521.6 - Tameable Seahorses, Flame Ballista Bolt and Glider Changes, & more!

[ATLAS 244]

Ahoy Pathfinders!

There have been reported sightings of a strange and mysterious creature, often alluded to but frequently brushed off as nothing more than a sailor’s tale! It appears these majestic Seahorses have found their way to the seas of Atlas! From what we’ve observed, it appears these creatures are quite fond of Seaweed and Sea Grapes! Once a Pathfinder has gained its loyalty, the Seahorse may allow them to travel the waters on their back. With its natural poison, the Seahorse is a powerful ally. Just be sure to have an antidote ready in case of any mishaps! 

Not to be outdone by Seahorses and their poisons, Dolphins have learned how to harvest Coral and Seaweed for their masters! Do we sense a Dolphin vs Seahorse rivalry in the makings?

Various changes were made to the Glider to make it more fun and useful while trying to address some previous exploits. It will likely undergo more changes as we hear feedback and discover abuse cases.

Please see the full patch notes below for additional details and other exciting changes - including the Flame Ballista Bolt buff, new blueprints for farmhouse variants, resource and loot drop changes, among various bug fixes as well!

 

      Community Surveys 

We will be publishing a series of surveys on different topics in an effort to better gauge and quantify Community Feedback. Surveys may range from balancing, to design, to community/social initiatives, and more! Some surveys may be more geared towards specific audiences than others, but we will try to hit a variety of different topics and niches - so don't worry if your concerns are not addressed in the current survey. We understand how diverse our player base is and we want ATLAS to be accessible and fun for everyone! However, we are a small team, so we cannot roll everything out at once. 

While this first survey is focused on PVP Balance, please rest assured that we are working on many different things at the same time in the background. We aren't forgetting PVE, or Private Servers! A lot of things that you may not see being discussed are either already being worked on or already on our radar/to-do.

These surveys do NOT mean that we are only taking feedback in this way. We are continuing to take feedback from all sources. These surveys are only meant to help us pinpoint and gather further details from community data.

Please find the Survey here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeTCwgHFfxeOLpgTlRjeTRDUaOY5r7CbY7V_EOPDWVvi5RcJQ/viewform?usp=sf_link

Although we cannot promise to commit any specific change, we would want to be able to quantify which issues players care about most by using this survey to reach as broad an audience as possible.

We appreciate your support! Thank you!

 

      Released Patch Notes 

v521.6

New Creature: Seahorse
Found in the depths of the Trenches, Seahorses are a new creature that can be tamed and bred after unlocking the Underwater Taming skill in the Beastmastery tree.

• Favorite Foods: Seaweed and Sea Grapes
• Taming Style: Passive
• Saddle: None
• Primary Attack: Venomous Bite
  • Gives the target the Poisoned debuff which deals 20 damage over 15 seconds
  • The Poisoned debuff can be negated by using an Antidote
• Secondary Attack: Acid Spit
  • Fires an arcing projectile that deals extra damage to Submarines and increased durability damage to armor

New Medicine: Antidote
The Antidote can be crafted at the Mortar and Pestle after learning the Basic Medical Studies skill in the Medicine tree.

• Grants the user a buff that removes the effects of Seahorse poison and prevents them from being poisoned again for 20 seconds
• Crafting Resources: 5 Medicinal Herbs, 2 Organic Paste

New Tool: Crude Tool
Players now start with a simple recipe to make a tool they can use to collect wood. No more bloody fingers!

• About 1/4 as effective as a Hatchet
• Loses Durability very fast
• Crafting Resources: 1 Stone, 10 Fiber

Dolphin

• Dolphins can now harvest Coral and Seaweed
• Bug Fix: Water Temperature Fortitude bonuses from the skill tree are no longer removed when riding creatures underwater
• Bug Fix: Resolved issue where Dolphins would occasionally die when near the surface

Flame Ballista Bolt

• Deals increasing damage to Sails every 2 seconds
  • Example: 20/40/60/80 damage at 2/4/6/8 seconds
• Hitting a Sail with a second Flame Ballista Bolt adds 100 to the current amount of damage
  • Example: A Sail is hit with a second Bolt after it has already been on fire for 2 seconds. The amount of damage received by the Sail increases from 20 to 120
• Fires can be extinguished by closing the Sail, using an Olfend's water spray, or by dumping a Water Bucket on the Mast

Glider Suit
Various changes were made to the Glider to make it more fun and useful while trying to address some previous exploits. It will likely undergo more changes as we hear feedback and discover abuse cases.

