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Darklords

Exploration: Part 1 - Public Testing Round 2!

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Based on the feedback so far we have made the following changes below, they are now live on the test server. Please give them a try and let us know what you think about the changes and any further feedback/suggestions you have.


New Changes

  • Can now open more than 1 map at a time and the windows are resizable and minimizable.
  • Challenge clues have been reworked to give some more detail and look much nicer. Will now give you a map grid that the item is near being more accurate the easier it is.
    • This will only take effect for clues generated after this update.
  • Map clues now have a right click hint option which will show a circle on the ingame map with a rough area of where the map is located.
  • Oracle now has an ingame map.
  • Removed distance estimation on examination.
  • Increased area clues can be dug up now for easier tier clues.
  • Reduced the time it takes to dig for treasure.
  • Added deed ruin clues, are map clues with the location of an old disbanded village marked, will show hints on the ingame map the same as normal map clues.
  • Prayer is now on the list of actions that can produce clues.
  • Guard towers now display the name of the tower on hover.
  • Loot has been reworked
    • All reward items should be higher quality than before.
    • Several new items to find inside
      • 5 new necklaces
      • 3 new small statues
      • Some pirate accessories
      • 2 new longsword varieties
      • 2 new containers with some special properties
    • Filler items are now selected from the following pool
      • Gold/Silver/Electrum lump
      • Chess Pieces
      • Leather
      • Pelts
      • Ropes
      • Jugs of alcohol
      • Paper/Papyrus sheets
      • A compass
      • Fragments of a dioptra
      • Different kinds of high quality rope
      • Source Crystals
      • Sleep Powder
      • Gems(Chance to include 1 star gem as well)
    • Will sometimes contain a single skilling imbue potion.
    • Will sometimes give a medium/2h weapon, this has an additional chance to be made of moon metal.
    • Strange bone fragments which can be collected to make a rare bone when you have enough fragments.
    • Special village upkeep chips have been added as possible rewards. These chips come in various denominations, like coins, and may be used like coins to fund settlement upkeep.
      • To add upkeep chips to a settlement's funds, activate the chip, then right click that village's settlement token. An option to deposit the chip will appear in the "Settlement" menu.
      • If a settlement currently has any upkeep chips in its coffers, their total will be listed in any windows where deed coffer totals are listed.
      • Upkeep chips provide the same value as normal coins when used for upkeep. In other words, a 20 copper upkeep chip will provide just as much village upkeep as an actual 20 copper coin.
      • Upkeep chips in a village's coffers are always spent before normal currency, for both upkeep itself and any other action that takes funds from the coffers, such as deed expansion.
      • (PVP only) Upkeep chips cannot be drained from the settlement, but they also do not protect against draining or disbanding from draining in any way. If a settlement's normal upkeep funds are fully drained but the village still has upkeep chips in its coffers, the settlement will still disband.
      • Upkeep chips are not refunded if the village is disbanded for any reason, and cannot be removed from the village coffers after being deposited.

 

 

