Today we wanted to give you an update on what's been going on with multiplayer and what we still have left to do. We are closer than ever to getting the multiplayer update finished and we are so excited. Recently we've been doing some internal testing and it really adds a new feel to the game. There's just something fun about exploring islands and taking on pirates with your friends.
At any rate, let's dive in! Here's a look at what's been done so far.
Core Multiplayer Engine
One of the biggest tasks was getting the core multiplayer engine working correctly. We needed systems to be able to sync and handle everything in the game for multiple players, handle saving, etc. With a game like Salt, there are a lot of items and things in the game that has to be taken into account. So it was very important we got a nice system in for handling these sorts of things. And not just getting the system in, but getting it working in the most efficient way possible.
Syncing the World
While there are still some things left to sync up, we've got most everything working. At this point, the majority of enemies, boats, resources, animations, day/night cycle, loot, and armor visuals sync up. Getting this done was a huge step forward as we wanted to make sure players could see the same things in the world. This means if you see a rock in a certain place, then it needed to be there for the other player as well. This also goes for enemies.
And speaking of enemies, we've also got enemy aggro working, though we are still making some tweaks to it. As it is currently, an enemy will change their target if they are taking enough damage from someone else.
Joining Friends and Text Based Chat
Another system we've got in and working is the ability to join your friends on Steam. So when you are in the game, your friends will show up as an icon on the screen and you will be able to click that and join their game. We've also added in a text based chat box so that you can chat with other people in the world!
Player Inspection and Trading
Another major feature we just wrapped up is the ability to inspect and trade with other players. Now, you'll be able to interact with another player and see what gear they have on. In addition to that, you'll be able to initiate a trade with them and trade various items. This can be a particularly useful way to speed up progression when playing together or help encourage different playstyles. So if you're going for a more stealth based light armor character and you come across a big piece of heavy armor, you might want to consider giving them to your friend to help them out!
What's Left To Do?
While we've got the vast majority of major features in and implemented, we've still got some other areas we need to finish up. Here's a list of some things we still need to do:
<*>Full support for three or more players. (We've got this basically in and working but it needs to be ironed out and expanded)
<*>Enemy power scaling (We will be adjusting enemy stats based on how many players are in the proximity)
<*>Syncing boss battles
<*>Syncing player-placed ship content
<*>Syncing handheld item visuals
<*>Server options (enable/disable pvp, etc.)
<*>Wave and point emotes
<*>Final testing and bug fixes
Overall, multiplayer is coming along great! We are getting very close and can't wait for the community to be able to play together. As always, we'd love to hear your feedback and thanks for reading!
A Look At Update 1.9.6
Hey everyone!
We've been hard at work at a lot of different areas in Salt recently, particularly multiplayer. However, we do have another content update coming out soon before multiplayer and we wanted to give you an idea of what you can expect from that update!
Here's a look at some of the content coming soon:
Weather
One change that we are incredibly excited about is weather! This is something that has been requested for a long time and we are finally happy to have it near completion. Weather is going to dramatically affect the overall atmosphere and aesthetics of the game. Not only will you get lightning, clouds, and rain, but we've also included changes to the fog and lighting based on the weather. This creates a much more dynamic feel to the world of Salt.
Ship Cannons
Another new change we are very excited about are ship cannons! Now in the world you'll be able to find cannons and cannonballs at pirate camps. You can them place these on your ship and take out pirates from a distance. Plus, once multiplayer is out, you'll be able to shoot other players and feel like a true pirate!
The Blacksmith
In this update we've also added a new NPC known as The Blacksmith. Upon finding The Blacksmith, he will give you a quest that will reward you with a new pickaxe. With this new pickaxe you'll be able to occasionally mine obsidian ore from various rocks. You can then turn this obsidian in to The Blacksmith for unique rewards. In addition to that, he will also sell salvage tools that will allow you to salvage certain weapons for resources.
We think Update 1.9.6 is going to be a great addition to Salt and we can't wait to get it out! We will give another update soon on when you can expect that update to hit Steam. Also, we just want you to let you know that multiplayer is coming along great. We've got a lot of great functionalities in and working. We will post a blog in the next week or two showcasing what we've got working so far and what's left to go.
