Captain's Log 26: The Hoppening 🐰

Ahoy Pathfinders!

One week has passed since the launch of our Mega-update 1.5 (ATLAS v100), and what a crazy voyage it’s been! As mentioned in our previous announcement, this update has been one of the largest we’ve ever worked on as a team and we are incredibly proud of the results. The last few days have shown us that these changes have been a step in the right direction to help fulfill ATLAS’ ambition of becoming the ultimate fantasy pirate adventure. 

Since the patch launched, we have been continuing to iterate daily based on your feedback and reports, and have plenty more being cooked up as we speak. This log will talk about some of the new content you’ll get to experience in our upcoming mega update, our Easter Event, as well as the future of Empires.

      update on empires and na pve 

After careful consideration, we have decided that we will be shutting down the Empire network as it has been demonstrated by the players that the Colonies & Settlement system is much more favored. We suspected this to be the case prior to the launch of these servers, but we believe in trying out and testing new systems and want to make the best use of Early Access as we can. 

The results speak for themselves, so as of tomorrow, Friday the 19th, at 7 PM Eastern the Empire Server will be shut down. This network will be replaced with a North American PvE network using the existing Colonies system.

We still believe that there is a place in the game for ambitious PvP players, and we believe that open-ended PvP is a really important and fun part of ATLAS. We want to find a way we can still support those goals whilst still keeping our more controlled and rule-based PvP. 

      The Hoppening  

This weekend, the ATLAS will be paid a visit by the Magical Easter Bunny! They’ve struck a deal with the Cosmetic Vendor at your local Freeport and will be giving away their specially branded Bunny Ears for a small donation of Easter Eggs! So hop on into the ATLAS this weekend and join the hunt for eggs which are buried in treasure or can be collected from chickens. Before you know it, you too could be standing proud--or at least standing--with your very own Bunny Ears!

If ears don’t float your boat, you could always be a scallywag and throw the egg at passers-by, yolking their vision or slowing down wild creatures. Get yolked! 

The Hoppening Patch Notes (v101)

• Treasure Chests now include Easter Eggs and Chickens (both wild/tamed) will drop them over time.
• Easter Eggs can be used to purchase crafts of a Bunny Hat (they stack, so you can purchase multiple crafts and keep them even after the event ends!)
• Eggs can be thrown at players to cause a post-process ‘yolk’ effect and at wild creatures to slow them down.
• Easter Bonus: Egg Maturation speed increased by 3x
• Increase player speed by 10% across-the-board
• Water Reservoirs now automatically generate water if they are placed on fertile soil. How quickly they generate water depends on the soil type and biome, indicated on the HUD when you place or look at the water reservoir.
• You can now self-heal with the medkit. How much healing you get is dependent on a new Self-Healing Skill (though you can Heal yourself without the Skill, you'll only get 10% effectiveness)
• Killing the Krakens now completes the respective Quest for everyone in the combat zone, not just the people who have got all the Power Stones / Essences. (not retroactive)
• Fixed Treasure Maps sometimes generating stuck into the world geometry (not retroactive)
• Spikeshot now has a 15-second Defuse timer that begins upon impact.
• Company limit on PvP server has been increased to 75.
• Mermaids should now properly target players on ships (they should then sing to lure the players off the ships).
• Reduced Submarine max weight to 800
• Submarines move 33% slower and uses 50% more fuel
• Submarine is unable to move laterally when overweight/overcrewed, can still move longitudinally.
• No longer able to place explosive barrel item directly onto the water. Must have them carried and then tossed into the ocean.
• Increased % scale for Cannon Reload skills, increased from 10 -> 20 -> 30 to 33% -> 66% -> 100%
• Armour equip timer has been reduced to 5 seconds
• Melee weapon equip timer has been reduced to 5 seconds
• Gun equip timer now matches the reload time (when not completing the mini-game or having the special skills, we'll be updating the skills in the future so that they reduce the equip timer). 
• Updated creature breeding biome tags so that creatures can always be bred in biomes they're found in.

      upcoming patches 

Over the coming weeks, we’ll be sharing more about our next mega update which we have planned for ATLAS. It’ll be a similar scope to that of the one that launched in April, here’s a little sneak peek at what’s to come!

An enormous dungeon found deep in the depths of the polar region. We can see that this was clearly once occupied by pathfinders but now deserted. 

Rumour has it that they were slaughtered or their fear of a legendary and elusive mythical beast steered them away.  

We’ve also got a lot more plans for combat, including new weapons! Here’s something we’re working on currently:

More islands will soon be emerging their way onto the ATLAS network early this summer, and they’re going to be large and higher quality than ever before!

