Finally it looks like something is going to happen. The first large content update for Trolddom is imminent, with the main attraction being an increased level cap. Yeah, it has taken a while as I greatly underestimated the amount of time it would take to add all the stuff that I wanted to add. In my previous blog post I stated “the vast amount of work is related to coding stuff”. Well yes, but actually no.

So, what have you been doing all this time?⌗

With increased level cap comes a bunch of new leveling content. At level 10 (or before, if you’re feeling adventurous) you can take the boat from Aetheris Isle to Thalvaron, the mainland, where you can quest your way to level 20.

Thalvaron vs Aetheris Isle

  • Around 8x land area compared to the level 1 to 10 island. Same map will be expanded when level cap is bumped to 30.
  • Hundreds of new quests.
  • Three new instanced dungeons: Valoris Insurgency, Tower of Indulath, and Tirnwood Thicket.
  • The Shrouded Lands finally open for PVP action, unique loot, and quests.
  • Two new professions: tailoring and enchanting.
  • Mounts, new mercenaries, and way too much other stuff to put in a list like this.

Overhaul of talent trees⌗

Talents were originally intended to be spread out over more levels. I never really intended to have that many of them available already at level 10, I just figured it was useful for testing purposes. For that reason I originally made every talent tree tier 3 points deep. Eventually, when the level cap is increased to 30, that will be just way too many tiers. Because of this I’ve now changed every tier to be 5 points deep instead, with some talents changed and others moved around a bit. Hopefully it all makes sense. The talent trees of all classes have received a few new talents as well, including a new ultimate one in each specialization. For example, a fighter heavily specialized in subtlety will now have access to stealth.

Stealth is a new subtlety talent for fighters.

Unlocked abilities⌗

The fast unlocking of basic abilities was never really intended either, but at this point I don’t want to change it too much. I don’t want people to log in to find that half their abilities are no longer unlocked at level 10. In hindsight they should have been staggered out more, like a new basic ability unlock every two or three levels, but I’m going to leave it like it is. So unfortunately after level 10 you won’t get any new basic abilities (for now).

More stuff⌗

A major problem with the game currently is lack of things to do. Players have quite quickly maxed out their characters in all ways possible and then that’s pretty much it. I’ve tried to add a larger variety of content to the game. For example, you can now improve your reputation with certain factions, which will unlock various rewards, such as vendors with unique items and profession recipes.

Reputations.

How you gain reputation varies a bit from faction to faction, but it includes tasks such as completing their quests, killing their enemies, or collecting resources for them.

Another new addition are Tokens of Victory.

Token vendor.

These tokens can be used to buy a variety of items. For example, one vendor has an everchanging offering of rare random items. For people who like purple, more expensive epic random items are also available.

Tokens drop from bosses.

How do you gain these tokens? Bosses in dungeons drop one the first time you kill it every day. These are assigned to individual players so you don’t have to roll for them. You’ll also find some rare worldbosses that drop them (also once per day at most). Furthermore there are some daily quests that also give them as a reward. There are plenty of bosses across the different dungeons, so you can gather these tokens rather quickly. I don’t want the process to be too grindy.

Quest tracker.

Also worth mentioning is the new quest tracker which allows you too see quest progress without having to open the quest log.

Damage and stuff.

If you like numbers as much as me you can now view statistics about current and previous fights by right-clicking in the combat log.

The Shrouded Lands⌗

From Valoris, the capital city, you can take a portal to The Shrouded Lands, which is the new world PVP zone of the game. Here you’ll be assigned a PVP faction based on what pantheon of deities you have the best standing with: either you’ll fight for The Underworld or you’ll fight for The Light.

  • Note that the PVP flag is always on in this zone, but you’ll only be hostile to players of the opposite faction.
  • Players of the opposite faction won’t be able to join the same party.

The Underworld vs The Light.

By completing quests on behalf of your faction its power will be increased. You can also decide to capture control points around the zone, which will help increasing the power of your faction. The higher power, more faction NPCs will spawn and help you fight. What happens when the power reaches 1000? It will reset back to zero, but you’ll get a chance to fight one of the world bosses.

What kind of rewards can you get? Quests give you tokens that be used to buy unique rare (and a little epic) gear from special vendors in the zone. World bosses also drop a bunch of tokens for anyone who participates in killing them.

If faction balance gets too lopsided there are ways to temporarily fight for the opposite faction.

Balancing⌗

All previous balancing have been kinda YOLO, but now I have a few better tools to see how much damage and healing are happening. It should be better now, but I’m under no illusion that class balance is perfect, especially not when it comes to PVP. I’m imagining that it will be possible to do some quite degenerate things to other players in The Shrouded Lands. Will people be instagibbed by geared out fighters or will sorcerers just kite forever? I’m not really sure. As you’re probably aware, Trolddom is a solo show, so unfortunately there isn’t a big team of testers to make sure everything works like intended. If the game ever gains some kind of traction and attracts enough players then I’ll probably put up some kind of public test realm, but at this point that would be kinda silly.

Dungeons should be quite a lot harder now. Bosses and other monsters will have a few more tools in their toolboxes. Fights will take longer and mana will be more of an issue. Probably. Again, I’m not really sure, as I’m mostly just doing dungeons with my bots and they’re not too clever. :)

It’s not impossible that some dungeon bosses in the present state are tuned way too hard, so please complain if that’s the case. I think it’s better than having everything too easy as it’s less awkward to nerf bosses than buffing them after release.

In conclusion⌗

I’ve added so much stuff to the game that I’ve kinda lost track of it, so this blog post definitely doesn’t cover everything.

I’m not exactly convinced that it will be possible to bring back players after the game being a ghost town for a few months, but I’ll keep working on the game because I love it. I want to take the game to a place where I’m comfortable taking it out of Early Access, which I think will be coincide with raising the level cap to 30. After that I’ll keep trucking as long as there are people playing it (and probably longer than that because I can’t help myself).

Unless something really bad happens I’ll release the update tomorrow on May 1st. Probably around noon in Europe. If you’ve played the game earlier, go try it out again on Steam! And, oh, I’m raising the level cap of the demo to 10, meaning that all the previous content will be available for free.