As always, we appreciate your support and would love to hear your feedback!
Update 1.9.5 - Birds of Paradise is Now Available
Hey everyone!
You can now download Update 1.9.5 - Birds of Paradise! This a huge update we've been working on for a while and are very excited to finally have it out. Just as a reminder we are still working hard on multiplayer and will be updating you on that progress soon!
Here's a look at what you can expect in Update 1.9.5.
Birds
A major change in this update is the introduction of new wildlife. Now when you are exploring islands you will see various birds flying above the trees. Though it's quite a challenge, these birds can be shot down and you can use their feathers to make items and trade for good gear. Overall we feel birds add not only new content but a new sense of atmosphere to the game.
Sea Treasure
You've been asking for more ocean content for quite some time and we are finally happy to take a step in that direction! Now out in the ocean you can find little glowing rings that indicate sea treasure. Once you have a treasure grabber (you can get one from a new NPC) you'll be able to dig up sunken treasure! There's different tiers of treasure with increasingly rare loot as well.
Challenge Chests
Now on pirate and natural islands you will be able to find challenge chests! We are really excited about these chests as they give a repeatable challenge with nice loot. Basically the way these work is you have to kill either all the pirates or all the deer on an island for them to unlock. The pirate challenge chests also increase in rarity for higher tiered pirate islands and as such drop better loot.
Abandoned Campsites
As a new piece of island content we have added abandoned campsites. You can find various trade-able items, lore books, and even rum! Look for these camps on natural islands.
New NPCs
We've introduced multiple new NPCs in this update including the Sea Treasure Hunter and the Sea Collector. The Sea Treasure Hunter mainly goes along with treasure hunting and the Sea Collector acts as a trading NPC for various items you find in the world.
Combat Improvements
With this update we wanted to also take a step toward improving combat. To do this, we added a parry mechanic. Now if you time a block at just the right moment you can stun the opponent and get a guaranteed critical hit upon your next attack. Adding just this one new mechanic has really opened up combat as parrying also uses stamina. This means you'll have to decide between attacking, power attacking, blocking, parrying, and dodging for how you want to spend your stamina in battle.
New Death Screen and In-Game Options
In this update we also added a new death screen as well as in-game options. Now when you die you will be greeted with sad music and a new death screen. You can also now change audio, gameplay, and graphics settings live in the game.
New sounds
We've also added new music and sounds in this update. We've tried to improve the sound design and give a greater sense of immersion. Now there will be subtle sounds that play when the game transitions from to day to night and also when you discover content on islands.
Additional Changes
We've made a ton of additional changes including new lighting, new main menu background, tons of new items, new boats, new waves system, and a lot of bug fixes. You can read the full patch notes below.
As always we'd love to hear your feedback!
Patch Notes:
Added birds.
Added sea treasure
Added new content to find on islands.
Added new challenge chests that unlock when you defeat all of a certain type of enemy on an island.
Added new NPCs, quests, and items.
Added some new recipes.
Added new music.
Added new discovery sounds and day/night transition sounds.
Added new boats
Added a new parry mechanic. Blocking at the right time while fighting pirates will open them up for a powerful hit.
Slightly changed the content on the starting island.
Adjusted the stats on some items.
Improved the death screen.
Added in
game options, which includes some new options such as motion blur and antialiasing.
Updated background in the main menu.
Some NPCs now spawn with nearby light sources, making them a little easier to spot.
Some NPCs now have slightly happier expressions.
Increased the amount of weight of all items by a factor of 10 and changed the functionality of weight to match the new bloated values. This means that an item that used to have a weight of 0.2 will now have a weight of 2.
Re
balanced lighting and visuals.
Increased base stamina and stamina regeneration speed.
Re
textured various items to be more cohesive with the world's visuals.
Implemented some new NPC greeting sounds.
Changed the clothes of various NPCs to be more unique.
Recipes that craft multiple of the same item (such as arrows) will now indicate so by a number in the bottom right of its icon in the crafting window.
Reduced the amount of memory the game uses during play.
Added boat sounds to the White Narwhal.
Extended the sound of the Plunderer's Ring and increased its distance slightly.
Trees are now less likely to spawn around the stone with the skull.
Adjusted the contents of the starting island.
