Welcome to a devblog / news post, where we detail what we’ve been working on and what’s coming next for the game. As we’ve previously stated, we’re now focused on delivering the Cursebreaker Release Update, to bring the game out of early access. Since our last content update we’ve also delivered a number of invisible bugfix patches to the game, we’ve recorded a list for some of those at the end of this post.
So what new will we bring to the game at release? First of all, we’re raising the maximum achievable skill level to 100 for the most dedicated players to work towards. This increase in the level ceiling will be accompanied with appropriate unlockable milestones, so plenty of new harvestables and craftable items.
To help accommodate the increased skill cap, we’re expanding the outdoors map with a new ogre mountain area named Amarien's Foothills.
The Ogre Mountains: "Amarien's Foothills"
The mountain parts are more of a late game area that’s to be unlocked through completing certain quests on the “mainland”. To this end, we're finishing off the loose end that is the bandit fortress in Haywind. Completing these "prequel" bandit quests will through twists and turns lead you to the ogre mountains.
As you travel to the new map, you will initially encounter a wide outdoors area and battle high level ogres who’ve begun attacking human settlements. Beware, nasty barbarian foes may also be camping at remote mountain corners.
Venturing deeper into the mountains, you will discover dark caverns where the ogres have fortified themselves. Deeper in the climate starts getting quite cold, and eventually these caverns lead down to the nest of a mighty beast even the ogres have learnt to fear…
Expanded Crafting
Higher skill levels naturally require powerful unlocks, and we've already started with new tiers of craftable armors. After all, it will be important to display to all the peasants your new heights of power. Here's a peek at some of the new gear that will be obtainable.
Achievement Content
We've already mentioned achievements a few times before, but as a reminder, the release update will add achievements to the game and with them, a lot of small form side content all across the world. We have upwards of 200 achievements lined up that mainly consist of exploration, small helper tasks and grinding out enemies and resources.
Being a helpful busybody and completing tasks and achievements will also earn you ingame rewards.
You will be able to retroactively earn achievements with save games you've started during early access and those saves will continue to be playable.
Timeline
We're now targeting to deliver the release update around August/September, but we're reluctant to give a strict date as of yet, as there's a lot to go through and we essentially only have 2 pairs of hands working on the game full time. With that said, we're making progress as swiftly as we only can, and we'll make sure to announce the exact release date as soon as we've confidently decided on one.
Latest Bugfixes
As mentioned in the intro, we've implemented a number of silent bugfixes to the live game over the past month or so. For the record, here's a list of notable fixes we've applied:
Removed a duplicate spawner of the grimoire quest item in Etherlight dungeon, which had the potential to break the main quest chain.
Added item descriptions to cannon part items in thornhill academy quest, which were previously missing them.
Fixed broken player house in Timberwell.
Nails may now be bought at general stores.
Torches may now be bought at general stores.
The journal entry in the quest "Bearer of Bad News" now gives instructions on where to find Haywind Town Hall.
The hatchet requirements in the quest "Logging Issues" now make sense and the quest giver gives accurate information on which hatchet is needed and where to get it.
Fixed an alchemy table in east Thornhill, which had stopped being interactable.
Journal entries in the quest "Garden of the Witches" now give accurate information on the amount of herbs that are needed.
Fixed Agathe's dialogue during quest "Garden of the Witches", which contained placeholder texts when asked about the herbs that grow in the swamp.
Fixed the bookshelf of magical knowledge in Greywall Dungeons, which gave out a quest item spellbook at inappropriate times.
Fixed a floating fishing rod in the Spruce Shade crypts.
Added directions to journal entries in the Hunting for Perfection quest, and made the packet of critterskins recoverable if by some means lost.
Fixed interactable overgrowth blocking the way to the Hidden Grove not functioning properly.
Halloween arena final fight should now reset upon losing.
Staff of Spiteful Seas should now function correctly.
+ a number of typos and small visual and pathing glitches...
As always, if you have any burning questions, we'll do our best to answer them on our discord server. which is where you're most likely to get a hold of us - the link's included down below. With that said, it's time to wish you all happy gaming and enjoyable summer months!
Regards, Pura
Early Access Update 10 - Thornhill's Academy of Masters
Greetings adventurers!
We have another content update for the game. This time we're finally bringing trainers into Thornhill city as well, and they'll have plenty of new abilities and skill improvements to sell. This update also adds two new quests into Thornhill city, alongside other smaller features, improvements and bugfixes. More details below!
This will be the last Early Access content update for some time, as we're working on sweeping changes to transition the game out of its Early Access state. We'll still be delivering bugfixes and otherwise update on our progress through blog posts.
The Academy of Masters
Within the Academy of Masters you'll find trainers for all the skill disciplines, who may expand your powers and abilities now all the way to level 50. The trainers will also ultimately provide crafting stations as furniture to be obtainable for player homes, as well as special tool racks.
The advanced combat skill trainers provide a number of abilities to be unlocked, such as leaping at your opponents or firing exploding arrows at them, to make combat a little bit more active and to give further tools against challenging boss opponents.
There are more utilitarian abilities to unlock as well, for instance you're now able to turn logs into river canoes near bodies of water to make traveling around the map more convenient.
The Thornhill Academy has a lot stricter standards of admission than Haywind College! Not just anyone can be let in, you know. You'll have to impress the instructors and the headmaster in a new quest "Tribulations of Higher Education", which you can start by talking to the academy's Headmaster Trevelyan.
Within the quest you'll gain access to a sheltered area accessed within Thornhill city, which will contain all the crafting stations within a single location. It serves much the same purpose as the crafting guild in Haywind, adding an easy go-to alternative for when you need to access one of those workbenches.
The Curator of Thornhill's Preservation society has a new task to further open up Thornhill's catacomb area. It should no longer cause confusion regarding to what extent that dungeon is accessible.
In theme with the Curator's previous quest, completing his task will unlock additional new furniture to decorate your homes with.
Other Changes
Life at the Smuggler Village
Our previous update on the swamp smuggler's village left the location looking very unpolished. To be fair, it's not the only one of its kind in the game as of currently, but we took the opportunity to give the building interiors appropriate decoration and lighting.
