Beginning tomorrow, December 7th at 12 PM (Noon) US Central Time, and running until Sunday at 10 PM Central Time, we’ll have our next Beta test for OrbusVR: Reborn.

There are a few blog posts out already that highlight some of the new content that you’ll be able to test, so be sure to check those out:

World PvP, Battlegrounds, Public Events Spotlight

Shaman and Zones Spotlight

Launcher Download: https://rebornpatch.orbusvr.com/file/orbusvr/update/RebornLauncher-2.13.zip

Patch Notes

All existing characters have been wiped. You will need to create a new character.

You will need to create a new character. Locomotion Reverted the change which penalized you for sliding during combat, causing your Stamina not to regenerate when not sprinting. It now works just like it did before. The “grid” system for allowing you to teleport around the game world has been completely reworked. It should now work much better particularly on slopes, should allow you to get closer to places such as large mountains, etc. Mounts are now available, and when you create a new character you will start with a mount in your inventory that you can equip.

Combat Combat balance has been re-worked since the last patch. In general, fights should now be shorter than they were in the last test, and monsters should feel a little easier, especially at lower levels. The scaling system has been re-worked into the Matched and Unmatched content system, see below for more details. Fixed bugs which were causing Runemage spells and other projectile-based abilities to explode instead of fly over some world objects. Added the new Chaos enemies race to the world. The Rusher Corrupted Nature enemies have been re-worked. Exploding ones will now explode as they are about to be killed rather than right when the reach you. The radius of the explosion has also been greatly reduced, and you now have much longer to dodge it.

Leveling and XP We are beginning the introduction of the revised XP curve with this beta. Note that the new XP curve is weighted heavily toward the missions system, public events, and daily bonuses such as dungeon queuing (which isn’t in-game yet). As such keep in mind that once you get to around Level 5+, you will definitely want to be doing missions. The amount of XP you get for killing a monster is now constant depending on that monster’s relative value to you. Monsters that are Unmatched and less than 6 levels below you no longer give XP (although they do still drop loot and you can still complete missions that require killing them).

Gear and Itemization You will now see the Level of a piece of a gear in the tooltip. The “maximum attack per level” hidden cap has been removed from the game. Instead, you now cannot equip an item unless it is your level (or lower). Gear now has a small chance to drop above your level. So for example, you might see a Level 4 weapon drop when you are Level 3. You’ll have to gain one level to equip it. There is also “Plus Gear” in the game. For example, you might see a weapon drop which is “3 +1”. This is a Level 3 item (so you can equip it at Level 3) but it has higher stats than a normal Level 3 item. In the full game, these plus items will drop from dungeons, shard dungeons, and raids. There are now Silver Foil and Gold Foil versions of armor which drop in the game. These are rarer versions of each style of armor that has a visual effect applied to it (but the same base stats). These will show up as separate items in the Transmog Station as well, so you can choose to outfit yourself in a mix and matched way.

Bard Fixed a bug which wasn’t allowing you to hit the notes on your Bard instrument while you were sliding. Re-turned how the Bard aggro generation works in general, so it should be more consistent now. The Bard now has the ability to throw their mallets at enemies to do a small amount of damage. This also serves as an interrupt attack. To throw, just grip and release while making a throwing motion while you have your mallet out in your hand. Note that the Bard Super, talents, and some ability orbs still aren’t in the game. We’re also still planning to make further improvements such as allowing you to change the position of your instruments based on your feedback, we just didn’t have time to get it all done before this Beta.

Shaman The Shaman class is now available for play. You will find a Beginner’s Shaman Mask and a set of totems in your inventory when you create a new character. Just equip the mask to your weapon slot and then equip the totems to your class item slots to play. Note that the Shaman shield totem and Super and talents are still not in the game yet.

World You will now begin the game outside of Highsteppe near the new training area when you create a new character. The city of Hightsteppe is now available to explore. Just open the door near either gate to enter. Your Player House has been expanded with an additional four rooms. In the full game you will unlock these rooms over time, but for now feel free to explore them all. The Lamavora Frontier zone is now available to explore, and you’ll find a new race of enemies there to fight as well.

Public Events Public events have been added to the game. These are group-based encounters which spawn throughout the world and encourage players to work together to complete the challenge. There are currently two public events available to play, both in the area around Highsteppe. You will see a beam appear in the sky when the event is getting ready to begin, and when it is currently active. Public Events currently give XP as a reward upon completion. Eventually they are going to reward a small reward cache which contains XP, dram, and other useful items.

User Interface The menu system has received a styling overhaul to make it more appealing. The laser-pointer based system now works correctly with scrollbars.

Missions There are now 15 missions available from the various NPCs in Highsteppe, including ones for Dragon Pet racing, monster hunting, and critter capture. In the full game, you will have an opportunity to do each mission once as you level through the game, and then a set of weekly missions on rotation at max level. For now we’re just providing all the missions to do at once.

Dragon Pet Racing Leaderboard times have been reset since last Beta. We’ve also hopefully fixed the ways that some of the races could be “cheesed” to get unreasonable times. A new golden ring has been added to some courses which takes 5 seconds off of your time. Consider what path you want to take carefully!

