November 2023 Monthly Update – Of Giants and Titans, Monument and more!
Hey Traveler’s and Heroes!
This month at Northern Forge Studios we’re working hard to bring new core features to the game. In this content update we’ll be walking you through the events you’ll experience this month, talking about a new Guild making its way to the game and covering some of the bigger features we’re trying to get into your hands as soon as possible.
It’s a giant-sized (see what I did there) blog – so let’s dive in!
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Of Giants and Titans
In this month’s main event, Of Giants and Titans, you can claim fallen celestial power for yourself!
The event questline will have you farming monsters for Stardrops and Moondrops, consumables that will summon either a boss or a raid. The weapons dropped from these fights are primarily focused on two-handed abilities, offering up various stance abilities that will change the way you battle. By finishing the questline you will be rewarded with one of many potential Olympian Followers.
We’ve made some minor additions to the events this year. Event bosses and raids now have new Adornments added tot their loot pools.
Finally, questlines are now instanced, which means you’ll be able to repeat event questlines even if you’ve completed it before.
Mini Events
For mini-events this month, we’re bringing back the Crimson Festival between November 20th to November 30th. You’ll also get to experience the resprited Sisters of Morrigan when they return on November 25th to the 30th.
Pictured above is our full list of events for the month! ^^
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Seers Guild
The Seers Guild aims to provide additional rewards for players who partake in Memory Hunting. You’ll gain Proofs by completed Shattered Memory Hunts that can be spent on materials, unique sprites, followers and more!
We’re aiming to get this Guild released in November if all goes smoothly with the beta!
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Legendary Sprite Pack
We’re bringing another Legendary Sprite Pack to the game this month. We’re really happy with how these turned out and appreciate those who used these new packs as a means to support our studio. By keeping our new product type as cosmetic only, we’re able to continue development our games free of ads, pay-to-play and pay-to-win monetization tactics.
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Hero of Aethric Joystick
We’ve updated the control options in Hero of Aethric to include a joystick. After a few iterations of non-tap-to-move controls, we’re pretty pleased to answer the community demand for a joystick. We’re pretty pleased with how this turned out but are eager to hear feedback on this new control scheme.
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Monument
Monument is a new feature that aims to provide a supplemental way to engage with our events. This is not going to replace events as you know then, but rather offer an optional manner to complete them. We’re still hammered down some final design decisions on this feature, so keep in mind some of this is subject to change.
Monument is a building that will appear in the world (GPS) for Orna: the GPS RPG and can be found within the game world of Hero of Aethric. Different enemy types will appear within Monument depending on when you enter. This will offer up players a new way to complete questlines and gain event materials.
Monument also brings with it a new Guild that will be completely event focused. The Guild shop will contain some exciting things in exchange for proofs. Be sure to stay tuned as we release more information on Monument later this month!
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Conqueror’s Guild
The Conqueror’s Guild will see the territory control system reworked in Orna: the GPS RPG. As one of the hallmark features of our GPS title, we set about developing this feature with a few things in mind:
- Respect the investment players have made in the current territory system
- Keep the upper level of competitive integrity at the higher levels of control
- Allow players to interact with the system before T10 in highly competitive areas
With the new system, you’ll be building a group of fighters that will battle it out for territory on your behalf. You’ll need to arm these fighters with your own gear and spells to capture or defend territories.
Each territory will have various Tiers available to capture and your rosters will have to equip a wide variety of gear from all stages of the game in order to find success. We’re hoping this system reinvigorates excitement for current players and is more approachable for newer players. Rewards will also be adjusted to offer more than the current system, including a Proof currency to spend at the Guild Shop.
We’ll be talking about this feature a lot more throughout the month of November, so stay tuned!
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Deep Dungeon Update
We’d like to thank the community for the rigorous testing and bug reports that came from the Deep Dungeon beta test. We identified a few areas that needed improvement before we could launch this feature into the game and have been working hard to get this ready for you, thank you for your patience.
We believe this is in a place to release this feature back into the beta for a final test before we launch with a hopeful release period of this month!
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That’s it for this month’s content update. Here at the studio, we’re really focussed on bringing some new and game-defining features to our games with both Monument and Conquerer’s Guild deep in development. We’re aiming to have an updated roadmap for our titles and can hopefully share more on that soon!
Thanks for being the greatest community in gaming (ok, maybe we’re biased but we believe it!)
– The Northern Forge team
