As described in the latest newsletter, the development branch has been out for quite some time now, but we were waiting on addressing some issues before announcing an update in this post. The creature spawning/reputation/rune changes are in and after going through some iterations, is at a good level of polish now. We have also been adding tons of new things as well (like usual). Just a recap for those not following along:

• Reputation AND alignment are gone!
• Creature spawning is now based on territories/zones. Read more about that here: https://steamcommunity.com/games/wayward/announcements/detail/4346622097173088568
• New stat and status effect UI/tooltip system.
• Tile targeting for actions (including ranged targeting).
• Runes and deities now have unique effects to do with creature spawning.
• Less bugs?
• More bugs?

There's a few issues that are remaining, but we are getting close to a new release! If you are feeling like doing a playthrough with the new system in place, we would love to hear your feedback!

Here Be Dragons Drakes

As always, we would encourage you to back up your saves before trying this development branch of the game. By default, you can find your backups and save folders in the main Wayward directory. You can also export saves and global save data in-game if needed.

More information on how to change branches here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=721479594

Report any issues you spot!

Here’s the ever-growing, largely unsorted changelog thus far:

New

• Creatures now have simplistic "territories" — creatures near your spawn point are now easier than creatures far away, and creatures will stay in their original areas more often.
• You have attracted the attention of multiple unknown forces — deities. As you survive and make decisions, these deities will award you with tokens in their likeness. Invoke them, and in turn receive their blessing.
• You can now "stack" and "unstack" like items. Item stacks display as if they are the first item in the stack (respecting your sort), with a quantity of how many total items are in the stack. You can press "ctrl" to temporarily expand the stack your mouse is over.
• Added wheelbarrows, allowing you to push and pull additional storage.
• Added armor stands, allowing you to store armor and weapon sets visually with the ability to quick-swap certain builds.
• Added a new action bar that gets filled with context menu action history as you play.
• You can now right click on any visible location to perform actions there, your character will automatically walk to wherever they need to.
• Merchant trading has been redesigned.
• The actions drawer now supports selecting a specific item type from a list of all discovered item types, and selecting a range of qualities.
• Added a tamed status icon above tamed creatures.
• The stats layout has been reworked, associating status effects with their related stats and providing stat names.
• Added conifer resins, pitch, and glue for use in new recipes and reinforcing.
• Added primitive musical instruments that can be used to command multiple creatures at a time.
• Status effect iconography has been redesigned, allowing players to more easily know at a glance how threatening a new effect is.
• Added animal cartilage, and new food recipes/food preservation through the use of gelatin crafted from cartilage or shark fins.
• Magical Binding now has a new action and use involving attack and defense bonuses.
• Added "Thaumaturgic", a new milestone and modifier for finding every type of magical property.
• Added luck, a new stat affecting chances. There are not many places where luck currently takes effect, nor many things that modify luck — this will be expanded on later.
• All containers now have a "dump contents" action.
• Added a bindable to "Toggle Tooltips Visible", with no bindings by default. (Thanks Hiran!)
• Added bindings for toggling whether individual static UI components are visible (like the action bar, messages, etc.) These bindings are not set by default.
