Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
Is there any new information you can share about the artisan system (new or revised artisan classes, how new/old artisan characters will stay relevant after launch, incentives to not just use an alt, etc.)?
Thanks!
The Ancients were the race created by all ten gods of the Pantheon. Three of those gods taught the race about the Essence, and were then banished by the other seven gods. Those three are known as The Others.
Underwater cities as well. The could be sieged by something similar to depth charges, magical bombs perhaps?
Can we /hide it like helmets?
Can we avoid using it as melee characters?
ie can X/Cleric heal a group, or X/Tank tank for a group for easy content ?
1) Depends on your exact question. Building can have various skins/cosmetics applied to them. If you are asking if you can modify the skin applied to the building itself (e.g., change colors) then yes if the skin has dye sections. We don't know if all skins have dye sections and how many though.
2) For crafting of items we will have control and your standing in various social organizations and level of unlocked crafting benches will determine what option dials are available to you during crafting.
For dropped items we don't know, but probably it will be random and based on level of mob gear dropped from. It is possible some stats will be thematic (e.g., +fire dmg from fire elemental mobs having higher chance as a stat).
3) Invalid questions. 1 Questions ONLY please. These are good, but just pick one. I would stick with the first one.
5) Good Question. Could use a re-word for clarification. E.g., "Will Guild Progression Trees have Trade Specific perks?"
7) They previously discussed how they plan on keeping all content relevant (starter areas and farthest to reach areas) due to the node advancement system and how surrounding nodes influence their neighbors. The same answer would apply here. I would suggest we get to release of the base game first before we worry about impacts of Expansions.
8) Honest answer is "we don't know". From some older videos it seems like you will "attempt to tame" a full HP creature if you have that artisan profession and depending if check is passed you succeed, and if you fail it attacks you; however, that's not "official" anywhere.
9) It will be used and they have hired EVE / Planetside devs to help with this. Testing needs to occur before the tail end of this question can be answered and in a way is the answer.
11) Previously they said "maybe" but in reality it won't happen. Stat balance would become out-of-whack if this was enabled as 2H weapons will have larger stats than 1H and if you can dual wield 2H you would get too much stat gain to make 1H an attractive option.
13) Yes. We saw this in the Cleric 1-10 reveal.
15) I hear what you are asking but this is not a good question b/c there are too many variables to be able to answer this. Sure.. you could solo kill 100 people if they are all AFK and not paying attention and never fight back (assuming you aren't gaining corruption).
I suggest your rephrase this as “What power level influence % would you estimate group coordination could provide?”. We know it’s between 40-50% for itemization. This is a similar question although about a more subjective topic.
20) You are free to RP as you want. Steven Sharif previously stated "There are not plans for gender neutral pronouns." You can here this here:
22) Read https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Player_flagging
For heals and AOE, Players will be able to opt-in (via a checkbox) to allow their beneficial or non-beneficial AoEs to hit flagged players. If this is checked then AoE heals or damage will affect flagged players. If it is not checked then the AoE will not damage or heal any flagged players, and as such will not cause the caster to be flagged themselves (if they are not already).
This seems like a request that the above opt-in checkbox be changed to an opt-in drop down that has “always Combatant”, “AOE and Heal triggered Combatabt” or “Direct Attack triggered Combatant” options. I can get behind this.
23) The Declaration Flags exist in the Attacking Guild's HQ which spawns on a successful 5-min Siege Scroll cast. It's the HQ that's attacked which houses the declaration flags, not the flags themselves. Successfully sieging the HQ increases the respawn timers of the attackers; it does not make them respawn farther away. Read up here: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Castle_sieges#Castle_siege_objectives. In "Node Sieges" the Attacking HQ can be destroyed and end the Node Siege early. We do not know if the Guild's HQ in Castle Sieges can be destroyed, I would say yes, but no official quote.
24) This is your second question. You had Question on Page 1, Question 10. Only one question allowed. The answer is YES but it isn't significant enough to make a "HUGE" difference. If a guild kicks you b/c you haven't 100% min/max'ed then find another guild.
27) The answer is: because that's what Intrepid decided as part of AoC design. It's the same answer as if you were asking "Q: why is my character allowed to die in this game? A: because that's part of the game design." Steven previously mentioned that they want you to have to make choices; they want you to have to interact with others. They designed the game to encourage this.
