RUNE II March 2020 Monthly Update

Originally posted at https://www.rune2.com/mar20update/

This past month on RUNE II, we headed East Bound and Down. March was a big month for us for RUNE II’s development. Let’s get to it.

 

PTR Updates

Last Friday, the RUNE II Public Test Realm received a major update:

  • Villages and Friendly AI Villagers

  • Major loot and stats changes

  • Co-op gameplay enemy scaling, and more

If you’d like to see the changes instead of reading about them below, hop into the PTR and start playing now!

Full 1.0.643 Patch Notes are available here. 

The RUNE II PTR is available to all players of RUNE II. Find instructions on how to download the PTR on this page.

Villages and Villagers

It was foretold that once Loki attacked Midgard, villages and villagers would never come back to reclaim their lands. Well, we’re gonna do what they say can’t be done. In the Southeast Corner of Austri Midheim, you’ll find a bunch of new building plots including:

  • Forge

  • Longhouse

  • Meadery

  • Neer tent

  • and more to come…

As you start rebuilding this destroyed village, more and more villagers will come back to Midgard in search of a community to rally around. They may need some help fighting off Loki’s horde…

At the moment, all buildings are set up to only take 5 wood to construct and build instantly so they can be seen easily for testing purposes. Expect these values to change and increase in future builds. 

In the future, building a full village will grant you bonuses. Here’s where we need your help:

 What kind of bonuses do you want to receive from a full village?

  • Automatic resource collection?

  • 20 mead waiting for pickup?

  • Gold ore easier to craft?

Tell us on our forums, and you might just see your ideal bonus in game at a later date.

Loot Updates

Previously all weapons and armor could be equipped at all levels, and progression was dependent on when you found new gear. Usually you would start finding really good gear after the 4th or 5th age. This didn’t make loot very fun, so we’ve re-designed how Loot works in RUNE II.

First off, loot drops directly into the world from all chests and enemies ala Loot Pinata! 

Secondly, weapons and armor may have Level Requirements.

Thirdly, All item material types now have a level that they start and stop dropping at.

  • At levels 1-5, Wooden, Leather, and Rusty gear will drop. Stops dropping after level 10.

  • At levels 3-10, Copper and Bronze gear will begin to drop. Stops dropping after level 15.

  • At levels 11-15, Steel gear will begin to drop. Stops dropping at level 30

  • At levels 16-20, Gold gear will begin to drop. Stops dropping at level 40

  • At levels 21-25, Obsidian gear will begin to drop.

  • At levels Level 26-30, Blessed gear will begin to drop.

  • At levels Level 31+, Realm gear will begin to drop

Although we’re still working on these values, we’ve gotten great community feedback that this is absolutely the right direction. 

Not able to find the item you want? You can always craft your own version and take a chance on the random mods that come with it. 

To craft an item, you’ll need to have used the recipe stick to learn the recipe and bring the required materials to an anvil inside a longhouse or village. 

With thousands of possible combinations, the perfect weapon is a drop or craft away!

 

Stacks on stacks of stats

We’ve added base stat categories for strength, dexterity, wisdom, and constitution

  • Strength: Increases attack damage

  • Dexterity: Increases speed and critical chance

  • Wisdom: Increases defense and god power

  • Constitution: Increases health and stamina

When you create a character, you’ll receive a pool of starting skill points to assign. 

REMEMBER TO ALLOCATE YOUR POINTS WHEN STARTING A NEW GAME!

As you level up, you will also get one skill point to assign. As you skill up, you’ll affect all derivative stats in that category. Currently all base stat categories cap out at 20. While we think that 20 is a good place for right now, we may increase or decrease that number in the future. 

We’ve also exposed more stats in the User Interface. Newly uncovered stats include: 

  • Attack damage

  • Critical hit damage

  • Critical hit chance

  • Attack speed

  • Falling damage reduction

  • Stamina recovery rate

  • And more!

Inventory Updates

When you open the inventory screen for the first time, you’ll see a brand new section on the right side of the screen. We’ve added a basic player “paper doll”, which lives in the same location as the crafting menu with an option to toggle back and forth in the top right.

Other UI Improvements:

  • We’ve updated the inventory UI to make rarity colors stand out more

  • The UI is updated for rarity highlights in the gear slot’s tooltip for modded items

  • We added a red visual lockout filter when the Level Requirement has not been met

  • The crafting menu now shows the level and skill requirements on an item prior to crafting

We’ll continue to update your inventory to make the user experience the best it can be. 

 

Ages of Ragnarok Updates

Loki’s Ages of Ragnarok grow more extreme… 

In the Age of Fire, we’ve added 300% more fire just southwest of Heimdall’s tower at the Midheim Forest Gate. 

In the Age of Frost, the oceans have frozen over and become an ice sheet for the players and their enemies to walk on.

Artifact and Progression Changes

Last month, we talked about how we were looking at changing the core loops and rebalancing the world to have a level range that enemies will spawn at. As we’ve been playtesting internally, one of the issues that kept coming up was the order and randomized locations that Artifacts would spawn at. Through meticulous planning and a healthy amount of spreadsheet usage, we’ve set all Artifacts to only spawn in a specific location, only in a certain order, and only in a certain age. With this one change, we’ve resolved the major progression issues that came up when you were level 5 and the artifact you had to retrieve was in a level 30 zone. 

As we work on player progression and RUNE II’s core gameplay, we will continue to optimize the Artifact locations, spawn order, and age requirements. 

 

Main Game Update…when?

With all of these changes that we’ve made over the past month, we’ve talked a lot about when the best time to update the RUNE II live client. We don’t want to rush out an update that could have showstopping bugs, like the bug that we found and fixed preventing players from aligning to a god in Single Player. The RUNE II live client will receive an update after we have gone through a rigorous testing, bug fixing, and polish phase. 

 

Server Condensing

As part of our ongoing commitment to always provide the best online RUNE II experience, we will be condensing a number of official cooperative servers. The full details, including what will happen to save games, can be found here.

As a reminder, you can always host your own RUNE II server for free on your computer, or rent your own RUNE II server from one of our server hosting partners at G-portal, Nitrado, or Survival Servers. 

 

We’ve got a long way to go, and a short time to get there. Look for a lot more information coming from us about the future of RUNE II in April.

Remember what tomorrow’s date is. Stay vigilant. Don’t believe anything you see on the internet.

Mitch, out!