Happy Wayward Day! Okay, well, not quite. Due to some scheduling conflicts, we are a "few" days from April 22nd. For the 3rd year of Wayward on Steam, we are offering our best sale yet at -30% off for the next 24 hours on Steam or through the widget on our website.
We are still hard at work on beta 2.8, but we thought we would spoil a few upcoming features and announce a new feature voting page on our website.
Feature Voting
In the past, we have shared interactive polls (using the poll.ly service) for players to share what they would like to see next in version of Wayward. Unfortunately using this service resulted in some vote manipulation, dodgy submission, and less than ideal ordering and sorting features.
We ensured the most popular features are available for voting since submissions are no longer available through our new feature voting page. We aren't removing the ability suggest new features of course, rather just "approving" them on our end before listing them. Please share your suggestions via our forums, social media, or chat as per usual. Please also check out or Trello to see a full listing of submitted ideas and future plans: https://trello.com/b/PWX1Hpjn/wayward-todo
Water Still Changes
Stills will no longer require containers to craft them, meaning, if you want, you can use a single container for desalinating water. You can now spot visually exactly what container is attached to each and their fullness state (in the case of glass bottles and waterskins).
You can now attach and detach containers as you want as well as drink directly from the still.
Item Refinement and Weight Bonuses
A large part of the mid-to-late game of Wayward is managing item weight and starting to think about crafting items using the lowest weight components. While this is an intentional system for players to min/max, we wanted to introduce another strategy. Crafted items with higher weights will now provide bonus max durability. Additionally, a new system called "refinement" has been implemented through the use of new metal "refinement tools", which will allow you refine most items, reducing their overall weight at the cost of some maximum durability (which can still be increased through reinforcement). With all these new systems, players can strategize which they want to focus on: weight or durability, or even somewhere in the middle.
This image shows weight and durability before/after refining and how many refines were used (not all are maxed out in the example). The maximum refinement depends on the item and at what weight it started at.
And of course, you can still reinforce the item's durability back to optimal values with a lot of glue!
Here's a showcase of how weight can now affect maximum durability:
Scale Armor
Leatherworkers rejoice! You can now work with more than hides and look extra stylish while maintaining quite competent defense values - comparable to copper or wrought iron, but a lot less heavy and durable.
Coming at you today with some great news for certain players. The recent state of our reviews makes it clear to us that Wayward is attracting far too many players that are not familiar with traditional challenging, turn-based roguelike games with grid-based movement. We never anticipated more casual players finding the game. No, Wayward is not like Stardew Valley! It has led to a lot of frustration and confusion on both our parts and the players who subsequently refund the game, after leaving a negative review of course.
Because of this, we are taking a step back and re-focusing our efforts to make a game that tailors only to true hardcore gamers. Gamers that don’t need fancy graphics or free movement to be satisfied.
Wayward is moving to ASCII! Here’s a preview of what is to come.
One of our developers has also been investing a large amount of time into a VR port, all done in ASCII of course. This will be one way we can combat all the UI issues the game has.
Stay tuned for more (real) updates!
Beta 2.7.4 Released
With this update, the beta 2.7.x series should be concluded.
Much like our last update, we focused on squashing bugs, but also balancing, refining some systems and improving the mechanical depth of the game.
This time around, we took a look at crafting and deepened the impact of several factors including required doodad quality (which was largely unimportant previously) as well as adding "tiers" to required tools, making it so better tools could produce better quality items. New sorting options will also help to maximize crafting benefits. Get those legendary furnaces and iron hammers out!
Some other stand-out changes include:
You can take a look at some of the preview media for this update shared in the last update post.
After this update, we will begin working on the next major update (provided there are no major issues). Our hope with beta 2.8 is to take a look at some systems and areas of the game that are getting a bit long in the tooth. This includes an overhaul to the inventory and crafting interface as well as improving the performance of the game (the two are closely linked). We will of course be adding lots of new content and improvements as well, picking some of the things suggested based on the wishlist discussions and poll.
Instead of our normal process of beginning work on the next major update, along with the last update (beta 2.7.3), and the upcoming beta 2.7.4, we wanted to try to push out more substantial changes, much quicker than normal. So, along with the last "minor" update, this one will also be quite large for a "minor" release, if you can even call it that.
While we are in this downturn of Wayward patch releases, we have another, different type of release for you. Coming to you by popular demand are the downloadable soundtracks to the game, available through Steam and in support of Austin Dhillon, the composer of the music for Wayward.