• Added a binding for toggling whether all auto-use action slots are enabled.
• Added "gamemoderun" support.
• Added the Afflicted and Exsanguinated milestones.
• Status effect tooltips have been completely redesigned, providing more information and presenting it in a clearer way.
• Ranged actions can now be used at any angle.
• Added a new option to make action slots be used on the tile you're mousing over.
• All stats are now inspectable, providing general information on how the stat works, along with new information such as their related core stat and the skills you can use to use to improve them.
• Added a new stat "potency" equipped magical property that increases the bonuses that items provide when used.
• Added a new milestone & modifier "Statistician" for discovering the stats that each skill can raise.
• Added eggshells (for chicken and penguin eggs), a new form of compost.
• Added stripped leather, a new high-tier cordage.
• There is now a visual on the depth when digging.
• You can now set an action slot to "Use Hovered Item", allowing you to set up slots to quickly use actions on hovered items.
• Added a new custom game option for disabling scared creature mechanics.
• There is a new custom creature spawn rate multiplier option that will allow you to scale the rate at which creatures spawn including disabling it altogether.
• Added a custom game option to enable viewing container dialogs for the items on the tile you're facing.
• Added sandstone arrows and arrowheads.
• Added a new "shadowy" creature.
• Added a "Skip Quest" button to the Starter Quest.
• Added a rare, secret challenge modifier.
• Added a challenge modifier for starting at sunset.
• Added a new challenge modifier "Cursed!"
• There are now modifiers in challenge mode for spawning in other biomes.
• Added a multiplayer option to pause server when desync occurs.
• Each island now progresses or "ticks" independently.
• Added a new help article about "Item Protection".
• Added an automatically updating notice to launching the development branch of the game.
• Added a number of new sound effect variations around inventory management.
• Added the "Runekeeper" milestone and modifier.
• Added a new milestone, "Curator" for discovering every item quality.
• Added the "Dedicated" milestone and milestone modifier, allowing players to set one that raises faster than all others, while the rest raise very slowly.
• Added OLED burn-in protection for HUD/UI elements.
• The skills dialog now displays skill icons & can be resized to display multiple columns.
• Added two new milestones and modifiers to do with creature spawn rates.
• The "Move All" and "Move All of Quality" actions can now be bound to the action bar.
• Added an audio cue when encumbered or overburdened.
• You can now set maxed skills as your in-game title.
• Added notifiers when dual-wielding is enabled/disabled.
• Added fish bones and glue.
• You can now drag actions from context menus to the action bar.
• Added two new books.
• The chance to craft mastercrafted items is now revealed at 100% skill.
• Minecarts can now push other minecarts. The faster the tier of minecart, the more minecarts can be pushed.
• Added aberrant versions of all fish.
• Added a new magical property "persistence" which increases max item durability far beyond normal means among other bonuses.
• Added a new type of skeleton with unique item drops that can appear from skeletal remains based on the current zone/tier.
• Added crucibles, a new device for smelting ores.
• Added a "heel" or "follow, but don't attack" command for tamed creatures.
• Ice and puddles (on certain terrain) are now slippery and will cause slippery movement for players (with certain footwear) and some creatures, more so if jumped upon.
• All container dialogs throughout the game (your inventory, held containers, container doodads, vehicles, NPCs) have been ported to the new UI system, fixing some longstanding issues and improving performance.

