Early Access Update 9 - The Ghost of Greywall
Greetings adventurers!
Today we're excited to bring into the game its single biggest content installation so far - the Dungeons of Greywall! All in all, the windy corridors of this new dungeon span an area larger than Haywind City and come packed with new enemies to fight, new crafting to unlock and ultimately new abilities to learn. There's also a hefty amount of new written content that comes in the form of the single largest quest anywhere in the game, which will guide your journey through the dungeons.
The dungeon's level design features a new set of assets we created to achieve a more unique look that also sets the area apart from other regions in the game. Combined with an ambitiously scoped quest, getting this update together really did take a lot of effort on our part and we're a little delayed from when we hoped to deliver it. But hopefully our efforts also show in the gaming experience the new content delivers.
This time we won't type out detailed patch notes due to the amount and focus on new material, but we will showcase the new content in a devblog format.
Starting location
Quest length
The quest to investigate the Ghost of Greywall is a continuation to the quest called Echoes of Suffering we introduced in a previous update and cannot be started without completing that quest first (you can pick it up in the Ratcliffe mining village). Once Echoes of Suffering is completed, you'll be prompted to visit the priest residing at Haywind's River Shrine to discuss your experiences.
A conversation with the priest will send you on your way to investigate an undead corruption gripping the halls of Greywall - a haunted underground prison.
Once you've wrestled your way into the dungeon, you'll find it defended by a wide variety of undead monsters. In order to uncover the truth about Greywall's curse and to vanquish The Ghost of Greywall, you'll have to fight your way into the deepest, darkest depths of the dungeon...
[h2]Fight your way through hordes of undead guarding the prison...[/h2]
We've added a wide variety of new enemies to guard the dungeons, dealing every variety of damage against you both up close and from range. Remember to inspect your enemies, if some of them prove particularly punishing to fight. Chances are they're highly resistant to your choice of attacks, or you're not well defended against theirs. Whatever damage you do take, there are always healing spells, food and potions to pick you up.
This update we've also upgraded the inspect option with a way for us to include descriptions of the special abilities an enemy might have, as well as potential tips for how to defeat them.
[h2]Craft powerful new items...[/h2]
New enemies also come with new things to loot, a lot of which can be crafted into more powerful items than the game previously had available. We've added new craftables almost across the board to accommodate some of the higher ranges of crafting skill levels, but the materials you'll have to loot within the walls of Greywall itself. Not quite all the items we were planning made it in (for example a new bow), but we'll add those afterward.
Speaking of crafting, Greywall's main quest is accompanied by two simpler sidequests, which you'll encounter naturally as you progress along. These are crafting related quests, where one will encourage you to reforge the mighty platearmor of a fallen champion of undead slaying. Reforging such a powerful armor sure ought to feel like an accomplishment, but succeeding in crafting exceptional variants of that armor is on a whole other level...
Oh, and don't forget to unlock your new player house as you roam in search of crafting materials down in the dungeons!
[h2]Silvermirror Ampoules[/h2]
The other crafting sidequest you'll run into, 'Garden of the Witches', happens in the Silvermirror swamps. An alchemist lady in the smuggler village will teach you how to craft ampoules, small potions that grant you entirely overpowered levels of protection against incoming attacks. But their effects only last for a few seconds, so time them well.
Ampoule crafting has brought with it a whole new set of swamp plants required as ingredients, and small modifications to the terrain have been made here and there, which should vastly improve the experience of pathing and exploring in the swamp area. You'll also notice the swamp village houses have been reworked using more appropriate and far less resource intensive assets.
[h2]Action bar and other changes[/h2]
A lot of unlockable abilities, spells and new consumables have crept into the game since the early days, which has been desperately calling for us to increase the capacity of the action bar, and in this update we have done so. You'll now find +/- buttons next to the action bar to add or remove space to your liking.
Additionally we've fixed some bugs and broken things in a few previous quests causing issues, as per player feedback (which continues to be invaluable to us by the way, thanks once again), and a most elusive and mysterious bug causing special items (primarily the Soulfire Crystal and Mistywood Talisman) to disappear from inventory at seemingly random - it should now also be very much resolved.
[h2]What's coming next?[/h2]
Though creating Greywall has been a really good exercise for us in terms of learning to create more immersive questing experiences, we likely won't be developing a similarly scoped body of questing content any time soon - certainly not before we officially bring the game out of early access.
This doesn't mean we won't develop more quests - we definitely will - but we're shifting our focus more on skill progression next, as well as the Thornhill Trainers players have been asking about since we released in early access.
We're also just about ready to address long standing technical issues in the game. When we first released early access, we announced we'd start working on a reworked pathing system to get rid of those pesky 'getting stuck' problems we keep getting reports about. That pathing rework is nearing completion and we'll hopefully soon be ready to implement it into the game.
On the other hand we're aware there's a lot of annoying cpu stuttering sometimes while playing the game and those become especially prevalent near the big cities, particularly Haywind. A large cause of that is the game actually loading the houses themselves, so we're planning to just rework almost all of the housing using our tailor made house assets, in the same manner as we now replaced the housing at swamp village.
The work on an achievement system also continues. However, as we previously announced, we decided to postpone implementing that into the live game until the official release update - it makes a lot more sense that way as we're constantly in the process of adding achievement-worthy content into the game still.
In terms of expanding the map, for the release update our plans include an ogre infested mountain zone... but we'll talk more about that as its time comes near.
In the meantime, we sincerely hope to see you enjoying the Dungeons of Greywall and let us know what you think of it, perhaps what you think it's missing and what improvements could be made. Feedback is best shared to us on our Discord, where we do read all your feedback even when we might not always be super quick to respond to it.
With that said, it's time to wish you all happy gaming!
