Alpha-2 phase-1

Alpha-2 phase 1 roadmap .

October 25th we will start with our Phase one of Alpha-2 testing. Phase one is going to consist of weekend long tests that run from Friday to Sunday and will occur every weekend, moving forward until Phase two begins. – Steven Sharif

Alpha-2 phase-1 is the first phase of Alpha-2 testing.

• This phase is focused on testing scalability, stability, performance, and progression.
• Phase 1 testing will be weekend-long tests running from Friday to Sunday starting on October 25, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific Time (PT). Download instructions will be emailed to those with access to the testing phase.
• There will initially be 6 Alpha-2 testing realms for the NA and EU regions (3 realms each). More realms may be added based on demand.
  • United States will start with Resna, Lyneth, and Vyra.
  • Europe will start with Arioch, Lotharia, and Shol.
• The starting max level at the beginning of phase 1 will be 25 for adventuring and level 25 for artisanship professions.

Especially for phase one, some of these features you will see at the start of phase one and some of them you will see as we expand Phase One with the Cadence updates every six weeks. – Margaret Krohn

World

• 55+ km² (square kilometers) of The Western and Eastern Aelan Riverlands, Sandsquall Desert & Vandagar Tropics.
• 36+ Points of interest.
• Day and night cycle.
• 4 Seasons.
• Dynamic world populations.
• Dynamic reward tables.
• 1 Grand dungeon.
• 4 Pocket dungeons.

Nodes

• 5 Node locations to Village (stage 3) using some systems from Town (stage 4).
• Nodes will only be present in the Eastern and Western Aelan Riverlands in this phase.
• Dynamic Road Leveling (Provide buffs and advance in visual quality).
• 4 Service building plots, 5 Default service buildings.
• 8 Active constructed buildings.
• + 5 Passive constructed buildings.
• Node currencies.
• Citizenship.
• 56 Tax categories.
• Mayorship.
• Buy orders.
• 25+ Player commodities.
• 24+ Mayoral commission types.
• 36 Node resources with T1-T3 recipes.
• Service building expansion voting.. There may be 22 different expansions that are possible within the nodes for those buildings.

At the Phase One level we are going to have five node locations that will be primarily level three however there will be some systems that we will be turning on that are level four systems in order to test during phase one. – Steven Sharif

Races

• Vek, Kaelar, Empyrean.

There's a lot that goes into making a race fully playable and that includes making sure that we have all of the 470 plus unique pieces of armor deformed to each one of the races so that when you equip a pauldron or a curias that it is on a unique race: that it's not interpenetrating the race- that it doesn't have some skin weight issues. – Steven Sharif

Archetypes

• Tank, Fighter, Mage, Cleric, Ranger, Bard.
• ~130+ Abilities.
• ~60+ Passive skills.
• 22 Status conditions.

Those archetypes have a combined 130 plus unique abilities, 60 plus unique passives, 22 different status conditions that live across all of those different archetypes. – Steven Sharif

Weapons

• 2H Greatsword.
• 1H Mace.
• 1H Sword.
• Scepter.
• Wand.
• Longbow.
• Shortbow.
• Spellbook.
• Shields.
• Focuses for offhand.
• Maces, Shortbows, Longbows, one and two handed swords, Wands, and Spellbooks are all expected to have weapon skill trees with ~30+ nodes per nodes per tree.

We have eight unique weapons that each have 30 plus nodes per weapon skill tree. – Steven Sharif

PvP

• Player flagging.
• Lawless zones.
• Corruption system.

Part of any alpha is going to be that people are less disincentivized, or less deterred from doing bad things because it's a temporary alpha: It is not something that's going to persist, so we're probably going to need to overtune the corruption system a little bit during the alpha in order to make it more debilitating so that type of gameplay is more reflective of how people would be apprehensive to gain corruption when the game goes live. – Steven Sharif

• Guild wars.
• Node wars.
• Caravan PvP Event System.

You might see a term here you don't understand and that is 'Lawless zones'. We have talked a little bit in the past about a change we made to the open seas being open areas of player combat. – Steven Sharif

Systems and Economy

• Flying, Ground, and Water mounts.
• Caravans (Management, Cargo, Caravan events), Rafts.
• Mail System.
• Player trading.
• Level 25 for all Artisan professions (Novice, Apprentice and Journeyman tiers).
  • Artisan skill trees will come online in Alpha-2 phase-2.
• 15 Unique Gathering tools.
• 33+ Unique Gatherables.
• Surveying.
• Fishing.
• Hunting (38 Unique Animals).
• Processing (~400+ Recipes).
• Crafting (~600+ Recipes).
• Gear enchantments.
• Party & raid markers.
• Chat (Guild, party, citizenship, global).
• Item deconstruction & repair.
• 45 Caravan components.
• Guild size of 50. This may expand to 100.

