Greetings, wanderers!

The 15.2 update introduces new social features, changes and improvements to waystations - including the brand new Plots! - resources and economy balancing changes, and more! Check out the list of changes below:

Friendship & Social Features

Player Moods

• What’s your current vibe? You can now show how you’re feeling or what you’re up to with Moods ✨

• Select your Mood under its tab in the Character Menu and an icon representing your current mood will appear for other players, so they know if you’re questing, procrastinating, up to socializing or helping others.

• Moods have different functionalities attached to them. For example:

  • Not Feeling Social: if you’re out of spoons or your social battery runs out, this mood is for you. With it, you won’t automatically meet or greet Strangers or get requests from anyone who isn’t a friend. This is also a nice way to signal if you’re not in the mood for socializing, so others know you’re enjoying some alone time 🫂

  • Newbie & Volunteer Guide: these moods will make you visible on the map so others can find you, and you can help them or get help!

New Auto-Meeting feature

• You can now automatically meet other players by accompanying them when playing music or by joining a fluffalo train ride with them - this will reduce friction and make it easier to befriend other players! 

  • This will not apply to players who are using the “Not Feeling Social 🌙” Mood or players you have blocked

Improvements to blocking

• Based on your feedback, we made a change to completely hide the avatars of players you have blocked, instead of showing them as Strangers, to prevent further contact with them. This is one of the initiatives we have planned to improve the Blocking functionality, and we hope to bring even more in the future.

Friend Invites Codes

• We have renamed the “Invite a Friend” screen to “Recruit a Friend”, and clarified the process to recruit a new friend and get rewards. We hope that those changes make it easier for players to understand how to recruit their friends to the game and get rewards!

• We also made it clearer when accepting a friend recruit code that it will result in you moving waystations or villages;

• Removed the cooldown on getting gifts, so both players are rewarded immediately when a new player joins via recruit code

Friendship with Crosslanders: 

• Crosslanders will now react differently to receiving their favorite gifts, so it’s more evident when you figure out Crosslanders’ favs!

  • Once you discover a Crosslander’s favorite gift, this information will be available under the “Friends Info” tab in their Relation Progression screen

• You can now get Friendship progress with DJ Fuzz EE, Luna and Rudi by completing their world events in the wilderness.

Waystations

This update also introduces lots of changes to waystations, including the brand new Plots (that were announced in a previous #fox-thoughts post), a new preferred architect selection system that can improve on the random selection of Architects, and updates to the waystation beacon levels. 

Starter Plots

• Introducing the brand new Starter Plots 🗺️ - predetermined spaces in waystations where players can express their creativity and show off their building skills;

• There will be enough Starter Plots so every player with Neighbor role or higher can own one;

• Permissions

  • As default, only the Starter Plot owner can place, move, rotate, remove or propose items.

  • If a Starter Plot owner becomes inactive or leaves the waystation, their plot will be abandoned. The items placed inside their Starter Plot will be returned via Mail, and they will need to collect those items before they can claim another plot. 

• Use your plot however you’d like: as long as it’s within the plot’s limits, you can create your own shop, art gallery, or even a hang out space!

Preferred Architect Selection

• Players can talk to Eudora to check the list of Waystation members, and they can select any player who completed the Architect Certification to appoint as their Preferred Architect(s);

• You can select as many players as you want - if you have no preference, you can even select all players in your waystation - but you cannot mark yourself;

• Once a certain threshold of selections is reached, the monthly selection process stops being random and switches to whoever got marked as “Preferred Architect” the most

• Players marked as your “Preferred Architects” will remain that way until you choose to unmark them - that means you don’t have to switch or mark other players unless you want to;

• With this system, we’re hoping to give players more autonomy to select Architects who have done good things for your waystation in the past, and prevent toxic or inactive Architects from maintaining the role.

Beacon Levels Update

• We clarified the language in the Beacon screen so it’s easier to know when your waystation is stable and safe from being taken over by the Storm

• To better reflect the everchanging nature of the Waystation Beacons, we’re renaming Beacon Levels to Beacon Charges - this will also make it clearer to new players that Beacons are charged and protected against Storms according to the number of contributions they receive, and they don’t retain those charges without it.

  • There are new icons for Beacon Charges!

• We’re applying some balancing changes to the Beacon Charges to make them more rewarding to players.