Additionally the location is now packed with miscellaneous, highly interactive npcs, which should breathe some new life to the place when traveling through.
Updated Pathfinder!
We're now updating the game with a new, completely overhauled pathfinder. From the beginning the absolute most commonly occurring bug report we keep receiving is the player character becoming stuck somewhere. The new pathfinder ought to resolve the majority of these issues, though ironically it may also have introduced some new ones.
If you encounter getting stuck somewhere, somehow, please do keep reporting on these. We'll do our best now to regularly iron out any remaining wrinkles regarding this issue.
New Settings for Optimizing Performance
We're aware of the stuttering issues in the game and continue looking into solutions to address the fundamental causes. We've mentioned potentially reworking a lot of the houses before, which in their current state are causing problems especially in/near the large cities.
For now, we've brought a few additional settings into the game that should hopefully help alleviate the issue if you're running into unbearable stuttering:
Disable Background Characters - hides "useless" characters that cannot fight or be interacted with, should improve performance in crowded areas like cities, at the cost of making them look more empty. (At the moment selecting this also removes most background conversations between random npcs...)
Reduce Movement Quality - improves performance and stutters, at the cost of less smooth character movement
Lower Characters Load Speed - improves performance by limiting the rate at which characters are loaded, but might result in more characters visually 'popping' into view
Notable Bugfixes
The large pillars in the main quest's final boss fight now successfully block the spinning spell that slowly follows the player
Screen sometimes turning black and game freezing during boat travel
Interacting with Horsy the pack mule sometimes resulting in multiple Horsys
Arakite hammer can now be used for refining ore
Fixed three trainer spells - Deadly Strikes, Flight of Arrows and Meditation - to have cooldowns and mana costs, which they previously did not have.
Adjusted all hostile npc stats and loot within thornhill catacombs
Fixed broken combat stats on some trolls and adjusted all trolls stats, for instance to include hp regeneration.
Added trader icon and right-click trade option to Agathe in swamp village after her quest is complete, which was previously missing.
Next Steps
At this stage we're pausing larger updates, as we're focused now on delivering some sweeping changes, sorting out all clearly unfinished things and trying to polish out as much jank as possible, so as to haul the game out of Early Access. Before then, we'll still deliver small updates in the form of bug fixing where needed. We'll also do our best to write dev blogs to showcase our progress and what will be coming in the "release" update of the game.
Thank you all for the continued support, feedback and for playing the game as much as some of you already have - thank you, and happy gaming!
Regards, Pura
Early Access Update 9 - The Ghost of Greywall
Greetings adventurers!
Today we're excited to bring into the game its single biggest content installation so far - the Dungeons of Greywall! All in all, the windy corridors of this new dungeon span an area larger than Haywind City and come packed with new enemies to fight, new crafting to unlock and ultimately new abilities to learn. There's also a hefty amount of new written content that comes in the form of the single largest quest anywhere in the game, which will guide your journey through the dungeons.
The dungeon's level design features a new set of assets we created to achieve a more unique look that also sets the area apart from other regions in the game. Combined with an ambitiously scoped quest, getting this update together really did take a lot of effort on our part and we're a little delayed from when we hoped to deliver it. But hopefully our efforts also show in the gaming experience the new content delivers.
This time we won't type out detailed patch notes due to the amount and focus on new material, but we will showcase the new content in a devblog format.
The quest to investigate the Ghost of Greywall is a continuation to the quest called Echoes of Suffering we introduced in a previous update and cannot be started without completing that quest first (you can pick it up in the Ratcliffe mining village). Once Echoes of Suffering is completed, you'll be prompted to visit the priest residing at Haywind's River Shrine to discuss your experiences.
A conversation with the priest will send you on your way to investigate an undead corruption gripping the halls of Greywall - a haunted underground prison.
Once you've wrestled your way into the dungeon, you'll find it defended by a wide variety of undead monsters. In order to uncover the truth about Greywall's curse and to vanquish The Ghost of Greywall, you'll have to fight your way into the deepest, darkest depths of the dungeon...
Fight your way through hordes of undead guarding the prison...
We've added a wide variety of new enemies to guard the dungeons, dealing every variety of damage against you both up close and from range. Remember to inspect your enemies, if some of them prove particularly punishing to fight. Chances are they're highly resistant to your choice of attacks, or you're not well defended against theirs. Whatever damage you do take, there are always healing spells, food and potions to pick you up.
This update we've also upgraded the inspect option with a way for us to include descriptions of the special abilities an enemy might have, as well as potential tips for how to defeat them.
Craft powerful new items...
New enemies also come with new things to loot, a lot of which can be crafted into more powerful items than the game previously had available. We've added new craftables almost across the board to accommodate some of the higher ranges of crafting skill levels, but the materials you'll have to loot within the walls of Greywall itself. Not quite all the items we were planning made it in (for example a new bow), but we'll add those afterward.
Speaking of crafting, Greywall's main quest is accompanied by two simpler sidequests, which you'll encounter naturally as you progress along. These are crafting related quests, where one will encourage you to reforge the mighty platearmor of a fallen champion of undead slaying. Reforging such a powerful armor sure ought to feel like an accomplishment, but succeeding in crafting exceptional variants of that armor is on a whole other level...
Oh, and don't forget to unlock your new player house as you roam in search of crafting materials down in the dungeons!
Silvermirror Ampoules
The other crafting sidequest you'll run into, 'Garden of the Witches', happens in the Silvermirror swamps. An alchemist lady in the smuggler village will teach you how to craft ampoules, small potions that grant you entirely overpowered levels of protection against incoming attacks. But their effects only last for a few seconds, so time them well.
Ampoule crafting has brought with it a whole new set of swamp plants required as ingredients, and small modifications to the terrain have been made here and there, which should vastly improve the experience of pathing and exploring in the swamp area. You'll also notice the swamp village houses have been reworked using more appropriate and far less resource intensive assets.
