The first update for Arcane Odyssey is released! This post goes over the major additions and fixes in the update, but if you want to view all of them, they can be found under the Patch Notes section of the game’s Trello board:
Additions/Changes
- Added an Easter Event that will last until May 23rd. You can find an Egg Tome in your backpack when you spawn, which explains the event, shows what items you’ve found from it, and gives you hints on how to find each egg.
- Added Diving Points, small underwater structures that generate randomly at the start of each server. 60 of them can be found across the sea, and are represented by a small “splashing” effect above them on the ocean’s surface. (Credit to MarkDonovanSmith, KingCryonical, che_em, and HailFirz for building most of these)
- The deeper the diving spot is, the more dangerous it is to loot it, but it generates with more treasure. Bronze Sealed Chests can also spawn at these, and you get XP when you find all chests at one.
- Added Underwater Structures, which generate randomly at the start of each server and have names and themes. 20 of them can be found per server, but they are not as easily found as Diving Points. (Credit to MarkDonovanSmith, KingCryonical, techlevel80, and HailFirz for building most of these)
- The best way to discover them is to find Sea Charts from Sailor Chests, which will reveal the location of a random underwater structure on your map. On the map, the depth of the structure and its total chest count can be seen, as well as a “Diving Percent” bar which shows what percentage of underwater structures you have explored in that specific server.
- Sharks naturally spawn around underwater structures, making them dangerous to explore if you don’t have shark hunting ship attachments. (A new thing in this update, explained below)
- If you fully explore all underwater structures in a server, you earn the “Bronze Sea Diver” badge and title.
- Revamped shark/sea monster AI when targeting ships, they no longer just swim straight at your ship, bite it, then swim away, instead they will circle it on the ocean surface for a bit, strafe around, and eventually go in for a large bite before de-agroing.
- During the circling phase, you can damage them. Damaging large sharks in this stage can sometimes scare them off for a bit.
- Added the first Attachment items for ships (previously called the Add-on slot), which are:
- Swivel Guns - Fires small arcanium cannonballs which damage scales with Magic stat
- Throwing Harpoons - Allows you to throw harpoons which scale with Strength stat
- Harpoon Gun - Allows you to fire harpoons which scale with Weapons stat
- Net Launcher - Allows you to fire large spiked nets which scale with Vitality stat
- Each one of these items can be affixed to your ship and be used to hunt sharks or sea monsters safely from the surface. While seated at one, sharks and sea monsters nearby will begin circling your ship, allowing you to kill them using these attachments.
- These make it possible to explore underwater areas safely, by first clearing out the sharks below using your ship attachments.
- Added the basic brewing system and first potion type.
- Seaweed can be found growing in shallow water around islands and can be collected. In its description, it tells you it can be used to brew decent Water Breathing potions. Water Breathing potions are the only type of potion added in this update, as it was pretty important for exploring deep underwater.
- Clams, conches, pearls, and all other shore items can now be used as “potion catalysts”, as stated in their item descriptions.
- To brew a Water Breathing potion, find a Cauldron in the world, which can usually be found near Alchemist NPCs. You will need to insert 1, 5, or 10 Seaweed. Depending on the amount inserted, you will get Water Breathing I, II, or III.
- Then, insert a shore item such as a pearl. The rarity of the shore item used affects the duration of the Water Breathing effect (potency). For example, using 2 clams as a catalyst will only make a Water Breathing Vial, which has very low duration, but using 2 golden pearls will make a Water Breathing Elixir, which lasts for much longer.
- Drinkable potions are the only type that can be made right now, but as part of the Brewing Update, many other applications will be added, such as throwable potions, lingering, cauldrons which can be shared with party members, gel which can make the potion imbue into your attacks, and more.
- You now have to confirm your stat allocation instead of them being applied as soon as you click +, which was a pretty bad design oversight that has been fixed. As a result of a lot of people messing up their builds on release, every existing file has been given a free stat reset.
- Reduced the rate at which air drains underwater by 50%.
- Adjusted the spawn rates of some shark types.
- Servers now automatically shutdown after 12 hours, with a countdown starting at the top of the screen when its 10 minutes prior. This was done because the game has a pretty bad memory leak which ruins servers after about 2+ days, and I wasn’t able to find the cause of it.
- Added an in-game update shutdown announcement system, so that when hotfixes/new updates are ready to release, players in-game have a timer before the shutdown so that they don’t lost any progress.
- Players over 1mil Renown were set back to 1mil due to adjustments in how Renown is earned. Renown at high amounts is mainly intended to be obtained through hunting other players’ high bounties/fame, not through farming enemies for hours.
