The update is on Wednesday - so close! While you'll see few items on the lists below, it's because the team is focused on bug fixing. Since none of these bugs have been seen by the public, it seems silly to add them to the list. Fear not, they do exist and are being squashed. That's the teams main focus until update day. You'll notice a few new and improved things have been adjusted specifically from player feedback (cotton and water). We appreciate it!
This will be the last development digest until the 14th of January! You'll have full patch notes next week. The following week is Kindred Games vacation week. A nice time to relax and getaway for a bit before coming back and attacking weapon abilities, weapon stats, and the magic system. We'll have a removal of Frostfall update the following week with patch notes and then back to business.
Happy holidays and happy new year to you all!
Working on:
West Windless Woods
Bug fixing for the update
New:
Display plaques to show off your weapons in your home
Frost Golem health bar
Furniture paintings in different sizes (all sold in Sleepy Haven)
First equipable trinket
Water bucket resource at wells to collect free water daily
NPC in Ramshackle
Improved:
Snowman have a chance to drop the hat they are wearing
Better showing/hiding of AI health bars and nameplates
Marshmallow stick now applies burning effect
Increased the chance to get cotton seeds from farming cotton
Cleaned up lighting around the world to help with performance
Optimization pass in Sleepy Haven
Fixed:
Permission issues with new storage type placeables
A few pictures to hold you over until Wednesday:
Development Digest December 3rd - December 10th
Happy Friday! Another fun thing that happened this week was the team had a full day design meeting going over the magic and weapon overhaul that is starting in January. It was a very productive meeting and they figured out a lot of great new systems and details. More information to come!
Working on:
West Windless Woods
Balancing Frostfall for all players
Rigging and animating new creatures
Frostfall loot
New:
Weapon Rack furniture display item to unlock at level 11 carpentry
Display Case furniture display item to unlock at level 20 carpentry
Various rugs to unlock in tailoring
Merchants in Frostfall
Frostfall exclusive mount
Furniture and home plan in the Sleepy Haven furniture shop
Bakery furniture items
Frostfall weapons
Improved:
Ella’s Bakery now sells a variety of things needed for baking
Display improvements and network optimizations to damage numbers
AI perception responsiveness and performance improvements
Fixed up paintings throughout the world to not take up so much memory
Fixed:
Typo in Erma’s dialog
Typos in Frostfall dialog
Here's a few pictures of new things!
See you all next week!
Development Digest November 19th - December 3rd
Hey everyone! We're excited to announce that our Frostfall update will be launching December 22nd. You'll be able to visit Snowpeak, grab some seasonal attire, hats, masks, furniture, and more. Just like our Witch's Eve update, this will be a two week event. During the last two weeks, we've also done a lot of clean up in the project and a bit of refactoring which is a bit harder to add to the below list.
Working on:
West Windless Woods
Balancing Frostfall for all players
Models for new furniture items
Rigging and animating new creatures
Frostfall loot
New:
Animal companion overhaul - now able to level up and rename companions
Two festive house plans
Seed makers and cauldrons now have radial progress bars
Festive glider
Festive weapons
Festive masks and hat
Plantable crop
Analytic being tracked: any file errors, even if players don’t know they had an error
Merchants in Snowpeak
Non-seasonal furniture sold in Sleepy Haven, Ramshackle, and Farmlands
One house plan sold in Sleepy Haven
One new buildable furniture item
Improved:
Changed Red and Pastel backpacks to unlock at level 20 instead of 18 to match the ingredients that unlock at level 20
Changed the ingredients needed to craft the Maple Bow to reflect the correct level items for the bow
Increased Cotton yield from 1-2 to 2-3
Milk now has a unique icon and model (was previously using the Eggnog icon and model)
Fixed:
Rug patterns to be centered
Rugs so they weren’t floating off the floor
Typo in mailbox description
Forge widget now updates if people remove from output
Picking up a bed that someone else is sleeping in no longer gets them stuck
That's it for now. I'll get some more snazzy screenshots for next week's update. See you all then!
Vote for Swords 'n Magic and Stuff in the Steam Awards
Have you picked games for all of your award categories? If not, please consider voting for Swords 'n Magic and Stuff in the "Labor of Love" category. Just check that box above and you've nominated us!
Nominations are only available until 10am PST on the first (which is in less than 11 hours!).
Be on the look out this Friday for news on when the Frostfall update will be launching. This will be included in our normal development digests.
Thank you all for your support! See you Friday.
Development Digest November 12th - 19th
It's FRIDAY!
A fun new addition was added last Friday during a Twitch stream:
Yes, that is a hot tub. It will be a furniture item added to our Frost Fall update.
Something I've been working on this week is cleaning up the levels in the project to make sure things were where they needed to be. That took a few days, but it was worth it! This needed to happen to be able to start properly looking into more performance optimization.
Another success this week is that Michael set up Kickstarter rewards! We're so close to be able to get those out!
A fun placeable item that's coming is a Frost Fall Tree! What's cool about it is that you can place your own ornaments on it!
Everything in that above picture is a placeable item. The presents have their own storage, too! Something else, non-seasonal coming is display cases:
Another furniture item that you can use to show off your coolest prizes. Weapon racks and wall mounts are still in progress.
The animal companion overhaul is still going strong and getting ready to wrap up for testing. I don't have any cool pictures as that's a lot of spaghetti code.