• Restored the ability to control pitch so you can now glide up and down
• Increased the max height to activate from 100m to 400m
• Slowed the base glider speed down by around 40%
• Added a drag component to the speed updates
  • The faster you are going, the more drag will slow you down
  • Prevents maintaining high speed for a long time after a dive
• Reduced the minimum speed you can glide at before you stall to about 2m per second
• Changed the dive angle and required dive time
• Glider Known Issues:
  • You can still gain height but it's slow
  • You can still glide across half a server if you jump off a 400m spot
  • It's hard to tell when you are about to stall
  • Sometimes at super slow speed you inexplicably corkscrew
  • Pressing the 'Dive' button (Shift by default on PC) results in a weird sideways dive

Loot Drops

• Blueprints for Lumberyard, Quarry, and Mine now drop. They have two new stats on them: Capacity (how much weight and stacks they can hold) and Gather Rate
• Coffee and Coffee Seeds may be found in place of other food drops

Resources

• Fish Oil drops from some fish which previously did not drop it
• Stone Harvesting nodes in the Copper Region (Northwest) have been rebalanced and a set of changes are being tested
  • Iron is the most common metal now, and may be found in rocks in place of whatever metal may have been used before. Copper is the less common metal found primarily in this region
  • Geodes may now drop from rock. Using a Geode will destroy it and may give some limestone, rock salt, and/or a small amount of different gems and crystals. Geodes may only be gathered by hand or with Tames, not with the Quarry or Farmhouse
  • These changes will be moved to all regions after a period of testing

Ships

• Bug Fix: Third person view can no longer be obstructed by structures built near the ship's wheel
• Bug Fix: Ship levels 46-50 are no longer purchasable on ships with a level cap of 50
• Bug Fix: Cannons on the Ramming Galley now have wheels

Tames & Creatures

• Carried Rabbits now give a 20% speed boost while the player's stamina is at or above 90%
• Creatures' torpor bars are now displayed after receiving torpidity damage
• Seaweed can now be placed in the Trough

Misc

• The Seed Vendor's inventory now rotates every 12 hours
• Decay Times on Market, Warehouse, and Kiln have been set to the standard 10 days
• Fixed some instances where Markets get out of sync
• Bug Fix: Structures can now be built next to the sides of Armored Docks
  • NOTE: There is still an area near the entrance and exit where structures cannot be placed
• Bug Fix: Resolved issue where Markets, Farmhouses, and Warehouses become invisible in Single Player

      Final Note 

Again, we would like to emphasize that ATLAS is still in Early Access, meaning many things can and will likely continue to drastically change - even in the middle of development. Anything discussed is only up to date as of the moment it is posted. Features and changes that ultimately make it to the next patch, as well as timing, may be different from what was previously discussed. 

As always, we appreciate the suggestions and feedback from the community. Please keep them coming! Thank you for all of your support!

 

Happy Sailing,

- ATLAS Crew

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

Natter n' chatter on Discord: https://discord.gg/playatlas
Hear ye, hear ye on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sailtheatlas
Watch us scallywags on Twitch: http://twitch.tv/sailtheatlas
Plus ye can band with us Pirates on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/playatlasgame

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[DiseasedLeopard 94]

It would be nice if tickets were actually answered and not automatically marked as "solved".

[Vlad Bad 5]

[big kitten 2]

normally I would f and blind at things but to be  honest a lot of the work the devs and CM are doing is pretty interesting

  so only thing i really got to comment on it thank you for the work

[Aquagoth 38]

Ty for your work, lads. Ty for taking this game seriously again.

Most of us don't mind if you make mistakes here and there. Just as long as you are continually moving upwards like a stock's line graph chart.

[warrl0rd 0]

Looks like unofficial servers are no longer visible on Xbox again. Oh Joy........

[George Catcher 367]

Hey Grapes guys. Could you please tell us at least approximate time of next wipe? I mean at least tell us will it be next month, at the end of winter, upcoming spring??? Because there were alot of talks about new claiming system, thats gonna be here soon™, and everyone think it's go live with wipe.

The problem here is I can't force myself to play, knowing that soon™ we're all gonna start over. So I could test everything up, but I enter the game, just to gather food, relaunch my windmill, ang then logout. I just can't help it!

Edited January 28, 2021 by George Catcher

[[email protected] 1]

Fix the loading issue please I am so upset I saw the major update and thought i would be able to play the game again.. But nope they did not FIX THE FACT AMD 6900 XT GRAPHICS CARD WILL NOT LOAD IT GETS STUCK ON LOAD SCREEN EVERY TIME WTF??I paid 29.99 for the game and cant play but you add sea horse in the game your team needs help hire someone who cares about gamers please! 

[Robroy Danzing 2]

I keep getting kicked out of the game...

I load in move and then kicked??

