Coming to a Quadrant Near You: VulcanVerse Updates
We promised you more information on VulcanVerse updates as our development and art teams progress – and so today we bring it to you!
You will all be familiar with the forthcoming merchant from our previous blog, he will allow you to trade initially from Vulcan City as part of the stage 1 economy work with more to come as we reach further stages. First, let’s look at what our economy work looks like, followed by a detailed delve into each of the points on listed that constitute stage 1.
- Marketplace
- Gods – Olympians and Titans
- Alchemy Profession
- Stamina and Satiety
- Hollow resources
- Cursed plots
- Fast travel
- Fragmented NFTs
- Building system
The idea of the economy work from a game design perspective is simple: to create an VulcanVerse economy which will give players various options and ways to spend their resources; including through new activities and features that can be further expanded and empowered with new mechanics, giving players additional motivation and reasons to interact with them. Essentially, increased gameplay built on the foundations we presently have around resources and inventory.
Marketplace
Say hello to the merchant! This travelling trader begins his journey in Vulcan City. That is, at stage 1, this is where you’ll find him. Marketplaces serves as a mechanic where players can exchange their foraged and fished resources into another forageable or fishable resource with a dynamic price that works on a “supply and demand” principle for every player. The highest demand resources are expensive to purchase and lowest demand are the cheapest to exchange. Trade is made with the merchant NPC. The price and value coefficient in the marketplace is shared between all users. Prices are also dynamic and increase depending on the amount of resources a player trades. One of the VulcanVerse updates we’re most eager to share with you!
Gods – Olympians and Titans
An exciting one, as owners of God NFTs have been eagerly awaiting their use for some time. The Olympian and Titan gods mechanic introduces several god’s bonuses as well as a new Temple upgrade system which requires collective resource gathering in order to unlock god bonuses at the next level. Players are required to collectively gather a certain amount of resources in order to upgrade the temple and unlock the god bonuses, with the temple having multiple potential levels to upgrade to.
Contribute your resources in a collective effort with other mortals
as a sacred offering to fuel the Temple’s upgrades!
This caters well for Olympian and Titan NFT holders, but why would other players want to contribute to upgrading the temple? At stage 2, we’ll be introducing shrines or statues around VulcanVerse that players can make offerings to. For example, god NFT owners will receive profession related god buffs natively as they are ‘blessed’ by their patron god, as denoted by the NFT. Non-god owners will be able to get limited time buffs by sacrificing to a particular deity at these shrines.
Own a god, but not a particular one? You can also get a limited time buff for that god by making an offering at a shrine.
Alchemy Profession
The first of several professions to come to VulcanVerse. Well, you didn’t think your avatars would survive without having a profession and the items that come as part of this system did you?
Alchemy is a profession that uses foragable and fishing resources in order to create consumable potions that can be used by a player to receive temporary bonuses. For example, forage for particular materials, go fishing and catch a certain type of fish. Create a potion based on the combined materials. Potions will be used to empower player Vulcanite stats and player avatar capabilities.
Examples?
The Elixir of Ashen Roots: Increase foraging stat by 500 for 10 minutes in Hades
Resources required: 3 soil, 3 Bonecrest Fish, 3 silver, 1 opal.
Lesser Healing Potion: Heals Vulcanite for 2500 HP, can be used once during combat.
Resources required: 3 Rainbow fish, 3 walnut wood, 2 silver, 1 halite, 1 opal.
There are further stages to the Alchemy profession and as mentioned there are several more professions being developed. Gods will also be linked to professions.
Stamina and Satiety
Possibly one of the VulcanVerse updates that will affect players the most, altering the way they play, stamina and satiety are linked systems that will need to be monitored closely if your avatar is to move at optimum speed.
Stamina
Stamina is a resource that can be used in order for a player’s avatar to sprint. Sprinting allows for increased movement speed and jumping height. Stamina resource is consumed when a player’s avatar sprints or high jumps. The resource starts to recover a few seconds after the avatar ceases to sprint or high jump. Stamina is refilled at different speeds depending on what the player is doing, for example standing still will restore stamina at the maximum rate, walking at a relatively quick rate and running at a medium rate.
