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Ahoy Pathfinders! We hope you've been enjoying your sails on the Tradewinds and the other new changes we've brought into the game. In this post, we were able to take some time with the Dev team and have a few questions answered regarding the future plans of Atlas and what the rest of the year may hold. Again, we are in Early Access and the changes mentioned in the responses are subject to change. Although this may all just be speculation, we wanted to provide some transparency into the upcoming aspirations of the team. Once again, we'd like to thank you for your support and patience. On the Horizon: Dev Insights Regarding the Tradewinds patch, what were your goals and expectations for the strategic impact of the Tradewinds and new map layout? The Tradewinds in the latest update to go hand in hand with the recent map changes to help create more interesting strategic choices for players and companies. The new map layout is intended to provide spaces that are desirable to all different player types. New players are given better opportunities outside of the Freeport areas which allows for a more even spread of action. Islands with valuable resources are spread across the map to make sure no one area is perfectly suited to all needs. Islands with more valuable resources are in the North of the map, driving higher level players to that general area. The Tradewinds provide for faster sailing times across large areas of the map. Players interested in exploration, trade, or raiding will be able to find ways to use the Tradewinds to their advantage. This will also push player conflict towards these shipping lanes and the islands near them, adding more opportunities for pitched battles over valuable resources. What is the plan for PvP combat and balancing? Is there a philosophy that dictates what gets buffed, nerfed or removed? We feel that PVP conflict should consist of interesting challenges and opportunities for both sea and land combat. We want to drive the focus first towards fleet battles and provide ways to effectively defend your holdings with the ships you customize and build. The ships you build will be able to blockade your island, with your opponents first having to deal with those defenses before they can safely make landfall. Your fleet will also be your main weapon of attack – both to defeat your enemies blockade and to soften their land defenses. In general our PVP philosophy focus is on counterplay – to provide options that are deadly and effective but can be countered with the proper tactic. We want to see powerful options that players can use to attack their enemies, and equally powerful options the defender can access to counter them and fight back. Ideally this allows for and encourages players to have different tactics available to them instead of always relying on one mainstay ability that works best in every situation. What more are we going to see in the upcoming patches? Are we done with map/macro enhancements in favor of micro adjustments and additions? Is there new content that we can look forward to? Updates are on the horizon for the game map, such as separating the map into regions with different geographical theming. Piracy happens all over the world in Atlas, and players will be able to experience this more when they travel from an area of arid desert isles to a region of the world with tropical islands and crystal blue waters. There is a system in design to allow for the capture and control of strategic resource points placed in the world. These will unlock many capabilities for the companies who control them, such as structures which provide server-wide buffs you can share with all of your allies. Some of these structures will require monumental levels of materials and time. This all leads towards a long term goal of having large projects with huge collaborative efforts that companies compete over. In the upcoming patches there will also be many new ship options. Players will be able to customize more of their ship, starting with the midship portion of their modular ships – adding options such as gun ports, rowing banks, armor and more to the broadside sections of your vessel. In future updates there will be more options for other components of the ship, such as new sail types and front and rear castle varieties. There will be additional pre-built ships coming to the game, as well as a larger modular hull class that players can build. Players will have the ability to craft fleets that consist of vessels with different roles in combat and utility. When two enemy fleets clash there should be a variety of ships and tactics at play, each one effective unless properly countered. In the next major update we will see two new ship types – the Mortar Ship and the Turtle Ship. The Mortar Ship will add a long range artillery option to ship combat, while the Turtle Ship is armored up to break through blockades. You will be able to construct and customize these new classes of modular ships as well as the existing types in the shipyard. New BPs will drop in the world to allow the crafting of the railings, midship tiles, and ship types being added. We want Atlas to become known for large, collaborative fleet battles that require the coordination of multiple players and companies. 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 View full article

From the 6/2 Dev Blog: What is the plan for PvP combat and balancing? Is there a philosophy that dictates what gets buffed, nerfed or removed? We feel that PVP conflict should consist of interesting challenges and opportunities for both sea and land combat. We want to drive the focus first towards fleet battles and provide ways to effectively defend your holdings with the ships you customize and build. The ships you build will be able to blockade your island, with your opponents first having to deal with those defenses before they can safely make landfall. Your fleet will also be your main weapon of attack – both to defeat your enemies blockade and to soften their land defenses. That's not how land-based PvP happens. Ever. Island attacks rarely if ever involve actual ship vs.ship battles. The standard procedure is to land as many players and tames as possible, build a FoB and kill/blow up everything. Typically, the landing ships retreat afterwards if there's any real chance of a naval counter-attack. Any organized attack will make landfall LONG before there can be any meaningful naval response. In fact, quickly destroying ships at anchor with tames is a favorite tactic. Add to that the fact the gold cost of ships, and no smart defender will ever un-anchor a green-anchored ship in an armored shipyard during an attack unless the defending side is guaranteed to win. The stated vision of PvP in this blog is pure fantasy. In general our PVP philosophy focus is on counterplay – to provide options that are deadly and effective but can be countered with the proper tactic. We want to see powerful options that players can use to attack their enemies, and equally powerful options the defender can access to counter them and fight back. Ideally this allows for and encourages players to have different tactics available to them instead of always relying on one mainstay ability that works best in every situation. Attackers will always have the initial advantage in any island attack for no other reason than because they're prepared and have a plan, while the defenders have to scramble. And I'm curious, what "powerful defenses" are available for defenders when tame-towed guns will always out-range NPC defenses? ...Or manned defenses for that matter, since a tame-mounted cannon can be angled on a rock or hill to fire higher and further than a mortar placed at the same level? Bottom line: the only advantage possible for a defender is to 'be-more' or 'be-better'. What more are we going to see in the upcoming patches? Are we done with map/macro enhancements in favor of micro adjustments and additions? Is there new content that we can look forward to? Updates are on the horizon for the game map, such as separating the map into regions with different geographical theming. Piracy happens all over the world in Atlas, and players will be able to experience this more when they travel from an area of arid desert isles to a region of the world with tropical islands and crystal blue waters. There is a system in design to allow for the capture and control of strategic resource points placed in the world. These will unlock many capabilities for the companies who control them, such as structures which provide server-wide buffs you can share with all of your allies. Some of these structures will require monumental levels of materials and time. This all leads towards a long term goal of having large projects with huge collaborative efforts that companies compete over. In the upcoming patches there will also be many new ship options. Players will be able to customize more of their ship, starting with the midship portion of their modular ships – adding options such as gun ports, rowing banks, armor and more to the broadside sections of your vessel. In future updates there will be more options for other components of the ship, such as new sail types and front and rear castle varieties. There will be additional pre-built ships coming to the game, as well as a larger modular hull class that players can build. Players will have the ability to craft fleets that consist of vessels with different roles in combat and utility. When two enemy fleets clash there should be a variety of ships and tactics at play, each one effective unless properly countered. In the next major update we will see two new ship types – the Mortar Ship and the Turtle Ship. The Mortar Ship will add a long range artillery option to ship combat, while the Turtle Ship is armored up to break through blockades. You will be able to construct and customize these new classes of modular ships as well as the existing types in the shipyard. New BPs will drop in the world to allow the crafting of the railings, midship tiles, and ship types being added. We want Atlas to become known for large, collaborative fleet battles that require the coordination of multiple players and companies. Mortar Ships. I'm not even sure how to respond to that. I think that we can safely assume they'll out-range NPC-manned harbor towers, so yeah. Honestly, it's not any one "vision" for the game; it's a cumulative thing, ever-repeating evidence that Grapeshot fundamentally doesn't understand its own game.

This post is more of a brain-dump about the new lawless claim tower system than a commentary. It's not comprehensive by any means, but hopefully it might be useful for anyone with questions about it. We're a small company of ten folks this season, so we decided to forego the whole island claim race and give the new lawless claim thing a go. So far, we generally like it as it seems ideal for small groups or even a solo, since a claim tower locks down a good chunk of land for yourself without the need to spam claim blocks. Now onto the stuff: You cannot place claim towers on lawless islands adjacent to freeports or on "quest" islands - like the polar islands where you do the yeti achievement. There might be more islands that are blocked, but we haven't found any. Claim towers have no "combat timer" or permission functionality at all, and they will not protect you or your buildings/tames from attack. Basically, they just give you a ring of building blocking and immunity from the lawless decay timer. Attackers can happily skip past your ring of claim towers and burn down your thatch shack 24/7, so plan accordingly. Only the claim owner can build within the claim tower circle; enemies and allies alike cannot. Player and company owned claim towers become owned by the inviting company when joining or merging. Claim towers are fairly cheap (no alloy for land claim towers), and one person can probably gather enough mats for one in a few minutes. Water claim towers are pricier since they require alloy. If you played in the first season, the claim mechanic will be familiar (since it's basically the old flag-claim, but with towers). Each company, even if you're a company of one, begins with 200 points to spend when claiming. Your first tower will cost (4?), and then scale up as you add more. Tower claims do not need to be adjacent (or even on the same island), and they cover a reasonably large area (this isn't us, btw): There's a one-hour(ish?) delay after you place a tower before the land is officially claimed, which you can see as a flashing green circle on the map. When first placed, the tower will have very low hitpoints, and will repair itself over the next hour to a maximum of 400k hitpoints. Note: On hover, there's an option to feed the tower 200g. We have no idea what this is for - maybe it instantly repairs it to full? Dunno. You don't need gold to place one, and we're not in the habit of giving gold to random buildings without knowing why. You can place multiple claim towers at the same time, and their circles can overlap. In the case of overlap, the first tower placed takes precedence: I.e., the first tower placed controls a full circle, the second overlapping one controls its circle minus the 'bite' taken from the first claim. This is relevant when placing towers next to enemy claims: you can place a tower directly next to (but not within) an enemy claim, and your claim will not capture any land controlled by the enemy tower until it's destroyed, Enemy claimed areas can only be captured when the enemy claim tower is destroyed. At 400k hitpoints, common cannons will need just over 300 cannonballs to destroy it. Water claim towers can only be placed adjacent to your own land claim towers (I'm guessing that this is to prevent monkeys from claiming chunks of open sea, as often happened in season one). Land claim towers follow the local build height limit (not the bed/cannon height limit), so you can definitely land claim mountaintops around you (and you should). Your buildings within a claim ring will not be subject to the fast lawless building decay rate. You might see a 'decay quickly' when you first place a tower - ignore it, it's a dirty lie. If you read nothing else in this list, read this... it's really, really important: buildings within a claim tower radius are owned by whoever owns the claim tower. Which means, if the claim tower in which your base resides is destroyed, and an attacker places their own claim tower in its place, the attacker now owns everything within the ring of their claim tower: every building piece, door, chest etc.. now belongs to them (i.e., their company's name appears on hover instead of yours), potentially without a shot being fired - other than those at your now-destroyed claim tower. It is possible to build around a claim tower and completely enclose it within layers of blocks and/or honeycombed walls (see above bullet point). If you have a primary base, it's probably a smart idea to build your base around a claim flag. That's all I can think of at the moment, but I'll add more if anything comes to mind. Feel free to add anything if you have additional insight or have specific questions.

Ahoy Pathfinders! Today we finally get to answer some of your questions once again. With the recent patch/wipe and contests announced, we didn’t want your answers to get lost in the wake. Now that the waters have calmed, we’re back to provide you answers. Please check out the contest here to submit your videos and have the opportunity to win up to a $25 Amazon gift card. As a reminder, the answers below only reflect the current timeframe and are subject to change. While we can provide current insight on the game and what we hope to do, what is destined we can’t foresee. We appreciate your support and understanding. So ‘til next time, may your skies be clear, waters calm, and sails full in whichever way you roam. Without further ado, here’s our Q&A! Hang out at our Discord for a chance to get your questions answered in the next Q&A! Q&A Any plans to address shield stun duration or overhead mace torpor damage to make melee combat more entertaining and challenging, rather than stun-lock-and-torpor combat? Damage during land combat is something we are only loosely balancing right now as we continue to work through Early Access. We will be revisiting it closer to the 1.0 release. With barrel bombs (even shot from catapults) still dictating the "meta game," is there a plan to remove them from ship combat totally? We are working on new ways for players to counter dominant strategies in ship combat. We recognize that ship combat is not in a good place right now and are focused on the long term health of the game. Look out for new defensive modules when we expand the module crafting system in the next major patch. Are there any plans to limit structures per island, reducing the lag associated with the spam we have currently? We are coming at this from a couple different angles. * Some memory management improvements are in testing that will allow clients to load and unload structures faster. * Some new structure types that are larger are in the works so players don't have to build massive structures out of many small pieces. * We are working through some ideas with claiming to help undercut the motivations for placing lots of small structures for meta reasons such as making landing tames hard or preventing others from building nearby. Do you plan to limit the number of armored docks a company or island can have being used at any given time? Not directly. Armored Docks require gold to operate. As we develop the economy, we are looking for more ways to sink gold and keep it scarce so that placing an Armored Dock costs you the opportunity to do something else important with that gold. Are there any inbound flag claim (Height, Radius, etc) or Island changes (i.e.- Lawless Areas On Island Outside of Claim Radius)? We definitely had some significant changes to this in the last major patch! We'd like to see how the meta adjusts before we commit to other changes. We are also spending effort making these configurations more customizable and exposing that to unofficial server owners so you can try out what combinations of ruleset you think are most interesting. Long term we would like to make fighting over valuable locations in the game take a concerted, multi-day effort. We'll talk more about that as features related to it are closer to being rolled out. Are there any plans to add upgradeable end-game gear as a needed gold sink. Any chance on this being added back with the new BP crafting system you have hinted at? We would love to make the crafting system more customizable and interesting. We have to balance this with other goals we have for the game. This particular area is not one of our primary focuses and so it's coming along in the free time, after hours, and weekends between other higher priority work. Is there any way you guys will add a hull bigger than a brig with 4 large sails. But smaller than a galley? Our plans for updating the modular ship system are full speed ahead and this is on the horizon. Our next major patch is planned to be focused on getting our core customization options out for ships. Immediately following that we will be working on making modular ships craftable in the Shipyard and introducing a dozen or more ship sizes. One of the great benefits of this new ship system is that we can make an entirely new ship completely out of existing parts and we are only a couple months away from unleashing that power! Can we get an upgrade that increases the level (and rewards) of SotDs, allowing SotDs to be relevant in more than 8 out of 121 tiles in the game? Check out the latest patch! Ships of the Damned are much more prevalent and have a much wider variety of difficulty on the map now! Will the wipe affect the Unofficial Servers? There are new features that unofficial servers may want to take advantage of. Our goal is to not require unofficials to wipe to support our changes, when possible. Early Access means that some changes in the future may be so transformative that this is unavoidable. When will crew resource silos hold other food besides berries? Thanks for the suggestion. This seems like an easy fix that will improve quality of life a little. We always try to fit these sorts of things in along side our larger features. What does Atlas' long-term monetization strategy look like? Do you think it will be an Ark-like direction where you release multiple expansions? Subscription model? Mtx? Right now we are focused on improving the game and making it something you want to bring your friends into play. Of those options, the most likely is expansions. There's not any interest with the team right now to do subscriptions or microtransactions. What are some strategies you're working on for long-term player retention? Improving the game. Seriously. We are trying to build a game where you want to gather a bunch of friends and try to carve out your place in the world and compete against other companies. That's the sort of game you can play with people for years and still have fresh experiences. What are your thoughts on Armored Docks now that they have been in game for a while? They have added some really cool elements to the game but I also believe they have been abused by larger companies. Armored Docks still are not where we want them to be. As the meta changes, their role within it will also change. Right now we want to focus on fixing any abuses or exploits using the Armored Docks. After we get some other changes in we'll revisit Armored Docks as a whole and see if they are fitting the way we want them to into the meta. Is the current trade system completed in the devs opinion? Seems to not quite be everything it was advertised to become. It's not at all complete. We got it roughed in and then moved onto roughing in some other things. We'll be coming back to working on it when we get some of our other large systems in order. Any plans to improve how torpor works in general? Maybe make torpor do something like mess with the camera like the drunk debuff, torpor wouldn’t be such an instantaneous end to fights. This is one of the approaches we have discussed for addressing the current land combat meta if we spent time on it. Land Combat is a major undertaking and requires a ton of continuous work on balance, so we are mostly leaving it as is right now until we have enough free resources to give it our full, undivided attention. Is there a plan to address the lack of craft charges mainly on Gunports, Planks, and Cannons currently in the game? These were addressed in the recent patch. 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 View full article

I guess... but I have terrible luck of finding ships BPs. In 12 BPs I already found I have 7 COGs (lol), 1 harrier, 1 mortar (both has low crew capacity by default and turning them to battle vessels will require alot of points for extra crew). 1 Majestic Kraken (which is unavailable before the Kraken fight, and obtaining submarine) and... Pegasus. It has 30 crew by default, so basically in this stage of game - it's my best option : ) I turned it to something like this. It turned out that single modular gunport now goes with armor kit like turtle ship. : )) Not sure if that was intended but armored ship goes long way!!!