Improvements

• The Steam overlay is now more consistently implemented and will no longer report itself working in some cases where it did not.
• Each item will now have an associated skill (or skills) so that actions taken upon it (like refining) will use a more closely related skill. (Thanks DragonOvLeaves!)
• Renamed all "Toggle X" actions to "X or Y", for example "Toggle Container" is now "Open or Close Container."
• Rewrote the "not suitable to plant" message so that it makes sense when trying to plant a coconut. (Thanks Shim Panzé!)
• The "Best for Crafting" sort is now more accurately calculated to include "Aptitude" items. (Thanks Andrej27!)
• Tamed creatures now smartly follow you through cave entrances.
• Shippers will now spawn closer to lit lighthouses.
• The "Path to Tile: Preview" bindable has been removed in favor of it working automatically based on the modifiers of the "Path to Tile" bindable. IE, if you have "Path to Tile" set to "Shift + Click", it will automatically show the path preview on "Shift."
• Added an option to disable the quit confirmation in cases where save data would not be lost.
• Added a dedicated, toggleable option for "Disable Modifier Unlock Requirements" that is not locked behind Developer Mode, so players that don't want content locked behind milestones don't have to use a developer option mark them all as completed.
• Reworked trapdoor spider AI. They are no longer hidden by default, instead choosing locations to hide in. They no longer move while hidden, and will sometimes come out of hiding to go somewhere else.
• Spawned creatures from items will now have some despawn protection. (Thanks DragonOvLeaves!)
• Drawn maps are no longer stocked on merchants. (Thanks Dewred!)
• The Doctor milestone modifier has been reworked into something a bit more interesting.
• The Doctor milestone has been reworked to now be a discovery milestone and require discovering all possible cures. Its information is displayed in status tooltips.
• You can now disable the game playing audio in the background. (Thanks Kowalth!)
• The light color from cave entrances is now matched the biome's fog color.
• Lava is now lit with a darker shade of orange/red.
• Random creature movement has been reworked to feel less random and more like creatures deciding to move to specific places.
• The "Grab All" button has been changed to a "Move All" button on all dialogs, transferring to the current quick-move target.
• Civilization score is now done per zone in addition to the whole island, impacting the creature spawning of individual areas in the island.
• The various "Drop on Action" gameplay settings now support the "Drop into Containers" option.
• "Reference links" in the game's text, such as the hoverable links to items, creatures, doodads, skills, etc, now display a new "help" cursor to indicate that they are clickable for more information.
• Tooltip headers have been redesigned to improve consistency and user experience between them.
• All previous mechanics involving reputation (such as claw worm spawning, treasure chest creature difficulty, creature spawning in general) are now based on the zone's tier you are in.
• Stat gain messages now display the skill that caused them to raise.
• When a creature is regenerating or healing from a damage type and they are already at maximum health, it will now show a +0 (instead of -0).
• Reimplemented the "Uses:" list for item tooltips, reducing noise and improving visual consistency.
• Individual stats are now discovered for new players as they progress through the game.
• The "Range" and "Attack" that is specified in tooltips for weapons/tools will now update dynamically based on skill.
• Dismantling hide now uses the "Leatherworking" skill instead of "Tailoring".
• "Leather Hide" is now just "Hide" and "Tanned Leather" is now just "Leather".
• Tweaked and made consistent the color of bone items.
• Multiplayer "Error code 2" now reveals the issue and potential fix for user and/or server admin.
• The snow scarecrow will now leave behind non-meltable items when melted.
• Added a "Developer Mode" option for Steam Deck users to toggle fullscreen mode in the event they are playing in desktop mode. (Thanks Geschrieben!)
• Fishing a tile that cannot support any fish or items will now say so (instead of saying overfished).
• Added a visual for "over-fished" tiles.
• Doodads used in crafts can now receive the "Aptitude" magical property.
• You can now see the stack of tiles when inspecting them.
• Mud is now spawned around swamps and will be located under swamp tiles when dug.
• Trapdoor spiders and claw worms now produce holes when revealed or spawned.
• Deep holes will allow water to be routed 100% of the time.
• Protection now persists through building and picking up items, for example building a sailboat, riding it, then picking it back up.
• Discovering an item of a new quality now displays a celebratory message.
• Items of undiscovered qualities on the ground now appear as the closest discovered quality instead of a "?"
