Official Update Thread

[Cryptite]

Some updates over the last few days as well as some changes that we've implemented as a result of discussions with LCRs:

• You are now able to trade Shards from your Shard Pouch in trades.
• You can now click to preview Shulker Boxes in trades to do a last-minute check on its items before confirming.
• In order to prevent some reported cheese regarding ganks, if you throw an enderpearl and try to relog, you will be blocked from re-joining for 10s.
• You are now able to swap out players freely in Rivina once again, even if they have participated already.
• Fixed a bug in which accepting a beacon warp request asked you to lock for the beacon's town, and not your own.
• The total number of Land Mines generated by the Radar Module has been reduced.
• Additionally, fixed a bug where the land mine was detecting in a radius that started at the corner of a block, rather than the center, which may've led to some mines appearing to explode on you earlier than you expected.
• The Bell at Spawn now rings on the hour!

 

[Cryptite]

Infested Tiles
Lotsa mobs, lotsa loot. More access for everyone!



​

In order to help balance the grinding of mobs for brewing materials across Loka, we've finally released Infested Territories. These are swarming with constantly spawning monsters and are risky to visit but worth the loot! GP caves are unfortunately few in number and it is unfair for the few towns to have them to have a permanent "safe space" to grind that not all players have equal access to. As a result, we have nerfed mob drops in underground monsters and have instead made Infested Monsters drop plentiful loot!

Infested Territories use our new Custom Biome Tech, allowing us to literally change the color, sky, ambient particles, and ambient sounds inside of a biome. As a result, enjoy the visuals of the different-looking kinds of Infested Territories! (Note, if you have a resource pack that has custom biome color maps in it, you will not see our custom biome colors, as the resource pack overrides that).

In addition to these being released, normal Bountiful Territories will no longer spawn, as these are meant to replace them.

We will be keeping a constant eye on loot quantity, spawning bugs, and the like but are very excited about these cool territories. Time for specifics!

• Two kinds of Infested Territories:
  • Yellow Wilderness - You will keep your gear if you die, but will drop any Unstable Loot you have gathered from monsters.
  • Red Wilderness - Typical wilderness, all gear drops. However, monsters here are both tougher, but also drop more loot. More risk, more reward!
• You can see which territories are which on the World Map
  • We have also fixed up the map a bit so it looks better and tooltips no longer show up underneath map markers.
    Thanks @Skuhoo!
• 7 New Achievements related to Infested Territories. Go get 'em!
• Vanilla mobs that spawn underground now have highly decreased drop rates.
• Infested Territories spawn on Neutrals only.
• Up to 5 can spawn on each continent. One per biome, 1 Red, and the rest are Yellow Infested Territories
  • Will not spawn adjacent to docks, each other, oor towns.
• You cannot make a town on one.
• You cannot place an inhib on one.
• Infested Territories will rotate every 2 weeks, starting on Truce drop, then 2w after that.
• Monsters that spawn, beyond the usual, can include Evokers, Vindicators, Slimes, and low chances to spawn Phantoms and Skeleton Horse jockeys!
• Infested Monsters have natural fire immunity.
• Passive mobs do not spawn.
• Neutral Mobs, Extra Drop buffs, and Looting do not work in Infested Territories.
• Ghast shrines drop twice as much gunpowder.

Go Forth and Slay!

 

[Cryptite]

Mid-February Conquest Update
And a catchup on various changes since January​

Sharding nears completion! At this point, All but Spawn and Ascalon are sharded. So far aside from some bugs here and there left, and some cross-network messages that are missing, things are running fairly smoothly. Not much else to report on here other than the work is almost done and I can finally move on to better and more interesting things! Woo!

Reinforcement Management GUI
No more clicking a chat spam of reins requests
View attachment ReinsGUI.mp4​

All reins requests for Reinforcements are now handled in a GUI. You can approve/reject players and see information about their town/alignment to you. An additional change is that rejecting a player requesting for you is now permanent and they will not be able to request again unless you unblock them from the Rejected menu. There have also been a few changes to the Spawn Beacons which should be more informative about why you cannot use them during reins due to approvals/rejections/conquest locks, etc.

Shield Change
Cooldown when you swing a weapon
​

After a lengthy discussion with the LCRs we have decided to introduce a change to shields meant to encourage "Dying in Conquest" which is the same thinking that brought Loka to add 33% damage in the first place. From amongst the myriad suggestions, the most impactful change we decided to implement, that didn't overwhelmingly break things, is that every time you swing a sword/axe, your shield will incur a 1 second cooldown and cannot be raised during that time. It is our feeling that this makes for a choice between attacking vs using your shield for appropriate reasons like going for a charge and defending yourself. We of course will keep an eye on how this plays out over the coming weeks.

Module Updates
Time to put a little love into the modules a bit.​

• Laser - Now respects Line of Sight and can no longer shoot through walls/ground/etc.
  • It's a bit shocking to get railed by this before you even see where the tgen/laser mod is.
• Spectral - Spectral Lockdown now lasts only 10% of the base warp time (24s for Rivina, 48s everywhere else).
  • And you can no longer get Lockdown Debuff if you're destroying the Spectral mod's lamp.
• Debilitating Aura - Increased the debuff time of DA from 8s -> 12s
• Vicious Attack - The range of players affected by the attack/knockup has been increased from 5 blocks -> 8 blocks.
  • NEW: Whenever a player gets a charge from killing a Golem, one available defending Golem will perform an instant Vicious Attack on the charge-getter. This can only occur once for the duration of your Charge.
  • Also I think the knockback on this never used to actually work, but it does now, so that's fun.
• Tactical Rush - Buff lasts now 2x longer and is a % of warp time, Healing Circle lasts 2x longer.
  • NEW: The Healing Circle that spawns when an attacker dies now Refreshes Speed II and Strength II to Full Duration (1m30s) as long as you stand on the circle.
• Chain Reaction - Stun length of Golem increased by 5s.
  • NEW: When a Golem is Stunned, the defending TGen's Laser and TnT Modules are now disabled (like with Golem Override) for the length of the Golem stun.
• Shield Wall - Any attackers with Shield Wall will not incur the Shield Cooldown (newly added from above section) when swinging a weapon.