Just wanna sum what I found so far about new lawless claims. - New structures outside claimed zones have just 12h decay. But those built before patch - have same 10/40 days timers. - Structures that built before towers appeared in territory goes to "claimed" state with no decay timer after tower appeared. Towers doesn't have decay timer as well. - Some pieces that built in claimed territory and attached to claimed structures - also goes to claimed state. - Structures that built in claimed territory and don't attached to claimed structures count as "not within claimed territory" and goes to 12h decay (this one is fixed). - Building on claimed territory that not yours is forbidden. Now about the towers. They are in "basic of building" skill, so no worries about extra skill point you need to spend for those. Costs: It fits 3x3 square (a little less). Water one has pretty cool night texture (but flag is down even after it hit 100%) It's not paintable, and flag also not paintable. It's white like you surrender lol : ) You can put one in unclaimed zone. Land Tower HP is 400 000 and it start with 40 000 health, It gains 400hp every 3 seconds. And hit 400 000 in 45 minutes. After it hit 400 000 you have your territory claimed. All buildings within your territory will be automatically claimed. If you destroy your tower, all building stays yours but goes to 12h decay (even those were in 10/40 days before claimed). Water Tower HP is 500 000 and it starts with 50 000 health. It gains 1k hp every 4 seconds after built. It claims additional territory in 30 minutes. You can speed it up putting 200 gold every 10 seconds to raise HP by 1%. For land tower you can speed up your building to 11 minutes 15 seconds. It'll require 13 400 golds. For water tower you can speed up your building to 10 minutes. It'll require 12 000 golds. ------------------- Your company have certain points for towers. - Solo company have 70 points. - Company of 18 ppl have 135 points. Each tower cost 4 points in the beginning and more you put in, more points it costs (6th one cost 5 points). You can not put 2nd land tower in claimed area: However you can put water tower in to land's tower area. But you can not put 2nd water tower in to 1st water tower area. If you put your tower right next to some players area, you'll have your area cut (Sry FH... didn't mention your windmill was there): And last thing. I you place tower and some other player will place his tower right near your tower - they both start to gain health. The first one that hits 400 000hp, will vanish all another towers within it's radius. Caution - the capture radius is not just green/red circle visible when you place your tower. But it's around 10 meters wider. So if tower will be placed at circle border or within 10 meters from outside the border - it'll be vanished as well.

Edit (May 18th): Due to an unexpected issue, we’ve made the difficult decision to delay tonight’s patch to next Wednesday, May 25th @ 7PM PDT. We want to ensure the start of the new season is as smooth as possible. Thank you for your patience and understanding. Ahoy Pathfinders! The time has come for new adventures to begin again in the world of Atlas. While familiar, the seas have shifted and hold new mysteries and challenges for both new and old pathfinders alike. With the recent discovery of the Golden Age ruins, pathfinders will find themselves tested by new adversaries that will strike down the most experienced of pirates if not careful. Seven of these bosses now roam the lands waiting to unleash their might on any that dare to find them. Are you brave enough to take the challenge? There is also talk of an new unexplored region, shrouded in mystery, that may bring a new set of trials to pathfinders looking to unlock its secrets. Do not trust your senses in this eerie place for one false move may spell doom for you and your crew. The map itself has also undergone a few changes to make traversing the world a little easier. As always, with the new content, we are also continuing to fix many of the issues that have been reported by you, the community, and will continue to do so until we get it right. We want to say thank you to all the pathfinders that have provided feedback and suggestions and that continue to support us as we make gradual steps to make Atlas the best gameplay experience possible. With that said, the servers will go down May 18th at 7PM PDT and will undergo a few hours of maintenance. Barring any issues, we expect the servers to return and season nine to start around May 18th, 10PM PDT. We wish all the best luck in your new adventures and, of course, happy sailing! Released Patch Notes v543.0 Season 9 Patch Ahoy pathfinders! The tides of Atlas are shifting again. New exotic locales to explore and dangers to confront have emerged. New Content New Mini-Bosses of the Golden Age Ruins Seven new Mini-Bosses have been added. Each Golden Age Ruin island will now have its own boss to find and fight. Ancient Fire Elemental The first fire elemental ever to be created. An unknown, wicked deity possessed inflamed, volcanic rocks. It is rumored that all other fire elementals derive from this one. Found on the Golden Age Ruin island in A7 Elder Rock Elemental A Giant Rock Elemental that has seen the tides of the Atlas shift many times. He has finally arisen from the sulfurous land to destroy pathfinders who trespass on his grounds. Found on the Golden Age Ruin island in F4 Kekada A Deep Sea crab that invaded the surface long ago. Its docile nature was corrupted by the power stone contained on the island it is found on. Kekada now brutally crushes anything it can fit in its massive claws. Found on the Golden Age Ruin island in L7 Buwaya A cursed Crocodile that is only told about in myths originating from the Philippines. Legend says, those who fall victim to this monster are taken to the world of the spirits. Found on the Golden Age Ruin island in G8 Eber The Boar God. Even creatures have deities, and this one smells awful according to Pathfinders who have encountered it. They say it is a big, feral boar with rotting flesh and piercing eyes that roams the forest. Found on the Golden Age Ruin island in L3 Crystal Scorpion Legend of a mysterious scorpion that appears only in darkness that is drawn to dark energies. Found on the Golden Age Ruin island in M13 The Sentinel A cyclops creature tasked with protecting crystal entities. Corrupted by tainted crystals, this creature's appearance has taken on the visage of the very crystals he guards. Found in the Golden Age Ruin island in E1 Maw Waters A new region has been discovered! A brave, possibly foolish, Pathfinder followed the Ships of the Damned across the waters of Atlas. He returned with tales of a land shrouded in darkness and unnaturally thick fog, with creatures that seem to vanish or appear out of thin air, and eerie green fires. As proof of his findings he brought back a strange crystalline substance, soft to the touch yet somehow solid. His final notes state that any Pathfinder who ventures to these lands should not trust their eyes, as empty stretches of land may have hidden dangers. New Items Lantern of the Maw A special lantern that automatically appears on ships when they enter the Maw Waters region. Interact with the steering wheel to access the lanterns inventory, see current Essence value, and craft Solidified Essence. Fully fill your lantern to leave the Maw Waters region. How to gather Essence of the Maw and fill your Lantern There are several activities that will grant your lantern Essence of the Maw. With the exception of the Relic of the Maw all Essence is gathered on the ship the player enters on. Active Accumulation Destroy Ships of the Damned - Each ship destroyed will grant 10 Essence Destroy other players ships - Each ship destroyed will grant 25 Essence Obtain a Relic of the Maw - The Relic of the Maw is found in Flotsom and when consumed on a ship instantly fills that ship's lantern to full. Grants 100 Essence Passive Accumulation Travel 500 meters, either by sailing, swimming, or walking. Rewards 2-3 Essence. Survive in the Maw - For every 5 minutes spent inside the Maw Waters 3 Essence is rewarded. Essence of the Maw A viscous smoke that can be collected within a special lantern. This item is only acquired in the Maw Waters region, and can not be used outside of the Maw Waters. Solidified Essence A semi-soft semi-solid crystal that glows a dim blueish green hue. Relic of the Maw An ancient Golden Age Relic, found only in the Maw Waters. Using this Relic will instantly grant 100 Essence of the Maw. Reworked Map The World of Atlas has shifted again, new lands have emerged and the known world has been disfigured. Maps all around the Atlas will need to be redrawn with these newly discovered regions. Bug Fixes Fixed instances where babies born in the tame house did not require imprinting. Fixed instances where the forge would prioritize burning thatch before wood. Fixed instances where controller disconnect can cause a crash. Fixed instances where Shipyard scaffolding clipped through the front of the Pegasus. Fixed instances where tame house debris would have incorrect textures. Fixed instances where perpetual portals had invisible collisions. Fixed instances where invisible collisions existed around damaged portal entrances. Fixed instances where health was not displayed correctly for the Cursed Temple. Fixed instances where the Harrier had an incorrect description. Fixed several issues with the Giant Turtle tame. Fixed instances where the Industrial Smithy had an incorrect description. Fixed instances where the height and interact volume of the tame house was to high. Fixed instances where the error messaging when joining an online session was incorrect. Fixed instances where there was a lack of UI feedback for the Great Temple progression. Fixed instances where the Pegasus had an incorrect description. Fixed instances where unanchored ship limit increased when demolishing a ship before it is released. Fixed instances where orichalcumized walls had incorrect LOD settings. Fixed instances where Industrial statue framework being mislabeled as burial mound framework. Fixed instances where Industrial statue framework returned a burial mound framework when picked up. Fixed instances where the Industrial statue would float in the air when completed. Fixed instances where there was a storage limitation of the Great Temple progression table. Fixed instances of baby male tames being able to mate while in the tame house. Fixed instances where food added to the tame house does not increase spoil time. Fixed instances where medium weight sails are over-performing. Fixed instances where medium and small weight sails would not take damage. Fixed instances where transient node harvesting structures would collect resources from different factions. Fixed instances where a baby tame would spawn under the ground causing its death. Fixed instances where the workstation had incorrect crafting recipes. Misc. Timeworn quality has been removed until content and bugs are fixed Giant Turtles no longer spawn underwater Chromatic Aberration has been removed from underwater post processing Increase cost of the tame house No longer rounding on ship sail unit values. Players can no longer store temporary tames in the Pegasus. Industrial Rifle has been adjusted. Bleed removed, increased damage from 160 to 200 per shot, increased durability loss from 4 to 8 per shot. Industrial Revolver has been adjusted. Bleed removed, increased damage from 50 to 100 per shot, increased durability loss from 1.5 to 3 per shot. Tames will be ejected from the Tame House when the Tame House is destroyed instead of killed. The time it takes a modular ship to sink after it starts leaking has been increased. The resource costs for crafting patch kits and armor patch kits has been reduced by 50%. Modular ships have had their base weights adjusted. Server restarts have been set to automatically happen at 10:30 PST daily, including weekends. Scuttle and Unclaim options for ships have been changed to be locked behind company rank, similar to how structure access is. Interact with the steering wheel to set the minimum rank that can scuttle or unclaim. Adjusted lighting so there will be less contrast between day and night Xbox Only Improved memory performance Improved network connection Industrial Wonder Content Due to the feedback we received surrounding the Industrial Wonder, we have decided to cut it from this patch so that we have adequate time to redesign and adjust. 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 View full article

U know guys... what I really love to see in release version - is reworked weather engine. Because weather (along the ocean and ships themselves) is the CORE of sailing game! It should be cool. It should bring spectacular view. It should require us to deal with it!!! What should be done: - Removed "Waves" (both cold, heat and fog) because they just makes no sense and doesn't brings anything to the game (seriously - If I hunt SotDs during fog I just stop, go alt+tab and watch youtube, and if I sail somewhere - I just sail). - Removed 3D clouds. We're not in flight simulator, where 3D clouds matters. - Wind rotation system should be canceled. - Pacman with 100500 tornadoes - should be canceled. --- - New skyboxes added, with different types of weather. So everyday we experienced something different. Bright sunny days. Partly cloudy. Gloomy gray. Drizzle. Heavy rains etc. Also snowstorms, white mist in cold areas. With spectacular sunrises and sunsets, rainbows after the rains, st. Elmos before storms. And all that kind of stuff. - Steady wind (most of the time it's average strength, but rarely goes to calm or hurricane). It's fine for me if it will be random direction and strength every grid. It should change it's strength and direction from time to time (not that often). - Deadly thunderstorms with lightning strikes risk. Damaging planks if you point wrong angle to waves, or go full speed, and damaging fully opened sails. - Tornado should land rarely. It should be large, single, predictable, avoidable (at all costs) and deadly to pass through. --- Maybe some weather skills allowing us to predict the weather, or check one at neighbor grids. Maybe some +xp bonus for ship - sailing through dangerous conditions.

