Patch Notes

Below you'll find information on each major playtest release, including what's been added/changed. As we move forward in the testing schedule we will eventually switch to a more traditional versioning system.

Known Issues

Here's a quick list of things you may notice that are wrong with the game, but we haven't had a chance to fix yet.

• If you pick up a King Sweetie apple, it will not appear in your inventory correctly.
• Queen's Ear and Reed Flute flowers are not showing up currently in the game world to harvest.
• If you leave a Wilds zone as a bandit, your bandit flag will get reset when entering the new zone, instead of remaining.

June 2, 2017

Welcome to the fourth OrbusVR Closed Alpha test! If it's your first time playing, please be sure to consult the Getting Started guide. There is not yet a full in-game tutorial, so it's important to review the guide before starting, otherwise you will have a hard time playing the game.

Major New Additions

• Ranger levels have been reset to Level 1 for all characters. In addition, all inventories have been reset. This is the last inventory reset that we anticipate needing to do during the Alpha.
• The Ranger class has been re-worked, introducing several new arrow abilities and bringing back the Ranger's trap. See the Ranger Play Guide for more information.
• The Fishing class has been greatly enhanced, including the ability to catch multiple different types of fish based on the lure, location, and time of day that you are fishing. Check out the Fishing Play Guide for more information.
• The Jungle zone and a new Jungle Dungeon have been added to the game. The Jungle Dungeon features 3 new bosses with interesting mechanics to fight, and the Jungle zone features seven new enemies.
• The level cap has been raised to 12.
• When you catch fish, they will now go into your inventory as items.
• Fishing lures now have a durability, which decreases each time you cast them. In addition, if your line snaps while trying to catch a fish, your lure will break immediately.
• You now have a chance to get a "nibble notification" if you are fishing in a body of water where fish are available to catch but you are using the wrong lure.
• Added the Ranger Spread Arrow, Darkness Arrow, and Piercing Arrow. Also added the Ranger's Mark ability and the ability to equip different arrows to your equipment.
• The Ranger's trap now causes a hard CC on the enemy it explodes onto, both stunning and immobilizing the enemy for up to 30 seconds. Any damage will break the effect. In addition, the target's health will be restored to full when they are trapped.
• The Warrior's Taunt ability now gives maximum aggro on a target, plus the aggro equivalent of a Provoke combo maneuver. This means it should be effective on targets even at the start of fights.
• Some items in the game (particularly fishing lures) now have durability. When the durability reaches zero, the item will remain equipped but will act as though nothing is equipped in that slot.
• The third tier of equipment has been added to the drop tables for the new zone and dungeon.
• You will now only receive loot for the class that you are actively playing. Loot chances slightly increased to make up for this. In addition, this means that bosses should now generally drop loot that you want.
• Bosses will now always drop a piece of loot as their "guaranteed drop" for a member of the group, as opposed to crafting ingredients.
• When you become a Bandit during World PvP, there is now a timer that will appear for you to see underneath your XP bar that shows how long it will be until your Bandit status expires.
• Bandits now have cash bounties on their heads. All players can see the current bounty for a bandit. The bounty will increase if a bandit kills additional players. If the bandit timer expires, the bounty does as well. Players who kill a bandit split the bounty according to the same aggro percentage formula as a monster kill.
• When Bandits die, they will now respawn near the Jail in the beginner zone, rather than at the graveyard for the current zone they are in.
• Box colliders around monsters have been re-worked to be more standardized.
• Warrior combo effects will now appear at the point where the Warrior's sword hit the target, rather than at the center of the monster. This should make it easier to see the combo effects on large creatures and bosses.
• The Warrior's Sword Rush cooldown will now only trigger if they successfully teleported to the monster.
• The Warrior's "Up" combo is now slightly less sensitive, which should cause it to mis-recognize less often when fighting large creatures.
• The Warrior's shield block detection has been reworked to better function on large creatures and bosses.

Major Bugfixes

• If you place a Musketeer orb on top of an existing orb already loaded into your gun, the already-loaded orb will re-appear as available to use rather than getting "lost".
• The Ranger's super effect should no longer get stuck on their bow if they die while doing their Super.
• Your "coin" should no longer reset between logouts.
• Ranger and Musketeer arrows/bullets will no longer collide with the firing player if the bow/gun is held close to the body.
• Decurse (both the spell and the Musketeer orb) will now function correctly.
• Fixed an issue which could cause you to stop hearing someone else talking until you went far away from them and then came back.

