Talk:2023-11-30 Livestream

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Transcription brute

Intro

• 00:00

Hello everyone and welcome to our glorious Ashes of Creation November development update.

• 00:22

We hope that everyone has been having a wonderful month.

• 00:25

It has been a long one for us, even though it's like short.

• 00:28

So because of the holidays, it just makes everything so cramped for us.

• 00:32

So we're like trying to make sure we get everything done.

• 00:35

Same with December.

• 00:36

So it's like those two sprints for us in development, we use like sprints and milestones to do our

• 00:42

calculations of what we're going to be doing and milestones.

• 00:46

It gets a little hectic.

• 00:47

Yeah, because everyone's just trying to power through, but everyone is amazing and doing

• 00:51

rock and roll and kicking major butts.

• 00:54

Yeah, it's always, oh, go ahead.

• 00:55

It's always interesting.

• 00:56

At the end of the year, we have these two back to back streams in November and December,

• 01:02

and then our longest stream until the end of January.

• 01:05

That's true, because January is so long.

• 01:08

That's true.

• 01:09

But of course, I'm Margaret Cron.

• 01:11

I'm the director of communications here at Entrepid Studios.

• 01:13

And with me as always is Steven Sharif, our creative director.

• 01:17

And we have a whole slew of things for you.

• 01:19

We have some quick reminders.

• 01:20

We're going to try to go through this pretty quick.

• 01:22

Artisanship preview, which I think a lot of you crafters out there are probably really

• 01:26

excited about this.

• 01:27

We've had a lot of questions.

• 01:28

And of course, to preface, this is going to be more of our core functioning stuff, so

• 01:32

not super in-depth in regards to manual crafting.

• 01:37

But we'll talk a little bit more about that.

• 01:39

And of course, if you have questions, feel free to pop those into the Twitch channel,

• 01:45

Discord.

• 01:46

And of course, we have a watch party in Discord right now.

• 01:49

So there's a lot of places for you to interact with us.

• 01:51

Our community team is full throttle.

• 01:55

So of course, we are always pulling those in after those segments as well.

• 01:58

And then we'll have a quick little studio update, art update, and then do our Q&A as

• 02:03

well, like a forum Q&A that we always pull from.

• 02:06

But before we do that, we do have our spotlight.

Reminders

• 02:09

Whoops, wrong one.

• 02:10

There we go.

• 02:12

Our spotlight comment.

• 02:13

So if you, on our development updates, leave a comment, subscribe to us.

• 02:19

You may be selected.

• 02:20

Make sure that you have it so that we can see that you're subscribed to us.

• 02:23

And then you will maybe get your comments selected.

• 02:26

It's random.

• 02:27

So today's comment is from Pa Beats.

• 02:30

And they would like to know, it's less of a question, more of a statement.

• 02:33

Caravans are my number one most loved feature when it comes to MMOs.

• 02:38

This is it.

• 02:41

I will preorder the game first time in like 15 years.

• 02:47

PS, would love to see the other side of that feature.

• 02:51

Maybe how a party of robbers attacks a caravan and how they can then flee and sell it to

• 02:56

a fence or something of that sort.

• 02:59

Yeah, I figure we could talk a little bit about that.

• 03:02

Sure.

• 03:03

Yeah, absolutely.

• 03:04

It's less of a question, more of a statement.

• 03:05

And if you didn't know, we showed off caravans.

• 03:08

So if you're curious about those, definitely check that out.

• 03:12

There's a lot of people in the studio that share that excitement for caravans as a system.

• 03:19

It is the epitome of risk versus reward, obviously.

• 03:23

And knowing that that is a core pillar of a lot of the systems design and Ashes, caravans

• 03:29

represent that very well.

• 03:33

It took a lot of work to kind of get caravans to a place that felt good, both from a drivability

• 03:38

perspective but also from a customization perspective as it relates to crafting unique

• 03:42

components and creating these vehicles that live in stalls that are located at different

• 03:47

nodes and kind of their summoning mechanic and leveraging them for the transit of these

• 03:52

cargo and materials that are so vital to the economy.

• 03:57

All of that in a fantasy world, you might see that in games like an EVE or something

• 04:03

that's a little bit more sci-fi with transport, but it's not often seen in fantasy style games.

• 04:09

And so I think that's super cool, obviously.

• 04:13

When we talk about the PVP element of them and that risk, I am happy to announce that

• 04:19

in January we will be showcasing, this is I guess a little bit of a leak of things to

• 04:25

come, but we will be showcasing a large PVP battle around caravans.

• 04:31

And you guys will get to see a little bit of the caravan raft take place as well.

• 04:36

We should be in a good spot for that come January.

• 04:40

So that's going to be really exciting, I think, for people to see.

• 04:42

I know that we've had the last few streams have been kind of focused around mechanics

• 04:47

within Ashes that aren't combat or PVP related.

• 04:52

That's a good thing because what makes the world go round in Vera is obviously those

• 04:56

types of systems.

• 04:58

And it makes the events where player conflict does occur that much more exciting because

• 05:03

of how much it took to kind of set the stage for a high risk reward type encounter.

• 05:10

And that's what caravans are all about.

• 05:11

So January is going to be a really fun thing to see, I believe, and you guys are going

• 05:15

to be happily surprised.

• 05:16

There's definitely a lot of questions regarding the PVP element of just our game in general.

• 05:21

And of course, when we showcased the caravan system, there were a lot of follow up questions

• 05:26

in regards to how PVP would play into that.

• 05:28

And of course, we had already planned to share that, but the caravan system alone is such

• 05:32

an in-depth system and the PVP on top of that is.

• 05:35

So we just split those up.

• 05:37

Hopefully you all understand that.

• 05:38

And of course, we didn't want to put too much pressure on those teams right back to back.

• 05:43

So kind of giving a little love here and there.

• 05:46

But of course, I think I misspoke last month.

• 05:50

I meant to say that in the December, at the end of the year, we are going to share the

• 05:55

quarter.

• 05:56

I believe that's what we had said earlier on as well when we announced the 2024 Alpha

• 06:01

2 timeline as well.

• 06:03

And I think I misspoke and said next live stream when I meant to say at the end of the

• 06:07

year.

• 06:09

So we will be announcing what quarter Alpha 2 will be next live stream in December's live

• 06:13

stream to make it very clear.

• 06:15

Apologies for the confusion.

• 06:16

Yeah, not too far away.

• 06:17

Yeah.

• 06:18

No, yeah, absolutely.

• 06:19

We're only a few weeks away from that actually.

• 06:20

Yeah, that's true.

• 06:21

We're not that far away.

• 06:22

Yeah, we got a lot of testing that's been going on over the course of this month.

• 06:28

And obviously, December is going to be a big month when it comes to testing as well.

• 06:31

I made a little bit of commentary about that in the Discord.

• 06:36

Things are heating up for sure, but I do want to temper expectations.

• 06:39

I want to remind everybody that this is Alpha testing, right?

• 06:44

And so because of that, you can look historically at how far the game has come year after year,

• 06:50

the improvements that get made.

• 06:52

And what we're about to show you right now, which is a little over an hour long showcase

• 06:58

regarding all things artisanship, right?

• 07:02

I made a post in Discord yesterday that just went over kind of all the types of updates

• 07:07

that we're going to see.

• 07:08

And I want to reiterate them here before we actually move to the video segment.

• 07:12

And I know a lot of you guys take your hour break to kind of watch this, to watch our

• 07:17

live stream.

• 07:18

I apologize.

• 07:19

Oh, I'm sorry.

• 07:20

I thought that was my cue.

• 07:21

No, go through the reminders and then I'll do that.

• 07:22

No, that was not your cue yet.

• 07:23

Okay, okay, go.

• 07:24

You're good.

• 07:25

But yeah, I just wanted to kind of let people know that that was a misspoke on my side.

• 07:31

And of course, we do want to thank you all for helping us raise money for Extra Life.

• 07:36

What an amazing campaign that we have as a team.

• 07:40

You're wonderful.

• 07:41

I mean, we can't thank you guys enough for what you've done for each other.

• 07:44

I forgot that that was this month.

• 07:45

I feel like that was a year ago already.

• 07:47

I know.

• 07:48

But we did put an article up.

• 07:50

It also has the winners too.

• 07:52

And all the winners have been reached out to and given their rewards.

• 07:56

I think the last of rewards are the three thank you videos, which we're going to be

• 08:00

recording right after this and sending out.

• 08:01

So everyone should be getting all of their things or have information on when your things

• 08:05

are going to be shipped to you.

• 08:06

So I just wanted to reiterate that to folks.

• 08:12

And just a last parting comment regards to Extra Life.

• 08:17

Those of you who didn't get to participate or didn't get to take a look, I think that

• 08:22

as a community, we need to celebrate our accomplishments.

• 08:27

And it is a really cool thing that we as a community have come together over the course

• 08:33

of the last several years to raise over three hundred and twenty five thousand dollars for

• 08:38

Rady's Children's Hospital.

• 08:39

And that is that is truly something that is unique about the Ashes community.

• 08:44

I mean, we're not even in our game yet playing.

• 08:46

Right.

• 08:47

And we have come together as a community very strongly and are capable of doing these things

• 08:53

that help others and demonstrate the quality of what it means to be an Ashes of Creation

• 08:59

community member.

• 09:01

And that's something that I think is very unique and it's something that we should be

• 09:04

proud of and that we should carry with us to the other gaming communities that we are

• 09:08

a part of.

• 09:09

And and, you know, we're all an eclectic bunch of gamers.

• 09:12

We enjoy lots of different games.

• 09:15

The cause that that Extra Life presents, I think, is a worthwhile one.

• 09:20

And it is something that touches the hearts of people who are gamers just like you and

• 09:25

I, like Margaret and I.

• 09:27

And it's really something that's noticeable for for for us to come together and perform

• 09:31

like that.

• 09:32

So kudos to you guys out in the community.

• 09:34

That is truly something remarkable.

• 09:36

And I can't wait to see what even crazier things we get to do in the future as we get

• 09:40

closer and closer to launch and then post launch as well and how we can integrate Ashes

• 09:44

of Creation into more of those type of things.

• 09:47

So thank you all.

• 09:48

And of course, our community is just amazing as a whole.

• 09:50

So we love how much you all interact with us on all of the platforms.

• 09:54

So keep keep that up.

• 09:56

And I know it's only going to get crazier when we start doing more guild stuff, because

• 09:59

we are definitely going to expand to more of that as we get like in game and do that

• 10:03

kind of stuff because guilds are very important.

• 10:05

But of course, I just want to remind you that we do have some dev discussions up.

• 10:09

We have our dev discussion for respawn times.

• 10:14

So if you have not partaken in that, we are going to be wrapping up our reporting for

• 10:18

that.

• 10:19

So please feel free to pop in there.

• 10:21

Give us some some of your thoughts.

• 10:22

Of course, you can even after our reporting still continue to give us feedback.

• 10:25

We always go back and double check things, but did want to do that.

• 10:29

And of course, I wanted to give you a little teaser.

• 10:31

Vagner shared that next one will be on drop rarity.

• 10:35

And so if you have feelings and thoughts on drop rarity, which I know most of you all

• 10:38

out there do, definitely give us your thoughts in regards to that because we are going to

• 10:43

be compiling a report for the dev team in regards to that.

• 10:48

Also, I don't have an asset for this because it's more of a surprise thing.

• 10:53

We always do something that kind of cool and fun or silly during the holidays.

• 10:57

But our next one is going to be a bonus dev discussion.

• 11:00

It's going to be a special holiday delicious dev discussion.

• 11:03

For those of you who have partaken in the past, we've made some really cool recipes

• 11:07

and things like that.

• 11:08

And especially tying in with artisanship stuff for those who enjoy cooking and things of

• 11:12

that sort.

• 11:13

You definitely want to head over to the forums next week and vote on which Varon holiday

• 11:17

recipe you would like to see.

• 11:20

And we'll be putting some of those out to share with you guys for the holiday season.

• 11:24

And hopefully some people will make them and then send us pictures.

• 11:27

Yeah, that would be super cool.

• 11:30

What if some people did make them and we had a little bit of like some alpha keys that

• 11:35

we gave out for the best version of those recipes?

• 11:38

I don't know.

• 11:39

That could be interesting.

• 11:40

That'd be hard.

• 11:41

We'd have to do a whole campaign for that.

• 11:44

We could do community voting.

• 11:45

I don't know.

• 11:46

We can figure something out.

• 11:47

We might be able to do something like that.

• 11:54

Definitely contest in the future.

• 11:55

But I think we might be able to give some alpha keys away if people make some stuff

• 11:58

and share with us.

• 11:59

That's like bonus, not contest oriented.

• 12:02

Yes, that's right.

• 12:04

We'll discuss on that front.

• 12:06

And of course, just a reminder that the Unseen Order will be ending January 17th.

• 12:13

I know that some people just want to make sure that they're being conscious of that.

• 12:17

So if you would like a pre-order pack, this is the last time we will be offering a pre-order

• 12:22

pack specifically.

• 12:23

So if you would like that, definitely head on over there and snag yourself one.

• 12:28

And with that, Steven, I will hand it over to you to do some prefacing.

Artisanship Preview

• 12:33

Thank you.

• 12:34

All right.

• 12:35

So let's really breathe together on stream.

• 12:38

We want to breathe in, hold, and breathe out.

• 12:44

Okay.

• 12:44

So as a reminder, this stream is going to be focused on artisanship as a whole.

• 12:53

And artisanship in the economy is obviously a very integral component of creating a world

• 13:00

where progression matters, where decisions and choices matter.

• 13:05

The world state that is constantly in flux and changing around you is very relevant as

• 13:11

it relates to supply and demand within the economy.

• 13:14

That creates opportunity.

• 13:16

It also creates, unfortunately, downsides and downturns.

• 13:20

But that keeps a market interesting, right?

• 13:22

It also makes you remember things.

• 13:25

The times when you're having struggle, when you win and overcome those is like the things

• 13:29

you remember the most.

• 13:30

I mean, imagine your favorite guild moments are usually when you're like, we tried 10

• 13:35

times on the boss, but then we finally did it, right?

• 13:37

Oh, yeah.

• 13:38

100%.

• 13:39

I mean, some of the more interesting moments that I've had in other games was where there

• 13:47

were unique and scarce resources that everyone was contending for, right?

• 13:55

And those created, I think, very emergent and dynamic interactions between the players.

• 14:02

Obviously that was interesting.

• 14:05

But okay, so what we're going to see today is not just about artisanship.

• 14:10

It is also going to be related to several changes that happen within the game over time.

• 14:18

And so being that this is the end of the year or coming close to the end of the year, you're

• 14:22

going to see a number of different updates to several different systems.

• 14:27

You're going to see some updates on the UI front, a little bit more explanation and perhaps

• 14:32

a clearer picture for you as it relates to spatial management and the inventory systems.

• 14:37

That's obviously something that is unique to the gathering system.

• 14:42

You're going to see significant updates to game lighting.

• 14:47

When we showed the night and day cycle in the past, there was a resounding feedback

• 14:51

from the community to see a bit darker exploration for the night times to kind of bring that

• 14:59

field of view in a bit more.

• 15:02

And so we've updated that.

• 15:04

You're also going to see some significant changes from our tech art team with the skybox

• 15:08

and our volumetric clouds.

• 15:11

I think it's something that creates a bit more dramatic atmosphere within this video.

• 15:15

You're going to see the first showcase of processing and how processing works from a

• 15:20

stations perspective.

• 15:24

These are going to be systems that allow players within the node who may not have a freehold

• 15:31

to still participate in some levels of processing.

• 15:36

And that's an important distinction between what's available on freeholds and what's available

• 15:41

within nodes.

• 15:42

You're going to see, get a little bit of insight to predicate systems that relate to what you

• 15:49

can access in the wild.

• 15:52

We made this change a while ago that everything is accessible, obviously, from a resource

• 15:57

gathering perspective.

• 15:58

However, we do gatekeep some of the access points to progression within the profession.

• 16:04

And you're going to see the certification, a very low level certification process that's

• 16:09

quest driven.

• 16:10

You're not going to see that whole certification process, but you are going to see how those

• 16:16

resources are restricted.

• 16:17

You're also going to see some tool making, kind of the initial tools that you'll get

• 16:20

as a gatherer, which is going to be quest related to start.

• 16:27

And then you'll have to be making those tools yourself.

• 16:29

You're going to see a little bit of our recipe system and the recipe book, as well as the

• 16:33

other crafting stations for those recipes.

• 16:35

We're going to be specifically crafting a weapon in this video.

• 16:39

And you're not going to see all of the accurate recipe components necessary to craft the weapon,

• 16:45

but you are going to see a version of that right now.

• 16:49

You're also going to see something that you haven't seen since Alpha 1, which is our corruption

• 16:55

zones.

• 16:56

And the corruption zones are something, obviously, that changes within the world state.

• 17:04

And the world state is a very important aspect of what resources are available at what time.

• 17:10

Corruption spreads as players do not respond to it appropriately.

• 17:13

It can be the predicate for events.

• 17:14

It can be the predicate for story arcs to kick off.

• 17:19

And it does dynamically change the spawners within the world.

• 17:23

Something that's unique, obviously, to Ashes of Creation is that world state change affecting

• 17:27

the supply and demand of resources.

• 17:29

And you're going to see a little bit of our adaptive resource.

• 17:31

And from that, you're going to see a little bit of our adaptive resource gathering tech

• 17:35

updates where you see those resources change from night to day or from corrupt to not corrupt.

• 17:42

And then there is going to be a little bit of a leak of a couple of ranger skills.

• 17:47

I will give you another leak that next month we are going to be doing the ranger showcase

• 17:51

again.

• 17:52

There's 18 new abilities within the archetype kit that we're going to show off.

• 17:56

And I think that you guys will have a fun time with that.

• 17:59

But we did have to dispatch a few wolves while we were out looking for resources during this

• 18:02

livestream.

• 18:03

So, with that being said, I do want to leave off with the last disclaimer.

• 18:07

As you all know what I'm about to say, this is still Alpha.

• 18:11

Yes, that's right.

• 18:13

This is still Alpha.

• 18:14

This is still a work in progress.

• 18:16

Things only get better from this point forward.

• 18:19

But as is our responsibility, we want to show you how things are progressing.

• 18:23

And we want to do so so that you're able to provide us feedback on the directionality

• 18:27

you see through these showcases and can let us know how this relates to your experiences,

• 18:32

how this is something you want to see or what you would change differently.

• 18:36

So keep in mind as you're watching, what are the points of feedback that you want to give

• 18:39

us?

• 18:40

And you can give them to us on YouTube, which will be released shortly after this livestream.

• 18:43

We have a forum thread that we'll have up.

• 18:46

That's the best way because it makes it the easiest for us to compile.

• 18:49

It is.

• 18:50

It is the best way, forums.

• 18:51

But I know not a lot of you are keyboard warriors on the forum.

• 18:54

So if you want to be out on the Discord or on the social medias.

• 18:58

If you prefer to talk.

• 19:00

And then of course, any social platform like Stephen was saying, you can leave us feedback

• 19:04

on.

• 19:05

Yes, absolutely.

• 19:06

Let me think.

• 19:07

Was that the last thing?

• 19:08

Was that the last thing?

• 19:09

I think that's the last thing.

• 19:10

I think that was the last thing.

• 19:11

We will see you guys just over in a year.

• 19:13

It's always like packing when you leave for a trip and you're like, did I bring everything?

• 19:16

I know.

• 19:17

Do I got my phone?

• 19:18

I got my wallet?

• 19:19

I'm good.

• 19:20

All right.

• 19:21

We'll see you guys in just a little bit.

• 19:22

Bye for now.

• 19:44

Hello everyone and welcome to yet another stream from Vera.

• 19:49

And we have a very exciting stream for you today.

• 19:54

We are going to be going through the artisanship system.

• 19:58

And it has been a little while since we last talked about artisanship and showcased the

• 20:06

gathering and we're going to do a little bit of that today.

• 20:08

And we also, during our last stream with Freeholds, talked a little bit about processing and we're

• 20:14

going to be doing that today as well.

• 20:17

And we're also going to be crafting something pretty interesting.

• 20:19

And I have joining me four of our glorious team here at Intrepid.

• 20:26

Some of them regulars.

• 20:27

I think all of them actually regulars have been on the stream before.

• 20:31

We have two of our glorious designers, Mike and Corey.

• 20:35

Mike, Corey, how are you guys doing?

• 20:37

Doing great.

• 20:38

How are you?

• 20:39

Glad to be here.

• 20:40

Doing very good.

• 20:41

I'm excited to show off what you guys have been working on and how far it's come since

• 20:43

people last saw it.

• 20:45

Yeah, same here.

• 20:47

It's very exciting for us.

• 20:49

Yes.

• 20:50

We also have joining us one of our glorious engineers, Alex.

• 20:55

How you doing, buddy?

• 20:57

Doing great.

• 20:58

How are you?

• 20:59

Doing very good.

• 21:00

You have been doing a lot of work on the engineering side of things, getting all these glorious

• 21:03

designs up and running.

• 21:04

It's going to be exciting to take a look at that today as well.

• 21:07

Yeah, it's been a challenge.

• 21:09

After all the wishes of my designers.

• 21:12

Not bad, was it?

• 21:16

You're like, wait, all of our wishes?

• 21:20

The one that passed visibility.

• 21:23

We also have joining us for, this is your second time now, Nathan, our glorious producer.

• 21:30

Yeah, the double feature.

• 21:31

I know, back to back.

• 21:33

I know.

• 21:34

The artisanship is the peanut butter to the jelly that is node, so I'm super excited to

• 21:38

show how these start interacting with each other.

• 21:40

Yes, it is totally, 100%.

• 21:43

You guys have done a great job so far.

• 21:45

I know you guys have been really pushing it this last sprint, and it has definitely shown

• 21:53

through to me, so I'm excited to show the audience.

• 21:55

All right, so why don't we talk a little bit about what we're going to be doing today?

• 22:03

Corey?

• 22:04

Mike?

• 22:05

Yeah, it sounds good.

• 22:09

You had brought up that you had done a little lumberjacking, but were kind of interested

• 22:14

in getting into some mining and herbalism because you picked up a recipe.

• 22:20

I think it's like, you were saying that's a pretty nice sword or something.

• 22:24

Oh, okay.

• 22:25

Let me take a look at that.

• 22:26

Is that going to be in my inventory?

• 22:27

Yeah, it should be in your inventory, yeah.

• 22:30

So I was thinking we could go out and get some of the stuff that we would need to make

• 22:37

that sword.

• 22:38

Okay.

• 22:39

Some of them are a little harder to come by, so I'm not sure whether or not we'll be able

• 22:41

to get our hands on that.

• 22:43

If not, I think we might have some stuff for you.

• 22:45

But yeah, I guess we just need to kind of get our stuff together.

• 22:51

As you mentioned, or as I mentioned, you already did some lumberjacking, but we'll probably

• 22:55

need to get you herbalism sickle and maybe some extra bags so you have some space.

• 23:04

So yeah, let's make our way over to the agricultural supply.

• 23:10

I think there's one of those built in Winstead right now, so we can head down there.

• 23:16

So now talk to me a little bit about, obviously we have this recipe.

• 23:21

When players are looking to create different items in the game, they're going to need to

• 23:26

go out and either purchase or get drops of recipes or trade with other players.

• 23:31

And when they acquire that recipe, like I have here, it says Nightblade.

• 23:35

I can use the recipe and I will learn a weaponsmithing recipe for the Nightblade.

• 23:40

So I have a recipe book that I get to keep essentially.

• 23:43

I learn these recipes once.

• 23:45

Yep, pretty much.

• 23:47

There might be some unique cases where some recipes might have a charge count.

• 23:51

So when you craft it five times, it might disappear.

• 23:53

But generally most of the cases, all the recipes should be permanently learned.

• 23:57

Okay, nice.

• 23:58

That's very cool.

• 24:00

And right clicking this is going to consume it, I assume.

• 24:02

But I do get a preview of the materials that we need.

• 24:05

And Corey, this is what you were talking a little bit about.

• 24:07

Go ahead, I'm collecting some of these.

• 24:09

There's a night opal moon bell.

• 24:11

I assume that is some type of flower.

• 24:14

Yeah, so the night opal and the moon bells are, those are the ones that I was kind of

• 24:19

alluding to.

• 24:20

They're a little difficult to get our hands on.

• 24:23

The night opals, you basically can't see them at all during the day.

• 24:27

But as it gets closer to night, if they're in the world, they'll sort of push away their

• 24:34

shell and start shining a bit.

• 24:36

And then the moon bells only bloom at night.

• 24:40

So we'll have to kind of, you know, maybe we'll work on some of the other things you

• 24:45

need for that recipe.

• 24:46

And hopefully nighttime will come around and we can find some of those things.

• 24:49

Okay, very cool.

• 24:50

So I'm going to right click this recipe to learn it.

• 24:53

Let's see here.

• 24:54

Oh, very cool.

• 24:55

It says learned new recipe, night blade.

• 24:59

Okay, yeah.

• 25:01

Now where are we going to go to get this sickle mentioned?

• 25:03

Oh yeah, so right over here.

• 25:05

Okay, they got this area in kind of the back alley of the town.

• 25:13

Yeah, so if you head through here, this is the agricultural supply.

• 25:18

This is one of the, you know, service buildings that you can build in the node.

• 25:20

This one kind of focuses specifically on artisanship and you'll find stuff for herbalism, farming

• 25:25

and animal husbandry here.

• 25:27

So if you talk to Mr. Willy over here, yeah, so he, if you talk to him, he should give

• 25:37

you some stuff that you can use to construct your first sickle.

• 25:42

And then once you have those things, there's a little anvil here over here to your left

• 25:47

and you can craft the sickle there.

• 25:49

And then I think once you have the sickle, you can talk to him and it'll complete the

• 25:55

quest and give you your first sickle.

• 25:57

You'll be ready to go.

• 25:58

This guy is incredibly rude.

• 26:00

We need to have a conversation with the narrative team about how these vendors speak to the

• 26:06

citizens of this village.

• 26:08

This is unbelievable.

• 26:12

He can't teach just any drifter.

• 26:13

Am I just any drifter?

• 26:15

Does he not see the crown on this helmet?

• 26:17

I guess not.

• 26:18

I'll have to add the mayoral narrative tags just so they can end up their respectful

• 26:26

speech.

• 26:27

He's not even going to pay me too for achieving these many tasks he has for me.

• 26:31

He's paying you in experience.

• 26:33

That is not enough.

• 26:34

Oh man.

• 26:35

I've had those jobs before.

• 26:38

Same.