The crafting window recipe scroll area now defaults to the top when the crafting window is opened.
Increased sail speed bonus of the windy sail slightly when sailing in the direction of the wind.
Upgraded Unity version.
The UI for the player chest inventory now reflects the maximum number of items it can contain.
Change the appearance of the cursor.
Added sounds that mark the transition between day and night.
Changed some of the default gamepad controls.
Added DirectX11 support.
Fixed an issue where the quest journal wasn't updating when you got the cleansed skull.
Fixed an issue where you were unable to loot an immaculate deer hide from scent lured deer.
Fixed some typos.
Fixed an issue where night time ambience sounds were missing from some islands.
Fixed a bug that caused islands to occasionally not fully spawn.
Fixed a bug where an island would occasionally generate its contents in different places upon returning.
Fixed NPC dialogue options to no longer clip through the bottom of their rectangles.
Items that use the short sword model no longer cast a shadow.
Fixed the reported food value in your character window not taking into account special foods.
Fixed boats being stuck in the air after coming back from far away.
Fixed bug with the white deer set bonus.
Fixed loading screen appearing quickly without a center image when starting the game in an area with no islands.
Slowed down the deer death animation.
Update 1.9.5 Now on Testing Branch!
Hey everyone!
Update 1.9.5 is now available on the testing branch! Please consider opting into the testing branch and helping us find any last minute issues before we push to the official branch. If you're not already on the testing branch and would like to be, follow the instructions below:
We are very excited about this update as it introduces a lot of new content and general improvements to the game. With this update we've added birds to islands, new challenge chests, sea treasure, new NPCs and quests, new sounds and music, and a lot more.
Here's a list of the current patch notes:
Update 1.9.5 Patch Notes
CHANGES
- Added birds.
- Added sea treasure
- Added new content to find on islands.
- Added new challenge chests that unlock when you defeat all of a certain type of enemy on an island.
- Added new NPCs, quests, and items.
- Added some new recipes.
- Added new music.
- Added new discovery sounds and day/night transition sounds.
- Added new boats
- Added a new parry mechanic. Blocking at the right time while fighting pirates will open them up for a powerful hit.
- Slightly changed the content on the starting island.
- Adjusted the stats on some items.
- Improved the death screen.
- Added in-game options, which includes some new options such as motion blur and antialiasing.
- Updated background in the main menu.
- Some NPCs now spawn with nearby light sources, making them a little easier to spot.
- Some NPCs now have slightly happier expressions.
- Increased the amount of weight of all items by a factor of 10 and changed the functionality of weight to match the new bloated values. This means that an item that used to have a weight of 0.2 will now have a weight of 2.
- Re-balanced lighting and visuals.
- Increased base stamina and stamina regeneration speed.
- Re-textured various items to be more cohesive with the world's visuals.
- Implemented some new NPC greeting sounds.
- Changed the clothes of various NPCs to be more unique.
- Recipes that craft multiple of the same item (such as arrows) will now indicate so by a number in the bottom right of its icon in the crafting window.
- Reduced the amount of memory the game uses during play.
- Added boat sounds to the White Narwhal.
- Extended the sound of the Plunderer's Ring and increased its distance slightly.
- Trees are now less likely to spawn around the stone with the skull.
- Adjusted the contents of the starting island.
- The crafting window recipe scroll area now defaults to the top when the crafting window is opened.
- Increased sail speed bonus of the windy sail slightly when sailing in the direction of the wind.
- Upgraded Unity version.
- The UI for the player chest inventory now reflects the maximum number of items it can contain.
- Change the appearance of the cursor.
- Added sounds that mark the transition between day and night.
- Changed some of the default gamepad controls.
- Added DirectX11 support.
FIXES
- Fixed an issue where the quest journal wasn't updating when you got the cleansed skull.
- Fixed an issue where you were unable to loot an immaculate deer hide from scent lured deer.
- Fixed some typos.
- Fixed an issue where night time ambience sounds were missing from some islands.
- Fixed a bug that caused islands to occasionally not fully spawn.
- Fixed a bug where an island would occasionally generate its contents in different places upon returning.
- Fixed NPC dialogue options to no longer clip through the bottom of their rectangles.