These changes will go in within the next day or so.

 

[Cryptite]

Town Zoning 1.5
It's not 2.0 but it's a half-step meant to help address some immediate issues​

Players have been asking for more granular permissions in their zones for a long time now and with the increasing volume of town betrayal reports, we decided to go ahead and implement a handful of Zoning changes, rather than wait for the future "full towns 2.0" update.

The biggest real change to Zoning is the introduction of Zone Flags. With these flags you can change the permission of certain actions in a zone with that correspond with individual member levels. For example, if your zone war_room is a level 5 zone and you assign it a town flag of teleport with member level 3 (/town z flag war_room teleport 3), then only level 3+ members of your town can pearl there, but do nothing else.

Town Zones now operate under a Zero Trust mechanism. This is a common security practice these days on The Internets. What this means is that if a zone is Level 5, then a lower-level town member can do nothing in that zone. They cannot break/place blocks, and now they cannot interact/teleport/open containers/etc. You may notice town members cannot do things they once could in high-level zones, and this is why. You will need to individually apply the below flags to grant permissions to town members.

The current Town Zone Flags are:

• interact - Push buttons, flip levers, interact with animals etc. (Open to suggestions for other things)
• teleport - Pearling, chorus fruit, etc
• container - Opening any chest/container/brewing stand/etc.
• shulker - Place, open, and break shulkers

Remember you can /town z test 2 to "become" a level 2 member for example and test things, though this will look a bit funky with the action bar which tells you when you have perms or not. It'll be helpful if you test with other members of your town.

Other zoning updates:

• All of /town z should support tab-completion now.
• You can no longer even attempt pearling if you're in a zone with no teleport perms. Previously I guess you could still throw the pearl even though it wouldn't teleport you.
• You can now edit zones while in test mode without having to drop out of /z test to make a change and then go back in.

If you have additional feedback/suggestions on Zones, feel free to /report and make some forums posts! It has been suggested that `/town z default` also support these flags which may be added soon. Otherwise, these changes should allow town owners to feel much safer with their town protections.

Sharding Complete!
Loka is now split into 6 shards and is running better than ever!

​

Minecraft sucks for performance, we all know it. Sharding has been a process that has been slowly added to Loka over the better part of the last year, and we are finally proud to say it's complete!

What Sharding actually does is divide the various worlds of Loka into their own entire servers (instances of Java). This helps distribute the load of players on the server so that heavy towns on one continent don't bog down all of Loka while a 150 player fight is happening on Balak, for example. If you've seen weird error messages like "Ascalon is not accessible", that's because it was restarting and is a separate shard than the one you're on. There are still various bugs here and there and we'll always be continuing to smooth things out.

There are 6 total Survival Shards (not including things like /c train, the PvP server, hub, etc):

1. Ascalon
2. Kalros
3. Garama
4. Spawn - Spawn (Aladra)
5. Isles - The End and the Nether
6. Conquest - Balak and Rivina

So far it's been very successful, allowing Loka to hit it's highest player count of all time at 216 concurrent players, supporting a 186 player fight on Balak that (aside from warp-ins which have smoothed out a bit since then) had virtually 20tps. The lag isn't all gone though, as enough people on a single shard can still cause some issues. We have plans for potential additional sub-sharding but we'll have to see how things play out over the rest of 2022. Necessity is often the mother of "oh god we have problems".

Misc changes over the past month​

• Conquest Strength - The formula for Strength has been tweaked slightly. The most notable change is that towns are now rewarded far more strength at the beginning of a month to create a bigger gap between big alliances and regular/small towns. In short this prevents there being any real purpose in trying to farm little towns for strength as it is possible to earn 0 strength in a fight now.
• Changed the map visuals for Capital Bountifuls a bit so they don't look just like Infested ones.
• Fixed Cap Bountiful defends not properly returning loot to each individual town in an Alliance.
• Fixed Cap Bountiful beacon timers being wrong if you weren't on the same shard as the fight
• Fixed Cap Bountiful TGens requiring mats to mod (it's a forced-neutral, defenders are meant to get free ability to mod the tgen for defense)
• Some Stat Tracking fixes, mostly fishing
• The cooldown for using a Feather to do block-logging in your town has been reduced from 5s -> 2s.
• Now that sharding is complete, it should be easier/possible to bring animals/etc on boats to other continents now.
• Fight warp-ins should now randomly distribute players in a small radius around the spawnpoint, rather than 80 of your teammates warping into 1 block.
• Fixed warp-ins to TGens putting you inside the beacon block.
• Fixed Sugar Cane not growing in River biomes
• Minor updates to icon tooltips on our server map (partly for the Conquest Alert Discord, but also doesn't hurt)
• Soulbound Items can no longer be pulled out of containers by hoppers. They will now be sent to your /b.
• And a bajillion other fixes and new bugs.

Ok Go Forth!

 

[Cryptite]

1.18.2!
Yay caves!

​

As is tradition we have finally updated to the latest version of Minecraft. Check out the Super Useful 1.18.2 mods thread by @Evil_X!

Update-wise, there's not a whole ton to delve into on this one, so let's just hop right in!

