Happy Thanksgiving All,

In two to three weeks we are hoping to be releasing the massive quest and mini-map patch we have been working on. We are starting on the last quest in the Chapter 1 core story line quests.

The patch introduces a core story line to the game, something many players in the past have asked for. The quests are designed to help easily introduce new players to the game and provide a flow for them to follow. There are 9 quests in total for the Chapter 1 quests. While the first few quests simply introduce some tasks to get the player acquainted with the game, the rest of the quests will begin to immerse your character in the storyline; something that was missing in the past. The nine quests are designed to help you take your character from level 1 to level 20 (although  you can complete them on any level) and can be completed by good and neutral characters.

We reused two of the existing side quests in the core storyline as we felt they would be a good fit for the core story line. One was previously only available to the knight and involves the west brimstone treasury; the second was the Miner’s wife quest that seemed like it really demanded more. We have tweaked both quests and they help the story flow. For players who have already completed these quests; they will have the opportunity to re-complete them again since they have been tweaked and must be completed in order.

Along with the new mini-map functionality previously shown, comes the integration of quests into the mini-map. When a player has a quest active key places will be marked on the mini-map to help the player locate where they are supposed to go. The exception to this is where the main point is to be searching for an object as these quests will not draw out exactly where the objects are.

Another change we made to quests to make them more challenging (and what I think is more logical) is if you die with a quest active then you will be required to restart that quest.

As is consistent with our sandbox mentality, players may choose to do or not to do the chapter quests.

There are also numerous miscellaneous items that will be included in this patch including the following:

• You will not be able to select good/evil till level 20. If you have already choosen an allegiance then you will be grandfathered under the old rule. This is to coencide with chapter 1 quests really being geared towards neutral starting characters as there is no chapter 1 quests for evil. With how the story is setup, evil quests will be introduced with chapter 2 though we may end up revamping the whole good/evil system before then.
• Attack speed in general will be 30% faster overall. This is in response to some players feeling combat is a little slow
• The maximum obtainable attack speed for a player is now 1.0 second (was 1.5 seconds)
• Skill gain overall will be slowed by 10 – 20%
• Labels are now shown when hovering over containers (Thanks Gimili)

There are also some other items that may make it in before the release that we will note later.

We will hopefully be starting on the chapter 2 quests in a couple months, but there are some other items we want to focus on first with the game. We are considering starting a kickstarter project to help fund the future chapter quests other new game features as well. More info to come on that in January.

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