unlikely to make a noticeable difference to players (We have very little lag as it is). They may add up, however, when we have bigger quantities of players on.
• We completely rewrote how Beacon Warps work. Nothing's really different here for players other than some cleanup and polish on Beacon/Spawn-Beacon GUIs. These should be more stable and break less and just super duper.
• Beheading kill messages now have the victim/killer symbols that our custom kill messages have.
• Lots and lots of various bug fixes.

New Craftable (Smeltable) Blocks!
Since 1.14 is a ways out

​

• Because we're far away from 1.14, we changed our mind on this thread. You may now smelt Stone, Sandstone, and Red Sandstone (the bottom ones) in order to make Smooth Stone, Smooth Sandstone, and Smooth Red Sandstone (the top ones). You can do this in 1.14 but since we're a ways out, builders would like to be able to use these blocks now since they exist in 1.13.

 

[Cryptite]

• Fixed a variety of bugs introduced by the October update throughout the day yesterday. Things should be more stable today.

Industry Fixes

• Industries will now say the proper number of things they produce each hour. (The math was wrong, but the production was correct).
• I forgot to hook up the Arcanum correctly after all the big changes yesterday, oops.
• A bunch of Windmill bugs have been fixed.
• Destroying smoke stacks, etc will properly reposition the particles, rather than leaving them where they were.
• We're continuing to do a pass on Industries as there're still a few bugs here and there and it could use some updates.

 

[Cryptite]

More Industry Updates
Makin more things, and the right things​

• A bunch of Industry fixes have gone in that normalize and fix a bunch of various (and old) bugs.
• Dungeons now produce the proper amount each cycle. (They were making about half the things they should).
• Barns are empty/full appropriately and will communicate when full once again.
• All Industry output/input numbers have been updated. Check out the Wiki page to see the breakdown.
  • Perhaps the most notable change will be the the base production of industries is now 10 items produced up from 5. The old base math for items produced each cycle was basically (Territories Owned x 2) + 5 and the base of 5 has been increased to 10.
• Locked Input Chest Slots should now be the appropriate numbers. Input chests were always supposed to have locked slots. Unfortunately, it's been a bug for a very long time that they didn't have them.
• There may yet be a few tweaks to the numbers, but overall production/capacity amounts should be working properly now.
• We've added, and will continue to work on better messaging around how much Industries produce, when, and the affect that more/less territories and the like have on production.

 

[Cryptite]

• A few Industry-related polish that cleans up a few errant bugs we've had for a long time:
  • You were never properly blocked from placing blocks when an Industry Building was warping in. As a result, you could get in a situation where placing, say, a Shulker Box, when an industry was warping in would add it to list of "Building Blocks". Thus when you broke it later, you wouldn't get the block back.
  • Also added a last-check failsafe for Shulker Boxes just in case.
• Added some stricter/more-accurate checks around Void Storage. In cases where you have two item frames that occupy the same block location (ie: one VS frame, one regular). Editing frames in all cases should work properly and not result in accidentally deleted items.
• If you somehow removed your gold block from your beacon and you click the button, it will tell you to replace your beacon now, rather than let you try to warp to a fight and then fail at warp-time.
• The recipe for Void Storage Access Markers is no longer blank in /rb.

 

[Cryptite]

While things have been quiet lately, we've still been working on some bug fixes and other various work:

• Fixed some weird VS issues that some players were having.
  • While I was in there rummaging around, I cleaned up a thing or two and now Player Heads sort alphabetically in VS.
• Admins now have the ability to rollback VS actions.
• Industry Input Chests were showing the wrong level for unlocking slots. The slots were correct, mathematically, but they were displaying the wrong unlock-level
• As discussed in the related recent Twitch Stream, Ruins are now "ruining" automatically once again. They hadn't been since the morning server restart time had been pushed back (many months ago).
• Combat Log NPCs weren't properly dropping items when killed, nor were they properly handling soulbound/KoD things.

 

[Cryptite]

Ruins 2.0!
Ruins for days!

• We've made a ton of upgrades to our automatic Ruins system. Most of it was because we hadn't really revisited it since upgrading to 1.13. Now ruins are a lot more intentional in how they decay, and a lot less random and noisy looking.​
• Blocks crumble, more things decay, cobwebs appear in corners, and further secrets lie in wait in the dark, forgotten places of the world.​
• Ruins runs now also do a little cleanup on things like floating plants, etc.​
• A handful of new achievements are available to intrepid explorers of Ruins. Find em all!​
• Ghosts spawn a little more frequently now.​
• Ruins show in the tablist when you're in one! \o/​

Other Changes​

• You can now toggle your Suffix Title freely in addition to your prefixes. Both show in /title. This includes donator stars and the like. You also can optionally choose to turn them off entirely.​
  • This is not available to people with Forced Suffixes (these would be things like Dev Team / LCR's symbols)​
• All "Pure Damage" on Loka (ignores armor) will now play the "getting hurt" effect rather than silently lowering your health. Obvious uses of this are bleed effects, Laser modules, core damage, etc.
• Water/Lava no longer block getting charges.
• Various and sundry bug fixes, additions, rearranges.

