DEV DIARY #3

Is it time for another dev diary already?! Wow the time has certainly whooshed past! It's time again to share with you what's been going on with AEGIS Kingdoms! If you don't like reading paragraphs, there's a TL;DR at the bottom of this post!

CURRENT STATE OF THE GAME

As mentioned in this post we announced that AEGIS Kingdoms will be launching into "Alpha Island Access" which is where Alpha Knights (our testers) can play AEGIS Kingdoms on the weekends. Become an Alpha Knight here. Alpha Knights will have free roam of Mistral - an ancient island in the Southern Kingdoms. It's lower-to-sea-level landmass makes it a great destination for travellers looking for adventures. Mistral will very much be a "tutorial island" of sorts, however there won't be the too much restriction over where you travel or what you do. In the grand scheme of things Mistral is actually a rather small island when compared to other landmasses in Sor'res. You can see a crude sketch of what our vision for the full AEGIS Kingdoms world map will look like below.
Mistral will be acting as the primary location for players to quest, skill and progress until we go into Early Access. When we head into Early Access, our focus will be the continent Ophelia, with a latter focus on the additional continents post launch in expansion content. At present, Mistral's zones are still being developed. The full size of the current terrain is 12km, which equates to around 3.58km in length and width, however the actual "playable" areas are much more condensed than that as much of it is either mountainous or submerged. The aim of Mistral is to continue to test, as well as provide playable content so in the beginning there will not be a huge amount to do other than level up, quest, buy, trade & explore. In later updates, we will be launching Weapon Skills where you will gain levels when you use a specific weapon type. For example using 1H Swords to fight will level up your "1H Sword" level. At various levels you will gain access to exclusive cosmetics. The higher the weapon skill, the rarer the cosmetic. It should be noted, however, that all combat is horizontal in AEGIS Kingdoms meaning that all "1H Swords" will do the same damage. However you will need to find your own play style as each weapon type has pros and cons - i.e some weapons are faster but do less damage, others are slower but deal higher damage etc.
In the above screenshot you can see that we are achieving a very similar shape to the original "scribble" (sketch?) for Mistral, albeit a little better laid out. There are multiple hotspots laid out around Mistral where you can explore, quest and otherwise engage with the world. These hotspots will become more fleshed out as we progress. At the moment they are still very bare bones and in need further refinement. There are no trade skills yet, so characters will not progress any levels in combat, crafting or gathering. This will be worked on soon, but we want to get you into the game first. Instead you'll be able to level your character up, buy & sell, complete quests, ride mounts and own pets. There are a variety of mobs (at various difficulties) as well as bosses. We are also looking to have some dungeons in a later update. As we continue I will shed more light on the progress of new updates.

COMING IN THE NEAR FUTURE

As mentioned the hotspots are mostly for skilling, combat and questing, however there is also an element of exploration. Due to the horizontal nature of combat progression, the difficulty in mobs you face will be a mixture of higher damage & health, as well as faster and stronger enemies. There are also cases where force multipliers will be used, too. What this boils down to is your ability to maximise how effective you can be as an individual player, and how best to overcome the various enemies you face - it won't simply just be the ability to out-damage enemies. The exploration aspect of AEGIS Kingdoms to designed in such a way as to not guide you too much when you play. It will be down to you to explore as much or as little as you like. We've taken inspiration from games we love such as RuneScape and Sea of Thieves. There's an element of vertical skill progression, but the horizontal nature of exploration and combat. Quests are optional, but will help you level up and give you fun rewards as well as later on adding factions with faction specific content. There are also fun gems hidden around the place, and more that will be added in the future. AEGIS Kingdoms is a living, breathing environment so we will be changing things around a little from time to time. Moving and re-hiding things to continue to keep things interesting and fresh. Striking that balance between not having the game go stale, and not change too much.

NEXT UPDATE FOCUS

The next focus after the initial release of "Alpha Island" (aka your access to Mistral), will be the combat skills. Combat skills track your progression in a given combat style. For example using a "2H Sword" - the more you use the 2H Sword, the more you will gain EXP for it, and level it up. At certain levels, for example level 5 - you will be able to equip different aesthetic-variants of the 2H Sword weapon-type. The higher your level, the more access to rarer cosmetics will be available. It is important to note that these cosmetic variants will NOT have any additional stats for the most part and will perform the same as a regular 2H sword. HOWEVER there are some exceptions with some Legendary (Orange) and Mythical (Crimson) items, which will have alternative stats. You will need to have progression (high levels) in a variety of trade skills (gathering, crafting & combat) in order to equip these. In some cases you may also need to have completed specific quest(s).

TL;DR

• AEGIS Kingdoms is a game set in the world of Sor'res where players can explore, progress and quest.
• Mistral is the primary location for players to play before the launch of Early Access.
• Mistral is still being developed but players can level up, quest, trade, explore and engage in combat, but no trade skills are available yet.
• The game has a horizontal progression system for exploration and combat, but vertical progression for skills.
• A focus of the next update will be the introduction of combat skills which track progression of weapon types.
• AEGIS Kingdoms is a living environment, and the game will continue to be updated with new content.

Join the Discord for more screenshots, insight into AEGIS Kingdoms and impromptu tests. (Link at the very bottom, in the footer!)

[ 2023-05-02 09:15:13 CET ] [ Original post ]