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Easter and Equipment Update

Categories: Aether Story Patch Notes
Written by thephantom on Apr 09 2021

Welcome to the full scope release of Alpha 4! The Easter and Equipment Update! For the first time in Aether Story's history you now are able to buy, trade and find equipment in the game! And equip it! Not only that, you can also equip gems to the rarer pieces, further customizing your stats!

 

Meet this month's donation pet:

Puffie The Puffball Bunny 
Puffie loves carrots. He gobbles them up night and day, and it is no wonder why he is a big puffball. Adopt puffie yourself and have your own carrot loving furball of your own.  Donate now!

Puffie is only available to those who donate $10 or more this month of April 2021. After which Puffie will no longer be available. So get him now! Aether Story is funded by players like you. Thank you for supporting Aether Story!

 

 

Equipment

  • You may now equip gear and costumes using the new equipment menu (Hotkey U).
  • There are three cosmetic only slots: Costume, Mask and Cape. Currently the Cape is unavailable but will be given to those who donate $100 lifetime.
  • All other gear is non-visual but improves your character's strength through stats.
  • Some pieces of Equipment have empty gem sockets. These allow you to equip a gem.
  • Equipping a gem destroys the existing gem. Be careful! You won't be able to get a gem out once you equip it.
  • Equipment in Aether Story usually randomly rolls its stats. So when you buy a piece of equipment, or pick up a piece of equipment, it can be random each time! Some equipment may have fixed stats though.

Tip: Get your first set of gear by visiting the Blackmsith in the Outpost. A weapon is given as a quest reward by Axel in the South Forest.

 

 

The Stats In AetherStory

Part of the reason that equipment and battle took so long to be released is that I needed to figure out the stat model for Aether Story. I didn't want to just copy another game. I wanted to examine what made an RPG's stats and figure out what was needed to make our game.

Let's list out the stats, they are:

  • Power - damage you deal both physical and magical
  • Health - increase your life bar (HP)
  • Mana - increase your mana bar (MP)
  • Defense - physical damage mitigation
  • Resist - magical damage mitigation
  • Speed - energy regen rate and cast bar speed
  • Luck - cirtical hit chance

The decisions behind why I chose these stats will be saved for a future blog post.

 

Easter 2021

Easter is here again everyone! And will be until the end of the month, April 30th!

The main activity with Easter, and is carrying over from last year's Easter, is the Egg Hunt! Eggs have been scattered all over the world. In every building, on every map. Check everywhere! Eggs spawn differently from other things in the game. They spawn for everyone, and the first person to collect it gets to loot it! So you are racing each other to the eggs!

With enough eggs you will be able purchase limited time cosmetics from Maika. Maika is positioned this year outside the Command Hall in the Outpost.  She is selling all cosmetics from last year plus two new ones:

  • Bunny Onesie - 150 eggs
  • Bunny Ears - 150 eggs
  • Bunny - 200 eggs
  • Ostara's Gown - 300 eggs new in 2021
  • Ostara's Crown - 300 eggs new in 2021

This year also added a lot of new features to Easter! Let's list them out:

  • A new dungeon has been added with the game's first instance dungeon boss: Todd the evil rabbit. Take your friends, this fight is hard. Tip: Todd drops the best gear in the game, try to get a full set of gear from Todd!
  • Two new cosmetic rewards have been added: Ostara's Gown and Crown for 300 eggs each.
  • A new quest given by Maika will lead you to Todd's dungeon and reward you with a piece of gear (from Todd's loot table) of your choice!

Tip: If you are farming eggs, especially in a party with friends, the best place to do it is within the Easter Burrow, before Todd's Lair. The rabbits and eggs here are more group friendly.

 

The Slime Glade

A new area has been added to the southern forest that contains harder slimes. These slimes drop Gems, Healing Potions and a new Rare Slime pet!

Tip: If you are looking for Healing Potions visit the Witch in the Forest and gather Healing Coral daily to get new potions daily!

The Slime Glade was added to this update because I needed a secondary location for players to play in, besides the Easter Burrow cave. I also needed a location for gems to be farmed. The slimes were the perfect idea!  The Slime Glade also features a merchant in the cave leading to it. This cave is part of the same map as the Slime Glade, so entering the cave (from the Glade side) has no load screen. Allowing you to farm slimes easier and have a merchant to unload your junk at.

 

Leaderboard Update

The Leaderboard has been updated wtih a new "Holiday" tab. This tab will rotate out every holiday season with new leaderboards designed around the goals of a holiday.  This Easter the Holiday leaderboard features new leaderboards:

  • Eggs Collected - how many easter eggs you find
  • Todd Kills - how many times you kill the Todd boss in or out of a party
  • Solo Todd Kills - how many times you kill the Tod boss not in a party
  • Egg Mimics Killed - how many egg mimics you kill
  • Ostara's Grace Drops - how many times the rarest weapon in the game drops

Check out the new Easter Holiday leaderboard for yourself.

 

Misc Changes

  • All character's positions were reset to the lighthouse, but nothing else was reset. Do not be alarmed.
  • Battle no longer has annoying flashing squares on the ground.
  • Character weight has been increased to 150 (up from 100)
  • Account Bank weight has been increased to 300 (up from 100)
  • Healing Coral turn in now gives you 3 potions (up from 1) for every 5 Coral.
  • New slime monsters have been added to some parts of the Southern Domhan Forest.
  • Monsters no longer have to drop an item, some will drop nothing if you are unlucky.
  • All monster stats were reworked with the addition of equipment.
  • Character bound items in the Account Bank for deleted Characters were removed from the game, no longer clogging up your space.
  • Gold UI box should no longer appear after death sometimes.
  • Loot tables for all chests in the game have been adjusted to no longer give an abundance of gems and potions!

 

Summary

The Easter and Equipment patch has been out at the time of writing this post for two weeks. And boy have the players been loving this update. For the first time people are telling me, "Wow this game is actually feeling like a game." And that is awesome. I played my non-GM character and I got to experience it myself. And it really does feel like a real game. Having goals to work towards, gear to strive for, and a challenge of trying to solo the Todd boss yourself. Its one of the best updates we have had yet!

 

 

 

For now be sure to download the game and check out the game's current Alpha.

You may download the early Alpha access easily through itch.io:

We are really enthusiastic to have you play our game! Being a small indie game
dev company, we depend on your support to keep us going.
Please consider making a small donation to help us fund the continuous
development of Aether Story! It will really help us out.

If you already have Alpha Access, head on over to the Game Downloads page and download the new Launcher Setup Installer!

And don't forget to join us in Discord.gg/phanxgames to share your suggestions, find other players to play with, and hang out.

 

 

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