Exploration

Exploration in Alpha-1.

We want to put things in the world that are dynamic, so there are reasons to keep going out and keep exploring. – Akil Hooper

Players will be rewarded for exploring.

Exploration is a huge part of the game and there are a lot of systems that are dedicated to rewarding exploration.. – Steven Sharif

• Utility skills exist that can help players discover hidden paths and entrances and may lead to discovering hidden quests.
• Certain relics can only be discovered through exploration.
• Constellations may only be seen at certain times at specific locations.

It's widespread how exploration can affect many different progression paths within the game; and it's not just about visiting an area once and never coming back, because timing matters as well. – Steven Sharif

• Treasures (and treasure maps) will enable players to reap economic gains from exploration.

• It will be easy to get lost in Ashes of Creation.

It'll be easy for you to get lost in AoC. That is our goal from an exploration standpoint. – Steven Sharif

Landmarks

200 foot tall Pyrian statues in Alpha-1.

Landmarks are scattered throughout the world, allowing players to judge their position on the map.

From a lore perspective these statues have been around for a long time; and they are representative of the civilizations that existed once on this world before. – Steven Sharif

Major visual landmarks. You can look all the way across the horizon have an idea where you're going or where to meet friends or where to meet just based on these huge landmarks in the world. – Mat Broome

Treasure hunting

Pre-alpha Mage finding hidden treasure.

Treasure hunting is not exactly "cartography", but it does involve maps that help to pinpoint the location of hidden treasures throughout the world.

• Treasures (and treasure maps) will enable players to reap economic gains from exploration.
• The more treasure a player finds the better maps they can create.
• Hints are given through rumor mills, interaction with different NPCs, and gaining access to potential dig sites.
• Treasure hunting will be a "way of life" rather than a profession.

Treasures may also be obtained through fishing and by exploring naval content.

Coastal nodes

Pre-alpha naval concept.

There will be healthy amounts of sea content within the coastlines of the continents that does not fall into the "open sea" area. – Steven Sharif

There will be nodes along the coast and on islands.

• These nodes will have specific water oriented influences and abilities, services, questlines, that relate to the seas.
  • There is a healthy amount of sea content within the coastlines of the continents that does not fall into the open sea area.
• Coastal nodes change the spawn tables of the nearby water content and can also trigger specific events.
• Harbors in coastal nodes will have quest lines that relate to the ocean and nearby islands.
• It may be possible to siege a coastal city by sea.

Island chains are part of Ashes of Creation naval content.

Adaptive content

Alpha-1 preview pirate themed dynamic point of interest.

This is actually a dynamic POI. This one will evolve as players evolve the node that it's attached to. So this is kind of its final state. – Jeffrey Bard

New points of interest (such as dungeons, world bosses, and corrupted areas) spawn as nodes develop. This content adapts to the node progression of the zone it is in.

• Additional buildings will spawn.
• Additional mobs will spawn.
  • Different antagonists/leaders with different story lines.
  • Populations will change.
• Content difficulty will change.
  • The content may be different altogether.
  • Additional quest hooks.
• Dungeons will be unlocked when certain nodes advance to certain stages.
  • Multiple nearby nodes may collectively influence larger POIs.
  • Larger dungeons will gain higher level content as nearby nodes advance.
  • Storyline objectives for players inside dungeons will depend on the story arc paths chosen through the node system.
• Drop tables in areas and dungeons will be tied into the progression of certain areas.
• POI events are events that relate to specific points-of-interest (POI).
• The location of points of interest will be the same on each server, but some servers may have limited or no access to them.

Certain dungeons and other points of interest across the map will all be affected by the server’s node development. Some dungeons will only be unlocked if nodes are developed to certain stages. The storyline objectives for players inside dungeons will also be dependent on the story arc paths chosen through the node system. The drop tables in area and dungeons will also be tied into the progression of certain areas. For example, let’s say that the humans have developed a node in Region A, and a storyline has opened up that leads players to inspect the ruins (dungeon) of a nearby area. And let’s say that this node was developed in a scientific (crafting) zone… Well before the node developed, this dungeon was accessible… But now the dungeon has propagated new monster assets that include a drop table catering to a crafting emphasis because of the development of that scientific node. And perhaps, a new boss appears in different rooms of the dungeon that includes different adventure quest starts, like a mysterious item with a storyline that can only be progressed if a node develops to the metropolis stage in a certain region, across the world. Our system is so vast, when it comes to interconnectivity and how the world reacts to the players.

