Alpha 4 patch notes

Watch The Legend of California Alpha 4 dev update on YouTube. Opens youtube.com in a new tab.

Sangre Élite Invasions

The tides of war are upon us. The tyranny of Legión Sangre has been growing unchecked for too long. Now General Guerrero’s most seasoned veterans, the Sangre Élite, are on the offensive.

Elite and extremely difficult Legión Sangre forces known as the Sangre Élite will begin invading and occupying Strongholds after the server has been up for a period of time. As time progresses, the invasions will strike Strongholds in Tier 2 and Tier 3 as well and also become more numerous.

Sangre Élite enemy units are considerably more difficult than normal Legión Sangre enemies.

The invasions last approximately 5 hours before the Stronghold reverts to its previous state. During each Stronghold invasion, players can loot a special Elite Stronghold Chest. This chest is lootable independent of the normal Stronghold Chest one-time looting rules. These chests are extremely rewarding but also very difficult to get to.

Item Quality System

Along with the introduction of more challenging content, we’re updating our item system to introduce the concept of Item Quality to certain items starting at Tier 4. Players can either find higher quality items directly through looting or upgrade existing items.

Currently, the system is applied to Weapons, Clothing and Tools with a few special exceptions. Those items can be found in the following qualities:

• Common (White)
• Uncommon (Green)
• Rare (Blue)
• Epic (Purple)
• Legendary (Orange)

Tools and Clothing are generally “better” as quality improves. Weapons receive a significant damage increase in addition to more mod slots. A lower tier weapon such as the Taylor and Shaw revolver will be more viable at higher tiers if the Item Quality is above Common.

If you acquire a recipe for an Item Quality upgrade, you can use the “Upgrade” tab on your workbench. Drag and drop the item from your inventory or character sheet you want to upgrade onto this interface and you will be presented with the crafting cost for the upgrade. This interface is temporary and will be improved in an upcoming milestone.

Higher Item Quality gear can be found by doing Tier 4 activities, World Events and rarely from jobs and both normal and special vendors.

We’ve also added over a dozen Legendary Items to the game. You cannot upgrade items to Legendary quality. These items are bespoke and extremely rare. We think you’ll have fun discovering these.

Rattlesnake Junction

Originally built by Nathaniel Wright’s expedition for Moore Industries, Rattlesnake Junction served as the railway center for the entire island. But that was long ago. Now the train traffic has stopped and all sorts of dubious characters use the junction for nefarious purposes.

Rattlesnake Junction is a Medium-sized Stronghold that can appear in any Tier 2, Tier 3, or Tier 4 region on the island. It is also susceptible to Sangre Élite Invasions. Combat here is often frantic and chaotic with a good mix of interior and exterior gunplay as well as a broad range of sightlines for snipers and shotgunners alike. The non-linear design provides players with a multitude of approaches.

Updated Player Progression

The Company Goals and Player Challenges panels have been completely overhauled.

Company Goals are shared among you and your teammates. Completing these continues to be the way to progress your ranch and company through the four tiers of content. You can view your progress by pressing J (default keybind).

Player Progression has been moved to its own button on the navigation bar and is bound to L (default). This interface panel has two sections: Player Challenges and Achievements. Achievements are mostly unfinished with a few pieces of content in for internal testing. Someday these will integrate with platform achievements (Steam, Epic Games Store). But this is very work-in-progress and not yet finished.

Player Challenges now feature two reward types: Repeatable and Legacy. Once a Legacy reward is unlocked, it is unlocked to your account. Unlocked Legacy rewards will appear throughout persistence resets and will appear on characters you make on other servers. In this alpha test, Legacy rewards include:

• Clothing Variations (new models of clothes)
• Clothing Styles (new material looks of clothes)
• Tent Styles
• Piano Music
• Emotes
• Furniture Variations
• Furniture Styles

For the shipping game, these Legacy unlocks will be permanent (short of some disaster). But for Alpha and Beta testing we reserve the right to reset these unlocks for testing purposes. It’s extremely likely that we’ll be moving a bunch of these rewards around based off of player feedback and playtest data. And for Early Access launch these unlocks will definitely be reset because we want all players to be on equal footing (and not everyone has access to the Alpha/Beta).

