World Map Events

Good old red dots mechanics were added. At random times, these dangerous locations will appear on World Maps in predefined zones.

 

So far, we have Raider Fortress, 2 types of Raider Outposts, Collapsed Tunnel and Sewer Hideout.

Special encounters were added. Now, you have a very low chance to get into special encounters while traveling on a World Map. So far, we have 10 different special encounter maps added and a lot more are planned.

Assignments

Repeatable quests from the town’s noticeboard were added. These are low risk and low rewards locations which are excellent places to learn and get used to the mechanics. Also, they are party friendly, so gather your team together and venture forth.

So far we have 3 familiar locations from s3 (maps, loot, loot spots, mobs) recreated and adjusted to fit Season 4.

These assignment types of quests are still being observed and looked for if they are fitting the game in the current way they are. There are no cooldowns on how often assignments can be taken, at least for now.

Improved Hover Mouse Info

There are new settings for mouse hover info. If enabled, then additional info is shown.

Important NPCs names:

Chance to lockpick (lockpick tools in hand affect) :

Scavengeable objects:

Action on interactable objects:

Destroyable objects:

Items on ground and minor highlight:

Noticeboards Improvements

Towns notice boards will now point you towards points of interest and quest objectives. Not taken quests in town will show up as notes on the noticeboard, we all know previously a Wikipedia was necessary to even know there is a quest, notice boards should help to direct players towards quests. Stores, and banks, crafting areas will also have their notes that you can interact with to be pointed towards it.

Useable Items and Tools

Explosives C4, Mines, Dynamite

Plastic explosives were added to the game. They work differently than in the previous season. You need to craft a switch to use C4, and activating it detonates all placed C4 Explosives on the same map. Only your own placed explosives can be triggered by you. C4s cannot be stacked on the same hex, and they do not explode inside player inventory or containers. The explosion of C4 does not destroy nearby C4s on the ground. These new mechanics allow nice chain reaction explosions, and creative tactics. Damage from plastic explosives is only decent, and the radius is 3 and by linking multiple of them players can do really massive damage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QSh7rxTJzY

Mines work pretty much in a similar way as in the previous season. High explosive damage with radius of 2, decent chance to cripple legs.

Dynamite has the highest radius of the explosives, being 4 hex range. They can be armed and thrown at target hexes. Ideal for interior bombing.

On top of that, players now have a perk called “Tinkerer” to increase the effectiveness of all these explosives.

Tools

When dismantling weapons and armors, the chance to gain back resources is affected by tools.

With a Tool in hand when dismantling, you gain back 25% more resources.

With a Super Tool Kit in hand when dismantling, you gain back 50% more resources.

Using tools in hand greatly increases the chance to repair items.

Super Tool Kits are rare, so better think twice about which items to use them for. Super tool kits can also be used to guarantee repairs to armors and weapons, but they are costly, and they get consumed on use. Tools are more common and can be randomly found across the wasteland, but consistent sources are general shops and mechanical shops. Both tool items can be crafted.

For tier 4 gear repair requirements, a rare Advanced Repair Toolkit was added, it’s quite rare.

Stealth Boy and Motion Sensor

These items were re-added to the game, and they work as a consumable. Once you use them, you have a timer until the effect ends. The timer for these is 15 minutes. Items were made stackable.

Stealth Boy increases character Sneak value by 100.

Motion sensor grants the player the ability to see through walls, and the ability to see 5 more hexes around him.

First Aid Kit & Doctor Bag

Both healing items provide great benefit for medication purposes, but have a high chance of getting depleted when used.

 

First Aid Kit on target removes burning and bleeding effects, and medication cooldown is reduced by 50% of what it normally would be.

Doctor Bag removes all the crippling effect on target and medication cooldown is reduced by 50%.

Lock pick Tools

Using a lock pick set on hand or via hotkeys will increase the chance to open the lock. There are 2 variants for regular locks and for electronic locks. When in use, they reduce the lock’s complexity level and give a boost to user lock pick skill.

Client Updater

The game can now download a new .exe by itself and auto-update, so we can start pushing in-engine changes without need to redistribute the .exe file. The rest of the files are also updated on client restart. No need to worry about having to download the newest client to play the game. This brings a lot of flexibility to push even smaller updates much faster and efficiently.

 

Hotkey System

Going to the menu and Settings, you can find the Key Bindings option. Here you can set key bindings for almost everything. You can even import and export key bindings, handy if you like to play on multiple computers or want to share your hotkeys with friends.

Weather effects

Weather effects were added. Radiation particles and dust floating around and rain dropping. Weather effects can happen anywhere and if it is happening in populated towns, town people will seek the cover.

Weather can be disabled in the settings.

Advanced Filter

Advanced filter selection added in the Settings menu. Using the advanced filter, players can filter items by types, Quality and by name.

Paginated Pages

The Crafting screen and auction house used to cause lag spikes when opened due to sheer amount of content. So, another optimization was required. Both these are now working as pages and only load what you can see. Auction house screen also got additional filters (Type and Quality).

We are creating a game for gamers, so the voice of the community is a great source of ideas. Active game testers that give feedback, suggestions and report bugs help us immensely.

Overall, it seems like we are getting closer and closer to the S4 release, but it is still too early to tell when. Many content-related things are still missing, and much more testing is needed. It will be finished when it’s done, but we’re getting there – once again, Your help will make the process take less time, so join the Test Server now!

Thank you for reading through and have a nice post-apocalyptic day!  

One more thing before we end here. The Halloween event will start today 18.10.2024.

Log in to the game to find more.

