Hello, prior to today I've been uploading devlogs every few weeks onto the page over on Itch, but I will start updating the page here as well to ensure visibility to those that want it.
I will start with summarizing the updates over the past few months, and then move onto today's news!
January 16th 2024
New areas
Work is currently underway to shape the second continent of the world, which will be The Empire. The empire steps away from the nature focussed area that you've seen in the first continent of the weathered woods, and takes the player to a packed city environment. For the past weeks I've been designing the new city, and below you can see some small snippets of what it currently looks like:
This new city will host all of your previous NPC's that helped you out in the first continent and will host a suite of new ones. Of course a city without anything in it wouldn't be that interesting so you will also be getting access to two new skills, with the first one currently in development being: Fishing!
Fishing
This skill won't be as much click&wait, but rather be a minigame where you must actively chase the fish to catch it. Catching larger and rarer fish mean more XP, and more materials that you'll be able to exchange at the fishing vendor for a suite of rewards. Each new fish type will also unlock new vials in the alchemy skill. Can you catch the elusive legendary quality huge fish at 0.0001% spawn rate? Probably not! Here's what you would be looking out for:
You control the fishing bobber with your movement, and hit to attempt to catch a fish. You will have to actively chase the fish shadows, until your proximity circle turns green, marking a potential catch. Higher rarity fish will be marked with a lootbeam on the water, alerting you of the urgency to catch it, since they can disappear quite quick! Your bobber has a stamina bar that you can use to move faster, but keep in mind it recharges slowly. Your fishing efficiency/speed increases with the skill level. I'll have more details on this skill as it develops.
Controller support
As was stated on the roadmap, controller support is something I'd love to have. So for the current development build I've passed a first batch for the controller support. It's not final at all and still requires a lot of work, but as of now it's fully possible to play the entire game with a controller without needing to use the keyboard for anything. In a second batch I will look at making the menu's more controller-friendly as well as being able to manipulate the dialogue system with your buttons rather than needing a cursor to navigate.
New enemies and rewards
As with the previous area you will be facing 4 new bosses in this zone as well as 4 new enemy types. As of now the first boss and its enemy types are finished, with their combat areas currently being designed. Defeating the first boss unlocks a new type of ability you will be able to cast, in addition to the previously available kit! The new ability type will be available with the key, and is an alternative magic spell! Which leads me to the following:
Changes
Seeing as ranged was a swappable combat style, it only made sense to do the same for basic magic attacks. We have removed them from the key and assigned a swappable class for it. You will now switch to the magic style in the same way you swap to ranged by hitting , and then using left click to fire your basic attacks. You are also able to swap between all three modes using 1-2-3.
While I haven't started on it yet, there will be a major overhaul to the mining/woodcutting aspect of the game. They will be removed as they are currently being used and converted into dedicated skills, much like fishing. Dedicated areas will be created and you'll be able to actually progress the skill itself, while gathering materials for your own island!
There are many changes planned to the player island as well, to make sure that the island serves a decent useful purpose for your adventures, I'll be posting more about that later.
January 30th 2024
Fishing
Work on the fishing skill has continued to the point where I'm satisfied with the result. It's a minigame to kill time, that will reward you with items that will power up your character a bit on the side. Of course, in order to track your progress in a skill (as with any skill), the player will need a way to track their progress. I've been working on the needed XP curves, reward systems and menu's to make that happen.
Below you can see what a skill menu will look like when you open it up:
Rewards will be unlocked gradually from level 1 - 99. As you can see, there is still plenty of placeholders open, these are rewards I intend to fill later on. For now, the groundwork of the skill is done, and you will be able to advance it in the next patch.
For now, here you can see the skill while you're training it, and some of the things that will happen as you're doing your job!
Resource Rework
We understand that the current system to gather metal, wood and fiber is a bit tedious. Simply smacking trees and rocks while on your adventures with your sword in order to get some minor materials to decorate your house with wasn't very rewarding, nor did it really make you want to pay attention to it. So I'd like to point out a few changes as of the next patch.
Housing Rework (batch 1)
To make sure that the housing system holds more value to the rest of the game, I've patched in a new category of items that you can buy (after unlocking it) from the furniture store, the utility tab! Below you can see some of the utility items, I'll keep their purposes hidden for now :)
This is a first batch of additions that will make the housing area feel more like a "hub". Much more is planned and will be revealed in the future.
Of course, since it's no longer possible to farm metal/wood through the previous system, a new system is required. So therefore I've converted them into two actual seperate skills: Mining & Woodcutting!
