The Black Death

[Asid]

A catastrophic plague has left a trail of destruction across 14th century Europe. Survivors confront sickness and scarce resources in a land rife with banditry. Attempt to find a cure, acquire power, learn skills and adapt to survive. Those lucky enough to survive have come to call it ‘The Black Death'.


Website: Here
Steam: Here
Forum: Here
Wiki: Here
YouTube: Here


Multi-player/Online Multi-Player

Trailer

About This Game



A catastrophic plague has left a trail of destruction across 14th century Europe. Survivors confront sickness and scarce resources in a land rife with banditry. Attempt to find a cure, acquire power, learn skills and adapt to survive.

Those lucky enough to survive have come to call it ‘The Black Death’.

CAN YOU SURVIVE THE BLACK DEATH?
Take on the role of a medieval man of science, a plague doctor, hell-bent on finding a cure to the horrific plague spreading across the land. Study the effects of the infection through experiments and autopsies on man and beast alike, with the ongoing risk of your own infection - and in danger of being lynched by townsfolk who believe science to be heresy!

FORGE YOUR OWN PATH
Take advantage of different realistic medieval professions: Crafting fine armors to protect yourself from deadly raiders as a Blacksmith, taming animals and farming the land as a Peasant, tricking players with counterfeit goods as a Bandit, and much, much more.

A GRITTY MEDIEVAL MULTIPLAYER WORLD
Embark on a journey through a dark and gritty open-world depiction of a plague-infested Medieval Europe. Witness the plague spread in real-time through the population including your friends and enemies whilst exploring bustling towns, striking castles and plague-infested mines in your search for the cure to this deadly infection. Interact with hundreds of NPC’s; trade with merchants and hunters, clash with crusaders and bandits and be wary of infected beggars.
You don't have to face these horrors alone - team up with other players and work together to prosper or become a menace to the world and take everything you can! But be careful who you trust…

Try to rebuild society by building a homestead by yourself, or with friends. Develop your building skills and turn a rickety shack into a powerful estate, complete with an ultimate medieval research lab to help you perform your experiments and find a cure.




Key Features in Early Access -

•   Enter the world as a plague doctor, looking for a cure to the deadliest pandemic of the Middle Ages.
•   Learn skills from a number of different professions to help you survive.
•   A huge open world (8km2) based in 14th century Western Europe. Explore thriving castles, bandit camps, busy ports and abandoned mines.
•   Learn more about the plague through physical examinations and autopsies of infected animals and humans.
•   A living world with hundreds of NPC’s and day / night cycle. Trade with merchants, hunt animals, talk to townsfolk and fight bandits.
•   Over 300 in game items. Craft over 40 different weapon and armour pieces, using medieval tools and utilities.
•   Buy deeds to houses, upgrade them, and hire staff to work on your estate.
•   Large scale multiplayer, with up to 50 players per server

[Asid]

V0.26 Update Status
The Black Death - [SIG] Emily

Hello adventurers,

As stated in our Dev Blog last week "we are going to be aiming to have V0.26 releasing into a Live status onto our Official Servers on Friday 30th March. This is not set in stone as we cannot plan for issues that may arise on the day of the updates release"

Sadly, we have been experiencing some technical issues as we have uncovered some underlying networking issues that we need to resolve before deploying the update and also performing a full character and house wipe on the Live servers.

We know you are all excited to play the new V0.26 update and all it has to offer. We can't wait to see what the community creates with our new building system, seeing Guilds being created across the servers and also siege battles with player made kingdoms and fortresses! We are excited to see some epic structures and Guild Halls being made in Mercia.

The team have been working non stop in the office since Friday to get this update out to you all, and are in the office working hard into the nights this weekend to get V0.26 out to our Liver servers. To confirm, there will also still be a FULL character and house wipe on all our Official Servers.

We apologies for not posting out an update sooner, as we did state in our Dev Blog last week that we would keep you all informed.

As always, Thank you all for your patience and continued support to The Black Death, it truly means so much to us all, and we want to get the new update out as soon as we can.

// The SIG Team

[Asid]

Update V0.26 - DOMINION
The Black Death - [SIG] Emily

This update has a lot of new features, systems and changes to The Black Death. We have a brand new Building System, New Siege Equipment, a Guild System and lots of other features and fixes as part of this update.



WARNING! THIS UPDATE WILL INCUR A CHARACTER WIPE AND HOUSING WIPE

As stated in our last weeks Dev Blog, this update will incur a wipe of ALL characters and ALL player houses, including Kingdoms.
A Note For Admins Of Community Hosted Servers
If you own a Community Server please note that you will need to update your server with the latest update. To do this you will need to update the folder/files on your Server or update using our Steam Server Build in SteamCMD.

If you do not have the latest update to The Black Death your server will not appear in our in game Server Browser.

NEW BUILDING SYSTEM

Our new Building system is an overhaul from our Player housing system. You can now build without needing a Land Contract. You will need to find Buildable Land to be able to place structures down in the world.

Our new Building System is a complete overhaul from our previous Player House System. Players no longer need to find a House Plot and then use the Land Deed at the house workbench to obtain a house.

Players can now build anywhere in the lands of Mercia that is flagged as "Stable Ground". You will see this icon on the left of your Quick Slot Bar to indicate that you can build on this land. The ground is also clearly marked with a brick like floor texture.



Purchasing a Land Claim (previously known as the Land Contract) from a Town Earl will ensure that your land cannot be touched by other players, this also protects access to your doors to keep others out!

When placing a Land Claim a large white hologram will appear along with the workbench itself. Adjust this within the Stable Ground and then place it down to "claim" the land as your own.

You can also join Land Claims together, much like a grid system, to expand your ownership if you have built structures that extend the radius of your Land Claim.

If your structures are damaged such as your House walls you can repair them. Simply highlight the structure you want to repair, hold down "E" and then use the Context Wheel to select "Repair" the Gold cost will be shown based on the amount of damage that was caused to the structure.