Action bar and other changes
A lot of unlockable abilities, spells and new consumables have crept into the game since the early days, which has been desperately calling for us to increase the capacity of the action bar, and in this update we have done so. You'll now find +/- buttons next to the action bar to add or remove space to your liking.
Additionally we've fixed some bugs and broken things in a few previous quests causing issues, as per player feedback (which continues to be invaluable to us by the way, thanks once again), and a most elusive and mysterious bug causing special items (primarily the Soulfire Crystal and Mistywood Talisman) to disappear from inventory at seemingly random - it should now also be very much resolved.
What's coming next?
Though creating Greywall has been a really good exercise for us in terms of learning to create more immersive questing experiences, we likely won't be developing a similarly scoped body of questing content any time soon - certainly not before we officially bring the game out of early access.
This doesn't mean we won't develop more quests - we definitely will - but we're shifting our focus more on skill progression next, as well as the Thornhill Trainers players have been asking about since we released in early access.
We're also just about ready to address long standing technical issues in the game. When we first released early access, we announced we'd start working on a reworked pathing system to get rid of those pesky 'getting stuck' problems we keep getting reports about. That pathing rework is nearing completion and we'll hopefully soon be ready to implement it into the game.
On the other hand we're aware there's a lot of annoying cpu stuttering sometimes while playing the game and those become especially prevalent near the big cities, particularly Haywind. A large cause of that is the game actually loading the houses themselves, so we're planning to just rework almost all of the housing using our tailor made house assets, in the same manner as we now replaced the housing at swamp village.
The work on an achievement system also continues. However, as we previously announced, we decided to postpone implementing that into the live game until the official release update - it makes a lot more sense that way as we're constantly in the process of adding achievement-worthy content into the game still.
In terms of expanding the map, for the release update our plans include an ogre infested mountain zone... but we'll talk more about that as its time comes near.
In the meantime, we sincerely hope to see you enjoying the Dungeons of Greywall and let us know what you think of it, perhaps what you think it's missing and what improvements could be made. Feedback is best shared to us on our Discord, where we do read all your feedback even when we might not always be super quick to respond to it.
With that said, it's time to wish you all happy gaming!
Regards, Pura
Devblog 15 - Happy New Year!
Greetings adventurers!
As the year’s coming to a close, we wanted to wish you a happy New Year and take the opportunity to reflect on what we've achieved and what's still to come. 2023 was a big year for us, getting our game out in early access was a great milestone and we’ve been delighted by how many of you enjoyed playing the game and exploring its every corner despite its rough edges – thank you sincerely!
Reflecting back on our initial 2023 roadmap, admittedly a number of points still remain to be addressed and timetables have shifted a lot. The Ghost of Greywall content piece for example was thought to be developed over the summer, and though we pushed its warmup quest in September, we’re in the midst of developing it now.
On the other hand, other priorities outside the roadmap have occasionally risen during development, and from player feedback, and that's okay too. We're still optimistic we'll be able to transition the game out of early access within the first half of 2024 and should that plan change, we'll let you know.
So what new has risen since we begun early access? In our development we've started focusing much more on creating higher quality questing experiences. When we begun early access, high quality questing only really existed while doing the main story. Though we did have plans for some deeper, separate story lines, the reality of side quests was "kill 10 rats" or "bring 10 carrots". We'd like to think every quest (almost) we've introduced since has a bit more than that going for it, and moving forward we'll aim to create the feeling of 'if you're going on a quest, it should feel like going on a quest!' as much as possible.
That’s not to say we aren’t happy to add mundane tasks to the world too, but we’ll be making more of a distinction between “tasks” and “quests”. We're planning to tie the tasks, such as 'please help me with thing X', with the achievement system we've been working on. For example, helping the denizens of a village like Aurfield with their tasks (please help me with my beer shipment, please I need cabbages for my soup...) will contribute towards earning an achievement (Friend of Aurfield), which will also allow you to claim rewards in game, including a special currency that may be spent at achievement content related shops.
Behind the scenes we've also managed to improve our custom tools and processes to help us work more efficiently in many ways with what is ultimately a very small team. Consequently we're better equipped to deal with technical issues / performance in the game. For example we're now planning to slowly rework most houses with new fully in-house (pun intended) produced sets of 3d-models that ought to significantly improve performance around cities and their surroundings and eradicate issues of getting stuck while pathing inside houses.
Now onto the main attraction - if you've made it this far - the subject of our next, imminent game update! We’re currently working on the Greywall Dungeons, a more perilous area than any other on the map thus far. It will be accompanied by a rather meaty quest (one that should really feel like an actual quest), and will culminate in facing off the source of a dark curse that looms over the dungeons – the Ghost of Greywall!
The Ghost of Greywall will be the largest individual quest we've done so far and the dungeon area itself should feel quite nice and large as well. A few small sidequests will also be included, there'll be new loot to grind for and new powerful items and consumables to craft. The final boss in Greywall is going to offer a new challenging fight in a similar vein to the end of the current main quest.
We're aware some of you have expressed frustration with regards to that fight's difficulty, while others enjoy it. Still we want to introduce challenging content into the game. We're also aware the pacing of difficulty in the game isn't great at the moment and it's something we'll be looking to address. But we do also understand how some of you may precisely want to just relax with the game and enjoy not needing to sweat while playing it.
Our current thinking on this issue is that we'll aim to provide a reasonably paced difficulty throughout the game with challenging moments, and afterwards we'll introduce a story mode to accommodate for more casual play.
That wraps up our thoughts and feelings so this year. We’re aiming to push the Greywall update live in January, so stay tuned. For now, on behalf of our team I wish you all a happy New Year! And most importantly, happy gaming!
Regards, Pura
Early Access Update 8 - The Harvest Festival
Happy Halloween, adventures!
We're here to bring you a content update with a bit of seasonal flavor - welcome to the Harvest Festival! To clarify, this is an update bringing permanent new content to the game and not just a seasonal event. We've done our best to theme it according to the season, while having it not come across as too out of place when playing later outside of it.