[Chucksteak 279]

I still fail to see how a glider that glided was an exploit because it glided. Would still like to see the glider put back to original.

[Baktus 0]

WHY? That is horrible with Gliders....

Our Island is bombed by barrels. About 8 Players with Gliders and Barrels circle around our island.
See the Range they comming from. WHY? Is this what u want with this change?????????
But yes its a way to bring the players  and ships on the sea before the ships are destroyed by barrel in the port

Edited January 28, 2021 by Baktus

[Chucksteak 279]

@Baktus SO, when I was able to drive by with my ship and shoot barrels out of a cannon, we all agreed that barrels were clearly OP AF. We all did the right thing and complained about barrels being OP until they were removed form cannons. I do not recall anyone saying that the ships were broken and should not sail quite so well.

Now you're mad because some people used a glider to deploy barrels on you. Yet this time you say it is the gliders that should be nerfed not the barrels.

You are disregarding that barrel bombing is not easy and takes skills and resources. We should promote things that are skills based, not remove them. 

You are disregarding that the glider was working as intended, it was GLIDING! It is only the barrel you seem to not like. I can agree with the barrel needing a nerf, but not with your reasoning for nerfing a glider for gliding.

[Baktus 0]

@Chucksteak of course. For my Opinion there should be only 2 ways to use Barrels carry by hand and use with Catapult but both on land. Catapult with Barrel on sea is not much different to the Issue with Cannons and Barrels. I dont like it, oftentimes u dont have nice seafights, there comes a fast Barrel Schooner with Catapult and the fight is over. But in principle it is not as absurd as with cannons.
The Gliding with Barrels before the Glider nerf was ok for me and u needed a good timing u knew where a gliding attack can happen. Now u have to count with it anytime. In addition, you can theoretically take off from the ground and fly anywhere and stay in the air forever. A little crazy

[Pant 98]

Third time you change balistas, the balista is probably the second most patched weapon in this game at this point next to the barrels. I don't understand why its receiving any attention at all. I feel like you are only changing it to give the squirt camel some purpose, which just brings me back to WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU SPENDING TIME DEVELOPING SHIT LIKE THIS? Dolphins? Sea Horses? You are like Melania Trump rebuilding a tennis court while the country is on fire.

I would like to know why you felt headshots needed to be nerfed aswell. Ranged weapons are by far some of the weakest weapons in the game, you can afk tank a carbine for a minute straight come back, use a medkit and live. In contrast a Mace can knock you out in ONE SWING! A swivel can kill you in ONE SHOT! Crabs, lions and tigers kills you in seconds.... But somehow 1 minute TTK on a carbine thats to low.

It would take so little effort to alter stats on melee weapons and get some data on pvp... Fuck how about removing shield the stun attack for a week and see what pvp is like? Its been two years and we've been stuck in the same bullshit braindead shieldstun meta.

[CyanicEmber 40]

On 1/28/2021 at 1:52 PM, Baktus said:

@Chucksteak of course. For my Opinion there should be only 2 ways to use Barrels carry by hand and use with Catapult but both on land. Catapult with Barrel on sea is not much different to the Issue with Cannons and Barrels. I dont like it, oftentimes u dont have nice seafights, there comes a fast Barrel Schooner with Catapult and the fight is over. But in principle it is not as absurd as with cannons.
The Gliding with Barrels before the Glider nerf was ok for me and u needed a good timing u knew where a gliding attack can happen. Now u have to count with it anytime. In addition, you can theoretically take off from the ground and fly anywhere and stay in the air forever. A little crazy

Just give barrels a chance to misfire when used with catapults. That way even if people put them on ships it’s not necessarily a sure fire way to deal a decisive blow and could backfire in a big way.

[CyanicEmber 40]

2 minutes ago, Pant said:

Third time you change balistas, the balista is probably the second most patched weapon in this game at this point next to the barrels. I don't understand why its receiving any attention at all. I feel like you are only changing it to give the squirt camel some purpose, which just brings me back to WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU SPENDING TIME DEVELOPING SHIT LIKE THIS? Dolphins? Sea Horses? You are like Melania Trump rebuilding a tennis court while the country is on fire.

I would like to know why you felt headshots needed to be nerfed aswell. Ranged weapons are by far some of the weakest weapons in the game, you can afk tank a carbine for a minute straight come back, use a medkit and live. In contrast a Mace can knock you out in ONE SWING! A swivel can kill you in ONE SHOT! Crabs, lions and tigers kills you in seconds.... But somehow 1 minute TTK on a carbine thats to low.

