Removal of Subscription and Trading Fees

As of now, LiteBringer is completely free to play, there are no microtransactions or monthly fees required to play. The only ‘cost’ you will encounter is the mining fee which is paid to the miner who mines the block that includes your transaction.

Evolve Balancing

Old sky shards can be converted into a new type of shard at a trader. These new shards can be used both for item and character evolves. They can be obtained with a daily limit per character. The evolve costs have been adjusted, too.

Furthermore, the equipment item UI has been reworked which should ease the evolve process considerably. It now allows several evolves per transaction.

Synchronization Performance Improvement

We also substantially reworked the syncing mechanism which improves syncing speed for version 16 and 17 a lot and allows faster syncing in the future without the preloaded blockchain service. Moreover, we added a preloaded game state. It will be downloaded once and is then used as starting point for synchronization. In case of a resync only the blockchain part after this point needs to be loaded again.

Zoomable Map and Character Deletion

The map is now zoomable and you can delete characters via the context menu

Here is a list of all changes and fixes:

Changes

• Removed subscription and trading fee
• Reworked syncing mechanism for much faster syncing speed
• Balanced evolve formula for character and item evolves
• Added a new evolve resource which can be obtained with a daily limit per character
• Adjusted “Realmgate” quests
• Added a trader to convert older sky shards into a new type of shard
• Adjusted trader prices for rare metal fragments
• Adjusted dismantle revenue for items evolved before version 17
• All effects can now be chosen for tier 9 set items at the equipment trader
• Epic equipment items of tier 9 bosses now drop with a random effect
• Added curse immunity against “Curse of Zhiogga” for tier 8 set items
• Added curse immunity against “Curse of Zhiogga” and “Curse of the Dark Pharaoh” to tier 9 set items
• The map is now zoomable
• Depot resources are now displayed within a trader and at resource quests
• Added an option to the character context menu to delete characters
• Added an option to the character context menu to move a character to bottom or top
• Equipment items can now be evolved several times per transaction
• Reworked the GUI for equipment item infos, evolve and level up
• Enhanced equipment item tooltip
• Added a sort and display option for “price per unit” for trade offers
• Added a subfilter for presents and events
• Account addresses can now be enter in leaderboard to enter VOA mode
• Account addresses can now be copied to clipboard
• Increased search speed for trade offers
• The “Create Character” screen can now be entered to retrieve class infos even if no character can be created anymore
• Increased possible resource amount for trade offers
• Added a preloaded game state as starting point for synchronization
• Reduced GPU usage
• Some minor performance improvements

Bug Fixes

• Set correct attributes for tier 9 battlemage equipment
• Set correct values for Saglometh
• Nefarian Kilt now has correct attributes for priests
• Fixed a rare bug leading to not released depot slots on trader purchases
• Fixed some space problems with too long texts
• Fixed mempool transactions which were not cleaned up
• Fixed some visual bugs in the inventory
• Fixed a reset selection bug for traders
• Fixed a bug when switching accounts saying “Key is alread set”
• Fixed a bug allowing consumables to be dragged in VOA mode
• Fixed a minor visual bug in trading filters
• Fixed a minor wallet bug
• Fixed a minor leaderboard bug

Farewell

This final update marks the end of LiteBringer’s development and our active support for the game and all CipSoft-related services.

Thank you for all your help, dedication and enthusiasm, for accompanying us on this adventurous journey and giving us a chance to explore true blockchain gaming together with you. We embrace and value the experiences we made and the lessons we learned, but most of all we cherish you, our community, for the courage, passion and commitment you have shown. The memories we have made thanks to you will not be forgotten.

Farewell, LiteBringers, here’s to you!

It was a daring step into the unknown which required courage and passion, not only from us but also from you, the players. Courage has its root in the Latin word for heart, cor. And indeed, you, the LiteBringer community, have always been at the heart of this adventurous endeavor.

We relished the opportunity to explore untrodden paths together with you. Just like we put a lot of time and resources into LiteBringer’s development, you put a lot into contributing and supporting us through ups and downs. We truly appreciate how you have always been generous with honest feedback and suggestions.

However, despite our combined efforts to breathe more life into the game, LiteBringer’s player numbers failed to gain sustainable traction but dwindled away instead. It became more and more apparent that we had reached an impasse. Throughout the last weeks, we thoroughly analyzed and assessed the state of LiteBringer, its problems and challenges, and its future.

After carefully considering all aspects and our options, we have made the difficult decision to stop the further development of LiteBringer. A decision which we hereby announce with a heavy heart.

Discontinuation of Development

We are aware that there are still ideas and proposals we have not yet explored with the game, many of which were not only suggested by the community but also found an echo within the team. Yet, we had to conclude that any adjustment which only scratches the surface cannot fundamentally change the appeal of LiteBringer to attract a wider audience.

