Search the Community

Hi Everyone! A late happy Thanksgiving from all of us at Wurm, we give thanks to you all playing and enjoying the game, and especially to your feedback! There's been a lot of upheaval and questions that right now we don't have answers to, and I know that makes things uneasy in your confidence in the game. I can assure you that we are here and going to be here for a long time, we know our goal of continuing to polish the game and address bugs and your suggestions and we are working towards it every day. Anyways, on with the news! New Keybinds Heading off from the pinned suggestion thread, we'll be adding the following keybinds next update! These are all aimed at making the game much smoother to play, and we'll likely be adding more as we go on! Hoist the main sail! The artwork for sail furling is now complete! Ships will be able to go full, half or no sail and will have models that match it's state, see below for all of them! The farming box art is also complete, with a few surprises included: This unfortunately won't be going live in this weeks update, but we aim to have it out before Christmas (Which is scary close!) The stronghold is revealed Last weekend the beacons were weakened enough to reveal the location of the stronghold, the hidden base of the creatures of Jackal! This led to a countdown of 144 hours, with a large fight expected. If that the end of it? Maybe not... The stronghold is revealed (Hey, they're not knowing for being the wonderful designers Freedomers are, maybe that's why they raid?) Shrimpalong! I refuse to call it a Christmas Impalong because it ends 10 days before Christmas, but it's on! Expect Shrimpiies usual slew of games, prizes, deaths and of course, impings! Last year we had the famous The Public VS Dreammaster trial, will the acquitted killer return? It runs from the 6th to the 15th of December, so plenty of time to celebrate with your Wurmian friends before the real world drags us kicking and screaming away... Wulfgar joins the dev team! You may see forum member Wulfgar with a shiny new developer tag on our forums (And I totally wasn't reminded by him posting beneath) Wulfgar has joined us to work on the game bringing a vast amount of knowledge on coding and has been working on bringing in quality of life changes including the new keybinds and the paper decay removal suggestion to come soon! Everyone give a big warm welcome to Wulfgar before demanding he fix things! What Retro is up to: I smartly decided to rebuild my PC, having purchased another 8GB of ram and a new 500GB hard drive. I forgot how difficult and time consuming it is to set everything up juuuuust the way you like it. What a pain! I also have a new keyboard coming and phone adjustable LEDs... for purposes My schedule is going to be long this week... That's it from us this week, I'll be on this weekend streaming on our official channel, taking questions from you and discussing the world of Wurm with you all Until then though, keep on farming, playing with daisies, and Wurming! Regards, Retrograde & the Wurm team

The Lunalong Building - Dracaa Greetings Wurmians! Retro here with the hottest of goss, the juiciest of news, the most scandalous of tidbits, aka the Valrei International! But first.. Patch Notes We'd be alright if the wind was(not) in our sails! No sea shanties here, but there is something coming very soon! That's right, the long wanted ability to furl sails and remove windspeed affecting the ships movement. This allows for better control when parking and also makes the docks a little nicer looking in my opinion! In the hall of the mountain farmer Also coming soon is the ability to farm underground! We'll be adding farming boxes for you to plant and grow any crop inside caves. These will be able to be built below ground as well as above ground in buildings. They are not able to be tended however. They don't need sunlight either, but that's wogic for you! UI works One of our goals with the UI update is to add scalability to text to allow for 4k monitors to be a lot easier to read, and with that we're working on allowing UI elements to be resized as you can see below To cut down on clutter within the UI the health/stamina bar will also be compacted, showing CCFP and sleep bonus when moused over Wurm Unlimited news As some have already stated, our focus for Wurm unlimited is shifting from content updates from WO to bug fixes and more modding support. We'll be adding the client modloader to the vanilla WU client which will allow for easier control of mods as well as many other features. We'll be working closely with server admins and modders via the Discord server in providing as much support as we can. While this does mean the end of content updates from us, our goal is to provide as much freedom as possible to the modders to continue to push what is possible in Wurm. Community Content The Lunalong is here! In the amazing underground halls of Kappa on Xanadu, located just near Lormere is the annual Lunalong by Dracaa, it's an amazing deed, with amazing people, and just, gosh, so amazing. There's even a maze...ing This Friday our very own Bloody Drongo will be hosting his annual fashion competition there too, so make sure to get your swimsuit body ready (or harvest one) and attend! There's a lot in the works, and our focus is on making Wurm the best game it can be over the next few months, this includes the loyalty system I have discussed as well as other features including improvements to Animal Husbandry, combat and a bunch of other things yet to hit the table. We're always looking ahead, and it looks great. Until next time, keep on Wurming! Retrograde & the Wurm team

Jeston's deed - Deliverance Greetings Wurmians! Retro coming in early with the news because... well, I'm a little late really. Between all the news on the forums, a month absence while I went to Australia, and getting sick after returning I've been a little awol. I'd like to thank Madnath for his "valerie international" in the meantime, it contained just enough absurdity that I had to double check I didn't write it. But enough of Valerie, I'm back and getting back into the saddle, so onward! The big forum news While I was gone the announcement of Budda being replaced by Samool was made. I just want to take the time to publicly thank Budda for his friendship and all his work, from Archaeology to Jackal and including all his bug fixes his work will continue to be used in wurm daily. With this change the roadmap announced previously has shifted a little; some things have been delayed, other things added, and plenty of reworking of our goals for the game. The big goal listed is the eventual launch on Steam. This is currently slated to happen by mid 2020 and there's a lot of work that needs doing. We aim at spending the time between now and then polishing many mechanics, adding new things to improve mechanics and lots of tidying up. It's a long time until it does launch on Steam but somehow I feel it'll go by fast One thing that's been raised is the complete separation of the servers and the reasons behind it. There's a few reasons here and there but something that is a major issue is RMT. Steam does not allow RMT in the sense that Wurm does, the sale of currency, items, accounts for real world money is strictly forbidden, and would require us to do our due diligence in ensuring it doesn't occur. Wurm is a small game that logs every currency transaction already, we would be able to abide by these requirements quite easily. However, that impacts on many existing players, and I'm sure many would be hesitant at the idea of no more sales of accounts, silver or items. If we keep these completely separate it may be possible to continue as normal, but there's also the possibility that Steam will require we remove all RMT from both sides. Now it's possible to use the Steam marketplace to sell silver, but it's not in our immediate goals to add this functionality so we can't guarantee it would be part of the Steam game. As you can imagine a step such as this would be a tough one, and a bitter pill for many of you to swallow. This is why we have not made a firm decision on allowing the outside client to connect to Steam servers. As we get closer to launch midway through the new year we'll likely be spending time talking with Steam about this and what we need to do in order to ensure we meet the requirements, but hopefully you all understand the reasoning behind it a little more. Lookin' Good Coming this week are more visual upgrades to Wurm, with the HDR post-processing setting, new shadows, and ambient occlusion! These all add better distinction between items and the ground, improve the general feel of the game, and best yet, make winter bearable! Previously: With the new post processing tweaks: Getting hitched No not me, the animals! With this update hitching posts will be added to the game. I believe this was one of the first content oriented WU mods, but we finally caught up! Creatures that can be led will be able to be hitched to these, with 3 hitching slots. Hitching posts will contain troughs that hitched creatures will feed from at the same rate they feed from a pile on the ground. Halloween! That's right, Halloween is back, and many witches hats and troll masks are abound. It's currently the same as last year, hunter mobs drop the witches hats and pumpkin shoulders while trolls drop the troll mask. Could there be something more? Watch this space (because I forgot to check with Saroman) Continuing Development Along with the news on break our devstreams have also been a little quiet. That's going to change this week with the return to Under Development, where I will discuss the game as I play it with you all, so make sure to follow us on Twitch at https://twitch.tv/wurmonlineofficial so you can catch the action! That's it from us this week, there's lots to discuss and more to come but the thing I'd like you all to take away from this is that we may not have the answers yet as we simply do not have all the facts of the moment ready. Rest assured once we know them we'll let you all know too! Until then though... Keep on Wurming! Retrograde & the Wurm team.

