Update 6.0.0 – The Item System Update

RELEASING 08/19/22 @ 5:00PM


The full release of Bitrealm’s item system!


hey guys, dandy here.

the next big update is here!!!

the foundational pieces of Bitrealm’s item system have been around for a few months now, but as of this update all of the item system’s building blocks will be present. for those who haven’t seen any of the item system mechanics that have trickled in over the past few months… this post will explain them all!

Items

Bitrealm’s custom items (or, what the community has lovingly called “dandy items”) vary across the board from tools, weapons, armor, accessories, and more. each have some of their own unique mechanics. they each consist of old and new stat boosts that empower the player in unique ways.

just as the items themselves empower the players, the players can empower their items making them stronger, more durable, or more effective depending on what the item is. they can do so with the following mechanics…

The Blacksmith, Gemsmith, Merchant & Jeweler

the first four NPC shopkeepers to be added to Bitrealm are fundamental in the new item system.

The Blacksmith returns from season 1 with a few new fancy tricks. The Blacksmith sports an array of repair kits to help repair items, smelters to deconstruct items, and recipes for crafting fancy new items.

The Merchant offers only items for sale and no recipes. he sells all wares ranging from leather bags to health and mana potions.

The Gemsmith sells pouches full of gems and recipes for players to reconstruct their deconstructed gems into whichever gem they choose.

The Jeweler purchases rare minerals from the world and offers recipes for shiny new accessories for your player.

at this current moment our NPC friends only spawn in “caravans” which come around at the same time and place wandering traders would usually spawn. however, as our beautiful new spawn city Port Celeste is under construction, they will be finding themselves new homes very shortly.

Reinforcements

reinforcements are the most universal way to empower an item. almost every item in the game can be reinforced.

item smelters can be purchased from the Blacksmith or Gemsmith and will deconstruct any item they’re applied to

deconstructed items result in rarity essence corresponding to the rarity of the item deconstructed. common items will drop common essence, mythical items will drop mythical essence, etc. 4 essence of the same rarity can be crafted together to make 1 essence of the next highest rarity.

combining 9 essence will result in a rarity compound, which when returned to The Blacksmith can be turned into a rarity ingot.

applying an ingot to an item permanently upgrades it and adds a suffix based on how many times it has been reinforced. (+1, +2, etc.) any item can only ever be reinforced 5 times, and each type of item receives different enhancements depending on its purpose. (i.e. weapons vs armor or tools vs accessories)

the lifecycle of an item

Gems

gems are Bitrealm’s replacement for enchantments. there are dozens of types of gems all with stats generated on a bell curve so nearly no two gems are the same.

gems can be found all across the world. they drop from mobs, they can be crafted by The Gemsmith, they can be obtained from gem pouches, etc.

gems have different types, Offense, Defense, Resource, Utility and Special. most items in the game have gem sockets corresponding to these different types, and gems can only be placed in sockets of the same type.

when deconstructed, instead of dropping essence, gems drop gem dust. this dust can be returned to The Gemsmith to be crafted into any gem of any rarity. this gives purpose to less valuable gems as they allow you to craft gems you actually want.

gems are by far the most effective way to grow in power. hunting down “high roll” gems that are best for your class and build are how you become significantly stronger.

Modifiers

gems and reinforcements were present in the first season of Bitrealm, but modifiers are brand new! they make items innately more or less powerful before being enhanced by player-intervention. modifiers add a level of variability to an item’s worth, and allow for build personalization with specific modifier strengths. a lucky adventurer can find a mob drop with an excellent modifier, or an unlucky one can find a mob drop with a negative modifier.

modifiers are classified by -3, -2, -1, 0, +1, +2, and +3 quality modifiers. -3 modifiers make your item significantly worse, and +3 modifiers make your item significantly better. there are more positive and neutral modifiers than there are negative ones, so you’re more likely to benefit from modifiers than to be hindered by them.

a very sad video of a very unlucky dandy hunting for a +3 modifier

a new crafting station, The Oblivion Forge, allows you to reroll the modifiers on an item at the cost of 4 rarity essence. if the essence is the same tier as the item and the item is capable of having modifiers (i.e. not a block or a bucket or whatever) a new modifier will be applied.

Accessories

that concludes the ways to enhance items, but before i close this post out i’d like to show you the brand new item type added to Bitrealm – accessories.

accessories are a special kind of item that only grant their stats to the player when they’re equipped in the new accessory inventory. each accessory inventory has slots for two earrings, two rings, one necklace and one belt. each of these seperate accessories grant different stats (albeit in very small quantities) and have different reinforcement upgrade paths.

they serve primarily as sponges for all your strongest gemstones, but still provide small boosts to your damage and resistances on their own.

you can access the new accessory inventory by using the commands /inventory /inv /accessory /accessories or /acc

Conclusion

with these new foundations in place the capability for players to grow in strength has just grown exponentially. there are now nearly infinite different ways to customize your character’s build and limitless potential for min-maxing.

now, with this foundation in place, it’s time to fight something that will rival this newfound power…

stay tuned!

that’s all for now, and as always i love you all and thank you for your continued support. this project has begun to blow up in ways i could have only imagined, and i hope you’re all as excited as i am to see where this goes.

– dandy

Update 5.1.0 – The Kingdoms Update


The long awaited return of Kingdom-based gameplay features comes to Bitrealm Season 2!


hey guys, dandy here.

for those of you who were players in Bitrealm Season 1, you’ll know that the kingdom gameplay was an integral part of that entire season. Season 2 has felt lonely without it, but with careful consideration and planning we’ve gone through the motions to bring it back! however, this version of kingdoms gameplay won’t be using factions as a base, but instead we’ll be implementing Towny and Siege War. many avid multiplayer server players will already know what Towny and Siege War are, but for those unenlightened let me introduce you!