Here are the patch notes in full:

New:
•   New building mechanic implemented
•   New land claiming mechanic implemented
•   New Guild mechanic implemented
•   New Mason profession recipes
•   New Siege weapon/catapults have been added: Trebuchet, Mangonel,
•   Ballista
•   New emote set while crouching
•   Anti-Speed Hacking Third Party Software

Updated:
•   Now using hardware cursor making mouse movement faster and smoother in menus
•   Added speed hack preventions
•   Player owned guards require guild membership to place and will adopt your guild colours, they will regard anyone not in the same guild as the enemy
•   Updated item interaction. Pressing “E” will interact with it and holding “E” will bring up contextual menu of options you can perform
•   Updated icons for emotes
•   Updated settings UI to include guild menu (which is key “O” by default)
•   Updated map to show the top scoring guilds on that server
•   Now mouse cursor changes look when you hover over certain elements (buttons, text input etc)
•   Seeds are no longer place via the context wheel, instead they are placed like building items (via the quick slot bar)
•   In character create made per profession attribute increase gold to stand out more
•   Made profession increase on attributes in the inventory easier to read
•   Updated version number
•   Updated attenuation radius of some sounds to hear things from further away
•   Updated and improved metal shader
•   Updated and polished numerous areas across the land of Mercia

Fixed:
•   Fixed bug with Heavy Crossbow recipe
•   Fixed bug with Cloth Tabard recipe
•   Fixes added for hitches when opening inventory screen
•   Fixed bug which meant if crouching with a weapon and you put it away you would be stuck in that previous weapons crouch anims rather than the unarmed poses
•   Fixed missing UI sounds in the main menu
•   Fixed a bug that caused players to occasionally be unable to interact with anything in their inventory after levelling up
•   Fixed bug where objects could get profession prefix if you hover from a person the directly to an object
•   Fixed bug which stopped attributes profession increase for Mason to not show
•   Fixed selecting Mason profession in character create filling in at the top with “Militia”
•   Fixed misc spelling mistakes
•   Fixed misc errors that slowed down cooking

Balancing:
•   Flamberge recipe was moved from Mason to Smith profession
•   Utilities have been removed from the world, players can now build their own via the building system
•   Earls now sell more land contracts for cheaper as well as selling a larger variety of peasant contracts: hunters, chicken farmers, wheat farmers and food merchants.
•   All Wood Axes and Pickaxes have had their durability largely increased

Optimising:
•   Optimisations for networking
•   Optimisations for rendering
•   Optimisations for game thread
•   Optimisations to textures
•   Optimised server performance
•   Optimised UI
•   Optimised meshes

Known Problems:
•   Sitting on chairs/using stocks doesn’t work correctly at the moment
•   Built Objects currently do not decay

As always thank everyone for playing and enjoy the largest update so far in THE BLACK DEATH.

The S.I.G. Team


To see the full release post with descriptions and images look here

[Asid]

Update V0.27 - War
The Black Death - [SIG] Emily



Welcome Mercian's to our V0.27 update!

This update adds a lot of fixes and additions to The Black Death. We are introducing an engine upgrade, to the Unreal Engine V4.19, this brings with it increases to performance and fixes to help with the recent connection issues. We have also included much needed additions to the building mechanics such as being able to destroy your own constructions with a single click!

The Unreal Engine update may clear server side data.

A Note For Admins Of Community Hosted Servers

If you own a Community Server please note that you will need to update your server with the latest update. To do this you will need to update the folder/files on your Server or update using our Steam Server Build in SteamCMD.

If you do not have the latest update to The Black Death your server will not appear in our in game Server Browser.

Declare War On Guilds!

In this update we have introduced a new Guild feature, which we teased in our Patch notes for V0.26 as an upcoming feature. You will now be able to Declare War with another guild on your server!

You can now gain Clan points and climb the ranks on your server by killing players in your enemy Guilds that you have declared war on and be the top Guild on the server.


Select guilds to attack or make peace with recent foe


Enemy guilds that you are at war with will be highlighted red including their NPC guards


Hold "E" on your constructed objects and click "Destroy" to remove them, they'll even be some debris loot left over with some of the material cost it took to craft them

Here are the patch notes in full:

New:
•   Declare war on other guilds
•   Gain guild points and climb the ranks by killing enemy guild members
•   Now using latest version of the Unreal Engine 4.19 for better performance and access to more features
•   Ability to destroy built items (if you were the person who built them, does not cover pre V0.27 update buildings)
•   Destroying buildable objects have a chance of dropping items called “debris” loot
•   New tooltip while hovering over an inventory profession gives you a list of recipes that you will unlock at the next level

Updated:
•   You can now use the right click options menu on your gold coin to take/stash specific amounts of gold into storage chests
•   If you sleep in a new bed then that becomes the new place you will spawn at
•   Removed the “Peasant Contract” reward from the tutorial as it is no longer used in-game
•   Updated the siege/catapults rotate and tilt controls allowing you to hold down the direction instead of having to click repeatedly
•   Each guild now has a cap to how many guards they can create
•   Doors Adopt the current rotation and automatically snap to door frames
•   Added a tooltip when you hover over a quick slot in inventory, which shows you the name of the item
•   Garlic resource now spawns throughout the world
•   Updated version number