• Loka's build heights have been increased to the new 1.17 levels (-64 - 319y).
• All Continents (only) have had retrogeneration applied. This means that under all continents below y0, new vanilla caves have generated!
  • Check under your town to see what sweet caves you got!
• For the most part, all the things that generate with caves (lush caves, dripstone caves, all the mossy business, etc) have been left in excluding:
  • Geodes/Crystals
    • We are reserving this for cool future content.
  • Azalea blocks (flowers/bushes/etc)
    • Azaleas will become native to the Sunset Isles.
• Bonemealing Moss will only convert dirt/grass-type blocks to moss blocks and will not convert deepslate, stone, etc type blocks.
• Melons are no longer a protected resource and can be grown/farmed globally.
  • Cause everybody needs em for pots and that weren't too fair.
• Replenishing Resources will soon work actually.
  • As a reminder, replenishing resources are things like trees/flowers/etc that will grow back when you break them even if they're in a territory you own.
  • There is a mechanic which is currently being fixed where you can prevent these replenishing blocks from growing back by placing blocks (aka building naturally). Within a small radius around any "player-placed blocks" that extends to the sky, no replenishing blocks will regrow. This is to ensure that if you build something small and cool, that any trees you cut down to grow back into it.
  • The lack of this feature (whether it was broke or maybe I never even implemented it lols) probably explains why a lot of simple grass/vegetation is missing from a lot of the world.
  • For flowers, the intent is that you can pick a flower anywhere you find them in the world, it is only when you bonemeal grass that any flowers non-native to the area will be blocked from growing.
• It is a well-known "bug" that all world changes on 1.18.2 come with a guaranteed 2s Loading Terrain. It's real dumb but apparently it was Mojang's way of preventing issues where people could sometimes fall through the world. But it's also really ugly and stupid and we all hate it.
  
  There does exist this mod if you are so inclined to try to get rid of it. Your mileage may vary.
• There is a New Alliance Permission to Manage Reins.
  • This is separate from Calling Reins and simply lets alliance owners choose which towns may accept/reject reins requests.
• Lastly, as always, many bugs have been fixed over the past weeks and we'll be polishing new 1.18 bugs over the coming days before moving on to New Achievement Work.

That's all folks! Get out there and explore some caves!

 

[Cryptite]

Announcing Pre-Warps!
Go to fights early! Stare your opponents down!
​

Loka's finally hit a point where we decided to implement a feature we long figured we would need. As everybody is aware, the first warp of a Conquest Fight is always the biggest, often the worst. Having hit some 180+ player fights lately, the time has come to implement Pre Warps. In short, before a battle starts, you can warp to the fight so that ultimately two major things can happen:

1) You, the player, can load chunks, get a feel for the battlezone, jump around with your friends and hype up for the battle. Often many players are warping to a fight with no idea what to do, or what things look like.

2) The server doesn't choke trying to simultaneously warp in and send a bajillion players chunks and whatnots. Instead, players can organically warp themselves in over a 5 minute window before the fight starts, making the server happier.

It's a win, win! Here's how it works:

• Once there are 5 minutes left before the fight starts, you will see the option to pre-warp to the fight. Once you have registered to warp, you can then simply click the Chorus Fruit item to warp out to the fight!
• You cannot return to your town/beacon once you pre-warp!
• There is a Pre-Warp Region, surrounding the TG/Inhib that extends a bit out beyond the building (indicated by a sphere of intermittent end rod particles):
  
  • You cannot leave this area until the fight starts.
  • You cannot fire any projectiles except Ender Pearls in this region.
  • You cannot tp outside of the region by pearling.
  • All players in the region have Warp Protection (aka no friendly fire)
• At precisely 1 minute left to the fight, the first warp will automatically be triggered.
  • This ensures both that players not pre-warped still get to the fight, but also ensure warp-based Inhibitor Modules still work (Rallying Charge, Golem Override, etc).
  • As a result Conquest Fights now truly begin at 0s, rather than a minute later since the warp has moved up a minute.
• All subsequent warps are like they always were; this is just for the first warp.

That's all! Go Forth and Pre-warp!

 

[Cryptite]

Item Signing!
Get your favorite Lokans to sign your stuff!

​

The hour is upon us! You may now sign items for players! Paired with this update is a change to the tracking and display of Foes Slain. These are now tracked appropriately as real data rather than parsed from the items themselves. Let's get into it!

• Ask a player (or yourself!) to sign your item with /sign <player>.
  • Costs 100 Orbs for the player requesting the signature.
  • You can only do this near the player, within your town, or within a sanctuary.
  • Almost all blocks/items are signable. The ones that aren't are probably subject to change/addition over time.
    • This includes, like, soulbound stuff too if you wanna, idk.
  • Both players must confirm the signature... for safety!
• Signature colors are based on the Generation of the Player. The older the player, more "epic" (per our rarity color system) it is colored. But beauty is in the eye of the Mineperson I guess.
• There is now a Reserved Bottom Section Items which cannot be modified by players. This new area is where foes slain and signatures (and perhaps future things) will go:
  
• Signatures (and foes slain, of course) will automatically update in the case of either a player's name change or a generational color change (rare, of course; only happens when new gens are added).
• You can only have one signature on an item at a time. You'll be warned about stomping over the old one if you wish to change who's signed it.
• There is a new setting in /profile to toggle signature requests.
• This feature comes with 16 New Achievements! Good luck!
  • Players (especially older generation ones) have free will on whether they will, or won't sign your things or make you do stuff to gain their revered signature...
• Foes Slain are now tracked properly and will survive things like /lore clear.

We are aware that at the moment /lore is not working well with items. There was a migration to newer and more modern data storage format for lored items and it has caused a few issues here and there. It is being worked on (but so is the web-tool for ez lore editing, so whichever comes first).

Ok Go Forth!
❖ Signed by Cryptite

 

[Cryptite]

A part 2 to some Lore Changes!
Because.​

One cool NEW feature and one highly REQUESTED feature and one not-that-much-requested-but-makes-sense change!

Change the color of your item's Stat Tracking
Theme up that Stat Track with your Very Blue (or whatever) sword


​

We noticed quite a few players have very color-specific theming to their lored items that clash with the DARK_AQUA color of all Stat Tracking. So, we decided you can just change that color however you like! Use /lore stcolor to pick any of the 16 Legacy MC colors to use as the colored ST text. The command will provide all possible colors and you can click them to command-suggest them in chat. This is specific to each item and is not global to your account (like all stats tracked are). you can have 2 ST swords, one gold, one purple, etc.

Delete Lore Lines
​

You're no longer required to /lore clear to start fresh on an item. Just /lore delete <line> to delete and remove that line of lore. That's, uh, all it does.

