Sindusk

Wurm Online: Jackal's Return

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Wurm Online: Jackal’s Return

A Wurm Online Expansion

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Overview

In Wurm Online: Jackal’s Return, players will once again venture into the lands of Jackal to fight the rift invaders in their home world. With a new design, players will have to work together to slowly push back the fauna and cleanse the Jackal landscape. The rift invaders have created outposts across Jackal which charge the barrier preventing entry to the central fortress. Once the outposts are destroyed, an assault can be made on the fortress. A successful assault will lead to Jackal’s armageddon phase, where players will be sent back to their original homeworlds and incur a moon metal meteor shower across all of Wurm.

 

Jackal Returns

 

Accessing Jackal

Jackal portals can now be created similar to the PvP or Epic portals, though they require rift wood and rift stone to craft. Once created, players can travel back and forth from Jackal freely. Skills will transfer to and from Jackal, but items will not (with a few exceptions). Faith and currency will not transfer either. Jackal can be accessed from both the Southern and Northern Freedom Isles, making it the only place where players from both clusters can play together. Currency (iron/copper/silver/gold) will not transfer to the server from any cluster, because Jackal will have a unique currency system for players to create deeds and trade.

 

Hazardous Terrain

Jackal’s terrain is completely covered in fauna. This fauna is poisonous to players, and will cause damage rapidly when attempting to traverse it. In order to survive, players will be required to use a variety of methods to either remove or replace the fauna. Pavers can pack and pave over the fauna to make it safe to travel. Libila priests can use Fungus to create mycelium which will overtake the fauna. Fo priests can use Cleanse to rid the area of the fauna and replace it with dirt or grass.

 

This will require players to move slowly across the map, making roads through the fauna to reach points of interest. Using jackal points, obtained through removing the fauna and assaulting outposts, players will be able to create deeds over areas which are fully expunged of the fauna.

 

New Resources

In the cave systems of Jackal, players will be able to find Cobalt veins, a new metal type unique to Jackal. The properties of this metal are between that of steel and moon metals. Any cobalt item created that turns rare, supreme, or fantastic becomes unbound.

 

The trees of Jackal also possess similar special properties. Items created from these wood types will become unbound if turned rare, supreme, or fantastic.

 

Unbound Items

Completing objectives on Jackal (such as assaulting an outpost) will reward participants with a random unbound item. Unbound items can be any tool, weapon, or armor. Metal or wooden items will have a random material type.

 

Unbound items have the special property of being able to freely transfer between Jackal and Wurm. This allows players to retain items they found for use at the start of the next iteration of Jackal. These can be improved, enchanted, runed, and modified in the ways any normal item can be modified.

 

In addition, they increase the difficulty of any action performed with them by a small amount. This makes them less efficient than normal tools, but useful for certain skill gain methods.

 

Priest Restrictions

On Jackal, priests have less restrictions than in the homeland of Wurm. Since faith does not transfer, players will be able to pick a new faith and become a priest specifically on Jackal if they choose to do so. Each deity now permits it’s priests to improve a certain subset of items:

 

  • Fo: Tailoring and all sub-skills. Nature and all sub-skills.
  • Vynora: Carpentry and all sub-skills. Pottery.
  • Magranon: Smithing and all sub-skills.
  • Libila: Masonry and sub-skill Stone cutting.

 

This will allow players to maintain the combat effectiveness of being a priest, while still being able to pick up a crafting trade to benefit the war effort against the rift invaders.

 

Jackal Points

Jackal points are earned through removing fauna and completing Jackal objectives. These jackal points can be exchanged for rewards directly, or used to place a deed and claim land on Jackal for the current iteration.

 

Armageddon

Once the final fortress is assaulted and destroyed, Jackal will enter an armageddon phase. This will cause chaos on Jackal for a few days before finally destroying the map entirely. The armageddon phase is not time-gated, and players can trigger it whenever they complete enough Jackal objectives to open up the fortress. It will be up to the speed and efficiency of players tackling Jackal to trigger this event.

 

When the Armageddon phase completes, Jackal’s server will shut down and a moon metal meteor shower will begin across all servers in Wurm. The meteors that land will have 5-10 lumps of moon metal that can be mined by players who find them. After a week, the Jackal server will regenerate and launch again with a refreshed map.

 

Content Reworks

Heading into Jackal, an experimental combat system update and meditation rework will be implemented for Jackal. If these systems receive positive feedback, they will be applied to the rest of Wurm.