- Items that use the short sword model no longer cast a shadow.
- Fixed the reported food value in your character window not taking into account special foods.
- Fixed boats being stuck in the air after coming back from far away.
- Fixed bug with the white deer set bonus.
- Fixed loading screen appearing quickly without a center image when starting the game in an area with no islands.
- Slowed down the deer death animation.
A Look at Update 1.9.5
Ahoy mateys!
Today we wanted to give you a look at the next patch coming out, Update 1.9.5 - Treasures in the Sea. This is a pretty big update as far as content goes and we're still working hard on getting everything implemented and polished. We are also still working on multiplayer implementation and are making some great progress with that.
Let's dive into some of the content coming in the next update!
Sea Treasure
You've been requesting more content at sea for quite some time, and so we've started implementing some new ocean content we are calling Sea Treasure. Sea Treasure will spawn randomly out in the ocean and you'll have to find it and pull it up via a boat upgrade item known as the Treasure Grabber. In order to get the treasure though, you'll have to rank up with a new NPC known as the Sea Treasure Hunter. He'll require special coins that can only be found in Sea Treasure to rank up with him. As you rank you up, he'll get give you better treasure hunting items to find more rare treasure. And of course, the rarer the treasure, the harder it'll be to find. We are working on some neat puzzle mechanics for finding rare, epic, and legendary sea treasure.
Abandoned Campsites
With this update we are adding a new discoverable place on natural islands: abandoned campsites. These campsites will contain various resources, quest items, lore books, and finally, rum! What's a pirate game without rum anyways?
Sea Collector NPC
Many of the items you find at abandoned campsites will be collectible quest items that you can turn in to a new NPC known as the Sea Collector. He will mainly be a trade NPC that will have very unique and rare items, some of which are quest items leading to legendary weapons that he will give you in exchange for the collectibles you find throughout the world.
New Ocean Waves
In this next update we are increasing the deep ocean wave sizes and adding a chance for rare, huge waves. This new wave system will make navigating the deep waters a lot more fun and challenging!
Main Menu Changes
We've also made some subtle changes to the main menu, adding a randomly generated island in the background, some new graphical effects, and the ability to slightly move the camera, giving it a more immersive feel.
Additional Changes
In addition to lots of new items, weapons, quests, and lore, we've also made performance improvements, made some changes to NPC's such as giving them the ability to turn towards you when talking, and a bunch of audio changes such as new greeting sounds and sound effect improvements. We've also re-textured various weapons in the game to improve their look.
Overall this update is coming along well and we expect it to be out soon! As always, we'd love to hear your feedback!
Update 1.9.4 - Songs of the Seas
Introducing Update 1.9.4 - Songs of the Seas. This update includes a new NPC, musical instruments, Steam achievements, new quests, items, bug fixes, and more! Let's go over some of the content you can expect in this update.
Musical Instruments and The Composer NPC
Hanging out at the Inn you'll be able to find a new NPC known as The Composer. This NPC features an entirely new quest line that will allow you to unlock and earn musical instruments that you can play throughout your journey. These instruments also give you buffs in addition to a nice melody for your adventure! With the new Composer NPC you can also earn new gear. And we may have added some secrets as well...
Steam Achievements
We have now added Steam Achievements for Salt! We are very excited about this and we tried to design some fun and challenging achievements for you to work toward.
Audio Changes
With this update we've also added a slew of audio changes and improvements. One such change is new boat sounds. Now when you are sailing in your big ship you can hear creaks, sail flaps, and things of that nature. We've also added new footstep sounds, and a new save sound.
1.9.4 Patch Notes
Added steam achievements.
Added a new NPC known as The Composer.
Added new musical instrument items.
Added new quests and item rewards.
Added music for the first time you use the raft.
Added new loading screens.
Added new secrets.
Added new boat sounds.
Added new footstep sounds and increased the variety of sounds that can play.
Added a new save sound.
Fixed white deer set bonus not applying properly.
Updated short sword model.
Fixed a bug that would have you receive multiple "Blood Jungle" items when completing the quest.
The Sea Scholar will no longer charge gold for books you have sold to him.
Fixed an error that would cause sound to sometimes not work properly after a death.
