The Black Grimoire: Cursebreaker News

Greetings adventurers!

As the year’s coming to a close, we wanted to wish you a happy New Year and take the opportunity to reflect on what we've achieved and what's still to come. 2023 was a big year for us, getting our game out in early access was a great milestone and we’ve been delighted by how many of you enjoyed playing the game and exploring its every corner despite its rough edges – thank you sincerely!

Reflecting back on our initial 2023 roadmap, admittedly a number of points still remain to be addressed and timetables have shifted a lot. The Ghost of Greywall content piece for example was thought to be developed over the summer, and though we pushed its warmup quest in September, we’re in the midst of developing it now.



On the other hand, other priorities outside the roadmap have occasionally risen during development, and from player feedback, and that's okay too. We're still optimistic we'll be able to transition the game out of early access within the first half of 2024 and should that plan change, we'll let you know.

So what new has risen since we begun early access? In our development we've started focusing much more on creating higher quality questing experiences. When we begun early access, high quality questing only really existed while doing the main story. Though we did have plans for some deeper, separate story lines, the reality of side quests was "kill 10 rats" or "bring 10 carrots". We'd like to think every quest (almost) we've introduced since has a bit more than that going for it, and moving forward we'll aim to create the feeling of 'if you're going on a quest, it should feel like going on a quest!' as much as possible.



That’s not to say we aren’t happy to add mundane tasks to the world too, but we’ll be making more of a distinction between “tasks” and “quests”. We're planning to tie the tasks, such as 'please help me with thing X', with the achievement system we've been working on. For example, helping the denizens of a village like Aurfield with their tasks (please help me with my beer shipment, please I need cabbages for my soup...) will contribute towards earning an achievement (Friend of Aurfield), which will also allow you to claim rewards in game, including a special currency that may be spent at achievement content related shops.

Behind the scenes we've also managed to improve our custom tools and processes to help us work more efficiently in many ways with what is ultimately a very small team. Consequently we're better equipped to deal with technical issues / performance in the game. For example we're now planning to slowly rework most houses with new fully in-house (pun intended) produced sets of 3d-models that ought to significantly improve performance around cities and their surroundings and eradicate issues of getting stuck while pathing inside houses.



Now onto the main attraction - if you've made it this far - the subject of our next, imminent game update! We’re currently working on the Greywall Dungeons, a more perilous area than any other on the map thus far. It will be accompanied by a rather meaty quest (one that should really feel like an actual quest), and will culminate in facing off the source of a dark curse that looms over the dungeons – the Ghost of Greywall!

The Ghost of Greywall will be the largest individual quest we've done so far and the dungeon area itself should feel quite nice and large as well. A few small sidequests will also be included, there'll be new loot to grind for and new powerful items and consumables to craft. The final boss in Greywall is going to offer a new challenging fight in a similar vein to the end of the current main quest.



We're aware some of you have expressed frustration with regards to that fight's difficulty, while others enjoy it. Still we want to introduce challenging content into the game. We're also aware the pacing of difficulty in the game isn't great at the moment and it's something we'll be looking to address. But we do also understand how some of you may precisely want to just relax with the game and enjoy not needing to sweat while playing it.



Our current thinking on this issue is that we'll aim to provide a reasonably paced difficulty throughout the game with challenging moments, and afterwards we'll introduce a story mode to accommodate for more casual play.

That wraps up our thoughts and feelings so this year. We’re aiming to push the Greywall update live in January, so stay tuned. For now, on behalf of our team I wish you all a happy New Year! And most importantly, happy gaming!

Regards,
Pura

Happy Halloween, adventures!

We're here to bring you a content update with a bit of seasonal flavor - welcome to the Harvest Festival! To clarify, this is an update bringing permanent new content to the game and not just a seasonal event. We've done our best to theme it according to the season, while having it not come across as too out of place when playing later outside of it.



[h2]Little Grainwater Harvest Festival[/h2]



Previously an empty bit of village preoccupied the area between Haywind, Grainwater and Ratcliffe, where a single odd quest could be found - procuring carrots for a mysterious stranger. It was one of the earliest quests put into the game, basically as practice, and it's safe to say it wasn't incredible exciting nor well received in general feedback.

