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Tech Team Update: The Future of Vortex and LotC 1.16 There is an important topic in coding, finance, and even life, and it’s called the sunk cost fallacy. The idea goes that you shouldn’t consider what you’ve already put into something, as it is essentially a sunk cost - there is nothing you can do about it - what we can do is look to the future and see what we can do with the resources we have at our disposal. With that, after much thought, discussion, and community feedback, we’ve come to the decision that we’ll be removing many of the core elements of Vortex, and scaling back to a vanilla crafting system with our 1.16 update, which will be coming towards the end of the month. This decision was made for a few reasons, but the main one was the amount of time and effort that will be required to get Vortex to a state where both the staff and the players are happy with it. This time can be better spent working on other projects, such as planned recodes to item editing, shops, auctioneers, and bringing back some of our more fun plugins like hookah, caravans, and NPCs. So the question goes - have we wasted months and months of programming time working on content that we’ve decided to cut? Not necessarily, Vortex in and of itself has expanded various API’s we use for all of our plugins, and through those additions sprang the idea of these plugin rewrites. Vortex was a fantastic learning experience, and its removal is unlikely to be permanent. We still want to make a professions and crafting plugin down the line, and many of the resources and infrastructure we have made for Vortex will still be usable then, or in other projects between now and then, but the plugin simply isn’t a priority at this moment, and will be put on ice. When we revisit professions and crafting in the future, we’ll be taking a very different approach, and want to assure the community is more involved. An Honest Note from Nickrocky The removal of Vortex was completely, and wholly my call, no admin, manager, or even player was able to convince me to remove the plugin. The reason I decided to pull Vortex is for the explicit issue that I am progressively seeing more and more. Our plugins on LoTC are dated. Plain and simple, plugins are old, buggy, unresponsive, and antagonistically archaic, so much so that not even the shops plugin is willing to cooperate. Here is your obligatory Admin Approved™ leak of staff chat. What will be staying? In short, Vortex will be split off into two standalone plugins: Surge PvP with vanilla crafting recipes for each of the weapons, and Terra, which will be a version of the node system for gathering vanilla resources. Any existing resources, such as apple wood, maple wood, tin, copper, bronze, and lead will be usable in vanilla crafting as if they were regular wood, iron, gold, etc. What will Surge PVP look like without Vortex? Surge PVP has been extensively tested and refined over the past few months on our open beta server, and will be remaining on it’s own with vanilla recipes added to create ferrum gear, gambisons, and special arrows. Aurum will also be usable to create the same materials iron, though this will mainly be for the sake of roleplay items/aesthetics, as we still plan to create a custom resource pack for all of these armaments. Potion brewing and enchanting will still be unavailable. A final remark regarding Surge is that after ample testing on the OpenBeta, Development, and live servers we have determined that the need for a weapon cap is moot. We will be axing the weapon cap from Surge PvP and allowing individuals to carry items as they see fit. How will Terra work? It won’t be too different from the current node gathering system, though it will lack any Vortex resources. Botany nodes will remain unchanged, and the four hubs will be outfitted with a wide, abundant array of vanilla building materials, and a mining improvement. Vanilla crafting will be able to make stone, iron, and gold tools to use for resource gathering and building. What about Tile Improvements? Tile Improvements will be trimmed down to simpler ranching, a standard mine with coal, iron, gold, lapis, emeralds, and redstone, and ‘vanilla building resources’ - which can include lumber yards for vanilla woods, quarries, or other special materials. More information on this will be outlined in an upcoming post from the World Team Ranching improvements will have a 40% (subject to change) chance to give two animals when breeding, with normal breeding possible in any inhabited area. Full Information About 1.16 We are aiming for the end of the month to update Lord of the Craft to 1.16.5, and aside from the aforementioned changes, we have a lot of other exciting changes to release to the community. 