Removing the Empty Space
Not everybody likes newlines!
​

Because Lore Swords are already pretty dense, we have decided to remove the forced-newline that happens before the "Bottom Bits" (Stat Track or the bottom foes slain/signature). You are welcome, if you have a lored sword, to use /lore line # space to add a blank link there if you'd like, but some people have pretty condensed items without spacing and the forced-newline was breaking their lore aesthetic.

Have funsies!!

 

[Cryptite]

Zyre is out!
The Isle of Murder! Enjoy this 8k render of the isle in all its glory.

​

Welcome to Zyre, Loka's all-new Island of Murder. Fight, flee, kite, fish, team, disrespect, hunt! Whatever you're into (except invis), Zyre's the place!

Created to offset the inadvertently legendary Loka End Ganks, Zyre is an isle without some of the shenanigans the community has loudly protested. The isle serves the purpose of being the Ultimate regular-pvp landmass. Add a little bit of intrigue, a ton of achievements, and some basic mechanics and we proudly present Zyre! As of this update, The End is now a Yellow Wilderness (KoD like the Nether).

How to go!
A new Dropship near the End Tower in spawn!
​

• Head to the hills over the Museum where the The End Airship Tower is. Take the steam jump up to the top and head over to the new Airship Dock.
• Hover over the Item Frame Map to choose (right-click) between dropping at one of 9 unique zones on Zyre!
• Prefer chaos? Don't choose a drop point and get on the boat. You'll get random-dropped!
• You must have a full diamond set and a diamond sword to go to Zyre!
  • You have to put some skin in the game to visit the isle. No free tours!
  • Keep on Death gear is not allowed!
• Like with Proving Grounds, you get one free fall-damage when you jump/pearl off the dropship.
• Dropships float well off the ground so you have a little bit of time to consider where to drop/pearl.
• Once you arrive on Zyre, you cannot stay on the dropship to return back to spawn!
  • Once you're there, the only way out is an escape ship or death!

How to leave
Get to the escape ship!
​

In order to add some intrigue, there is no single, fixed sanctuary dock region like the rest of Loka. The point is to go and fight. Having a simple dock for everybody to hang out at all day just recreates The End and defeats the purpose of the isle. As a result:

• There are 9 Escape Ships found throughout the isle, but only one is active at a time.
• The exit Airship rotates randomly every 10m to one of the possible locations.
• The Airship will warn when it’s about to move, not telling you where it will move to until it’s switched ports.
• Much like other boats, you cannot escape the isle while combat tagged. If you are out of combat, there is a small sanctuary only on the deck of the airship itself.
• There is a world-wide Compass in your Boss Bar which shows you directions as well as a permanent indicator of where the exit ship is.

The Mechanics Breakdown​

• Full Red-tag FFA PVP Island
• Over 70+ new achievements (and a lot of hidden ones too!)
• Rivina-style potion and pearl refunding.
  • Armor, potions, and pearls all drop REGARDLESS of their refunding properties.
  • Choose to have your resources returned to your Personal Escrow (the default), or your Town Storage (setting in /profile)
• The Ocean (Sea of Vanquish) is Corrupted (same as infested tiles).
  • There is no kiting out into the water for shenanigans, you will dissolve!
• Invisibility Potions and Elytras are COMPLETELY DISABLED on the Gank isle.
  • Landscape traversal like our ancestors once did.
• No boats or TnT Minecarts can be placed on the Gank Isle.
• Many of the same placeable blocks forbidden in Conquest are also forbidden here.
• Town chests are not allowed. Ender chests are but with limitations (see next).
• All gear (weapons, armor, tools) on you when you arrive is tagged as Unstable.
  • This is to prevent any cheese of trying to safely deposit gear into your echest for easy extraction.
• Players have permanent, infinite Fire Resistance on Zyre.
  • It's just a pain, and also means you're not at a disadvantage against those with Firestones.
• Cannot pearl onto dropships (not to be confused with escape ships).
• All Gear/Weapons dropped on the isle is tagged by who dropped them! Useful for achievements, also for bragging!
• Radar Powerup - See your 5 nearest enemies on your compass
  • Helpful for finding people who do not wish to be found
• Month-long stat tracking for Kills/Deaths/Streaks (and more in the future).
  • At the end of each Month (same as conquest cycle), we'll send you a mail of your monthly stats on the isle!
• Works great with parties! See below!

Also introducing Parties!
Group up with your friends, tackle challenges together!
​

It's a simple feature, but we wanted players to be able to individually party up to head to Zyre. We know there are lots of sub-groups of friends in the great Towns and Alliances of Loka and what better than a standalone group feature to organize and strategize with your friends

• Join a party, or add members to your party with /party add.
• Once you join a party, you're automatically added to Party Chat (/ch pt).
  • You can toggle off this default behavior in /profile
• You may toggle off the sidebar HUD if you'd like with /party hud.
  • The HUD shows where your party members are or what they're doing!
• Parties must have a leader, and only the leader can invite other players.
  • You can transfer leader with /party leader
• On Zyre, up to 5 of your nearest party members are shown on the compass.
• Short and sweet! Perhaps this feature could be fleshed out a bit more but it works for now!
  • The intent is that Parties can be how you queue for group adventures/pvp/battlegrounds, etc. But that'll be awhile.

Ok that's it! Go gank!
-Crypt

 

[Cryptite]

Town Vendors and Logging
Two of our most requested features for, like, ever, man
​

At long last, we have implemented Town Vendors on Loka! Town owners, or town members with the appropriate permissions can now create their own Vendors (just like are found at spawn). With the ability to buy and sell any item they choose, Towns are now able to create systems to their liking to sell/buy all kinds of things from grinding mats, rare items, or whatever they choose!

