Arcane Odyssey - Empires Update Patch Notes

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The Empires update for Arcane Odyssey has been released! This post outlines info for the coming updates, and goes over the major additions and fixes in this update. If you want to view all of the smaller changes and bug fixes, they can be found under the Patch Notes section of the game’s Trello board:

Patch notes p1
Patch notes p2
Patch notes p3
Patch notes p4
Patch notes p5
Patch notes p6
Patch notes p7

Additional credits:
galaga49 - Added tons of new items, helped add the defensive tiered structures to the building tool, helped fix bugs, helped add balancing changes, and added multiple new skills
HailFirz - Built 7 of the 9 new islands
SelloutJTN - Designed numerous new armor sets and characters added in this update
techlevel80 - Wrote some of the new dialog and findable notes located on the new islands
Astralworks - Modelled some of the new items
KingCryonical - Built Ierochoros, one of the new islands
Partcline - Edited/directed the trailer for this update ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6P65V3GzZKc )
Full game credits: Trello

Additions/Changes

  • Added the Building Tool, which is automatically given to you after you claim an island while being in a clan.

    • Selecting it lets you build numerous types of decorations, farms, defenses, and more, as well as save and load your builds on that specific island.
    • You can build using your own galleons or your clan’s treasury if you are a high enough rank
    • Co-leader+ ranks can save their builds to the Clan save slot, which can be loaded by anyone within the clan.
    • You can turn on Team Building to allow any clan member to build alongside you on your claimed island

  • Added Fort Castrum to the Bronze Sea, a Ravenna fortress that can be sieged by ships, and then invaded for rewards.

    • After breaking the island’s defenses with your ship, you can land on the island, which starts spawning waves of enemies. The amount and levels of the enemies both scale with how many players are doing the raid.
    • After surviving the waves, you can fight General Valerii, a miniboss with unique item drops.
    • After defeating him, you can claim your rewards from inside Fort Castrum’s keep, which is Modified Silver/Golden Chests. These have a random modifier and go in your inventory, and when clicked, give multiple items with the modifier of the chest. They can also be traded. You get more chests from the raid depending on how many players participated.

  • Added Makrinaos, the Assassin Syndicate base and criminal hideout of the Nimbus Sea

  • Added Shieldguard, the Grand Navy base of the Nimbus Sea

  • Added 1 new island to the Nimbus Sea.

  • Added 5 new islands to the Bronze Sea.

  • Some underwater structures in the Nimbus Sea now spawn up to 2x deeper than the sea floor layer.

    • Sharks and sea monsters that spawn in these structures will always be Giant variants
    • The chances of finding Silver and Golden chests are increased by up to 4x at the deepest possible structures.
    • Items obtained from chests in these deep underwater structures have a 20% chance of having the new Abyssal modifier, which alters the items’ appearance and gives it more Defense and Resistance.
    • These deep underwater structures require potions to be looted, as it is incredibly dark below the sea floor level and takes a while to swim down to.
    • Fully looting one of these underwater structure gives the Abyss Diver badge and title.
    • Sunken items have a 2x chance of being found in these depths. (1 in 1500 instead of 1 in 3000)

  • Added 2 new findable rare spells: Array (220 magic required), Cannon (80 magic required)

  • Added 1 new findable rare technique: Blitz (220 strength required)

  • Added a new Dual Bladed weapon skill: Soaring Eagle (90 base weapon stat required)

  • Added 3 new Dark Sea exclusive armor sets: Sophragos, Dromeas, and Diatrys

  • Added 2 new rare armor sets that can be obtained rarely from treasure charts: Lost Envoy and Lost Diplomat

  • Added an uncommon armor set that can be obtained rarely from treasure charts: Rusty

  • Added 27 new obtainable items in chests.

  • Revamped the Intensity stat, which now reduces the cooldown of spells/techniques/skills depending on how much of it you have.

  • Added new jewel secondary effects:

    • Potency Jewels (Potency Boost %) - Increases the potency of powerups (Aura spell/Focus technique), and increases the duration of potions that you consume or use. This effect can be applied to jewels by using Corroding reagents.
    • Affliction Jewels (Status Durations %) - Increases the duration of status effects applied by your attacks. This effect can be applied to jewels by using Poison reagents.