Progress on Multiplayer
We know many of you are awaiting the Multiplayer update, and we want to thank you for your continued patience. It is a large undertaking, but it will definitely be worth the time investment. More and more progress is made daily. We do not yet have an ETA on its completion.
Update on Multiplayer
Hey everyone!
As you know we've been working hard on multiplayer implementation and so we wanted to give you an update as to where we are in that regard and what some of the next steps are going to look like!
In-Game Chat System
One of the first aspects of multiplayer we implemented was an in-game chat system. We felt important to be able to communicate with other players so we've added a nice little chatbox. It even gives you your own unique text color!
Friends List and Inviting
Of course, to chat with friends you're going to want to invite them. So we've implemented the ability to see your friends list and invite players to your game.
Other Players
Say hello to the ghost pirate. Don't worry, we're just using him as a fun placeholder to test other player's characters in the world. You will have a fully formed pirate body when it's all said and done!
Currently we have it to where you can see other players moving around in the world. You can also see other player's boats and ride them. This was a big milestone for us to hit and while we've still got a lot of kinks to work out, it's coming along well.
An Overview of the Networking System
Salt is making use Steam’s API in order to provide networking functionality. This make it easy to connect and play together with your Steam friends. Steam’s API provides the ability to send simple messages between two Steam clients. We have to write systems within Salt to use this messaging ability in an organized and efficient way that will result in a multiplayer experience within the game. We have now got a lot of these systems written and mostly working. Bug fixes and efficiency tweaks with them are still common at this point in the development.
After these systems are written and in place, the next step is to write code to use these systems to sync the worlds of players playing together. The goal is to provide a seamless multiplayer experience while sending as little data between computers as possible. Everything that syncs across the network must be told when and how to do so. This includes things like the positions of players and boats, what animation to play for a character, the health of an enemy, time of day, ocean waves, etc.
Salt is going to use a server/client model. The player who invites other players into their group is the server host. All players must wait on them to join a game. Once the host joins a game, all other players can then choose any of their created games play as long as it uses the same world seed as the game that the host just entered. You can also choose to create a new game with the correct world seed if you want. All player’s progress is stored locally and not on the host’s computer. This means that you can play single player or multiplayer interchangeably as you desire in any of your games.
It will still be a bit before these changes are put out there for testing, but we will keeping you updated throughout the process.
The next steps are more polishes and bug fixes on the networking systems, and work on syncing more and more things in the world such as enemies, items, and player animations. Also any multiplayer related UIs will need to be created or polished.
Update 1.9.3 - Cloud Saving
Saving Changes
Salt now takes advantage of the Steam Cloud for storing save data files. Steam will automatically handle uploading and downloading your latest save file data between computers. Along with this, when the game saves data has been altered slightly. Your inventory and other certain game states are no longer saved constantly. Instead, the state of the game will save both when you manually save, and periodically as an auto-save. By default, loading a game will load the most recent save, but you can chose to load the last manual or last autosave by clicking on the gear icon next to the save slot in the Load menu.
A side effect of the save changes is that the game now requires Steam to be running. However, this does not mean it requires an internet connection as it will work just fine when Steam is in offline mode.
Your current save files will automatically be converted to use the steam cloud. No action is required on your part.
New Items
With this update we've also added in some new armor, items, and lore to various places. You can now find new armor sets in both hunting shacks and ancient chests. We've also added a new epic weapon that requires a full set of the new armor to find. In addition to that, we've added some new items to pirate chests and added some new lore books in the game.
New Quest
This update also includes a new quest line involving the search for a mysterious jewel. There's an item that can be found somewhere in the world that will trigger this quest line when turned in. As with most quests, you'll find yourself going to various islands, defeating some tough enemies, and even uncovering new lore and items.
Battle Music
While we do have boss music in the game, we wanted to add some music for fighting tougher than normal enemies that aren't quite bosses. Now when you encounter any pirate captains or commanders, you will have some music to go along with your battle!
Changes
Integrated saving with the Steam Cloud.
Improved appearance of informational popup messages.
Added new battle music for pirate captains, named captains, and commanders
Replaced some ambient sounds with smoother looping versions.
Added a new armor set to hunting shacks.
Added a new armor set to ancient chests.
Added new items to bronze and silver pirate chests.
