Devblog 27 - Bounties, New Creatures, Pagans, Longswords, Crossbows, & More

Disclaimer: Features discussed in this post reflect what is currently under development in pre-alpha and may change in the future. It's been a long while since a Devblog has been posted so this one will include both a summary of recent additions to the pre-alpha and features coming to future tests.

BOUNTIES

Bounties are the center of the new core game loop for acquiring Silver. Each player has a list of bounties to complete, with varying monetary rewards. Bounties involve hunting animals, killing outlaws known as Reavers, killing enemy players, and more. All bounties require an item to be returned to town for completion. For example, the bounty for Boar hunting requires a Boar Tusk to be turned in for Silver.

REAVERS

Reavers are world characters in the form of outlaws who live in camps and abandoned forts. Their forces include bowmen, knife-wielding bandits, and swordsmen. Facing a large group of Reavers requires higher end equipment and coordination with other players.

AVATAR RECRUITMENT

Avatars are now obtained through recruitment. This is done at the Recruitment Table in town. Players can choose from Avatars with varying strengths and starting attributes: Apprentice, Journeyman, and Master. This gives players more agency over the type of Avatars they wish to attain.

NEW UNDERWORLD

Following the initial prototype for the Underworld, a comprehensive review was done, as the moment-to-moment gameplay experience was not up to standard. There were issues with movement, visibility, and visual clarify among others. The team felt it was time to go back to first principles around the initial goals and take a fresh look.

Since the initial prototype, the project's internal tooling had been upgraded drastically, which brought about many workflow improvements. Iterating on the original prototype was a laborious process, as making even simple changes took much longer than it needed to, never mind adding cool or intriguing details to explore. The new tooling allowed the full power of Unreal Engine's level authoring tools to be used to construct the new Underworld, enabling designers to overcome the prior limitations and giving them greater control over level design, visual direction, and overall gameplay flow.

While it'll always be a dangerous place to traverse, the danger should be coming from its denizens, not the camera or wonky terrain. This new iteration of the Underworld is still very much a work in progress.

NEW CREATURES

New types of creatures have been added to the world of Anvil Empires. Bounties have been added to hunt such creatures, yielding larger amounts of Silver as a reward.

Mánadýr

Calligans have long whispered tales of a creature born of moonlight. Eternal Wanderer. Eoten of Wild Root. The Man-Deer. Ancient Calligan writings refer to it by a different name—the Mánadýr. Under the veil of a new moon, those who go scouring the forests at night are found impaled and eviscerated at wood’s edge by sunrise as an omen for would-be hunters.

Stonwulfe

The wolves of Calligo are a menace. All true-born Mirrish sing songs teaching the dangers of veering off well-trodden roads. A popular children’s game has a group singing one of these songs louder and louder until one of them braves their way down into a cavernous hole. "Stonwulfe, Stonwulfe…" Every so often, one will venture too deep, leaving behind only the memory of their screams bellowing out from the Underworld.

LONGSWORDS

A new class of melee weapons are being added, two-handed Longswords. These weapons deal higher damage and a good range, but require their user to expose themselves without a shield.

They will also serve the specific role of countering Heavy Armour in the game. Heavy armour is being upgraded with new capabilities, such as deflecting arrows, so having a dedicated counter will be an important part of the balance of combat in the game.

CROSSBOWS

Crossbows are also being added as the ranged counter to Heavy Armour in the game. Unlike Shortbows and Longbows, they will have to be reloaded as a separate step and use Bolts instead of Arrows.

RETURN OF PAGANS

The Pagans faction will be returning to the pre-alpha finally and will be here to stay this time. They will be enabled in the upcoming test, bringing a three way conflict back into the game.

Fleeing the storm-plagued islands at the heart of the Wayward Sea, the Aranic Pagans find a new home on the shores of Calligo. Reworked from the ground up, we’re finally reintroducing the Pagan alliance. A seafaring culture; salt flows through their veins. Clad in loose, lightweight garb, they adorn their ships and armour with colourful, patterned fabric to boldly announce their arrival.

Some of the earliest concepts for the Pagans were more traditional Nordic/Dane-inspired, but those initial explorations weren’t quite there yet. The world of Anvil Empires features a tapestry comprised of many cultures, religions, backgrounds, and traditions. It’s always been important that each primary alliance feels like they have their own cultural perspective. The Aranic Pagans adopted their name to mock adversaries who sought to paint their gods as false idols.

[c]“Pagan” represents a badge of honour, a name that now strikes dread into the hearts of unlucky souls who spot their iconic green sails crawling over the horizon. All who travel the Wayward Sea know the Pagans are most comfortable riding the waves, going so far as adorning themselves in ropes and knots. Their queen, Pyri, now rules over the Humberweald from a newly established colony, Harodiga. Meanwhile, the “Pagan Prince” Isa raids port towns across the southern Calligan coastline, leaving only devastation in his wake.[/c]

BARRELING CHANGES

Barrels are a legacy mechanic developed when the game's logistics model and balance was very different. A recent effort has been made to bring Barrels up to speed in terms of gameplay and overall balance.

The current purpose of Barrels is to provide a way to efficiently transport loose items like food, weapons, and armour on a Cart or Hand Cart. For that goal, Barrels can now be packed and unpacked at Keeps, Camps and Homesteads, no longer requiring a Barreling Station. The interface for packing Barrels has been improved such that items can be packed by simply dragging and dropping item stacks onto the Barrels that are in the packing slot. Barrels can now also be partially filled and do not require a full stack.

VEHICLE & HORSE TRADING

Vehicles can now be bought and sold at the Marketplace. This includes Horses, Carts, Handcarts, and Caravans. Horses and Donkeys require a small Livery Fee and must also be well fed in order to be put on sale. Players can also place orders for vehicles, allowing players that operate farming Homesteads to fulfil those orders, earning them additional Silver.

HOMESTEAD RENTING

Homestead owners can now rent access to their facilities in exchange for Silver. This will especially important in towns, where other players will rely on using Blacksmiths, Furnaces, Hearths, and other structures available only at Homesteads. This in turn might help Homestead operators with ongoing Upkeep costs.

AVATAR ATTRIBUTE CHANGES

The existing implementation of Avatar's Melee and Ranged Combat attributes caused readability issues in PvP situations since they're hidden from other players: threat assessment was difficult as players had no way of knowing how strong an enemy Avatar was by just looking at them.

With this in mind, Combat attributes have been changed such that they no longer influence damage dealt in PvP combat. Instead, weapons and equipment of increasing power levels require higher attributes to equipment. Additional tiers of certain weapons have been added to support this change. If a player has higher attributes and is wielding a more powerful weapon, this will be observable by other players.

QUALITY OF LIFE IMPROVEMENTS

Harvesting an animal now puts its contents into an interactable inventory, allowing the individual resources to be retrieved from one interface. Previously, some items would drop on the ground, some would drop in a stash, and others would be transferred to the player directly. This change puts such loot into a single unified interface. In addition, walking away will now automatically close this (and any other UI window), reducing the amount of repetitive actions needed for frequently actions such as this.

The compass is now larger, displays all cardinal directions, and has contextual icons that guide players towards nearby locations, key structures, cave entrances and their own corpses

There are many other quality of life improvements coming. Stay tuned for the release notes for the next test.

Be sure to add Anvil Empires to your wish list on Steam. If you want to join the community, head over the to official Discord server or Subreddit.