  • Added the first random-spawning miniboss to the Bronze Sea: Evander. He can spawn on islands or sailing at sea on his unique ship, and drops a unique armor set as well as a new strength weapon, the Colossal Greatsword, with its unique skill Colossal Cleave.

  • You can now reset your first or second magic by finding Hecate Essence in the Far Reaches of the Dark Sea.

    • This is displayed as a small cloud of glowing blue smoke, which prompts you to enter it when you go inside. A voice will speak to you, and allow you to choose which magic slot you want to reset and what you want to replace it with. After this, the blue smoke will dissipate.
    • Hecate Essence can be used any number of times as long as you find it again.

  • Revamped the Elysium server access system. When buying access, it teleports you into your own server and displays the private server code in the menu, which other players can teleport to from the titlescreen.

    • Elysium access bought is now linked to your player, not to the file you bought it on, so any of your files can teleport to your private server from the titlescreen.
    • If a player tries to join a private server while the owner of it is not in the server, they are automatically kicked. (So that your access timer doesn’t go down due to other people using it)
    • When the private server owner leaves, everyone in the server is kicked.
    • While owning a private server with access remaining, you can open it directly from the titlescreen by entering its code, rather than travelling to an Elysium portal.

  • You can now find Godly Nectar, an exotic potion reagent that lets you brew Elysium Potions, a non-consumable potion type that allows you to teleport to your Elysium private server, or buy one.

  • NPCs Level 140 and higher can now use rare spells and rare techniques.

  • Higher level NPCs and NPC minibosses can now “supercharge” their attacks rarely, giving them increased size, damage, startup, and effects.

  • Defeating higher level NPCs now has a chance of giving rare+ treasure charts.

  • Higher level NPCs and NPC minibosses now have a “miniboss health bar” that displays when fighting them, a simplified version of the boss health bar.

  • Players in clans with 25,000 infamy or higher are now placed into separate servers with each other. These servers are exact copies of the Bronze and Nimbus Seas, and this serves as a way to make stronger clans more competitive with each other. You can see if you are in a “clan server” or not by seeing if the server name in the menu has [C] after it.

  • Players in the Grand Navy and Assassin Syndicate can now create subclans if they have 600,000 renown or more.

    • These basically serve as a way for players in factions to have some of the functionality and personalization that clans do while still being in a faction.
    • You can join one at any renown as long as you are in the faction, and your current rank within the faction will be kept.
    • Subclans have a bit less customization than regular clans, and also add subclan colors to the trims of your faction uniforms

  • Added Clan Tax, a new option for clans which lets the leader specify a percentage of galleons earned by members that will be automatically taxxed into the clan’s treasury. It can be set anywhere between 0% and 99%

  • You can now edit your clan logo and colors in the Edit Clan menu, which costs galleons.

  • Added a “rank permissions” UI to the clan UI, explaining exactly what permissions each rank has within your clan. (These cannot be edited)

  • Various visual improvements (Destruction effects, metal/gravel/ocean materials, blood/drawback effects, death sound/screen, shockwave effects, fire effects, cloud models, wind effects)

  • Added an “arms” toggle to the inventory, which lets you toggle whether right, left or both arms of your chestpiece will be visible. When disabled, your character’s regular arms will show.

  • Revamped how the Luck effect from potions works:

    • New effects per tier:
      • Tier 1 Luck: 10% chance of rolling a second drop
      • Tier 2 Luck: 40% chance of rolling a second drop
      • Tier 3 Luck: 70% chance of rolling a second drop
      • Tier 4 Luck: 100% guaranteed roll of a second drop
      • Tier 5 Luck: 200% guaranteed 3 rolls
    • It now affects the rates of far less things, since before it was very overpowered to loot even regular chests with high Luck.
    • Chests: Every item obtained from treasure chests (including things like rare spell scrolls) are rolled again depending on luck tier. (Ex: Tier 5 luck would mean that the chance of getting a Prometheus Acrimony is rolled 3 times, at the same base rate of 1 in 6,000)
    • Rock breaking: Rock drops are rolled again depending on luck tier
    • NPC drops: The NPC/boss drop chance is rolled again depending on luck tier
    • Sealed chests: The rates of getting items are rolled again depending on luck tier
    • Jewelcrafting: Luck the same effect as before
    • Fishing: Now only applies to items caught by fishing rather than affecting fish rarity. When catching an item or a sunken item, the drop rate is rolled again depending on luck tier. (So catching a sunken item with Tier 5 Luck means it would roll the base sunken rate 2 more times, 1 in 2,000 multiplied by the rod’s Item Chance)

  • Invisibility potions no longer prevent Atlanteans or Sirens from agroing onto you.

