2.2.0 Update Preview #1

While Renewed brought the rest of the game's content up to par with current standards, it left some gameplay aspects lacking.

The most problematic part of Fragment's gameplay sandbox has always been the arrow economy. Bows and crossbows are very strong, with their only drawback being limited ammo, but players could always choose to fill their entire inventory with arrows, taking away the one balancing factor of bows.

There are many issues with this system:

• Bows become a multi-tool with no drawbacks

• Player inventory size is wasted on arrows

• Newer players with less resources will instead be running out of arrows constantly, making bows/crossbows almost unusable
  
  

To address all these issues without massively nerfing bows, we are introducing the Quiver.

The Quiver is a new item, similar to the Menu item in that it is forced to always be in your inventory.

Arrows as items have been effectively removed, as the Quiver acts as your arrow storage, with it's current capacity indicated by it's durability bar.

The key changes in this new system are:

• You now have a much lower max capacity for arrows

• You now only ever use up 1 inventory slot for your arrows

• Arrows are no longer purchased from merchants, with the Quiver instead being refilled directly through gameplay

This means bows will be much less overpowered for endgame players, while being much more accessible for newer players.

The Quiver can be refilled in a variety of ways:

• Melee kills give a small refill

• Picking up arrows dropped by enemies gives a medium refill

• Dying gives a full refill

In addition, anything that previously gave arrows will now refill your Quiver directly, this includes things like Hunter's Mark and the Leftovers enchantment. There are also multiple new sources of Quiver refill.

Overall, the goal of this system was to make arrows a actually limited resource, while making sure players don't have to prepare by bringing their own arrows. This massively improves the flow of gameplay as the usage and acquisition of arrows has been balanced out. This also makes bows much more usable against enemy types which don't drop arrows on death, like the Templars.

This change will definitely be a nerf to players who previously used bows as their main weapon, but it is for the betterment of gameplay variety. Bows and crossbows will still be very strong, but you will now have to build into Quiver refill if you want to use them as your main weapon.

Legendary changes

As is tradition, 2.2.0 brings with it buffs and reworks to underperforming Legendary gear.

Today we'll be taking a look at two pieces of Legendary armor that have both been overshadowed by other Legendaries ever since their introduction in 1.0.0. Shade Hood and Cloudwalkers have both already received a a complete rework from their initial state, yet both are still some of the least used Legendaries in the game.

This time they will not be receiving complete overhauls however, as I think their problems lie more in the smaller details of their functionality rather than their concepts as a whole.

Shade Hood

Shade Hood's Smoke Bomb ability has been a very strong boss damage utility ever since it received it's rework in 1.1.0, but it has been difficult to utilize because of the low visibility within the Smoke Bomb.

The biggest change is the caster of the Smoke Bomb has greatly increased visibility through the smoke cloud.

In addition to that, the Smoke Bomb now also blinds and slows enemies that enter it. These changes combined should make Shade Hood much more usable against miniboss/boss tier enemies.

The Smoke Bomb's duration has also been increased from 10s to 15s. However, with all these changes, the ability's passive uptime was too high for all the benefits it provides, so the cooldown has been increased, but melee kills now reduce the the cooldown time of Smoke Bomb significantly. This should encourage players to use the Smoke Bomb more aggressively, instead of just saving it for boss damage.

These changes have led to Shade Hood being a very strong Legendary for melee play.

Cloudwalkers