Broken Lands is now live! |
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GM Rikoo
Moderator Group Community & PR Manager Joined: 28 Mar 2014 Location: Mars Status: Offline Points: 1233 |
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Posted: 05 Jun 2014 at 21:54 |
BROKEN LANDS LIVE!
As you are aware, we have been working to open the gates to the Broken Lands, the new landmass directly to the south of Elgea, the current continent. Not only does this new landmass double the size of the map, but it introduces many new terrain types, NPCs and opportunities for expansion. The good news is that your wait is over! The Broken Lands are open for business. The bad news? The Broken Lands are no joke. You'll need to bring your best game to make it down there. As many of you have asked or as many of you might ask in the future: yes, we did away with the PvP-free zones. We can discuss it more in-depth in the future, but for now it's safe to say that we decided that the combat-free zones were not really worth the extended time it takes to create them, were broadly unnecessary, and did not fit within the free-for-all spirit of the rest of the game. We are also keeping the current account limits in place. That means 10 cities per account (and only 2 accounts per player!) which translates to the need for exodus, tenaril or settling a new city in the new land. If you want to get there, it might be tough on you to do so - but it may also be very worthwhile! We hope you enjoy the new area! We have been working very hard to get it to you in a proper way, and we can't wait to sit back and watch as all of your caravans make their way into the new land! Good luck. You'll need it, GM Rikoo |
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Illyriad Community Manager / Public Relations / community@illyriad.co.uk
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GM Stormcrow
Moderator Group GM Joined: 23 Feb 2010 Location: Illyria Status: Offline Points: 3926 |
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Hi everyone,
As GM Rikoo has said - Broken Lands is now live! A bunch of Broken Lands (BL) updates and notes; please bear with a slightly longer post than usual. It might even be informative! Broken Lands Factions All the BL factions are now loaded in and merged onto the Factions page. You can see the list of Factions here, and we've added a column indicating whether a Faction is BL-based, Elgea-based, or on both lists (in the case of the Windseekers and the Illyriad Trade Council), though there are, ofc, linkages between (eg Tal and the Tal Colonies). Whilst we were in the Faction page, we also tidied it up to include hub images, and an actual working Standing graph with number that shows you exactly where you and your alliance currently stand with a faction. Please bear in mind that the Factions in the Broken Lands aren't generally as friendly as the Factions in Elgea, as they are still largely recovering from The Sundering. I strongly recommend that players looking to settle in the Broken Lands check their nearby hubs to ensure that their default Racial Standing with the owning Faction isn't too low for them to (eg) trade at Standing -35 or below. Generally, I would recommend that players read the Faction Lore for the Broken Lands factions anyway. They're a great read, and they give many indications of not only what's happened and what the current situation is, but also the way future Faction interactions, quests and story arcs are likely to proceed. Please note that I have not yet loaded in the default (initial seed) BL inter-faction relationships (ie relationships between the Factions themselves) as this currently has no impact on players, and is still a work in progress in BL. As an aside, the Elgea faction "Keepers of the Golden Fields" has been renamed to the slightly more poetic "Keepers of Golden Fields". It also, happily, fits better within width limits. Broken Lands Hubs All the Hubs are now on the map, with their Hub Description text, and Faction assignments. You can see their locations either on the Factions page, or on the Strategic Map if you enable the Options -> Factions On/Off toggle. As mentioned above, please do check your Racial Standing with the Faction Hub before you choose to settle near it. You might not be able to trade there initially, and there is currently no mechanism for altering default Racial Faction Standings. Seeding of Resources All resources have now been seeded on the Broken Lands map. That's all the Wood, Clay, Iron, Stone & Food; and all the herbs, minerals etc. We've also seeded the Lochs, Lakes & Tarns, as that's what we're moving onto (after counter-claiming sovereignty) post this release. Please note that the brackish coastline around Calumnex is Dead Water, and is intentionally incapable of supporting natural life. Yes, that's a deliberate use of spooky italics. Italics are clearly spooky by default. When used judiciously. 