Hello everyone!
We've got another dev update for you and just wanted to let you know what we've been working on over the past month, as well as new information regarding release times for alpha/beta tests, and when the game will potentially launch. Let's dive in.
Item Talents
One feature we are really excited about in Salt 2 is weapon and armor talents. When you craft or loot a piece of gear it will have a certain number of talents that can be unlocked based on the item's rarity. The talents are randomly picked from a pool of talents and so items can come in a lot of different combinations. We took some inspiration from games like Diablo 3 and Destiny to design this system and we think it will work really well within the gameplay loop. While exploring you'll constantly be delving into a massive caves in search of loot or leveling up your crafting skill to make high level gear. We want this process to have a lot of replayability and this will allow you to hunt for certain talents. For example you may be on the lookout for an epic scimitar with a unique high level talent on it. This system also still allows us to make unique weapons with unique talents that can drop from bosses or as quest rewards.
Crafting System
A major gameplay feature in Salt 2 will be crafting. We've been working a lot on the crafting UI, item weight system, item rarities, talents, and all that goes into crafting items. Although you'll find a lot of loot and gold while exploring, we want crafting to be very rewarding in and of itself. If you choose spend time crafting items and leveling up your crafting skills, you'll be able to make some high level unique items and a lot of gold doing so.
Lore Books
We recently implemented a lot of new lore and journals into the game, as well as a book you hold in your hand to read them. We wanted the journals to feel authentic and having it in the main UI just didn't feel as good as holding a book in your hand. In Salt you'll be able to find a lot of different journals that add some life and background to the world. You may discover a fisherman's journal at a fishing hut, or a pirate's log deep in a pirate cave. We've written hundreds of books and are excited for you to explore the lore of the world and uncover funny and interesting stories.
New Points of Interests and Visuals
As always we're constantly working on adding new areas to explore. We recently started working on fishing huts that can spawn on the outskirts of island. We're also adding some fun challenges to caves like locked cellars, hidden passages behind breakable boulders, secret levers that open gates to pirate treasure, and more. In addition to that we've been adding some new foliage like flowers, sand grass, and other models to make the islands more varied in the way they look.
Release Time Update
Our original Early Access release goal for Salt 2 was October 2021 (this year.) We're making great progress on development and are getting close to where we want to be for release, but we want to make sure we don't rush it and take time to run alpha/beta tests, fix bugs, and polish up the game before launch. We are only two developers and are working as hard as we can but we really want to make sure the first impressions for Salt 2 are as good as possible.
As of right now we plan on delaying the Early Access launch of the game till January or February of 2022. This is only a delay of a few months but will allow us to get the game in a great state, test it, and really spend some time ironing out the kinks before launch. We know delays are never fun news but we want to make sure Salt 2 is a great experience and not riddled with bugs and issues on launch. This means we will likely run an alpha test around October or November, and a beta test in December if all goes according to plan.
Thanks so much for everyone's support and understanding. We've seen so many cases where games come out too early and the first impressions really suffer as a result. We want to make sure that doesn't happen.
As always thank you all for reading and feel free to reach out to us on Discord anytime if you have any questions.