Greetings Mortals,
[p align="start"]In our recent stream yesterday, Henrik announced the PTR date for Sarducaa, surprise revealed our brand new Lockpicking system we had been keeping a secret and answered loads of your questions about the new North American hosted continent.[p align="start"]If you missed the stream, you can still view it in its entirety on our YouTube channel:[dynamiclink href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwtFGeERbUU"]
Below we will summarize a few key points covered in the stream, as well as dive a little deeper into the newly unveiled Lockpicking feature which is being released as part of the Sarducaa Expansion.
Sarducaa PTR Details
The PTR for Sarducaa will begin on Wednesday the 17th of June!
[p align="start"]As usual the testing server is planned to be open throughout the rest of that week and the weekend until Monday morning, however depending on how things go we may extend it.[p align="start"]As the PTR will mostly be focused on testing the technical aspects and overhauls required to support the new continent, large areas of Sarducaa will be blocked off during the testing phase so as to not spoil everything before release.Third Character Slot
As we have alluded to in the past, we will indeed be adding a third character slot for everyone upon the release of Sarducaa, so you will not need to delete one of your existing characters to access the new continent.
[p align="start"]The third character slot will be enabled for the PTR, and as with the release will require you to go through Haven to transfer to Sarducaa, as this is one of the things we need a lot of testing data on. Glory gain will be massively enhanced on the PTR however, so you will be able to pass through Haven very quickly.NA Server Location
During the Stream Henrik revealed that the location of the new server will finally be in an “East-Central” area of North America.
[p align="start"]Due to the rather specific and in some ways extreme requirements we have for server hardware in order to facilitate certain aspects of our game, such as real-time directional combat on such a large open world scale, and the availability of such requirements, this decision came down to a simple choice that would have involved compromising on server performance and capacity in order to have lower latencies for SEA / Oceanic players with a West Coast location.[p align="start"]
Existing Haven Characters
As part of providing as fair of a “fresh start” experience as possible for the Sarducaa release, only new characters created after the release will be able to travel to Sarducaa from Haven.
[p align="start"]This means existing characters on Haven will not be able to leave for Sarducaa.Lockpicking
Hopefully those of you present for the live stream reveal of this new feature were pleasantly surprised, as it is not often we keep a brand new feature we have been working on behind the scenes a complete secret.
[p align="start"]Lockpicking allows you to open chests of various different difficulties throughout the world, provided you have both the sufficient tier of Lockpick and the required skill level to use it.[p align="start"]For those of you who played Mortal Online 1, this new system is quite different from what you might remember.
This minigame has been designed from the ground up with the following simple principles in mind, that it should:
Be smooth to play, and not feel clunky.
Have a relatively low skill floor, but a medium to high skill ceiling, allowing the minigame to be both accessible to anyone interested in it but also enable skilled players to outshine others through mastery.
Lastly but certainly not least, it must make you feel like you are deftly picking open a lock!
Toward the last point, great care has been taken to make sure this lockpicking minigame is, to our knowledge, perhaps the most detailed and closely simulated one to real lockpicking principles ever created.
It incorporates real lock aspects such as binding order, underset and overset pins, key and driver pin separation, and perhaps most uniquely the need to manage both your lockpick as well as a second tool, the tension wrench, at the same time as you progress through the lock.
Additionally, all of the sound design / foley was created in house, using recordings of real lockpicks and lock components, and we are extremely proud of the beautiful visuals created by our very talented 2D artist.
Every lock is different, however at the moment every lock stays the same even after a server reset, which means it is possible to memorize or record the pin order of any lock to help pick it faster next time, however as there are so many chests in the game only the most dedicated lockpickers will be able to memorize a lot of them.
Lockpicking is a standalone Primary skill in the Profession tree.
There are 3 different tiers of lockpick as well as chests:
Novice
Adept
Master
Higher tier chests have more pins, up to a maximum of 8.
You need to have a high enough Lockpicking skill level to use the higher tier lockpicks:
Novice Lockpicks can be used by anyone to open a Novice difficulty chest and learn the skill through action.
Adept Lockpicks require level 50 Lockpicking, allowing you to open Adept chests.
Master Lockpicks require Level 100 Lockpicking, allowing you to open the most valuable chests in the world.
Lockpicks are not simply bought from an NPC for gold, rather you need to find them.
Novice Lockpicks have a chance to be found in almost any Barrel in the game, and are intended to be rather common items.
Adept Lockpicks are only found inside Novice chests.
Master Lockpicks are only found inside Adept chests.
This means you need to work your way up the tiers to obtain a Master Lockpick, allowing you to open the highest pin chests, such as dungeon chests.
All dungeon chests are now lockpickable, except boss chests which need a specific key.
All dungeon chests are Master difficulty, with the highest number of pins.
This means you must have 100 Lockpicking skill and to have obtained a Master Lockpick to pick open dungeon chests.
Dungeon inhabitants still drop keys, but at a now lower drop chance, so keys will drop less often.
This is part of making sure the Lockpicking skill a desirable point investment, as it will be required to get the highest possible value out of a dungeon run, potentially creating the role of a lockpicker for hire who gets paid to tag along with a party of adventurers and open chests very quickly.
As we want to allow dedicated players to discover and learn the nuances of these mechanics themselves and choose whether or not to share their expertise, we will not be revealing exactly how the systems work in detail, however here is a video which shows opening a lock and displays the various visual behaviors of the lock and tools:
[dynamiclink href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mya6FC17J60"]
There is a huge amount of anticipation and excitement growing in the team as we draw nearer to the Sarducaa release, and we can’t wait to see you all on the PTR server on the 17th of June!
See you soon on the Sarducaa PTR,
[p align="start"]The Star Vault Team