Ringo O'Rourke

In a two man company, we're both roughly level 41, have a base, schooner-level ships, personal combat skills, have tames, farm plots, and routes for necessary mats etc. However, we have reached a plateau where beyond that there is basically nothing to do. We don't have the points to immediately spec into artillery. Probably 4-5 levels until we can outfit a battle schooner and confidently take on SoTD. Ditto for outfitting ballistas to hunt whales. So all we have to do really is boring level-up stuff until we can get there. In addition, we were punched in the nuts with the old age debuff. Yep, penalize your earliest and most committed players. There's something they should teach at Harvard Business School. We could lag wizard the FOY, but that's cheese, though effective. And when it does return to normal, the FOY and other endgame dungeons and encounters are not made for two people. So essentially we just log into do chores now. All MMO's have their chores, but that doldrum in the middle levels is pretty unique to ATLAS. There is nothing satisfying to do in addition to the chores.

No if it means you get a permanent debuff unless you do endgame content. (Has any MMO ever used a stick to make you do endgame? it's usually a carrot). No if it means that players who do the endgame content can accumulate super-man buffs. Yes if no buffs or debuffs are involved, just a lineage system that passes on your line.

I agree. We depend on the Equilibrium buff to thrive on the Tundra. The last thing we need is an old debuff we could not prepare for. Living on the Tundra is all about thinking ahead and preparation. If birth had been implemented, and we knew this old age debuff was coming, we would have raised a brood to pass on the line. But now we were are debuffed without warning, probably until birth actually is implemented, since we have no interest in the end game zones. How long until birth is implemented, a month or more?

This just seems too ridiculous to be true. For example, someone could completely build a wall around your house in fifteen minutes to grief you. But maybe they really don't want people to build on lawless.

Lame. Birth should have been introduced first to give those uninterested in end game Golden Age Ruin content a chance to avoid the age debuff. Not everyone wants to spend their time training up to do the end game zones.

It will be good for small companies and soloers for sure. They'll be able to specialize in certain skill trees, and buy the rest they need. It will also super-crafters to sell top gear to small companies and soloers too.

What does balancing vitamins actually do for NPC crew though? They don't appear to suffer from vitamin deficiency. So why not just feed them berries?

Great post. I think you've put your finger on a contradiction in the game: for a sailing pirate game, there is way too much emphasis on generic land-based base building. It really was wholesale ported from a game with a different setting. I think a lot of the land necessity problems could be solved if there were completely neutral zones or islands where people could not build bases, but could claim public farming plots and kennels as you describe. Granted, these are getting into more "traditional" MMO territory, and might change the flavour of the game (perhaps for the worst), but something has to be done. Another solution is to implement player vendor NPC's or an auction house. If all needed farm materials could be bought without much trouble at a central hub, then people wouldn't have to farm themselves. This is probably the best solutions, and would solve a lot of other problems with the game. Since there is no player vendors or auction houses, it is difficult to specialize unless you are in a big company. This is why Grapeshot had to up skill points/level to allow small companies/solo players access to more skills. With robust trade, everyone could specialize.

I attacked a turtle that later turned out to be a level 241 alpha with my bow and regular arrows. Thank goodness they only walk at a crawl on land. There was no glow at all on it. Look like a regular turtle at all distances, and in the water.

If it's going to rain on the Tundra when it's 18 below zero Celsius, and not snow, then we need waterproofing for armor. With increased fortitude and fur armor you can survive most conditions on the tundra and get what you need done. However, when it rains, your survivability drops through the floor very intensely and immediately. That window of time can be lethal. Don't get me wrong, we built on the Tundra because we enjoy the extra challenge, and building things up from nothing. With planning and foresight you can thrive. The only plan that really works for rainstorms on the Tundra though is go inside (if the starting temperature is cold enough). Having to go inside is fine when you are starting out on the Tundra, but not when you are established. Obviously the best solution is rain turns to snow below zero Celsius. And fur amor gives protection against snow (perhaps other types are weaker). But if snow is not going to implemented, then at least give us a craftable that waterproofs armor, or give fur armor a waterproof rating of some kind.

The server provider Nitrado, which I believe is the official ATLAS host, is a German company. They do have US server farms though.

I actually enjoy the vit/food/water part, including getting vitamins in equilibrium. I live on the Tundra, so monitoring my food is part what you need to live for the buff. I really enjoy hunting underwater with the bow, and vit/food etc. gives you a reason to do it. I find it more enjoyable than building bases for example. Though I like building infrastructure like ladders and stairs to inaccessible places. I also find it gives you one more thing to plan for too when going on long voyages, and adds some realism, as scurvy etc. were real plagues. Amazon is nerfing food in New World, so let's have at least one Survival MMO that keeps it as a necessity.

Yeah, you could get them sent to the gulag!

We saw a rope ladder sticking out of the water near the border last night. We stopped to investigate, as we thought it might be a shipwreck, but when someone went in the water there was nothing there. Definitely a head-scratcher.

