New Mount and Gene System
Each individual mount is now unique, we started out with horses, and from now on every horse you encounter will have different strengths and weaknesses, as well as differ in appearance. Horses also have a new equipment system with 4 slots; Armor, Bags, Feet and Headpiece.
The Armor slot is for saddles and armors. A saddle will give a better grip and allow for more control and speed when riding. This slot is also used for various armors to give your horse better defense.
The Feet slot is used to equip things like horseshoes, generally for better grip and speed.
There are a number of different bags you can put in the Bag slot, each having different properties such as number of storage slots and allowed equipment weight.
The Head slot is used for special gear, including decorations and equipment with particular functions. One example is blinders. As horses will now use their attributes (Intelligence, Psyche) to act on their own, they will for instance try to avoid obstacles and perceived dangers. Equipping your horse with blinders will give you more control over the horse in crowded areas and in combat, at the expense of intuition and reflexes of the horse.
The new mount system features a complete revamp of handling and control. Your horse now has its own individual personality and is fully alive, and you have to control it accordingly. There are too many changes to list, and it's hard to describe how the controls feel in text, so the best thing to do is simply to try it out yourself!
The horse family is also is the first of our creature families to use our dynamic gene system. Similar to how DNA works, horses will now inherit and pass on genetic traits such as size, strength, speed, intelligence, skin pattern, hair length etc. The gene system will soon let you train individual creatures within the caps of their genetic heritage, and is also a prerequisite for the upcoming breeding profession, which will allow players to breed individuals within a species for favorable attributes, traits and appearance. All other creature families will be updated to use this system as we go along.
Attribute Reserves, Hunger and Sleep
The Health, Stamina and Mana system is now expanded with the long-awaited reserves. These reserves will be used when you refill your current attributes by for instance healing and using potions, and if you die they will deplete even further. Refilling your reserves may be done in several ways, for instance by sleeping or eating.
To give you an example: If you are engaged in combat and receive a lot of damage, you will probably heal yourself by potions, or magic. However this will also consume your health reserve, and after healing yourself back to full numerous times, and maybe even dying and being resurrected, your low health reserve will start to affect your current health. From now on, receiving damage and healing back up will slowly reduce your maximum current health, as well as increase the risk of sustaining long-term wounds. This health fatigue can be cured by sleeping, or eating. More detailed information will be published closer to release.
The new system also features mechanisms for general hunger, and sleeping in various environments. More information about this will be published at the time of release of the expansion.
Cooking
The new cooking profession allows players to cook food with the right tools and skills. Almost all resources in the game can be used in cooking, although we strongly advise against using many of them such as rocks.
Food will play an important role in Mortal Online as it is used to recover reserves (read more below). The cooking system is extremely open-ended and will allow for a lot of experimentation, and the complex calculations behind it will even take metabolism rate and calories into account. Now, grilling some random road kill (or simply eating it raw) just to refill your health reserve will be very straightforward, however cooking more complex dishes will require a lot more skill and specific tools.
Cooking and eating special food may yield various results, for instance eating gourmet food will earn you Sophistication, which will be introduced later in certain social areas of the game such as trading, persuasion, and joining specific NPC guilds. More detailed info about the cooking system will be published at the time of release of the expansion.
Graveyards
You can now visit the old burial grounds of several villages in Myrland. Be careful around the dead though, for some of them refuse to rest peacefully.
Fishing
With this expansion, more fishes can be found in the waters of Myrland. Some fishes are now endemic, meaning they can only be found in certain areas. The majority of fishes can be used for cooking, however not all of them are good for your health.
Mail and Trading Tools
With Dawn we are starting to introduce better trade tools, for instance for handling offline transactions between players. We are also taking the first steps with transport service tools.
With the initial Dawn release, players will have access to a new mail system. This will allow players to trade items and messages with others whether they're currently online or offline. As expected in Mortal Online, there is a large twist when compared to traditional MMORPG mail systems. While you can send and receive mail in any major town, packages are not automatically delivered across the world. It will be up to players to deliver the mail and parcels to the recipient's home town or address.
Game-play Tutorial System
The new tutorial help system teaches newcomers Mortal Online's basic controls, rules and systems as you play the game. When performing actions for the first time you will now receive notifications which can be expanded into helpful and informative guides. This intuitive system will answer almost all questions a new player might have concerning the fundamentals of playing Mortal Online. The tutorial system is easily disabled for veteran players.
Player House Updates
Two new types of player houses are now available, including a small and inexpensive construction which can be upgraded with one of the following: shop, stable, storage or a workbench. The storage in this house type may be used by the house owner as well as members of the same guild.
In addition to the new inexpensive model, Tindremic houses can now be constructed! Models of tier one through tier three are available.