Time for another news update. Things have slowed down a little bit for the game this month. Although, thinking on it, that might only be in comparison to last month where there was a large content patch and then several smaller patches.
I've been hard at work regardless trying to get plenty of things squared away. Combat has taken a larger chunk of my time and will likely continue to in the future. I don't tend to post works in progress but I think I might attach some images of the art as its at least interesting to look at in my opinion.
Combat aside I've been trying to split my time into little things that still need to be addressed, smaller systems that I can add, etc. For those who have followed the game a bit they'll know that there was nearly a year of content drought for v0.4. I have no intentions of doing that again because it just sucks from a player perspective to get nothing new for a year. Granted that lapse in updates was more circumstantial than anything.
In short, I hope to be bringing out smaller patches to breach the gap between large updates (like combat). These will include smaller systems, new NPCs, new quests, zones, balance and bug fixes, etc. Currently, I've got a few things figured out along with some minor fixes. Gates (for walls) will be in the next patch, I remember now why I stopped working on them, I had to basically remake the entire wall engine. Aside from that some balancing for how things spawn in the world, and a change to truffles for pigs. I'm sure some other stuff will be in there too.
In the near future I'd like to get repeatable quests in, that would just be small tasks from a task board. The secret puzzles need to go in as well once I get some of the rewards squared away. I think I'd also like to start up on what I think I'm going to call the "compendium" which will be an ingame resource that tracks tons of stuff. For instance collections, tutorials for various parts of the game, past conversations and quest dialogues, and probably more than that in the future. Sort of like a mini wiki that you fill in as you play.
Aside from that there are some NPCs that should really be added so I'll need to refocus on that as well in the near future. I'd prefer if every house in town could be entered at the very least. NPCs are a little easier to add but I felt I should put a little justification in for the lack of new zones. Those who have been playing for a while will probably also know that I haven't really added zones much in recent patches. This is mostly because I'm trying to give some more thought to each zone as to the size it should be and what I can put there to justify expanding the world. The plains are a zone that could have been smaller, I don't want to create another large empty expanse like that so I'm taking zone creation a bit more slowly. If I had to guess the plains will likely see some sort of addition in the future as well to give them some purpose.
I don't think there is much more to say than that. Hopefully in the coming weeks there will be a new small patch and we'll go from there. Thank you all for playing, hope you are having fun with the game so far.