Skyward Summit, the next major update for VR MMORPG Zenith: The Last City, has a new preview of the lifeskills and crafting changes on the way.
For more than a year now, Zenith: The Last City has added some major content, with a number of smaller updates and patching up bugs along the way. Not only have they added new platforms, including as a launch title for PlayStation VR 2, they added new technology support as well.
With a still-vague release window of “Q2 2023” still on record, the team has been releasing previews of Skyward Summit in the past couple of weeks. The latest is a video of how the Ramen VR team is expanding crafting and resource gathering in the game. Woodcutting and Mining are two of the new skills coming in the update, and the video shows both and what it looks like for a VR MMORPG to have these kinds of skills.
Woodcutting and mining both involve you hitting the tree or the rocks you’re extracting stuff from. In the clip we see encouraging statements like “keep going” and “good hit!” when the person strikes a rock to mine ore.
Crafting in MMORPGs is something that has been around for a long time and most of us probably have lots of experience doing it. but what does it look like in a VR MMORPG? Clearly, you're not just going to press a button and wait to see what the end result is like.
From the video we see how you access a list of items to craft, and their required materials. There are still encouraging statements happening when crafting, but also directions to “hammer with precision” as the completion percentage goes up with the work done. It's certainly looking like an active process, involving adding the right materials at the right time. It’s looking like those instructions on precision, and some “weak hit” or “perfect timing” messages could potentially mean that technique might affect the final quality of crafted items.
With testing already going on, and that Q2 date approaching, more is undoubtedly on the way about this next chapter in Zenith: The Last City.