 

[Cryptite]

• Your ping in Tab is now more accurate!
• Fixed a bug where players with Invalid Conquest Locks could properly request to, and warp to reins fights, but then would get yanked back to spawn with the "You cannot enter this fight" bug.
• Players with forced titles can now set their suffix in /title. This doesn't let them use that title's icon, but it does use the color of it to apply to their forced suffix (like it worked before the suffix title changes).

 

[Cryptite]

• Industry NPCs are making a comeback! Many are missing, and in most cases, they have all stumbled their way back home from the Great Industry NPC Festival of 2019.
  • In the absence of knowing where to go, you may find your missing NPCs standing on top of chests, somewhere weird, who knows! They're all still drunk. In order to facilitate shuffling them to their proper places, there is a...
  • New Command: /g i movenpc
    • You can move an Industry's NPC to anywhere you'd like inside the Industry Zone.
• Because problems, Liquids can no longer be placed in Cap Halls, nor can Pistons be activated in them until we find a better solution for creative cap hall builders.
• Fixed /c train requiring a conquest lock, whoops.

 

[Cryptite]

December Conquest Update
All new, Inhib-only Attack Modules, risky bow-boosting​

As we've mentioned in the past, we have been working on a unique set of Attacking Modules for Inhibitors to better balance the fact that there is only one module on the building. These mods are meant to introduce soft counter-play to Inhib vs TGen modules and allow for a more interesting metagame for Conquest Battles than what we have now. Inhibitors will have their own exclusive set of modules, separate from the current modules which will become Defense/TGen-only.

Most of this is a general copy/paste from the original announcement thread, but with some updated names/numbers/etc. Let's do it!

5 Brand New Attack Modules
Choose wisely​

• Pearl Bomb - Whenever an attacker throws an Ender Pearl, it has a 10% chance on landing to spawn an Endermite bomb.
  • This is the same Endermite Bomb from the Core and will be subject to friendly-fire checks (won't blow up attackers), nor can they be damaged by the attacking team.
  • Damage and length of time is the same as in the core.
  • Endermite Bombs in both cases (module and core) will now have Spectral (glow) so that they're easier to distinguish, since they're lil' bitty.
  • Sweeping attacks do not damage Endermites.
• Tactical Rush - When attackers warp, allies within 35 blocks of the inhib gain Focused Assault for 120 seconds.
  • Focused Assault - You cannot be slowed and any heal pots you throw won't heal enemies.
• Golem Override - When attackers warp, Inhib Golems become empowered and all defender (TGen) modules will become disabled until a single Inhibitor Golem has been killed.
  • Empowered Golems are immune to projectile damage and have 200% total health.
• Supercharged - Whenever you kill a golem, your charge lasts 2x longer (15s -> 30s) and all allies within 10 blocks gain Thick Skinned
  • Thick Skinned - You are immune to all bleed effects.
• Chain Reaction - Whenever a lamp is damaged, another randomly chosen defending Golem will become Stunned for 20s
  • Stunned Golems are frozen (cannot move) and will die in one melee hit.

Module Roulette
Try to out-think your opponents by freely swapping our your install mods before a fight starts​

• In the hour after activating an Inhib and before the fight starts, all installed modules on both sides will become blacked out visually. You will be unable to see which module is which.
• Both sides will have the optional ability to change which module(s) they have already installed in order to play the enemy in their strategy. Once the Inhib goes online and the attack starts, the modules will be revealed.
• Swapping out mods does not cost extra, you already paid up-front for your mods.
• You will be able to remotely swap out your mods in /c list.

Big, Other Changes​

• Neutral Inhibs cannot be moduled
  • These new attack modules are fairly powerful, some of them could even render neutral attacks almost trivial. We still want capturing undefended territories to require some level of effort and resources.
  • Additionally, this eases the transition of newer players onto Conquest by not requiring them to figure out Modules when they're just trying to either start a town or take their first territory(ies).
• Bow Boosting will now do 2.5 hearts of True Damage
  • We recognize that Bow Boosting, while still possible, does heavily favor people of great skill, but also great ping. Even more problematic is how much it renders Ender Pearls (specifically Loka's long cooldown on using them) inert. If somebody is particularly skilled at bow-boosting, they can flee or attack with great ease, not having to worry about pearling very much.
  • We never wanted to completely remove boosting, but we believe the best approach to keep it was to make it a calculated risk to use. We wanted it to be predictable damage, so you can judge when to bow-boost without worrying about some sort of accidental self-crit (which would be a good meme though), hence the true damage.
  • As a reminder, True Damage ignores all armor/enchants/etc. Note/remember that all Conquest damage (golems/core attacks/modules/etc) is true damage, so this is a usual behavior.
  • This only applies to shooting yourself with a bow/arrow (just to be clear)

