🏰 Kingdom o' Quests Update is Live! 🍻🗡️
Greetings, brave delvers! ːsteamthisːːsteamthumbsupː The dwarven realms have grown richer and rowdier with our latest Below the Stone update: Kingdom o' Quests! This patch brings a trove of new content to explore, fight, and drink your way through. Let’s dig in:
📜 Quests Galore
Open your journal and keep track of some of our new new side quest chains that add depth, danger, and delightful rewards to your journey. Whether you're rescuing lost miners, hunting rare beasts, or uncovering ancient relics, these quests will test your mettle and expand your legend.
New quest lines to assist new NPCs at the kingdom
New Quest tracker in the journal (for all those needing to keep track of game progress)
New "Craftmaster" NPC (which we will go into more later!)
New "Bartender" NPC with quest line to repair his bar
New Bar patrons who visit once the bar is repaired, with repeatable side quests
Unique NPCs with personalities as strong as their ale
Crafting costs gold now -- so help out some of the folks in the kingdom to earn some coin!
A new foundation that we will continue to build on in future updates!
🍺 Drinks on us! Welcome to the Tavern
Say hello to your new favorite haunt: The Hollow Hearth Tavern! Nestled in the heart of the dwarven kingdom, this lively locale is more than just a place to grab a pint.
Meet quest-givers, gossip with locals, and hear rumors of treasure
A rotating cast of characters and events to keep things fresh
A new way to make gold,
A new foundation that we will continue to build on in future updates!
🏹 Ranged Weapons Enter the Fray
Steel isn't the only way to slay anymore. With the introduction of ranged weapons, you can now take down threats from afar with precision and flair.
📜 What this update means for players
A lot of work has gone into foundation that we will continue to build upon in the dwarven Kingdom -- from quests, to ranged weapons, the tavern, a lot of this content will continue to be built on. Another big request we get from players is combat changes, this update allowed us to prepare a lot of what will be seen in our upcoming, and well awaited...
We want this update to be special, so please let us know what you look forward to most with combat improvements in the game. We want to do an entire pass on the game's combat system, We've already collected a lot of notes on what players have been asking for, but please add your voice to the mix, let us know what you think! We dwarves take each other seriously, and we want to craft the best experience for all our depth dwellers.
So whether you're a seasoned spelunker or a fresh-faced recruit, the Kingdom o' Quests update adds new layers of adventure and allows a lot of upcoming content to shine. So grab your gear, and head below the stone—there’s glory to be won and ale to be spilled!
🛠️CHANGELOG AND CLOSING NOTES:
Alpha 0.10 - Kingdom o' Quests Update
[New Features]
* Added new "Quest" system to bring longer term goals to the game. Quests can be viewed in the Journal.
* Added new Bar area in Kingdom with many new NPC's who also offer quests.
* Added new crafting NPC called The Craftmaster who allows you the craft things that the Blacksmith can't (glowsticks, ranged weapons, dynamite, etc).
* Added 6 new ranged weapons.
* Added health regen level 2 potion
* Added a gold cost to crafting recipes
* Added "low hp recovery" mechanic. If you have less than 20 HP, you will slowly regenerate HP until it reaches 20, but only after a short delay of not loosing more HP. This should help people who have 1 hp and feel doomed in the caves.
* Added shale buddies to shale biome.
* Added crafting recipes for a few existing items to Craftmaster.
* Added guard NPC's to kingdom.
[Improvements]
* Updated Head Explorer to now use the new Quest system to give the player the "Save NPC quests" that you would previously only get through dialog.
* Changed the loot tables of wooden crates and basic treasure chests. Wooden crates now predominantly hold crafting resources, and treasure chests now often drop ammo.
* Upgraded ranged weapons' logic to now use an "internal magazine" for holding ammo. Useful for more types of weapons going forward.
* Improved cave sweeper to now have a 4 round magazine, allowing you to finally live your dream of properly soaking a cave in bullets.
* Crossbow bolt's max stack size set increased to 64
* Shotgun shell's max stack size set to a staggering, recording break amount of 128
* Balance tweaks to melee weapons to hopefully help smooth out the difficulty curve of Layer 1
* Slightly reduced health of some Layer 1 enemies to also help smooth out the difficulty curve of Layer 1.
* Webbing potion now has a stack size of 4
* Refactored Journal UI
* Refactored Crafting UI and reintroduced it for Blacksmith (and used for Craftmaster). Overall quality improvements to the UI's feel.
* Updated/Removed/Added various tips that both Kroz and the Head Explorer give to try and help their information feel more useful to players.
* Tweaks and improvements to Mole Trader (and his UI) in caves.
* Updated the "item drop entity" hit ground sound.
* Very slight improvements to player's "light lamp" in caves.
* Green Troll now has a mass of 10 (he's a chunky boi) so that shotguns don't push him around as much.
* Slightly reduced health of spider cocoon entity.
* Reduced drop rates of crossbow bolts from skeletons. You should be getting them from treasure chests now, and crafting them.
[Fixes]
* Fixed HP bar "low hp animation" not happening for the first heart.
* Fixed a noticeable delay from when an "item drop entity" hits the ground, and the sound that plays when it hits the ground. The sound should now play with almost no delay from the item hitting the ground.
* Fixed issue where spider cocoon's still had a damage cooldown, which meant it took way too long to break them.
[Removals]
* The original wooden crossbow's crafting recipe has been disabled. The item has not been removed, but you can no longer craft it. So you will still have it as a token of the past.
🛠️ As always, we’re listening—drop your feedback/reports in the Steam forum, as well as our Discord and let us know what you think!
ːsteamthisːːsteamthumbsupːSee you in the depths, – The Below the Stone Team
Most of these can be found at the Craftmaster at the moment.
(Work-in-progress screenshot of the Craftmaster and her workshop station.)
