Solace Crafting cover
Solace Crafting screenshot
Linux PC Steam
Genre: Role-playing (RPG), Adventure, Indie

Solace Crafting

Beta v 1.0.4.24
I finally got in a full work day today! I hope that doesn't sound condescending, but I've had a really hard time looking at a screen for very long without getting dizzy and, frankly, sick. I'm doing a lot better this week, though still only 60-70%. I made it back to the gym yesterday for the first time in over two months, and was only able to walk on the treadmill for 15 minutes after some light weight lifting, where I used to run for 30 minutes 2-3 times a week. I am definitely getting better though ːsteamhappyː

I've spent most of today going through problems mentioned recently in Discord and on the Bug Tracker. As always, bugs really have to take priority, but I am excited to get into adding some of the suggested features we've got posted and voted on in Discord. Assuming nothing strange arises, these changes will be pushed to the live version in the near future.

Happy gaming!

v 1.0.4.24 2023.09.04
- Added a check to reassign Basic Attack and Recall to the hotbar in the event of skills being reset
- Added mouse over text on map icons for Shrines, Monoliths, Rifts, and Totems (English only for now)
- Added solace names to solace map icons
- Reduced the spawn rate of Rifts outside of badlands
- Reduced the spawn rate of Goblin Totems outside of swamps
- Reduced the spawn rate of Monoliths outside of Grasslands and Mountains
- Fixed Masonry spent points showing Woodworking spent points
- Fixed shrines not properly awarding buffs
- Fixed Imps disappearing as soon as their rift is closed
- Fixed Rift Spawn Rate setting
- Fixed Monoliths and some other objects spawning at improperly low rates
- Fixed finishing drinking a stack of water in a container throwing an error
- Fixed several non animal specific items printing out animal specific names

You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin, or you can verify file integrity to trigger it.

To opt into Beta you only need to go to your Steam Library, right-click on Solace Crafting, select Properties, click on the Beta tab, and opt-in to the beta.

Join us in Discord!

Interested in supporting development of Solace Crafting?
Please consider becoming a patron via Patreon!

Check out the bug / suggestion tracker

v 1.0.4.23 Now Live
This patch merges all of the current changes on the beta branch onto the default live branch. I was hoping to finish a bit of upgrading I'm working on on the skills and skill points systems as there are still some small bugs floating around with those, but time has been steadily moving forward, and the longer beta and live fall apart the harder it is to track which bugs have or have not actually been fixed yet.

My health has been a lot better this past week and a half. My family convinced me to take Monday and Tuesday off to spend some time together and focus on getting better. I'm just past 3 weeks now on the medication that has been helping me out of lot. Hopefully next week I can start reducing the frequency or dosage and keep moving towards a full recovery.

I am hoping to get back to a mostly full-time schedule for the rest of the week, and appreciate very much everyone's patience and understanding with the unforeseen unfortuitously combining with the untimely.

v 1.0.4.23 2023.08.19
- Refactored localization system to fix the root of a variety of recent bugs related to stats, skills, recipes, and monster abilities
- Improved breath and temperature logic
- Improved effect and buff logic
- Raised minimum healing percentage from 0 to 10
- Added a catch for attributes going null, causing players to not load
- Added a debug to print the current language in use to logs to help track future problems
- Fixed effects reapplying repeatedly
- Fixed a skill upgrading issue
- Fixed players saving in caves reloading their position improperly in MP
- Fixed an instance where client data could be not saved properly in multi-player
- Fixed a harmless error related to monster sounds
- Fixed cave changes not being saved properly in some cases in multi-player
- Fixed a problem with learned/unlocked recipes blocking the recipe list from refreshing
- Fixed a bug preventing new character creation
- Fixed a variety of equipment names and icons not displaying properly
- Fixed Market town building displaying as Stoneworker
- Fixed a bug preventing new character creation
- Fixed a number of attribute, adventuring, crafting, and harvesting skill tree problems
- Fixed entity abilities being able to stack
- Fixed an error with multiplayer audio calls
- Fixed harvesting throwing errors
- Fixed some skills not properly applying to new characters that chose starting classes
- Fixed strong harvest cooldowns not working
- Fixed Rhinos named improperly
- Fixed Lamp Posts not being able to spawn in multiplayer
- Fixed debuffs spamming errors
- Fixed a Buff UI refresh problem
- Fixed a console error
- Fixed damage over time spells applied to monsters applying all ticks immediately
- Fixed some models rendering in front of water
- Fixed crocodiles and hipos getting stuck walking in place

You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin, or you can verify file integrity to trigger it.

Join us in Discord!

Interested in supporting development of Solace Crafting?
Please consider becoming a patron via Patreon!

Check out the bug / suggestion tracker

Beta v 1.0.4.22
After two weeks completely offline and one week on a medication that is supposed to take a couple of weeks to really set it, I'm doing better, but not great. Thus, I'm imposing very limited screen time on myself, but was able to put in 3 hours of work today, and hope to do so for the next few days before trying more. It's been a very weird and unfun experience, but thankfully it's nothing life threatening and likely impermanent.