Fixed:
•   Fixes added to stop players getting kicked back to main menu/infinite loading screen bug
•   Fix added for door problems: including being visually out of sync and defaulting to open after a server restart/relogging
•   Fix added to stop a bug where if you slept in a bed placed in bad place (collision wise), when you try to respawn the character would fail to spawn
•   Fixed a bug/exploit that let you get double items from shops
•   Fixes added to utility crafting to stop a periodical problem where a craft would take the ingredients but would not give you the resulting item
•   Fixed a bug where you couldn't build in the same place as an object that had been destroyed
•   Fixed a bug where building a “Stone Gatehouse” would give you a “Large Wooden House” instead
•   Fixed a bug which caused a “Palisade Wall Corner” to actually craft a “Palisade Wall”
•   Fixed a bug which caused the cross-hair to stay up in the dissection screen
•   Fixed a bug which caused building objects to take a while to update e.g. constructing, showing health damage, destroying etc
•   Fixed a bug with the weapon shader
•   Fixed a bug that made planted crops float
•   Fixed A.i sitting on no benches in starter town
•   Fixed issue that stopped your steam name being filled in across the UI
•   Fixed a bug that meant the manor house didn't have health and couldn't be damaged
•   Fixed shader problem with the underwater post material
•   Fixed the network cull range of the siege weapon/catapults so that they don't visually pop in as much any more
•   Fixed the network cull range for beds so that they don't visually pop in as much any more
•   Fixed a bug where you could get stuck unable to look around after reading a book and closing it
•   Fixed a bug with the A.I.bowmen where they would not play a reloading animation
•   Fixed a bug in the context wheel where if you look at another player who is part of a clan you would get a random weight/gold value and their clan logo would be a white square
•   Fixed a bug that made names that were too long for inventory items wrap badly (e.g. “Archer Guard Contract”). They will no longer overlap other elements
•   Fixed bugs with crafting timers across the UI which made their formatting incorrect as they counted down
•   Fixed a bug that meant you could continue to send invites to someone who was already in a clan
•   Removed a white floating cube floating in Dunstead
•   Fixed a bug which stopped footsteps sounds playing when you turn on the spot
•   Fixed a bug which caused the Ballista to not visually tilt up and down (animation wise) as you change the angle of firing
•   Fixed harsh lods on loot bags
•   Fixed character movement update errors: UpdateMovementSettingsOnServer, UpdateMovementSpeedOnServer
•   Put in some fixes to help stop the wrong skills showing when you level up and it shows you what you unlocked
•   Fix added for a bug that could cause you to get kicked back to main menu when using the inventory button via the context wheel
•   Fixed a bug which would let you (when you should not be able to) place down a guard without being part of a guild
•   Fixed a bug which caused guild guards clothing not to be the colours of the guild after a relog

Balancing:
•   All Recipes/Craftable Items have had their XP rewards re-balanced so its more gradual
•   Gold Ore now spawns more regularly throughout the world
•   Increased XP reward for killing harder A.I.
•   XP rewards for days survive is now more gradual
•   Rebalanced enemy Monk A.I and resources around the Bywick area
•   Rebalanced tutorial rewards
•   Rebalanced the amount for Xp required for a single skill point
•   Reduced the simple bed health
•   Removed a duplicate catapult ammo recipes
•   Increased the damage done by Catapults/siege weapons
•   Renamed catapult shot to Mangonel shot

Optimised:
•   Optimised bone LODS for all skeletal meshes
•   Removed skeletal mesh crows and replaced them with cheaper VFX version
Known Problems:
•   Guilds that have been declared war with will sometimes provide a white highlight instead of a red one
•   Killing enemy guild members sometimes does not provide guild points
•   Collision being left behind on some destroyed player built structures.
•   Sometimes the automatic door snapping to door frames on houses will be off and give a red error it just needs to be re-equipped to correct itself
•   All Built Objects prior to this update are subject to severe bugs, them being destroyed and re built will address these issues.

Unreal Engine Upgrade To V4.19



Previously, we were using version 4.18 of the Unreal Engine to craft The Black Death. This brought with it an issue with intermittent server connection issues, which arose from a bug in the Unreal Engine itself. Check this thread link if you would like to learn more about this. Part of the issues with logging into a server is to do with PC memory being overloaded by the Unreal Engine. This upgrade should address some of the connection and lag issues that are being experienced by some players

With this update, V0.27, we have now migrated to the Unreal Engine V4.19. You can read the release notes from Epic Games at this link.

We also plan to do this again to version 4.20 later this month, as there are optimisations that have been found from the game Fortnite implemented into the newest version of the Unreal Engine.

That’s all for now, thanks for reading and we will see you next time!

// The SIG Team

[Asid]

Update V0.28 - Dweller
The Black Death - [SIG] Emily



Hello Mercians, Today we have a much needed bug fix for server connection issues (stuck in loading screen) and a bug fix for collision remaining behind when certain built objects are destroyed. We also have new content including a new range of cosmetic items for your home/kingdom. This update includes the introduction of more complex recipes for late game structures like hammering nails, cutting planks and baking bricks. Here are the patch notes in full!

New:
House items:
•   Bookshelf storage
•   Wardrobe storage
•   Candel
•   Wall mounted torches
•   Boar, stag and wolf animal trophies
•   Basic, Large and Royal tapestries
other items:
•   New Clay resource scattered across Mercia
•   Wood Planks item and recipe
•   Stone Brick item and recipe
•   Forged Brick item and recipe
•   Nails item and recipe
•   Mortar item and recipe
•   Clay Tiles item and recipe
•   Purchasable Tavern Merchant


Plenty of new cosmetics to decorate your house

Updated:
•   When typing your passwords into text fields it will now hide the actual word
•   Honey in the world now has a chance of giving beeswax (for making candles)
•   Boars, Wolves and Deer now have a chance of drop their heads (for making trophies)
•   All Paintings can now be hung up
•   Updated version number
Fixed:
•   Fixed a bug which caused you to get stuck in the loading screen indefinitely
•   Fixed bugs that were affecting connection to the server
•   Fixed bugs which saturating the server with network traffic
•   Fixed bug which meant when destroying some items you own the server side collision of some building objects would not get destroyed
•   Fixed bug which mean you couldn't destroy the anvil if you were the owner
•   Fixed bug which caused you not to be able to destroy contract NPC that you had made/owned
•   Fixed steam authentication client registry issues (to give more accurate numbers)
•   Fixes added to steam api related to server numbers (client to server handshaking)
•   Fixed a bug so server now uses steam client dll to fix crashes
•   Fixed a bug that could cause LAN servers to not work correctly
•   Fixed bug which caused Large campfires, Stone Mill and the Mortar & Pestle to not show health bars and were not be able to be destroyed
•   Fixed bug which caused the furnace to have very little health
•   Fixed bug which caused the Mortar & Pestle not to save
•   Fixed bug where you couldn't make a standard chair
Inventory recipe items amounts now refresh when you open the inventory (you don't have to click on the recipe again anymore)
•   Fixed a bug with stone gatehouse which stopped some door types fitting in it


High level Masonry recipes are now more complex

Balancing:
•   Adjusted Stone gatehouse gold value to be in line with its rarity
•   Standard chair recipe renamed to “Wooden chair”
•   Wooden chair now requires a workbench to craft
•   Campfire and Large campfire now under the filter type “House items”
•   Traps have been rebalanced for a more realistic spawn timer for caught animals
•   All stone wall variants recipe resource costs have been updated with new items
•   Wood and Reinforced Door recipe resource costs have been updated with new items
•   The Wooden Tower recipe resource costs have been updated with new items
•   The Small house recipe resource costs have been updated with new items
•   The Large house recipe resource costs have been updated with new items
•   The Manor house recipe resource costs have been updated with new items
•   All Castle wall variants recipe resource costs have been updated with new items
•   All kingdom walls variants recipes resource costs have been updated with new items
•   The Kingdom Keep recipe resource costs have been updated with new items
•   Crafting Braziers now require level 19 artisan to make
•   Iron, Silver and Gold Ore resources now have a population cap however their respawn rate remains the same


Purchase tavern merchants from your local town earl and build your own pub!