1.16 Blocks and Items Many of the new resources building blocks will be made available through Terra nodes at the hubs, or vanilla crafting. This includes basalt, blackstone, chains (note: can not be used within 10 blocks of a bed), chiseled bricks, warped wood, crimson wood, warped and crimson fungi/flora, crying obsidian, quartz bricks, shroomlights, soul soil, soulfire lanterns/campfires/torches, redstone targets and new banner patterns. We haven’t thought of a good way to implement loadstones or netherrite, though may make them available as building blocks if we can do it cleanly. Tutorial Island and Genesis Treshure, WestCarolina, BathRugMan and some other staff members have been working on an awesome revamp for Tutorial Island, which will tie into the New Player guiding plugin, Genesis, which will guide new players to settlements after the tutorial. More information and a full reveal on the new tutorial island will be released down the line in it’s own post. ItemEdit Changes ItemEdit will be implementing a GUI based editor for items, while maintaining the legacy commands for others if they wish to still use them. Additionally this update will see some perk updates for certain VIP ranks, namely Coal, Iron, Bedrock, Ender, and Aether VIP. After a notable discussion in the Development part of Tech Team, we decided to lift the bar for editing items to at base allow an individual with Coal VIP to be able to sign, describe, and rename items. Editing items is a core part of creating an interactive world, and by limiting even an individual that has paid for a rank on our server from creating items fully we are doing the community a disservice. Further, we have decided to revert a change that was made by Korvic in his changes to ItemEdit that limited the number of lines that can be placed in a description. As of our 1.16.5 update for the server, this limit will be raised to 22 lines for all players, the same as Aether VIP currently has. Hookah Updates Hookah was removed from the launch of Almaris due to its old menus, odd data storage, and completely broken hallucinations. With this update of Hookah we will be modernizing the menus, changing some of our backend, and bringing back hallucinations. Additionally we are tinkering with some possible additions of scenarios, and other content for the plugin so stay tuned on that front. Other Projects As mentioned above, after the 1.16 update the Tech Team will be focusing on various other projects, such as shops, showcases, auction houses, fixing bookshelves, llama caravans, fixing NPCs, bringing back tents, recoding the Crown store, looking at VIP perks in general, streamlining various aspects of wars and region management to help Moderation and nation leaders, and so much more. We look forward to opening a new chapter of Lord of the Craft, and taking everything we’ve learned in the past year to make some great content for our community. — Tech Team Leadership | Llir, Nickrocky, and Vooper

As many of you may know, the new combat update for LOTC has been in the works for a while, a lot of tweaks were made following player feedback, and I don’t doubt that after this we will make many more. Today Surge 1.1 will be moving from Alpha to Beta, what this means is Coal VIP+ will now be able to access the beta server. If you are looking for instructions on how to join the open beta, just scroll past this next bit for now. Though I highly encourage everyone taking the time to read this to read the patch notes section and the content update section following it. Patch Notes Legend [+] Addition [~] Change/bugfix [-] Removal [#] Work in progress [!] Note Major Changes [~] Re Added the Weapon Cap [+] Added the ability to dual wield one handed weapons [-] Removal of the limit on allowing players to use Hotkey F to switch off hands with vortex items. [+] Added horse armor within Surge [+] Added Pikes as dismount weapons [+] Added Spears as a melee/short ranged piercing weapon [+] Added a 15 second cooldown after being forcefully dismounted by a pike [+] Added Shields properly into combat [~] Buffed Splintering on great axes to deal 80% of a shields current durability when the perk applies [~] Fixed various bugs regarding off hand’s and perk’s failing to apply. [~] Buffed Splintering to deal 100 durability damage to a shield when the perk applies on war axes [~] Buffed Piercing to deal 10% of an armor piece’s max durability when the perk applies [~] Increased damage by 1 heart on horseback for pikes and great axes [~] Modified all chances for a perk to apply on weapons [!] The perk chances for weapons can be found on their item descriptions. [-] Removed longbows and lances [!] When this change comes to main all long and short bows will merge into becoming just bows. Arrows [+] Addition of modular arrows [+] Implementation of Arrow perks, which give special effects when they hit players [!] Most Arrow perks happen 100% of the time, its just special abilities for arrows, see Arrow Perks under the Content section for more information regarding Arrow perks. [~] Increased the damage floor for arrows [~] Fixed bug where arrows dealt damage to Minecraft durability but not Vortex durability [-] Removal of vortex_arrow, old arrows will be turned into Flint-Applewood Basic Fletched Arrows. [#] Aquatic Fletching's are currently being worked on, this post will be updated when they are implemented fully. [#] While the arrow buffs are in they still require a fair bit of play testing before I would be comfortable calling them