And as always, we’ll be continuing to iterate on your reports and feedback on a regular basis. Since the Mega-Update 1.5 launched, we’ve had over 10 patches fixing bugs, adding in new features, and making adjustments. You can expect that to continue over the coming days, weeks, and months ahead!

      latest patch notes 

 up to v100.81 

- Fixed multiple cases where players would get stuck in structures after reloads, respawns, or fast travels.
- Fixed a bug where player flags would be merged into companies if they didn't have a company previously. Creating your own company when you own a flag will still merge the flag, however joining an existing one won't merge over the flag.
- Significant improvements for raft sail-mounting control
- Possible fix for 'ghost islands' appearing when transitioning between servers
- Submarine is now unlocked when defeating the Kraken, regardless if you have collected all the power stones as an individual. 
- Readjusted (increased) gold dropped from Whales, so that their total reduction was only 17.5% rather than 35%.
- Active Settlement wars should now show up on the map for everybody, regardless of team and regardless of how zoomed out you are.

v100.7

- Possible fix for tamed Creatures falling through structures on server load/overtime.
- Fix for creatures over spawning when wandering out of spawn areas.
- Increased structure check on creature spawns to prevent them from spawning inside bases on Lawless servers. May still occur in areas with a large open space, such as a big pen.
- Fixed a case where Army of the Damned were being destroyed but did not count towards your objective, therefore made it impossible to dig up certain treasure chests.
- Eliminated some D3D hung crashes
- Adjusted mythical shipyard crafting requirements so they can be crafted at smithy
- Maximum tax on PvP is now 30%
- Barshot projectile has had it's range and speed increased so that it's closer to a regular cannon ball
- Water Reservoirs now hold 12,000 water and Barrels hold 4,000.
- Whale health has been increased by 20% and gold reduced by 35%
- Ballista reload time has been increased
- Elevators now rise at 3x the rate and can carry 2x more -- may cause some clientside jittering when moving on top of the elevator (known issue that we're working on).
- Medkit spoil timer increased to 12 hrs
- Increase durability of grappling hook by 2x
- Increase earthworm spoil time to 1 hour
- Increase the stasis range of Mermaid so they're easier to find
- No cooldown on placing cannons in PvE
- Reduced creature harvesting for berries
- Ramshackle sloop weight capacity has been reduced to 1200
- Raft weight capacity as been increased to 1600

v100.6

- Giraffe now harvests 6x thatch again
- Fixed an issue where structure check was allowing players to build when there was no foundational support
- Improved bola offset for feeding Elephant and Giraffe
- Fixed a bug which allowed you to take items from the trade window of another person in the same company as yourself
- Fixed a case where player inputs would 'stick' on sails that they had just unmanned

v100.5

New server commandlines:

?SuppressSettlementName=true
Suppress the capability to rename settlements except for server admins.

?SuppressJoinNotifications=true
Hides all the join/leave notifications on a server regardless of client options.

v100.43

- BattlEye update

v100.4

- Fixed some issues where characters were able to contest Flags out of range, and where they weren't showing up with the "Flag Range Sonar" action. Also increased the time of the Flag Range Sonar to 30 seconds.
- The flag Contesting range has been lowered to 10k for Colonies mode, down from 15k.
- Official Servers now have a much lower repopulation prevention radius for resources and creatures (approximately 25% the previous range)

v100.33

- Fixed blueprint number-of-crafts-remaining erroneously appearing on engrams
- Added a text to craftable item icons indicating how many times it can be crafted based on the resources in the inventory
- Adjusted the position of the item icon stat label to not overlap with the quantity label
- Doubled the size of the quantity label on the gameplay HUD item crafting indicator to be more readable
- Fixed a camera blip when grappling hook attaches in TPV
- Fixed the Melee Camera Animations checkbox option to work again

v100.31

- Can only select Freeports/Lawless as home servers now on the Official Network
- Claim resume timer is now 10 seconds after contesting has ended
- Claim contesting requires placing a flag in range of the enemy flag
- WALL Lantern resource consumption rate reduced by 75%
- Max Tax rate on PvE set to 20%, and is only additive on PvE (doesn't reduce the taxee's resources)
- Improved Grappling Hook functionality resulting in better interactions with Floatsom, and when climbing down.
- Freeports and Lawless Servers have a unique display icon in the server map grid.

and you can check out our entire Patch List since release, here:

  SHOW 'N' TELL #6 

We loved looking over the entries for Show 'n Tell 6 and we're excited to get back into the swing of regular contests so we can check out your creative endeavours and piratey adventures! Feast yer eyes on  th' best o' th' bunch below! 

WINNERS

OTAWA72

We're fans of Otawa's great eye for composition and framing. This one tells a story of a Captain's post as he oversees his vessel being navigated through the shallows. 

BOSSNDABEAT

Damn! This innovative Dynasty Dragon fleet is amazing! Nice work.

LEXI_NYX

Picturesque landscape, a ship, the blue horizon, smoke trails and...explosions. What more do we need? 

ENKI ANNUNAKI

Enki's Public PvP Arena displays some awesome creativity, building skill and dedication along with community spirit. We appreciate you! 

Honourable Mentions

ARYU

But at night I would wander away, away,
I would fling on each side my low-flowing locks,
And lightly vault from the throne and play
With the mermen in and out of the rocks;
We would run to and fro, and hide and seek,
On the broad sea-wolds in the crimson shells,
Whose silvery spikes are nighest the sea.

Lord Alfred Tennyson

CLETUSREBEL

Voyage can be the key to discovery. The golden halo surrounding this ship as she emerges from a deep, watery canyon may signify good fortune for her crew.

ELCARLOSPRO

Congratulations to all of the winners who will receive some real life cash booty! We look forward to the next round of Show n' Tell!

Alrighty, that ’s it for this log! Thank you so much for becoming a part of our crew and we can't wait to show all you scallywags, landlubbers, captains, and seadogs what lies ahead!

Happy Sailing,

Grapeshot Games

‍For the latest dispatch on #playATLAS keep yer one good eye trained on this here information‍

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