That quest has for now been removed (who knows, maybe it can still be worked into something at a later date), and the area has been reworked to accommodate a Harvest Festival with new quests and festive games!

New quests introduced in this update are the following:

[h2]Quest: The Great Harvest Melee[/h2]





As the festival's main attraction, Master Matthews has invited brave fighters across the land and beyond to participate in the Great Harvest Melee. Fight against four varied opponents, climb the ranks of the tournament and win great prizes!

[h2]Quest: A Dangerous Brew[/h2]





While others among the festival are engaged in the making of delicious pumpkin juice, a little off to the side a dubious alchemist can be found making an altogether different kind of brew... Melvin Greyr will ask you to procure ingredients for him, which may prove to be a slightly dangerous undertaking. Does the whole situation seem a bit shady? Perhaps, but surely you'll be rewarded for your efforts.





[h2]Quest: Pumpkin Pandemonium[/h2]



The village mayor Albert Forxford is quite proud of the festival he's managed to set up, but he's made one crucial mistake - hiring a somewhat deranged witch to entertain the children with her magic. Not only is her little pet preventing people from collecting the festival pumpkins, the mayor is genuinely worried someone may get hurt by it. He'll appeal to you for help in resolving the situation.




Quality of life feature, you may now facilitate the sale of lots of items in the form of bank notes.
- All items stored at the bank can now be withdrawn in the form of a stackable bank note.
- Click "Withdraw banknotes" in the bank interface to toggle withdrawing items as bank notes on and off.
- Items in the form of bank notes can be sold normally to vendors.





That's it for this time! Below are detailed patch notes for those who may be interested.

Quests and Environment:

• "The Great Harvest Melee"
  
• "A Dangerous Brew"
  
• "Pumpkin Pandemonium"
  
• Removed quest "To Feed the Beast".
  
• Environmental changes; Little Grainwater Harvest Festival.
  
• Environmental changes; Small spider thicket south of Harvest Festival + spider cave.
  

Gameplay:

• Multiple balance changes to the loot dropped by bandits of varying levels in the early parts of the game.
  
• Adjustments to low level skeleton loot, fixed copper round shield having two separate, high drop rates.
  
• Balanced Crafting experience gains, particularly unintentionally high xp gains from willow staff and wand crafting and coins gained from selling those items.
  
• Adjusted treant stats so those slow lumbering creatures now have high resistances against ranged and spell attacks.
  
• Living wood drops from treants at more reasonable rates now.
  
• Added resistances to a number of hostile npcs missing them.
  
• Adjusted Haywind furniture shop items to have unique prices reflecting the quality of the items, increased storage chest prices.
  
• Adjusted item drops/rates for aurfield pirates.
  
• Adjusted early cave troll drop tables to provide early leather drops.
  
• Adjusted unusual acorn droprates, making them a little more unusual and increasing the significance of gaining them from woodcutting.
  
• Adjusted magic item drops from early game ghosts at the beginning crypts and added more spawners to find them.
  
• Rabbits now also drop carrots, because why not.
  
• Added sheep to a great number of locations in the early parts of the game map, where sheep were previously hard to find.
  
• Lowered rewards from fixing Eryk's cart in quest 'Antique Wheels' to a more appropriate level for what the quest required to complete.
  
• Improved tooltip descriptions on 'Elemental Lightning' spell.
  
• Tailoring workbenches can now be found in early game spruce shade areas.
  
• Increased bank size by 10 rows.
  

42 New Items, but notably:

• Jester's Outfit
  
• Jester's Hat
  
• Trairian Fencing Attire
  
• Trairian Rapier
  
• Tabard of the Grey Knight
  
• Knight's Bascinet
  
• Trairian Fencing Hat
  
• The Fearsome Pumpkin Head
  
• Pumpkin Juice
  
• Venomous Blackhair Extract
  
• A Bewitched Pumpkin
  
• The Blade and Bane: A Practical Guide for Poisoning Weapons
  
• Skill Book: Heroic Kick
  
• Skill Book: Fight Dirt with Dirt
  
• Broadsword of a Thornhill Knight
  
• Hydrobor Duellist Wand
  
• Reinforced Pitchfork
  
  Furniture items:
  
• Lifeless Autumn Tree
  
• Blood Basin
  
• Cauldron of Eyeballs
  
• Coffin
  
• Red Curtains
  
• Evil Eye Lantern
  
• Spider Web (4 varieties)
  

New Spells and Abilities:

• Venomous Bladestrike
  
• Heroic Kick
  
• Blinding Sand
  

Skills:

• Provided tailoring options for start of the game; new material dropping from early enemies - coarse linen.
  