 

Combat

The combat system has been tweaked to allow players to interact more with the opponent. The UI will now show the attack direction of your opponent. Special moves have been updated to be more potent against NPC’s. Their accuracy is now significantly higher than a normal swing. Effects such as draining the food bar now have a much more significant impact on the creature’s fighting ability. These concepts are applied to players as well. A well fed and hydrated combatant is now more competent in combat than a starving one.

 

Creatures now become less effective in combat at lower stamina. As health and stamina declines, their combat ability declines with them.

 

AI for Jackal creatures are now more advanced than standard creatures. They will use player-like behavior and target any mounts or creatures hitched to your vehicle first, leaving them heavily wounded before switching to the player. They do not focus on dealing killing blows to mounts or hitched creatures, instead opting to leave them wounded to cripple the player’s movement.

 

Meditation

Meditation is completely overhauled. Instead of requiring a 2 minute meditation at a certain location, meditation is now an option on certain objects. Players will activate their meditation rug, then use it on the object that’s relevant to their path in order to gain skill and advance. For example, Path of Hate will use corpses of slain creatures as their meditation target. Path of Insanity will use veins in mines as their target.

 

Meditating on proper targets will grant enlightenment progress, which can be used to unlock the perks of meditation. Each meditation path has new abilities which are unlocked then upgraded. For example, Path of Knowledge’s Get Info ability can be upgraded to show creature traits when used. Path of Love’s Enchanted Grass ability can be upgraded to freeze the age of a tree, preventing it from growing.

 

Enlightenment progress increases faster with more meditation skill. The progression has been reworked to be entirely based around enlightenment, with meditation skill being a factor only for the speed at which enlightenment is gained. There are no longer any skill level locks on meditation.

 

Final Words

This is a suggestion, not a news post. If you were getting excited, you can stop now.

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4 minutes ago, armyskin said:

Now this is a suggestion that deserves a +1

Agreed!!! Finally a suggestion I can +1 

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I think a week for Jackal to regenerate and relaunch is too short

 

Maybe put that to every month or every 3-4 months.

 

Otherwise +1

Edited by atazs
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+1 i like it very much

P.S. maybe would go even bolder and try to ditch priest restrictions totaly just to see how Wurm functions in such enviroment

Edited by kochinac
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+1 

Maybe with increased skill gain considerably too.

Re-launch after a week or less is fine, as it gives people chance to play the next round if the feel they are late on the current, without having to wait 4 months.

Can be used as a beta-testing religion changes etc

 

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1 hour ago, Wurmfarm said:

what about skill transfer

 

Skills would transfer seamlessly between Jackal and the main cluster servers. Any skill gained there would transfer back as soon as you took the portal home.

 

56 minutes ago, Tor said:

+1 

Maybe with increased skill gain considerably too.

Re-launch after a week or less is fine, as it gives people chance to play the next round if the feel they are late on the current, without having to wait 4 months.

Can be used as a beta-testing religion changes etc

 

 

I was considering pitching a possible different skill gain solution for the server which makes it tempting to play when you have unenchanted tools to start. The idea would be something like 50% increased skill gain, but sleep bonus would increase skill gain by 50% instead of 100%. This would make playing on Jackal without enchants more appealing while still making normal servers more efficient when you're min-maxing with enchants.

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In the end I decided it would probably just make a point of contention so I decided to leave it out. I do agree that some incentive to skill gain on Jackal would be nice.

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3 minutes ago, Eyesgood said:

I would not start promoting the use of the word "Expansion"...  

 

I don't see why not. This could be launched for Wurm Online with a marketing campaign. Then several months later added as DLC for Wurm Unlimited. This would make players of Wurm Unlimited happy (they would get all the updates from Wurm Online) and the company would receive revenue from purchases of the new DLC. Company makes money, players get new content, and everyone is happy. Expansion is exactly what the game needs.

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Dam man you had me going for a minute there...   😪

Sindusk as lead DEV...

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Some very interesting ideas here. I especially like the combat adjustments and the difficulty increase using unbound items adds more options for efficient skill gain.

 

The first Jackal server had everybody starting with no equipment and all skills at one I'm curious what are the reasons for changing to full skill transfer. Do you think other characters starting with high skills would reduce the attraction for newer or less skilled characters ? Also for subsequent Jackal servers do you think that some people's ability to bring unbound, high quality, enchanted, runed equipment with them at the start is potentially unbalancing ?