Item deconstruction and repair, this is obviously the primary sink for an open economy like ours, those deconstructions are going to provide unique materials that are necessary in order to craft higher level gear so that's something important to keep in mind. – Steven Sharif

Content

• 460+ Unique pieces of gear.
• Node war Godspike event.
• 16 Unique Public events.
• 149 Story driven quests/Commissions.
• 111 Treasure maps.
• 3 World bosses (~44+ Abilities/Behaviors).
  • Additional bosses will be released during later phases.
• 75 Unique Enemy creatures (~280+ Unique NPC Abilities/Behaviors).

On the content side this is something to keep in mind, there is a lot of content here but again, this is from an Alpha perspective. There will be bugs, there will be issues, there will be things that we need to fix and flesh out further. – Steven Sharif

Alpha-2

Guide to Alpha-2.

Alpha-2 is an alpha. This is an actual Alpha. We are not a game where we're just porting over, or translating to another region. This is a proper Alpha. So, as Steven has stated many times, it's not a game. We are here to test and get things moving along. – Margaret Krohn

Alpha-2 Node wars PI spot test #6 finale. Alpha-2 screenshot. Image credit: User:Lex

Alpha-2 is really the testing grounds for a lot of the more minute details of how a particular system works; and you can change a lot of those details without actually needing to change the feature that's been developed. These are variables that exist within the code that we have control over so that when we want to iterate upon it it's easy to do iterations: and some of those iterations can feel very impactful to the system overall. So Alpha-2 really is meant to gauge this initial approach and then we're afforded the ability to change that drastically by tuning and changing some of the aspects of the specifics of the system. – Steven Sharif

Non-NDA Alpha-2 testing will occur in three phases:

• Alpha-2 phase 1.
• Alpha-2 phase 2.
• Alpha-2 phase 3.

The cadence of Alpha-2 updates will vary based on the type of update: Hotfixes will be deployed as needed. Minor updates will occur approximately every 3 weeks. Major updates will occur approximately every 6 weeks.

By the end of Alpha-2, the game is expected to be feature complete, but will not be content complete until launch.

In-game support is expected to be present during Alpha-2 to handle a limited range of support issues. Game masters are expected to be in-game at live launch.

We will have people who will have access to being in-game and helping support if needs be, but our goal for Alpha-2 is we are not going to be assisting at the same capacity that we would be for launch. At launch we do want to have in-game GMS. – Margaret Krohn

Alpha-2 availability

Alpha-2 testing phases.

The cost behind Alpha access accounts for server and CDN costs associated with a live service product. And while this is not a finished game, it will be a live service Alpha that we will be updating on a 6 week basis as we build out the rest of the game's content and features. – Steven Sharif

Opening Alpha Two Access.

Thanks to your glorious feedback, we have made some adjustments as you can see in the above image. We appreciate our community beyond words, and we want you to know that we hear you. – Steven Sharif

Phase	Release	Estimated/Actual date
Alpha-2	Alpha-2 spot testing (NDA).	November 2023.
	Alpha-2 phase-1 (No NDA).	October 25, 2024.
	Alpha-2 phase-2 (No NDA).	December 20, 2024.
	Alpha-2 phase-3 (No NDA).	May 1, 2025.

• Owners of Alpha-2 access from previous pre-order packs, Kickstarter, and Summer crowdfunding will have access to all phases of Alpha 2 starting from the weekend of October 25th. This includes recipients of key giveaways, but giveaway keys do not grant access to the Beta phases.

During the stream, there was some confusion around clarifying that giveaway keys we have done in the past, for example the food contest keys, do not provide access to subsequent alpha/testing phases. However, any keys that have been purchased provide access to subsequent testing phases. So if a user owns a key to any Alpha phase that they have purchased, they also own access to Beta as well. – Steven Sharif

Alpha-2 bundles.

• Bundles include Alpha-2, Beta-1, and Beta-2 access, 1 month of Subscription time ($15 value), and $15 in Embers (in-game marketplace credits, NO P2W!). Previously it was stated that Alpha-2 phases grant keys only.
  • Alpha-2 phase 1 bundles grant access to weekend Alpha-2 testing beginning on November 8, 2024.
  • Alpha-2 phase 2 bundles grant access to week-long (5 days at a time) Alpha-2 testing beginning December 20, 2024.
  • Alpha-2 phase 3 bundles grant access to 24/7 Alpha-2 testing, beginning May 1st, 2025 and running until launch.