Misc Updates​

• The suggestion of Weakening Modules over time is something we considered, but will have to revisit in the future. With this update changing so much we did not want to add yet another variable, which could make balancing very difficult.
• Debilitating Aura - Now applies Slow II down from Slow III and also prevents pearling (like Slow Module). No longer applies mining fatigue.
• We are formalizing the concept of Buffs and Debuffs. You will notice some of these when you get things like Thick Skinned, Focused Assault, etc. from above. These are a new global Loka feature and will likely be seen in PvE content, etc. as well.
• Fixed being able to potentially have DBA and Vicious Attack (can only have one).
• Messaging around when you can/cannot have certain mods has been improved.
• Normal Endermites (that spawn from just throwing pearls) no longer spawn in Battle Zones as this would probably confuse with Pearl Bomb mites.
• Warping to fights should now warp you directly onto one of the Iron Blocks that make up the "destination pads" of Inhibs/TGens.
  • We used to warp you in 1-block up to account for people getting stuck in weird places, but this seems to have potentially caused "You are flying" checks to go off and sometimes disconnect players. This may/may not fix or address issues where players can be killed after warping in and their stuff drops. Either way this should hopefully smooth out warping to fights for some.
• The Leather Chest item(s) we use to show Defending Attacks in /c list is now the same color of that town (ie: the color their leather armor would likely be in the fight). Used to just be regular, undyed leather.
• All modules are formatted better and their buffs are separated for legibility when browsing them in menus.
• You can now view the modules installed on conflicted TGens/Inhibs in /c list. Those with the place-inhib town permission can edit them in the pre-fight period (module roulette).
• TGen/Inhib Lamps now make noises (sparky noises for early damage, fire for later damage).
• Loads of little /c train fixes.
  • There is still some work to be done on /c train. The biggest missing issue right now is that the Attack Modules that activate when attackers warp don't happen in /c train since there is no warping. The idea is likely to implement a sort of VotA-style reocurring warp where if you die, you will automatically "warp-in" (respawn) at the pad when the next 1 minute interval is over. Ideally that interval could be configured in the future too.

Since this is obviously a huge meta shakeup, we will be keeping a very close eye on these new modules. As you know we generally try not to mess with balance-changes and the like during the active Conquest month; however we recognize that some of these attack mods may just be too big. We'll try to communicate as best we can with both LCRs and the Community about these changes as we expect, as is tradition, bigly spice after people start to try out these new mods.

That said, Go Forth and Attack!

 

[Cryptite]

Small round of of bugs/features over the past few days:

• NEW: We've added a new Battle Zone Events messaging system (title + chat bar). It'll message everyone in the fight about things happening in the fight, with colors and sound effects specific to what side you're on.
  • The only new message event that was added was when Modules are Disabled/Enabled as a result of the Golem Override module.
  • In addition, we've roped in some of the other messages into the new system format so they present more nicely. This is things like "Core is vulnerable", "X Module Destroyed", etc.
  • Any remaining Battle Events and all new ones will use this new feature as it better communicates to both sides what's happening. Please feel free to /report or suggest battle events you think we should add.
• Fixed players with Invulnerability (like when you warp into a fight) not being protected from Pure Damage attacks (like from Pearl Bombs, etc).
• Fixed Defenders not being able to modify their TGen Modules during the pre-battle period.
• Logging out during a Fishing Tournament will no longer spawn a Combat Log NPC for players.
• Chat Zones (Fishing Tournament, Kaurii's House, Library, etc) will now only intercept your chat if you're in Public or Local chat modes, as opposed to intercepting all chat everywhere and sending it to the zone.
• Lastly, we're still working to identify and address a bug with some account data that (currently) requires us to restart the server whenever we find it. It's a doozy

 

[Cryptite]

February Conquest Update
Tweaks, fixes, polish!
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We've been having a lot of great dialog with our LCRs this month. Having equal representation from the various sides of the server has been really helpful to diagnosing issues with Conquest and more. Most of these changes are the result of conversations with the LCR team, rather than just Mag and myself which we feel has been a really positive change. Let's get into it!