Download link here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1G8YyKddD-qIu4QsdClwB6Cw1tM0tgCqg/view?usp=sharing

 and on FOnline2 discord s4-download channel.

 

Combat Related Tweaks and Balance Changes

Previously, cones of weapons had splitting issues, so the burst lines were split in unrealistic ways. Forming the cones now uses weapon max range, not the mouse hex position. The direction of cones is defined by mouse hex position relative to the player.

Slug shells straight line burst (no cone) implemented. Now you can shoot from range with the same dmg as using one hex with slug shells.

Status Effects

Status effects now trigger text “BRN/PSN/RAD/KO” over the target

 

Damage caused by you and effects on targets are shown in a different color, default color being yellow. Color can be changed in the settings. Float msg does not remove previous float messages as before, it will slowly fade away.

Weapon maximum range is marked with faded red lines around the player.

Contour Shaders were previously causing rectangle shaped bleed over on targets around. It was messy. Now only targets that will get hit are highlighted red.

Hex shooting has been improved. While holding Ctrl, hex shooting target hex is taken by the mouse cursor position, targets under the hex shooting mouse cursor no longer interfere.

1hex marker under the target of 1hex. When the player is at one hex distance to the target and uses burst and has a mouse over the target, the hex under target is colored red. This helps a lot when there are a lot of enemies around and the player is not sure where to click to hit the target he wants.

Gap between lower and higher tier weapons were reduced in both ways. Low tier weapons damages are overall increased, so even low tier weapons can be deadly. It also means that NPCs that do use these weapons cannot be ignored anymore. Higher tier weapons did way too much damage in previous tests, it was no fun to die from range with 2 shots. High and mid-tier weapon damages are lowered, and damage increase perks/traits/drugs/critical hits have been nerfed. From current experience, I could say that melee weapons seem to have found their needed usages. One hexing values are slightly increased, meaning one hexing is more effective than in previous tests. It is still far from perfect, but the direction is right. Weapons have been tested on player vs environment situations and comprehensive PVP tests are required.

New Audio

New weapon audios were updated for Plasma and Frag Grenades and the Molotov Cocktail.

Scavenging related audio was added for mining, cutting wood, harvesting fruits and collecting microcircuits.

New Playable Races

Mutant shaders, textures, cosmetics and animations for armor and weapons were added. Some are still being developed. Mutants can use armors made of leather, and metallic materials. Mutant weapon restrictions mostly exclude small guns and some melee weapons from being used. Usable melee weapons are all Sledge type weapons (Pickaxe Axe, Sledgehammer super sledge etc.) and unarmed (Power fist, knuckles, boxing gloves)

Here is a Super Mutant donning armor made of used tires.

For now, there is no way to change to another race other than your choice in the character creation registration screen.

Registration Screen and Character Origin

To start your journey in the Wasteland, you must register your character. Start by choosing your race: Human Male, Human Female, Ghoul and or Mutant. Then choose the cosmetics you like by setting Skin tone, Hair, Colors, Shirt, Pants, and Boots. Write your character name and password. Email address is optional, but if you ever forgot your password, then you will need email to reset it.

Your character origin will have a few different options to select from: Caravan Guard, Raider, Scientist and Tribal. Origins will define small things here and there on dialogs, quest rewards and give starting bonus skills on a preset of skills. Origins will get more usage/features/flavor added later. There were worries that if the origins have too much effect on the gameplay, then players are obligated to create characters for each origin, but for the matter of end game it does not have any impact.

Toxic Caves Instance

You can find a map leading to Toxic Caves randomly dropped from World Map encounter mobs. Using a map will reveal its location near Klamath. The old maps were improved, enemies and loot were redone. You can expect a lot of radiation and some sources of poison damage. If you have rubber boots, then this is the place to use them. The dungeon is still a work in progress and a new kind of puzzle is planned, and an additional boss level is added. Despite work in progress, the dungeon is fully playable.

 

Base Building and Management improved and Tweaked

Now, players gain 100% resource when salvaging objects, so you can freely change and replace everything without worrying about losing resources. Accidental salvaging might still happen, but extra measures are planned for salvaging structures.

Base sorting solution was added, a buildable Mr Handy robot charging station.

 

You can command your robot to do all the cleaning for you. By default, the robot will collect everything from the floor. Robot picks up loot and does it in a 2 hex area around him instead of an item per item basis. Picking up items from the floor can be toggled off.

 

After the cleanup phase, the robot can also pull-out items from a “Main storage” to resort when this option is enabled. When everything is gathered, Handy begins to Sort the Loot. All the loot item types that have linked containers will have their items delivered to those containers. If there is no container linked, or the container does not exist anymore, the robot will deliver it to the “Main storage” instead. Suppose a main storage is not linked either, it will drop unsorted items on the ground for you.

Storage linking

All item types are listed in the storage UI, and all detected containers are also listed. If the player labels the container, it shows the label instead of the default name of the container. By clicking the item type, then the container, you can link the item type to a specific container. Multiple Item types can be linked to the same containers, so it’s not an issue how you want to sort things.

Item types were separated so as you can see there are a lot of options. If someone wants fewer containers he can link item types for the same containers, for example, I linked a container called ModsAndBooks to mods and books. If the player doesn’t want the robot to touch items on the ground, he can disable Picking up items and can use the Distribute Main storage feature, so you can put all items into the main container and the robot will move items from there. Car Trunks have no interaction with the base cleaner, and will not have one in the future. There will be an alternative way to transfer items between bases. If more loot shows up on the floor during clean-up duty, the robot will prioritize picking up items. This feature is pretty useful straight out of the box, but we’re waiting for bug reports and other information on how to improve it.

