Hi all,
As you may have noticed, the past month it has remained quiet on the update front. That is because I've enabled a lot of the chapter 3 features in the current development branch, marking a point of no return for me. That means that all QoL's that are requested during this period will be added to the chapter 3 patch.
In other words, the next patch that you will see will be the chapter 3 patch, including the multiplayer functionality and the new continent.
To keep you in the loop of what will be added, this development blog will contain most of it. Don't enjoy spoilers? Best not to read this one!
For those that are simply interested in timelines, let me save you the read:
- Chapter 3 will likely be entering beta testing in this month, worst case April.
- Chapter 3 will likely release during summer 2025, this could be June, this could be July or worst case August. All of this will depend on how much balancing is still needed during the beta testing.
To get some more eyes on the game, I will also be entering Incursion2D into Steam Next Fest next round to get some more people on the multiplayer side of the game. If chapter 3 is not running into too many issues, it may already enter the nearest Next Fest, but if not I will delay it until the next one, since these events can only be attended once and we want to have a good impression :)
For the rest of you, let's dive in!
Continent 3
Enemies
As stated in previous devblogs, the next continent will be The Frozen North. A barren frozen landscape where it is nearly always dark. Luckily you'll have a few cozy places to keep you safe during your travels. This continent will introduce you to who the actual endgame boss will be for the game and introduce some extra needed lore for that.
New lands mean new enemies, so this patch will introduce 4 new enemy types and 4 new bosses.
You may see your new challenge in the image below:
(As with previous updates, of course thank you to the artists over at Itch whose credits are mentioned within the game).
From left to right:
1) Frostflame, the ice elemental - accompanied by his army of snakes.
2) Grimskull, the raider - accompanied by her army of goblins.
3) The Frozen Titan - accompanied by his armies of geodes.
4) ??? - accompanied by his army of skeletons.
The final boss is an event that happens during the storyline in The Frozen North and thus I will keep his identity safe for now.
As usual, new mechanics are introduced for you to deal with so expect an increase in difficulty spikes!
These bosses will also include hardmode versions!
And of course, the third arena will be opening its doors as well, so you can chase new hiscores and rewards!
Multiplayer
Another big addition to this patch will be multiplayer. Over the past months this has been tested more and more and we feel that it is in quite a stable place.
Persistent servers will be available for you to play on, and we will monitor the amount of traffic to ensure enough space is available. Latency wise the first servers will be spun up in the EU, if we notice demand in the US or Asia regions, we can easily expand into those areas as well, but we will monitor the demand first. As you know servers aren't free :)
Sharding
One of the first things I've changed over the past few months is moving from a single server to a sharding system:
Servers at this time are capped to 32 players, also here we will see how the performance is. If the shards can handle 32 players with ease, we may increase the playercount. However, due to some decisions made this will have to be evaluated not just based on performance.
Leading into the next point!
Multiplayer interaction
Last blog we mentioned that multiplayer would be a visual multiplayer, where the online interaction is limited to seeing other players and being able to chat with them.
Since that post the system has been expanded a bit and some new functionality is available:
- Inspecting fellow players and being able to see their equipment and their skill levels
- Multiplayer abilites can now be equipped. These are special abilities that can actually be used on other players inside your server shard. This ranges from healing to buffing others.
- You can now also see the abilities that the other players are casting, besides just seeing the player animations. This setting can be turned off in the settings to assist with visibility.
- Tools have been added for admins to be able to award items ingame or be able to kick/ban(*) players. Moderation is something that will be continously worked on.
Inspecting a player:
*Founders get a special background!
Healing a player:
* What does getting banned in this game mean? Your savefile is effectively no longer allowed on any online version. You will retain access to the offline version.
Future plans
-In the future we are looking into implementing multiplayer events and bosses in which players can play together at a common goal. Think of event bosses or specific minigames/areas where players can fight the same thing.
-A party system is in the works so that you can only see your party members while playing in combat areas.
Hunting
A new skill will be introduced this patch, which will be the hunting skill! In contrast to the other skills, this will not be bound to a specific area. You will be able to hunt specific animal types in specific continents.
