Hey everyone, juicy blog post today going over a lot of the new mechanics for the Mini Story Pack, some of which will likely find their way into the base game in the future as well. We go over climbing, new quest types (and the return of improved older quest types from the older Orbus day), and the new Treasure Hunt content.
Check it out: https://blog.orbusvr.com/mini-story-pack-spotlight-3-new-mechanics/
Great stuff guys
Finding missing children reminds me of that mission from old orbus
Exciting news, ty - a bit of feedback/questions:
Climbing: Hm, I did not enjoy apps like āThe Climbā that much, it never felt natural (tho the views were great) and my Rift S got issues with overhead movements or those where hands gets too closeā¦ those ropes look like trouble, so I really hope that works out, mechanically.
Treasure Hunt
Ok wellā¦ crates are ātradableā, but how? Via AH to ALL players, those who got the DLC and those who have not? What will prevent new players from buying unneeded crates then, will there be a warning? Or do only those having the DLC see those items in the AH? Also 4 days is way too short, that means I need to wait 3d for an auction to expire to get one (if it was set to bid) and then only got 1 single day or a half to use it, depending on when the seller put them in.
Even 1:1 trading is a slow process, due to my experience, and in my timezone, you donāt find people so quickly and even less if they need to own the dlc. Then you need to meet up, time your rl for that (yea, some still workā¦) so that restriction would put too much pressure, imo.
Escort Quests
Uhm I hated them in the OG alreadyā¦ they were hard for certain classes since mobs killed the npc/wagon before you could, for example, poison the enemies down (Musky; now in Reborn Shaman is also a very sloooow class, totems need to be placed etc., most mobs get hits in by the time you have your first orb spawn). Overleveling these quests did the trick in the OG but I fear those could be frustrating for solo players in Reborn, due to levelscaling; but yea, just an annotation, with the different routes all that is yet to see.
Climbing:
Itās not obvious from the gif, but you have full freedom of movement around all the climbable objects, so overhead movements arenāt necessary (except for the initial grab I suppose in that one case). You can bring your body up and do movements along your stomach, for example. It is fairly forgiving in that. You can even just use one hand if you like. (You get put at the ground level if you do not grab with either hand after a couple seconds.)
Treasure Hunt
I donāt have an answer regarding the AH non-dlc stuff yet, but with regards to the time limit, the idea is to keep a limited supply in circulation. You get one every 24 hours for free by just killing stuff, and if you happen to want to run multiple in a row you can purchase some. Bid-only would definitely not be the choice to sell those, but players will set buyout prices in that case.
Escort Quests
Weāve been working at improving the pathing and design of escorts, so they should be much better than in OG Orbus. Weāre also going to be careful at balancing them so theyāre doable and donāt require a big group like the OG ones did (if you were low level.)
While I am looking forward to the DLC I am concerned with the treasure map coming in another chest and this post is going to get slightly off topic but is very related and needs to be said and hopefully addressed
Okay, so youāre adding another chest that goes into your inventory, that looks exactly the same as:
9 months ago it was bought up that these reward chests looking the same is an issue, it was said that youād be making the icons unique, that still hasnāt happened and now youāre adding even more
Here is the thread from before about the chests:
This should be a very quick and easy fix and 9 months later it still hasnāt happenedā¦
please make the treasure map chest āRareā so itās blue and doesnāt look like a standard chest, please update the current chests all you have to do is change the icon, the beam colour can wait if that would take more time to fix though potato made a very good post on the inconsistency of the loot beams
Now getting back to the topicā¦
Will the NPCs that are being escorted be able to be healed by muskys and bards? or will this more be for dps/tank classes?
As is indicated on the blog post, the map crate will have a different icon. We just didnāt have it in when the gif was created.
We understand players want different icons for every item on the old crates as well, but with the current system it would require us to create duplicate different items for every single drop and this would be incompatible currently. We are looking into that feedback though.