Storage management is available from the outpost UI. Outpost UI has been slightly reworked:

 

You can also change the cleaning robot’s personality as you like:

Crafting Costs Balanced

Crafting and item value costs were adjusted to make more sense; some previous values were just temporary filler. Each crafting materials source and sinks were checked and balanced. Still, some changes will be needed, but the current direction is right.

Skill Gain and Skill Books

In regular game play without grinding any specific skills, some skills were proceeding much faster than others. Skill related issues were comprehensively tested and adjusted to balance the speed of skill gain to be more equally proceeded. Skill gain is still slow as intended, but where’s the hurry?

The main source of weapon skill progression are NPCs you kill with said weapon skill. NPCs only provide a small amount of experience, this amount is directly transferred to weapon skill progression. For character experience gain, the main source will be quests.

Skill formulas are still being adjusted, so still too early to go into fine details, but some short explanations: Weapon skills affect hit chance (weapon skill requirement and target distance affect your chances). First aid affects the amount of hit points healed by your first aid skill, and affects your chances to fix crippled limbs. Repair is your chance to repair items (deterioration and tier of the item affect your success rate). Pick lock affects your chances to lock pick containers and doors (lock difficulty checked vs skill level). Traps affect your chances to disarm traps (traps difficulty checked vs skill level), and it also defines the difficulty of traps placed by you. Traps skill also affects how far you can detect traps from. Scavenging skill affects the amount of resources gained from scavenging objects such as junk, cars, mining ores, cutting trees and scrapping old computers. Outdoorsmen affect your chance to avoid encounters. Barter skill affects the value you gain by selling and buying items.

Skill book mechanics were changed to give flat skill bonus instead of faster skill gain % for a certain time. Each skill does have a newly made skill book to use. Skill books can be found randomly from dungeons and bought from bookshops and libraries. Using a skill book has new audio of “page turning sounds” for you to enjoy.

Transit Protection

When you enter or change a map, there will be a small amount of time (3 seconds) during which you are not targetable. While you are on this transit timer, you cannot change maps or target other players. You can target NPCs, which will remove the timer. NPCs do not target you while your transit timer is active.

User Interface

The User Interface has been updated as we continue to shape our original style. UI can be made transparent via settings. Some screens are still in progress, but here are few screens before and after:

Quality of Life Improvements

Alt + Clicking on consumable items in the inventory screen to use the item. No longer need to hold down the mouse and use the context menu and hopefully hit the correct selection, you still can but there is no longer a need to do so.

Ctrl + Clicking on the item will equip the item to first hand slot/armor slot.

You can now mark any stackable items as favorites, these items will be at the top of item lists and are not affected by drop/transfer all commands. This helps to deload inventory much faster without dropping items you need.

When items are marked favorite, then a small star icon is added onto the items.

Trading windows got the total weight of possible transactions added. Now you can see when weight is going over the limit of your carry capacity.

This helps to optimize trading efficiency. Since we will talk about trading, I will remind you of a few older improvements to use there. Ctrl + Click moves the whole stack of items, Shit + Click moves a single item. Holding Shift while scrolling scrolls the whole visible page. Scrolling is overall improved in all the menus.

When more than one target dies to the same hex, you can now swap between corpses using small arrows in the looting screen.

Mouse cursor distance from character added while holding ctrl:

Vehicle fuel status is now visible next to the car’s given name and while driving a vehicle, players have access to a car’s trunk and can even fuel it:

While you are in your own base, your character will have a boosted carry weight of 2000. Just to make base managing easier.

A colorblind option was created, and colors were selected based on feedback. We’re still looking to improve it with some help.

Hiding GUI does not hide all GUI elements anymore, just ones normally visible as an overlay, e.g. now you can interact with a container and see the loot window with a disabled UI.

Harvestable old computers and fruit trees got two different stages added (unharvested and harvested), so players can see from the visuals of the object whether it is harvested or not.

Quest Markers. NPCs that have an untaken quest, will be shown with a yellow QUEST tag, allowing you to find them more easily.

World Map Improvements

Location selection. If you are hovering on the World Map within the border of more than one location, you will get a drop down choice list of locations.

 

Cooldowns are now visible while on the World Map.

Hotkeys works now while on the World Map.

Terrain difficulty added meaning traveling on rough surfaces is slower than on flat surfaces.

 

The Day and night cycle:

Map Fixes and Streamlined Styles

The amount of map fixes is huge, missing blockers, inconsistencies, refresh of styles, lighting related fixes. New scenery objects were added. Still a lot to do and some maps unfinished. Some Town maps got rechecked, fixed and improved. Each bug report in the game (saves coordinates) or screen report helps us to create better and better maps. Here are some new maps.

Journal

Journal was added to the game, you can open it by pressing J.

Inside the Journal are Quest Log, Achievements, Weekly Challenges, and Leaderboard.

Achievements

A lot of new achievements were added to the game and more will be added later. Many achievements do have multiple levels of accomplishment, and the main rewards are a huge amount of experience and cosmetics to show off. A few of them provide key items like glow key cards. Some of these are still in progress due to content not yet being added.

Weekly Challenges

Weekly Challenges are once-a-week objectives you can accomplish, 6 of them are generated each week and are randomized. Weekly tasks are a non-forced way to direct players to compete on the same things and to increase player interactions. Tasks are shown on Discord notifications and in the weekly challenges tab, where you can also check your progress on each task.

