The day has finally arrived and I couldn't be happier of what Of Blades & Tails has become over the past 3 years. It's been a wild and exciting journey. I'm grateful for everyone of you who helped with their feedback from the first demo back in 2021 and throughout the last year of Early Access!
I'm not gonna lie, the last 6 months or so have been pretty intense. Working on an open-world RPG, managing community and trying not to wipe everyones progress with each major update is not an easy task, especially if you have a full time job and family :)
It's so great to see that eventually everything worked out! Especially the fact that you could play the game from the early demo to 1.0 (over 2 years) with the same savegame and not losing all your progress along the way. That has always been an issue for me as a player when it comes to EA. Therefore I implemented a savegame migration strategy early on and it did the job quite well. There were 2 updates that required a reset of the players attributes/abilities, but everything else could be silently handled under the hood.
Not least because of this it has been possible to receive a wide range of valuable feedback across the whole game and not just the first 10 hours or so, because players were forced to restart after each update.
That being said, some of you sure wonder what future plans I have for Of Blades & Tails! The honest and probably not very satisfying answer to this is: It depends... ;)
First of all I will definitely work on player feedback and fixing any major issues that might come up! Extra content post-launch will depend on how well the 1.0 release goes. So that's something I can only evaluate in the coming weeks. And because of the intense nature of things in the past months I would definitely like to slow it down a bit / take a little break / regain energy. So TL;DR I will get back to the topic of future content in a separate post. Some time in December seems appropriate! :)
Now with all of this out of the way, I wish you all a ton of fun with Of Blades & Tails 1.0! I wish I could erase my knowledge of the game to be able to play it blind and make all the discoveries for the first time! It definitely is the kind of game I always wanted to play. So I hope you'll like it, too :)
Last but not least, here is our fresh Release Trailer!
Feature Highlights during EA
A summary of all highlight features that have been added during Early Access, in chronological order.
Stealth talent and gameplay
Achievements
Detailed in-game statistics
Treasure Hunting
Reworked health recovery and balancing
New region: The Haunted Forest (with a unique survival mechanic)
Engineering talent
Beastmastery talent (with abilities to temporarily tame creatures)
New region: Levendell and surroundings
Equipment modifications
Illusion Magic talent
Reworked unarmed combat
Random seeds that add more variety to each playthrough
New region: The Barrenland
A Combat Arena where players can compete in leaderboards
New "Challenge (Hard)" difficulty mode
Changelog v1.0.0
Game World
The main quest "Over Hill and Dale" can now be completed.
The story quest "Of Haughty Antlers" and following can now be completed.
A new region has been added: The Wasteland
New biome and dungeon types have been added.
Multiple new locations have been added to the wasteland.
A final encounter has been added.
4 new dungeons have been added.
2 quests have been added to the Adventurers Guild.
1 quest has been added to the Mages Guild.
New types of enemies have been added.
6 new legendary items have been added, incl. 2 artifacts.
A new human lore piece has been added.
New music tracks have been added.
New secrets and hidden encounters have been added.
Mechanics
A new item and mechanic has been added: The Magic Detector
Magically hidden objects have been placed at existing locations.
This item allows you to detect magically hidden objects in the game world. There are several ways to obtain a detector:
Through the Mages Guild quest.
Bought from the Trader for Magic Supplies in Immerfurt.
Found at a few locations in the world. In the chest inside the Church Ruins, and in the chest at the larger Cultist Camp(Unless you already looted these locations, then you'll have to fall back to the other 2 options.)
UI & QoL Improvements
The path indicator now shows your remaining movement points for this turn.
Added a "locked" toggle to player/skill bar that prevents skills from being accidently dragged outside the slot. (This has been reported as a potential issue from Steam Deck players)
An audio option has been added to disable the combat music.
The feedback form won't pop up on exit anymore, but is now available through a dedicated button in the main menu.
Achievements
8 new achievements have been added:
Wanderer
Explorer
Discoverer
Become an Adventurer
Become a Mage
Magic Detective
With a little help
And so it ends
Other Improvements & Fixes
Adjusted item mods on random loot so it's more likely to find level 16 items now. (This may also affect your existing loot, but only in a way that a former lvl 14 item is now lvl 16.)
Fixed a missing perk description for "Trained Runner".
Fixed a bug where object highlighting remained active after pressing Alt+Tab.