Blocks wee castle - Block Greetings Wurmians! I'm back (yep, not rid of me!) after a short break to bring you all the latest news of what I and the dev team have been up to, so let's get into it! Mysteries afoot Some recent rumours have been spreading about strange creatures being sighted, to investigate we sent intrepid explorer (this ain't his first day at kindergarten), Jack A. Lormere of the prestigious Lormere family on from Xanadu to investigate these claims. We received one message back, which we've been able to transcode into this link: https://vocaroo.com/i/s14Vyj5cinbH Any attempts to contact Jack have since gone silent... But we're left with many questions, what was that sound, and what became of Jack A. Lormere? Merchandise (show off your wurm!) Ever want your own wurm online shower curtain? No, well now you might! We've teamed up with Redbubble and have now launched our official merchandise via their print on demand site. This means you can order posters of the ingame maps, wurm logo merchandise, an soon to be more! If you have ideas for what you'd like to see let us know, and we'll try make it happen! Check out the merchandise here: https://www.redbubble.com/people/WurmOnline?asc=u Stream stuff We've been trialing our new chillstreams with the focus being on the soundtrack and ambiance of Wurm. It's been a pretty cool thing to set up and check out, with a lot more focus on the actions and sounds of Wurm, we'll be running these on Tuesdays and Thursdays as we tweak it, so tune in and check it out! Tomorrows will be smithing in the mine, I've got my gear all ready, my mismatched smith all setup, and will be starting that from 12AM UTC! You can also catch our old streams on YouTube! We have an official YouTube channel setup and it'd be great to hit the 100 subscribers to it to give us a custom emote. We'll be uploading all Twitch streams to it as well as some sneak peeks and more soon, so check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9pnMrLxEeDELcH1gHctgjw With hitting affiliate, we're also working on official emotes for Wurm, including Rolf face, a question mark bag, and the ever valuable GoldenRolf too! Passing of Eir It was some sad news to announce with the passing of Eir/Qualia, a really long term member of the community who unfortunately passed away from her battle with cancer. It's been amazing to see everyone come together to share their experiences and interactions with her, including a sighting of Rolf! See? he's totally not locked in our basement... That's it from us this week, as we're packing our tents and our saddlebags and going off hunting after Jack, fingers crossed we can retrieve some evidence of his adventures... Until then though, keep on Wurming! Retrograde & the Wurm team

Hi Everyone! I deeply apologise for the late VI, the main reason being we've been able to get through huge chunks of long term projects such as project Frontier and Elevation reset. This means that news is light as the other works have been pacing along well! The delay allowed me to collect all the info on the Elevation update with the full locked in systems to share. So let's get to it! Save the date! The final details have been locked down for the Epic patch and Elevation reset! The date is set at going down some time on the 9th, and relaunching on the 11th with a new map. This will affect all of Epic so if you would like to play please do make sure to transfer your character to Freedom. We may even be able to organise something so Elevation goes out with some bangs! The locked in details are: We also have the ingame map that will be available. We'll be launching with a fog of war covering all of Elevation. Over time we may unveil certain areas, but for now everyone will be going in blind. Going native We're also working on a native launcher client to replace the jnlp client very soon. It will be entering team testing for any major issues then be available for all. This won't change anything beyond how the game is launched but will avoid any issues with getting wurm to launch with jnlp. Party time! Last week the 10th Anniversary for Independence event was launched, and it's been awesome. It's been tweaked based on feedback with some locations given a little more info and should be easier to find. I hope everyone enjoys the reward, because I personally think it's amazing! The event will run all July until the update on the 25th, so get to it! VEN streamer and well known drongo Emoo also went on this adventure across Independence, sharing some of his stories and memories, including this awesome glow up of dragonfang! Suggesting suggestive suggestions Another thing in the works is a guide for the suggestions forum detailing the purpose of the suggestions forum and how we as developers use it. Tips on how to post a good suggestion, how to support or counter a suggestion (hint: it's not a democracy with +1's and -1's deciding a winner) as well as answers to commonly suggested ideas. Expect to see this next week. Community stream Later today at 10pm GMT I will be streaming some adventures on another server (we may even have some goodies to give away) ! I haven't picked which server but I will let hint that we are looking for a place to found a developer deed, where we can play the game on stream while we talk (and show how bad we are at it). If you have any suggestions about which server we should check out leave a message below! In the future we'll be looking at streaming earlier in the evening for the Euro players, around 8pm GMT That's it from us this week, I'll see you all on stream today and we'll be working hard to get everything ready for the Epic update on the 9th. Until then though... Keep on Wurming! Retrograde & the Wurm team

Greetings Wurmians! We’re back with another Valrei International, going over what we’ve been up to and have planned, so strap in and call me Susie! Devblog updates After last Valrei International mentioning the changes to development, Product Manager Budda posted a devblog with the changes planned. This means that we can work in better cycles and produce monthly updates reliably. It also means we can work better on showing you what’s coming each month and how it fits in with long term plans. We’re in the process of gearing up for all this, so once the ball gets rolling we’ll begin looking at sharing our plans for the future. Aside from that there will be a whole bunch of QoL updates and fixes. Our aim is to not reduce the amount pushed out each month, but package it into one larger update per month to reduce downtime and give you all more to chew on. Next update The first update under this new cycle is planned for the 30th of May, and will continue to be on the last Thursday of each month. This month will include the distant tree visual improvements showcased in previous editions of Valrei International and on Wurm Wednesday with bloodydrongo a.k.a. Emoo as well as normal and specular mapping on player armours. The update will also touch on a few aspects of the journal, including crediting past legendary creatures slain, colossi built, and guard towers! This means less big building projects, lucky you. Me, on cam! Our official Wurm Online devstreams are in the works! Our planned start date is 10pm (GMT) Saturday the 25th of May. This stream will be an introduction of all of us available (We expect the dev roster to vary depending on availability) but it will be hosted by yours truly, Retrograde! So tune in to us here We're also looking at adding some sweet wurm merch via Streamlabs store, including posters of the ingame maps! It's still in a experimental phase but expect to see it soon. HotA retirement With the introduction of the new HotA battlecamp system, we’ll be disabling the old HotA zone shortly after the update on the 30th. We’re pleased with how the new battlecamp system has gone and feel it creates more roaming oriented play as opposed to centralised focus on the HotA zone. We’ll give more info on the time exactly so anyone who wishes to occupy the current HotA zone can fight for it! Community Content Independence hits 10! It’s a day of big birthdays, with berris posting that the Independence server hits 10 years old on the 17th of June, along with Wurms 13th birthday on the 6th of June. Do we have anything planned? You’ll just have to wait and see… That’s it for us this edition, we’ll be back on the 29th with the Valrei International before the update, but you’ll also see us live before then! Until then though, keep on Wurming! Retrograde & the Wurm team.

Oceania Terraces At Fairview - Lyhrinae Greetings Wurmians! We touch base this week to share with you what's being worked on and where we're at with things. So take a break from binge watching whatever is on Netflix and jump into it with us. But first.. Patch Notes Shine bright like a diamond With all these fancy normal and specular maps, one question has gone unanswered... What about player armour? Well, the Saroman and Samool dream team (The S&S for brevity) have been hard at work, and are pleased to showcase, shiny armour!!! https://i.imgur.com/PrELaql.gifv Not only that, because these guys don't do things by halves, they've gone and added the ability for rarity to show too! When these guys get together, nothing can stop them (bar performance impacts, and the odd ripply naked man). Expect this to go live in the coming weeks. Crusader PMK gear Well the votes are in, and my favourite one won! (I swear I had nothing to do with it, I just have good taste) We'll be doing a few tweaks then get them in-game for you all to continue to show off your cool PMK stuff. Movement and desync devblog In the patch notes during this fortnight a little single bugfix was posted "fixed a number of movement issues" While it looks small, Budda took the time to jump into just how big this "simple" fix actually was and what it means. Check out all the details here: WU Beta The WU beta is ongoing, with a small patch released last week. We'll likely be including one more update before it all goes live, so hang onto your hats, that's gonna be huge! It appears to be one of, if not our biggest update we've done code wise! Community Content Forum member Gawain has started vlogging his life in Wurm! He shares his adventures via YouTube video, and updates a forum thread here: That's it from us this week, by next news the WU beta should have gone live, and we'll no doubt have more to share with you about what we've been working on. Until then though, keep on Wurming! Retrograde & the Wurm team.