Woodcutting
You will now be able to head to a dedicated area where you can start farming XP for your woodcutting skill. Higher levels will unlock higher quality trees, and various other rewards. For each tree you will receive some wood chips, alongside the expected logs. Wood chips can be converted at the woodcutting NPC for a 10:1 ratio of lumber. This is the type of lumber you need to buy things with in the furniture store. If you don't want your extra logs, you can convert those into extra chips! Below is a spoiler on what the area looks like:
The skill will feature some fun random events, that will progress your XP even faster if you play them! I'll show the below as a small spoiler, but how it works you can find out for yourself!
Mining
In a similar vein ( *wink* ) as woodcutting, a new system was needed to farm "metal" for the furniture store. Instead of wood chips, you'll gather metal fragments during your mining training. Much like before, you can trade these in at a 10:1 ratio for metal at the mining NPC. This skill comes with its own progression tree and will yield you with ore that grows in rarity the better you get!
Smithing
Since you're now holding a bunch of new ore, you'll need a place to spend that ore! Currently I'm working on this skill specifically, as the above skills are in a pretty good state already. I don't have too much to show on this one, except for the part that will convert your ores into bars. The bars will be used at the anvil where you'll be able to craft different tiers of equipment. You'll be encountering rare recipes during your fights that will unlock rarer equipment! Crafting these will not be simple however. You can see the forge system below:
February 21st 2024
Smithing
Last devlog I had just finished working on the forging part of the smithing skill, with this one I can say that the smithing part is now also finished. In order to advance this skill, you will have to gather ore through the mining skill, and refine it in a forge. The forge will provide you with bars that you can then bring to the anvil to craft stuff! Next time you visit town you will find below utilities next to the smithy to start smithing:
Below you can see what the GUI for it will look like, as with all menu's, these are of course placeholders.
Now, to make the skill a bit more interesting these recipes will not actually be available from scratch (besides the first one). I want the items that you can smith to hold much more strength than the items you can get from drops in the world. So in order to craft these items, you will have to obtain them through drops as well! The recipes will drop in different tiers, and each time it drops, it will roll a random recipe!
Higher tier recipes will have chances to roll legendary gear that will always hold value, no matter in which continent you are. To accomodate this, I have introduced a few new item related stats:
- Melee Multi
- Ranged Multi
- Magic Multi
These speak for themselves, as they will provide a % based stat to their respective combat style. As they aren't flat numbers anymore these will boost your character much more when your base stats get higher! These will also become available through vials for the alchemy skill further down the road.
New abilities
I haven't spoken on this yet in the past devlogs, but as it stands, you will get 2 new melee combo movesets, 1 new magic basic ability and 2 new magic combo abilities and a new ultimate ability. I'll show a small spoiler of one of them:
These will of course unlock for free as you unlock through the new combat areas.
New combat areas
The next patch will include the first new boss and his enemy subspecies. I am already working on the second one, and that one will actually involve a bit more storyline and a new twist on the gameplay :)
Below will be the areas you can enter to start the new rooms!
First area:
Second area:
The second boss has a lot darker and dramatic tone going on, that is intentional!
Other mentions
- The smuggler service is now free
I've decided to change the difficulty a bit leading up to a boss. Since boss fights are getting more complex and will take longer, I have decided that you no longer have to pay the smuggler to get quick access to the boss. Once you have unlocked a boss, you will now be able to try the boss again for free if you die in the combat area before it. Feedback on this change is welcome!
- Arena mode now has higher pet drop chances
- A lot of bug fixes have been done
- An option has been added to delete your save file if you want to start over, for ease of convenience:
- I'm planning to rework the visuals of the starting areas of the first continent, since they were quite simplistic, and no longer up to par with some of the newer areas.
March 4th 2024
Steam Achievements
Last week I've been learning how to use the Steam API to be able to set up a first set of achievements. As of now we have 22 achievements to earn with the upcoming build, with of course many more coming later down the line. I'll leave you with an example:
Founder Pack
In case you're reading this and you think that I changed my mindset on the monetisation of the game - rest assured, I have not. However to have a way for people to support the project, and still getting something in return I've decided to make a founder pack available for purchase. The money from this pack will allow me to buy more graphical assets to then use in the game! The pack will just be 5$ and you will get the following items available for use in-game:
Cleaning Up
As I prepare to make a new build available on Itch mid-march, I'm finishing up the first new boss and the skill related content. When the second continent is finished in its entirety, I will swap over to Steam and start releasing patches as part of the Early Access program.
It's been a relatively slow week, so not much more to report, but stay tuned!
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That's it, thanks for reading!