Devlog #4 — Evil now starts close to you

The biggest change this week was to the opponent. Evil plays the same game you do — the same mines, the same costs — but it was playing somewhere nobody could reach it.

Evil starts close

Before, evil was born in the fortresses of Hell, in the last ring, and colonized the mines there. But players take weeks to reach Hell: evil grew undisturbed, and almost all of its income came from places nobody could cut off.

Now it colonizes from the inside out: the ring closest to the Crystal that still has a free mine first, then the next one. Its first colony appears in the second ring — and every new colony is announced an hour ahead, with its location. There is time to gather people, get there and stop it. Every colony has an Altar of Corruption at its heart; bring down the altar, and it falls.

Real time

Mines now produce per real hour, for evil and for player towns alike. On the old clock, evil alone took over the map in two hours. On the new one, it would take about ten days — if nobody does anything. Plenty of time to react, and too little to fall asleep on the job.

Evil characters (part one)

The four bloodlines of evil got characters that play like people: Adventurers, Mages and Merchants on the other side, with their faction’s color on their bodies and its name on their nameplate. They hunt in the zone for their level, level up, fight players and the other factions, and when they fall they respawn at the nearest colony. And when they die they only drop what nobody made: evil is never a source of finished gear. This is part one; the rest is coming in future devlogs.

Password accounts

The game now has accounts, with a password and several characters each. Your password is never stored — only a fingerprint of it, made with the algorithm recommended today for that job (Argon2id) — and the login travels sealed. When you create an account you get a recovery code, shown only once: keep it.

It is also settled what happens at the End of the World: if the Crystal falls, characters and buildings are erased, but your account and your character’s name stay yours. You start over at level 1, with no items, and pick your class again.

Under the hood

• Saves are now a database. The whole world is saved at once: if the server goes down halfway through, no item gets duplicated or lost.
• Tested at scale: the server handled 64 players at once and, in another test, the middle of almost 1,900 monsters.
• No more hitches: the first fight, entering the world, teleporting and leaving the cave no longer freeze the screen — whatever needs loading loads in the background.
• Open for days, like the first minute: the game clock was swapped for a more precise one, and a game left open for days keeps moving and drawing just the same.

And the game, in its window and menu, is now called Defeat The Evil Online.

Spotted something odd? The bug forum is the place.