[2022] Finishing the Packing, but What’s Next?

A lil somethin somethin: You can find the details for this event on the announcement page here.

Final Packing Iteration
Today we’ll go over the patch and then a few updates on each of the major lines of effort and where we stand on them. The patch today is, mainly, focused on fixes and tweaks to Sleeping Giants and, most of all, closing out all of the packing bugs and improvements. There is one more feature we want to add that should prevent anyone using packing from getting griefed while trying to unpack on PvE tiles specifically, but will work on all tiles with the same rules and intention. Unfortunately, that will come a bit later in a separate patch, but we'll try to add it as soon as possible, without waiting for any large patch to include it, so expect one to come soon.

Otherwise, the patch today focuses on continuing to improve the Sleeping Giants experience, through fixes, and implementing new features, or tweaking existing features in new ways. The main feature we've been working on, though, is packing. Since its release we've received quite a few reports regarding it, like difficulty to unpack or other issues, especially with Hangar Walls, and tried to address them all in this patch. Overall, once we’re sure that all of these packing changes didn’t introduce any new terrible catastrophic bugs, we’ll start burning some tiles to condense the World Map, as we've talked previously. The burn will have a timer of at least 7 days prior to the actual decay of the tile, so you'll have plenty of time to pack and move to another tile that's not being burnt. You'll see a timer above a tile that's being burnt on the World Map and if a map doesn't have one, it will not be burnt.

We'll keep monitoring gameplay with the new changes and the lower number of tiles on the World Map and keep adjusting the numbers if we see that there are still too many tiles or that they're all to crowded without an ability for someone who wants peace and quiet to go to a less populated oasis.

Changelog. This time, in the beginning of the post:

• Made unpacking use the same allowed distance to other bases as building allowance.
  
• Fixed an issue with an error that says a base is too close when it actually isn't.
  
• Increased Lathe Torque inventory to 1,000.
  
• Added packing information and decay timers to Walker HUD to see them while driving.
  
• Reduced Stamina use for Long and Sturdy Grappling Hooks.
  
• Allow raising and lowering unpacked base to allow for an easier unpacking experience.
  
• Made unpacking ignore the owning player when checking for obstructions to make it easier.
  
• Fixed bugs with dirty and toxic water being treated as normal water - autoconsumed in bottles, used for repsawning, etc.
  
• Made toxic water on maps damage only players who are inside it, not mobs or structures.
  
• Improved visuals of toxic water on maps to make it look more dangerous.
  
• Increased Falco HP to 34,500 from 24,500. Did not increase current HP, so need to repair.
  
• Increased sap drop rate from saw blade harvesting.
  
• Fixed sap not dropping with proper loot and quality when using a sawblade.
  
• Made windmills and excavator not decay on the ground.
  
• Made all other structures decay when placed on the ground without a foundation and maintenance chest.
  
• Added Repair Station (small hardpoint on walkers).
  
• Made Repair Station take damage on repairing items, as it's considered heavy workload. Requires repairing the station or rebuilding it. Higher quality Repair Stations last much longer.
  
• Rarity Items can be repaired with the use of rarity resources and a schematic of any rarity, including non-rarity schematic of that item.
  
• Common items can be repaired with common resources without any schematic.
  
• Updated and improved delivery merchant quest to make it more clear.
  
• Replaced Delivery Merchant model to look different from any other Merchant, so it's instantly visible that it's unique and stealthy (as they're smugglers).
  
• Added Medium Water Bag to store more liquids in (small hardpoint on walkers).
  
• Fixed not being able to pack small gates.
  
• Prevented using unpacking to build sky bases. This is not a challenge! Floating bases are subject to be deleted by divine intervention at any moment and the owners banned as per the ToS.
  
• Added highlighting the invalid part when unpacking to make it easier to figure out what is preventing placement.
  
• Made it easier to place bases on uneven terrain.
  
• Added packing period multipliers configurable in server settings for private servers owners.
  
• Separated weapon, tool, and armor rarity durability multiplier. Increased tool and armor durability scaling, slightly rebalanced Weapon durability.
  