If you noticed from the pictures above, there is snow in Tirawyn. Last year we only had snow in Frost Fall, but this year, the snow is coming to Farmlands and East Windless Woods. We've had a bit of material clean up to do to make sure the proper things are getting snowed on.
What are we working on next? -models and icons for new items -adjusting the frost golem and snowmen (can you hear their cries already?) -new housing blueprints
That's it for this week! See you all next Friday. And happy holidays!
Development Digest November 9th - 12th
Hey everyone! It's that time again. This week is going to be a bit different since we just released a patch on Tuesday. This week I'll share some pictures!
If you haven't seen, I recently updated our roadmap:
The tutorial menu went into the game with Tuesday's patch, but we still have plenty more tutorials to add. We tried to get the basics in to help new players. Joe is working on the animal companion overhaul currently and that will be included in the next update, which is our Frost Fall holiday update. The detailed stats panel is about 20ish% done right now. That leaves us with the holiday update! I've been busy adding recipes and furniture and outfits. Soupy has spoiled us with 5 new outfits and the outfits that were on the NPC's last year will be available to purchase this year. Here's a sneak peek at one:
Last year's Frost Fall food will be back along with 2 new holiday specific foods. Also added 14 new foods at various levels. Waiting for the models and icons before sharing these ones!
I think my favorite thing though, is the furniture! Look at some of the fun items!
This is not everything that's being added. We have a Frost Fall Tree, wreath, and plenty more. I've also added in more non-holiday items including more plants, rugs, and decor. But the thing you'll be most excited for is that the dressers, armoires, cabinets, etc. have their own storage now! They are not going to be anywhere near as much storage as a chest, but it adds to the RP element and allows for more customization.
Things that are being worked on: -Ensuring Frost Fall is working 100% -Adjusting the difficulty in Frost Fall -Decorating Sleepy Haven for the season -Animal companion overhaul -New items
Next Friday should go back to our normal lists. Or maybe I'll mix it up again. See you then!
Patch 1.4.7
Hey there!
We've finally got this patch out to fix some bugs and hopefully put an end to some save issues we've been experiencing even with the new AB save method.
We apologize for the delay. We ran into some issues with the changes we made to the save system and had to address them first.
Here are your patch notes so you can see what's new and improved with this patch.
New:
Tutorial Cards on Castaway Rock (Existing players may have to return there to obtain them all)
Character AB Backup Saves
Improved:
Save System changes to help better protect your save games
Splash potion costs have been reduced
New star icon on item hover which tells you if you need the item for your collections or not (Tutorial card for this in progress)
Recipe shop items now show benefits and required level on hover
Collections now show weapon and cooking stats on hover
Fixed:
Fixed save issues which may have been causing some hits on performance
Can now get grocery order from Astra for the Gravekeeper quest
Yenna now gives you the key you need for the frozen chest (May need to restart this quest...)
Xanthe's sold out signs no longer floating
Fixed Various typos
Bandit Betrayal quest now works as intended
Wylie's Song quest now works as intended
Added Responsibility quest now works as intended
Big Friend quest now works as intended
Cultist Confirmation quest now works as intended
Rebel's Revenge quest now works as intended
Other various location-specific visit quests should be fixed
Azi's crystal ball no longer flickers
Invisible crab in Maggi's cellar has finally escaped
The plot in Azura is now completely flat
Post Witch's Eve Update - 1.4.6
Hey guys.
Witch's Eve is over, but more festivities are just around the corner with the Frostfall Festival!
In the meantime here are the changes for this update:
NEW:
Witch's Eve festivities removed
Craftable bandages for tailors
Game analytics to help us track gameplay stats and balance the game better (opt in/out)
Player titles (Well, one player title right now. More unlockable titles coming soon)
IMPROVED:
Quest zones notify the player when an advancement condition is updated now
Balanced some potion recipes, specifically for splash potions
FIXED:
Quest locations should be displaying properly on map now (Minus a few quests that haven't been set up yet)
Ice cave water shouldn't light you on fire anymore
Weapons should show the appropriate quality in shops now
Various typos
Various foliage issues
Fixed some holes in the world
Tall Dark Candle Stand now glows purple
Fixed an issue with spirit anchors behaving strangely
Erma no longer has an endless supply of cotton
Seedmaker can appropriately yield Wild Farmlands Seeds now
Development Digest October 22th - 29th
Hey all! Friday update day! Before we get to all that, I wanted to showcase some of our Witch's Eve event. The event is only open through November 2nd, so hop in this weekend to see it all!
These pictures were submitted by the community on our Discord (Thanks!!).
It's been a week since our last patch and in that time, the team has "attempted" to take a much needed break, but I can't keep these people away. All the fixes below will be included in the next update on the 2nd. Happy hunting this weekend!
Working on:
Tutorial cards for the new menu
Game analytics
Starting Frost Fall update
New:
Bandage types (in tailoring)
Improved:
Where the skeletons spawn with Grimwick
Quest zones now display a quest updated message even if not tracking quest
Fixed:
Quest locations not showing up on the map
Ice cave water doesn’t light you on fire anymore
Spelling errors
Weapons are now showing their proper quality in shops
Erma no longer has an endless supply of cotton
Floating grass that went into a fence
Tall Dark Candle Stand now glows purple
Seedmaker can yield farmlands crops now
Witch's Eve Patch - 1.4.5
Just a little patch to fix some minor bugs.
Fixed:
Trick-or-Treat dialog in Hope Harbor should be all cleaned up
