Of Blades & Tails News

Hey everyone!

The day has finally arrived and I couldn't be happier of what Of Blades & Tails has become over the past 3 years. It's been a wild and exciting journey. I'm grateful for everyone of you who helped with their feedback from the first demo back in 2021 and throughout the last year of Early Access!

I'm not gonna lie, the last 6 months or so have been pretty intense. Working on an open-world RPG, managing community and trying not to wipe everyones progress with each major update is not an easy task, especially if you have a full time job and family :)

It's so great to see that eventually everything worked out! Especially the fact that you could play the game from the early demo to 1.0 (over 2 years) with the same savegame and not losing all your progress along the way. That has always been an issue for me as a player when it comes to EA. Therefore I implemented a savegame migration strategy early on and it did the job quite well. There were 2 updates that required a reset of the players attributes/abilities, but everything else could be silently handled under the hood.

Not least because of this it has been possible to receive a wide range of valuable feedback across the whole game and not just the first 10 hours or so, because players were forced to restart after each update.

That being said, some of you sure wonder what future plans I have for Of Blades & Tails!
The honest and probably not very satisfying answer to this is: It depends... ;)

First of all I will definitely work on player feedback and fixing any major issues that might come up! Extra content post-launch will depend on how well the 1.0 release goes. So that's something I can only evaluate in the coming weeks. And because of the intense nature of things in the past months I would definitely like to slow it down a bit / take a little break / regain energy.
So TL;DR I will get back to the topic of future content in a separate post. Some time in December seems appropriate! :)

Now with all of this out of the way, I wish you all a ton of fun with Of Blades & Tails 1.0!
I wish I could erase my knowledge of the game to be able to play it blind and make all the discoveries for the first time! It definitely is the kind of game I always wanted to play. So I hope you'll like it, too :)

Last but not least, here is our fresh Release Trailer!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

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[h2]Feature Highlights during EA[/h2]

A summary of all highlight features that have been added during Early Access, in chronological order.

• Stealth talent and gameplay
  
• Achievements
  
• Detailed in-game statistics
  
• Treasure Hunting
  
• Reworked health recovery and balancing
  
• New region: The Haunted Forest (with a unique survival mechanic)
  
• Engineering talent
  
• Beastmastery talent (with abilities to temporarily tame creatures)
  
• New region: Levendell and surroundings
  
• Equipment modifications
  
• Illusion Magic talent
  
• Reworked unarmed combat
  
• Random seeds that add more variety to each playthrough
  
• New region: The Barrenland
  
• A Combat Arena where players can compete in leaderboards
  
• New "Challenge (Hard)" difficulty mode
  

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[h2]Changelog v1.0.0[/h2]

[h3]Game World[/h3]

• The main quest "Over Hill and Dale" can now be completed.
  
• The story quest "Of Haughty Antlers" and following can now be completed.
  
• A new region has been added: The Wasteland
  
• New biome and dungeon types have been added.
  
• Multiple new locations have been added to the wasteland.
  
• A final encounter has been added.
  
• 4 new dungeons have been added.
  
• 2 quests have been added to the Adventurers Guild.
  
• 1 quest has been added to the Mages Guild.
  
• New types of enemies have been added.
  
• 6 new legendary items have been added, incl. 2 artifacts.
  
• A new human lore piece has been added.
  
• New music tracks have been added.
  
• New secrets and hidden encounters have been added.
  

[h3]Mechanics[/h3]

• A new item and mechanic has been added: The Magic Detector
• Magically hidden objects have been placed at existing locations.
  

This item allows you to detect magically hidden objects in the game world.
There are several ways to obtain a detector:

• Through the Mages Guild quest.
  
• Bought from the Trader for Magic Supplies in Immerfurt.
  
• Found at a few locations in the world. In the chest inside the Church Ruins, and in the chest at the larger Cultist Camp (Unless you already looted these locations, then you'll have to fall back to the other 2 options.)

[h3]UI & QoL Improvements[/h3]

• The path indicator now shows your remaining movement points for this turn.
  