 

One question about the cobalt and jackalwood tools that become unbound. The idea is you could bring them back home after Jackal and work on them but even though the wooden items can be improved with non-Jackal wood as normal you can't improve the cobalt tools much since there is no source of cobalt back home ?

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2 hours ago, Explora said:

The first Jackal server had everybody starting with no equipment and all skills at one I'm curious what are the reasons for changing to full skill transfer. Do you think other characters starting with high skills would reduce the attraction for newer or less skilled characters ? Also for subsequent Jackal servers do you think that some people's ability to bring unbound, high quality, enchanted, runed equipment with them at the start is potentially unbalancing ?

 

The reason is because the server isn't targeted towards new players. It should be targeted towards skilled fighters and veterans of the game. People who want to take their skills and use it to push for something new and productive. When the original Jackal launched, the lack of transfer was, in my opinion, one of the main reasons for it's lackluster participation. People have been playing for years and years and have built their character and skills for a long time. To have that stripped away when engaging with new content doesn't feel very good. Some players don't want to start over, they just want new content. This concept is aimed at providing exactly that. New players should start on the original servers, and have participation on Jackal as a goal to strive for - not a starting point.

 

2 hours ago, Explora said:

One question about the cobalt and jackalwood tools that become unbound. The idea is you could bring them back home after Jackal and work on them but even though the wooden items can be improved with non-Jackal wood as normal you can't improve the cobalt tools much since there is no source of cobalt back home ?

 

Correct. The idea is that you'll need to create high quality smithing tools on Jackal in order to make a rare unbound cobalt item. It would need to be improved on the Jackal server specifically. If you take it back to the original servers and damage it, the only way to get it improved again would be to revisit Jackal and have it improved there.

 

Cobalt veins would have low quantities in them, and very high difficulty (above gold). Each vein wouldn't be guaranteed to be very good or utmost, either. Getting high quality rare Cobalt gear should be a chase goal for players with high skill participating on Jackal, not something that should be expected.

 

Whether that concept should extend to the trees of Jackal is up for debate. It's possible to make it so only Jackal wood can be used to improve items made from Jackal wood. It's just a matter of whether or not that's a good idea - and I don't know the answer to that.

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As high end PvE content I would prefer a hunting server connected to the other servers. With special metal veins and such. 

 

But this suggestion is not bad at all.

+1

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There is a lot to unpack here, and this very much is a suggestion for there are many details to be dealt with.

 

However...  The bones of a good new server are there, with a strong distinction from regular wurm play and a heavy seasonality.

 

I can see this becoming a popular feature, especially with the skillgain posited later (burn your SB on your main server, then head over to Jackal to carry on at a decent level of skillgain without SB).

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if they don't completely remove deeding/guards/guard towers then jackal will not be a challenge

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This sounds great for an expansion as I've stopped playing Wurm.  Thought Steam Wurm would be fun, but got tired of low skill grind when I've already spent enough time on regular Freedom with other characters.

 

I like the idea of skills transferring back and forth 1:1 and not some wonky formula that has issues later on.  The incentive is doing something new at an advanced level in a foreign environment.  Always wanted a hunting server.

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Overall, love it. Deeds should be only created on connected "cleansed" land, kinda like tower chaining. One thing I loved about Jackal and Epic is the faster action timers. You have limited time, you need it and it feels so good to just-get-things-done. I get that now if we assume full skill transfer, it might not be as necessary as it was, but I'd still support it.

 

One thing that should be reminded: wetas. Always wetas. Must. Have. Wetas. Back.

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Deeds should not exist.  They destroy spawns, effectively making the area safe.  As there's so many people now, it would easily become overwhelmed with players.

 

Allow building, and no deeds/guard towers.

Edited by sweatygopher

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Love all of the idea in general, Sindusk. 

I was pretty excited at first, thinking/hoping this was really some announcement about Jackal's return.  Bumbed when I got to the end, but very much looking forward to it coming back one day.

As for the idea of no deeds-


I like the idea of no deeding allowed at all though, if it were not for the mess that griefers could cause you in various ways.  For this reason I see deeding as being needed, even if I'd rather not see it on Jackal. 