Libila watches - Samool Greetings Wurmians! We’re back with another Valrei International, showing you all what’s been going on behind the scenes of the world of Wurm, so let’s get into it, ya ken? spec(tac)ular metals One thing coming in today's update is the addition of specular and normal maps to metal weapons, tools, and parts of transport and furniture! It adds further depth and realism to these surfaces, just check it out! I personally can't wait to see these after the update, I'm so keen! Journal Tweaks We’ve been making some tweaks to some journal goals and clearing up some others in today's update. We’re also introducing a progress percentage display, so you can keep track of those big ones! Tapdance deconstruction Tapdance is a horrible mess of construction, whats happened? Team Shark has happened, with the tapdance redesign firmly under way. VEN member Fabricant will be streaming this process as he goes, expect disaster of hilarious proportions. WU Beta That’s right, after 180+ days of waiting, Wurm Unlimited is getting brought up to speed with Wurm Online! It’s a big beta with a ton of behind the scenes changes, so the beta will be fairly long, between 2-4 weeks. We’ll also be pushing an update to the beta some time during this with some WU specific fixes as well as including the update due out today. Ongoing AWS work Keenan is still hard at work with the foundations of shifting to AWS, looking at dockers and uh, honestly, half of it goes over my head, but you can catch it all here as he keeps updating it! Whether you can follow it, or like me you smile and nod as Keenan excitedly tells you what big things it means, I hope you enjoy these type of devblogs, and I certainly will be encouraging more in the future! Crusaders artwork Last week we posted an announcement regarding the copyright issues we unfortunately faced regarding The Crusaders PMK designs. I’m super thrilled to say that they not only have replacements, but they have opened it up to public voting! There’s some amazing designs on offer, and they want to know your opinion. Not only that, but one lucky voter will win a set of the winning design! Hota rework We’re gearing up for the HotA rework to go live in a coming update (not today's) . For the initial release it will run alongside the existing HotA system. From there we’ll work with feedback and tweak if necessary to ensure it’s engaging and achievable. That’s it from us today, there will be an update in the next few hours with lots of goodies so you better not be too sleepy! Until then though, keep on Wurming! Retrograde & the Wurm team

Foggy morning - Kasumi Hi Everyone! It's been a rough few weeks with ups and downs, and we know everyone is feeling a little drained by it, but rest assured, we are working through these issues and coming up with plans to resolve each and every one. Some of these plans may take a little longer to get into effect than others, but there is a path! I myself have been bobbing along working on Archaeology on Independence, I'm keen for 90, I can taste it! (I'm leaving so many fragments behind I think I need a maid though). Now it's time to touch on what we've been up to, we've got some good news ahead to lets get to it But first... Patch Notes WU Beta! It's been a long time coming, but with a lot of changes with the new tutorial system, fishing and everything else in the past six months WU will be getting a huge update in the coming weeks. We are working on an internal build and will have a beta build up as soon as we can for all the modders and hosts to ensure everything will run smoothly. Laggy hidden bugs! With our ongoing work on fixing lag with server side polling tweaks, we have encountered a few instances where improving the lag has caused other bugs to come out of the woodworks. This is what resulted in the crash on Xanadu earlier this week. Improving the servers speed in saving to the database by avoiding unnecessary polling and querying in batches has unearthed some issues with server configuration. Todays restart is focused on addressing that configuration error before it causes more crashes. As for the independence issues, we believe this to be due to the disk replacement or new hardware and are currently investigating. We are also currently in the process of looking for a more permanent solution to the hosting issues we have been facing in the recent weeks. We do understand the lag can be quite frustrating so want a resolution quickly. Once we have a solid plan on the next steps we will share them, along with a detailed postmortem of the server issues we have been facing. Alongside the 5 hours sleep bonus, we'll also be giving out a 3 day premium code for all players to redeem! This code will be available after tomorrows restart (not todays) along with the 5 hours sleep bonus. Far far away With vast improvements in client performance, we continue to look at ways to improve the look and feel of the game, and one area inparticular is the long distance terrain being rather bare. As you can see below, Samool has gotten his ever talented mind on the task of improving the look of distant terrain and I have to say, it looks amazing. That's it from us this week, we hope you enjoy the sleep bonus and premium time as our way of saying thanks for putting up with the issues, hopefully soon we'll have a solution guaranteed to end it to share with you all. Until then though, Keep on Wurming! Retrograde & the Wurm team

Pifa stars in sharknado prequel Greetings, Wurmians! It’s been a bit of a rough week here for the Wurm community. We’re all still a bit shaken by the news of Tich’s passing, but it’s been incredibly amazing to read all the kind words and to see so many people coming back from long absences to share their stories and experiences. Realising how much Tich touched players’ experiences throughout the years is heartwarming, to say the least. This week’s news is understandably on the lighter side, new-content-wise, but first… Patch Notes Fish for Tich As previously mentioned, a commemorative statue will be added to the game for our dear friend and developer, Tich. The statue of Tich’s character fishing will be craftable and should be coming soon in a future update. Tich’s last major project was a massive overhaul to the fishing system, which the developer team plans on continuing and releasing in Tich’s honor. It's a huge system that has Tich's usual level of depth, and it'll be a lot of fun hanging out in a boat with a friend! We currently have no ETA on this update, which is why it was not announced earlier, but we will share more information as the time comes for public testing and release. Goodbye Halloween It’s been a great load of fun with the new masks and witches hat added, with hunters on all servers thinning the population of mobs. It was awesome to see everyone travelling and seeing what they could get, it’ll definitely be a system we have to use again in future events! Over the Hedge Continuing his work to beautify Wurm, Saroman has a new Oleander hedge model coming soon. I foresee a lot of replanting on a deed, some poor padre will be quite feisty during this Also, based on feedback, the new Camellia hedge model will be tweaked in size, as it is currently a bit shorter than the original model was. The updated model will be raised slightly to match the height of other medium-sized hedges and fences for consistency’s sake. Horsing Around The results are in! As per The Great Horse Color Poll of 2018, the five new horse colors that will be added to Wurm Online are: (drumroll please!) 5th place: Chestnut, with 84 votes 4th place: Blanket Appaloosa, with 109 votes 3rd place: Gold Buckskin, with 110 votes 2nd place: Skewbald Pinto, with 121 votes 1st place: Black Silver, with 130 votes Unfortunately, Dapple grey did not make the cut. #BlamePing Thank you again, Malena, for your work on these new textures! We cannot wait to see the final results. Lunalong Be sure to stop by Dracaa’s first ever Lunalong, November 11th-17th, at the deed Kappa on Xanadu! The host deed looks like a beautiful location for an impalong, and Dracaa seems to have a few fun activities planned for the event! I will definitely have to check it out next week and bring some of my own shenanigans along. Community Content With the passing of Tich, several stories and memories have resurfaced. Here are a few of our favorites: Tich as a dentist: Attack of the sharks: Tich builds a boat: On behalf of the entire developer team, we’d like to thank you all for your condolences and well-wishes. The coming days won’t be easy as we navigate the hole Tich left in our team, but with the spirit of the Wurm Online community, we know we can make it through. We hope each and every one of you knows how special your words are to all of us. Thank you for your support. Keep on Wurming! Retrograde and The Wurm Team

coop- Seriphina (sorry!) I apologise for the late news, this week has been busy, and what a huge week it's been! There's a lot to unpack as we review the update and our feedback on your feedback with the various new systems in. This fortnights Valrei International will be the last until early next year, we expect to return with the next edition on the 23rd of January! But first... Fishing fun So this overhaul of the fishing system has been big, with a lot of confusion and a little bit of wogic in the systems. Needless to say there'll be a period of tweaking based on your feedback, we've already removed the ability for reels to be broken on a fail, instead taking damage. We'll also look at tweaking how difficulty affects fishing, with it currently being a little confusing. For the record, the message of "you miss the x" is a skillcheck fail, it's not timing based! We'll be working with the wiki team in getting the full fishing system up on the wurmpedia including fish and their preferred bait and locations! New tutorial and journal The new tutorial system has had lots of positive feedback, there's room for a few tweaks and we'll be working on those in the new year along with the planned phase 2 of the journal. As we've stated before, the journal is the successor to the personal goal system, aimed at picking up from the tutorial and moving forward, guiding a player from their first steps into the game into the long road of becoming a wurm veteran, the first five stages are in, with tasks such as building a house, imping items to certain thresholds and more. We have a few more tiers planned in phase two with bigger and better rewards, as well as including systems to allow priests to take part and 100% complete tiers. Expect to see that early in the new year, as that will be one of the first things we want to work on. Tapdance redesign The proposals are in, and it's voting time! We have two contestants, with team shark and team allenkey! Both designs are pretty awesome and I'm keen to see either one come in, so head to the thread, check them out and place your vote! Community Content In just a few short hours, I'll be joining my Assistant CRC and VEN coordinator Joelle in a stream decorating Havens Landing! We'll be working with fellow VEN member Fabricant and Madnath while we decorate all the buildings and parks of Havens Landing, feel free to jump in and help with your ideas too! Some poor sucker will be left spawning items for them, haha, what a lo... wait! That's it from us for this weeks Valrei International, and indeed for this year! It's been a HUGE year with a ton of content added and plenty of advancement made, with these steps taken we know 2019 will be even bigger and better. Until then though, we at the Wurm team hope you have a wonderful safe and happy holiday season, put an angel with a tiara on the tree, and have a happy new year, we'll see you in 2019! Retrograde & the Wurm team.