• Novice mage robes craftable at tailoring skill 2, requiring 3 coarse linen.
  
• Sheepskin bracers changed name to wolfskin bracers, require 2 wolf pelts to craft instead of sheepskin.
  
• 2nd tier leather armor and bracers now require cowhides instead of sheep skins to craft.
  

Random Npc Interactions:

• Numerous new interactions related to the harvest festival site.
  
• Singing Sparrow Inn, 2. floor interactions.
  

Miscellaneous:

• Items can now be withdrawn in the form of bank notes from bank storage.
  
• Added hostile bushwhackers into forests near ratcliffe.
  
• Gave the large cave troll 'boss' near timberwell a new name and an aggrobark.
  
• Added hostile bushwhackers into forests near ratcliffe.
  
• Added a shovel to fishing trainer shop.
  
• Added potatoes to be found at farmer eryk's previously empty fields.
  

UI:

• New map marker; Little Grainwater
  
• Changed player housing naming schemes to more clearly indicate where they're positioned.
  
• Added buttons to set minimum and maximum values in amount sliders.
  
• Added an option to withdraw a custom amount of items from bank.
  
• Added an option to withdraw all but 1 items from bank.
  
• Added right click options to sell 10 or 20 items.
  
• Horsy rightclick option to send items to bank.
  
• Changed usable item tooltips to reflect the action better, now you can “use” your shovel instead of consuming it.
  

Music:

• Harvest Festival "Whimsical Delight of Delightful Fair"
  
• Harvest tournament "Whimsical Combat of the Harvest Fair"
  

Bugfixes:

• A cinematic sometimes not triggering in the final main quest `Reunion of Fire and Death`, resulting in the quest not completing.
  
• Added right-click go to shop options missing from Haywind Seamstress, leather merchant 'Hunter'
  
• Fixed LOD setting on large pot plant furniture which previously made the plant disappear in plain view
  
• Fixed a hole in the world near timberwell
  
• Fixed Grainwater tavern local cooking recipe demanding higher level trait than advertised
  
• Added hovering quest indicators missing in quests 'Whiskey Pressures' and 'Antique Wheels'
  
• Added reply icons to a few places in main quest dialogue missing them, to improve readability.
  
  
• Monstrous Crustacean Helm missing defence level requirement.
  
• Exceptional weapons missing weapon type (e.g. Blade, Hammer).
  
• Triggering a cinematic in the middle of a teleport spell causing player to turn invisible.
  
• Copper Morningstar attack missing.
  

As usual, feel free to follow us on twitter and/or Discord for future news and updates.

Stay tuned and happy gaming!

Regards,
Pura

Greetings again, adventures!

Summer has come and gone, we're a little behind on many of the features we originally envisaged in our spring roadmap, but we do have a new content update for you! This update brings with it quests and environmental changes to the forests southwest of Thornhill City, as well as a number of gameplay additions and changes.

It also kicks off a prequel quest for the haunted Greywall Dungeon we're working on, which will offer separate story content and layers of incrementally more challenging enemies, culminating in a boss fight with the 'Ghost of Greywall'. We're aiming to release the dungeon in our next autumn update, accompanied by achievements-system we've also been working on.

But for now we wish to deliver a content update involving a mix of ghosts, trolls and lumberjacks. In our usual fashion, you'll find a showcase of the major features included in this update below, as well as more exhaustive patch notes at the very end.



[h2]Environmental changes, the 'Prowler's Thicket'[/h2]




We're rebranding the forests southwest of Thornhill City / south of Harshwind Village as the Prowler's Thicket, leaning heavily on its troll inhabitation, while at the same time we've made it accommodate our new Thornbark Sawmill woodcutting minigame - more information on that below. The emphasis is once again on improving the sense of exploration; running into this forest you'll find new quests and things to interact with, new resources and items to hunt, where before it was all quite barren.