• 26:39

Oh, that was so good.

• 26:42

That was so good.

• 26:44

Thank you.

• 26:45

Oh no.

• 26:46

Okay.

• 26:47

I have achieved this quest.

• 26:48

I am going to create a feast of flowers.

• 26:50

Awesome.

• 26:51

He wants me to show him my crude sickle.

• 26:56

Nice.

• 26:57

You should do that.

• 26:58

We'll turn away.

• 26:59

Wait.

• 27:00

Whoa.

• 27:01

This is going to be one of those streams.

• 27:06

Okay.

• 27:07

All right.

• 27:08

So what do I need to do with this?

• 27:10

Come over here next to the anvil.

• 27:13

Yeah.

• 27:14

You?

• 27:15

Yeah.

• 27:16

There's a little anvil right here.

• 27:17

You can interact with that and that should pull up the crafting menu.

• 27:20

So as a gatherer, you'll be able to craft your own tools.

• 27:25

They're going to take resources that come from all sorts of different professions.

• 27:30

You won't be able to always source all of those things just yourself.

• 27:34

But luckily, Willy's nice and he gave you some components and you can just throw them

• 27:41

together to make your first sickle here.

• 27:44

So you can go through with the craft.

• 27:46

You should get that thing and show it to him and he'll give you a little pat on the back.

• 27:51

All right.

• 27:52

So now this is a great example as we kind of players as you're entering into Alpha 2

• 27:58

and you're wanting to get started into artisanship.

• 28:02

These different professions will have a number of quests available to introduce players to

• 28:06

their first tool sets.

• 28:09

And then from there, tool set sustainability will be incumbent on the player to continue

• 28:16

to gather the resources necessary to repeatedly create these tools because they have a durability

• 28:21

that gets expended when interacting with the resources in the open world.

• 28:26

Exactly.

• 28:27

All right.

• 28:28

OK, so I'm going to talk to him again.

• 28:32

And yes, I made the sickle.

• 28:34

OK, now he's criticizing my crude work.

• 28:38

OK, OK.

• 28:39

All right.

• 28:40

But that's fine.

• 28:43

We all know what your first mayoral decision is going to be is destroy agriculture supplies.

• 28:49

This guy is going to destroy agriculture supplies.

• 28:54

All right.

• 28:55

Very cool.

• 28:56

So I can preview it in the artisanship page, actually.

• 29:03

Once you once you there you go.

• 29:05

You should have your rewards now.

• 29:06

Equipped to artisan tool slot.

• 29:08

Very cool.

• 29:09

So now it is in my artisan tool slot.

• 29:10

Should I open that and take a look here?

• 29:13

Yeah, perfect.

• 29:14

OK, OK.

• 29:15

So, yeah, so we have that panel open.

• 29:20

This is kind of like the hub for all artisanship stuff.

• 29:23

I think we poked around here a little bit in some of the previous streams.

• 29:26

But on the right hand side there, you can see all the different slots for the the tool

• 29:31

types for each of our five gathering professions.

• 29:34

So it looks like you have one of each of the tools that we're looking to use today.

• 29:40

And also kind of notice very progressed in my in my lumberjacking.

• 29:44

Oh, yeah.

• 29:46

You said you're like, what level you?

• 29:47

I'm like level nine.

• 29:49

I'm about to be level 10.

• 29:50

Oh, that's awesome.

• 29:51

OK, so like while we're out and about, you'll if you hit level 10, you should be able to

• 29:56

upgrade your certification to apprentice.

• 29:58

And that's one of our certification breakpoints.

• 30:02

And once you each hit those breakpoints, it kind of opens up a whole new range of stuff

• 30:07

that you can do.

• 30:08

New tools.

• 30:09

Exactly right.

• 30:10

A new portion of your skill tree.

• 30:13

So we should for sure get you that level 10 and see what happens.

• 30:17

What up, Steven?

• 30:18

We need to prepare for a journey.

• 30:19

Oh, oh, yeah.

• 30:20

Yeah.

• 30:21

So we'll get some potential bags.

• 30:24

OK.

• 30:25

Yeah.

• 30:26

Yeah.

• 30:27

So we talked about this in the past with the with the Tetris inventory, kind of having

• 30:31

different spatial layouts of our bags and also our our resources.

• 30:37

And so we've been working on that a little bit and trying to set up bags that have spaces

• 30:43

that are optimal for the shapes that are going to be associated with the resources and having

• 30:49

stats on the bags that will change the stack size and how much you can stack stuff up.

• 30:54

So since we're going out, we're going to collect a bunch of stuff.

• 30:58

You should grab one of the bountiful bags from Willy and then we'll go over to the stoneworks

• 31:04

and see if we can grab a bag.

• 31:07

And Willy has a number of different farmer's shirts and novice herbalism or herbalist skivvies.

• 31:16

Do I want any gear from this?

• 31:18

Yeah, it's up to you.

• 31:20

I mean, there's so there's gear for all of the different crafting, gathering and processing

• 31:24

professions that will help you, you know, do those different trades.

• 31:28

So it's up to you.

• 31:30

Like if you you said you're higher level in lumberjacking, so, you know, you could grab

• 31:34

some of that stuff to kind of compound on the stats, make you make you faster at chopping

• 31:39

or should I go over there?

• 31:40

I buy that stuff.

• 31:41

OK, cool, cool, cool.

• 31:43

So from this guy, let me purchase his bags.

• 31:46

Yeah, once you grab grab the bountiful bag from him, the bountiful ones are pretty great.

• 31:52

They I think they have the increased stack size on them so you can stack up more herbs

• 31:57

in that bag than you can in others.

• 32:00

I see there is a novice herbalism bag.

• 32:06

And if you scroll down on the bottom, there is a

• 32:07

alin herbalism basket.

• 32:08

Oh, OK, so I'm going to grab the basket.

• 32:09

Yeah.

• 32:10

All right.

• 32:11

Done.

• 32:12

I got one of those.

• 32:13

Sweet.

• 32:14

Awesome.

• 32:15

Anything else?

• 32:16

Any other bags?

• 32:17

Yeah, let's run over this way to the stone works.

• 32:25

There's another gentleman over here that we can talk to, kind of standing by this crane.

• 32:34

OK, and you can do the same thing from him.

• 32:36

Throw throw a little gold at him and he'll give you some give you some bags and stuff.

• 32:40

From this guy, the stone novice bountiful mining bag, novice bountiful.

• 32:46

OK, got it.

• 32:47

Awesome.

• 32:48

So now those those bags should be in your inventory.

• 32:52

And if you right click them, they'll equip.

• 32:55

And then if you go over to your materials tab, you should be able to see those new bags that we got.

• 33:02

OK, so just real quick, you were speaking earlier about the unique stack sizes as being part of the kind of asymmetric design for bag crafting.

• 33:13

And these bags have specifically curated benefits for stack sizes of the type of resources they relate to.

• 33:22

And that's the specific profession of gathering and the resources you would gain from those those different unique professions.

• 33:29

So by equipping this herbalism bag, whoops, let's see here.

• 33:34

And then also, let me just open up the materials section.

• 33:39

And this one I see now I've actually gotten a unique looking structure for the alien herbalism basket.

• 33:52

And those are the types of structures that you would expect them to gather that are the gatherables for herbalism.

• 33:57

Correct. Correct. Correct. Yeah.

• 33:59

So that's not necessarily to say that I can't collect non herbalism resources.

• 34:04

I could and I can put them in that bag, but it just wouldn't utilize the most beneficial aspect of it, which is the higher stack count for those types of herbalism resources.

• 34:15

Yeah, exactly. We can also, you know, there can also be constraints on the on the shape, right?

• 34:21

Like we were talking about, like you can kind of see I'm not sure what materials you you have in your bags, but like I have a couple of pieces of wood that are, you know, one by three.

• 34:33

And so, you know, in in the herbalism bag, I'm not sure that there's any any slots for for pieces of wood that are that size.

• 34:40

Right. So some there'll be some constraints and benefits in terms of shape and then also, you know, the stack size based on the on the type.

• 34:50

So, OK, cool. So now I go ahead.

• 34:54

A good example of if you equip the mining bag as well on top of the herbalism bag, you'll be able to see the shapes are different.

• 35:03

But you can see the mining bags are two by twos and herbalism bags are one by twos.

• 35:10

So you can technically put herbs into your mining bags, but you won't get the benefit of the stock bonuses of the mining stuff.

• 35:17

Right. Yeah, that's very cool.

• 35:20

I'm sorry. Go ahead, Mike. Also, the earlier versions might be very restrictive in sizes.

• 35:27

So like the novice mining bags and all the herbalism bags are very restrictive.

• 35:32

But as you level up and then make better bags, might be more generous of shapes.

• 35:37

So you could technically do some other things as well and then have more bigger sizes and have be able to hold more variety of things as well.

• 35:46

OK, very nice. I think that's pretty cool. Should we go to the lumberjack to grab those?

• 35:51

Were you talking about some equipment that he might have that might help us with our lumberjack?

• 35:56

Oh, yeah, definitely. Yeah.

• 35:59

Oh, I see. Here you go. Let me see here.

• 36:04

I have I also have a quest that relates to we rise after felling.

• 36:10

Oh, yeah. So that's the certification quest.

• 36:13

So as you mentioned before, you know, there were where we're planning on having some some content related to, you know,

• 36:22

onboarding players to the different professions and, you know, you're going to need a tool for the first time and you're going to want to craft a thing for the first time and kind of learn how to do those things.

• 36:32

But we also want to extend that out to kind of more of a individual story arc like experience for players.

• 36:40

So as you as you become a better lumberjack, you'll you'll you'll play out your story as as a lumberjack.

• 36:47

So these different certification quests are meant to be kind of keystone moments in that story progression.

• 36:56

So, you know, right now we have something kind of simple set up.

• 36:59

It looks like you already collected all of the wood that you needed. Right.

• 37:03

But you also need to reach the level needed to even take on an apprenticeship. So so I think.

• 37:12

Yeah. See, see what he's got. I check out some of the gear.

• 37:16

I think that will since you're already pretty pretty good with the wood chopper and you could probably get a little faster with the gear that he has.

• 37:22

So he does have he has a shirt pants.

• 37:27

And I think on a tool belt and yeah, you're having different benefits.

• 37:35

Looks like I'm getting lumberjacking speed from the pants and from the shirt.

• 37:40

And the tool belt is going to give me processing.

• 37:46

Oh, I think you might be looking at lumber milling. Oh, yes.

• 37:50

So at this at this service building, we're housing another three professions. So there's there's carpentry stuff here.

• 37:57

There's the lumber milling stuff here and there's also the lumberjacking stuff here.

• 38:02

So what he's going to have stuff from from all three.

• 38:05

I mean, if you're looking to do any, you know, woodwork and related activities, he's your guy.

• 38:11

So that's sort of what we mentioned when we were showing the nodes in a live stream a few months ago was like your ability to build.

• 38:19

Buildings to really cater to the important industries to your region or to your node.

• 38:27

Yeah. Yeah. Let me just take a look here. I know this is obviously guys.

• 38:32

This is I want to state this again. We always state this in every showcase.

• 38:37

But everything you see here is still a work in progress.

• 38:40

We are working towards our Alpha two. That includes things like visual effects, like UI.

• 38:47

These are all very functional states, but not necessarily at their polished states.

• 38:52

So still a lot of work that needs to be done there.

• 38:54

I noticed that we have three slots for the the equipment that I just put on and they're not displaying visually.

• 39:03

But we do intend to provide that visual display as an option to the characters.

• 39:08

Correct. Correct. Yeah. It would be a toggleable thing that players could be do in the future

• 39:16

when we get some assets. Yes, absolutely. There's a lot of assets.

• 39:20

All right. Let us. So what should we do here?

• 39:25

Want to go out and gather some stuff? Yeah. Yeah.

• 39:28

So, you know, we're kind of scouting out there beforehand and we know we know a pretty good spot.

• 39:35

If you're if you're heading out kind of past the Smithy, you should see a good old tower carfen out there in the distance.

• 39:43

And if you had a little bit east of that, you can kind of see some like rock formations up there.

• 39:51

That's where we're at. And there's a nice little little valley in there has I think it has pretty much everything that we're looking for.

• 39:58

So I love the autumn look out here. I think the it fits perfectly for this time of year.

• 40:07

I mean, definitely. We could just have Thanksgiving. Feels kind of like Thanksgiving out here.

• 40:12

Does it does feel like Thanksgiving? It's beautiful. I really like the colors turning out really good.

• 40:18

That's my favorite season so far. I just have Thanksgiving too or no.

• 40:24

Hey, no trying to get lower out of me. This is an artisanship focus.

• 40:30

Give us one more thing. You're doing a live stream.

• 40:37

I really love the leaves falling down effect. Just when you walk away. Speaking of leaks, however, I know that I am playing a Ranger class.

• 40:46

You might see a couple of early look at the Ranger skills here in case we run into any potential resistances.

• 40:53

But next month we are doing a Ranger update and it's going to be pretty fun, too.

• 40:59

So there's a little leak. Nice. I see how it is. It's OK for skill abilities, but not for the lore.

• 41:06

That is true. The lore is safely unbelievable. So we do have some beliefs that someone's chopping out there that you're chopping.

• 41:14

Yeah. I get a little jump on it. Fallen in the distance. Where? That's great.

• 41:20

Over to the left. I think he's up on that hill. Are you trying to beat me up to the.

• 41:28

Chop down some trees, too. Oh, we do. This is ash. We need oak, though, right? Or do I need it? Yeah. Yeah.

• 41:37

Yeah, that's right. Be helpful. Nothing. Just trying to become grandmaster before you steal.

• 41:42

Exactly. I will leave this land a barren wasteland. He's no trees for you to chop.

• 41:47

He's sicked some wolves on me. Yeah. All part of my master plan. Nice.

• 41:59

Yeah, I'd get the get a few of these oaks, at least enough to level up, and then we need to find some basalt.

• 42:05

Basalt is going to have the zinc and copper that you need. Oh, here's some over on the ridge.

• 42:11

Where at? Up the cliff. Basalt. Yeah. Can you see me? That area looks kind of twisted and gross.

• 42:19

Yeah. Wolf. Where?

• 42:32

So now this area appears to have a little bit of corruption that started seeping in.

• 42:39

Yeah. The citizens of this town aren't doing their job. Fight back the corruption.

• 42:46

Old neighborhoods go to hell. Oogie. There's rubies here, too. Yeah, yeah, I think you can grab those.

• 42:51

Yeah, it's not this. Yeah, these are the new rubies that we just introduced with Chaos Physics enabled.

• 42:59

Oh, nice. Yeah. Thanks to Noah and some magic from engineering.

• 43:05

When you see it gather, you see that it shatters. Oh, that's awesome. Love that. That's super cool.

• 43:12

Additionally, if you open your backspace now, you'll see that your mining bag has now rubies, and it prioritizes based on your stack size.

• 43:20

Oh, let me see here. Hold on. First, let me gather a little bit of...

• 43:27

Look for some basalt. I think there's some over here. Yeah, I see some basalt over here. To the right.

• 43:33

There's one right there. Yeah, there is.

• 43:39

Right here? No, this is opal. Nope. Oh. Opal. I can't even interact with the opal.

• 43:45

No, it's right here. Yeah. Basalt. Oh, don't we need opal?

• 43:51

I think so. I think we need night opal, which is the one that only really appears at night.

• 43:58

Okay. Interesting.

• 44:04

I've gotten some zinc and basalt. Nice. Okay, so you got lucky. You got the drop chance.

• 44:12

So this gave me two things. It gave me zinc as well. Yes. Yeah.

• 44:18

So when you're mining stone, we're trying to do stuff that makes sense with the drops.

• 44:22

In stone, you'll find metal and gems, and depending on the tier and the type of stone,

• 44:28

there'll be different kind of selection of gems and stuff that you can get in it or metals.

• 44:34

If you're trying to target a certain metal, you might want to consider some particular stone as well.

• 44:42

As you get better at mining and doing stone-related stuff, you'll kind of learn the ropes there so you can make better decisions.

• 44:50

Okay, that's cool. Additionally, as you gather, you can actually notice that your durability goes down for your tools.

• 44:58

Oh, really? Let's see. I'm using this pickaxe. It's at 95. Nice. All right. You got plenty of durability left.

• 45:10

It's good to repair when you get into town, though, so it kind of sucks when you find something real nice

• 45:14

and your durability is low or your tool is broken and you won't be able to hit it. Nice.

• 45:20

And I really love the physics. I remember in the gathering stream, we were showing off the trees

• 45:28

and kind of set a precedent with how that looks, and now we have to make all the other stuff just as cool.

• 45:34

So the rocks and gems and metal were kind of a big hurdle for us,

• 45:40

and having it in a place where it's starting to look really good, that was super exciting.

• 45:44

That was so cool. That was actually really cool. That should definitely knock you over or kill you.

• 45:50

Oh, I leveled up. Let's go. Hey, there we go. Oh, I've reached level 10. Oh, my God. That just killed Mike.

• 46:00

I'm alive. Trees can't kill me. Grab some daffodils, maybe.

• 46:07

So you leveled up, you said? Yes, I said I leveled up.

• 46:10

Okay, so when you level up, you're going to get some skill points, and you should be able to put those in your skill tree.

• 46:18

You should pop that open. There we go. Okay. Yes, I have a bunch already allocated, but now I have two new points.

• 46:26

Oh, nice. Yeah, you should spend those and poke around in the tree a little bit,

• 46:30

but that is something that we're wanting to do with our artisanship in all three of the branches.

• 46:36

You'll have skill trees for your profession. So those skill trees, you'll be able to find passives

• 46:41

that will give you stat bonuses and predicates for extra functionality within whatever the profession is,

• 46:48

access the stations, expanding out some of the various systems.

• 46:53

You can see some of the surveying ones, right?

• 46:56

You can add extra pylons or extra scanning range and lower the cooldown on how often you can survey.

• 47:05

We're trying to make those trees interesting and give people different paths that they can progress through.

• 47:12

Wow, that's cool. Very cool.

• 47:17

So obviously, I'm looking at this skill tree right now, and I see one side is dealing primarily with yield.

• 47:24

The other side is dealing with rarity, with quality.

• 47:30

The other side is dealing with yield. And then the survey system.

• 47:35

Talk to me a little bit about the survey system.

• 47:41

Yeah, so surveying is something that we're trying to use for gatherers to really interact with the things that we want to do with our dynamic world.

• 47:54

One of those things is we want to be able to spawn stuff randomly, and we want to put it in places in the world that will make people travel

• 48:04

and bolster up our local player-to-player economies, have people actually be out in the world looking for stuff

• 48:13

and not standing in the same place waiting for a tree or a flower to respawn over and over again.

• 48:20

We're kind of having the best of both worlds, where we have our lower tier stuff that will fill out the base look of our world so that it's always looking good.

• 48:30

And then the higher tier stuff from apprentice onwards will always spawn randomly in places that we've deemed look good and make sense for what that thing is.

• 48:42

So surveying is a way that you can track that stuff down.

• 48:48

It will help you find places, it will help you find particular resources, it will help you find resources at a certain rarity.

• 48:58

It should be something you can do as a gatherer on your own or group up with other people to bolster up the power of your survey or the range or reach of it.

• 49:12

It says I need a higher certification for this tree. Corrupted oak.

• 49:18

Gotcha, well you just leveled up, so I bet you if we went back to town and...

• 49:22

Oh my god! There's some fucking crazy... excuse me. There's some crazy...

• 49:27

Oh no. We're going to need to bleep that out.

• 49:30

There's some dude up there. That's awesome.

• 49:33

I would say the same thing if I saw that.

• 49:35

I know.

• 49:36

Ancient horror.

• 49:37

Step away from a gentleman.

• 49:38

Yeah, let's back up a little bit.

• 49:41

How you doing on backspace by the way?

• 49:44

How am I doing on what? Backspace, yes. Let me open that up.

• 49:47

I have 3 copper, 22 basalt, 17 zinc, 5 ruby, a number of dandelions and daffodils.

• 49:58

With some plant fibers. Okay, that's cool.

• 50:01

And a bunch of...

• 50:02

Nice.

• 50:03

And as you notice, all of those materials are sorted nicely and the appropriate backspace is on your stack sizes.

• 50:09

Oh yeah, that is pretty nice. So it didn't misplace them in a different bag than what is best.

• 50:17

Yeah, it prioritizes basically the best stack size first and then it finds the other empty spots after.

• 50:24

That's a pretty nice quality of life feature.

• 50:27

Definitely. We... there was a lot of discussions about the spatial inventory and the different stack sizes

• 50:36

and whether that could cause confusion for players or extra stress on sorting of inventory.

• 50:44

And I was like, alright, no matter what we do, we got to try and make this as easy and usable for players as possible.

• 50:51

And luckily, really smart people like Alex and Alec and our UI team, Colby and the gang,

• 50:57

that are helping us make the system that we want function really nicely.

• 51:05

So that was one of those features that came on that's like, alright, well, I don't have to every single time I get something,

• 51:12

look and see what bag is the best for it to be in.

• 51:16

The code can do it for us.

• 51:21

Very cool.

• 51:22

Nice.

• 51:23

Alright, we ready to head back now?

• 51:25

Yeah, let's head back to town and get your apprenticeship.

• 51:31

Yeah, now obviously, you know, let's talk a little bit about how gathering is a bit different in Ashes.

• 51:40

And one of the most unique things about, I think, the world is obviously the number of different systems we have that change world state.

• 51:51

We just saw a corrupt zone.

• 51:54

Hold on, let's kill this dude.

• 52:01

Okay, done.

• 52:02

We just saw a corrupt zone.

• 52:04

And that zone becomes corrupt after a period of time in which players are not addressing some issues that arise through certain events or through certain story arcs.

• 52:17

And that corruption can spread and corruption changes the spawners for resources and for monsters.

• 52:27

And that has a fundamental effect on the resource economy of the game.

• 52:34

Yeah, definitely.

• 52:35

It plays into, you know, scarcity.

• 52:36

It gets players out in the world searching for different things that are predicated on the dynamic parts of our world, right?

• 52:45

We can do stuff with day and nighttime and do stuff with seasons.

• 52:48

We can have things that are specifically related to some event or story arc or, you know, corruption, even particular locations, right?

• 52:57

The regionality of a biome, some, you know, frozen tundra place that's completely covered in ice versus, you know, the riverlands and the lushness there.

• 53:09

So don't want to just have that stuff in and not be doing anything with it.

• 53:15

So we're trying to play on that for for gathering and open up the diversity of stuff that you can process and craft by finding those things.

• 53:25

So, yeah, I love that.

• 53:28

We mentioned actually a time of day and seasonality as being part of that world state change.

• 53:35

And as I understand it, we have a number of different.

• 53:40

Oh, let me see here. Go over to recipes.

• 53:49

Can I look at that?

• 53:51

We have to don't we have to gather some recipes or some materials that are predicated on time of day?

• 53:57

Yeah, I think they were. Those are the ones that we're talking about. They're a part of your night blade, right?

• 54:01

The moon bells and the night opals, night opals like do not reveal themselves during the daytime.

• 54:11

Surprise, surprise. And then the moon bells are similar. Yeah, they only bloom at night.

• 54:16

So you if you're looking for those in particular, you want to take keep an eye on the day night cycle and, you know, know where they're found in the world.

• 54:28

And yeah, I do have some powers if we want to perhaps change it to nighttime that I could use.

• 54:37

Shall we? Because it'll take a little while probably for us to get to nighttime at least another hour or so.

• 54:44

Yeah. OK, let's do it. All right. Hold on. Stand by.

• 54:52

Oh, my goodness. There we go. Oh, OK.

• 54:58

This is looking good. Freaky out here.

• 55:00

You guys will probably notice that the nighttime is significantly darker than when you guys last saw our nighttime update.

• 55:10

We saw feedback from the community that bringing in the field of vision through the through the lighting in the environment was something you guys wanted to see.

• 55:20

And that's what we have adjusted a bit.

• 55:23

Now, I'm excited because I have a certification that I can, I think, update now.

• 55:30

Right. Yes. You should be able to upgrade your lumberjacking to apprentice, which give you access to a new tool so we can craft one of those if you want.

• 55:40

We should make your, you know, chop and faster. Help you find some rare stuff.

• 55:45

Yeah. All right. Let's see here. I'm going to accept.

• 55:52

There we go. Ta-da. So I think if you open your artisanship window, if you look at your lumberjacking, I should say that you're an apprentice now.

• 56:01

There we go. And you got you got a nice little chunk of XP from that, too.

• 56:04

Yeah, that was pretty good. Cool. So now that you've done that, go.

• 56:11

I think this anvil. Yeah, this is the same anvil as the herbalism.

• 56:16

See, see if you can craft a tool there. What what materials do you need?

• 56:22

It says that I need zinc fragments and oak timber for a novice lumberjacking.

• 56:27

The apprentice requires zinc fragments with copper fragments and oak timber.

• 56:33

Awesome. OK, well, that's all novice stuff.

• 56:36

So so the way that the certification stuff breaks down is that everyone gets to be a novice everything.

• 56:43

So all 22 professions, the players get to be novice of. And then it starts kind of like narrowing from there.

• 56:50

So after that, you'll only be able to be an apprentice of five things.

• 56:54

You can be a journeyman in four things. You could be a master in three things and be a grand master in two things.

• 56:59

So you'll you'll need to narrow, but you can also sort of diversify to support the professions that you want to first push further in.

• 57:07

So now obviously those are those restrictions are in place in order to create a dependency cross player faction.

• 57:17

Right. For how players specialize their progression in the artistry.

• 57:23

Yeah, I mean, like being social is is important to us, right? Like we want players to interact with each other.

• 57:30

We want the professions to make stuff for the other professions that are useful.

• 57:35

You know, I am influenced quite a bit by the Star Wars Galaxies style crafting and just having people in your network that can supply the the metal that you need to make your armor and the you know, the the flowers that you need to make your potions.

• 57:52

And, you know, maybe the potions that you need to make your enchantments.

• 57:57

That to me was really interesting and part of the the gameplay of economic gameplay of being a good crafter, being a good gatherer, having that that system.

• 58:07

So and it really plays into the the economic field of a particular server.

• 58:16

Right. You can come in and be like, I want to be the the potion mogul here. Right. And like having good sources and, you know, having having a guild that supports you is just really, really interesting.

• 58:29

And without without sort of narrowing down what you have access to yourself, it's it takes away from from the ability to achieve that.

• 58:40

Right. So. So now, OK, we're going to be creating this, you said apprentice tools. What do I need to do that? It's a fragment, zinc fragments and I think copper fragments.

