DevlogLevels past twenty-seven, and creatures to fill them

Until today nothing in the world existed above level twenty-seven. Fourteen zones are drawn and described but not open yet, highlands and ashlands and a pass and a cave and an ocean, and none of them had anything to put in them.

Creatures for the levels the world did not have. Twenty for the gap up to the level-fifteen wall and past it, then twelve more for 28 to 45: hill giants and highland raiders, an ancient treant that roots you and burns you, cinder wolves, ash revenants, magma elementals, a deep stalker that sees through invisibility, a stone colossus, ash drakes, and an elder drake at 45 with sixteen thousand health. Nothing is placed yet. The day one of those zones opens, there is something to stand in it, and one command opens a planned zone when that day comes.

Redfang, one of the new creatures, proved in a real fight rather than a table.

Proved in a fight, not a spreadsheet. Every new creature was put up against a real character, and the new casters cast. Two chains of quests cross the new levels, and what the creatures carry feeds a third tier of tradeskills: dark iron out of ashen ore and an ember core, a breastplate with drake scale worked in, a bow strung with giant sinew.

Death, and coming back from it. A cleric can now give back the level death took, and the death screen stays put when you respawn in another zone.

The Vault Warden, photographed where it stands.

Smaller things that matter. Chat crosses the world in 21 milliseconds instead of a second and a half, seeing the world no longer costs more than living in it, foraging depends on where you are, standing with the factions starts meaning something, and there is a recipe book and the bag it is made in.

And three new tools in the studio: the zone editor learned to build with groups, lights, painted faces and carved walls; the Armory dresses a body, paints armour onto it and photographs its icons; and the Modeler builds from blocks or sculpts from clay and stands the result in a zone.