- Added an exhaustion mechanic to dodging. When being hunted, dodging a far distance away from the player hunting you will notify you that you are exhausted, meaning your dodges will take more stamina and have a longer cooldown until you get closer and fight back. This helps the issue of bounty hunting being basically impossible due to runners.
- Hitting a player’s ship also now puts you both in combat to help with this.
- Destroyed structures such as houses now have their parts instantly deleted instead of unanchored, since this caused huge frame drops for some reason.
Balancing Changes
All balancing changes below were suggested and discussed by the community. My goal for balancing in this game is for it to be community-driven, not just some balancing team doing things without any outside feedback, and I think this update was a good start to that.
If you want to get involved in future balancing changes or discussions, find the balancing doc on the game’s Forum which can be found on my Twitter. (Not sure if I’m allowed to link any of those here so…)
Summary
- Changed Spear/Trident blast shape damage from -10% → -15%.
- Changed X Slash blast shape damage from -30% → -20%.
- Reduced all blast shapes +25% size multiplier to +15%.
- Shape speed multiplier now affects explosion spell startup time more.
- Magic’s speed affinity now affects explosion spell’s endlag.
- Ultimate Art explosion spells size boost 45% → 30%.
- Self explosion spells with multiple duration are now smaller in the same way that they are with placed explosions.
- Reduced Power aura spell potency by 25%.
- Power aura spell damage multiplier is now multiplied by the magic’s damage affinity.
- Reduced Resistance aura spell potency by 40%.
- Following changes to magic health affinities: (used by Resistance aura spell)
- Wind, Explosion, Poison, Ash, Fire, Plasma, Lightning, and Light all changed to 0.7x
- Water and Acid changed to 0.8x
- Sand changed to 0.9x
- Magma changed to 1.0x
- Reduced Speed aura spell potency by 20%.
- Magic’s speed affinity now affects Speed aura spell by half as much.
- Removed the Bursting option from aura spells.
- Pulse Rate no longer affects the impact damage of Pulsar.
- Reduced the pulse damage and pulse AOE size of Pulsar by 30%.
- Increased Pulsar’s startup by 30% and made it affected by magic speed affinity.
- Increased Pulsar’s endlag by 25% and made it affected by magic speed affinity.
- Changed Pulsar’s cooldown from 5s → 7s.
- Re-added the airstall to Cannon Fist throws.
- Using spells now charges Thermo Fist’s heat.
- Increased Basic Combat’s damage affinity 0.8x → 0.9x.
- Increased Boxing’s damage affinity 0.675x → 0.8x.
- Increased Boxing’s speed affinity 1.2x → 1.3x.
- Increased Boxing’s size affinity 0.85x → 0.9x.
- Increased Cannon Fist’s damage affinity 0.55x → 0.7x.
- Increased Iron Leg’s damage affinity 0.8x → 0.925x.
- Decreased Iron Leg’s size affinity 1.2x → 1.15x.
- Increased Thermo Fist’s damage affinity uncharged 0.675x → 0.775x.
- Increased Thermo Fist’s damage affinity charged 0.775x → 0.875x.
- Changed the Thermo Fist heat drain grace period from 2s → 0.5x.
- Increased Thermo Fist heat gain by 10%.
- Sailor Style’s size/damage and added visual effects now max at 70% instead of 100%.
- Increased Sailor Style’s damage affinity uncharged 0.675x → 0.775x.
- Increased Sailor Style’s damage affinity charged 0.775x → 0.925x.
- Reduced the seawater bottle hunger loss 20 → 5.
- Decreased seawater bottle drinking time by 20%.
- Sailor Style seawater is now retained on death.
- Crash skill now has 20% damage resistance during the leap.
- Attack Speed no longer affects the speed of Crash or Spiraling Fury, now Agility does instead.
- Focus technique and Aura spell now drain energy at the same rate of post-awakening’s passive energy regen.
- Reduced the potency of the Focus technique by 17%.
- Changed Vindicator’s minimum level 120 → 80.
- Increased the AOE of Whirlwind by 33%.
- Increased the force of Rising Tide by 50%, decreased its endlag by 20%, increased its damage by 10%.
- Decreased the knockback of the final hit of Tiger Rush by 33%.
- Sword Draw: Flash Strike, Sword Draw: Mirrored River, and Ethereal Flash now share cooldowns to prevent spam.
- Increased the AOE of Shining Cycle by 20%.
- Increased the projectile speed of Flying Slash by 20%.
