7/19/2017

## Developer Comments

Welcome to our very first Citadel: Forged with Fire patch notes post! We had an absolute blast watching all the streams and gameplay videos that came out during our first Closed Beta Test, and used all the feedback we observed to tweak the game’s balance and improve the gameplay experience for our next test.

We noticed most players encountered issues with our NPC behavior. Enemies would give chase to players infinitely, and the only option to deal with them was to jump in a pool of water and snipe them from safety. To fix this, we’ve made a number of changes to our NPC AI, which should hopefully resolve this issue.

Spell balance was another thing we decided to take a look at coming out of last weekend. Players expected spells to be more powerful, so we went ahead and gave them some significant buffs. Additionally, we also addressed some audio and graphical issues that may have occurred (I’m looking at you Haste).

In addition to the above, we made some key changes to building and map presentation, and added a few small things here and there to make some confusing things a little more obvious. Oh, and we added VOIP!

Transparency and communication is a top priority for us as we move towards and beyond our Early Access launch, and we can’t wait to continue rapidly delivering new content, balance changes and bug fixes on a constant basis.

Take a look below, and we hope to see you in-game soon!

## Patch Notes

### NPCs

* NPCs will now drop aggro when you run away. No more being chased from the Whispering Woods all the way up to Venturer’s Bane by 50 Orcs!
* NPC movement has been increased. You can run, and they’ll eventually lose interest, but don’t expect to be faster than a wolf while running backward now.
* NPC perception has been decreased. Orcs will no longer spot you from a mile away, so you will now be able to better avoid unwanted encounters.
* Forest Guardian rock throws should now work properly instead of harmlessly exploding near you.
* NPC health has been balanced. We’ve made it so early game enemies (near starter towns) are a little easier and late game enemies (up north in the Tundra regions) are less abusable.

### Structures

* Doors and door frames have been renamed to avoid confusion. You do not have to build a door frame to build a door. They are two independent building options.
* Doors should no longer render off the hinges and should be placed properly within the wall. As you’d expect from a door.
* All references to “Nexus” replaced with “Throne” for clarity.
* Some adjustments to build menu icons to make things a little easier to understand.

### Spells/Combat

* Lots of spell buffs. Players last weekend observed that spells were not doing as much damage as basic melee, which felt a little off. Damage, cooldowns and mana costs have all been adjusted to give them a little more oomf.
* You can no longer fire spells off while swimming. Now water will be useful in escaping mobs, but cannot be used to cheese enemies.
* Telekinesis is now very expensive and a lot weaker. We want this spell to be underpowered at launch, and we’ll slowly readjust and increase its power as we go. We don’t want this spell to become too overpowered and have it ruin anyone’s experience.
* Pacify has been rebalanced. You can now only tame creatures ten levels higher than you or less.
* Extract costs less mana to cast to make resource gathering less tedious.

### Other

* VOIP is now live! Push “-“ in-game and start getting chatty!
* Mana and health pools regenerate your vitals a lot slower to avoid abuse. Our plan for mana and health pools was to have them as a places where you can rest for a moment and top up your vitals. This is more in-line with that objective.
* Saddles are now craftable to allow creature riding.
* The House window will now display properly for all players.
* Empty chests now properly show as opened.
* Haste, Bloodlust and Blue Aura VFX now stop when the buff wears off.
* Resource rich rocks are now glowier and more noticeable.
* Lots of map presentation tweaks.