Added new lore books to hunting shacks.
Added a new quest line with new items and lore.
Increased the drop rate of ceremonial keys from cultists from 8 to 10%.
Fixed some items having the Armor stat instead of Physical Armor.
Fixed some recipe descriptions.
Fixed missing texture on augmented moonrock sword.
Fixed poacher’s lure. It can now be equipped as bait.
White ink no longer requires a red flower to craft.
Made bamboo on jungle islands consistent with other islands.
Update 1.9.2 - Echoes of the Past
Echoes of the Past update adds some new content to the game as well as a number of bug fixes and improvements. Let's dive into some of the content you can expect to see in this update.
Sea Hunter
This update introduces a new quest giver in the world known as the Sea Hunter. Like the recent introduction of the Sea Scholar and Sea Fisher, the Sea Hunter will feature five quests that unlocks vendor items as you progress. Once those are completed, you'll be able to do a repeatable quest for a random rare loot drop.
Pirate Graves
Salt is all about exploration and discovery, and so with this update we wanted to add in another new piece of content for you to discover: pirate graves. Throughout your adventures you will now find tombstones occasionally on islands with grave text and often times, buried treasure. The graves will have a chance to either have bronze, silver, gold, or a ceremonial lock box. These lock boxes can be opened with a key of the corresponding color and will contain a piece of loot.
You probably already have some bronze, silver, or gold keys laying around, but with this update we've also introduced ceremonial keys. These keys will be used exclusively to open ceremonial lock boxes, which will contain a rare item. You can obtain these keys from various places throughout the world so stay on the lookout!
Inventory and Crafting Changes
In addition to new content in the world, we've also made some adjustments to the inventory UI and the crafting system. For the inventory, we've added the ability to drag and drop items and the ability to sort your inventory by a few different filters.
For the crafting system, we've now adjusted it to where when you craft multiple items, it will craft each item individually, gradually increasing the speed as it goes. We've also completely revamped the crafting discovery window to show you any and all recipes that can be made with the item in the crafting window. This will show you recipes you could potentially make but don't have all the required items for yet. This adds an almost quest-like element to the crafting discovery system that sends you out on the hunt for various items in order to craft something new.
New Island Music
With this update you will now occasionally hear music while you are exploring islands. This music will only occur on large natural islands, so as not to interfere with combat and things of that nature. Our goal with this music is to be unobtrusive but add to the feeling of exploration and wonder when exploring islands. There will be new exclusive music for daytime island adventuring and for nighttime.
Change Log
Added a new NPC to be found in the world.
Added pirate graves.
You can now drag and drop items within the inventory. This allows you to sort it as you please. Each inventory section can be sorted individually.
Added a button to auto-sort your inventory.
New music can occasionally play while exploring some islands.
Added new recipe discovery features. When adding one or more crafting items to the crafting window, all recipes which require those items appear in the recipes window. Recipes that need more components than what is in the components window will be greyed-out (but still selectable). This allows players to discover recipes that they may not have the required items for yet. Note that although most recipes can be previewed, some "hidden" recipes will not appear at all in the crafting interface until all components have been added. Only a very small number of recipes are hidden.
The recipe list is now scrollable.
Crafting multiple items will no longer happen all at once. Instead, each item will auto-craft individually, with each subsequent craft being faster.
Changed method of acquiring bamboo poles. Players must now manually pick up rare, slightly greener bamboo stalks that spawn in normal bamboo clusters. Running through them no longer has any effect.
When you press a hotkey with multiple items bound to it, it will now only switch to the next item bound to it if you had previously just pressed the same hotkey.
Help menu items are now marked as seen as soon as its corresponding notification appears.
Smoothed out transition between when the loading screen is done and play begins.
Improved performance of some trees and foliage.
Bamboo and palm trees are now affected by wind.
Changed the way sea scholar final repeatable quest works.
Increased thickness of bamboo mat.
X on the controller no longer loots all items from a container or loot window.
Lenvell will now spawn upon the transition of night to day or day to night if you are on the correct part of the quest.
Updated some old loading screen tips and images.
Fixes
The keyboard hotkeys UI is now drawn behind the item description window so that it will no longer block it when playing on certain resolutions.
