Captain's Log 28: Man The Harpoons!

Ahoy Pathfinders!

Well, it’s been a few weeks since ATLAS 1.5 went live and we’re pleased with the progress thus far. Thank you again for all of the support and feedback - especially during the PTR and beyond. 

This Captain’s Log comes straight off the back of today’s Livestream and we’d like to offer a recap for those who may have missed it. The purpose of the Livestream was to answer questions asked by the Community and to discuss some of the things you care about along with showing off our upcoming content slated for the May mega-patch. We collated questions on our Community Hub, but, in the interest of time, we focused on answering a few big topic ones initially. We will be pulling more from the community’s responses and addressing those throughout more Captain’s Log and general outreach on social and our community hub. 

If you didn’t have a chance to watch the steam, worry not as you can check out the entire VOD here!

          Livestream Recap! 

Before we begin going through the content in the mega update, we want to cover some topics that frequently came up in our Q&A thread. Please keep in mind that we’re not going to be able to cover everything, however, we will be looking over the thread at your suggestions, feedback, and try to cover more in the coming weeks through these logs and additions to our patch.

Will there be a wipe with this Mega Update?

No. We have no plans to wipe the networks with the next mega update. The game is in Early Access and we don’t want to be afraid to make big changes for the betterment of the game in the long-run, but we balance that with the time you guys have invested and the feedback you’ve provided. Adding new content, including exploring areas doesn’t necessarily mean that a wipe will be necessary. The last mega update required a wipe as we were making some grand changes to the core game like claiming and ownership of islands, and we look at that type of situation as an extreme case which would advance the game’s development.

Does ATLAS have lore, do you guys plan to explore on that through quests or other means?

The world of ATLAS has a history and lore that we are building through the environments and things like discovery zones and notes. We’re handling this similarly to the early days of ARK, where the lore was sprinkled in but none of the dots could really be connected. Over the course of development, as we solidify our game mechanics and technical features, you might start to see more of this lore introduced into the world in various ways that ties everything together. We have some really fun stuff planned for the future in terms of quest lines and world building.

What’s planned for the state of Piracy as an action?

We know this is a question that has been raised a lot, and especially recently with this update’s reveal of content that may not be as pirate focused as some would like. We are interested in how these various pieces of content play out and it’s important to state that what is in the current game may not be in the ultimate game. This means we’re going to try different things and experiment a lot, especially throughout early access. Over the weeks and months ahead, the game will continue to evolve as we sail towards our goal of making the most fun pirate fantasy game, as opposed to the most realistic pirate game. On that note, this upcoming mega patch does introduce a fair bit of content related to seafaring and the pirate playstyle, and we’ll continue to look into ways we can further establish this via new multidimensional gameplay mechanics as well as rebalancing and tweaking existing systems. 

Where is the Pirate Hat cosmetic from playing pre-1.5?

It’s coming! Between addressing bugs and server performance along with working on the mega patch, it kinda got stuck in our pipeline! Yes, we will give you all your fancy hats soon, sorry for the wait.

XBOX?

We’re going to have some very exciting Xbox news for you in the coming months. We’re thrilled to have you aboard, our plans haven’t changed and can’t wait to bring it to you this year. Stay tuned!

And now...onto the update itself!

Unlike the last Mega Patch, this one is more content focused and less systemic. We still plan to make more systemic changes, however, we want to give our previous changes some time to settle, so we can see how they play out and decide what steps we’d like to take next. That means this for this patch, we’ll be introducing some new weapons/combat related items for players and ships, structures, items to generally improve QOL, cosmetics, creatures, and an explorable area, the Ice Dungeon!

New Cosmetics: Hydra Steering Wheel, Hydra Hide Armour Set, and Cyclops Heavy Armour Set!

Similarly to our other skins, these will be purchasable at your local Freeport.

It’ll be the first time we’ll have skinned a steering wheel, and it’s applied by accessing it’s inventory and equipping it in the skin slot. The skins will be able to be painted and we plan to have many more exotic wheel skins in the future.

New Offensive Structure: Torpedo Launcher (and torpedoes!)

Torpedo Launchers are a new Golden Age ruin item which allows crew and captains to fire torpedos at their targets. The launcher must be snapped to a Gunport location and can be used manually or via the Captain’s Firing mode. Shooting a torpedo at or above the water’s surface will make it follow that path on the surface, and angling it downwards will have it follow that trajectory, like a missile. We can assure you that we are aware of the ways in which Torpedo’s could be problematic in terms of the meta and we’ll be keeping a close eye on their balance.

New Boat Attachment: Cargo Racks!

A new storage option for medium and large boats. The cargo rack is snapped to dingy hangar locations and will significantly reduce the weight of any item inside of its inventory. The cargo rack can only be accessed when the boat has anchored, and if the boat is sunk, the cargo rack will turn into a special-flotsam which contains the inventory floating out at sea, providing the potential for it to be stolen by another pirate crew!

New Cart Attachment: Large Storage Box!

Cargo Carts now own up to their namesake and can carry additional cargo! Attach a large storage chest to a cargo cart will automatically reduce the weight of the items (this effect will be disabled on ships), to help players transport resources more easily on land.

New Tool: Fishing Net!

