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Greetings Celeste players! It's been a while, but we are back with another Developer Blog. This time, we will be showcasing our current and future plans for the game, as well as giving you an update on the Indian Civilization.

Project Celeste Development Roadmap
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Aiding Socrates Quest Pack

• This quest pack will be launching soon, hopefully before the Summer Event.
• It will feature Legendary-only quests at first, but we will add non-Legendary variants of the quests later on.

Champion Mode Experimental Patch

• This patch will be bringing drastic changes to Champion Mode, aimed at freshening up the gameplay in PvP as well as opening up new strategies.
• It will be deployed soon, and will be coupled with boosted rewards for Sparta PvP for its duration.

2022 Summer Event

• The Event is currently scheduled to launch on July 26th, but we are trying to launch it earlier.
• It will feature all-new Legendary items, as well as previously released items.

Visiting Other Players' Capital Cities

As a highly requested feature, we are finally making the last steps required to bring this feature back, so you can visit other players' cities. We will also be hosting Capital City Decoration contests once this feature is deployed. Stay tuned for more info!

Starting Civilizations at Level 40

One of the biggest points of feedback that we received during our most recent survey was that leveling up can be tiresome for some players, particularly if they are doing it for the 5th+ time. As such, we are introducing another option for players - starting their civilization at level 40. We still haven't finalized every detail of this feature at the moment, but some of the things we can share are that:

• Players will be able to start their civilizations directly at level 40, with the ability to equip Legendary items from the get go.
• They will have level 40 items equipped on all of their units and buildings already, but they are just enough to fill the gap until they can optimize their gear.
• They will not have to play through the non-repeatable versions of quest lines in order to access their Legendary variants.
• Since every campaign quest will be complete already, some items will not be available for players who use this feature. This is so that players who spend the time to level up and play through the quests are rewarded for their time and effort.

Skirmish Hall Rework

As the biggest project currently underway in Project Celeste other than the Indian Civilization, the Skirmish Hall rework will drastically improve the Skirmish experience in Age of Empires Online, bringing it on par with other Age of Empires games' skirmish modes. We are around 2,000 lines of code into re-implementing the skirmish hall UI (and other related mechanics) and we are still a long ways away from being finished with it!

• The rework will be coupled with a much better reward system so that it is on par with other PvE content that takes similar time and effort.
• There will be a few Skirmish Hall Exclusive Legendary items releasing at the same time.
• It will feature multiplayer Champion Mode Skirmish.
• We are currently investigating the possibility of having human and AI players on both teams, but do not yet know if this is within our technical limits or not.
• The Skirmish Hall user interface will be receiving a major overhaul, including an improved AI selection menu.

Stay tuned for further updates regarding the Skirmish Hall rework!

Optimized Loot Tables and Individual Item Droprates

We are adding the ability to limit the drop rates of items per item type and also per single item.

• For example, we want to make it so that Scepters drop less often than Bows.
• Also, we want to make it so that items that are supposed to be more elusive than other items of the same type will drop less often, making them more valuable. (yay, Tools of Weyland and Battle Scrolls of Gilgamesh!)

Advisor Reworks

We have already done several Advisor reworks in the past, and we plan on doing at least one more. Stay tuned!

Reworked Capital City Report

Another feature that is work-in-progress is the reworked Capital City report. This will mean that players will be able to manage their workshops much easier and keep track of their production as well as a general overview of their empire all from one menu. We will be sharing more news on this soon, when we have more to share.

Campaign Quest Tracker

You might have noticed that there are a few buttons in the Player Progression interface that are currently disabled. One of them is for this feature, the campaign quest tracker.

Aimed for those completionists out there, this interface will help you keep track of all of your non-repeatable questline quests. While the visual style of this interface is still work-in-progress, this is one concept that belongs to the Twelve Kingdoms questline from Cyprus:

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Network Relays

As another step towards improving Age of Empires Online's networking and connection system, we are looking into reworking the entire connection system for the game, so that players will connect to a network relay instead of each other (think of it like a dedicated server of some sorts, instead of P2P connections.). Our server engineer and lead technical developer are hard at work with this and will keep you updated as more progress is made on it.

Quest Cooldown Tracker

Yet another feature that is highly requested by players is a way to keep track of which quests are on cooldown and when they will be available again. We have this on our to-do list and will provide you with further updates when we have more to share.

Quest Rotation System

As part of our plans to make less popular quests played more often, we plan on adding a quest rotation system. This system will select several different quests and increase their rewards significantly for a set amount of time.

• This system is meant for players of all skill levels. So it will feature all types of repeatable quests, including regular Repeatable and Elite quests.
• The same quests will be featured for everyone, so it is not unique for each player. This is intended to encourage co-op gameplay.
• If a quest is on cooldown for a player once the rotation happens, the cooldown for that quest will be reset for the player.

Here's a UI concept of this feature:

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We are really excited about this feature and will keep you updated on it!

Endless Mode

An entirely new game mode, Endless Mode will have players defending a Roman Wonder from its invaders for as long as they possibly can. Hold on to that Wonder the longest and secure the #1 spot on the leaderboards!

You will be able to fight for either Caesar, Pompey, or Crassus, that will each come with their own passive bonuses during gameplay, as well as unique technologies, and more.

It will feature its own leaderboards, and have its own ranked seasons and seasonal rewards.

More details to follow later.

Update on the Indian Civilization
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As you might have read on our latest Indian Dev Blog, we are currently short on 3D Animators in our team, and it is slowing down the progress of development significantly.

If you or someone you know can spare a few hours a week (or something around that) who has previous experience with animating (preferably in Blender), please send me (PF2K) or Max v.R. or Eamon (Chaos) a message on Discord with a few examples of your previous work so we can bring you in on the team. Thanks in advance for your help!
(PF2K's Personal Note: This is how Eamon got in the team as well!)

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However, progress is still being made and we will be publishing a new Indian Dev Blog later this week, and showcasing the first Military Elephant unit of the civilization in it!

While there will be more quality of life changes and updates coming to Project Celeste along the way, this blog should give you a good overview of what to expect in the future. But due to the volunteer-only nature of the project, we cannot guarantee everything and everything in this blog is subject to change, delay or adjustment. Thanks for understanding!

Thanks for reading, and we look forward to reading your thoughts and questions below!

All current and future content will stay 100% free and accessible to everyone.

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Project Celeste Development Team

What do you think about this week's blog? What would you like to see next? Let us know in the comments below!

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The Romans are here! Watch the Overview Trailer.

Project Celeste is completely free and always will be. However, we gladly accept donations for our overhead costs, which are larger than we have budgeted. If you want to support us, you can do so HERE.

Read every Romans related blog HERE.
Read every Indians related blog HERE.

Tell your friends! Join our Discord HERE.
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