Greetings, Wurmians! What a fortnight! We've been hard at work with the big things coming in the next update. A huge update planned before Christmas! This update will include the priest overhaul, the fishing update, and a whole lot more, so let's see what it is! Consider Us Inspired! There was quite the response to our recent “You Have a Moment of Inspiration…” contest. With all of you taking the time to share your inspiration in the game, it really showed that everyone plays Wurm for their own unique reasons, and that inspires us! There are so many different play styles in Wurm Online, and this contest served as a perfect example of how differently everyone in our community enjoys the game. We had such a hard time choosing winners that we’ve decided to reward everyone who submitted entries with a coupon for 2 sleep powders each. Be sure to check your forum PMs if you entered for your coupon code. Now, for our winners… In 3rd place, receiving a rare strange bone… Koreal, who shared a spooky story of a dark castle in Wurm. In 2nd place, also receiving a rare strange bone… Champagnedragon, who is inspired by shaping the land and seeing their ideas come to life, as well as traveling Wurm to enjoy the beautiful views. And in 1st place, receiving a supreme strange bone… Fabricant! Who is inspired by… Well, we don’t know what he’s inspired by, exactly… But it was sure unique, with each picture having us laughing for ages! Congratulations to all, and thank you once again to everyone who participated! Keep on the lookout for more contests in the future. Here, Fishy Fishy As we’ve discussed before, the next big update will include Tich’s major fishing overhaul. Tonight, I was a guest on Emoo’s stream as he joined us on our super secret dev test server, home of our 50 speed scorpion testing track, and a nice big lake to showcase a bit of the fishing system live. You can check out all the discussion and fun here: There's a lot to unpack in all this, namely rods now contain choice of reel, line, hook, float and bait! Each impacts your chances of catching different fish, along with different zones to fish in, and time of day changing what's around too! It's a hugely in depth system with lots of customiation and that usual depth Tich's updates always had. It's been an honour to be able to finish it and have it out, and we hope everyone is looking forward to it too! Xanalag-a-bit-less These past few weeks, we have been quietly working on additional optimization for the servers with a focus on improving performance. The most noticeable change will be on Xanadu, where we have been prioritizing our testing. We’ll continue to work on improvements with the lag, but have already made significant back-end advancements. Please note that this is not in relation to specific lag spikes, but to general performance all day round. You Can Tap Dance if You Want To Coming up next in the starter deed redesigns will be Celebration’s Tap Dance! As usual, we are seeking design concepts to be voted on. For the full details including a deedplanner file of the current deed, please visit the thread here: Submissions will close and voting will open with the next (standard) Valrei International, so get planning! Chain My Heart Another long requested feature in PvP is the reintroduction of a tower chaining system, so guess what’s coming! We’ll be introducing a system that requires chaining towers and influence between the PMK capital and outlying deeds in order to avoid penalties. This system will change how towers and influence currently work by a huge amount, including removing the ability to capture towers, and require demolishing and rebuilding. Linked deeds will get certain bonuses, with unlinked deeds taking penalties over time. Unlinked towers will also be easier to bash so establishing and maintaining those links will be vital to success! There is more in the works with this system, and we’ll go into depth more before the big update so everyone is aware of what’s coming. Haven’s Whispers Many rumors abound about the purpose of Haven’s Landing, with rumours of creatures hopping about, and groans of the CRC being heard all around. Imagine that! All some a little bit will be shared this weekend with the Factional Fight brothers on their stream. Can you guess what it’s for? Community Content Shrimpiie’s Shrimpalong Shrimp-travaganza of Shrimp and Fun (aka the Blackmoor Christmas Impalong) is on again this year! Starting December 7th and running through the 16th, this year’s impalong seems to be shaping up into a huge event with a ton of things that you won’t want to miss! Be sure to come along and take part in the fun. We’ll be there to crush, kill, and maim anyone we can with our crazy spawns… so the more, the merrier! That’s it for this week! We’ll see you next Valrei International (or sooner) with some more exciting news. Until then, though, keep on Wurming! Retrograde and The Wurm Team

Greetings, Wurmians! We apologise for the delay, cheeky little gremlins have been at play (hah, I'm a poet and I didn't even realise) but we’re back with another exciting edition of the Valrei International. This week, we have quite a few announcements, so let’s get started! “What’s Your Favorite Wurm Memory?” Last week, we launched a special Facebook contest inviting people to share their favorite Wurm Online memories. The contest ran for one week, and at the end of it, Joelle and I randomly chose five entries out of 39 total participants! They all had such amusing, touching, and interesting stories to share. Here are the lucky five winners, who each received a key of 30 days premium time: It’s always heartwarming to read players’ experiences with Wurm, and it reminds us that everyone plays this game in their own unique way and that should be celebrated! Be sure to follow the Wurm Online Official Facebook page to receive updates about the game, sneak peeks, and more chances to win in-game prizes! “You have a moment of inspiration…” To continue with the contest hype, we’ve decided to launch a forum-based competition with a special theme: You have a moment of inspiration… Players should submit entries based on what inspires them in Wurm Online. Entries can be as creative as you like--from screenshots to poems to videos and more! It could even be as simple as sharing your own personal story about how Wurm inspires you. The sky’s the limit with this competition, and the prizes involved are something you don’t want to miss out on. Tich’s Statue [16:15:56] In loving memory of our friend and developer, Tich. Next update, the memorial statue for Tich will be released. Tich passed away at the end of October, and we know you all have been eager for this statue to come to the game. The statue will be craftable as marble, with metal types being discoverable via archaeology. Horse Colors (YAY!) Also in the next update, the five new horse colors will appear in the game. Malena did an amazing job with these textures, as I’m sure you’ll all agree, and we are so excited for the variety they will bring. Chicken Colors? Whaaaat? Speaking of variety, this update will also ALSO include new hen and rooster colors! Saroman was so inspired by Malena’s work on horses that he just had to keep the work going with his own project! (And we’re not saying, but we’re just saying, there may be more new textures on the horizon in future: <Saroman> want to do more now, it’s fun haha) RIP Oblivionnreaver, but the joke was worth it! A Shadow Rises A familiar darkness is looming over Freedom, hushed whispers spread across the land about an eerie and chilling fate: Libila is coming... With the priest update, we are looking at bringing the ability to become a follower of Libila to Freedom servers. Because of all of the current restrictions with this religion, we’re planning on using more public testing and taking the transition slowly. Some restrictions will still be in place, such as mycelium, which will not be able to grow on Freedom, and some spells will not be possible just as they are not possible with player gods. The pact is sealed. That said, being a Fo-llower is where it's at yo. Community Content What does it mean? That’s it for this fortnight! The next update will come out on Thursday, with the new creature colors and Tich’s statue. Next time, we’ll have more information about what to expect in the end-of-the-year BIG update. Until then though, it’s smooth sailing! Keep on Wurming! Retrograde and The Wurm Team

Greetings wurmians! We’re back with another Volcano Press, I mean, Valrei International! taking a break from zapping each other with spells and watching water, we’ve got a bit to share of what we’ve been working on! Waves of excitement Samool has been hard at work improving something you might see every day in wurm, and it looks amazing! https://drive.google.com/file/d/1G2V1CZrdLbEgJyh7EekKZQsl6LdBZtMr/view?usp=sharing Coming soon to a client near you, water physics and effects will be far more spectacular, with an overhaul of the water rendering system with amazing waves and ripples. The best part of this? It’s even better performance than the existing water! That’s right, it looks a million times better and has less impact on your game! We got to give Emoo a sneak peek at this effect, catch what he said below: Priest work Testing is ongoing with the priest overhaul system and I’d like to personally thank everyone who has jumped on and given their feedback! There’s a ton of good and useful feedback there and we’ll be using it to perform various tweaks and adjustments. Bloodthirst will be adjusted based on player feedback so keep an eye out for that! Hedge your bets! Anyone felt hedges have been a little too basic? Well you don’t need to head into the woods to see your foliage varied anymore! Saroman has coloured his thumbs green and is updating hedge models with individual textures, below is rosewood and camellia! Other wood types are on the way, so keep an eye out! Rose: Camellia: Community Content This weeks community content is an artwork by Ehizelbob of a lava spider! Just in time for halloween there’s a definite creepy vibe to this walking lamp! You can check out all her at here at https://www.facebook.com/ehizellbobart/ That's it for us this fortnight, we hope you all have a safe and spoopy halloween and we will see you all next fortnight! Until then, keep on Wurming! Retrograde & the Wurm team

