Dark and Darker Playtest 4 Adds Solo Goblin Caves map, and More

Playtest 4 for Developer Ironmace’s Dark and Darker is now live and comes with new features such as a Goblin Caves map meant for solo players, in-game chat, a Karma system, new weapons, a Gathering Hall system and a lot more.

It’s a meaty build compared to Playtest 3 as there’s a variety of new additions and balancing changes. The big surprise in this build is the addition of a map that catered for solo players that only want to play with solo players, as the biggest complaint in previous tests are solo players being ganged up by groups. 

The new map has a disclaiming marking it as “experimental”, and will only feature only nine players in the lobby. The interesting this about this map is that it has new monsters such as goblin, a goblin shaman of sort, and even a troll monster that will likely rip new players to shreds.

Here’s a rundown of changes and additions from Ironmace on what’s added for Playtest 4.

Alpha Playtest #4 Changelog

New Features and Updates

• New Gathering Hall System - Hang out at the Gathering Hall and build the perfect dungeon party.

• New Karma System - Rate your fellow allies after your adventure. Beware! Scoundrels and deviants are unable to participate.

• New VoIP - In-game voice chat to interact with other adventurers.

• New experimental Goblin Caves for a solo adventurer experience!

• New Trading Channel QoL features.

• New Report system to help us round up and punish the wicked.

• New Cosmetics

• New Weapons - Short Sword and Quarterstaff, 

• Some Unique Weapons have been greatly improved.

• Attack animation improved for the War Maul, Double Axe & Battle Axe.

• Weapon attack animations now do more varying amounts of damage.

• New Armors for the 'head' slot.

• New 'Sanctuary' spell for the Cleric.

• New Ore and Craft Items.

• New 'Valentine' NPC.

• The secretive 'Goblin Merchant' now sells mysterious wares.

• An improved party invite system.

• Added bundled items to the merchants.

• Added Flavor texts for more immersive game mood.

• Added a new Tokyo Region + preliminary Japanese localization - first draft.

Balancing

• Moved the starting spawns from the edge of the map to the interior and added more variations to test.

• 2-handed weapon attack movement penalty has been reduced.

• Added +1 base stat point to 'agility' to the Cleric to normalize the class with all other classes.

• Rebalanced the Wizard's starting stats.

• Added a projectile damage falloff system where damage slightly decreases based on distance. Currently the effect is very small.

• Plate armor improved to give more bonuses,

• Lightfoot Boots, Regal Gambeson and Templar Armor are a little slower.

• Rapier damage slightly buffed.

• An installed Pavise can now be knocked down by an attack.

• Buffs for many of the less frequently used Perks and Skills.

• Wizard's 'Light' spell now removes the 'Hide' status. Does not remove the 'invisibility' status.

• Increased the duration of an installed campfire but the recovery effects per tick has been reduced. You will need to sit at a campfire for a longer period compared to the last playtest for the same recovery effects.

Dark and Darker is still in its early stages of development but interest for the high-risk fantasy online RPG game has been massive. SteamDB is already showing the new playtest – which is only a few hours open so far as of this writing – is over 60k concurrent players. 

Playtest 4 will run for the duration of Steam’s Nextfest event happening from February 6 until February 13. It’s likely the developers will extend the Playtest as it has become a tradition with them to extend it for a few more days, as we’ve seen them doing in previous playtests.

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