Changed "Armor" stats on some pieces of equipment to "Physical Armor".
Some NPCS who would spawn too close to the water and be submerged by tides have been moved up the beach a bit.
The Old Pirate Hat can no longer be looted multiple times.
Fixed a bug that would allow for multiple applications of set bonus effects after death.
Fixed an error that would occur when trying to place a boat into a chest.
Fixed a number of map items saying that they were useless.
Fixed an uncommon error where pirate forts would be placed at the wrong location on an island.
Fixed some deer hide recipes incorrectly stating the number of deer pelts required.
Fixed the description on the White Deer Hide Cloak to properly convey what it does.
Fixed bug where multiple Sea Scholar NPCs would sometimes appear on the same island.
Fixed description on Red Spotted Mushroom to indicate what it does when eaten.
Fixed a graphical error that would cause leaves to be too bright when in the line-of-sight of the sun.
Fixed icon of Signet of the Alchemist.
Journal text involving locations where you talked to NPCs other than merchants no longer refer to the NPC as a merchant.
Sea fisher quest entries in the journal are no longer under the sea scholar section.
The tip about resting through the night will now only appear once.
You can no longer use a poacher's herb bag if your food bar is too low.
Progress Update on Multiplayer
We are still working hard on the addition of multiplayer to the game. We do not have an ETA, but have made some good progress. While we continue to work on multiplayer, you can expect more content and polish updates such as this one. Those of you who are waiting for multiplayer, we appreciate your patience and will continue to keep you updated.
Update 1.9.2 Coming to Testing Branch Soon!
UPDATE - the patch is now live on the testing branch. For more information, check out this thread.
We are in the process of finalizing the content for the 1.9.2 Update and plan on pushing to the testing branch within the next week or two. Today we want to go over what you can expect in this update, as well as some other things we've been working on!
Update 1.9.2 - What to Expect
This update will be another one of our content updates while we are implementing multiplayer. If you've been following us for a bit, you'll know that since multiplayer implementation is a long endeavor, we wanted to release small updates during that process so that you would still have fun content to experience while you wait on multiplayer.
With our next update we are introducing three major new changes. These changes will include a brand new new NPC and quest giver known as the Sea Hunter, pirate and NPC graves that can be discovered throughout the world, and the introduction of island music to some large natural islands.
Sea Hunter
The Sea Hunter NPC will be much like the Sea Scholar and Fisher, where you will able to complete a number of quests, rank up to earn new vendor items, and eventually do a repeatable quest for a chance at a nice loot drop. Each of these new npc's are meant to tailor to a certain playstyle. In Salt, we've always wanted players to feel like they can play the game the way they want and still be rewarded for it. The Sea Scholar rewards players for exploring and finding lore books, the Sea Fisher rewards players for fishing, and the Sea Hunter will reward players for fighting and hunting down particular enemies.
NPC Graves
Salt at its core is an exploration game about discovering new content, and as such we try to constantly introduce new places and things for the player to discover. With this update we'll be adding in a new piece of discoverable content that we are calling NPC Graves. These will basically be tombstones that you'll find scattered throughout the world, and if you have a shovel on you, you'll be able to occasionally dig up a lockbox and get some nice loot.
The graves will feature four different lockboxes: bronze, silver, gold, and ceremonial. Each one of these will require a key of one of those types. The ceremonial lockboxes will contain very nice high end items and will only be able to be opened with a ceremonial key. These keys will be introduced in this update and will be found in various places.
New Music
We are also introducing brand new island music in this update. This music will only occur occasionally on large natural islands so as not to negate the feeling of combat or intensity on other islands. The goal for this music is to add to the relaxation and exploration aspect of the game while roaming around some calmer islands. To begin with, there will be three daytime island songs that can play and three night time island songs that can play. We will likely add more in the future.
What Else Have We Been Working On?
In addition to the 1.9.2 Update, we've also been making some good strides in other areas. Robert has been working hard on designing a new recipe discovery system and overhauling the current crafting system to be more intuitive and streamlined. We will talk more about this in a future update. John has also been working very hard on the multiplayer update and we are making some great progress there. We still have a ways to go but we will be sharing some more info on that soon as well.
Thanks for reading and as always we would love to hear your feedback!