• 58:52

Awesome. So the zinc fragments and copper fragments are going to be from the metalworking profession.

• 58:57

And then the oak timber will be from the lumber milling profession.

• 59:01

So since we're here, we can do the lumber milling. And this is the station that you need right next to us.

• 59:05

So this is the debarker. This is one of the few stations that lumber milling has is the debarker, the head saw and I think the drying kiln along with the refinery.

• 59:18

So this is the the novice station.

• 59:21

I think this is an apprentice version here. Since we're at a service building that's built, the service buildings usually come stocked with some some some better base stations.

• 59:30

And then you can kind of progress them from there depending on how you you expand the buildings.

• 59:35

But so why don't you interact with this? And yeah, I think this is the first time that we've ever done any processing.

• 59:43

Yes, absolutely. Now, we alluded to it a little bit when we were showcasing the the freeholds.

• 59:49

But this is everyone's first look at kind of how processing works.

• 59:55

And as you said, we're looking to make some oak timber here. And as I've clicked on the oak timber to add fuel, it says to the oak timber side.

• 1:00:06

Talk to me, Mike, a little bit about what fuel does for processing.

• 1:00:12

So fuel is the basic requirements on top of the resources that you need to craft a thing. So every processing stations will require some kind of a fuel to automate the process to make these process resources.

• 1:00:28

Though most of the resources or any type of resource or items could technically have a fuel value attached to them.

• 1:00:35

And then each recipe will require some kind of a fuel value to to be met to be able to process these things.

• 1:00:42

So think of it as like if you're melting or you need to put fuel to fire to melt the ore.

• 1:00:49

So that kind of concept exists on all our processing stations.

• 1:00:53

So when you click on it, you should be able to put the oak wood or anything that you have gathered to.

• 1:01:01

So I've added one of the oak wood and then I see I also have a number of different herbalism resources here as well.

• 1:01:10

Do those act as fuel potentially?

• 1:01:12

Yeah, most of our resources will have some kind of a fuel value to it.

• 1:01:15

And like I mentioned, like some items do. But for this recipe, you only need one. Some other recipes might need 100 or 50, etc, etc.

• 1:01:23

But the thing is, some some items might be just catered towards being a fuel, right? So something like charcoal or something like coal, something like anything that is just designated as a fuel will just have a very efficient fuel value.

• 1:01:39

So you want to save that for higher recipes or something simple like this one.

• 1:01:44

You can pretty much use anything that's common or or lore or degrade or sorry, the tier one items to be in the fuel.

• 1:01:54

OK, so I've added in the wood for the fuel and now it has my fuel has been selected and I can start the job.

• 1:02:03

It says that the duration is one minute.

• 1:02:05

I'm noticing at the top of the processing station that we have three available slots. Is that a queue that players can use?

• 1:02:17

And is it shared? Is it for just themselves?

• 1:02:19

Talk to me about that.

• 1:02:21

For node, it's personal.

• 1:02:23

So we didn't want to congest like only three spots for every single person in the node.

• 1:02:29

That would have been pretty bad. So it's the queue system is only for yourself, but something personal like freeholds would be station based.

• 1:02:39

So if five people wanted to use one one station at the freehold, you have to wait in line.

• 1:02:43

And then that kind of comes into the family system we talked about on the freehold livestream where you want to have limited access to whoever is viable for the fuels or for the stations.

• 1:02:55

But for any service buildings in the node, it's all personal.

• 1:02:59

So you can queue up as much as you want and then someone else can just combine the use the same station and then queue for their station.

• 1:03:05

That's awesome.

• 1:03:07

Additionally, it will also be influenced by nodes.

• 1:03:09

So like right now you see three, but it could be five.

• 1:03:12

It could be two simultaneous jobs at such a base how your node grows.

• 1:03:16

Got it. So there are specializations that the processor can take if the node should elect to do so.

• 1:03:23

So if two citizens participate in that upgrade, that would increase that size or perhaps even the efficiency of the processing jobs as well.

• 1:03:32

Both speed, quantity of receipt, any rarity products, anything, all of those play a role in upgrade potential that the node might choose to specialize in.

• 1:03:42

Right. But just like we discussed in the freehold livestream as well, the node processing only goes up to journeyman.

• 1:03:48

So if you want to do the highest tier of processing, you probably want to seek out the freehold owners basically.

• 1:03:59

Oh, I might be full.

• 1:04:04

Hold on. I can't claim it yet.

• 1:04:06

I need to get back to basis full.

• 1:04:09

Who needs this this cheap glint here?

• 1:04:13

I didn't mean to delete that. Whoops.

• 1:04:18

Are you just throwing money away? That's how rich you are.

• 1:04:21

Pretty much.

• 1:04:22

Additional thing I would like to add for processing, as you can see, you could cancel the job also.

• 1:04:29

So like let's say you accidentally scheduled the wrong one. And the only thing that gets consumed is the fuel.

• 1:04:34

So fuel is basically a sink for this job.

• 1:04:37

Got it. OK, so fuel is always sunk regardless of if you cancel the job or not.

• 1:04:42

Yeah. Another thing as well is that when you're choosing the job, you'll see kind of on the right hand side that we have something called job size.

• 1:04:53

And right now, right now, there's only the ability to make one job size.

• 1:04:59

But in the same vein of this having like more jobs that you can queue and like better stats that make them go faster or proc extra resources.

• 1:05:09

Job size is another thing that we could do, right?

• 1:05:12

So you probably don't want to use three entire slots just to make three pieces of oak wood.

• 1:05:19

But if you had a job size that was 20, you'd be able to make all 20 of those with the one job size.

• 1:05:27

So it's a little different than what people are used to with, you know, I'm making exactly 17 pieces of oak timber.

• 1:05:34

You might need to do a job size of five plus one if you need specifically six.

• 1:05:40

So that's awesome.

• 1:05:42

Yeah, we are also influenced by customization options that the node can participate in as well.

• 1:05:48

And perhaps policies and or relics like all those things are an intricate web of boons, benefits and downsides that apply to these different game functions.

• 1:05:58

Exactly. Yeah. Very cool. Love it.

• 1:06:01

All right. So we've made some timber. Gotcha.

• 1:06:04

Yeah. Let's head let's head down to the Smithy over here.

• 1:06:08

There should be a crushing station. You can crush up the copper and zinc that you got into fragments.

• 1:06:14

And then we should have what we need to make you a new pickaxe or axe.

• 1:06:20

Yeah. This is the crushing station right here.

• 1:06:23

Nice. All right. All right. It's really nice of you to have built all of these artisanship service buildings.

• 1:06:33

Look, look at all these jobs that you're creating. This guy is here. He gets to hang out all night.

• 1:06:38

Russian rocks doing stuff. That is awesome.

• 1:06:42

Yeah. Great for the economy. Really, really great mayorship decision.

• 1:06:47

Thank you. Thank you very much. That's why I'm a term after term mayor.

• 1:06:50

Just no term limits at all. It's the way we like it here.

• 1:06:54

Right. My personal investments have somehow miraculously just had the greatest returns of any citizen of the mayor.

• 1:07:02

Agreed. I think there's only other been one other mayor that was Alec.

• 1:07:05

And I haven't seen him for a really long time. That's right.

• 1:07:08

That is right. His family members actually came by looking for him to.

• 1:07:13

Oh, no. Okay. So I need to make copper fragments and zinc fragments. Yeah. I'm going to kick off.

• 1:07:20

I'm going to add some fuel here. Okay, cool. That's cool.

• 1:07:25

Put this and I'll kick that job off and then I'll use the zinc. Oh, my God.

• 1:07:31

You see the NPC working real hard. Yeah, he is. He's a go getter.

• 1:07:36

I didn't even start the other job yet. He just immediately went to work.

• 1:07:40

He needs a raise. There we go. Okay. Yeah.

• 1:07:45

And just just a comment, too, on that right.

• 1:07:48

Like we're trying to sort of marry the visuals with what's actually going on at the station.

• 1:07:54

Right. So if you have a job queued and you're trying to do errands throughout the node or in your freehold or whatever.

• 1:07:59

Right. Like should be able to look at the station and know what's going on with it.

• 1:08:03

So he's there working and once he's done, he's going to stop and you can be like, okay, you know, there's there's stuff ready to pick up.

• 1:08:09

And have some visuals associated with that.

• 1:08:12

So as much as we can have stuff rooted in the world instead of, you know, throw it a bunch of UI in the player's face.

• 1:08:19

That's that's something that we're trying to do and is important to us.

• 1:08:23

That's very cool. Yeah. And to add to that, it's personal, right?

• 1:08:26

So it's only like other people won't see you doing your processing.

• 1:08:31

Got it. Yeah. In nodes, right.

• 1:08:33

The free the freehold ones would be since they are relevant to any of the people to have access to it, you'd be able to see that a job is going right.

• 1:08:45

This guy is a dedicated worker. Yeah, definitely.

• 1:08:51

So now just remind folks, obviously, when we talk about processing as one branch of the artisanship tree.

• 1:09:00

Even though you have access to all branches throughout the world, up to some level of degree.

• 1:09:07

Processing best processing is done on freeholds and the best crafting is done in nodes.

• 1:09:15

Right. When we talk about workstation availability. But there is some overlap there, as those of you who remember from our freehold live stream.

• 1:09:25

You do have up to a certain point to progress available to you for both gathering, processing and crafting without needing necessarily a freehold.

• 1:09:36

Yeah, exactly. So go ahead, up to journeyman, you'll be journeyman's type of gathering, crafting and processing should be available pretty much everywhere.

• 1:09:47

And then this specialization really kicks in at the master and above.

• 1:09:53

Awesome. All right, I have, I believe, acquired now some fragments.

• 1:10:03

Well, let's let's head back up to the crafting session next to good old Woody Gungan and make yourself an apprentice axe.

• 1:10:14

And I think we should be able to chop that corrupted tree down. Yeah, that's right.

• 1:10:19

And then also now that it's night while we're out there, you guys can grab perhaps some of the over the other ones.

• 1:10:26

The night opal. Yeah, I think Mike has high enough mining to get the mine opal, night opal.

• 1:10:31

And then I think I think new moon bells are novice, so you should have access to those.

• 1:10:37

All right, so I'll grab the moon bells. Perfect. All right. I'm crafting my new apprentice lumberjacking axe.

• 1:10:45

It is equipped. Nice.

• 1:10:50

Cool. Very sweet. It's there. How fast is it? It's 30 lumberjacking speed.

• 1:10:57

Nice. I think the other one was like only five. So you should be fast. When we get out there, we should race.

• 1:11:01

See if you can chop the tree down faster than me. All right. Let's do it. I'm ready. All right.

• 1:11:12

I actually really like the nighttime. I think it was. Yeah, it's looking really good from the community to to tune this a bit more on the darker side.

• 1:11:20

Oh, shooting star. You see that? Make a wish.

• 1:11:26

I look at the moon. Yeah, I did. I did look at the moon.

• 1:11:30

It's looking pretty nice. I think it might need a little atmosphere.

• 1:11:36

I like the harbinger moon. Is the moon getting closer? No.

• 1:11:44

That's not what we want to hear. Kill the moon.

• 1:11:48

So, Cory, tell me a little bit like when we right now we're in this night phase.

• 1:11:53

I love the fireflies too. Noah did a great job on these.

• 1:11:57

Yeah, Noah is next level. We love Noah. Noah, we love you.

• 1:12:04

Obviously, moving tonight now is going to give us access to these moon bells and these night opals.

• 1:12:11

But when things like the world state change, whether it be corruption related or time of day, it's not just an introduction of rare materials.

• 1:12:19

It also is a removal of some other materials as well, potentially.

• 1:12:23

So it's a it is a and some world state changes like we talked about with corruption,

• 1:12:28

if not addressed, can significantly alter the flow of resources across the world in such a way that creates a bit of turbulence in the world market and economy.

• 1:12:38

And that's what we're trying to achieve with these world state changes.

• 1:12:42

Yeah, you can see out in the open, the night opals lit up those little blue lights all over the place that wasn't there before.

• 1:12:53

I can see those as well by the trees.

• 1:13:00

Now, you should be able to grab those. That's awesome. Those are just just basic little rocks.

• 1:13:06

Yeah. So that's like, you know, we we thought those were all opals and they were opals during the day.

• 1:13:11

But at night, you know, some of them are actually night opals. So pretty cool.

• 1:13:17

Oh, look, level up again. Crushing it. Herbalism. Herbalism, God, literal herbalism.

• 1:13:28

Yeah. These moon bells that exist before, too. We're at the same spot. Yeah. Oh, my God.

• 1:13:34

Oh, no. The wolf. I mean, we're going to protect him.

• 1:13:46

Mike, no, I'm like max level. So just slaughtering. Can you pet the dog, Steven?

• 1:13:53

No, but I can shoot it with an arrow in the face. If you're faster than me. Wait, let's chop the trees down together.

• 1:13:59

Right here. Right here. All right. I'll start.

• 1:14:07

Wait, no, no, no, no. Three, two, one, go. Right now we messed up. We messed up. We can do this. How many people does it take to chop down a tree?

• 1:14:16

Well, I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter. You're way faster. I have no equipment.

• 1:14:19

One, two, three. Oh, you just got wrecked.

• 1:14:27

Excuse me. This is where PVP starts.

• 1:14:33

Excuse me, sir. Give me the word. He's already purple. Let's go cut down that corrupted tree.

• 1:14:41

Oh, yeah. That's why we're here, huh? There we go. This place looks so good at night.

• 1:14:51

Oh, man. There's the spooky dude again. He's just chilling up there. Yeah. He's I.N.S.

• 1:14:58

He's waiting. Challenger. Will we approach him? Stay away from that guy.

• 1:15:06

It looks like one shot city up there. I can't get these blood boiled spirit points.

• 1:15:13

Yeah. I can tell you the lore behind that or. Never mind.

• 1:15:24

Yeah. I got some of those. I got this thing.

• 1:15:32

Oh, bam. Tree splosion.

• 1:15:34

Do you think, Mike, you want to take on this ancient minion over here?

• 1:15:39

I think we need to know Stephen. I was like less than two seconds.

• 1:15:44

Yeah, that was really I was like in there and out of there.

• 1:15:48

Maybe a little balancing that's necessary. Take that note down, Mike.

• 1:15:54

They're family incoming. Yeah. Way to go, Stephen. Already nerfing lumberjack.

• 1:15:59

I know. Yeah. All right. So now do we have all the materials we need?

• 1:16:04

Did you guys get the night opals? Yeah, I got some. All right.

• 1:16:08

Sweet. Trade you back in town. Let's do it. Let's get rid of this guy.

• 1:16:17

Are you good? Oh, that's unfortunate. Animal abuse.

• 1:16:25

So now talk to me a little bit about the sword that we're going to be crafting.

• 1:16:30

Obviously, itemization in Ashes of Creation is not restricted based on class.

• 1:16:39

Right. So anybody can wear kind of anything, whatever is most beneficial towards their particular strategy of class kit and build.

• 1:16:46

But how do we influence that from a crafting perspective?

• 1:16:52

So the recipe that you learned is somewhat of a unique sword.

• 1:16:57

We want to introduce as mid-level, maybe a little bit high, but generally for itemization purposes,

• 1:17:03

we want to have a viable option for every build that players want to try.

• 1:17:09

I know that's a bold statement. Stephen knows where his city is. Yeah. Where are we going?

• 1:17:17

We have a mini map. Come on. Is this way? I always get lost out here when I take my nightly strolls.

• 1:17:27

OK. All right. Sorry, Mike. What do you love about it?

• 1:17:32

OK. What was I saying? Anyways, I was saying that we want to support every kind of build that player wants to try out.

• 1:17:41

And I know that's a bold statement, but that is something that we're going to attempt,

• 1:17:44

which means a lot of crafting recipes will need to support variable stats, variable play styles.

• 1:17:50

And for this weapon, for particular, it was somewhat of a unique sword because it's a sword that has magic penetration.

• 1:17:59

So something that mages maybe might be able to use or clerics.

• 1:18:05

And if we go to the crafter crafting station, right here.

• 1:18:11

All right. You should give them the right. All right.

• 1:18:17

I can trade you. Done.

• 1:18:24

OK, we got some night opals. Sweet. Accepting trade.

• 1:18:32

Boom! Got some night opal. Let's do this.

• 1:18:38

So now I see I have my learned recipe. The night blade is under weapons category. OK, that's cool.

• 1:18:45

Yeah. I'm not sure we touched on this on different live streams, but our crafting menus will have some required materials.

• 1:18:52

So those are the things that you must have at that certain rarity.

• 1:18:56

So the night of Opal and the moonbell that's required. And then we have the selectable section where you can put different rarity amounts.

• 1:19:04

You want to do the the zinc one first, Steven.

• 1:19:09

So that's a lot of there. And then now you can see that the item itself was uncommon.

• 1:19:16

And then if you add the fragments in. Oh, I see what you're saying.

• 1:19:19

So the uncommon night blade is here. That's the default.

• 1:19:24

But by adding in these legendary zinc fragments. Yep.

• 1:19:28

If you submit it, now it turns rare. Oh, OK.

• 1:19:32

And now you can see there is additional properties onto the item.

• 1:19:36

So things change. And then if you put the oak timber also at legendary.

• 1:19:40

Also legendary oak. OK, got it.

• 1:19:43

And then now it becomes a heroic version of it. And that's the increase.

• 1:19:47

So these are the things that we kind of want to explore on the crafting side, where we introduce maybe a new stat line or different proportion or ratios of stats at certain tiers.

• 1:19:58

And when you craft these items, we're using better materials.

• 1:20:02

The rarity of the item increases for demonstration purposes.

• 1:20:07

We're using legendary, but basically when you use a higher tier than the recipe is intended for.

• 1:20:13

So we could technically build this item with common or ten years and fragments and that would produce an uncommon item.

• 1:20:19

But since we're showcasing this legendary tier, you can move up the tiers and have the stats increase.

• 1:20:27

That's awesome. And so obviously there's going to be a number of different types of selectables that you can incorporate as part of the crafting process.

• 1:20:34

Each of them having unique results as part of the stat block for the weapon, but also increasing the quality predicated on the quality of the selectable that you're contributing.

• 1:20:44

Right. That would be our recipe system that we kind of highly touch up on.

• 1:20:48

So a common copper sword might have some recipes that changes the staff block completely, which would be, let's say, a brutal copper sword, which specializes in the damage.

• 1:21:00

But that would be changing the selectable items from oak timber to ash timber, for example.

• 1:21:06

And then when it's on the selectable level, we can choose the rarity of those resources to increase the rarity of the item produced.

• 1:21:14

Awesome. And each time you're kind of unlocking a different result with regards to that particular recipe,

• 1:21:20

you're learning that interaction between the selectable materials and the output that comes from it.

• 1:21:26

So learning one recipe actually learns you a multitude of different potential rewards from that one particular recipe.

• 1:21:36

Yeah, we have something unique in our crafting system where we want to have recipe XP of some sort.

• 1:21:46

And then those recipes could be earned by leveling up your recipe,

• 1:21:50

which means that you have to craft the nightblade multiple times to level it up to have a better result.

• 1:21:55

So the sub recipe could be from a vendor recipe or world drops, like we said earlier.

• 1:22:00

But the idea is one type of item can have potential to be multiple different outcomes.

• 1:22:07

Cool. Awesome. OK, let me go ahead and craft this weapon.

• 1:22:13

We've done it. We've received a nightblade.

• 1:22:17

The loop is complete. Oh, my God, we made it through the entire loop.

• 1:22:24

Let me see. I know. Let's see. Let's take a look at what we have in our inventory here.

• 1:22:33

So I see we have a heroic nightblade that's doing some physical damage and magical penetration with some magical damage as well.

• 1:22:40

And if I compare that currently to my longbow, obviously we have some comparable version there.

• 1:22:45

But let me go ahead and equip this. Oh, that looks good.

• 1:22:52

That looks awesome. You're styling. You are styling. You put in the work and now you're styling.

• 1:22:57

I love it. That looks super cool. Sweet. Very nice.

• 1:23:03

You want to rate it up for the fam? Yeah, I got to get the right perspective here.

• 1:23:08

Standby. Ladies and gentlemen, we have crafted world first on the nightblade.

• 1:23:18

We have done it. Very cool.

• 1:23:26

So, guys, we just walked through from start to finish crafting one particular recipe, of course, of many, as itemization is a very key component of player progression within the within the world of Verra.

• 1:23:39

And as you can see from gathering to processing to crafting, this is the type of experience and the unique aspects of that process that is within Ashes of Creation.

• 1:23:52

We do these demonstrations so that you guys get an early look during development on the direction of this particular core loop, this core system to Ashes.

• 1:24:02

And we want your feedback on it. What did you think about the gathering, the processing, the stations?

• 1:24:07

Those the times that it takes the queue system for it, the unique interactions with the recipes, the progression of the recipes, the tool dependencies and the the skill tree that you saw,

• 1:24:20

the unique world state that influences the economy and the ability of players to accumulate these resources and move them across the world.

• 1:24:27

We're fresh off of a caravan stream as well, where you kind of see how those materials, those resources, that wealth gets accrued and trans transited across the world.

• 1:24:40

So all of these things are things we want you to opine on in our YouTube, on the forums, on different social medias.

• 1:24:47

Talk to us about what you saw today and how you feel about it.

• 1:24:50

Where do you think that it could be improved and how it relates to your previous experiences and other MMOs that you've played and what you've enjoyed about them.

• 1:24:58

But otherwise, Mike, Corey, Nathan, Alex, thank you guys for joining me.

• 1:25:03

I know the audience obviously appreciates all the hard work that you guys put in, that everybody on the team puts in.

• 1:25:08

And this is a very big group effort, obviously, to get these types of systems up and running.

• 1:25:12

I know I appreciate that the audience does, too.

• 1:25:14

Thank you for joining us and chatting with us a little bit about how all the stuff works.

• 1:25:20

And everyone, I will see you guys back on stream in just a moment.

• 1:25:25

See you all. Thank you all.

• 1:25:28

Yeah.

• 1:25:37

Woohoo! We hope that you all enjoyed that. Lucy did. She was watching with bated breath for every single moment, weren't you, Lucy?

• 1:25:46

Lucy's ready to get out there and craft.

• 1:25:48

Are you ready to craft? Do you want your own sword? I think she does.

• 1:25:53

But of course, we do have some questions that we noticed from chat. Our wonderful community managers have been pulling those in.

• 1:26:00

But while we answer those, I will have the video up just kind of like playing in the background so you can kind of relive all the crafting goodness.

• 1:26:08

But the first couple are more reiterations because we did answer these questions in the stream.

• 1:26:13

But I think that it wasn't clear because people keep asking it post that.

• 1:26:18

So the first one was how many people can use the crafting stations at once? And is there a queue to use them?

• 1:26:25

So as it stands now, crafting stations and processing stations that exist within nodes are unique to the player.

• 1:26:35

So meaning you can there is no limitation on who and how many people can use a crafting station within a node.

• 1:26:42

That's different on a freehold. Freehold, it shares the queue.

• 1:26:47

So if you have family members that are wanting to use the processing stations on your freehold, those queues are limited on a per job basis.

• 1:26:57

Whereas in nodes, because they don't go to the highest tier possible of crafting, excuse me, of processing, those get those get are personalized.

• 1:27:06

So you saw when I was when I was doing a number of different processing actions,

• 1:27:10

they I had my own little queue section up above where I could have three jobs running sequentially.

• 1:27:18

Now, upgrades to in the node can change those things.

• 1:27:22

So as the as the service building that's offering the processing or the crafting, it has upgrades.

• 1:27:31

There are policies that exist. There are certain relics that you can acquire,

• 1:27:36

all of which change the dials a bit on processing yield, processing time, processing job size.

• 1:27:46

Like those things can get adjusted. And that helps players determine where do I want to go to do the things I need to do?

• 1:27:53

Which node should I use? It is it is important to understand how that node has specialized,

• 1:28:00

because you only have a limited amount of specializations you can do with the service building plots, the policies enacted and the upgrades chosen.

• 1:28:09

Can you provide more details in regards to the design philosophy behind why you it's a queue system for freeholds, but not for nodes?

• 1:28:20

Yeah, absolutely. So on the freehold, processing can achieve the highest levels of processing.

• 1:28:28

That's where the highest levels of processing occur. Nodes can only go up to a certain level of processing.

• 1:28:34

Now, we want to be able to throttle the amount of resources that can be processed at any given time in response to the fluctuation and flows of the economy.

• 1:28:46

Right. So we want to make sure that the economy is kind of a bigger ship when turning than being able to immediately start processing everything at once

• 1:28:56

and get new resources out as the flow of supply and demand changes within the world.

• 1:29:03

And because, again, that's that's at the highest levels of processing and you're sharing the available queues that exist at those stations,

• 1:29:12

it's going to take time and it's going to take a long time for the higher level materials.

• 1:29:18

Right. And then the next one here is more of a commentary in regards to there's been some mixed conversation in regards to this. And I think in the past,

• 1:29:26

we've also done a whole feedback thread and report on this topic specifically.

• 1:29:32

But why did you go with a spatial inventory system for resources?

• 1:29:36

Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Great question.

• 1:29:40

So obviously, there's a number of different methods that we can use in an effort to mitigate or again, throttle the amount of success that players can have in any one trip out in the world.

• 1:29:55

Right now, we're using a combination of three things.

• 1:29:58

We are using progression gating through your profession level. Right.

• 1:30:04

So you need to have a certain level to access certain resources.

• 1:30:09

We are utilizing the spatial inventory space as a limitation on how much things you can gather before you need to go back to town.

• 1:30:19

And then lastly, we have a tool predicate where you need to have a tool that is relevant for the resource you're gathering.

• 1:30:30

And those tools have a decay value after each use.

• 1:30:35

Weight is obviously an approach that we could take if we wanted to limit.

• 1:30:39

However, the spatial system works in concert with a number of other types of systems.

• 1:30:47

For example, we want to have itemization drop on death, specifically as it relates to material items.

• 1:30:58

And we want there to be an additional layer above just weight that introduces complexity.

• 1:31:06

And where there is complexity, there is choice and there is strategy and there is planning required on behalf of the player in order to set themselves up for the best possible success in certain situations.

• 1:31:18

Right. And so situationally, it's unique which bag type you choose.

• 1:31:22

This also gives us a unique progression realm within bags themselves so that bags are catered towards a specific quote unquote weight class.

• 1:31:33

And that is augmented by the spatial component. Right.

• 1:31:36

So as you introduce not just the weight aspect that you would normally see through stack size, but you also have the grid formation of the spatial aspect to to again make it a relevant choice.

