PAT9 Planet Pyromycis

Pyromycis is of course the name of the fourth planet that got newly added as part of this test-cycle. But before we get to that, a short word on the previous test-cycle: Because of the holidays, it was a long one. Roughly twice as long, as these test-cycles typically last, in terms of weeks. Through the months before, we used to see a new update, a new version and a new test-cycle roughly every two weeks, ocassionally three - this time it took over a whole month. I hope the devs enjoyed some time off, and got their batteries recharged!

But this last cylce was even longer, in terms of playtime. Times of test-events were pushed to 4 hours per test - and there have been a few waves of numbers of such 4-hour tests in close succession, peaking in a phase of a few days with two 4-hour tests each day. The total playtime you could accumulate this cycle, was many times that of previous ones. That being said, this was a special holiday-only occurence, and future tests will return to a more regular 2/3 weeks cycle.

Another two things I’d like to mention is, that for my timezone it was a bit late yesterday, and I kept forgetting to take screenshots. I got a few, but not quite the number seen in some previous reports. Also, what I did during the four hours of the test, very closely resembles what I have been doing during ⁠PAT8 Homestead Building - get some basic equipment, earn XP, unlock and craft items, place a homestead claim… the usual starting steps. I did notice that XP gain for some professions seems to have been boosted even further for testing, making it faster to get through these and unlock things.

“Mushroom” rock formation on the right

Pyromycis is the new planet, that became available for the first time, during this test.

During previous tests, we’ve seen a few different iterations of a temperate planet, one desert planet and one jungle planet. And all of those felt very much like they could be someplace on Earth. Sure, there were some alien looking glowing mushrooms, and some weird buildings in some places, and of course alien creatures roaming the place - but overall, the backdrop wouldn’t look out of place in many regions of this world.

Not so Pyromycis. This is a decidedly different, more strange and alien world. Nothing all too crazy - there are some pretty strange places here on Earth as well - but wondrous. As in, instilling a sense of wonder. I like that, since I feel it makes exploring these places a lot more interesting. Also has some nice Sci-Fi vibes to it. Another thing, the new Planet does very well, is diversity. This planets has different regions that look nothing like each other. The salt flats are a completely seperate place from the volcanic caldera, from the high montain peaks and steep valleys, to the strange, mushroom shaped rock-formations. Previous planets have had that to a smaller degree - but here it really feels like cranked to eleven.

And there’s also a huge underground cavern to be discovered - which looks like it’s completely distinct own biome as well: (It would seem the lighting changes that make caves darker, haven’t made it in yet - as the cavern still clearly is lit by outside daylight).

Cavern Discovered

Another City is going to be founded down here, later

Another change we’ve seen introduced in this test, is that player camps are now consumable items. You start the test with three camps in your inventory, and every time you place a camp, one of those is consumed.

This lead to some old discussions about item loadouts and item swapping to flare up again. I’m not gonna go into detail about that again - as I already talked about that in the PAT7 Report. I understand that people want to be able to swap their tools anywhere and anytime, and also to spend their skill points just as freely, and while we’re at it, why not make dance-healing available anywhere without limits as well? It definitely would be a lot more convenient… but it would also remove entire gameplay loops from the game.

But I feel like the entire discussion completely misses the point, as nobody ever asked (or at least not within my earshot), how hard/expensice or easy/cheap camps will be to attain in the final design. Right now, camps are exceptionally easy to craft, and with a bit of effort, you can stock up hundreds or thousands in your inventory. I can easily imagine a final game, where everyone who might need camps, can just stock up on them in arbitrary numbers turning the whole thing into a total non-issue. In fact, turning the camp from a ranger-only skill into a item that can be used by everyone, should actually massively increase the accessibility and availability of camps.

Apart from that - the planets may have been empty and pristine at the start of the new test cycle - but by now there are already homesteads popping up in all sorts of places. Homesteads currently are public just like camps are, and allow you to do everything you can do in a camp. Even crafting benches can now be made and placed into a homestead. It’s only a matter of time, until you no longer need camps anyway, because there’s always a fully equipped homestead near you anyway.

For now though, homesteads are still a bit rare, and people are a lot more reluctant to place their camps, now they got only 3 of those - which means that at least during this test, there were a LOT less camps littered about than previously. On the upside, that makes it lot easier to find a nice place to claim your homestead - as those camps aren’t getting in the way - on the flipside (which - depending on your angle - might not even be a downside), combat has become a bit more dangerous, as you aren’t constantly saving your inventory, and might not have a relife point completely nearby. Death still isn’t a big deal - but you have to be ever so slightly more careful, to not loose stuff from your inventory.

