Wandering Tales Online — Alpha 0.0.4
Alpha 0.0.4 brings portal invasions to the wilderness, expands Bloodforged and Bloodmender abilities, and refreshes combat feedback across many skills. It also improves equipment effects, early-game encounters, contracts, travel visuals, and several everyday interface details.
New
World events and exploration
- Wilderness portal invasions: Rifts can open in the wilderness and lead into a multi-wave fight against Champions, with a Giant finale when the selected encounter meets the level requirement.
- Changing invasion locations: An invasion uses one selected site in its region, so the event does not appear at every possible marker at once.
- Invasion map markers: The world map now shows active invasion locations and a remaining-time indicator. The display updates as the event changes state.
- Wild Rabbit: The level-one Green Clover encounter now appears as a Wild Rabbit, with rabbit idle, movement, attack, and death animations. Existing contract progress remains compatible.
Skills and presentation
- Bloodbound ability growth: Bloodforged and Bloodmender receive expanded early abilities and level-based evolutions, carrying their progression through the later levels. Blood Mend is shared by both specializations and scales with Intelligence.
- A refreshed set of skill effects: New projectile, strike, healing, ward, mark, buff, and area effects have been connected to appropriate skills across the Mage, Priest, Warrior, Rogue, Scout, Guardian, Berserker, and Bloodbound specializations.
- Clearer gameplay moments: Level-ups, Return Rune use, obelisk attunement and travel, successful revives, and completed quests now have dedicated visual feedback.
Improved
Combat and class skills
- Cleaner weapon attacks: Large decorative slash effects and weapon trails are off by default. Compact impact feedback now appears when supported melee attacks actually damage a target; misses and fully blocked hits do not produce a hit impact.
- Bloodlash corrected for melee: Bloodmender Bloodlash is now an instant, single-target strike with a 4-metre reach instead of a long-range cast. Its damage, health cost, cooldown, and healing interaction were preserved.
- Arcane Sweep presentation: The Battlemage cone remains a 6.5-metre, 120-degree area attack. Its oversized floating arc was replaced with compact feedback on enemies actually damaged.
- Skill-specific effects: Healing, protective wards, marks, interrupts, stances, and movement buffs use effects that better match what each ability does, rather than a generic flash where a suitable effect exists.
- Hellstep dash: Hellstep now appears as a fast forward dash with a crimson-orange trail; its 8-metre movement, cooldown, and collision checks remain unchanged.
- Combat music transitions: Brief gaps in combat activity no longer make an already-playing combat track jump back to its opening. The track can resume from its recent position during a quick transition.
- Skill descriptions: Single-target abilities no longer show a misleading area-radius line when that radius does not apply.
- Bloodbound combat flow: Blood Sweep now checks for a valid nearby enemy before charging health, avoids duplicate targets, and can resume auto-attacking the selected hostile after the sweep.
Monsters, rewards, and contracts
- Less aggressive first encounters: Green Clover (now Wild Rabbit) and Meadow Rat no longer start chasing solely because a player enters their proximity detection area. They still respond when attacked.
- Larger Meadow Rat: The rat's visible model is about 18% larger, with its selection area adjusted to match. Its combat stats, loot, and spawn population are unchanged.
- Champion rewards: Champion monsters make two independent equipment-drop rolls instead of one.
- Giant rewards: Eligible level-8-and-higher Giants select one guaranteed equipment reward and make three additional independent equipment-drop rolls. Normal-monster loot remains unchanged.
- Corrected F-rank contract gold: The Swamp Hopper and Swamp Crawler F-rank goals now award gold in line with the established contract reward tiers.
- Level-grouped contract offers: The contract board groups available offers by level range and opens near the player's current range.
- Roomier contract tracker: The active-contract tracker now scrolls when needed and keeps four active rows from overlapping; progress, thresholds, and turn-in status remain visible.
Equipment and inventory
- Rarity effects on equipped gear: Rare and Epic weapons, shields, and modelled armour pieces receive more visible lightning effects. Effects follow the equipped model and respect the visual-effects setting.
- Enhancement shine: Enhanced equipment gains a staged glow that grows with enhancement level, with the established gold appearance at high enhancement.
- Compare before equipping: Equipment tooltips compare an item with the actual equipped item for its slot, including rolled stats, empty slots, and two-handed weapon/shield conflicts.
- Bag slots and capacity: The four bag slots unlock at levels 1, 5, 10, and 15. Locked slots show a padlock with the required level. Their purpose is to let you equip bags for more inventory space; unlocking an empty slot alone does not add capacity.
- Enhancement preview: The enhancement window previews the next change to relevant stats before an attempt, and clearly identifies capped or unchanged results. Costs and enhancement rules are unchanged.
- Clearer prices: Item tooltips distinguish the amount a vendor charges from the amount paid when selling. Return Rune sell values use the existing coin denominations; item prices and economy rules did not change.
- Daggers become Short Swords: Rogue Daggers are now named Short Swords. Meshes across all eight equipment tiers and the paired Short Swords have longer, wider, straighter blades while keeping their original grips and guards. Item identities, stats, and equipment rules are unchanged.
World, travel, and interface
- Outdoor distance fog: The approved distance fog is retained in the playable outdoor regions, while the world map remains fog-free.
- Obelisk map icons: Obelisk travel markers use a dedicated obelisk icon, and active invasions have their own marker on the world map.
- Chat scroll position: New chat and loot messages no longer pull the reader to the bottom if they were reading older messages. The scroll position is preserved through chat refreshes.
- Contract and vendor language: Additional contract stages, guild guidance, and vendor labels have English and Polish text.
- Character-sheet point cue: The character sheet indicates unspent attribute points only when points are available.
- Movement with modifier keys: Movement input works while using held modifier keys, unless another action owns that exact key combination.
- More reliable pointer selection: Clicking through the local character no longer selects that character, and selection stops at the first world obstruction.
- Contract targets: Contract titles, descriptions, and target names use the updated localized presentation across the board and active tracker.
- Overhead nameplates: Monster names and health bars now sit at model-specific heights. Bar visibility follows the selected-target or nearby-hostile settings, and other players can see guild names above characters.
Fixed
- Invasion waves and cleanup: Event waves advance only after their own spawned enemies are defeated; ordinary nearby monsters do not interfere with wave progress. Timed closure cleans up remaining event enemies.
- Combat-aware invasion timer: Fighting an invasion pauses its normal expiry countdown, with a short grace period after combat and a hard maximum event duration.
- Portal visibility to other players: Invasion portal presentation is synchronized so nearby players can observe the active event state.
- Character selection: The last-played character now appears first, and an account can keep up to six characters.
- Saved Bloodforged skills: The compatibility update keeps previously learned Bloodforged abilities and their hotbar assignments intact.
Known Issues
- Invasion portal material: The portal can appear pink because its material is missing. This is a cosmetic issue planned for Alpha 0.0.5; invasion gameplay is unaffected.
- Helmet appearance: Some helmets do not yet display their equipped appearance.
- Wild Rabbit hit reaction: The available rabbit animation set has no dedicated hit-reaction clip; the stunned state uses its idle animation.
- Early access to some later-tier off-hand drops: Some Rare and Epic off-hand items from later equipment tiers can currently drop for level-one characters. Whether this is intended still needs a balance decision.