Town Vendors
Create your own Town Economy!
​

• Create up to 2 Town Vendors in your town.
  • The ability to create more will be unlocked in a future Town Progression Update
  • Two new Town Perms for Vendor use:
    • EDIT_VENDOR: Control who can create/edit Vendors
    • ACCESS_VENDOR: Control who can view Vendors at all
• Use /town vendor to create, edit, move, and delete your vendors.
  • However you can shift-right-click a Vendor if you have perms to instantly enter its editing mode.
• Each Town Vendor can have up to 24 Total Sales in their overall inventory.
• Freely create Folders in the GUI where you can organize your sales into different categories as desired.
• Upon creating a new Vendor, a Biome/Continent-specific Skin will be given to your new Vendor.
  • However, you have the ability to choose from any continental skin available. So you're not restricted to a Desert Skin if you'd rather have a Jungle/Savannah skin instead.
• Create Sales for your that allow them to trade from a few sale types:
  • Regular Minecraft Item - You will be required to provide the Stock for the vendor.
    • Have the NPC sell
  • Prestige - Town Prestige (/town prestige). This currency is intangible and can be used however you'd like in your town.
    • We have made a change to the Tab List in removing the Achievement Points number and instead replacing it with your Town Prestige (if applicable)
    • Prestige is now an Aqua Star:
    • Don't forget you can manage Prestige for your town members with /town prestige
  • Shards - Sell whatever you'd like for the price of shards.
• Provide numeric limits to your sales:
  • By default you must stock your item/shard sales so the items exist for players to buy. However, there are two other limits you may place:
  • Per-Player Total - Define a total number of a sale that a player can buy (Up to 5, for example)
  • Absolute Total - Define a total number that can ever be bought by any players.
    • As an example you could combine this with Per-Player and make a Vendor who will only sell a max of 1 per player, but up to 5 total and then it's just up to the first 5 players to buy the sale.
• Add a Description to a Sale (with the usual color code inputs) to provide more information, lore, text about a specific sale.
• Navigate and Edit your Sales quickly with a number of shortcuts and quality of life features:
  • Shift-click an item in your inventory when in Edit Mode to instantly create a sale for that specific item.
  • Shift-click a Sale that exists to auto-stock the sale with as much as you have in your inventory.
  • Free-Rearrange - Enter this mode to rearrange your Sales to your liking. This includes the ability to drop sales into folders and out of folders as well:
    View attachment VendorRearranging.mp4

Town Audit Logging
See all the edits your town owners, and leaders have made​

• All towns now have a #townlog Discord Channel.
• Every (or most so far) edit made to your town will show up in this channel so you can have an easily-readable and searchable place to find out who is making what changes in your town.
• This includes everything from:
  • Member changes
  • Zone changes
  • Alignment changes
  • Pretty much almost everything and we're still adding things here and there that we forgot or are requested.
• Town Vendor Purchases by players also will show up in #townlog.
  • The purchases will be rolled up into a message that represents everything they have bought in the last 30s or so:

Ok that's pretty much it! Expect us to tweak things for a few days as we monitor bugs and polish the system even further. It's our first Keystone Feature launch in a long while, hence not having used this thread for awhile, but this is perfect use for it.

Sell Forth!

 

[Cryptite]

March Conquest Update
Mutators, mutators, mutators!​

Conquest has needed some freshening up for quite awhile now and after beefing up many of our other Loka Systems, we were happy to get back to raw ideas and seeing what we could do to shake up the meta of how Conquest Battles play out. As a result we are introducing the new Battle Mutators feature in which Conquest Fights can have their rules changed (a little, or a lot) in order to make flights play out a bit differently. Thanks for the tons of ideas everybody gave us throughout the past month. We're excited to see these in action. Okay, here's how they work:

• Every week on Wednesday, Mutators will be randomly assigned to Owned Territories on Continents only
  • The final Wednesday before the end of the month, all Mutators will be cleared so the final days of the Month are mutator-free to ensure "fairest possible battles for Caps"
  • So, no Mutators on Rivina/Balak
• Mutators are weighted based on a variety of rules, some affect Water-only tiles, some can be continent specific, etc.
• Mutators are visible on the Loka Map on the website.
  • You can see what Mutators are on which territories so you can decide/strategize on placing there and how to deal with it if desired.
• A Mutator will be rolled for a neutral territory if it becomes captured.

So, what are the Mutators then? Below is the current exhaustive list of all possible mutators in no particular order separated (roughly) by their impact on the fight as a whole. There are some concepts that require explanation that are referenced below:

• Empowered Modules - Each Inhib/TGen module will have an empowered state where it's stronger/more effective, etc.
• Cardinal Directions - Where the TGen and Inhib represent "North/South on a compass', two additional points on a compass are used to place structures, monsters, whatever (East and West). Mag made this legendary art to explain (squares are inhib/tgen, circles are "other points"):
  
  

Ok here's the list of em all! Enjoy!

Light Mechanic Change​

• Great Wall of Conquest: Walls appear cutting the battlefield in half randomly during the fight. Randomly picks between cutting battlefield on x or z axis. The wall is impassible (bedrock to sky limit)
• Robin Hood: Bows do double damage (not crossbows)
• Anonymity: Player nametags are hidden and everybody has the same skin.
• Corruption: A random quarter of the battlefield becomes corrupted dealing damage to anyone who enters. Changes every so often
• Snow Storm: Randomly a 20-second countdown starts, and everyone has to take shelter before it hits 0 or you take major damage and are slowed.
• Stuck in the Mud: A huge patch (or patches) of mud in the middle of the battlefield. If you step in it you are trapped in the area and cannot leave for 15 seconds. While inside the mud area, you have slow II & pearl block.
• Spectral: Spectral module effect applies to both sides.
• Vicious Attack: All golems have Vicious Attack.
• Debilitating Aura: All golems have Debilitating Aura.
• Zoomies: Everyone has speed II and cannot be slowed by modules or debuffs.
• Crystal Healing: End crystals now reapply Speed and Strength Buff durations as well as heal players, instead of damaging them.
• Better Together: If you have 4 or more teammates within 15 blocks of you gain regeneration II and resistance I. (or no knockback)
• Lone Wolf: If you have no teammate within 30 blocks, you gain Strength III
• The Great Equalizer: Every hit is a critical hit.
• Spider's Web: Spiders spawn on tiles and randomly place cobwebs behind them.
• Pearl Blocked: Nobody can pearl.
• Pointless Currency: Everyone who dies drops an Opyc.
• Seeping Corruption: Water in the tile becomes corrupted. (Only on water tiles)
• Blood Mine: A landmine is placed wherever a player dies.
• Handicap: Every time you get a kill you lose 1 max heart (down to 3 min). For every death you gain 1 max hearts (up to 20 max)
• Shulkerless: You cannot place Shulkers in the BZ, but now on death you drop all potions in your inventory.
• Free Fight: Pots/AI’s,etc are refunded throughout the fight just like any regular Rivina fight.
• Where’s Your Head At: If a player is beheaded (increased behead chance?) a powerful zombie with their head spawns in their place (no head is dropped) Zombie fights for one of the teams (the one who got kill?).
• Bola Bonanza: Webbed Bolas apply slow II (db effect) and bleed for duration of pearl cooldown.
• Creep: Players who die drop permanent sculk (3r radius ish) which gives you darkness when you stand on it.