The bug tracker I use, a part of Atlassian software, is for some reason requiring my to approve all bug reports before they become visible to other users, despite not having required that for the past several years that I've been using it. I can't find any setting to make it stop doing that, and have asked for help in the Atlassian community, but rest assured submitted bug reports are going through and will be seen by me. I have approved for visibility all those that were pending.

v 1.0.4.22 2023.08.17
- Fixed strong harvest cooldowns not working
- Fixed Rhinos named improperly
- Fixed Lamp Posts not being able to spawn in multiplayer
- Fixed debuffs spamming errors
- Fixed a Buff UI refresh problem
- Fixed a console error

You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin, or you can verify file integrity to trigger it.

To opt into Beta you only need to go to your Steam Library, right-click on Solace Crafting, select Properties, click on the Beta tab, and opt-in to the beta.

Join us in Discord!
Follow development live on Twitch!

Interested in supporting development of Solace Crafting?
Please consider becoming a patron via Patreon!

Check out the bug / suggestion tracker

Developer update
After an episode of heat exhaustion, my sympathetic nervous system broke down, and has yet to recover. It's been a very weird experience. Sometimes I fell fine and the next morning I'm a mess. It's apparently normal to take up to or even over a month to repair, and I'm coming up soon on one month. It is however likely I will not be online for another few days as I am trying to make sure that this goes away for good.

I know there are a number of small but debilitating bugs floating around, but I have to take care of this before anything else.

This was in part caused by my long running addiction to a certain very stress enducing video game and I'd like to take this moment to remind everyone how important your health, hydration, and sleep really are. Even more so after 40!

Stay safe, and happy gaming!

Kyle Postlewait
AKA Malkere

Beta v 1.0.4.17
Due to a technical decision that was made early in the development of the recent localization revamp there ended up being quite a few unforeseen bugs brought into the game. Several patches were made slowly remedying the problems, but the underlying cause wasn't being addressed and more and more little problems kept cropping up. This patch instead, though it took longer, refactors the main problem from its origin and has fixed most of the problems based on initial tests.

As I should have done with the first wave of localization patches, this patch will first be placed on beta to be sure that it doesn't have anything catastrophically wrong with it. However, given the state of the current live branch, it's likely that this will be pushed live by tomorrow.

Once these more major problems are out of the way I am planning to shift my attention to focus purely on bug fixing and a variety of quality of life improvement requests that have been floating around for a while.

v 1.0.4.17 2023.07.27
- Refactored localization system to fix the root of a variety of recent bugs related to stats, skills, recipes, and monster abilities
- Improved breath and temperature logic
- Improved effect and buff logic
- Fixed effects reapplying repeatedly
- Fixed a skill upgrading issue
- Fixed players saving in caves reloading their position improperly in MP
- Fixed an instance where client data could be not saved properly in multi-player
- Fixed a harmless error related to monster sounds
- Fixed cave changes not being saved properly in some cases in multi-player

You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin, or you can verify file integrity to trigger it.

To opt into Beta you only need to go to your Steam Library, right-click on Solace Crafting, select Properties, click on the Beta tab, and opt-in to the beta.

Join us in Discord!

Interested in supporting development of Solace Crafting?
Please consider becoming a patron via Patreon!

Check out the bug / suggestion tracker

Patch v 1.0.4.12
Not gonna lie, it's been a rough few weeks. Made some bad calls, rushed out some patches, and have been scrambling to get things sorted out. Unfortunately, I got so sick last week that I couldn't even watch TV for more than 15 minutes without getting dizzy. Heat exhaustion is weird, and I still haven't recovered 100% 10 days later.

This recent series of patches has sorted the majority of the problems out but there are still some smaller problems I am working on. In particular, a lot of people's skill points got messed up with a localization error several patches ago. This most recent patch should sort the majority of these out, though they may still reset if you load a character in a different language than they were last saved in. I will continue to improve those and other systems so these side-effects don't linger.

v 1.0.4.12 2023.07.19
- Fixed terraforming data not being properly factured when being sent to clients causing general loss of control of characters
- Fixed an issue with skills getting overriden, this may cause an initial reset of bought skills in some skill trees

v 1.0.4.11 2023.07.18
- Fixed a subsequent timing error causing the first 4 terrains to load using an incorrect world seed

v 1.0.4.10 2023.07.18
- Fixed several intialization timing issues causing a number of multi-player problems

v 1.0.4.9 2023.07.17
- Fixed a performance issue with AOE attacks
- Fixed an incorrect map marker
- Fixed an issue with disappearing towers
- Fixed a bug causing some skill descriptions to not show up

You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin, or you can verify file integrity to trigger it.

Join us in Discord!

Interested in supporting development of Solace Crafting?
Please consider becoming a patron via Patreon!

