[Chance]

As of the last development post, we've seen a number of additions over the past few months. To celebrate the New Year and beyond, the next patch will be fairly ambitious and introduce some new systems. 

Thank you all, & happy holidays! This is the time of year to unwind and reflect, and I hope life is treating you well now and into next year!

Magic Content
Along with new additions to the public trees all around, the patch will introduce the following:

• Absorption Magic: An ether based tree that has mana interactions, such as exchanging your MP with the opponent and healing based off of the difference, or attacking it directly. You also get to view their MP beneath their HP. This introduces 7 new spells to the game in total.
  
• Summoning Magic: At a fairly heavy cost of 30RPP, you can purchase your own summon so long as you meet the spell requirement; to conjure the firebird you'd need fire attunement, for example. This will introduce a summon for every core magic in the game, expanding further later on.
  

Construction System
A long requested feature that many considered the highlight of Spires of Agartha. Something that certainly came with a host of design challenges despite the appeal and basing the game around it, but our latest implementation of the feature is going to be a much more cleaner, flexible, and aesthetically appealing take on it. Let me divulge most of the details!

How it works is you have the following types of construction projects. These are,

• Settlement: A fort that has an allotted coin cost. When constructed, all nearby trees will immediately collapse, and you'll be able to build 'settlement buildings' within its radius. The settlement is linked to a guild of choice on creation, with level 5 and 4 members possessing permissions. The cost of forts will vary depending on inflation and the competition: a low of 250,000c and a high of 1000,000c and beyond, further impacted by how much space they allot. You can decorate your settlement with everything from pathways, to castle walls (at a cost!), and even landscaping like trees, flowers, long grass, etc. 
  
• Settlement Building: These buildings can only be constructed within the radius of a fort. They're typically styled based on guild/culture, so 'Osrona' has different options from 'Fireblooded' for example, unless a design is designated as public. You need to given a building permit generated by a leader to construct a settlement building within the comfort of a fort.
  
• Settlement Stalls: Similar to the above, except for merchant stalls.
  
• Watchtower: Watchtowers can be built anywhere by level 5 and 4 members of a settlement, linked to their fort. They come with the perk of increasing member scout range while nearby the building.
  
• Public: These are buildings that can be constructed by anyone, anywhere, if they have the coin requirement.
  

Building related commands include:
Destroy: A command that can only be used during prime time, costing 1000 energy and takes an hour to complete with a progress meter, with an RPL requirement. If the player goes beyond a certain distance of the building, it's cancelled. Additionally, all members of the controlling guild are alerted within a 100 tile radius. You can expect to see this primarily used against watchtowers that are used to control precious resource spots made more scarce in the map update (more on that later!)

Custom Prop: The introduction of our custom prop system has led to some wonderful things and a sense of personality that lacked before within homes and beyond. Now we want to automate this. Using the command (which can be used indoors and outdoors) will spawn a special object that can be dragged about and placed with left-click. On right-click, options to change its sprite, edit the name and description, its x/y position, or delete it, all become available.

How does the construction system differ from the one during Spires era?

• We're not instancing maps and having to rely on heavy savefile routines that could often cause loss of data. This is all cleanly handled so you'll never have to worry about losing a chest or anything of the sort.
  
• One major issue with the version in Spires is the map couldn't be manually edited after the fact, whereas now a mapper, as they please, will be able to touch up and improve an area. There was often criminal aesthetic issues with the old system; we can just fix that and offer our own TLC, the best of both worlds.
  
• The system is far more flexible. You'd often be blocked from placing a building due to cliffs, for example. Now dense objects won't be an issue. In addition you'll get to landscape: plant trees, bushes, let the grass grow, so on! 
  
• These buildings are going to act as coin dumps. In the previous version, buildings had a wood/stone cost, which didn't mean anything for the economy. With a settlement costing upwards of a million to get going (or more) and your dream cottage home by the beach taking a heavy penny, there won't be as much 'waste'.
  
• The custom prop system will make things much, much prettier, especially on the outside. With the reach of community resources ever growing, it won't be long before we had a large assortments of props publicly available. Or even added directly to the game itself.
  

Farming & Food Changes
This is going to be an overhaul to ingredients, cooking, and food.

• First, cooking will use a more generalized EXP formula, and the cooldown on EXP will be removed completely. Each recipe will reward differing amounts of EXP, and you'll unlock new recipes as you level up. Mind, this will still be a massive grind! But at least you can look forward to the secret master chef recipes at level 100. 
  
• Similarly the EXP formulas across the board (for mining, farming, fishing, etc) will be standardized from 1 to 100 and their benefits adjusted accordingly.
  
• There will be a High Quality chance when obtaining an ingredient, whether it's grown on the field or caught in the ocean. The higher your level in the respective life skill the more likely each time it is to get the bonus. One HQ item adds 1 power to the finished product, and yes, they can be stacked. Using quality ingredients when cooking also grants bonus EXP!
  
• With the construction system, you'll be able to till farms using a hoe. Tilled land can be used for farming, like it is now. However if tilled land goes 72 hours or longer without being watered, it begins to degrade and fades away, to avoid map clutter.
  
• Some bug fixes like certain recipes not granting their advertised stats.
  

Tutorial NPC
Something that's been desired for a long time is to redo the current shabby 'tutorial' and have something more in depth. Here's a run down of it!

It will be a series of quests. If the player is a green name (AKA fresh key) the nearby tutorial NPC will be highlighted to catch their attention, and on interacting with it they complete mechanic based quests. Each time you interact with a certain quest active it'll also provide expanded information in the chat, kind of like how it works at the moment with the text detail. 

These quests are,

• Buy an item from a shopkeeper. Explains interacting with merchants and customizing clothing. 
  
• Sell an item to the shopkeeper. Explains the drag and drop mechanic.
  
• Kill a monster. Teaches the player about casting spells, targeting, and encourages them to explore to find a target.
  
• Complete an RPB. Also elaborates on the prefix commands such as /rpb and /help, and encourages them to take their first step into actually interacting with and roleplaying with other players.
  

Each will reward coin, and can only be completed once per character.


Misc / QoL

• Anyone not participating in a battle when it's initiated will be knocked back 15 tiles from the centre. 
  
• The Mentor ability will be reintroduced, used in teaching Holy, the Occult, and baseline Medic, all logged.
  
• There will be two variants of Medic, the base healing 25%, and the upgrade 50%, the latter having a light spell point cost. This is to encourage more experienced/focused healers and such.
  

New Resources
A few new rare, sought after ore and herbs will be added, found scarcely in lore appropriate locations. Along with this there will be an expansion to the types of weapons available and their stat lines. Expect to see sceptres and nyeshk greatswords that grant vitality, katanas and daggers focused on crit, and variants in between.