Hello critters! It's been a long time, hasn't it? Have you seen our new trailer?
We're back with a huge content update. It'll probably take months for people to touch every aspect of it. Here's just some of the things in it.
Workstation Crafting
One of, if not the biggest changes in the update is that we've added a new kind of furniture item: the workstation. If you've ever played with enchanting, you have some experience with this already; it's like a container but the slots are arranged in a particular way, and you put stuff down in them and then hit the button to try and find a recipe. We've expanded that model internally to create a bunch of different workstations that are used to craft advanced recipes. Don't worry; it's much more forgiving than enchanting.
Hm? That looks a bit intimidating to you? Well, don't worry; it's not nearly as complicated as it looks. The top six slots are your ingredient slots. The bottom two are the vessel slot (think bowl, cup, pan, etc) and the output slot. Next to the "Prepare" button will be the name of the item you're crafting as well as what skill it uses, if you have the valid ingredients for it on the table. Many recipes require only one or two ingredients. We'll continue to expand on this system to provide you with more feedback, and we have some special stuff coming up before the event to help you out. For now, just play around with it.
Cooking, Brewing, and Forest Craft all have recipes in every one of these new workstations (except the Cask; that one does not have any Cooking recipes). For example, ink and wax are made in a pot, and dye is made in either a pot or a cask, but ink requires inkberry juice (from Brewing) which is made on the prep table now.
Cooking is a little different. Cooking recipes are extremely freeform; as long as you meet the basic ingredient requirements you can extend and customize them significantly. They also won't display the name of the recipe the first time you make them; it will show "???" on the table. If you successfully craft something, you can use the cooked item to create a recipe by writing it down on a piece of paper. From then on, cooking that recipe will be significantly easier and it will show the recipe name in workstations, as long as you're holding the recipe. You can put recipes in a cookbook to organize them.
Lore books will be forthcoming on all the new mechanics, but I need time to write them. In the meantime, here's a teaser video:
Rebuilt Client
In case you hadn't noticed, we rebuilt the entire client in Godot. Goodbye, Game Maker! This has enabled an unprecedented level of control over how things work and ease in building UI that has allowed us to do some incredible things. For instance, check out this rebuilt character creation menu.
The improvements are too many to list, but I'll try. The action bar can now be hidden, and things can be assigned to it by drag-and-drop, you can have up to 10 action bar presets and swap between them, as well as a combat-specific action bar, and there's a settings menu that lets you control volume and remap keys, as well as some accessibility settings. You can now highlight, copy, paste, and delete text both when writing and when speaking. That's just a taste.
New Player Experience
We've improved the new player experience in several ways. First of all, new players are required to use a prebuilt "class" for their first character which chooses stat priorities and traits for them, so it's much harder to make a lemon the first time you play. Prebuilt characters have a skill plan and the game discourages you from learning anything outside it, since this was very common new player behavior. We'll continue expanding this with more prebuilds as time goes on.
Secondly, prebuilt characters load into an entirely new, custom-built instanced tutorial zone with a quest that teaches you the basics of playing the game and provides a space to mess around in and experiment with things. None of your effects tick in the tutorial and it resets if you quit the game while inside it, allowing you to start over. This should provide a much gentler on-ramp than being booted straight into the Library to fend for yourself.
Finally, there's now a new prebuilt quest that teaches you a bit about the Library and challenges you to go explore a ruin to get a free, character-locked novice skill book for a skill in your skill plan. Experienced players can guide new ones there to help them get started, or if there's nobody around you're able to get somewhere on your own if you're persistent and run all over the map. The quest will complete when you finish your skill plan, and then you'll be just like any other character and can begin learning skills freely.
Changelog
It's quite difficult to cover everything that changed in detail, so here's a list of the major stuff, I'll add to it if I realize I've forgotten anything:
New item: Fur Tuft.
New scrounge: Pome.
New scrounge: Pire.
New scrounge: Sternfruit.
New scrounge: Critterfruit.
New scrounge: Bugberry.
New scrounge: Oilberry.
New scrounge: Alicorn.
New scrounge: Kinbulb.
New scrounge: Neep.
New scrounge: Redroot.
New scrounge: Broadleaf.
New scrounge: Brown Seaweed.
New scrounge: Goldshelf.
New scrounge: Eggseed.
New scrounge: Rivergrain.
New scrounge: Honeycomb.
New mined item: Alum Crystals.
New mined item: Chalk.
New mined item: Fossilwood.
New mined item: Rock Salt.
New forest crafted item: Soap.
New blacksmithed item: Loaf Pan.
New blacksmithed item: Partition Pan.
New blacksmithed item: Pie Tin.
New blacksmithed item: Chalice.
New blacksmithed item: Metal Plate.
New blacksmithed item: Pot.
New blacksmithed item: Cauldron.
New blacksmithed item: Still.
New blacksmithed item: Camp Stove.
New stoneworking item: Mug.
New stoneworking item: Clay Bowl.
New stoneworking item: Clay Plate.
New stoneworking item: Jar.
New stoneworking item: Bottle.
New stoneworking item: Quern.
New woodworking item: Wooden Plate.
New woodworking item: Cask.
New woodworking item: Prep Table.
New woodworking item: Rolling Pin.
New woodworking item: Screw Press.
New woodworking item: Beehive.
New woodworking item: Hive Box.
New papercrafted item: Cookbook.
New tailored item: Doll.
New artificed item: Moon Shell.
New artificed item: Swapper Wand.