• 1:31:51

When you're leaving town, which bags I'm going to have equipped and we want to have a deep progression in bag choice as well because it not only interfaces with the resource gathering, but also the PVP aspect of things and players can cater themselves towards one of those directions.

• 1:32:10

So, you know, with a broader appeal that the game design provides through having these multiple progression loops that are somewhat disparate and interest, some being PVP, some being PvE, some being crafting oriented.

• 1:32:24

This all provides a matrix of decision making on behalf of the player that I think yields a compelling gameplay loop.

• 1:32:33

And so that's why we're going to do it.

• 1:32:35

Now, it's important to note, once again, this is alpha, which means that these concepts that live, you know, up here and get down into paper, then get down into into implementation, there is still an iteration phase that exists after the implementation.

• 1:32:53

And so when we get into alpha two and when we test these things, we are going to fine tune them and sometimes they might be completely changed. That's just the nature of an iterative process.

• 1:33:05

And so we need to understand right now.

• 1:33:09

If you're seeing this in action, it's going to be different when players are hands on and we'll be collecting all that information all those logs will be querying how players interface with these different systems, and will also be very importantly the next step, collecting feedback directly from the players about these types of systems and whether or not they hit the mark and how they need to be fine tuned in order to do so or wholesale replaced.

• 1:33:31

So I would say, as players are participating in alpha to get a feel

• 1:33:37

for the systems and provide the feedback and we'll see how to do. Can you hear me.

• 1:33:44

You're good now, you froze for us for a moment.

• 1:33:47

I was like, Oh, my bad.

• 1:33:51

So yeah, I don't know where I left off there but that's basically you're asking for feedback definitely share feedback. We actually have a forum thread already up so please do so I'll remind you guys at the end as well.

• 1:34:00

But, um, yeah, there were some kind of tangential questions in regards to what you were just talking about. Sure, typically because people were wondering about crafting bags and different types of bags and can like crafters create those bags.

• 1:34:16

Yes.

• 1:34:17

And, you know, the obvious answer is obvious.

• 1:34:20

Yes, yes, absolutely that that that is a that is a wholesale crafting area.

• 1:34:25

So, the next one here is in regards to alt characters, how do we feel about people because we provided some details in regards to how many professions you can and processing classes and things of that sort that you can personally be on per character basis.

• 1:34:43

And I create all that have those, so that I can cover all of it. Is that something that we're okay with as a company or how we can yeah I think so I mean, look, this is, you know, this is entirely a subjective viewpoint of course, but, but in my opinion, if the

• 1:35:05

decision that it's necessary to progress a character to the point where you have access to those types of things is parallel with the effort.

• 1:35:16

It takes for your main character to do those things.

• 1:35:20

Then that's a choice that you're making and you're splitting your game time efforts towards two different characters and presumably so that's a bit of an asymmetric balance point that gets provided.

• 1:35:30

I think that's fine.

• 1:35:32

I think that you know when we designed the game we designed with that in mind as well and that's why we have certain restrictions on the number of grandmaster professions that one particular character can do now, when we want to extend those restrictions out

• 1:35:47

from a character basis to an account basis we do so and we do so is particularly with housing. That's an additional level of limitation that's going to mitigate some of the alt atmosphere for let's say owning a freehold right.

• 1:36:01

That is something that that we place as a restriction because we feel that the limited real, real reality space that exists within the world is something we don't want to extend to the alt atmosphere.

• 1:36:14

And so in that situation a player might have to, you know, get another account or something or do some obfuscation there but from the perspective of progressing within the crafting professions and within the processing and gathering professions.

• 1:36:27

That's acceptable in my opinion.

• 1:36:31

And then the next one here is will gathering and its noises increase the range the monsters will notice you so if you aren't being so stealthy and you're harvesting things and chopping down wood our creatures going to like perceive that.

• 1:36:47

That that there has been some discussion about that in the past. We have not yet gotten to the types of unique perception behaviors that we want NPCs to have right now they're relatively rudimentary and their perception, although it is what players

• 1:37:03

would come to expect in the majority of MMOs they've already played.

• 1:37:07

But we're aiming a bit higher.

• 1:37:10

And we haven't gotten to that work yet but we are talking about things like unique abilities, played by characters that extend the perception radius, or sounds and different types of walking that are angular from the, from the, from the mobs perception

• 1:37:29

to be unique different types of creatures that might be three dimensional in space, whether it is in water or birds in the sky that have a downward cone angle type perception as well like those.

• 1:37:43

Those are things we want to do, but we haven't yet spent the time on the AI, AI behaviors there.

• 1:37:51

The next question here is in regards to artisan gear and will it be a viable thing for me to utilize in combat so if I'm crafting and someone asked me to help them with something can I just leave my artisan gear on and go, go out and fight or will I need to be

• 1:38:08

stopping my armor.

• 1:38:09

Well, you will not need to swap your armor artisanship gear lives in alongside your adventuring gear, and there will be a toggle that you can use to display one or the other's visuals.

• 1:38:24

Now that doesn't mean you need to swap the gears.

• 1:38:27

It means that if you want to be seen as wearing the herbalists outfit. You can, you're still going to have your adventuring gear present and on the character and benefiting from the stats that are conferred by them.

• 1:38:41

And vice versa for for the for the gathering gear, or the artisanship gear, excuse me. All right.

• 1:38:49

The next one here is in regards to upgrading items. So, if I create an item at a low quality. Will I later be able to upgrade that item when I have the resources to do so.

• 1:39:02

Yeah, we want to be careful, you know, so right now as you saw in the stream. The contribution of materials to crafting an item results in advancing the rarity of that item.

• 1:39:18

Now that doesn't exclude players who don't have the legendary or the higher quality contributed resources from progressing their common item up the rarity tree through enchantments such as scroll enchanting, or through tempering the gear.

• 1:39:42

Now these can affect the quality and the rarity of the gear that you produce. But by contributing the resources during the crafting process you are getting a head start with the higher quality item and now are less dependent on those other avenues to achieve

• 1:39:59

that which might be, again, a different vertical space of progression that you don't have as good of access to right so it's kind of, it's kind of distributing that approach.

• 1:40:12

Okay.

• 1:40:13

And then this is probably what I noticed a lot from more of our long term fans who have been with us and on this journey for a really long time. They are curious about what happened to the more manual crafting side of crafting, because we didn't showcase

• 1:40:28

a lot here we showed most of the fast crafting. Who's a long time? A lot of people.

• 1:40:34

Oh, a lot of people. I thought you said there's one person. I thought I heard you say like, we have a long time person who's been asking like oh my god who's that? No, no, no, no. I meant generally I noticed this question from people who are, yes, are fans for a long time, not new people.

• 1:40:48

So that is still a work in progress.

• 1:40:51

And, you know, we want to be careful. I'd be here all day if I listed all the names.

• 1:40:56

Fair, fair, fair.

• 1:40:58

We want to be careful that when we, when we list, excuse me, when we showcase certain systems that we're doing so in a way that's digestible obviously and allows for people to provide feedback, but not all systems come online as fast as we want them to.

• 1:41:13

That particular gameplay layer is still a work in progress.

• 1:41:17

And you will likely be getting an update on it at some point in the future when we're ready to showcase it but it is still intended. The question that's outstanding with that mini game layer, I don't like calling it a mini game layer.

• 1:41:29

Yeah, that's why I was calling it manual crafting. I know. It's really confusing when you say mini games because it is not mini games.

• 1:41:35

Agreed, it's not. It is a unique gameplay layer. However, what I would say is that there's still some discussion about whether or not that occurs on a craft by craft basis, or if it occurs at the certification level, right?

• 1:41:49

So when you're certifying up, you participate in the, that gameplay layer. But what I would say is, hold off on that for a moment, we're still working on that, we will give an update when we're ready.

• 1:42:01

Also, putting things into a core functional state allows us to test some of those core systems and features, so we can kick out all the bugs that are potentially there and believe me we've fixed a lot of them already so, and there's plenty more that will come along the way as we move towards that more manual crafting process.

• 1:42:19

And then the next one here is, will the skin of the weapons have slight changes depending on the rarity that it's crafted at?

• 1:42:26

Yes, yeah you saw there that the rarity of that sword was heroic and when it was equipped you saw some effects that were kind of pulsating up the weapon.

• 1:42:40

Those types of effects will be yielded the higher quality and or rarity that the weapon is. So it's something that also is visually conveyed to other players, if not from just a threat assessment perspective but from, you know, getting some data point on the equipment

• 1:43:00

that another player has.

• 1:43:02

So yes, there are some effects that get scaled up when that happens.

• 1:43:05

All right, we got two more and then we'll move on to the next segment otherwise we'll be here all day, because Vagina and Roshan keep adding them, which is awesome.

• 1:43:13

The next one here is, can a player of any profession level learn any recipe, or do I have to be like a certain level to learn the recipes?

• 1:43:23

Oh, that's a good question.

• 1:43:25

I think we've gone back and forth on that in the past. I believe that currently, you might need to have the appropriate ability to craft the recipe in order to learn it.

• 1:43:40

I believe that's the current approach, but I could be wrong on that I'll have to double check.

• 1:43:45

And like Steven said before, everything's subject to change as we test things as you guys experience things as you provide your feedback, we adjust things as well.

• 1:43:53

The next one here is, can a player equip multiple of the same types of bags, or are bags unique to characters in some way?

• 1:44:00

No, you can equip multiple of the same types of bags. You can be highly specialized.

• 1:44:06

And I think there was a tangential one here was, can people put these crafted bags on their meals as well?

• 1:44:16

Can they put craft, I'm sorry my battery just said it's about to die. Sorry, say again.

• 1:44:20

Can they put the crafted bags on their meals as well? Like the satchels on their bags?

• 1:44:25

No, the mules use the cargo system. So the cargo system is crate based.

• 1:44:31

You have to acquire the crates and then you can equip them to the vehicles and or mules.

• 1:44:36

Mules cap out at the small crate value, and you can add to that crate while in the wild.

• 1:44:44

All right. Well, from there, we're going to move on to our studio update.

Studio Update

• 1:44:51

I don't know if you want to share some deets on how we're doing, where we're at in regards to studio goodness, but I know folks keep asking about all of that jazz.

• 1:45:00

Yeah, no, absolutely. Things are going great at the studio.

• 1:45:03

We've gotten some really talented team members who have joined us over the course of this last month that we're very excited about to have with the team.

• 1:45:15

We are in the process of winding down for the year.

• 1:45:18

Obviously, the studio goes on break from the 22nd until January 3rd.

• 1:45:23

And we have a lot of plans to get things done before the 22nd.

• 1:45:27

Oh, until the second.

• 1:45:29

Yeah, we've got it. Oops, the studio is like, oh, we're getting an extra day.

• 1:45:33

Yeah, I was like, I just want to because I know a lot of them watch the stream. I don't want them to be like, oh, I know. Yeah, 22nd to the second. Good call.

• 1:45:40

But we have a lot of plans, obviously, to get some things done here before the end of the year.

• 1:45:45

We will be finishing up our milestone seven, which is a big, big, big milestone for us, obviously.

• 1:45:51

But yeah, a lot of things going great with the studio right now. Yeah, we're trying to plan some little fun things that we can do as a team too for December.

• 1:45:59

We always try to do, I think we always do like a Christmas sweater contest and we have fun.

• 1:46:05

We try to, we try to, I think we're going to do a movie as well. We've got some gifts going out to the team.

• 1:46:11

I'm working out the event details on that. So yeah, we're going to prep some stuff.

• 1:46:15

I know people who are our staff are probably, but we'll announce that later internally.

• 1:46:22

But yeah, we're definitely rocking and rolling.

• 1:46:25

I think we talked about this in a previous live stream, but our attrition rate is insanely great.

• 1:46:30

You know, people do come and go here and there, but it's well, it's crazy because like it is like 12 plus percent.

• 1:46:38

And well, right now, it's like insane. We're like one percent or two percent, I think.

• 1:46:44

Yeah. So it's very, very low. Beyond that, let's move on to character goodness.

Art Update

• 1:46:50

So the first thing here that you're going to see is that we are starting to kind of change up our Kalar starting gear.

• 1:46:57

We're kind of re-addressing those, changing them. You're going to see these for all of the races as we move forward.

• 1:47:03

But feel free to share your feedback and thoughts on them as we continue.

• 1:47:09

Yeah, the fabric looks so good. Yeah. Let's go through.

• 1:47:17

Materials just look so good. Of course, lighting changes everything, so it depends on where you are in game,

• 1:47:24

how the lighting is going to look on the armors and stuff like that.

• 1:47:28

The next thing here is a copper weapon set. You're probably going to see these for every type of material.

• 1:47:33

So I think you've seen some of them from previous materials, too, in the past.

• 1:47:39

But you'll probably be seeing more of those as we move forward. Just a lot of weapons and stuff are being weapons and armors are being made.

• 1:47:45

Tons of them. Very rich, diverse grouping of itemization that can be progressed through questing, drops and crafting.

• 1:47:56

Speaking of which, we have some carfen weapons. We have a dagger and a focus that are being worked on right now.

• 1:48:03

I think we've shown some of the other carfen weapons in the past as well that you've seen.

• 1:48:07

I like to sprinkle a little hue in there because obviously that's going to be a fun dungeon.

• 1:48:15

And then we have the Scarlet Remembrance, the little ring that we had.

• 1:48:19

The lore for this is really sweet. So if you haven't read it, I would highly recommend.

• 1:48:26

And then we have the Feyguards, which this one was a contention. Some people loved this set and some people didn't.

• 1:48:35

But now you're seeing the 3D render of it, which looks great. Yeah, it's different, too, which I think is fun.

• 1:48:43

And then we've got the Bloomfest, which is from that same set.

• 1:48:51

Oh, beautiful. And then this one, Bloomfest was our wonderful intern, Marlene.

• 1:49:03

Oh, my God. Marlene. Shout out, Marlene. Very cool.

• 1:49:11

And then we have the Mature Drill Spider. This is in a T-pose, so the little spiky thing would be up, not flat like that.

• 1:49:25

And then we have the Rainrock Fawn. I think I have a turntable for this one, too.

• 1:49:33

Love it. So cool. Very cool.

• 1:49:38

I could see us making a lot of different versions of this with the different materials in the game, too.

• 1:49:43

Oh, yeah. Little corrupt version of it. Yeah. Oh, no. This one is one of my favorites. This is the Shoal Skipper.

• 1:49:52

We were joking that this is what we all look like after Thanksgiving dinner.

• 1:49:56

I can't wait to ride that thing in the ocean and just lay down a bunch of mines for ships and stuff. That would be crazy.

• 1:50:02

Oh, my gosh. I love that. Steve is plotting his revenge. Just have like a squad of these.

• 1:50:12

Oh, that'd be so fun to see a squad of them. Oh, my gosh. In Alpha 1, we all went in the water.

• 1:50:18

We were all on those turtles, remember? And then we did the barrel roll all in a row like a wave.

• 1:50:23

Yes. Do you remember that? That was so good. I do remember that. That was fun.

• 1:50:26

I think it was with the PI folks when we did that. I don't know if the PI folks remember.

• 1:50:30

But it was a lot of fun. That's what happens in private testing. You do weird things.

• 1:50:35

Because we were having everybody line up and they were like, run to the shore, because we were trying to test having a lot of people in one area.

• 1:50:41

I remember that. That was good times. Yeah. And with that, we are heading on to our Q&A.

Outro and Q&A

• 1:50:49

So thank you to our amazing artists. Obviously, they work on way more things than that.

• 1:50:53

We just try to sprinkle in a little bit here and there that they're really proud of that they want to share.

• 1:50:59

Sometimes I ask them for additional things that they're not quite ready to share. But I'm like, come on, people will like it.

• 1:51:07

And of course, we keep some stuff for you guys so that you get to experience them.

• 1:51:12

So we're going to move on to our Q&A. If you don't know, we grab some questions from our forums.

• 1:51:17

We always put these up in advance when we announce our live stream.

• 1:51:20

So if you are following us on all the social, you'll be notified of that. And of course, on the forums.

• 1:51:26

The first question here is from Nice Gaming. Thank you, Nice, for also making amazing content. We always love seeing that.

• 1:51:32

They wanted to know about new player experience. And is there a plan to have a tutorial or quest detailing corruption, the flagging system, etc. as new players enter Vera?

• 1:51:42

Absolutely. That is not something, however, you will be noticing in Alpha 2. We call this obviously our first time user experience.

• 1:51:51

The first time user experience is something that's going to have a lot of love and attention during betas, but is not going to have much attention during Alpha 2.

• 1:51:59

But it is intended for us to have a very in-depth first time user experience to kind of introduce players to the number of different systems, right?

• 1:52:08

They're not going to be super in-depth. We don't believe that first time user experiences should handhold players through all of the processes and reveal the world, so to speak.

• 1:52:16

But just to give them a shallow touch for the system so that they understand the concepts and essentially how to navigate.

• 1:52:24

But we want to leave that for exploration. Sometimes it can be overwhelming to have a bunch of UI pop ups.

• 1:52:28

I think also we've been trying to take a more tangible process of you learning through the game and not always through windows popping up at you too.

• 1:52:37

The next question is from Nero who wants to know about stolen glint. This was a contentious question after you talked about this on the caravan live stream.

• 1:52:47

So I think this is a great one to also clarify. So I'm glad it got picked in the random generator.

• 1:52:52

The question is, will a character be able to loot their own corpse and retrieve their dropped glint as normal glint again?

• 1:53:00

Or is it forever stolen glint the second that the character dies? Does this also mean that if my friends loot my body and gives me my glint back, it's considered stolen?

• 1:53:12

I think the problem here was that you die and then your glint becomes stolen glint, but then if you loot it, it's weird for it to be stolen.

• 1:53:20

The glint does not become stolen on death. It becomes stolen on looting.

• 1:53:26

As long as it's not you, right?

• 1:53:28

Correct. Yeah. If you're able to loot your own body, it will not be converted into stolen glint.

• 1:53:34

If however, another player, regardless of their affiliation, loots the body, it will then be converted. The glint will be sunk and the stolen glint will replace.

• 1:53:44

Your friends can steal stuff from you. It is true.

• 1:53:48

The next one is from Lashing and they want to know about NPC levels. Will mob level keep scaling past player max level as an indicator for power level?

• 1:54:01

I think this is more in regards to at high level, will there still be challenging combat for me beyond that?

• 1:54:09

Wait, so what's the question?

• 1:54:11

Will mob level keep scaling past the max player level?

• 1:54:15

Yes, yes. When the game, both in Alpha 2 and when the game launches, there will be monsters whose technical level is above that of the cap.

• 1:54:24

And the intent there is obviously again to provide some level of challenge that exceeds a comparable level challenge rating.

• 1:54:35

Yes, that is expected.

• 1:54:37

All right. And then Neurotoxin wants to know about crafting agency. What percentage of an items specifically like a weapon that hits corruption target or corrupted targets harder will be defined specifically by blueprint, material, character, skill, the station and region where it was crafted and by the player's own selective inputs?

• 1:54:58

So I think this is a pretty meaty question, but just I guess kind of breaking it up. What where do the power elements come from percentage wise per the different elements of crafting?

• 1:55:10

Well, a big chunk of it's going to come from the static recipe value, right?

• 1:55:14

That's going to drive a lot of the stat block. And then as we saw here, you will be able to influence the quality of the recipe and the distribution of stats within the stat block based on the components that are dedicated to the craft.

• 1:55:31

So that presents a wide variety of potential output from a single recipe.

• 1:55:37

Recipes have the ability to gain, recipes themselves can gain experience, you can unlock different results through different compositional contributions of resources.

• 1:55:52

And that in and of itself is kind of an exploration progression that crafters will have access to.

• 1:56:02

And our next one is about crafting innovation from old cat.

• 1:56:07

And they want to know will players have the ability to innovate within the crafting system, creating unique items or designs? If so, how much customization can players expect when it comes to crafting their own gear or items?

• 1:56:22

I think this is pretty much the same kind of answer that I just gave, which is that obviously there are statically defined

• 1:56:33

there statically defined an array of results that can come out of a particular recipe. And your ability to unlock those results is predicated on what composition of resources you contribute to crafting that particular weapon type.

• 1:56:46

And so in that sense, yes, crafters will have the ability to to uniquely create certain types of the recipes results based on how they're contributing resources to it.

• 1:57:01

Yeah, I think this question is more specifically about creating, manifesting their own recipe.

• 1:57:07

Yeah, that you. Yeah, exactly. The, the result has to have a corresponding recipe definition. And so in that sense, it isn't completely customizable to the point where the player gets to uniquely create these particular items, but rather they are discovering what

• 1:57:26

creations are possible with each recipe type.

• 1:57:29

And then, I'm sorry if I say your name wrong, just DM me on Discord or something and or forums and let me know how to actually pronounce it.

• 1:57:39

Mo, Mo Lu, Mo Luxto's.

• 1:57:45

They want to know about crafting recipes, will the recipe book be account bound or player character bound. Will there be account wide sharing recipes so can I share my recipes with my other characters, or do I have to do them per character.

• 1:57:59

This brings us back to the alt question.

• 1:58:03

And the alt question was, how do we feel about people making alts in order to kind of corner the, the mastery professions.

• 1:58:14

If you learn a recipe, it stays on that character. And if you want another character to have access to those recipes they have to achieve those recipes in order to do so.

• 1:58:24

And so in that sense, we're not making it easier for alts right. It is an equitable amount of effort required in order to achieve the type of payoff you want from these alt characters.

• 1:58:35

Alright, and then Roni Schaponi, I always love that name. They want to know about gathering skills. Do gatherers need to spec into group based gathering at the expense of solo gathering?

• 1:58:48

Do they need to? No, no I do not believe so. So they can spec into, they can do both equally? Correct.

• 1:58:56

And then Tiger Blue Eyes wants to know about crafting materials. Are crafting materials going cross tiers? For example, using high level material in low level recipes or low level materials in a higher level recipe? Is that allowed?

• 1:59:10

Yes.

• 1:59:12

And then Phantom MX or Phantom X wants to know about crafting skill. As character artisanship skills improve, will RNG in the process go down?

• 1:59:25

That is a good question. As I level up, am I more likely to succeed?

• 1:59:29

To a degree.

• 1:59:32

Well,

• 1:59:35

right now we don't really have a failure chance when it comes to crafting.

• 1:59:42

The RNG chances that we place on itemization live more within the enchant realm and within the deconstruction realm

• 1:59:57

and socketing, like, that's where RNG comes into play. The recipe is a relatively

• 2:00:04

high degree of certainty when inputting things.

• 2:00:09

You may not know what the outcome of that input is going to look like but I wouldn't call that necessarily RNG for failure because you can't necessarily fail that.

• 2:00:19

So, yeah, hopefully that answers your question.

• 2:00:22

Yeah.

• 2:00:23

And then Drunk Ninja wants to know about crafting consumables. Will every crafting profession be able to make some form of a consumable?

• 2:00:32

No, not every crafting profession will be able to make a form of consumable.

• 2:00:38

All right. That wraps up our Q&A.

• 2:00:41

Woo! We made it through it all.

• 2:00:44

And of course, we do have, you know, some reminders again for you all.

• 2:00:50

Just head on over to our forums. We would love your feedback.

• 2:00:53

Forums.AshesOfCreation.com. We have a forum feedback thread already up there for Artisanship.

• 2:00:59

So definitely let us know your thoughts, what you think you liked from it, what you'd like to see improved.

• 2:01:04

This is a long stream.

• 2:01:05

It was a long stream. Yeah, this is a long stream.

• 2:01:07

The video for the 4K version of the Artisanship segment will be up on YouTube right when this is over.

• 2:01:15

So you can go watch that, pause it, look back so you can really give us feedback on what your thoughts are.

• 2:01:20

And of course, our team is going to be creating a report for the dev team, which is always something that is beneficial for us.

• 2:01:27

Again, thank you all so much for helping us with Extra Life.

• 2:01:31

There's also a ton of other dev discussions and things of that sort that are over there.

• 2:01:34

We're going to have a delicious one that's coming up with recipes.

• 2:01:38

And maybe we'll do some bonus Alpha 2 keys for anybody who actually creates the recipe and sends us a photo or something.

• 2:01:45

So it's like a bonus just fun.

• 2:01:47

But yeah, definitely keep your eye out for some fun things that are coming along the way.

• 2:01:51

The Unseen Order Cosmetics will be ending on January 17th at 11 a.m. Pacific.

• 2:01:56

Reminder that this is the last pre-order pack that will be available.

• 2:02:00

And you can check out all the information on our FAQ on our site.

• 2:02:03

And of course, thank you so much to all of you for tuning in.

• 2:02:06

This was a long one. So we appreciate you sticking through with us.

• 2:02:10

And of course, to Corey, Mike, Alex and Nathan for helping us with the Artisanship Showcase.

• 2:02:17

They all did an amazing job. I know it is not an easy feat to come and talk in front of a bajillion people.

• 2:02:23

I know people can make fun of folks. So be kind.

• 2:02:27

Developers, that's not our main thing to do.

• 2:02:29

We're making a game, man. And we're just trying to help explain things at the same time.

• 2:02:33

And of course, to Steven for all of your time. I know that it is precious.

• 2:02:37

We always appreciate all of it.

• 2:02:39

And with that, we hope that you all stay healthy and safe.

• 2:02:42

Like I said, the VOD will be up on Twitch as well right away.

• 2:02:45

So you can watch the whole thing. If you want to rewatch any of the FAQ sections, the videos up on YouTube.

• 2:02:50

Leave us a comment on this dev development update.

• 2:02:55

So when the full one goes up on Friday.

• 2:02:57

And we will be picking a lucky winner to be spotlighted again like we did in this one for next month in December.

• 2:03:04

Also follow us on all the places. We are Ashes of Creation everywhere.

• 2:03:07

We post stuff almost like multiple times a week.

• 2:03:10

We try not to spam you too much, but we also try to make lots of fun engaging posts.

• 2:03:14

Also sharing with you lots of cool things from the game.

• 2:03:17

Sometimes you get some unique stuff that doesn't get shown on the live stream.

• 2:03:20

So definitely follow us on all of the places so that we can keep you informed on what's going on.

• 2:03:25

And with that, we will see you all next month for the final live stream of 2023.

• 2:03:32

Yeah, is it like two weeks away? Three weeks away?

• 2:03:35

Yeah, two or three weeks away. It's not very far because we wrap up on the 22nd here.

• 2:03:39

Like no one's working on the 22nd at Intrepid, so hopefully not.

• 2:03:44

That's right.

• 2:03:45

All right.

• 2:03:46

All right, everyone. Thank you for joining us. We had a lot of fun.