I literally just did tonight, lol. I saw this post while I was searching around for how to do it and figured i'd drop by to leave it in case anyone else comes across this. It's the same as ARK, but with the names from ATLAS, obviously. This goes in (YourServerLocation)\ShooterGame\Saved\(ServerName)\Config\WindowsServer(or LinuxServer)\Game.ini It should look something like this: [/script/shootergame.shootergamemode] (Other Game.ini Settings) ConfigOverrideItemCraftingCosts=(ItemClassString="PrimalItemShip_Plank_Wood_Medium_C",BaseCraftingResourceRequirements=((ResourceItemTypeString="PrimalItemResource_Fibers_BASE_C",BaseResourceRequirement=1.0,bCraftingRequireExactResourceType=false),(ResourceItemTypeString="PrimalItemResource_Metal_BASE_C",BaseResourceRequirement=1.0,bCraftingRequireExactResourceType=false),(ResourceItemTypeString="PrimalItemResource_Thatch_BASE_C",BaseResourceRequirement=1.0,bCraftingRequireExactResourceType=false),(ResourceItemTypeString="PrimalItemResource_Wood_BASE_C",BaseResourceRequirement=1.0,bCraftingRequireExactResourceType=false))) This would make the Medium Planks cost 1 Fiber, 1 Metal, 1 Thatch, 1 Wood. You can find the ItemIDs here: https://atlas.gamepedia.com/Item_IDs EDIT: (Figured I'd leave a small explination to help if people are confused by any of the settings. Changes are in Bold.) Don't forget to append the _C. I wasn't putting the _C at the end and that was causing it to not work. Change the 1.0 if you want to change the cost. Example: (ResourceItemTypeString="PrimalItemResource_Fibers_BASE_C",BaseResourceRequirement=204.0,bCraftingRequireExactResourceType=false) would make it so the item would require 204 Fibers(any type). Change "bCraftingRequireExactResourceType=false" to "bCraftingRequireExactResourceType=true" if you want it to require a specific type of resource. You can find the specific resource name in the ItemIDs link posted above. Example: (ResourceItemTypeString="PrimalItemResource_Thatch_Root_C",BaseResourceRequirement=1.0,bCraftingRequireExactResourceType=true) If you do it for something that doesn't require Metal or Thatch or what have you, don't forget to remove/change that. So for example, the Small Plank doesn't require Metal, so I removed the complete line from the Medium Plank above that required Metal and changed the Medium to Small as it is displayed in the ItemIDs page i listed earlier. Compare the below example to the above ini example for changes. Example: ConfigOverrideItemCraftingCosts=(ItemClassString="PrimalItemShip_Plank_Wood_Small_C",BaseCraftingResourceRequirements=((ResourceItemTypeString="PrimalItemResource_Fibers_BASE_C",BaseResourceRequirement=1.0,bCraftingRequireExactResourceType=false),(ResourceItemTypeString="PrimalItemResource_Thatch_BASE_C",BaseResourceRequirement=1.0,bCraftingRequireExactResourceType=false),(ResourceItemTypeString="PrimalItemResource_Wood_BASE_C",BaseResourceRequirement=1.0,bCraftingRequireExactResourceType=false))) Hope this helps someone else in the future EDIT: I made a topic for this and added a more detailed explanation of how it works and how to customize it here:

New Mechanic Suggestion: Sail Ships away if All Crew/Deck Hand Killed [15 Minutes] Why: Piracy revolved around stealing ship's w cargo Stolen ship's Should increase LVL cap of ship by a % of LVL cap this is due to LVL cap being determined by ship dock type Mythic dock would offer +15 LVL cap increase, Masterwork +12 LVL cap, and so on Diminishing returns of this too should be implemented, stealing a ship a second time would off less of a LVL cap increases & stolen ships should be harder (longer timer) to steal Stealing a ship BACK (from prior owned company) should have a shorter timer (both on Sailing AND Stealing back, This incentivizes Company’s doing raid missions to steal a boat back, Invulnerability should be turned off on doors and walls and any “deckhand” (IE killable) for a stolen boat from a Previously owned company) THIS IS A HUGE INCENTIVE to steal ship's (ship inventory should have Mechanic/Button to see stolen history (another reason to have company names binding)) Deckhand Status: If anyone in range of deck (fighting in water wont negate Deck hand), Deck hand status to boat. (Multiple boat deck hands can be applied as clustering boats in and of itself is a HUGE disadvantage to the boats being clustered) Who has been on deck in last 15 minutes (only in zone, cant bed-spawn, then bed-spawn to somewhere else will reset it) Making Landfall will also negate being a Deck hand -A deckhand who was killed in range of ship will not RESET deckhand timer unless alive past bed/PvP timer (IE Re-spawn timer is 3 minutes due to multiple PvP deaths, he will have to stay alive 3 minutes PAST re-spawn to Reset Deckhand Timer, Which would be at 12 minutes as he was dead for 3 minutes waiting on re-spawn) This forces people to GUT ship's and destroy beds. (so fighting will be extended, and should be rewarding) This will allow/force players to design better ship interior's as they will take consideration, (seen a lot of galley hallow, this mechanic will require them to build better) If Deck-hand Status alive to ship, Ship cannot be sailed away or NPC's snapped to sail Sailing: Sailing a ship away allows a Chase mechanic/Game Play, adds the option to request companies to help save ships (cross company support/help would be more wanted/requested) Ship cannot be anchored in Island invulnerability range, Sailing in a Free-port would be DETRIMENTAL to someone trying to steal. It would cancel the steal status/flag. It would allow the crew to come back to the ship and they couldn’t be killed, and those in range would reset the sailing ability of the boat. Ship owner can TRACK BOAT (still visible on map) until the boat is Claim flag’ed stolen. (allows them to chase it and have great time fighting to get it back) You will HAVE to have NPC's snap to each sail (2 per sail) during sailing/stolen process; Unfamiliar Sail/Knot/Rigging System of unfamiliar ship is a DISADVANTAGE and require more constant attention to work Allow/Require 2 players To operate a sail (2 players having to communicate (open to -65 degree 100% sail) and both having to get it correct, if either put different option sail has random negative effect, Random Rotate/Open Close) NPC's cannot man anything OUTSIDE OF SAILS; Players cannot man anything outside of SAILS and Helm (piracy skill for helm control? Disadvantage to DRIFT without this piracy skill, meaning any one can sail it away but a pirate would be BETTER at it and constant readjusting course) Reason, it will require players to DISADVANTAGE another ship to make this play (they weaken a boat by either having extra crew/NPC on it (less player/crew slots) or they have to remove gun NPC’s, Or 2 actual players NPC LVL must be above 20 (more experienced sailor right?) Mechanic / Game play I’m still concerned about: Parking ships in SUPER harbor’s (this takes all the fun out of rescue missions) maybe have a mechanic that the ship cannot be parked at/in range of Islands w a high/med value? And within a LARGE range of a foundation/building structure Of course people would just build SUPER LARGE structure/harbor in the middle of the ocean… but if they went through that much trouble to build it in the middle of the ocean and are that big of a target to be attacked and have a bounty placed on it… so IDK Suggestion and feedback are APPRECIATED A company Can only steal a CAPPED amount of ships from another company (avoids company stealing each other’s boats to get super fleets) (say 3 ships Company A can only steal 3 ships from Company B But can steal another 3 from company C ect ect ) I think this mechanic added to game play would: Incentivize people into NOT sinking Ship’s instead try and STEAL ships (reward system to not offline ) I think the GAME-PLAY would offer a Great Reason to use The Bounty systems and offer company's a reward to get boats back.

Let's take a look at sea travels. I prepared, get sextant buff, set sails, point my ship to direction I need, a-a-a-a-and...? I Alt+Tab and go check my e-mails, social media and watch Youtube for funny videos. Sometimes abnormal storm appear - I play Pacman with like 50 tornadoes, and I get nothing in reward. Sometimes it's fog - I either lower my sails, stop and go watch Youtube, or continue along the border, and go watch Youtube. Sometimes it's coldwave - with same low visibility and I either stop and go watch Youtube, or continue along the border and watch Youtube. Sometimes it's heatwave - which lower my HP by half. Then it regains. Sailing is second main pillar of games like this. And right now there is JUST NOTHING in sea travels that keeps player in a game. Seriously. I once set my sails along the border and went for a walk with my dog for a half an hour. Let's talk about: 09: SEAS ADVENTURES The basics I would do: 1) - Compress whole ocean at least twice, so the longest half atlas travel would lasts 40-60 minutes (I mentioned this one earlier) 2) - I would make players actually do something while sailing. 3) - I would reward them for all activities. But before I go there - let me tell something about the wind. Right now it just rotates clockwise. It raises and cut it strength from calm to strong and back. And that's it. If I go half ATLAS with loaded ship, I know I'll experience counter-wind and calm (I pray not together) and that's only fact just take away my desire to sail: I would change the wind so It would just blow same direction for a while (and by "while" I mean at least 24 ingame hours). Then it randomly rotates for some angle (clockwise or counter) and blow new direction for a while again. Most of the time wind is around average, provide me FULL SPEED. Occasionally it goes to strong hurricane state and this requires me to lower my sails and turn to it's direction to prevent ship and ragging damage. Occasionally it goes to calm state and all hidden flotsam appear on the water surface. Now to the challenges. Weather should be divided in to two types. Warm in equatorial, tropic and desert areas. Cold in temperate, tundra and polar zones. Warm weather brings: rains, thunder, storms whit tornadoes or hail, dust storms and fog. Rain - make ship heavier, it loses some speed and maneuverability. Thunders - slight chance that lighting strikes masts, causing ragging damage. Storm brings deadly tornado or hail. Storm is not global, it just wide dangerous zone in the ocean, and players goal is to avoid or escape one by all cost. Sail into tornado will cause sever damage to ship or either destroy it. Hail do moderate damage to sails. Fog lowers visibility to all ships (NPCs ones also) when it's calm. Dust storm lowers visibility when it's strong wind. Cold weather brings snowfall, ice rain, blizzard, white mist. Snowfall just makes ship heavier. Ice rain makes it even heavier, and deck became slippery. Blizzard - is local spot to avoid because it cause moderate damage to ship and sails. White Mist is bright sparky show fog appears during sunny day. Lower visibility. Oh, and about visibility itself. I would cancel unlimited visibility and make so it always changes around average values. So islands would appear as we getting close to them and lighthouses actually guide us (for that I would make freeport and homeland lighthouses different color or brightness). Beside weather, player also should deal with ocean. There are randomly generated dangers in there. Warm zones provides migrating seaweed zones and reefs with rocks out of the water. Seaweeds dramatically lower ship speed, and if player wont escape in time full sails along wind direction may require to escape. Rocks and reefs are deadly. Hitting one will fully take out planks HP. Cold zones provides drifting icebergs. Hitting one is also dangerous. Both cold and warm zones also randomly generate jet streams (make ship turns and damage planks if angle is too big) and funnels (tries to capture ship in it's center - require full sail along the wind and along rotation direction to escape). Everything above affect all ships. Player's ship, NPC's ship, damned ships etc. Also because there are less water around, and islands closer to each other - sailing through the center of grid will require some maneuvers between island (something like that now in Polar and it's fun to sail through). And tasty one. Each danger that player face, and each activity player actually do in the ocean, gives special reward points to the ship. If player pass seaweed zone - he gets "seaweed point". If he avoid iceberg - he get "iceberg point" there. If he gather flotsam - he get "flotsam points" etc. After gathering enough points player can choice special tittle for the ship. After gathering more points, player get special skill for the ship. After gathering points for the third time - special figure head for ship became available to craft. For example if I avoid a lot of seaweed zones, I can add to my ship name a tittle: "Unstoppable". If I continue to pass seaweed zones I'll open a skill for ship that lower my speed penalty in seaweed zones by half. After I pass many more seaweed zones - I'll get... let's say "mermaid" figure head blueprint for my ship. Getting there should take a while, to make all those achievements valuable. Figure head might also have some bonus stats. For balance stuff player should be able to choice just one danger bonuses and either be able to change em in repair dock or be unable to change them at all : )) Maybe survive inside the most deadliest situation (like actual tornado) - give player some really unique and valuable reward. In PVP ships with those skills might suddenly get an advantage if battle occur near dangers. And yeah. Some nice addition would be, if next weather would be predictable. - Scarlet red sunset-sunrise - before windy weather. - st. Elmo's flares - before thunderstorm etc.

So I've been working on farming and cooking with the hopes of making some alternate food for my company. However I'm finding cooking needs some serious love. Recipes that require raw fish/animal meat still need the fire turned on to cook them. This causes the fish/meat to get cooked, which in turn makes it unusable in the recipe. Can we either get a toggle box on cooking pots and grills to enable/disable automatic cooking of meat or just make cooked meat/fish a recipe like everything else? There's a real lack of variety in the recipe component requirements, especially regarding farmed foods. There are a ton of recipes that require wheat or maize, but hardly any of the other farmed vegetables are required aside from as generic vegetables. Carrot is used in one thing, chilies two, peppers two, potatoes 3, etc. I'm yet to see a recipe that requires chick pea or cactus. Lack of recipes in general. There's a huge variety of available ingredients, but only 17 dishes and 5 drinks we can make from them. I don't think it should be too hard to come up with another dozen or so foods. Water management when it comes to cooking is pretty terrible. It's not bad with milk since those come as individual units, but it seems silly to require 50 water to make a cup of tea. I suggest making drinks require X water (like 10 or 15) and then taking that much from available water supplies in inventory. It would be nice on foods that gave buffs if they listed them and a description on the crafting recipe or at least on the finished product. I suspect lots of things are waiting for these though. That's all I've got off the top of my head. Thanks!

Before you freak out, read the whole idea. First, make all claim flags require a resource upkeep. Second, make that upkeep exponential based on the number of claim flags a company holds. (First flag is 50 wood and 50 fiber per week. By the fifth flag ALL flags require 200 wood, 200 fiber, 200 stone, and 200 berries from the biome type it is planted in per week. By the twentieth flag ALL flags require 1000 wood, 1000 fiber, 1000 stone, 300 metal, 500 berries of biome type, and 200 berries of each of the OTHER biome types per week. Change the flag models to increasingly extravagant structures as higher tier is reached. Maybe every five flags. Exact numbers will be need to be balanced.) Third, make all structures and anchored ships within the claim zone invulnerable so long as upkeep is being met. If upkeep is not met, fast decay times like lawless zones set in. (A pick lock feature to allow some raiding perhaps? Make characters unable to pick locks within 5 meters of a sleeping character?) Fourth, an opposing group's counter claim is a destroyable structure that will continue claiming regardless of ANY nearby players until it is destroyed. Make it require resources to build and make the claim timer much longer. Ships and structures lose invulnerability when the owner clan damages the counter claim structure. (This will need balancing to find best values. Like 500 wood, 500 stone, 200 hides, 120 cooked meat, and a four hour timer. It's a siege after all.) Please respond with refinements that would help balance or avoid exploits. I can't think of everything. Perhaps restricting counter claims to particular days of the week? Like odd numbered grid squares Thursdays and Saturdays, even numbers on Fridays and Sundays, Mondays through Wednesdays only areas that have failed upkeep can be counter claimed. I would prefer counter claims anywhere, anytime, but tiny groups might not agree.

A map that shows portal routes: Pathfinder Portals (Grey): Allow ships and everything on them to leave Rookie Cove. These are one-way, you cannot go back though them with your ship. If you need to go back you can talk to the NPC, but your character can only go through naked. Perpetual Portals (Green): These are free 2-way portals to get between regions. Damaged Portals (Yellow): These are one-way portals that require materials to activate (50 mythos and 250 gold) Does that mean u cant live in rookie Grove, and actuelly go down and lets sayt kill kraken, without u sacrifice u ship ? cuz u cant get back to rookie crove what a shit system

Good day mods and devs. 1st of all, game is great, thank you for working on it. I know you guys busy and probably have a plan or seeing how ur game should be working. But there a few thing that I would like to see in game. 1.Too many claims, no space for new players and guilds. Suggestion: claim's should require weekly payment with gold. Every new claims placement should require gold as well.More claims should require alot of gold. (Good for ur game currency, more pvp in open seas, tresure hunting = less loaded servers, also good for ur claim contesting system) 2. Too many objects at servers with big alliances, ram is overloading. Suggestion is: more stocked buildings, defence towers etc, can be something like drawing of a building that require resources. Or jsut give insides to ur cities and let people live there. (Less claims, better social component of the game.) 3.Most important in MMO is currency and ways to spend it. The more ways, the more expensive ur currency wotrh. Suggestion I wrote above in 2.

