We had the chance to check out the changes before the servers came down today

Landing today, the largest update for Landmark so far is set to shake the foundations of the game. We were lucky enough to get a guided tour of what’s inbound from Director of Development Dave Georgeson and Senior Producer Terry Michaels.

After much time spent on polishing the building tools and laying the foundations of core systems, SOE is ready to unleash some features that signal a leap forward towards the game's ultimate destination. While Landmark has provided an excellent canvas for builders, the time has come to add the elements that make Landmark a full game, and this update includes a sizeable chunk of them.

There’s so much, in fact, we’re going to break it down into sections for the sake of clarity. There will be some overlap, but it’ll save me from going insane as my nerd brain tries to communicate all the awesome all at once. Have you ever heard a 7 year old excitedly explain Minecraft to a patient relative? It would be like that.

The Cave System

There are already surface caves to run around and get lost in, but this update is going to push them all the way down through Landmark’s massive underground space. As players travel deeper through the five layers the risks get riskier as the rewards get rewardier.

Featuring developer and player-made structures and points of interest, much larger caverns will be scattered underground, these will be the best places to find monsters and are intended to be quite a challenge for a lone player.

The team want these places to feel dangerous and to have an element of risk, which is why teleporting works a little differently underground.

A temporary change for this update actually sees the removal of surface caves, so we won’t be running down into the network from the surface for a while. Access to the underground areas will be via the Leyline point at the Hub. Surface caves are due to return for open beta, when the islands will be reformed. This means there is no chance currently that players will lose a claim to a pesky cave placement.

Travel

If you’ve been following the game for as long as I have, you probably remember the days when fast travel was seen by some as a potentially game-breaking issue. What a difference context makes.

The underground volume of the islands in Landmark is too big to navigate without a fast travel system, so included in this update is the Leyline network to facilitate getting around underground. This network opens up as you discover the teleport points, with points being located conveniently in the new caverns.

Speaking of convenience, graveyards will be located underground for ease of access to the target of your vengeance. You’ll have an option of where to respawn when you die, including nearby graveyards and the Hub.

Gallery teleports will no longer work underground, and portal shards will have a cooldown of 10 minutes to the Hub and 30 minutes to a claim.

Monsters

PvE comes to Landmark with the addition of the first five enemy types. We were introduced to the fly-trap like Chomper a while ago, and we saw the ethereal Wisp and the exploding Fiery Fungus at SOE Live. Now we have two new friends to play with: the savage Falmer-like Slaug and the nightmare in ooze Abomination.

Monsters will be using some elements of the Storybricks system; some Slaug will chase you for longer than others, Wisps will tend to run away from you until they have an advantage. With more monsters added over time it’ll be interesting to see the types of dynamic encounters these behaviors will give rise to.

Non-static enemies will wander the land, above ground and below (though never on claims) and will be at their highest density in the caverns. The different types have distinct behaviors and tend to group up to defend themselves from mean players out to steal their stuff.

Armor and Weapons

Stealing stuff from monsters has a proud tradition in RPGs and is one area where Landmark is happy to follow suit. Enemies will drop valuable items, player and developer made building templates, and crafting recipes. For those that worry about this sort of thing, loot is personal, no one is going to steal your stuff.

Players can now salvage items at the new Ether Stone, located at the Hub, for the crafting materials they need for the weapons, armor and accessories they want. Items and ability collections, as well as the methods of obtaining them, are intended to lead to strong build diversity and experimentation. Dave Georgeson said the system was influenced by the collectible and situational nature of MOBAs and TCGs.

There will be four new weapon sets in the update: Obsidian Daggers, Darksteel Sword and Shield, Lucent Wand and the Crescent Bladed Longsword. Each have unique abilities based not just on the weapon type but on the Keyword system, a sort of elemental attunement. For example, the Obsidian Daggers use the Poison Keyword, meaning its abilities are poison based and would be different if they used the Lightning Keyword.

To whom it may concern, the Crescent Bladed Longsword does use the Lightning Keyword, and it looks just like the Tempest class we met at SOE Live.

Around 20 new armor types are coming along for the ride, with abilities that complement different playstyles and Keywords. There’s a lot of variety in what different pieces of gear will do, and items will certainly be judged on how they interact with each other as opposed to solely what numbers are attached to them.

It’s a real mix and match system that theorycrafters will have a lot of fun with. It will be interesting to see if a meta emerges at this early stage, or at least what strategy the community collectively decides is ‘best’.

Linking and Triggering

While there is a lot of love for adventurous types in this update, there’s still room for people who like to make things. The Linking and Triggering system allows props to interact with each other, from simple behaviors like a switch activating a floating platform to complex, looping and timed behaviors. This new feature opens up a lot of space for players who enjoy making more mechanical creations; expect spectacular light shows, mazes full of traps and Rube Goldberg machines to pop up overnight.

One neat addition is a brand new tool! The Area Tool can be used to define an area that will trigger when a player enters (or exits, or both) and linked to any prop. To help facilitate players in making awesome interactions, new props are being added with toggleable particle effects (the rocket-like flame effect is particularly cool).

The system is designed to be very generic to facilitate as many interactions in an elegant a way as possible, it already has so many applications in the right hands the mind boggles at what the creative players of Landmark will come up with.

Miscellaneous

Here are some more things that are incoming that wouldn’t fit anywhere else.

• The Vivox VOIP system: an integrated voice chat with proximity, guild and group channels; custom channels to come later. This can be setup and/or disabled in the game settings.
• Tooltip behavior tweaks: this may not seem like a big deal from the outside, but Landmark players will rejoice! This also includes an expanded tooltip for detailed information about weapon abilities.
• In response to player feedback, night is darker in the world of Landmark. You can still see well enough to navigate, but light effects are certainly more pronounced.
• Loads of new props in addition to the new particle effect emitters, including curtains and shutters.
• Bug fixes, polish and optimization, as always.

Coming Soon™

What, that’s not enough for you? To be fair, Dave Georgeson and Terry Michaels were the first to point out there are some more features that need to be in place to get that full gameplay loop going. Many of these systems are slated to appear soon after the holidays, some only just missing the cut for this giant update.

These features include the player economy, with Claim Vendors for players to buy and sell items on their claims, and the Achievement system, a means to guide players and show what the game has to offer without the need for dry or patronizing tutorials.

It won’t be too long before it’s time for the Game Master tools to be implemented, at which time the team have everything they need to go full steam ahead on creating the world and content for EverQuest Next while the players will have everything they need to build their own content in Landmark.

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