30+ New Terrain Types There are a large number of new terrain types. Most are flavour graphics to add to the Broken Lands experience (for example, Lighthouses, Fisherman's Huts etc) that dot the coast as replacement NPC squares for Coastline. A Fisherman's Hut, Tiki pole, and a Crumbling Lighthouse on the coast of Lapo A Lua There is also, however, a new Overall Terrain type (for combat purposes) that specifically occupies the area surrounding Omen in Calumnex, the epicenter of "The Sundering". This terrain type is basically Obsidian - Volcanic lava glass and magma plains; and it's nasty stuff. If it isn't razor sharp glass trying to cut your fingers to shreds, it's probably oozing lava beneath a thin crust, ready to melt your legs into sinuous slag. You probably don't want to live too close to Omen, unless you really hate having units. Or towns. As one can imagine, this is highly inhospitable terrain, and all units - especially heavy units - are very substantially penalised on this terrain, and more so in attack than defense. On the plus side, there's not that much of it on the map. There are also 2 new biome types, both for the terrain around The Sundering: Dead Waters &Warped Lands. Warped Lands are the Obsidian/lava mountains. Dead Waters is the biome for the nearby grey, brackish, foul water. Don't expect to fish in these. In fact, don't expect to survive if you settle near this. The region is called Calumnex for a reason, and the Tower was named Omen for a reason. Repairing unsightly terrain calumnies We've repaired a number of BL weirdness from the original fractal generation. The few unsiegable spots (settlable spots surrounded on 8 sides by impassable terrain) have gone, and we've also done a substantial tidy-up of singleton water squares that have repaired the slightly jagged coastline. BEFORE Unsightly pockets of fresh water cause your eyes to ironically weep salty tears of anguish AFTER Beautifully smooth coastlines cause your eyes to weep slightly-less-ironic salty tears of joy Minimaps Water & Terrain minimaps have now been added to the main World map for Broken Lands. One addition/change from Elgea (where Volcanoes were distributed randomly) is that the slightly more seriously Volcanic areas have been labelled in Red on the BL Terrain minimap. Town-to-town trade cross-continent We're not showing or permitting town-to-town trades between Elgea and Broken Lands. By this, I mean fulfilling resource trade orders directly from your town, cross-continent. We don't think most players who are offering direct (non-hub) trades from their towns want their caravans to be tied up for (potentially) weeks. You can, of course, send goods directly between the continents. In the fullness of time, I think allowing town trades to set a maximum trade distance might be the more flexible answer. Worldmap datafile For you data-literate technorati out there, the available-for-download datafile of the world map now shows the Broken Lands terrain on it, and those of you who use the datafiles should also get new copies of the terrain files, which contain the data on:
The worldmap datafile now updates overnight, every night, to reflect (eg) terraforming changes if you're insane enough to want to track that level of detail, and don't yet work at Illy MegaCorp. Please bear in mind that the file is large, by personal data standards:
... and if you open the file directly in your browser, it will crash your browser. The reason I'm not linking directly to the file from here is simply because lemming-people will click on it and then their computer will melt, and I don't want the inevitable flood of "omgbbq illy melt my comp 11eleventy-one!! ktnxbai" petitions. If you currently use the data file, you know where to find it. If you don't currently use it, but are happily familiar with XML data, downloading once (and subsequently handling and processing large amounts of data offline), scheduling cron jobs (or whatever the cool kids call it these days, with their fancy "COBOL" and their new-fangled International Business Machines FORTRAN 1401)... then you are certainly capable of finding the other posts explaining how to use the datafeeds we supply - and where they reside. We might look at providing a "change only" overnight file in the future; but that doesn't take away the necessity for a snapshot for new entrants to the "I am an ALGOL deity and the syntax of Lisp no longer brings me night-terrors" school of illy third-party programming. Or whatever it is that my Pathe newsreel instructs me - once I've finished threading the celluloid through my magic lantern - is really the "hip-ho, daddy-o" instruction set for today's automata. Ah, there's the Pan-Atlantic dirigible delivering the newscast now, huzzah! Please also *do not* link any distributed third party applications directly to this file; it'll rapidly turn up on our bandwidth reports and we'll be apoplectically unhappy. If you're the kind of