• 2:03:49

See you all.

• 2:03:50

Bye.

• 00:00

Hello everyone and welcome to our glorious Ashes of Creation November development update.

• 00:22

We hope that everyone has been having a wonderful month.

• 00:25

It has been a long one for us, even though it's like short.

• 00:28

So because of the holidays, it just makes everything so cramped for us.

• 00:32

So we're like trying to make sure we get everything done.

• 00:35

Same with December.

• 00:36

So it's like those two sprints for us in development, we use like sprints and milestones to do our

• 00:42

calculations of what we're going to be doing and milestones.

• 00:46

It gets a little hectic.

• 00:47

Yeah, because everyone's just trying to power through, but everyone is amazing and doing

• 00:51

rock and roll and kicking major butts.

• 00:54

Yeah, it's always, oh, go ahead.

• 00:55

It's always interesting.

• 00:56

At the end of the year, we have these two back to back streams in November and December,

• 01:02

and then our longest stream until the end of January.

• 01:05

That's true, because January is so long.

• 01:08

That's true.

• 01:09

But of course, I'm Margaret Cron.

• 01:11

I'm the director of communications here at Entrepid Studios.

• 01:13

And with me as always is Steven Sharif, our creative director.

• 01:17

And we have a whole slew of things for you.

• 01:19

We have some quick reminders.

• 01:20

We're going to try to go through this pretty quick.

• 01:22

Artisanship preview, which I think a lot of you crafters out there are probably really

• 01:26

excited about this.

• 01:27

We've had a lot of questions.

• 01:28

And of course, to preface, this is going to be more of our core functioning stuff, so

• 01:32

not super in-depth in regards to manual crafting.

• 01:37

But we'll talk a little bit more about that.

• 01:39

And of course, if you have questions, feel free to pop those into the Twitch channel,

• 01:45

Discord.

• 01:46

And of course, we have a watch party in Discord right now.

• 01:49

So there's a lot of places for you to interact with us.

• 01:51

Our community team is full throttle.

• 01:55

So of course, we are always pulling those in after those segments as well.

• 01:58

And then we'll have a quick little studio update, art update, and then do our Q&A as

• 02:03

well, like a forum Q&A that we always pull from.

• 02:06

But before we do that, we do have our spotlight.

• 02:09

Whoops, wrong one.

• 02:10

There we go.

• 02:12

Our spotlight comment.

• 02:13

So if you, on our development updates, leave a comment, subscribe to us.

• 02:19

You may be selected.

• 02:20

Make sure that you have it so that we can see that you're subscribed to us.

• 02:23

And then you will maybe get your comments selected.

• 02:26

It's random.

• 02:27

So today's comment is from Pa Beats.

• 02:30

And they would like to know, it's less of a question, more of a statement.

• 02:33

Caravans are my number one most loved feature when it comes to MMOs.

• 02:38

This is it.

• 02:41

I will preorder the game first time in like 15 years.

• 02:47

PS, would love to see the other side of that feature.

• 02:51

Maybe how a party of robbers attacks a caravan and how they can then flee and sell it to

• 02:56

a fence or something of that sort.

• 02:59

Yeah, I figure we could talk a little bit about that.

• 03:02

Sure.

• 03:03

Yeah, absolutely.

• 03:04

It's less of a question, more of a statement.

• 03:05

And if you didn't know, we showed off caravans.

• 03:08

So if you're curious about those, definitely check that out.

• 03:12

There's a lot of people in the studio that share that excitement for caravans as a system.

• 03:19

It is the epitome of risk versus reward, obviously.

• 03:23

And knowing that that is a core pillar of a lot of the systems design and Ashes, caravans

• 03:29

represent that very well.

• 03:33

It took a lot of work to kind of get caravans to a place that felt good, both from a drivability

• 03:38

perspective but also from a customization perspective as it relates to crafting unique

• 03:42

components and creating these vehicles that live in stalls that are located at different

• 03:47

nodes and kind of their summoning mechanic and leveraging them for the transit of these

• 03:52

cargo and materials that are so vital to the economy.

• 03:57

All of that in a fantasy world, you might see that in games like an EVE or something

• 04:03

that's a little bit more sci-fi with transport, but it's not often seen in fantasy style games.

• 04:09

And so I think that's super cool, obviously.

• 04:13

When we talk about the PVP element of them and that risk, I am happy to announce that

• 04:19

in January we will be showcasing, this is I guess a little bit of a leak of things to

• 04:25

come, but we will be showcasing a large PVP battle around caravans.

• 04:31

And you guys will get to see a little bit of the caravan raft take place as well.

• 04:36

We should be in a good spot for that come January.

• 04:40

So that's going to be really exciting, I think, for people to see.

• 04:42

I know that we've had the last few streams have been kind of focused around mechanics

• 04:47

within Ashes that aren't combat or PVP related.

• 04:52

That's a good thing because what makes the world go round in Vera is obviously those

• 04:56

types of systems.

• 04:58

And it makes the events where player conflict does occur that much more exciting because

• 05:03

of how much it took to kind of set the stage for a high risk reward type encounter.

• 05:10

And that's what caravans are all about.

• 05:11

So January is going to be a really fun thing to see, I believe, and you guys are going

• 05:15

to be happily surprised.

• 05:16

There's definitely a lot of questions regarding the PVP element of just our game in general.

• 05:21

And of course, when we showcased the caravan system, there were a lot of follow up questions

• 05:26

in regards to how PVP would play into that.

• 05:28

And of course, we had already planned to share that, but the caravan system alone is such

• 05:32

an in-depth system and the PVP on top of that is.

• 05:35

So we just split those up.

• 05:37

Hopefully you all understand that.

• 05:38

And of course, we didn't want to put too much pressure on those teams right back to back.

• 05:43

So kind of giving a little love here and there.

• 05:46

But of course, I think I misspoke last month.

• 05:50

I meant to say that in the December, at the end of the year, we are going to share the

• 05:55

quarter.

• 05:56

I believe that's what we had said earlier on as well when we announced the 2024 Alpha

• 06:01

2 timeline as well.

• 06:03

And I think I misspoke and said next live stream when I meant to say at the end of the

• 06:07

year.

• 06:09

So we will be announcing what quarter Alpha 2 will be next live stream in December's live

• 06:13

stream to make it very clear.

• 06:15

Apologies for the confusion.

• 06:16

Yeah, not too far away.

• 06:17

Yeah.

• 06:18

No, yeah, absolutely.

• 06:19

We're only a few weeks away from that actually.

• 06:20

Yeah, that's true.

• 06:21

We're not that far away.

• 06:22

Yeah, we got a lot of testing that's been going on over the course of this month.

• 06:28

And obviously, December is going to be a big month when it comes to testing as well.

• 06:31

I made a little bit of commentary about that in the Discord.

• 06:36

Things are heating up for sure, but I do want to temper expectations.

• 06:39

I want to remind everybody that this is Alpha testing, right?

• 06:44

And so because of that, you can look historically at how far the game has come year after year,

• 06:50

the improvements that get made.

• 06:52

And what we're about to show you right now, which is a little over an hour long showcase

• 06:58

regarding all things artisanship, right?

• 07:02

I made a post in Discord yesterday that just went over kind of all the types of updates

• 07:07

that we're going to see.

• 07:08

And I want to reiterate them here before we actually move to the video segment.

• 07:12

And I know a lot of you guys take your hour break to kind of watch this, to watch our

• 07:17

live stream.

• 07:18

I apologize.

• 07:19

Oh, I'm sorry.

• 07:20

I thought that was my cue.

• 07:21

No, go through the reminders and then I'll do that.

• 07:22

No, that was not your cue yet.

• 07:23

Okay, okay, go.

• 07:24

You're good.

• 07:25

But yeah, I just wanted to kind of let people know that that was a misspoke on my side.

• 07:31

And of course, we do want to thank you all for helping us raise money for Extra Life.

• 07:36

What an amazing campaign that we have as a team.

• 07:40

You're wonderful.

• 07:41

I mean, we can't thank you guys enough for what you've done for each other.

• 07:44

I forgot that that was this month.

• 07:45

I feel like that was a year ago already.

• 07:47

I know.

• 07:48

But we did put an article up.

• 07:50

It also has the winners too.

• 07:52

And all the winners have been reached out to and given their rewards.

• 07:56

I think the last of rewards are the three thank you videos, which we're going to be

• 08:00

recording right after this and sending out.

• 08:01

So everyone should be getting all of their things or have information on when your things

• 08:05

are going to be shipped to you.

• 08:06

So I just wanted to reiterate that to folks.

• 08:12

And just a last parting comment regards to Extra Life.

• 08:17

Those of you who didn't get to participate or didn't get to take a look, I think that

• 08:22

as a community, we need to celebrate our accomplishments.

• 08:27

And it is a really cool thing that we as a community have come together over the course

• 08:33

of the last several years to raise over three hundred and twenty five thousand dollars for

• 08:38

Rady's Children's Hospital.

• 08:39

And that is that is truly something that is unique about the Ashes community.

• 08:44

I mean, we're not even in our game yet playing.

• 08:46

Right.

• 08:47

And we have come together as a community very strongly and are capable of doing these things

• 08:53

that help others and demonstrate the quality of what it means to be an Ashes of Creation

• 08:59

community member.

• 09:01

And that's something that I think is very unique and it's something that we should be

• 09:04

proud of and that we should carry with us to the other gaming communities that we are

• 09:08

a part of.

• 09:09

And and, you know, we're all an eclectic bunch of gamers.

• 09:12

We enjoy lots of different games.

• 09:15

The cause that that Extra Life presents, I think, is a worthwhile one.

• 09:20

And it is something that touches the hearts of people who are gamers just like you and

• 09:25

I, like Margaret and I.

• 09:27

And it's really something that's noticeable for for for us to come together and perform

• 09:31

like that.

• 09:32

So kudos to you guys out in the community.

• 09:34

That is truly something remarkable.

• 09:36

And I can't wait to see what even crazier things we get to do in the future as we get

• 09:40

closer and closer to launch and then post launch as well and how we can integrate Ashes

• 09:44

of Creation into more of those type of things.

• 09:47

So thank you all.

• 09:48

And of course, our community is just amazing as a whole.

• 09:50

So we love how much you all interact with us on all of the platforms.

• 09:54

So keep keep that up.

• 09:56

And I know it's only going to get crazier when we start doing more guild stuff, because

• 09:59

we are definitely going to expand to more of that as we get like in game and do that

• 10:03

kind of stuff because guilds are very important.

• 10:05

But of course, I just want to remind you that we do have some dev discussions up.

• 10:09

We have our dev discussion for respawn times.

• 10:14

So if you have not partaken in that, we are going to be wrapping up our reporting for

• 10:18

that.

• 10:19

So please feel free to pop in there.

• 10:21

Give us some some of your thoughts.

• 10:22

Of course, you can even after our reporting still continue to give us feedback.

• 10:25

We always go back and double check things, but did want to do that.

• 10:29

And of course, I wanted to give you a little teaser.

• 10:31

Vagner shared that next one will be on drop rarity.

• 10:35

And so if you have feelings and thoughts on drop rarity, which I know most of you all

• 10:38

out there do, definitely give us your thoughts in regards to that because we are going to

• 10:43

be compiling a report for the dev team in regards to that.

• 10:48

Also, I don't have an asset for this because it's more of a surprise thing.

• 10:53

We always do something that kind of cool and fun or silly during the holidays.

• 10:57

But our next one is going to be a bonus dev discussion.

• 11:00

It's going to be a special holiday delicious dev discussion.

• 11:03

For those of you who have partaken in the past, we've made some really cool recipes

• 11:07

and things like that.

• 11:08

And especially tying in with artisanship stuff for those who enjoy cooking and things of

• 11:12

that sort.

• 11:13

You definitely want to head over to the forums next week and vote on which Varon holiday

• 11:17

recipe you would like to see.

• 11:20

And we'll be putting some of those out to share with you guys for the holiday season.

• 11:24

And hopefully some people will make them and then send us pictures.

• 11:27

Yeah, that would be super cool.

• 11:30

What if some people did make them and we had a little bit of like some alpha keys that

• 11:35

we gave out for the best version of those recipes?

• 11:38

I don't know.

• 11:39

That could be interesting.

• 11:40

That'd be hard.

• 11:41

We'd have to do a whole campaign for that.

• 11:44

We could do community voting.

• 11:45

I don't know.

• 11:46

We can figure something out.

• 11:47

We might be able to do something like that.

• 11:54

Definitely contest in the future.

• 11:55

But I think we might be able to give some alpha keys away if people make some stuff

• 11:58

and share with us.

• 11:59

That's like bonus, not contest oriented.

• 12:02

Yes, that's right.

• 12:04

We'll discuss on that front.

• 12:06

And of course, just a reminder that the Unseen Order will be ending January 17th.

• 12:13

I know that some people just want to make sure that they're being conscious of that.

• 12:17

So if you would like a pre-order pack, this is the last time we will be offering a pre-order

• 12:22

pack specifically.

• 12:23

So if you would like that, definitely head on over there and snag yourself one.

• 12:28

And with that, Steven, I will hand it over to you to do some prefacing.

• 12:33

Thank you.

• 12:34

All right.

• 12:35

So let's really breathe together on stream.

• 12:38

We want to breathe in, hold, and breathe out.

• 12:44

Okay.

• 12:44

So as a reminder, this stream is going to be focused on artisanship as a whole.

• 12:53

And artisanship in the economy is obviously a very integral component of creating a world

• 13:00

where progression matters, where decisions and choices matter.

• 13:05

The world state that is constantly in flux and changing around you is very relevant as

• 13:11

it relates to supply and demand within the economy.

• 13:14

That creates opportunity.

• 13:16

It also creates, unfortunately, downsides and downturns.

• 13:20

But that keeps a market interesting, right?

• 13:22

It also makes you remember things.

• 13:25

The times when you're having struggle, when you win and overcome those is like the things

• 13:29

you remember the most.

• 13:30

I mean, imagine your favorite guild moments are usually when you're like, we tried 10

• 13:35

times on the boss, but then we finally did it, right?

• 13:37

Oh, yeah.

• 13:38

100%.

• 13:39

I mean, some of the more interesting moments that I've had in other games was where there

• 13:47

were unique and scarce resources that everyone was contending for, right?

• 13:55

And those created, I think, very emergent and dynamic interactions between the players.

• 14:02

Obviously that was interesting.

• 14:05

But okay, so what we're going to see today is not just about artisanship.

• 14:10

It is also going to be related to several changes that happen within the game over time.

• 14:18

And so being that this is the end of the year or coming close to the end of the year, you're

• 14:22

going to see a number of different updates to several different systems.

• 14:27

You're going to see some updates on the UI front, a little bit more explanation and perhaps

• 14:32

a clearer picture for you as it relates to spatial management and the inventory systems.

• 14:37

That's obviously something that is unique to the gathering system.

• 14:42

You're going to see significant updates to game lighting.

• 14:47

When we showed the night and day cycle in the past, there was a resounding feedback

• 14:51

from the community to see a bit darker exploration for the night times to kind of bring that

• 14:59

field of view in a bit more.

• 15:02

And so we've updated that.

• 15:04

You're also going to see some significant changes from our tech art team with the skybox

• 15:08

and our volumetric clouds.

• 15:11

I think it's something that creates a bit more dramatic atmosphere within this video.

• 15:15

You're going to see the first showcase of processing and how processing works from a

• 15:20

stations perspective.

• 15:24

These are going to be systems that allow players within the node who may not have a freehold

• 15:31

to still participate in some levels of processing.

• 15:36

And that's an important distinction between what's available on freeholds and what's available

• 15:41

within nodes.

• 15:42

You're going to see, get a little bit of insight to predicate systems that relate to what you

• 15:49

can access in the wild.

• 15:52

We made this change a while ago that everything is accessible, obviously, from a resource

• 15:57

gathering perspective.

• 15:58

However, we do gatekeep some of the access points to progression within the profession.

• 16:04

And you're going to see the certification, a very low level certification process that's

• 16:09

quest driven.

• 16:10

You're not going to see that whole certification process, but you are going to see how those

• 16:16

resources are restricted.

• 16:17

You're also going to see some tool making, kind of the initial tools that you'll get

• 16:20

as a gatherer, which is going to be quest related to start.

• 16:27

And then you'll have to be making those tools yourself.

• 16:29

You're going to see a little bit of our recipe system and the recipe book, as well as the

• 16:33

other crafting stations for those recipes.

• 16:35

We're going to be specifically crafting a weapon in this video.

• 16:39

And you're not going to see all of the accurate recipe components necessary to craft the weapon,

• 16:45

but you are going to see a version of that right now.

• 16:49

You're also going to see something that you haven't seen since Alpha 1, which is our corruption

• 16:55

zones.

• 16:56

And the corruption zones are something, obviously, that changes within the world state.

• 17:04

And the world state is a very important aspect of what resources are available at what time.

• 17:10

Corruption spreads as players do not respond to it appropriately.

• 17:13

It can be the predicate for events.

• 17:14

It can be the predicate for story arcs to kick off.

• 17:19

And it does dynamically change the spawners within the world.

• 17:23

Something that's unique, obviously, to Ashes of Creation is that world state change affecting

• 17:27

the supply and demand of resources.

• 17:29

And you're going to see a little bit of our adaptive resource.

• 17:31

And from that, you're going to see a little bit of our adaptive resource gathering tech

• 17:35

updates where you see those resources change from night to day or from corrupt to not corrupt.

• 17:42

And then there is going to be a little bit of a leak of a couple of ranger skills.

• 17:47

I will give you another leak that next month we are going to be doing the ranger showcase

• 17:51

again.

• 17:52

There's 18 new abilities within the archetype kit that we're going to show off.

• 17:56

And I think that you guys will have a fun time with that.

• 17:59

But we did have to dispatch a few wolves while we were out looking for resources during this

• 18:02

livestream.

• 18:03

So, with that being said, I do want to leave off with the last disclaimer.

• 18:07

As you all know what I'm about to say, this is still Alpha.

• 18:11

Yes, that's right.

• 18:13

This is still Alpha.

• 18:14

This is still a work in progress.

• 18:16

Things only get better from this point forward.

• 18:19

But as is our responsibility, we want to show you how things are progressing.

• 18:23

And we want to do so so that you're able to provide us feedback on the directionality

• 18:27

you see through these showcases and can let us know how this relates to your experiences,

• 18:32

how this is something you want to see or what you would change differently.

• 18:36

So keep in mind as you're watching, what are the points of feedback that you want to give

• 18:39

us?

• 18:40

And you can give them to us on YouTube, which will be released shortly after this livestream.

• 18:43

We have a forum thread that we'll have up.

• 18:46

That's the best way because it makes it the easiest for us to compile.

• 18:49

It is.

• 18:50

It is the best way, forums.

• 18:51

But I know not a lot of you are keyboard warriors on the forum.

• 18:54

So if you want to be out on the Discord or on the social medias.

• 18:58

If you prefer to talk.

• 19:00

And then of course, any social platform like Stephen was saying, you can leave us feedback

• 19:04

on.

• 19:05

Yes, absolutely.

• 19:06

Let me think.

• 19:07

Was that the last thing?

• 19:08

Was that the last thing?

• 19:09

I think that's the last thing.

• 19:10

I think that was the last thing.

• 19:11

We will see you guys just over in a year.

• 19:13

It's always like packing when you leave for a trip and you're like, did I bring everything?

• 19:16

I know.

• 19:17

Do I got my phone?

• 19:18

I got my wallet?

• 19:19

I'm good.

• 19:20

All right.

• 19:21

We'll see you guys in just a little bit.

• 19:22

Bye for now.

• 19:44

Hello everyone and welcome to yet another stream from Vera.

• 19:49

And we have a very exciting stream for you today.

• 19:54

We are going to be going through the artisanship system.

• 19:58

And it has been a little while since we last talked about artisanship and showcased the

• 20:06

gathering and we're going to do a little bit of that today.

• 20:08

And we also, during our last stream with Freeholds, talked a little bit about processing and we're

• 20:14

going to be doing that today as well.

• 20:17

And we're also going to be crafting something pretty interesting.

• 20:19

And I have joining me four of our glorious team here at Intrepid.

• 20:26

Some of them regulars.

• 20:27

I think all of them actually regulars have been on the stream before.

• 20:31

We have two of our glorious designers, Mike and Corey.

• 20:35

Mike, Corey, how are you guys doing?

• 20:37

Doing great.

• 20:38

How are you?

• 20:39

Glad to be here.

• 20:40

Doing very good.

• 20:41

I'm excited to show off what you guys have been working on and how far it's come since

• 20:43

people last saw it.

• 20:45

Yeah, same here.

• 20:47

It's very exciting for us.

• 20:49

Yes.

• 20:50

We also have joining us one of our glorious engineers, Alex.

• 20:55

How you doing, buddy?

• 20:57

Doing great.

• 20:58

How are you?

• 20:59

Doing very good.

• 21:00

You have been doing a lot of work on the engineering side of things, getting all these glorious

• 21:03

designs up and running.

• 21:04

It's going to be exciting to take a look at that today as well.

• 21:07

Yeah, it's been a challenge.

• 21:09

After all the wishes of my designers.

• 21:12

Not bad, was it?

• 21:16

You're like, wait, all of our wishes?

• 21:20

The one that passed visibility.

• 21:23

We also have joining us for, this is your second time now, Nathan, our glorious producer.

• 21:30

Yeah, the double feature.

• 21:31

I know, back to back.

• 21:33

I know.

• 21:34

The artisanship is the peanut butter to the jelly that is node, so I'm super excited to

• 21:38

show how these start interacting with each other.

• 21:40

Yes, it is totally, 100%.

• 21:43

You guys have done a great job so far.

• 21:45

I know you guys have been really pushing it this last sprint, and it has definitely shown

• 21:53

through to me, so I'm excited to show the audience.

• 21:55

All right, so why don't we talk a little bit about what we're going to be doing today?

• 22:03

Corey?

• 22:04

Mike?

• 22:05

Yeah, it sounds good.

• 22:09

You had brought up that you had done a little lumberjacking, but were kind of interested

• 22:14

in getting into some mining and herbalism because you picked up a recipe.

• 22:20

I think it's like, you were saying that's a pretty nice sword or something.

• 22:24

Oh, okay.

• 22:25

Let me take a look at that.

• 22:26

Is that going to be in my inventory?

• 22:27

Yeah, it should be in your inventory, yeah.

• 22:30

So I was thinking we could go out and get some of the stuff that we would need to make

• 22:37

that sword.

• 22:38

Okay.

• 22:39

Some of them are a little harder to come by, so I'm not sure whether or not we'll be able

• 22:41

to get our hands on that.

• 22:43

If not, I think we might have some stuff for you.

• 22:45

But yeah, I guess we just need to kind of get our stuff together.

• 22:51

As you mentioned, or as I mentioned, you already did some lumberjacking, but we'll probably

• 22:55

need to get you herbalism sickle and maybe some extra bags so you have some space.

• 23:04

So yeah, let's make our way over to the agricultural supply.

• 23:10

I think there's one of those built in Winstead right now, so we can head down there.

• 23:16

So now talk to me a little bit about, obviously we have this recipe.

• 23:21

When players are looking to create different items in the game, they're going to need to

• 23:26

go out and either purchase or get drops of recipes or trade with other players.

• 23:31

And when they acquire that recipe, like I have here, it says Nightblade.

• 23:35

I can use the recipe and I will learn a weaponsmithing recipe for the Nightblade.

• 23:40

So I have a recipe book that I get to keep essentially.

• 23:43

I learn these recipes once.

• 23:45

Yep, pretty much.

• 23:47

There might be some unique cases where some recipes might have a charge count.

• 23:51

So when you craft it five times, it might disappear.

• 23:53

But generally most of the cases, all the recipes should be permanently learned.

• 23:57

Okay, nice.

• 23:58

That's very cool.

• 24:00

And right clicking this is going to consume it, I assume.

• 24:02

But I do get a preview of the materials that we need.

• 24:05

And Corey, this is what you were talking a little bit about.

• 24:07

Go ahead, I'm collecting some of these.

• 24:09

There's a night opal moon bell.

• 24:11

I assume that is some type of flower.

• 24:14

Yeah, so the night opal and the moon bells are, those are the ones that I was kind of

• 24:19

alluding to.

• 24:20

They're a little difficult to get our hands on.

• 24:23

The night opals, you basically can't see them at all during the day.

• 24:27

But as it gets closer to night, if they're in the world, they'll sort of push away their

• 24:34

shell and start shining a bit.

• 24:36

And then the moon bells only bloom at night.

• 24:40

So we'll have to kind of, you know, maybe we'll work on some of the other things you

• 24:45

need for that recipe.

• 24:46

And hopefully nighttime will come around and we can find some of those things.

• 24:49

Okay, very cool.

• 24:50

So I'm going to right click this recipe to learn it.

• 24:53

Let's see here.

• 24:54

Oh, very cool.

• 24:55

It says learned new recipe, night blade.

• 24:59

Okay, yeah.

• 25:01

Now where are we going to go to get this sickle mentioned?

• 25:03

Oh yeah, so right over here.

• 25:05

Okay, they got this area in kind of the back alley of the town.

• 25:13

Yeah, so if you head through here, this is the agricultural supply.

• 25:18

This is one of the, you know, service buildings that you can build in the node.

• 25:20

This one kind of focuses specifically on artisanship and you'll find stuff for herbalism, farming

• 25:25

and animal husbandry here.

• 25:27

So if you talk to Mr. Willy over here, yeah, so he, if you talk to him, he should give

• 25:37

you some stuff that you can use to construct your first sickle.

• 25:42

And then once you have those things, there's a little anvil here over here to your left

• 25:47

and you can craft the sickle there.

• 25:49

And then I think once you have the sickle, you can talk to him and it'll complete the

• 25:55

quest and give you your first sickle.

• 25:57

You'll be ready to go.

• 25:58

This guy is incredibly rude.

• 26:00

We need to have a conversation with the narrative team about how these vendors speak to the

• 26:06

citizens of this village.

• 26:08

This is unbelievable.

• 26:12

He can't teach just any drifter.

• 26:13

Am I just any drifter?

• 26:15

Does he not see the crown on this helmet?

• 26:17

I guess not.

• 26:18

I'll have to add the mayoral narrative tags just so they can end up their respectful

• 26:26

speech.

• 26:27

He's not even going to pay me too for achieving these many tasks he has for me.

• 26:31

He's paying you in experience.

• 26:33

That is not enough.

• 26:34

Oh man.

• 26:35

I've had those jobs before.

• 26:38

Same.

• 26:39

Oh, that was so good.

