SC X Bossfight and Salvage BA Drops

Early Release Today! All the stars and planets seem to have aligned nicely - tonight's release is Live already, so log in NOW!  

Salvage Quest: (See Joey standing in Soluna City, to the right of Tek's Mechs.) The Salvage quest has now been updated with chances for Back Arm weapons to drop! I don't want to give away too much yet, so I will just say that there are NEW Never-Before-Seen Back Arms for NSC, SC, and NG at every tier, plus some other "Oh I have one of those / OOh I was wanting one of those" Back Arms scattered among the possible drops as well.  Huzzah for Korin getting the new weapons all vectorized and animated and coloratizized, and grazie to bluesy for the specials designs, and to Vivi for codings - and yours truly set them up with all their numbers and descriptions and that sort of thing.

Star Captain Club Extreme Challenge: This new "Bragging Rights" option lets Star Captains battle the featured - and extremely tough - "Boss" - we are kicking this off by featuring the un-nerfed, super-powered, unleashed Teravolt! There was a little mix-up in the initial communication of specials planning for the Zargon Wormhole battle, so the original Teravolt came out as an opponent who was ... basically unbeatable by what I'm guessing would have been 999 out of 1000 players.  I haven't found my strategy for beating him in the Star Captain Club challenge yet, in fact.  (Feel free to discuss it on the forums, but please use spoiler tags if you come up with a way to defeat him before the end of this weekend...)

We're working ahead on Mogloween (MQ's Halloween) with some very cool plans - continued Mortis-related storyline with new animated cutscenes, all-new quests and in fact we are already working on the backbone for a "Trick or Treat" style quest!  Are you a Star Captain? Has Starbuck approved you for PvP (at the Stadium at GEARS University)?  If not, there is still time - the deadline is Thursday the 27th of October 6:30 PM Eastern time (Server Time)  You may submit your Character ID and Character Name on the forums in this thread so that players from all over the world (and from everywhere in the galaxies) can have the chance to visit your Starship this Mogloween!

I hope you all have a fantastic weekend - I know I will! I am getting IRC queries about having no Design Notes up yet, so I shall wrap up here and post them for you! I will be immersed in music and artwork when I am not doing home maintenance and not playing our games or visiting with you on our forums - and on that note... TTYL!

Tags: Maegwyn Star Captains Soluna Salvage SC Club

Traveler Weapons and More

The Traveler Gets a New Shipment!  A Star Captain Head complements the Ring shoulder series, and a Nova Gem and a non-Star Captain shoulder also arrive!

The Star Captain Macabre Circlet series: Each of the 4 hits has a chance for a critical hit. Can nerf enemy damage by -10% for 5 turns.  Can reduce enemy Bonus to Hit by -10% for 5 turns.  Has the potential to do HP and/or EP Damage Over Time for 5 turns.

The Nova Gem Poison Cannon series: May add +30 to your Bonus to Hit for 3 turns.  Good chance to do critical damage. May merge purge all Bonus to Hit nerfs affecting you; can also merge purge all Damage nerfs affecting you.

The non-Star Captain Flamethrower series: Does extra damage.  Good chance for an HP DoT - decent chance for an EP DoT as well.  Also has the potential to blind the enemy with a Bonus to Hit Nerf over Time (-10 per turn for 3 turns).

The 4th of July Mecha Models stay in the shop over this weekend! NG and SC get a buff! A lively discussion of the power level of the Deflagrator models is underway on the Balance Discussion Forums.  After some mid-week Staff discussion of your comments, we decided to buff the Star Captain and Nova Gem models a bit - the Star Captain models now have a chance to get what was previously the Nova Gem exclusive special, and the Nova Gem models have a greatly-increased chance of that special.  So we are keeping the shop open this weekend for you to pick up a Deflagrator.  

Char is working on opening the wormhole... but... 

This is a sneak-peek from one of the upcoming cutscenes in the newest Wormhole chapter of the Dragonoid saga!  Lyris has been putting together some epic scenes and we are working on quests, enemies, and ... rewards!  Thyton is drawing up something amazing, and as this unfolds over the next few weeks we think you will be on the edge of your seat!  