Corrupted areas

Work-in-progress Alpha-1 preview corrupted area on Alpha island by Mia DelCasino.

How the world kind of reacts and changes to the nodes, you see these intrusions of corruption beginning to pervert and infest the lands; and these are obviously going to be sources by which NPC events are driven based on player progression within the world. And these sources of evil need to be addressed by the players, or else they'll grow out of hand. – Steven Sharif

Corrupted areas (zones/points of interest) can dynamically evolve with the progression of nodes and story arcs.

• Harbingers that exist on Verra as dungeons are where The Ancients are capable of pushing into the material plane. They can continue to do so under the guise of the effects of corruption as it spreads.
• These are sources of NPC events that players need to address before they grow out of hand.
  • Players need to participate in these events to stop the spread of corruption and hold back the intrusion on the material plane.
  • If players fail to address these corrupted areas, the frequency of NPC events against their node will increase. These can lead to node buildings and services being disabled, increasing the node's vulnerability to node sieges.

It can be a very detrimental thing if corruption is not addressed; and that's the intent of corruption, is to present a challenge to the players that if not addressed it becomes exacerbated and a problem over time. – Steven Sharif

• Corrupted areas do not confer corruption onto a player. Only PvP related activities lead to player corruption (in the flagging system).

To degree your mortal coil, as we call it, or what some might consider a soul from your character's perspective within this story- can be influenced and can be changed into a shape that's more in tune with corruption; and that's through doing PvP things you can accomplish that. – Steven Sharif

• Corrupted areas will likely be impacted less by seasons and weather.

When it enters the corruption state outside of weather, in that corrupt state, you will probably see a little bit less of the influence of the season because really it's adopting that corruption, which in-and-of-itself is kind of a season. – Steven Sharif

Player driven narrative

One of the major goals I feel like we have is to allow player decisions to have consequences and to have meaningful results from the decisions that they make, so it seems like people can really create their own stories. – Aimi Watanabe

The world of Verra will be the same on each server, but Nodes will develop differently. Different servers will have different narratives. Things that happen on one server may not happen on another.

• The overarching narrative of Ashes of Creation is that players are the returning children of Verra but they will not be characterized individually as "saviors".

We want as many people as possible to experience the main server Narrative. These will branch at different scales, but largely at the personal level. Where things change is at the Node level – different parts of the story will be unlocked based on where and when Nodes grow. Unlocking a part of the story in a certain way locks out progression of the story in a different way. You’ll see different antagonists, different NPCs, and different calls to action depending on what’s happening with the server at that time.

It kind of redefines what the players will experience in an MMORPG to come into a wilderness that is devoid of really any structure outside of what the community creates themselves; and then what can be created can be changed, if they want to experience a storyline that's been seen on another server, but you know you're fighting a dragon because you're near a mountain and the other server's fighting a Kraken because they're near the coast and you want to fight that Kraken because of its drop table. If you want to meta it or because you just want that under your belt: to be the server first to take out that Kraken and you have yet to develop the node there, you know it's incumbent upon you to manifest that in the game. – Steven Sharif

Server history

Map concept art.

The history of each server will be tracked and visible to players in a node's library.

We're gonna keep track of the history of the world so that we can tell people the story up to the current day. A player who's brand new, who's come in at the six-month mark can take a look at each server, what each server has done, how each server has tackled the storyline; and they can decide for themselves what community they want to join; what version of the world that they want to take part in. – Jeffrey Bard

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

• Scribes may be able to collect and record information about the events of the world as they see it from their point of view.

Libraries

Scientific node building.