• 26:42

That was so good.

• 26:44

Thank you.

• 26:45

Oh no.

• 26:46

Okay.

• 26:47

I have achieved this quest.

• 26:48

I am going to create a feast of flowers.

• 26:50

Awesome.

• 26:51

He wants me to show him my crude sickle.

• 26:56

Nice.

• 26:57

You should do that.

• 26:58

We'll turn away.

• 26:59

Wait.

• 27:00

Whoa.

• 27:01

This is going to be one of those streams.

• 27:06

Okay.

• 27:07

All right.

• 27:08

So what do I need to do with this?

• 27:10

Come over here next to the anvil.

• 27:13

Yeah.

• 27:14

You?

• 27:15

Yeah.

• 27:16

There's a little anvil right here.

• 27:17

You can interact with that and that should pull up the crafting menu.

• 27:20

So as a gatherer, you'll be able to craft your own tools.

• 27:25

They're going to take resources that come from all sorts of different professions.

• 27:30

You won't be able to always source all of those things just yourself.

• 27:34

But luckily, Willy's nice and he gave you some components and you can just throw them

• 27:41

together to make your first sickle here.

• 27:44

So you can go through with the craft.

• 27:46

You should get that thing and show it to him and he'll give you a little pat on the back.

• 27:51

All right.

• 27:52

So now this is a great example as we kind of players as you're entering into Alpha 2

• 27:58

and you're wanting to get started into artisanship.

• 28:02

These different professions will have a number of quests available to introduce players to

• 28:06

their first tool sets.

• 28:09

And then from there, tool set sustainability will be incumbent on the player to continue

• 28:16

to gather the resources necessary to repeatedly create these tools because they have a durability

• 28:21

that gets expended when interacting with the resources in the open world.

• 28:26

Exactly.

• 28:27

All right.

• 28:28

OK, so I'm going to talk to him again.

• 28:32

And yes, I made the sickle.

• 28:34

OK, now he's criticizing my crude work.

• 28:38

OK, OK.

• 28:39

All right.

• 28:40

But that's fine.

• 28:43

We all know what your first mayoral decision is going to be is destroy agriculture supplies.

• 28:49

This guy is going to destroy agriculture supplies.

• 28:54

All right.

• 28:55

Very cool.

• 28:56

So I can preview it in the artisanship page, actually.

• 29:03

Once you once you there you go.

• 29:05

You should have your rewards now.

• 29:06

Equipped to artisan tool slot.

• 29:08

Very cool.

• 29:09

So now it is in my artisan tool slot.

• 29:10

Should I open that and take a look here?

• 29:13

Yeah, perfect.

• 29:14

OK, OK.

• 29:15

So, yeah, so we have that panel open.

• 29:20

This is kind of like the hub for all artisanship stuff.

• 29:23

I think we poked around here a little bit in some of the previous streams.

• 29:26

But on the right hand side there, you can see all the different slots for the the tool

• 29:31

types for each of our five gathering professions.

• 29:34

So it looks like you have one of each of the tools that we're looking to use today.

• 29:40

And also kind of notice very progressed in my in my lumberjacking.

• 29:44

Oh, yeah.

• 29:46

You said you're like, what level you?

• 29:47

I'm like level nine.

• 29:49

I'm about to be level 10.

• 29:50

Oh, that's awesome.

• 29:51

OK, so like while we're out and about, you'll if you hit level 10, you should be able to

• 29:56

upgrade your certification to apprentice.

• 29:58

And that's one of our certification breakpoints.

• 30:02

And once you each hit those breakpoints, it kind of opens up a whole new range of stuff

• 30:07

that you can do.

• 30:08

New tools.

• 30:09

Exactly right.

• 30:10

A new portion of your skill tree.

• 30:13

So we should for sure get you that level 10 and see what happens.

• 30:17

What up, Steven?

• 30:18

We need to prepare for a journey.

• 30:19

Oh, oh, yeah.

• 30:20

Yeah.

• 30:21

So we'll get some potential bags.

• 30:24

OK.

• 30:25

Yeah.

• 30:26

Yeah.

• 30:27

So we talked about this in the past with the with the Tetris inventory, kind of having

• 30:31

different spatial layouts of our bags and also our our resources.

• 30:37

And so we've been working on that a little bit and trying to set up bags that have spaces

• 30:43

that are optimal for the shapes that are going to be associated with the resources and having

• 30:49

stats on the bags that will change the stack size and how much you can stack stuff up.

• 30:54

So since we're going out, we're going to collect a bunch of stuff.

• 30:58

You should grab one of the bountiful bags from Willy and then we'll go over to the stoneworks

• 31:04

and see if we can grab a bag.

• 31:07

And Willy has a number of different farmer's shirts and novice herbalism or herbalist skivvies.

• 31:16

Do I want any gear from this?

• 31:18

Yeah, it's up to you.

• 31:20

I mean, there's so there's gear for all of the different crafting, gathering and processing

• 31:24

professions that will help you, you know, do those different trades.

• 31:28

So it's up to you.

• 31:30

Like if you you said you're higher level in lumberjacking, so, you know, you could grab

• 31:34

some of that stuff to kind of compound on the stats, make you make you faster at chopping

• 31:39

or should I go over there?

• 31:40

I buy that stuff.

• 31:41

OK, cool, cool, cool.

• 31:43

So from this guy, let me purchase his bags.

• 31:46

Yeah, once you grab grab the bountiful bag from him, the bountiful ones are pretty great.

• 31:52

They I think they have the increased stack size on them so you can stack up more herbs

• 31:57

in that bag than you can in others.

• 32:00

I see there is a novice herbalism bag.

• 32:06

And if you scroll down on the bottom, there is a

• 32:07

alin herbalism basket.

• 32:08

Oh, OK, so I'm going to grab the basket.

• 32:09

Yeah.

• 32:10

All right.

• 32:11

Done.

• 32:12

I got one of those.

• 32:13

Sweet.

• 32:14

Awesome.

• 32:15

Anything else?

• 32:16

Any other bags?

• 32:17

Yeah, let's run over this way to the stone works.

• 32:25

There's another gentleman over here that we can talk to, kind of standing by this crane.

• 32:34

OK, and you can do the same thing from him.

• 32:36

Throw throw a little gold at him and he'll give you some give you some bags and stuff.

• 32:40

From this guy, the stone novice bountiful mining bag, novice bountiful.

• 32:46

OK, got it.

• 32:47

Awesome.

• 32:48

So now those those bags should be in your inventory.

• 32:52

And if you right click them, they'll equip.

• 32:55

And then if you go over to your materials tab, you should be able to see those new bags that we got.

• 33:02

OK, so just real quick, you were speaking earlier about the unique stack sizes as being part of the kind of asymmetric design for bag crafting.

• 33:13

And these bags have specifically curated benefits for stack sizes of the type of resources they relate to.

• 33:22

And that's the specific profession of gathering and the resources you would gain from those those different unique professions.

• 33:29

So by equipping this herbalism bag, whoops, let's see here.

• 33:34

And then also, let me just open up the materials section.

• 33:39

And this one I see now I've actually gotten a unique looking structure for the alien herbalism basket.

• 33:52

And those are the types of structures that you would expect them to gather that are the gatherables for herbalism.

• 33:57

Correct. Correct. Correct. Yeah.

• 33:59

So that's not necessarily to say that I can't collect non herbalism resources.

• 34:04

I could and I can put them in that bag, but it just wouldn't utilize the most beneficial aspect of it, which is the higher stack count for those types of herbalism resources.

• 34:15

Yeah, exactly. We can also, you know, there can also be constraints on the on the shape, right?

• 34:21

Like we were talking about, like you can kind of see I'm not sure what materials you you have in your bags, but like I have a couple of pieces of wood that are, you know, one by three.

• 34:33

And so, you know, in in the herbalism bag, I'm not sure that there's any any slots for for pieces of wood that are that size.

• 34:40

Right. So some there'll be some constraints and benefits in terms of shape and then also, you know, the stack size based on the on the type.

• 34:50

So, OK, cool. So now I go ahead.

• 34:54

A good example of if you equip the mining bag as well on top of the herbalism bag, you'll be able to see the shapes are different.

• 35:03

But you can see the mining bags are two by twos and herbalism bags are one by twos.

• 35:10

So you can technically put herbs into your mining bags, but you won't get the benefit of the stock bonuses of the mining stuff.

• 35:17

Right. Yeah, that's very cool.

• 35:20

I'm sorry. Go ahead, Mike. Also, the earlier versions might be very restrictive in sizes.

• 35:27

So like the novice mining bags and all the herbalism bags are very restrictive.

• 35:32

But as you level up and then make better bags, might be more generous of shapes.

• 35:37

So you could technically do some other things as well and then have more bigger sizes and have be able to hold more variety of things as well.

• 35:46

OK, very nice. I think that's pretty cool. Should we go to the lumberjack to grab those?

• 35:51

Were you talking about some equipment that he might have that might help us with our lumberjack?

• 35:56

Oh, yeah, definitely. Yeah.

• 35:59

Oh, I see. Here you go. Let me see here.

• 36:04

I have I also have a quest that relates to we rise after felling.

• 36:10

Oh, yeah. So that's the certification quest.

• 36:13

So as you mentioned before, you know, there were where we're planning on having some some content related to, you know,

• 36:22

onboarding players to the different professions and, you know, you're going to need a tool for the first time and you're going to want to craft a thing for the first time and kind of learn how to do those things.

• 36:32

But we also want to extend that out to kind of more of a individual story arc like experience for players.

• 36:40

So as you as you become a better lumberjack, you'll you'll you'll play out your story as as a lumberjack.

• 36:47

So these different certification quests are meant to be kind of keystone moments in that story progression.

• 36:56

So, you know, right now we have something kind of simple set up.

• 36:59

It looks like you already collected all of the wood that you needed. Right.

• 37:03

But you also need to reach the level needed to even take on an apprenticeship. So so I think.

• 37:12

Yeah. See, see what he's got. I check out some of the gear.

• 37:16

I think that will since you're already pretty pretty good with the wood chopper and you could probably get a little faster with the gear that he has.

• 37:22

So he does have he has a shirt pants.

• 37:27

And I think on a tool belt and yeah, you're having different benefits.

• 37:35

Looks like I'm getting lumberjacking speed from the pants and from the shirt.

• 37:40

And the tool belt is going to give me processing.

• 37:46

Oh, I think you might be looking at lumber milling. Oh, yes.

• 37:50

So at this at this service building, we're housing another three professions. So there's there's carpentry stuff here.

• 37:57

There's the lumber milling stuff here and there's also the lumberjacking stuff here.

• 38:02

So what he's going to have stuff from from all three.

• 38:05

I mean, if you're looking to do any, you know, woodwork and related activities, he's your guy.

• 38:11

So that's sort of what we mentioned when we were showing the nodes in a live stream a few months ago was like your ability to build.

• 38:19

Buildings to really cater to the important industries to your region or to your node.

• 38:27

Yeah. Yeah. Let me just take a look here. I know this is obviously guys.

• 38:32

This is I want to state this again. We always state this in every showcase.

• 38:37

But everything you see here is still a work in progress.

• 38:40

We are working towards our Alpha two. That includes things like visual effects, like UI.

• 38:47

These are all very functional states, but not necessarily at their polished states.

• 38:52

So still a lot of work that needs to be done there.

• 38:54

I noticed that we have three slots for the the equipment that I just put on and they're not displaying visually.

• 39:03

But we do intend to provide that visual display as an option to the characters.

• 39:08

Correct. Correct. Yeah. It would be a toggleable thing that players could be do in the future

• 39:16

when we get some assets. Yes, absolutely. There's a lot of assets.

• 39:20

All right. Let us. So what should we do here?

• 39:25

Want to go out and gather some stuff? Yeah. Yeah.

• 39:28

So, you know, we're kind of scouting out there beforehand and we know we know a pretty good spot.

• 39:35

If you're if you're heading out kind of past the Smithy, you should see a good old tower carfen out there in the distance.

• 39:43

And if you had a little bit east of that, you can kind of see some like rock formations up there.

• 39:51

That's where we're at. And there's a nice little little valley in there has I think it has pretty much everything that we're looking for.

• 39:58

So I love the autumn look out here. I think the it fits perfectly for this time of year.

• 40:07

I mean, definitely. We could just have Thanksgiving. Feels kind of like Thanksgiving out here.

• 40:12

Does it does feel like Thanksgiving? It's beautiful. I really like the colors turning out really good.

• 40:18

That's my favorite season so far. I just have Thanksgiving too or no.

• 40:24

Hey, no trying to get lower out of me. This is an artisanship focus.

• 40:30

Give us one more thing. You're doing a live stream.

• 40:37

I really love the leaves falling down effect. Just when you walk away. Speaking of leaks, however, I know that I am playing a Ranger class.

• 40:46

You might see a couple of early look at the Ranger skills here in case we run into any potential resistances.

• 40:53

But next month we are doing a Ranger update and it's going to be pretty fun, too.

• 40:59

So there's a little leak. Nice. I see how it is. It's OK for skill abilities, but not for the lore.

• 41:06

That is true. The lore is safely unbelievable. So we do have some beliefs that someone's chopping out there that you're chopping.

• 41:14

Yeah. I get a little jump on it. Fallen in the distance. Where? That's great.

• 41:20

Over to the left. I think he's up on that hill. Are you trying to beat me up to the.

• 41:28

Chop down some trees, too. Oh, we do. This is ash. We need oak, though, right? Or do I need it? Yeah. Yeah.

• 41:37

Yeah, that's right. Be helpful. Nothing. Just trying to become grandmaster before you steal.

• 41:42

Exactly. I will leave this land a barren wasteland. He's no trees for you to chop.

• 41:47

He's sicked some wolves on me. Yeah. All part of my master plan. Nice.

• 41:59

Yeah, I'd get the get a few of these oaks, at least enough to level up, and then we need to find some basalt.

• 42:05

Basalt is going to have the zinc and copper that you need. Oh, here's some over on the ridge.

• 42:11

Where at? Up the cliff. Basalt. Yeah. Can you see me? That area looks kind of twisted and gross.

• 42:19

Yeah. Wolf. Where?

• 42:32

So now this area appears to have a little bit of corruption that started seeping in.

• 42:39

Yeah. The citizens of this town aren't doing their job. Fight back the corruption.

• 42:46

Old neighborhoods go to hell. Oogie. There's rubies here, too. Yeah, yeah, I think you can grab those.

• 42:51

Yeah, it's not this. Yeah, these are the new rubies that we just introduced with Chaos Physics enabled.

• 42:59

Oh, nice. Yeah. Thanks to Noah and some magic from engineering.

• 43:05

When you see it gather, you see that it shatters. Oh, that's awesome. Love that. That's super cool.

• 43:12

Additionally, if you open your backspace now, you'll see that your mining bag has now rubies, and it prioritizes based on your stack size.

• 43:20

Oh, let me see here. Hold on. First, let me gather a little bit of...

• 43:27

Look for some basalt. I think there's some over here. Yeah, I see some basalt over here. To the right.

• 43:33

There's one right there. Yeah, there is.

• 43:39

Right here? No, this is opal. Nope. Oh. Opal. I can't even interact with the opal.

• 43:45

No, it's right here. Yeah. Basalt. Oh, don't we need opal?

• 43:51

I think so. I think we need night opal, which is the one that only really appears at night.

• 43:58

Okay. Interesting.

• 44:04

I've gotten some zinc and basalt. Nice. Okay, so you got lucky. You got the drop chance.

• 44:12

So this gave me two things. It gave me zinc as well. Yes. Yeah.

• 44:18

So when you're mining stone, we're trying to do stuff that makes sense with the drops.

• 44:22

In stone, you'll find metal and gems, and depending on the tier and the type of stone,

• 44:28

there'll be different kind of selection of gems and stuff that you can get in it or metals.

• 44:34

If you're trying to target a certain metal, you might want to consider some particular stone as well.

• 44:42

As you get better at mining and doing stone-related stuff, you'll kind of learn the ropes there so you can make better decisions.

• 44:50

Okay, that's cool. Additionally, as you gather, you can actually notice that your durability goes down for your tools.

• 44:58

Oh, really? Let's see. I'm using this pickaxe. It's at 95. Nice. All right. You got plenty of durability left.

• 45:10

It's good to repair when you get into town, though, so it kind of sucks when you find something real nice

• 45:14

and your durability is low or your tool is broken and you won't be able to hit it. Nice.

• 45:20

And I really love the physics. I remember in the gathering stream, we were showing off the trees

• 45:28

and kind of set a precedent with how that looks, and now we have to make all the other stuff just as cool.

• 45:34

So the rocks and gems and metal were kind of a big hurdle for us,

• 45:40

and having it in a place where it's starting to look really good, that was super exciting.

• 45:44

That was so cool. That was actually really cool. That should definitely knock you over or kill you.

• 45:50

Oh, I leveled up. Let's go. Hey, there we go. Oh, I've reached level 10. Oh, my God. That just killed Mike.

• 46:00

I'm alive. Trees can't kill me. Grab some daffodils, maybe.

• 46:07

So you leveled up, you said? Yes, I said I leveled up.

• 46:10

Okay, so when you level up, you're going to get some skill points, and you should be able to put those in your skill tree.

• 46:18

You should pop that open. There we go. Okay. Yes, I have a bunch already allocated, but now I have two new points.

• 46:26

Oh, nice. Yeah, you should spend those and poke around in the tree a little bit,

• 46:30

but that is something that we're wanting to do with our artisanship in all three of the branches.

• 46:36

You'll have skill trees for your profession. So those skill trees, you'll be able to find passives

• 46:41

that will give you stat bonuses and predicates for extra functionality within whatever the profession is,

• 46:48

access the stations, expanding out some of the various systems.

• 46:53

You can see some of the surveying ones, right?

• 46:56

You can add extra pylons or extra scanning range and lower the cooldown on how often you can survey.

• 47:05

We're trying to make those trees interesting and give people different paths that they can progress through.

• 47:12

Wow, that's cool. Very cool.

• 47:17

So obviously, I'm looking at this skill tree right now, and I see one side is dealing primarily with yield.

• 47:24

The other side is dealing with rarity, with quality.

• 47:30

The other side is dealing with yield. And then the survey system.

• 47:35

Talk to me a little bit about the survey system.

• 47:41

Yeah, so surveying is something that we're trying to use for gatherers to really interact with the things that we want to do with our dynamic world.

• 47:54

One of those things is we want to be able to spawn stuff randomly, and we want to put it in places in the world that will make people travel

• 48:04

and bolster up our local player-to-player economies, have people actually be out in the world looking for stuff

• 48:13

and not standing in the same place waiting for a tree or a flower to respawn over and over again.

• 48:20

We're kind of having the best of both worlds, where we have our lower tier stuff that will fill out the base look of our world so that it's always looking good.

• 48:30

And then the higher tier stuff from apprentice onwards will always spawn randomly in places that we've deemed look good and make sense for what that thing is.

• 48:42

So surveying is a way that you can track that stuff down.

• 48:48

It will help you find places, it will help you find particular resources, it will help you find resources at a certain rarity.

• 48:58

It should be something you can do as a gatherer on your own or group up with other people to bolster up the power of your survey or the range or reach of it.

• 49:12

It says I need a higher certification for this tree. Corrupted oak.

• 49:18

Gotcha, well you just leveled up, so I bet you if we went back to town and...

• 49:22

Oh my god! There's some fucking crazy... excuse me. There's some crazy...

• 49:27

Oh no. We're going to need to bleep that out.

• 49:30

There's some dude up there. That's awesome.

• 49:33

I would say the same thing if I saw that.

• 49:35

I know.

• 49:36

Ancient horror.

• 49:37

Step away from a gentleman.

• 49:38

Yeah, let's back up a little bit.

• 49:41

How you doing on backspace by the way?

• 49:44

How am I doing on what? Backspace, yes. Let me open that up.

• 49:47

I have 3 copper, 22 basalt, 17 zinc, 5 ruby, a number of dandelions and daffodils.

• 49:58

With some plant fibers. Okay, that's cool.

• 50:01

And a bunch of...

• 50:02

Nice.

• 50:03

And as you notice, all of those materials are sorted nicely and the appropriate backspace is on your stack sizes.

• 50:09

Oh yeah, that is pretty nice. So it didn't misplace them in a different bag than what is best.

• 50:17

Yeah, it prioritizes basically the best stack size first and then it finds the other empty spots after.

• 50:24

That's a pretty nice quality of life feature.

• 50:27

Definitely. We... there was a lot of discussions about the spatial inventory and the different stack sizes

• 50:36

and whether that could cause confusion for players or extra stress on sorting of inventory.

• 50:44

And I was like, alright, no matter what we do, we got to try and make this as easy and usable for players as possible.

• 50:51

And luckily, really smart people like Alex and Alec and our UI team, Colby and the gang,

• 50:57

that are helping us make the system that we want function really nicely.

• 51:05

So that was one of those features that came on that's like, alright, well, I don't have to every single time I get something,

• 51:12

look and see what bag is the best for it to be in.

• 51:16

The code can do it for us.

• 51:21

Very cool.

• 51:22

Nice.

• 51:23

Alright, we ready to head back now?

• 51:25

Yeah, let's head back to town and get your apprenticeship.

• 51:31

Yeah, now obviously, you know, let's talk a little bit about how gathering is a bit different in Ashes.

• 51:40

And one of the most unique things about, I think, the world is obviously the number of different systems we have that change world state.

• 51:51

We just saw a corrupt zone.

• 51:54

Hold on, let's kill this dude.

• 52:01

Okay, done.

• 52:02

We just saw a corrupt zone.

• 52:04

And that zone becomes corrupt after a period of time in which players are not addressing some issues that arise through certain events or through certain story arcs.

• 52:17

And that corruption can spread and corruption changes the spawners for resources and for monsters.

• 52:27

And that has a fundamental effect on the resource economy of the game.

• 52:34

Yeah, definitely.

• 52:35

It plays into, you know, scarcity.

• 52:36

It gets players out in the world searching for different things that are predicated on the dynamic parts of our world, right?

• 52:45

We can do stuff with day and nighttime and do stuff with seasons.

• 52:48

We can have things that are specifically related to some event or story arc or, you know, corruption, even particular locations, right?

• 52:57

The regionality of a biome, some, you know, frozen tundra place that's completely covered in ice versus, you know, the riverlands and the lushness there.

• 53:09

So don't want to just have that stuff in and not be doing anything with it.

• 53:15

So we're trying to play on that for for gathering and open up the diversity of stuff that you can process and craft by finding those things.

• 53:25

So, yeah, I love that.

• 53:28

We mentioned actually a time of day and seasonality as being part of that world state change.

• 53:35

And as I understand it, we have a number of different.

• 53:40

Oh, let me see here. Go over to recipes.

• 53:49

Can I look at that?

• 53:51

We have to don't we have to gather some recipes or some materials that are predicated on time of day?

• 53:57

Yeah, I think they were. Those are the ones that we're talking about. They're a part of your night blade, right?

• 54:01

The moon bells and the night opals, night opals like do not reveal themselves during the daytime.

• 54:11

Surprise, surprise. And then the moon bells are similar. Yeah, they only bloom at night.

• 54:16

So you if you're looking for those in particular, you want to take keep an eye on the day night cycle and, you know, know where they're found in the world.

• 54:28

And yeah, I do have some powers if we want to perhaps change it to nighttime that I could use.

• 54:37

Shall we? Because it'll take a little while probably for us to get to nighttime at least another hour or so.

• 54:44

Yeah. OK, let's do it. All right. Hold on. Stand by.

• 54:52

Oh, my goodness. There we go. Oh, OK.

• 54:58

This is looking good. Freaky out here.

• 55:00

You guys will probably notice that the nighttime is significantly darker than when you guys last saw our nighttime update.

• 55:10

We saw feedback from the community that bringing in the field of vision through the through the lighting in the environment was something you guys wanted to see.

• 55:20

And that's what we have adjusted a bit.

• 55:23

Now, I'm excited because I have a certification that I can, I think, update now.

• 55:30

Right. Yes. You should be able to upgrade your lumberjacking to apprentice, which give you access to a new tool so we can craft one of those if you want.

• 55:40

We should make your, you know, chop and faster. Help you find some rare stuff.

• 55:45

Yeah. All right. Let's see here. I'm going to accept.

• 55:52

There we go. Ta-da. So I think if you open your artisanship window, if you look at your lumberjacking, I should say that you're an apprentice now.

• 56:01

There we go. And you got you got a nice little chunk of XP from that, too.

• 56:04

Yeah, that was pretty good. Cool. So now that you've done that, go.

• 56:11

I think this anvil. Yeah, this is the same anvil as the herbalism.

• 56:16

See, see if you can craft a tool there. What what materials do you need?

• 56:22

It says that I need zinc fragments and oak timber for a novice lumberjacking.

• 56:27

The apprentice requires zinc fragments with copper fragments and oak timber.

• 56:33

Awesome. OK, well, that's all novice stuff.

• 56:36

So so the way that the certification stuff breaks down is that everyone gets to be a novice everything.

• 56:43

So all 22 professions, the players get to be novice of. And then it starts kind of like narrowing from there.

• 56:50

So after that, you'll only be able to be an apprentice of five things.

• 56:54

You can be a journeyman in four things. You could be a master in three things and be a grand master in two things.

• 56:59

So you'll you'll need to narrow, but you can also sort of diversify to support the professions that you want to first push further in.

• 57:07

So now obviously those are those restrictions are in place in order to create a dependency cross player faction.

• 57:17

Right. For how players specialize their progression in the artistry.

• 57:23

Yeah, I mean, like being social is is important to us, right? Like we want players to interact with each other.

• 57:30

We want the professions to make stuff for the other professions that are useful.

• 57:35

You know, I am influenced quite a bit by the Star Wars Galaxies style crafting and just having people in your network that can supply the the metal that you need to make your armor and the you know, the the flowers that you need to make your potions.

• 57:52

And, you know, maybe the potions that you need to make your enchantments.

• 57:57

That to me was really interesting and part of the the gameplay of economic gameplay of being a good crafter, being a good gatherer, having that that system.

• 58:07

So and it really plays into the the economic field of a particular server.

• 58:16

Right. You can come in and be like, I want to be the the potion mogul here. Right. And like having good sources and, you know, having having a guild that supports you is just really, really interesting.

• 58:29

And without without sort of narrowing down what you have access to yourself, it's it takes away from from the ability to achieve that.

• 58:40

Right. So. So now, OK, we're going to be creating this, you said apprentice tools. What do I need to do that? It's a fragment, zinc fragments and I think copper fragments.