I gave this a negative review on Steam in Feb 2020 and had every reason to never come back, which felt like a tragedy because I bought five copies of it so I could play with my wife and kids. The moment-to-moment gameplay was fun an engaging (which made it so we put in ~300 hours and felt like we got our money's worth), but the macro game was chaotic and genuinely soul-crushing and we just had to stop playing. Out of sheer curiosity last week, I read some of recent the patch notes from after I quit playing, and to my utter surprise you had addressed every concern I had in my review, so I took it down and switched it to positive. There is still a long ways to go, but this last year has made me optimistic about ATLAS again. I gave a fair amount of the new content a try-out in single player and creative mode so I could see how things would work and play out and I'll give PvP and PvE a try when I have time. I'd like to start off with some compliments about this game, so you guys can get some insight into what you're doing well and what makes ATLAS fun. 1. It's beautiful. Your modeling, design, effects, everything is just absolutely stunning. I like that it's UDK as well, because it means my kids can play it on their cheap-o computers and enjoy it with me on my monster gaming rig. I'm a bit of a sucker for pretty scenery and your game is very nearly at the top of my list for well-crafted beautiful scenery (you're honestly going toe-to-toe with Guild Wars 2 and Breath of the Wild here) 2. I love the volume of content, and honestly can't get enough of it. I love sailing out to a new zone because I need aged wood, or a different kind of fiber. If you added a dozen new types of fiber, and trees (hopefully with unique models to match), I would absolutely take my time to go exploring to find them all. It makes exploring feel emotionally rewarding, and makes me feel content with the time I spend in game. So long as I avoid the wiki, it's just impossible for that to get old. 3. The micro mechanics of the game are fun. Sailing is engaging and I feel like I'm rewarded (with lower repair costs, and combat advantages) for being good at it. Base building is fun to place and design your outpost, so much so that I am motivated to go gather more materials for it. Building and designing a ship makes me feel invested in its survival. I mention these first because I feel like understanding what you do well helps you play to your strengths as you explore new mechanics, and code, and features. So, here are my observations and suggestions. I've put a lot of thought into these so I hope you see this for what it is: someone who is absolutely rooting for you and your game. 1. Individual player interactions with devs is bad. I know most people in engineering are not sociable by nature, but this is currently the #1 point plaguing your steam reviews. Get a dedicated support person. They can write bug reports for you, interface with customers, make social media posts and do light advertising for you—in short, get a community manager. A good one will pay for themselves. Have someone help players feel like their concerns are being addressed because my personal interactions with your support was. . .well, lacking to say the least. Your devs are busy, resources are tight, and I get it, but I truly believe this should be your next financial investment so you can start building the community around this game, as opposed to most of us just dying off after a while of playing because we're frustrated. If you already have a community manager, then I am not seeing any real benefit from them and you should look at one with a different skill set. 2. Early access is a generally poor decision for a game in the MMO genre. Wipes are needed, frequently, in Early Access, stuff gets lost—it's part of the social contract. However, MMOs require a huge time commitment from their players, and many MMO players are ready and willing to devote entire days to playing their game of choice all in the pursuit of character development and in-game wealth. Because of this, early access will naturally poison your developer/player ecosystem. There are few remedies to this that have worked inside of the MMO genre. You already tried the first one: wipes means newer players have a better chance at claiming an island, but it disenfranchises more established players and the ones who are genuinely desperate for their friends to convert over to their MMO of choice. The few MMOs who have tried this eventually die off. I think the best approach is two stages: public test realm, and tailored migrations. Public Test Realms are inherently imbalanced and indifferent to exploits. Players can start with nothing, mid-game stuff, or late-game stuff whenever they want and play with other people in a public arena. This fixes some of the problems with Early Access because a player can always just hop on PTR and play the parts they enjoy without the typical MMO investment. They can kind of do this on single player, but, yeah, tether distance makes that not-viable and it limits the content they can explore. More importantly, not having it means that the only place you have to test experimental features and new ideas is your production public servers that some players have invested close to 1000 hours into. See the problem? Having a PTR means you can test a feature that is risky with little to no risk to your players—like having character migrations from one version to another. I hope this is a simple thing (especially since ARK already had the player transfer and dino upload, so there is a kind of migration path forward there). It's disheartening to lose your Galleon that you spent hours upon hours making, upgrading, designing, filling with crew, and became your virtual home. Really, making it so crew and ships can be stashed before a wipe would mean the world to established players, and the key feature here isn't for the players at all, but for the devs down the road. I know external storage isn't exactly conducive to UDK, but solving that is probably essential for an MMO in the long term. The PTR also gives you the mechanism for gently removing broken game mechanics, and for offering consolation prizes to users who invested in a mechanic that ultimately doesn't work with the final game (which items often become collectables down the road). More importantly, having this would open up the user base to the more common MMO revenue streams, like paid for cosmetic skins and titles. Without having a culture and expectation of migration and data preservation, attempting to introduce either of those would likely incite a riot or boycott. I think this two-stage approach will help fix most player complaints and problems much quicker, and to some extent would address all the other suggestions or problems listed after this. 3. The servers feel generally empty. Even when I make it to another player's base, it feels like I'm walking through a museum. Having more players and well-established companies help alleviate that, but some of this needs to be put into the feel of the game. A simple fix would be to add in freeport style NPCs as purchasable upgrades for player bases. This is a sensible thing to do with the upcoming trade system updates, you're already putting in this kind of effort, why not apply some of it more generally? It's a small thing and it may not seem like it's worth the effort, but taking the time to add in animation trees and some rudimentary patrol paths for NPC characters would make the whole game feel much more dynamic. Something like more noticeable idle animations on vendors, and if you're really feeling ambitious, having them respond to the animals nearby could help Atlas feel more like a living world of exploration, rather than an archeological dig. Even if it's just a meaningless animation, a harvester NPC from the farm would go a long way to fixing this feeling. One suggestion I have that could also help this, which the game seems well suited for is borrowed from an ultimately failed MMO, Shadowbane. In this particular game, any skill or ability past level 20 was simply not accessible until you joined a clan. Player-made cities were the hubs of trade as a result, and everyone was intrinsically motivated to clan up. It made for some very fun social play, and since you already have player base building as a core mechanic, why not extend that into a social fleet building? I know a lot of players would moan about it, but if you think about it critically, does it really make any sense that murdering seagulls gives me the ability to craft a large speed sail? Learning skills from well-established player ports would create incentive for an entirely new kind of exploration—other people. That particular mechanic will never get old and will require a lot less dev time to develop (still needs some care and attention so it doesn't develop into a toxic community). I think the best way to implement this would be to have high-level skills (basically anything that gets upgraded in the current skill tree) come from tome drops that you need a port-specific NPC to decode to gain the skill (in addition to regular level requirements). I'd break up “Esotery of building” to individual building tome skills as well, so that individuals are inclined to clan up with strangers to get access to ports and companies are motivated to take in strangers because they have tomes/skills not found in the clan. As fun as it is to have a character that can do it all and be it all, MMOs just don't really need that. Everything should be split up into specialties and only the most dedicated players who are willing to create multiple toons for their account should be able to do that. ***This is a side note for future reference*** What killed Shadowbane, apart from bad business decisions and the market just generally moving onto the next-gen, was that clanning up was to heavily incentivized. In Shadowbane you could capture other clans cities (which took typical MMO levels of effort to build in the first place), and make them swear loyalty to you. The result was that one or two players would become the effective emperors of the MMO and it would eventually work it's way out of a PvP environment. The only solution that they could get to reliably work was to force a reset and everyone would have to start over periodically. Even putting in a taxation system only reinforced this dreaded cycle, because emperors had more money and resources and it would snowball into server-wide kingdoms. Putting constraints on it didn't work either, because they'd just have one of their long-term clan mates control a not-officially-affiliated clan and they'd just do tandem raids and city captures. Knowing their pitfalls can give you a better chance at preventing this, and some of the pirate theme could help. Reversing it so that each player-captured base requires upkeep from the conqueror seems a pretty sensible constraint, and allowing captured companies to mutiny after a certain time has passed would probably be enough. History is probably the best educator for this, and the factors that led to the collapse of the British Empire are probably your best bet (expense for making war to reclaim rebellious colonies, and just sheer distance involved in punishing those who rebelled, which you can easily emulate in the ATLAS environment) *** end note *** 4. It's been mentioned at great length, but the gold cost for building a ship just doesn't make sense. I could see justification for it at 1/10th the current rate, but in its current form, it's just nonsense. Honestly, you should hot-fix that out ASAP. I think an alternative to it that achieves what you were after would be a patron/loan system for a ship, where you can rent one and get a commission as a privateer. Make it the start of your power stone quests and in true pirate/privateer form make players obligated to fulfill the quests of the commission, otherwise your patron hunts you down for failing to pay your debt. Existing random-generated maps are a great first draft implementation, and you could expand it to doing trade hauls as you build out that system, that way you don't just increase your server load without increasing your player count. Formalizing this and enforcing it via mechanics could even make it possible for existing players to sponsor new players and give them a commission and a ship (which you'd want the rewards to be essential to unlock certain game mechanics to get the seasoned players onboard). Now for the last problem on my list. 5. Persistence and Instances. There's no possible way everyone who plays ATLAS can get their own island, and even trying to find a good spot for a PvE base can be challenging. It's also a core gameplay mechanic, and a fun one. The decay timer solves your needs and alleviates this problem to some extent, but it puts a time bomb into our experience. We know we'll lose everything sooner or later, contrast that to other MMOs I've played where I come back after 3 years and I'm filled with nostalgia at my armor, gear, and items in my bank. I will never have that with your setup, and I am honestly concerned that the game will never make it out of Early Access for this reason. I also need base of operations on land. I think armored docks are a step in the right direction, but I think the ultimate solution is instancing and zone specification. I don't see any real technical reason why H3 couldn't be a PvE zone, and H4 a PvP. It's good to have that blend so players can kinda pick and choose what kind of game they want to play that day without having to maintain two separate characters. It gives the Pkers more prey, and it enables PvE-centered players (like myself) to be careful, wary, and pick up some PvP skills along the way without fully committing to the pwning noobs cutthroat environment common to PvP games. It creates some excitement and keeps me from getting bored from staying in my comfort zone to long. Risk vs Reward becomes the player's guide, and that's something you can tune behind the scenes to ensure you have a welcoming and engaging gaming community. But, instancing could work just as well. It's a cheap and dirty way to make the world have less boundaries, and would make most players indifferent to another world-size shrink. In my head, for ATLAS, it would look something like a zone labeled “the unknown.” As soon as you sail into it, you're given some navigation options. “Use a chart” could take you to a specific player/company base (sharable amongst friends of course) charts, “Follow the stars” could take you to a random player base of someone who is currently online, “Pillage” would take you to a player base that's specifically in a PvP capture window, and “Explore” would generate a random bare island. Of course, to save on costs, you'd want to limit the “random” islands to the ones you've already made, and so it doesn't become to comfortable make them only spawn base_ resources. That way, you could limit what you store in an economically IOP provisioned database, and map it to static assets. Long load times are acceptable for these regions, and a single island could be smaller in size so more would fit on a single host, because they will implicitly spend a long time in them and it would be something they could actively choose to go to, and you could put the servers you're running or hosting it on in a cloud autoscale group with a shared data drive that loads the instance when a player travels to it. That way your costs better match your usage. If you're willing to take the risk, you could even have this data exclusively stored and hosted client-side (so it really only is available when a company member is online), and just put in constraints on what resources can leave the region (like, players have to register a ship and cargo manifest before it can leave to ensure nothing impossible or unlikely makes its way into the public, and the item count and value could put a throttle on how long it takes for the system to approve their manifest). That lowers your operations costs, and then it merges the three different systems you're maintaining: PvP, PvE, and single player. It really is just about which resources you have at your disposal, more Dev, or more Ops? If you have more Ops, you probably want the autoscale group with shared data drive. Anyways, sorry for the long read, hope some of this is helpful.

1. Regarding the ingame chat channels. If I have been mistaken in my characterization I apologize. It is meaningfully different for their to be channels created by devs or mods that allow access only to certain players, than for player created channels to have devs or mods belonging to and participating in them. I am not hand waving that distinction away so again if my characterization was in error I apologize. Also the ability for developers to have players report exploits through a channel that is not necessarily widely seen is also useful and valuable and I recognize that as a tool the team would have every legitimate reason to want to maintain. However, regardless of whether the channel is dev created or player created, these channels are creating a problem of perception. I did not pull this notion out of thin air. It is one that I have garnered from disparate sources going as far back as the spring. Players who do not know each other have spoken to me or discussed the existence of channels where megas communicate directly with the devs. You should be aware that this is creating and has contributed to a perception of favoritism towards megas amongst players who do not belong to large companies.I think the end result of this perception is personified by Talono, who sees every new development as catering to large companies regardless of whether that is it's intent or effect. I would suggest that going forward the developers should take some time to consider whether maintaining these channels outweighs this negative perception that is perpetuated amongst the remaining playerbase. Regardless of function or utility, the bottom line is that obviously you and Jat cannot afford to belong to or participate in just any player created chat channel that any player or company invites you to ingame, so inevitably this is going to lead to the perception of favoritism. 2. Regarding your explanation of communication channels as being organized into tiers, presumably with the forum being the top tier (fyi hubs imply a wheel like configuration, so describing something as being in tiers and then saying one part if it is a hub is a bit problematic and unclear, but I think I know what you meant), I must respectfully say that my impression over time of the way information is disseminated is at odds with what you describe. I'm the single most active poster you've got on this forum, so presumably I'm fairly active in reading said forums (I realize it's possible to read a lot and not post much), yet there are more occasions than I can count in 9 months where I learn something from someone which they came by from a non forum source like discord or twitter, and to the best of my knowledge that information isn't available on the forums but is highly relevant to the game. I think there has been some improvement in this area, but if the LiveStream Q and A thread is a pinned and locked thread at the top of the forums, why wouldn't a thread with a link to the livestream also be pinned and locked? I had to look elsewhere on the site to even find a link to the livestream you took questions for from the very forums you're not then posting that stream to. 3. Regarding other channels and feedback I think part of the problem is what other channels require of you as developers and moderators to do in order to gain value from those channels. Discord must be sat and watched in real time. Sometimes the conversations there be they voice or text may be useful, sometimes not, but you don't know unless you are there looking for them and focusing on them. The forums allow one to browse desired topics at any time, they don't require real time monitoring. Twitter is limited to 240 characters. The amount of useful feedback that can realistically be offered in Twitter's format I'm going to charitably refer to as small. The amount of that feedback that couldn't just as easily be offered here is zero. This goes to an important point. If the developers use Twitter more extensively to communicate with players than the forums, they are creating the impression accurate or not that this is the best place to get your feedback heard. This encourages players to communicate there rather than here. This has the secondary effect of creating the impression you don't want, or listen to feedback that doesn't fit into Twitter's extremely limited 240 character format. Twitter is useful for short pithy annoucements such as "servers back up" or "loved meeting you guys at E3." It's utility as a medium for meaningful feedback on a game's development is dubious imo. 4. I'm not going to comment extensively on the livestream since I haven't watched it. The second hand impressions I'm getting from sources I trust doesn't lead me to believe it would be a good investment of my time. Take that however you will. 5. There is most certainly the impression that some information is shared exclusively on Discord or Twitter and this is because as I've already referenced I'm one of your most active forum participants and yet in 9 short months there have been numerous instances of being made aware of important information from other players who said they got it from those channels when to the best of my knowledge the information was nowhere to be found on the forums. It seems to me that it would be a fairly simple procedure when one has information to convey to the playerbase to simply post to forums, then Discord, then twitter, so that every channel is equally informed in real time. I am less concerned about acknowledgement of receipt of feedback since I've always operated on the assumption most stuff gets read at some point, but the idea of a CM emoji response to a post that acknowledges it was read by yourself Jat or some other member of the team seems like a great idea. You're gonna read a lot of stuff. I would even venture to say a majority of it doesn't need or require any real response from the team other than to say "hey we saw that." I write more than my fair share of long winded screeds. I do so mostly in down time from work where I've got nothing meaningfully better or more pressing to do (God I love my job.) If you and Jat started trying to match me word for word in response, even I wouldn't consider that a good use of your time. 6. In summary I am less upset if it is true that there are no developer created ingame channels, as you could probably tell, this idea really burned my biscuits. However, I think the team should seriously consider that what you did describe is also problematic from a perception and fairness perspective, and the team really needs to weigh whether those negatives are outweighed by information provided through such channels about exploits. I would suggest that a means for any player to provide information about exploits that was widely promoted might be more suitable, since players in small groups are often just as aware of these things, sometimes even moreso. I think that the team has been slipshod in it's communications with players across different channels and has failed to properly prioritize making sure that the forums are as fully informed as they should be. This should be a fairly easy thing to fix, as it's mostly about one's mindset and habits. I think devoting CM or developer time to monitoring real time channels like discord is cumbersome and of questionable overall value since you are a small team with limited resources. I also think the team may not realize how the visibility of the emphasis it chooses to place on each channel of communication affects player choice of channel negatively away from the forums and towards channels less suitable for in depth meaningful feedback. Making it more apparent and visible that you are montoring the forums is a step in the right direction, but I think it's fair to say there is a perception amongst the playerbase that this dev team has a strong preference for other channels of communication, and that perception has consequences.