It would take so little effort to alter stats on melee weapons and get some data on pvp... Fuck how about removing shield the stun attack for a week and see what pvp is like? Its been two years and we've been stuck in the same bullshit braindead shieldstun meta.

I am delighted with Dolphins and Sea Horses because I don’t play this game to go “brr brr player dead I big manly man.”

 

This game has a diverse audience and not all of them are invested in PvP. If I want really good PvP with primitive firearms and deep tactics I play Hunt: Showdown.

[Kavarimy 0]

 

Please, Kind and Insightful Developers! Remove the ability to fly gliders with a barrel in hand. By all laws, this would be logical, because you cannot control the glider if you have a large and heavy barrel in your hands. Now the game is returning to what it was in the second season. 8 hours of daily flight with barrels to the enemy base. With trade, making a million barrels is no problem. Even the ability to shoot cannon barrels was not as destructive to the game as the combination of a glider with controlled height and barrels in hand.

[Pant 98]

34 minutes ago, CyanicEmber said:

I am delighted with Dolphins and Sea Horses because I don’t play this game to go “brr brr player dead I big manly man.”

 

This game has a diverse audience and not all of them are invested in PvP. If I want really good PvP with primitive firearms and deep tactics I play Hunt: Showdown.

The 2/3rds of the player base that play on the pvp servers should go play Hunt: Showdown? Because you want sea horses? Yea thanks for clearing that up.

Edited January 30, 2021 by Pant

[CyanicEmber 40]

On 1/30/2021 at 11:59 AM, Pant said:

The 2/3rds of the player base that play on the pvp servers should go play Hunt: Showdown? Because you want sea horses? Yea thanks for clearing that up.

No, all I am saying is that you should let Atlas be Atlas, and if you want a game focused solely around PvP, go play one.

[Pant 98]

1 hour ago, CyanicEmber said:

No, all I am saying is that you should let Atlas be Atlas, and if you want a game focused solely around PvP, go play one.

What are you saying? Let Atlas be Atlas? Sounds like you are saying I am not allowed to give feedback.

Asking the devs to revert the headshot change and do something about shield stun is a farcry from asking them to focus solely on PvP.

Preaching about diverse audiences in one post and telling an audience to play a different game in the next is a bit contradicting don't you think?

Edited January 31, 2021 by Pant

[CyanicEmber 40]

30 minutes ago, Pant said:

What are you saying? Let Atlas be Atlas? Sounds like you are saying I am not allowed to give feedback.

Asking the devs to revert the headshot change and do something about shield stun is a farcry from asking them to focus solely on PvP.

Preaching about diverse audiences in one post and telling an audience to play a different game in the next is a bit contradicting don't you think?

Actually I don't take issue with anything you said except where you dissed the Dolphins and Sea Horses and said they were a waste of time and effort.

[Ranger1k 183]

   Pirate-definition: one who engages in acts of robbery on the high seas (Merriam Webster Dictionary)

 

How about we focus on that..

 

This is advertised in the xbox store as the "ultimate pirate experience.."

 

Enough with the 20+ tames, hats on cats, blueprints, grinding, breeding, farming, farmhouses, warehouses, markets, bosses, gigantic bases, lighthouses, shops, holiday decorations, "exciting new features" ..... AND JUST GET PEOPLE OUT ON THE SEAS FIGHTING AND PLUNDERING. PERIOD.

Thats it. Thats the point of this game. Get back to basics instead of layering all this bullshit into a giant shit sandwich. Focus on the core experience instead of making things so complicated.

Its a pirate game. Let me be a PIRATE then, then, THEN after that let me CHOOSE to fart around with all the anncillary content.

 

Edited February 3, 2021 by Ranger1k

[Chucksteak 279]

https://www.seaofthieves.com/news/awards-nominations

https://steamcharts.com/app/1172620

https://steamcharts.com/app/834910

There is something to be said about knowing what you are and doing it well. 

SoT has some 50k users in last 30 days. Atlas has 5k. 

Obviously, SoT is a few years old, and Atlas hasn't even launched yet.

But if we think about it, 40-50k is about how many copies Atlas sold in its first month. 

One could draw a correlation between those numbers, and say that there might only be about 50k-100k people who play this particular genre.

I purpose most of them tried Atlas and landed in/back in SoT.

Edited February 3, 2021 by Chucksteak

[Ranger1k 183]

@Chucksteak to concur..

Excerpt from The Art of Worldly Wisdom, maxim 86...

""....It is very easy to acquire a bad reputation, for badness is easily believed and hard to erase. Let the prudent person avoid all of this.... An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure"

I've officially soured

Edited February 3, 2021 by Ranger1k

[Chucksteak 279]

@Ranger1k 

I've read too many of your post to believe you. You are an optimist.