Medium Mechanic Change​

• Air Support: Arrow shots (with a cooldown) from elytras explode on contact with blocks and players and do high damage (basically VotA's explosive arrow ).
• Empowered Modules: All modules are empowered.
• Underdog: If you have fewer lamps than the enemy, your modules become empowered and your golems become Buffed.
• Small Army: Fight is capped to 25 players per side.

Large Mechanic Change​

• Soul Link: 2 teammates share a health pool (40hp/20 hearts). If one dies they both do. On warp, those warping in get linked to a new player. Your teammate has spectral to just you.
• Capture the Flag: Get charges by killing your own golems and then run to the enemy lamps to overload. While a flag carrier (have a charge), you do not take knockback, have Slow I, and cannot pearl. Charges last longer as a result.
• Mineman Charged: Players who die give charges. There is one (maybe more) neutral Golem in the middle of the battle zone as a backup for getting charges.
• Assassinate: Upon warping in, you have a randomly assigned Enemy Target (displayed on scoreboard, and spectral'd only to you). If you kill them a charge is auto-applied to a random enemy lamp.
• The Cursed Witch: Each team has a powerful Witch they have to defend which spawns at the other two cardinal directions to structures. If you kill the enemy Witch you lock down enemy modules for 4 mins. (mob respawns once buff wears off)
• Offense is the best Defense: 2 capturable points at the other two cardinal directions to structures that have a neutral state too. If you control 1 you get empowered modules, if you control both your structure is invulnerable to damage.
• Piggy Banks: Pigs roam around the battlefield and drop 1 coin on death (unstable soulbound bag). If you die you drop your coins. In the middle of the BZ is a deposit point for coins. While standing near the point, you will periodically deposit coins (so you can be interrupted by fighting, etc). Once your side has enough coins deposited, friendly Illagers spawn around the enemy structure to help you attack it.
• Siege Weapons: Three capture points on map. Two at the other two cardinal directions to structures and one in the middle. If you control one of the cardinal direction points it will target the enemy structure but will only deal damage if you control the middle point. Damage will slowly reduce a lamps health at random.
• The Dark Dimension: There is a Portal in middle of BZ that leads to a dark (instanced) version of the fight. Within either instance of the fight, the buildings/golems are identical but the players in them are unique. You must choose which reality to fight or defend in!
• Tower Defense: There are 2 capturable points at the other two cardinal directions to structures. Each has a TnT tower that act like 4 TnT modules in one. If your side captures it, it will fire at the enemy. (might do variations of this with laser, slowness lingering, etc)

Chaos Mutators​

• TnT Tag: At the start of the fight someone is randomly chosen and TnT is put on their head with an accompanying timer. If they melee hit another player it is passed to them and when the timer runs out whoever has it at that time blows up killing them and damaging those around them. A new TnT then spawns on someone.
• Lightning Storm: A spot on the battlefield is targeted with lighting and player have 10 seconds to stand close to it. When it strikes all players within small radius are randomly smitten, which either deals large damage (8 hearts) or empowers them (fully heal, gain 5 absorption hearts, strength 2, speed 2, regeneration I)
• GOAT: Goats spawn all over the battlefield and aggressively try to charge at and knockback players.
• Landfill: Randomly gravel will fall from the sky onto random areas in the tile, piling up in to mounds.
• Bouncy Battlefield: Jump pads randomly spawn around the battle zone.

And there you have it! We're very excited to see how these Mutators play out.

Go Forth!

 

[Cryptite]

June Conquest Update
Achievements, achievements, achievements, achievements​

There isn't a ton to report for what's coming in June. We do have plans to have a SOTS soon so we can catch everyone up on our current roadmap for the future. In the meantime, a couple things to note for next month's Conquest Cycle. Let's get into it!

Achievements coming, bigly.
As we've been teasing with the temporary VC channel, we are finally starting to implement our massive backlog of Achievements that have been waiting in the wings to be implemented.

• In the Conquest category alone there are at least 200 new achievements coming!
  • Some of these are retroactive because they involve statistics we have been tracking for a long time. Expect a lot of achievement spam on Wednesday when this update goes out!
• The Achievements GUI has also been updated a bit to support subcategories as we begin to add our bunches of achievements.
• There are also achievements in other categories coming and we will likely just be implementing chunks of achievements for the foreseeable future when possible.
• NOTE: While there are some achievements that will be retroactively applied on login, we have not been tracking every stat/thing that the new achievements called for. So there are going to be many achievements that you will have to do even if you have done "the thing" before.

Infested Territory Changes
We've been collecting data over the past months and armed with this knowledge there are changes we want to implement for balance/intrigue reasons:

• We are reducing the number of Yellow Infested Territories per-continent from 5 -> 3.
  • 88% of all loot gotten from Infested territories come from Red Infested, so not only are there too many yellows everywhere, they are rarely used and due to the logic around randomizing them, they wind up in similar places a lot. So this allows more room for infested territories to be placed as well.
• We are reducing the number of Red Infested Territories from 1 per continent, to 1 world-wide.
  • Red Infested territories are meant to be greater risk, greater reward, and while there are a lot of players who go to Conquest there are not a ton of grinders in a town/alliance. Between the choice of infested territories, and the international community; players are able to still reasonably "safely" grind red infested, when the entire reason they're red is to make them a more hostile pvp environment.
  • As a result we are changing the randomizing to only place 1 red infested in the entire world, randomly chosen between the continents. So, rather than adjust the loot drops for red, which some players feel is too strong (and some too weak), we felt that only 1 infested would increase the spice-level of grinding there and then keep an eye on the balance.

