Greetings, Scavengers!

Over the past months, many of you have reached out to us with great feedback and suggestions, as well as plenty of questions about Persist Online and its development.

To provide more transparency, we’ve gathered some frequently asked questions and suggestions and answered them in this blog. We hope this gives you a clearer look at recent development decisions and the future we’re building together.

We truly appreciate your curiosity and engagement, and we are looking forward to even more input from you—our community.

Question: I would love some sort of ‘Inventory Sort’ and some sort of ‘Pouch/container’ separate from the inventory for your food/healing items/goodies etc. that wouldn’t get sorted/mixed up with stuff in the ‘main’ loot inventory. Maybe like a 5×5 pouch separate from the main inventory.

Answer: An option that would automatically sort a players inventory is not planed. But we are working on a filter option for the inventory that would show/highlight certain items like consumables, weapons, armor etc. better. Plus we will move the equipped backpack slots to the bottom to improve general scrolling expierience.

Question: Can you consider removing the ‘Are you sure?’ pop-up when clicking Apply in Skill Trees? It’s hard to misclick the Apply so the ‘Yes I’m sure’ is very implied already, only a small annoyance but still.

Answer: We will add an option in the interface/game settings, where players can freely choose to enable/disable these messages.

Question: Good changes on the Passive regeneration when sat down recently, I still think we should always have some small health regeneration, even in combat, something like 1/s or 60/m. Any thoughts about that?

Answer: We currently have no plans to add automatic HP regeneration when being in combat.

Question: Please highlight unusable items (due to missing requirement) by e.g. giving them a red background, so it’s obvious at a glance which items are equipable (or not) from a big stash tab.

Answer: Great suggestions, this is already on our to do list for a future pre-alpha update.

Question: Please add an option to hide email address when logging in (for content creators/streamers)

Answer: Absolutely. We will implement this in a future pre-alpha update.

Question: Please consider adding an official Map to the game, ideally in-client, but at the very least on your website.  It doesn’t need to be a spoon-fed type of map with everything labelled and showing you where to go etc., but having an official map is crucial for future tools/guides/content etc. 

Answer: We heard this feedback a lot and we are still discussing it internally.

Question: The ‘Disgusted’ debuff feels terrible/unfun, especially for melee players. Can you either remove it or change it/make it weaker (e.g. from unable to use consumables to consumables are 50% effective)?

Answer: No plans to remove it from the game, but we will have a look at the debuff to make it less “unfun” especially in the early game.

Question: Scoped Rifle sound is way too loud compared to other sounds -fix please!

Answer: Many sounds in the game are not optimized/final yet and will be updated in the future.

Question: Please expand the filters and add more options (e.g. for each armor slot, flexible vs sturdy options, each weapon type etc.)

Answer: Yes, we are planning to add filters in the future, i.e. for the storage, inventory etc.

Question: Sniper Rifles feel very weak early game, not sure how you balance that as they are fine from skill level 10-15, but at level 1, if you’re picking Rifles (Sniper) you are gonna struggle a lot, which may put some new players off who like the ‘sniper’ archetype. Any plans to give Rifles a boost?

Answer: We know that this is an issue and we will address this in a future update, but currently our focus is on expanding the world and add more features.

Question: Are there any plans to add possible roll ranges for each item (dmg, crit chance, crit dmg, headshot damage rolls for weapons, and dmg reduction, evasion rating rolls for armor). Perhaps hidden behind the ‘ALT’ more information. Right now it’s very hard to evaluate how good a particular roll is and this will eventually lead to players having to constantly look up those possible ranges online anyway which is going to be very annoying.

Answer: We like to do this in the future but we need to find our way on how to implement it the right way.

Question: I don’t really understand the point of ‘improvised weapons’. I haven’t used them once in my whole playtime. I read some post where they were supposed to function as tool replacements, but I haven’t really needed them nor was it obvious to me in-game without looking it up. Are you going to re-visit them to find an actual use-case for them?

Answer: We are currently looking into on how to improve this, for example by adding improvised weapons to the normal weapon lineup.

Question: I think every weapon base type needs to have something slightly different about it to provide some decision making when crafting. Right now I’m looking at crafting a new Revolver and I’m faced with 4 options, which are basically identical outside of a different ammo type. That’s boring. I suggest you look into ‘Implicits’ and consider adding something like this to Persist Online base types. Small bonuses to differentiate them. 

Answer: Yes, we agree, and want to add this in the future, but currently our focus is on expanding the world and add more features.

Question: Higher Rarity/Quality food (e.g. Tree Sap, Honey) should grant better regeneration. Any plans here?

Answer: The main purpose of those consumables is not to heal players. Sure, they can be very helpful for a quick heal in emergency situations (especially in the early game), but you should focus on using them for “buff food” cooking in the safehouse. 

Question: The Safehouse UI is probably one of the most off-putting parts of the game. Any plans to improve this in the future?

Answer: This is already on our to-do list and we are actively working on it.

Question: This may be impossible technically based on your architecture, but it’s very annoying to have to ‘log out’ to access the safehouse. I don’t really see why the Safehouse can’t just be an extra pop-up window that can be triggered e.g. from some bench/terminal in the open game world. Constantly having to go through the long-ish loading screen to access safehouse just to complete a task and then log back in gets very annoying quickly. Would love it if you could make it more seamless.

Answer: This is very difficult to implement due to technical and programming limits. But in the future we will add more factions in the world (besides Legacy, Thatcher) that will give players the opportunity to unlock additional strongholds with safehouse entries.

