[2022] Preparations for Rarity, Base Raiding and More

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

New patch is out, so here's a small update post to accompany the first segment of the rarity overhaul.

A quick refresher of the plan first. Tiles were burnt yesterday successfully and all remaining rarity tiles were set to Common. Today's patch is mainly consisting of preparatory parts of the rarity patch, as well as a bunch of balance changes and improvements. Early next week, we will patch again, which will include additional changes to rarity and allow for rarity event tiles to start spawning. At that time, we will also be enabling base raiding, so make sure to have your bases prepared until then!

We wanted to touch on a few groups of changes specifically that are included in this patch, and how they’ll impact the rest of the rarity overhaul and the game in general.

Walkers

• Rebalanced Stiletto, Mollusk, and Toboggan Wings HP, Torque, and Cost.
  
• Rebalanced Stiletto and Mollusk Leg Cost.
  
• Made Walkers unlockable at their default half HP.

Next week when we reset the rarity, we’ll patch in an overhaul to walker spare part upgrading (cargo, hatch, water, etc). Since we want to have a more deliberate progression through each map, with a partially linear progression of walkers as a part of it, we realized that it doesn’t make sense to make the T3/4 upgrades of a walker take ceramic and iron when the game is being designed for you to upgrade past those walkers. With that in mind, all walkers will require resources that can be acquired at the same tier that the specific walker is, but the upgrades will still require rarity schematics and resources to keep it balanced. We hope that this will foster some good competition for those resources and add a proper incentive to engage in rarity hunt in general. Considering that, there will be a rebalance of those spare parts in accordance with the easier resource requirements. In addition, the hull of the walker will provide a multiplier on each upgrade and all the upgrades of rarity walkers will have a multiplier. What it means is that a higher rarity walker of the same type and at the same upgrade level, will have better stats. For example, an Uncommon Stiletto at T1 Cargo upgrade will have more slots in cargo than a Common Stiletto at the same T1 Cargo upgrade, providing an additional layer of walker progression and another incentive for rarity.

With respect to making walkers unlockable at their default half HP - this was a good idea that came from the community. What it means is that if at a Common rarity, a walker has 10000 HP and losing 5000 HP would unlock it, then a Legendary walker with 22000 HP will still only require 5000 damage to be unlocked. Getting a Legendary walker will likely to be very difficult and so it has to be rewarding, but it shouldn’t dictate who gets to win every fight. This way, the owner of a Legendary walker will become stronger in PvE, and will have a walker that is harder to zero, but won’t have an insurmountable advantage when losing a PvP fight. It’s close to impossible to perfectly balance the effort, skill, and game time required to gain the advantage in literally every aspect of the game, but small changes like these are the types of things we want to foster to level the playing field, especially in PvP, which is one of our main focuses right now.

Melee
While the rarity weapons were obviously a bit over-tuned, it was good to see some new armor and weapon metas on the battlefield. It’s long overdue that we shake some things up with respect to melee. We have put in a few experimental mechanics, fixed some issues, and done a ton of rebalancing.

• Completely rebalanced ALL weapons and armor (more on that below).
  
• Removed double use of stamina on hits.
  
• Added stamina consumption for holding an attack (that starts after a small delay not to affect short holding that’s useful in melee).
  
• Removed Nomad Cloth from all Bone weapons.
  
• Added Brittle Bone Boots and Gloves to the set.

Double use of stamina has always existed (which is just stamina use at the start of any attack, not an actual double use), but due to some other changes to it in Season 5, it became a bit excessive, so we’ve removed it for now to see how fights will change. We also implemented a stamina drain during held attacks, which only kicks in after a short delay to avoid punishing quick holds that are extremely useful in melee. Our intention here was to make an abusive mechanic less lucrative and promote more dynamic melee, but it’s very experimental and we’ll be monitoring how it performs. As for equipment, we’ve completely rebalanced all of the armor and weapon stats and many of their costs. Nomad Cloth in armor and weapons at this tier was just too expensive, which is hard to argue against. The goal for the stat rebalance was to ensure a higher variety between weapons and create both a better progression through the tiers and a more specialized roster of weapon types to choose from - depending on your stats, personal preference, and, most importantly, your target. Swords and cutting weapons in general will be deadly against light armor, while mauls, hammers, and other blunt weapons will be a good choice against a heavy set. There will certainly be additional refinements that we’ll have to do as we continue iterating, such as adjusting Armor Speed Reduction and Weapon Speed more precisely, but as far as stats are concerned at the moment, this change should make every weapon have its own niche in the game and make the process of choosing your weapon for a fight be fun in itself.

