CAVES!
Caves are here! Large, craggy underworld entrances have broken through the surface of Landmark's islands, awaiting your discovery. Each of the dark, windy caves are unique and house brand new biomes to explore, mine, and pulverize your way through. Eager spelunkers will want to gather some new and existing tools to help them navigate the twisty turns and drops of the exposed caverns, especially if they plan to seek out the more isolated cave pockets that don't break the surface. This is our first phase of caves in the game and they only occupy 10-15% of the depth of the world. When we roll out the next phase of Caves, they'll fill up the rest!
Please note that the area around a cavern entrance cannot be claimed. if you happened to have a Claim where a Surface Cave has been generated, it will automatically be foreclosed. Your Claim will be auto-templated and your resources and props will be refunded.
Caves have ore, gem, and ancient earth veins that can be found while spelunking. Be sure to look all around you! You'll find veins not only on the ground, but on the cave walls and ceilings.
Most of these veins are bigger than their counterparts on the surface.
Some veins are hidden just beneath cave walls and floors. Using detection items will help you locate these rich deposits.
Ore and gem veins can now be found underground in the space between caves. They're rare, so detection items are a must!
With the discovery of caves through the world, come rumors of treasure chests to be found! These chests contain resources, props, accessories, potions. and even a few new items to be discovered. Treasure chests will award loot to any nearby group or player - when loot drops for you, it will automatically be granted to you!
Resource Detection
Because of the addition of Caves (and Ore / Gems in said caves) we wanted to introduce a way to find stuff that is buried in the ground.
Ore Prospector: Using this item will illuminate surrounding ore veins for 15 seconds and summon a directional HUD element for 30 seconds (with an optional distance indicator).
Ground Sounder: Using this item will illuminate surrounding gemstone, stone and ancient earth pockets for 15 seconds and summon a directional HUD element for 30 seconds (with an optional distance indicator).
The Landmark Exploration & Spelunking Society highly recommend players acquire these items before venturing into underground caverns.
Swimming
Get your swimming trunks on, and grab your snorkel - you can now swim in the ocean! As you enter the water, you'll swim along the surface - aim the camera down with Right Mouse or press X to dive down and explore beneath the waves. You can still use all of your tools under the sea!
Plant Harvesting
Plant harvesting has received a minor makeover to help support the addition of Infused Plant crafting items and improve the overall experience:
All non-special world plants are now harvestable. These basic plants will be drop Plant Fiber and Plant Extract, basic ingredients of Average quality used to make Textiles and Infused Plants.
Textiles now require only 5 of their respective plant ingredients (down from 10) and 5 basic Plant Fiber ingredients to create.
All special plant harvestable ingredients are now Superior quality, rather than ranging from Average through Exceptional.
The Alchemy Station, Alchemy Lab, and all three Infusers can now create Infused Plant ingredients.
Special plants now spawn in specific biomes, and several new plants have been discovered to be spawning in caverns.
Plant descriptions in the collections inventory now indicate which biome they can be found in.
Large versions of plants are now growing in their respective biomes, and will yield more bountiful harvests when sickled.
Tree Changes
The special trees which drop Heartwood in the desert, jungle and tundra have been updated to support new prop distribution. You can see examples of these new trees in the Resources Guide, which is accessed by clicking the Help button. We've also renamed some of them, to better fall in line with the model of the trees.
Thistle Seed is now known as Gnarled Knot
Spindle Cone is now known as Spindled Splinter
Palm Heart (Jungle biome) now drops from the Wild Palm tree.
Gnarled Knot (Desert biome) now drops from the Petrified Gnarl tree.[IMG]
Spindled Splinter (Tundra biome) now drops from the Frosted Spindle tree.[IMG]
Ancient Rootstock (Old Growth biome) now drops from the Ancient Sagewood trees.[IMG]
Potions
Various consumable potion items can now be crafted at the Alchemy Station using existing ingredients and the new Infused Plants.
Sharp-Eyed Elixir: Increases Discovery stat by 5 for 15 minutes.
Potion of Minor Yield: Increases Harvest Bonus stat by 10 for 15 minutes.
Potion of Furious Harvesting: Increases Harvesting Damage stat by 25% for 15 minutes.
Potion of Greedy Harvesting: Increases Harvesting Size stat by 25% for 15 minutes.
Potion of Nimble Harvesting: Increases Harvesting Speed stat by 10% for 15 minutes.
Highstep Brew: Increases Jump Bonus stat by 5 for 15 minutes.
Bottled Moonlight: Increases Light Radius stat by 30 for 30 minutes.
Spirit of the Wolf: Increases Run Speed stat by 5 for 15 minutes.
Note that these potion effects are not cumulative, and do not stack with themselves.
Marketplace
Be sure to check out the new bundles in the Showcase.
Wooden Furniture Bundle
Round Cushion Bundle
Bloodtear Builder's Bag & Chest
Bluebell Builder's Bag & Chest
Cordella Builder's Bag & Chest
Crystia Builder's Bag & Chest
Nightbloom Builder's Bag & Chest
Tool Improvements
We've made a few Quality of Life improvements to some of the tools.
Added a Mirror button to Paste / Template Volumes, and removed the Scale button (since you can't scale those anyway)
Made the Translate arrows on small paste volumes easier to use. There's now a bit of a buffer around your pasted volume, so that the arrows don't obscure what you're trying to paste. That cheering you hear is from all you microvoxels users!
Templates
Added a new feature to the Template Screenshots! When you create a template and take a screenshot (with a selection volume active) it will now highlight your selected voxels in the screenshot, and darken everything else.
Bug Fixes / Misc Changes
Increased the rollover time on Claim Likes. Previously, Likes would "expire" within seven days. We've increased this to 14 days.
Fixed an issue that caused some templates that used older materials from Alpha from being placed.
The new cushion props now stack up to 40, just like all of our other pillows.
Sometimes you could get in to a state where you could not completely remove all the tags on your claim. This is fixed.
Typing /bug should no longer result in a LUA error.
Previously you could queue up multiple Deletion confirmations, this no longer happens.[/spoiler]
EDIT: Btw, I took the plunge (without ever playing this game) on Friday and dropped $100 on this game. After messing around for a few hours I got a nostalgic SWG vibe, which for me is a good thing. Right now I am just focusing on build all the Crafting/Refining Stations and their upgrades and hopefully a legendary Mithril Pick. I am enjoying running around and farming and just thinking of what I want to build.
Two questions:
1. When does Open Beta start?
2. Will there be a wipe between Open Beta and release?