No, we donāt want every item to have itās own icon, as you can see from my post on that thread I linked we just want a way to tell the difference from a standard mission/public event reward chest and one with value such as a Rare/Epic/Legendary drop
You just need to make 3 icons and then update the current chests so the icon colour matches the colour of the rarity of the item inside
I even did a very poor mock-up of what we want via MSPaint, clearly you could do a lot better job but this is showing exactly what we are asking for, not icons for everything but 3 different icons that quickly and easily show the different rarity of the chest so we donāt accidently open a rare/epic/legendary chest instead of a common public event chest
I apologize, I misread which request you were talking about - What we will be doing is changing that overworld drop crate icon to be different from the leveling/mission/event chests one.
At the moment, the way our system is currently set up with the crates, it wouldnāt be possible to have a different crate for every rarity type like that, or split the icons in any other way, so in order to do what you suggested weād have to re-work the entire way the crating system works.
Omg, Iām really excited about the treasure hunting. I thought of the idea but didnāt think it was going to be added 
Iām very happy to see it being implemented in the game, and very interested in seeing how it works out.
(searched āTreasure mapsā in search bar and saw I was tyne only one, makes me feel pretty special)
As for telling rarities, the Nameās colour (and the description) is more than plentiful for me to tell. I just put the chest away from the other ones before I start opening other.
Yes, it would be useful to have a more clear way to determine rarities other than in the descriptions but there is a way to tell what is what.
Is there a way to make a prompt before opening these chests so people are warned that they are about to open a rare chest that will be soul bound when opened? That shouldnāt need a huge rework right?
While hovering over the crates there is a description of the items that say when you open it, it will become soulbound, but having it tell you when you try to open it would be much more convenient for sure
Thatās a pretty large oversight on your teamās part to be honest. Its basic MMO 101 and any other loot based games to be able to visually differentiate between rare loots and the trash. Not trying to be rude here, but come on. Not even asking for much as rickness stated. Simple colored outlines over the same icon would have done it. Literally minutes of work if the foundation had been done correctly.
Edit: Thanks for the explanation of why it hasnāt been implemented. Before it seemed as though it was just being ignored.
Its still strange though how there are two icon types of those chests already, which proves that its not hardcoded with 1 icon. I can not imagine how the system was written wrong there but I guess we have to believe the devs in this. Spending time on it would be appreciated as you might notice from peoples reactions 
My retired coder-brain goes tick-tock tick-tock thinking about hooow could that possibly have been messed up 
?? (And yes there are sometimes weird weird ideas of someoneā¦ in the pastā¦ which you stumble over later and think omg we will live with that solution until the very end of our appās life XD - not that I hope itās the case here).
Actually I think from these hints it IS hardcoded, like, every item got a certain chest as a property, which is assigned by hand in the creation/design process; not dynamically or via any criteria like rarity. Now redoing the few overworld items should not be the biggest deal (and that is why that really should come soon), redoing 100s items however would be and before I would do that I would likely drop whatever the old hardcoded method was and switch to a dynamical assignment tied to rarity instead (plus flag/property that it comes in a chest, at all) to save work in the future; so that would be a bigger project.
āwho will then lead you on a glorious path of death and destruction across a very hostile environmentā
I knew that ghost pilgrim was just trying to get us killed!
Looking forward to the DLC 
dont for get the donkey in the rainforest in classic orbus
I always wished you could feed him a carrot at the end for being a good little donkey.
Having hidden chests and using a shovel tool would be cooler than a chest hanging in the open (if that is the case). In general a lot of this looks good.
When I used to play Runescape, I would put a lot of time into doing Treasure Trails from clue scrolls this feels like a step in that direction and Iām looking forward to it, though there was a lot of puzzles and riddles with that as well as map locations, but itās a good start
My thoughts exactly, it would be cool if they could put lore-type puzzles or something to give each map area a little more flavour. Having mobs guarding the chests are something Iām going to have to wait to gather my thoughts on. Also the fact map drops are limited to 1 per day is meh. I understand this since the rewards arenāt as numerous as in Runescape.