Regards,
Pura
Today we're excited to bring into the game its single biggest content installation so far - the Dungeons of Greywall! All in all, the windy corridors of this new dungeon span an area larger than Haywind City and come packed with new enemies to fight, new crafting to unlock and ultimately new abilities to learn. There's also a hefty amount of new written content that comes in the form of the single largest quest anywhere in the game, which will guide your journey through the dungeons.
The dungeon's level design features a new set of assets we created to achieve a more unique look that also sets the area apart from other regions in the game. Combined with an ambitiously scoped quest, getting this update together really did take a lot of effort on our part and we're a little delayed from when we hoped to deliver it. But hopefully our efforts also show in the gaming experience the new content delivers.
This time we won't type out detailed patch notes due to the amount and focus on new material, but we will showcase the new content in a devblog format.
The Ghost of Greywall
Starting locationRiver Shrine, Haywind.
Quest lengthEpic
The quest to investigate the Ghost of Greywall is a continuation to the quest called Echoes of Suffering we introduced in a previous update and cannot be started without completing that quest first (you can pick it up in the Ratcliffe mining village). Once Echoes of Suffering is completed, you'll be prompted to visit the priest residing at Haywind's River Shrine to discuss your experiences.
A conversation with the priest will send you on your way to investigate an undead corruption gripping the halls of Greywall - a haunted underground prison.
Once you've wrestled your way into the dungeon, you'll find it defended by a wide variety of undead monsters. In order to uncover the truth about Greywall's curse and to vanquish The Ghost of Greywall, you'll have to fight your way into the deepest, darkest depths of the dungeon...
[h2]Fight your way through hordes of undead guarding the prison...[/h2]
We've added a wide variety of new enemies to guard the dungeons, dealing every variety of damage against you both up close and from range. Remember to inspect your enemies, if some of them prove particularly punishing to fight. Chances are they're highly resistant to your choice of attacks, or you're not well defended against theirs. Whatever damage you do take, there are always healing spells, food and potions to pick you up.
This update we've also upgraded the inspect option with a way for us to include descriptions of the special abilities an enemy might have, as well as potential tips for how to defeat them.
[h2]Craft powerful new items...[/h2]
New enemies also come with new things to loot, a lot of which can be crafted into more powerful items than the game previously had available. We've added new craftables almost across the board to accommodate some of the higher ranges of crafting skill levels, but the materials you'll have to loot within the walls of Greywall itself. Not quite all the items we were planning made it in (for example a new bow), but we'll add those afterward.
Speaking of crafting, Greywall's main quest is accompanied by two simpler sidequests, which you'll encounter naturally as you progress along. These are crafting related quests, where one will encourage you to reforge the mighty platearmor of a fallen champion of undead slaying. Reforging such a powerful armor sure ought to feel like an accomplishment, but succeeding in crafting exceptional variants of that armor is on a whole other level...
Oh, and don't forget to unlock your new player house as you roam in search of crafting materials down in the dungeons!
[h2]Silvermirror Ampoules[/h2]
The other crafting sidequest you'll run into, 'Garden of the Witches', happens in the Silvermirror swamps. An alchemist lady in the smuggler village will teach you how to craft ampoules, small potions that grant you entirely overpowered levels of protection against incoming attacks. But their effects only last for a few seconds, so time them well.
Ampoule crafting has brought with it a whole new set of swamp plants required as ingredients, and small modifications to the terrain have been made here and there, which should vastly improve the experience of pathing and exploring in the swamp area. You'll also notice the swamp village houses have been reworked using more appropriate and far less resource intensive assets.
[h2]Action bar and other changes[/h2]
A lot of unlockable abilities, spells and new consumables have crept into the game since the early days, which has been desperately calling for us to increase the capacity of the action bar, and in this update we have done so. You'll now find +/- buttons next to the action bar to add or remove space to your liking.
Additionally we've fixed some bugs and broken things in a few previous quests causing issues, as per player feedback (which continues to be invaluable to us by the way, thanks once again), and a most elusive and mysterious bug causing special items (primarily the Soulfire Crystal and Mistywood Talisman) to disappear from inventory at seemingly random - it should now also be very much resolved.
[h2]What's coming next?[/h2]
Though creating Greywall has been a really good exercise for us in terms of learning to create more immersive questing experiences, we likely won't be developing a similarly scoped body of questing content any time soon - certainly not before we officially bring the game out of early access.
This doesn't mean we won't develop more quests - we definitely will - but we're shifting our focus more on skill progression next, as well as the Thornhill Trainers players have been asking about since we released in early access.
We're also just about ready to address long standing technical issues in the game. When we first released early access, we announced we'd start working on a reworked pathing system to get rid of those pesky 'getting stuck' problems we keep getting reports about. That pathing rework is nearing completion and we'll hopefully soon be ready to implement it into the game.
On the other hand we're aware there's a lot of annoying cpu stuttering sometimes while playing the game and those become especially prevalent near the big cities, particularly Haywind. A large cause of that is the game actually loading the houses themselves, so we're planning to just rework almost all of the housing using our tailor made house assets, in the same manner as we now replaced the housing at swamp village.
The work on an achievement system also continues. However, as we previously announced, we decided to postpone implementing that into the live game until the official release update - it makes a lot more sense that way as we're constantly in the process of adding achievement-worthy content into the game still.
In terms of expanding the map, for the release update our plans include an ogre infested mountain zone... but we'll talk more about that as its time comes near.
In the meantime, we sincerely hope to see you enjoying the Dungeons of Greywall and let us know what you think of it, perhaps what you think it's missing and what improvements could be made. Feedback is best shared to us on our Discord, where we do read all your feedback even when we might not always be super quick to respond to it.
With that said, it's time to wish you all happy gaming!
Regards,
Pura