Optimised:
•   Optimised steam tags for server registry

That’s all for now, thanks for reading and we will see you next time!

// The SIG Team

[Asid]

[Asid]

Announcement - Upcoming Update: Large Server/Connection Stability Improvements
27 April - [SIG] Emily   



Greetings Mercians,

The new update V0.29 will incur wipes, after numerous rounds of testing we discovered we cannot avoid loss of player built structures due to a refactoring of how the system works, on the bright side it has had further optimisations and stability that will hopefully allow many players to build much larger kingdoms without affecting connection times. We have brought some connection times down from 240 seconds to 25 with some of our latest internal testing.


Community featured build: HouserVT (Kingdom day time)


Community featured build: HouserVT (Kingdom night time)

We understand this is frustrating so we will be also implementing some new content to ease the pain such as player clothing matching their guild colours. Buildable mining camps that require NPC peasants for mass production and of course more recipes. This update will also include a decay system and new PvE servers that will allow more peaceful citizens of Mercia to build and grow without fear.


Buildable Mining Camps will be coming soon...

We hope you are excited about the improvements made to The Black Death as we are and we plan to make this update live on the 3rd of May.

Thanks everyone for playing.

// The S.I.G Team

[Asid]

Update V0.29 Loyalty
The Black Death - Smallimpact




Hello Mercians, Today we have a new update focusing on optimising and addressing issues with lengthy connection times and also some new content to enjoy such as guild colour player clothing, lumber mills and throwable torches. Here are the patch notes in full:

WARNING! THIS UPDATE HAS A NEW SYSTEM FOR BUILDING SO UNFORTUNATELY YOUR BUILT STRUCTURES WILL BE WIPED HOWEVER PLAYER SAVES ARE UNAFFECTED

New:
•   Increased server stability and optimisations
•   Reduced loading times for entering server
•   Atmosphere enhancements:
•   Day and Night Mood
•   Fog Effects
•   Rain ambience
•   Certain military clothing items will change colour depending on your guild colours
•   Weapons in your quickslots show up on your body
•   New industry buildings added: Lumber mill, store house and mining camp
•   Player built objects now have decay applied to them over time
•   Ability to set servers as PVE
•   New rat animations
•   New movement animation for tools and torches
•   New attack weapon trail VFX on single handed weapons
•   You can now throw torches which create fire areas that cause damage


Not only have connection issues and loading times been addressed but the building feature has been greatly optimised allowing for much large cities without affecting performance

Updated:
•   Plague masks now prevent infection if worn
•   When you hit a profession level with no more recipes to unlock, it will say “MAX”
•   Main menu has been smoothed out and online/Lan games are now more simple to join
•   Player built lights (e.g. candles and braziers) lights are now always on
•   Updated UI across the board with tweaks to help increase flow/smoothness (e.g. recipe size has been increased, so easier to read)
•   Updated and smoothed out some blends on player movement
•   English warhammer and long sword are now craftable
•   Tweaks to aim offsets to help with aiming weapons and punching
•   Increased the size of the debris pickup
•   Adjusted the context wheel so it doesn't accidently popup as much (when no context)
•   Updated hangable housing objects backend so they are easier to place
•   Updated version number
•   Updated collision across a range of assets to make object placement more accurate
•   Updated and polished numerous areas across the land of Mercia


Hire peasants and build them a lumber mill or a mining camp to provide yourself much needed building materials

Fixed:
•   Fixed crow material not correctly loading
•   Fixes added to crafting at utility flow/UI
•   Fixed drop object sound having no attenuation
•   Fixed bug in combat mode where the character would slowly rotate in the opposite direction from the direction you were running if running at 45 deg angles
•   Fixed start jump effort sound not playing
•   Fixed bug that caused a double landing sound to play after some jumps
•   Fixed current ‘screen resolution’ filling in incorrectly in the settings menu
•   Fixed bug causing old stamina bar system UI to pop up when you are blocking
•   Fixed bug where equipping a spade caused a fullbody animation with no movement on your legs
•   Fixes added to ai to stop them ignoring you when you hit them from distance
•   Fixed bug where crafting item amounts would not update when you dropped something
•   Fixed a bug where the stone wall corner would build a stone wall
•   Fix added to stop tooltip/options menu staying up after you press craft
•   Fix to wooden spikes missing name when you look at it on hud
•   Fixed a bug where friendly ai heavy hit reaction directions were the wrong way round
•   Fixed a bug where the settings menu wouldn’t close when you are in-game
•   Fixed the wrong icon for the storehouse item
•   Fixed LODs for pickaxe, bone club and stick club
•   Fixed small bread roll icon so it is no longer mouldy
•   Fixed stone altar collision so relic will now spawn
•   Fixed for bandits so now use the appropriate idle rather than a sword and shield one
•   Fixed a landscape texture bug


Build yourself a large external store house for mass storage!

Balancing:
•   Trophies and tapestries now stack
•   Reduced the weight of clay
•   All tapestries now require a loom to craft
•   Throne, bookshelf and wooden chair now require wooden planks and nails
•   Player built wells will now spawn water up to 60% faster
•   Rebalanced health of buildings, walls and doors
•   Seeds are around 75% lighter and have less gold value
•   Balanced the cost of NPC contracts
•   Flour now requires two wheat
•   Ai have decreased amount of delays to prevent them so easily being spammed/beaten or caught in reaction anim loops
•   Balanced weapon recipe costs
•   Increased durability on all pickaxes and wood axes

Optimised:
•   Optimised player buildable lights (candles, braziers)
•   Fixed some errors that were slowing down the cooking process
That's all of it! Hope you enjoy the new features, see you around Mercia and thanks for playing.

