Hey everyone!

Reborn Beta 4 begins tomorrow (Friday, February 22nd) at 12 PM (Noon) US Central Time. Here’s the patch notes:

Scoundrel

The Scoundrel discipline has been added to the game. This is a high-DPS, medium-range class which has a high skill ceiling.

Utilizing their gun which can sling curved bullets along with their magical deck of cards, the Scoundrel rewards fast-paced, quick-thinking play with a penchant for showing off their skills.

For more information, see the preview blog post.

Note that talents and Super have not been added yet for this class.

Runemage

The Runemage Level 30 Talents have been added.

After you select either talent, you can perform a new two-step spell during combat every 15 successful spell casts (as indicated by your blue class bar underneath your health bar).

The ritual is the Resurrection Ritual rune followed by the Polymorph rune.

Triplicity is a single-target DPS burst damage buff. You will generate two orbs near your body; for each successful spell cast while the buff is active, these orbs will mirror your spell, casting it two additional times for a lesser amount of damage than a full-strength spell. You guide all 3 spells just like normal.

Contamination is an AoE missile which will afflict all enemies in range with a debuff which will greatly increase the duration of DoT debuffs cast on those targets.

Warrior

The Warrior’s Level 30 Talents have been introduced, with one implemented and one still being worked on.

The Throw Down Talent introduces a new mechanic whereby you can slam your shield into the ground, sacrificing its remaining health to gain a powerful buff depending on which shield you have equipped. The Large Shield will grant you a defensive buff to increase your armor, while the Small Shield will grant an offensive buff which increases your damage. You must have at least 25% shield strength remaining to use these buffs, and the duration that the buff lasts is based on how much shield strength was left when your shield was broken.

The Bubble Shield Talent (which is not yet implemented) will create a defensive bubble shield on the battlefield. Party members inside the bubble will gain an offensive damage buff, and the shield will absorb projectile attacks, lasting either until it expires or the damage absorbed breaks the shield.

Musketeer and Ranger

The firing system of the Ranger bow and the Musketeer gun has been re-worked. Essentially now what you see on your screen should match much more closely what the server sees in terms of where your arrows/bullets are going, when they hit the ground, etc.

This should solve any remaining issues with Musketeer orbs flying through the ground improperly.

This should also solve issues around firing your bow/gun and hitting targets while actively sliding around.

Other Classes

The Paladin Ground Slam attack has been fixed and should now work properly.

Note that classes are still not balanced and some may feel more “OP” than others.

Character Creation

When creating a new character, you now choose the Discipline that you want to begin the game as. This allows us to give you an inventory at the start of the game that makes sense for that Discipline type (e.g. you will have arrows pre-equipped if you are a Ranger, etc.)

If you want to unlock other Disciplines, just find the NPC in Highsteppe, who will gladly give you a beginner weapon and the associated class gear for each class for free.

You can also now re-do the appearance of an existing character by pressing the “Change” button if a refresh is available. For testing purposes, all existing characters and all new characters are automatically given a refresh.

You can now use the laser pointer to select character customization options instead of needing to grab and throw them onto the character (although you can still do that if you want!)

New Dungeon: The Sewers

Our second dungeon has been added to the game. See the Preview Blog Post for more information.

To access the dungeon use the other dungeon portal down near the base of the tree in Highsteppe.

The Dungeon Queue will randomly pick between both Dungeon 1 and Dungeon 2.

PvP Honor Ranks

When you kill another player in combat, either in Open World PvP or PvP Battlegrounds, you will now receive Honor Points based on their Honor Rank.

Each week, the server will tally the participation in the Honor Ranking system and award ranks based on the number of points earned.

For the Beta, the system will run each day instead of once per week.

Titles

The Player Titles system has been introduced. You will see a new “Change Title” button on your character screen in the Player Menu.

You can choose a new title at any time. There are a couple of test titles that all characters start with for testing purposes. In the future titles will be unlocked by achievements, quests, and more.

Overworld

The Scav enemy race has been added to the game and can be found in various zones.

The Overworld layout has been finalized. Note that there are currently 5 overworld zones (not including Highsteppe), some of them have been re-shuffled since the last beta.

3 additional Public Events have been added to the overworld.

You will now receive XP from all monsters, even if they are more than 4 levels below you, if they are matched. Unmatched monsters will continue to follow the old rules.

You can now see the beams for the status of Public Events in-between zones.

You will now receive a scaling amount of XP for Public Events even if you fail them based on how close to completing it you were.

