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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.
Caravans, Carpentry, and Commodities
Shirra
Member, Alpha Two
I wanted to put together a post regarding the above topics that I have been very interested in and testing to a large degree. I want to start off by saying that I am overall excited and like the caravans and carpentry and that this is meant as an observation of good, bad, and bugs associated with them.
To start with caravans are a very fun, and for me, new experience in an MMO. It took me a while to get the basics figured out as right now the system is not user friendly and has a few major bugs that make it challenging to start or end caravans sometimes. That being said I am very excited to see the final form it takes and to use it extensively for gaining money and transporting high quality materials. The end UI could use some work to help explain the fact that you have to first purchase a caravan, then do upgrades to it if you wish, then go buy the commodities, then come back and load them into the caravan before finally launching and then placing the caravan. It would help to allow upgrades to be done after putting cargo in as well as not requiring a caravan be set up and ready to purchase commodities. I had a couple guild mates that had major issues with a bug not allowing them to purchase commodities because there was “not enough storage space” when they had sufficient space to do so.
Once you launch the caravan there were a couple of issues where caravans would glitch through the world when trying to convert to raft or back again. It would be nice to have the caravan UI as something that is not attached to actually riding the caravan so that you can recover/unstuck caravans when they become inaccessible. I also had a very weird glitch where Mycilides were attacking me and exploded under the caravan launching it into the air. I would also like the caravan to have the name of the owner on it so that it is not confusing in a party who’s is who’s.
One other thing I might suggest is to allow caravans to go off ledges. You could make fall damage really punishing for the caravan to keep people from jumping off cliffs but, small ledges should be something I can ride off of and take a little damage instead of having to find a way around it.
When ending a caravan some of the city boarders are super close to town while others are very far out. A uniform size would be nice. I also encountered a glitch that many other people had where the inventory of the caravan would not appear once you finished the caravan and would either have to close the game and relaunch or sometimes actually relaunch the whole caravan and come back to town to fix it. Some caravans also seem to be unrecovered when using the recovery option. They do not appear in town.
The overall feel of caravans is very nice although very slow at the beginning. I really enjoy getting to play the traveling merchant to gain money. The controls for the caravan itself take a little getting used to but make sense and I think make it more interesting. I like the fact that you can upgrade the caravan significantly just with journeyman carpentry and it makes it feel like I might be able to have a caravan that I would drive from node to node eventually without it taking forever.
This brings me to the carpentry side of things. While I get the idea of having things made from every wood, there is not enough of a difference between them to warrant doing this. I will always pick Western Larch at novice and Weeping Willow at apprentice. Even the “reinforced” pieces using a decent amount of ingots were not appealing. I would recommend making all T1 wood just create a single item where you can select on the item what wood to use but it is all named the same with the same stats to help unclog the crafting UI. Otherwise try to make a larger difference between the woods. Oak is high armor, Ash is high magic resist, Easter Hemlock is more balanced, and Western Larch has more HP for example. But make it where I would actually want to go farm a certain wood for certain reasons. I would also like the chassis and wheels to be available for novice level for the novice woods instead of having to wait for apprentice to get anything other than the carriage.
Finally I wanted to talk about some things with the commodities. I really like how you get more money for going further and that you can pack more glint in a trip by getting the rarer ones. However, it appears that uncommon commodities are incorrect. All the other commodities hold to a certain ratio of glint to space and glint to money except you can gain 2x as much money with 12 uncommon commodities as you can with 2 epic. I think the uncommon were supposed to take up 2 horizontal spaces instead of 1 which is causing this issue. I would also suggest changing the layout requirement for heroic and epic so that heroic is 2 high and 3 wide and epic is 3 high and 2 wide. Overall though, the rates seem very good and allow you to make a good return for the risk of running the caravan.
To start with caravans are a very fun, and for me, new experience in an MMO. It took me a while to get the basics figured out as right now the system is not user friendly and has a few major bugs that make it challenging to start or end caravans sometimes. That being said I am very excited to see the final form it takes and to use it extensively for gaining money and transporting high quality materials. The end UI could use some work to help explain the fact that you have to first purchase a caravan, then do upgrades to it if you wish, then go buy the commodities, then come back and load them into the caravan before finally launching and then placing the caravan. It would help to allow upgrades to be done after putting cargo in as well as not requiring a caravan be set up and ready to purchase commodities. I had a couple guild mates that had major issues with a bug not allowing them to purchase commodities because there was “not enough storage space” when they had sufficient space to do so.
Once you launch the caravan there were a couple of issues where caravans would glitch through the world when trying to convert to raft or back again. It would be nice to have the caravan UI as something that is not attached to actually riding the caravan so that you can recover/unstuck caravans when they become inaccessible. I also had a very weird glitch where Mycilides were attacking me and exploded under the caravan launching it into the air. I would also like the caravan to have the name of the owner on it so that it is not confusing in a party who’s is who’s.