person that really knows their way around Excel and have even recorded a Macro or two in the past, then - despite your unswerving belief that PivotTables are the answer to all data analysis - this path is *NOT* for you. Turn back now. Exodus / Tenaril / Settlers We've changed the code for Exodus / Tenaril / Settlers so that it works how it should - it's first-come, first-served. No longer can two towns move to the same location (which ends in complete weirdness). If there are settlers heading there, or an exodus heading there... you won't be able to Tenaril. If there is an Exodus to a location, you won't be able to send settlers etc. Basically, the first person to actually send settlers, or a city towards a location is the person who gets the spot. We haven't implemented the "exodus to hostile terrain = city destruction" code yet, and - no - we won't implement it retrospectively when we do. So you can still exodus/settle in safety. As an aside, during testing we also found (and killed) an ancient bug in Tenaril that prohibited anyone and everyone from using Tenaril to any square where either X = 0 or Y = 0. So, no one's been able to Tenaril to the Centrum axis across the whole map, ever. Who knew? Now fixed :) We also discovered that (after using Tenaril), players were forwarded to an old version of the World Map on which to see their city; this has now been fixed. Other Things
We'll be getting onto these as we go (Nature as a priority) but the main priorities going forward are instating the new "counter-claiming sovereignty" system and releasing Lochs, Lakes & Tarns. We hope you enjoy this substantial update to the game world. Of course, there may be some unanticipated teething problems with an update of this size. We have tested as much as we can, but please don't hesitate to report anything that looks awry - via Petition please. Many thanks, SC
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Aurordan
Postmaster Player Council - Ambassador Joined: 21 Sep 2011 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 982 |
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Looks cool. I'll be very exited in a month when my city gets down there...
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Rill
Postmaster General Player Council - Geographer Joined: 17 Jun 2011 Location: California Status: Offline Points: 7078 |
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So we should exodus now before they introduce the town-destroying thing ...
Overall, a MAJOR effort and very exciting times. Thank you to our awesome developers!
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GirlFromHell
Greenhorn Joined: 08 Feb 2013 Location: Underworld/Hell Status: Offline Points: 52 |
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~Hell_Girl_Rei / -Nyx-
Dovie'andi se tovya sagain. |
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jordigui
Wordsmith Joined: 20 Jun 2010 Status: Offline Points: 157 |
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Congratulations!
Are there new t2 resources in the Broken Lands or remain the ones in Elgea (i.e. trove, silversteel, toadcap fungus, sharproot)? When are we expecting NPCs to spwan? at 00:00? THanks |
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Rill
Postmaster General Player Council - Geographer Joined: 17 Jun 2011 Location: California Status: Offline Points: 7078 |
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Same resource types as in Elgea. Stormcrow said in chat that they are working on NPCs.
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GM Stormcrow
Moderator Group GM Joined: 23 Feb 2010 Location: Illyria Status: Offline Points: 3926 |
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Hi everyone,
I've had some questions about whether some of the NPC terrain squares in Broken Lands are supposed to be barren (ie no Wood, Clay, Iron, Stone or Food). An example of a square like this would be here: I've looked into this, and the answer is "Yes" - the NPC squares in BL have the same overall distribution as Elgea. You get the same phenomena in Elgea, just more rarely outside of Arctic and Desert terrain. For example: So, yes, this is intentional. Many thanks, SC Edited by GM Stormcrow - 06 Jun 2014 at 01:19 |
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geofrey
Postmaster General Joined: 31 May 2011 Status: Offline Points: 1013 |
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GM Stormcrow, can you finally squash the outrageous rumors that pathfinding and advanced ship speeds are not next on your list?
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Nesse
Forum Warrior Joined: 03 Oct 2010 Location: England Status: Offline Points: 406 |
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No, please let the rumors live! |
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Nesse(Dwarven Druids) and Odd (Fairy Road Authority)
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