Quests and Environment
Little Grainwater Harvest Festival
Previously an empty bit of village preoccupied the area between Haywind, Grainwater and Ratcliffe, where a single odd quest could be found - procuring carrots for a mysterious stranger. It was one of the earliest quests put into the game, basically as practice, and it's safe to say it wasn't incredible exciting nor well received in general feedback.
That quest has for now been removed (who knows, maybe it can still be worked into something at a later date), and the area has been reworked to accommodate a Harvest Festival with new quests and festive games!
New quests introduced in this update are the following:
As the festival's main attraction, Master Matthews has invited brave fighters across the land and beyond to participate in the Great Harvest Melee. Fight against four varied opponents, climb the ranks of the tournament and win great prizes!
While others among the festival are engaged in the making of delicious pumpkin juice, a little off to the side a dubious alchemist can be found making an altogether different kind of brew... Melvin Greyr will ask you to procure ingredients for him, which may prove to be a slightly dangerous undertaking. Does the whole situation seem a bit shady? Perhaps, but surely you'll be rewarded for your efforts.
The village mayor Albert Forxford is quite proud of the festival he's managed to set up, but he's made one crucial mistake - hiring a somewhat deranged witch to entertain the children with her magic. Not only is her little pet preventing people from collecting the festival pumpkins, the mayor is genuinely worried someone may get hurt by it. He'll appeal to you for help in resolving the situation.
Bank Notes
Quality of life feature, you may now facilitate the sale of lots of items in the form of bank notes. - All items stored at the bank can now be withdrawn in the form of a stackable bank note. - Click "Withdraw banknotes" in the bank interface to toggle withdrawing items as bank notes on and off. - Items in the form of bank notes can be sold normally to vendors.
FULL PATCH NOTES
That's it for this time! Below are detailed patch notes for those who may be interested.
Quests and Environment:
"The Great Harvest Melee"
"A Dangerous Brew"
"Pumpkin Pandemonium"
Removed quest "To Feed the Beast".
Environmental changes; Little Grainwater Harvest Festival.
Environmental changes; Small spider thicket south of Harvest Festival + spider cave.
Gameplay:
Multiple balance changes to the loot dropped by bandits of varying levels in the early parts of the game.
Adjustments to low level skeleton loot, fixed copper round shield having two separate, high drop rates.
Balanced Crafting experience gains, particularly unintentionally high xp gains from willow staff and wand crafting and coins gained from selling those items.
Adjusted treant stats so those slow lumbering creatures now have high resistances against ranged and spell attacks.
Living wood drops from treants at more reasonable rates now.
Added resistances to a number of hostile npcs missing them.
Adjusted Haywind furniture shop items to have unique prices reflecting the quality of the items, increased storage chest prices.
Adjusted item drops/rates for aurfield pirates.
Adjusted early cave troll drop tables to provide early leather drops.
Adjusted unusual acorn droprates, making them a little more unusual and increasing the significance of gaining them from woodcutting.
Adjusted magic item drops from early game ghosts at the beginning crypts and added more spawners to find them.
Rabbits now also drop carrots, because why not.
Added sheep to a great number of locations in the early parts of the game map, where sheep were previously hard to find.
Lowered rewards from fixing Eryk's cart in quest 'Antique Wheels' to a more appropriate level for what the quest required to complete.
Improved tooltip descriptions on 'Elemental Lightning' spell.
Tailoring workbenches can now be found in early game spruce shade areas.
Increased bank size by 10 rows.
42 New Items, but notably:
Jester's Outfit
Jester's Hat
Trairian Fencing Attire
Trairian Rapier
Tabard of the Grey Knight
Knight's Bascinet
Trairian Fencing Hat
The Fearsome Pumpkin Head
Pumpkin Juice
Venomous Blackhair Extract
A Bewitched Pumpkin
The Blade and Bane: A Practical Guide for Poisoning Weapons
Skill Book: Heroic Kick
Skill Book: Fight Dirt with Dirt
Broadsword of a Thornhill Knight
Hydrobor Duellist Wand
Reinforced Pitchfork
Furniture items:
Lifeless Autumn Tree
Blood Basin
Cauldron of Eyeballs
Coffin
Red Curtains
Evil Eye Lantern
Spider Web (4 varieties)
New Spells and Abilities:
Venomous Bladestrike
Heroic Kick
Blinding Sand
Skills:
Provided tailoring options for start of the game; new material dropping from early enemies - coarse linen.
Exceptional weapons missing weapon type (e.g. Blade, Hammer).
Triggering a cinematic in the middle of a teleport spell causing player to turn invisible.
Copper Morningstar attack missing.
As usual, feel free to follow us on twitter and/or Discord for future news and updates.
Stay tuned and happy gaming!
Regards, Pura
Early Access Update 7 - Echoes of Suffering
Greetings again, adventures!
Summer has come and gone, we're a little behind on many of the features we originally envisaged in our spring roadmap, but we do have a new content update for you! This update brings with it quests and environmental changes to the forests southwest of Thornhill City, as well as a number of gameplay additions and changes.
It also kicks off a prequel quest for the haunted Greywall Dungeon we're working on, which will offer separate story content and layers of incrementally more challenging enemies, culminating in a boss fight with the 'Ghost of Greywall'. We're aiming to release the dungeon in our next autumn update, accompanied by achievements-system we've also been working on.
But for now we wish to deliver a content update involving a mix of ghosts, trolls and lumberjacks. In our usual fashion, you'll find a showcase of the major features included in this update below, as well as more exhaustive patch notes at the very end.
Quests and Environment
Environmental changes, the 'Prowler's Thicket'
We're rebranding the forests southwest of Thornhill City / south of Harshwind Village as the Prowler's Thicket, leaning heavily on its troll inhabitation, while at the same time we've made it accommodate our new Thornbark Sawmill woodcutting minigame - more information on that below. The emphasis is once again on improving the sense of exploration; running into this forest you'll find new quests and things to interact with, new resources and items to hunt, where before it was all quite barren.
New quests introduced in this update are the following:
Following the shockwave from Gabrius' magic that sent tremors across the land, some among the mining village of Ratcliffe face a disaster. The nearby Sallowstone Mine has caved in, causing all workers within to perish. The prospector Phillip Arden is the lone man who survived and the player may find him in the chapel building contemplating the fate of his friends.