28) That's up to you. You don't have to escort it if you don't want to. But it can be attacked. You can hire mercenaries or other guilds to escort it for you. How long it will take depends on where it is going and what Caravan Components were used making the Caravan (https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Caravans#Caravan_components).
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When it comes to leveling, you have stated in the past that it will take 45 days to reach cap. You have also stated that "Grinding" repeated content will not be a part of the leveling experience. In this dynamic world are we going to be grinding out our own goals from the wealth of in game activities, or will the game be generating random quests based on node progression?
A variation of the question would be:
How many quests would I expect the game to give me per level, and how much experience am I expected to get per level from grinding on my own per level?
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
1) Same answer as Page 1, Question 2
7) Steven's Message on 07/22/2020 . Having said that, it is highly UNLIKELY with where we are.
8) You can RP a beggar as much as you want, but even though we don't have an official quote on this, you will not see hotkey-based "beggar" interaction, b/c if they did that, they would also have to do "town crier", "drunk", "fanatic", "whore", "peddler", etc. interactions based on demand. Just RP a beggar and people can Trade with you if they want.. but it will be using the trade interface and not with a specific UI hotkey. NOTE: This is my opinion.
11) Intrepid previously mentioned that low-level processed goods will be needed for high-level crafting as partial components. Ashes 101 does a decent job explaining this here.
12) Yes, there will be treasure hunting. https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Treasures
14) They previously discussed how they plan on keeping all content relevant (starter areas and farthest to reach areas) due to the node advancement system and how surrounding nodes influence their neighbors. Zones don't have specific "levels" as all of that is tied to Node Advancement.
15) They previously gave examples of this with Rogue Archetype and how Daggers could have a chance to cause "bleed" effects and Rogues would have bonus damage for some of their abilities (say "backstab") if the target is bleeding. So yes, there will be weapon/archetype/class synergies.
17) You can watch streams; however, even that will not help much. Each boss will have different mechanics even for the same level dungeon as it will be based on speed of clear of early bosses before final boss. For more details read here: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Bosses
23) Mayor's will be able to incentivize certain existing quests (via gold rewards for completion) and potentially trigger certain quests from a list of pre-populated quests or from building choices they chose to build. They will not be, outside of any RolePlaying they want to engage in, be able to create quests of their own imagination. With respect to events, certain events they can trigger (like Caravans), but it's limited in scope to a pre-populated list.
25) Freeholds can only be placed on freehold plots within a node's ZOI. You don't have complete control of the placement but pick from available placements determined by the game system. The game system ensures that what you are describing cannot happen when you claim a freehold space. See here for more details: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Freeholds
30) https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Dungeons#Announcements.2FNotifications
Dungeon Opportunities will be announced server-wide.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Bulletin_boards
Bulletin Boards allow for Quest Sponsorship and Job Postings (like Dungeon Delving)
Finally, word of mouth from other players (or Tavern Gossip). This is made to be a social game.
Can you lose items like gatherables or other non weapon/armour/tool items (when not corrupted)?
Do you respawn at the closest spawn point or can you walk to your body like in WoW?
Also: is there a respawn cooldown?
Extremely excited for the game. Your ideas are amazing and now whats important is the gameplay. If you can make the gameplay, especially the combat, fun and enjoyable while also keeping this player driven world I think it could be one of if not the best mmorpg out there
Keep up the great work
2) The lore is the same across all servers. You simply unlock various story arcs of the lore as you progress certain nodes in certain ecosystems (mountains, coast, jungles, etc.) differently across the servers in certain layouts and advancements which in turn opens up new quests/dungeons which when progressed unlock (or unblock) certain segments of the lore. For example: being able to open a gateway to another plane through the Essence might require that a certain top-level dungeon located in a mountain region and bordering a Scientific Metro be completed. When done it unlocks a new Story Arc on that server. On other servers, that same Story Arc is available to be unlocked when the trigger condition is met. This is conjecture on my part but illustrates how the lore could be the same while allowing each server to approach it differently and perhaps unlock different Story Arcs (which could also have rules that if Story Arc "A" is unlocked/unblocked then Story Arc "B" is no longer available on said server).
