Blog Post for the New NPCs, Items..etc update!

So, my finals are done so I went full speed ahead on this update. It took some time to setup over the weekend due to some issues that came up and some more stuff I wanted to get in but here's a full list of what went down.

NOTE: Some people have reported the Targeting Module's Overcharged Function doesn't work after the first use. It requires atleast 11-12 trades which is a signficant investment for most through crafting, so I have disabled the use of this item until it's fixed. Should be a quick fix tonight [This won't affect the Aiden questline don't worry].

1. New Items:

a) Materials & Tools - 2 new item types. You may have encountered materials already, but not tools. They are both intended for use in crafting in the Shadow Forge. The thing that's special about them is that when you're crafting a new item, the trades determined for the new item (the lowest trade out of all required items inputted) does not factor in the trades of a Material. As for tools, there will be some recipes where you need a Tool present in your inventory in order to do the recipe. To be quite honest, I'm not so hot on tools being used for that purpose so they may just change to Materials as well but I'll keep you posted on that front. So far, no recipes require any tools.

b) Items can have data associated with them. Example: the new Targeting Module - an item where 1 trade = 10% battery power. Using the item once will consume a trade and destroy the item if it drops to 0 upon a use. The Targeting Module itself comes with some nice features - the cool one being that if you overcharge the battery power (go greater than 100%), you can perform an "Overcharged Scan", which finds a common to rare item for you held by a hunting group and make that a guaranteed drop on your next hunt of that hunting group. See rollin340's top post in his NPC and Items thread! The Targeting Module also, by default, has a list of all the owners of Phantom items, and their locations (if overcharged, it will display wasteland coordinates too). What are Phantom items? Glad you asked.

c) Phantom items are basically like Spectral items, although a simpler form of them. See, items can now have "expiry times" associated with them. So I combined this new spectral-like rarity with that expiry time and we get these Phantom items. When you defeat a player who has a Phantom item, you can claim that Phantom item. It's simple for now as I added it in very quickly as one of the last things as a sort of fun way to bide the time over the weekend while I set things up for this update but yeah, we'll flesh it out soon

d) These items have already been in the game for a while actually, just never been released but Generic/Rare/Epic/Special Blueprints are now available (most as drops, although one or two can be found using a Targeting Module) along with some new recipes to come. We'll keep adding new recipes as well to the Shadow Facility so stay tuned.

e) Throwing Blades - /throw in WL. These are still highly experimental and yes you can kill your own gang member with this. Not really intended but it's funny.. will be patched fairly soon... so, um, don't

2. Shadow Facility received a bunch of updates although a lot of it is behind-the-scenes and stuff you won't see the fruits of until an update or so from now but what's been done that you can see now is:
a) After crafting something, you'll get a "Craft Again" button which will take you back to the crafting page for the same recipe.
b) When you first go to the Shadow Facility, it will by default keep the crafting tab open.
c) When you click "Go back to the Shadow Facility" from the any of the forge/crafting pages, it will take you back to the Crafting tab selected and the last recipe you used open.
d) For every 2 levels of positive difference between your level and the level of the recipe you are trying to craft, you will receive a -20% XP penalty to the total XP possible from that recipe.
e) Some recipes reward you with bonus xp per optional item added.
f) Crafting Skill has been converted to decimal points for greater flexibility with the kind of XP recipes give.
g) Added items are removed from the respective dropdown list in the forge, and vice versa for Removed items. (More to come on this front).

3. New NPCS - X-Corp Markswomen out.


More patches/followup updates to come during the week.

Recipes will soon be coming into the game with the incoming hunting updates. There will be some annoying recipes as well as some cool recipes (in my opinion). This update will also see the existing recipe that all Shadow Facility contributors have had access to (a free conversion for av blood to a boosted serum) be modified - the recipe will soon require a minimum crafting level of 7 and will not offer any crafting XP.

So what recipe(s) can people use to start leveling their crafting?

You'll see soon. There will be ..versions of the above recipe that lower levels can use, along with some other recipes!

Also check out my Item Giveaway thread in the Games Forum quickly before it ends!

~Aldo

Here are some minor details on what's coming up. I have midterms this week and next week again (with another 1 week of break after them before I have finals RIP) so I thought I'd share some stuff.

- Lynx is working on some lovely stuff for the market, should be coming sometime this week if all goes well!

- There will be a hunting update or two as I teased last week. Not sure if they will make it in this week but basically these updates will involve a few new minor quests/conversations and probably a mini quest journal to help track your progress through these different questlines. But yeah just wanted to give a head's up on this.

- Through the hunting update, we will also release blueprints into the wild as drops. There are 4 types of blueprints that are dedicated to the forge, based on their rarity (their names are very uncreative so feel free to guess ). They'll drop through hunting, quest rewards, and jobs. So soon others who haven't been able to craft at all will be able to join in as well There'll be a couple of recipes in particular that I think some of you might find useful.

- The avatar job that I've teased for forever will probably be one of my last updates, if not the last, before I quit soon. This is because it involves some other not-announced systems/things to come into place first as per my overall plan. I've teased the name of this job multiple times so I don't see any need to hide that atleast - it will be called Artifact Retrieval and it will be an avatar job but it will not reward you more than Research Lab (money-wise).

- There's a certain kind of shop I've been lately thinking about adding into the game as I kinda miss the old shops we used to have on our way to avatar. If I do go through with it once I've decided on how I want it to work, it will MAYBE require a golden nugget to access. If it will, then it will be a one-time fee (only 1 golden nugget ever will be required), just a head's up. I'll post more about this soon once I've finalized the details.

I'm looking at my list now and there are some other interesting things here that I probably won't tease until they're a day away from release so yeah.

Have a good day and week

~Aldo