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Conquest Changes

• Having Turtle Master Effects (aka Slow IV+) will now prevent you from Jumping or Pearling for the duration of the effect.​
  • TM is OP and "Because Minecraft", players can easily spam jump/sprint to overcome the intended Slowness it applies. Our changes ensure that it's still viable, however far more risky to try using TM in fights.​
• Healing Arrows, (only) when used to bow-boost are now far less effective. Instead of taking 2.5h (with normal arrows), with Heal Arrows you will take 1.5h guaranteed damage.
  • These heal-arrow were completely overriding the purpose of bow-boost damage on Loka, so they needed nerfin'.
• Unless blocked by the relevant Continental Policies, all sides can now fly freely in Battle Zones.
  • Pretty much just used to be that in normal fights, only defenders could fly because it was their territory, but that's boring, and flying is more fun, so go for it.
• TnT Minecarts can no longer be placed in Battle Zones.
• Golem Respawn time has been increased from 45s -> 1m
  • Even partial-wipes were just way too punishing still, and so in order to make less fights finish in just 2 warps, we've upped the respawn timer to see how it goes.
• It is no longer possible on Balak to remotely-attack territories.
  • Regular continent territories can be locked, but on Balak there aren't enough nodes to justify locking. Since you can remotely attack, participants feel overly required to mod EVERY TERRITORY, which sucks and feels less realistic.
  • Additionally this introduces some slight strategy where you can protect some of your territories by taking surrounding nodes, leading to greater importance on some (likely buff) territories.
• Golem Override now lasts a maximum of 4 minutes.
  • If defenders (if there even are any) are unable to take down an Inhibitor Golem in order to reactivate their modules after 4 minutes, the TGen modules will automatically reactivate.
  • It was pretty OP choosing GO for attacks where defenders didn't show up, as it meant steamrolling the fight extremely easily. Combined with the 1m golem respawn timer, this should make fights still take some effort as is the intent.
• Golems have had a slight adjustment to their AI to make them less useless. At least for now, they shouldn't wind up sitting perfectly still while you're getting dumpstered right next to them. I'm sad nobody made any memes about this
  • We'd like to take another stab at adding some intelligence and priority targeting to Golems in the future, but that will require some discussions.
  • You should in theory feel a bit safer around your own TGen/Inhib if you have golems up, but that isn't really quite the truth at the moment, which doesn't feel good. We're gonna look into it.
• Lastly, Golems now have explicit spawn points.
  • Since Inhibs and TGens both have the same Andesite Block "pad", there are clear, fixed points to spawn Golems rather than the old way which sometimes caused Golems to spawn in stupid places, suffocate, be underground, etc. They should all always spawn in the same places. Radars are a different story though.

Other Changes

• Beds can no longer be placed in The End.
• Monsters that pick up player-items will no longer forcefully respawn so you can go get your stuff back now.
• Conquest Truce is now at 20:00:00 server time, and not 59 seconds later. :|
• It is no longer possible for in-game players to @everyone in their town/alliance Discord channels.
• As well, town chat messages in Discord will no longer show the town tag, because that's unnecessary information.
• The Spectator Scoreboard for Conquest Battles (for streamers, etc) will now show Charges attempted and the % conversion rate for charges. Should be good for some spicy stats as converting your charges to overloads is the key to victory!
• A lot of backend optimization and performance updates that we thought would help with the problem below, but turned out not to have anything to do with it, but hey now we did it so the server still stands to benefit \o/
• And lastly,

Fixed This Heckin' Problem
You can now build in your own town like a normal person.

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Go Forth!

 

[Cryptite]

Growing Trees outside Towns
Foreign players can't anymore.

• Slow IV+ Jump Prevention is now handled differently.​
  • It's admittedly janky in its own right (Minecraft!) in that you can jump, but it'll block lateral velocity (same behavior as being dropped out of the sky when flying in foreign territories/towns, etc)​
• Fixes various issues with town block storage (Industry Buildings and Beacons) so that there're less overall issues with these.​
• Fixes to tracking Item Frames in towns so that people are hitting the max and being blocked better.​

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[Cryptite]

Loka is 9 Today!​

Hard to believe we're only one year away from turning 10! Happy Birthday to the server. It's officially Anniversary Day! We're going to be celebrating the week with some phased rollouts of updates.

Return of VotA

• Over the past few days we've been fixing up and modernizing our classic and original battleground Valley of the Artifacts!
• Many many bugs have been fixed and the battleground should once again work like it used to!
• There are obvious balance issues since our Talents haven't been updated since 1.7.10 Minecraft.
• Besides fixes, the only really notable change to Talents are that we no longer use the concept of Coal to show talents as on cooldown. We now make use of Minecraft's natural cooldown system (like with Ender Pearls) for everything which makes things a little more clear.
• With VotA's return, we've also gotten the Talents version of Proving Grounds (Quarts button in /pvp) back up and running so you can play with and learn the Talents system.
• /pvp and hop in the queue!

Quests

• Quests are still being polished up. They're not quite ready for launch, but we expect to launch it in the next few days so hang tight!
• If you didn't catch our Feature Preview, you can watch it below!
  

Go Forth!