So, today was a big day! Sundisk and I joined Emoo in his weekly Wurm Wednesday stream to discuss the huge upcoming priest overhaul, which touches on almost every aspect of being a priest, we shared details about mechanics as well as showcased new spells and talked about balance, there's a lot to go over and we'll cover bits of it in here, incase you missed it, you can catch the stream here: Gods and Demigods In order to better streamline how player gods work, we'll be working on tying demigods (player gods) to the original gods more closely, demigods allied with a god will share many aspects, including prayer locations, restrictions, influence spell lists, and most importantly, demigods allied with a god will be able to have their priests link together. Priest restrictions In order to improve priest play we have loosened many restrictions from general priesthood, and also adjusted god based priest restrictions to, as follows: The following restrictions have been lifted from priests: Continuing structures, fences, and items Repairing structures Alchemy (including healing covers) Bashing structures and fences (includes structure roof & floors) In addition to this: Fo based priests (this includes demigods allied with Fo) can now do mining and all mining actions (Mine, prospect, tunnel, analyse). Libila and her template demigods can now operate war machines Magranon and his template demigods can now cut wood Vynora and her template demigods can now do all things digging, including Flattening, Leveling (including border), and Dredging This means playing as a priest solo is more feasible, and means working with lower quality tools than crafters, but still able to built a house! Rite spells We all know that Vynoras rite of spring is the dominant rite, who can turn down 5h sb? Not us! (Except me, because Fo is thebest). With this update we'll be setting Vynoras rite to be more of a baseline, with each rite giving 5h sleep bonus and a small characteristic improvement depending on the god. Gods and their Demigods will now share a server wide pool on these casts, so following/praying to a demigod will still provide towards the base gods total pool. The required amount of prayers will not change with server population, meaning an influx of players to a server will not increase the requirements, and there will not be a requirement of players in local to cast either, meaning better systems for organising them as the community events they were intended to be! Last but not least with rite spells, they will no longer require being on at a specific time! After the cast, players have up to 24 hours to pray and receive the bonuses, meaning if you were offline when it was cast, you don't miss out! New spells Along with a rework of most spell mechanics, new spells have been added: Cleanse: Fo spell. Converts 3x3 area of mycelium back to normal, cast on dirt will create grass Essence Drain: Libila spell. Libila version of life transfer and flaming aura/frostbrand, healing a small amount of damage and dealing a small internal wound as bonus damage. Less effective than LT or FA/FB, but able to do both. Focused Will: Magranon spell Magranons healing spell, drains stamina of the caster as it heals. Hypothermia: Vynora spell Single target cold damage spell Inferno: Magranon spell Single target burn damage spell Summon soul: All gods. This one we expect may be a little controversial, allowing a priest to summon a player to their location. It will require the person being summoned to accept the summon, as well as being PvE only. There's a large favour requirement and a cooldown so it's not one for spamming, but may help travel sometimes in certain situations! Resistances and cooldowns With all the new spells and reworking of the old, improving spell based combat is a big focus. With the previous mechanic of overheating proving to be somewhat ineffective, we've introduced both resistances and cooldowns on spells. Taking damage from a spell increases your resistance, and many spells have their own cooldown. Some spell types will share resistances, such as Worm brains, Hypothermia, and Inferno sharing a common resistance, and healing / life transfer has a total combined resistance, much like how light of Fo has worked. There's a lot more to share including spell specific changes which we'll be doing as it goes to public testing, we expect to be picking up with team testing soon! Newspring overhaul There's been a lot of voting for the Newspring deed redesign, and i think both designs have been awesome, but there always must be a winner, and this time it is Renate! Renates design carries a treetop wander feel, and I'm keen to see it in the game, we'll be working with him to get it all ready so expect to see results soon! There'll be a small update this week which will include the little unicorn and hell babies which I'm excited for, so see you there, until then though, Keep on Wurming! Retrograde & the Wurm team

Ultima Nostalgia - Katspurr (twitch) Malena (ingame) Greetings, Wurmians! It’s another fortnight down, and it’s time to share what we’ve been up to as well as recap the archaeology update. But first… Patch Notes Archaeology work is groundbreaking! Last week’s update saw a whole new layer added to archaeology with the introduction of caches. This system provides a greater sense of progression and goals for archaeologists, and we feel it gives the skill a solid end goal. We’re extremely pleased with how it came out, and thrilled to hear such positive feedback about it! To recap, archaeology caches are found by collecting reports about old deeds. Once the report has been filled enough, you can use the “get direction” function to locate the token site of the deed. The cache includes more statue pieces as well as increased chances of higher end archaeology items. The cache also includes a memento of the old deed in the form of a miniature version of the old token model. These can come in any metal type, giving players many opportunities for collection. Speaking of collection, the update also saw a few new statues added to archaeology, as well as smaller statuettes. I like to call these the “Wurmians at Work” collection by Saroman. The update also introduced the ability for wooden items to be discovered as any wood type, including types that were not previously available, such as lavenderwood: New Cloth Armour A discussion thread about existing coloured cloth armour and dyed armour led to a dev discussion about possible resolutions. The result of this was sitting Saroman down with a needle, a loom, and 300kg of cotton. He came up with a few new pieces for you all to enjoy! Cloth jacket Cloth striped sleeve There's a lot of trust in here, colours that clash make bunnies sad There will also be a plain white cloth hood, in case you want to roleplay a novice nun. Public Priest Testing Public testing on the priest overhaul will begin this weekend! Expect to see it live on test on Sunday server time. We will be providing full notes, discussing our goals, and accepting feedback on the many changes during this round of testing. We know these changes have been long anticipated, and many are excited to see them come to the game. (Yes, there will be a full faith swap option.) DAS BOOT To celebrate 500 followers, the dev team got together to come up with an item to recognize Emoo’s success as a streamer for the Valrei Entertainment Network. As such, we decided to create an item that is easily the most recognizable feature of his streams: The Shoey. A supreme drinking shoe was given away on stream, and a fantastic one was given to Emoo as a gift to memorialize his hard work. (I made him cry.) That’s it for this week! I hope to see you all on test server this Sunday. Until then, keep on Wurming! Retrograde & The Wurm Team

They wait - Shmeric Greetings wurmians! It’s been a slow news fortnight as we’ve been busy working on a few big projects, I’m excited to tell you more about them but unfortunately they’re not at that point yet, so this week we’ll touch a bit more on priest stuff as well as some client works. Saroman won’t let me show what he’s been working on sadly, I’m quite grumpy. But first… Priest stuff Priest testing has been opened to the wurm team and we’ve had a bit of discussion about many features. We’ll be working towards opening it for public testing once we’re aware of the major bugs (and fixed them hopefully) and such, then you’ll be able to test to your heart's content! We’ve added a few features to help with testing, such as the ability to set your own faith and favour, as well as spawn statuettes and vesseled gems via the test menu. We’ve also added a feature that outputs spell power for testing purposes, which is really cool and will help with feedback too! We’ll continue to check out helpful suggestions with ideas to do with priests and improvements, so keep up the good work. We expect this to open to public testing either this weekend or next week, we want to make sure we can help as much as we can with scenarios, so we’ll include information on how to grab a GM if needed! Client improvements 10,000 large amphorae in the desert, 10,000 large amphorae in the desert, you take one down, kick it around, still 10,000 large amphorae in the desert. No, this isn't my backyard, this is our client developer, Samool’s testing ground. One improvement to the client will be how it renders multiples of the same object. Currently if you had all 10,000 of these large pottery amphorae there they’d be rendered individually and slow your system to a halt, but here? The game draws the item once, and simply copies it around, meaning amazing performance improvements in areas with a lot of the same objects. Now, if you had 10,000 different objects there’d still be the problem, but we’re continuing to work on extra features to improve performance, make sure you check out the modern renderer and the preview client! Community content This weeks community content is a huge shoutout to Valrei Entertainment Network member, Bloodydrongo, who has hit over 500 followers! We’ll be thinking of a few ways to help him celebrate, so keep an eye out for his news! His love of wurm, discussion, and drinking from a shoe has all found us something to connect with him (except drinking from a shoe, that's on him) Check out his stream here: https://www.twitch.tv/bloodydrongo That’s it for us this week, short and sweet, just like me, right? We’ll be back snappier than a rubber band on a bunny next fortnight with hopefully some more news, including progress on the priest testing and plans for live launch! Until then though, keep on Wurming! Retrograde & the Wurm team.