Fixed a bug in item upgrade and modification views when view gets closed in-between animations.
Prevented an issue caused by clicking quick slot items faster than intended.
Updated several localizations.
Full Release on November 9th!
Hey everyone!
I'm very happy to finally announce that we'll be leaving Early Access on November 9th! So in 2 weeks from now, you'll be able to complete Reik's Adventure and eventually find out what lurks in the Great Lair!
The 1.0 Update will feature a lot of new content! Here are some highlights:
The main quest will be complete and lead you to a new and dangerous, final region!
The story quests that lead you through the world and get to know the other tribes will be complete.
New quests for both the Adventurers and Mages Guild will be added.
A new mechanic to detect magically hidden objects in the world will be added.
A bunch of new legendary equipment can be obtained!
More secrets and lore to uncover...
We are already in the process of testing and polishing the 1.0 version to make it a smooth and (almost!) bug free experience for everyone!
I can also assure you that all savegames will be compatible, so if you don't want to wait any longer, you may jump in right now, enjoy all the content that already exists and eventually finish your main quest (and more) in November!
Moving closer to release, I just want to use this as a reminder that reviews help a lot to reach more players. So if you already joined this Early Access adventure and were hesitating: Yes, a kind and constructive review is highly appreciated :)
Our ever growing and friendly Discord community is also happy to help if you need tips or just can't figure out this one mystery in the game!
We would love to see you around!
I'll be back in November with the full changelog and a more detailed post about the journey so far and future plans!
Until then, take care everyone!
Felix
Patch 0.19.2
Fixed a potential blocker in the swamp lake traversal caused by certain seeds.
Patch 0.19.1
Fixed a problem where the tooltips of attribute stats did not update correctly after switching equipment.
Fixed a potential crash when pressing key 6 while the second weapon set was active.
Fixed a problem with the calculation of resistance multipliers.
Fixed an issue with the "Back Stab" skill: Jumping back 1 tile does now work even if the target got defeated.
Fixed a problem where danger/safety detection was not working properly with static enemies like plants.
Fixed a potential issue when indicating that the player reached the max level of 25.
Fixed a typo in skill effect description for "Vanish".
1.0 Coming Soon!
Hi all!
As you already know, we have recently released an update which included a new game mode and quite a few QoL improvements (read here). We are excited to say, that this update was the last stop on our roadmap before we reach our final destination, which is version 1.0!
EARLY ACCESS WILL BE ENDING SOON!
There have been numerous updates during Early Access and many new things have been added into the game including new biomes, characters, enemies, quests etc.
Since the entire roadmap has been completed, I'd like to now spend some time making sure that everything works just as intended, so I can deliver the v1.0 as perfect as possible, without any bugs and with the final quests finally available!
NEW PRICE
Since we're almost ready to launch out of Early Access, we are planning on increasing the price of Of Blades & Tails, which will take place on September 18th. The new price will be set to $14.99.
I think the game has improved a lot over the past year and we strongly believe that this is the right course of action.
I really appreciate all your support, it means a lot to both me and Pineapple Works. I'm also extremely happy to see how great our community has been and I'd like to thank everybody who volunteered in both testing and localizing Of Blades & Tails, allowing it to be available in many languages!
Till next time!
Felix Laukel & Pineapple Works
Update 0.19.0 - New difficulty mode and QoL improvements
Hey everyone!
Here goes the last, slightly bigger update before we reach 1.0 :) It contains the missing "Challenge" difficulty mode, rename/delete options for save slots and other requested quality of life improvements.
Changelog v0.19.0
"Challenge" difficulty mode has been added with these modifiers:
You will lose 20% exp and 8% of your coins upon defeat.
Enemy density is increased by roughly 50%. (This primarily affects the overworld levels)
Recovery at bonfires is disabled.
Fast travel cost is increased.
Your starting health is slightly decreased. (This primarily affects the overworld levels)
Enemy base level is increased by 1.
Auto-recovery is disabled. (Recovery from herbs, potions, etc. still works as normal)
Other improvements and fixes
It's now possible to rename and delete save slots within the game.
The current difficulty is now shown in-game in the statistics view.
It's now better indicated in the character view if you reached the max player level of 25.
The attribute tooltips now include detailed numbers of the affecting bonusses, like base value, equipment bonus, and other bonusses.
