For Starmourn and beyond! A small update on what’s going on behind the curtain –
New Tutorial Status
Work is progressing nicely with #NewTutorial, and I really look forward to unveiling it to you all sometime this month!
Prep work on the new tutorial began quite a while ago over lengthy discussions with current players and recent newbies to better understand what new players truly needed to know before taking their first steps on Omni Station.
The goal of the new tutorial is to cover many lessons in a brief span, hopefully taking a new player an average of 10 minutes to complete.
In completing the tutorial, new players will:
- Learn how to engage with the world
- Be prompted with the chance to develop a roleplay-based backstory
- Gain an understanding of unique functional systems including wetwiring, cloning, marks and purchasing, etc.
- Have the opportunity to learn about history, racial lore, tradeskills, and more
- Learn and practice the basic attack and healing abilities of up to all five classes
- Equip/Wear their first pieces of armor and weaponry (plus a mod if they explore a bit)
- Get the chance to preview larger systems such as performance and modding
- Pet a gorepup!
The new tutorial also includes a robust NPC generator including NPCs of all races operating with unique interactions based on a variety of personalities, descriptions, and dialog cues. Through this, each player experience within the tutorial city will be unique, though of course it’ll follow the same general course.
Those of you who participated in the Round Table talk a few months ago may recall me mentioning a future installation: The Academy. This will be an NPC-run continuation of the new player experience, serving as a location for returning players to pick up gear and get re-oriented, as well as serving as a place for players to learn advanced skills such as hacking, space flight/combat/mining, additional combat kill paths, etc.
The Academy is going to be a long-term project and will not be released at the same time as the Tutorial – I’ll be taking some time to do some worldbuilding in between and monitor how the new tutorial land is being received before building this out.
The Main Quest with Cassandra will be temporarily put on hold once the New Tutorial comes out, pending a decision about where to plug it back in. It will be back, though! We love Cass and co too much to ever let them go.
Photo by Nguyễn Trường
Website Updates
Class Skills Page
Thank you Garryn for creating a live-updating class skills page!! Players can use this to learn about class skills outside of the game, including actual skill information and lesson costs.
Check it out: https:www.starmourn.com/game/skills
Archaeology Records
Coming soon! I’d like to start building out an Archaeology Database of RP records since y’all have been so powerful about exploring those wildernesses with your teams to recover ancient specimens and artifacts. If you have a research session you’d like registered on the website, please send me a Pastebin file or log of the research on Discord or as an in-game message.
Make sure everyone involved in the research is on board with it being shared!
Photo by Felix Mittermeier
Events & Worldbuilding
Secret Event & Zone
Marra is hard at work planning an absolutely STELLAR event for y’all in game, including an expansive new hunting zone full of unique quests and intrigue. I really can’t give any more information and risk spoiling it, but you should all be VERY excited.
Hyndoh Prison
Serpentine lower body undulating, a Rags-affiliated Selassian prisoner moves west.
A place of treachery and scandal, the prison warden is working on making its halls accessible to the Sector’s bravest spacers. Stay tuned for more details after the New Tutorial’s release.
Newbie Questing
Based on some additional feedback from new players, we’re looking to expand on low-level area quest opportunities. We’re most interested in quests that build out game lore, including food quests to learn about cultural meals, unique hunting quests, infiltrating organizations, etc.
We’ve got a few spoons in the pot on this development, but we welcome all players to come up with ideas as well! If you’ve got a thought about building out a newbie area, feel free to shoot me a message on Discord or in game.
We’ve been hard at work behind the scenes and look forward to sharing more content with you in the days, months, and years to come here in the Starmourn Sector. <3
Starry-eyed and thriving,
Your Starmourn Admin Team
A big thank-you to Picram and Shunvaz for inspiring our recommended playtime event, and to everyone who participated in this lore exploration!
Recap: After conducting a very newbie-friendly overview of Starmourn’s modern history, Picram and guests were given an open invitation to meet with a Lha Ti named Ambassador Mhoyul to learn about the mysterious Ibyssian Brotherhood straight from the space-whale-diplomat’s mouth. This was a rare opportunity to engage directly with one of the most ancient living races in the Starmourn Sector, and we on the Admin team had a lot of fun letting some old secrets slip.
As a result of this player-driven event, we’ve released a new zone – on the oceanic homeworld of the mysterious Lha Ti no less. If you’d like to check it out the new areas of Ghenla, you can access them via Rensu Station. Just be aware of the dangers! Remember, the Ibyssian Brotherhood is seldom appreciative of outsiders, so I hope everyone is on their best behavior!
Players seeking new alien hunting grounds might consider the Amber Ridgeline above the Panzan Marshes suitable for MIL50+ characters.
