Throughout the last year, Intrepid has shown us phenomenal progress with Ashes of Creation, giving us the Node Showcase, Freehold Showcase, giving us multiple class arc types, story arcs, all sorts of things that are really tying this game together, finally leading us towards Alpha 2. But the biggest showcase yet to come, I believe, is going to be this month in the November Developers Update, where we are going to get the Artisan System functioning in the game, along with an announcement that gives us a quarter of when to expect Alpha 2. I know it's not the exact date, but Intrepid giving us a rough 3 month time frame of when we can expect Alpha 2 in 2024 is going to be absolutely huge, because at that point there's no more waiting, there's no more guessing, we will know it's going to be in summer of 2024, it's going to be in fall, it's going to be early next year, we will know when we can jump into the world of Vera, and from then on, anyone who has Alpha 2 access will be able to play Ashes of Creation and test it until launch, basically, because it's going to be a persistent test. There will definitely be downtime in wipes and things like that, but from when Alpha 2 launches Alpha 2 is said to be live through beta 1, beta 2, and finally through launch, where it will become the PTR test server for the game, which is absolutely huge, because for all of us that have been waiting for years, it's finally coming together, and we're finally going to have our hands on it. Next year, so it's pretty cool, beyond that though, Artisan ship is going to be one of the biggest streams they can showcase. I know we've said this before about the nodes, we've said this before about crafting, and honestly, surprisingly enough, the Caravans stream in my opinion has been one of the best ones so far this year, over the nodes and everything else. Crafting is one of those things that you love it, or you hate it. Going around gathering materials and building up your armor and your weapons and all that, it can be a fun thing, it can be satisfying, it gives you a sense of progression, and in Ashes of Creation it's going to be key to the economy, because most of the end game gear you get is going to be something that players can craft, because what makes Ashes of Creation stand out a bit is you're not going to have your typical gear drops in a sense from end game raid bosses, they're going to drop rare materials and resources and patterns to create these end game weapons and these end game armors, and these materials are really going to be what's bolstercy economy, because you can then sell it to other players, you could make your own stuff, you could become that master crafter of the server of your guild, and it's going to have a huge impact on the game. And beyond that though, the Artisan ship trees are extensive from what we've heard. I don't know what to what extent we're going to see them this month, you obviously have the Artisan trees broken up into your main gathering processing and crafting, gathering has you go in and gathering materials through a thro' world, processing has you processing those raw resources into fine materials, and then crafting obviously is putting those materials together into something pretty cool. You have things such as the animal husbandry system which has you breed mounts and pets, you have blacksmithing and weaponsmithing, creating all these weapons and stuff, there is their shipbuilding siege building tied into these professions somewhere, they're originally going to be standalone professions, but it sounds like they're going to be kind of scattered throughout various professions now. You're going to be able to make furniture for your houses, cooking food, potions, all that good stuff, but you're only going to be able to master one of these trees, which is the cool thing, not everybody is going to be able to set out and be a master weapon smith and a master blacksmith and a master horse breeder or whatever you want to call it. You're only going to be able to do one and then you're going to be able to dabble in some of the other ones, so that again is really going to cause you as a player to rely on other people. It already does because as a crafter you need the processors, as a processor you need the gatherers, so it's going to be a pretty cool and a pretty complex system to see and trumpet finally bring to the table. And one that I'm really excited for, we also know that there's some minigame-esque systems tied into crafting, to even really kind of talk about it but not going into detail on this in the past, it's kind of teased when we see the crafting UI when there's a fastcraft which makes it up in quickly and then there's another crafting button that we haven't seen actually function, we haven't seen the fast crafting in the node showcase for Stephen Creed as a sword, but beyond that we haven't seen the complexity in what's going to make Ash's Accurations, Artisan System stand out from above the rest. If that's even the case, it could have slight improvements on other systems, it might not be this groundbreaking system, but it's going to be a very crucial system to Ash's Accurations and the way the economy works in a way, the caravans function and players trade and interact with each other and players stalls within nodes and getting the resources you need for guild sieges and castle sieges and upgrading your ships as you set out on the open ocean to vary, there's a huge part of the game and something that kind of like the node is going to have, it's going to tie in a little bit everywhere. What I want to see out of this though is not just the crafting side of thing, but I want to learn more about say, for example, with gathering, there's a whole land management system and I want to see this, I want to see how this is going to work in the game throughout the alpha testing in beta's and what interpret really plans from this for those you don't know, interpret has some land management system built into the game where you can gather resources and the more you gather, the less that kind of grows back, which is a very interesting take on it, which means players are going to have to somehow manage to work together to not completely wipe out resources on the map, especially those that you know you're going to need sooner or later, and you want them to be growing back rather quick. So it's going to in a way want players to want to spread out and gather materials from across the world instead of in one certain locations, but how interpret is going to advertise that to the players, being like, hey, you probably shouldn't touch those trees, they've been harvested a lot, is going to be quite an interesting take, and whether players actually listen to that or most of them probably just go chop down those trees, anyways, because they don't really care about some guild's land management system, they just want to make a cool sword, but beyond that, I would love to see more of the professions we haven't seen. I'm sure Steven's going to keep this close to the chest and show us the simple things, like blacksmithing or armorsmithing, and not the things like shipbuilding or siege building or animal husbandry or alchemy or anything like that, although those are the things that I want to see, I want to see something that stands out and isn't your ordinary craft, but I guess we will have to wait and see. Let me know, are you guys hyped to see the artist and system functioning in the game on Thursday, November 30th? Let me know in the comments below, and as always be sure to stay tuned for a lot more to come. you