Completing a weekly task provides the player 20% of the experience needed to advance in level, so it will scale on higher levels too. Completing tasks also provides points that players can see globally on the score screen. The top five scores of each week will have some nice rewards. In the future, there will be a shop to spend these accumulated weekly points:

Leaderboard

The leaderboard will show the total global score accumulation on selected topics.

For example, Metro Highscore selection shows who have managed to reach the highest difficulty in Metro dungeon:

Say Hello to our testers!

Claiming Rewards

The challenges screen has a reward-claiming section added. Once you have been rewarded from town control, achievements, or weekly tasks, your rewards do appear on the list. Rewards can only be collected while being in a safe location such as bases, while on World Map, or in safe towns.

Discord Related Features:

Game Events such as weekly challenges, town control, and town raids are notified in the discord events channel.

 

Also, in-game there is a setting that affects if your character level and location, if it is safe, is visible on your discord profile:

If the option is not selected, then on the discord profile it shows: [Player Level] Player Name.

PVP Locations will not display on discord no matter the setting.

This can be useful when you want to group up with other players or meet for a trade.

Shaders Reworked, Animation Tweaking and Textures Improved

Your feedback has been heard, and the character visuals have been improved to match the original style. Previously, some models looked a bit off and were too smooth. 3D rendering was optimized, and models do not cause performance drop on load, the 3d models also now have a different shader that blends them more with the original art style. Better to show you than explain how it looks, so here is a video to show the human, ghoul and mutant moving animations wearing different armors. Death Animations are also being implemented, getting more and more gruesome as we progress.

Improvement work never ends, but that’s the advantage of having our own assets that grant us unlimited potential.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVJ05q5ZPmQ

It has been a while!

Our team has been hardworking and diligent as always. Updates have been pushed on a daily basis. Due to that, this post will be long. That is why we made an updated summary and then a more detailed list of information for those who want to read everything.

We would like to thank our dear testers for finding and reporting bugs. Our current bug report status has reached over 500 bugs reported and around 90% of them have been fixed, but it does not mean we have a bug-free game yet, as each feature implemented has the potential to create new ones. However, we are happy to say that the worst and most common offenders have been fixed. The in-game bug report system has been really useful, and a few individuals who have been grinding the game hard do require special thanks.

 

A few major bugs that were causing lag spikes and sloppiness were found and squished. A few example issues: One hexing previously felt very inaccurate, but now it is much more fluent and snappier. Some shaders caused huge lag spikes when NPCs got in view of the player. On each action that had audio cues, playback was initiated multiple times, which caused micro-lagging. The performance of the game is much more optimized than what it was a year ago.

There will be four posts in total today, below is a summary.

Summary of Updates

Part 1

• Metro Dungeon

• Radiation Mechanics

• Town Militia

• Item Quality

• Weapon and Armor Modding

Part 2

• User Interface (WIP)

• Quality of Life Improvements

• World Map Improvements

• Challenges

• Discord Compatibility

• Shaders, Animation, and Textures

Part 3

• Combat Improvements and Balance Changes

• New Playable Races

• Character Registration and Origins

• Base Building and Management Improvements

• New Skill Books

• Transit Protection

Part 4

• World Map Events

• Assignments

• Useable Items and Tools

• Client Updater

• Hotkey System

• Weather Effects

• Advanced Filter

• Paginated Pages

• Fixes

• Halloween Event

There is much to talk about, so let’s start with the biggest new thing that was added recently, the Metro Dungeon.

Metro Dungeon

The dilapidated network of metro tunnels under the Boneyard is a new randomized dungeon – the deeper you go, the more difficult it will get, and consequently, enemies and loot will be scaled based on that difficulty. High-tier loot and permanent metro upgrades are waiting to be discovered and unlocked. Pretty much everything is randomized, types of enemies, loot, traps, possible hazards, and so on. Map layouts are randomized, so each new junction presents a unique challenge.

To enter the Metro, you need to enter the building east of Adytum, which has been taken over by The Blades. Talk to the quartermaster, who manages things from the top. Once inside, your task is to get to the nearest Metro station. Expect heavy resistance. Once the enemies have been dealt with, you can retrieve the Metro Fob from the station’s main terminal. Now you have the option to either go back to the surface or to continue to deeper tunnels – which will get more difficult the further you go. Talk to the Quartermaster for more details.

Player vs Player action is also possible inside the Metro. You and your party can meet up with other players that are close to your level and about similar party size. While going in with a party does provide more safety versus hostile NPCs, safety in numbers does have its drawbacks. A larger party means higher maintenance costs, less fluid movement in tight spots, and more potential for mistakes and mishaps. The number of metro fobs gained is limited – each run yields only one, so using a party might not be the most efficient way to gain them.

Metro upgrades can be unlocked in the Metro entrance building computers. These permanent bonuses will aid you greatly in getting to deeper levels. Upgrades are available on each difficulty’s last level –  the Metro station. When entering Metro as a party, the party members’ combined upgrades are used to determine upgrades on the station.

Here we can see some of the metro upgrades built on the metro station.

Few screenshots from Metro Dungeon:

Radiation Mechanics Reworked

You get a radiation dose for each minute you are inside locations that are irradiated. There are also visual cues that inform the player he is in an irradiated area.

The default dose of radiation is 100, but your character radiation resistance will reduce it by a percentage of the value. Previously, Radiation resistance affected the radiation damage taken and not the dose. Each time your character takes a dose of radiation from the environment, radiation damage is applied, or each minute ticks if not in radioactive locations. Radiation damage is the exact value of the accumulated radiation level. Accumulated radiation levels are reduced by half of the radiation damage gained. The RadAway drug is an excellent way to reduce high radiation levels (-250 Rad).