It is not only their deaths that trouble him, though, as he claims the spirits of his friends soon sprang up as ghosts haunting the mine. The old prospector appeals to the player for help, to find a way to bring peace to the ghosts of his fellow miners, to allow them to pass into the afterlife where they belong...
Quest: A Daring Rescue
[table noborder="1"] [tr] [th] Starting location[/th] [th]Harshwind Village, central square[/th] [/tr] [tr] [th] Quest length[/th] [th]Medium[/th] [/tr] [/table]
Entering the small Harshwind Village, the player now encounters a woman in distress. Her father, who also happens to be the mayor of the village, has failed to return home from a hunting trip into the woods. Instead the rest of his hunting party who managed to scramble away claim that they were ambushed by the forest trolls.
In the scuffle the poor mayor was lifted by one the trolls and hauled deeper into the woods, no doubt to one of the nasty lairs the trolls inhabit, to await his fate. Are you willing to go look for him?
Quest: Logging Issues
[table noborder="1"] [tr] [th] Starting location[/th] [th]Thornbark Sawmill, building by the small stream.[/th] [/tr] [tr] [th] Quest length[/th] [th]Short[/th] [/tr] [/table]
Before getting the Thornbark Sawmill churning, the player must first aid the sawmill foreman with a slight hitch that has seized the operations. The sawmill's access to the clearing where they acquire all their precious logs of Wildsfir has become blocked by a suspiciously large tree trunk. Seems like a simple obstacle to break through, yet the foreman seems reluctant to send his own men...
The Thornbark Sawmill & the Shaman
Much in the same vein as Shearston Ranch in our previous update, the Thornbark Sawmill offers an alternative way to gain woodcutting experience while also offering a range of unique rewards. The sawmill processes a new type of wood called Wildsfir into planks, rewarding you with tokens you can spend at the foreman on a range of new items, such as Deep Forest garments.
Sometimes while splitting the logs you may find a strange blue gem, the Mystic's Amber, also found on the forest trolls. These are desired by the reclusive shaman Thor Ganesh, found some ways off from the sawmill.
Talk to a stablehand anywhere, do them a small favor, and they'll reward you with Horsy the Pack Mule! Besides offering companionship, Horsy serves the very important task of carting items cluttering your inventory at inconvenient times to your bank / storage. Simply 'use' any item on Horsy to quickly store it away for later.
Quest Rework: The Foreign Raider
This was a quest we pushed a few updates back and we were never fully satisfied with it. Then in our last update it appears to have been disabled half accidentally. So this time we rewrote the quest and added a few additional phases to it.
Assuming you're on a save where you haven't yet completed this quest, upon entering the newly improved militia camp west of Haywind, you'll encounter Deputy Rieler who's looking for help in taking down high value bandit targets. He'll want to know you're up to snuff first though...
Traits
In this update we again continue our never ending quest to flesh out the trainer traits system. This time we've focused on including the base "tier" traits with desirable bonuses beyond the placeholdery experience gain increases that they've previously offered.
Woodsmanship tier traits now for example buff you with "Pathfinding", which increases your movement speed outside of combat, while cooking tier traits unlock options to learn local cooking recipes (with unique buffs) at various taverns in the world.
Equippable items you create with smithing, tailoring and crafting can now gain a 'critical success' from trainer traits, producing an exceptional quality of that item. Exceptional items have increased stat bonuses and earn you more coin when sold.
Combat skill trainer traits will reward you with various base stat bonuses outside of items, while alchemy traits increase the duration of your beneficial potions.
Mining and fishing tier traits still remain in the works, but will be coming soon™...
Random NPC Encounters (making the game world feel more alive)
We have added a number of background conversation that play out between NPCs in the world as the player draws near. These have basically always been in the game, but previously they have been few and far between. We've worked on better, more efficient ways of implementing these and we're aiming to plant a lot of them around the game world, as they do wonders for immersion and making the game feel more 'alive'.
At best they can also inform about the environment or story and where effort can be spared, they can evolve as the player progresses through quests. This is in fact how the background conversations already worked in quests in our previous update (Shearston and Aurfield) and this trend continues in our latest quests 'Echoes of Suffering' and 'A Daring Rescue'.
We'll also be implementing more of what we call "aggro barks" from now on, which potentially give hostile npcs something to say when engaged in combat.
It's possible to sink quite a few of these into an open world as large as we're working with though, so this will be an ongoing process for the future as well.
Achievements Sneak Peek
Our achievements system still needs to bake, but for now we can offer a sneak peek into what we've been designing. Various feats you complete in the game will net you your usual Steam achievements, but in game the system goes beyond that. We wanted achievements to offer a way to track content in game, so we've created a window to do just that, where achievements and progress are listed under varying categories.
As an example, looking under the categories of Story / Haywind you would find achievements relating to side-questing in the Haywind area.
As you may notice, we've made it possible to include rewards within the achievements, which can be collected at your leisure. We could for example include small tasks from villagers etc. you encounter, which don't constitute as fully fledged quests, but could still be rewarding to do in this way.
The achievements could largely reward with achievement tokens also, which may be spent at an "achievement shop".
FULL PATCH NOTES
That's it for this time! Finally, here we have more detailed patch notes for those who may be interested.