Since I think deeds are needed, I do like the idea of any deeds on Jackal requiring player participation in the assault on Jackal.  That would mean that only those who are actually actively pushing Jackal back get to claim a piece of it for deeding. I would assume that once a deed is set up, the experience of her combined citizenry would form a pool that would serve as currency for any deed expansion as well as in some way serve as the currency for upkeep.  This would mean that players could team up to set up and maintain a decent sized deed, but players could not group up to set up a large deed and then leave to group up to form another.  Ongoing activity of citizenry at a deed is needed to keep the deed up.  I think some details need to be worked out around how that would work, but I like the general idea stated in the OP.
 

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You have put a lot of thought into this proposal, and while I do not agree to all of it, it could be a starting point for new Jackal rounds.

 

But a problem remains: If Jackal is open for both (or all, including Epic) clusters, there is an issue with ingame currencies.

 

At the moment, SFI and NFI silver circulation are held apart, for good reason. Though there is a thriving economy on NFI now, much of the silver for purchasing has to be bought in the shop. SFI, on the other hand, has huge silver thesauri, and much of ingame silver is just circulating among the players. And price levels between both clusters vary vastly so that there exists an unofficial "exchange rate" for triangle trade between alts of 1.2-1.5 "south silver" per unit of "north silver". 

 

If silver is circulating freely on new Jackal, and players can access from either side, they do not need triangle trade schemes anymore, rather southern players with waste amounts of silver could just pour it into their northern alts,  be it directly, or by "trading" e.g. woodscraps for some gold ;) .

 

I fail to see many amiable ways to work around that. Restricting trade among jackal players is hardly feasible. A workaround like different exchange rates would discriminate those in the south who did or do not hold waste silver accounts (there are not few). It would be ugly anyway, e.g. in the form of former eastern bloc currency rules with fixed exchange rates like the former FEC yuan in China, or mandatory exchange of not re-exchangeable amounts and similar. The one or the other ways, it will be a mess. 

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1 hour ago, Ekcin said:

But a problem remains: If Jackal is open for both (or all, including Epic) clusters, there is an issue with ingame currencies.

 

On 9/21/2020 at 9:05 AM, Sindusk said:

Accessing Jackal

Jackal portals can now be created similar to the PvP or Epic portals, though they require rift wood and rift stone to craft. Once created, players can travel back and forth from Jackal freely. Skills will transfer to and from Jackal, but items will not (with a few exceptions). Faith and currency will not transfer either. Jackal can be accessed from both the Southern and Northern Freedom Isles, making it the only place where players from both clusters can play together. Currency (iron/copper/silver/gold) will not transfer to the server from any cluster, because Jackal will have a unique currency system for players to create deeds and trade.

 

This isn't something new that has to be implemented or anything. There's already code capable of separating the currency between the northern, southern, and jackal clusters. When you go to Jackal, you will not have silver. When you return, from Jackal, all your silver will be accessible again. Purchasing currency on Jackal would be disabled outright since the mechanics would operate on Jackal Points instead.

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20 hours ago, Ekcin said:

You have put a lot of thought into this proposal, and while I do not agree to all of it, it could be a starting point for new Jackal rounds.

 

But a problem remains: If Jackal is open for both (or all, including Epic) clusters, there is an issue with ingame currencies.

 

At the moment, SFI and NFI silver circulation are held apart, for good reason. Though there is a thriving economy on NFI now, much of the silver for purchasing has to be bought in the shop. SFI, on the other hand, has huge silver thesauri, and much of ingame silver is just circulating among the players. And price levels between both clusters vary vastly so that there exists an unofficial "exchange rate" for triangle trade between alts of 1.2-1.5 "south silver" per unit of "north silver". 

 

If silver is circulating freely on new Jackal, and players can access from either side, they do not need triangle trade schemes anymore, rather southern players with waste amounts of silver could just pour it into their northern alts,  be it directly, or by "trading" e.g. woodscraps for some gold ;) .

 

I fail to see many amiable ways to work around that. Restricting trade among jackal players is hardly feasible. A workaround like different exchange rates would discriminate those in the south who did or do not hold waste silver accounts (there are not few). It would be ugly anyway, e.g. in the form of former eastern bloc currency rules with fixed exchange rates like the former FEC yuan in China, or mandatory exchange of not re-exchangeable amounts and similar. The one or the other ways, it will be a mess. 

 

The problem always remains when the game progress are being staggered by this phantom thing so called "The market". Now lets wait 2, 5 or 10 more years so the market of North freedom get drained down the toilet so things like this can even get planned

Edited by Tor

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Going to bump this as Jackal has a lot of promise that was never realised.

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