Hey all! We're back with another update for our in development patch: Players' Most Wanted. This update will cover changes that we're making to the Craft from Storage feature, player inventory size, and how resources are laid out across the biomes. This is just one set of many changes coming for this patch; if you want a refresher on the general changes, check out our previous dev blog!
Craft from Storage Feedback
Once a more rare feature, crafting from storage has become an expectation for any modern survival crafting game. While expected, it still takes many different forms across various survival games, such as:
Stations craft from storage of nearby chests only
Crafting from storage comes as an upgrade
Crafting from storage is available on all chests
These all have different pros and cons, and help facilitate different gameplay scenarios. For example, crafting from only nearby storage chests encourages you to build your base in a certain way for more efficiency - so you'll often see this in very automation-focused crafting games. Meanwhile, having it as an upgrade incentivizes players to chase upgrades and continue to advance their base technology. Conversely, having it available on all chests removes that pressure, which is great for games that don't want to focus on those mechanics as a way for players to progress. These are not all of the examples of how these can be used, but hopefully this illustrates some of the thinking that goes into choosing these options for one's game.
We've had crafting from storage available as an upgrade for a while; when you unlock the first official Chest, which is the upgrade from the Baskets, you unlock the ability to craft from storage. Through Early Access we've been collecting feedback about it and feel that it has room for improvement. If you're surprised to hear we have crafting from storage in our game, that segues into one of our biggest problems! Let's talk about some of the feedback.
Main Feedback Points
It's a hard-to-discover feature!
A lot of players who try the game don't realize that we have crafting from storage. We believe this is due to the somewhat 'invisible' nature of this feature. Technically if you look forward far enough in the Knowledge Tree, find the right node and read the description you could discover this. But this is an extremely difficult way to discover it.
The feature is locked too far back in progression!
Some players feel that this comes too late in the game, and they don't have a lot of ways to change that. We have tried to move this around a few times into earlier progression points, but ultimately this did not end up satisfying for players.
Why does it only work on some chests?
Currently our crafting from storage only works on chests, leaving baskets feeling obsolete.
For our game, base building is a major focus - especially the ideal of building up a sanctuary in each biome. This was originally why having crafting from storage as an upgrade felt impactful for us. As you advanced in your technology and leveled up enough to create more and more bases, you would earn this functionality that would make things easier to do and feel like a major advancement. We still believe this is true (sorry, I know some folks want it always on!), but we think we have a better mechanism for it now than we did when we first introduced this feature.
Craft from Storage as a Sanctuary Upgrade
We added the concept of Sanctuary upgrades with our Tend, Build, Thrive patch. If you haven't played in a while, this is a form of base progression. As you build more inside of your Sanctuary radius and create comfort and a safe haven for the spirits, you will earn more functionality and benefits to your base.
We felt this was the perfect spot to put something like crafting from storage. Since crafting from storage only works from within a Sanctuary, tying these concepts together makes it more understandable. Additionally, this feature is now a lot more visible to new players because Sanctuary buffs are something they are introduced to very early on in the game. And lastly, this will allow any type of storage whether it's a basket, chest, or other object to benefit from crafting from storage.
While we know that opinions are very divided on whether this feature should be a baseline functionality or an upgrade, we hope that offering it through the Sanctuary buffs will be the perfect compromise for it to come earlier and feel like a chaseable goal for the early game.
Excluding Chests from Crafting
Now that we've made all storage types able to craft from storage, there is a small gap left to close. If you've played a lot of multiplayer survival games, at some point you've probably experienced signing in ready to complete some major objectives only to find that someone used all of the progression materials to craft random items (and if you've played with me... maybe that was me :P). Since in our old system baskets could not craft from storage, some players had adapted to storing progression materials in baskets to make them private and ensure they wouldn't be misused.
Alongside our storage changes, we have added a feature to exclude any storage chest from crafting from storage. Keep it secret, keep it safe :D
Inventory Size Buffs
We've also made changes to the inventory size, both the base amount as well as the amount you earn from progression. So much of a survival crafting game is exploring, gathering, and pushing your limits and luck to bring back as much loot as possible. This means it can sometimes be a tricky balance to make sure you have enough constraints to feel that tension, while not having it feel excessively limiting. Our inventory size was feeling too restrictive, especially as players progressed to later biomes and discovered more types of resources.
So we have buffed the base inventory size by another entire row. We've additionally increased the amount of inventory slots you get from utility spirits by +1, so now you'll get 5 additional inventory slots when finding the inventory expansion spirits. And we plan to add more utility spirits in the final biome so that you can end with a rounded total of 50 inventory slots.
Loot goblins rejoice!
Biome Resource Layout
Highly intertwined with inventory, storage, and crafting are resource nodes. Players love exploring the world, but have given us feedback that the resources in the world feel too flatly distributed. It felt like you would find the same things everywhere. This disincentivized players from exploring the further reaches, or left them feeling unrewarded for doing so.
We've done placement passes across the biomes to create more focused clusters of resources, especially important progression resources like ore, so that players must venture into the further portions of the biome. Additionally we've lowered the abundance of food resource nodes, but clustered them together more densely when found so that it will feel more valuable to hop off and grab those berries.
What's Next?
If you made it this far, thanks for reading :D We hope that players will enjoy these changes and they'll make the experience of exploring, gathering and crafting feel better. Stay tuned for our future dev blogs where we'll continue to dive into the features coming up in the Players' Most Wanted patch!
Have questions? Hit us up in the comments! 👇