The Ashes of Creation team have closed out their monthly streams of 2023 with a new look at the Ranger and an announcement of the Alpha 2 window.
Alpha 2 will be out sometime in Q3 2024. It is an incredibly early announcement, and almost bafflingly so, but we’ll surely be hearing that repeated for the months to come. Intrepid has been talking about the road to the next alpha phase for a while now, and it might be a bit of a relief to at least have a window announced and out of the way.
?? We are excited to announce that Alpha Two will begin in quarter three of 2024!?? We appreciate all your patience as we prepare Verra for this glorious testing period. pic.twitter.com/ycuzZ6y0f0
— Ashes of Creation (@AshesofCreation) December 19, 2023
The latest dev stream highlight was focused on previewing the Ranger. Bringing up a “ranger” class likely brings a few things to mind, but the team emphasizes player creativity and choices in an effort to feel like a ranger but also not be too limiting. Part of their efforts involved showing off what the skill tree looks like now, which is the first time in a while we’ve gotten that peek. With a kit that included basic attacks and combo with a short bow, and getting more creative with headshots and the use of Marks to vary your attacks and cause more damage.
Marks are effects you can apply, with things like bonus crit chance or extra hit scaling with your target’s health. Hunts, another option, are buffs that work similarly to Marks. Both let you customize how you play. Another way you can do this is by using other possibilities like imbue ammo which lets you imbue your next 10 shots with different special effects.
You'll be able to customize your character and weapon progression trees with a series of active and passive abilities and the team demonstrates the weapon tree with a short bow in the demo, but you'll be able to adjust in a variety of ways.
Barrage is fire ability dealing physical damage with a charge. Snipe is an alpha strike, best used as an opener. Headshot, well, lets you dole out a headshot via an execute ability. If you use a Mark on your target, you even lower your cooldown by 50%.
As part of these improvements, they describe how certain abilities may have changed as well as gotten improvement with new effects or new features. This includes how they implemented weighted shots, and what they're working on in animations as well. Overall, they are optimistic about how progress is going.