  • Added new items in the Waystation Vending Machines for reaching higher Beacon Charges levels

  • Increased the amount of build limits for all Beacon Ranks

• When your waystation is overcharged, meaning it is receiving more contributions than it needs to remain stable, you’ll get rewards as well.

  • We expect these higher levels of charge to be rare and temporary.

Waystation Vending Machine:

• The Waystation Vending Machine now has resource exchanges to get Wood, Ore, and Clay. 

• New Waystation-exclusive Clothing, Wall, and Floor Dyes can appear. 

• Gifts can also appear in the Waystation Vending Machine.  

• Gliders are available while at the highest Waystation level, dyed with 2 new Waystation-exclusive dyes.

Resources & Economy Balancing

We have applied a few balancing changes to certain resources, such as coins, gifts and materials obtained from the wilderness based on your feedback, in order to provide you with more of the things you have been needing, and less of the things you already have too much of.

Coins 

• Exchanging resources for coins with Crosslanders now wields double the amount of coins (100-200 ➡️ 200-400 each)

• Made some coin trades accessible earlier on:

  • You can change Fruit/Nuts for Coins with Marj in the “Initial” unlock instead of “Upgrade 1”

  • You can trade Pigment Base with the Tailor in the “Initial” unlock instead of “Upgrade 1!

Gifts in Shops

• Marj’s Shop now sells more stock of gifts, which was previously too low

• Marj’s Shop now sells Soothing Tea for Greens and a much lower amount of Coins. 

• Nibbit’s Shop now sells the Mystery Gift bundles for Purified Root items instead of Coins. 

Wilderness Resources

• We’re implementing a fix for the issue that caused players to be soft-locked if they gathered all resources from the Wilderness before grabbing a quest

  • Harvestable Nodes of the required resource will refresh if a quest requires that resource to be completed

  • This also applies to the Bell - and we also reduced the cooldown to ring the bell so players wouldn’t have to wait if they (or someone else) already rang it before getting a quest that requires ringing it.

  • This also applies to Storm-Plagued Lanterns, in case new players already cleaned them all up before getting the quest teaching you about them.

• We have increased the harvesting caps for Fishing and Blots to 300, Mushrooms to 100 and Wilderness Pots to 30;

• We have implemented a 150 daily water harvest limit to prevent farming and crashing;

• First Time Harvestable Bonus: you’ll now get double the amount of resources the first time you harvest a Bramble, Relic, Stump or Ore node, once per Wilderness. This is meant to help players who can’t play every day get more resources than they would currently be able to get by playing just for one day per Wilderness. 

• All Harvest nodes that previously required co-op are now doable solo. Please keep in mind that this may still be extremely, extremely slow especially at lower tool levels, so it’s still always beneficial to help others!

• ICYMI: Tubers respawn once per Wilderness instead of daily since 15.1.

• Offering Spirits that request one Standard resource in exchange for another are no longer super greedy and should accept those Standard resources instead of asking for Tier 3 resources - sorry for that!

• Speaking of Spirits, we redistributed Passing Spirits in the Wilderness so their requests are more balanced and Tier 3 (Masterful) requests are no longer super rare. The updated Passing Spirit request spread should be: Standard Items: 50% Complex Items: 30% Master Items: 20% 

Although Masterful Items are more difficult to craft, those Spirits will also offer more generous rewards in return, such as Gifts for Crosslanders.

• Shrineworks Parts: you can now get Parts by completing world events, or collecting them from Shrineworks Dispensers in caves and peaks in the Wilderness!

  • You know who is all about the Shrineworks? Joule!

  • You can use these parts at her crafting table to craft unique shrinework items for your waystation or house, or trade them with Joule for Gliders

  • Joule will be glad to take any spare Shrinework Parts out of your hands in exchange for Coins and Resources 

• Chaos Shrine: Chaos Shrines are more expensive to use, but we have adjusted their reward pool significantly:

  • You will now get fewer Fluffalo Treats and Blot Bells from these, and get Normal Bells instead of Jumbo Bells

  • In return, you now have a chance of an even bigger Coins jackpot than before - there are now 3 tiers of Coin rewards instead of 2. 