While Ambassador Mhoyul has returned to the deeps, future visitors can speak with one of her peers – Ambassador Ylexei – for a little more info about each of the races that make up the exotic and isolated Ibyssian Brotherhood.
New and Veteran players alike – Join us Saturday at Sync-1 for an open training session with the Lord Commander of the Song Dominion and a guest star from the admin team!
We’ll be covering topics including, but not limited to, historic lore and sector-wide politics! Bring your questions and puzzling inspirations to strike up debate amongst your fellow spacers.
Check the new UPCOMING LIST in game for the start time and consider adding yourself as Interested on the Discord event for a handy reminder leading up to the start.
Not in the Discord yet? Join us where the conversation (and the science-magic) happens: https://discord.com/invite/H8m7pFV
Recommended play time: April 1st!
The Admin behind Argus’ tiny paws has had a change of heart and is going to be a gorepup from now on. Say goodbye to that cute fluffy kitten and his tippy-tappin’ paws. We’re upgrading to floppy ears and big slobbery keyboards.
APRIL FOOLS! Or is it?
Log in any time on April 1st (0:00 – 23:59 UTC) to find out, plus claim something naughty-or-maybe-nice in the chaotic spirit of the holiday.
With a mischievous glint in our eyes,
Your Starmourn Admin Team
It’s that time of year, folks! Time for some egg-celent adventures out in the Starmourn Sector.
Fufu Tiggywink and Derika Larsson have once again taken their respective places on Omni and Paskal Station and require your help to hunt the Sector for chicks, lapines, and eggs! Remember that you can always WALK TO to walk to named NPCs, so WALK TO FUFU or WALK TO DERIKA!
Keep in mind that you can only do one quest at a time – You’re working with two enemies, after all! After completing a quest, you can continue turning in lost critters and eggs to earn bigger and bigger prizes at the end of the event period.
These two will be available for you to assist until Sync on Monday 4/8 (8pm Sunday 4/7 EST), then you’ll have until Sync on Monday 4/15 (8pm Sunday 4/14 EST) to talk to them and collect your prizes.
Happy Easter / Egg-Event Week to all!
Your Starmourn Admin Team <3
The Admin team has been working hard on the new tutorial, testing along the way and taking care to ensure all your feedback is being brought into account. We’ve broken the tutorial out into three key phases for development, loosely summarized as follows:
Phase One of the tutorial is COMPLETE! This covers the initial entrance into the Sector and covers some key commands including checking the map, checking for exits, probing / opening / wearing items, emoting, a brief introduction to Wetwiring, and interacting with dialog menus. Players will also meet a new NPC mob with some… cute?… no, quirky?… no, dangerous?… We’ll call them “unique” behaviors.
Phase Two is ongoing, but the area is mapped and most of the NPC characters to be met are created, described, and progged. In this section, new players will have the chance to learn a significant amount of lore about the sector to inform and inspire roleplay for their characters. Along the way, they’ll also learn about the bigger systems available to engage with, including a holoperformance of a brand new song by The Vurboks, and some more core skills including interacting with shops, managing their Wetwiring, setting descriptions, slotting mods, and potentially a few other bits that we’re still deciding on.
Phase Three is going to be challenging. This is the final phase of the tutorial where players will meet a Class Legend an- actually I won’t share anything else just yet, but it’s gonna be great.
img: Two black pyramids almost touching at their bases with a burst of light emerging from the center.
In this new tutorial, no two players’ experiences will be exactly the same. The citizens of TutorialLand have significant customization, including several personalities spread across every player-race and physical customization that even includes a rare chance to pull from promo customization options! I’m also working on building out branching implications to the choices players make while in this area which will affect the outcome of their time there.
As a reminder, MainQuest with Cassandra will still be available for players to interact with, it’s just going to get a plug-in further a little further along in each players’ story. We will also be moving the introduction of certain lessons and system introductions to a new zone tentatively named ‘The Academy‘. This will serve as the place where new and returning players alike can come together for a refresher course on key lessons.
In between sprints on the tutorial, we’re also finishing up Marra’s new CRITTER rework, building out a TASK system to supplement the tutorial and give factions a way to structure newbie development, working on RP Request submissions, and even eyeing a few new hunting areas that we’re hungry to release out after the tutorial project is complete.
Once the tutorial is ready, we’re going to open up Tutorial Testing to existing players so everyone has the chance to experience it, but also so we can get feedback and work out any kinks before new players dive in. You’ll be compensated very well for your time, of course.
So… yeah! That’s what we’ve been working on. We hope you’re as excited as we are!
Sincerely,
Your Starmourn Admin Team
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