- Increased the cooldown of Tempest 4s → 6s.
- Removed the knockback from the initial slam of Seismic Slash and increased its thrown rubble’s size by 33%.
- Increased the damage of Raging Impact by 40%.
- Increased the hitbox size of Brutal Rush’s grab start.
- Decreased the AOE of Piercing Shot by 15% and decreased its cooldown 10s → 9s.
- Aiming spells or techniques for the max length now increased the attack’s AOE by 33% instead of 50%.
- All damage and size multipliers now add onto each other instead of multiplying on top of each other.
- Increased health restore on player kill 35% → 50%.
- Increased the stamina cost of dodging 10% → 15%.
- Increased the cooldown of dodging by 50%.
- Increased the combat timer 30s → 60s.
- Damaging a player’s ship while its being steered will put both players in combat.
- Removed the 10% damage boost that Mages and Berserkers receive post-awakening.
- Changed the formula for power aura and focus.
- Dodging now has an exhaustion system that triggers if you run away during fights, increasing the dodge stamina cost and cooldown more and more as you run further away during combat.
- Reduced the AOE increase of weapon aura +33% → +10%.
- Weapon aura now gives +10% attack speed to all weapon skills.
- Fighting styles imbued into weapon skills now add 0.15 to the damage affinity of the fighting style instead of 0.25.
- Changed Petrified and Frozen status effect durations 0.7s → 1s.
- Crystallized damage boost after it stacks is now 30% instead of 35%.
- Crystallized can no longer be removed by any magic and instead gives a damage boost synergy for magics that used to remove it.
- Ice Magic now applies Frozen on its own if its attack deals 33% or more of the target’s health.
- Increased the damage boost of Earth, Metal, Lightning, and Crystal Magic when hitting a Frozen target +20% → +30%.
- Reduced the defense of the following armor sets by 10%: Titanium, Ravenna Centurion, Steel, Lion of Ravenna, Sunken Iron, and Cernyx.
- Reduced the attack size and agility given by the Lost Crown of Ravenna and Mantello of Ravenna’s Fallen King by 18%.
- Increased the amount of stats given by the following items by 45%: all Attack Size amulets, all Attack Speed amulets, all Intensity amulets, and all Agility amulets.
- Fire Magic size 1.05x → 1.1x.
- Explosion Magic speed 0.95x → 0.8x.
- Glass Magic rubble size increased by 50%.
- Ice Magic damage 0.925x → 0.95x.
- Lightning Magic damage 0.85x → 0.875x.
- Magma Magic damage 0.925x → 0.9x.
- Poison Magic size 1.1x → 1.15x.
- Light Magic now gets +2% damage for each Blinded status the target has, to a max of +10%.
- Reduced the Snare spell’s damage by 21% and increased its knockback by 2x.
- Aura spell cooldown and duration both reduced by 10s.
- Attack speed now affects the moving speed of Crash and Spiraling Fury again and agility affects the distance of it.
- Smash technique endlag -20%.
Next Updates
The main purpose of these first few updates is to prepare for the addition of the Dark Sea, a basically infinite area where random structures, ships, enemies, and all sorts of amazing things can occur which will lead to some great replayability and rewards. The Dark Sea can’t really be started though until brewing is fully added (since a lot of the high tier reagents will be from the Dark Sea), and the brewing system couldn’t be started until underwater structures were added, since a decent amount of regular reagents will come from those.
After this I will be working on a smaller patch for additional bug fixes, adjustments, and maybe more balancing changes if necessary. After that, I will be starting the Brewing Update which will add tons of potion effects - as well as the stat reset potion which I’m sure people have been waiting on - lots more ways to apply potions, a brewing mastery level similar to cooking, and more.
Sorry for this update taking longer than expected, but as you know I had to fix a lot of exploits and issues for a week after release, and also went on vacation for a bit. I expect the next update won’t take nearly as long as this one did, since the brewing system’s core functionality is already added.
As for those wondering about the story, I don’t really know when that will continue since a lot more work still needs to be done on the Dark Sea and its sub-content, and a few more islands need to be added to the Bronze Sea. I’m hoping to start the next chapter of the story in July after the Dark Sea is finished, but plans may change or maybe I’ll do a vote around then, cause currently I’m not sure if I’d rather start the story continuation earlier, or add structure building for clans.
Once the Dark Sea is added, story updates will be worked on as part of each major update so that new chapters and islands can release regularly. Story will always be a priority for this game, though at this stage it has to be put on the backburner a bit for replayability and other content. Hope you all understand and enjoy the first update!