Rogue Date Confirmed, Ranger Changes Hit PTR, and Major Gathering Rework | Ashes Moments Weekly Newsletter
Things begin to heat up - in more ways than one - as we get closer to Phase 3
Welcome to another edition of the Ashes Moments Newsletter, keeping you up-to-date on all things Ashes of Creation. We’ve got a lot to cover today, from Artisan changes to Discord banhammers, so lets get started!
Rogue Finally Unstealthed
Creative Director Steven Sharif took to the official Ashes of Creation Discord to quell some building fears that the Rogue may be delayed yet again.
With an “official” confirmation (as official as anything can be during an Alpha), many players have decided to take a step back until the Rogue release, planning to hit the ground running on one of the most anticipated feature updates since the Sandsquall Desert.
Discord Crackdown
While the Ashes of Creation Discord is a great place for Intrepid employees to speak with players, and players to report bugs and feedback, it can also be a neutral battleground between Guilds and players. Since practically all the community-run Discords are owned or managed by players with affiliations to one or more guilds, allegations of bias, favouritsm, and even admin abuse are common.
Now, this isn’t the first time Steven has had to come into the Discord personally and lay down the law. While players have been very active in the official Discord for years, this time players have started to make accusations of doxxing, out-of-game harassment, threats, and more. This has caused many players to cry out for Intrepid to set an example as to how they would deal with these alleged actions, and puts Intrepid in a weird spot: how much time and money is it worth to enforce external behaviour guidelines in an Alpha?
While temporary timeouts are fairly common, permanent bans are usually reserved for some of the more infamous individuals in the Ashes past, and are one of the few things Intrepid can do to completely ostracize someone from the community.
Ranger Rework…Really
First reported by /u/Talents on Reddit, a major rework to the current Ranger has landed on the PTR (Public Test Realm). For those that are unaware, access to the PTR is currently reserved only for a higher-tier of package owners and specific supporters, as well as being for highly-specific testing and under a visual NDA (so no pictures/videos). Eventually, all Alpha 2 players will also get access to the PTR, but the timeline on that is still uncertain.
Rangers have been changed to include a resource called Focus, which augments their abilities to do 15% additional damage, which is proportional to current Focus. Weapon combos can regenerate Focus in additiona to passive regen over time.
Also, Rangers have obtained a new skill called Salvo which has replaced the current Barrage skill, which has instead been moved to a T2 spell.
The Mark and Hunt system has also gotten a massive change, with a level 1 spell called Mark Prey providing a debuff against a target based on the current active Hunt, which temporarily removes that Hunt’s benefits on the user. The Hunts are now: Raven provides 10% accuracy, Tiger provides 10% critical chance, and Bear provides 10% increased penetration, with varying debuffs given to the target for each corresponding Mark that synergize with the lost buff.
For more information, check out the Reddit post above, or watch this review from Flanker on Youtube.
Major Gathering Rework
The Intrepid Studios team has heard the feedback from the players over these past couple of months, and have dropped a rare News update regarding upcoming changes hitting the Alpha 2 servers regarding Gathering, Surveying, and even Processing.
Some of the most common complaints regarding the current gathering system is the static respawn time and the static rarity, resulting in mad dashes on server restarts for the location of the new high-raririty gatherables, which allows for a full 24-hour cycle of legendary farming if you managed to get lucky.
As gatherables almost always respawn as the same rarity in either 30-minute, 2 hour, or 4 hour intervals (depending on gatherable type), players can coordinate with friends and guildmembers to lock down an entire days worth of materials with almost no soft-friction from other players. However, that is soon to change according to Intrepid Studios.
Coming on build 0.8, 0.9, and 0.10, which is set to release on April 10th, April 24th, and May 8th, respectively, Intrepid will introduce Gatherable Spawn Clustering (by rarity), which adds variability to spawn times, amounts, and locations.
Surveying will also play a larger part in gathering in the near future. Testers will soon be able to utilize a new Surveying item to discover the general location of specific gatherables and find rarer instances of them. This allows for multiple groups to learn of (and contest) a highly sought-after resource just by efficiently using this surveying tool.
In addition to the gatherable changes, Processing Stations will now allow players to more flexibly choose the size of the job they want to process, and also mix-and-match different rarity gatherables, similar to Crafting. Gathering Tools will also be converted to equipable items, allowing for the trade and economy of Artisan-focused players to be more varied and engaging.
These changes and more can be found on the Ashes of Creation website in the link above, or check out Copium Clinic’s review of the incoming changes, set to hit Alpha 2 Servers in April and Early May!
That’s it for this week’s edition of the Ashes Moment’s Newsletter! Be sure to subscribe to be updated on all the leaks and changes coming to Ashes of Creation from all over, and be on the lookout for the next Top Ashes Moments video, coming soon!
You can submit your moment over on the Ashes Moments website, and subscribe to be notified on the next release. I’m your Host Ily. Take it easy!