New quests introduced in this update are the following:

[h2]Quest: Echoes of Suffering[/h2]

Prequel Quest to the upcoming Greywall Dungeon






Following the shockwave from Gabrius' magic that sent tremors across the land, some among the mining village of Ratcliffe face a disaster. The nearby Sallowstone Mine has caved in, causing all workers within to perish. The prospector Phillip Arden is the lone man who survived and the player may find him in the chapel building contemplating the fate of his friends.

It is not only their deaths that trouble him, though, as he claims the spirits of his friends soon sprang up as ghosts haunting the mine. The old prospector appeals to the player for help, to find a way to bring peace to the ghosts of his fellow miners, to allow them to pass into the afterlife where they belong...

[h2]Quest: A Daring Rescue[/h2]





Entering the small Harshwind Village, the player now encounters a woman in distress. Her father, who also happens to be the mayor of the village, has failed to return home from a hunting trip into the woods. Instead the rest of his hunting party who managed to scramble away claim that they were ambushed by the forest trolls.



In the scuffle the poor mayor was lifted by one the trolls and hauled deeper into the woods, no doubt to one of the nasty lairs the trolls inhabit, to await his fate. Are you willing to go look for him?



[h2]Quest: Logging Issues[/h2]






Before getting the Thornbark Sawmill churning, the player must first aid the sawmill foreman with a slight hitch that has seized the operations. The sawmill's access to the clearing where they acquire all their precious logs of Wildsfir has become blocked by a suspiciously large tree trunk. Seems like a simple obstacle to break through, yet the foreman seems reluctant to send his own men...

[h2]The Thornbark Sawmill & the Shaman[/h2]

Much in the same vein as Shearston Ranch in our previous update, the Thornbark Sawmill offers an alternative way to gain woodcutting experience while also offering a range of unique rewards. The sawmill processes a new type of wood called Wildsfir into planks, rewarding you with tokens you can spend at the foreman on a range of new items, such as Deep Forest garments.




Sometimes while splitting the logs you may find a strange blue gem, the Mystic's Amber, also found on the forest trolls. These are desired by the reclusive shaman Thor Ganesh, found some ways off from the sawmill.



[h2]Quest: Staple Foods[/h2]





Talk to a stablehand anywhere, do them a small favor, and they'll reward you with Horsy the Pack Mule! Besides offering companionship, Horsy serves the very important task of carting items cluttering your inventory at inconvenient times to your bank / storage. Simply 'use' any item on Horsy to quickly store it away for later.

[h2]Quest Rework: The Foreign Raider[/h2]

This was a quest we pushed a few updates back and we were never fully satisfied with it. Then in our last update it appears to have been disabled half accidentally. So this time we rewrote the quest and added a few additional phases to it.

Assuming you're on a save where you haven't yet completed this quest, upon entering the newly improved militia camp west of Haywind, you'll encounter Deputy Rieler who's looking for help in taking down high value bandit targets. He'll want to know you're up to snuff first though...



In this update we again continue our never ending quest to flesh out the trainer traits system. This time we've focused on including the base "tier" traits with desirable bonuses beyond the placeholdery experience gain increases that they've previously offered.

Woodsmanship tier traits now for example buff you with "Pathfinding", which increases your movement speed outside of combat, while cooking tier traits unlock options to learn local cooking recipes (with unique buffs) at various taverns in the world.

Equippable items you create with smithing, tailoring and crafting can now gain a 'critical success' from trainer traits, producing an exceptional quality of that item. Exceptional items have increased stat bonuses and earn you more coin when sold.

Combat skill trainer traits will reward you with various base stat bonuses outside of items, while alchemy traits increase the duration of your beneficial potions.

Mining and fishing tier traits still remain in the works, but will be coming soon™...



We have added a number of background conversation that play out between NPCs in the world as the player draws near. These have basically always been in the game, but previously they have been few and far between. We've worked on better, more efficient ways of implementing these and we're aiming to plant a lot of them around the game world, as they do wonders for immersion and making the game feel more 'alive'.