While crypto games utilizing non-fungible tokens to reward players have surged in popularity, this trend has also given rise to higher player expectations in regards to the monetization of their gaming experiences. Expectations which LiteBringer cannot meet in a way that would attract and satisfy a large enough player base, including more casual players. Trying to adapt to these expectations would require a radical and massive redesign in various aspects with a whole string of consequences which would completely alter the character of LiteBringer and its spirit in the end. It would be a high-risk, cost- and time-intensive endeavor with a highly uncertain outcome.

Since we do not consider such a change worthwhile, we will discontinue the development of LiteBringer, our active support for the game and all CipSoft-related services with the release of a final update around the end of March 2022.

The Final Update

This update will remove the subscription and all trading fees, and also include a few minor balancing changes. LiteBringer will still be playable after this update since it lives on the Litecoin blockchain. Players who at the point of this announcement already stocked up subscriptions which would make them pay for the game beyond said update, will be automatically reimbursed for the overpayment.

We are also trying to find a way to preserve this Discord server by transferring its ownership to capable hands if possible.

We are grateful to every single one of you for your courage and enthusiasm, your patience and support, your loyalty and honesty. Thank you for inspiring us in so many ways! The development of Litebringer taught us many lessons and we are proud of what we have achieved together with YOU, because the game would have been nothing without its passionate and dedicated community.

Together, we embraced, believed and trusted in LiteBringer’s revolutionary potential. We stepped into what was and still is mostly uncharted territory – true blockchain gaming. Trying to leave a trail where there was no path.

We feel honored that you accompanied us in this adventure and we salute you, LiteBringers!

In the last few weeks, we already gave you a glimpse on the new adventures and challenges that are waiting for you.

Make sure you are well prepared when you head out unearth the dark secrets of Ankharash, an arid desert land shunned by the living. You better get your hands on gear with immunity lest curses befall you and sap your strength.

If you are more in a jolly mood already, you can look forward to the start of Winter Solstice on December 17. It will not only bring some delicious festive treats but also allow you celebrate the spirit of gifting by sending presents to other players.

In addition, February will be spiced up with the new seasonal event Haunting of Carnester and April will ring in the Beaster Season.

You will also be able to collect a new item type through these seasonal events: Consumables which grant temporary benefits. Consumable have their own body slot in the inventory and will be used up if you send your character to a quest while having the item in question equipped.

Moreover, you can now exchange normal fragments and emblems for rare metal fragments at specific traders.

For a better overview, here is a list of the new features and fixes:

New Features:

• Added a new area with higher tier and rewards
• Added seasonal events, which will be repeated yearly
• Added consumables as new item type, which can be equipped and disappears after usage
• Added a present system, which allows players to send presents to other players
• Added a curse system for monsters, which reduces the power of the character’s equipment when it has no immunity
• Added a trader for rare metal fragments
• Weekly quests will now start date-based
• Adjusted starting times of weekly collosseum quests
• Removed normal metal fragments from “Mine of Dorastir” quest

Bugfixes:

• Improved client performance
• Reduced tracker size
• Reduced emblem costs of head equipment in tier 7 trader
• Reduced wrong experience point values of tier 8 bosses
• Removed wrong set bonus of Wicked Demon Skin Vest
• Removed “Send Currency” pop-up in VOA mode
• Fixed a wrong value for remaining blocks in “Temporary Quests” overview
• Fixed reduced amount of shown effects in the monster overview
• Fixed double amount of transactions shown when dismantling equipment
• Fixed a broken check of remaining resources of an account in a trader
• Fixed a bug allowing to view own account in the leaderboard
• Fixed a rare visual bug in the inventory
• Fixed a rare bug making it not possible to cancel a trade offer
• Fixed some typos

Last week, we gave you a glimpse on three new seasonal events you can look forward to. Each of them will give you the opportunity to obtain something special:

Consumables

Consumables are a new item type which can be obtained as reward from seasonal quests. Whether it is a baked apple, a dragon costume or an evasion potion, a consumable will bestow a temporary ability bonus onto your character. They can add a power value to your base power or increase a character attribute. Some can also raise your base power against a specific monster type by a certain percentage or boost the experience points your character gains per round.

Whatever benefit is granted, it is not permanent. A consumable will be used up if you send your character to a quest while having the item in question equipped. It will be consumed after the first round and will grant its bonus for the whole quest duration. Before sending a character on a quest, the confirmation dialogue will inform you about the item you are about to consume.

Consumables go into a new bodyslot in the inventory. It comes with a checkbox for auto refill which is deactivated by default. If you tick this checkbox, the bodyslot will be automatically refilled with the equipped consumable if you have any of this particular consumable left.