The dynamics around camps have changed, and player behavior changes in response to that… and that’s what devs wanted to see, and can now collect data on. Testing successful!

Starting a new Homestead

The Salt Flats

Another change that had some interesting effects on player behavior, is that crafting a grav-mesh now requires a rare metal called “anti-gravium”.

For those who don’t know yet: The grav-mesh basically acts like a jet-pack, allowing you to basically fly, but only for limited time. This equipable item is the biggest boost to mobility you can currently get in the game - followed by the grapple on second place. The grav-mesh offers more freedom of movement, while the grapple can get you around faster - but also requires a little more skill to use efficiently.

It’s not a necessity - I actually skipped building a grav-mesh until pretty late, during the last test cycle. You definitely can get around and do everything without having either gravmesh or grapple - you’ll just be slower, and larger obstacles like steep cliffs or high montains require a tiny bit of planning ahead, to overcome. With a grav-mesh though, you can just fly anywhere you want like nobody’s business. And that’s why many players decided it’s an absolute convenience necessity, and the first thing you have to get after a wipe.

Anti-gravium was previously only available as a loot-drop from a particular mini-boss on the jungle planet. That boss was barely solo-able, once you had upgraded weapons and shields - but acquiring anti-gravium in any quantity still was quite a chore. Not that it had any use in the previous test.

For this new test though, anti-gravium is available as a natural - but rare - ore on the new planet Pyromycis. A few thousand units were strewn about various small deposits, mostly around the salt flats. A player needs only 10 units to build a grav-mesh - and can’t use more than 30 units, when building all the items that use anti-gravium. That means, that in theory there was enough available for hundreds of players. In theory.

Another View of the Salt Flats

Cutting Through the Stem of a “Mushroom”

In practice it seemed more like a few players would end up having hundreds of units, leaving the rest hanging dry.

To find it, you had to use prospecting - a skill you have to first unlock from the Mineralogy tree, which then allows you to search for specific materials in a radius around you. You have to just run around scanning, until you find something, an then you will see some cube-symbols guiding you towards it’s location in the ground.

Once players had unlocked that skill, they could also see how much anti-gravium was available on the planet in total. And they saw that number was dropping. Mentioning that in chat, led to a small gold-rush. Basically everyone tried to get their share as quickly as possible. As a result it really didn’t take long for all the anti-gravium to be mined dry across the entire planet.

And that is where things started to get really interesting. At first, the portal and main spawn point of Pyromycis became an impromptu trading point. Players would show up there, with those having excess antigravium gifting it to those who had none, distributing the rare metal more evenly, and giving more people access to the anti-grav mesh.

But then Dave gave a hint in chat, about there being a second method of obtaining anti-gravium, that didn’t require any mining. The hint was: “Dark Wizard”. Players quickly figure out, that this was the name of huge, rare mushroom, that was often guarded by flying suicide-bomber creatures. But harvesting these mushrooms didn’t yield any anti-gravium right away. You had to first take their seeds, and then replant those to grow cultivated exemplars of the Dark Wizards - and only then could you harvest anti-matter from those.

So, in order to help new players get access to a grav-mesh, testers with some skill points in botany and forestry, would travel around the planets, and plant a patch of those mushrooms right in front of every world-spawn-point, where people first arrive.

It was quite exiting to me, to watch both some simple trading and some newbie-care emerge completely on it’s own - just because the grav-mesh recipe now contained a rare metal.

CASIM doesn’t detect the detachement immediately

On Return After Death

And last, but not least, I’d like to talk a little bit about botany.

I already wrote in the previous post above, that players were harvesting seedlings from wild mushrooms, to then plant domesticated mushrooms with those. That’s a new feature added for this test as well! Previously you could only gather tree seedlings when cutting down trees with the Xyloslicer tool. Now you can get seeds of all sorts of plants, by non-destructively harvesting from them (with the Harvester tool).

The wild versions will only give you seeds - and the homegrown versions (which I called “domesticated”, which is not a word ever mentioned by the game or testing doc) may then give you different yields (but never more seeds). That’s a rudimentary placeholder version - the game design plans on proper farming mechanics with a lot more depth for later. But it does allow you to collect and grow and farm plants right now - which is a lot of fun.

I very much like these glow-roses, which are just a very decorative little flower (I have yet to explore and discover lots of other plants):

Pretty Flower