May 18, 2017

Major New Additions

• Warrior and Musketeer levels have been reset to Level 1 for all characters. In addition, all inventories have been reset.
• The Warrior and Musketeer classes have been greatly re-worked and expanded, including new orbs, new abilities, and a new Super ability for each class. See the Warrior Play Guide and the Musketeer Play Guide for all the latest information.
• Client-side networking code has been re-written so that all network functions are now off the main application process. This means that if you experience a high latency spike or packet loss, your game will continue to render smoothly. Previously you would see 'glitches' of it showing the SteamVR home screen/lighthouses. Note that if your latency is very high, you still won't have an optimal play experience, as you will see monsters and players jumping around, but at least now it shouldn't cause graphical lag.
• Added an in-game indicator which will appear above your XP bar on the top of your screen if you are experiencing latency greater than 300ms.
• The World Boss, Elongata, should no longer respawn repeatedly after being summoned. Instead, you need to re-summon it each time after you wipe. This also means that if you defeat it, you'll have plenty of time to grab loot without worrying about dying again.
• Reduced the interaction radius of the hand so that you should now be less likely to accidentally grab other items such as your Player Compass by mistake. Increased the interaction radius of the Musketeer orbs to compensate for this.
• The Runemage Pushback spell now also has a short stun, matching the behavior of the new Musketeer Gravity orb.
• The accuracy of drawing Runemage runes now affects how powerful the resulting spell is. There is a difference of approximately 30% between the least accurate and most accurate spell cast. The overall Runemage accuracy detection threshold has been increased to its final level, which is pretty close to where it was at the start of the last test.
• Added a new effect to the Runemage wand which will appear when either a) you fail a spell completely, or b) you succeed in casting a spell with a very high accuracy.
• Monsters will now seek targets that they can attack even if they can't reach their exact spot. What this means is that Monsters will be much less likely to reset just because you are standing next to a tree or a pillar.
• Examined the Rock Golem boss fight in the dungeon and did a lot of work to make sure that the boss will not reset during the fight, and will reset properly after a wipe instead of getting stuck in the room.
• Added an overlay effect which will tint the edges of your vision red if you drop below 50% health, increasing in opacity the lower in health you are.
• Entirely re-worked the way that Warrior sword hit detection works, so it should work much better now in general, and especially for those with higher-latency connections. It should be extremely rare now to "miss" a swing that goes through an enemy.
• Your Personal Chest has been added to your house. To open it, just grab the lid and lift up with your free hand. This will open up a secondary inventory screen where you can add or remove items that you want to store in your chest. Note that at this time, all items must be in your Inventory if you want to equip them for combat.
• Our first crafting experience has been added, Lure Crafting for the Fishing Discipline! This is just a first pass, but you can read more about it on the Fishing play guide.
• If you attempt to pick up a piece of loot and your inventory is full, the loot bag will fall back to the ground and you will receive a notice telling you to clear some space.
• The way that the Warrior taunt ability works has been re-worked; you will now receive the highest aggro + 10% when taunting.
• Placed pillars in the starting area which feature the runes for Fireball, Frostbolt, and Affliction. You can practice your runes by standing near the pillar and tracing the rune using your wand.

Major Bug Fixes

• Fixed bugs in the dungeon where monsters would wander into walls, then jump out at you later.
• Took out ability of players and monsters to climb up into the farmhouse at Cenn's Farm, which should prevent issues with monsters being unreachable but attacking you.
• Turrets, spells, and other items should no longer become 'stuck' if a player dies or disconnects. This should fix the 'debris field' that was appearing during large group boss fights against the World Boss.
• In particular, Musketeer turrets should now always despawn when their player dies.
• The menu button can now bring up the menu during combat, and pressing it again will dismiss the menu.
• If you kill yourself inside of your Player House, you will no longer become stuck and unable to leave.

May 5, 2017

Welcome to the second OrbusVR Closed Alpha test! If it's your first time playing, please be sure to consult the Getting Started guide. There is not yet a full in-game tutorial, so it's important to review the guide before starting, otherwise you will have a hard time playing the game.

