On the first day of Celebration, the Brethren Court gave to me… The Winter Update!
Ahoy!
At long last, the most anticipated event of the year has returned - Twelve Days of Celebration!
Every day from now until December 25th will bring a new update to The Legend of Pirates Online! We’ve been hard at work to deliver these changes to ye all! Ye can read the details of this release here!
Weapon Balancing
To start, we have made some significant changes to various weapons throughout the game; many weapons have had some work done to them.
Guns
Yarr, me eyes don’t work as well as they used to these days… ye know? Tell me, what year does the calendar say? Is that 2024? When I be squintin’ me eyes, it looks like it says 2020!
Guns have been significantly rebalanced. All guns have had their damages dramatically increased. This includes repeater pistols, single-shot pistols, blunderbusses, and muskets. Single-shot pistols and blunderbusses, in particular, should now do dramatically more damage. As well, Take Aim actually works now. Woah! A barely charged hip shot will do the same amount of damage as a non-charged shot. To compensate for this, a number of repeater pistols and blunderbusses have had their attack values reduced. Rest assured, they should do the same amount, if not more damage, as before. Additionally, when assigning skill points to gun ammo (Lead Shot, Steel Shot, etc.), it now has a bigger impact per skill point used.
We have also bumped up Beckett’s Pistol’s Steel Shot and Dodge boosts. We wanted Beckett’s not to be outright worse than its twin, Mercer’s Pistol. We bumped its Steel Shot damage to be more powerful than Mercer’s so that it could fulfill the Steel Shot damage niche better than Mercer’s does.
Mojo Dolls
Mojo Dolls are a special voodoo doll subtype we designed around the concept of making the player using them a juggernaut. As such, we added special hexes designed to soak up damage and return it as health or even make the player temporarily invincible. However, after observing their use in player-versus-player instances, we felt that hexes such as Safeguard and Haven needed some adjustment.
To start, Safeguard now gives a shield worth 40% of your max health instead of 50%. Now, when a player is at low health, their opponents won’t have to work through a full half of their max health pool to finish them off. For Haven, players can now only allocate 4 available skill points instead of 5, for a total of 8 seconds of total invincibility. Both Safeguard and Haven have had their voodoo costs increased.
We felt that these two hexes gave the player too much invincibility for too long. Becoming immune to all damage is a very powerful tool to have under a pirate’s belt, and we felt their voodoo costs and durations didn’t account for their power.
General Balance
Now that we’ve swabbed the deck with some more in-depth changes, here’s some more general balancing!
Maelstrom Charge now deals increased self-damage when it is thrown. We felt Maelstrom Charge made The Storm Sphere way too overpowered, to the point it overshadowed any other weapon. This change will make it more of a risk-versus-reward every time ye throw it; ideal for one-shotting small groups of enemies but not much so for conquering entire caves and areas.
Jack Sparrow’s Blade and many of the swords available from loot and the shops on Bilgewater now have a new passive skill: Skeletal Scourge. Any weapon with this powerful ability will deal increased damage against skeletons! In particular, Jack’s Blade’s attack value has been increased, and its former Cleave boost has been replaced with an Endurance boost. We noticed that many players have complained that Jack’s Blade isn’t worth its status as a Legendary sword and even the very sword of the infamous Captain Jack Sparrow. Now, the Blade should deal significantly more damage and we hope it is well worth its status. If ye be lucky enough, it can be found in loot from the nefarious General Darkhart.
Bottle Rocket Cannon Ram now has Round Shot, Rapid Reload, and Shrapnel boosts instead of an explosive boost. The Bottle Rocket weapon skill has been buffed as well. These changes will give the ram more of a purpose and use at sea.
Have ye ever felt dread at noticin’ the arrival of December and the start of the Yuletide event? Well, we’ve taken note. Silver Striker is now only available in loot from ships at sea and Holly Frost’s Yuletide Shop. The weapon has also had some work done to it. The former cutlass is now a sabre and boasts a variety of new stats. Its Cleave boost has been replaced with a Cyclone Cut boost, too. To compensate for its rework and new rarity, we’ve increased its price in the Holly Frost’s Shop.
And finally, Watcher’s Visage now lasts 20 seconds and recharges in 25. This will give it more longevity and competition with some of the other damage-boosting skills, namely Titan’s Curse and Ghost Form.
Quality of Life Changes
Over the last few years, we have made a huge effort to improve quality of life within the game. In particular, we have added countless small features that make playing the game just a little bit better. Previous changes we’ve made of this sort include the loot trash button, loot countdown timer, and teleport permissions.
This year, we’ve made a handful of small changes that should have a positive impact on players. First, we’ve added a button within the game options menu to disable caching! When caching is disabled, this means the game will not attempt to save prebuilt world locations to disk for future lookup. Caching is typically advantageous in most situations, and it is recommended to be left enabled, but if you are using a computer with a slow hard drive, there may be enough of a performance disadvantage where the game is spending too much time writing to and reading from disk storage that justifies the need for disabling caching.
We’ve also added various other quality of life improvements throughout the game this year. Some notable highlights include a clickable GUI exit button to stop interacting with a ship steering wheel, several bug fixes, memory leak fixes, a new sound effect when changing clothing items, and new holiday music on Bilgewater Island.
More Is On The Way!
Keep a weather eye on the blog over the duration of the Twelve Days Event! Who knows what goodies or surprises the Crew might bring ye next? Perhaps something new to complement something ye’ve always had? Or a surprise somewhere ye’ve never looked? Or a new addition to a place of secrets past? Ah, who knows. The possibilities be endless!
May yer sails be filled with lots of merry holiday joy, mates!
The Crew @ TLOPO