Patchnotes – February 2014

Hi Space Pilots,

We know that we post a lot of announcements about features and events, but that you cannot always see what we are doing to improve the game. These monthly patchnotes are intended as a way to keep you better informed.

In February, we implemented the following features, events, etc.:

New Features

· DarkOrbit Reloaded
At the beginning of February, we relaunched the game after implementing many improvements during the last months to make the game more attractive for beginners. With a new logo and the addition of “Reloaded” to the game’s name, Bigpoint started a marketing campaign to draw new users to the game. Part of the relaunch was a complete new trailer. In case you haven't watched it yet, click here to take a look.​

· Auction Rework
The reworked auction house will be launched sometime this week and will provide hourly, daily and weekly auctions as well as a better structure and an option to filter by item category.​

· Mission Rework
Mission texts for level 13–20 missions will be provided to complete the already implemented storyline for missions up to level 12.​

· New Galaxy Gate Maps
We've put some effort into making the Galaxy Gate maps a bit nicer than they were. We also changed the Galaxy Gates to look more spectacular. Don’t be irritated when you come across one.​

· Verify Email and Newsletter Layer
If a player has not yet verified his/her email address, he/she will be shown a layer telling him/her to verify his/her email address and subscribe to our newsletters in order to receive news and bonus codes.​

Events

· Carnival 2014 (global)
One week of action in space to celebrate carnival. Special bonus boxes were present most of the time on the maps and the Disguisor NPC teased the players. Several event games also entertained the players and diversified daily gameplay.​

· Defender of the Fatherland Day (RU only)
This event ran for one day only on all Russian instances and featured some additional event games and country-themed bonus boxes. In addition, WIZ rockets and fireworks were offered in the shop. Furthermore, drones did not take any damage.​

Improvements

· Game Client​

· The client loading times have been improved so that the client now loads much faster than before.​

· Maintenance has been done on the database to improve the game’s performance.​

Bug-fixes

· Website​

· Achievements:​

· Death-defying: The progress of the achievement will now be displayed properly.​

· Wow, so many different types of aliens, Flexibility and Rage Attack: Conditions have been reviewed and updated to the current state of the game.​

· Admin accounts are no longer visible in the Top-User rankings and the pilot profiles.​

· Events that ran for two days were displayed twice on the website. This has been corrected.​

· Inventory: The proper tooltip will now be displayed again for the Hercules design (RU only).​

· Skill tree: When a user clicks too fast, Credits will no longer go into negative amounts.​

· Winterfest 2013: We fixed an issue with achievements not being updated correctly.​

· Game Client​

· Chain Impulse skill: Its effect will now be visible to all players.​

· Engine sounds no longer increase in volume after a re-login.​

· Galaxy Gates: If you kill the last NPC in a wave, the NPCs will no longer simply disappear and take all their loot with them. Instead they will explode and drop cargo when you kill them with your P.E.T.’s Kamikaze detonator.​

· Missions:​

· It's a trap! – the 10 EMP bursts should now (finally) be rewarded to players.​

· All completed mini-tasks will now be displayed in green in the mission window.​

· Mission Priority Alpha 18: Previously only ore from Goliaths with the basic design was counted towards the mission goal. This has been fixed!​

· For some challenges, the “Abort Mission” button was not displayed correctly. This has been fixed.​

· The quest “Hunt the hunter” is now properly displayed as “closed” when it has been finished.​

· NPC's shield bar will no longer pop up again while the NPC is taking damage by a ship's laser attack.​

· P.E.T.: Resource locator gear now points in the right "direction".​

· Singularity skill: The tooltip of the Singularity ship skill of the Venom skill design will be corrected. By mistake, it currently states that it reduces the targeted enemy’s ship speed by 50%.​

· Special level-restricted offers will no longer be exploitable so that they can be used by higher level players.
· The repair bot’s sound will no longer loop under certain circumstances.​

· The tooltip in the quickslot bar for the Moth formation (F-09-MO) drone did not show text properly (RU only).​

· Under certain conditions, a player who participated in Sector Control could sometimes not reconnect after a server restart. This problem has been fixed.​

· We fixed a bug with the group system where it was not possible to attack a player who left the group.
​

• Ranking

• Due to a slight mistake several players were no longer listed in the DarkOrbit rankings. This has been fixed now. Everyone who should be in the ranking now is where he/she belongs.
• We also carried out a number of additional bug-fixes, text corrections and other improvements.

​

Regards,

Your DarkOrbit team