Alpha Two Update Notes - November 1, 2024

Roshen

Here is what's changed for Alpha Two since last weekend's test. As a reminder, if you come across bugs during this test, please report them to us in-game using /bug

StevenSharif wrote:

Glorious testers, Intrepid has been hard at work this week making adjustments based on the data collected from our 10/25/24 weekend testing. Our testers went hard, and so did we this week. It is important to note that development is not a perfect science. Sometimes when you fix bugs you make new ones, and often times velocity of work done correlates to new bugs generated. Please be vigilant this weekend as you test the changes listed below. Thank you for your help and patience, as we continue to make Ashes of Creation better and better ♥ - Steven

HIGHLIGHTS

• Added Samia’s Hope. This is a secondary starting questing area, in a camp to the east of where you start.
• Fully implemented the “Sweat of your Brow” quest in Samia’s Hope
• Added additional NPC population to Samia's Hope

KNOWN ISSUES

• Whenever you log out of the game or disconnect, you will need to completely close the game and relaunch to avoid issues
• You will disconnect if you stay at character creation or the character select screen for over about 100 seconds
• Samia’s Hope commissions are asking you to do things that are further away than expected
• The attunement shrine has moved for Welcome to Verra, but the quest objective marker is showing the old location. This shrine is north after the gates on the left
• There are placeholder environment assets visible at further distances in Samia’s hope. Getting closer to these assets will resolve the issue

TANK ARCHETYPE UPDATES

Courage

• Changed it so this applies Staggered to targets struck by Weapon Combo Finishers
• Courage generation from Shield Assault and Weapon Combo Finishers has been increased from 25 to 33

Vengeance

• Progression steps are no longer tied to shielding
• Damage reduced to 90% of base damage
• Changed cost to 33 Courage
• Changed from 4 steps to 3 steps
• Added a cleave mechanic similar to basic attacks
• Damage increase per step has been rolled into the base version, and reduced from 15% to 5% per stack
• Changed the buff icon to indicate what step of Vengeance you are on
• Relentless Vengeance now increases the shielding amount by 50%

Ground Pound

• Courage cost reduced from 40 to 33
• Adjusted this to be a wide line attack

Fortify

• No longer has a minimum Courage cost

FIGHTER ARCHETYPE UPDATE

Blitz

• Will now always travel the full distance to target or stop your character after 2 seconds

MOUNTS

• Mounts now have a dash ability for MAX SPEED
• Mounts are slightly faster across the board
• Mounts will show their owner's name on their nameplate. This will make it easier to find your mount when lots of mounts are present
• Fixed various mount movement visuals
• Improved mount animations
• Fixed a bug where mount eyes could dislocate from their skull
• Fixed issues with incorrect flying mounts being sold at Nodes
• Made improvements to the smoothness of mount movement

CORRUPTION

• Made changes so you need to force flag for PvP to heal a Corrupted or Combatant player. Added setting for “Required Force Flag to Heal Combatants” to Combat Settings
• Made changes so you no longer become a Combatant for healing yourself
• Made changes so you no longer become a Combatant for damaging a Corrupted player
• Corrupted and Combatant status will be more clear. For example, health bars are always red for targets that you can harm
• Added Corruption stats to the character page
• Reduced the number of kills required to grind off Corruption
• Fixed issues that caused some characters to spawn with corruption even if they died with 0 corruption

COMMISSIONS

• Added new commissions to Winstead, Miraleth, Samia’s Hope, New Aela, and Joeva
• Added bounty commissions to the pool of available commissions for players who are level 3-8
• Adjusted the area for where characters get credit for kill commissions around Lionhold
• Fixed an issue allowing Fishing commissions to be completed indefinitely

ENVIRONMENT & VISUALS

• Made several visual and lighting updates to Samia’s Hope
• Made lighting updates to Carphin
• Fixed various visual bugs with roads
• Fixed various visual bugs with terrain
• Fixed an issue with beards not working with all armors
• Improved lighting in the Hall of Judication. You shall no longer venture in the monotonous darkness
• Improved the visual quality of some landscape assets

NODES

• Reduced the cost of mayoral commissions, and increased the amount of time before they expire
• Player Commodity Vendor will now show when players do not have enough storage space to purchase commodities
• Added a level requirement to plunder quests, and moved the plunder quest giver to Stage 3 Nodes

