Happy Friday Folks,
Update 0.51 releases today, including a major refresh to several of our UI elements, big changes to class balance, tweaks to our resource gathering formula, and a litany of bug fixes.
A highlight of this week’s update is the myriad changes we’ve made to CU’s User Interface, focusing on readability, performance, user customization, and beautification. Players should see better UI performance across the board when in a party or warband. Hovering over class icons in unit or party frames will tell you a player’s class rather than leaving you guessing, and party frames now have indicators signaling when a party member is in the Veil.
Above: Showcasing some of the options players have with our updated UI elements.
Our UI and Art teams have also done a great job putting together an overhaul for ability bars. In addition to custom art for each Realm, ability bars can now be further customized via the HUD Editor beyond what was previously possible. Our ability bars also now have a restyled cooldown overlay and support for dragging items from your inventory (such as food or potions) onto your action bars.
Above: Newly updated action bars, with customizable frame art and spacing between bars.
To further our efforts in making the UI more readable and informative, we’ve also updated the Ability Book to include class passives under the ‘Class Page’ section. Active abilities granted by class passives will also display in the ability book in a separate location from a class’s progression paths, hopefully avoiding the confusion caused by having them together. The Quest Tracker can now be minimized for players who find it obstructive, and our loot goblins of the world will find new warnings when their inventory is full (or close to it).
Above: Class passives highlighted in the ability book, with more info located elsewhere in the same page.
Update 0.51 also features some important changes to class and combat balance, with the aim of providing better parity between existing archetypes. Our goals here are to make options that have been less popular more appealing and to pull back on some of the most stand-out options. Stealth will now apply reduced Movement Speed while active, Faith should no longer feel like an “infinite” resource, and several instant abilities have been given very short cooldowns to reduce their burst potential. Additionally, Warlocks are now able to actively regenerate their mana, and Blackguards have gotten some love to help them shine a bit more compared to the other Realms’ Archers.
While what we’ve highlighted above isn’t an exhaustive list of what you can expect to see in today’s build, it does cover some of what we’re most excited about. We are continuing to work towards more content, fixes, and improvements for future updates throughout the Fall, and you can expect to hear more from us soon.
Until next time, we thank you for your support and we look forward to seeing you on the battlefield!
World Changes and Balance
- Salt and Coal nodes can now be mined 10 times total, up from 5.
- High level elite NPCs, such as Keep Lords, now have fear immunity. This should prevent them from running into strange pathing issues.
- Additional harvesting nodes have been added for Candleberries.
- Additional Candleberry spawns (levels 8-12) have been added to two herbalism locations in Silvermine Mountains.
- Additional harvesting nodes have been added for Herbs.
- Additional Herb spawns (level 8-12) have been added.
- Additional harvesting nodes have been added for Garlic.
- Additional spawns (level 8-12) have been added for Garlic.
- Additional harvesting nodes have been added for Grain.
- Keep capture points have been updated.
- The Keep Lord will now spawn as soon as the Keep is captured, and the main Keep control point will be locked as soon as he spawns.
- Once a Keep has been captured, outer Points of Interest (such as the Chapel) cannot be captured for two minutes.
Class Changes and Balance
General
- Players now receive a -15% Movement Speed penalty while Stealthed.
- Increased Control Resistance duration from 10 seconds up to 15 seconds.
- Significantly reduced the amount of Faith granted by abilities that cost Judgement.
Warlocks
- Font of Energy now becomes Channel Energy upon use.
- Channel Energy: Channel to recover 8% of max Mana each second.
Heavy Fighters
- Mjolnir
- Added a 1.5 second CD to Warrior’s Salute and reduced the increased damage per stack of Strength of Wotan! from 5% to 4.5%.
- Added a 1.5 second CD to Thundergod’s Rage.
- Added a 1.5 second CD to Warrior’s Cry.
- Black Knight
- Added a 1.5 second CD to Knight Terrors.
- Fianna
- Added a 1.5 second CD to Whirlwind.
- Earth’s Gift now properly triggers damage reflection against ranged attacks.
Archers
- Blackguard
- Reduced Focus cost of Marksman’s Ritual from 80 to 50 and increased its Duration from 10 seconds to 20 seconds.
- Increased Sign of the Wizard‘s duration from 8 seconds to 30. It now only provides the Armor Rating bonus while affected by a sigil, but it provides +80 Physical and Magic Armor Rating instead of +100 Magic Armor Rating.
Performers
- Added a 1.5 second CD to Skald’s Icewyrm’s Roar.
Scouts
- Fixed a bug causing Lullaby Trap‘s debuff to not be removed when it should, in some cases.
- Trap abilities are no longer usable while in combat.
Build Updates
General
- Added several emotes to the list of available player commands. These can be executed by typing the emote with a / before it and hitting enter (e.g. /wave).
- Wave
- Dance
- Yes
- No
- Point
- FistShake
- ComeOn
- Scared
- BringIt
- Bow
- Curtsy
- Laugh
- Salute
- Mad
- Cheer
- Yawn
UI Changes
- Performance
- Improved UI performance when in a party or warband.
- Unit & Party Frames
- Hovering the class icon on unit and party frames now shows a class tooltip.
- Health that Exertion locks is shown as a grey section on unit and party frame health bars.
- Shields now show on unit and party frame health bars.
- Veil indicator: party and warband frames get a violet tint and mist overlay when that member is in the Veil.
- Ability Bars
- New Realm-specific art for each ability bar.
- The HUD Editor has a new slider for spacing between slots, plus per-bar toggles for the left, right, top and bottom decorations.
- Restyled cooldown overlays.
- The colored ring showing which resource and ability costs now also covers Mana, Focus and Determination
- Support for dragging activatable items, such as potions and siege equipment, onto your ability bars
- Ability Book
- The class page now shows class passives, with their icon, name, description and the abilities they grant.
- Quest Tracker
- New minimize button, and the tracker remembers whether it was minimized.
- HUD Art & Polish
- Art update for Arthurian vertical dividers and header border.
- Added “Inventory full” and “Almost Full” warnings.
Audio
- New UI chat sounds for Send, Submit, and switching tabs and checkboxes.
- New crafting sounds for reagent selection and item icons.
- New dialog for select Emotes.
- Added unique SFX for the TDD Trebuchet movements and impacts.
- Added unique SFX for the Viking Trebuchet movements.
- Added a “report” to the sound of trebuchet shots when the player is near an impact location.
Bug Fixes
- Healing/shield messages appearing as ‘Unknown’ in the combat log should be fixed now.
- Fixed audio bug where different factions from the Trebuchet Operator could not hear the movement of the trebuchet when standing close
- Fixed audio bug reported by community for repair kits being heard globally.
- Fixed audio bug where Foley Footsteps were not playing on some NPCs.
- Fixed audio bug where certain abilities were being heard globally.
- Fixed a bug causing Health Regeneration to become negative while in the Veil and in combat.
- Fixed an issue where Blade of the Duelist, Overwhelm, Blinding Grit, Shackles of Stone, and Flare of Corruption weren’t properly triggering their bonus conditions.
- Forced Into the Veil is now correctly treated as a Control Effect.
- Fixed a bug causing Arisen’s Walking Dead passive to not go on cooldown correctly.