Both tames and hand harvesting require an investment of skill points to obtain. The tame requires investment of time and resources to acquire. Better tools require investment of time and resources to acquire because one must first do maps to obtain blueprints, then acquire the mats needed to craft the tools. Default level tools don't require any special effort but they also don't get you as high of a yield. Tames are still useful because while tames can be just as efficient as hand harvesting, the tame will still have greater carry weight. For fiber, which weighs very little, this might not matter much. For just about anything else you'd use a tame to harvest with, it will very quickly, so the time and effort invested in taming is still worth it, it just isn't realized in pure harvesting efficiency. You should be perfectly familiar with this idea from Ark. I can boost my melee stat and get a high quality pick, but no matter how much I boost my carry weight too, I'll never be able to carry as much metal as the anky. Taming an anky is still useful.

released patch notes v24.4 - Reverted optimization to how Seating Structures are replicated, caused some issues. v24.3 - Fixed invisible tamed creature case, and optimized some networking related to creatures on ships. - Optimized how ladders network their extended/retracted states. - Attempted an optimization to how Seating Structures are replicated (Steering Wheels etc) v24 - Further fix for case where steering wheel usage became desynchronized. v23 - Major client and server optimization for ships - Fixed remaining case of Client Disconnections (Not necessary to adjust Client Bandwidth, this was related to something else. We recommend all players try to use EPIC Bandwidth!) - Various new server performance optimizations - Sail Canvas is now unaffected by Repair Hammer - AoD soldiers now take significantly less damage from bullets. v22.21 Fixed a bug where tamed creatures, boats, and NPC Crew stats didn't replicate properly. v22.1 - Fixed a case where players would disconnect on certain servers when loading into large bases. We advise setting your "Client Network Bandwidth" Option value back to Epic if you had previously changed it, to deal with the disconnections. - Fixed a case which would cause creatures to flash or flicker. - Fixed a case where players on saddled creatures would teleport back to the server's origin if the creature they were mounted on had been killed by another creature. - Sail canvas now takes twice as long to repair. Repair hammer can no longer be used to repair a canvas. A canvas must be repaired using the pinwheel option on the mast, which can be accessed by holding down E. - Target Soft Spots will no longer add torpor to other player teams in PvE. - Camera no longer interpolates to origin when destroyed. - Glider will no longer activate when encumbered. - Buoy signs remain attached after server restart (retroactive). - Server and client performance optimizations. - Fixed an exploit which allowed players to stall and potentially disconnect other clients. - No longer able to turn off cannons that do not belong to your team. v21.43 - Fixed some server side crashes and added additional server performance optimizations for NPC Crew v21.1 (client) - Fixed choppy claim flag physics 21.42 - Further optimizations to NPC crew 21.41 - Optimized replication and ticking of NPC crew on turrets, for significantly improved server performance. v21.31 - Improved Structure replication rate from servers, though this may increase client stalls slightly. Clients can reduce their "Client Network Bandwidth" Option value if they are experiencing too many stalls with this change (we do recommend the default, 60 KB/s). v21 - Optimized how items are networked resulting in significantly higher performance and less bandwidth usage - Added the Hook Hand and the Peg Leg to the Freeport cosmetic vendor v20.1 With our planned changes for March, the game will be heading into a more rule based system, so for the next few weeks we’ll be making some changes to experience what it would be like if we took an alternative route. We’ll be releasing an update tomorrow which includes the following changes: - 6x Rates - Harvesting, Taming, Experience, Gold, Farming, and Breeding. - Claim flags will no longer prevent enemy building. You can now build anywhere, and only structure build radius will prevent it. This does not apply to cannons and mortars, which will still require a claim flag. This is a non-default, which will be enabled on our PvP Networks. Unofficials can also use this as a custom server-side config. - All servers, other than Golden Age Ruin servers, can be set to home servers, allowing players to respawn at them. (PvP only) Game.ini: [/script/shootergame.shootergamemode] bDontRequireClaimFlagsForBuilding=1 bIsLawlessHomeServer=1 bForceRequireClaimFlagsForBuildingCannons=true This is what we’re enabling on all our non-Golden Age ruin servers, but please note that you must also flag the corresponding grids as homeservers on the servergrid.json This patch will also include: - Whispering voice hotkey [* [numpad] key] - Server side config that allows you to alter the distance for the 3 voice modes: Whispering, Normal, and Yelling. Game.ini: [/script/shootergame.shootergamemode] ProximityRadius = 8500 YellingRadius = 22000 WhisperRadius = 2000 - Removing the Destruction Mesh on Lighthouses - Increased the limit of folders in inventories from 20 to 40, and 80 in Bookshelves - Treasure Map names now includes the grid for easy filtering - Explosive Barrels can no longer be used as an ammo type for cannons. Any loaded ones will just fire regular cannons. They'll be receiving a large redesign in the major update coming in March. - Fixed chat scrolling, so it now works again with Page Up and Page Down - Fixed an edge case where voice chat would stop working unless the client relogged These changes will allow us to see how the game would pan out if we didn’t have the claim system affect build rules, which helps us collect more feedback on playstyles. v19.62 - New style Claim Flag with improved flag physics - Improved mini map X icon for visibility - Added chat tabs - Reorganized claim flag notifications (requires updated server) v19.52 - Fixed multiple cases where inpulses would be stacked causing players or creatures to be launched into the distance. v19.51 - Disabled the use of some client side console commands which could be used to gain an unfair advantage in PvP v19.5 - Army of the Damned Soldiers and Crew melee attacks now properly hit. - Fixed an issue with servers that could have stalled them out for significant periods of time (5+ seconds) - Improved general server performance v19.4 - Further optimized server performance - Fixed issue where Buffs were not being added (drinks and such) if you were on a seating structure, or if you were encumbered. v19.3 - Significantly improved server performance when unstasising structures (50%+). - Fixed the bug where picking up stat'ed Structures would eliminate quantity of existing structures in your inventory. - Fixed a case where server-side Spoiling Times were incorrect on preserving bins. - Whale corpses now last 30 minutes - Giraffe harvesting now yields 6x thatch v19.21 - Doubled maximum server physx substeps to maintain more consistent ship movement at low server framerates. v19.2 - 2x Harvesting, XP, Taming and Gold enabled on the Official Network until Monday 25th. - Bookshelf added to organize your maps, blueprints, notes, and songs. You can learn it from the Esotery of Building skill. - Signs/Canvases can now be placed on storage boxes and bookshelves to help indicate what they're used for. - Note added to the game to leave each other messages. You can learn it from the Secrets of Building skill. - Company UI now displays last online time for members - Significant server optimizations (company network data is now replicated more efficiently to clients) - Maximum ship level is now 52. v18.97 - Fixed Melee damage application to Army of the Damned - Fixed NPC crew disappearing for a fraction of a second when mounting on cannons - Prevented climbing of the Kraken barrier wall - Improved Cyclops movement to allow it to clamber over rocks better v18.95 - Optimized server spatial octree, which should result in better server performance and reduced stalls. v18.94 - Fixed an issue with NPC's not interacting when stationed. v18.92 - Canvases are now free-paintable - Improved the appearance of storm cyclones vfx v18.9 - Fixed an issue with babies not eating from inventory/troughs when in stasis. - Fixed a bug with Alpha creatures. v18.89 - Fixed an issue with the unstasis/render distance on ships - Optimized performance of various server subsystems. v18.87 - Optimized performance of various server subsystems. v18.84 Weight - Gold coins have had their weight reduced by 50% - The weight of all items have been reduced by 30% globally (does not apply to structures that are placed on boats, only items in inventories) - Weight Sails now provide 20% more bonus weight. - Diving Suit now provides a buff which gives players a 50% extra base weight when diving underwater - Water Barrel now has a base weight of 75. It can hold 6000 water (previously was 500). For every 1000 water, it will add 20 weight. This means the lightest it will be is 75, and the maximum weight will be 195. - Players now start the game with 30% more personal weight and will gain an additional 40% per level (so base weight has increased from 250 -> 325 and bonus per level is up from 10 to 14) - Tamed creatures now gain an additional 6% weight per level into weight rather than 4% Creatures & Tames - Elephants and Rhinos now provide a 25% weight reduction to their specialised resources - Giraffe now receives an approximate 2x bonus when harvesting thatch and has a 25% weight reduction when carrying thatch - Elephant base stamina increased to 390 - Rhino base stamina increased to 190 - Giraffe base stamina increased to 440 - Baby creatures will no longer take into account the temperature alterations from coldfront and heatwave - Tamed creature resistance has been increased by 30% and damage increased by 20% - Bear health has been reduced by 10% - NPC Crew can now be renamed - NPC Crew can no longer be placed on Bear and Horse Carts - Company Tame Limits have been doubled - The interval between paying crew gold has been increased by 40% (there is now more time before you have to pay them again) - Ship of the Damned will no longer physically damage a team's structures and anchored boats unless they have been specifically damaged by that target. PvE servers only. Structures and Items - Puckle Damage has been increased to 100 base and is 50% more armour piercing - Carbines reload time has been reduced by 10% - Pistol reload time has been reduced by 33% - Blunderbuss reload time has been reduced by 20% - Blunderbuss damage to creatures has been increased by 50% to wild and by 20% to tamed. - Stone Structure SAP crafting requirements changed to fibre. - Wooden Structures resistance to explosive and siege damage types increased by 30% - Stone Structures resistance to explosive and siege damage types increased by 45% - Explosive Barrel change reverted until the redesign - Reverting damage increase and crafting cost decrease to Grenades - Oil Jar weight has increased to 10 and fires lit on top of oil have had their duration reduced by 50% - Oil Jar has been made more difficult to craft - Fully Anchored Boats now have a buff which provides a bonus 300% structure resistance QOL - Old Age no longer has a debuff - Fountain of Youth is now available on all Golden Age Ruin servers (we'll be looking at redesigning how this works in the near future) - Players can now purchase a respec soup at the Commodity Trader in Freeports - Players now have approximately 20% more skill points per level Bug fixes - Fixed a bug where quality specific equipment would display a multiplicative % stat increase and a flat stat increase, but only one would work. Going forward, the flat stat increase will be made obsolete and items will no longer be generated with it. Quality stated items will now only generate with the multiplicative stat bonus, and this change will be retroactive. - Fixed a bug where items would falsely state that they were providing a speed benefit (did not do anything). They should not generate anymore going forward. - Mortars will no longer be able to shoot at players outside of render distance v18.76 - Fixed a bug where fire AoE would not attach properly to moving boats. v18.74 - Potential fix for some frequent server side crashes. We'll be monitoring with this build v18.73 - Explosive Barrels will be undergoing some changes with this patch, please note that they're still in the process of receiving their redesign, but this puts them close to it: Limited to 1 carryable stack per person. Stack size will remain at 10 You will not be able to store them in creature inventories, however, legacy ones will remain there. They will be able to be placed near enemy structures and water without needing a claim flag, but not on boats itself. You will not be able to equip them into your hotbar, they must be placed from within the inventory. There will be a restriction to how many can be put down at a time within a certain radius. Reduced Explosive Barrel damage by approximately 20% Reduced Explosive Barrel explosive radius by approximately 20% - Diving Suit will make wild underwater creatures ignore you unless you attack them - Alcohol will no longer spoil - Cooking Recipes spoil time increased to 10 hours - Spoiling time increase bonus on Preserving Bag has been increased - Increased Grenade damage by approximately 50% - Decreased crafting costs for Grenades by approximately 20% - Improved cannon collision and obstruction check to limit the effectiveness of multiple cannons in gunport. - Diving Attachment now has the same health as the Dinghy Hangar - Fixed a bug relating to shooting cannonballs, previously allowing it to go through certain ally structures. This will no longer be the case anymore. - Cannister shot range increased by approximately 20% - Cannister shot damage increased by approximately 10% - Spike shot explosion timer is now 30 seconds instead of 20 seconds - Spike shot now reloads approximately 10% quicker - Spike shot range increased by approximately 15% v18.69 - Fixed some server startup crashes - Widened the amount of networking info the server can send to clients - Server optimisations v18.65 - Fixed a bug related to server transitions v18.6 - Crow's Nest peak will no longer block the camera. - When it rains, cyclones now only have a 33% chance to occur (previously 100%), and will deal twice as much damage. - Dolphins chance to jump has been reduced to 20%. - Client-side option to hide the Gamepedia Wiki button in player inventory. - Patched out some .ini changes which allowed people to remove certain visual effects granting them an unfair advantage in PvP - On PvE specifically, Ship of the Damned should not attack anchored ships that have not fired upon them. - Rare Resources are now available on PvE Commodity traders for a higher gold amount than regular resources. - Fixed crew on puckle gun taking damage from fire aoe buffs. - When gunports are closed they now reduce their specific snapped-cannon weight by 60% (previously 50%), open-ports are default cannon weight. - Gunport crafting and repair costs are now the same as regular planks. - Fixed an exploit which allowed players to place multiple claim flags at once. - Large Cannons now do 30% less damage against Ship planks and Ship decks. v18.58 - Added extra server-side protection to remote inventories to resolve an exploit v18.57 - Company Claim Flags cannot be personally owned anymore. - Server crash fixes v18.55 - Client Side GPU Optimisations - Explosive Barrel Weight now correctly displayed as 60 - Added a direct button to the ATLAS wiki when opening your inventory v18.5 - Server optimisation for structures on boats - Fixed a bug where picking up a higher quality structure within the pickup timeframe would result in the common structure, rather than the specific higher quality itself v18.43 - Fixed an exploit which allowed players to stall out servers - Added extra protection to inventories to fix and prevent players from bypassing pin codes - Fixed a bug with the Kraken which would have inflicted a high amount of unintended damage - The Kraken's Barrier will no longer damage ships on collision - Explosive Barrel weight has been increased back to 60 (we're still working on a redesign). This is not visible on clients but will be active on servers. We will have a corresponding client fix to go out with this later. v18.31 - Explosive Barrels can no longer be placed on enemy ships, and only have a weight of 6 now. This is a temporary measure due to undesired gameplay. We are going to be redesigning the barrels from a technical/gameplay point of view to give them more use in the future. - Fixed a case which allowed players to enter the bottom of ships - Fixed a case which allowed players to clip and stick themselves inside the boat's hull - Protected against players accessing inventories from outside ships via clipping into boats - Fixed multiple cases where players would fall through structures upon server restart, login, transition, etc. - Fixed a crash which would occur when transitioning with the sextant buff - Fixed Swivel Cannons from firing through walls - Allow players to pick-up structures if you're on the same team even if you do not have demolish rights - Global Number of Ships is now displayed in the player's ATLAS Map UI. We'll be making this more visible on the UI in a future update. It will not display if you do not have any ships and do not belong to a company. - Cleaned up an error message when attempting to craft a boat when you were at the maximum global limit - Added a Crew name filter for company UI - Added a 12 second delay between playing status voice clips (such as injured or starvation) - War Drum songs have been adjusted to be more rewarding. Details can be found here. - Tweaked war drum battle songs to eliminate a big gap in the note sheet preview (just the preview, not the actual song) - Fixed a bug causing the buff timer shown on the music UI during a looping song that gives a perpetual buff to become off by 1 second from the actual buff timer. - Fixed a bug causing notes to incorrectly fail when activated near the edges of song loops - Fixed a bug where client fps stutters could cause notes to fail that should have been auto-played - Reduced tutorial background opacity - Made it so text wasn't cut off for long paragraphs in the tutorial - Mod Map Extensions now work (and will not require recooking the mod) - Linux WaveWorks optimisations (Linux Servers will run much better) - Kraken will no longer give impulses to players for the tentacle slams or tentacle impacts - Impacts with the Kraken bodyparts will no longer cause ship damage - Ship of the Damned Kraken minions are now damageable in PvE - Reduced the damage of the Kraken homing projectiles by 50% - Increased the damage taken by the Kraken tentacles by 50% - Ghost ship will now appear every night rather than every 3 nights - Swapped Mythical and Legendary in the descriptions for tools skills tier 2 and 3, as they were previously incorrect. - Fixed a bug where beds that were placed beyond the default accommodation limit were destroyed on server load v18.15 Bug Fixes - Turrets and Cannons will no longer fire underwater and can no longer be mounted underwater - Fixed a bug allowing players to reset all glider cooldowns by moving the glider between hotbar slots - Increased the required minimum diving velocity before going into the glide-fall state to reduce gaining/maintaining height - Ghost Ship has been fixed and will now take damage. Server Performance - Eliminated Cannon Animations playing entirely on the server for performance savings Quality Of Life - Option to hide territory broadcast messages - Territory broadcast message boxes now scale according to the character size of the message - Gunport camera socket has been lowered and moved forward for better viewing when shooting from gunports - PvE players will now be able to see their claim flag's inactivity timer on the flag itself - Attacking Player no longer needs to be in range for declaiming progress - Glider now has a required dive duration rather than a forced dive cooldown (achieves the same nerf effect on glider spam and feels better to use) Creatures - Whale Counts have been boosted on the Tundra and reduced the spawn interval between whales by 50% - Wild Dragon damage has been reduced by 30% - Golden Age Spawns have had their spawn interval increased from 30 seconds to 5 minutes and increased distance from players from 7700 to 9000 Music - Various buffs/changes made to musical songs played on the Accordion. Details can be found here - we have some planned updates to come for the War Drum in a future update, once we've resolved some technical issues related to it. Miscellaneous - PvE Claim Flag inactivity timer has been adjusted so that it now scales dynamically. A company with a small number of flags will be declaimable after 3 weeks of inactivity, whereas a company with a large number of claim flags would be declaimable after 3 days of inactivity. - The gold cost has been increased on upgrading higher quality items and structures - Cooking Recipes spoil time has been increased - Top Companies will have their names displayed on the left-hand side of the map and are now granted special nameplates and figureheads - Fixed