• 58:52

Awesome. So the zinc fragments and copper fragments are going to be from the metalworking profession.

• 58:57

And then the oak timber will be from the lumber milling profession.

• 59:01

So since we're here, we can do the lumber milling. And this is the station that you need right next to us.

• 59:05

So this is the debarker. This is one of the few stations that lumber milling has is the debarker, the head saw and I think the drying kiln along with the refinery.

• 59:18

So this is the the novice station.

• 59:21

I think this is an apprentice version here. Since we're at a service building that's built, the service buildings usually come stocked with some some some better base stations.

• 59:30

And then you can kind of progress them from there depending on how you you expand the buildings.

• 59:35

But so why don't you interact with this? And yeah, I think this is the first time that we've ever done any processing.

• 59:43

Yes, absolutely. Now, we alluded to it a little bit when we were showcasing the the freeholds.

• 59:49

But this is everyone's first look at kind of how processing works.

• 59:55

And as you said, we're looking to make some oak timber here. And as I've clicked on the oak timber to add fuel, it says to the oak timber side.

• 1:00:06

Talk to me, Mike, a little bit about what fuel does for processing.

• 1:00:12

So fuel is the basic requirements on top of the resources that you need to craft a thing. So every processing stations will require some kind of a fuel to automate the process to make these process resources.

• 1:00:28

Though most of the resources or any type of resource or items could technically have a fuel value attached to them.

• 1:00:35

And then each recipe will require some kind of a fuel value to to be met to be able to process these things.

• 1:00:42

So think of it as like if you're melting or you need to put fuel to fire to melt the ore.

• 1:00:49

So that kind of concept exists on all our processing stations.

• 1:00:53

So when you click on it, you should be able to put the oak wood or anything that you have gathered to.

• 1:01:01

So I've added one of the oak wood and then I see I also have a number of different herbalism resources here as well.

• 1:01:10

Do those act as fuel potentially?

• 1:01:12

Yeah, most of our resources will have some kind of a fuel value to it.

• 1:01:15

And like I mentioned, like some items do. But for this recipe, you only need one. Some other recipes might need 100 or 50, etc, etc.

• 1:01:23

But the thing is, some some items might be just catered towards being a fuel, right? So something like charcoal or something like coal, something like anything that is just designated as a fuel will just have a very efficient fuel value.

• 1:01:39

So you want to save that for higher recipes or something simple like this one.

• 1:01:44

You can pretty much use anything that's common or or lore or degrade or sorry, the tier one items to be in the fuel.

• 1:01:54

OK, so I've added in the wood for the fuel and now it has my fuel has been selected and I can start the job.

• 1:02:03

It says that the duration is one minute.

• 1:02:05

I'm noticing at the top of the processing station that we have three available slots. Is that a queue that players can use?

• 1:02:17

And is it shared? Is it for just themselves?

• 1:02:19

Talk to me about that.

• 1:02:21

For node, it's personal.

• 1:02:23

So we didn't want to congest like only three spots for every single person in the node.

• 1:02:29

That would have been pretty bad. So it's the queue system is only for yourself, but something personal like freeholds would be station based.

• 1:02:39

So if five people wanted to use one one station at the freehold, you have to wait in line.

• 1:02:43

And then that kind of comes into the family system we talked about on the freehold livestream where you want to have limited access to whoever is viable for the fuels or for the stations.

• 1:02:55

But for any service buildings in the node, it's all personal.

• 1:02:59

So you can queue up as much as you want and then someone else can just combine the use the same station and then queue for their station.

• 1:03:05

That's awesome.

• 1:03:07

Additionally, it will also be influenced by nodes.

• 1:03:09

So like right now you see three, but it could be five.

• 1:03:12

It could be two simultaneous jobs at such a base how your node grows.

• 1:03:16

Got it. So there are specializations that the processor can take if the node should elect to do so.

• 1:03:23

So if two citizens participate in that upgrade, that would increase that size or perhaps even the efficiency of the processing jobs as well.

• 1:03:32

Both speed, quantity of receipt, any rarity products, anything, all of those play a role in upgrade potential that the node might choose to specialize in.

• 1:03:42

Right. But just like we discussed in the freehold livestream as well, the node processing only goes up to journeyman.

• 1:03:48

So if you want to do the highest tier of processing, you probably want to seek out the freehold owners basically.

• 1:03:59

Oh, I might be full.

• 1:04:04

Hold on. I can't claim it yet.

• 1:04:06

I need to get back to basis full.

• 1:04:09

Who needs this this cheap glint here?

• 1:04:13

I didn't mean to delete that. Whoops.

• 1:04:18

Are you just throwing money away? That's how rich you are.

• 1:04:21

Pretty much.

• 1:04:22

Additional thing I would like to add for processing, as you can see, you could cancel the job also.

• 1:04:29

So like let's say you accidentally scheduled the wrong one. And the only thing that gets consumed is the fuel.

• 1:04:34

So fuel is basically a sink for this job.

• 1:04:37

Got it. OK, so fuel is always sunk regardless of if you cancel the job or not.

• 1:04:42

Yeah. Another thing as well is that when you're choosing the job, you'll see kind of on the right hand side that we have something called job size.

• 1:04:53

And right now, right now, there's only the ability to make one job size.

• 1:04:59

But in the same vein of this having like more jobs that you can queue and like better stats that make them go faster or proc extra resources.

• 1:05:09

Job size is another thing that we could do, right?

• 1:05:12

So you probably don't want to use three entire slots just to make three pieces of oak wood.

• 1:05:19

But if you had a job size that was 20, you'd be able to make all 20 of those with the one job size.

• 1:05:27

So it's a little different than what people are used to with, you know, I'm making exactly 17 pieces of oak timber.

• 1:05:34

You might need to do a job size of five plus one if you need specifically six.

• 1:05:40

So that's awesome.

• 1:05:42

Yeah, we are also influenced by customization options that the node can participate in as well.

• 1:05:48

And perhaps policies and or relics like all those things are an intricate web of boons, benefits and downsides that apply to these different game functions.

• 1:05:58

Exactly. Yeah. Very cool. Love it.

• 1:06:01

All right. So we've made some timber. Gotcha.

• 1:06:04

Yeah. Let's head let's head down to the Smithy over here.

• 1:06:08

There should be a crushing station. You can crush up the copper and zinc that you got into fragments.

• 1:06:14

And then we should have what we need to make you a new pickaxe or axe.

• 1:06:20

Yeah. This is the crushing station right here.

• 1:06:23

Nice. All right. All right. It's really nice of you to have built all of these artisanship service buildings.

• 1:06:33

Look, look at all these jobs that you're creating. This guy is here. He gets to hang out all night.

• 1:06:38

Russian rocks doing stuff. That is awesome.

• 1:06:42

Yeah. Great for the economy. Really, really great mayorship decision.

• 1:06:47

Thank you. Thank you very much. That's why I'm a term after term mayor.

• 1:06:50

Just no term limits at all. It's the way we like it here.

• 1:06:54

Right. My personal investments have somehow miraculously just had the greatest returns of any citizen of the mayor.

• 1:07:02

Agreed. I think there's only other been one other mayor that was Alec.

• 1:07:05

And I haven't seen him for a really long time. That's right.

• 1:07:08

That is right. His family members actually came by looking for him to.

• 1:07:13

Oh, no. Okay. So I need to make copper fragments and zinc fragments. Yeah. I'm going to kick off.

• 1:07:20

I'm going to add some fuel here. Okay, cool. That's cool.

• 1:07:25

Put this and I'll kick that job off and then I'll use the zinc. Oh, my God.

• 1:07:31

You see the NPC working real hard. Yeah, he is. He's a go getter.

• 1:07:36

I didn't even start the other job yet. He just immediately went to work.

• 1:07:40

He needs a raise. There we go. Okay. Yeah.

• 1:07:45

And just just a comment, too, on that right.

• 1:07:48

Like we're trying to sort of marry the visuals with what's actually going on at the station.

• 1:07:54

Right. So if you have a job queued and you're trying to do errands throughout the node or in your freehold or whatever.

• 1:07:59

Right. Like should be able to look at the station and know what's going on with it.

• 1:08:03

So he's there working and once he's done, he's going to stop and you can be like, okay, you know, there's there's stuff ready to pick up.

• 1:08:09

And have some visuals associated with that.

• 1:08:12

So as much as we can have stuff rooted in the world instead of, you know, throw it a bunch of UI in the player's face.

• 1:08:19

That's that's something that we're trying to do and is important to us.

• 1:08:23

That's very cool. Yeah. And to add to that, it's personal, right?

• 1:08:26

So it's only like other people won't see you doing your processing.

• 1:08:31

Got it. Yeah. In nodes, right.

• 1:08:33

The free the freehold ones would be since they are relevant to any of the people to have access to it, you'd be able to see that a job is going right.

• 1:08:45

This guy is a dedicated worker. Yeah, definitely.

• 1:08:51

So now just remind folks, obviously, when we talk about processing as one branch of the artisanship tree.

• 1:09:00

Even though you have access to all branches throughout the world, up to some level of degree.

• 1:09:07

Processing best processing is done on freeholds and the best crafting is done in nodes.

• 1:09:15

Right. When we talk about workstation availability. But there is some overlap there, as those of you who remember from our freehold live stream.

• 1:09:25

You do have up to a certain point to progress available to you for both gathering, processing and crafting without needing necessarily a freehold.

• 1:09:36

Yeah, exactly. So go ahead, up to journeyman, you'll be journeyman's type of gathering, crafting and processing should be available pretty much everywhere.

• 1:09:47

And then this specialization really kicks in at the master and above.

• 1:09:53

Awesome. All right, I have, I believe, acquired now some fragments.

• 1:10:03

Well, let's let's head back up to the crafting session next to good old Woody Gungan and make yourself an apprentice axe.

• 1:10:14

And I think we should be able to chop that corrupted tree down. Yeah, that's right.

• 1:10:19

And then also now that it's night while we're out there, you guys can grab perhaps some of the over the other ones.

• 1:10:26

The night opal. Yeah, I think Mike has high enough mining to get the mine opal, night opal.

• 1:10:31

And then I think I think new moon bells are novice, so you should have access to those.

• 1:10:37

All right, so I'll grab the moon bells. Perfect. All right. I'm crafting my new apprentice lumberjacking axe.

• 1:10:45

It is equipped. Nice.

• 1:10:50

Cool. Very sweet. It's there. How fast is it? It's 30 lumberjacking speed.

• 1:10:57

Nice. I think the other one was like only five. So you should be fast. When we get out there, we should race.

• 1:11:01

See if you can chop the tree down faster than me. All right. Let's do it. I'm ready. All right.

• 1:11:12

I actually really like the nighttime. I think it was. Yeah, it's looking really good from the community to to tune this a bit more on the darker side.

• 1:11:20

Oh, shooting star. You see that? Make a wish.

• 1:11:26

I look at the moon. Yeah, I did. I did look at the moon.

• 1:11:30

It's looking pretty nice. I think it might need a little atmosphere.

• 1:11:36

I like the harbinger moon. Is the moon getting closer? No.

• 1:11:44

That's not what we want to hear. Kill the moon.

• 1:11:48

So, Cory, tell me a little bit like when we right now we're in this night phase.

• 1:11:53

I love the fireflies too. Noah did a great job on these.

• 1:11:57

Yeah, Noah is next level. We love Noah. Noah, we love you.

• 1:12:04

Obviously, moving tonight now is going to give us access to these moon bells and these night opals.

• 1:12:11

But when things like the world state change, whether it be corruption related or time of day, it's not just an introduction of rare materials.

• 1:12:19

It also is a removal of some other materials as well, potentially.

• 1:12:23

So it's a it is a and some world state changes like we talked about with corruption,

• 1:12:28

if not addressed, can significantly alter the flow of resources across the world in such a way that creates a bit of turbulence in the world market and economy.

• 1:12:38

And that's what we're trying to achieve with these world state changes.

• 1:12:42

Yeah, you can see out in the open, the night opals lit up those little blue lights all over the place that wasn't there before.

• 1:12:53

I can see those as well by the trees.

• 1:13:00

Now, you should be able to grab those. That's awesome. Those are just just basic little rocks.

• 1:13:06

Yeah. So that's like, you know, we we thought those were all opals and they were opals during the day.

• 1:13:11

But at night, you know, some of them are actually night opals. So pretty cool.

• 1:13:17

Oh, look, level up again. Crushing it. Herbalism. Herbalism, God, literal herbalism.

• 1:13:28

Yeah. These moon bells that exist before, too. We're at the same spot. Yeah. Oh, my God.

• 1:13:34

Oh, no. The wolf. I mean, we're going to protect him.

• 1:13:46

Mike, no, I'm like max level. So just slaughtering. Can you pet the dog, Steven?

• 1:13:53

No, but I can shoot it with an arrow in the face. If you're faster than me. Wait, let's chop the trees down together.

• 1:13:59

Right here. Right here. All right. I'll start.

• 1:14:07

Wait, no, no, no, no. Three, two, one, go. Right now we messed up. We messed up. We can do this. How many people does it take to chop down a tree?

• 1:14:16

Well, I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter. You're way faster. I have no equipment.

• 1:14:19

One, two, three. Oh, you just got wrecked.

• 1:14:27

Excuse me. This is where PVP starts.

• 1:14:33

Excuse me, sir. Give me the word. He's already purple. Let's go cut down that corrupted tree.

• 1:14:41

Oh, yeah. That's why we're here, huh? There we go. This place looks so good at night.

• 1:14:51

Oh, man. There's the spooky dude again. He's just chilling up there. Yeah. He's I.N.S.

• 1:14:58

He's waiting. Challenger. Will we approach him? Stay away from that guy.

• 1:15:06

It looks like one shot city up there. I can't get these blood boiled spirit points.

• 1:15:13

Yeah. I can tell you the lore behind that or. Never mind.

• 1:15:24

Yeah. I got some of those. I got this thing.

• 1:15:32

Oh, bam. Tree splosion.

• 1:15:34

Do you think, Mike, you want to take on this ancient minion over here?

• 1:15:39

I think we need to know Stephen. I was like less than two seconds.

• 1:15:44

Yeah, that was really I was like in there and out of there.

• 1:15:48

Maybe a little balancing that's necessary. Take that note down, Mike.

• 1:15:54

They're family incoming. Yeah. Way to go, Stephen. Already nerfing lumberjack.

• 1:15:59

I know. Yeah. All right. So now do we have all the materials we need?

• 1:16:04

Did you guys get the night opals? Yeah, I got some. All right.

• 1:16:08

Sweet. Trade you back in town. Let's do it. Let's get rid of this guy.

• 1:16:17

Are you good? Oh, that's unfortunate. Animal abuse.

• 1:16:25

So now talk to me a little bit about the sword that we're going to be crafting.

• 1:16:30

Obviously, itemization in Ashes of Creation is not restricted based on class.

• 1:16:39

Right. So anybody can wear kind of anything, whatever is most beneficial towards their particular strategy of class kit and build.

• 1:16:46

But how do we influence that from a crafting perspective?

• 1:16:52

So the recipe that you learned is somewhat of a unique sword.

• 1:16:57

We want to introduce as mid-level, maybe a little bit high, but generally for itemization purposes,

• 1:17:03

we want to have a viable option for every build that players want to try.

• 1:17:09

I know that's a bold statement. Stephen knows where his city is. Yeah. Where are we going?

• 1:17:17

We have a mini map. Come on. Is this way? I always get lost out here when I take my nightly strolls.

• 1:17:27

OK. All right. Sorry, Mike. What do you love about it?

• 1:17:32

OK. What was I saying? Anyways, I was saying that we want to support every kind of build that player wants to try out.

• 1:17:41

And I know that's a bold statement, but that is something that we're going to attempt,

• 1:17:44

which means a lot of crafting recipes will need to support variable stats, variable play styles.

• 1:17:50

And for this weapon, for particular, it was somewhat of a unique sword because it's a sword that has magic penetration.

• 1:17:59

So something that mages maybe might be able to use or clerics.

• 1:18:05

And if we go to the crafter crafting station, right here.

• 1:18:11

All right. You should give them the right. All right.

• 1:18:17

I can trade you. Done.

• 1:18:24

OK, we got some night opals. Sweet. Accepting trade.

• 1:18:32

Boom! Got some night opal. Let's do this.

• 1:18:38

So now I see I have my learned recipe. The night blade is under weapons category. OK, that's cool.

• 1:18:45

Yeah. I'm not sure we touched on this on different live streams, but our crafting menus will have some required materials.

• 1:18:52

So those are the things that you must have at that certain rarity.

• 1:18:56

So the night of Opal and the moonbell that's required. And then we have the selectable section where you can put different rarity amounts.

• 1:19:04

You want to do the the zinc one first, Steven.

• 1:19:09

So that's a lot of there. And then now you can see that the item itself was uncommon.

• 1:19:16

And then if you add the fragments in. Oh, I see what you're saying.

• 1:19:19

So the uncommon night blade is here. That's the default.

• 1:19:24

But by adding in these legendary zinc fragments. Yep.

• 1:19:28

If you submit it, now it turns rare. Oh, OK.

• 1:19:32

And now you can see there is additional properties onto the item.

• 1:19:36

So things change. And then if you put the oak timber also at legendary.

• 1:19:40

Also legendary oak. OK, got it.

• 1:19:43

And then now it becomes a heroic version of it. And that's the increase.

• 1:19:47

So these are the things that we kind of want to explore on the crafting side, where we introduce maybe a new stat line or different proportion or ratios of stats at certain tiers.

• 1:19:58

And when you craft these items, we're using better materials.

• 1:20:02

The rarity of the item increases for demonstration purposes.

• 1:20:07

We're using legendary, but basically when you use a higher tier than the recipe is intended for.

• 1:20:13

So we could technically build this item with common or ten years and fragments and that would produce an uncommon item.

• 1:20:19

But since we're showcasing this legendary tier, you can move up the tiers and have the stats increase.

• 1:20:27

That's awesome. And so obviously there's going to be a number of different types of selectables that you can incorporate as part of the crafting process.

• 1:20:34

Each of them having unique results as part of the stat block for the weapon, but also increasing the quality predicated on the quality of the selectable that you're contributing.

• 1:20:44

Right. That would be our recipe system that we kind of highly touch up on.

• 1:20:48

So a common copper sword might have some recipes that changes the staff block completely, which would be, let's say, a brutal copper sword, which specializes in the damage.

• 1:21:00

But that would be changing the selectable items from oak timber to ash timber, for example.

• 1:21:06

And then when it's on the selectable level, we can choose the rarity of those resources to increase the rarity of the item produced.

• 1:21:14

Awesome. And each time you're kind of unlocking a different result with regards to that particular recipe,

• 1:21:20

you're learning that interaction between the selectable materials and the output that comes from it.

• 1:21:26

So learning one recipe actually learns you a multitude of different potential rewards from that one particular recipe.

• 1:21:36

Yeah, we have something unique in our crafting system where we want to have recipe XP of some sort.

• 1:21:46

And then those recipes could be earned by leveling up your recipe,

• 1:21:50

which means that you have to craft the nightblade multiple times to level it up to have a better result.

• 1:21:55

So the sub recipe could be from a vendor recipe or world drops, like we said earlier.

• 1:22:00

But the idea is one type of item can have potential to be multiple different outcomes.

• 1:22:07

Cool. Awesome. OK, let me go ahead and craft this weapon.

• 1:22:13

We've done it. We've received a nightblade.

• 1:22:17

The loop is complete. Oh, my God, we made it through the entire loop.

• 1:22:24

Let me see. I know. Let's see. Let's take a look at what we have in our inventory here.

• 1:22:33

So I see we have a heroic nightblade that's doing some physical damage and magical penetration with some magical damage as well.

• 1:22:40

And if I compare that currently to my longbow, obviously we have some comparable version there.

• 1:22:45

But let me go ahead and equip this. Oh, that looks good.

• 1:22:52

That looks awesome. You're styling. You are styling. You put in the work and now you're styling.

• 1:22:57

I love it. That looks super cool. Sweet. Very nice.

• 1:23:03

You want to rate it up for the fam? Yeah, I got to get the right perspective here.

• 1:23:08

Standby. Ladies and gentlemen, we have crafted world first on the nightblade.

• 1:23:18

We have done it. Very cool.

• 1:23:26

So, guys, we just walked through from start to finish crafting one particular recipe, of course, of many, as itemization is a very key component of player progression within the within the world of Verra.

• 1:23:39

And as you can see from gathering to processing to crafting, this is the type of experience and the unique aspects of that process that is within Ashes of Creation.

• 1:23:52

We do these demonstrations so that you guys get an early look during development on the direction of this particular core loop, this core system to Ashes.

• 1:24:02

And we want your feedback on it. What did you think about the gathering, the processing, the stations?

• 1:24:07

Those the times that it takes the queue system for it, the unique interactions with the recipes, the progression of the recipes, the tool dependencies and the the skill tree that you saw,

• 1:24:20

the unique world state that influences the economy and the ability of players to accumulate these resources and move them across the world.

• 1:24:27

We're fresh off of a caravan stream as well, where you kind of see how those materials, those resources, that wealth gets accrued and trans transited across the world.

• 1:24:40

So all of these things are things we want you to opine on in our YouTube, on the forums, on different social medias.

• 1:24:47

Talk to us about what you saw today and how you feel about it.

• 1:24:50

Where do you think that it could be improved and how it relates to your previous experiences and other MMOs that you've played and what you've enjoyed about them.

• 1:24:58

But otherwise, Mike, Corey, Nathan, Alex, thank you guys for joining me.

• 1:25:03

I know the audience obviously appreciates all the hard work that you guys put in, that everybody on the team puts in.

• 1:25:08

And this is a very big group effort, obviously, to get these types of systems up and running.

• 1:25:12

I know I appreciate that the audience does, too.

• 1:25:14

Thank you for joining us and chatting with us a little bit about how all the stuff works.

• 1:25:20

And everyone, I will see you guys back on stream in just a moment.

• 1:25:25

See you all. Thank you all.

• 1:25:28

Yeah.

• 1:25:37

Woohoo! We hope that you all enjoyed that. Lucy did. She was watching with bated breath for every single moment, weren't you, Lucy?

• 1:25:46

Lucy's ready to get out there and craft.

• 1:25:48

Are you ready to craft? Do you want your own sword? I think she does.

• 1:25:53

But of course, we do have some questions that we noticed from chat. Our wonderful community managers have been pulling those in.

• 1:26:00

But while we answer those, I will have the video up just kind of like playing in the background so you can kind of relive all the crafting goodness.

• 1:26:08

But the first couple are more reiterations because we did answer these questions in the stream.

• 1:26:13

But I think that it wasn't clear because people keep asking it post that.

• 1:26:18

So the first one was how many people can use the crafting stations at once? And is there a queue to use them?

• 1:26:25

So as it stands now, crafting stations and processing stations that exist within nodes are unique to the player.

• 1:26:35

So meaning you can there is no limitation on who and how many people can use a crafting station within a node.

• 1:26:42

That's different on a freehold. Freehold, it shares the queue.

• 1:26:47

So if you have family members that are wanting to use the processing stations on your freehold, those queues are limited on a per job basis.

• 1:26:57

Whereas in nodes, because they don't go to the highest tier possible of crafting, excuse me, of processing, those get those get are personalized.

• 1:27:06

So you saw when I was when I was doing a number of different processing actions,

• 1:27:10

they I had my own little queue section up above where I could have three jobs running sequentially.

• 1:27:18

Now, upgrades to in the node can change those things.

• 1:27:22

So as the as the service building that's offering the processing or the crafting, it has upgrades.

• 1:27:31

There are policies that exist. There are certain relics that you can acquire,

• 1:27:36

all of which change the dials a bit on processing yield, processing time, processing job size.

• 1:27:46

Like those things can get adjusted. And that helps players determine where do I want to go to do the things I need to do?

• 1:27:53

Which node should I use? It is it is important to understand how that node has specialized,

• 1:28:00

because you only have a limited amount of specializations you can do with the service building plots, the policies enacted and the upgrades chosen.

• 1:28:09

Can you provide more details in regards to the design philosophy behind why you it's a queue system for freeholds, but not for nodes?

• 1:28:20

Yeah, absolutely. So on the freehold, processing can achieve the highest levels of processing.

• 1:28:28

That's where the highest levels of processing occur. Nodes can only go up to a certain level of processing.

• 1:28:34

Now, we want to be able to throttle the amount of resources that can be processed at any given time in response to the fluctuation and flows of the economy.

• 1:28:46

Right. So we want to make sure that the economy is kind of a bigger ship when turning than being able to immediately start processing everything at once

• 1:28:56

and get new resources out as the flow of supply and demand changes within the world.

• 1:29:03

And because, again, that's that's at the highest levels of processing and you're sharing the available queues that exist at those stations,

• 1:29:12

it's going to take time and it's going to take a long time for the higher level materials.

• 1:29:18

Right. And then the next one here is more of a commentary in regards to there's been some mixed conversation in regards to this. And I think in the past,

• 1:29:26

we've also done a whole feedback thread and report on this topic specifically.

• 1:29:32

But why did you go with a spatial inventory system for resources?

• 1:29:36

Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Great question.

• 1:29:40

So obviously, there's a number of different methods that we can use in an effort to mitigate or again, throttle the amount of success that players can have in any one trip out in the world.

• 1:29:55

Right now, we're using a combination of three things.

• 1:29:58

We are using progression gating through your profession level. Right.

• 1:30:04

So you need to have a certain level to access certain resources.

• 1:30:09

We are utilizing the spatial inventory space as a limitation on how much things you can gather before you need to go back to town.

• 1:30:19

And then lastly, we have a tool predicate where you need to have a tool that is relevant for the resource you're gathering.

• 1:30:30

And those tools have a decay value after each use.

• 1:30:35

Weight is obviously an approach that we could take if we wanted to limit.

• 1:30:39

However, the spatial system works in concert with a number of other types of systems.

• 1:30:47

For example, we want to have itemization drop on death, specifically as it relates to material items.

• 1:30:58

And we want there to be an additional layer above just weight that introduces complexity.

• 1:31:06

And where there is complexity, there is choice and there is strategy and there is planning required on behalf of the player in order to set themselves up for the best possible success in certain situations.

• 1:31:18

Right. And so situationally, it's unique which bag type you choose.

• 1:31:22

This also gives us a unique progression realm within bags themselves so that bags are catered towards a specific quote unquote weight class.

• 1:31:33

And that is augmented by the spatial component. Right.

• 1:31:36

So as you introduce not just the weight aspect that you would normally see through stack size, but you also have the grid formation of the spatial aspect to to again make it a relevant choice.

