Dev Update: October 2024

Hello Cambrians!

Excited to share a quick update today from the development team on our upcoming plans for Early Alpha, as well as some sneak peeks of upcoming content. We've been working towards this release for a couple months now, and we're finally ready to announce some upcoming dates:

• Early Alpha (Testnet) - October 26th to 28th
• Early Alpha: Gold Rush (Mainnet) - November 1st (10 days), tentative

Season 0 of Gold Rush will be a major milestone for us - we've been working on various different iterations of a risk-to-earn crypto MMO for close to two years now, and we're finally at a place where we have a few core game loops + an interesting economic metagame that we feel is worth shipping and testing at bigger scale than our limited playtests to date.

Gold Rush (for those who aren't familiar) is a high-stakes game of risk and reward set in the world of Cambria that forces players to compete + cooperate across a complex economy to extract and cash in as many rare Artifacts as they can find (or steal).

Season 0 will be a fixed-length season designed to:

1. Push the economy to its limits on Mainnet: We want to see how our current design handles large-scale economic activity with real ETH at stake, tracking key data points on Artifact trade-ins (Royal Favor), gold sinks & sources, and resource flows. We also want to see how the Grand Exchange handles in-game trading volume across multiple worlds and how the market evolves.
2. Ramp up to multiple worlds and thousands of concurrent players: This is our first step toward building gameplay at scale, for a broader and more casual audience. Before taking Cambria to a (much broader) web2 audience, we want to make sure we are ready to handle the operational and technical load.

Similar to the "Leagues" system in Path of Exile, we plan to ship major releases as new Seasons, each with their own economy, prize pool, and rewards. Characters, collectibles, achievements, and leaderboard standings from each season will eventually be integrated into the "forever" persistent Cambria world as onchain profiles, linked to the player's Cambria account.

Early Alpha for Gold Rush will be live on both the Ronin and Blast blockchains, with full support for all the integrations (wallets, infra, etc.) in both ecosystems. Players will be able to seamlessly play and interact with our contracts regardless of which chain they set as their default.

In the meantime, here's a sneak peek at some of the recent things we've been working on, game content wise:

1. Viceroy Systems for Early Alpha

Our Viceroy (sponsoring) system has been massively reworked for Early Alpha launch. Viceroys are nobility from the Old World who sponsor adventurers on risky expeditions in search of Artifacts, jostling each other for influence and Royal Favor leaderboard placement and putting their massive treasuries at risk to claim the lion’s share of the riches in New Cambria.

Viceroy powers include:

• Creating Guilds and sponsoring entire groups of players with ETH
• Controlling trade routes and resource access
• Engaging in high-stakes smuggling operations to bring back incredibly powerful (and illegal) weaponry that gives their guild an edge

During Early Alpha (Season 0: Gold Rush), we’ll be experimenting with a few early Viceroy mechanics to test the role they play in driving the economy. We think that building more macro ETH deploy opportunities on top of each season (prediction markets on guilds, speculative loops etc.) is the ultimate goal for Gold Rush once we prove out the core gameplay - derivative markets are usually 10x+ bigger than spot markets, and onchain functionality along these lines is a great way for us to drive the $10m+, $100m+ volume on top of the ingame economy.

2. New Regions: Dark Forest and Swamps Expansion

We’ve expanded the world Cambria with two new Tier 3-4 regions, with substantially expanded mid & late game content.

• Dark Forest Expansion: A sprawling, ominous region almost entirely covered with thick forests that limit player movement and visibility. Players will need to dodge traps, death cults, and the Butcher King himself.

• Swamps Expansion: Deeper in the swamps, one can find bogs, environmental hazards, poisonous plants, and the dangerous Wyrmkin. Exploration here will require resourcefulness and careful planning.

P.S. Some more sneak peeks of new Bosses & mini Bosses (Broken trine, Hidden Valley / Megatur open world dungeon, Shroom Lord, Stone Golems):

3. Combat Redesign & New Weapons

We’ve made significant updates to combat mechanics, introducing new weapons, damage types and special attacks. Our goal with this pass was to create a more dynamic and strategic combat experience, where players have more depth in their choice of build and are forced to adapt their strategies, gear, and PvM methodology with the type of region & NPCs they are encountering.

• Melee Combat Styles: Players can now switch between multiple combat styles per weapon, with each having a unique niche in both PvM and PvP combat - Pierce (stacking accuracy on single targets), Slash (heavy bleed damage), and Crush (stuns & armor penetration).
• Special Attacks: We’re now finishing out the Early Alpha scope for advanced weaponry with special attacks, ranging from area-of-effect damage to powerful single-target burst, creating more opportunities to combo for lethal damage.

4. Tutorial Island

No MMORPG is complete without an engaging onboarding experience - to support this, we've built out Tutorial Island as the gateway into New Cambria. While on the island, players will get a streamlined introduction to the game’s mechanics, lore, and economics, ensuring that both seasoned players and noobs understand how to get started with skilling, PvM, and PvP.

5. Engineering Rework

We've reworked our Engineering skill to expand the range of use cases for Engineering contraptions, streamline the crafting pathways for engineering parts, and integrate the skill deeper into the game. We've also added a new high tier Engineering contraption called the Auto Ballista, which if left unanswered, makes combat xp and loot farming extremely lucrative.

6. And much more..

Coming soon to an Early Alpha near you!