Alternative sources of radiation were created, such as Micro Fission Cells.

They work like regular MFCs, but there will be additional radiation added (5-15 radiation levels) with each shot. Oh, and they also glow in the dark. Due to the nature of the effect per hit, there will be nice synergies with traits that increase the splash area of projectiles. To acquire this kind of ammunition, players will need to craft it using rare uranium ores.

Some enemies also have irradiated attacks, so it will be wise to use some rad away before the radiation damage tick appears to prevent high damage spikes. As before, Radiation is no joke and may be deadly, especially for unprepared travelers.

Good old Green Goo and Rubber Boots make a comeback. They may come in handy in the newly added and reworked Toxic Caves dungeon. (Playable, but WIP as of now.)

Town Militia

The unsafe towns are now protected by the Militia from the winning side of Town Control, those guards will protect town citizens and also fight anyone trying to break into the town treasury.

If there is Vault Buster placed on the town treasury door and no player is fighting Militia, they will head to the treasury and remove it, defusing the event.

Item Quality

There is a new type of item parameter, Quality.

Quality can range from Common, Uncommon, and Rare to Exotic. The background color of an item is based on that Quality:

For armor and weapons, Quality will define the maximum amount of available Mod Slots. For other items, it provides information on item rarity and value, so new players know which items are worth taking so as not to fill their backpacks with every rock and flint stone in the Wasteland.

Armor and Weapons of Common Quality can have one Mod Slot available, Uncommon Quality has two Mod Slots available, and Rare and Exotic have 3 Mod Slots available.

You might ask, then, how and where to find the best Quality Items? Weapons looted from NPCs are of the lowest tier of Quality, Common. Uncommon Quality armor and weapons can be looted from instances where PVP is not very likely to happen, or bought from NPCs shops and by crafting. If one wants to find the best Quality armor and weapons, then he needs to find them in high PVP-risk areas such as public dungeons and Red Dot World Map events. Tier 4 weapons and armor are always of Exotic Quality.

Weapon Modding Reworked

Weapon mods have been reworked in a way that makes managing them easier and more nuanced. There is no need to scroll through hundreds of mods to check their individual bonuses as now mod bonuses are rolled on installation. Mods are now stackable. Modding screens have been scrapped and replaced with more universal ones.

 The rules of modding are that 3 individual mods can be installed, but the same type of mod cannot be installed on different slots simultaneously. If you are not happy with the rolled stats, you can install another mod to replace the old one. Installed mods cannot be detached.

Mod items have kept their names, effects, and tiers. A quick reminder on how weapon tiers work. Tier defines a number of rolls. Tier 1 = 2 rolls, Tier 2 = 3 rolls, Tier 3 = 4 rolls, Tier 4 = 5 Rolls of possible bonuses. Possible bonuses are based on mod types.

Modified items will have a small gear icon displayed. Shop and dungeon items have a chance to have modifiers by default.

Armor Modding

An armor mod system was created. It will use the same universal crafting screen as weapon modding. Armor mods do require higher-tier resources such as steel, composite, and energy transformers, and leather as a base material. Armor mod bonuses are applied on installation. There are no different types of armor mods as in weapons, but mods can provide a huge list of possible bonuses. Unlike weapon mods, Armor mods do not have an item type, and multiple of the same type can be installed. If a player wants to focus on a single type of bonus, then he can try to get the same bonus on each armor slot. For example, carry weight bonuses of 24, 30, and 13 rolled for the slots (a total of +67 carry weight). Each slot bonus can be re-rolled by installing another mod. Tiers work similarly to weapon mods in terms of the number of rolls.

 

List of possible armor bonuses per roll:

•        Normal Resistance 1-5

•        Laser Resistance 1-5

•        Fire Resistance 1-5

•        Plasma Resistance 1-5

•        Explode Resistance 1-5

•        Electric Resistance 1-5

•        Critical Resistance 1-5

•        Knock Resistance 1-5

•        AP use reduction 1-5

•        Threshold 1-2

•        Durability 5-30

•        Carry Weight 5-30

Happy Holidays, Wastelanders!

We’ve compiled a video showing the avalanche of features developed since the last article. The list is vast and we’ve decided to present it in a video form.  

This year was exhausting and exhilarating, with our design ideas coming to fruition. With most of the major tasks behind us, we are now entering a phase of refinement and optimization. And just like preparations and cleaning that precede the celebration of Christmas, we are dedicating our efforts to fine-tuning our project.

I want to express my gratitude for our team’s hard work and dedication throughout this journey. Together, we’ve accomplished a great deal, and I look forward to presenting our refined and polished project in the near future.

We wish you a joyful and festive holiday season!

Best regards,

Fonline2 Developer Team

And the other things…

Hello folks!

We’ve been hard at work and redesigning the core of character builds. This has led to a significant rewrite, merge of perks, and implementation of S.P.E.C.I.A.L.

Below we will talk about changes to the character system, and mention our build manager that lets you conveniently change and share builds and features of unsafe towns.

S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system implementation

We’ve spent a long while redesigning the character system to allow more impactful, varied builds. With our new design, we’ve found a place for S.P.E.C.I.A.L., it is now is implemented into the game and provides small stat benefits, like a carry-weight bonus from strength for example.

But the most important task of S.P.E.C.I.A.L. is that it dictates the max perk level of its child perks.

Every S.P.E.C.I.A.L. has 4 perks assigned to it and the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. value divided by two is the max perk level you can pick.

