Howdy everyone!
We wanted to give you a quick update at we've been working on over the past few weeks and also an update on release time. Our current goal is to release sometime this summer into early access. The game is in a great state but we're still polishing out content, balancing, and fixing as many bugs as possible before launch. Even though it'll be an early access launch, we want to make sure it's a smooth and polished gameplay experience for you.
With that said, here's a look at just some of the content we've been working on recently!
Scorpions
Now throughout the world you can find scorpions wandering the wilds ready to attack! We believe that there's a good balance between exploration, combat, and quests. Adding in some creatures like scorpions help us achieve that balance. We don't want you to be overstimulated with constant outlaws and bandit camps, but we also don't want super long stretches of the world where you don't encounter enemies. Adding in scorpions helps us make this feel a bit more dynamic. You may be out in the wilderness exploring and instead of hitting yet another camp of outlaws, you might see a scorpion roaming around or be surprised by one shooting poison at you from the bushes.
There are also multiple scorpion types and some of the rare ones, while more difficult, will offer good loot drops and therefore a reason to hunt for them.
New Quests
One of our main focuses with this game is to make sure there is a ton of content for you to experience. And as such we are always working on adding new quests. We have tried to strike a balance between quests you get from an NPC, and quests you find naturally while exploring. For example, you may enter a new town and discover there's been a murder and the sheriff wants you to investigate it and track down the killer. Or you may be exploring the wild and come across a graveyard with a rare ability scroll requiring you to complete a puzzle to unlock it. This balance between natural discoveries and quests found through NPCs is something we are always trying to refine but we feel like it's coming along well.
New Weapons
This game at its core is about exploration, and of course, loot. Loot is very important in a game like this and so we're trying to constantly create new pieces of armor and weapons for you to find. Here's how the loot loop is working as of right now. Most bandit camps or bosses you find can drop a random piece of armor. Armor has different rarities, stats, and an item level that fit different playstyles. You'll find new armor pretty consistently and a lot of your time will be spent taking the armor that fits your playstyle to blacksmiths in order to upgrade its level and stats.
Weapons and abilities however, are a bit more rare. When you find a new weapon or ability, it really means something. We want it to be exciting to get a new revolver or shotgun, and for it to be alongside you for a decent bit of the journey. That being said, we are adding a decent variety of weapons scattered throughout the world so be sure and explore every nook and cranny to collect them all. Different weapons will be like armor in that they have varying stats, but can also vary in ways such as reload speed, bullet spread, damage drop off, and things like that.
Other Changes
In addition to the content mentioned above we've also been spending a lot of time balancing the game, fixing bugs, working on performance, and other under the hood tweaks to make the game polished and run well. This is still a work in progress as the world is very large and there's a lot to take into account when trying to polish and balance it. Overall it's coming along great though.
As always thanks for reading and we'd love to hear your feedback!