• Added a "locked" toggle to player/skill bar that prevents skills from being accidently dragged outside the slot. (This has been reported as a potential issue from Steam Deck players)
• An audio option has been added to disable the combat music.
  
• The feedback form won't pop up on exit anymore, but is now available through a dedicated button in the main menu.
  

[h3]Achievements[/h3]

8 new achievements have been added:

• Wanderer
  
• Explorer
  
• Discoverer
  
• Become an Adventurer
  
• Become a Mage
  
• Magic Detective
  
• With a little help
  
• And so it ends
  

[h3]Other Improvements & Fixes[/h3]

• Adjusted item mods on random loot so it's more likely to find level 16 items now. (This may also affect your existing loot, but only in a way that a former lvl 14 item is now lvl 16.)
• Fixed a missing perk description for "Trained Runner".
  
• Fixed a bug where object highlighting remained active after pressing Alt+Tab.
  
• Fixed a bug in item upgrade and modification views when view gets closed in-between animations.
  
• Prevented an issue caused by clicking quick slot items faster than intended.
  
• Updated several localizations.
  

Hey everyone!

I'm very happy to finally announce that we'll be leaving Early Access on November 9th!
So in 2 weeks from now, you'll be able to complete Reik's Adventure and eventually find out what lurks in the Great Lair!

The 1.0 Update will feature a lot of new content! Here are some highlights:

• The main quest will be complete and lead you to a new and dangerous, final region!
  
• The story quests that lead you through the world and get to know the other tribes will be complete.
  
• New quests for both the Adventurers and Mages Guild will be added.
  
• A new mechanic to detect magically hidden objects in the world will be added.
  
• A bunch of new legendary equipment can be obtained!
  
• More secrets and lore to uncover...
  

We are already in the process of testing and polishing the 1.0 version to make it a smooth and (almost!) bug free experience for everyone!

I can also assure you that all savegames will be compatible, so if you don't want to wait any longer, you may jump in right now, enjoy all the content that already exists and eventually finish your main quest (and more) in November!

Moving closer to release, I just want to use this as a reminder that reviews help a lot to reach more players. So if you already joined this Early Access adventure and were hesitating: Yes, a kind and constructive review is highly appreciated :)

Our ever growing and friendly Discord community is also happy to help if you need tips or just can't figure out this one mystery in the game!

We would love to see you around!

I'll be back in November with the full changelog and a more detailed post about the journey so far and future plans!


Until then, take care everyone!

Felix

• Fixed a potential blocker in the swamp lake traversal caused by certain seeds.
  

• Fixed a problem where the tooltips of attribute stats did not update correctly after switching equipment.
  
• Fixed a potential crash when pressing key 6 while the second weapon set was active.
  
• Fixed a problem with the calculation of resistance multipliers.
  
• Fixed an issue with the "Back Stab" skill: Jumping back 1 tile does now work even if the target got defeated.
  
• Fixed a problem where danger/safety detection was not working properly with static enemies like plants.
  
• Fixed a potential issue when indicating that the player reached the max level of 25.
  
• Fixed a typo in skill effect description for "Vanish".
  

Hi all!

As you already know, we have recently released an update which included a new game mode and quite a few QoL improvements (read here). We are excited to say, that this update was the last stop on our roadmap before we reach our final destination, which is version 1.0!

[h2]Early Access will be ending soon![/h2]

There have been numerous updates during Early Access and many new things have been added into the game including a balance overhaul, treasure hunt, equipment modifications, a combat arena with leaderboard, and much more!

Right now I'm about to finish the final region and story quests. After that we'll be testing everything thoroughly to make sure it will be in a great shape for the full release.

[h2]New Price[/h2]

Since we're almost ready to launch out of Early Access, we are planning on increasing the price of Of Blades & Tails, which will take place on September 18th. The new price will be set to $14.99.

I think the game has improved a lot over the past year and we strongly believe that this is the right course of action.

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I really appreciate all your support, it means a lot to both me and Pineapple Works. I'm also extremely happy to see how great our community has been and I'd like to thank everybody who volunteered in both testing and localizing Of Blades & Tails, allowing it to be available in many languages!


Until next time!

Felix & Pineapple Works