Work never stops at Crema, so one more week we're here with a new patch for the Alpha!
Aguamarina Caves
The Aguamarina Caves are a complex of caverns that run deep under the Thalassian Cliffs. The better-known entrance is through the Sillaro River, but they're so huge they even cross the whole cliffs and connect the river to the upper area of the Indigo lake.
The Caves have five different floors and they include a new gameplay feature: the crystal areas. We don't want to spoil too much, so you'll need to go ahead and discover it by yourself. The crystal areas affect how the player moves through the terrain and they will be very present along the whole Archipelago.
Right now the Caves are a totally optional area to explore and they don't have too much in terms of interesting new Temtem or items. In the future, we plan to re-populate them with some more Temtem so they will become the first area in the game where you will be able to obtain them. They will also hold a special and unique shrine you will be able to reach with the climbing equipment...
House Interiors
One of the more prominent features missing from the current Alpha is the option to go inside the houses currently placed on Deniz. This ends today!
With this patch, you will be able to visit the houses and talk with the people inside them. Houses are also usually something optional, but they add so much richness to the lore and the overall feeling of the game we wanted to include them as soon as possible.
You'll notice some of the houses are still closed. These houses are "special" places that will open in future updates since they are related to some unavailable features right now. We added an Alpha sign to them so you will know where you can enter or not.
By the way, almost everything you see in the NPC houses will also be available to player housing. We're doing everything as flexible as we can so everything works for the player's houses too.
And more fixes, improvements and new stuff
As usual, there's a lot of things on this patch. We've made a huge number of improvements and fixes including some important ones like improving the initial cinematic flow or making sure the AI uses the rest option when needed in battles. We also managed to find one of the most endearing bugs in the Alpha which caused the NPC tamers to forget about you and ask for a fight constantly.
We also included some new stuff: 4 new Luma species, 9 new Techniques including a new Status Effect, death voices for every Temtem, new sounds here and there... You can read the full patch notes in our forum.
Omninesia and more
As you already know we're still working on the next huge content patch for the Alpha, which will include a whole new Island, new Temtem and several new features. We don't have a fixed date for that content yet, so we will be keeping you posted in the coming weeks.
Also, we're working on having a pre-order option for users who want to buy the game and get instant access to the Alpha. Although it looks like something easy, having a pre-order store implicates a lot of stuff under the roof and we want to make everything right as usual. Please, bear with us while we work on having everything ready!