New: 4 new quests:
"Echoes of Suffering"
"A Daring Rescue"
"Logging Issues"
"Staple Foods"
New village - Thornbark Sawmill
New harvestable resources:
Woodcutting: Wildsfir, level 25
New equippable/consumable Items:
Lantern of Soulsoothing
Woodworker's Outfit
Troll Crossbow
Deep Forest Garb
Deep Forest Hood
Symbol of the Deep Forest
Deep Forest Bracers
Wildsfir Hatchet
Haunted Pickaxe
Bracelet of the Troll Berserker
Antler Helm
Willow Staff
Willow Wand
Snail Roll
Ore Hauler's Stew
Woodland Skewer
Grainwater Flatbread
Random Npc Interactions
Added an interaction between Helga and Furrball in Timberwell
Added an interaction to Timberwell fisherman
Added interactions to Opticus Aluminar
Added an interaction between guards at the deputy's camp near Aurfield
Added an interaction between a farmer and his cow on the fields near timberwell
Added an interaction between two hunters by the road after exiting Spruce Shade's Rest
Added an interaction between two villagers at Timberwell's well + smaller interactions to other villagers
Added a number of new npcs to Ratcliffe mining village with interactions
Added an interaction to Ratcliffe sword merchant
Added interactions to "Mountain Rescue" npcs Madam and Master Hubbs
Added an interaction to Ratcliffe mining foreman
Added several interactions to Haywind militia camp in the fields west of the city
Added interactions to Fog's Dwindling tavern.
Added a number of new interactions to Grainwater tavern.
Added a small interaction to the Haywind smith
Small interactions to Thornhill and Haywind guards
New interactive merchants at fenwater village market
Aggressive barks to an unrecorded amount of hostile npcs as they attack you, for example the great mudclaw.
Music:
Grainwater tavern "Whimsical Whistle of Everlasting Delight"
Thornbark Sawmill areas "On the Prowl"
Misc:
Miranda, a quirky tonic merchant opposite grainwater tavern
New ore mining location near Fenwater
Changes:
Quests:
Full rewrite of a previously implemented quest "The Foreign Raider".
Misc:
Environmental changes to new Prowler's Thicket.
Slight improvements/edits to journal entries to early main quests.
Wearing staves now comes with a new animation holding them upright.
Changed coins received from quest 'In Search of a Bride' from 150 to 350
Cleaned up / edited certain peasant dialogue lines in Timberwell.
Edited certain peasant dialogue lines in Grainwater.
Clarified tooltips on a number of consumables.
Simplified item name "Faintly Glowing Bead" to "Glowing Orb"
Included a variety more harvestables and hostile npcs to wide areas west of Haywind
Filled Grainwater groceries shop with a bunch of actual groceries.
Added Barnsy's flaming arrow ability book to his shop for the rare event the player loses the book before learning the ability.
Scavengers:
Included a recovery option for near enough all unique quest reward items at the Scavenger's shop - nothing is ever lost for good!
Skills:
Alchemy: changed level required to pick sweetgrass to 12.
Alchemy: changed level required to craft mild antipoison to 14.
Alchemy: changed ingredients required to craft mild antipoison: 1 Empty Vial, 1 Cavern Puffball and 5 Sweetgrass.
Alchemy: changed ingredients required to craft swiftness potion to include empty vial.
Alchemy: changed ingredients required to craft firestick mixture to include empty vial, and mushrooms.
Traits:
Novice Spellslinger trait now increases base mana by 5
Experienced Spellslinger trait now increases base mana by 5 and mana regen by a slight amount
Novice Shieldbearer trait now increases base health by 5
Experienced Shieldbearer trait now increases base health by 5 and health regen by a slight amount
Novice and Experienced Swordsman traits now increase attack speed with melee weapons slightly
Novice and Experienced Marksman traits now increase attack speed with ranged weapons slightly
Novice and Experienced Potioner traits now increase potion durations slightly
Novice and Experienced Wright, Outfitter and Blacksmith traits now give/increase chance to craft exceptional quality equippable items
Novice Saucemaker trait now unlocks options to learn local cooking recipes from taverns in Timberwell, Grainwater and Ratcliffe
Experienced Saucemaker trait now unlocks option to learn local cooking recipe from tavern in Fog's Dwindling
Novice Lumberjack trait now grants Pathfinding, which increases movement speed outside of combat.
Experienced Lumberjack trait now increases the movement speed bonus from Pathfinding.
World Map
World Map can now by default be scrolled using any of the mouse buttons, as opposed to only the left mouse button previously
Renamed/Added world map pointer to Prowler's Thicket (forest southwest of Thornhill)
Added world map pointer to Golemwoods (forest southeast of Thornhill)
Added world map pointer to Harshwind Village (west of Thornhill)
Added world map pointer to River Aure
Added world map pointer to Ruins of Greywall
Fixes:
Added a generic tavernkeepers to harshwind and south thornhill taverns.
Reduced Grainwater inn and similar type building's camera collider, which would often get in the way in an irritating way.
Reduced stablehands' wandering distance slightly to prevent them from walking too far off.
Adjusted banker barks so their unlikely to shout the same thing at the same time.
Adjusted banker's and many shopkeeper's interact distance to be more in line with what one would expect.
Ghost form Gabrius now correctly disappears from spruce shade crypts after progressing the main quest, as he should have done.
Fixed Haywind's smith Forvan's npc spawner so that he always shows, instead of only spawning when entering the bounds of his forge
Fixed visual glitches inside a few houses in various areas.
Fixed a number shop doors that didn't automatically open.
Removed several signs from Haywind houses that served no purpose.
Fixed a typo from Wrathful Torrent spell tooltip.
Removed certain unobtainable items from skill milestone lists.
Corrected the name of Rancher Eryk's interactable cart on Haywind side.
The quest reward popup window for 'Battle of the Shearston Estate' now indicates that the alchemy recipe for crafting firestick mixture is unlocked, which it should have previously done.
Deer now have loot
As usual, feel free to follow us on twitter and/or Discord for future news and updates.
Stay tuned and happy gaming!
Regards, Pura
Early Access Update 6 - The Great Mudclaw of Aurfield
Greetings all!
We're once again happy to deliver a new game update (almost) in time to celebrate Steam's summer sale. Without further ado, here's an overview of the main features and areas that have been updated in today's patch.
More detailed patch notes may be found further below.
Fishing Village of Aurfield
In this update the area northeast of Haywind gets a facelift. You’ll be able to discover the cozy fishing village of Aurfield on your journey up the river, where you’ll find new interactive npcs, harvestable resources that smooth out the early game progression, a shop and 3 new quests.