Base Raiding
This patch implements the HP increases on all base pieces, which means that the HP of your bases in general will go up by a significant amount now. As you know from the walker HP increase, what this also, unfortunately, means is that all the doors are going to be unlocked by default, as increasing Max HP doesn’t increase the current HP of an object. To allow everyone time to fix this issue and repair your bases, we are leaving on 100% refund and will not be enabling base raiding until the rarity patch next week. Repair hammers got a significant buff in this patch as well, though, so, hopefully, it should be an easier task than it otherwise would have been.

The ammunition damage changes are not being patched in right now, and instead will come together with a more thorough pass over all the weapons in one of the next patches, possibly the rarity one early next week. The intent of this change will be to improve weapon variation in PvE and PvP, somewhat similar to how different melee weapon types are now good against specific targets. For most ammo available to players at this time, the damage against Reinforced Armor (which all bases currently use) will be between 1-5% per hit. Same as everything else, though, it’s still very much a subject to change as we collect your feedback and iterate.

To Summarize
Overall, this patch is aimed at preparing for the rarity update next week, but also making the game a bit less grindy and trying out some new things to increase the variety of choice in both melee and walkers. We’ll continue this trend as we head into the next week and rarity maps begin to appear.

Check out the full changelog below:

• Completely rebalanced ALL the weapons and armor. More on that in the post.
  
• Removed double use of stamina (Stamina consumption on attack start).
  
• Added Stamina consumption while holding an attack after a short delay.
  
• Made rarity Walkers unlockable at their Common half HP to level the playing field in PvP. Meaning, Legendary Firefly will take 4875 HP to unlock instead of 11,000.
  
• Added 2 new Dinghy rigs - Nimmo Rig that's balanced towards combat with more hardpoints on one side, which should make fights more dynamic, while providing a large number of points for guns with a unique balancing factor. And also Traveler Rig, geared towards moving large amounts of items for trading or other purposes, with hardpoints mainly located in the middle of the walker for an ideal chest placement. Both are dropping in Canyons camps.
  
• Significantly increased HP of all the base pieces, including Hangar in preparation of enabling base raiding (Example: Light Wooden Wall 2250 HP -> 24,000 HP).
  
• Increased durability of all Repair Hammers except Simple to have a better progression and buff repairing as an activity.
  
• Rebalanced Stiletto, Mollusk, and Toboggan Wings HP, Torque, and cost.
  
• Rebalanced Stiletto and Mollusk Leg cost.
  
• Added Brittle Bone Boots and Gloves that were missing from the set.
  
• Rebalanced Brittle Bone and Forester's Armor cost, considering new additions to the Brittle Bone set.
  
• Removed Nomad Cloth from Bone Tier weapons. Replaced with Rope and other resources to make them more affordable.
  
• Increased Javelin and Heavy Javelin stack size from 5 to 20 for easier use and carrying.
  
• Made Automaton collision with the player a little smaller for easier walking on deck.
  
• Rebalanced the way resources drop from Rupu. Will drop more rarely, but at higher amounts and better types to make sure that most loot drops are valuable, regardless of the random chance.
  
• Added a chance for Beeswax and Redwood Wood to drop from some Rupu on Canyons to buff the drop.
  
• Fixed a Mollusk rig not dropping where it's supposed to (was dropping a Stiletto one before).
  
• Added new armor for different Rupu types to continue making them look unique and recognizable.
  
• Removed Mushroom Flesh as an ingredient for making Fruit Pulp. Mushrooms are not a fruit.
  
• Tweaked Windmill crafting recipe (also, added T2 Windmill with passive generation, even faster Sandstorm one, and full Sandstorm damage protection, but gotta wait until SG for that one. I like Windmills, they're my pet project for weekends).
  
• Made Toxic Water actually look toxic, so it's more obvious that it's dangerous.
  
• Fixed Bone Bottle recipe using wrong items. Should be craftable now.
  
• Fixed Tech Tree icon of the Maintenance Chest.
  
• Removed Modules Container from Walkers until we add them back, not to confuse everyone.
  
• Removed Walker Crafting Skill menu, which wasn't working and just confused everyone.
  
• Slightly improved Walker Management screen for clarity.