Towny

Towny is a plugin that functions very similarly to how kingdoms did in the last season, with a few notable changes. just as in the previous season, Towny aides players in working together as well as claiming and protecting their land. However, unlike in Season 1 where all land was universally claimed under the kingdom you belonged to, land is now claimed through towns. towns can be fully configured by the mayor to include taxes, land for sale, and many other unique features. the claims are still handled through chunk-based claiming, but letting players to determine their own legislation on those claims allows for more creative freedom with how they use their land.

outside of protecting your well earned loot, sharing land with your friends, and and deciding your own turf rules – towns can automatically produce resources! towns serve as a solution to the lack of infinite materials that comes with our pre-made map by infinitely generating resources which can be collected by players. these resource wells grow in potency the larger your town grows.

this is all well and good, but where are the kingdoms? well – kingdoms (referred to as nations in the original version of towny) are simply collections of towns with a capitol and a king. all towns in a nation are granted the benefits of being in said nation, all while having the freedom to do whatever they please with their individual territory.

all of these divisions – towns and nations – are displayed on the server’s map for everyone to see. mayors an kings can fully customize the colors of their towns and nations, so look forward to seeing some new fancy flare on the world map!

Siege War

an integral part of the kingdoms experience was the pvp. before, we had masswars that dictated when we all agreed to fight. now that the server is going public, that kind of model is unsustainable and would get way too chaotic. the other big issue with that model was the issue of availability. if players weren’t able to make it to the masswar or werent online when someone decided to raid their base, they were essentially doomed. Siege War solves both of those problems.

sieges are how pvp is conducted in the new season. instead of chunk-by-chunk domination of a town, sieges are occupations of an entire town at once. sieges are essentially a 3 day long king of the hill minigame that gives control of the town to whoever wins. players can participate in the siege once every hour, and only get to participate 3 times a day on weekdays and 6 times a day on weekends. this means that people with jobs and other responsibilities can still participate and still have a chance against people with much more time to spare.

the victorious kingdom can no longer invade a town and steal all their stuff, instead they can occupy the town and plunder from their bank and resource wells. additionally, the 5 most influential nations (size population and wealth) on the server automatically get heaps of free items every Saturday morning. this promotes a new non-toxic reason to pvp – resources and global domination.

there’s a lot of features i’m not mentioning in this post…

Towny and Siege War are both so expansive that if i was to explain all of their features in this post it would be too long to read. luckily, we have an entire tutorial dedicated to towny features in-game. if you’re interested in learning the intricate details of these new features, just type the command /t help in-game.

that’s all for now, and as always i love you all and thank you for your continued support.

– dandy


p.s. i hope you liked my art

2022 Fundraiser Information

The fundraiser event has ended, and this post only serves as an archive of the fundraiser information. If you’re still interested in donating, support is always appreciated!

hey guys, dandy here.

Bitrealm has been a passion project of mine for over two years now, and i’ve spent collectively over a thousand dollars and hundreds upon hundreds of hours to make Bitrealm what it is today. i’m more than happy to do this, because i love Bitrealm and its community, but every once and a while i’m met with development costs that are too much for me to be willing to pay out of pocket. unfortunately, now is one of those times.

for the next chapter of Bitrealm i am looking to take the server public, meaning we need to begin laying the foundation for potentially hundreds of players. one of the hurdles in that process is the host server. right now i outsource Bitrealm to a company that charges $40/month for a 16GB RAM server, and it does fine. but, these fees add up. over the two years i’ve been doing this it’s contributed to at least 95% of the money i’ve spent in developing Bitrealm. on top of that, it’s likely i’ll need to upgrade. Bitrealm’s current host can sometimes barely handle 15 players at the same time as you might recall from season 1, and if we’re set to launch publicly that’s just not going to cut it.

so i’m starting another fundraiser to purchase a server so i can host Bitrealm locally.

not only does this give me full control over all of Bitrealm’s back-end, but it also allows me to fine tune and configure our server’s computing power to appropriately accommodate our needs. this will be insanely useful for the growth of Bitrealm because it allows me a hands on approach to the mechanical side of the server. it also means i no longer need to pay someone else to host for me, i can operate Bitrealm entirely autonomously. a bonus, too, is that i can store all of my development files internally. this lets me access all of the essential files from anywhere, and allows our developers to access them from anywhere too. this will streamline the development process and get content pushed out sooner!

this sh*t aint cheap though, it’s essentially building a new computer just to host Bitrealm.

i’ve talked to a handful of people much smarter than myself and i’ve set up a pretty juicy build for this server. it clocks in a bit over $1000 total. even though it’s totally worth the investment and will pay for itself in no time, it’s a bit much for a college student budget. so even though i’m not known to ask for help, i’m starting this fundraiser to see if the generous people of this community can help me cross this hurdle.

i’ve tried really hard to set up some donation incentives i think you guys will like

i recognize that this is a HUGE ask, so i want to give back in some way for those among you who are kind enough to help me through this. i’ve set up some donation rewards. they’re listed in the info above, but i wanted some exclusive benefits to this fundraiser that won’t be obtainable ever again.

let me preface though, by no means are you expected to donate. only support me if you can sufficiently support yourself, i’ll be okay. prioritize your own needs above those of myself and Bitrealm. whatever amount we generate from this fundraiser i will put directly into the cost of the server, and if we don’t meet our goal i will be paying for the remainder out of pocket. just know, that even by donating a small amount you are contributing directly to the development of Bitrealm

thank you so much for your continued support, i love you all

– dandy


The fundraiser event has ended, and this post only serves as an archive of the fundraiser information. If you’re still interested in donating, support is always appreciated!