All of the armor pieces are the Frigid Dawn base skin except for the chest which I kept as the Arisen Commander skin with a silver blue dye to blend in the colors. The firestaff skin is Sizzling Snow (which you can get via crafting one of the event patterns (1, 2, 3) if the patterns are available on your server's trading post).
Not shown, but similiar to the firestaff the shield skin is Frigid Bulwark from the winter event patterns. The only other change I've thought about is making the sword have the Iceburst skin. Enjoy!
I have to admit the game looks visually better with each developer update and that stands out the moment the demo starts. I am really digging the look of the town (called nodes) and it is still crazy to think most of these towns will be player placed and upgraded.
The demo shows commissions which immediately brought "quest boards" to mind of every MMO in recent memory. However, the difference that eventually pays off in the demo is that the commissions feed into more and more of what Ashes is advertising as it's main attraction: a living and dynamic world.
Think of the commission as a kick start to get players out of town and into the opportunity to unlock a chain of events that contributes to a dynamic change in the world. Players can of course just skip the opportunity as Steven does in the demo and get a train of enemies rolling around, but more exciting was to see the world change as different actions are taken.
In the video we get to see a sudden thunderstorm form as new enemies appear in an open world event. The event intertwines with other quests in the area before hinting at unlocking a larger transformational world event at the end of the video.
Plenty of MMOs have dynamic open world events, but the "revolution" Ashes hints at is that all actions are leading to changes in the world that are stickier than other games. A real "fear of missing out" model where server 1 will be different than server 2. Add in the nodes mentioned earlier and the game is starting to show the real possibility to be that revolution we've all wanted in the MMORPG genre.
This isn't to say all of it was revolutionary. There was still the same old static -- I will never move from this spot - quest givers. Enemy AI wasn't all that impressive; easily defeated by the age old tactic of running away. Combat looks noisy (too many effects) and for a few updates has shown a favor towards kiting enemies.
While I could nitpick more I won't. I am cautiously continuing to grow excited about the possibilities of this game. With only Alpha 2 planned for this year there is still along road to go here for betas and a launch, but its going to be a fun one to check out each month in the developer updates.
Create a post on X (or whatever social media of choice) and share it on a site like a video game's forums and it's cool. But create content on your own blog you've run for 19+ years to share and you are just a bottom sucker of the Internet. Just blogging things.
New World has an update on the public test realm (PTR) for the new artifacts coming in Season 5 (March 2024). The biggest change is to Phoenix (the new amulet artifact). The changes are covered in the following YouTube video from TrickTrick.
As noted the big change is to Phoenix. The initial version had a perk that was a copy of the original Defy Death ability for Hatchet.... which was long ago nerfed out of existence in the game. As expected there was an uproar in the community that it would be coming back on an amulet that anyone could use. Fortunately the developers changed how it will work with Phoenix. The new PTR wording is below:
Phoenix Vengeance: When you receive lethal damage, avoid death and become invulnerable for 4s, after which you die. (180s cooldown).
The last part is the key: the player will die no after the four seconds expires giving them a last hurrah before taking their dirt nap! However, as noted in the video there is a way on PTR using Ice Gauntlet's Entombed ability for a player to avoid the "die" portion. That has to be fixed or this is going to be abused. Even with that oversight fixed this is still going to be strong; especially for those players that love diving into piles knowing they are going to die anyways and just want to take a few folks down with them.
The spear artifact Venom was changed to only trigger on heavy melee attacks from the other equipped weapon. Previously it included ranged attacks so, as an example, bow heavy attacks triggered Venom. Ranged weapons are already very strong in the game and this would of made them even stronger. This is a good change.
The third artifact changed was the Tempest Fury Great Axe where Keen Speed was replaced with Refreshing Move. This was a sensible change since the weapon already has a ton of speed boost built into it and didn't need anything extra. Refreshing Move is a sought after perk on Great Axes for bruiser builds in war and as called out in the video by TrickTrick this will likely see some action in wars. Personally I am going to try a "spin to win" build with the Fortifying Whirlwind aspect.
Just a few screenshots from trying out No Man's Sky this weekend as part of it's free weekend. The game seems very complex but I was digging it after about an hour of play. I got blown up in space though so ended up on a planet repairing my ship which requires me to build a base
first to craft all the repair parts. The systems seem to go very deep so a
bit of a learning curve that I didn't get to explore further as the free weekend expired.
Scanning...
Refining
Floating space junk I never got around to exploring