Please note, the challenge UI is not complete. We have some features and quality of life fixes coming next milestone. For example, we know the “toasts” are spammy right now and we are working on toning that down.

PvP Updates

For Alpha 4 we’ll be putting up our PvP Server Ruleset for players to try and provide feedback. The PvP Server will be clearly marked on the server browser.

It’s difficult for us to test the PvP rules internally, so we fully expect there to be some issues with PvP during this Alpha Test (in fact that’s the point of the test). If a possibly unbalanced or unfair ruleset worries you, please join a PvE server instead. But we appreciate those of you willing to help test the PvP settings.

First, there are some global PvP changes that also apply to the limited PvP areas on PvE servers as well:

• You can now place your tent and ranch in Lawless (PvP) areas
• Items obtained in Lawless areas are flagged as Lawless in your inventory (Temp UI: little red icon)
• Only visiting your Tent Campsite or your Ranch clears the Lawless Tag on Items
• You can no longer Fast Travel to your Tent Campsite or your Ranch if you are PvP flagged
• When you die while flagged for PvP:
  • We spawn you further away than a PvE death
  • We randomize your respawn location more than in PvE
  • You will drop any Lawless flagged items
• The time to leave a PvP flagged area has been reduced from 30 seconds to 15 seconds
  • If you deal or take damage during this window, it resets the counter
• You cannot learn Lawless flagged recipes until the tag is cleared
• You cannot take a Stagecoach while flagged for PvP

PvP Server Specific Changes

• The entire island is flagged for PvP with the exception of:
  • Your Tent Campsite
  • Your Ranch
  • Outpost Vendors
  • Stagecoach
• The items on Abigail’s (PvP Vendor) shop list are more expensive
  • This is to compensate for the increase in Contraband
  • We’re planning to address the discrepancy in Contraband and Lawless Challenges and Rewards in a future milestone

PvE Server Specific Changes

• The Outlaw Strongbox and Contraband Cache world events can now take place in a non-PvP Stronghold.
• During the event, the Stronghold will convert to a PvP area
• There is ample warning that the Stronghold is going to temporarily convert to a PvP event
• Once the event is complete, the Stronghold will revert back to being a PvE area
• Developer note:
  • We wanted PvP to feel more dynamic on the PvE server. Also, because of the way procedural generation works, limiting the PvP world events to only the PvP subzones was very repetitive. Oftentimes there were only one or two viable locations for the events. This change opens up more variety.

Ping System

To enhance communication between you and your teammates we’ve added a ping system.

• By default, ping is bound to the middle mouse button
• Tap the ping button to briefly mark a location for you and your teammates
  • You can also ping lootable objects
  • You can ping enemies but the system will only report their location at the time of sighting and does not follow the enemy (by design intention)
• Press and hold the ping button for additional types of communication
  • Gather Up
  • Help
  • Danger
  • Question

Note: The ping system has not gotten a visual treatment or real UI yet. Improvements are coming! But we wanted to get an early version in for feedback and testing.

Build Mode

We spent a significant amount of time evolving Build Mode. Most of what you’ll experience in Alpha 4 is a work in progress. The interface is completely temporary and will be worked on for the next milestone. But we want to show progress as we develop the feature. It still has a long way to go before our vision is realized but we can’t wait to see the cool stuff you come up with.