server issue that could disconnect clients if they had a lot of map entities. v17.1 - Fixed a case where players/boats would get stuck playing transition ping-pong between two servers, frequently happened with large boats. - Pinging on an enemy claim flag should show all contesting NPC crew, in addition to players. - Multiple serious performance optimisations for companies on servers - Improved Ship position on the minimap so that it updates more smoothly v16.39 - Fixed a server crash - Fixed a server startup crash that would effect modded servers v16.36 - Fixed a bug which prevented players from being able to demolish structures v16.35 - Fixed an exploit related to structures v16.34 - Resolved a server crash v16.33 - Fixed Barshot so that it now targets sails and acts a slow through to incapacitating a ship's movement as intended. - Company Flags will now update properly onto www.playatlas.com - PvE servers will now automatically kill any character that has not been logged in for 4 weeks. Official Network only. - PvE servers can now use the homeserver option which disables replication on sleeping/logged off bodies. (Non Default but enabled on Official Network). Game.ini: [/script/shootergame.shootergamemode] bHomeServerDontReplicateLoggedOutPlayers=1 (enables logged off/sleeping players from replicating on home servers) bPvEDontReplicateLoggedOutPlayers=1 (enables non-replicating logged off/sleeping players on all PvE servers) - Climbing on other boat's ladders now disabled in PvE if the ship is anchored - PvE claim flags now only allow logged in players to contest the claim - Fixed a bug which would cause the activity timer on PvE claimflags to tick into the negatives. Also updated so the timer now displays days, hours, minutes, and seconds. - Tamed Dragon lifespan reduced to 3 hours - Tamed Dragon damage reduced by 33% - Tamed Dragon health reduced by 33% - Added Effect descriptions to Music and Cooking Recipes - Fixed an incorrect fiber reference in crafting barshot - Fixed a bug where Dead Bodies wouldn't be replicated on servers with replication turned off (Freeports and all PVE) v16.26 - Resolved a save-load issue with appended inventory engrams (Devkit Issue) v16.25 - Fixed Water Spout inventories not appearing on PvE servers - Eliminated frequent server crashes v16.22 - Alpha Creature damage has been reduced by 50% - Alpha Creature resistance has been reduced by 50% - Alpha Creatures are now 25% less common v16.21 - Server optimisations for structures (approximately 8% gain) v16.2 - Dragon Tame Token costs 40k gold as intended - Old "permanently unlocked" Power Stone Artifacts are removed (it was a bug that they were, some weeks ago, granted as a permanent character default item) - Tamed Dragon movement speed reduced by 33% - Tamed Dragon health reduced by 10% - Tamed Dragon stamina reduced by 78% - Tame Dragon Fire has 45% less lifetime v16.14 - Fixed a server crash related to demolishing structures - Fixed an exploit with Grapeshot that allowed it to be shot rapidly v16 Server Changes - Player Movement Optimisation for an approximate 15-20% performance gain on servers - Server Launch Option which locks the Fountain of Youth to one Golden Age Ruins server: -AlwaysActiveFountainsOfYouth Balance Changes Land - Stone Structures crafting costs have decreased by reducing the metal cost by 55% and reducing the organic paste requirement by 25% Ship - Steering Wheels are now considered 'stone' when it comes to their defence type, so they cannot be hurt by fire and take less explosive damage Creatures - Dragon now has 65% less HP when Tamed - Dragon now takes 40% more bullet and explosive damage when tamed - Dragon now recovers stamina 25% more slowly when flying - Dragon can no longer be healed by Nature's Touch - Dragon tamed timer reduce from 8 hours to 6 hours - Dragon Fire Damage reduced by 50% - Dragon Token cost increased to 40,000 gold coins v15.76 - Retroactively fixed an issue which destroyed all sails on rafts - Retroactively fixed an issue which would prevent rafts and ramshackle sloops from sailing v15.73 - Fixed a bug which allowed players to place multiple steering wheels on boats - Fixed a bug which allowed players to bypass the Ship Sail Unit Limit. This is a retroactive fix. - Removed the initial stamina cost for blocking v15.67 - Fixed a case where Steam clients sometimes were unable to connect to the servers. We recommend hosts upgrade to this version. v15.63 - Discovery Zones now provide 1 Discovery Point per unlock - Resolved some connection timeout issues. v15.61 Server Changes - Server optimisations to increase performance by approximately 5% - Optimized transition data cleanup in Redis to avoid DB bloat. - Server Listing for non-ATLAS servers has been rewritten and will list non-ATLAS servers immediately. Fountain of Youth and Aging Changes - Fountain of Youth is only usable if you're over age 90. - Fountain of Youth is now available on two random Golden Age Servers. - Old Age debuff has been reduced by 50% Bug and Exploit Fixes - Fixed a bug which made it so that beds and boats would not display on the map if they weren't in a company. - Fixed a bug with the Drake which allowed it to phase through structures - Fixed a bug which allowed players to have more beds on their boat than permitted, this is a retroactive fix. Balance Changes Land - Increasing explosive damage to stone structures by 2.5x. - Increasing seige structure damage to stone structures by 60% - Wood Land Structure has been buffed to provide better resistance to siege weapon types by 40%. - Wood Land Structures have been buffed to provide better defence against all non-explosive/siege damage types by 50%. - Stone Structures crafting costs have been increased by adding metal cost, and changing fiber requirement to organic paste, which requires both fiber and sap to craft - Thatch Structures have had their crafting costs reduced by 3x. - NPCs mounted on Puckles are now invincible Ship - Ships can only receive damage from collision encounters with other ships if they're of the same or a greater weight class (deals with cheesy cheap ramshackle builds to sink bigger boats). Galleon - Weight class 5 Brig - Weight class 4 Schooner - Weight class 3 Sloop (Ramshackle) - Weight class 2 Raft - Weight class 1 Dingy - Weight class 0 Creatures - Drake balances adjustments (10% less HP, 10% less damage, and double stamina cost for using fire breath) - Magical tames can no longer be used in boss fights and will be destroyed when used inside the dome (Drakes) Misc Changes - BattlEye has been updated to now support Windows Insider Builds. - Resolved multiple Devkit crashes. - Updated latest translations: German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Turkish, Ukranian, and Chinese - Discovery Zones now count as 3 Discovery Points instead of 1. Players no longer need to discover all zones to reach max level. Not a retroactive change. This value can be adjusted for Unofficial Servers here: Game.ini: [/script/shootergame.shootergamemode] MinPointsPerDiscoveryZone=3 v15.35 - Fixed an issue with Wild and Tamed Dragon scaling which would have cause it to have incorrect stats. - Rebalanced base weights for tamed creatures (increase) - Added an additional Fountain of Youth on a different Golden Ruins server, so 2 are active tonight. The additional Fountain of Youth will not be visible until the client side update releases later tonight. v15.33 - Fixed an issue where clients would not correctly see the Rejuvenate buff - Fixed an issue where players could not tame the Dragon using the token - Fixed an issue where players may not have been able to feed bola'd creatures due to a desync on servers v15.21 - Fixed an issue where doors, gateways, and gunports would break on server reload v15.1 - New "Fountain of Youth" quest will appear for characters aged 90 years and higher. The "Fountain of Youth" (currently represented as a magical particle effect) appears in a single Golden Age Ruins across the ATLAS, near the Power Stone Container. Every 50 in-game days, it teleports to another Golden Age Ruins, on a cycle. If you find the Fountain, and activate it, your character will be set back to age 20, and if you do this when you were aged over 90 years, you'll gain a significant permanent statistics boost (you can do this multiple times to gain further boosts, each time when you're at least 90 years old). - Characters over age 90 get an old age debuff that slightly reduces stats (shown in char panel) - Fixed an erroneous feat cooldown time calculation, now all the feat cooldowns are what was originally intended. - Defeating the Kraken now gives you a unique passive skill which permanently and automatically reduces all of your Feat cooldowns by 33%! - Summoning the Kraken now only require the first 8 powerstones (Ghostship powerstone is no longer necessary) - Fixed the bug that was preventing recruiting new Crew in Freeports - Reduced the total time for unclaiming enemy claimflags, the max is now 4 hours, with 15 minutes when at 100 flags. - Vultures no longer target low-health wild creature - Reduced Wolf spawn frequency - Reduced Wolf natural targeting range - Reduced Wolf notify neighbor range. - Reduced Wolf hp and damage - Fixed land creatures AI's not getting aggro properly if attacked from a a ship - Stop Allies being able to Capture other Allied territories - Fixed rapid unclaiming, now if your contested flag is unclaimed it will unclaim at the same rate that it took to claim! - Improved door ticking performance - Added cheat DestroyAllNonSaddlePlayerStructures - Reduced default gold from treasure maps by 50% (as originally intended) and added a new server scaling value for treasure gold. Though, the Official 2x weekend puts the gold back to pre-patch values. - +50% tame damage resistance - Shark and Jellyfish targeting/neighbor ranges reduced 30% - Diving suit adds 90 fortitude now and lasts for 2 hours at surface and about 30 minutes at deepest depths - Crop plots are now prevented from being placed on ships and are destroyed if they were on ships. - Ocean creatures can no longer be Alpha. - Fixed Whale AI to target the ship or player more, rather than the point the player touches the ship. - Fixed NPC Merchant ship showing as overweight when players carried a lot of weight aboard. - Fixed Merchant ship showing as Raft with company ID 0 when looking at it. - Fixed Company ID O showing on none player owned structures on maps (water spouts, etc.) - Fixed Pillars being build-able on PVE islands. - Fixed Fog event not appearing for players using low settings. - Fixed Chicken hurt SFX. - Added new Large Cannon SFX. - Fixed Parrot hurt SFX. - Fixed players not getting aggro when attacking whilst based on a ship. - Added Streamer stealth mode option. - Fixed Monkey hurt SFX. - Fixed a bug causing Map Markers to draw at incorrect locations on the map UI. - Fixed skill description error, "mythical" changed to "legendary." - Fixed flotsam items spoiling when reeled in with grappling hook. - Fixed client crash when transitioning with sextant buff. - Fixed a Song not referencing the correct song buff. - Fixed a bug making it so that the Raft could be repaired for free. - Increased Flame Arrow durability cost to 4 durability consumed per shot. - Reduced Flame Arrow max percentage damage by 25% (4% health per second to 3% health.) - Reduced Flame Arrow max damage per second from 10 to 5. - Reduced Flame Arrow damage to mythical creatures by 75%. - Reduced Kraken health by 60%. - Reduced Kraken Minion AoD Ships ship Health 50%. - Reduced Kraken damage by 50%. - Reduced Wild Dragon damage by 40% - Reduced Wild Dragon health be 40% - Reduced Wild Dragon targeting range by 66%. - Fixed Dragon not returning to its spawn area. - Increased Dragon end aggro grace period from 6 second to 9 as it has a tighter aggro range now. - Fixed Lucky Loader feat ability to not be used whilst prone (as you cannot reload prone.) - Fixed Cloth Gloves clipping into hands in FPV. - Fixed Dreadlocks not shrinking correctly with hats. - Fixed LtOrderSeat collision bug. - Improved death collision to human corpses. - Fixed female emotes playing male voices. - Fixed female player characters using male sleep SFX. - Added ability to place top hat on certain creatures. - Fixed Gorgon "Remove Snake" text. - Corrected Repair box inventory name to read "Ship Resources Box." - Removed Elephant having weight reduction for Wood, as this was never an intended mechanic and resulted in players being able to get around ship weight restrictions. Accordingly, we'll be re-balancing the base weight of tamed creatures early next week. - Fixed treasure guards despawning instantly on stasis. - Fixed Giant snake lock on and player ability to damage it using melee attacks. - Fixed Monkeys dropping human poop. - Fixed Client Crash when rendering ocean harvestables. - Reduced Greek Fire range by 40%. - Increased Greek Fire crafting costs by adding 6 firegel per ammo. - Fixed Cow death harvest component giving the same amount of prime as a Bulls. - Reduced trample damage for all applicable creatures. - Updated Pig force poop ability to scale with creature level, to incentivise taming higher levels. (45 secs at lvl 1 and 15 secs at lvl 130). - Reduced Lion grab weight threshold. Prevents unrealistic grabbing of Wolves and Horses. - Fixed newly tamed creatures being hungry despite being fed during taming. - Increased Dolphin follow ship range by 33%, and reduced interval by 20%. - Fixed Bola'ed HUD to better indicate where to feed creature during taming. - Removed "Giant" prefix from creatures' descriptive name that use it. - Changed "Giant Snake" descriptive name to "Cobra". - Fixed incorrect sounds being used by Lion and Tiger animations. - Fixed incorrect Bear attack ranges to prevent stopping movement for claw attack, which often missed and allowed players to gain distance when being chased. - Reduced attack and AI ranges for Cave Bear, based on its smaller size. - Fixed incorrect item weights for cloth, hide and plate armor. They are now heavier. - Added folder paths for wooden gateways and gates so you no longer see them instantly when opening the Smithy inventory. - Fixed ability of players to feed through walls of taming pens and not get attacked. - Prevented some creatures from not being able to be tamed if they are clipped too far into terrain or structures. - Prevents multi use feeding from the root, putting themselves in harm's way. - Improved Waking Tame Feeding sockets on Cow and Razortooth. - Improved bola socket on Crow - Updated Vulture AI controller to aim lower when targeting corpses. - Fixed various creature spawn issues. - Fixed players being able to bola certain alpha creatures (now you cannot.) - Updated Dolphin to prevent health bars appearing when they follow players. - Improved torpor animations of Razortooth and Ostrich. - Increased Ostrich melee swing socket radius to more consistently land attacks. Updated Ostrich IK to prevent leg distortion when running down slopes. - Reduced max wander height on flyers. - Improved server list efficiency for a better experience. - Fixed Greek Fire SFX. - Fixed player on fire SFX. - Fixed inability to repair door frames in certain constructions. - Added some additional server configs: Game.ini: [/script/shootergame.shootergamemode] EnemyBuildPreventionRadiusMultiplier=1 (only applicable if not using claimflags) bDontUseClaimFlags=false (this will disable claim flags) bUseStaticCharacterAge=false (this will disable dynamic aging) TreasureGoldMultiplier=1.0 v14.11 - Remember 'Show Non ATLAS Servers' setting - No lover overwrites the last connection string - Grid Number columns are now hidden when displaying non ATLAS servers v14.1 - Fixed a client side crash that could occur on login v14 - Launched ATLAS Devkit 11.4 - Fixed multiple exploits which allowed movement of excessively encumbered players through various gameplay mechanics - Disabled non allied players and creatures basing on anchored or docked ships which can be toggled with a server-setting on PVE servers with the in Game.ini - set bPvEAllowNonAlignedShipBasing=true If you want to allow non allies to be able to be on your ship - Disabled feats when encumbered - Melee auto target should no longer pick ally targets in any mode, or player/tame targets in pve - Disallowed freeport npc crew recruiting if 20 or more level 1 npc crew's for that company on the server 11.3 - Fixed an exploit which allowed cannons on cargo carts to shoot through walls - Additional backend infrastructure for anti-cheat and hack detection 11.2 - Server performance optimisations (20%+ improvement). We'll have more changes in the week for an additional (approximately) ~25% server perf improvement. v11.1 - Enabled BattlEye Anti Cheat on all Official Servers. Please restart your Steam Clients and make sure to install BattlEye in order to play on our Official Network. Unofficial Networks can still play without BattlEye, and players can right-click the title in their Steam Library and play without the anti-cheat. For those of you who have made custom shortcuts, please update the executable to this: ShooterGame\Binaries\Win64\AtlasGame_BE.exe - Implemented code to kill off inactive bodies in Freeports and Lawless Regions (players who have been logged off for more than 10 days). v11 - Re-enabled weapon/attack based feats - Fixed game exploits v10.82 - Temporarily disabled weapon/attack based feats v10.8 - Claim Flag Settings have now been enabled - Taxing Resources now affect crops - Tax Bank will stack items similar to a Crew Resource Box - Tax Bank will no longer allow you to drag item's into the inventory, so to prevent items from being taxed, they must be dragged from within the Tax Bank itself to the ignore folder. - Cost of Drake Token has been reduced to 20,000 Gold Coins and is now available for purchase at the cosmetic vendor in freeports. - 25% buff to explosives against stone structures v10.79 - Changed how custom blueprints are crafted for STACKABLE items when they're given a stat roll: > If a stackable item is crafted from the same blueprint and you already have an item crafted from that blueprint in your inventory, it will stack on that pre-existing item and not receive a different Intelligence Stat Bonus. > If you want a different roll from the same blueprint, you must make sure that you do not have an item which was crafted from that same BP in your inventory (stated or non) > This means that you can keep rolls by keeping the item in your inventory when crafting from the BP, even if you do not have the level of intelligence required to get the crafting bonus. Alternatively, you can remove the stated item from your inventory to get a new roll from the BP. - Resource respawn should now function as they did on Lawless servers prior to v10. - 50% reduction in the enemy structure prevention radius so that you can now build closer together on Lawless Servers. v10.75 - Wild land creatures will no longer target crew, tames, or characters on ships unless they have been aggro'd - Fixed a bug where Ship of the Damned would have rapid fire - Temporarily reduced Crew Log length as it undergoes some rewrites because it would cause performance problems. v10.71 - Fixed a bug which prevented cannons from being reloaded - Tightened up server-side protection on gliders - Fixed an exploit with mortars v10.5 - Fixed Ramshackle sloops breaking when you leave freeports - Fixed a bug which prevented you from accessing newly tamed inventories unless you relogged - Fixed a bug which caused Mantrays to be unusually aggressive - Comodity trader gold cost increased v10.43 Claim flag related changes - Claim Flags now have settings which allow other companies or players to build within them, with the specified tax rate applied to them. - You are also able to define an inclusion or exclusion list to these, to only allow or exclude specific company IDs (also used by players without companies). To grab someone's ID for the inclusion/exclusion list, you'll need to look at a structure they've placed which will list their Company ID; this number can be input into the flag's list system to prevent/enable building. Please note that exclusion/inclusion lists are not saved when altering building permissions, so switching from 'Everyone' can build to 'Company & Alliances' only will clear your list should you wish to return to 'Everyone' can build. - All claim flags will use the 'Everyone can build' as a default setting when placed, and this will also be a retroactive change. However, it will not function until Thursday the 10th of January, where we will release another server update to make this setting active. This means you will have two days, from Tuesday to Thursday, to decide and adjust the settings on your claim flag before the change is live. - Only admins and above will be able to make changes to company claims. - Claim Flags will have icons above them to represent their owner and setting. Your claim flags have a green icon. Claim Flags belonging to your allies that do not permit you to build, have a blue icon, or purple if they do belong to your allies and allow you to build. Claim Flags which belong to your enemies and do not allow you to build have red icons, or yellow if they belong to your enemies and enable you to build within them. - Fixed some bugs related to Sea Claims. - Enemy Claim Flags can now be directly pinged to identify any contesting enemies nearby - The time required to steal an enemy claim now decreases the more Claims that enemy team has. - Looking at your Claim Flag will show you how many land claims you have, and looking at an enemy one will