You can save and load equipped consumables with item compilations, including the selected auto refill setting.

Consumables are stored within a new sub tab with filters in your depot. You will also be able to trade consumables via a new offer type entry.

Date-Based Weekly Quest

In order to make weekly quests more predictable so you can better plan ahead, we will change them to a date-based timing.

The four Colosseum quests will be available for an entire day (24 hours) and can be completed 10 times. This matches the maximum of possible completions with the older block-based duration. Tier 3 will start every Tuesday at 00:00 UTC and Tier 5 every Thursday at 00:00 UTC. The restart time of the three training scroll quests will be set to Monday, 00:00 UTC.

Metal Fragment Exchange

Have you been craving for an additional way to get your hands on rare metal fragments? Then you should definitly seek out Hagaf Glesk. He is an alchemist by trade and a collector of metal fragments by heart. Even ordinary things are extraordinary in his eyes. Hence, he is willing to part with rare metal fragments from his collection in exchange for normal fragments of the same tier together with sky shards. He exchanges metal fragments from tier 2 to tier 6.

If you want to trade in emblems for rare fragments, Howard Philips will be your man for tier 7 and George Wilcox for tier 8. The sturdy new trader Rhys Sallah will hammer a deal for tier 9.

After our trip to the hot sands of Ankharash, this week gives you a glimpse on three new seasonal events to spice up your routine:

Winter Solstice and Presents

Spark your festive spirit by participating in the Winter Solstice quest. Once a day from December 17 till December 30, your character can collect a green, blue or red present box to bring joy to others and yourself! Use the new “Presents” feature to send the gift to another player. While the receiver will get some tasty treats of the season, your generosity will grant you a Winter Solstice voucher. Collect and redeem those to be able to don a truly outstanding outfit: You will not only look like the jolly Little Helper you are, but also get access to a special quest with a delicious reward.

Presents can be send via the new “Present” tab. You will find it under “Trade” which will also include “Buy Offers” and “Sell Offers” as of release 16.
You will not be able to send a present to your own account. Also, once you have sent a present to another account, you cannot send any more to the same account on that day. If you receive a present while you are online, you will be notified about it.

Haunting of Carnester

Are you a master of disguise? Carnester, the Shapeshifter, definitely is! From February 17 till March 02, this enigmatic villain will try to turn Asirenia upside down. Find him once he spawns and manage to slay him before he moves to a different location. You will be rewarded with a fancy costume matching the location’s monster race. Who knows how it might benefit you if you take it with you on your next quest?

Beaster Season

They are huge, they were fluffy once, and they hunger for your blood! Beasters are not the kind of bunny you would want to get as a cuddly pet. From April 11 till April 24, these vicious abominations will appear in random places across Asirenia. Drive them back to the abyss – or rabbit hole – they came from and carefully collect the coloured eggs they leave behind. Those would make for a good breakfast but you better trade them for something to drink at a special trader who offers invigorating concoctions.

Upcoming next week: Delicacies, ornate masks, magical potions – what is behind these goods you can consume?

Recently, we brought the subscription fee to its planned price equating to roughly 1 Euro per character per month. We also announced that we will adjust the fee regularly to minimize the influence of fluctuations in the Litecoin market price.

We have decided to adjust the fee on a monthly basis from now on. At the beginning of each month, its price will be calculated using the average price of the previous seven days. In order to determine the average we will take CoinMarketCap‘s historical data on high and low prices of the last seven days, excluding the current market price on that day.

Rising from Dust

Update 16 will take you on a journey to the arid heat of Ankharash, a new area with wavy dunes as far as the eye can see, sand and dust everywhere, in your shoes, in your pockets, in your eyes and hair, even in your mouth. It is an otherworldly kind of beauty, breathtaking and hypnotizing as the hot air bends the daylight, creating distorions to lead you astray.

And in the biting cold of desert nights, you will find yourself shivering in this dry and barren place which seems so lifeless at first glance. As you are looking for an oasis or a lonely river, scattered ruins of former splendor tell tales of a forgotten empire with a majestic, eerie black pyramid at its heart like a foreboding prophecy of death. Which secrets lie buried in this eternal tomb?

Make your way through Ankharash as you face the undead servants and immortal slaves of the Dark Pharaoh. Stand your ground against seven new bosses to be rewarded with precious emblems that you can trade for new intricately adorned Tier 9 sets, one for each class, and two new trinkets.

Dark Afflictions

But beware, treasure hunters! Don’t fall victim to the blight of this land!

You may hold powerful gear in your hands already but a curse strikes deep. Curses are a new monster ability reducing the power of a character’s equipment while being used against this monster. Different types of curses can afflict you so prepare yourself properly before you head out. Check the monster details in the quest overview to find out which curses you will have to deal with.

