The 1.4 Update adds a new mountain trail, the Shady Trail, to the lineup. The Shady Trail focuses on the darker and spookier side of the woods. That's not to say it can't be cozy, though! Fireflies will light your way through the dark forest, leading you to new treasure. The dark cover of night provides the perfect opportunity to watch falling stars in the night sky. The shady nature of the trail has also attracted certain dubious merchants to the mountain. ready to sell you all manner of items that were probably acquired in a legal manner.
This update is more focused on adding content than bug fixes, but it has a fair number of bugs squashed and UI improvements still. Also, I've got a native Linux version up and running!
- The Shady Trail appears! The player has a 1 in 4 chance of visiting the Shady Trail when they visit the mountain. The Shady Trail has its own unique set of trials to pass and secrets to discover.
- Added a new star-catching puzzle to the Shady Trail. The Shady Trail is also guaranteed to have the Columns puzzle and the Dark Woods puzzle
- All trails now have their own set of rooms that can appear. The Bee Swarm room will only appear in the Normal Trail, while the Squirrel Scamper room will appear in the Normal and Dry Trails. The Dried Flower room remains exclusive to the Dry Trail.
- New potion: Firefly Potion (replaces the unloved Pollen Potion). A Firefly Potion summons three fireflies that spread out in random directions. Fireflies dispel any mist they fly over. A boon for explorers.
- New trail room (Shady): Firefly Nest. Sends out lots of fireflies to explore the nearby trail.
- New trail room (Shady): Lazy Fireflies. Three fireflies chilling out by a tree. Nothing to see here, nope.
- New trail room (Dry, Shady): Quarry. Lots of rocks to break, and guaranteed to spawn a gem rock in the center. A gem rock is guaranteed to spawn a gem.
- New trail room (Shady): Sloeberry Bush. The rare sloeberry restores 100% of your energy, but gives a 10% penalty to speed for the rest of the day.
- New trail room (All): Herb Cache. A spot of especially alchemical soil has led to a clutch of forageable herbs to gather.
- New trail room (All): Merchant. A merchant (almost definitely a human and not a fox) has set up shop in the mountain! The merchant offers three items for sale, choosing randomly between magic items and rare potions. Trades for money, moonstone, and occasionally iron ingots. Guaranteed to show up on every trail visit, hidden somewhere in the mountain.
- Removed the Idol of Fortune from the crafting workbench. Replaced its art and renamed it to the Golden Statue. Available at your friendly merchant now!
- Added the Firefly Compass to the crafting workbench. If used on the mountain trail, it will spawn three fireflies and each firefly will head in the direction of a trail trial.
- Each mountain trail is now guaranteed to have at least six moonlight flowers.
- The Potion of Rocks now has a chance of spawning at least one gem rock.
- New magic item: Jeweler's Pick. This pick will never harvest any rocks, iron, or gold, but it doubles the chance of finding gems.
- New rare potion: All Rock Potion. This potion will spawn a single elemental rock when used. This rock gives a growth bonus to any of the eight tiles surrounding it.
- New perk: Benevolent Vulpines. This perk grants 20% off of all merchant prices.
- New Perk: Rock Bounty. Chance of gaining multiple rocks when a stone is broken with a pick.
- Mistberries are no longer given out as a trial reward. It is still given as a reward if a trail is cleared.
- The Shady Trail trials all have a second level of difficulty now.
- Higher difficulty puzzles now offer better rewards.
- Potions no longer have randomized colors. This made more sense when potions were unidentified until used, but it makes less sense now that potions start off identified.
- Added icons to the workbench screen to inform the player what each upgrade costs and what the player's current resources are.
- Fixed a cursor offset bug in the Oncewas screen
- Fixed a bug where items stored in chests lost their descriptions on loading a save.
- Fixed a bug where loading a saved game could allow a second visit to the Dry or Shady trails within the first four trail visits.
- Fixed a bug where plants about to be eaten by a vampire plant would wither away. Now the vampire power check happens before the wither check.
- Reduced kegging times to 1 day for berries and 2 days for honey.
- Fixed a bug where squirrels had vastly different speeds from encounter to encounter.
- New icon for items that are keggable.
- Moondrop now has a native Linux build! Tested on Ubuntu.
Moondrop is shaping up nicely! Now that two of the four different trail types are in place, I think you can get the feel for what the final game will look like. There are two more trails to still add - the Sunny Trail and the Damp Trail. I've been maintaining a pretty consistent patch-per-month schedule so far, but I'm planning to slow that down in the new year. I'm excited to be a part of Tiny Mass Games, a project where a bunch of cool game devs are trying to make complete (and tiny) games in two-month time frames. It will be exhilarating, perhaps exhausting, but most definitely a fun time. That will slow down the pace of development on Moondrop, though. I plan to have the next big content update out in March and then the final update in June. With that final update, the game will have four fully-featured trails, another difficulty level for all the trail trials, and a bevy of new secrets to discover on the mountain trail. I'll make sure to do at least one bug-fix-focused patch before each of the big content updates so that the game doesn't go too long without any love.
Finally - do you have a cool idea for something to find on the farm or on the mountain? I'd love to hear about it! I'm at a point now where all the systems are in place and it's much easier to add something new in.