• Added tool tier rarity multiplier. Rare items now have higher tool tiers and will harvest higher quantities. Low tier tools like early Axes might be able to harvest Redwood when rare now, and so on.
  
• Added Lathe and Curing Station to a Medium Hardpoint on Walkers.
  
• Fixed Magma Seed not being harvestable by Scythe-type tools.
  
• Overhauled Event Tile spawning feature.
  
• Made it a much lower probability that Event Tile maps with the same settings will spawn back to back (to prevent 1 Clan Cap Canyon after another). Added some other tweaks to settings to make it more balanced.

The new settings for private server owners regarding packing decay are:

• PackingDecayGracePeriodMultiplier
  
• PackingDecayPeriodMultiplier
  
• PackingPreparePeriodMultiplier

Sleeping Giants Improvements Plan
There are still several outstanding issues we’re continuing to work on. Your bug reports and feedback are incredibly valuable here. We have lots and lots still to do to make Sleeping Giants as high quality as we want. From improving loot tables, to fixing Okkam aggro, adding and balancing quests, balancing the rarity upgrader, and so on. Basically, lots of tweaks and fixes left to be done. But little by little we’re whittling all of the issues and inconsistencies down, and we think the end is in sight here. Keep sending your feedback and we’ll keep up the drumbeat of adjusting things regularly.


Quality of Life Update
We recently grouped a bunch of features that have been hanging around as good ideas into a focused plan we’re calling the “Quality of Life” Update. This includes many of the things we’ve talked about publicly, like how we want to implement features that replace some of the functionality of the lobby, like a “Vacation Mode” that would allow to safely log out of the map into a lobby with your walker at a Trade Station, a “Teleport to Home Tile” feature that would allow to build a Portal, much like the ones at the edges of the map and travel directly to your Home Tile, as well as Base Walker Packers that would allow to pack Walkers you don't use daily in a compact packer instead of having a gigantic Hangar.

Other than that, we've listed some ideas for other features that we either discussed ourselves or the ones that you suggested to us directly, which we'll discuss in another post when we flesh them out a little more to be presentable and worthy of your discussion.


PvP Update Q&A
We promised a Q&A here, but we’re going to need a rain check on that one. We had a lot of great feedback and questions posted by all of you, so not wanting to make it just a small post with a few handpicked questions, we'll try to make a proper Q&A without shying away from difficult questions and sharing as much information as we can through that post.


Ancient City
The Ancient City is coming along nicely and we’re, actually, really excited about how it is shaping up. It is going to be a completely new experience that hasn't been possible in Last Oasis before, with many pieces and parts hand-placed into the map, rather than spawned randomly. Meaning that we can design the experience in a much more specific way to make it both visually stunning and gameplay-wise exactly as we want it.

We’ll also be creating a completely new player-progression mechanic tied-in to exploring the Ancient City. Through finding and looting Relics, you’ll be able to improve your reputation when sharing them with the Flotillian Historic Society, unlocking the ability to buy high rarity schematics directly from one of their representatives, and, also, some unique rewards that will only be available by having a high reputation with the guild.

Overall, our current plan is to spawn Ancient City as an Event Map, separate from Rarity Event Maps, so you'll have 2 possible Event Tiles to go to at most times. We'll most likely be spawning the map both as a PvE and a PvP experience, where the PvP map will have rarity like any other Rarity Event Map that's PvP, while the PvE one will have no rarity, but all the same features and mechanics across the board, including the Relics.


In Conclusion
Each week our devblogs will be giving updates on the current status of each line of our efforts. As we’ve said many times, setting deadlines and ETAs are just recipes for disappointment, but we are endeavoring to attempt to be as transparent as possible and provide frequent status updates as we work on each update going forward. Expect more details on the newly announced Quality of Life Update, the PvP Update, and the Ancient City map release, which might be coming earlier than you expect.

Thank you for reading this post and, in general, supporting us through this development with your feedback, Steam reviews, daily discussions, and many more ways to make it easier for us to make Last Oasis better.