The soundtracks are split up into two eras of Wayward. The Alpha and the Beta.
A very long time ago, I posted on Reddit asking for some music help on a very early version of Wayward. I had a few people interested, with some even producing tracks that made their way into an earlier version of the game. But, I eventually reached out to another responder that had a very down-tempo, moody 8-bit synth song available on their Soundcloud. It fit very closely to what I had always wanted in the game. I originally shared the "Cave Theme" to the NES Willow game as an example to what I was kind of looking for. What Austin first shared (which turned out to be a rough cut of Darker World) gave me goosebumps. I knew right there that I wanted him to produce all the music for the game. The haunting qualities and atmosphere perfectly aligned with what I had envisioned. The subtle hip-hop influences also made it a very unique amalgamation of different interests and tastes; playing off of my vision and Austin's strengths.
Wayward Soundtrack: Volume Alpha contains all the original tracks from the game, composed and produced by Austin Dhillon in September of 2011 and released as part of Wayward Alpha 1.5 on September 15, 2012. Since then, many people have remarked at the haunting beauty and sometimes chilling atmosphere showcased in the songs; a perfect fit for the survival aspect of Wayward.
Wayward Soundtrack: Volume Beta is the long awaited follow-up to the original 9 tracks, composed and produced by Austin Dhillon throughout 2018. Released as part of Beta 2.7, these hip-hop inspired tracks range from dreamlike to dark and provide a mysterious backdrop to Wayward's survival experience.
Purchasing these DLC soundtracks directly supports Austin Dhillon and do not provide any in-game content. I thought I would try to make that clear in case anybody gets the wrong idea about this DLC.
Hopefully this is just the beginning of our journey with Austin. Special shout-out to Dusty "Goaticide" Melling for the album art! Stay tuned for beta 2.7.4!
Beta 2.7.3 Released
Welcome to beta 2.7.3! The not so minor, minor release!
We have hopefully wrapped up the majority of the bugs and issues brought forward with 2.7. But more important may be the balance changes and UI improvements in this release.
Our intention with the plant and gardening changes was to create a bit of risk and with the reward of producing large crops, but also to further the watering mechanic which was tedious with little benefit previously. We have had a lot of feedback on that as soon as you produced crops, there was no worry about food. This should adjust that sentiment, at least slightly for now. It was important to introduce something for this that was completely optional. You can plant and gather from your crops just like before, but if you want to continue to sustain life in the same crops, you must tend to them a bit more.
Another common complaint was the usefulness of copper. While the original intention was to create a resource that wasn't necessarily as good iron for the sake of variety and training your skills, it fell short as many players simply skipped the resource entirely in favor of iron. So, now with the previous changes of repairing copper items not requiring fire, differing resistances/vulnerabilities, combined with the changes in this patch (reduced weight and reduced crafting resources), we hope that it can now fill some more niches.
We possibly need to stagger the release of beta 2.8 a bit, so there will likely be another large-ish patch for the 2.7.x series to look forward to.
Please read below for all the details on the other changes.
Here's another patch to continue improving the beta 2.7.x series. We've identified some issues with multiplayer over the last few days and have corrected some connection bugs as well as done some balancing. More to come soon!
Hope everybody enjoyed/is enjoying their holidays!
Here's a quick follow-up patch to our release yesterday. While there's several more issues and improvements we are working on, these should serve as a start of what is to come over the next few weeks.
We wanted to get this out as soon as possible due to the strength bug. It seems like most of you are "enjoying" this bug a little too much! If you want to change your strength back to a reasonable value, please try out Debug Tools where you can open a player inspect panel (by default ALT+P) and set a strength value at the bottom of the dialog. As mentioned in the release notes below, this bug caused players to gain 25 extra points of strength on each strength increase. Knowing this, you should be able to figure out how much to deduct from your total if you want to.
Alternatively, you can modify this stat directly using our console guide and modifying: localPlayer.stats.Strength.value
While most of our players are "enjoying" the cold, Wayward is about to get hot, especially with its revamped desert biome, two new modes of play, and a new set of songs, composed by Austin Dhillon.
After a long year of work on Wayward and releasing two of the most requested features by the players (that being multiplayer and NPCs), we decided to take a step back and work on something less requested, but just as important: replayability.
https://youtu.be/7ZgjkHXiWEM
We are introducing two new modes of play:
Custom Mode
Pick and choose modifiers to customize your Wayward experience. You can significantly change the difficulty and feel of the game using different combinations of options.