At Village (stage 3) the scientific node's unique building is the Library. Players can use the Library to access information, including (but not limited to) the following:

• History of narrative events and when they occurred.
• Locations and last known quantity of gatherable resources.
  • As players report resource locations to their library, node citizens will see updated information for those resources on their map.
• Locations and inhabitants of new dungeons or POIs (points of Interest) that have spawned.
• Runic power stones for armor.
• Common armor and weapon recipes (level 25 and under).

Reports of information to the library may expire after a period of time (say one week). After which new reports will be required to update the existing information.

You'll get that shroud of war functionality for the week after a report but if it doesn't receive a follow-up report after that expiration period then it will not be updating real time. – Steven Sharif

Legendary items

There is a small RNG chance of looting rare and legendary items or crafting materials from mobs based on the level, status and type of mob. This also applies to harvesting resources with a gathering profession.

• There is a much higher chance that materials and unique recipes are dropped that can be used to craft items of equitable value.
• Legendary equipment is only dropped by Legendary world bosses.
  • Legendary equipment will have a roughly 6-12% improvement in base stats, subject to testing and balancing.

At each stage from Gatherer to Processor to Crafter you are required to have certain prerequisites before those elite types of materials can be essentially gathered, processed, or crafted. – Steven Sharif

• Gatherers must have high quality tools to gather rare resources.
• Processors must have high tier processing buildings on their freehold to produce rare materials.
• Crafters must also satisfy certain prerequisites to craft legendary equipment.

The amount of effort needed and interdependencies across the different types of players – between raiders and PvPers and crafters and even role players and the taverns and businesses: the processors and gatherers – all of those systems will likely have a component that lends toward creating or crafting that legendary item... We want to stay away from the highly RNGd system, and instead take our multiple progression paths that we are offering the players and put the construction components for achieving these legendary items within them so it encourages communities to work together because it's going to be difficult for just one person by themselves to gather everything. Not to say that they couldn't in an economic sense, by buying those components, that's possible. But achieving them from a time investment standpoint we want it to be considerably less RNG focussed. – Steven Sharif

Certain legendary items may be limited to one per server at any given time.

• If the player character leaves the server then the item will become available for acquisition through whatever means it was acquired previously.

There are absolutely legendary items and they're not items that are attained easily nor are they granted out in a volume. There might even be items that are single items that will exist on the server at any given time.

A legendary weapon is easily distinguished by its visual appearance.

It will be a very ornate and detailed weapon, more so than any other weapon or piece of equipment in the game. It will also include some awesome looking effects that won't too gaudy, you know they won't be too bright and shiny so that it doesn't look good, but they will be subtle and people will notice it and know wow that guy has this weapon. – Steven Sharif

Legendary items are not intended to be temporary.

• A notable exception to this is Royal mounts.

The fact there is only one of them... or very very few of them depending on what it is. I think that in and of itself is a balance component right and you need to make sure that the players who are striving for those legendary things and who are devoting the time energy, resources in order to achieve them are accurately rewarded... We do not intend on having legendary items that are temporary. – Steven Sharif

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

Discovery of legendary items will unlock further chapters of the Lore.

Easter eggs

Alpha-1 easter eggs

Easter eggs in Alpha-1.

• Creative director Steven Sharif's portrait is present as a painting in-game.

• Creative director Steven Sharif's sandals are present as a painting in-game.

• The Alpha island map is present as an in-game map prop.

• The Alpha island starting area quest giver Sergeant Landry is referred to as an "easter egg throwback to the original".

Alpha-0 easter eggs

There may or may not be a pair of sandals; if found will grant you some major boon or benefit... You might need a utility skill to find them.

Ashes of Creation Apocalypse easter eggs

There is a sandal out there. We will also have prizes and achievements for finding the sandal. – Steven Sharif

Visuals

• 

  2022-07-14
• 2022-06-08
• 2020-05-17
• 

  2018-07-11
• 

  2018-07-11
• 

  2018-07-11
• 

  2018-07-08
• 

  2018-02-14
• 

  2018-02-14
• 

  2017-11-18
• 

  2017-11-18
• 

  2017-11-18
• 2017-10-24
• 

  2017-10-12

See also

• Treasure hunting
• Environments
• World map
• Animal husbandry