Portal Knights - A Message To Our Console Crowd

Welcome back to another Portal Knights Community Blog. It’s been a while, right? Well, as you may or may not know, things have been pretty busy here at 505 Games and Keen Games, as we prepare for our biggest update yet! There’s a lot we want to talk about, so take a seat…

OUR PORTAL KNIGHTS COMMUNITY

Before we discuss our upcoming console update in too much detail, we want to start things off a little differently. We want to talk about community.

For those who don’t know… *Takes off hood* I’m Antonela, Senior Brand Community Manager here at 505 Games. You might know me as PK_CM505 on the forums, @AnimatedAnt on Twitter, or simply as Portal Knights across our other community channels. I take care of the Portal Knights community across all our social channels and forums, with the help of one of the awesome Game Designers at Keen Games, Daniel Koecher. I’m an actual human being, as is Dan (no robots or bots here) and it’s my job to respond to your questions, plan content, keep you in the loop with our plans and try and turn those frowns upside down when you’re feeling frustrated or angry. I’m the one you talk to daily across our community channels and the one you shout at when you don’t get a response as quickly as you’d like. (Don’t worry, I can handle it!) 😉

I’ve taken care of the Portal Knights channels since the start of 2016, so from the very beginning of our journey. This community matter to me and the entire team here! Every tweet / message / video / screenshot you send our way means a great deal. We LOVE that so many of you care enough to take time to communicate with us, daily. As a Community Manager, that means more than you will ever know! I wake up to so many positive messages each day and they really do put the biggest smile on my face. (As cheesy as it sounds) So please, don’t stop being awesome!

Of course, as mentioned, it’s also my job to handle negative messages and we’ve certainly seen an increase in those over these last few months, understandably. It’s actually really upsetting as your CM to see our players frustrated / disappointed and while I will always be open and honest with you guys, I know we don’t always give you folks the answers you want to hear. 🙁

As many of you know, we took the decision as a team to follow a slightly different development strategy with console, to launch these updates in the quickest way possible. Here’s the thing, our team size is small, very small! It’s very hard to explain in detail why we’ve followed the strategy we have BUT please try and understand, game development isn’t easy, things do not happen at the press of a button and we have to think about submission too. The team are brilliant though and have been working flat out to bring this shiny new content to console as quickly as possible.

To our console crowd, please remember, we are gamers ourselves. We know EXACTLY how you feel. We can totally understand why you’ve been so frustrated. But we hope our latest update will make up for the long wait you’ve had to endure. What’s more… This update will be completely FREE to download! You’re going to get the Adventurers, Creators and Villainous update at no extra cost whatsoever.

As many of you know, we are going through the submission phase right now. Once we’re approved and ready, then we will announce a launch date. Hang on in there, the wait is almost over!

But what can you expect as part of this update? Well, let us fill you in…

CONSOLE UPDATE FEATURE LIST

– Creative Universes have been added

o The Universe Selection menu has been updated to allow the creation of “Creative” universes.

o Creative universes have a few different rules:

– Islands can either be created from a selection of presets or copied over from other universes.

– Everything is minable with one hit.

– Every game item, like blocks, props, etc. are available in the creative inventory and can be used freely.

– The character can fly, initiated by double-jumping.

– It’s always daylight.

– There are no enemies.

– There are no quests or events.

– There are no loot drops.

– Placing and mining distances are longer than in adventure mode.

– Falling from an island induces no penalties.

– Remaining under water doesn’t cause any damage.

– Three new bosses have been added – the Slime Queen, the Knight Hunter, and the All-Watcher! Quests in Port of Caul (1-07), Witchwater (2-12), and Sea of Stalks (3-06) will lead you to three epic battles. (Regeneration required.)

– New Towns

o Fort Finch (1-03) contains a town filled with new quests, NPCs, merchants and much more to discover!

o There is a new merchant at Fort Finch that sells mannequins. Mannequins can be placed anywhere and can be equipped with the player’s armor and weapons to show them off.

o “Palm Bay” (Island 2-01) is now called “Landlubber’s Leap” and hosts a new pirate hideout!

o Landlubber’s Leap offers:

– New NPCs with additional dialogs and quests.