Check out the bug / suggestion tracker

Hotfix v1.0.4.8
I have received a number of reports that the F key for interacting with objects is not working for some first time players but have not been able to reproduce the problem, nor is it something most players are encountering. In order to help track down the cause, if anyone experiencing this problem could tell me their OS, OS language, whether they have any controllers or joysticks plugged in, and if possible send me their cfg.dat and player.log files found under:
C:\Users\\AppData\LocalLow\Big Kitty Games\Solace Crafting\
That would be most appreciated 👍

v 1.0.4.8 2023.07.14
- Added tooltips to hotbar buttons
- Added a tips to the initial loading screen
- Fixed a prominent teleport bug and added several checks to help debug any further errors
- Fixed a prominent shader error
- Fixed a collision problem with some town buildings
- Fixed several localization errors
- Fixed a goblin archer sound
- Fixed the quarrying animation not playing
- Fixed an AOE skill error

Regarding recent negative reviews
The recent review summary has become "mostly negative," something I've never had before, and it's my full-time job to try and make sure that doesn't happen. So I'm trying to better understand the main reasoning behind that to make sure I spend my time wisely over the next few weeks trying to correct the problems causing this.

A couple of important mentions first:
1. It's impossible to please everyone, especially with a (currently ~) $11.50 indie game made by one guy. There will always be negative reviews that I can do nothing about
2. There seems to be two annoying bugs going on right now, one with ranged bow attacks, and one that seems to only affect first time players causing the default interact keybind of F to not work. If you run into the interact key problem please try clearing the keybind and then setting it again.
3. I was briefly hospitalized on Sunday and have not been able to work since and may be unable to for another day or two, otherwise I would have fixed those bugs by now.

Having said that, I think one of the main things first time players are complaining about is the control scheme. We spent a lot of time and effort adding the RMB to move camera and click to target WoW style controls thinking that would make casting, ranged attacks, and UI interaction easier overall. For players that prefer a locked camera there is a toggle (default is V), but it seems a lot of people don't know there is a toggle and do not like the RMB controls.

Now of course there are a lot of little QoL things that can be improved and that will be my focus after we clean up the current issues, make sure the new multilingual system is working properly and get full controller support onto the beta branch. But this post is not about those.

I'm asking the people that left a negative review, or would consider leaving one still for responses along the lines of:
"I couldn't get the controls to work,"
"RMB to move the camera was terrible,"
"I didn't know I had to target mobs to attack them,"
"I didn't know there was a help window,"
"I couldn't figure out xxxx and gave up."

Things that caused you to go beyond "well that's kind of annoying," into "I don't like this game and what the developer is doing with it."

Some things I am considering to try and improve the new players experience:
- Adding tips to the loading screens
- Adding more buttons linking to the help window
- Adding pictures to and improving the help window
- Offering a return to the aim to shoot (no targets) locked camera controls

We talk about a lot of these things in the SC Discord server, but I know there are plenty of people, especially those willing to write a negative review, that aren't interested in joining Discord. I'm hoping this will reach some of those people so I can get a better grasp on how to best use my time improving things from here on.

Thank you and happy gaming!

Hotfix 1.0.4.6
More little fixes patching up the recent new bugs.

v 1.0.4.6 2023.07.05
- Now automatically recalculating skill points on load
- Fixed language resetting to OS on startup
- Fixed one of two spent skill point displays not working properly
- Fixed an item description issue due to recent changes
- Fixed a bug causing targeted creatures to rendered through walls
- Fixed snake scale missing translations
- Fixed a General achievements & Town achievements menu bug

You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin, or you can verify file integrity to trigger it.

Join us in Discord!

Interested in supporting development of Solace Crafting?
Please consider becoming a patron via Patreon!

Check out the bug / suggestion tracker

Hotfix 1.0.4.5
The allure of the Steam Summer Sale got the best of me, and the big patch last week ended up bringing in a number of debilitating bugs unfortunately. First and foremost, my apologies for that. We've remedied the majority of them with this 5th hotfix, but there are still some after effects affecting some players, in particular messed up skill points. I've received some bugged player character saves from affected players and am looking into a way to retroactively remedy the problem. Worst case scenario I will a full skill reset with a small patch tomorrow so that we can get everyone back to where they should be.

v 1.0.4.5 2023.07.04
- Refactored a portion of the localization code to prevent future errors
- Fixed the hotbar resetting sometimes after changing language

v 1.0.4.4 2023.07.03
- Fixed a missing German translation
- Fixed translation problems preventing the game from loading

v 1.0.4.3 2023.07.02
- Fixed obsidian golem & glowing mushroom name errors
- Fixed broken item requirement text in crafting menu
- Fixed weapon recipe description text

You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin, or you can verify file integrity to trigger it.

Join us in Discord!

Interested in supporting development of Solace Crafting?
Please consider becoming a patron via Patreon!

Check out the bug / suggestion tracker
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