Question: I am kind of indifferent to the long task times in the safehouse, it provides for some planning etc., but I do disagree with one design decision very strongly – requiring the character with the appropriate skill to be the one craft a weapon of that skill. For example, my main character right now has 20 Revolver skill and I want to craft a level 16-20 Revolver for it, which will take 24 hours. I basically must give up playing my best/main character for 24 hours that I want to play (and this will only scale and get worse with Blue/Purple/Orange items). That is crazy. I suggest that at least one character in your family needs to have the required skill level to craft the desired item but then make it so then any family member can actually craft it, not just the one with the particular skill. 

Answer: We agree with this, and plan to remove the restrictions with a future game update. Once implemented, any character of a players family will be able to handle unlocked tasks in the safehouse.

Question: It was very hard for me to find the faction NPCs (Legacy and Thatchers). Can you add some sort of quest (level 10 or 15), maybe given by Marcia, that introduces you to the factions and adds quest markers for both faction leaders so that you can find them easier and decide which to join?

Answer: We added Questmarkers with the last pre-alpha update to help with this, and we will continue to improve the quest system (incl. NPC positioning to spot quest NPCs better) in general.

Question: I often find myself hard-capped by Labor without a clear way of how to farm it. I understand the passive gain and through combat, but I’m not really a fan of it. I’d prefer a ‘dedicated’ way to grind a bit of Labor. Can you add some simple daily quests (could reward e.g. 5-10 labor)? Perhaps available from each of the faction leaders once you reach Friendly status. 

Answer: In the future there we will add additional ways to gain Labor, for example with daily quests.

Question: Can you also add a task/hunter NPC that grants you never ending tasks like ‘Kill 20 Banshees’, ‘Kill 15 Angler Zombies’, ‘Kill 5 Dreadnoughts’ (difficulty/amount based on your level) etc., that could provide an alternative gameplay loop/purpose, but also reward you with stuff like a bit of Labor, maybe a rare chance for some cool stuff like cooking recipes, repair kits etc.?

Answer: Yes, this is coming with our daily quests system – we will share more details on this soon.

Question: Do you guys have any plans to improve Nodes? I really like the idea behind the feature – timed, higher stakes, specific resource farm. However, I think they need a fair bit of balancing/changes to make them more fun/worthwhile. As they are, I do not think I would ever go to them once the game is live. Right now, I grab them but only because almost no one else is playing so I just claim and then get a big mailbox shipment after 3 hours, I do not bother with the ‘gathering’ part. 

Answer: Yes, we are making some adjustments to Nodes in an upcoming update: First, we will reduce the amount of time a Node can be claimed by a player to 30 minutes (was 3 hours). In addition, the Pristine Item spots that spawn on claimed Nodes can be harvested every 3 minutes (was 20 minutes). This change hopefully makes Nodes overall feel better and more rewarding. We will continue to monitor the system and make more adjustments if needed.

Question: I struggled very much with finding higher rarity Fishing spots. I suggest extending the quest where you must get the 3 fish from the lake for the cat. Add a mission for each fishing quality. After you do the first quest, you get a quest to deliver 3 Common fish + markers to some common fishing spots. Then quest for 3 Good fish + markers to some good fishing spots etc.

Answer: Currently we only added “green/good” quality fishing spots in the world. Higher quality spots are still in development and coming in the future.

With today’s developer update, we’re happy to introduce a cool new feature for Persist Online: Nodes. Nodes will allow players to gather “pristine items”. These items can be recycled in the Safehouse into lucrative amounts of raw materials for your tasks.  

Lets have a closer look into Nodes and how they work in the game.

Nodes are small areas in Persist Online that can be controlled by a one single player character for a set amount of time in order to harvest pristine items. When recycled, pristine items provide a significantly higher amount of raw materials for Safehouse tasks than the normal junk items found in the world.

So if your character is ever running low on certain raw materials, Nodes are the place to go!

Nodes can be found in specific areas throughout the world (for example: inside buildings, on top of skyscrapers, on islands, and other unique locations). There are multiple claimable Nodes in each world ring[www.persist.online] - with the first Nodes becoming available in Ring 3.

Once a player reaches Level 12, they can claim ownership of a Node in the world. Please be aware, that only one character can claim one Node at a time - but you can always claim additional Nodes using other characters from your family.

Each Node in Persist Online also has a specific time window during which it can be claimed. In the Character Overview Menu (C-Button), you will find more information about when individual Nodes become claimable. In addition, you have the possibility to set any Node as favorite (no limit), so they appear on the top of your list and trigger a special notification when they become available - but you can only mark one single node to be visible on your compass. 

To claim a Node, the player must interact with the flag located in the Node area by pressing the “E” button while standing close to it. This will start a countdown timer, and once the countdown is completed, the character gains ownership of that specific Node. Be careful though: the countdown will stop immediately if the player takes any damage during the process. Make sure the area is secure before attempting to claim it.

Once a player has claimed a Node, the reward phase begins and lasts for three hours. During this time, the Node owner can regularly find specific spots near the Node flag that might hold pristine items to harvest. These pristine items can be recycled in the Safehouse for a lucrative amount of raw materials, depending on the Node’s theme. For example:

• Pristine items from the Woodcutter Node will be recycled into wood.

• Pristine items from the Tabletop Store Node will be recycled into plastics.

At the end of the reward phase, the Node owner will receive a final reward via in-game mail, and the Node will enter a depleted state until its next claimable phase begins.

Nodes will be included within our next game update, which is planned to release very soon. If you’d like to test this feature during an upcoming playtest (no date set yet), please make sure to signup for our regular playtests[sibforms.com]. Also, don’t forget to join our Discord Server[discord.com] to stay up to date with the latest game news, information about upcoming playtests, chat to fellow testers and community members and also share your game feedback and ideas directly with the Persist team.

We truly appreciate your continued support and are incredibly grateful for all the feedback we’ve received so far to make Persist Online the best game possible.

-The Persist Online Team