New artificed item: Poppet.
New skill: Husbandry.
New trait: Drunkard.
New trait: Alcoholic.
New trait: Acquired Taste.
Removed the Ascetic, Highborn, and Herbivore traits from character creation pending rebalance for the new food mechanics.
The recipes for ink, wax, and dye have been moved to Forest Craft. Ink and wax are pot workstation crafts, dye can be made in both the pot and the cask depending on the recipe, and soap is made with the prep table and baked in an oven.
Cooking and Brewing are no longer a craft menu skill. Instead, you'll need to use various workstations, like the Pot, Cask, and Prep Table, to craft freeform recipes. Every skill has some recipe on each of these workstations.
Food now has flavors (specifically, four of them: sweet, savory, salty, and bitter, although bitter just counts as gross without the Acquired Taste trait), and Cooking recipes (as well as other means) can be used to add flavor to things. You'll have to explore and experiment to find out what
We'll be keeping an eye on what you all try to make; if a recipe doesn't work right now but seems plausible to us, we might add it in the future!
Added about 30 new freeform Brewing recipes.
Added about 50 new freeform Cooking recipes.
Some drinks are alcoholic and will impart the Drunk effect. This effect may make it difficult to play the game at higher intensities; you can disable the post-processing effects in the Accessibility settings if it makes the game unpleasant for you.
Characters who overindulge will eventually reach the Blackout Drunk stage of the effect. You may choose whether you want your character to be taken over by a GM at this stage, and provide guidance on how to play the character. If you decline to opt into the feature, your character will instead just KO until the alcohol wears off.
Alcoholic drinks will start "gross" to players without the Drunkard or Alcoholic traits, and you'll need to get used to them (sort of like Foreigner immersion).
The server now uses SSL encryption for client connections.
Password hashing has been updated to Argon2id. You do not need to reset your password; it will be upgraded automatically.
You can now take a fur tuft from a knocked out character (but only one).
You can memorize a character's scent from a fur tuft.
You can now reverse pickpocket items into people's equipment slots.
Reverse pickpocketing no longer counts towards your hard limit on a character, but is still affected by it.
Added a settings menu with audio sliders, control remapping, and accessibility options.
You can now reverse-loot items onto knocked out characters. Like spell anchors.
You can also reverse-equip items onto knocked out characters. As with regular looting, this is prevented by a successful Struggle check.
You can now feed vials to knocked out characters.
You can now enable and disable the Struggle skill from the action bar.
You can now drag both characters and items, around the map, between zones, and up/down ladders. Have fun!
The Eject button has been removed in favor of dragging characters out of the burrow.
Anyone can now drug cooked food and drink, both in inventory and in the world, with vials. If you know Pickpocketing, you'll use it to attempt to conceal that you did so.
Using vials on weapons now displays a message that you did so. If you know Pickpocketing, you'll use it to attempt to conceal it. (Maybe the skill should be renamed Sleight of Hand at this point?)
Drinking vials still doesn't display a message since people would just switch to drinking out of a cup if they wanted to be sneaky. Maybe when we have better log filtering in the new UI. At that point we'll probably need a radial menu option for "do this stealthily" or something.
Eyes of Elyenne can now be used to forget up to 50 levels across multiple skills, multiple times.
Flavor text description requirement tags have been changed to the format "[req skill=Example,10]" or "[req stat=Perception,5]" and are now colored and tell you what you needed to pass them when you hover over the text.
Looking at a Heavy Sleeper who's knocked out will now tell you they look dead to the world so you know they can't hear you speak.
HP/stamina/mind poisons now have a warning before they take effect like other poisons.
The Disguise skill can now be used to disguise equipment that you're wearing.
Memorizing a scent with Tracking now allows you to assign whatever color you want to it.
Lore books are now actual books.
You can now write on books.
Writing now takes time to complete.
Updated the character creation menu to be more user-friendly, and added new player-friendly prebuilt classes to speed up character creation.
Added a tutorial quest for prebuilt classes which takes place in an instanced zone, a passenger ship bound for Kalris, to give new players a consequence-free place to explore the controls.
Added 9 extra action bars, plus a dedicated action bar for hostile intent, which you can separately assign actions to and cycle between.
You can now hide the action bar.
Added a text cursor to dialogue bubbles and support for moving it with the arrow keys.
Pointing at a scrounging spot and revealing it to another player will reset your Point cooldown.
You can no longer include your character name when customizing items.
Slightly buffed the damage of tin and stone weapons.
Fixed not being able to be drugged by herbs that were successfully added to something if the alchemist rolls "worst joint ever," is asked to leave Kalris performs poorly enough on a successful skillcheck. This ought to be reserved for failures.
Fixed knocked-out light sleepers being woken up by things.
Fixed looooong sign writing text field.
Fixed reading signs not working when done from inventory.
Burrows no longer have a title. If you want to give them a name, use a hanging sign with a label! Or a regular sign, if you're boring.
Enchanting tables are now properly synced for everyone looking at them, no exceptions.
Fixed the issue with herb spots not properly respawning until the server restarted, essentially rendering Herbalism unusable.
The Herbalism spot system is now fully unified with Scrounging and Mining and spots can be depleted by overuse.
Wildtouch no longer works on herb spots.
Weather is now saved to the database and persists across restarts.
It's harder to parry attacks from a combatant using a buckler.
If you've gotten this far, what the heck are you waiting for? Head over to https://farwoods.net and join the alpha.