There are now multiple styles of all gear types and weapons that will drop in the Overworld, as well as a Dungeon-specific set of each.

Gear itemization has been finalized and you will now begin to see “minor affixes” appear on gear.

The maximum level in the game has been increased to 25. Note that for testing purposes, Level 30 talents can currently be selected at Level 20.

After reaching the maximum level in the game, you will continue to acquire XP which will continue to fill up your XP bar; filling up the bar completely will continue to reward you with a Large Reward Cache.

The amount of XP that you receive for killing monsters has been increased compared to the previous Beta test.

The city of Highsteppe has had its layout reworked to be more compact.

We’ve heard your pleas and have re-worked the rain to hopefully be better

Shard Switching

There is a new menu in the Social tab of the Player Menu which allows you to view any other shards which are active for the current zone you are in, and if another is available, to switch to it (provided that there is room).

Auction House

The Auction House is now available for testing. To list an item, go to the new Auction House chest in your Player House and place items in it. After you do so, you can set the minimum bid and buyout bid to list the item. There are currently no fees for listing or AH cut for successful sales for testing purposes.

To buy something on the Auction House, use the Auction House NPC which can be found currently in your Player House and in Highsteppe. You can place a bid on an item or buy it out immediately.

If you win a bid or a buyout of an auction, the item will be delivered to your Delivery Chest in your Player House. If you are outbid on an Auction item, the bid you placed will be returned to you via your Auction Chest.

Missions

There are now over 100 missions to acquire across 7 different activities, including Fishing, Monster Hunting, Critter Capture, Dragon Racing, PvP Battlegrounds, Public Events, and Salvaging.

Missions will now unlock as your highest-level class increases. You can choose to do any mission at any time after it has unlocked.

Fishing

Fishing has been re-added to the game. Speak with Chef Lethrow to get Fishing missions and also acquire your first fishing pole.

The Lure Crafting Station is now working again in the Player House.

Note that now you equip the fishing pole to one of your tool slots, and the fishing lure to your other tool slot, in order to fish.

Fishing is no longer a separate class; instead as a tool, you can now stay as your primary combat class and have the correct health, stats, etc. You can even drop your pole and fight if you are attacked.

Gathering/Crafting

The Lure Crafting, Alchemy, Artificing, and Transmog stations are now in and functioning.

Harvesting ore now requires you to hit the ore several times to harvest it. Herbs still require only one strike. Gatherer dragons will now only gather Herbs, not Ore.

Responsive Health Bars

Health bars are now more responsive in-game. You can now point your finger at far-off monsters to have their health bar/damage indicator zoom in closer so you can see it.

If you are close to a monster you are attacking and cannot see their health bar, the health bar will move automatically to float at the top of your vision, great for melee characters/tanks.

Miscellaneous

The Selfie Bot will now correctly captue the skybox in photos.

Sliding and Teleporting have been re-worked to be less CPU intensive, which should solve some of the juddering issues experienced last test while frequently teleporting.

Sliding collision detection is now based on the position of where you are standing rather than the center of your play space.

There is a new option in the Player Menu which allows you to disable pressing the Grip button to Sprint during combat.

Fixed a bug which was sometimes causing players to be stuck at a black screen after switching between zones (e.g. leaving Player House).

FPS Drop Bug

As some of you have experienced, there is a bug with Unity currently where the FPS of the game will drop precipitously for seemingly no reason. We have finally tracked this bug down to the following:

issuetracker.unity3d.com Unity IssueTracker - [VR]EarlyUpdate.XRUpdate's CPU usage increases by about... Steps to reproduce: 1. Create a new project 2. Enable VR 3. Build for standalone with "Development Build" and "Auto-Connect Profiler...

The TL;DR of the bug is basically, if your companion window the game on your Desktop monitor doesn’t stay the active, focused window, after around 5-10 minutes the game will drop down to 45 FPS and remain there until either you focus the window or you do the “Ultra -> Low -> Ultra” graphics settings fix.

Note that for example if you maximize your window, then put a Chrome browser window in front of it, that could cause the bug. If you have Discord open in another browser window on your second screen, that will cause the bug. Etc.

So basically, pay extra close attention and make sure your OrbusVR window is always active and focused while you are playing, and you will not see the FPS Drop bug happen anymore. We are actively working with Unity to try and get them to fix this problem, as it’s affecting all VR games built on Unity using a version greater than 2018.2.