A Message from our CEO
Before diving into Mastery, which is shipping in early form to the Public Test Realm today, I’d like to update you about when the full Combat & Progression update will ship to Production Servers and the accompanying wipe.
We have decided to postpone the wipe. Combat & Progression simply isn’t ready, and we don’t want to risk shipping something that could force another wipe soon.
Expect to see eleven classes with Mastery on the Public Test Realm by July 17 (Monk and Necromancer coming a bit later), then on Production soon after. Please log into the PTR, try the classes and mastery, and provide your feedback. Expect several weeks of updating, testing and tuning.
Once it’s properly tuned, we’ll wipe the Production Servers and release updated Combat & Progression there. We will publish the new wipe, Combat and Progression Update, and Badia de Cara target dates as soon as possible.
Chris Rowan, CEO
Week Six Highlights
Below are some highlights of today’s patch. For the full list of all of today’s additions and fixes with more details, check out the patch notes here.
This week, we are introducing the first iteration of the Mastery UI, along with mastery options for Warrior, Paladin, and Dire Lord. Mastery for additional classes will be added in the coming weeks.
This week’s Mastery testing will be focused on the functionality of the UI elements, any issues/bugs related to interacting with the Mastery system, and the nodes/upgrades working properly. The Mastery trees for the Warrior, Paladin and Dire Lord are still under heavy development, with many more options and overall tuning/balance improvements forthcoming. With this in mind, we are not looking for feedback on how “good” these Mastery trees are right now, but how well the system functions overall.
One quick note: The Mastery UI and node layouts are a work-in-progress. We will continue to update and improve the UI as we go forward, so expect changes from week to week as we refine it. You will notice some of the Mastery branches are visually busy with connection lines between nodes and other elements. Expect this to be refined heavily in the weeks to come.
Accessing Your Mastery
To access the Mastery UI, you need to be at least level 5. If you’re level 5 or higher, visit any ability in your Codex and click on the Mastery button. This will open the mastery UI. Make sure you are in a safe place when you do this, since the Mastery UI is currently a full-screen experience.
We’re planning to update the Codex in the future to make accessing mastery a little easier and more intuitive, but for now you can use this method to get into the system.
When you first open the Mastery UI, you will see a short opening animation and a popup dialog introducing you to the system. After acknowledging that dialog, you will be able to begin unlocking Mastery nodes for your class.
Spending Mastery Points and Unlocking Nodes
You unlock nodes using Mastery Points. Right now, you will earn one Mastery Point per level (which means you will have 5 points to spend at level 5 when you first unlock Mastery). Each node will cost 1 Mastery point to unlock. Nodes can also have pre-requisites, where you must unlock them in a specific order. You’ll see this reflected right now as lines between the nodes in the UI.
A few notes on the layout: The nodes in the center area empower some of your core class abilities. When you unlock one of these nodes, it will allow the effects of that ability to begin scaling up as you spend mastery points in your class mastery branches. This power scaling is still being worked on and may not function in this early build, but expect it to start functioning more fully in an upcoming update.
On either side are your two class branches, divided into rings. At Level 5, the first ring will become available to you, and at higher levels additional rings will unlock. Each ring also requires a minimum number of points spent in that branch before it will unlock, and individual mastery nodes may have their own pre-requisites as well (such as unlocking a specific node in the previous ring).
To unlock a node, first select it in the array by left-clicking on it. You will see the border of the node icon change color when you do this. If you did not want to select it, left-click again to de-select it. You can select multiple nodes as long as you have points to spend:
To confirm your selections, click and hold on the confirmation button at the top of the UI window:
You will see an animation play as your choices are locked in. Once you have unlocked a node, the benefits will apply to your character immediately.
Resetting Your Mastery
For testing purposes, we are allowing everyone to reset their mastery at any time and re-spend their points for free. Once the system is finalized, you will need to visit a specific type of NPC that will be found in most cities, but their services will not be cheap. For now, however, you can access the reset by pressing this button within the Mastery UI.
Testing Focus
As mentioned, this is the very first iteration of this User Experience, and as such you are going to be seeing a lot of placeholder art (like the UI background). Expect visual changes to come in over time, but for now what we are most focused on is making sure that it all functions properly. Please try spending mastery points in different ways and let us know if you encounter any problems while using the UI. Feedback on the experience and how we can make it better or more intuitive is also welcome.
For Warriors, Paladins, and Dire Lords, please let us know if you encounter a problem with any of the mastery nodes that you unlock. This is also the first iteration of mastery for each of these classes, and we are still planning to add several more mastery options for these classes as well before everything is done. Please make sure to report any mastery unlocks that don’t seem to provide their benefits as expected, so that we can investigate those as potential bugs. Feedback on balance is welcome. However, be aware that we may not act on balance issues right away as our top priority right now is ensuring everything works.
Looking Ahead
Now that we are testing mastery, here is what you can look forward to in future updates:
- Refinements and improvements to the Mastery UI and the Codex.
- Class Mastery options for other classes (healers will be coming in next).
- Additional mastery options, refinements, bug fixes, tuning, and improvements for all classes.
- Once Class Mastery is finalized, we will be bringing General Mastery online, along with ways to earn additional Mastery points to spend on that category.
As always, we want to send a big thank you out to all our players who are logging onto the Public Test Realm. Your bug reports and feedback are helping us refine the changes we are making so that when we are ready to push the Combat and Progression update out to all our servers, our game can deliver a compelling and fun combat experience at all levels.
Known Issues
- Shrink doesn’t shrink just yet.
- Standing under the elevator in Wild’s End will push players under the world (Don’t do that).
- Nocturnal Eyes is not functional.
- Water in Eastern Plains may not be swimmable.
- Sent mail may not immediately show up in the sent tab.