There are still plans to continue to add the rest of the Mutators but some of that has been pushed aside to address some other issues.

Ok Go Forth!

 

[Cryptite]

1.20.1
Nice easy update!

​

Loka has officially updated to Minecraft 1.20.1. For a full breakdown of the whole patch, read: https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Java_Edition_1.20

If you like modpacks, @virfy has done great work putting together a Loka Modpack!

Here's a quick breakdown of what is, and isn't available from new patch on Loka:

What's Available

• All blocks that are craftable by default should be generally available on Loka. This generally includes:
  • Bamboo building blocks
  • Hanging signs
  • Chiseled Bookshelves
  • etc
• Camels can be found in the Desert of Garama
• Sniffers can be found in the Marred Steppes of Balak

What's not (yet) Available

• Armor Trims (Smithing Templates)
  • These will be found by doing various things on Loka like exploring Ruins, etc.
• Cherry Tree Blocks
  • These will be found in a New Biome coming at some point in the future.
• Archeology Things
  • TBD where they're going, maybe somewhat in ruins cause why not.

As always, we'll provide updates about the remaining 1.20 features as they are added.

Go Forth!

 

[Cryptite]

Master Seals
Protect your IP. Sell your wares!
​

Announcing a simple new Item, the Master Seal! Used to make Maps and Books Uncraftable, which blocks them being copied by other players, or used in any crafting sense.

• Use it like an Ancient Ingot. Right-Click to pick it up, Left-Click over a Filled Map or a Written Book to seal it, making it Uncraftable.
• Master Seals are sold by Askil in the Library for 320 shards.
• Get an achievement
• Protect your stuff!
• Sell your stuff!
• ...
• Profit!

Go Forth!

 

[Cryptite]

1.20.4, Town Cost/Transfer Update​

With the 1.20.4 update also come the Town Cost/Transfer changes. Few things worth mentioning, hence the forum post so here we go!

• We have not been historically tracking when players joined towns and have no good way to look that up retroactively. As such, all town members' join dates were set the following way:
  • All players were set by default as having joined their town as of December 11, 2023.
  • If a member was last online before that date, we use last joined date instead.
• The Tax Manipulation Capital Policy values have been nerfed a little (quite op!):
  • Neutral: Your alliance pays 30% -> 20% less upkeep.
  • Oppressive: Every town on the continent that is not in the alliance pays 30% -> 20% taxes to the capital.
• We have removed the sound effect for entering a new zone. Just too spammy. The /setting for this was also removed.

 

[Cryptite]

February Conquest Update​

Not much in the way of updates for this cycle but since it is tradition to have it as a forum post, here's a breakdown:

Core Attacks
Players too good at not dying in Cores​

• Living Bomb (Core attack) damage has been increased by 33%
• Lava floor final hit (Core Attack) damage has been increased by 13%

The damage on these is a bit less than we would like, especially considering how "pro" players have gotten predicting Core damage. Even in the throes of a "swarm the core" type moment at the end of a very close battle with attackers and defenders in the core room, players would be able to survive these attacks even while taking damage from lots of sources.

We want these to be dangerous attacks that players must deal with, and presently players are able to fully tank both attacks with ease. Further, it's fairly well accepted that once the Core is open in a fight, the defenders are very likely to lose. So anyway, we buffed em.

Conquest Locks
Now with World Locks!​

We wanted to take some time to clarify some of the shenanigans that happened this month with conquest locks. So here's what happened:

We had always intended to have Alliance Locks, and while we had not yet fully implemented the logic for them, we had already been tracking Alliance Locks.

When Frostholme first left Sigma League, its members suddenly had no lock and thus were able to fight elsewhere. Players raised these concerns to us immediately and because we already had in the data that they were locked to Sigma League, we were able to hotfix the logic to check their Alliance Lock. This explains why we were able to "fix their locks the first time".

At this point, the system was working as fully designed (at the time). If you had a conquest lock and both your town AND alliance were deleted, you became a free agent and could fight wherever you wanted. When the Alliance of Sigma League was deleted and their players were then able to fight elsewhere, this was considered "by design" and is why we did not agree to try to hotfix those players' locks.

However we recognize this is potential cheese and as such, we are introducing a third (and by golly hopefully final) World Lock. When you lock to a town, you will actually get three locks at once:

• Town lock
• Alliance lock (if applicable)
• World Lock (the continent the town lives on).

The idea is that if the same behavior happens again (town and alliance deleted), you are at least limited to fighting on your original Lock Continent and thus are not able to go abroad to other continents to fight. This also helps with newer players who lock to towns and then have their owners delete on them, bricking their locks.

There is a final extra addition which is that players will not be able to have "no locks" where they can fight wherever they want. If you have lock to a dead town AND alliance (or to a town with no alliance), you will be prompted to lock again to the next town you fight for. Basically you should never be able to /find a player and see no lock on them unless it's because they truly haven't locked yet.

Lastly, this is a good time to remind folks that new players (during their first month on the server) are not subject to Conquest Locks. Cause it'd be really lame to get locked in your first fight on the whole server.

Hopefully this resolves final goofiness with Conquest Locks.

Ok Go Forth!

 

[Cryptite]

Announcing the Cherry Grove
The first new habitable land in years!

Mojang finally gave us Cherry Plant Stuff! Our players have only been asking about for about 10 years and we now have a whole biome dedicated to the beautiful foliage. So welcome to the Cherry Grove, a large new landmass found on the southwestern side of Kalros!