• When tiles are referenced in messages/tooltips, they will now show their quality, magical status, renamed names and more.
• The "Replay" button will now reset turn modes and multiplayer options.
• You can now see how many times you've tamed or petted a tamed creature.
• Added tooltips for all buttons on the action bar.
• Menu sections are now highlighted when scrolled to via a section button.
• Players will no longer be woken up from rest/sleep if the player around them can't actually get to them.
• Swapping positions with creatures no longer causes an extra delay.
• Tamed creatures now move around less when near the player/not busy with another task.
• Petting will now also increase the creature's maximum health (to a much lesser extent than re-taming/offering).
• Reduced the chance of merchants saying they had new stock after they already equipped or consumed it.
• Creatures will now keep a total of how many pets they have received which will impact (in addition to times tamed) command unlocks, taming chances, and more.
• Added a new "leaves" group which goats will now accept.
• "Drop All" and "Move All" action slot actions now use what is filtered in the player's inventory.
• Move/drop all binds and actions no longer moves/drops equipped items.
• Players with high taming skills can see the exact turn count when creatures untame.
• The same item(s) can be traded back and forth several times between a merchant and a player at a cost penalty.
• Organic tiles will now always provide static resources when dug to better conform with doodads/plant resources. (Thanks DanekJovax!)
• Protected items that can't be used in crafting and dismantling will no longer be counted in the crafting/dismantle tooltip. (Thanks Feral Grumpicorn!)
• Multiple random items sourced from the same milestone modifier or challenge modifier into the same container are no longer duplicates.
• Some items are now excluded for random item milestone modifiers.
• Added a "Days" or "Nights" counter to the ferocity tooltip/inspection.
• The message log now supports infinite scroll, loading additional messages as necessary.
• The message log no longer forcibly keeps you at the latest message if you're trying to look at earlier messages. Scrolling back down to the latest message locks the scroll there again.
• The message log has been reimplemented for performance.
• The "worth" magical property now has a greater range of values possible.
• Magical doodads and bookcases that grant skill bonuses are now shown in the skill tooltips. (Thanks DanekJovax!)
• The "Hide Equipped Headgear" option now hides your equipped headgear for other players too (only if PVP is disabled.)
• You can now cage untamed creatures which uses the trapping skill and the creature's difficulty as a chance modifier.
• Cages now have different action tiers based on type/quality.
• Creatures now have an innate "worth" when caged to be used for trading and other purposes.
• There is now a chance for looted bags/backpacks to contain some items.
• "Swords" are now referred to as "short swords".
• Damage notifier icons are now shown on heavily damaged items when thrown or fired on the tile instead of above the player.
• Void now displays as a separate unique graphic in maps.
• Health vignetting no longer shows in screenshot mode.
• Being hit additional times while delayed no longer increases your delay further.
• Added a message for when pouring water on a creature/player had no effect.
• When an item with a colored border (ie, by quality or by it nearly being destroyed or decayed) is highlighted, the border now is now a brighter version of the normal color. (Thanks muzzy!)
• There are now actions for moving the contents of containers (in both doodad & item form) between containers and to your inventory.
• Resting or sleeping will no longer reset hunger/thirst timers so they immediately tick down after one turn while resting/sleeping.
• Gathering no longer automatically picks up items.
• Updated "A Powdery Catalog" book. (Thanks Feral Grumpicorn!)
• "Gather With Hands" now has a description.
• To help the user experience of working through a quest line, "Next Quest: " buttons are are now pinned to messages, ensuring that the player views the quest text as their pinned quest requirements update.
• "Enable Smooth Zooming" is now disabled when "Disable Movement Animations" is enabled.
• Piles of rocks now use the "mine" action instead of "chop" as their tool-based gather action.
• Container dialogs are no longer closed and reopened when changing state, such as when picking up a chest, or boarding/dismounting vehicles. The sort & sort direction now also persist between the states.
• The optional smooth zoom animation is now curved, starting fast and slowing down near the end, to make it feel better to use.
• Doodads that will be destroyed on pick-up will now warn you. (Thanks riftborn!)
• Picking up any vehicle will now only damage them by 1 instead of their damage multiplier.