Pleasantly pass the time at sea on long journeys, as you cast your new fishing net to satisfy your hunger and deepen your pockets!

New Ballista Ammo Type: Boat Harpoon

Stop your fleeing enemies in their tracks and reel them in with the new Boat Ballista Harpoon! Load up your ballistic and fire the projectile, if it successfully attaches you and your target will be unable to move. Reel them in before they destroy the harpoon. You can only successfully harpoon same-or-smaller ship classes.

New Weapon: Spear Gun!

With a highly accurate piercing projectile, a rapid reload rate, and the ability to reuse ammo
the Spear Gun is the best choice for your underwater weaponry! 

New Creature: Olfend

This quirky looking creature narrowly avoided being burdened with the moniker: the Camelephant. The unique Olfend possesses some utilitarian attributes based around water. Water can be collected as you ride it across fertile land or by drinking from lakes and the considerate Olfend will store it, distribute it amongst water containers or...spit it in a friend’s eye. The delicately-legged creature also has the potential to be more heroic than it may appear by being put to use in extinguishing fires. 

New Creature: Giant Tortugar

We’re pretty fond of this creature and the aspects it can bring to player’s experience of the game. In some ways the Tortuga acts like an armoured personnel carrier and, in others, it is similar to an organic submarine. Nestle under its’ sectioned shell for protection or stay sheltered as it plunges into the depths and affords its passengers reduced oxygen consumption.
    
New Level: Ice Dungeon

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.  

Additional Mega-Patch Notes!

• New Weapon: Crossbow
• New Structure: 3x4 Medium Gates
• New Structure: Ice Box - a high-insulation box for transporting ice. Has “active” mode that will drain ice but reduce surrounding temperature (reverse fire). Consumes less ice if “indoors”. Extends spoil time of things inside, but greatly extends the storage time of ice. Also has an option to turn ice into water to consume.
• New Resource: Ice - Must be harvested from cold zones. Decays relatively quickly if not in “insulated” storage. Can be consumed to reduce temperature for a short duration (15s per ice cube, max of 5 mins). Relatively heavy.
• New Feature: Company-wide map markers
• New Feat: Instant Hotbar Equip
• QOL: Structure Weights now displayed on items
• QOL: Revamped Skill Tree UI
• QOL: Breeding Temperature Gate adjustments
• QOL: Faster Reload skills now also scale the corresponding equip time

With more notes still to come!

ISO: BLACKWOOD

Prepare for a dark twist on the Equatorial biome with ISO Blackwood. Dark jungles, caves, alcoves, villages, homes, and farms, an interesting array of animals and a new concept; The Mire. Wade through thick green waters teeming with dangerous creatures, rare plant life, and the occasional Gorgon to find buried treasure, lost corpses and even the giant and ancient snake boss Anacython.

In early June we expect to be able to release our special mod-map, Blackwood, created by Iso, the level designer behind ARK’s popular mod-map Crystal Isles. This is not something we’ll be supporting specifically on our Official Network, as it was designed and intended to be used for single servers an example of a stunning mod map that can be hosted unofficially. This specific map will be set up so that you can still enjoy all the mechanics that ATLAS has to offer, whilst hosting it as a standalone server with no additional database setup required!

      Latest Patch Notes 

CURRENT V103.0 
- Player Shops only cost upkeep on Non-Lawless PvE-style Homeservers. (Technically in Official PvP too, but only on the non-lawless homeservers that are effectively PvE regions)
- Servers can use this server config value to scale the player shop upkeep:

Game.ini:
[/script/shootergame.shootergamemode]
PlayerShopGoldUpkeepMultiplier=0.08

Default value is 0.08, for a 92% reduction from the previous rate.

- Player Shops are now limited to 70 slots
- You are now allowed to build more than one player shop per team on an official homeserver, now you can build as many as you want to pay the upkeep for.
- War Declaration cost has been reduced to 40k gold and 500 of each additional material, rather than 1000.
- Ability to respawn on your current server when you die on a lawless/freeport server that isn't set to be your home server.
- Water creatures will no longer lose their targets close to the water surface.

- Magic Mythos is now enabled on Official Servers: bonus 2x Harvest, XP, Taming, and Gold rates for the weekend.

v102.62

- Fixed a client-side crash

v102.61

- Optimizations for creature food consumption and structure tagging

v102.5

- Fixed some rare crashes.
- Stationed NPCs (on boats and land) no longer take damage from guns on Official Servers.
- Added a new Game.ini ShooterGameMode config bool: bSeatedNPCIgnoreGunDamage=1

v102.47

- You can now reveal unconscious targets contesting your own claimflag (pinwheel option activated on your claimflag)

v102.46

- Magic Mythos is now enabled on Official Servers: bonus 2x Harvest, XP, Taming, and Gold rates for the weekend.

Complete Patch Notes: 

      Show 'n tell #7 

We’re still collecting entries for the Show ‘n Tell! So you have a little longer to astound us with your creations, be they your fleets, building designs, imaginative tatts, entertaining videos, original fan art or scenic screenshots. Don’t be shy and head to the submission thread for a chance to win some booty in the form of a cash prize!

Alrighty, that’s it for this post. 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 on the horizon!

Happy Sailing,

Grapeshot Games

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

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