– New rewards for the player.

– New merchants with a mixture of old and new items.

– New pets.

– New hair and beard styles.

– New building blocks.

– The Ranger’s Guild “Bodkin’s Point” has been added to Hintertown (2-03) along with new quests, NPCs, merchants and much more to discover!

– In existing universes the “Regenerate Universe” feature may be used to make this new content available.

– New Items

o Several new home décor props have been added, including bathroom furniture, kitchen-themed items, cage doors, potted plants and awnings.

o Water pumps and drains are available. An unlimited water source item is in Creative Mode.

o Players can now craft three different types of gift boxes containing items from a pool of resources, such as valuable crafting ingredients, furniture sets, vanity items, etc.

– These gift boxes can be given out by players as prizes after a challenge or a tournament.

o Traps are now available for Rangers to use against enemies.

– Weapon and Armor Progression

o Several new weapons and weapon variants have been added.

o Weapon progression has been reworked. Players now have more choices of weapon type per player level and the weapon progression is better aligned with the player’s progression through the islands and the crafting materials found there.

o A new type of Epic Chest spawns at the end of dungeon crawls which contain special weapons which are otherwise unobtainable.

o All armor has been reworked

– Many armor pieces are now dropped from normal dungeon chests instead of appearing as recipes at crafting stations.

– Armor has been reworked and rebalanced to better align to the new drop system.

– Two additional “end of game” armors for each class have been added.

– A new upgrading station at the Sanctuary allows refining mid-tier armor into high-end armor.

– Rings and Capes have been rebalanced and are now dropped as loot from epic chests and bosses.

– One new high-end Cape for each class has been added.

– NPC Features

o There is a new NPC type that will allow the player to change their appearance.

o Certain NPCs can be picked up and be relocated to almost any location.

o Info on NPCs can now be found on the map. Islands will list names and types of NPCs present as well as whether they are relocatable.

o NPCs now give the tutorial. This should help new players get off to a smooth start. In order for these new NPCs to appear, Squire’s Knoll (1-1) needs to be regenerated.

o NPC encounters have been added at various locations throughout to help guide new players through the game. In older universes the “Regenerate Universe” feature will add the new encounters to previously visited islands.

– Other Features

o A “sit” emote has been added to the emote menu.

o Furniture can now be interacted with. The player can sit on chairs, thrones, benches, etc. and lie down on beds. When lying down on a bed, time will speed up.

o Pets can now be placed in special pet homes. These homes can be purchased from Funny Jongo and must be placed before pets can be added to them. Pets will roam freely about their homes.

o Enemies now take more damage when being attacked from behind.

o Crystals now have seedlings, like plants, and can be grown in their native biomes.

o Loading screens show awesome gameplay tips.

o All bombs, artifacts, and potions (except health and mana) are now crafted at the new Alchemy station.

o A “Smart Camera” option has been added and enabled by default. The Smart Camera will automatically track the player and position itself behind them.

o New side-by-side chest menu! When you open a chest or other container, you’ll now see a handy side-by-side view of your backpack and the chest, along with shortcuts for mass item transfers and stacking.

o Consumable items and recipes can now be used directly from your backpack (via the More Actions menu).

o Completed events now grant XP and gold.

So there we have it, here’s what you can expect once we’ve passed submission and ready to launch. We’ve not included bug fixes and changes here, but watch this space! We’ll be publishing full patch notes at launch. If you’ve left us already, we hope there’s enough here to bring you back! We will happily welcome you back with open arms. And if you’re still with us, thank you! Thank you for sticking with us. Your support means absolutely everything to us.

A lot of TLC has gone into making this our biggest and best Portal Knights update yet! We cannot wait for our console crowd to get hands on and let us know their thoughts. As soon as we have a confirmed launch date, we will communicate that, rest assured.

In the meantime, if you have any questions, please leave them in the comments below or message us across our community channels and we’ll do our very best to answer as many of them as we can!

PLEASE NOTE – Nintendo Switch users already have access to the Adventurers Update content. Be sure to check it out if you haven’t already!