Minar, meanwhile, is working on an exciting top-secret project in his spare time, while keeping busy designing and animating weapons!  Awesome art, as always!

I guess that's it from me for now - I feel like I'm forgetting something I meant to tell you, other than to thank you - and I'll see you on the forums (and facebook, and formspring, and twitter...)

Tags: Maegwyn Dragonoid Saga The Traveler Star Captains 4th of July specials

SC Challenge Gets a New Chapter

"Team Loose Cannon" -  which is Maegwyn, Vivi, Minar, and blues - ROCKS! While others of the Artix Entertainment team focused on mini-game styled things for Gametastic (which you should vote on here http://forums2.battleon.com/f/fb.asp?m=18657738) Korin let me manage this week's MQ release! (The link to Korin's team's game isn't quite ready yet but you should totally check it out when it is!) (And congrats to all the Gametastic teams!)(Our team didn't make a new minigame as the other teams did - we worked on this week's release.) (I think I might be finished speaking parenthetically...) So, if you've been eyeing the "S.O.O.N. List," one thing we promised ages ago was to update the Star Captain Xtreme Challenges in the SC Club. For a long time, blues has had ideas for this, and we made it happen! This is part A of (planned for 4 parts) and it is brutal... blues wanted this to be more than just a challenge, so I wrote up some storyline that will gradually reveal over the parts of the quest.  Vivi coded all the monsters and the reward heads - Minar designed, drew, and animated the heads!  

The one thing about which I'm less than satisfied is - what happens when you lose.  You have to click more buttons than is really ideal - and you're going to lose a LOT before you win... Warlic & Korin took some time to assist wwith this puzzle - this is not just me being new at quest-building - so far, we haven't been able to put the player where I envisioned, upon losing a battle.  I did put in lots of skip buttons otherwise, so while there are some extra clicks if you lose, you should be able to get back into the challenge reasonably quickly to give it another go.

Non-Star Captains have the intro to the Knife & Spork's new Challenges to keep playing for this week. The Traveler is still in town, so everyone still has time to purchase weapons. Next week we've got some beautemous new weapons for Hero's Heart Day from Minar and some replayable MQ Hero's Heart quests as well!

Enjoy your weekend and I'll try to catch up with you on the forums! 

Tags: Maegwyn Star Captains

The Traveler Returns

The Traveler returns to Soluna City with new weapons (art & animation by Minar, specials designed by blues and coded by Vivi) - something in his shop for NSC, Star Captains, and Nova Gems.  If you are a Star Captain you may choose to go on an exclusive quest!  This quest will be available when The Traveler comes to town so if you upgrade to Star Captain in the interim, you will be able to access this quest when he comes back.

There is a new bossfight - Vivi designed and coded the AI.  I think it's genius!  Korin suggested a detail in this enemy's defeat animation that puts a pretty awesome finishing touch on this gem.  

The reward is sweeet - another work of brilliance brought to you by Minar-blues-Vivi!

I hope you like the quest - Korin is starting his grand plan of getting help more with quest building. He started by giving me a tutorial, using an existing quest as a sort of template (so you will recognize a lot of elements) and I used that to set up what I guess you'd call the 'bones' of the quest.  Things like how it decides which enemies you will fight, and when - choosing from a variety of things you might find if you don't find the thing you were looking for - basically how the quest is set up.  Then he took that and added it to The Traveler's menu choices - so that you can actually, y'know... access it...

I actually used real paper, colored pencils, and scissors to set one thing up.  Then I took photos of it and showed it to Korin so he could see exactly what I meant.  But it would be a spoiler if I were to explain exactly what. You'll just have to play the quest to find out... It was really fun to write and set up and I even got to do some coding without making too many mistakes!  I learned a lot from the little things.  

Korin also chose from your suggestions and we've given the first Verified Mecha its proper chassis and weapons names.  Thank you to everyone who participated - I don't have the list of names of everyone whose suggestion was chosen but I know astro999 came up with the part of the chassis name that shows which level it is. Congratulations and thank you!

And I know I had a lot more to say but I should probably take a break at some point here.  So thanks for playing, and have a great weekend! (I'll probably see you on the forums.)

Tags: Maegwyn The Traveler Star Captains