Updated Notes

  • Only available on our test server Oracle for testing.
    • To use the test client, use the Test Client launcher shortcut or the Choose Client shortcut and choose the test client. For Steam, right-click Wurm Online in your Steam Library and click Properties. Then add a -c to the Launch Options. This will give you a prompt to select the Test Client.
    • Logging in with a new username/password will register an account automatically and log you in.
    • Selecting any item and using it on the ground will give a test option which allows you to change your skills and spawn in items like armour and weapons. You can also use it to change your faith, deity and spawn items like vesseled gems/statuette. Submitting the test menu will also heal you fully and restore your stamina.
    • At the bottom of the test item creation option you can also spawn in a fully geared horse/ropes to get around quicker.
  • Chance to find them from rare rolls on the following actions. For testing, we will have a 1/25 chance on non rare rolls as well.
  • Farming/Harvesting
    • Botanize/Forage Actions
    • Digging
    • Mining
    • Investigating Archeology Sites
    • Fishing/Dredging
    • Praying
  • Different difficulties, the harder the less common they will be but the larger the end rewards will be.
    • Novice(1/5 chance on rare roll)(1-29ql)
      • Will be between 2-3 steps long
      • Will have very small combat challenges occasionally.
      • Will not be terribly far from the locations they are found.
    • Challenging(1/10 chance on rare roll, supreme rolls will always give one)(30-59ql)
      • Can be 3-5 steps long
      • Will have decent sized and not infrequent combat challenges.
      • Will be a moderate distance from the locations they are found.
    • Difficult(1/25 chance on rare roll, fantastic rolls will always give one)(60 - 100ql)
      • Can be 4-6 steps long
      • Will always have difficult creatures to kill for most every step
      • Will be long distances away from the locations they are found.
  • Possible types of clues
    • Map clue, Shows a map with a location you must go to, will not be super close to villages or in an enclosed area.
      • Right clicking the map and selecting the hint option will draw a circle on your ingame map with a general area to search, the area gets larger on harder clues.
    • Deed Ruins clue, Works similar to the maps but will be focused on areas that past villages have existed.
      • Right clicking the map and selecting the hint option will draw a circle on your ingame map with a general area to search, the area gets larger on harder clues.
      • Will mark nearby disbanded villages on the map as well as the area to dig.
    • Challenge clue, will give an area and some information about an item from a list of items to find.
      • Any guard tower that are not enclosed or near or in a village
      • Colossus that are not enclosed or near or in a village
      • Mission Constructed items that are not in caves/enclosed or near villages.
      • Will mention what map grid it is near, this becomes less precise the more difficult it is.
    • Combat Challenges, when you try to dig up a location you may come across some creatures ambushing you which you must defeat before you can continue digging it up.
      • Will go into hiding again after 45 minutes if not yet killed until you come and dig again, then the same remaining creatures will ambush you again.
      • Creatures from this will drop no corpses but will give skill for fighting.
  • Interaction to dig up clues
    • Use a shovel on the ground and select the dig up treasure option which will check if any clues you have on you are at your location.
    • Has some grace distance, you do not need to dig on the exact tile/item it picks just near it.
      • This grace distance is even larger the easier the clue is.

 

 

Red box is the test server starter village.

terrain-starter.png

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For me, being color blind to a degree, I find it difficult to see the differences with some of the colors on the maps. So whether or not I can find a treasure is going to be heavily determined by a map clue and I suspect that scrolls and such will end up as deco, unless they decay on deed.

 

Regarding the journal, will the treasure hunting journal entries be added as requirements for completing the journal to get journal rewards?

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A M A Z I N G

Huge steps in the right direction! 

 

I received a clue reading "The trove you're looking for is within about 6 map squares of f11 and . Look for it underneath..." Seems there's a missing hint entry there after the and

 

Seems in-game map circles aren't properly disappearing 

 

Guard towers are now extremely difficult to find, likely won't be as bad on Live servers but the hints should still be a bit more accurate. Perhaps do 1, 3, 5 map squares for novice, challenging, and difficult? Perhaps add the ability to activate and "show" a guard your map, with them giving a rough direction to your target tower or just some hint to help narrow your target down?

 

Loot from a 46ql map

Spoiler

e3COFMx.png

The filler items are a bit more worthwhile now. I do still think adding in a small chance for rare coins and mm lumps would be good, but getting a mm weapon would at least be able to be smelted down. I definitely see myself completing these in the future, especially now that we've officially been told what some of the better rewards can be. Very interested to see what the unique rewards do!

 

Minimizing a treasure map seems to crash the client

 

Spoiler

LeKw8Ny.png

Maps like this are damn near impossible. Interestingly enough, the deed "Silver Castle" was found by investigating around P19, quite far away from the hint circle. Unsure if it's a case of the same deed name being used, or the Map Hint being wrong. Hopefully contour lines provide some more information to help make future clues like this less frustrating. 