  • Increased the drop rates of items within Dark Sealed Chests:

    • Gems (all types) 20% → 50%
    • Enchant scrolls (all types) 16.6% → 33.3%
    • Dark Sea exclusive items 20% → 50%

  • You now earn 10 galleons for every appraisal your placed notes get

  • Added unique titles obtained by reaching total note appraisals received milestones:

    • 500 - Wordsmith
    • 1,000 - Scribe
    • 5,000 - Scholar
    • 10,000 - Sage (changes player list name color)
    • 25,000 - Philosopher (changes player list name color)

  • Added the Fighter animation pack game pass. (Animations by Dreay04x)

  • Items found in chests now count towards quest completion, and quests can now be cancelled.

  • Various optimizations: Fixed a memory leak relating to imbued abilities, changed the game’s physics calculations to adaptive instead of fixed, far away players now unload on your client

  • When dying in a previous sea, your ship now despawns and respawns with you at the sea border. (If you have a closer spawn to where you died such as a camp, you will spawn there instead like before. This is just to prevent the issue of players sieging islands with a Brig, dying, and respawning in their Brig constantly, which is unfair to defenders)

  • You are now teleported into the sea your file was last in when pressing Continue on a file on the titlescreen, instead of being teleported to your current story sea.

  • The center dot of the temperature UI now indicates whether your character is currently tanning or not

  • Added a “who can teleport to me” setting to prevent harassment. (This does not work for renown leaderboard players)

  • Tons of bug fixes and balancing changes (there are honestly just way too many to list here so if you want to read them check out the Trello patch note links at the top)

Next Update

Now that this update is finally complete, I’ll be starting preparation for the Full Release update. Before then though, there will be a few small patches over the next few weeks to add a Halloween seasonal event with new items, and potentially the start of the Marketplace system. The Marketplace will replace the old planned “auction house” system, and will allow players to list items for sale that can be bought by other players across servers, and even while the seller is not online.

Full Release Update

After the hotfixes, Halloween event, and Marketplace system are added, the massive Full Release update will finally be started. This update will add the remaining major features that are planned, such as ghost ships, legendary ships, sensing, spirit weapons, and more, and also add 2 new large story chapters which will bring us right to the middle of the rising action part of the Nimbus Sea’s story.

I’m not 100% sure what all content wise will make it into Full Release, but I plan to basically just work on it until I feel like its at a good state. I don’t expect it to take less than 7 months unfortunately, even with help, but the wait will be well worth it since it will really finalize and polish a lot of aspects of the game. I’ll also have galaga, JTN, xael, and others helping with content for it as well.

There will also be a holiday seasonal event made by galaga, xael, and astralworks, taking place later this year while we’re working on the Full Release update.

I’m pretty excited to start the Full Release, cause I feel like its important to take a step back and just improve general aspects of the game, like the feel of the environment and add small details, as well as improving the early game/new player experience. Stuff like that really helps keep a game feeling fresh rather than just constantly adding content and kind of neglecting the past parts of the game.

After the Full Release update, each update will continue adding more story and some smaller features, as well as more content for existing features. The hope is that once Full Release is out, we won’t have large gaps of time between story chapters anymore (like this update), and new features can kind of take on a smaller role, while I mainly focus on story and others help add content.

I realize its kind of silly that its called “Full Release” and yet the game will keep getting updates (lol), but I feel like it was important to specify the game was in an early access state due to there being so many missing features, and “full release” symbolizes the completion of most of the planned features.

As for the far future, we’re about 1/4th or 1/5th through the game’s overall story right now, as the player still has to travel to the Vimir, Aegean, Chimera, and Marauding Seas. I realize this might be alarming for some people, but its called an “odyssey” for a reason :sob: I knew what I was signing up for when I started this game, and I’m happy to keep working on it for many years into the future.

To keep up with the general plans of Full Release, be sure to keep an eye on this Trello card: Trello where the rough list of planned features is located. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this update, and look forward to future content! The end of the Nimbus Sea story is the best stuff me and tech have written and I can’t wait for us to get there!

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Arcane Odyssey - Early Access Information