• New material choice in the build menu at the top
• Wood kit pieces now just cost wood/stone to build, not lumber
• Added new kit piece art variants for existing kit pieces
• Added a few new kit pieces into the kit (more to come!)
• Building costs now show up in Build Mode while you’re building or before you place a building. It will also show the current state of your stockpile while in Build Mode for unfinished buildings.
• Added new placement and Build Mode specific keybinds

Cooking

• Meal Updates
  • Optional ingredients on meals unlock from certain kitchen accessories (molcajete, cast iron skillet, etc.)
  • More meal recipes start unlocked on the stove, while others can be purchased from various vendors or unlocked via Company Goals.
  • Pemmican no longer provides bonus duration. Instead it provides increased damage to animals and lucky find when skinning.
• Ingredient Updates
  • Meat drops have been consolidated somewhat with certain ones like felid, canid, and unusual meat being removed and replaced with “Wild Meat”.
  • Only specialty meats can be used for meals.
  • Preserves, a sweetener and seasoning, can now be crafted. Requires a molcajete for the recipe
  • Syrup now requires a Dutch Oven
• New recipe: “Render Animal Fat” allows you to convert tough meat into animal fat. Unlocked via Dutch Oven.
• Added four new gatherable ingredients: Currants, Potatoes, Yucca and Cave Truffles.

Mining

• Enemies now inhabit abandoned mines and Stronghold mines
• Steel is now crafted with Dense Iron Ore (previously was regular Iron Ore)
• Salt should be easier to obtain
• Updated procedural generation of mines for better visual fidelity and more interesting layouts

Hunting

• All predator animals’ health increased by 50%
• Birds now sometimes drop feathers on the ground after taking flight
• Dire Wolves are no longer Legendary spawns. They are very rare, however, and their pelts can be used in crafting
• Mountain Lions, Bobcats and Jaguars received an overhaul to their behaviors and animations
• Legendary Animal spawn probabilities reduced

Developer Comment: Rare animals (e.g. Great Bison, White Stag) are being seen and killed more often than desired for their specialness and rarity. We want these to be exciting and awesome when you see them, but they shouldn’t be expected. The intent is you don’t always see one in a full play through, and it’d be rare to see multiple.

User Interface

• Some default keybindings have been adjusted:
  • Y - horse panel (was L)
  • Z - Alternate Interact (was G)
  • L - Player Challenge (was P)
  • 0 - Holster/Put away (was Z)
  • G - Map (still on M too)
• Tool Selection Wheel added to X
• Toggle Sprint and Toggle Aim have been added to options
• Map icons have been tuned to increase readability while fully zoomed out
• Redid the visibility display for multiple point of interest types, especially when there are world events or teammates have already revealed a location
• Chat: added an emote icon picker

Friends

The Legend of California is better with friends!

• See which of your friends are playing The Legend of California and what server they’re on.
• Get a notification when a friend logs into the server you’re on.
• Out of the game entirely? Joining from their Steam or Discord profile will take you straight to their server.
• The Social panel now marks which players on your server are friends.

Your Steam friends are already in the list, nothing to set up. Open Friends from the main menu, or from the Esc menu while you’re playing, and press the Discord button in the panel to pull your Discord friends into the same list.

If friends aren’t your thing, Settings > Gameplay > Privacy has an option to turn off Rich Presence. When disabled, your friends won’t see which server you’re on and the Social panel stops marking you as a friend. It doesn’t hide that you’re online.

Social

The Social panel shows the players on your current server. Click any player to: Invite to Company, Mute and Report on the Players tab, plus Make Leader and Kick on the Company tab if you lead the company.

A player you mute stays muted the next time you play.

Miscellaneous

• Increased storage on many items and containers and redid stack sizes in the player’s favor
• Medium backpack is no longer crafted. It can be purchased at a Tier 1 general store for 15 bucks
• Emotes
  • UI, Camera and controls have been updated
  • Many new emotes added
  • Some emotes are now unlocked via Player Challenges as Legacy rewards (account bound)
• Characters’ mouths now move while they’re speaking on proximity voice
• Climbing on ladders has been overhauled
• The coast along Pacific Riviera and South Coast has been overhauled visually
• Small Shipwreck Hideouts can be found along the coast