 

I feel as though the examine hinting should be brought back to some extent. Say, if you investigate and discover the abandoned deed mentioned in the clue, it allows you to use the examine hint to pinpoint the spot. Within a 50 tile radius of the target guard tower/colossus? Examine hints show again. Some system that would notify a player that they're well along the right track, and should narrow their search.

Edited by Synjor
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The hints are very nice.

 

It still doesn't get me close enough, however.  As they appear to be based off abandoned deeds (aka archaeology) if you don't know where that deed was the hint at least gets you within a couple map grids.  But, from there, it is just walk 4-5 tiles, hit dig up, walk 4-5 tiles, hit dig up.  No way am I ever going to find these that way.  The maps themselves are very difficult, as I have no idea what they are representing.  Is this dark blob water, hill, forest, what?  Is it based off the original maps in game (which are horribly inaccurate now) or when the treasure map was created?  Is north even to the top (I see a compass rose, but no N).  

 

I would love something like dowsing for water, or the locate soul spell, that the maps can do to lead me towards the right way once I get within the hint range.

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Yeah... no. This map and clue is very discouraging. All I see is a dot on a blank field and I don't know what the scale of that dot is, much less what it might be and it doesn't seem to match to some dot on the clue. I had someone in my house say that they could see other dots, but I can't, maybe if I could see colors better. I'll keep exploring as I often do but I don't think this update will encourage more of that. It's nice to see new content in Wurm, but this one is not for me. I am concerned about the journal though, If this is added as a requirement to complete the journal then that crushes any thoughts I may have entertained of someday completing it. 

 

7Z5O5cM.jpeg

 

 

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OMG really dig the imbues and upkeep chips. Thank you for listening!

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4 minutes ago, Whane said:

Yeah... no. This map and clue is very discouraging. All I see is a dot on a blank field and I don't know what the scale of that dot is, much less what it might be and it doesn't seem to match to some dot on the clue. I had someone in my house say that they could see other dots, but I can't, maybe if I could see colors better. I'll keep exploring as I often do but I don't think this update will encourage more of that. It's nice to see new content in Wurm, but this one is not for me. I am concerned about the journal though, If this is added as a requirement to complete the journal then that crushes any thoughts I may have entertained of someday completing it. 

 

7Z5O5cM.jpeg

 

 

Likely in the steppe where all the tiles are the same, so the map will show like that. 

 

If you check the journals you'll see they exist as their own separate tier, so you can complete the regular journal fine. 

 

Alternatively, you can work with others too to help search and locate map locations, I see a lot a sleuths enjoying the hunt 

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Took me under 5 minutes to find it. Look for the very distinctive tar spot in the lower right corner of your trasure map:

r1Xm7Ll.jpg

 

Edited by Bekador
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I have 3 maps.  3 circles.  No idea which is which, and they are not disappearing.  

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The new journal tiers are standalone and have their own rewards will not be required for any other tiers or the rewards for them.

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8 minutes ago, Whane said:

Yeah... no. This map and clue is very discouraging. All I see is a dot on a blank field and I don't know what the scale of that dot is, much less what it might be and it doesn't seem to match to some dot on the clue. I had someone in my house say that they could see other dots, but I can't, maybe if I could see colors better. I'll keep exploring as I often do but I don't think this update will encourage more of that. It's nice to see new content in Wurm, but this one is not for me. I am concerned about the journal though, If this is added as a requirement to complete the journal then that crushes any thoughts I may have entertained of someday completing it. 

 

7Z5O5cM.jpeg

 

I am severely colorblind myself, and wanted to highlight and reinforce the above feedback. There are a very large number of us in the world (and likely on the game) and having clues that are dependent on colorized information can be extremely difficult for us.

 

Generally speaking, I am not having as much difficulty as Whane is with the hints (I believe I can see the dot on the world map example that should represent what their treasure is south of).

 

But with that said, I've had a hell of a time with some of the maps myself, I just didn't think to mention it because I'm used to calling my SO over to interpret color for me lol

 

The easiest way to help colorblind / color deficient people with this kind of thing is to make colors more strongly luminance contrasting. It is the gradients that we lose on a physics level, which prevent us from seeing the details that may be present as well as simply perceiving colors incorrectly.