One other thing I might suggest is to allow caravans to go off ledges. You could make fall damage really punishing for the caravan to keep people from jumping off cliffs but, small ledges should be something I can ride off of and take a little damage instead of having to find a way around it.
When ending a caravan some of the city boarders are super close to town while others are very far out. A uniform size would be nice. I also encountered a glitch that many other people had where the inventory of the caravan would not appear once you finished the caravan and would either have to close the game and relaunch or sometimes actually relaunch the whole caravan and come back to town to fix it. Some caravans also seem to be unrecovered when using the recovery option. They do not appear in town.
The overall feel of caravans is very nice although very slow at the beginning. I really enjoy getting to play the traveling merchant to gain money. The controls for the caravan itself take a little getting used to but make sense and I think make it more interesting. I like the fact that you can upgrade the caravan significantly just with journeyman carpentry and it makes it feel like I might be able to have a caravan that I would drive from node to node eventually without it taking forever.
This brings me to the carpentry side of things. While I get the idea of having things made from every wood, there is not enough of a difference between them to warrant doing this. I will always pick Western Larch at novice and Weeping Willow at apprentice. Even the “reinforced” pieces using a decent amount of ingots were not appealing. I would recommend making all T1 wood just create a single item where you can select on the item what wood to use but it is all named the same with the same stats to help unclog the crafting UI. Otherwise try to make a larger difference between the woods. Oak is high armor, Ash is high magic resist, Easter Hemlock is more balanced, and Western Larch has more HP for example. But make it where I would actually want to go farm a certain wood for certain reasons. I would also like the chassis and wheels to be available for novice level for the novice woods instead of having to wait for apprentice to get anything other than the carriage.
Finally I wanted to talk about some things with the commodities. I really like how you get more money for going further and that you can pack more glint in a trip by getting the rarer ones. However, it appears that uncommon commodities are incorrect. All the other commodities hold to a certain ratio of glint to space and glint to money except you can gain 2x as much money with 12 uncommon commodities as you can with 2 epic. I think the uncommon were supposed to take up 2 horizontal spaces instead of 1 which is causing this issue. I would also suggest changing the layout requirement for heroic and epic so that heroic is 2 high and 3 wide and epic is 3 high and 2 wide. Overall though, the rates seem very good and allow you to make a good return for the risk of running the caravan.
1
Comments
Some comparable notes:
1) The beginner's quest to Caravans can definitely use a little fleshing out. It is quite rudimentary and doesn't explain things terribly well. However, I can see how this may just be a placeholder until the caravan system itself is in it's final form.
2) I'd like to see the Storage opening along with the Caravan Masters options folded in to a single UI element. Again, this may be the final intention, but just making a note of it here.
3) Caravan nameplates definitely need to be worked on. It would be nice if when created a Caravan could adopt it's originators name, but a pop-up above the Caravan could tell who was driving it -AND- their guild.
* I took a Caravan out and was attacked/ran down while in wagon mode, and one of the attackers was in a alliance-adjacent guild. He claimed he joined the attack because he did not recognize my name as a member of the guild I was in - which is a fair defense.
* Later I took another Caravan out, and while in Raft mode was approached by 2 members of a more-chaotically aligned guild. They didn't attack, nor did they join defense, but their engagement may have initially been to attack before checking with their guild about mine (as you can see both the player name and guild in Raft mode). They both out-leveled me and likely could have taken the raft.
4) Love Shirra's idea about playing with different Wood type elements for crafting Caravan parts with different stacks. This may be a future plan, as different Woods already have different Fuel Values, and can easily be adapted to offering better protection against certain attacks. If Western Larch has such a high fuel value, it should be more susceptible to Fire Damage as a Caravan.
5) Can confirm, commodities definitely need some re-tooling. The ratio of the Uncommon commodities would be balanced out by making it a 1x2 grid item, but as of now just offers a 2:1 return on space invested when compared to the others. Shirra's point about the height spacing of the Rare/Epic commodities is also valid, as we are able to upgrade to Caravan Storage to 2 high before 3, which falls inline with buying Rare commodities before Epic.
6) Would like to see the glint packing in to higher level Commodities pushed a little further.
7) This may be planned, but it would also be nice to see Nodes offering different rates on Commodities based on the import they have seen in the item. For example, if everyone is running Epic Commodities from Miralith to NA, then eventually there would be diminishing returns on that Commodity. So it might be better to run Rare/Uncommon Commodities instead to NA and Epic Commodities to Joeva, for a short time.
Again, loving the system and can't wait to see how it develops further!