Brief update after a day of raiding concerning bugs..etc. A few people reported the following bugs after raids went live, some of which have been fixed by now:

1. Occasional attack error leading to accidentally killing an npc twice and leading to double drops. This has been fixed - I closed the system last night and then put it back up once the fix was up (a few mins later since Zorg was around ). Those who received double drops mostly only got Large Power Cells, most of which have been returned to me. I'll be in touch with some of the others.

2. Trinkets not showing up correctly on profiles - this has been fixed. To learn more about them, check out the raids thread in main forum.

3. Item XP received for killing NPCs in raids - this has NOT been fixed yet. This was not really intentional since energy for killing npcs was removed right at the end.

Regarding the item xp, I appreciate the reports coming in. I haven't really seen anyone trying to abuse this save for a couple of people who I'm assuming were curious about it. Seems like most other people are just playing the raid normally - don't really appreciate people advertising their attempts with this bug though.

I have logs I can sift through to roughly identify who's trying to abuse the raid considering there are no cooldown penalties for ending the raid early right now before they complete their 30 minute tick. I'm not sure I need to close the system yet, most probably yes as no matter how many people play by the rules, there'll always be the silent exploiters I don't really see anyone else trying to abuse it but the fix for this will most likely get in Thursday so I'll make a call tonight on whether raids will go down until thursday.


As for stuff that's coming around thursday as well - minor improvements like bringing in SC, healing and starting a raid at the same time if you need a revive on the raids list page (Thanks rollin), and some other cleanups/fixes..etc.

~Aldo

The raid system is now live with our first short raid, A Very Merry Realm!

Find it under Fighting > Raids. The first active raid is a small winter event raid available to all those level 70+.
More non-event ones will be coming *very* soon after we've seen this one get some usage, especially ones for lowbies. I have some very cool
and, more importantly, doable ideas for that pertaining to our lore.

Hard details about raids in general:
1. Every raid might have some hourly, weekly, daily rewards that you get for doing the raid once during that time period.
2. You can only complete one raid during every 30 minute tick.
3. All the resets (hourly/weekly/daily rewards resets and raid 30 minute cooldown resets happen at server time ticks. The weekly reset is Monday 12:00am).
4. Keep browsers updated if you're having funky javascript issues during the raid.
5. Some npcs in raids can drop rewards like hunting npcs - but you don't get them right away. They go into a 'raid stash' that you have access to if and only if you complete the raid successfully.
I'll work on better indicators for showing that you've completed the raid in addition to the End Raid button becoming green and some flavor text in chat.

6. This isn't active yet but later this week I'll be adding a short 5 minute cooldown if you quit a raid prematurely or without succeeding.
I might also give an HP penalty, still thinking.

7. Every raid will have a minimum level requirement. You won't see a raid in your list if you aren't at that level or above. Please note that
the minimum level requirement is just a minimum - enemies in the raid will actually be higher most of the time.

8. Attacking NPCs don't use energy - but you also don't get experience for killing them (yet). I'm still tweaking this but I'd prefer upfront costs for some raids
vs energy costs during. As for getting experience for killing npcs though, I'm working on something minor for that.

The raid system, as many of you know, has been a labor of pain and love for me over the last ..2 years almost? I mean I really got down to it
this year on and off but I had a very basic version of the map system ready when I first became volunteer dev back in ~ sept 2016. I wrote out
this massive doc and plan for it but never really continued due to various reasons. I really got down to it this year during late summer but
had to stop due to personal and professional life requiring more of my time and patience.

But we're here now. Over the last 1 week, I put this raid together. I planned it over the last 3 weeks with the initial phase just being brainstorming
and putting together art. I really want to offer a huge shoutout to UnicornBob - he really kept me on task and motivated during the last few weeks, especially
the last week when I actually coded a lot and wrapped up version 1 of the raid system. He also produced almost all the art for this raid - I just did the map
+ some touchups here and there on some of his work. It's really impressive quality and I'm super honored I get to use his work for the launch of this system.

I'll add it to one of the sectors very soon - initially I planned for it to go into outskirts where brief purple link used to be but let's see.

I really hope you guys enjoy it. Let me know of any bugs - use the help/main forum. Please keep your browsers updated to have the best experience.

More to come VERY soon - enjoy everyone!!

~Aldo

Ventrix showed up earlier on SC I wonder what he wanted. Check out the thread in Main Forum (thanks dagreek) to see what happened! (Sorry ste for the butchered pixels )

So, a lot of people have asked for any kind of update on the arrival of raids proper so I thought I'd share a bit of a dev/hype update.

Firstly, woot poster: Click me!

Anyway, the first raid - titled Trials of the Observer - will be Coming Soon (TM) as noted on the poster. Now how soon is soon? Again, life can get crazy but I'm looking at September end as a personal deadline I'm cautiously optimistic that it'll be ready but don't want to promise anything earlier than this. I'm targeting september end because I'd like us devs to do something cool for halloween

A few early hard details: It will be a solo-only, level 80+ raid. Length-wise.. this will fluctuate by the end but I'm personally hoping it'll be about ~10-15ish minutes at the bare minimum (for your first runthrough.. after that I'm expecting this will get lower).

I'll share what rewards you can expect from it closer to its release

I've been pretty busy this summer so far IRL so the progress has been chugging along whenever I get a moment and patience to do so But the first raid's design is pretty much locked down and I'm working on making sure the system will support it. I really want to make sure it works well so it will also see a strong amount of dev stress testing whenever it's ready (but expect classic Aldo gamebreaks at launch - I'll release an Aldo's House raid map if people get through it fine without it breaking the game ).

I want to keep expectations tempered (lol tempering, remember that?) because ultimately if you think about it, for those who did the little raid teaser with Ventrix (talk to him if you didn't), it's basically a slightly more interactive WL... but I think it'll be cool (provided it works well lol) - especially as the start of the system and it will be a good base to build on for future ones.

Have a good one!

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Hello World.

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Stay tuned for an informational podcast coming soon!