The Flooded Cave
Nearby you'll find a flooded cave that serves as a dungeon to explore. One of the new Aurfield quests - "Dead Fishermen Tell Tall Tales" - leads here to vanquish a new boss, a giant crab called The Great Mudclaw. With it come new item drops of course, including special armor and the potential to learn a powerful spell.
A Hidden Grove
For all the fishing enjoyers, you get to hunt for an elusive Aurora Trout in a new quest: "The Prize Fish". It swims in the waters of a secluded grove, and is only attracted by the shiniest of bait. A hook made of gold is a great start, but for some reason folk always lose such things by getting them stuck on crab shells...
Antique Wheels
You could use a convenient way of getting to the new village. Help Rancher Eryk fix his cart that has been in his family for generations in the quest "Antique Wheels", and he'll be happy to let you hitch a ride when traveling between Haywind and Aurfield.
Discover the Shearston Estate
On the other side, northwest of Haywind, you may now find a new farming village that is the Shearston Estate. The farmers here are most known for producing the finest clothing in the land, but their operation has become halted due to being blockaded by the menacing bandit horde that roams the land. Haywind’s militia has been unable to reach them, but perhaps you could lend the poor farmers a hand in defense of their home?
The Battle of the Shearston Estate
The estate features a new quest, "The Battle of the Shearston Estate", where you support the farmers in their efforts of driving away bandit raiders, and you'll learn to throw fire bombs along the way.
Operate the quirky Shearston loom
To improve the tailoring skill experience in the game, the estate features a new minigame unlocked by the quest - keep the quirky Shearston loom running by feeding wool into it! The minigame now provides an easy way to acquire wool in the game, which was previously unnecessarily sweaty. It's also an alternative, fun way of gaining tailoring experience and rewards you with tokens that can be exchanged for unique rewards.
Other new quests...
Waterway Tradesmen
Started north in Thornhill's harbor inn, a merchant enlists you for help in establishing a trade route between the two cities of Thornhill and Haywind. Just beware, he's an investor of limited funds and the boat he's acquired for the job reflects that - it may need slight repairs to prevent it from sinking.
The quest unlocks a new fast travel option between Haywind and Thornhill harbors.
The River Pirates
The marauding bandit horde of Haywind also resorts to piracy against trade barges traveling the length of the river! Help a Haywind deputy, stationed on the opposite side of the harbor across the river, deal with the pirate menace.
Once completed, the quest offers a repeatable interaction where you're rewarded for every 5 stolen cargo crates you recover from the pirate camps. Much of what you recover from the crates will turn out to be common goods, conveniently stored for later use in the new player (ware)house placed nearby along the river, but sometimes you may be able to find cool hidden gems along the cargo too.
Steam Cloud saves & plans for NVIDIA GeForce Now
Cloud saves are now enabled, so your saves are synced between your devices! The saves are also stored locally on your device, and you can choose between cloud and local saves in the main menu.
In other news, we've opted in to NVIDIA's GeForce Now cloud gaming service. The game needs to be approved before being available on the service though, so we'll keep you updated about the process and let you know the moment when/if it becomes available.
Patch Notes
New:
Steam Cloud saves is now enabled.
6 new quests:
"Dead Fishermen Tell Tall Tales"
"The Prize Fish"
"Waterway Tradesmen"
"The River Pirates"
"Antique Wheels"
"Battle of the Shearston Estate"
New village - Aurfield
New village - the Shearston Estate
New map section - the Flooded Cave
New map section - Hidden Mistywood Grove
The Great Mudclaw - new boss npc
Shearston loom - tailoring minigame
New obtainable spell - the Wrathful Torrent
New harvestable resources:
Woodcutting: The Glowing Willow, level 9
Alchemy: Sunflowers, level 20
Alchemy: Waspheart Iris, level 17
Alchemy: Firestick Plant, level 5
Fishing: Aurora Trout, level 20
Fishing: Worms (bait)
Fishing: Luminescent Worms (bait)
New equippable Items:
Copper Pitchfork
Bracelet of Stalwart Riverfolk
Pirate Dagger
Monstrous Crustacean Helm
Riverpirate's Cutlass
Riverpirate Captain's Cutlass
Riverpirate's Tunic
Riverpirate Captain's Overcoat
Riverpirate Captain's Hat
Chitin Torch
And a number of other new, more trivial items...
2 new alchemy crafting recipes
New tailoring crafting recipe
2 new house decorations
New tailoring trait, obtainable from Shearston: Cotton Handler
3 new fishing traits from Haywind trainer, involving the digging of worms.
Changes:
Sweeping environmental changes focused in areas north of Haywind.
Gathering Northwind cotton now requires level 20 in tailoring
Improved interiors of the entrance to the Elder Druid's tomb in Haywind.
Improved the clarity of most spell tooltips.
Improvements and additions to world map texts.
Fixes:
Added a generic tavernkeeper to north haywind's empty tavern, and fixed its sign.
Gate not opening in Tomb of the Elder Druid.
Missed damage showing as -0 damage taken in chat.
Numerous pathing issues.
As usual, feel free to follow us on twitter and/or Discord for future news and updates.
Stay tuned, happy gaming and hope you all enjoy your summer!
Regards, Pura
Devblog 14 - Sculpting the Open World
Greetings all!
We've decided delaying a bit until pushing our next game update to deliver a slightly larger patch in time for steam's summer sale event, so we thought it'd be a good time to write a devblog to update on our progress. We continue to be focused on filling in blank areas of the open world with questing content that also rewards exploration. We're also currently prioritizing the early/midgame areas of the game.
For example, in our next update the bare lands between Mistywood and Haywind will receive a complete facelift with a new village named Aurfield full of npcs with dialogue, multiple new quests, and new surrounding wilderness with semi-hidden caves and new resources to find!
Beware, according to fishermen's tales a great crab monster may also be lurking nearby...!
From a more optimization-perspective, we've tried using a different style of housing for this area. The houses we've used thus far are actually somewhat unnecessarily resource intensive for what this style of game should really need, so for the future we'll be creating houses that only use a far more appropriate amount of system's resources.
