After yet another span of silence, piratical MMO Atlas has once again piped up with a new version update that adds, among other things, some fiery new ammunition for the ballista weapon, some quality-of-life adjustments, and a list of bug fixes.
The hot item (get it?) is the Ballista Fire Bolt, which is specially designed to set fire to ship sails. Multiple fire bolts will apply stacking fire buffs(?) to a ship’s sails, and putting out the buff(??) can be done by either fully closing the sail, using the Olfend mount’s water spray, or by simply being in rain or snow since it’s hard to set wet things on fire. These bolts can also set fire to other structures, creatures, and the ground, and will also damage a ship’s mast if it’s hit, so players can get creative with their fire-based ammunition.
In addition to this new ammo type, the update brings QoL features like a ship heading indicator on the map when at the captain’s wheel, item descriptions with helpful gameplay-relevant info for 80 items with more to be added later, and balance changes like increased damage for fire arrows and torches and decreased oil jar weight. There are also a wide swath of bug fixes introduced in the update.
The post also opened with thanks to players for “sticking [with developer Grapecard] through all the storms and chaos” and promises that the future of Atlas is “packed full of adventure.” However, the game does continue to see player concurrency drops on Steam, with the most recent numbers showing a 24-hour peak of over 3,000; the game did see a spike between October 2019 and January 2020, but February and onward has seen another dip in player numbers.