Challenge Mode
Previously called “Daily Challenge”, this difficult mode now has randomly generated modifiers and quests intended for quick playthroughs and races with friends.
With these new modes, the breadth of options at your disposal should allow you to play Wayward the way you see fit.
Another part of that replayability aspect is multiplayer. It was hard and tedious to get a group together to play. We have introduced a brand-new server browser that will allow you to not only find your friend's games easier but will also allow you to find new friends by joining their public games. Additionally, you can now simply copy a code within the "World" menu and share it with anybody you want to join your game. You no longer must rely on Steam to facilitate multiplayer. Speaking of which, we have implemented Discord rich presence allowing Discord to share what you are doing within Wayward but also enables you to invite others to your game. Other Discord members can even ask to join your game as well.
Along with the replayability theme, we also added a ton of new content including three new creatures, three new plants, and tons of items featured primarily in the desert biome.
A few other stand-out additions include:
Oh ya, and how about that new music? Beta 2.7 is dropping with 9 new tracks! 9 tracks that serve as the long awaited follow up to the original tracks, composed by Austin Dhillon. These hip-hop inspired tracks range from dreamlike to dark and provide a mysterious backdrop to Wayward's survival experience.
Typically, we would have spent another month on beta 2.7, but we are attempting to speed up our release schedule a bit. This means less substantial updates, but a bit more frequent. We also wanted to release during the holidays for most people.
Enjoy and please continue reporting issues and submitting suggestions!
Beta 2.6 turned out to be another long one in terms of bug fixes and improving the new additions we brought forth in the release. We got up to six patches before eventually moving on to the next major update.
Some things of note within the beta 2.6 release and minor patches included:
Almost all of these have been suggested by the community and were eventually considered high-priority additions. You can see a full overview of all of the 2.6 changes here: http://www.waywardgame.com/changelog
Beta 2.7 Plans
One of our main goals and focus for beta 2.7 will be replayability and variety. Although, we still want to prioritize what the community votes for in the game, it is important to keep an active playerbase as well. To this end, we are adding in some new features that weren't necessarily the most popular in terms of votes, but thought would help the game sustain a healthy following as we develop. Some of these ideas include:
Server Browser Finding people to play with is hard and laborious. To help everybody (including those that graciously hosted dedicated servers in the past), we are replacing the "Friends" menu with a server browser that will show all public multiplayer games (or ones that your friends are in).
Daily Challenge The daily challenge mode in Wayward has never been the most engaging. It's basically just a harder version of the game with no saving. We want to redesign this from the ground up to be a quick pick-up game with unique modifiers and goals/challenges. We envision these games to last around 30 minutes to 1 hour in length (from start to death or win).
Custom Game Mode A great side effect of adding in custom modifiers for the daily challenge is we can add a custom game mode where players can pick and choose them for their own normal game. Things like decreasing hunger/thirst rates, disabling creature hostility, modifying reputation rates, and more.
Beta 2.7 Reveals
We don't have a great amount to show yet as everything is still kind of sitting in a state of "half-done", but there are a few things we can at least preview.
Tooltip Improvements
Tooltips are getting a face-lift! World tooltips are much easier to read/scan and feature expanded information.
Desert Improvements
The desert areas are about to look a lot better and feature some more unique content. We're adding three new plants, a new desert creature, and even a new tile into the mix.
Wells
Wells are coming to beta 2.7 as part of the "Item Idea Contest" that we held over the last month or so. Find more information on the contest below.
Wishlist
As always, we are offering a streamlined way to get your suggestions and ideas in for beta 2.7 as well develop it. While there are tons of things we have already added, we still have a few months of development to go before the next release.
We got a ton of item submissions. Thanks for all of your ideas! Sadly, we can't pick them all to win a place as some of the next new items to be featured in the game, but we made notes on everything submitted. So it's possible your idea may be a future addition.
In a weird turn of events, it looks as if Steam is getting to be a bit more like Discord, and Discord a bit more like Steam as of late. Wayward now has an official Steam Chat, although, we are unsure if this will actually take off the way our Discord did.
In the last bit of news, it looks like Wayward finally has YouTube category. Sadly, it appears to be auto-generated with no way of updating or changing any of the information. But at least content creators can now use "Wayward" as the category instead of defaulting to Minecraft or something even less relevant which was the only option in the past. If you have created some content on Wayward on YouTube, we would appreciate it if you could update the category on your videos.
