Morphs - The Non-Mounted Mounts
As time grew, and powers collide, mystical creatures, with inconceivable power and might, began to rise. A showdown between good, and evil, emerged. Unrelenting beasts now roamed the lands; born to do the bidding of the gods. War, after war, clash, and collision, these brutes fought to protect and advance their designed purpose. Although bred to obey, they would eventually grow to achieve sentience; separating control from their masters, and bringing in a newfound era of liberated control.
What followed, were eons of conflict and ruination. A near complete annihilation of all that exist; a memory hole of the past. ‘Till all that remained, were the spirits that once were; fragments of old; an essence of the forgotten…
Although these creatures no longer exist in physical form, their essence still remains. With the help of ancient magic, and modern methods of conjuring, there now exists an ability to transmogrify yourself into these mythical brutes… if only for a short while. You may not retain all of their incredible powers in the process, but you’ll surely begin to feel their spirit take over, as you morph into this superior being, of the past!
Morphs Breakdown
Morphs are simple. To break them down, you can compare them to traditional mounts, but without all the mounti-fullness. Morphs are cosmetic, yet provide utility. They provide a slight increase in speed, to help make your adventurely travels, slightly less prolonged. Here are some quick details:
- Morphs provide a 30% speed buff while in-town, and on adventures
- Every single interaction, with anything, will end your morphed form
- You can only stay in morphed form for so long, before you turn back
- There’s a short cooldown between Morphs
- To recharge your ability to morph, you must first travel a short distance, as your true self
- You can’t morph while being targeted by an enemy
Our First 3 Morphs Have Arrived!
Head over to the website shop, and you’ll be greeted by our first ever set of Morphs! 3 distinctly different creatures, each with their own unique visual effects. These Morphs are limited in supply, and won’t be released ever again, so be sure to claim yours as soon as possible!
New Center-Hud Module
The ring located around your minimap/outfit, is now a capsule for your Morphing ability. When you aren’t morphed, this capsule will fill up, as you walk. When full, you are ready to morph. When morphed, this capsule will automatically drain as you move about in morphed form, until you eventually revert back to normal. This capsule is essentially a cooldown to determine your morphed status.
How Do Morphs Compare To Other Items?
- Morphs are mostly cosmetic, in the sense that they will always have the exact same speed, no matter which one you have, or it’s rarity.
- A Morphs value will essentially come from it’s scarcity. We currently have no plans of introducing virtual Morphs, which means, all Morphs will be limited in supply, and be blockchain items.
- Since Morphs are blockchain items, they will be tradeable, of course. (Trading will be enabled once a Morph is sold out on the website shop)
- Morphs will be sold on the website shop, and like outfits and pets, will have exclusive holiday versions, sold during events. Essentially our 3rd category of “cosmetic” items.
Why?
The reason is simple. People have been asking for “mounts” (Morphs) for a very long time, and we’ve found some areas where this type of mechanic, make sense:
- Having another item be sold in the shop, helps with revenue, which ultimately helps to ensure that the game can sustain itself, even further.
- Backtracking while on adventures. On one hand, we need the adventures to be a certain size, and length, but on the other hand, we don’t necessarily want people to be running around after they’ve already discovered every route, just to pick up items, or make their way to the exit. This offers players a middleground solution, which allows for them to not spend so much time backtracking, after they’ve already slain all of the monsters.
- World expansion. As the game grows, and new towns and areas are added, there’s going to be a lot of places to explore, and therefore, a lot of running around. This will help to speed things up a bit.
- There will be times where production nodes are quite a distance from your stash, and therefore, we wanted to give players a bit of help with their efforts. Due to cooldowns, you won’t be able to be completely morphed during your creating process, but it’ll definitely help to decrease time spent travelling.
Rebalance Of Travel
Although Morphs are new, the thought of their implementation, is not. Morphs had been planned since nearly the very beginning of this game, and in one form or another, they were coming. However, before we could release these Morphs, the game required many dependencies, and one of those, was the all-new adventure generation system, that came with update 210.
Since we knew that Morphs were coming, we made sure to set the base speed of characters, to be higher than we ultimately wanted. We did this in order to maintain a moderately quick travel experience for players, before Morphs would eventually be ushered in. This allowed for slightly quicker travel, and production.
Now that Morphs have arrived, we’ve slightly lowered the base speed of players, down to what was originally intended and matched the animation appropriately. Morphs will provide a speed buff of 30%, above the base speed. Most players probably won’t even notice the difference, but we prefer to be transparent, either way.
Quick Bits Unrelated To Morphs
- Your “Goals” can now also be found as an icon, located on your top bar
- Improved the top bar layout, rebalancing it’s design
- New Save/Load Icons, dedicated to loadouts
- Outfits now have a slot located in your stash-equipment screen
- AI Movement and Behaviour has been updated, take a Teleport scroll just in case
- Updated target picking to give weighting to more interesting targets (players around your stash are lower priority than your stash now)
- Removed level up gifts, as we have various other reward mechanics now (Champion Rewards, Daily Goals, etc)
- A few new Quality of Life updates for you to discover!