Awesome things abound Bumfuzzlers! I’m really excited about a couple of things, but wait until you hear about the horde! Also, we have key changes to the store, NPCs, performance and decay, based on your feedback! Let’s take a look at what’s what! All the following changes are for Modtopia.
Water Jugs
Turns out stacking water jugs can screw with the quantities inside them so I turned off stacking with them.
Now you can only put one water jug in a slot, but they won’t be accidentally emptied when an empty one is s stacked on top a full one. Thanks JackHillKing for the feedback!
Discordomics
I’ve been tweaking the Discord Economic event – where paying attention in Discord can win you big money – and I’m sure I’ll tweak it a bit more over time to create the proper balance. It’s fairly easy to get lots of money if you participate so there’s a danger of some people joining the top 1% somewhat rapidly lol
I’ve changed the values just a little bit:
- Event occurs between 30-90 min instead of 40-120
- Rewarded money was changed from $20-$80 to $15-$70
You’d be wise to pay attention to the Discord! You can get rich quick!
Decay
I did some testing with decay and I determined it was a little high. Building a reasonable sized base would result in being made a housewife for the entire wipe, filling the cupboard all day with resources. I’ve gone ahead and cut the required upkeep in half so it’s not so much of a burden.
This will hopefully result in more of you getting outside for some well needed Vitamin D. Thanks MrNiceGuy for your feedback and persistence!
Auto CodeLock
VIPs have had the ability to automatically place a code lock when placing doors, boxes, cupboards, lockers, etc. even when they didn’t have one in inventory. I’ve gone ahead and disabled that. Now VIPs will require a code lock in their inventory just like everyone else.
I’ll consider adding this back, but it seems it’s too easy to place doors for the code locks and then recycle them for free resources. I don’t believe players are doing this, but it easily could be and that’s not good.
Monument NPCs
The bots stationed at monuments should now parachute in! It looks really nice and makes more sense instead of having them simply appear out of thin air. Should be very cool to see when watching monuments like the rocket area since there are lots of NPCs there. All we need now is a plane!
Also, typically, when killing an NPC, the name of the bot would give your location away. For instance, if you were seen killing Trainyard Security, someone would know you were at the Trainyard. Now, the bot names are completely ambiguous so when someone sees you killing a bot in chat, they won’t know where you are. You can expect silly names like Joe Soldier, Guardsman Jones, Private Paul, Sergeant Stephen, Boxer Jones, Charlie, George, Jimmy, Agent Anderson, Stacy Glasses, Sammy Study, Michael Gasmask and so on. I am considering a themed name change, but let’s see how it goes.
Thanks MrNiceGuy for your feedback!
Lastly, NPCs would shoot from quite a bit away. In fact, up to 120 meters. I was finally able to change this and now they’ll shoot at you from up to 75 meters. This should be realistic, but hopefully somewhat inaccurate. I’ll continue to adjust it as needed.
In-Game Store
As the dust settles on the store, I noticed some issues with various items there. Here’s a few of the things I changed:
- Skin Perk Pickaxes are now sold 1 per purchase instead of 3
- Removed buying 3 Salvaged Axes. Now you can only buy the Blueprint
- I renamed the Salvaged Icepick, Hammer and Axe so interface is more organized
- Changed values of all salvaged items to be more aligned
- Lowered count and cost of Satchel Charges
- Lowered Small Stocking quantity to 1 from 3
- Lowered Super Stocking quantity to 1 from 3
- Raised Super Stocking cost to 3
- Added 4x Scope for purchase
- Raised all ammunition 1 Reward Point
There’s a lot of balancing here yet to do, so please give me feedback!
Zombie Horde
I’ve just added a feature that I think is awesome and I think you’ll agree! Now, groups of zombies will spawn across the world. They’ll start out as smaller groups, but over time, they’ll grow! They don’t like to be attacked and will slaughter anything in their way! Now you have something to be afraid of! Not just Jason 🙂
Here’s how the horde works:
- When a horde is destroyed, a new one will be created 5 minutes later
- A new horde will contain 7 zombies
- Hordes will grow up to sizes of up to 25 zombies
- The world will contain 3 hordes
- Hordes randomly spawn
- A new zombie is added to the horde every 10 minutes
- When the horde kills a player or NPC, a new zombie is added to the horde
- You must put 100 meters between you and the horde for them to lose interest
- Hordes will merge together if they meet
Unlike Jason, they have no health or damage changes and for the most part, they only have melee weapons.
Server Performance
Performance issues with the server are rare, but after doing some math it appears some work was needed. With NPCs and this new zombie feature, we are effectively adding to the player count so each NPCs uses near the equivalent of a slot. With that, I decided to up the server from 50 to 100 players to compensate. Hopefully any lag that existed before, even infrequently, is gone. I’ve already heard positive feedback about the change.
Mind you, this is doubling the cost of the server and changes like the Zombie Horde also cost money. Any donation, no matter how small (can donate $1!) is always appreciated.
I’ve re-enabled the Warp Master package which gives you more teleports, homes and teleporting abilities. With this you can teleport directly to grid coordinates and you can also use /tpb which teleports you back to where you teleported from. Very nice tools for Bumfuzzlers and only a couple bucks! This way you’ll get something for your support!
Fishing Improvements
In the past, all you could do was poke the water with a spear to get yourself a fish dinner, but I enabled a new feature with fishing that might be fun when you’re on your boat!
- Start off with either a wooden or stone spear (stone gets better results)
- With the spear selected, type /makefishingpole
- Now that you have the fishing pole, go out to the water and type /castfishingpole
Keep in mind that there are a couple of criteria that add to your catch percentage:
- Your attire is 10%
- Your Items are 10%
- The Time of Day is 10%
- Your fishing pole or spear is 10%
For instance, I believe your catch percentage is less if you’re naked, have no inventory and your’e fishing at night with a wooden spear. If you want to know your chances just type /fishchance.
Also note that there’s a 10% chance you’ll get a random item!
Wipe Upcoming
On Thursday we’re going to have a map and blueprint wipe so get ready! I’m anticipating lots of new Rust goodies from Facepunch as well so it should be interesting!
As always Bumfuzzlers, please have fun and keep the feedback flowing! I appreciate your efforts to keep me informed and also to test changes!
P.S. Hope you like the new Bumfuzzler character in the pictures 🙂