For example: To pick level 5 Lifegiver player has to invest 10 points into endurance.

Marathon runner 5 requires 10 agility so to just have those two maxed perks, the player would already spend 30 out of 58 points. This encourages us to approach character building from a different perspective, trying to reach level 5 of perk is not anymore the main way to go.

The player begins with all S.P.E.C.I.A.L. being at level 1. The initial level of S.P.E.C.I.A.L. costs no points.

Perk points changes

Because of S.P.E.C.I.A.L. implementation, we’ve adjusted and changed how perk points work. Now instead of 15 perk points, the player has 58 total character points, with 2 gained per level up until level 30. The now-named Character points are used to increase both your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. and the level of your perks.

Perk changes and new perks

To make all the perks more impactful. Some of the perks were merged, we’ve additionally added new perks to the list. New and modified perks can be found below.

Perks in bold font are not fully implemented yet. Features related to them are still a work in progress.

• Cybernetics – Increases implant benefits by a percentage.
• Immunity – Increases resistance to poison and radiation and gives a small amount of threshold value.
• Party Animal – Used consumables stay active for longer [%] and have stronger effects [%].
• Engineer – Unlock Sandbags, Sandbags stacking, Flamer Turret, Sniper Turret, Burst Turret.
• Thick Skin – Increases resistance to Electric, Fire, and Explosion damage.
• Man Of Steel – % Chance to negate Knockback, Knockdown, and Knockout effects.
• Penetration – Lowers total enemy resistance [%] from your attacks.
• Relentless – Lowers active perk cooldowns [s].
• Squad Leader – Group gains benefits [%] if you’re the leader of the party or travel group.
• Rancher – Allows you to have an animal follower. Your animal follower is stronger [%] with every level of this perk.

Build Manager

Build manager allows the player to simply load & save build presets, build presets are files that players can share. You only need to have enough points for the preset.

This is a huge Quality of Life feature, as instead of meticulously selecting S.P.E.C.I.A.L. and perk values and traits from someone, you can download a file from him, and without even restarting the client you can load the build into the manager and apply it to your character.

Browser-based build manager is also in progress and it will allow you to load/save build presets just like the in-game version.

Town Control Event

The old Town Control type is changed into Town Raid, where players can raid the town treasury after finishing the raid.

New Town Control is focused on winning by score by taking control of individual randomly picked control points all over town. There will be two sides in each town conflict. Town control fights are between these two NPC factions. For players to participate in town control for either side, the faction leader/officer needs to choose the side that the faction will support for taking control of the town. Factionless players and factions that didn’t pick a side can join the fight as individual 3rd parties, but they cannot take over control points and won´t be able to gain rewards related to loyalty to one of the sides.

Below we will try to simplify how town control mechanics work.

Every 10 seconds a Tick happens.

During the tick, players within control points will shift the influence over the point to their team. Every player increases influence by one, and the max influence over a point team can have is 6.

Based on influence, the score is distributed, for example:

The blue team gains 2 points per tick and the Red team gains 4 points.

Killing enemy team members and NPC will award some score but it will not be as influential as the control point score.

Players will get individual rewards based on their participation score on top of faction rewards.

If there was a significant difference in team balance, the underdog will receive a reward multiplier.

Factions get allegiance reward that provides permanent bonuses to their factions if they remain loyal to one of the town teams.

The winning team takes over the city, other than the visual difference, the factions that sided with them will have benefits in town.

Town Raid

Raid is similar to our classic town control system but is turned into a quick skirmish instead of rewards for 24 hours.

Raid and treasury is completely unrelated to Town Control Event.

The town’s treasury will keep generating stackable loot every specific amount of time. Players can decide to try to raid the town which alerts the guards and announces it to the server. The town Raid triggers when at least half of the town guards are dead.

At the end of the raid if the town didn’t manage to defend itself for a set amount of minutes, the treasury will open and whatever rewards were there, can be looted by anyone, even by some unrelated sneaking thief. The treasury will remain unlocked until more loot gets generated.

The town can be raided as soon as there is generated loot and the treasury is locked.

In a case of guards recovering to full power because of players being unable to beat them, or resigned from assault, the raid fails and the treasury will not open.

Rewards system

To ensure the player is accurately rewarded for his effort and can secure his rewards from PvE and PvP activities, as well as some matchmaking events and achievements – They are not directly sent to his inventory, but instead to player rewards storage, while being in a safe location, the player can request and receive all of the rewards he has collected. This helps us to ensure that the player doesn’t lose his reward at the end of the event and allows us to implement challenges that completing wouldn’t bloat the player’s inventory before he gets out of the unsafe location, it will also allow sending basic items to offline players.

Quality of Life and fixes

Since our last Open Testing, we’ve improved some smaller things that players mentioned to us. There were hundreds of fixes and AI tweaks as we strive for as polished as possible experience, those smaller changes you will find out yourself. Below we will find the most often discussed QoL features.

• The outdoorsman was fully implemented; you can now detect and skip encounters. Detecting encounters levels up the skill.
• Cooldowns now have timer text on top to allow players to glance at the cooldown. It also mentions the effects of cooldown on mouseover.

Item descriptions were updated, and players will now find all the information on what items do if it’s a drug or a mod.

• The mouse movement was slightly rewritten to make the character react instantly to a right click, it will now also play animation on a picked hex.
• Previously broken, now previewing maps from entrances were implemented.

This concludes our news. We will hope you like the improvements and we will keep on polishing the game until satisfied. We will see each other on open world PVP beta with the faction system implemented!