Certain items, though, can have an immunity against a specific curse or even curses in general. Immunities will be unlocked at level 15. They will be displayed in the items tooltip and detail section.
A curse will reduce the power of an item without immunity against this curse type by an absolute base value and per-round value. The exact calculation of a character’s equipment power affected by curses will be shown in the monster tooltip as new category.

Upcoming Next Week: ‘Tis the season!

Here is a list of the changes:

Features

• The client only connects to stable Litecoin nodes (can be changed in the settings)
• The action “Send on Quest” while using free transactions does not block the client anymore
• Reduced the required amount of loading data on startup when using the balance tracker service
• Transaction history and tax report are now loaded on demand when using the balance tracker service

Bug Fixes

• Action button now changes to “Buy from NPC” in all character subviews
• Fixed estimated resource amounts for quests
• The hint for open temporary quests now shows grouped quests correctly
• Two mines are no longer counted as open temporary quests
• Tooltip for quest restarts now shows correct number of blocks
• Traders will now only accept confirmed resources
• Fixed a rare issue with the block timer
• Free transactions are no longer visible when viewing another account
• All a boss‘s resistances are now shown in the overview of the map
• Fixed map indication now showing if a boss can be beaten
• Added option to send an error report for database corruption errors
• “Sell” button is now disabled when there are no items in the sell offer
• Handling of a corrupt account file added
• Sending currency is now possible even with lots of unspent outputs
• Added hint that a subscription cannot be bought while using free transactions
• Added progress report when using multiple dismantle transactions

As of November 04, 2021, we will bring the subscription fee to its planned price of roughly 1 Euro per character per month.

At the start, we had dropped the fee to an absolute minimum, already pointing out that this special deal is a time-limited offer.

To minimize the influence of fluctuations in the market price, we will routinely adjust the subscription fee.

In a nutshell

The blockchain is basically a web based technology that connects multiple users and forms a global or local network in which every single participant possesses the complete information of the network. This characteristic is why a blockchain is pretty much the opposite of a cloud. Remember, in the cloud the information is stored in just one place, which can be accessed by everyone. The data in a blockchain is segmented in smaller units, called blocks.

What is a “block”?

The blockchain consists of a large number of blocks. Blocks are data container structures that aggregate transactions in order to be included in the public ledger and added to the end of the blockchain. They are made up of 2 parts: The header, containing metadata, and a long list of transactions that make up the bulk of the block‘s size. An average block contains over 500 transactions.

The header of the block consists of three sets of block metadata. One part contains the difficulty, timestamp and nonce, taken from the mining competition of this specific block. Another part contains the so-called Merkle tree root. That is a data structure which efficiently summarizes all transactions in the block. While a third part contains a reference to the previous block hash, which connects this block to the previous block in the chain.

How are they chained together?

A block can be described in two different ways: By its position in the blockchain or with its cryptographic hash.

The position of a block is called the block height. Imagine a large tower of boxes where the base has the height 0. Each box added on top of that is one position higher. On December 9, 2019, the block height of the Litecoin blockchain was approximately 1,750,000. This means there were 1,750,000 blocks stacked on top of each other, including the first one created in October 2011.

The block height is not part of the data contained in a block. Each node dynamically identifies a block‘s position when it is received from the bitcoin network. Unlike the hash, the height is not a unique property. Although a single block will always have a specific and unchangeable block height, the block height does not always identify a single block. It is possible that two or more blocks might have the same block height. In that case they are competing for the same position until the conflict is resolved.

How to get rid of conflicts

It is because the blockchain technology has got a decentralized data structure, different copies of it are not always 100% consistent. This happens when two miners are able to generate a possible new block at nearly the same time. Both will start to broadcast their success to the global network.

As soon as the miners/nodes are informed about such a success, they will start searching for the next block using the new block as the starting point. Consequently, there are two different groups of miners/nodes in the network operating with different bases.

These groups are called forks. Forks occur as temporary inconsistencies between different versions of the blockchain, which are resolved when more blocks are added to one of the forks. This is possible because the network is based on a consensus that always uses the longest available chain.

Right at that moment, when one of the groups is able to add the next block, the success is communicated throughout the global network. This causes all participants of the shorter branch of the chain to stop trying to expand their fork and accept the longer chain as their new base. The conflict is resolved.

Why the blockchain is safe

Taking the example of the stacked boxes again, changing the latest box is comparably easy. The manipulation of the box below is where it already gets extremely complicated. Replacing that second box is impossible without affecting the box on top.

The deeper a box is buried in the blockchain the harder it becomes to manipulate it. If you want to change the very first box at the bottom of the tower, the whole tower would have to be rebuilt. That is, without anyone noticing. Impossible.