At best they can also inform about the environment or story and where effort can be spared, they can evolve as the player progresses through quests. This is in fact how the background conversations already worked in quests in our previous update (Shearston and Aurfield) and this trend continues in our latest quests 'Echoes of Suffering' and 'A Daring Rescue'.

We'll also be implementing more of what we call "aggro barks" from now on, which potentially give hostile npcs something to say when engaged in combat.

It's possible to sink quite a few of these into an open world as large as we're working with though, so this will be an ongoing process for the future as well.



Our achievements system still needs to bake, but for now we can offer a sneak peek into what we've been designing. Various feats you complete in the game will net you your usual Steam achievements, but in game the system goes beyond that. We wanted achievements to offer a way to track content in game, so we've created a window to do just that, where achievements and progress are listed under varying categories.

As an example, looking under the categories of Story / Haywind you would find achievements relating to side-questing in the Haywind area.



As you may notice, we've made it possible to include rewards within the achievements, which can be collected at your leisure. We could for example include small tasks from villagers etc. you encounter, which don't constitute as fully fledged quests, but could still be rewarding to do in this way.

The achievements could largely reward with achievement tokens also, which may be spent at an "achievement shop".



That's it for this time! Finally, here we have more detailed patch notes for those who may be interested.

New:
4 new quests:

• "Echoes of Suffering"
  
• "A Daring Rescue"
  
• "Logging Issues"
  
• "Staple Foods"
  

• New village - Thornbark Sawmill
  

New harvestable resources:

• Woodcutting: Wildsfir, level 25
  

New equippable/consumable Items:

• Lantern of Soulsoothing
  
• Woodworker's Outfit
  
• Troll Crossbow
  
• Deep Forest Garb
  
• Deep Forest Hood
  
• Symbol of the Deep Forest
  
• Deep Forest Bracers
  
• Wildsfir Hatchet
  
• Haunted Pickaxe
  
• Bracelet of the Troll Berserker
  
• Antler Helm
  
• Willow Staff
  
• Willow Wand
  
  
• Snail Roll
  
• Ore Hauler's Stew
  
• Woodland Skewer
  
• Grainwater Flatbread
  

Random Npc Interactions

• Added an interaction between Helga and Furrball in Timberwell
  
• Added an interaction to Timberwell fisherman
  
• Added interactions to Opticus Aluminar
  
• Added an interaction between guards at the deputy's camp near Aurfield
  
• Added an interaction between a farmer and his cow on the fields near timberwell
  
• Added an interaction between two hunters by the road after exiting Spruce Shade's Rest
  
• Added an interaction between two villagers at Timberwell's well + smaller interactions to other villagers
  
• Added a number of new npcs to Ratcliffe mining village with interactions
  
• Added an interaction to Ratcliffe sword merchant
  
• Added interactions to "Mountain Rescue" npcs Madam and Master Hubbs
  
• Added an interaction to Ratcliffe mining foreman
  
• Added several interactions to Haywind militia camp in the fields west of the city
  
• Added interactions to Fog's Dwindling tavern.
  
• Added a number of new interactions to Grainwater tavern.
  
• Added a small interaction to the Haywind smith
  
• Small interactions to Thornhill and Haywind guards
  
• New interactive merchants at fenwater village market
  
• Aggressive barks to an unrecorded amount of hostile npcs as they attack you, for example the great mudclaw.
  

Music:

• Grainwater tavern "Whimsical Whistle of Everlasting Delight"
  
• Thornbark Sawmill areas "On the Prowl"
  

Misc:

• Miranda, a quirky tonic merchant opposite grainwater tavern
  
• New ore mining location near Fenwater
  

Changes:

Quests:

• Full rewrite of a previously implemented quest "The Foreign Raider".
  

Misc:

• Environmental changes to new Prowler's Thicket.
  
• Slight improvements/edits to journal entries to early main quests.
  
• Wearing staves now comes with a new animation holding them upright.
  
• Changed coins received from quest 'In Search of a Bride' from 150 to 350
  
• Cleaned up / edited certain peasant dialogue lines in Timberwell.
  
• Edited certain peasant dialogue lines in Grainwater.
  
• Clarified tooltips on a number of consumables.
  