Fo - Theodin Greetings, Wurmians! Time sure flies when you’re having fun, and these past two weeks have gone fast! We’ve been hard at work testing and ironing out the new priest and spell changes to get them ready for release. Unfortunately, with the sheer amount of things being changed, internal testing is ongoing. So while it’s not quite ready for public testing yet, we do have some exciting things to share with you today. But first… Patch Notes Hellishly Cute That’s right! Along with the upcoming unicorn foal model, there will also be new adorable hell foals! They will still have their own color texture, just with added cuteness. Expect to see them next update. Modern Renderer We’d like to thank everyone for their feedback regarding the modern renderer. We’ve addressed the issues with stability and memory usage (with the client--not sure if the same can be said about us), so starting next update, the modern renderer will be the default renderer. The legacy renderer will still be available as an option in settings, but will be phased out in the future. Discord Twitter! Thanks to resident Discord genius Capi, we've integrated Twitter feeds of important announcements for freedom and chaos into Discord! You'll be able to keep track of things such as deed foundings, legendary creature spawning, and HotA! To check it all out, visit our official Discord server here! https://Discord.gg/wurm Resisting! One question we've seen is how resistances vs spells will work, with the increase of viability in offensive and AOE spellcasting. The way of approaching this for us was aimed at avoiding cases where spells could be spammed and increase diversity in casting, so we've implemented a system that will have individual resistances apply, each balanced around the specific spell in question. This gives us the ability to balance resistances against the spell effects,, without impacting spellcasting in general. Spell resistances will vary from 2 to 5 minutes at 100% resistance, and will be visible in both spell effects and icons. I'm looking forward to it, and I hope you are too! A-better-view-spring (It’ll catch on, I promise!) The Newspring starter deed redesign contest had two unique entries, and it’s up to all of you to pick your favorite. To check out the entries and vote for your favorite, go here: That's it from us this week, We'll be continuing to work on the priest changes and hopefully in the next week or so we'll be at the stage we can open it to public testing, we've still got our dev team under the hood making sure the mechanics are sound, after that we'll be looking for you all to join us in several testing events to see how it goes, from simulated fighting to more structured combat, taking your feedback on each spell and whether it feels overpowered or underpowered, and also feedback on the other aspects of priest play. Until then though, keep on wurming! Retrograde & the Wurm team.

Calico at night - Pristine - Joelle Well, the update beat me to the news this week, so we'll be recapping what went out (because that's what I had prepared!) and also touching a little on some big things in the near future! But first.. Patch Notes Armour updates Last nights update saw a bit of a change to how armours work together, with base DR rebalancing, and adjusting DR based on damage type. This helps improve the effectiveness of studded leather and chain, while also giving some love to plate, reducing the movement speed penalty. Don't forget the values listed in the patch notes are for iron specifically, meaning plate and chain gain extra DR benefits from other metals over studded. It's a change that increases the viability and surviveability of all armour types, meaning more choice, more work, and more fun. Sindusk has shared a snapshot of a calculator he built based on the epic armour code for his wurm unlimited server, bear in mind these are at 100ql values, so real results will vary! WU beta With this update out containing some fixes that needed to go in before we launched a WU beta, we can now begin work on a new beta with all the goodies from the past few updates! We'll also be including some special WU centric stuff to make server management a little easier, so stay tuned for that! Priesty stuff Today I spent part of the day zapping Budda, and copping some seriously heavy hits as part of internal testing of the priest and spell system. There's a huge amount of work in it, and the dev team have been hard at work on it, with bug fixes, tweaks and further balances expected to continue this week. After internal testing, we'll be providing details about whats changed and what to expect, along with the opportunity to jump on the test server and check it all out, find bugs, and all that fun stuff. But what would the fun of that be without some teasers? I snuck through some notes and gathered a little bit of intel to share ahead of the full release! Demise Rework There are two components to the new way demises work: Non-deity demises, and deity demises & protections. Animal’s Demise, Dragon’s Demise, Human’s Demise, and Selfhealer’s Demise are all remaining as weapon enchants. They will no longer grant increased accuracy and crit chance versus the targets. Instead, they will offer a small damage increase. Dragon’s Demise is being renamed to Legendary Demise and will affect all legendary (unique) creatures. Selfhealer’s Demise is being renamed to Monster’s Demise and will affect all monsters. These changes should open up more choices. While Dragon’s Demise previously overlapped with everything affected by Selfhealer’s Demise, these new demise changes do not have any conflicts and every target is only affected by one of the demises. The move from hit chance and critical strike towards damage increase was done to try and improve the clarity of the effect. While it was previously extremely difficult to know how much a Demise would increase your chance to hit, the new iteration will give an exact amount of power increase that can be easily understood and weighed against other options. Protections Deity demises and protections, such as Fo’s Demise and Libila’s Shielding, have all been reworked into jewelry enchants. These new jewelry enchants work around increasing and reducing damage from a certain damage type. Each deity will receive one offensive and one defensive enchant from these new spells. There is a built-in rivalry between Fo vs Libila, and Magranon vs Vynora. Fo: Increased Poison, Reduced Acid Magranon: Increased Fire, Reduced Frost Vynora: Increased Frost, Reduced Fire Libila: Increased Acid, Reduced Poison These new jewelry enchants all conflict with each other and Nolocate. Players on PvE will now be able to obtain meaningful benefits from wearing certain jewelry, and PvP players will have to make a choice between increased combat prowess and inability to be located. The change into jewelry enchants was done to combat the deity-specific spells being rather underwhelming and archaic. Jewelry enchants are a bit of a void, and this felt like the perfect opportunity to tackle two birds with one stone. We’re interested to see what type of combinations players are able to figure out in order to maximize their power. Puzzle labyrinth! The factional fight brothers are back, and have finished their long awaited labyrinth! I dropped in for a tour of it, and attempted to crack it, it's a maddening puzzle that just shows how awesome things can be created in this game, and I hope the brothers are extremely proud of what they've done! To celebrate it, we've joined with them to provide a unique prize for finishing it! I've asked them to write a little bit about it, and I'll provide a link to that post when it goes up! Hope to see you all there though! Newspring makeover It's about time for another starter deed remake, and this time eyes are on Newspring! The rocky island located on Xanadu, home of seals, seals, and more seals! We're looking for a starter deed design for Newspring, and want to give you all the opportunity to design and build your dream start deed! As usual we'll provide the materials, you get a team together, plan a design and get to leave your mark on the game! Check out the full details and a copy of the deedplanner design here: That's it from us this week, we'll be zapping each other, freezing and burning, and all sorts of other things, I need to take down Budda and reclaim champ title, expect victorious shouts (I hope) Until next time, keep on wurming! Retrograde & the Wurm team.

