Happy Friday, friends!
We'll be launching the Windless Woods update September 22nd!
Some things I touched on last week that will be in the update that I have more information for:
Pets (these are cosmetic, not animal companions) Like this cute chicken!
Dedicated Servers (currently using Steam's service for this, but looking into hosting websites for more options). We did a stress test with our dedicated testers and it went really well! We've turned over all the information to the hosting websites we're talking with and will have more information we hope at launch. Steam's service is working, so if the hosting websites take longer, at least there is that option. Feel free to ask any questions and I'll make sure to get answers from someone who knows them better than me!
This week has been a lot of clean up and making sure all the new items are actually able to be purchased/found/rewarded/etc in the game. There are so many items. At my last count, there were over 60 weapons, 10 outfits, 50 furniture items, 15 house and structure plans, 5 alchemy reagents, 4 potions, and let's say 30 plus resources. Not including cooking, farming, quest items, and all the secrets. That's a LOT of stuff. Here's one of the items that has a really cute icon:
Here's a work in progress gauntlet that just started out looking exactly like something else already in the game:
And here's a greataxe that has a matching set of weapons (not final colors):
I won't go into the specifics of everyone as it's been a little of everywhere for everyone. Just getting everything wrapped up and fixing bugs! But speaking of bugs, look at this fun "invisible NPC"
One of our new systems that was created (that we needed a long time ago) is what we call "vanishing NPCs" which is where the NPC vanishes from one spot and appears in another. So when they tell you that they'll meet you somewhere, they won't be in that first spot anymore. There was some fun bugs with it like the above, where the NPC did vanish, but left all their stuff.
Finally, I want to talk about our arachnophobia mode. We had it set up with potions that would last an in-game day, but some weird bugs started appearing. We ended up changing it to an option in the ESC menu so that it will be set for your whole game. Here's what the spiders will look like (one isn't colored, but it'll be the same purple, just without the legs). It applies to the mount as well so no one can join your server and creep you out with their mount.
That's it for this week. The two monthly community play sessions I talked about last week will be on September 10th at 5pm PST (TOMORROW!!!) and September 24th at 11am PST. Details on our discord. Hope to see you all there!
-Janna