Beta Test is scheduled for 03.06.2023-04.06.2023 Starting around 18:00 GMT+2

The game client will be released before tests.

Hey, Wastelanders.

We are going to organize a small beta test to pinpoint any bugs and find the issues with balance, beta test will offer both PvP and PvE elements,

Players will begin the game at the tutorial and then receive the following on completion:

• level raised to 30.
• skills increased to 100.
• all crafting recipes up to Tier 3.

Players will find three dungeons, Necropolis, Warehouse, and Glow.

– Necropolis is a PvE-only dungeon during this Beta test. So don’t be shy about grouping up with strangers to get past the dungeon.

– Glow is slightly complicated and requires players to think smart to not get locked in and die from radiation. Radiation resistance drugs will allow Players to stay there for longer.

– Warehouse is full of deadly Deathclaws, it’s a quick get-in, get-out type of place.

Players can create their outpost inside an encounter by crafting Tent Backpack and using it. Most of the base features are disabled but Players can use it as a storage and crafting place. Players can also invite others with the “#addmember playername” command.

There will be two towns available that players can regroup and trade-in.

Plenty was added since the previous post and we’ll run down some of the features quickly, you will be able to test them out in the upcoming beta test. Below you will find information about some of the mechanics.

Encounter System

The world map is separated by biomes. The encounters are randomly generated with structures and resources that are available for the specific biome player is in. Players might encounter two separate NPC groups at once that scale with their travel group count. Having 3 players in the travel group doesn’t exactly triple the enemy count. Each specific groups have its scaling so it’s balanced depending on enemy type.

Worldmap Group and Party

Players can have up to 8 party members totally in Party, this means if one party member leaves, everyone else can follow them onto Worldmap. There is no limit or disadvantage to traveling in a group, as long as people travel on foot or the vehicle has enough seats for everyone.

If a group enters an encounter, everyone from your party will be able to see it.

For example, if you will enter an encounter, a party member in the hub can leave the town and join you as it’s visible to him on Worldmap.

Tutorial and Starting Location

After registering, the game puts you in Northcrest Ranch, a semi instanced location with plenty of quests that teach basics to the player. The tutorial follows a couple of rules:

• On death, you will spawn again in the graveyard.
• You do not lose loot.

Players can follow the quest line to find out what to do or leave the location early by heading to a camp that is located northeast of the ranch.

Respawn

When you die after the tutorial your loot will be dropped and you will respawn within an encounter somewhere 3 zones away from where you have been killed.

Quest Log

The player can find all his ongoing quests inside the quest log accessible by pressing “j” or opening it from the inventory/multipanel menu

Destructible structures

Players might run into destroyable structures, it can be a rock pile, cracked wall, or just doors.

Destroying them could open passage to extra loot in dungeons, or secret shortcuts. One example can be found in Vault 15, where destroying rockfall with dynamite lets players into an extra loot room.

Suffocation

Suffocation is an anticamp feature, if players remain in a closed loot room that requires a certain task to be opened, they will begin suffocating. Suffocation takes a % of max health, so the result is a quick death if the player attempts to exploit secure rooms.

Outdoorsman

The outdoorsman skill is not yet active although it will work in a way that the highest party member outdoorsman skill will be used for traveling calculation.

Bug Report System

You will now find an in-game bug report system after accessing the menu, there you can describe the issue. Your location and name will be automatically reported, so just include the information.

Optimization And Improvements

Since the last pvp beta, we’ve spent months optimizing and looking for things that might cause performance impact. The result is a far smoother game even if there are a lot of players running in combat.

Hey there!

I’m excited to share some news with you. We’ve been hard at work since the PVP beta testing and have made some amazing progress in implementing features for PvE and the core gameplay loop. Our team has been super productive and we’ve been making great strides in checking items off our to-do list. While a lot of the work has been on the code backbone, we’re thrilled to give you a sneak peek of how some of these new systems will work.

We’ve got so much to share that we’ve decided to split it into two articles. In this first article, we’ll cover the basics of player skills and the essential economic systems.

The gameplay elements presented below were created from scratch and are explained in a way to introduce them easily to new players. Stay tuned for the second article, where we’ll dive into some major gameplay content. Thanks for your support!

Barter

Barter is a skill that allows players to trade for goods at better prices. The higher the Barter skill, the better prices a player can get both when purchasing and selling goods. Barter is a progressive skill, meaning that as a player’s Barter skill level increases, they will be able to access even better prices.

To level up Barter, players must trade for items. Specifically, purchasing items from traders will improve a player’s Bartering skill, while buying bottle caps will not increase it. This encourages players to engage in trading and acquire a diverse array of items, rather than simply accumulating large amounts of currency.

With this redesign, Barter has the potential to become one of the most important skills and features of the game. By investing time and resources into improving their Bartering skill, players can gain access to better prices and a wider range of goods.

Traders

Some traders specialize in specific types of goods and offer better prices for those items compared to general stores. For example, a skin trader may accept Brahmin and gecko skins and offer a better price for them than a general store. In addition, the trader may allow players to barter for specific items in return, such as ammo and other resources, at a fair price.

To make it clear which items a trader accepts, the items that the trader does not accept are faded and colored red. This allows players to quickly identify which items can be put on offer to that particular trader.

Traders also have different skill levels depending on their location and the goods they offer. For example, a bar in Klamath may offer better prices for alcohol than a bar in Hub, while a gunsmith in Hub may sell guns and ammo more cheaply than a general store in the same town. This incentivizes players to explore different areas and interact with different traders to get the best prices for their items.