The S.I.G. Team

[Asid]

Dev Blog #62: Dev Updates, Game Polish, Atmospheric Overhaul, World Events System Teaser & More!
25 May - [SIG] Emily   



Greetings plagued ones and welcome to Dev Blog #62!

We apologise for the long break between Dev Blogs, we realise that it has been almost 2 months! We have been super busy and now it’s time to take a look into what we have been working on in this issue.

This Dev Blog features a lot of media in the form of galleries and video playlists to show off what we have been working on for The Black Death. Be sure to check out our comparison sliders too, these allow us to show off our new visual changes in a nice format alongside our information.

In this issue, we dive into our Dev Updates, our shiny new main menu cinematics, character creation overhaul, game polish, new world events system and loads more.


Full post here

[Asid]

Update V0.30 Professions
The Black Death - Smallimpact



WARNING: A WIPE WAS REQUIRED FOR THIS UPDATE THERE MAY BE LOSS TO YOUR CHARACTER PROGRESSION AND BUILT STRUCTURES

Good day everyone and welcome to another massive update to The Black Death. This update brings huge quality of life improvements to all areas of the game, including much needed fixes to disappearing walls and also the return of fan favorites, the Beggar and the Knight. These new professions come alongside an improved profession system which include exclusive passives, a stunning new character selection screen and profession unlocking/progression much like the old days of The Black Death.

Here are the patch notes in full:

New:
•   The Beggar profession - Start as a down on your luck poor person with restrictive but unique player visuals. Beg for survival and learn skills to unlock the profession of your choice
•   The Knight profession - Unlocked by gaining level 5 in all skills. Knights have a passive ability that provides you with bounty payments when you kill infected A.I, the bigger the better
•   Profession passives - Gather double resources as a Peasant, sell items through your own shop as an Artisan, be rewarded with double loot from animals as a Hunter, craft double food items as a Cook, repair weapons as a
•   Blacksmith, befriend bandits but have guards as an enemy as an Outlaw and build faster as a Mason
•   Profession unlocking - Each profession requires a certain skill level in order to be played, such as level 5 in farming to unlock the Peasant
•   Events - Use your map and compass to locate procedural events around the map and take part in fights with unique deadly NPCs, loot valuable items and claim relics before other players do. The current active event appears in the top left corner of your HUD
•   Animal husbandry - Owning animals makes a return with a new more intuitive system. Buy animals from a farmer shop and place them on your land, use animal feed on them to gain items such as milk and eggs
•   Localisation - Partially complete, an early version of French and Russian translations (if you spot mistakes, let us know!)
•   New starting animation on spawning in to the world
•   Partial controller support - Most of the game is now working with a gamepad, some menus such as guild and settings, are still being worked on
Coal resource


Choose your newly unlocked professions in the new character creation screen

Updated:
•   New Game Launcher - Improved visuals and functionality, including a news feed, patch notes display and server settings
•   Updated main menu cinematics
•   Overall style/mood of menus and UI have been improved and are more consistent
•   Profession/character creation screen - Now displays professions with a unique scene, animation and uniform. The character creation process has also been adjusted
•   Only doctors can perform dissections and only beggars can beg for gold
•   Tutorial Quest - The old quest has been removed and replaced with an extendable tooltip quest on the top right of your HUD. This is more helpful for learning core gameplay without being intrusive and should help new players greatly. Currently can take up to 3 hours to complete and will be expanded further in the coming months
•   Atmosphere - further improvements have been made to the graphics of the game to improve mood and provide a unique experience
•   Resources now have improved effects and provide more gameplay feedback
New enemy types
•   The map screen has more information on it. Your own location, points of interest as well as event locations can now be seen. You can now also show/hide elements as well as being able to zoom in and out for a better view
•   Building system - now provides more freedom with better control for snaps and rotations. The building effect has also been improved. A new camera position is now active when building to make it easier to see placement of structures
•   Hitting wooden structures should now provide accurate feedback
•   Combat - Hit registering has improved including a subtle short slow motion effect when a hit has been successful to provide more gameplay feedback
•   Shops - Far more items available from a larger range of shops
•   Skills have been renamed to prevent confusion with professions. Such as
•   Medical skill instead of Doctor, Survival skill instead of Hunter and Cooking skill instead of Cook
•   Your screen now desaturates more the lower your health gets
•   New craftable quality types for stick helm, stick greaves, stick chest armour, stick gauntlets and cooked meat. Example is burnt meat and sturdy stick helm. These have varied durability amounts
•   A.I. Spawn balancing, rats and other infected A.I. shouldn't spawn close to player spawns
•   More echo volumes have been placed around the world, for example can be heard when you are in churches
•   Different rain sounds will be different when you are under cover on out in the open
•   Infected A.I. now have a red X icon above their heads
•   Shop A.I. now have trading icons above their heads
•   Heavy Gambeson armour can now be crafted through the banditry skill
•   Fog will now move around the world
•   World - Large amount of new raidable areas have been introduced. Also new larger stable ground plots
•   Updated version number
•   Barricades now have destroying effects
•   Loading screen art has been updated and improved
•   Adjusted the way animations play (emotes, sickness, weapon holding) so they can only play on specific parts of the body helping to keep things more fluid
•   Adjusted location of crafting progress tab within the inventory screen to make it easier to read
•   Removed UI cooldowns for attacks
•   Blocking - You can now block with your fists, however only prevents a small amount of damage, not effective against weapons. Blocking NPCs causes a full body reaction. Blocking is now a toggle and can be held rather than a short parry
•   Relics - Multiple relics can now be acquired
•   Punching now spawns trail effects
•   Enemy NPCs now have accurate names for clarity e.g. Club Bandit
•   Weight amount in hud and in inventory is now displayed in decimals to give a more accurate reading
•   You can now move items in and out of storage even if it puts you over weight
•   Player spawn/start locations are now scattered along beaches and no longer concentrated in Freeman’s port
•   Claim zone now controls more area above and below to help with elevated placement
•   Interaction outline - objects you can interact with are now displayed with an outline, this should help the player see content easier such as a stick resource in a forest
•   You can now attack with tools
•   Camera animation upon death
•   Ranged weapons used by the player can now aim your throw more effectively