 

More information available below, if the devs are interested in this as the potential accessibility issue it definitely is:

https://99designs.com/blog/tips/designers-need-to-understand-color-blindness/

https://uxdesign.cc/color-blindness-in-user-interfaces-66c27331b858

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9 minutes ago, Bekador said:

Took me under 5 minutes to find it. Look for the very distinctive tar spot in the lower right corner of your trasure map:

r1Xm7Ll.jpg

 

 

That is a much nicer map than the in game one, may I ask where you find it?

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17 minutes ago, Archaed said:

If you check the journals you'll see they exist as their own separate tier, so you can complete the regular journal fine. 

 

Good to know. Thanks. :)

 

 

  

17 minutes ago, Bekador said:

Took me under 5 minutes to find it. Look for the very distinctive tar spot in the lower right corner of your trasure map:

r1Xm7Ll.jpg

 

 

I see what you mean. Possible with the map dump, I could never see that on the in-game map.

Edited by Whane

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5 minutes ago, Spacy said:

 

That is a much nicer map than the in game one, may I ask where you find it?

Updated the main post with that map it was in the original testing post.

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This is wonderful.  It is great to see feedback taken in the spirit intended, to improve the experience. 

 

I was on last night and I think some of these updates were in already.  The ingame map was functioning and my "map" was a text clue for a tower and gave the inscription and the name and had a map grid hint.

 

However, there were no villages or ruins nearby and the map grid hint was terrible.  The clue was QL2 so should definitely should have been on the easy scale, so the map grid clue should have been the most accurate available, and it was "Within about 4 grid squares of Q16".  Let's call "about" to be + or - 1, so that was a 10x10 map grid search area.  I relied very heavily on examine to make up the shortfall and find the tower.  If that is the standard of the clue, and distance is gone from examine, this would effectively be impossible to find.  Not merely difficult - exceedingly difficult to the point of being no point when the towers are not visible until almost on top of them.

 

1 hour ago, Darklords said:

Removed distance estimation on examination.

I really hope the other measures make up for this.  As bad as it has been relying on examine to find the dig spot, it has been the ONLY reliable way to do so. 

1 hour ago, Darklords said:

Increased area clues can be dug up now for easier tier clues.

\o/

1 hour ago, Darklords said:

Reduced the time it takes to dig for treasure.

\o/ \o/  \o/ 

(that's 3 cheers, btw).

 

I like that new items have been worked into the loot.  Looking forward to testing it more.  I do want to complete a chess board  😛.

 

 

 

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17 minutes ago, Bekador said:

Took me under 5 minutes to find it. Look for the very distinctive tar spot in the lower right corner of your trasure map:

r1Xm7Ll.jpg

 

How do tell the difference between a tar patch and one of those ink blots added for effect?

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1 minute ago, TheTrickster said:

This is wonderful.  It is great to see feedback taken in the spirit intended, to improve the experience. 

 

I was on last night and I think some of these updates were in already.  The ingame map was functioning and my "map" was a text clue for a tower and gave the inscription and the name and had a map grid hint.

 

However, there were no villages or ruins nearby and the map grid hint was terrible.  The clue was QL2 so should definitely should have been on the easy scale, so the map grid clue should have been the most accurate available, and it was "Within about 4 grid squares of Q16".  Let's call "about" to be + or - 1, so that was a 10x10 map grid search area.  I relied very heavily on examine to make up the shortfall and find the tower.  If that is the standard of the clue, and distance is gone from examine, this would effectively be impossible to find.  Not merely difficult - exceedingly difficult to the point of being no point when the towers are not visible until almost on top of them.

 

 

I'm getting ready to log in and test, but this was my big concern too.

 

I'm back to the high levels of excitement I had before the first round of testing, and I'm just hoping I don't end up right back in the position of digging and packing my way across hundreds of squares in an increasingly frustrating attempt to "find the treasure" lol

 

Hoping the circle and the more forgiving mechanic makes up for the loss of the examine clue.