Similar to Aurfield, the road from Haywind to Thornhill is another area that currently remains devoid of content and thus isn't particularly exciting to travel. It will be receiving more attention a bit later, most likely after the Aurfield update. We want to apply more polish to these areas first, as they're ones that new players can encounter relatively early on (definitely earlier than Thornhill City itself, for example) and we wouldn't want anyone to feel discouraged from playing further as they encounter these rough patches.
At the same time, we're of course always looking to expand on the core skills in the game. The next update will include some new interactions across skills such as tailoring, fishing and woodsmanship. A new farm estate will contain a tailoring minigame to make skill leveling a bit more fun...
The taverns are another place we're looking to flesh out a bit more. There are quite a few of them in game and the ones that have amusing NPC background conversation make the game feel infinitely more immersive and alive in our opinion. We'd also like the taverns to be a place where the player can generally expect to find quests.
For now, here's a scene from a new quest started at Thornhill's harbor inn, which will unlock a fast travel option between the two cities of Thornhill and Haywind.
At the moment our efforts mainly center around improving the experience of journeying through the lands as the player progresses through the main quest content. We're also adding more tasks around the game's world that can be repeated, also in the form of repeatable quests from npcs, so that it may feel a bit more alive with things to do, and with alternative ways of gaining experience in skills for example. Later down the line in autumn we're planning to shift more towards implementing challenging high level content.
You can expect our next game update to land at the end of the month.
As usual, feel free to follow us on twitter and/or Discord for future news and updates.
Stay tuned, happy gaming and hope you all enjoy your summer!
Regards, Pura
Early Access Update 5 - The Curator
Greetings!
Today we have a regular game update for you, introducing a new side quest "A Historical Undertaking", new items, new abilities and skill trainer interactions. Quick showcase and patch notes may be found below:
A Historical Undertaking
Near Thornhill's southern gate (Baron's Gate), the player may now encounter a house belonging to the Regal Society for the Preservation of Imberthale’s History and Relics, or the Preservation Society for short. Its curator, Ser Ames Verrington, tasks the player with acquiring relics of historical significance from locked crypts within Thornhill's catacombs. It's all in the interest of protecting them, of course.
This will start a chain of quests progressing through the catacombs, the first part of which is included in this update.
New Lifeskill Traits
The skill trainers in Haywind College have received new traits / abilities available for purchase. There are new interactions especially for the gathering skills of mining, woodsmanship and fishing. For example, it's now possible to remove impurities from ore out in the field, to gut fish into fillets and to split logs into firewood, which in turn can make campfires out in the field of course.
Performing these actions offer a way to stack some of your gathered resources to gain more inventory space, and they also contribute to your experience in their respective skills.
The sorcery trainer has also received a choice for a new ability.
Patch Notes
New:
New side quest, A Historical Undertaking.
Over a dozen new items, including recipes, cosmetics and special furniture.
6 new buffs and abilities.
New trait options for Haywind's combat skill trainers as well as alchemy, mining, fishing and woodsmanship trainers.
All small storage bags and other starting trait items are now available for purchase from Haywind trainers
Haywind trainers now have shops offering experience books and skill related items
Changes:
Spell/ability selection no longer resets after consuming potions/food or after using once-off spells or abilities
Adjusted skill book experience gains at higher levels
Fixes:
Fixed an aggressive LOD setting related to brambles in Silvermirror Throne, causing them to disappear while still near the player.
Fixed some typos.
Fixed colliders/doors on some houses to better detect when to display interiors.
Adjusted Quick Strike damage timing to match the animation
More quests and content are in the works, so stay tuned and happy gaming!
Early Access Update 4 - The Plague Doctor
Greetings!
Today we have a content update introducing 3 new side quests into the game, among other things. Here we'll quickly cover a brief description of these quests and where to find them. You can also scroll down for the patch notes.
Plague Doctor's Apprentice
This is the largest of the new sidequests in the update. The city of Thornhill is reeling from the effects of a plague called the Blistering Plight that recently swept through it. Besides a few mentions in dialogue, this wasn't really represented in the game yet, so we decided to make a sidequest revolving around that theme.
You start this quest by running into a young woman outside the plague doctor's house in Thornhill, as you walk north up the road from the poor people's district on the eastern side. She turns out to be the plague doctor's apprentice, but the work the doctor is currently conducting is beyond her experience.
If you prove to be able to craft yourself the appropriate attire, you will be sent to carry out the plague doctor's work, where a variety of skills may be needed.
The Foreign Raider
This is a fairly simple bounty on one of Haywind's marauders, which you can acquire by talking to a Deputy Rieler in the militia camp west out of Haywind. He's hunting for a foreign bandit leader called Nyls Yellen, and if you bring him proof Yellen's demise, there is a quirky reward to be had. More bandit quests to come in later updates.
Mountain Rescue
Down in the mining village of Ratcliffe, near the Silderstone mountain, you may find a miner's wife who is extremely concerned for her missing husband. She asks for your help in going up the mountain to search for him, but don't forget to bring necessary mountaineering gear with you!
On your way up the mountain, hidden in a cave, you may also discover a strange altar. Offer a key, say a prayer to the Stone Father, and new gifts may appear! Oh, and watch out for the menacing cave bear lurking about.
Other Patch Notes
New:
Added a full screen world map, you can open it by clicking the icon next to the minimap or by using a keybind
Added a minimap text for Lovers' Rest in Silvermirror Fen to alleviate confusion during quest 'Reckoning of the Silvermirror Witch'
Changes:
UI Scale can now be lowered down to 5% and increased up to 300% in video options
Scrawny wolves now drop wolf pelts
Adjusted trainer trait costs
Adjusted shop prices
Skeleton Sorcerer's Staff - Increased special attack damage and debuff duration. Special attack debuff strength now scales up based on Sorcery level.
Some journal improvements on existing quests.
Changed etherlight portal room npc loot tables in a way that players are no longer restricted to crafting a unique vessel of essences
Fixes:
Starting furniture (chest, table, chair etc.) in Spruce Shade Shack sometimes disappearing
Added empty vials to alchemy recipes that were missing it
Starting location[/th]
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