3) Same Sex Marriage is allowed. https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Marriage. There is some debate in the community whether Intrepid will keep this in all server regions as certain EU countries might have regulation prohibiting it. But same sex marriage is planned in the US.
4) https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Summons
https://discord.com/channels/256164085366915072/256164085366915072/734644178780291103
5) There are several factors that account for difficulty of the dungeon. You don't "select" a difficulty, it dynamically changes for you based on your performance. https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Dungeons#PvE_difficulty
a) The Main One - "The difficulty of PvE content, such as raids and dungeons will adapt based on the performance of the raid or group against previous bosses in that encounter."
b) Secondary One - "Variables are manifested based on node progression." Meaning, dungeons can change from session to session based on neighboring node progression changes.
6) There is no reason to do this. There is no concept of "take our place". Node Sieges do NOT have a participation cap (max size). Castle Sieges are limited to 250 vs 250, but not Node Sieges.
8) They CANNOT add a new CLASS. They could add a new ARCHETYPE as classes are a combination of a primary and secondary archetypes. However.... if they did that it would mean adding 17 more classes as we would go form 8x8 = 64 classes to 9x9 = 81 classes. As a result, it's a large undertaking and unlikely.
11) Unlikely in my opinion as that would add the need for new cosmetics in much architecture (as remember racial influence affect node architecture styles if that race accounts for the most XP to that node during an advancement). Also, secondly unlikely b/c no Nodes exist in the water (only coastal). So your questions is to create lots of "underwater" architectures cosmetics which could apply to above-water or underground nodes while no actual in-the-water nodes exists.
12) https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Classes - the class names are know. The exact details are not and summoners (and bards) will be the last 2 archetypes to be developed. Unlikely the summoner will "transform" at as a "class" ability (maybe a skill ability). We also know that "Summoners will likely not be able to fuse with their summons (eidolons)" which makes me think this is unlikely even more.
18) The Ancients are the original creations of the Gods (a single race) that were trained by the 10 gods to eventually have stewardship over all creation. At one point however, 3 of the 10 gods decided to teach too much Essence control to the Ancients thus granting them immortality and border-line similar capabilities to that of the Gods, but not quite equal. This angered the other 7 Gods and created a battle. The Seven eventually won and the 3 gods (called The Others) were banished with The Ancients to the Void. The Seven then tried again to create new beings, but this time rather than just one race they split them into 4. These became the 4 Parent Races of Verra we know today. https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Lore#The_Ancients
21) There is an overarching Narrative / Storyline in AoC. Please read on "Story arcs", "Storyline quests" and "Epic/legendary quest" here: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Quests
22) There is Treasure Hunting. https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Treasures
This is essentially the same thing.
5) Only 1 Question per user please!!! You have on on Page 4, Question 4 already.
As per my previous answer to your quoted question - no "nodes" exist in the water or underwater. No nodes are planned in the water or underwater. This means no underwater cities to live in. There will be underwater dungeons which might be designed to look like cities though.
6) Please only ask ONE question. Just delete everything after your first "?" so your question is not invalidated.
7) To answer your question, good on your Alternate Characters which are logged out are safe. I understand this is not exactly what you were hoping to hear though, but there is a "safe" option, just not a convenient one. Not sure if goods actively listed on the Auction House are safe or not (people could exploit this by just listing them at very high prices to keep them on AH until they need them if this is allowed).
12) No third-party programs that interact with AoC are allowed. What programs do you plan to use that you think you will need to play AoC? I assume you mean Discord or some form of Team Speak / Voice Chat. Nothing that touches AoC memory and processes will be allowed.
13) You are NOT ALLOWED to ask multiple questions (you also have one just below it - Page 4, Question 14). Please delete one.
To answer this one, the closest you can achieve is to leverage the Node Wars system as a Mayor and declare approaching players as Enemy of the State. Read "Leadership Powers" here: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Node_wars
Note - there is no "factions" in AoC.
15) One question only please.
26) Only one question please.
Please read here: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Player_death
It answers most of your questions except if there is a respawn cooldown. From videos where Steven has died though.. repeatedly, we saw a 60 second auto-respawn timer.