• You can now sort skills by "recent".
• The milestones dialog now displays milestone icons & can be resized to display multiple columns.
• Added particle effects to crafting/dismantle/disassemble actions with colors based on the item.
• Dripstones and stills now show a purification counter in their tooltip.
• Dripstones and stills now have variable turns taken for desalination based on type.
• "Animal Glue" is now "Bone Glue" and will only require bones instead of bones and offal.
• The "Keep Sort Active" option has been replaced with simply persisting the selected sort in containers. When manually reordering items, the sort changes to display "Custom" instead of a sort, as no sort is active anymore.
• Efficacy, success, quality chances and percentages are no longer shown when not meeting the requirements (as they were not accurate).
• Action slots no longer automatically switch to "best item" until you attempt to use the slot a second time. (Thanks muzzy!)
• Some milestones are now hidden entirely until you complete previous milestones, to make the milestones dialog a bit less overwhelming. (IE Survivor reveals Weathered reveals Seasoned.)
• Advancing island turns is now nearly instant at the cost of accuracy.
• Options for the action bar are now accessible via a new button alongside the + and - buttons.
• Improved the performance of displaying non-craftable items, and of dimming out irrelevant items in containers when one or more are highlighted.
• Improved performance of tooltips.
• Orb of Influence has been renamed to "Cracked Orb" to be used as a new magical component for unlocking the "alter" action.
• The "active container" highlight is now a tab on the side of containers. You can click the tab to manually set the active container instead of using the container the game thinks is best.
• The "open container" action now makes the container active if it's already open.
• Grabbing or clicking on an item from a container no longer makes the container active, allowing you to use the item "quick-move" feature between containers.
• Fires will now be more visible on tiles that contain items. (Thanks DerSimon!)
• "Copal" has been removed and replaced with "Hide Glue" with similar uses/efficacy.
• Changed some default action binds away from WASD keys, for example, Dismantle and Disassemble which caused many accidental actions.
• You can now use the mouse to organize all items of a type or quality within a single container.
• Doodads that block line of sight will now illuminate their surrounding tiles properly when on fire. (Thanks muzzy!)
• When building or picking up containers, the container dialog now stays opened.
• The skills and milestones dialogs now save their sort options when reloading the game. (Thanks 柯箴之!)
• NPCs will now prefer to attack their attacker instead of the nearest player.
• Killing creatures via traps, tamed creatures, or fire now provides the correct loot quality bonuses. (Thanks Art Shrival!)
• The "days" shown on server details now are a cumulative total and average respectively across all islands.
• Improved support for slow multiplayer connections.
• NPCs can no longer spawn within line of sight to a player.
• "Dig With Hands" is no longer available on piles of rocks or other doodads. (Thanks muzzy!)
• Changed the "Rest" action to auto-use only when you have the "tired" status effect.
• Trampling fire now produces messages for partial/failure events.
• Equipment slots and action slots can now be inspected with the Inspect dialog.
• Puddles now provide audio/visual cues when stepped on.
• The islands dialog now displays waves as decorations between the islands.
• Updated the appearance of the weight tooltip.
• Equipped lit torches now provide heat.
• You will now receive a warning when overwatering small plants. (Thanks Zeτα!)
• Holding alt while slotting an item or action in the action bar now slots it with auto-use enabled.
• Container weight is now revalidated on reload (for save compatibility). (Thanks Veeyu!)
• NPCs will now attempt to move off of dangerous tiles.
• The "dangerous" creature tier has been renamed to "vicious" to differentiate it from the "danger level" mechanic.
• You can now sort milestones by "recent".
• Puddles now decay faster if walked on, but last a bit longer by default.
• The doodad version of "skill" magical properties will now have an "encircling" affix.
• Action slots containing an item now highlight when the mouse is over the item in your inventory.
• You can now navigate backward and forward through your Inspect dialog inspection history.
• Useful item hover binds are now described in the inventory management help article.
• Your carry & max weight now display in your inventory dialog with a tooltip.
• Updated some old references in the help articles.
• You can now click on most tooltip links to open that tooltip in the Inspect dialog, rather than needing to press shift+right click in all cases.
• New items were added to the challenge mode's "get item" quests.