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2 hours ago, Darklords said:

Added deed ruin clues, are map clues with the location of an old disbanded village marked, will show hints on the ingame map the same as normal map clues.

 

This is what interests me most. It was hard to imagine Archaeology not having more connection with treasure hunting. Very good decision.

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I found a 9 kg glass jug of Gin in my first post change chest.

 

-Is it intended its a glass- instead of a pottery jug?

-Is it intended the alkohol has no affinity attached? Tasting/drinking it gives nothing.

 

Also my chess knight was a blueberry wood one, so can they come in all wood types now?

 

Edited by Bekador
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Client update (in about 10 minutes) should fix the hint circles not disappearing.

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Im not colour blind but im finding im squinting so badly to try and discern tiny colour differences to match the map that its severely hurting my eyes and giving me a headache, then the next map puts me at pretty much a stand still with no feedback from failing to locate treasure to point me in the right direction.

ikVfOMZ.png

zAw5PDk.png

 

I can make a decent guess as to where it might be but theres only so many times i can watch the dig timer and get nothing and no feedback before i say bugger that i have better things to do with my time.

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I found a pile of 2 pawns and 1 king (not mine, someone left them in a pile).  All were birchwood.  I assume this was from round 1 testing.  I will put near the starter town tomorrow so if someone wants to try to make a chess set with them that would be cool.

 

After about 3 hours total testing and exploring, I am right now of the opinion that this isn't fun.  My home is xan - and basically I don't see this as being possible there.  The player made maps don't have guard towers or colossi on them, nor should they have to.  Abandoned deeds are gone, so don't provide the clues either unless you are lucky enough to remember where they were (need way of incorporating the history, but functionally worthless info otherwise).  There is no master list of deeds that ever existed on the server either, and looking through the various map threads isn't realistic as probably only 1 in 3 ever get asked to be added to the map.  The hint feature that gets you close (the circles had 9 grids in them on test) is great - but it wasn't close enough to do anything with once you got there.  The maps are too vague for me - I don't know if I am looking at woods (which, btw, everything is woods), stone, water, etc.  They don't resemble the in game maps, nor the map dump maps, enough to be useful to someone like me (who read maps for 20 years as a living).  At a minimum I would like to see contours on the maps, and a legend telling me things like "grass, water, oak forest, stone, etc".  Adding in a feature like water divining once you are within hint range would go a long ways to improving the experience.  Another option would be a mini-red light such as the rifts have (but much smaller & preferably a different color depending on the danger) that you can wander around and find.  

 

As it is, I found one location because it said under an archery tower - and I got lucky it was the tower in the center of the map (and about 4 grid tiles from the grid it gave me on the paper description - so I was very surprised it worked at all).  Then when it revealed step 2, I got stuck again.  Another abandoned deed, another circle, another giant guessing game.  

 

I also think of some of the giant cliffs & mountains on xan.  I would strongly like to add in a "reset" button that basically resets to map to stage 1 and all new locations, perhaps with an additional opportunity cost of lowering the QL to do so.   There are many locations that cannot be accessed, which make the maps worthless - but a reset would eliminate that as a burden.  Perhaps taking it to a cartographer NPC in a starter town to do so as well, so it won't be an accident to hit it but a very deliberate action.  Even a cost (minimal - 10 karma or 5 copper or something) to do so as well if you feel the need to make it even costlier.  

 

You know how many missions of "find this tree" or "find this traitor" are never completed on xan (and I assume to a lesser extent indy) due to it's size.  If you are not, talk to Shydow about it as he has first hand experience.  The current system is looking to be an even worse case than that in terms of "good luck" finding it.  Those missions are not fun.  Neither is this system the way it currently stands.  Thanks for listening.  

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Just wanted to add in regards to matching treasure maps to the in-game world map - yes we realise it's a bit difficult at the moment, but we have something that will address this slated for a later update. While not a perfect solution, for now the map dumps should have that extra detail needed to help match locations when the world map is missing some details.

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