Major New Additions

• Runemage levels have been reset to Level 1 for all characters. In addition, all inventories have been reset.
• The Runemage class has been greatly re-worked and expanded, including dozens of new spells, the Runemage Super ability, the Resurrection ritual, additional Portal destinations, and more. See the Runemage Play Guide for all the latest information.
• The "activate spot" on the Player Compass has been widened, so it should now be much easier to make sure that you are talking to your party.
• You can no longer use nav jump points (such as going across bridges or down stairs) from a long distance. Instead you need to be fairly close to trigger them.
• The Resurrection menu will now follow you around if your location changes significantly (such as if you had your headset on the floor when you logged in and you were already dead).
• The XP system has been completely re-worked. Now XP is granted based on your contribution to killing a creature, and player groups receive the largest XP bonuses. Read more about this on the blog post.
• The 300% global XP bonus has been re-instated.
• The Player Menu will now always open in the same place regardless of where your finger is when you swipe downward. In addition, the Menu button on the controller will no longer open the Menu when you are in combat. Finally, swiping downward while the Player Menu is already open will have no effect, which should prevent you from accidentally closing the menu when preforming actions such as deleting items.
• Healers now generate aggro on monsters when they heal a player that the monster was already attacking (or planning to attack). Aggro for healers has been tuned such that they can heal twice as much as the damage output of a DPS class before pulling aggro.
• The attack potency of the Warrior has been increased by approximately 35%.
• The server-side collision system has been reworked to be more performant, which should aid in better detection of fast attacks such as Warriors quickly swinging their swords.
• The Warrior's shield will now regenerate its hitpoints when the Warrior is out of combat.
• The Dungeon Rock Golem Boss's base damage has been re-adjusted to be in-line with the correct tuning. It was previously around 10x too low. In addition, the Boss now has an animation to show when it is in a weakened state, and the length of the weakened state has been increased to 10 seconds. The boss's HP has been increased accordingly. Finally, the Golem Boss's key mechanic will correctly reset if the boss resets, rather than requiring you to return to the graveyard to reset it.
• The groups of enemies in the Dungeon have been re-tuned to account for the new ability of the Runemage to polymorph an enemy.
• Glowing crystals have been added to some parts of the Dungeon so that only the beginning area is truly covered in darkness.
• All boss monsters (currently, the Rock Golem Boss and Crab Boss in the Dungeon) will now always drop at least one piece of loot upon dying. They have also been granted their own loot table with items that can only be gained by killing the bosses.
• Runemages can no longer begin rituals while in combat. In addition, taking any damage while in the process of completing a ritual will cause the ritual to end without success.
• The long-range grab indicator will now be hidden when you are holding an object.
• Fixed a bug which was causing enemies to float in the air when coming down a slope toward you. They should now obey the laws of gravity.
• The Harvesting system has been added to the game, which allows you to equip a Harvester tool (currently a pickaxe) to gather flowers and herbs out in the world. See the Harvesting page for more information.
• Added a "quick slot" system to the game which allows you to equip up to two tools to your toolbelt. The tools are only visible when you have at least one free hand available.
• Inventory items can now stack on top of each other. The herbs and flowers which you can harvest will stack to 100.
• The damage numbers in the game have now been separated, so that your own numbers appear in red, and other's damage numbers appear in yellow. In addition, your critical hits will now have a special visual effect where the number goes up instead of down and grows larger than normal.
• Healing spells in the game can now critically hit for double the healing, just like damage spells.
• The World Boss, Elongata, has been re-tuned. The explosion effect which occurs has been changed to be better reflect the attack, the minion's levels have been increased, and it should now not be possible to attack the boss without receiving damage from a far away place.

Major Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where the Warrior's sword throwing ability did not work correctly if you were using the Front Facing setup option to turn around.
• Fixed a glitch where when you were fighting the World Boss, Elongata, there was a constant loud noise coming from the boss.
• If you somehow manage to die while inside of your Player Housing, you should now resurrect at the front door.
• Fixed a bug which was causing the left hand to appear all yellow instead of only outlined in yellow when it was highlighted.
• Monsters will no longer turn around in-between charging and performing their red-area attacks.
• The Musketeer's Frost orb now correctly slows monsters.
• Runemage portals should now be more reliable in getting you to your destination.

April 21, 2017

• The PvP Arena is now available for play.
• There are some new hidden easter eggs for you to find in the game world...
• Added additional logging to catch errors in zone transitions.
• Fixed performance of lights in the dungeon.
• The Golem Boss and Crab Boss in the dungeon now have larger radii that they can travel to before resetting to make fighting them make more sense. (server-side patch)

April 20, 2017

Welcome to the first test of the OrbusVR Closed Alpha! We're thrilled to have you back with us in-game. From here on out things are going to move very quickly. If it's your first time here, please be sure to review the Getting Started guide. There is not yet a full in-game tutorial so it's important to review the guide before starting otherwise you will have a hard time playing the game.