show you how many land flags they have, note that this does not update dynamically on the client for server performance reasons. To always have the latest number, you can relog or re-enter stasis range of the Claim Flag. general changes - Server performance improvements - All Cannons/Turrets can now be pin code protected for lever activation/deactivation - There are 4x as many trade ships on the seas, and they now also sell commodity types for gold, as do NPC's at Freeports. - Lawless servers can no longer be specified as Homesevers. If your Homeserver was a lawless server, you'll be required to pick a new (Freeport) Homeserver upon respawn. This does not mean that land will be claimable on these servers, just that they cannot be selected as a server to respawn on. - You can now buy a "Ramshackle Sloop" from the NPC Shipyardsman at Freeports. The "Ramshackle Sloop" is a pre-built sloop which has permanently lower plank HP, carry weight, and crew limit, but is cheaper and faster to acquire if you want to get into sailing faster. - "Favorites" server selection drop-down is added for Unofficial - Joining through Steam browser server list with password now properly caches the password for ATLAS travel - Fixed up some temperature scalings and Weather events are now indicated on the HUD - Armour effectiveness and some values have been adjusted so that firearms are more useful in PVP - Fixed some bugs related to Sea Claims, Enemy Claim Flags can now be directly pinged to identify any contesting enemies nearby, and the time required to steal an enemy claim now decreases the more Claims that enemy team has. - Farming rebalances to be easier; water can now pipe uphill, region requirements for growing crops are more forgiving, and crop growth & yield is much faster and higher. Crops now take much longer to spoil when placed in a preserving bag. - Reduced shovel stamina cost. - You can now fill waterskins/jars from ground spouts. - Metal Tools can no longer damage the planks of anchored ships. - 50 more player levels added, and Skill Points per level increased. - Loot stat scaling has been boosted (retroactively) by 60% - Some ship costs have been adjusted, and in some cases reduced by approximately about 50% - Animals health regen rebalanced, so they're not regenerating high amounts whilst in combat! - Eating poop is now instant-death - Fixed an issue where you couldn't kill yourself by exhaustion (for stuck situations) - Pipes can now move water upwards and the vertical limit on underground junctions has been eliminated. Also, pipes can go farther without foundation requirement, and underground junctions can now be snapped onto existing pipes. - Guns and melee weapons have had their damage and penetration values adjusted to make them more effective against armour - Throwing Knife does significantly more damage when thrown to unarmoured targets (body and headshot) - Armour penetration has been reduced on spear throw to make it less effective versus higher armoured targets - Explosive Barrel weight has been increased - Stone Arrows now stack to 60 and a bow can fire them 60 times before breaking - Fire Arrows now stack to 40 and a bow can fire them 40 times before breaking - Puckle damage has been increased and also been made more effective against armour - Fixed Salted Animal & Fish Meat so that they naturally generate when placed in an active preserving bag (must use raw meats) - Updated some legacy sounds and icons - Updated stair collision on shipyards - Fixed a bug which prevented passive feats from applying after death - Fixed a bug with the torch which caused it to repair endlessly - Lighthouses can now be lit even if they are touching water - Using a bucket on a tamed cow now causes the bucket to lose durability - Fixed a bug where players would get stuck in the crouched position - Fixed a bug which sometimes would occur where players would disconnection when being invited to a company - Fixed a bug which prevented creatures from receiving experience points above a certain level - Fixed a bug which would cause NPC Crew to sink into foundations when exiting stasis range - Rewrote structure destruction logic to avoid cases of floating structures - Inventory ranks per structure and creature will now work for companies - Fixed a bug which prevented admins from accessing remote inventories with the F key when changing group ranks. - Autolock all structures in 'PvE only' with an inventory, except campfires and similar structures which can be placed without a claimflag. Unofficial Servers can run this with PvE enabled & ?ForceAllStructureLocking=true - Gunmounts are now colorizable - Gates and Gateway costs have been adjusted and now include metals (wood) and alloy (stone) - Gateways and Gates are now crafted in smithy instead of player inventory - Fixed an exploit with Prying Eyes - Can no longer glide up mountains with the glide suit - Fixed an exploit which allowed you to gain massive height when using the zipline - Fixed a building exploit which allowed you to float structures and fortify walls with floors Creature related changes - Sea Monsters' damage has been reduced by 66% - Tamed Creatures take 20% less damage - Wild Alpha creatures HP and Damage reduced by 20% - Tames HP and Damage scaling nerfed by about 40%, and Cannons/Explosions damage to tames increased 50% due to level increase and scaling possibility - Killing the Monsterous Sperm Whale or Blue Whales (as they're now named) provides (one-time) 50 Discovery Points each to everyone within 100k units of that event. - Penguin AoE insulation now scales by level, the higher the level, the more insulation. - Updated Mounted and Rider buffs to display icon while active, to better inform players the source of stat boosts. - Dolphins now periodically leap out of the water. If you're nearby to witness that at close-range, you'll gain a temporary Intelligence buff! - Updated affinity ineffectiveness values based on the recent x2 taming increase - Updated creature specific buffs and ability value clamps to be scaled across 130 levels, due to recent extra 30 level ups for tames. - Increased Wolf attack destination offset and increased some physics bounds to reduce clipping into players. Temporarily increased Wolf saddle scale in the engine to limit fur clipping. - Updated taming ineffectiveness values to allow the highest efficiency to only be achieved with Taming Proficiency skill 3. - Updated some undesired movement speed bonuses on tamed creatures - Adjusted Seagull and Crow aggro speeds (Would previously take a long time to de-aggro). Updated collision to allow player attacks to land more consistently. - Updated Vulture AI to only target sleeping humans if the player is connected. Updated attack logic to better harvest corpses, while reducing its melee swing radius (Was previously hitting from very far away) - Reduced Bee movement to allow player attacks to land. Reduced sting buff duration to better reflect its size. - Increased harvest amount of fur and milk from Sheep and Cow to incentivise taming and better compete with natural resource gathering amounts. Updated max yield timings to scale with creature level, similar to other creature abilities, instead of food value. - Added durability decreased to the bucket when milking. - Clamped amount of fur gained from harvesting wild sheep, again to incentivise taming. Wild sheep will also flee and may attack players after excessive shearing. We'll be adding recipes in an upcoming update which can be used to heal your creatures! - Added Lion roar animation. - Fixed fur stretching on Wolf's face and hind leg - Decreased Crocodile swim speed. - Creature health regen rebalanced and changed so that they no longer regen health when forcefed or from consuming corpses. With the exception of Wild Carnos, which still can consume corpses to heal at a reduced rate. - Baby breeding balance changes to compensate for the overall creature regen changes. - Wild Scorpions will no longer target large creatures, will no longer be aggressive towards Elephants, Giraffes, etc. - Lion will only dismount players that are on medium and less sized creatures, will no longer dismount players from Elephants, Giraffes, etc. - Updated taming foods to allow a variety of items to be used in taming creatures. Effectiveness left(more) to right(less): Tier 1 Chicken - Fruits, Berries Monkey - Fruits, Berries Parrot - Hardtack, or Berries Rabbit - Carrots, or Berries Sheep - Flowers, or Berries Tier 2 Bear - Honey, Vegetables, Fruits or Berries Cow/Bull - Rushes, Fronds, Vegetables, Fruits, or Berries Crow - Worms, Fruits, or Berries Horse - Sugarcane, Vegetables, Fruits, or Berries Ostrich - Chili, Vegetables, Fruits, or Berries Penguin - Prime Fish Meat, or Fish Meat Pig - Maize, Vegetables, Fruits, or Berries Seagull - Prime Fish Meat, or Fish Meat Vulture - Spoiled Meat, or Worms Wolf - Prime Animal Meat, Bones, or other Meats Tier 3 Elephant - Wheat, Vegetables, or Fruits Giraffe - Beets, Vegetables, or Fruits Lion - Prime Animal Meat, or other Meats Rhino - Turnip, Vegetables, or Fruits Tiger - Prime Animal Meat, or other Meats v9.392 - Fixed a client-side crash on logging in v9.35 - Fixed some server-side crashes and desync when transitioning 9.33 - Fixed some server-side crashes when transitioning v9.32 - Fixes a bug where servers couldn't be connected to on startup. v9.31 - Fix for PVP Claim flags, not upkeep timer not updating properly when a friendly player is in range, should be it now guys! v9.3 - Resolved some server-side stalls related to perf large companies - Fixed alliance chat sometimes duplicating messages - Fixed a bug where clients could end up invisible when demolishing a podium v9.2 - Default resource and taming speeds have been increased to 2x as the baseline. - Reduced min damage and min percentage on flame arrow buff by 33%. - Reduced max damage done on flame arrow projectile hit to 50. - Increased gravity on flame arrows 20% to make it less ranged. - Increased firegel cost of flame arrows by 100%. - Added durability consumption to flame and stone arrows (1 dura per shot, 40 shots per bow repair). - Change bow durability from 50 to 40. - Fixed a bug which allowed Mortars to have rapid fire. - Fixed an issue where upkeep timer on PVE Claimflags was not correctly updating. - Company Member, Company Groups, and Alliance data loss issue should hopefully be resolved. - Official Network Companies are now hard limited to 500 members, and this is a current measure until the Company system receives a backend overhaul in the long-term. - Fixed inland water buoy's being invisible and fixed buoys, so they no longer prevent resource respawn. - Prevent ship collision damage from occurring when caused by other player ships on PVE servers. - Fixed sunken-ship area indicator lingering even after a shipwreck has been entirely salvaged. - Reduced deepwater aggressive creature frequency and targetting range. - Melee weapons are now temporarily ineffective against ship planks. Later this will be changed so that it will only be ineffective against anchored ship planks. - Sailing against the wind now provides 30% of with-the-wind sailforce, as opposed to 0%. - Also increased the amount of sailforce provided by minimum windspeed conditions by 30%, and the sailforce provided by maximum windspeed conditions by 15%. - Every Tame can now get a minimum of 30 tame level-ups put into it, plus however many base levels it had when wild. So for example, a level 5 wild wolf would get 35 tame level-ups to apply, whereas a level 40 wild wolf would get 70 tame level-ups to use. - Increased the base carry Weight of all ships by +40% v8.72 - Fixed some server crashes - Slightly improved server performance and reduced server stalls - Ended New Year's event (Tophats remain but no longer grant double treasure gold and can no longer be bought at in-game cosmetics NPC traders) - Buffed Tamed creatures HP and Damage globally by 25% v8.56 - Anyone can now demolish shipwreck structures to regain resources so get your diving suits ready! - NPC Trading Ships are back and no longer affected by wild creature destruction commands! Reminder for those with deep pockets, the trader ships have an epic Dragon which can be purchased for 50,000 gold coins v8.35 - Improvements made to joining/rejoining servers, should make it more reliable and eliminate many cases of connection lost/failure to grab server info. v8.35 - Fixed a bug where HUD may not have shown to players in some cases. v8 - Further improved server stability. - Further reduced Ship of the Damned spawns by 20% - Ship of the Damned now are allowed to "Wander" away from shore if they find themselves close to shore - Ship of the Damned targeting ranges now are reduced by the type of ship (down to 30% for rafts (which means they will now attack rafts - but you have to get pretty darn close to them!) and 0% for dinghies) - -LowMemoryMode now disables the background movies for lighter memory footprint - Changed damage type on repair hammer to 0 against players, human npcs, and creatures to stop pvp on pve servers, not used as a weapon on pvp. - Ships near shore do not attract cyclones anymore - Vultures should now more easily harvest corpses - Ships that players are based on do not use staggered updates now (resolving the issue of the choppy spyglass rotation when in the crow's nest, for example) - Can no longer weapon-charge or dodge when encumbered. - Fixed erroneous reference to chalcedony instead of flint base - Added Ingots/Alloys and Organic Paste to the list of resources allowed in the ship repair box - Tripled gathering weighting of metal in all the generic rocks for both pick and hatchet damage types - Grenades damaged to stone multiplied by 3x - Changed Human Crew character carry inv max weight from 1000 to 60. - Switched damage weightings around so the pick tool is preferred from metal/crystal/gem/salts and hatchet for wood/coal/stone, etc. No adjustments have been made to yield changes, just tools have been adjusted. - Fixed an issue with treasure bottle's spawning (there will now be more of them and more reliably spawned) and increased the quality of loot found in treasures. v7.8 - Further server/networking optimisation to improve server performance and stability. We have effectively eliminated over 95% of our crashes. We'll be continuing to monitor our servers over the coming days ahead and tackle more events. Consequently, we will be turning our primary attention to data transfer issues and connection issues. - Reduced Ship of the Damned targeting range by 50%. We're going to look into scaling that based on the type of ship. v7.6 - Further server/networking optimisation to improve server performance, stability, and connection issues. - Further tweaks made to Ship of the Damned should no longer wander close to shore, however they may chase you. - Shipyards are now properly tagged on the server side, so enemy players will not be able to demo them unless the decay timer has truly hit 0 on the server. v7.33 - Improvements made to -lowmemorymode to use async loading, resulting in less freezy load times. - Added -nosound launch command - Added -noinlinestreamer launch command - Server-side crash fixes and stability improvements. Resulting in approximately 40% more stable servers, with additional changes to come! - Reduced Army of the Damned ships spawn rate by 60% - Reduced Army of the Damned ship HP per level scaling by 20% - Reduced Army of the Damned ship Aggro range by 10% - Boosted Army of the Damned ship loot quality by 10% - Reduced Flotsam spawn rate by 35% - Increased Treasuremap item quality by 15% - Eliminated at-sea increased rate of vitamin/vitals consumption. Now it just causes food to spoil faster, and temperatures to drop. - Increased vitamin equilibrium range to +/- 20% rather than 10% (making it easier to achieve and stay in equilibrium) - Decreased vitamin deficiency debuff threshold to 10% rather than 20% - Reduced base rate of vitamin consumption by 2% - Ensured army of the damned ships spawn farther away from shore, and don't spawn too near player ships - Fixed Diving Platform to take any oils, not just blubber - Changed Lighthouse HP to 25k, gave it stone structure settings, and allow it to burn oil - Vultures will no longer erroneously target players they can't hit - Army of the Damned Ships will no longer initially aggro to drydocked or anchored ships, unless fired upon by them or already targeting them. - Added one more Skill Point earned by all level-ups above 10 (recommend players Respec) v7.0 - Added a new event cosmetic, 'Top Hat'. Permanent skin with 10 applicable uses. Can be purchased from Cosmetic Vendors in Freeports or Travelling Merchants. From the 27th of December, through til the 2nd of January, wearing this hat whilst digging up treasure will result in double the gold. - Improved server performance by adjusting server water thread utilization - Changed declaim period (stealing enemy territory) to 30 minutes from 1.5 hours (requires they have no alive crew or players in the vicinity) - Removed requirement to be on a boat to steal someone's boat after placing the claim flag. Adjusted base value times to claim the boats to be 1 one minute to steal a dinghy, 2hrs~ to steal a raft, a couple hours to steal sloop, and so forth (levelling a ship increases the time it takes to steal that ship). - Rebalanced Skill Point requirements as originally intended, where higher tier skills cost more SP. Forced a one-time 'free' respec to use these new values. - "Low Memory" Launch Option for more reliable <= 8GB OS support. Launch the game with '-lowmemorymode' to utilize this! - Ship collision damage is now disabled on Freeport servers. - Alpha creature spawns are now disabled on Freeport and Lawless Servers. - Item yield and Gold yield from Treasure have been doubled - Significantly reduced Torch and Fire Arrow Damage - Fixed a bug which prevented resources from respawning. Please note when this update goes live, it may be a few hours until they naturally start appearing again. - Increased the damage from Dragon Fire AOE and set it to an 8-hour tame time with the token - Equilibrium Buff now gives +20% XP, -20% reduced incoming damage, +30 temperature fortitude, +10% movement speed, +20% melee damage, and takes 30 minutes to achieve rather than an hour. - Fixed a bug which prevented Bottles and Flotsams from spawning - Fixed a bug ocean and deep ocean spawners, including Mermaids, Whales, Ship of the Damned, and Squids. - NPC crew that are recruited in Freeport are now correctly assigned to your team. - Fixed Shovels and Heavy Shields so they no longer damage stone structures - All freeports now have pirate music in town - Scuttling is now tied to the demolishing tribe governance setting and Prevent Demolishing Structures in Group Management Settings - Group ranks now enabled on seating structures, so you're able to have better control of who is able to use those (Steering Wheel and Lt Podium) - PvE Claim Flag contesting now displays the enemy Claim Flag's upkeep time remaining before you can contest it, and provides a proper HUD message to that effect. v.6.7 - Further changes made to resource respawn limitations which should result in less barren islands. - Fix for claim flags on PVP servers v6.5 - Ships and rafts no longer prevent resources from respawning. Note that nearby online players & structures (not claimflag ) will prevent resources from respawning. - Fixed an issue where bed overlap protection was too strong, prevent players from respawning when they were too close to unfriendly ships or structures. - Can no longer claim unallied boats on PVE servers. PVE Territory can only be claimed if the owner has not been active around the territory within the last 3 days. - Further optimised server-side performance - Fixed a bug with the repair hammer which allowed players to repair structures even if they had a damage cooldown. It will temporarily use the resources, however, this will be fixed in our upcoming client patch. - Can now claim enemy ships in Lawless and Golden Age Ruin servers. v6.2 - Lawless Regions no longer have EXP caps. v6.1 - Further server performance optimisation - Multiple server and client crash fixes - Fixes for beds and boats not displaying on maps/spawn UI - Ships are now instant craft in shipyards - Piercing Shot cooldown increased - Improved client replication on boats so they appear more smooth when the boats are moving - Fix for character creation prompts upon server join/respawn (still investigating additional edge cases) - Alliance players should no longer contest each other's claim flags - Coldfront and Heatwave extremity reduced by 60% - Fixed an issue where the game would leave players in the encumbered state after fast travelling to another or same server. v5.9 - More performance related fixes for clients and servers - Fixed for appearing in a random location upon relog - Fix for beds and boats not being selectable/visible on the spawn UI v5.5 - Fix for players spawning in the Ocean on Lawless Regions - Fixed multiple connection issues and bugs impacting server performance - Sleeping players are no longer replicated in freeports. v5 - Major version upgrade to investigate client issues when attempting to connect to a server, as well as server performance problems. v4.3: - Fixed multiple client-side crashes v4.2: - Fixed multiple server-side crashes v4.1: - Fix for Lawless maps not being named appropriately. v4.0: - Enabled Lawless regions to be connected to at the start - Reduced timeout length on disconnections - Switch to steam sockets to resolve players being unable to connect to servers

