Ryzom

I spent an hour or two on the test server today to get a first impression from what we can expect from the content patch 1 - and there seem to be quite some changes. Here's a short rundown of what I noticed (note that there might be many other changes that I just didn't notice in that short time):

Magic changes:
- The magic starter pack 1 now has acid damage 1, heal 1 is part of the medium starter pack.
- Cost of new skill trees is reduced significantly, I saw costs of 23 and 28 skillpoints for new skilltrees (cold damage, heal sap/stamina, create sap crystal, etc.)
- The magic amplifier is a type of armlet worn on both arms. For my taste it's a bit too big graphic-wise and almost looks like the caster is carrying two shields. The "glove" has some slashing damage to it in case you want to melee with it. I have to admit I'd rather Nevrax sticks with the magician staff - I can't see any advantage having these gloves instead.

Harvest. There are quite some changes to the harvest skill tree. I noticed:
- New quality bricks, now you can select either a "fine and lower grades" or a "fine grade only" brick for your prospection. Same for higher grade materials.
- New extract levels. Now you get gentle/harmful levels 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 like in the crafting skill trees. In my opinion it should have been that way since the very first design of the harvesting skill tree, no more superfast levelling harvesters I hope. *sighs*

Crafting:
- Skill points needed for Hp, Sap, Stamina and Focus boosts have been lowered to 40 skillpoints instead of 50.

Vendors:
There's a consignment system in the game. Basically when you sell an item to the normal NPC merchant you can specify a "resell" price and the NPC merchant will list the item with that price for other players to see and to buy.

All merchants now have 3 tabbed inventories, "player items", "NPC items" and "your items". "Player items" tab lists what other players have sold to the merchant and lists the player-specified price for it, "NPC items" is basically the same list of NPC junk as it is now, "your items" lists what you have sold to any NPC merchant (I'm not sure whether this only lists items sold to merchants in a specific region, couldn't test that).

I'm not yet sure how good the system will work, I fear it will create a huge list of items available on the merchants, need to test more.

Key configuration:
Nevrax changed the way a player can configure the keyboard. It's still possible but the new method is much, much more complicated and akward to use. Please roll-back to the method we have now on the normal servers.

Bugs:
Noticed some missing translations but no game-stopping bugs.

So far my report from the test server.

Thanks for the review, i'm probably going to download the test server over night and try it out. Sounds like some good stuff in there. I personally can't wait for the consignment merchants.

anything on what the devs mounts look like though?

Any idea when its going live?

algenon wrote:Any idea when its going live?

He, Algenon, from the news section: 1-2 weeks after landing on the advanced test server – Patch 1 goes live!

By the way, greetings from Jando!

larsa wrote:I spent an hour or two on the test server today to get a first impression from what we can expect from the content patch 1 - and there seem to be quite some changes.

Can I ask a couple of specific questions?

You mentioned the changes with the magic amp. Any sign of where the amps fall in the current crafting tree? Are they still in the 2H weapons tree, or have they been moved to armour?

Very good news about the harvesting for prospecting only fine, only choice, etc. My question then is, have they fixed specific materials prospecting where you can prospect only grips or only oils? Currently if you use oil prospect, you get oil or... anything else.

Are the merchant items available at every merchant? For example, if I sell my gear in MinCho, can you buy it in JenLai? Are you paid up front, or only when someone buys the goods? Is it like quests where the money goes straight into your coffers, or do you collect from the merchants in person?

Thanks for the early look!

Tin (who is jealous of your time in the test server <grin>).

larsa wrote:I spent an hour or two on the test server today to get a first impression from what we can expect from the content patch 1 - and there seem to be quite some changes. Here's a short rundown of what I noticed (note that there might be many other changes that I just didn't notice in that short time):

Thanks for taking the time to post it Larsa! For some reason some of us never got our Elder of Atys to test, and I wanted to play sooner so I canceled my pre-order and bought the game when it hit the stores. So no test-server for me. Not that I would likely spend much time testing though.

Magic changes:
- The magic starter pack 1 now has acid damage 1, heal 1 is part of the medium starter pack.

Finally, back to where it should have stayed to begin with.

- Cost of new skill trees is reduced significantly, I saw costs of 23 and 28 skillpoints for new skilltrees (cold damage, heal sap/stamina, create sap crystal, etc.)

Also back to where it was, and again also much much needed. I'm not sure why these changes were introduced and allowed to go live in the first place. Good to have it back closer to something that allows mages to really think about what spells they want rather than having to wait till high level game and still not afford everything.

- The magic amplifier is a type of armlet worn on both arms. For my taste it's a bit too big graphic-wise and almost looks like the caster is carrying two shields. The "glove" has some slashing damage to it in case you want to melee with it. I have to admit I'd rather Nevrax sticks with the magician staff - I can't see any advantage having these gloves instead.

This makes me dislike the sound of it even more. Please Nevrax, consider whether the playerbase even wants this type of change first. A lot of time has been spent changing magic around that would have been much better used in other areas... and would have messed the game up less. Maybe bring back a mix of the old casting animations instead?

Harvest. There are quite some changes to the harvest skill tree. I noticed:
- New quality bricks, now you can select either a "fine and lower grades" or a "fine grade only" brick for your prospection. Same for higher grade materials.
- New extract levels. Now you get gentle/harmful levels 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 like in the crafting skill trees. In my opinion it should have been that way since the very first design of the harvesting skill tree, no more superfast levelling harvesters I hope. *sighs*

Long, long overdue and a good step in the right direction. Hopefully we can still see something to improve the quantity foragers pull out and make xp based off of and reward pulling more mats as well.

Crafting:
- Skill points needed for Hp, Sap, Stamina and Focus boosts have been lowered to 40 skillpoints instead of 50.

Vendors:
There's a consignment system in the game. Basically when you sell an item to the normal NPC merchant you can specify a "resell" price and the NPC merchant will list the item with that price for other players to see and to buy.

All merchants now have 3 tabbed inventories, "player items", "NPC items" and "your items". "Player items" tab lists what other players have sold to the merchant and lists the player-specified price for it, "NPC items" is basically the same list of NPC junk as it is now, "your items" lists what you have sold to any NPC merchant (I'm not sure whether this only lists items sold to merchants in a specific region, couldn't test that).

I'm not yet sure how good the system will work, I fear it will create a huge list of items available on the merchants, need to test more.

I share the same worries as you. Don't want to page through 40 pages of junk to find one decently priced item worth buying. Also really need the stats on some items to display correctly (dodge/parry modifiers and ranged weapon stats) for this to be more meaningful.

Key configuration:
Nevrax changed the way a player can configure the keyboard. It's still possible but the new method is much, much more complicated and akward to use. Please roll-back to the method we have now on the normal servers.

Bugs:
Noticed some missing translations but no game-stopping bugs.

So far my report from the test server.

Can't comment on it as I haven't seen it. Again thanks for the report and hopefully Nevrax pays close attention to player feedback.

I like the Magic Gloves, Look way better than the stupid staffs im my views.