If you're coming back after participating in a previous Stress Test, here's what's changed:

Major New Additions

• Re-tuned combat to be more appropriately challenging, especially for solo adventurers at lower levels. Generally speaking, a same-level monster should be a challenge for a solo player but beatable, and solo players should have a hard time taking on 2 on 1 or more. An elite should require 3+ adventurers to defeat. Note that some classes (such as the Ranger and Musketeer) are inherently easier to solo with than others -- in particular the Runemage is very challenging to solo unless you can consistently cast your spells accurately nearly every time.
• Re-did underlying network architecture to be more reliable for spotty Internet connections.
• Added grass to the ground
• Added the Player Compass to the game, including Party Voice chat.
• New icons for the inventory screen that actually match what they're for.
• New launcher which will auto-update your game files to make sure you're always on the newest version of the game.
• Introduced day-night cycle which is now synced to the server, so all players will see the same sky.
• Added first version of Player Housing to the game. You can enter your player house next to where you start the game in Highsteppe. There's nothing to do in your house currently other than enter it and exit it, though.
• The Warrior class has been re-worked. Now your shield can actively block all attacks from enemies and has a separate health pool which will cause to temporarily "break." Blocking attacks also generates aggro.
• Added support for long-range grabbing of items such as loot bags. If you see a white circle in-game, hold your hand toward the item and the circle will widen, then you can use the Grip button to grab the item.
• Added basic support for currency in the game. There's not really a way to get any yet, though.
• Added new Character Creation screen, which allows you to customize the skin tone, eyes, and mouth that are used for your Character in-game.
• Introduced the official Naming Policy for the game.
• In-game health bars will now always face your position, rather than face toward the direction the creature is looking.
• There is now an in-game line which will appear when another player is teleporting to show you where they are going.
• Added the new Guild City to the game world.
• You can now reach M'aat's Keep in the game world by going through the cave near the bridge to the Guild City. The entrance to the cave dungeon has moved to where the Pigmen spawn.
• There is now an indicator in-game which appears next to the player's name to show who is talking. Eventually the player faces will animate to show this as well.
• If you are using the Front-Facing setup, you can now use the thumbstick/touchpad to turn left/right in 45-degree increments without holding down the Grip button.
• If you wipe on the Rock Golem boss in the dungeon, the key mechanic will now reset so that you can attempt it again without needing to reset the whole dungeon.
• The Ranger's damage output is now dependent upon how far back you 'draw' your arrow before firing it. This is to combat the "Rambo firing" approach from previous tests.
• You can now no longer change your Combat Discipline (class) while you are in combat.
• The "Back to Start" menu option has been renamed to "To Graveyard", as it now just kills you and lets you respawn at the closest graveyard.
• The "Bug Help" menu has been moved under the Settings menu and is now called "Bug Fixers".
• The positioning of the "hand" models has been changed so that they better reflect the natural positions of your hand when holding the controller. Instead of starting "palm downward" then are now "palm sideways."
• You can now scroll through the list of nearby players if there are more than 10. Just use the scrollbar to the right of the list by selecting it with your pointer and moving downward.
• Pressing down on the thumbstick or sliding down on the trackpad while Trackpad Locomotion is enabled will now cause you to slide backwards.
• When you are in a party, you can now gain a Chain XP Bonus. The bonus begins at 1.1x and can go as high as 1.5x. You have a limited time between each subsequent monster kill to keep the XP chain going. Your current bonus is shown under your XP Bar when you look up. Only monsters that are one level below you or higher will trigger the bonus.

Major Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue preventing you from picking up loot sometimes.
• Fixed LOD issues on housing models in Highsteppe.
• If a monster is unable to path to a player, it will now immediately reset instead of getting stuck running in-place and becoming unattackable.
• Fixed missing death animations for some creatures such as the Sheep and Wolf.
• Runemage rune detection has been loosened so it should now be slightly easier to cast spells successfully.
• It should now be much less likely that you will get stuck in combat after killing monsters that use status effects (e.g. spiders).
• Fixed a bug where the Warrior's sword couldn't hit things even when it was drawn after teleporting around (server-side patch).
• Fixed a bug where some monsters would get stuck and not take further damage. (server-side patch)
• Fixed a bug where if you used the Runemage's portal spell to transfer between zones you would get stuck in-between zones and nothing would sync.
• Fixed a bug causing performance issues client-side.
• Fixed a bug causing over-logging of errors due to the voice chat in the game.
• Fixed a bug causing the Wenderwood trees not to show up properly.