Landmark’s December update brings massive changes to gameplay

Yesterday, myself and a few others were privileged enough to see the massive content update coming to Landmark. Up until now, Landmark was mostly known for ability to allow users to create nearly anything on their plot of land, out of the materials and resources found in the game world. While the game had already implemented a few monsters into the game, such as the Wisps and the plant-like Chomper, not only will players get more enemies to testle their mettle against, a whole slew of new loot and armor will complement that as well.

Dave Georgeson (Director of Development) and Terry Michaels (Senior Producer) stated that this update is easily the biggest one to date; even bigger than the launch of the Alpha. As it stands, the features for it will roll out over the next few days, but we got a chance to check out some of the great new implementations that will change the game up in very big ways.

The team wanted to implement a logical gameplay loop, so players always had something to do. This loop would consist of going out into the world, explore, collect resources, kill monsters, get loot, equip or break it down, salvage the broken down equipment to use it to craft new and better armor, and then repeat the same process over again. There are only two more pieces to that puzzle which haven't yet been implemented, which are Achievements and Player Economy, both of which are coming next year.

While Achievements might sound trivial in an age where we're awarded 50 points for punching an enemy in the face five times, Dave stated that Achievements will act as the game's guide and tutorial of sorts. For instance, when mining a certain resource, you'll get an Achievement for doing so, congratulating you, while simultaneously alerting you of the next resource higher on the tier list. But again, this isn't included in the latest patch. Let's dive into what players will actually get to experience over the next few days.

We heard you like armor, so we're putting armor in your armor

Armor is one of the main and biggest additions to the new update. Each armor will have various stats associated with them that will allow you to carefully tailor your character to a specific build. For instance, Cuirass of Vigor that we've seen during the presentation has both Energy and Armor stats, but also increases the rate of health regeneration. Dusk Mail on the other hand is more offensive and boosts the potency of Shadow abilities.

These new armor sets aren't immediately craftable, and instead, players will have to venture out and do a bit of exploring to perhaps find some in a chest or maybe dropped by an enemy mob. If you find a piece of armor that perhaps doesn't have any boosts that are useful to your character, you can then salvage them and use their materials to craft new types of armor. Both Dave and Terry stated that new armor sets will constantly be introduced in the game.

The Caves down below

As of right now, caves were up on top of the surface level, and contained very little incentive to be explored, outside of a possible chest at the very end. The caves are getting a big overhaul now too.

The biggest change is that they'll now live deep underground, and will be expanded to have multiple complex hallways and corridors, making their overall size much larger. There will also be a lot more monsters down there, which of course come with their own set of loot rewards. But the biggest change to caves was also achieved thanks to the help of the community. Community members would be able to design various pieces of environment design, such as a crashed spaceship, or a temple, and these environmental pieces will now be dispersed in the caves, making exploration and finding them a lot more rewarding.

While caves are soloable, it was advised that players team up to take them on. They won't be instanced so players who find various caves first will reap the rewards, although we were told that chests and rewards do respawn over time.

Beam me up, Scotty

Teleportation is getting a big overhaul as well, dubbed as the Layline Network. Before you could teleport to a friend or to a claim, but the Layline Network will allow you to teleport between the various layers of the world, of which there are five. Once you find these Laylines underground, you can then always teleport to them from wherever you are in the world. It was essentially explained as the teleportation system for underground.

Monsters you say?

There will be five monsters in total in Landmark when the update goes fully live. The current monsters consist of Wisps,  and Chompers. The three new monsters introduced will be the extremely agile and deadly Slaugs, which are small, green Goblin looking things, with a very fast attack, the hulking Abominations with slower melee and ranged attacks that can also root you, and lastly, the less mobile but equally deadly, Fiery Fungi. Of course, the team will keep adding new monsters over time, but this is a great step in the right direction for those that might want to adventure more than build.

And now something for the tinkerers

Easily one of the most impressive new systems that will be introduced in this update will be the Linking and Triggering feature. This new mechanic allows you to set up multiple objects around your plot, link them together, and effectively set off a chain reaction for the objects to react to one another.

I know that sounds confusing, but in reality, it's quite easy to set up. An example we got was a light sphere placed in the world, which was then linked to a trap door. Whenever that light sphere was activated, it would then set off the trap door. Another slightly cooler trigger we saw was a perpetual motion machine, where five trap doors were linked together, and each time the next one would open, the previous one would close, meaning that sequence would repeat itself infinitely. This type of linking and triggering can result in some really crazy contraptions for tinkers that are willing to dive into it and learn the systems.

Automated systems with linking and triggering means that players can have a door open automatically when they step in front of it, or have a button that opens all the shutters in your house, or perhaps even a tile that can set off a crazy fireworks show right in your backyard. I'm super excited to see what players will come up with on their plots.

Mic check, one, two

And last but not least, the game will introdoce voice chat! For those that yearn to connect with their friends or even strangers within their proximity, this will be a reality. Group and Guild chat will be supported for players who aren't in the immediate area, but proximity chat is very much an option as well. Of course, this is entirely optional, and if you choose to play the game without any voice chat, you're free to do so.

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The update is going to start rolling out today, so make sure you keep hopping on to Landmark to see all these changes firsthand!