World PvP The new opt-in World PvP system is now available to test. To enable World PvP, change the setting in the Settings tab of your Player Menu while you are in Highsteppe or your Player House. Once enabled, World PvP will give you a 10% XP bonus from all sources (e.g. missions, public events, etc.) However, if you die you will drop all tradable items that you are carrying. There is no longer a concept of a “bandit” or a “bounty.” It’s assumed if you enable World PvP, you are opting in to a free-for-all world where anyone can attack you at any time. Note: We do not currently have safe zones added to the game, but we will be adding them around graveyards (to prevent spawn camping) and the training area. So keep in mind that if you enable World PvP in this beta, you may be subject to griefing that will not be possible in the full game.

Battleground PvP The new Battleground PvP system is now enabled, with our first Battleground, The Valley. This is a point-capture game where you claim a series of points on the map to generate points for your team. To capture a flag, just stand next to it. If players from two different teams are next to a flag, it will show as Contested and its status will not change. A scoreboard after the match has ended will show you stats from the match, including kills, deaths, and damage and healing done by each player. The join the Battleground, queue up from anywhere in the world using your Social tab under the Activities menu. Once the Battleground is over, you will return to your previous location automatically. The Battleground is 4v4. This may not be the final size in the full game (we’d actually prefer 5v5 or larger) but we decided to go with a lower number for this Beta to give more opportunities for testing. If you queue up as a group, the matchmaking system will attempt to keep your group together. Note that rankings and rewards for completing the Battleground are not yet implemented.



Matched and Unmatched Content

Based on the feedback that we received from the community during the last test, we are making some major changes to the way that combat will work in the overworld in Reborn. We are calling the new system “Matched and Unmatched Content”.

Matched Content

Matched content will replace the old dynamic scaling system that we were previously using. This content will still scale, but it uses a new system that scales from -4 to +4 levels relative to the monster. As an example, if there is a monster that is Level 20, and you are Level 5, your damage will be scaled up to do the “minimum” damage of a Level 16 against that monster, and the monster’s damage will be scaled down to do a “maximum” of Level 9 damage against you. You will see these monsters show up in the world as either “Very Easy” (-4 or lower), “Easy” (-3 or -2), “Even Match” (-1, 0 or +1), “Difficult” (+2 or +3), or “Very Difficult” (+4 or more).

This system preserves the desire of the community to have a power fantasy while leveling. Rather than having all monsters in the overworld be “the same level”, we have gone back to a more traditional MMO setting where the monsters in the zone closest to Highsteppe are Level 0-3, then farther away they are 4-6, etc. all the way to Level 30 in the farthest zones. This means that a new player starting the game will essentially be facing a world full of “Very Difficult” monsters. As they level up, more and more of the world will open up to them and become an “Even Match”, and then even “Easy.”

However, by capping the maximum difficulty at a -4 disadvantage, it should still be possible for newer players to be escorted by higher-level players into some of the farther-out zones. So for example if you have a new player who has a mission that you also have, you can do that content together without the newer player being one-shot. The goal is to make it so that Very Difficult content is essentially impossible to solo, but a group of players could tackle it together.

Likewise, as a solo player you should now have no problem going back to lower-level zones without fear of the monsters giving you much trouble, although you will still not be one-shotting them, and fighting 3 or 4 of them at once would be a bad idea.

Public Events, Dungeons, and many overworld areas (such as those featured in monster hunting missions) will feature Matched Content creatures.

Unmatched Content

Unmatched content, on the other hand, is content which has been assigned a specific level and which will not scale at all. So if it’s a Level 30 monster, and you are Level 5, you will be killed before you have a chance to really do anything. On the other hand, if you are a Level 30 coming back to harvest resources guarded by Level 8 unmatched enemies, you will have no problem dispatching them quickly and easily.

The overworld will now feature some unmatched content as well. In particular, places where there are monsters guarding resources such as ore or harvestable ingredients will feature unmatched content. As another example, there is now a giant corrupted nature brute which wanders around in the Highsteppe area. This mini-boss will not aggro players unless attacked first, but it is a high-level unmatched content creature, so it will require a high-level group playing effectively to defeat it. Unmatched creatures have a special symbol in addition to the difficulty symbol on top of their healthbar.

Our goal with this content is to provide a further version of power fantasy, in that there is now content in each zone that you can’t do the first time through, giving you something to look forward to as you level up and come back to tackle these tougher challenges.

In addition to this overworld content, Shard Dungeons and Raids will be unmatched content.

Testing This Content

In the current Beta, the level cap is 15. We want to show a “slice” of how this new system will work, so basically we are treating Level 15 the same as Level 30 would be in the full game. As such, you will see the wandering giant is around Level 15. The first zone goes up to Level 5, the next to Level 10, and the last to Level 15. These may not be the actual spreads as they will exist in the final game, but hopefully that should give you an opportunity to level up to “max level” and then return to the starting zone and get a feel for how the content will change as you advance through the world.

Note that we are not planning to wipe characters from here on out until we reach a point in the Beta where you can import your existing characters from the main game, so if you put in the time now to get to 15 you should be good to go for a bit.