To prevent infinite resource trading, no item will be able to be bought infinitely by caps through the dialog window. Instead, a fair amount of balance will be required to accommodate supply and demand. This encourages players to manage their resources carefully and to prioritize certain items for trading over others. Overall, the trading system adds depth and complexity to the game, requiring players to think strategically about how they acquire and use their resources.

Item Pricing & Value of caps

All item prices have been based on item real value, with resources priced at a low point and all weapons, armor, drugs, and other craftable items priced according to the cost of their base resources. This has significantly lowered the overall prices of items, with some items now costing as much as ten times less than they did before.

As a result of these changes, the value of a single bottle cap has significantly increased. This means that although players will earn fewer caps from activities compared to the previous version of the game, they will be able to purchase significantly more items for the same amount of caps. For example, instead of being able to afford only one combat armor with a certain number of caps, players can now purchase up to four combat armor for the same amount of caps.

Crafting

Resources are divided into 4 Tiers, with each Tier containing a specific range of resources. This allows for a more organized and streamlined resource system, making it easier for players to identify and manage their resources.

The crafting system has also been debloated, making it simpler and more intuitive for players. The overall amount of resources has been adjusted to balance the game and ensure that players have access to the resources they need to progress without overwhelming a player with too many options.

• Tier 1 resources are your raw ingredients, gecko skins, iron ore, and junk.
• Tier 2 resources are mostly the outcome of processing raw ingredients, e.g. gecko skins and brahmin skins turn to leather, iron and junk turn to metal, Broc flowers and Xander roots turn into chemicals.
• Tier 3 are a group hard to gain resources used in more advanced crafting recipes, those are available in limited amounts from shopkeepers, rarely gained from dismantling, and lootable in dungeons.
• Tier 4 are the rarest materials, used in endgame weapon recipes.

Most crafting recipes require one of 4 types of workbenches: General, Ammo, Chemistry, and Gunsmith. Crafting basic items does not require any workbenches.

The player needs to be near the workbench to be able to use it. The distance is more than 5 hexes, so good workbench placement means the player can use all workbenches from a single position.

Workbenches can be found in towns, or be built in player bases.

More advanced crafting recipes require a specific profession level. The number of profession levels can vary between 4-6 depending on the profession type. Profession levels can be gained mainly by completing specialization quests or being taught by NPCs.

Repair

Repair is a skill that allows players to restore the condition of their items. The mechanic works by requiring players to spend a resource material to repair an item that has been damaged or degraded through use, low tier items are exceptions to this rule. The material required for repair varies depending on the item being repaired.

Items are divided into tiers, with higher-tier items being more complex and difficult to repair than lower-tier items. This means that repairing higher-tier items requires a higher skill level than repairing lower-tier items.

When attempting a repair, players have a chance of success, which can be increased through the use of specialized tools. If a repair fails, the item being repaired will suffer additional damage, and may even break completely, rendering it unusable.

Broken items can still be repaired, but the cost of repair is doubled. It’s important to note that item deterioration does not decrease the performance of an item. However, if an item becomes completely broken, it provides no benefits and must be repaired before it can be used again. In such a scenario, sometimes it is just better to dismantle an item.

Successful repair increases skill progression.

Dismantling

All craftable equipment can be dismantled, providing players with a chance to obtain resources used for their crafting. When an item is dismantled, it has a chance to yield up to half of each resource amount used in its creation. However, the chances of obtaining these resources decrease with each additional ingredient, and the third ingredient, which is often a rare resource, has a low chance of being returned.

Players can improve their chances of obtaining resources from dismantling items by using tools.

Dismantling chance is not affected by any skill.

It’s worth noting that completely broken items have the same chances of yielding as many resources as brand-new items, so players are encouraged to dismantle broken items rather than simply discard them.

Traps

Traps are a significant hazard in the game, and players must be careful to avoid them or risk taking damage. Traps can be part of a lock or as a hazard on the maps, and players can also use traps like mines or dynamite for leverage in combat. Explosives can open secret pathways or extra loot rooms in the dungeons, providing players with additional rewards for mastering the use of explosives.

There are several types of traps in the game, each with its own unique challenges and dangers. Players can use a variety of explosives, including mines, C4, and dynamite. Each explosive has a different use, allowing players to experiment with different strategies to gain an advantage in battles or to uncover hidden areas.

Disarming traps increases the player’s skill progress, but the trap itself gets destroyed completely.

Lockpick

Players will encounter two lock types: electronic and mechanical. Both lock types can be lockpicked, but electronic locks require an electronic lockpick to attempt lockpicking, while mechanical locks can be picked by hand.

To aid in lockpicking, the player can use lockpick sets, which come in two types for each lock type. For electronic locks, the player can use an electronic lockpick or its mk2 version. For mechanical locks, the player can use a lockpick set or an expanded lockpick set.

Using lockpick sets significantly increases the player’s chance of successfully opening a lock. However, even with the right tools, lockpicking can be difficult with a low skill level.

Each lockpicked door/container increases skill progress.

Skill Timeouts

Cooldown is applied on failure, which means that players can attempt to repair, lockpick, or disarm traps as many times as they want as long as they succeed. However, if they fail, there will be a cooldown period before they can attempt it again. This cooldown period can be affected by the Tinkerer perk, which can reduce the amount of time players have to wait before they can try again.

Thank you for reading,

we hope this gives you a taste of what’s to come, and we can’t wait to share more about the other features we’ve implemented. Stay tuned for our upcoming updates, and thanks for your continued support!