Satiety
Your avatar will need to be fed and watered in order to maintain the stamina system. If satiety is not managed, then stamina will not be able to be used. Players will be able to visit NPCs selling food and drink in each quadrant and Vulcan City in order to fill up the satiety bar.
Hollow Resources
“Hollow” resources are a type of resource that can be gathered, for example by fishing or foraging, but cannot be used in their initial state – they must first be transformed by the player into a usable resource which can then be used in different mechanics, such as professions.
An example of this would be the Chromatic fish, difficult to catch at epic rarity (requiring special, high price bait). This fish can be used for alchemy and cooking recipes in order to create high value potions. As part of the process, the fish can be “fed” with epic or mythic gems to acquire certain types – such as Diamond fish, Opal fish and so on, with a very rare chance of turning into a Glittering Goldfish. A Glittering goldfish can be exchanged with the fishmonger for 20 gold.
Cursed Plots
Certain plots can be cursed, with a certain chance of this happening upon plot reset. A cursive plot will debuff a player if they try to forage on them. A player will be able to use special consumables or visit a special NPC that will dispel the curse or grant immunity for a certain amount of time, such as potions from an alchemist or scrolls.
Cursed plots can be scouted with high tier spying.
Fast Travel
This VulcanVerse update allows a player to purchase an option to fast travel to a predetermined location via NPCs and after that pay a fee for each usage of the fast travel option. From then on, the feature will allow a player to travel only to and from the locations where he bought a fast travel option.
The price for fast travel differs depending on the place player desire to travel, for example, the price from the bottom to the top of the Vulcan City walls – to access the city, is the cheapest option. The price to travel to another landmark is higher than from bottom to top of the Vulcan City, and the price to travel between quadrants is higher than on the territory of each quadrant. Fast travel NPCs will be located at landmarks and ports throughout VulcanVerse.
Fragmented NFTs
This is a feature that has been discussed in the past (remember the Typhon fragments?) but will be put into use within VulcanVerse soon. This feature allows players to collect NFT shards which can be foraged from hoarder and legendary plots and after certain amount of fragments are collected players can forge them into usable permanent NFTs.
For example, after collecting 10 NFT fragments of the same NFT, a player can forge them together in order to create usable permanent NFT. These NFTs could be rare building assets or similar.
Building System
This building system feature introduces an asset removal penalty which burns part of the resources spent on building paired with a building prices rebalance to bring use for new materials and distribute consumption of certain materials.
Material cost for building items will be changed, for example:
Currently bed asset requires: 10 wood, 5 copper, 2 leather to build
New bed asset will require: 10 wood, 5 copper, 3 wool and 3 silk to build
Part of the resources spent on building an asset are removed when a player destroys the item.
Further VulcanVerse Updates – Terramorphing Improvement
Currently, VulcanVerse developers are working on some changes to terramorphing and building as part of the coming set of VulcanVerse updates, as follows:
Terramorph x buildings blend
- Player should be able to blend buildings with terramorphed terrain
Terramorph brush
- Player should be able to increase the power of the brush which will cause an increased area of affected terrain or its height.
Floating rocks
Water
- Player should be able to place assets under the water layer
Player should be able to place assets inside each other to some degree
Player should be able to place walls + like on the foundation
Prebuilt houses can be built atop of the walls if it stands on at least 60% of its sides
Prebuilt house can be placed on ground that covers at least 60% of its base
Stairs should be able to be placed on the sides of the foundation
Snap-to grid mode when moving an object
Angle snap mode when rotating an object
The team are also working on a new avatar system alongside Ready Player Me and new events generation. For the points mentioned above, we are at stage 1, with much more to come, but these will be discussed at a later date.
Expected Time of Arrival
We expect all stage 1 economy updates to be complete and live in game between Q2 and Q3 2024, though due to the nature of interlinked sections and parallel work such as terramorphing and avatar updates, these dates are subject to change. Our first VulcanVerse update, merchant stage 1, will be released very soon.
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