<Fabricant> Keenan does his deeds like he does updates. It's going to take three attempts. - Upon seeing Null Point founded three times. Hi Everyone! Been a huge weekend with the friendalong on pristine, and I hope everyone had a lot of fun attending! The GM's and I got plenty of kills, and enjoyed terrorising you all. Coming off last weeks update there isn't huge a huge amount of new things to discuss, but we'll do a little recap but first.. Patch Notes: Titles and more Last update saw the new titles come in, along with the surprise of double barrel titles, AND village role showing! We hope it generated some excitement to see, and certainly enjoyed watching you all work out which titles corresponded with what skills, as well as showing off your best combination (I'm still a fan of Tim the toolman tailor). It's awesome to see people working together to figure things out (as long as it's not unbalancing to not know) and it was fun for us too, I'm still working towards Sturdy Light Bastion myself! Friendalong Vynora overlooks a foal as white as milk The pristine friendship bay impalong, or friendalong, was on this weekend, and it was fun! I dropped in several times, and managed to score a total of 9 kills! (Sorry elsa and tomatoes). It's fun to see everyone working together and helping each other, and some of the fights were pretty fun! I let pingpong win a fight against me, once I actually tried though we decided to call it a draw before i turned him into pingpong paste. I also received an offering from our Valrei Entertainment Network streamer Fabricant! Priest and spell overhaul Along with a discussion about the PvP changes that went live last update, Sindusk mentioned that he is currently working on the long desired priest overhaul. It's still a major work in progress, but the aim is to touch on almost every facet of priests and each spell individually, as well as how they fit on the whole. It will soon be entering internal testing, where we will focus on balance and mechanics working, before opening to public testing for players to jump in and see how it feels and flows. We'll keep you all updated on how this goes, but in the meantime, feel free to share your thoughts on rite spells in this thread here: Modern renderer The new modern renderer is now live, and what a difference it can make! The biggest current one is in lighting, with much improved systems that enable more lights with better performance! It's not all the new renderer brings though, and we'll be working hard on realising our goals with it, changing the visual landscape of Wurm greatly. This, along with saromans work on normal and specular mapping as well as various other projects are a concentrated effort not only in updating our rendering systems, but improving the visual feel of the game as a whole. To enable the modern renderer, in the launcher click on the gear icon, and go to the graphics tab, selecting modern from the rendering options will enable the new renderer upon launching the game. Just popping in As part of our ongoing visual works, Samool has been working on reducing the "pop in effect" of trees and objects. The pop in effect is when an object goes from distance rendering (e.g. the 2D images of trees) to the 3D models, this is quite sudden and makes it painfully obvious what is happening. To help eliminate how jarring it is, we'll be introducing a fade in effect that is less sudden and hopefully makes it a little less in your face: That's it from us this week, I know it's a little light on all the juicy things but I'll be working with the dev team on making sure that there's plenty more to come, so stick around and stay tuned, and as always, keep on Wurming! Retrograde & the Wurm team. Oh wait, there IS one more thing: Until next time!

Hi Everyone! We're back with another Valrei International, giving you the low down of what we've been up to and what's going on, so let's get to it! Bugfix blitz A lot of our work these past few weeks have been major pushes on addressing a huge amount of bugs, but we've got a few things to delve into as well, so here goes PvP stuff Many of you may have noticed a thread on the forums regarding PvP, and I know there were a lot of discussions about what could be done or what was needed. We spent a lot of time discussing it internally as well as within the thread, taking the time to read through everything (and yes, we can see hidden posts). There's a few back end mechanics we'll be working on for the next update and then we'll begin stepping into some of the heavier stuff, we'll be working very closely with you all via the feature feedback forum, so expect that soon! Renderer work Samool has been super hard at work improving and optimising the modern renderer coming soon, there's not much in the way of discussion about it, as it's goal is pretty simple, improve performance drastically and eliminate the need to have GLSL shaders disabled for better framerates! I managed to grab a few shots from him just to add some pretty pictures to the news (and wow are they pretty) When bugs become features We always make jokes about bugs being features, but occasionally there's a funny story. On the dev side we include logging for a wide variety of things, those who have been GM's on WU servers will know about logging of roads, as well as a lot of other internal things, but recently one logging feature had a little bug... This got us to talking about a few things, and thus this little bug has now become it's own feature with next update introducing the PvE death tab! Rest assured, for those embarrassed about dying to a mountain lion or autowalking off a cliff, there will be an opt out function within the player profile, and players with low skills will not show to avoid spam. The tab can also be closed via the profile too, but I know I'll be expecting a lot of jokes when i next die! Unique bloods Next update will be introducing some changes to the types of unique bloods that drop from certain uniques, we won't be going into full detail, but we'd like to give a little heads up incase you're holding onto bloods. Mixing some bloods after the next update will result in different potion types as we will be making sure all uniques drop bloods that mix into unique potion types.(I'm sure that makes sense) so if you want the potions they currently make, nows the time to mix them! We will also note we won't be removing any types, simply changing ones that double up. Wurm interior design It ran a little longer than expected, but that';s due to the introduction of part 2 of placing items on things, I'll totally blame that. We're blown away by what people have done with the ability to place items on tables, and it really does just add that extra oomph to making a house really look like a home. we have five winners to announce,, and there's been a lot of discussion with each dev picking their favourite, I'm pleased to announce the winners are: 1st prize: Seriphina with her tour of Lorewood Gardens and the beautiful library! 2nd price: Rhea with her tale of the great feast with a twist, a great use of the feature to write a mystery! I was expecting a goldilocks story, but I'm glad it wasnt, has someone done a rapunzel? 3rd prize: Aniceset with her tour of Amish Paradise, the bar is amazing and I have never met Candi in my life 4th prize: Kasumi with her troll cooking up a tasty foot and mouth stew (Yes, I checked the ingredients) 5th prize: Jakerivers workbench, it somehow still looks tidier than my RL workbench! A (dis)honourable mention goes to cenotaph for his luxury new player hotel, I mean, slave cage We'll be in touch over the weekend with your prizes! Friendalong! The friendship bay friend-a-long is quickly coming up, with imping, events, GM slayings (which will be even more fun with the death tab and general socialising. I took a few minutes out of the day to drop in on host VirusMD, and nag him all about it: It's on over the weekend of July 27th - 30th, be there, or have no friends!* *You will still have friends if you don't attend, they'll just be sad That's it this week from us, we'll be putting the finishing touches on our updates with the planned launch in the next week or so, so stay tuned for that! Until then though, keep on wurming! Retrograde & the Wurm team.

the gods watch over - User Hi Everyone! It's been a busy few weeks here at Wurm HQ, with quite a few projects underway as well as the launch of WU 1.7 with all that placement goodness. We have an update planned for tomorrow with the addition of normal mapping for new ground textures, and hopefully a little bit more, so let's jump in! Looking normal As we've discussed in the past, we're working on a major update and overhaul of graphics with the addition of normal and specular mapping, and the first pieces are ready to go live! Terrain is the first update, with many of the terrain textures updated, and normal and specular mapping added. It really changes the look and feel of the lands of wurm, as you can see below there are some major improvements: Snow even looks good! (Now all you have to worry about are pesky colds, but they even come in summer) Next up, we'll begin working on housing, which will really bring out some much needed depth to walls and buildings, as you can see here of a WIP shot of the pottery brick walls This is a rather large undertaking though, so it will take time to come to everything in the game, but the difference is definitely worth the wait! the terrain normal and specular will come in tomorrows update, but will be disabled by default, so if you want to check them out, make sure to enable normal maps on the advanced graphic settings tab once this goes live! Sindusk Joins the Dev Team A well established modder and server host, Sindusk, has taken the full plunge into madness by joining the Wurm dev team! In addition to running his own server, Revenant, he will be working with us in various tasks, starting with some work on bugs (seriously, lots of bugs fixed already) and looking at a few projects long desired. We're excited to have him on board and keen to see what he brings to the game! Valrei Entertainment Network additions This week sees the addition of two new members to the VEN program, Neferent and BrimstoneVomit! Neferent streams his travels across Xanadu as he nearly dies to scorpions with crocodiles for shoes: BrimstoneVomit streams his adventures on Wurm as he builds his deed and talks about his plans: I'd like to welcome them both to the program, and look forward to watching more of their adventures! On top of this, we have two more projects in the works, they may not go live tomorrow, pending whether we can iron out a few oddities, but they’re certainly things to get excited about! Item Placement 2.0 Hot off the heels of the new placement mechanic comes the next update to it, adding a new range of surfaces that can hold items on them! The full list is below: large anvil large barrel tub small barrel stone altar wood altar silver altar gold altar coffin well large magic chest small magic chest oil barrel wine barrel coffer alchemists cupboard storage unit small amphora large amphora The following surfaces will also heat any item placed on them: Oven Forge Hota statue Kiln Smelter Still So be sure not to place any wooden items on them, or they will get burned up! New Metal Alloy: Electrum Electrum is a new alloy made from gold and silver. It can be used to make all metal items as well as jewelry, bardings, and horse shoes. The full modifier list is below: Armour .5% DR bonus +2% glance rate bonus -1% movement speed penalty Weapon -2.5% attack speed -1% damage dealt +5% bonus to damage dealt to hunter mobs General -10% damage taken 9x trader price -20% decay damage taken +2.5% bonus to repairing +7.5% bonus to pendulum area of effect +10% bonus to bash damage Can be used to make statuettes Can be used to make unicorn shoes With this alloy comes one other unique item: Electrum Rune of Fo. This rune can be used to reduce the age relative to their current age upon successful use. While this means creatures can be made younger, it cannot be used on Wurmians, so it looks like my wrinkles are here to stay. Community content, the Wurm Unlimited Tournament: Round 2 Grab a partner and head on over to Wurm Unlimited for the second round of Darklords’ Competitive League. This time, instead of a 3v3 fight, it’s 2v2 to make it easier for teams to coordinate. Another change is the implementation of DUSKombat , a new combat mod designed for Wurm Unlimited, which drastically changes the way combat works. There is a 2 gold prize pool for Darklords’ tournament, with 1 gold for the winning team, 50 silver for 2nd place, and 25 silver each for 3rd and 4th. Signups for the tournament are open until Friday, so hurry up and form your teams now! That's it from us this week, we'll be busy with all these changes and more over the coming weeks, so be sure to stick around and check it out. Until then though, keep on wurming! Retrograde & the Wurm team

