It's done, Dustgrave's Prologue has been released! Experience the first few hours of Dustgrave: A Sandbox RPG and keep your savegames to continue the journey in the final release!
Compared to the demo we released a few months ago, the Prologue brings a massively improved experience, with extensive changes made to all game mechanics.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2393370/Dustgrave_A_Sandbox_RPG/
Here's a changelog listing the most important changes!
Major Changes
- Revamped and rebalanced everything related to combat. Many new items and enemies have been added, to offer a more consistent experience and add much-needed variety to enemies.
- Companions can now be recruited while traveling across the world, and it is no longer possible to start with 4 characters. Companions have unique personalities, but for now, they have limited content as a few dialogues and barks.
- Added a Crafting System, allowing for the creation of consumables and enhancement of equipment. Equipped items now have a Tier level that determines the scaling of their stats. Dismantling items will yield materials, including unique Tier-related ones that can be used to upgrade weapons and armors by visiting traders.
- When wearing faction-specific armors or clothes, you can now disguise yourself as a member of that faction, opening new ways of solving quests or overcoming challenges. All existing content has been updated to accommodate this new feature.
- Completely revamped the UI to be better-looking and easier to read, with several panels that have been rebuilt or improved to show additional info.
- Added several dynamic sub-quests to most major quests.
- Added a new dynamic major quest, with different flavors depending on where it triggers and who is involved.
- NPCs will now react to murders, meaning you can no longer kill people without alerting potential witnesses. It’s still a little buggy, just like real-world justice, but we keep working on it.
- Added Bombs as consumables, so that you can have fun throwing stuff at enemies.
Fixes and Improvements
- Greatly improved performances all across the board, in particular, while travelling on the map and when rendering stealth cone of views. There are some issues and stutters left, which will soon be addressed.
- Fixed some navigation-related issues in certain settlements with bridges or other similar structures.
- Completely reworked the Minimap on the World Map. It’s now much bigger, it can be panned with the mouse, and shows more details on regions, locations, and related quests.
- NPCs are smarter when it comes to detecting crimes.
- Skills cooldowns will now reset between fights.
- Improved the UI on the map to show more details of locations when hovering on the.
- Saving is now possible in quest locations.
- When saving the game, the position of playing characters is now saved properly, and no longer resets to the level’s entry point.
- Greatly improved the existing combat log to show more info and be easier to read.
- Fixed an issue with some quests related to finding stolen items or intel that couldn’t be completed.
- Your character will now say something when trying to open locked doors or containers.
- Locations on the world map will now dynamically change their looks to reflect their current status.
- Reworked the Journal to display more information and to group related quests together.
- Fixed several issues with dead people still being highlighted and showing UI pieces in combat, now they’ll be left alone until the end of the battle and won’t bother you anymore.
- In many quests, after trying diplomatic solutions it is now possible to go back and try different approaches instead of being locked into the choice after just one step.
- Prisoners found while exploring or doing quests that are not directly related to a quest now have many more interactions.
- Imprisoned people won’t free themselves and stand still like idiots after you talk to them. They will now be committed to their role of kidnapped or jailed people.
- NPCs overlays will glitch less often.
- Fixed a critical issue with Stealth remaining active during combat.
- Fixed several issues with loot dropping from enemies and the condition of such items.
- Mercenaries camped in a settlement will no longer pretend to be part of the local authorities.
- You will now be able to repair items, since we repaired the UI allowing you to do that!
- Expanded and improved all dialogues related to finishing a quest and getting a reward, increasing contextual accuracy and giving the player some choices to make.
- Wandering parties of traders or minor factions will appear in different settlements and move after some time.
- Tutorials can be turned off in the options.
- Characters will now react differently to Records depending on their ethics.
- Changed how critical hits work with status effects, now they simply increase the duration by 1. This also applies to Grazes, which only decrease duration by 1.
- Fixed a frankly ridiculous amount of game-breaking bugs, which says a lot about our competence as developers, but who am I kidding? Maybe three people will read this, so we will keep telling everyone, including ourselves, that we’re good at this.
- Added a lot of combat and ambient sounds to make the world more lively. Well, more lively than pretty much nothing was easy to achieve.
- Added a new panel to show relationships between factions.
- Fixed cooldowns on certain actions not working as intended.
- Dead people will no longer engage in solo conversations.