Behind The Scenes Player Owned Ports
This week we take a first look at player owned ports and Mod Moltare tells us about his perfect weekend - Thieving.
Player owned ports is a resource and time management mini-game, you will build and outfit your buildings,
your ships and your crews, to go on voyages to the newly discovered Eastern lands, and bring back fine loot and new in-game items.
As your ships progress further in the Eastern lands you'll discover new regions
which come with new voyages, new resources and new aspects of the storyline.
Voyages take place in real-time, which means that you can set your ships up, decide where they're going to go fire them off
and while you wait for them to return you can go about your business in the rest of the game.
You'll begin repairing and improving your player owned port by talking to the old Partner, the original owner of the port,
who is getting on a little bit, can no longer run the place by himself and needs a hand from someone with the sort of skills that our players will have.
The port is accessible from its own portal in Port Sarim.
In essence the Eastern lands have been lost for years, there's a sort of gold rush going on
as adventurers flock eastwards to see what they can learn, to see what they can acquire.
The game play of ports is very strategic, very front loaded.
You'll be choosing destinations for your ships to sail to,
obviously each of those voyages has its own hazards and its own rewards, for which you'll need to equip you ships
and equip your crews on the ships with the best combination for the greatest chance of success.
The strategy in all this lies in choosing appropriate voyages, in hiring and firing crew
so that your roster is as strong and diverse as it needs to be, in choosing what to unlock next
and in choosing the layout of the equipment on your ship.
Obviously there's a certain aspect of luck in this but with skill you can minimize how much that will affect you.
As your ships explore the Eastern lands you will find forgotten scrolls containing the knowledge of how to create new reward items.
There's high level armor, there's very high level food - the best food in the game,
and there are new scrimshaws which are equipped in your pocket slot and which confer bonuses on a number of skills including non-combat and combat.
To being interacting with player owned ports you'll need level 90 in at least one of;
fishing, herblore, runecrafting, prayer, thieving and slayer.
To see everything port's has to offer you'll need over 90 in all of those.
To craft the reward items you'll need over 90 in the associated skill -
melee armor requires level 90 smithing, magic armor requires 90 runecrafting, and so forth.
Player owned ports is large, very large.
The new systems we've put in, the amount of balancing that is required, the new story, the new lore, of the Eastern lands.
We've done a number of updates recently for our lower level players,
we wanted to produce something for our high level players and give them something to get their teeth in to.
I've always been happy to see player owned ports as a spiritual successor to the managing miscellania mini-game,
it's obviously much higher level, the rewards and stakes are higher and it has more depth of strategy available.
I'm very proud of this update, the way it looks, the way it plays; the way interacting with it feels.
I think players are going to very much enjoy the strategic elements of the gameplay,
I think they're going to very much enjoy learning more about the Eastern lands that's been a background topic of discussion for many years now,
it's all come together beautifully so I'm hoping people will go and check it out.
Next week behind the scenes gets all Christmassy as we investigate a stray in a manger. Awww.