  • Now, you can get Tier 1, Tier 2 or Tier 3 Crafting Resources from Chaos Shrine instead of just Tier 1, and you’ll get them in higher amounts

  • We’ve also added Gifts and Recipes to the loot pool

  • Don’t worry - you can still get Decor and Clothing drops from Chaos Shrines

• Wilderness Pots: we also adjusted the rewards you can get from Pots

  • You will get fewer Fluffalo Treats and Blot Bells, and a slightly lower chance of getting Decor and Clothing items from those

  • Chances of finding Gifts for Crosslanders in Pots have doubled

  • We also added a very low chance of getting Recipes

  • You can also get Shrinework Parts drops

• Wilderness Cache: some adjustments to the cache rewards

  • You now have a chance of getting Recipe Gems, Blot Bells, Fluffalo Treats, or a random Traversable, instead of a 100% chance of getting a Traversable. Traversable chance is now 10%.

  • There were no changes to the Beacon Energy and Coin chances

Dyes and Pigments

Hair Style & Dye Rework

• Just like we did with other types of dyes, we’re moving Hair Dyes over to an unlock system where players can acquire permanent unlocks to Hair Dyes and apply them to Hairstyles. 

• The hair dyeing flow has changed, and players can now dye the base color, and in the case of two-tone hairs, the accent color, independently. This should be an easier and more user-friendly experience. 

• All natural hair colors dyes are unlocked by default, but players will have to buy non-natural dyes from the Chromatist

  • New natural hair color dye unlocks are available in the player’s inventory. 

  • New non-natural hair color dye unlocks are available in the Dye Store. 

Wall & Floor Unlocks

• As mentioned in the fox-thoughts post we shared last month, Wall & Floor dye unlock prices have increased significantly with the 15.2 update. 

• This is not a balancing change - the costs of those unlocks were always meant to be more costly, since walls and floors are much bigger than decor or clothing, and much more complex - but due to an oversight on our part, the changes were not implemented with the release of 15.1.

• Here are the updated costs:

Simple: 2,000 Coins Complex: 6 Sparks Masterful: 16 Sparks

Players Houses

Build Mode

• We have uncapped default contributions to proposals in houses

• We have added a button to toggle Build Mode Snapping on/off in the Settings Menu for structural pieces like Floors, Walls, Roofs, etc

• In an effort to make group movement more usable (and placement more forgiving), almost all of our decorations are now allowed to "hang off the edge" of something they're being placed on. This means if you move a group of objects and something is hanging off it won't inhibit placement of that group. But also means an object support by another floor (as an example) may get left behind from your group if you move the floor it is overhanging.

• 🆕 Smart Connectors! To make it so you don’t have to keep track of craft multiple different pieces to achieve your building goals, we are replacing all of the building set corner, connection, inner corner wall pieces with Smart Connectors.

  • You can no longer purchase or craft the previous corner and connection pieces, but they have not been removed, so if have them in your home, waystations or inventory, you can still use them

  • You can also recycle any of your old connectors for resources

• Standard building set Metal Roofs are once again dyeable, with Decor Dyes. 

Home Prestige

• With this update, you can now get House Prestige XP from placing new decorations and using new dyes for the first time. You get 1 point for every new type of decor or dye you use.

• You will receive XP retroactively for items and dyes already used in your house 

• Because of this change making Home Prestige XP much easier to get, Home Prestige progression has been adjusted accordingly, meaning that each level now requires a little more XP.

Mr. Kit’s Catalogue Kiosk & Roomie Shop Overhaul

• Introducing Mr. Kit’s Kiosk - instead of purchasing decor, building pieces, room modules, crafting recipe unlock bundles, wall and floor dyes from Mr. Kit via Roomie, you can now access Mr. Kit’s Catalog directly from a new kiosk at your home trolley station.

  • Items in Mr. Kit’s Kiosk are unlocked as you level up your Home Prestige, as before

• Roomie was feeling a little bit left out that everyone was getting their own shop but him, so now he has a shop of his own instead of being a reseller for Mr. Kit!

  • Roomies bring the goodies: you can now purchase Foliage items like trees and bushes with your Roomie

  • As you level up your Friendship with him, he’ll offer you more options in his Shop

Quests & Errands

New Quests

• After joining your waystation and restoring Maya, you will now receive a small quest line to help Maya and Joule repair the damage to the village beacon. While this would normally be part of the  new player experience, existing players who are far past this point will also receive and be able to complete these new quests to help the village the first time they log in after the update. This quest also introduces the new Shrineworks Parts currency for Joule.