A problem with custom keybindings has been fixed, that caused the previous key to still trigger the action that has been assigned to a different key.
Multi-threaded rendering has been enabled, which should increase performance on mid and low end systems.
Interactive objects in the world can now be highlighted by keypress (default ALT). Please note that it's possible that you need to rebind this key in the options, if you already changed other keybindings.
The game now automatically keeps 1 backup of your last savegame. If you run into any issues with your savegame, you can now manually restore it in the save folder. However, this will most likely never be necessary :)
Patch 0.18.3
(chinese) Fixed a wrong direction description in the journal entry of the first quest.
Updated several other translation strings.
Patch 0.18.2
Fixed an issue where player names with non-latin characters haven't been displayed properly in the arena leaderboard.
Patch 0.18.1
Fixed a bug/exploit in relation with the Beast Banishing perk.
Beast Banishing is now explicitely limited to plants and insects.
Fixed missing persistence of the mounted witcher in the raider camp.
Changed how the leaderboard achievement gets triggered: It's now completed the first time you score in the leaderboard challenge.
Added missing translation string for raider dungeon.
Big thanks to the player who reported the issue with Beast Banishing.
Your leaderboard score has been removed. I hope you understand :) Would love to see you again on the top though!
Update 0.18.0 - World Expansion III
Hey everyone!
This is the next big chapter for Of Blades & Tails, which adds a new region to the world, with a completely new biome and settlement. It also brings a Combat Arena and allows you to compete with other players in the leaderboard.
Please refer to the last preview post to learn more about the new region and how the arena works.
Changelog v0.18.0
General
The max player level has been increased to 25.
Game World
The game world has been expanded to the east.
A new region has been added: The Barrenland
A whole new biome has been added.
A new settlement has been added: Murzork - Home of the Boar Tribe
Several new NPCs have been added.
New music tracks have been added.
A new dungeon has been added.
Several new types or variations of existing enemies have been added.
New locations have been added: Horned Beast Grounds
New locations have been added: Raider Camps
2 new quests have been added.
The Combat Arena
The arena can be found in the northern end of Murzork. It features 2 competitions:
The Leaderboard Challenge
Endless waves of alternating types of enemies.
Players earn an arena score by defeating as many enemies as possible.
Arena score can be boosted with Combo Multipliers, when multiple enemies are defeated in very few turns.
Each player who participates is ranked in the leaderboard.
The leaderboard can be viewed just outside of the arena.
All difficulty modes (Relaxed, Adventure, Challenge) are normalized in this competition. Allowing all players to compete in the same leaderboard under the same conditions.
Enemy levels range from 22 to 40+. Be prepared for a definitive challenge!
The Tournament
A quest is offered to the player to compete in the tournament.
It contains 5 individual stages.
Each stage offers a unique challenge.
This tournament will also be part of the upcoming story line quest. (You can complete it now or later.)
The "Champion of the Arena" is granted a new legendary armor.
Items & Equipment
A legendary item has been added: Champion Body Armor
A legendary item has been added: Champion Leg Armor
New item stat levels have been added to address the increased max player level of 25.
Achievements
4 achievements have been added:
Level 20
Level 25
Get Ranked!
Champion of the Arena
Fixes and Improvements
The artifact slot has been removed from the "Avg. Equipment Level" calculation.
A problem with the world map view has been fixed, that caused it to not center on the player location after game load or defeat.
The Fog of War (in overview mode) has been disabled in all settlements.
Several smaller fixes.
Improved several translations.
Savegame Compatibility
Savegames from version 0.17.x are compatible and future savegames will remain compatible as well :)
What's next
This will most likely be the last major content update before the 1.0 release! 😮 Feels pretty unreal to write this actually. We started EA last October and now we're in a great spot to reach the estimated timeline of ~1 year to full release.
So here's the (rough) plan until then: I will work on all the remaining story quests, the guild quests and of course the final region/encounter. Then there are still a bunch of smaller feature requests and QoL improvements on my list, which I will try to put in another minor update 0.19 along the way. I'm planning to take my time with all of this and not rush it. Therefore I can't give you any exact dates right now. All I can say is: Stay tuned, we're almost there! 😊
Meanwhile, if you enjoy your time with Of Blades & Tails and the new contents, then please consider writing a short Steam review. It really helps the game to grow and reach more players :)
