Hello everyone!
I'll try to provide you with small weekly updates from time to time about what's happening with the development.
I won’t be giving a super detailed report or a day-by-day breakdown, as that would take too much time. Instead, I’ll briefly outline what’s been going on.
At the end of each update, I’ll also share how I’m feeling mentally, my general thoughts, and what tasks I have planned before the big upcoming update.
Since the last news post, a lot of work has been done. However, I lost 12 days due to being seriously ill and was barely able to work. Still, aside from the sick days, I managed to accomplish the following:
1 Created a major quest about Svarog’s Forge, which begins in Red Yar and will conclude near the end of the game. The forge will allow players to craft Legendary items using rare materials that aren’t easy to find.
I won’t spoil the details, but the quest features Dragon and a fight with him.
It’s a complex quest that took a good amount of time—lots of dialogue, a bunch of conditions I had to implement as a developer, and plenty of tag-related headaches. But the quest itself turned out great.
2 Polished some of the more complex mid-game quests. Without going into detail, they involve a lot of characters and a large clash between the guards and the undead. It was quite a bit of work.
3 Started building the Dark Forest location where various evil creatures will live. The location is about 50% complete.
4 Made 4 small quests for Could Yar.
5 Began creating a massive ice cave/pass/tunnel beneath the mountain in Could Yar, which will be inhabited by various monsters. This tunnel will eventually serve as a shortcut between Could Yar and Red Yar.
6 Started working on the location for Dark Knight boss - Koschei, his dungeon and private chambers.
7 Spent several days fixing a particularly annoying bug where quests were being duplicated. It’s a long story, but it wasn’t easy to resolve.
8 Completed a huge number of small tasks and polish related to the main storyline quests. (There’s still quite a bit of polish work left to do.)
9 Created materials and visual effects for freezing, burning, and poisoning spells and enchanted weapons.
At the moment, my mental state is stable, though I’m a bit worried about not hitting the update deadlines I set for myself. I want to release it faster, but real life keeps throwing new obstacles my way—mice in the house, health issues, surprise visits from the tax office, paperwork, family matters, etc. For big companies, these things wouldn’t slow development much, but when one person is making the game, each of these interruptions can seriously delay progress, and that’s what frustrates me the most.
I’m capable of getting a lot done in a single productive day. Each good day brings the release closer, and every day lost to real-life stuff pushes it back just as much.
I can only hope for your understanding and am doing my best to work as fast and hard as I can. I have no other choice.
On a brighter note, I was kind of glad to hear that GTA 6 got delayed—because if "Elder Legacy" releases a little later than planned, I was worried the media space would be completely taken over by GTA.
Here’s a rough plan of the work I still need to do before the next update (which will essentially include almost the entire game except for the swamps). The time estimates are approximate—some tasks might be completed faster than expected, others might take longer:
Quest polishing – 1–2 weeks
Engine cutscenes and text-based cutscenes – 3 days
Quest rewards, XP, and XP balancing – 1–2 days
Fixing tags in old saves – 1 day
Programming additional quests – 3–6 days
Volkhv magic and abilities – 2–5 days
New monsters (animations, sounds, creation, placement) – 3–5 days
Bosses – 4–5 days
NPC appearances and their animations – 3–5 days
Combat system polish – 4–6 days
Bulletin board tasks – 2 days
Miscellaneous notes and tasks from Telegram – 3–5 days
Game balance – 3–5 days
Placing resources, items, and chests – 1–2 days
Economy balance – 1–2 days
Implementing new voice acting – 1–3 days
Sounds and music – 2–3 days
Books and lore entries – 2–3 days
Traps, puzzles, and dungeon logic – 3–4 days
Visual polish – 3–5 days
Small islands you can sail to – 1–3 days
Lighting improvements – 1 day
Bug fixing – 3 days
Cutscene illustrations – 1–2 days
Treasure maps – 1–2 days
Monster loot, vendor inventories, and crafting – 1–2 days
Card game for the rest of the game – 1–3 days
Platforming on cliffs – 1 day
NPC mouth movement during dialogue – 1 day
Summoning allies and transformations – 1 day
Testing and final adjustments – 1 week
So yeah, it’s a lot—but as you can see, each task by itself doesn’t take that long. On average, 1–3 days per task. The problem is that there are just so many tasks, and I’m doing them all alone. That’s why development takes so long. This is all pure work time, which can easily get disrupted by everyday life.
With this update, the game will expand significantly. The current Early Access content will feel like just a drop in the ocean.
Now that you have a clearer idea of what’s going on, I hope the wishlist drop-off will slow down. My mistake was doing everything silently—but believe me, I am working, and working a lot. You can't imagine how many lists like this I’ve made since the game entered Early Access.
All the best to you all!