Featuring:

• 16 new habitable Territories
  • 1 Moor territory has passed onto the next life to make room
  • Unfortunately, the ruins of Nerd Nation and Falias will be entirely lost to the update. Please go visit them while you have a chance!
• All the blocks from the Cherry Grove Biome!
• Mobs:
  • Pandas
  • Sheep
  • Chickens
• Flowers:
  • Lily of the Valley
  • Peony
  • Azure Bluet
• Restricted Resources:
  • Bamboo
  • Cherry Wood/Leaves
  • Cherry Petals

Launch Cadence
Since this is a new set of territories, we will be releasing the Cherry Grove in two phases to allow players time both to explore the territories, and also attempt to plan ahead for where they might want to settle.

Initial Exploration
Releases May 20th.

Players will be able to access and explore the biome but will not be able to setup new towns or take territories.

Available for Conquest/Town creation
Releases May 24th at 2pm server

Right on the dot at 2pm server, players will be allowed to place towns and take territories. We have chosen this time as it represents the "most" peak time that US/EU players have to be online. Whatever shenanigans players choose to ensure they can place towns is considered Fair Game. Be there or be square!

We're very excited to finally have some new land for you all to enjoy and build on. Good luck and enjoy the fresh new beautiful biome!

Go Forth!

 

[Cryptite]

Announcing the Mangrove Forest!
Out with the Marsh, in with the Mangrove!
​

Well, we kept accidentally adding it to TGen modding mats, so I guess we needed to actually release the Mangrove biome...

Replacing the very simple Marsh biome on the eastern shores of Ascalon, the dense Mangrove forest is the hot new place to get lost in and maybe settle a town! Dense mangrove trees and swamp-like terrain as far as the eye can see, the Mangrove Forest is the perfect place to get lost or settle a town that you want hidden away from the otherwise open and spacious terrain that makes up much of the rest of Ascalon. What will your story in the Mangrove Forest be?



Featuring:

• 16 total Territories
  • Several Plains and Birch Forest territories were absorbed into the Mangrove Forest
  • We will do our best to preserve some ruins to the best of our ability, but do take this time to explore what's around in the Marsh while it's still there!
• All the blocks from the Mangrove Biome!
• Cenotes!
  
  
• Mangrove Resources are largely the same as the Marsh was
• Mobs:
  • Axolotls
  • Frogs
• Restricted Resources:
  • Mangrove Materials

Launch Cadence
Like with the Cherry Grove, and likely how we'll handle all biome updates from now on, we will be releasing Mangrove in two phases to allow players time both to explore the territories, and also attempt to plan ahead for where they might want to settle.

Initial Exploration
Land update: Friday November 8th (shooting for morning).

Players will be able to access and explore the biome but will not be able to setup new towns or take territories.

Available for Conquest/Town creation
Release: Sunday November 10th at 2pm server.

Right on the dot at 2pm server, players will be allowed to place towns and take territories. We have chosen this time as it represents the "most" peak time that US/EU players have to be online. Whatever shenanigans players choose to ensure they can place towns is considered Fair Game. Be there or be square!

We're very excited to have some new land for you all to enjoy and build on. Good luck and enjoy the fresh new beautiful biome!

Go Forth!

 

[Cryptite]

The 1.21.3 Update
Major updates all across Minecraft, but mostly technical.​

Updating from 1.20.4 -> 1.21.3 (and not too far from now, 1.21.4) adds pretty much a ton of things to every facet of Minecraft across the board. New building blocks, new mobs, new biomes, updated potion physics, major technical changes under the hood (ton of work to update Loka, but will allow us to do incredible things in the future), performance improvements both to clients and the server (improved chunkloading, fps, memory usage, etc).

It's a step in the right direction again from Mojang. I won't enumerate all of the Minecraft changes, you can check those out on the Minecraft Wiki. But here's what to know for Loka:

Mobs​

• Armadillos can be found on Garama in:
  • Savanna
  • Desert
  • Mesa
• Bogged can be found in:
  • Mangrove Forest
  • Swamp
• Wolves (variants)
  We have distributed the many variants of wolves across Kalros and Garama to make finding and collecting them more FUN and INTERACTIVE.
  • 
    Kalros
    • Pale - Taiga
    • Black - Roofed Forest
    • Snowy- Cherry Grove
    • Ashen - Ice Taiga, Ice Wastes, Ice Mountains
    • Woods - Moor
    • Chestnut - Mega Taiga
  • 
    Garama
    • Rusty - Ancient Jungle
    • Spotted - Savanna
    • Striped - Mesa
• The new baby versions of the below mobs should just show up automatically
  • Dolphins
  • Glow Squid
  • Squid
  • Salmon
• Other mobs like the Breeze, etc will come in later updates.

Blocks
We have made no changes to these. So like normal, if they are craftable by default then they are available. If they cannot be found yet, then they will be added in future Loka updates.

Biomes
The Pale Garden will be added in a later update, same with Trial Dungeons or whatever and all that

Misc

• Bundles will behave like other containers/shulkers/etc:
  • You cannot insert Soulbound items, Quest items, etc into bundles.
  • Otherwise, go nuts!
• The Crafter block should just function as normal, and should not permit any crafting that can't otherwise be done by players. Pls don't lag us all to death
• We have updated our Dynmap!
  • We swapped out the old default dynmap plugin icons with some custom Loka ones!
  • These icons will also start to show up in-game to build consistency with the map.
  • We may still do further passes on these in the future to help distinguish between the icons.
• We no longer use the old industry-standard Holographic Displays plugin, and now use our own implementation of Display Entities (we already use this all over Loka).
  • This affords us the many cool features of Displays which you will slowly see around Loka.
  • Probably one of the first noticeable updates will be NPCs now have "subtitle" nametags!
    • Maybe we even do it on players one day...
• Slimes spawned by the Oozing effect will not drop loot.
• (cannot be crafted anyway, but) The Mace and other new stuff will be added, discussed, and thought about later (we haven't even considered it yet).

There's too much else to get granular about but I may still retroactively update this post if needed.

See you in the new version!