• Simplified item name "Faintly Glowing Bead" to "Glowing Orb"
  
• Included a variety more harvestables and hostile npcs to wide areas west of Haywind
  
• Filled Grainwater groceries shop with a bunch of actual groceries.
  
• Added Barnsy's flaming arrow ability book to his shop for the rare event the player loses the book before learning the ability.
  

Scavengers:

• Included a recovery option for near enough all unique quest reward items at the Scavenger's shop - nothing is ever lost for good!
  

Skills:

• Alchemy: changed level required to pick sweetgrass to 12.
  
• Alchemy: changed level required to craft mild antipoison to 14.
  
• Alchemy: changed ingredients required to craft mild antipoison: 1 Empty Vial, 1 Cavern Puffball and 5 Sweetgrass.
  
• Alchemy: changed ingredients required to craft swiftness potion to include empty vial.
  
• Alchemy: changed ingredients required to craft firestick mixture to include empty vial, and mushrooms.
  

Traits:

• Novice Spellslinger trait now increases base mana by 5
  
• Experienced Spellslinger trait now increases base mana by 5 and mana regen by a slight amount
  
• Novice Shieldbearer trait now increases base health by 5
  
• Experienced Shieldbearer trait now increases base health by 5 and health regen by a slight amount
  
• Novice and Experienced Swordsman traits now increase attack speed with melee weapons slightly
  
• Novice and Experienced Marksman traits now increase attack speed with ranged weapons slightly
  
• Novice and Experienced Potioner traits now increase potion durations slightly
  
• Novice and Experienced Wright, Outfitter and Blacksmith traits now give/increase chance to craft exceptional quality equippable items
  
• Novice Saucemaker trait now unlocks options to learn local cooking recipes from taverns in Timberwell, Grainwater and Ratcliffe
  
• Experienced Saucemaker trait now unlocks option to learn local cooking recipe from tavern in Fog's Dwindling
  
• Novice Lumberjack trait now grants Pathfinding, which increases movement speed outside of combat.
  
• Experienced Lumberjack trait now increases the movement speed bonus from Pathfinding.
  

World Map

• World Map can now by default be scrolled using any of the mouse buttons, as opposed to only the left mouse button previously
  
• Renamed/Added world map pointer to Prowler's Thicket (forest southwest of Thornhill)
  
• Added world map pointer to Golemwoods (forest southeast of Thornhill)
  
• Added world map pointer to Harshwind Village (west of Thornhill)
  
• Added world map pointer to River Aure
  
• Added world map pointer to Ruins of Greywall
  

Fixes:

• Added a generic tavernkeepers to harshwind and south thornhill taverns.
  
• Reduced Grainwater inn and similar type building's camera collider, which would often get in the way in an irritating way.
  
• Reduced stablehands' wandering distance slightly to prevent them from walking too far off.
  
• Adjusted banker barks so their unlikely to shout the same thing at the same time.
  
• Adjusted banker's and many shopkeeper's interact distance to be more in line with what one would expect.
  
• Ghost form Gabrius now correctly disappears from spruce shade crypts after progressing the main quest, as he should have done.
  
• Fixed Haywind's smith Forvan's npc spawner so that he always shows, instead of only spawning when entering the bounds of his forge
  
• Fixed visual glitches inside a few houses in various areas.
  
• Fixed a number shop doors that didn't automatically open.
  
• Removed several signs from Haywind houses that served no purpose.
  
• Fixed a typo from Wrathful Torrent spell tooltip.
  
• Removed certain unobtainable items from skill milestone lists.
  
• Corrected the name of Rancher Eryk's interactable cart on Haywind side.
  
• The quest reward popup window for 'Battle of the Shearston Estate' now indicates that the alchemy recipe for crafting firestick mixture is unlocked, which it should have previously done.
  
• Deer now have loot
  

As usual, feel free to follow us on twitter and/or Discord for future news and updates.

Stay tuned and happy gaming!

Regards,
Pura

Greetings all!

We're once again happy to deliver a new game update (almost) in time to celebrate Steam's summer sale. Without further ado, here's an overview of the main features and areas that have been updated in today's patch.

More detailed patch notes may be found further below.





