Expedition Overhaul, Player Level, and MUCH more 🚃 Koltera 2 Patch 2.0

This is a pretty big update, especially to expeditions. I want to go over a few changes and why I made them.

Expedition Overhaul

Expeditions previously were very, put any creature in the highest expedition you can do for XP. It was uninteresting to me and was not what I was intending with this mechanic. I wanted it to be a little less obvious and more of a puzzle to piece together the right teams and maximize experience and/or rewards.

Every expedition has been rebalanced. Each expedition has exactly 3 slots. The biggest change of them all, experience is divided amongst all creatures, instead of a XP/Sec. So the faster you complete the expedition, the more experience you earn. This creates a more interesting engagement loop in my opinion. Sometimes it makes more sense to duo a expedition than solo to maximize experience, despite the divided experience.

All together, I believe this will make expeditions more interesting. There may be some minor balancing to be had, but at this time, this is more in line with what I am aiming for.

Player Level and XP Bonus

Now there's a progress bar in the top left showcasing your player level. This is simply the average of all your skilling levels. Every level increase, bumps up a global XP bonus on skilling for yourself.

Clarity of Mechanics

I've gone ahead and revamped a lot of tooltips between the awaken tree, sanctuary, and expeditions to make things more clear and visible, especially for new players trying to learn the game. I hope this will make things easier to learn and will also be continuing to keep an eye on this.

Tons of QoL

You'll have to look at the patch notes to get the full picture, there's too much to cover. But the goal was to implement as much as I could based on the feedback everyone has given. As always, it'll always be a work in progress. I'll continue to listen to everyone's feedback.

Refunds and another Reset Potion
I've made some changes to Leather and Water Buckets, and sadly I can't be as retroactive as I wish I could with refunds, but if you have leather or water buckets, I've refunded the cost differences in the update.

I also made a pretty big change to the Awaken Tree, specifically the Awaken Gold upgrade for creatures, requiring 4 less points to get into it. As such, I have added a reset potion for everyone, to ensure you can properly re-distribute things with this knew knowledge.

Full Patch Notes
- Moss Looting 27 -> 5
- Moss Power 8 -> 10
- Pure Essences XP/Sec of 5 -> 3
- Stone (essence) XP/Sec of 6 -> 5
- Water Bucket recipe changes water vial amount from 2 -> 1, and refunds anyone with water buckets, 1 water vial each
- Coal XP/Sec of 1 -> .5
- Leather recipe changes hide amount from 4 -> 2, and refunds anyone with leather, 2 hide each
- Awaken Tree Workstation Speed Upgrade changed from 5% -> 10%
- Reduced the requirements by 4 whole awaken points, to get into the Awaken Creature Gold upgrades
- Provided an additional Awaken Tree Reset Potion due to cost nerf to get into Awaken Creature Gold Upgrade
- Added Gold/Min to creature tab to show awaken gold gains (including the bonuses from upgrades)
- Fixed shiny effect for awakened creatures not working
- Changed Helper xp towards level to be a flat rate, based on activity index. This is a big buff.
- Added XP / sec for helpers in their level bar
- Added job proficiency filters into the helpers creature browser
- Chronicle Rune level requirement from 60 -> 40
- Added and updated all expedition tooltips
- Added a loop mechanic to expeditions that rewards 1% xp bonus every 10 loops, capped at 20%
- Changed XP To Next Level to show as "Max Level" when there is no more XP to earn
- Added a tooltip in the creatures browser in the creatures page, when you hover the expedition icon to show what its doing
- Changed workstation colors to be more clear and different depending on the status of the recipe
- Changed workstation timer to be more human readable and broken out
- Changed Traits dropdown in creatures and expeditions tab to be in abc order
- Added filtering by job proficiency into the sanctuary tab
- Added more helpful information about Awakening to the Awaken Tree and in the Creatures tab Awaken section
- Added a Open Every Container button in the inventory
- Changed the Task Board requirements to scale the amounts required based on the odds of finding the resource
- Changed it so when swapping helpers, it retains what was being worked on to make the swap easier (only retains it until you leave the screen)
- Changed 5% drops from gathering to 10% drops
- Added container drop rate scaling for gathering skills, meaning drop rates are more stabilized and scale with base duration of activity
- Added drop rate scaling for other items in the loot table of gathering skills, to stabilize them, like containers
- Removed earth from forest advantages
- Changed forest disadvantage from fire -> earth
- Changed cave disadvantage from earth -> wind
- Added earth to lake disadvantages
- Changed recover lost supplies biome from plains -> desert
- Added a Player Level in the top right, that is the average of your gathering and workstation skill levels
- Added a +.25% XP Bonus to each gathering and workstation skills per Player Level
- Updated milk description, because there's going to be cows
- Changed Sanctuary description, tooltips, and headings to make it more clear how it works
- Updated music/sound systems to help mitigate memory leaks