Hello, Sector!
Ever wonder what life might be like for all those citizens of the Sector without INRs? Are you looking to up the stakes of your Starmourn experience? Do you enjoy roguelikes and wish Starmourn supported that sort of play experience? Would you enjoy roleplaying a character and seeing their arc come to a dramatic, perhaps abrupt conclusion?
Introducing a new, optional game mode: Hardcore. In an IRE first, we are introducing permadeath. This is an OPTIONAL game mode only available to NEW characters and there are a number of new mechanics to support this.
In Hardcore, when your character dies after level 20, they are dead, forever, and cannot be revived by any means. Hardcore characters have no INR, after all. No Hardcore character can ever be made into a Normal character, and vice versa, and you can only have one active hardcore character at a time.
You're probably asking, "If I die, what happens to my credits?" In the spirit of roguelikes, your character's credit value on death is added to your Hardcore Credit Pool, which you can claim on any of your future hardcore characters. Hardcore Credit value works a bit like retirement value, but is much more generous. Namely, you get 100% of the value from purchased credits, artifacts, collectibles, and other places, and 50% of credits obtained for free from a wide variety of sources including dailycredits. This DOES NOT, however, include the No Brainer packages. If you intend on purchasing anything at all on a Hardcore character, please do read HELP HARDCORE thoroughly.
NB: Since this is an entirely unique system in the IRE landscape with its own Credit mechanics, Hardcore characters cannot RETIRE.
And since I know you all love RANKINGS, we have 4 new rankings: HARDCOREXP, HARDCOREPK, HARDCOREHACKING, and HARDCORECAPTAINS. Hardcore rankings work a bit differently, taking combined scores from your current Hardcore character and all your dead Hardcore characters. This cumulative ranking has to be turned on manually, though, so you can still easily conceal who your next character might be after your old one die
There is a lot more to address, but that is the gist of it. Have a look at HELP HARDCORE for detailed information. You also probably have an idea now what those Memorial Deeds are all about. Have a look at HELP MEMORIALS! We've added some new memorial spaces to the faction areas, and are adding more neutral ones over time.
We also have two new artifacts: Reserved Plot (reserved_plot) and Last Will (last_will). Reserved plots are covered in HELP MEMORIALS. Last Will on the other hand is a way to transfer half your marks on death either to a designee or to your next Hardcore character.
And now, the credit reel. Hardcore is Eukelade's swan song for Starmourn. It was the final system she designed, overcoming the major design challenges, and we've been working hard on bringing it to life since. The wider IRE team has been super supportive. Tiur from Aetolia loves us so much, he helped code it too, writing the initial framework which I've gradually filled in over time. Credit to Damiel and the ST team for creating some truly breathtaking memorial spaces and rigorously helping test. Heck, even Euke herself volunteered her time to help test and design some memorials for us!
Rest in peace,
Neritus
