Hello once more, Tamers, and welcome to the last day of the very exciting Golden Week, a week where we spoil content and changes coming to version 1.0 or close to it! We close the week on a sweet note, with a couple of changes made to improve your shopping activities, rewards finally coming to Kudos, and a new Breeder route, here to delight Water enthusiasts.
No disclaimer today, either, so let's dig in!
Pansuns, or the lack thereof, and current activities
With the changes done in 0.9, and the inclusion of the Auction House and the Dojo Park, we believe that the economy for Pansuns is in an adequate place currently.
The inclusion of extra Feathers as a reward for each activity represents a general improvement in rewards for all activities, since you will now get both the RNG rewards, and the Feathers to purchase the non-RNG rewards. This should help mend the biggest issue that was causing dissatisfaction amongst our players. We don’t have plans for any additional changes there.
However, there are some changes coming to other specific areas that we felt needed improvement:
- First, we’re drastically reducing the price of cosmetic and housing items you can get in the regular Boutiques and Furniture Stores around the Archipelago. These items have always been expensive due to a handful of reasons, some of them being: we weren’t entirely sure of how the Pansun economy would develop up until 1.0 so we didn’t want to make such an important part of the game too cheap (it’s always easier to reduce the price instead of increasing it), and also we don’t want players spending too much during the campaign on cosmetic items (and not having enough Pansuns to purchase more needed items like Balms or Temcards). Now, after finally being able to grasp the whole Pansun economy and after reading a lot of feedback, we realized players don’t care about spending their money if they are going to look prettier. We decided to make this change.
- We’re also introducing more cosmetics and housing items as part of the current loot pools. We’re still reserving most of them for the Tamer’s Paradise shops and some for the future Cosmetic Pass, but we managed to include some more variety in the current pool.
- FreeTem! is also getting some changes. Our idea behind FreeTem! was never for it to become an activity on its own, but to exist as a bonus for people already choosing the path of capturing new Tems (mainly breeders). However, it has never been perceived as such. We are going to keep it, but we are basically cutting by half the time that is needed to receive item rewards. Currently, the cap for the last item is ~400-450 releases, and we’re turning the cap into ~200 and adjusting the rest accordingly. We are not increasing the Pansuns rewards to accommodate this change, but we are now adding Feathers as a reward for releases to compensate.
- Last but not least, we’re finally adding the rewards for completing Kudos. Most of the Kudos will grant Feathers and that’s why we weren’t able to grant rewards before. Some of them will also grant other more exclusive rewards like new cosmetics, housing items, or titles.
The last Breeder Route
If you're new here, first of all, hi, welcome! Breeders were a Backer tier in our Kickstarter whose perks included designing one tem and one route each. We've slowly but surely been covering the process behind the creation of the Tems and routes, and today's the turn of Tutorxic's, the Breeder behind Pupoise and Loatle, route, the Sea-Queen's Aquarium. This new route will be added to the game with version 1.0!
Tutorxic's initial idea was to have an underwater tunnel, the sort you usually see in aquariums, with fish swimming over your head. One of the things he requested was to have the camera place itself behind the players, so that the tunnel's depth could be properly appreciated. We appraised the idea, but due to technical restrictions we had to throw away the original iteration of the tunnel, and explore other possibilities. Because the camera cannot be shifted in Temtem, the tunnel made little sense because you'd never see the upper part of it.
Tutorxic even went as far as to send us another sketch for a different route idea, but eventually, and after thinking it thoroughly, we found a way to make the tunnel work that was complacent with the game's limitations. The idea was that, instead of a round tunnel, we'd have one main pathway surrounded by gigantic tanks of water instead of walls. We also came up with the idea of adding an upper floor made of walkways, so you'd get two playable areas: one where the water surrounds you, like in an aquarium, and another one where water is below you, as if a fishing area. We, of course, wanted to have Tutorxic's approval, so we created an stylized sketch that captured our idea. Here it is:
Tutorxic really liked the idea, so we moved further with it. Since he liked our take a lot, we barely had to make adjustments to it and could just move forward with the initial design.
We chose Deniz as the site for the route because, although it's an island full of content already, it matched the aquarium theme to a T, and we liked the idea of having the new route be a secondary zone in Deniz. We decided to have it be it nestled between the mountains on the northeast of Deniz, connecting the route with the Sillaro river through some cabins.
Gameplay-wise, the route was conceived as something completely optional, that players could choose to explore once they obtained the Surfboard. To reinforce this idea, all NPC Tamers that battle in this route are also entirely optional: they will only battle you if you interact with them and ask them to battle. My, how the tables have turned.
Lore-wise this made sense because we could picture all these NPC Tamers as fishing folk who are trying to reel something in, and are completely oblivious to you, eyes on that line. Like you might've guessed from this, we decided to include all Water-type Temtem species underwater in the aquarium, thus creating a wild area that is unique in the whole game, accessible only after you obtain the Fishing Rod.
That's it on the new Breeder route! Say, how does a romantic date in the Sea-Queen Aquarium sound, Tamers?🐟
That’s all for now, Tamers.
That’s a wrap on the general idea of 1.0 content! We are a bit out of our depth with sharing things so openly so early on, but we believe all these changes are really relevant to the final outlook of the game, and that it really shows the effect your constant stream of feedback during the Early Access have had on the game, as well as our compromise to listen to it. We hope these posts might have helped assuage worries, sparked some excitement, and maybe even rekindled lost hypes. Although there are still a lot of details and specifics to share, we hope you now have a clear understanding of what this huge patch should contain and what to expect from it.
We’re very eager to see you around Tamer’s Paradise on September 6th!
Let's close off this wonderful week by flexing a first look at what the world of Temtem might look like come version 1.0.
Talk to you soon <3