In this update the area northeast of Haywind gets a facelift. You’ll be able to discover the cozy fishing village of Aurfield on your journey up the river, where you’ll find new interactive npcs, harvestable resources that smooth out the early game progression, a shop and 3 new quests.

[h2]The Flooded Cave[/h2]



Nearby you'll find a flooded cave that serves as a dungeon to explore. One of the new Aurfield quests - "Dead Fishermen Tell Tall Tales" - leads here to vanquish a new boss, a giant crab called The Great Mudclaw. With it come new item drops of course, including special armor and the potential to learn a powerful spell.

[h2]A Hidden Grove[/h2]



For all the fishing enjoyers, you get to hunt for an elusive Aurora Trout in a new quest: "The Prize Fish". It swims in the waters of a secluded grove, and is only attracted by the shiniest of bait. A hook made of gold is a great start, but for some reason folk always lose such things by getting them stuck on crab shells...

[h2]Antique Wheels[/h2]



You could use a convenient way of getting to the new village. Help Rancher Eryk fix his cart that has been in his family for generations in the quest "Antique Wheels", and he'll be happy to let you hitch a ride when traveling between Haywind and Aurfield.






On the other side, northwest of Haywind, you may now find a new farming village that is the Shearston Estate. The farmers here are most known for producing the finest clothing in the land, but their operation has become halted due to being blockaded by the menacing bandit horde that roams the land. Haywind’s militia has been unable to reach them, but perhaps you could lend the poor farmers a hand in defense of their home?

[h2]The Battle of the Shearston Estate[/h2]



The estate features a new quest, "The Battle of the Shearston Estate", where you support the farmers in their efforts of driving away bandit raiders, and you'll learn to throw fire bombs along the way.

[h2]Operate the quirky Shearston loom[/h2]



To improve the tailoring skill experience in the game, the estate features a new minigame unlocked by the quest - keep the quirky Shearston loom running by feeding wool into it! The minigame now provides an easy way to acquire wool in the game, which was previously unnecessarily sweaty. It's also an alternative, fun way of gaining tailoring experience and rewards you with tokens that can be exchanged for unique rewards.







[h2]Waterway Tradesmen[/h2]



Started north in Thornhill's harbor inn, a merchant enlists you for help in establishing a trade route between the two cities of Thornhill and Haywind. Just beware, he's an investor of limited funds and the boat he's acquired for the job reflects that - it may need slight repairs to prevent it from sinking.

The quest unlocks a new fast travel option between Haywind and Thornhill harbors.

[h2]The River Pirates[/h2]



The marauding bandit horde of Haywind also resorts to piracy against trade barges traveling the length of the river! Help a Haywind deputy, stationed on the opposite side of the harbor across the river, deal with the pirate menace.

Once completed, the quest offers a repeatable interaction where you're rewarded for every 5 stolen cargo crates you recover from the pirate camps. Much of what you recover from the crates will turn out to be common goods, conveniently stored for later use in the new player (ware)house placed nearby along the river, but sometimes you may be able to find cool hidden gems along the cargo too.







Cloud saves are now enabled, so your saves are synced between your devices! The saves are also stored locally on your device, and you can choose between cloud and local saves in the main menu.

In other news, we've opted in to NVIDIA's GeForce Now cloud gaming service. The game needs to be approved before being available on the service though, so we'll keep you updated about the process and let you know the moment when/if it becomes available.



[h2]Patch Notes[/h2]

New:

• Steam Cloud saves is now enabled.
  

6 new quests:

• "Dead Fishermen Tell Tall Tales"
  
• "The Prize Fish"
  
• "Waterway Tradesmen"
  
• "The River Pirates"
  
• "Antique Wheels"
  
• "Battle of the Shearston Estate"
  

• New village - Aurfield
  
• New village - the Shearston Estate
  
• New map section - the Flooded Cave
  
• New map section - Hidden Mistywood Grove
  
• The Great Mudclaw - new boss npc
  
• Shearston loom - tailoring minigame
  
• New obtainable spell - the Wrathful Torrent
  

New harvestable resources:

• Woodcutting: The Glowing Willow, level 9
  
• Alchemy: Sunflowers, level 20
  
• Alchemy: Waspheart Iris, level 17
  
• Alchemy: Firestick Plant, level 5
  
• Fishing: Aurora Trout, level 20
  
• Fishing: Worms (bait)
  
• Fishing: Luminescent Worms (bait)
  

New equippable Items:

• Copper Pitchfork
  
• Bracelet of Stalwart Riverfolk
  
• Pirate Dagger
  
• Monstrous Crustacean Helm
  
• Riverpirate's Cutlass
  
• Riverpirate Captain's Cutlass
  
• Riverpirate's Tunic
  
• Riverpirate Captain's Overcoat
  
• Riverpirate Captain's Hat
  
• Chitin Torch
  

• And a number of other new, more trivial items...
  
• 2 new alchemy crafting recipes
  
• New tailoring crafting recipe
  
• 2 new house decorations
  
• New tailoring trait, obtainable from Shearston: Cotton Handler
  
• 3 new fishing traits from Haywind trainer, involving the digging of worms.
  

Changes:

• Sweeping environmental changes focused in areas north of Haywind.
  
• Gathering Northwind cotton now requires level 20 in tailoring
  
• Improved interiors of the entrance to the Elder Druid's tomb in Haywind.
  
• Improved the clarity of most spell tooltips.
  
• Improvements and additions to world map texts.
  

Fixes:

• Added a generic tavernkeeper to north haywind's empty tavern, and fixed its sign.
  
• Gate not opening in Tomb of the Elder Druid.
  
• Missed damage showing as -0 damage taken in chat.
  
• Numerous pathing issues.
  

As usual, feel free to follow us on twitter and/or Discord for future news and updates.

Stay tuned, happy gaming and hope you all enjoy your summer!

Regards,
Pura

Greetings all!

We've decided delaying a bit until pushing our next game update to deliver a slightly larger patch in time for steam's summer sale event, so we thought it'd be a good time to write a devblog to update on our progress. We continue to be focused on filling in blank areas of the open world with questing content that also rewards exploration. We're also currently prioritizing the early/midgame areas of the game.

For example, in our next update the bare lands between Mistywood and Haywind will receive a complete facelift with a new village named Aurfield full of npcs with dialogue, multiple new quests, and new surrounding wilderness with semi-hidden caves and new resources to find!

Beware, according to fishermen's tales a great crab monster may also be lurking nearby...!



From a more optimization-perspective, we've tried using a different style of housing for this area. The houses we've used thus far are actually somewhat unnecessarily resource intensive for what this style of game should really need, so for the future we'll be creating houses that only use a far more appropriate amount of system's resources.



Similar to Aurfield, the road from Haywind to Thornhill is another area that currently remains devoid of content and thus isn't particularly exciting to travel. It will be receiving more attention a bit later, most likely after the Aurfield update. We want to apply more polish to these areas first, as they're ones that new players can encounter relatively early on (definitely earlier than Thornhill City itself, for example) and we wouldn't want anyone to feel discouraged from playing further as they encounter these rough patches.

At the same time, we're of course always looking to expand on the core skills in the game. The next update will include some new interactions across skills such as tailoring, fishing and woodsmanship. A new farm estate will contain a tailoring minigame to make skill leveling a bit more fun...



The taverns are another place we're looking to flesh out a bit more. There are quite a few of them in game and the ones that have amusing NPC background conversation make the game feel infinitely more immersive and alive in our opinion. We'd also like the taverns to be a place where the player can generally expect to find quests.

For now, here's a scene from a new quest started at Thornhill's harbor inn, which will unlock a fast travel option between the two cities of Thornhill and Haywind.



At the moment our efforts mainly center around improving the experience of journeying through the lands as the player progresses through the main quest content. We're also adding more tasks around the game's world that can be repeated, also in the form of repeatable quests from npcs, so that it may feel a bit more alive with things to do, and with alternative ways of gaining experience in skills for example. Later down the line in autumn we're planning to shift more towards implementing challenging high level content.

You can expect our next game update to land at the end of the month.

As usual, feel free to follow us on twitter and/or Discord for future news and updates.

Stay tuned, happy gaming and hope you all enjoy your summer!

Regards,
Pura