Combat has been improved again, you can now block with your hands

Balancing:
•   Decay system - the decay system is now half the damage and ticks every
•   3 days rather than every 3 hours, repair less often for less cost
•   Claim zone size has increased by 200%
•   Durability on all tools has been increased
•   Durability on all iron and silver weapons has been increased
•   A.I. gold drop amount has increased
•   Crate spawn rate for items has increased
•   Boars now have increased chance of dropping bones
•   Wood Axe recipe has been re-balanced
•   Lower tier enemies such as bandit beggars have had been re-balanced to be less difficult
•   Thread and String are available sooner through the artisans profession instead
•   Stone arrows are now lighter weight
•   Mason profession now has an additional starting bonus of 1 for the merchantry attribute
•   German Battle Axe has now the correct damage amount
•   Chamomile resource now provides more items per node
•   All types of bandages including the cotton swab have had their recipe requirements re-balanced
•   All Ingots now require coal to craft


Take part in procedural events that can spawn around the world

Fixes:
•   Built structures should no longer disappear
•   Mesh skinning improved to prevent clipping on clothing and bodies
•   Items in player storage should no longer duplicate when removed after a server restart
•   The player being infected should now spread to another player when they cough, sneeze or throw up near them
•   Player storage that has been destroyed should no longer respawn after a server restart
•   Map locations and points of interest should be more accurate
•   A.I. should no longer spam ranged weapons and throwing rocks at players behind cover/walls. They should either retreat or find a better position.
•   Player Head LODS have been fixed which should prevent harsh LODs at a short distance for the entire body.
•   A.I. now ragdoll more realistically rather than drop in an idle pose.
•   Blunt weapons/fists should no longer cause gibs and beheadings
•   Bandit arrows should no longer fall to the ground immediately after being fired
•   Fix to stop crosshair info staying up when looking at the ground after having looked at an object
•   Removed old stamina out of breath audio which could play when you were attacking sometimes
•   Fixed a bug with wet clothing which would make it flicker to full wetness for a second
•   Destroying a standard table now has a destroying effect
•   Animals now drop animal fat again
•   Secret “Bookcase Door” now shows a name again when you are looking at it
•   One handed swords should no longer have a two handed animation set
•   Culling - various objects around the world should no longer cull at short distances
•   Distance colours/textures for the landscape should no longer be bright
•   Misc spelling mistakes fixed in the UI

Optimisations:
•   Optimised and deleted UI textures
Known issues
•   Destroying/Killing farm animals that are placed by the player will drop debris loot

Thanks everyone for playing and we hope you enjoy this update as much as we have!

See you in Mercia

The S.I.G. Team

[Asid]

Patch Notes: V0.30 Professions Hotfix
The Black Death - [SIG] Emily

Hello Mercians, Today we have a update with some fixes and polish.

Most notably a fix for a server crash that was occurring when events were being cleared and a rework to how shields are used. We found having shields equipping through the quickslots was causing issues and lacked fluidity, so we adjusted the system to instead work like how arrows and armour do. You now have one shield slot (in your inventory top right). Whenever you equip a single handed weapon your shield will automatically equip with it.


Here are the patch notes in full:

New:
•   Shields now have an inventory slot (like helmets and other armour) instead of being equipped through the quickslot bar

Updated:
•   Updated drop animation/system, now does left/right hand if you have a weapon out
•   Updated pickup animations/system, now does left/right hand if you have a weapon out
•   Updated the player open door animations, now does left/right hand if you have a weapon out
•   Longsword animation base poses have been switched over to the One handed anim base pose for now
•   Updated drink, eat and heal animation/system, now does left/right hand if you have a weapon out
•   Builder placement actor arrow fades out as building gets to 100%
•   Right clicking on the inventory item in shops you now get an option to sell all stack as well as selling singularly
•   Foraging animation now uses the pickup low animation
•   Added a popup to character create screen to explain that you can't customise the beggars appearance
•   Added highlight to doors to help show they are able to be interacted with
•   Updated resources that require a tool interaction timers so that they line up with the animation hits better

Fixes:
•   Fix for server crash caused by events clearing
•   Fix added for launching custom servers through our launcher
•   Fixed bug where the HUD ability icons wouldn't update when you were using a weapon
•   Fixes for shields and weapon equipping
•   Fix added to make sure you get correct XP if crafting multiple items at once
•   Fix added to stop lag/jittering if you login encumbered
•   Fix to stop siege ammo being used as ammo for the bow
•   Fix for relic multiple spawning in events
•   Fixes to house collision
•   Fixed tools context sensitivity bug. You will now do an attack animation unless looking at the correct resource in which case it will play a gather resources animation
•   Fixed some tool gather resources animations that were not playing correctly
•   Fixed missing collision/physics assets on spades, fishing rods, sickles and animal feed
•   Fixed a bug causing some doors to not play sounds when open/closing

Optimisations:
•   Optimised building placement actor
•   Optimised networking for doors


As always, thanks for all of your bug reports and thanks for playing!

[Asid]

Patch Notes: V0.30 Hotfix #2
The Black Death - [SIG] Emily

Good day Mercians, Today we have another update with more fixes, more polish and more localisation!

One of the main focus of this updates polish pass has been on updating and adding sounds to the game, like that of the combat swings, damage hits and destruction sounds. We also fixed numerous bugs, most importantly tracking down a rare client side crash when blocking with your fists. We also spent time updating the French translations and implemented a first pass at German translations (reporting any translation errors you see will really help us out). Big thanks to Discord user rAiGa #1949 for sending us a large amount of German translations!

