Hello everyone!
This is the final devlog dedicated to the upcoming “Rags to Riches” update, the largest one in Stoneshard’s history. So today, as promised, we’re happy to announce its release date - December 16th!
Plan your winter holidays accordingly - we almost can’t wait to show you the results of our work. But for now, this is a perfect moment to review the progress we’ve made over the past year and go through every addition to the game that will be waiting for you on December 16th. Let’s get started!
CARAVAN
The Caravan is the update’s most important system that will massively impact your approach to traveling and map exploration. With the Caravan, you’ll be able to cross large distances swiftly and comfortably, as well as set up a personal camp upon arrival - any empty map tile will do, be it next to a dungeon, a settlement, or a Point of Interest.
It’s important to remember that the Caravan doesn’t function as an on-demand fast travel button - you’ll need to have a stockpile of Fodder for the road, and the horses will require at least some rest after every journey.
CARAVAN UPGRADES
Upgrades are designed to further enhance the quality of Caravan travels and add utility to your camp. In Rags to Riches, there’ll be a total of 25 upgrades, starting with basic bonuses to the Caravan’s travel distance and speed, all the way to a personal Shrine and the ability to gain Reputation for killing enemies around settlements.
As always, a reminder: Caravan Upgrades are NOT skills and therefore require special items rather than Ability Points.
Related Devlogs: I, II, III, IV
FOLLOWERS
With the help of Verren, you’ll be able to recruit up to 3 Caravan Followers, who will support you out of combat by selling supplies, offering repairs, speeding up your leveling speed, and so on.
Each Caravan Follower is a unique character with their own recruitment quest, unique perks, dialogues, and Caravan events. And the more time they spend with your Character, the higher their Loyalty will be - leading to even more benefits and opportunities.
SETTLEMENT SITUATIONS
Settlement Situations will introduce a tad of unpredictability to your adventures. They exist in the form of village events and temporary NPCs, ranging from groups of Pilgrims and competing Mercenaries to Traveling Fairs and disease outbreaks.
Situations always bring new opportunities or complications, affect the local economy, and are partially dependent on the area’s danger level, which is mostly connected to active dungeons nearby.
DUNGEON REWORK
The Dungeon Generator went through a massive overhaul: narrow corridors and cramped rooms gave way to spacious halls, their visuals properly reflecting each dungeon’s tier and measure of opulence.
Different dungeon types have their own structural quirks: for instance, much of the Crypts loot will be stored in special sealed tombs, while the Catacombs will greet you with double doors and numerous libraries.
DUNGEON MODIFIERS
Modifiers are special effects that can take place in dungeons either randomly or as a consequence of failed contracts. They introduce additional complications that need to be taken into account during your expeditions - such as poisoned air in the Crypts or an ongoing ritual that empowers every Proselyte in the Catacombs.
CONTRACTS REWORK
To keep up with the Dungeons Rework, the Contracts System received a major update as well, boasting a slew of new objectives that don’t boil down to killing a miniboss or looting their treasure chest for a quest item. Naturally, many old contracts were also updated with additional mechanics, conditions, and challenges.
Additionally, the new system is expected to make the world feel more alive: contracts will be on constant rotation, simulating the efforts of other mercenaries, both successes and failures.
There’ll also be changes to the process of taking contracts: you’ll now have an option to inquire about the dungeon’s size and some of its modifiers, receive a hint about the miniboss residing there, and even request an advance or haggle for a better reward.
NEW SETTLEMENT: DENBRIE
Denbrie is the fourth and final settlement of the Grand Magistrate. Hardly any of its inhabitants survived the war: most of the village lies in ruins, and the only thing keeping it garrisoned and not entirely deserted is its active salt industry. Nevertheless, an experienced mercenary can still find a contract or two here - the Magistrate’s forces in the region are in dire need of reinforcements.
OUTSKIRTS
Outskirts are a new location type, situated around villages and the Rotten Willow Tavern. They serve as rest stops of sorts, offering your Mercenary a chance to recover and resupply, as well as opportunities to accept or turn in a contract for alternative rewards (Brynn Reputation or extra gold).
In total, Rags to Riches will feature 10 Outskirts with 60 unique NPCs and dozens of unique dialogues.
REWORKED ECONOMY
The Economy saw significant improvements, such as the addition of price fluctuations, the simulation of price and demand, and the ability to earn gold by purchasing all kinds of trade goods in Outskirts and then selling them somewhere else.
Other than that, there’s a lot of QoL additions - for example, all traders now feature hovers that contain all the important info about their prices, preferences, and other quirks.
GLOBAL MAP CHANGES
Many locations were moved to a new spot on the global map, making your Character’s journey through them more gradual and organic. After completing Odar’s quest in Osbrook, you’ll now be directed straight to Brynn, where you’ll promptly gain access to your Caravan and receive leads towards other settlements from Verren.
All Brynn contracts were moved to the Rotten Willow and Denbrie, with the city itself taking upon the role of a commercial hub, which you’ll be visiting from time to time to purchase new equipment and some Caravan Upgrades.
COOKING
There’s nothing better than a hearty campfire dinner after a day of completing challenging contracts - and now you’ll be able to cook it yourself, choosing from 40 possible recipes. Each dish comes with its own special effects, capable of boosting your Immunity, Sanity, Fatigue Resistance, and even some combat stats. Dishes can also be imbued with various spices, granting them additional bonuses.
CONSUMABLES CRAFTING
The Crafting System will offer you a chance to create certain consumables with ingredients you find in the field - provided you’re familiar with their schematics. In total, Rags to Riches will feature 15 crafting recipes, allowing you to cobble together a wide selection of handy items, from Smoke Bombs to Healing Salves.
