Update 1 Release Notes

2023-12-04
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Turugnî hisgin!
Greetings!

Continuing our theme of “Mumshanmê,” the Khuzdul word for “At your service.” We continue to be hard at work on improving your experience in Return to Moria, while ALSO preparing for our launch on PS5.  

We are excited to be delivering this latest patch with over 425 bug fixes and improvements to the game. Rather than writing out each fix in detail, we’ve grouped them together to give you an overview of what these fixes and changes mean for the game.

PC players, your game will display version 118059 in the Epic Games launcher once your game is updated. 

For all you PS5 Dwarves joining the reclamation of Moria, all of these fixes as well as the ones from our previous patches will be included in your day 1 download!  

The team is delighted to see your creations and experiences in the world, THANK YOU for continuing to support the team and the game. If you experience any bugs while playing Return to Moria or have any feedback you wish to share with the team, please do not hesitate to let us know via our support page https://northbeachgames.freshdesk.com/support/home 

Please see specific notes below.

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Update 1 changes and fixes:

Caution: we've done our best to avoid major spoilers in the notes, but there are mentions of some locations and items listed below that some players may consider spoilers.

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Quality of Life

- Storage & Inventory improvements

• Added two new chests, each with greater storage capacity. 
• The new “Elven Wood Chest” will unlock when players build the Steel Hammer
• The “Ornate Chest” will unlock when players collect granite.
• If you have progressed beyond these milestones in the game, the recipes should eventually unlock after manipulating items in your inventory

- Now you can auto deposit many items at once into a chest. 

• Inventories can group similar items together, all at once with the new Sort button. 
• Increased the storage capacity of all pallets. 
• Note that you may see your big stacks of stuff go down as a part of this change. Don’t worry, nothing disappeared, it's just the impact of this change on the pallet’s visuals.

- Added “auto-collection” feature

• Holding the Collect button will vacuum up all resources on the ground within a radius from the player.  

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Ending of the Story (Possible Spoiler)

- We have improved all phases of the final boss fight to fix bugs and improve the overall audio, vfx and difficulty. If you have beaten this fight, we hope you will try again or watch someone beat it!
- Clarified the steps to finally exit Moria and fixed bugs with some goals not resolving. 
- Both of these changes should solve some of the community's confusion about the last phase of the story.

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Earthquakes!

- Rarely, the mountain will shift while you are sleeping or loading an existing world.  
- Most players will see this the first time after a major game update, like this one. Each major update will trigger an earthquake. 
- These earthquakes will repopulate certain resources and enemies. This means some enemy camps, nests, and resources such as Elven trees will return. 
- Note there is a known issue where previously defeated orc camps may respawn with empty chests. The team is aware of this issue and it will be addressed in a future patch.
- Earthquakes also help adjust the world when a major update’s environmental changes clash with existing buildings or gameplay. 
- The team has worked hard to make these as painless as possible but sometimes an earthquake may damage or reset progress in small ways. Please reach out through the various feedback channels if you have any issues.

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Why Can’t I Build This Here?!

- Ever try to build something and it just didn't line up? The 90 degree rotation on building blocks clashed with some of the environment art and procedurally generated, existing buildings. This means sometimes you just can't get a wall or door to match up the way you want. Or the cobblestone on the ground is at an odd angle to the world-building grid. We felt actual pain everytime we saw this happen to a player! We caught many of these issues before launch but a chunk of them missed our net. In this update we focused on the major ones and will work to address some of the remaining smaller ones. 
-In this update we addressed the locations that were rotated off-grid enough that it was creating these frustrations. This includes:

• The Dwarven Farms
• Mining and Mining Camps
• The Elven Quarter
• The Darkest Deeps Entrances

- If you had built in these areas, it is possible that parts of your base now intersect the newly rotated environment. We apologize if this causes a strong desire to tear down and rebuild everything.  
- Finally, we have heard the player sentiment around building and are working on further changes for future releases. 

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Crafting Stations

- Fixed an error where players joining another’s game could no longer collect materials from crafting stations. 
- Fixed an error where the icon for an item being crafted would no longer display.  

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Respawning, Loading and Fast Travel: 

- Fixed an error where a joining player could not respawn after death.
- Reduced load times for loading walls between locations.   
- Improved logic when teleporting from a map stone. Generally you should end up closer to your destination if your destination mapstone happens to be blocked.
- If you continue to have issues arriving at your target mapstone, make sure the area around the mapstone is open

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Item & Resource Tuning

- Increased the max stack size of flora, seeds, and other small collectables to x99 
- Reduced Elven Wood cost for many buildings and recipes.
- Slightly increased the average drop of Elven Wood from elven trees.
- Added more rations that can be scavenged in Westgate.
- Ranger Camp / Pages Updates (Possible Spoiler): 

• Fixed issue that would not unlock the anti-shadow brew from the Dwarrowdelf Ranger camp
• For players who have already completed the Dwarrowdelf ranger camp, you can now unlock the missing brew by constructing the “King’s Brew Tank”.
• If you have previously rebuilt the “King’s Brew Tank” the recipe should eventually unlock after manipulating items in your inventory
• Fixed an issue where ranger pages were disappearing after patch updates.  

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Environment & Lighting 

- Enabled adaptive exposure correction, so lighting across the game is more dynamic and realistic.  Also, tuned lighting values in some areas to create more separation between daytime and nighttime values.
- Fixed many “Out of Bounds” errors which would allow the player to fall out of the world or get behind the wall geometry.  
- Reduced instances of shadow fog floating across uneven terrain. 
- It's possible if you are on a low graphic setting that you may not always see the Shadow Fog. We are working on a fix for this in future updates.

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Enemy Tuning

- Repairing a Legendary Forge makes a lot more noise and is now far more likely to trigger a horde
- Increased the rate of Orc Patrol Spawns in Orc Towns! If you need a specific drop from orcs (looking at you Gundabad Slag) Orc Towns will be your new home to farm
- Increased the rate of Deer in the Elven Quarter to make Hide Hunting much easier.
- Fixed attack animations for flying enemies so they no longer teleport. 
- Reduced instances of enemies and fauna getting stuck in walls. 
 

Dwarves 

- Reduced instances where armor would not mitigate damage for clients in multiplayer games. Please note, if this does happen, taking the armor on and off should clear the issue.
- Fixed issue where, with late game armor, enemies could do negative damage to the player (sorry) 
- Fixed a number of voice over issues with the game, including the joining player’s voice changing to the host’s voice.     
- Increased light meter impact of Eregion Shield.  
- Adjusted animation so spears do not clip through the Tower shield.  

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Controls

- Improved Mouse sensitivity range. 
- Improved Multiplayer flow to prevent random loss of functionality. 
- Improved controller functionality for Goals and Lore Screens
- Fixed Quick Build functionality on controllers
- Fixed missing functionality on controller for canceling call out mode.
- Improved slider speed on controllers.  
- Improved settings persistence for changing options. Ie: changes to your settings should now persist between loading different parts of the game.

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Map

- Map Icons have been redesigned to improve legibility
- New Map Icons have been added
- Most Map Icons will default to off for clients when they load into a server’s game.  

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Localization: 

- Many updates to all supported languages.  
- Legal page now localized to all supported languages. 

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Player Journey (SPOILER)

- Fixed the issue with the Fix the Hoist player Goal. It will now complete when you reach the bottom of the Crystal Descent no matter what. 
- This change is retroactive however you may need to return to the bottom on the Crystal Descent to apply this fix.

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