complete. Horses/Mounts [+] Addition of horses and tiers for horses [!] All horses currently on the map will be grandfathered into a tier based on their speed stat. [+] Addition of horse whistles [+] Addition of /bridle to allow for the theft of horses mechanically [!] On the main server proper roleplay must still be done to steal horses with /bridle. Further /bridle will not be able to be used on LoTC until Vortex 1.0.0. [+] Addition of Innate Armor + Armor toughness for horses [+] Addition of horse armors for each of the metal tiers in Vortex 1.0.0 Content Arrow Overview All arrows are now crafted from components, these components can be crafted by simply interacting with the woodworking table. The arrows are then crafted by having the items on you and interacting with the same table All arrows have 3 components the head, the arrow body, and the fletching Heads Flint - Effect: Cheap - Arrows are broken after they hit something, for instance if a flint arrow hits the ground the item breaks Bronze - Effect: Well Placed Shot - Arrows have a chance to become critical hit arrows. Ferrum - Effect: Skilled Hunter I - Arrows deal additional damage to low level hunting mobs Steel - Effect: Skilled Hunter II - Arrows deal additional damage to high level hunting mobs Aurum - Effect: Bane of the Undead II - Arrows deal more damage to mobs marked as undead Slayer Steel - Effect: Bane of the Undead I - Arrows deal more damage to mobs marked as undead Black Ferrum - Effect: Does extra durability damage to held shields per hit Bluesteel - Effect: Double Coated - If dipped in a potion effect, the duration of that effect is doubled. Arrow Body's All arrow bodies have three attributes on them, their carrying ability, their damage, and their velocity. Carrying ability is how many potion effects/special effects an arrow can carry. Velocity is how fast an arrow hits its target. Apple - 0 Carry, +25% damage, normal velocity Maple - 1 Carry, +25% damage, increased velocity Elm - 0 Carry, +50% damage, increased velocity Walnut - 2 Carry, +50% damage, decreased velocity Hickory - 1 Carry, +75% damage, decreased velocity Cherry - 0 Carry, +75% damage, normal velocity Twinwood - 1 Carry, +75% damage, normal velocity Fletching's Fletchings are another neat attribute buff but can seriously give you an upper hand especially if in some serious combat. Basic Fletching - Effect: Nothing Harpy Fletching - Effect: Deal an additional heart of damage to players at or below 50% Bokolo Fletching - Effect: Increased Bow Knockback (Punch 1) Aquatic Fletching - Effect: Currently WIP Weapon Cap A player at max can carry: 1 Carbarum Item 2 Shields 3 Weapons 5 Pieces of Armor For each item that is above the capacity you will be granted 1 additional level of slowness. For example, if a player has 5 items, they will be given slowness 2 for being over the cap. NOTE: Weapon Cap will have measures implemented on main to allow for the mass movement of weapons, and prevent ‘weapon griefing’ in pvp. Horses Horses are in the Beta test under supervision of me, I would like to arrange various cavalry tests for horses as they have been fully implemented. Dual Wielding Dual wielding is where a player can choose to use two one-handed weapons in their main and offhands. The result is 50% offhand’s chance to apply its perk being either added to the main hand or rolled for independently. Ex. Mainhand and Offhand are ferrum maces, the effect is that the main hand gives its +8% chance to stun and the offhand gives +4% chance to stun for a total chance of 12% to stun. Ex. Mainhand is a Ferrum Spear and offhand is a ferrum mace, the effect is that the main hand has a 28% chance to pierce the opponents armor, and the offhand gives the player a 4% chance to stun them. How to join the Open-Beta To join the open beta all you need to do is be on version 1.16.4+ and simply type /openbeta. At this time open beta is locked to Coal VIP+ but in the future I would like to test uncapped skirms for performance which will likely allow all players to participate. Basic Commands for the Open Beta /vortex kit list - Lists the kits for pvp /vrepair - Repairs your armor/weapons Beta-Resource Pack We were able to cobble together a pack for our beta test, it is completely optional though it will show you what weapons your opponent is using and lays out a base for people to expand upon with their own textures if they wish. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1w6C8lt49vrUWrs3uYYY3cE6bxRV_oBPw/view?usp=sharing A note from Nickrocky First I would like to give a HUGE thanks to my Alpha Testers that helped me balance a ton of these new features and rebalance the old ones. Not to mention the countless hours of preliminary bug testing to clean up the beta experience. Now that the Surge 1.1 Beta is now fully in swing I will be focusing a ton of my efforts on continuing to work on the Vortex 1.0.0 patch but I will also be working on an ItemEdit update and the return of the Hookah plugin. Please keep in mind that I am only one person and I can't always answer everyone but I’ll try my best. Anyways, have fun with the Surge 1.1 beta, this has truly been a long time coming.