• Hardtack has two new Friendship Quests, which will be available to anyone who has reached Friendship level 2 or higher with him

  • Look out for more new and updated Friendship arcs with other Crosslanders in future updates!

Errands

• Feeling lost on what to do next? Well, hopefully not anymore - Errands are a brand new set of goals in the Quest/Activity Log that you can complete. Look for a new tab in your Quest Log to list the Errands available to you each day.

• Most Errands can be completed in 1-2 days of play, so everyone, no matter how much they play or if they don’t play as often - can also get more income and gameplay from those

• Completing all Errands each week should grant you additional Beacon Energy, Beacon Spark and Coins. 

• NOTE: You may notice that the old “Help 5 Spirits” quest is now gone. This has been turned into an Errand. That specific Errand’s reward is lower than the quest was, but we balanced it out so the total amount of Beacon Energy you can earn each week from Errands is significantly higher.

• The regular “Explore the Wilderness” quest from Maya has also been converted to an Errand.

Wilderness Changes

World Events Schedule

• We have applied some changes to the weekly events schedule so no days have empty spots

• We have decreased the amount of times that the Lost Spirits and Facing Fears events appear during the week

• We have increased and evenly spread the co-op activities as much as possible: Whack-a-Mole, Rudi’s Target Practice, Wilderness Mural, Foot Race and DJ Fuzz EE’s Dance Party

• Luna now shows up according to the Lunar Calendar

• DJ Bear has recovered from his temporary identity crisis and is named DJ Fuzz EE once again.

Wilderness Traversables Changes

• We have increased the number of votes needed for wilderness proposals of anything except the 4 main traversables (jump pads, launch pads, lift fans, and ladders) up to 15. This should make it harder to grief by placing non-traversable items. 

  • The 4 main traversables will require 3 votes to place, so this doesn't slow down the placement of them, but we are also:

  • Reducing the number of report flags required to remove an item from 5 to 3. This means only 3 people need to flag it as a problem, and it's gone.

• Unused Entry Lands traversals can now be recycled 

• We've also removed the big stairs from the traversables vending machine and Amano's crafting station; since it's not used as often as the others, and it’s more tempting to use for griefing by blocking things. 

ART, UI

• New icon for Fiber resources

• New icons for Emotes

• Customization Options:

  • We have added more skin tone options!

  • We’re also introducing the brand new Gamer Outfit Set to the Stylesmith’s shop rotation!

  • The Gamer Decor Set was also added to the Premium Decor store rotation.

Quality of Life Improvements

• Out of stock items no longer show up in Build Mode

• The player is now informed by mail (once a day) when other players complete their proposals 

• You can now fish while sitting on the Pier

• We have simplified flow for planting seeds in pots so you no longer have to enter Build Mode to plant seeds!

• With the introduction of Starter Plots, we have modified the path from the Waystation Trolley to the Starter Plot island to allow for clearer access to that area. While we have tried to minimize the disruption, it is possible this may result in some items that had been placed in that area being sent to Waystation Storage.

• Search and Sort have been added to the Player House Travel menu to make it easier to find your Friends’ houses;

• Low hanging clouds have descended upon the Crosslands providing much needed respite for our fluffy friends! ☁️

• Ambient Spirits now hang out at Bonfire sites;

• We changed the existing category name “Cooking Resource” tag to “Crafting Resource” since we don’t have Cooking in the game (Clay is now a Crafting resource!)

• Hundreds of typos fixed - thank you all who pointed those out in the Typos Master Post

• The much-requested toggle for glider auto-deployment has been added in the Settings! 

  • Note: When the toggle is off, you will need to manually open the glider with input, but wind-based items will still deploy the glider (e.g. fans or cloud updrafts). When toggled on, the glider will automatically open when you jump from heights normally. 

• General improvements to game performance

Bug Fixes

• We fixed some instances where moving many objects at once in the player home could cause the game to desync and incorrectly prevent placement;

• Fixed an issue that caused the sizes of preview to be different sizes when viewing collectibles in Candlewick's Collection;

• Players who remain inactive for a certain period of time will no longer be reset to Initiate if they return to the same waystation they were assigned before;