Here are the patch notes in full:
New
•   1st pass at German translations

Updated
•   Updated French translations
•   Updated the language swap UI to show German
•   Polished the skinning of the male and female player heads
•   Pickups now have a highlight around them, making it easier to tell that they are interactable
•   Updated weapon type swing sounds for the player
•   Updated weapon/fist hit sounds for the player
•   Updated buildings and barricades to now make sounds when they are destroyed
•   Updated per weapon type drawing weapon sounds for the player
•   When an item breaks it now plays a breaking sound based on the material of the item
•   Updated/added some misc combat sounds
•   Added sound to the bandage/heal animation
•   Updated HUD UI when building as a Mason showing the player they have a bonus
•   Updated the sun is setting UI HUD to be a similar theme as the new morning one, also tweaked some new morning pop-up
•   All the main shop NPCs should now have icons above their heads showing what they stock
•   Updated the punching sounds that the hostile NPC's use
•   Updated player placed merchants shop UI to help explain how they work (they have no stock unless the merchant profession owner places items to sell in them)
•   Updated the new merchant shopkeeper trade window to the paper UI look
•   Updated merchant trade window so that you can set the value to sell something for by typing in a value not just using the +/- buttons

Fixes
•   Fix a client based crash that could occur if you had a shield in your shield slot and you block a hit with your fists while punching
•   Fixes to the who/what killed you text and days survived info in the death screen
•   Fixed main menu UI texture clipping problem on the server browser list, updated some popup textures and fixed some small misc errors
•   Fixed main menu server incorrect password entry error popup and stopped the text input area from constantly losing focus
•   Fixed a bug which would cause a old mesh LOD to appear on the crude shield
•   Fixed quick looting with "T" when in looting mode
•   Fixed double pickup sound playing when picking stuff up
•   Fixed drawing weapon attenuation problem, so drawing weapon sounds are back in
•   Fixed male player heads that didn't have a mouth inside part
•   Fixed character create bugs to do with switching between beggar and other professions (as beggar purposely has no customisation options but other professions do)
•   Fixed base bow pose twitching when encumbered and sprinting
•   Fixed misc blueprint compile errors that were slowing down the game cooking process
•   Fixed death screen early access number being incorrect
•   Fixed resources that require a sickle not playing the cutting animation when you gather from it

Optimisations
•   Optimised animation notifies so that they don't play sounds and VFX on the server
•   Optimised shields
•   Optimised the skinning of player heads
•   Optimised VFX crows actor so they don’t play sounds and VFX on the server

As always, thanks for all of your bug reports and thanks for playing!

[Asid]

Patch Notes: V0.30 Hotfix #3
The Black Death - [SIG] Emily

Mercians we have another update for you! Today we bring you more fixes, polish, optimisations as well as further localisation.

This week we started the process of polishing the games weapon visuals, fighting mechanics and combat animations. This is a ongoing progress and we are going to continue polishing these systems over the following weeks updates. We also spent time fixing numerous bugs, most importantly tracking down and fixing some rare server crashes, increasing the games overall stability. We have also pushed forward with the games localisation. The French and Russian translations have been updated and they now include the tutorial/quest texts from the top right hand of the screen. We have also added a 1st pass of Spanish translations! We want to give a big thank you to Discord user Roleander#2197 who helped us immensely with the Spanish translations.

Here are the patch notes in full:

New
•   The server browser now shows which servers you have an alive character in (From now on when you create a character in a server the next time you go to the server browser in the main menu it will show that you have an alive character in that server)
•   1st pass localisation of Spanish Localisation

Updated
•   Updated French translations
•   Updated Russian translations
•   Updated Bone Club 3d model
•   Updated Stone Battle Axe 3d model
•   Updated various weapons to have reduced cool downs from their secondary attacks
•   Updated torch so you can block and improved it's hit FX and fire FX
•   Updated two handed weapon light attacks to pass through the crosshair making it easier to land strikes
•   Updated the players unarmed aim offsets (looking around animations)
•   Updated map to give a more accurate current player location
•   Updated the events UI to match the HUD look and added a sound when a new event occurs
•   Updated the map UI
•   Updated the voices used for some placeable NPCs, so for example the hunter sounds more like a hunter
•   Updated chicken farmer NPC to have 1 moving skeletal mesh chicken, instead of 2 static mesh ones

Fixes
•   Server crash fix for auto equiping a null item
•   Server crash fix for loot all item data name corruption
•   Server crash fix for accessing null abilities on destroyed weapons
•   Server crash fix for rare null quest item checks
•   Fixed extra fog appearing when you first spawn in
•   Fixed bug which stopped bandits walking around and performing animations when at a distance from the player
•   Corrected text in the char create screen for Knight so it says "Unlocked by getting 6 skill points in ALL SKILLS"
•   Fixed a bug where if you were using a different language the plague doctor dissection menu wouldn't work properly
•   Fixed a bug that caused friendly AI to spam their audio repeatedly while you were standing next to them
•   Fixed animals and enemy NPCs death voices/sounds
•   Fixed some NPCs that had icons to say they could trade above their head, when they shouldn't have
•   Fixes made to placeable NPCs animations
•   Fixed bug where lumber mill/mining camp peasants collision could throw you up in the air
•   Fixed map key being hidden by UI
•   Fixed a bug that caused the drop animation to be used instead of the pickup animation when interacting with lootable items and utilities
•   Fixed a looping error on the Rat up close to player idle animation
•   Fixed sun is setting days alive number being incorrect

Balancing
•   Balanced build timers for placing NPCs bought through contracts
•   Balanced player built structures to have their health greatly increased. wooden and stick structures increased by 50%, Stone structures by 100% and brick structures by up to 400%
•   Balance to structure decay interval increased by 20% decay damage amount increased by 30%
•   Balanced the maul weapon to 35% less damage to stronger structures
•   Balanced siege weapons to do 100% more damage
•   Balanced iron and reinforced doors to have 100% more health. stick and wooden doors now have a 50% health increase

Optimisations
•   Optimised the lumber mill and mining camp skeletal meshes
•   Optimised animations for placeable NPCs

As always, thanks for all of your bug reports and thanks for playing!

// The SIG Team

[Asid]

Patch Notes: V0.31 Pandemic
The Black Death - [SIG] Emily



Be vigilant citizens, a plague is spreading throughout the land of Mercia! Along with a whole host of fixes, polish, balancing, optimisations and the inclusion of another language!

This patch includes our new plague mechanic, a dynamic world infection system. If left unchecked the outbreak will spread across the land of Mercia, infecting all in its path. It can be slowed and even stopped by cleansing the dead bodies left in its wake. You gain XP and gold as a reward however it is very easy to become sick, I have heard rumours of masks that can be crafted that can protect you from the sickness….



