Ashes of Creation already invited followers of the project to roam the desert; now the devs are bringing players through the forest. The latest dev broadcast from Intrepid Studios was full of information, starting off with a look at the forest and riverlands biome – one of two biomes that will be available in the game’s upcoming second alpha.
The preview footage shown in the broadcast was primarily of the environment itself, devoid of any resource nodes or spawners that would be in the location. Creative director Steven Sharif stressed that those nodes need to integrate into the environment and also talked about how alpha two would focus on balancing forest density with performance. Additional art previews offered up looks at some armor, a couple of new mounts, and some creatures.
Next was a look at a new world map that has a total area of 1,200 square kilometers. The map’s new size allows for about 480 square kilometers’ worth of land claim, which is similar to existing claimable space but now there’s greater space between the different continents. Sharif also talked about an underealm area that would be linked to the world map at surface level chokepoints to be used by caravans to travel, and discussed travel times across the map as well as teleportation spots that can be found.
Sharif then moved on to changes to nodes, which are being condensed from 103 to 85. This was primarily done in order to make nodes more meaningful, especially vassal nodes, which readers will remember effectively combine nearby nodes to create a sort of hierarchy for settlements as nodes level up. Sharif additionally discussed how vassal node structure works, clarified that guilds or players do not gain any power or gold by running a metropolis, and dove deep into how node focus works.
Overall, it’s a very granular look at how alpha two will operate. The full broadcast is below.
