Ahoy fellow sea adventurers!
In today's update I want to focus on some of the major new systems we've been implementing and what's still left to do before the early access launch. Also, if you are a Kickstarter backer and are expecting a physical reward, those will be shipped out soon! We sent messages to Kickstarter backers a couple weeks ago asking you to update your mailing address. So if you pledged in a tier to receive a physical reward, please let us know if your mailing address is the same or has changed and we will get those sent out soon.
Let's dive in!
Skill System
With Salt 2 being a procedurally generated world, we want to make sure there is a good bit of depth to content and a "grind" in the good sense. We want you to have different areas you can focus on, invest your time in, and be rewarded for doing so. All the while continuing to explore onward and forward.
One way we are achieving this is through a skill system. As you do various things in the world you will receive experience towards that skill. For example, if you mine some iron ore you'll receive some skills in mining. If you defeat a pirate with a cutlass you'll receive experience towards the slashing skill. Each skill will have its own talent tree. As you level up in the skill, you'll unlock points you can spend on the talent tree until you hit the level cap. Currently each skill cap is being set to level 50 but we may increase this in future updates.
There will be a good variety of skills at early access launch and we may add more later. Getting to max level in every skill will take a while and so this is a good way for you to not only be rewarded for focusing on certain skills, but to give you a constant reward to chase even in an infinite world.
Quest System
Another system we've implemented recently is our quest system. There will be a variety of quests in Salt 2 including a main story, side quests, and tasks you can pick up in towns. The main story quest will likely come after early access launch but we want there to be a good variety of side quests and commissions you can do to make money and earn loot. We've built a quest journal system so you can track your quests and a quest indicator on the main screen to let you know what your current objective is and how far along you are in the quest line. We'll have more information later on what types of quests you can get but you can expect things like hunting quests, bounty hunts, fishing commissions, and more.
Loot Variations
Salt 2 isn't just focused on crafting, exploration, and survival. It's also about the loot. As big fans of looter games we wanted to make sure that loot has a ton of variation. This is also very important in an infinite game like Salt. We don't want you to feel like you've found and looted all the weapons in the first 10 hours of play.
Here's the way loot variation will work. Each weapon or piece of armor will have one of five rarities: common, uncommon, rare, epic, and legendary. There will also be different stats for each piece of gear. So for example a cutlass might have a bonus to strength, agility, constitution, dexterity, or a combination. In addition to that variety, the rarity of the item will determine how many tiers of talents it can roll on. A common weapon only has one tier of talents but a legendary will have five tiers. Each tier will have two talent choices. These talents are chosen randomly from a pool of talents. This means there can be hundreds of combinations of each piece of gear when you factor in the stats and talent variations.
This allows for a Diablo-like system where you are looking for a specific roll. For example you might be looking for an Epic Cutlass with a bonus to dexterity/strength, and with the life steal talent or other specific talents. As you explore the world, defeat enemies, and loot gear from chests, these items will randomly drop and you might just get that god roll you were looking for.
In addition to looting items, you'll also be able to find crafting recipes for gear and that will give you a little bit more control over what type of gear you want. So for example, if you have a crafting recipe for a rare cutlass and you have enough components, you can craft multiple of those, each one with a random roll thereby increasing your chance to find that perfect roll.
We still want unique weapons in the game as well though. So sometimes a boss might drop a weapon specific to him that has a specific set of unique talents and stats. But overall we want you to have a large variety of weapons and armor to hunt for while you explore the world.
New Points of Interests
We are also constantly adding new points of interests as well. Recently we've started adding in sea ports, shipwrecks, and loot caves. Sea ports will be the main hub for merchants and quests in the game. When you find a port you'll be able to pick up quests from the local town board, buy and sell items from merchants, and talk to the local villagers. We are so excited for you to get to explore all the various places in the game. We're working hard to continue to add a good variation of caves, ancient ruins, pirate camps, and more to the game so you'll have a good variety of content even in an infinite world.
What's Next?
In case you missed it, we have pushed our original release schedule back to early next year. It's really important to us that the game is in a polished state and has a good bit of content at early access launch, and so we're taking the extra time needed to do that. We've still got some major systems to implement such as a dialogue system, fast travel mechanic, quests, and a few other things. If you have pledged on Kickstarter and are wondering when the alpha/beta tests are going to start, I'd say our best estimate right now is January or February 2022. We will likely run 1-2 weeks of an alpha test, spend a couple weeks fixing bugs and making changes from that test, and then we'll run a beta test and do the same for it. Then we'll be releasing shortly after that once we get everything balanced and polished.
Thank you so much everyone for your patience and we can't wait to release Salt 2 and see you out on the sea!