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Archives of Nethys

Pathfinder 1E | Pathfinder 2E | Starfinder

8/1/19 7:03 AM PST

Hello everyone! I’m Blake Davis, owner and lead developer of the Archive of Nethys, a set of websites that has served for years as a source for Pathfinder and (later) Starfinder rules. Last year, I was happy to announce that Paizo had made us an official partner and representative of these same rules.

Today I am ecstatic and oh-so proud to welcome you to the new website to host your Pathfinder 2nd Edition rules content for years to come.

Welcome to Pathfinder 2nd Edition!

The original site, as I’ve said before, was a labor of love - and oh so many poor programming choices. When I first wrote the site I was learning C# and SQL (mostly by reading a lot of stackoverflow) and much of the old design was the result of ignorance of what I could really do with the code. The new website is a complete re-design of the back-end database and the front-end code, taking advantage of some of the techniques that had been learned over the years. The main menu is still the same, something we just didn't have time to accomplish before launch, but improvements to that are coming soon as well!

New Features

Without further ado, here are some of the many new features you can find on the site:
  • The majority of mechanics have direct links build into their headers, something that was done with 1E and SF but not to the coverage on 2E. If you want to share a specific rule or mechanic with someone, now it should be available wherever you go.
  • Art! When I first announced the Paizo partnership, I mentioned that part of the arrangment was being able to use some art. Starting with 2E, I’m taking advantage of this and am finally including some art on the website. Every Monster in the new Bestiary that has art will show that art on their page, along with all of the Deities and Faiths/Philosophies. You can expect more art to come in the future, including a navigation menu on the Class page made up of the iconics’ art.
  • The menu header system was improved, showing you exactly which section you’re in as you navigate throughout the website.
  • Hyperlinks are everywhere. The table structure was redesigned with object relationships in mind, making it much easier to provide links between areas of the site. Fans of Monsters should be very happy with the significant amount of underlining in the new statblocks.
  • Thanks to the new Traits system, the Traits page will show you matching mechanics from all parts of the site, and will be improved later on with advanced filtering options to handle multiple trait selections.
  • With Monsters, I never quite liked how they sorted. If I’m looking for a Giant Ant, do I want G for Giant or A for Ant? In 2E, I decided to show a monster on an appropriate letter’s page if either its own Name or the name of its Family/Group matches, hopefully making it easier to find the monster you’re looking for.

Incomplete Features

Now, as happy as I am with all we got done, there are unfortunately a few spare items missing. We don’t expect them to take longer than a few days to correct, but I want to make sure all are aware.

On the complete side of the fence, all of the Core Rulebook and the Fall of Plaguestone were entered - they are done, save for miscellaneous bugs.

On the less complete side, we’re missing some monster data from the Bestiary and the set from Pathfinder #145: Hellknight Hill. Mark has been hard at work entering them all, and while many of them will be finished by the time of this post, some are still going to take a day or two. To easily tell which Monsters are unfinished (Monsters are composed of multiple tables, so just seeing a Monster entry doesn’t mean it’s "done"), simply look at whether or not they have a Creature Type in the Monsters table. Mapping traits (which includes the type) is one of the final steps done on a Monster, so its a good indication of whether a Monster is "done" or not.

Second, there are likely a few wrong hyperlinks here and there, mostly on individual Feats (not the large tables). We’ve spent the last few days cleaning things up, but there are certainly some still out there.

Lastly, the Search page is delayed until Monday. An error in SQL crept up during the last stages, and Milan, our primary database engineer on it, had just left for GenCon. It’s a quick fix thankfully, so the Search will be up and ready for your use on Monday.

Errors and all, we expect to have things cleaned up and finished by the start of next week. All of the monsters will be entered, the hyperlink errors cleaned up, and any other bugs found during the first few days hopefully fixed. All other areas of the site should be ready and functional, so explore! If you find any issues, check out the Contact Us page on the menu bar and shoot us an email! While I’m historically poor with replying to them, I regularly catalog the emails in our ticket system to make bugs on and get fixed.

Finale

I want to give a huge amount of thanks to all the contributers that helped out with 2nd Edition! Devin and Mark have done a fantastic job with data import, and Milan, besides managing the search engine, is a wizard at mapping Traits to all the different mechanics. There was no way I was going to get this done without them, so thank you to all of them, and everyone else on my team that helps with the other websites!

Alright, I’ll wrap things up here. Most of you know already that the Archives is a free-to-use site, and that’s not going to change - all three websites will continue to stay online so long as I get traffic to them. If you want to show your support, you can do so by turning off your ad-blocker or subscribing to the Patreon - every little bit helps!

Thank you for supporting us for so many years, and please, enjoy the new site!