The loop consists of:
- Finding tracks, potentially flushing out animals once found
- Hunting the animal with your ranged weapon (animals will get spooked and run eratically once alerted)
- Collecting their pelts
By increasing your hunting level, your tracking radius to spot tracks will increase and your damage to the animal will increase. You will also unlock the ability to spot animals out in the wild without spotting any tracks or potentially running into a nest of multiple animals at once.
If you are lucky, you may encounter a shiny variant of the animal! Hunting down this shiny animal will immediately unlock a cosmetic pet version of this animal for you to show off!
The regular pelts can be exchanged at a hunting rack for account bonusses or a cosmetic non-shiny version of the animal whose pelt you are exchanging!
This skill introduces a new stat into the game, which you may have already spotted in the above image. Multishot! Multishot triggers a chance to fire multiple projectiles when shooting your ranged weapon. The multishot chance increases by each hunting level.
At the release of continent 3 you will be able to hunt 6 species of animals.
Cosmetics
Being able to visually diversify your character is what makes chasing goals appealing! When you defeat difficult content in the game, having a cosmetic reward for it should be natural. To increase the customization of your character, two new cosmetic types have been introduced into the game:
- Wings
- Footsteps
By default you will have simple black footsteps available, the rest can be unlocked!
By introducing these new types I would like to move on to the next one.
Steam Inventory Integration and the in-game store
In an attempt to assist with funding the online servers, I need to have a form of monetisation in place that will help pay for these as the game itself is entirely free forever. I've always strictly said that the game should never have any pay-to-win elements, and I maintain that position. The new in-game store will be a simple shop where you can buy additional customization for your characters or your game client.
Below you can see how it will roughly look like:
Most of these cosmetics will be priced at about 250 gemshards, which is about 2.50$. Gemshards and purchased items are available as actual objects in your Steam inventory! Needless to say, these remain on your Steam account and resetting your save file won't affect them. You will always have access to these items for as long as the Steam integration remains functional (which is hopefully forever!). For transparancy, below you can see the pricing.
Of course a system has been built online where if you run into an issue with your purchase, you can always reach out to me via Discord and I will review your case. If something went wrong, don't panic, I can always award items via the new online servers!
Important: I also do not believe in FOMO whatsoever. Any item that enters the in-game store will remain there forever. There will not be any situations where certain items will disappear for certain periods.
I know this is usually a sensitive topic so please by all means give me your feedback on what's currently there.
Chapter 3 unlocks
Of course chapter 3 will contain many unlocks (non-premium) for your accounts that don't need to have seperate categories, but you may expect the following (at the time of writing this):
- 30+ new pets will be available for you to collect
- New alchemy vials will open up
- The max tier of your marketplace potions will go up to epic rarity
- 21+ new abilities are available
- 15 new smithing recipes are available
Just for a small sneak peek, here is one of the new abilities:
The Scribe
Much like every continent before this one has had a progression system, a new one will be available in this chapter as well. That new system is the scribe.
The scribe is a cleric that offers you the use of his desk which contains two types of literature:
- Scriptures
- Hymns
To progress in this skill you will need a new currency: paper.
Paper introduces a purpose for those logs you have been collecting so far!
Using a paper station,you can convert logs into paper:
Additionally, paper will drop in smaller amounts passively from monsters you'll be killing. The tougher the monster, the more paper! Simple!
The desk looks like this:
Upgrading either a hymn or scripture has a %-based chance of succeeding. Each time you are succesful, you will require more paper and the odds of succeeding will go down. The trade-off is that the stats get better and better the further you go.
Here is an example of a scripture:
Here is an example of a hymn:
Scriptures are passive stat increases much like alchemy that will further strengthen your character.
Hymns are combat passives that will invoke based on various conditions while you are fighting. You can only equip one hymn at a time!
I will keep the other effects of the hymns a secret at this time.
Conclusion
So, those are the systems that will be entering beta soon. Please note that the above is simply what is in progress and/or near completion. There is more content in the pipeline for this chapter, but they are not matured enough yet to display. For example I am looking into a proper endgame grind for those of you that reach the complete end of the storyline.
For now, that's all I have. I hope you have a wonderful day and please do let me know your feedback here or on Discord.
Thanks!