ECONOMY

• Increased the number of tier 1 gatherable spawns, and reduced their respawn time.
• Increased the max stack size for bags to be 20 for Novice, 40 for Apprentice, and 60 for Journeyman
• Changed the Sweat of your brow quest to provide one of five different horses
• Added copper gear to Lionhold and Node vendors
• Added descriptions to Glint, player commodities, and stolen cargo to explain how they can be used
• Added higher job sizes to processing recipes
• Removed profession stations from Ruins of Aela starting area
• Added more recipes using lumber
• Lumber is now the highest quantity ingredient needed in all bow recipes
• Updated Gathering station iconography
• Fixed an issue preventing players from finishing "Sweat of your Brow" if they closed the quest turn in dialogue
• Fixed bugs with unpacking commodities
• Adjusted spawn time of some trees
• Gatherable random spawn locations now change every 20-24 hours
• Added commodities to Commodity Vendors in the Sandsquall Desert and the Vandagar Tropics

LOOT

• Changed looting so items no longer automagically show up in your inventory when you win a loot roll. Items you win the roll on will need to be looted
• Reduced the loot roll duration from 60 seconds to 15 seconds
• Added additional loot drops for bows, focuses, and shields
• Non-elite mobs have reduced their gear drop % chance, elite mobs now have an additional gear drop % per star of difficulty
• Fixed bugs with chat loot roll notifications
• Changed looting visuals. These will change as you remove items from a loot pile, instead of after the loot window is closed
• Added a radius that characters must be in to get access to loot drops. Loot no longer gets auto delivered to player upon winning a loot roll

WORLD

• Adjusted the perimeter wall for "free Samia's Hope"
• Adjusted map markers for the “Sweat of your Brow” quest to line up with their actual locations
• Adjusted the “Horns of Betrayal” event radius
• Added additional Lionhold Sentry guards near the new Lionhold Emberspring respawn shrine to prevent spawn camping
• Reduced the elite ranking of some bandits within the Highwaymen Hills courtyard from 3 stars to 1 and 2 stars
• Church of the Seven Stars population overhaul: General cleanup of interior, added 3 star patrols, and increased difficulty of spawns at the top of the church
• Updated Ursine caves population to get more difficult as you descend the depths by consolidating 2 star elites on the upper level and 3 stars on the lower caverns
• Daragal Estates Population updated to have fewer 3 star elites on the outer areas, and added some additional dynamic population to appear during nighttime

NPCS

• Adjusted the attack range for plant type enemies so basic attacks will hit targets even if they are running away
• Improved NPC responsiveness in combat
• Made changes to prevent NPCs from getting into an unresponsive state
• Fixed issues with NPCs that had placeholder status effect icons
• Skeletons should no longer be able to transcend the limitations of undeath by stacking hundreds of copies of their revive ability
• Improved skeleton animation reliability
• Webweavers will no longer kite better than your party. Increased the cooldown on their backpedal
• Raving Rabids event will now give rewards

UI/UX

• UI fixes for “Spirit of the Undying” quest
• Fixed various issues with map and minimap zoom
• Added a 500 character limit to chat messages
• Fixed issues that prevented some characters from having a choice of spawns
• Fixes issues with the death location not displaying on the minimap
• Made changes so death location is visible at all map zoom levels
• Made changes to icon scaling on the map when zooming
• Added options for inverted mouse control
• Added options for screen percentage in a dropdown for AMD users
• Fixed an issue where objective markers could be underneath other icons on the map

PERFORMANCE

• Improved performance on multiple problem areas of the map
• Made improvements to reduce server crashes
• Additional server stability and FPS improvements
• Fixed client crash on lower end PCs
• Made improvements to prevent issues with characters appearing to be stuck on server boundaries
• Network improvements to reduce issues with characters running in place at server boundaries
• General network performance optimizations
• Fixed multiple animation related crashes
• Fixed multiple server crashes
• Fixed multiple client crashes
• Improved performance close to Winstead and Miraleth

LAUNCHER

• Added functionality to prompt testers to enable GPU Crash Debugging. Having this on helps us identify issues that make testers crash, but this will take up more space on your computer

OTHER BUG FIXES

• Improved hit reliability for Resplendent Beam ability
• Improved mage Blink rubberbanding issues
• Fixed an issue causing the camera to sometimes get stuck in a characters' heads
• Improved legibility and flow of Horns of Betrayal event
• Fixed issues with the scale of icons on the minimap
• Fixed a variety of typos
• Fixed a bug that caused people to crash when someone near them switched certain weapons
• Caravan health regen has been reduced
• Reworked hair appearance at difference distances