Kalaheo Escape, P14 Xan - absy Greetings wurmians! Today we bring you a few reveals including a new rendering system, the launch of the Valrei Entertainment Network, and a little bit more, so lets get into it! But first.. Patch Notes Leave A Light On We've shared our desire to improve the overall visual feel of Wurm over the years, along with major improvements in performance and we'll be taking some more gigantic leaps with that soon! We're working on introducing a new client renderer that has significantly improved lighting performance, reducing flickering and massively boosting FPS on most systems. This also removes the dynamic lights limiter system as all lights are rendered together, creating a much more ambient world. You'll notice some of these shots are from the live game, and one of Glasshollow, a place well known for taxing the most powerful of systems, we use it as a performance testing ground in a few occasions and this one wound up with significant improvements over the current stable and preview clients! Due to this not being supported by older systems (pre 2010 or so) and Macs, We'll be including this as a client option for players to disable and play on the existing renderer. Valrei Entertainers! A few newses (totally a word) in the making, we're finally rolling out the start of our Valrei Entertainment Network! We will be starting with a select few and building it up, ensuring we can shape this how we want and provide the support we want. Initial support will be cross promotion via social media, a special ingame title (all of my suggestions were apparently too lame) , and may include further things down the line such as sneak peek news for players to check out, and giveaways for you! The initial members that we can announce are below, but we'll be reaching out and inducting a few more over the next week when we can get in touch with them first! The current members are: Emoo Punishlife Fabricant We'll be working with them to create this platform and make sure it's the best it can be, so make sure to show them support! WU Beta With the dust settling from the anniversary update we're going to begin working towards a WU beta, aiming for internal stability testing and then a beta launch, from there we'll be launching it live, so expect it soon! Decoration time As announced in last news, we're doing a decorating competition! Simply decorate a room by putting things on surfaces (not unidentified fragments!) and submit your designs to this thread, the grand winner will receive 2 supreme archaeology statues of their choosing, second place receiving 2 rare, and third place receiving 1 rare. We'll also be including a rare marble table to the fourth and fifth place, so get designing! Title Suggestions There's been a huge amount of suggested titles and plenty of discussion about them, which is awesome! We'll be sifting through the suggestions and categorizing them all, choosing which ones we want to use and will be implementing them! If you have ones you would like to suggest it's not too late, get in quick! The great derby of 1075 Last weekend saw the great derby of 1075, with players joining IRC to take part in the quizzes for a chance to win an entry ticket to a race on Golden Valley! With our ten entrants: Briwerion, moirai, jaz, joelle, ostentatio, oblivionnreaver, klaa, williamwierd, rocklobstar, and Thorakkanath the race was setup, and was a really fun event, with the winners being Moirai, Briwerion, and then Jaz. To catch the full stream, we took our new VEN member Punishlife to golden valley to stream it, and check out the highlights video here!: That's it from us this week, we'll be working on a few things, adjusting and adding some player suggestions as well (saromans been busy all week learning table making etiquette!) for the next patch, so stay tuned for that! Until then though.. Keep on Wurming! Retrograde & the Wurm team

Celebrations! - Xallo (Totally needs a puppet) Happy Anniversary! Another year down as Wurm continues to roll on, that makes it a whopping 12 years since Wurm went gold! We've celebrated by releasing some LONG LONG awaited changes and additions. As they say with things, better late than never! But First... Patch Notes Personal Goals As previously mentioned we implemented the changes and fixes to personal goals with this update, which we're extremely glad to do so. The major reason we were hesitant to touch it was the way they were generated at server start and we have encountered a few issues with this. Today's update corrected the goals that shouldn't have rerolled while changing the ones that were (tomes, PvP oriented goals). We do apologise for the issues and confusion raised, but after this it's smooth sailing. As previously mentioned, there are plans for a completely new system to replace this one, though there is no ETA on it, so get in and get that title before it goes away! Anniversary Celebrations We'll be popping up ingame with lots of random trivia and some other events throughout the weekend and into next week, with plenty of things to give away, unfortunate newbies to get killed by 10 raging nogumps, and harass pingpong, who we all know is to blame. Keep your eyes peeled for funny shadows and warning of events ingame! Room Decorating With the ability to decorate expanded, we want you to show us what you got! To help with this, we'll be doing a competition for you to submit your decorated rooms! Submit your room in the thread below, and we will be organising a tour and showcase of the rooms during Emoos Wurm Wednesday stream! Titles Galore! As you all know, titles are awesome, and a fun thing to collect and show off, but there's some skills that don't currently have them, and we want to change that. To do so, we're requesting your ideas, after all, you'll be the ones wearing them! Community Content This weeks community content is another awesome work by Absy, a master architect! From palaces on Release to now Xanadu, check out their latest work! That's it from us this week, I hope you all enjoy the awesome updates and think of some awesome titles and decoration ideas and as always, keep on Wurming! Retrograde & the Wurm team

Vynora overlooks the land, full image here Dear Wurmians Things have been a little quiet on the news front, and I'm incredibly sorry, and to make it up to you all, I've gone combing through buddas desk, and aside from all the empty bourbon bottles, I found some really interesting things, so lets see it! Personal goals For a long time now personal goals have been a feature that can be quite frustrating to some, with hard to attain goals vs simply getting lucky with RNG. We outlined our desires to improve this system but also explained that a large danger is how the personal goals system draws the goals, without actually saving them. This meant that any changes to achievements could lead to everyone having their goals re-rolled, causing countless headaches. With a lot of careful work, and repeated testing, we're now able to address this issue, and will be removing some of the more tricky diamond personal goals. If you previously had one of these the system will now generate a new achievement of a equal tier. The following personal goals will be removed: Create fantastic item Conquer the world Rule a kingdom Become a demigod Become an arch mage Become a planeswalker Become a shadowmage Become a magician Mine a fantastic gem In the long term, we are working towards a complete overhaul of the way personal goals work, and will be removing the current system in its entirety. If you wish to receive the winner title and rewards for completing your personal goals, we'd advise working towards that, as the opportunity may be gone later. THINGS! ON TABLES! Long long long desired, (and even appearing as a mod) is the ability to place things on tables and shelves. We've wanted this as both players and devs for a long time now, and we're really proud to be able to unveil it today! It's functionality is directly tied with placing objects, so to put an item on a table, simply right click > place. then as you hover the green outline over the table, it will display on the table. Moving the table around (or even picking it up) will carry the object with it. The list of items that will be able to have items placed on it are the following: square table round table dining table bed bench (stone) bedside table open fireplace canopy bed tripod table high bookshelf low bookshelf round marble table rectangular marble table We'll also be introducing three new items: Empty low shelf Empty high shelf Bar top This feature has huge design impact, and will really open up possibilities about showing off and decorating. We're extremely excited to see it finally come, and hope you are too. Once it's launched, we'll be running a room designing competition, so think about what you'd like to do with your decorations! Introducing the content creation club Valrei Entertainment Network! Last news we had a small competition for suggestions to title our new streamer support program, and there were a ton of great ones, we eventually settled on the Valrei Entertainment Network by CIRAY, as the name. We've had a few applicants and will be reviewing them all over the coming week or so, expect an announcement in relation to it soon! Animal crates A little feature no one really knew about that we haven't told anyone about is animal crates! (just kidding, we don't have amnesia) And we're readying up for some public testing with them over this coming weekend and maybe a little next week. Still just a rat in a cage We'll be looking to check server crossings mostly, as our wonderful tester Alectrys has been hard at work breaking them in every other way. We'll have a thread up in public testing detailing everything we're looking for, so I hope you're keen for them! Now, I know you're all wondering "How long until this comes in?" and I have good news! These features should be in with the next update! As for the hard date on that it's not yet firm, but we are planning for this and more in time for wurms 12th anniversary, so buckle up! There's a lot to get ready for, from building tables, to working out which personal goals you want to achieve, to comforting your animals before moving them to the next server, so you all get busy and make sure to come on to test! Until then though, keep on Wurming! Retrograde & the Wurm team