We have been continuing work on the A.I and combat mechanics, with updates made to the animations for the starting beggar enemy and the inclusion of further ai types into the world such as the masked bandit and chickens. We have also added a first pass of Polish translations into the game. We want to say a big thank you from the whole team to Discord user Balwur#5010 who helped us greatly with getting the game translated into Polish!

Here are the patch notes in full:
** WARNING: THIS UPDATE CONTAINS A FULL CHARACTER AND BUILDING WIPE **
Due to improvements with the character saving system and world saving optimisations a full wipe to character and building saves is required.

New
•   Dynamic world infection system, an outbreak of the plague can start anywhere on the map and will continue to spread if the sources are not destroyed
•   The location of where you last died is now show on the map as a tombstone icon
•   1st Pass at Polish language implemented in the game
•   New procedural chicken A.I. with their own logic.
•   New plague mask bandits that spawn within the world infection zone

Updated
•   Updated the base punching ai beggar, animations and animation back-end, also added per ground type footstep sounds so you can hear them sneaking up on you now
•   Updated HUD to show shield icon/durability if you have a shield in your inventory slot
•   Updated the repair list at the anvil to only show items that need repairing instead of every repairable item you have
•   Updated the map screen key info
•   Updated main menu and settings UI to accommodate the Polish language option
•   Updated some undergarments to have physics simulation
•   Updated the simulation of dying A.I. so they fall more realistically
•   Updated the beggar character create screen with better lighting
•   Updated culling to be dithered fade out/blending on some meshes
•   Updated resources to have more visual states when collecting from them

Fixes
•   Fixed a bug which made you do the drop animation when you repaired an item
•   Increased Maximum concurrent sound allowance, as sounds were getting limited too much
•   Fixed a bug where the blood decals would move around on a dead body
•   Fixed a bug that didn't apply profession attribute bonuses to beggars and knights after character create
•   Fixed some overlapping HUD elements
•   Fixed weapon hit sound concurrency rate bug that could stop hit sounds playing
•   Fixed an issue that would allow honey resource to spawn
•   Fixed a bug so that now when your weapon breaks your highlighted quick-slot returns to the punching slot
•   Fixed a bug causing other players animations to react incorrectly as they got further away from you
•   Fixed pelt plague mask to not protect you from the plague
•   Fixed a bug that wouldn’t let loot bags simulate physics resulting them sometimes floating.
•   Fixed a bug that showed A.I. to “T- Pose” after death at certain distances

Balancing
•   Balanced/increased door health to match the tiers of gatehouses such as the iron door having the same health as the kingdom gatehouse, reinforced door having the same health as the castle gatehouse and wooden door having the same as the palisade gatehouse.
•   Balanced the tailor and blacksmith shop NPCs to have the same sell modifier for cost also added new items to sell within the tailor.
•   Balanced the player’s lootbag to destroy after 10 minutes instead of 5.
•   Reduced the spawn rate of wolves

Optimisations
•   Optimised UI textures and deleted unused ones
•   Optimised the order built objects spawn in on first load

As always, thanks for all of your bug reports and thanks for playing!

// The SIG Team

[Asid]

Patch Notes: V0.31 Hotfix#1
The Black Death - Smallimpact
 


Hail travellers. Today we bring you a new update full of fixes and quality of life improvements!

This week behind the scenes we have been continuing our work on combat and A.I improvements. We are making good progress but we are not quite ready to release these newest additions yet. So instead with this weeks patch we wanted to squish some issues that we knew were plaguing some people such as AZERTY key bindings and UI issues amongst other things.

We also worked on fixing numerous bugs, adding some sound polish and adding some quality of life improvements such as a server browser filter for alive characters. (Allowing you to quickly reduce the server list to just the servers you are interested in), and adding in the option to increase the size of your chat box even further.

We also wanted to say thank you to some of the community members that have been continuing to help us improve our translations! rAiGa for the German translations and Roleander for the Spanish translations!

Here are the patch notes in full:

New:
•   Added a filter to the server browser UI so that you can search for only servers that you have an alive character in
•   On PVE servers players can no longer cause damage to player built items e.g. buildings, walls, well etc (they do still degrade over time)

Updated:
•   Updated the chat box scale options in "Settings" "Gameplay" so you can now increase that chat box even more to x1.5 and x2 the size
•   Increased frequency of chicken general sounds
•   Added a repair success sound when you repair something to make it clearer that the item was fixed
•   Added a unique swinging sound for attacking with torches
•   On HUD moved the hit icon either side of the weapon abilities to make it more minimal
•   Updated the sound played when you drop an item to play a different sound per material it lands on, so for example if standing in water it will make a splash
•   Made it so you get the option to split stacks in your own inventory, when using a lootable and when trading with a trader

Fixes:
•   Fixes for bugs when using AZERTY keyboards (can now use/assign to Quickslot keys 1 2 3 4 5 6)
•   Fixes added to help stop some peoples mouse going off the right side of the screen when not in menu screens
•   Fixes added to help stop the inventory items options popup appearing not where you click
•   Fixed/updates added for German language translation
•   Fixed/updates added for Spanish language translation
•   Fixed bug which stopped you closing the guild menu with "O" or "E" shortcuts
•   Fixed some main menu bugs which stopped you "Esc" back out of some menus e.g. language popup
•   Fixes added to help with refreshing the inventory lists after you use/interact etc with items (to help stop the stack numbers being incorrect)
•   Fixed a bug that caused chickens to play human death sounds
•   Fixed a bug which caused the main menu settings not to visually represent the games current actual settings
•   Fixed a bug where if you were on a 4 ability weapon then switched to a 3 ability weapon, the 4th ability would still show
•   Fixed collision that let players walk through spawned infected carts
•   Fixed collision that made thrown torches passthrough and rarely damage infected carts
•   Fixed A.I. logic that caused guards and chickens to attack each other
•   Fixed a recipe that prevented roast meat from ever burning (when players have low crafting attribute levels)
•   Fixed a bug that made large cooked meat not stack and become normal cooked meat
•   Fixed a bug that made infected A.I. “glide” faster than their animation played

As always, thanks for all of your bug reports and thanks for playing!