Q: How did you justify the $120 price for Alpha-2 phase 1 access?

A: Allowing for an environment that is capable of holding over 100,000 concurrent players is a far different cost profile than having an environment that is only holding 20 or 30,000; and then especially when you compound that with the length of time that we expect Alpha-2 to run, which is at least a year's worth of time... We don't have a board of investors that are contributing to the development of the project. This is a personal endeavor of my own. So, in order to make sure that we are providing players an opportunity to participate in that, we came to the cost analysis of what it takes to achieve the levels of players that we're going to potentially see from an interest perspective. – Steven Sharif

• Alpha-2 servers will be live concurrently alongside the Beta servers. Players who own any purchased Alpha keys (including the new phase keys) will also have access to the Beta servers. This does not include giveaway keys, such as food contest keys.

• Alpha-2 does not have a subscription cost.

• Ashes of Creation will not have a box price at launch.

• Pre-order pack upgrades for previously purchased packs will continue to be available.

Persistent alpha

The intention of Alpha-2 is to be as persistent as possible, but there may be necessary wipes during testing. There will be downtime for upgrades and patches.

I do want to be clear that our goal is to not have server wipes in Alpha-2. We want to have persistence. That is the point of the persistence. We may have times where we come down for updates and things like that, but the goal is to not wipe if we don't have to. – Margaret Krohn

• The developers are trying to avoid wiping during Alpha-2 phase 1 unless it is necessary. There will be a full wipe leading into Alpha-2 phase 2.

We were trying not to wipe during phase one. I think we're going to be good on that front. We saw some database issues over this weekend that was probably affecting anywhere from one to two percent of users, so we didn't feel it was necessary to try to correct that at this stage, given the level of frequency. When it comes to wiping, our intent is for December 20th to be a full wipe day. – Steven Sharif

• Alpha-2 is expected to last until launch and run in parallel with Beta-1 and Beta-2. Alpha-2 realms will then become testing realms for upcoming Beta content, some of which may be covered by NDA.

Q: Will Alpha-2 run alongside with Beta-1 and Beta-2?

A: That's correct. So, when Alpha-2 ends, Beta-1 will start; and then you'll see that those realms will change to be more of a test realm that you can see content that's coming up the line. We may even ask people to join that to test things before it goes to the Beta. – Steven Sharif

• Alpha-2 will morph into a private test realm (PTR/PTS) post-live launch.

Q: Is Alpha-2 access going to result in PTR access?

A: Alpha 2 is still intended to morph into the PTR. And if you have Alpha 2 access, for any of the phases, you will have access to all subsequent Alpha-2 testing phages, which includes when it becomes the PTR. – Steven Sharif

• All server realms will be wiped prior to live launch.

• Beta-1 and Beta-2 will likely not be persistent.

Alpha-2 server wipes

Alpha and Beta server realms will be wiped prior to launch.

• The goal is to wipe as little as necessary during testing.

Q: How often do we think we'll wipe in Alpha-2?

A: As little as necessary. That is the goal. – Steven Sharif

Alpha testing system requirements

Alpha-1 stress testing, March 17, 2021.

These are fully operational NPCs. They have behavior trees, they have AI blackboards; they are functioning as an NPC would; and to my surprise, to everyone's surprise actually, the server handled it quite well: 5000 entities all within a very dense area. – Steven Sharif

Minimum and recommended computer specifications for Alpha-2.

Minimum Specs - 1080p

• Processor: Intel i5 8400 | AMD Ryzen 5 2600
• Memory: 12GB
• Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 1070 or equivalent
• DirectX: Version 12
• Network: Broadband Internet connection
• Storage: 100GB SSD Storage
• Windows 10/11

Recommend Specs - 1440p

• Processor: Intel i7 8700 | AMD Ryzen 5 3600
• Memory: 16GB
• Graphics: NVIDIA RTX 3070 or equivalent
• DirectX: Version 12
• Network: Broadband Internet connection
• Storage: 100GB SSD Storage
• Windows 10/11

Please note that these requirements will change throughout our testing phases.

Alpha-2 patch notes

• 2024-11-01 Alpha-2 Update Notes
• 2024-11-07 Alpha-2 Update Notes
• 2024-11-14 Alpha-2 Update Notes
• 2024-11-22 Alpha-2 Update Notes
• 2024-12-06 Alpha-2 Update Notes

See also

• Alpha-2
• Alpha-2 update notes
• Release schedule
• Ashes of Creation