NEW MINIBOSSES
The Crypt will become home to 7 new minibosses - Warlocks, Skeletons, and even a Wraith. Each has unique abilities and mechanics that might require clever strategies if you hope to emerge victorious.
NEW ITEMS
You can expect a bunch of new items as well:
- 5 chestpieces
- 1 helmet
- 2 necklaces
- 5 two-handed swords
- 3 two-handed maces
- 8 daggers
- 2 shields
- 6 types of commodity goods
- 15 valuables
- 10 ingredients
- 5 bags - each with its own layout and specialization
REWORKED REPUTATION SYSTEM
We also decided to revisit the Reputation System to introduce a bit more nuance to it - rather than featuring samey, shared perks, every settlement will now have its own set of bonuses, including unique ones. For instance, Denbrie’s “Magistrate’s Frontier” makes the completion of its contracts the fastest way to earn Brynn Reputation.
EQUIPMENT, ENEMIES, AND ABILITIES REBALANCE
In Rags to Riches, we decided to drastically shift our approach to enemy, dungeon, and equipment progression - all of the above will now function based on tiers, from I to V. This change solves several issues: first of all, it allows us to spread the existing content throughout all 30 Character levels while providing a simple and intuitive way to gauge the danger presented by each enemy or dungeon (or quality, in case of equipment). The system will also incorporate many previously underused pieces of gear and make the persistent problem of unobtainable equipment (the availability of which changed back and forth with every patch) a thing of the past.
Obviously, such a system wouldn’t be possible without a complete rebalance of most of the existing content - therefore, all gear, enemies, and some abilities received major stat tweaks. Equipment in particular was affected the most: every weapon and armor type will now have 2-4 distinct subtypes that support different Character builds, taking itemization to a completely new level.
SURVIVAL UPDATE
The “Survival” tree received numerous changes, both in terms of its overall structure and some individual skills. For example, “Butchering”, a skill for harvesting meat from slain animals, will be available to all Characters from the start, while the ability to harvest pelts and rare ingredients is now tied to “Resourcefulness”.
Since the schematic for crafting Bedrolls will also become universally available, “Make a Halt” will function quite differently, allowing to receive “Vigor” from sleeping in camps and Bedrolls and granting a noticeable boost to “Vigor” itself.
OTHER IMPROVEMENTS
Rags to Riches isn’t just about major additions, we made lots of minor changes too:
- Updated the enemy pathfinding algorithm, allowing it to efficiently account for many factors such as active AoE zones, bodies of water, and nearby allies, which made its results much more believable. Enemies will now also use their dashes to chase your Character down, attempt to spread out in open areas, and choose better routes for escape.
- Reworked AI states to make shifts between them more fluid and logical, while also allowing for more flexibility during any future adjustments.
- Reworked the Noise System for extra predictability and transparency: attracting enemies to your location should no longer require you to throw half a dozen bottles against the nearby wall.
- Reworked the dungeons’ Loot System, switching to a much more flexible and speedy algorithm that offers more options when working with containers.
- Reworked the technical aspect of the Save System, optimizing the size of save files and reducing load times when moving between locations.
- Greatly improved the system for resetting the state of locations by introducing a more modular design: dropping an item inside a settlement no longer means that it’ll stay there for months, while previously harvested mushrooms, berries, and other vegetation will now actually regrow after some time.
- Reworked random enemy spawns both in dungeons and on the surface, transitioning them to a system based on a mix of archetypes and premade templates.
- Changed the principle behind enemy spawns in the open world, removing their absolute dependence on your Character’s level: instead, each enemy type will be tied to a corresponding zone on the global map. These zones will grow more dangerous over time, but only to a certain point - for example, III+ tier enemies will never show up in the relatively safe area around Osbrook.
- Optimized the algorithm for generating roads, dungeons, and Points of Interest on the global map.
- Automated the interaction between our dialogue-writing tools and the game’s engine, allowing us to create dialogues with more speed and convenience than before, when every connection between dialogue lines had to be manually added into the game’s code.
- Added 1500+ new dialogue lines.
- Added several new Points of Interest and tasks.
- Added 12 new Steam achievements and changed some of the old ones to make the hunt for them less soul-draining.
- Added many new sound effects.
- Remade and improved many old sprites and some other assets.
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With that out of the way, let’s talk about Stoneshard’s near future. After the release of Rags to Riches, we intend to change our update strategy and switch to a schedule with more frequent patches and less sweeping changes.
Unfortunately, this approach was not applicable during the development of Rags to Riches, where every new and reworked system is a part of the same gameplay loop and relies on everything else to function as intended. The volume of work was truly immense, often leading to unforeseen mid-development realizations that the introduction of a certain feature would require us to rework or add an entirely different mechanic. However, now that the Caravan, the last major system planned for the game, is complete, we can finally switch to modular content updates - we’ll share the specifics after publishing the updated Roadmap.
There’s a certain risk that some currently unstable content will be postponed and added through follow-up hotfixes after the release of Rags to Riches - although we intend to do everything in our power to wrap it all up by the announced date. This mostly affects some of the new contracts, dungeon modifiers, and Follower events. We’ve also been working on a new type of Point of Interest - caves - which we wanted to present as a surprise, but they too might require a bit more time in the oven to iron out issues with their generation algorithms. Still, the groundwork for adding them has already been implemented, so they should be compatible with RtR saves once they arrive.
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That’s all for now. As already mentioned, there’ll be no more devlogs dedicated to Rags to Riches - see you on December 16th!