Balance

• Smoothed out the range in which aberrant creature defense scales with player skills.
• Old educational scrolls now have the potential to provide more skill.
• Ranged items now have an accuracy stat that determines the likelihood of hitting the intended target.
• Tactics now ramps up your attack accuracy a bit slower.
• Ranged action skills (throwing, marksmanship, and fishing) are now also used to improve the accuracy of the action.
• Increased gem spawn rate and island maximums.
• Golems are now exponentially more formidable based on type.
• You can no longer pick up vehicles with items in them - this functionality is reserved for containers only.
• Creature loot, creature resource quality, and treasure chest items have been increased per island distance, meaning you have to travel less far out to maximize rewards.
• Increased slime splitting chances in the case where the slime was over its normal maximum health (more slime factory potential).
• Using cages now costs durability. (Thanks riftborn!)
• There is now a limit on how deep you can dig per tile and deep holes will block most movement and store more items when dropped.
• There is now a tile stacking limit using the "Set Down" action.
• Tamed creatures will now have a higher chance of having "pity" points of damage.
• Creature versus creature fights will now have increased damage (reducing the chance of seeing full-zero damage fights).
• Reduced the amount of empty tiles needed to produce a cave entrance so they aren't as rare to dig.
• Reduced the quality durability bonus of mastercrafted items slightly.
• Vehicles can no longer be used as a container when inside your inventory.
• "Pacifier" and "Friendly" milestone modifiers now prefer land to spawn creatures on more than before.
• Building, picking up doodads, and placing tiles no longer reduces stamina based on the "Mining" skill.
• Slither suckers will now sometimes refuse to be unequipped.
• Challenge modifiers that apply permanent status effects can now appear alongside more other challenge modifiers due to their effects being weakened in challenge mode.
• Arrowheads now have set durability (based on material) and can be repaired.
• Offering items to already tamed creatures will now also increase their max health (previously, they needed to completely untame for this to happen).
• Reduced the amount of food/water merchants will use, allowing them to keep more of their new/old stock.
• Chickens now accept a larger variety of items.
• Crafts that create puddle byproducts will no longer create enough puddles to create water tiles. (Thanks warriorsforever482!)
• Reduced the weight of limestone and limestone powder.
• Skeletons no longer attack immediately after animating.
• Increased the quality of items merchants stock.
• Hostile creatures will only attack tamed creatures when their owner is nearby. (Thanks warriorsforever482!)
• Removed the concept of "ingots" and replaced it with a "smelted" version of ore, reducing amount of consumed materials needed to do metalworking.
• Merchant and shipper spawning rules have been reworked so that the chance of additional NPCs is decreased for each additional NPC of that type already on the island. Additional flooring tiles also no longer increases the chance of them spawning besides what civilization score they provide. (Thanks Nameless!)
• Tin armor no longer has vulnerability to cold damage.
• Invisible and mystery milestones will now display their name/description/progress after reaching 50% completion.
• Increased cold and blunt vulnerability on bronze armor.
• Decreased the maximum amount of hours you can sleep for.
• Increased the difficulty of crafts advanced through master slightly, making efficacy/skill more useful at higher levels.
• The "Alter" action no longer consumes the item, but instead uses its durability as a "charge".
• You can no longer jump while swimming.
• Initial skill(s) now start at a much higher value including all milestone modifiers that affect starting skills.
• Merchants no longer stock magical essence. (Thanks Veeyu!)
• Reduced maximum durability bonuses for qualities and reinforcing slightly.
• Tongs are now required for any blacksmithing craft or disassembly that requires fire.
• Tin items no longer require a sand cast flask when disassembling them.
• Dripstones will now take longer to desalinate in general.
• You can no longer disassemble dripstones and they now have a reduced weight when crafted.
• Increased the default rarity of non-normal quality items and magical properties slightly, but increased the bonuses provided through action tiers to get quality items.
• Skeletons will now fall back into remains after killing a player.
• The chance of receiving a mastercrafted item now scales based on skill as well as the previous random chance and efficacy percentage with more weight being placed on skill/efficacy rather than pure randomness with higher caps on each.
• Mudskippers now accept more raw fish types and forms.
• Shippers now have a bit more offensive capabilities.
• Aberrant fish no longer can move under the player.
• Creatures have reduced hostility towards shippers that are currently on a job.
• Skeleton attack damage has been decreased.
• Attacking your tamed creatures now decreases their happiness further.
• Decreased the skill check for tilling as well as increased the chance at gaining skill when failing.
• Reduced chances of hardened coils spawning on lava.
• Increased shark's attack and health values.
• Increased the minimum amount of turns to sleep/rest.
• The crafter milestone modifier now quadruples item durability.
• Scarecrows will now disable creature spawning in their radius (instead of just a chance).
• Some milestone modifiers no longer give additional items when respawning as a new character in a multiplayer server with "Hardcore Respawns" enabled. (Thanks Kowalth!)
• Reduced default range for all ranged weapons/tools.
• The default travel distance for thrown items or ranged weapons is the "range" property in addition to a skill bonus instead of any value in between 1 and the range/skill.
• Creatures in the coastal (starting island) caves now deal less damage.
We hit the Steam post limit! See the full changelog here: https://www.unlok.ca/wayward/development-branch-update-part-2/