It’s been a busy few months in the lab, and MoteMancer’s world keeps growing more intricate with every patch. I’ve been doing a lot of technical logs lately, so let’s take a breath and look ahead together.
The Long View
MoteMancer's Early Access phase has stayed on course so far with the addition of Blueprints, Entropy, and a wide variety of quality of life updates. While nothing is ever certain, 1.0 Launch is currently targeted for the one-year anniversary of Early Access - July 2026, with a few significant beats planned along the way, so let's get into that.
December
Fast approaching will be the Elemental Mastery Update, where all of the remaining Structures from every element will be available. Currently in game there are a handful of Shattered researches and recipes, which represent placeholder slots of said remnants. Those will all be filled in and the research tree will be getting an overall polish and tuning pass. I don’t want to spoil every surprise, but here are three new toys I’m especially excited about:
- Entanglement - Umbral Waygates form a pool of Ichor Slick that is shared per Plane. Umbral Waygates were always planned as a way for the player to teleport around their base, but tying them into logistics on a local plane felt very thematic and useful especially when navigating several late-game Planar Bridges.
- Delve - Earth Grippers grasp twice as many items from Earth Chests. I always imagined Earth as the mining and throughput king of the elements, even though Air needs to be just as powerful. This tech pairs super nicely with the BoxMancer playstyle as the community unofficially calls it, and will also have fun implications with Charged Lodestone - the structure I showed off that sends Chests plowing across the planes from one far-flung area to another. 12 items per pickup is super strong, but relies on Earth synergy.
- Tributary - Streamway Deltas can be toggled to reverse their flow. This one was a popular request to give MoteMancer's unique splitters some of the functionality that players enjoy from other factory games. The unique shape implications from hex logistics means that even though you can easily channel multiple streams into one main corridor, maintaining lanes becomes more of a hassle than it's worth. Reversing the Delta direction as a toggle is an elegant solution because it doesn't take up a precious structure slot, and follows the conventions that Air Grippers use for flipping their functionality on the fly.
There are of course many other toys like Filtered Grippers and Deltas, extra Lights and Paths, and the ultimate Elemental Synergy structures from each pair of elements. But those you'll have to see for yourself.
The Elemental Mastery update will also come with a host of visual improvements like structure animations and UI, as well as a holistic performance pass on the art in the game. I almost wrote about the current concoction I'm cooking up - I think I can get thousands of structure draw calls down to a dozen - but that'll have to wait until I'm certain it'll work. Either way, lots of performance improvements will come as well.
I want to quickly shoutout all of the people posting bugs - there isn't anything game breaking but there are a few typos and language issues that have been identified. I have fixed them all locally, but the game is in a pretty significant transition phase, so posting the updates to live won't happen until the build is more stable. Thank you for your continued reports, I read them all.
February
The Affix Update will take the game from dozens or hundreds of hours of content to hundreds or thousands of hours. I'm super excited for Affixes - they were planned from the start of the project but only really make sense once the first core playthrough is completely robust. If you are unfamiliar, Affixes are like modifiers or challenge modes that can significantly change the way you play the game. It's sort of like a combination of tuning sliders and built in modding, but MoteMancer is uniquely positioned in the automation space to take advantage of this because of how unique each element is.
Thanks to community brainstorming and feedback, I've already amassed dozens of affixes ranging from the obvious:
- Start on the Fire Plane
- Hand Crafting is disabled
- Water is Shattered
to things that can fundamentally alter the geometry puzzle of building:
- Mote Fields spawn random Elements per Tile
- All Grippers have double range
- Flora are Indestructible
and many many more. I have been asked whether achievements will be in the game, and the answer is yes - they are still on the roadmap, but they make much more sense to add after or with Affixes, since that will constitute the bulk of the challenge beyond the base game.
April and beyond
There will likely be a larger update in April as well, but it's too early to tell. If nothing pressing arises from the community, there are still plenty of performance opportunities to pursue. I still plan on making controller fully supported. Many people have asked for something like an Alchemist's Journal, which I would love to make eventually. There are many other things that can fill that slot, but I'm also sure I'll know much more by the time I get there.
Honestly I feel very well prepared for the road ahead. There’s a lot still bubbling in the cauldron, but MoteMancer’s growth has been steady and spirited since Early Access began. I’m grateful for every player helping to refine it for all of our future alchemists.
Back to the Lab! 🌿
~CyanAvatar