I sailed my sloop through a storm, and was hit by at least two twisters inside it. When I got through, I had 700 damage to each plank. So that could have been what happened. And not sure why people are saying cyclones inflict negligible damage. They do I suppose if you avoid the spouts inside them. (It used to be possible to go through the spouts without your ship taking damage, but that changed in one of the patches late last week).

The more I think about it, the more I don't understand why gold is in the game, at least to pay for NPC crews. (I can sort of see it as premium currency for cosmetics). Literally the only thing it does that directly impacts game play is pay crew salaries. So the question is why are ship crews gated behind a special currency? I know there's the elite argument. Getting a crew should be hard! But surely the devs don't think this way any more. They lowered ship prices, and added starting ships, to, in their words "get people sailing faster". Why are crew members still gated in the same way then? Gold currency would be feasible if there were more ways to get it. As it stands now there are only two: 1) tedious methods, or 2) combat. The tedious methods are digging in the ground, or hunting flotsam. Both mind-numbingly boring. And as for combat, I know you can just burn down the Army of the Damned, with fire arrows, or mount cannons on the your schooner+ to fight Ships of the Damned. But surely the purely trading ship should be able to pay for its crew without fighting, or without tedious methods. (I realize farming land-based mats can be tedious, but its got nothing on hunting flotsam in an empty ocean). If ATLAS had robust trading features, like player vendors, or an auction house, then gold would work. Players who like the tedious flotsam farming, or fighting AoTD or SoTD could farm gold and put it up for others to buy. However, it doesn't, and for all we know never will. In the absence of robust trade features then, NPC crews should be available for barter, just like the rest of the ATLAS economy works (this is how players trade now, and how you pay for noob ships in Freeports). The first NPC crew could cost a set amount of regular and possibly rare mats. And each crew member hired after that could cost more, making vast crews only doable for big companies. But it would still allow small companies to hire their 2 or 3 crew members with commensurate effort. If you got wiped out, you can spend your chunk of time farming mats for replacement crews, just like you do for ships, and get back to sailing. Thoughts?

I had a similar bug, that I first noticed using my pistols. As I looked into it though, I found it affected a few other things:

This is a strange bug, and only showed up late this evening after a Battle Eye install. Earlier this morning and afternoon, everything was working fine. I can only use my gathering tools (pick, hatchet, sickle) for left-click activity. I can gather normally with them. I can also go prone and crouch while having them active. However, if I switch to a weapon (melee or pistols) I cannot attack anything, either left or right click (in case of dual pistols). Can't even target them: no target assist comes up. Also, I cannot go prone or crouch while I have a weapon active. I equip only fists, I can attack with left and right click. However I cannot go prone with fists active, either in combat mode or out of combat mode. I can only go prone or crouch if I have a gathering tool equipped. On further testing, I can attack with a bow, and also crouch and go prone with a bow, unlike other weapons. I've tried reboots etc. etc., but nothing has worked.

Instead of disabling lawless, they should just add new grids where you can't build at all, not even boatyards. The islands would be strictly for visiting, and harvesting mats etc. You can add special mob encounters, lots of cool stuff etc. Some could be neutral areas for social or trade hubs. Just lots of possibilities.

Here are some screens of how the ladders look, and some other examples: https://imgur.com/a/gXJRnFj

My sloop got caught in one Thursday night that did damage to my planks. I think I got caught in the middle of one, if not two of the tubes. When I checked my planks later I had 700 damage to each one (fully repaired when I left port). About a week before I got caught in storm and went through several tubes. At that time, my ship took no damage. I did die a lot though because I was unprepared with cold weather gear.

Keep the tundra hard. It means that neighbours actually have to cooperate instead of playing selfishly. Which makes a better community.

That's an almost vertical cliff, so in my experience (some Ark, and experimenting in ATLAS) is you want to stack pillars upward as your scaffold, not walls. With the pillars you can cap them with ceilings every so often which gives you snaps to hang ladders from. Then you stack the next set of pillars on top of that ceiling. Since the climb is so high I would suggest putting 2 ceilings at each interval. One to cap the pillar, and a second ceiling attached to it to use to hang your ladder from. (You can make it a ceiling-door and hang it from the edge of the door). This is because you may need a platform every so often to place more pillars or maneuver. Make sure you plant your first pillar far enough outward that there is always room to put down the ceiling. And climbing picks are pretty useful when building up a cliff face. You can actually place structures when hanging from the side of a cliff with picks.

Adding locking to crafting stations, campfires etc. so quickly in this patch was a huge vote of confidence for us in the dev team. Gave us confidence in the future of the game. Resource respawn reverse confirmed this.

The solution to this is about the only thing the new neutral flag system is good for. If there is someone who you want to give land, they are actually your friend (i.e. you trust them) then you can designate one of your flags neutral and allow him to build on it. It's still your flag, so you don't risk loosing the territory.