Yea if it causes surrounding resources to vanish that could be bad depending on the gather rates, methods and whether or not ownership of #s of farmhouses is capped. A. May still work though if it can only farm a limited type of resources, specified by the owner. Maybe set it to lumber for an hour or a day, then change it to metal for a period etc... I'd be surprised if it just desolated every resource within range endlessly. Could also require gold upkeep to keep it running to limit the destruction, theoretically. If its expensive to operate then the desolation might only last an hour or 2 B. Seems smarter, to me atleast, to have it kind of magically attract the surrounding resources into storage w/out actually affecting them. This would be better for several reasons 1 People travel to get rare resources and it would be a bummer to arrive only to find your c**k-blocked by an auto harvester 2 Less stress on the back end (server) having to generate, render and destroy over and over. Simply adding certain resources into its inventory at a specified time & rate would require less processing I'd think 3 As @George Catcher said, it wouldn't be visually appealing If they want the person owning it to be able to monopolize the resource(s) as some type of method to encourage trade i guess A would be the choice. I suspect B will be the solution and thats what the players would want.

I posted the idea for the cargo containers a long time ago. Thank you VERY much for listening. Now, one thing I think you need to do with the flotsam that they create. Do not allow the company who lost them, to access them and popcorn the stuff in them to simply deny others the chance at some loot. I have seen too much of this popcorning of resources and gold, and maps, and blueprints, simply to deny anyone the ability to have that loot. We came across a schooner where this had been done, when we completed the Monster Whale quest. When we found it, it was half dead. We complete that, and immediately came across the ship that had done the damage to it. It had been sunk, and the two crew's bodies were in the water, and their NPCs for the sales were still among the flotsam. I dove on the ship and found that they had popcorned everything of value. This is not good for the game. So let me make some suggestions regarding other loot. Gold...does not need to be carried on your person. Have a safe in the base, and a safe on each ship. These cannot be withdrawn from by players of the owning company...only by those who are not in the company. Anyone who recently left the company, should not be allowed to access it. Allies should not be able to access it. When you do a AotD map, the gold goes to the nearest safe in that grid...thus the ship you traveled on. Weight should not be an issue for the ship. When the ship is within range of a base safe, you can transfer any amount you wish, from the ship's safe, to the base safe, using the radial wheel. When the ship is sunk, this prevents the owning players from popcorning the gold to prevent it from being discovered by other players. Maps and BPs. This is more complicated. I believe this is the solution. When you find them, you have a very limited amount of time to get them into a bookshelf, be it on the ship, or a base. Once there, it cannot be withdrawn. The Smithy would see any BP within range. You can transfer them to a base bookshelf that is within range, just as with the gold. With maps, once added to a bookshelf, it also cannot be withdrawn, but a copy can, but the copy has a limited timer on it. If that is stolen off a person's body, it removes the map from the base, or ship bookshelf. As with the gold, and cargo flotsam, it cannot be removed and thus popcorned by the owners. However, others can withdraw these items. Popcorning items...please find a way to stop this. I would solve this by limiting the amount of items that an enemy can remove from a container. They should not be able to drop items from a container. If they cannot drop items from the container, and can only withdraw a limited number of items from the container, they would be more judicious in what they take...in other words, valuable loot. Pirates only took what they wanted. They didn't throw the rest off of the ship and then leave. Make containers much much more durable. Make the initial damage unlock them. Then make it take a huge amount of damage after that, to demolish it. Drastically increase the durability of stone structures, except gates and doors. Require every room to have a door into it to prevent a meta of rooms with no doors. Maybe even require every wall to have a door. By wall, I mean that if you have a wall, and you wish to intersect that wall with another wall, it would require you to first install a doorway. If you demolish that doorway, the code would not allow it to be replaced by a wall. What this does is encourage raiding, but not wiping. I do not believe that wiping is healthy for a game like this, where it takes so much effort to get built up. I see people quit when wipes happen. Present Loot....I, and others I have talked to, are tired of so much of the loot NOT being loot. So many useless BPs, and maps...especially the BPs. I would get rid of the thatch BPs, and stone tool BPs. Take a look at how often people just throw these away. Also, there are just way too many other items that are over represented in the BPs. Gates, Fence Foundations, and Platforms come immediately to mind. Sure it is nice to get some, but let's be honest, most people don't use the platforms, and only use a small amount of the gates, and rarely use the fence foundations. What people want most are the wood roof BPs, wood ceiling BPs, and wood wall BPs, for our ships. Yet, these seem to be the most rare. Let loot actually be loot...meaning people actually want the items. It does not help the game when so often, you are just thoroughly disappointed by the loot you get from Flotsam, AotD, and SotD. One thing to consider is to allow for people to get not just BPs, but items as well. Good LOOT makes people happy, even if it never gets used. BPs, and Mythical items. Maybe consider reducing the offensive and defensive power of items, and instead increasing the durability, such that they need repaired much less often, and with this increasing more and more with higher quality BPs. Make repairs no more costly, or not much more costly, than vanilla items. As it stands, my company sees little value in mythical items due to the intense Mythios requirements for repair. This also has the effect of keeping the game friendlier to new companies. As it stands, a new company need not apply, as they will be using vanilla items, vs companies with much higher quality stuff. Allow for higher quality crafting stations, such that they reduce the cost of the creation and repair of items.