• 1:31:51

When you're leaving town, which bags I'm going to have equipped and we want to have a deep progression in bag choice as well because it not only interfaces with the resource gathering, but also the PVP aspect of things and players can cater themselves towards one of those directions.

• 1:32:10

So, you know, with a broader appeal that the game design provides through having these multiple progression loops that are somewhat disparate and interest, some being PVP, some being PvE, some being crafting oriented.

• 1:32:24

This all provides a matrix of decision making on behalf of the player that I think yields a compelling gameplay loop.

• 1:32:33

And so that's why we're going to do it.

• 1:32:35

Now, it's important to note, once again, this is alpha, which means that these concepts that live, you know, up here and get down into paper, then get down into into implementation, there is still an iteration phase that exists after the implementation.

• 1:32:53

And so when we get into alpha two and when we test these things, we are going to fine tune them and sometimes they might be completely changed. That's just the nature of an iterative process.

• 1:33:05

And so we need to understand right now.

• 1:33:09

If you're seeing this in action, it's going to be different when players are hands on and we'll be collecting all that information all those logs will be querying how players interface with these different systems, and will also be very importantly the next step, collecting feedback directly from the players about these types of systems and whether or not they hit the mark and how they need to be fine tuned in order to do so or wholesale replaced.

• 1:33:31

So I would say, as players are participating in alpha to get a feel

• 1:33:37

for the systems and provide the feedback and we'll see how to do. Can you hear me.

• 1:33:44

You're good now, you froze for us for a moment.

• 1:33:47

I was like, Oh, my bad.

• 1:33:51

So yeah, I don't know where I left off there but that's basically you're asking for feedback definitely share feedback. We actually have a forum thread already up so please do so I'll remind you guys at the end as well.

• 1:34:00

But, um, yeah, there were some kind of tangential questions in regards to what you were just talking about. Sure, typically because people were wondering about crafting bags and different types of bags and can like crafters create those bags.

• 1:34:16

Yes.

• 1:34:17

And, you know, the obvious answer is obvious.

• 1:34:20

Yes, yes, absolutely that that that is a that is a wholesale crafting area.

• 1:34:25

So, the next one here is in regards to alt characters, how do we feel about people because we provided some details in regards to how many professions you can and processing classes and things of that sort that you can personally be on per character basis.

• 1:34:43

And I create all that have those, so that I can cover all of it. Is that something that we're okay with as a company or how we can yeah I think so I mean, look, this is, you know, this is entirely a subjective viewpoint of course, but, but in my opinion, if the

• 1:35:05

decision that it's necessary to progress a character to the point where you have access to those types of things is parallel with the effort.

• 1:35:16

It takes for your main character to do those things.

• 1:35:20

Then that's a choice that you're making and you're splitting your game time efforts towards two different characters and presumably so that's a bit of an asymmetric balance point that gets provided.

• 1:35:30

I think that's fine.

• 1:35:32

I think that you know when we designed the game we designed with that in mind as well and that's why we have certain restrictions on the number of grandmaster professions that one particular character can do now, when we want to extend those restrictions out

• 1:35:47

from a character basis to an account basis we do so and we do so is particularly with housing. That's an additional level of limitation that's going to mitigate some of the alt atmosphere for let's say owning a freehold right.

• 1:36:01

That is something that that we place as a restriction because we feel that the limited real, real reality space that exists within the world is something we don't want to extend to the alt atmosphere.

• 1:36:14

And so in that situation a player might have to, you know, get another account or something or do some obfuscation there but from the perspective of progressing within the crafting professions and within the processing and gathering professions.

• 1:36:27

That's acceptable in my opinion.

• 1:36:31

And then the next one here is will gathering and its noises increase the range the monsters will notice you so if you aren't being so stealthy and you're harvesting things and chopping down wood our creatures going to like perceive that.

• 1:36:47

That that there has been some discussion about that in the past. We have not yet gotten to the types of unique perception behaviors that we want NPCs to have right now they're relatively rudimentary and their perception, although it is what players

• 1:37:03

would come to expect in the majority of MMOs they've already played.

• 1:37:07

But we're aiming a bit higher.

• 1:37:10

And we haven't gotten to that work yet but we are talking about things like unique abilities, played by characters that extend the perception radius, or sounds and different types of walking that are angular from the, from the, from the mobs perception

• 1:37:29

to be unique different types of creatures that might be three dimensional in space, whether it is in water or birds in the sky that have a downward cone angle type perception as well like those.

• 1:37:43

Those are things we want to do, but we haven't yet spent the time on the AI, AI behaviors there.

• 1:37:51

The next question here is in regards to artisan gear and will it be a viable thing for me to utilize in combat so if I'm crafting and someone asked me to help them with something can I just leave my artisan gear on and go, go out and fight or will I need to be

• 1:38:08

stopping my armor.

• 1:38:09

Well, you will not need to swap your armor artisanship gear lives in alongside your adventuring gear, and there will be a toggle that you can use to display one or the other's visuals.

• 1:38:24

Now that doesn't mean you need to swap the gears.

• 1:38:27

It means that if you want to be seen as wearing the herbalists outfit. You can, you're still going to have your adventuring gear present and on the character and benefiting from the stats that are conferred by them.

• 1:38:41

And vice versa for for the for the gathering gear, or the artisanship gear, excuse me. All right.

• 1:38:49

The next one here is in regards to upgrading items. So, if I create an item at a low quality. Will I later be able to upgrade that item when I have the resources to do so.

• 1:39:02

Yeah, we want to be careful, you know, so right now as you saw in the stream. The contribution of materials to crafting an item results in advancing the rarity of that item.

• 1:39:18

Now that doesn't exclude players who don't have the legendary or the higher quality contributed resources from progressing their common item up the rarity tree through enchantments such as scroll enchanting, or through tempering the gear.

• 1:39:42

Now these can affect the quality and the rarity of the gear that you produce. But by contributing the resources during the crafting process you are getting a head start with the higher quality item and now are less dependent on those other avenues to achieve

• 1:39:59

that which might be, again, a different vertical space of progression that you don't have as good of access to right so it's kind of, it's kind of distributing that approach.

• 1:40:12

Okay.

• 1:40:13

And then this is probably what I noticed a lot from more of our long term fans who have been with us and on this journey for a really long time. They are curious about what happened to the more manual crafting side of crafting, because we didn't showcase

• 1:40:28

a lot here we showed most of the fast crafting. Who's a long time? A lot of people.

• 1:40:34

Oh, a lot of people. I thought you said there's one person. I thought I heard you say like, we have a long time person who's been asking like oh my god who's that? No, no, no, no. I meant generally I noticed this question from people who are, yes, are fans for a long time, not new people.

• 1:40:48

So that is still a work in progress.

• 1:40:51

And, you know, we want to be careful. I'd be here all day if I listed all the names.

• 1:40:56

Fair, fair, fair.

• 1:40:58

We want to be careful that when we, when we list, excuse me, when we showcase certain systems that we're doing so in a way that's digestible obviously and allows for people to provide feedback, but not all systems come online as fast as we want them to.

• 1:41:13

That particular gameplay layer is still a work in progress.

• 1:41:17

And you will likely be getting an update on it at some point in the future when we're ready to showcase it but it is still intended. The question that's outstanding with that mini game layer, I don't like calling it a mini game layer.

• 1:41:29

Yeah, that's why I was calling it manual crafting. I know. It's really confusing when you say mini games because it is not mini games.

• 1:41:35

Agreed, it's not. It is a unique gameplay layer. However, what I would say is that there's still some discussion about whether or not that occurs on a craft by craft basis, or if it occurs at the certification level, right?

• 1:41:49

So when you're certifying up, you participate in the, that gameplay layer. But what I would say is, hold off on that for a moment, we're still working on that, we will give an update when we're ready.

• 1:42:01

Also, putting things into a core functional state allows us to test some of those core systems and features, so we can kick out all the bugs that are potentially there and believe me we've fixed a lot of them already so, and there's plenty more that will come along the way as we move towards that more manual crafting process.

• 1:42:19

And then the next one here is, will the skin of the weapons have slight changes depending on the rarity that it's crafted at?

• 1:42:26

Yes, yeah you saw there that the rarity of that sword was heroic and when it was equipped you saw some effects that were kind of pulsating up the weapon.

• 1:42:40

Those types of effects will be yielded the higher quality and or rarity that the weapon is. So it's something that also is visually conveyed to other players, if not from just a threat assessment perspective but from, you know, getting some data point on the equipment

• 1:43:00

that another player has.

• 1:43:02

So yes, there are some effects that get scaled up when that happens.

• 1:43:05

All right, we got two more and then we'll move on to the next segment otherwise we'll be here all day, because Vagina and Roshan keep adding them, which is awesome.

• 1:43:13

The next one here is, can a player of any profession level learn any recipe, or do I have to be like a certain level to learn the recipes?

• 1:43:23

Oh, that's a good question.

• 1:43:25

I think we've gone back and forth on that in the past. I believe that currently, you might need to have the appropriate ability to craft the recipe in order to learn it.

• 1:43:40

I believe that's the current approach, but I could be wrong on that I'll have to double check.

• 1:43:45

And like Steven said before, everything's subject to change as we test things as you guys experience things as you provide your feedback, we adjust things as well.

• 1:43:53

The next one here is, can a player equip multiple of the same types of bags, or are bags unique to characters in some way?

• 1:44:00

No, you can equip multiple of the same types of bags. You can be highly specialized.

• 1:44:06

And I think there was a tangential one here was, can people put these crafted bags on their meals as well?

• 1:44:16

Can they put craft, I'm sorry my battery just said it's about to die. Sorry, say again.

• 1:44:20

Can they put the crafted bags on their meals as well? Like the satchels on their bags?

• 1:44:25

No, the mules use the cargo system. So the cargo system is crate based.

• 1:44:31

You have to acquire the crates and then you can equip them to the vehicles and or mules.

• 1:44:36

Mules cap out at the small crate value, and you can add to that crate while in the wild.

• 1:44:44

All right. Well, from there, we're going to move on to our studio update.

• 1:44:51

I don't know if you want to share some deets on how we're doing, where we're at in regards to studio goodness, but I know folks keep asking about all of that jazz.

• 1:45:00

Yeah, no, absolutely. Things are going great at the studio.

• 1:45:03

We've gotten some really talented team members who have joined us over the course of this last month that we're very excited about to have with the team.

• 1:45:15

We are in the process of winding down for the year.

• 1:45:18

Obviously, the studio goes on break from the 22nd until January 3rd.

• 1:45:23

And we have a lot of plans to get things done before the 22nd.

• 1:45:27

Oh, until the second.

• 1:45:29

Yeah, we've got it. Oops, the studio is like, oh, we're getting an extra day.

• 1:45:33

Yeah, I was like, I just want to because I know a lot of them watch the stream. I don't want them to be like, oh, I know. Yeah, 22nd to the second. Good call.

• 1:45:40

But we have a lot of plans, obviously, to get some things done here before the end of the year.

• 1:45:45

We will be finishing up our milestone seven, which is a big, big, big milestone for us, obviously.

• 1:45:51

But yeah, a lot of things going great with the studio right now. Yeah, we're trying to plan some little fun things that we can do as a team too for December.

• 1:45:59

We always try to do, I think we always do like a Christmas sweater contest and we have fun.

• 1:46:05

We try to, we try to, I think we're going to do a movie as well. We've got some gifts going out to the team.

• 1:46:11

I'm working out the event details on that. So yeah, we're going to prep some stuff.

• 1:46:15

I know people who are our staff are probably, but we'll announce that later internally.

• 1:46:22

But yeah, we're definitely rocking and rolling.

• 1:46:25

I think we talked about this in a previous live stream, but our attrition rate is insanely great.

• 1:46:30

You know, people do come and go here and there, but it's well, it's crazy because like it is like 12 plus percent.

• 1:46:38

And well, right now, it's like insane. We're like one percent or two percent, I think.

• 1:46:44

Yeah. So it's very, very low. Beyond that, let's move on to character goodness.

• 1:46:50

So the first thing here that you're going to see is that we are starting to kind of change up our Kalar starting gear.

• 1:46:57

We're kind of re-addressing those, changing them. You're going to see these for all of the races as we move forward.

• 1:47:03

But feel free to share your feedback and thoughts on them as we continue.

• 1:47:09

Yeah, the fabric looks so good. Yeah. Let's go through.

• 1:47:17

Materials just look so good. Of course, lighting changes everything, so it depends on where you are in game,

• 1:47:24

how the lighting is going to look on the armors and stuff like that.

• 1:47:28

The next thing here is a copper weapon set. You're probably going to see these for every type of material.

• 1:47:33

So I think you've seen some of them from previous materials, too, in the past.

• 1:47:39

But you'll probably be seeing more of those as we move forward. Just a lot of weapons and stuff are being weapons and armors are being made.

• 1:47:45

Tons of them. Very rich, diverse grouping of itemization that can be progressed through questing, drops and crafting.

• 1:47:56

Speaking of which, we have some carfen weapons. We have a dagger and a focus that are being worked on right now.

• 1:48:03

I think we've shown some of the other carfen weapons in the past as well that you've seen.

• 1:48:07

I like to sprinkle a little hue in there because obviously that's going to be a fun dungeon.

• 1:48:15

And then we have the Scarlet Remembrance, the little ring that we had.

• 1:48:19

The lore for this is really sweet. So if you haven't read it, I would highly recommend.

• 1:48:26

And then we have the Feyguards, which this one was a contention. Some people loved this set and some people didn't.

• 1:48:35

But now you're seeing the 3D render of it, which looks great. Yeah, it's different, too, which I think is fun.

• 1:48:43

And then we've got the Bloomfest, which is from that same set.

• 1:48:51

Oh, beautiful. And then this one, Bloomfest was our wonderful intern, Marlene.

• 1:49:03

Oh, my God. Marlene. Shout out, Marlene. Very cool.

• 1:49:11

And then we have the Mature Drill Spider. This is in a T-pose, so the little spiky thing would be up, not flat like that.

• 1:49:25

And then we have the Rainrock Fawn. I think I have a turntable for this one, too.

• 1:49:33

Love it. So cool. Very cool.

• 1:49:38

I could see us making a lot of different versions of this with the different materials in the game, too.

• 1:49:43

Oh, yeah. Little corrupt version of it. Yeah. Oh, no. This one is one of my favorites. This is the Shoal Skipper.

• 1:49:52

We were joking that this is what we all look like after Thanksgiving dinner.

• 1:49:56

I can't wait to ride that thing in the ocean and just lay down a bunch of mines for ships and stuff. That would be crazy.

• 1:50:02

Oh, my gosh. I love that. Steve is plotting his revenge. Just have like a squad of these.

• 1:50:12

Oh, that'd be so fun to see a squad of them. Oh, my gosh. In Alpha 1, we all went in the water.

• 1:50:18

We were all on those turtles, remember? And then we did the barrel roll all in a row like a wave.

• 1:50:23

Yes. Do you remember that? That was so good. I do remember that. That was fun.

• 1:50:26

I think it was with the PI folks when we did that. I don't know if the PI folks remember.

• 1:50:30

But it was a lot of fun. That's what happens in private testing. You do weird things.

• 1:50:35

Because we were having everybody line up and they were like, run to the shore, because we were trying to test having a lot of people in one area.

• 1:50:41

I remember that. That was good times. Yeah. And with that, we are heading on to our Q&A.

• 1:50:49

So thank you to our amazing artists. Obviously, they work on way more things than that.

• 1:50:53

We just try to sprinkle in a little bit here and there that they're really proud of that they want to share.

• 1:50:59

Sometimes I ask them for additional things that they're not quite ready to share. But I'm like, come on, people will like it.

• 1:51:07

And of course, we keep some stuff for you guys so that you get to experience them.

• 1:51:12

So we're going to move on to our Q&A. If you don't know, we grab some questions from our forums.

• 1:51:17

We always put these up in advance when we announce our live stream.

• 1:51:20

So if you are following us on all the social, you'll be notified of that. And of course, on the forums.

• 1:51:26

The first question here is from Nice Gaming. Thank you, Nice, for also making amazing content. We always love seeing that.

• 1:51:32

They wanted to know about new player experience. And is there a plan to have a tutorial or quest detailing corruption, the flagging system, etc. as new players enter Vera?

• 1:51:42

Absolutely. That is not something, however, you will be noticing in Alpha 2. We call this obviously our first time user experience.

• 1:51:51

The first time user experience is something that's going to have a lot of love and attention during betas, but is not going to have much attention during Alpha 2.

• 1:51:59

But it is intended for us to have a very in-depth first time user experience to kind of introduce players to the number of different systems, right?

• 1:52:08

They're not going to be super in-depth. We don't believe that first time user experiences should handhold players through all of the processes and reveal the world, so to speak.

• 1:52:16

But just to give them a shallow touch for the system so that they understand the concepts and essentially how to navigate.

• 1:52:24

But we want to leave that for exploration. Sometimes it can be overwhelming to have a bunch of UI pop ups.

• 1:52:28

I think also we've been trying to take a more tangible process of you learning through the game and not always through windows popping up at you too.

• 1:52:37

The next question is from Nero who wants to know about stolen glint. This was a contentious question after you talked about this on the caravan live stream.

• 1:52:47

So I think this is a great one to also clarify. So I'm glad it got picked in the random generator.

• 1:52:52

The question is, will a character be able to loot their own corpse and retrieve their dropped glint as normal glint again?

• 1:53:00

Or is it forever stolen glint the second that the character dies? Does this also mean that if my friends loot my body and gives me my glint back, it's considered stolen?

• 1:53:12

I think the problem here was that you die and then your glint becomes stolen glint, but then if you loot it, it's weird for it to be stolen.

• 1:53:20

The glint does not become stolen on death. It becomes stolen on looting.

• 1:53:26

As long as it's not you, right?

• 1:53:28

Correct. Yeah. If you're able to loot your own body, it will not be converted into stolen glint.

• 1:53:34

If however, another player, regardless of their affiliation, loots the body, it will then be converted. The glint will be sunk and the stolen glint will replace.

• 1:53:44

Your friends can steal stuff from you. It is true.

• 1:53:48

The next one is from Lashing and they want to know about NPC levels. Will mob level keep scaling past player max level as an indicator for power level?

• 1:54:01

I think this is more in regards to at high level, will there still be challenging combat for me beyond that?

• 1:54:09

Wait, so what's the question?

• 1:54:11

Will mob level keep scaling past the max player level?

• 1:54:15

Yes, yes. When the game, both in Alpha 2 and when the game launches, there will be monsters whose technical level is above that of the cap.

• 1:54:24

And the intent there is obviously again to provide some level of challenge that exceeds a comparable level challenge rating.

• 1:54:35

Yes, that is expected.

• 1:54:37

All right. And then Neurotoxin wants to know about crafting agency. What percentage of an items specifically like a weapon that hits corruption target or corrupted targets harder will be defined specifically by blueprint, material, character, skill, the station and region where it was crafted and by the player's own selective inputs?

• 1:54:58

So I think this is a pretty meaty question, but just I guess kind of breaking it up. What where do the power elements come from percentage wise per the different elements of crafting?

• 1:55:10

Well, a big chunk of it's going to come from the static recipe value, right?

• 1:55:14

That's going to drive a lot of the stat block. And then as we saw here, you will be able to influence the quality of the recipe and the distribution of stats within the stat block based on the components that are dedicated to the craft.

• 1:55:31

So that presents a wide variety of potential output from a single recipe.

• 1:55:37

Recipes have the ability to gain, recipes themselves can gain experience, you can unlock different results through different compositional contributions of resources.

• 1:55:52

And that in and of itself is kind of an exploration progression that crafters will have access to.

• 1:56:02

And our next one is about crafting innovation from old cat.

• 1:56:07

And they want to know will players have the ability to innovate within the crafting system, creating unique items or designs? If so, how much customization can players expect when it comes to crafting their own gear or items?

• 1:56:22

I think this is pretty much the same kind of answer that I just gave, which is that obviously there are statically defined

• 1:56:33

there statically defined an array of results that can come out of a particular recipe. And your ability to unlock those results is predicated on what composition of resources you contribute to crafting that particular weapon type.

• 1:56:46

And so in that sense, yes, crafters will have the ability to to uniquely create certain types of the recipes results based on how they're contributing resources to it.

• 1:57:01

Yeah, I think this question is more specifically about creating, manifesting their own recipe.

• 1:57:07

Yeah, that you. Yeah, exactly. The, the result has to have a corresponding recipe definition. And so in that sense, it isn't completely customizable to the point where the player gets to uniquely create these particular items, but rather they are discovering what

• 1:57:26

creations are possible with each recipe type.

• 1:57:29

And then, I'm sorry if I say your name wrong, just DM me on Discord or something and or forums and let me know how to actually pronounce it.

• 1:57:39

Mo, Mo Lu, Mo Luxto's.

• 1:57:45

They want to know about crafting recipes, will the recipe book be account bound or player character bound. Will there be account wide sharing recipes so can I share my recipes with my other characters, or do I have to do them per character.

• 1:57:59

This brings us back to the alt question.

• 1:58:03

And the alt question was, how do we feel about people making alts in order to kind of corner the, the mastery professions.

• 1:58:14

If you learn a recipe, it stays on that character. And if you want another character to have access to those recipes they have to achieve those recipes in order to do so.

• 1:58:24

And so in that sense, we're not making it easier for alts right. It is an equitable amount of effort required in order to achieve the type of payoff you want from these alt characters.

• 1:58:35

Alright, and then Roni Schaponi, I always love that name. They want to know about gathering skills. Do gatherers need to spec into group based gathering at the expense of solo gathering?

• 1:58:48

Do they need to? No, no I do not believe so. So they can spec into, they can do both equally? Correct.

• 1:58:56

And then Tiger Blue Eyes wants to know about crafting materials. Are crafting materials going cross tiers? For example, using high level material in low level recipes or low level materials in a higher level recipe? Is that allowed?

• 1:59:10

Yes.

• 1:59:12

And then Phantom MX or Phantom X wants to know about crafting skill. As character artisanship skills improve, will RNG in the process go down?

• 1:59:25

That is a good question. As I level up, am I more likely to succeed?

• 1:59:29

To a degree.

• 1:59:32

Well,

• 1:59:35

right now we don't really have a failure chance when it comes to crafting.

• 1:59:42

The RNG chances that we place on itemization live more within the enchant realm and within the deconstruction realm

• 1:59:57

and socketing, like, that's where RNG comes into play. The recipe is a relatively

• 2:00:04

high degree of certainty when inputting things.

• 2:00:09

You may not know what the outcome of that input is going to look like but I wouldn't call that necessarily RNG for failure because you can't necessarily fail that.

• 2:00:19

So, yeah, hopefully that answers your question.

• 2:00:22

Yeah.

• 2:00:23

And then Drunk Ninja wants to know about crafting consumables. Will every crafting profession be able to make some form of a consumable?

• 2:00:32

No, not every crafting profession will be able to make a form of consumable.

• 2:00:38

All right. That wraps up our Q&A.

• 2:00:41

Woo! We made it through it all.

• 2:00:44

And of course, we do have, you know, some reminders again for you all.

• 2:00:50

Just head on over to our forums. We would love your feedback.

• 2:00:53

Forums.AshesOfCreation.com. We have a forum feedback thread already up there for Artisanship.

• 2:00:59

So definitely let us know your thoughts, what you think you liked from it, what you'd like to see improved.

• 2:01:04

This is a long stream.

• 2:01:05

It was a long stream. Yeah, this is a long stream.

• 2:01:07

The video for the 4K version of the Artisanship segment will be up on YouTube right when this is over.

• 2:01:15

So you can go watch that, pause it, look back so you can really give us feedback on what your thoughts are.

• 2:01:20

And of course, our team is going to be creating a report for the dev team, which is always something that is beneficial for us.

• 2:01:27

Again, thank you all so much for helping us with Extra Life.

• 2:01:31

There's also a ton of other dev discussions and things of that sort that are over there.

• 2:01:34

We're going to have a delicious one that's coming up with recipes.

• 2:01:38

And maybe we'll do some bonus Alpha 2 keys for anybody who actually creates the recipe and sends us a photo or something.

• 2:01:45

So it's like a bonus just fun.

• 2:01:47

But yeah, definitely keep your eye out for some fun things that are coming along the way.

• 2:01:51

The Unseen Order Cosmetics will be ending on January 17th at 11 a.m. Pacific.

• 2:01:56

Reminder that this is the last pre-order pack that will be available.

• 2:02:00

And you can check out all the information on our FAQ on our site.

• 2:02:03

And of course, thank you so much to all of you for tuning in.

• 2:02:06

This was a long one. So we appreciate you sticking through with us.

• 2:02:10

And of course, to Corey, Mike, Alex and Nathan for helping us with the Artisanship Showcase.

• 2:02:17

They all did an amazing job. I know it is not an easy feat to come and talk in front of a bajillion people.

• 2:02:23

I know people can make fun of folks. So be kind.

• 2:02:27

Developers, that's not our main thing to do.

• 2:02:29

We're making a game, man. And we're just trying to help explain things at the same time.

• 2:02:33

And of course, to Steven for all of your time. I know that it is precious.

• 2:02:37

We always appreciate all of it.

• 2:02:39

And with that, we hope that you all stay healthy and safe.

• 2:02:42

Like I said, the VOD will be up on Twitch as well right away.

• 2:02:45

So you can watch the whole thing. If you want to rewatch any of the FAQ sections, the videos up on YouTube.

• 2:02:50

Leave us a comment on this dev development update.

• 2:02:55

So when the full one goes up on Friday.

• 2:02:57

And we will be picking a lucky winner to be spotlighted again like we did in this one for next month in December.

• 2:03:04

Also follow us on all the places. We are Ashes of Creation everywhere.

• 2:03:07

We post stuff almost like multiple times a week.

• 2:03:10

We try not to spam you too much, but we also try to make lots of fun engaging posts.

• 2:03:14

Also sharing with you lots of cool things from the game.

• 2:03:17

Sometimes you get some unique stuff that doesn't get shown on the live stream.

• 2:03:20

So definitely follow us on all of the places so that we can keep you informed on what's going on.

• 2:03:25

And with that, we will see you all next month for the final live stream of 2023.

• 2:03:32

Yeah, is it like two weeks away? Three weeks away?

• 2:03:35

Yeah, two or three weeks away. It's not very far because we wrap up on the 22nd here.

• 2:03:39

Like no one's working on the 22nd at Intrepid, so hopefully not.

• 2:03:44

That's right.

• 2:03:45

All right.

• 2:03:46

All right, everyone. Thank you for joining us. We had a lot of fun.

• 2:03:49

See you all.

• 2:03:50

Bye.