Before I get into the post – this is not to kick up controversy, nor get attention or any such, just some feedback on the surge PVP system after trying it out for a couple days. I also realize it may be way too late into development to make any changes based off of this feedback, and that it might just get disregarded. But then, oh well, I’ve already wasted my time writing it. I like surge this far even though I’m way worse at it than 1.8 pvp. I hope it stays relatively even with equipment differences as to avoid another Axios situation. But there’s a few flaws, and a few suggestions I’d like to give. Firstly, chainmail and piercing weapons. At the moment the only piercing weapon is ranged, and ranged isn’t especially dangerous – just rush them down, or shoot back, not a big issue. This means that chainmail is a very safe option in armour, and to prove this, is the most widely used in the current beta, gambeson being a close second with plate a distant, distant third. To help shake up the dominance of chainmail, and to add on the versatility of using the surge weapons as proxies for RP weapons, I’d suggest adding one of two meele piercing weapons. Maybe a thrusting sword and a spear, a ravens beak, or even a trident. This would change the armour balance a lot, add a few new options, and diversify the weapons. To add more onto ranged – at least in the now, I feel it needs a buff. It doesn’t provide a noticable threat and does maybe three or four hearts of damage before meele begins. Of course you shouldn’t be able to kill someone from afar without them having options, but adding a bit more damage so you need to consider how to counter ranged would maybe add something to combat. To touch on anti-ranged, and combat in general, shields see very little use. This is because of two reasons I think. Firstly, they take up a weapon slot, which leaves you with far less options in gear if you take a shield. And secondly, two-handed weapons are powerful to the point that taking a one-handed weapon and a shield is just giving yourself a gigantic disadvantage. Buffing one-handed weapons (perhaps by giving them a much shorter cooldown to allow some basic combos) and buffing ranged would change this a lot as shields would now be more viable. Alternatively, just give shields their own slot so that you can carry three weapons and a shield, or make shields take up the fifth armour slot right now used for reserve armour. I’ll also briefly touch on the warhammer – it is right now by far the most dominant weapon due to its incredibly high crit damage. This leaves other weapons behind, and a lot of users, since it’s hard to get the timing correct, especially when its lagging, which is a fair bit of the time. Maybe lowering crit damage in general to make them a good tool but not absolutely essential could fix this, and make combat a bit more fair between those skilled and not skilled. And this is where my post veers off into the purely theoretical – mounted combat. We haven’t seen any mounted combat yet, but I’m concerned about it nontheless purely from reading lances and pikes. Firstly, the new pvp system is based heavily around crits, which you get from jumping and then striking the opponent on the downwards arch of your jump. As you may notice, this is very hard on a horse. This leads the main option for horsemen to work as horse archers, and as I mentioned above - ranged combat just isn’t especially powerful. A fix to this that’s of course heavily theoretical, but would lean into historical precedent, is to give lances an incredibly high damage, but stupidly long cooldown. Let’s say straight off a fourth or third of your health, but with a six second cooldown. This would add a niche for mounted combat as opportunistic high-risk high-reward gambling, as if you charge in and land your lance you’ll likely deal massive damage to your opponent. If however, they hit you with their pike to dismount you, or you miss, you’re done for since your weapon still has a six second cooldown til it can be used again. Such a long cooldown also allows time for countering, by shooting them from range, backing up and eating to heal since healing is pretty quick with enough saturation, backing up to join your group again, etc, etc. This would give cavalry an active and interesting role, make pikes a viable thing to carry around to counter this, and add something realistic – lancers, heavy cavalry, shock cavalry, whatever you want to call it. Something very real in the late-medieval-ish era we find ourselves in on lotc. It would also make cohesion very important, since the best counter to high single target damage is to swamp them with numbers, in this case a mass of pikemen counter-charging the cavalryman to dismount them. Which is also realistic, but leans into the current dynamic of group PVP – cohesion and coordination is extremely important, and this would only enforce that even more. But those are my thoughts, I’ll probably come back and add more to this when I remember something or come up with something new, I’d encourage others to give their thoughts as well, this changing of the pvp system si very important and will lead to a lot of changes within the community. (also, @nickrocky213 sorry mate, thought it best to ping you, if I wasn’t supposed to, very sorry about that, have a good day)