Quest Master News

Hey Quest Masters!

Jeron Moore here—Executive Producer at Apogee and Game Director for Quest Master. Today, I’m thrilled to share an exciting update that will take your dungeon-making and adventuring experience to the next level: a major overhaul to Quest Master’s music!

As you know, Quest Master is still in Early Access, and we’ve been listening to your feedback as we continue building the game toward its 1.0 release. Before we unveil the final dungeon theme update in the coming weeks, we’re excited to introduce a big change to how the music sounds as you create and play through dungeons.

[h2]Musical Journey from Retro to Orchestral[/h2]

Since Early Access launched, Quest Master has featured two soundscapes:

• Maker Mode: Lush, detailed orchestral renditions of dungeon themes.
  
• Play Mode: Nostalgic 16-bit, SNES-inspired renditions of the same music.
  

This dual-layered approach, where the music seamlessly transforms between modes, has been one of Quest Master’s standout features. Unfortunately, certain tracks were impossible to listen to, as Play Mode featured exclusively chiptune music.

When starting the game for the first time now, you are given the option to choose between a preferred style of music. Choose Chiptune to get the same experience a it has been so far. Choose Orchestral however, and the game will prioritize playing the orchestral versions of the soundtrack in places like the title screen, play mode, and even swap out fanfares like acquiring an item for the orchestral version.



For more fine-grain control, you can configure the music selection in a lot more detail in the audio settings if you change your mind later!



[h2]Orchestral Title Theme Showcase[/h2]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]Meet the Minds Behind the Music[/h2]

We’re incredibly proud of the composers who’ve brought Quest Master’s soundtrack to life. Here’s a quick look at the talent behind the tunes:

• Chipper Hammond (Los Angeles, CA): The creator of Quest Master’s iconic main theme, Chipper has composed the music for Dewdrop Roots, Gustwind Palace, and more. Inspired by legends like Koji Kondo, Nobuo Uematsu, and John Williams, Chipper’s melodies are unforgettable. Learn more about Chipper and his work here.
  
  
• Wayne Strange (New Jersey): Known for his work on Emberstone Quarry, the ambush battle music, and the regal themes of Castle Town and Castle Aetheria (currently under renovation)! Wayne’s compositions are rich with dynamic energy, drawing inspiration from the classics (The Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy). You can explore Wayne’s music on Spotify here.
  
  
• Tomas Palazzi (Venezuela): Composer for Bread & Fred and Littlelands, Tomas’s music brings Quest Master’s Sandswept Ruins to life with cinematic flair. Drawing from the spirit of traditional Egyptian music, his work blends exotic melodies with sweeping orchestral themes. Tomas has also crafted the charming themes for Lucky’s Locks and Gemini’s Shop (debuting soon!), adding depth and variety to Castle Town's soundscape. Discover more about Tomas and his work here.
  
  
• Tim Stoney (London, England): The brilliant mind behind Deepcoral Cove’s haunting theme, Tim also composed the music for the Early Access trailer, and is leading the charge on the music for the Single Player Campaign, promising a rich and dynamic score. Tim is part of Fractal Edge Music, and you can explore more of their work here.
  
  
• Brent Houston (Vav) (Mesa, AZ): Brent has created Quest Master’s chiptune adaptations and SNES-inspired sound effects, bringing retro magic to every note. Check out more of Brent’s work here.
  

[h2]Honoring the Past, Building the Future[/h2]

Quest Master aspires to be more than just a Dungeon Maker. It’s a Zelda-like dungeon builder set in a living, breathing, entirely original world. Every dungeon you create, every story you explore, and every note you hear is part of Aetheria’s history.

Through the music, you’ll feel the pull of the ancient Aetherial Network, the threads of power that connect the land. You’ll hear the echoes of Castle Aetheria, the seat of the kingdom’s secrets. You’ll sense the presence of the ancient Aetherium and uncover clues to the past that ripple through the present.

When the Single Player Campaign launches with 1.0, you’ll join Lanze, Javelyn, and Shiv as they face a journey shaped by courage, sacrifice, and discovery. They’ll brave the depths of long-forgotten dungeons, unravel mysteries buried in time, and stand against a villain cloaked in shadow and deceit whose ambitions could shatter the balance of Aetheria itself.

This update marks a major step in making the world of Aetheria richer and more immersive than ever. Whether you’re creating your next masterpiece or diving into someone else’s dungeon, the music of Quest Master will inspire every moment.

Thank you for being part of Quest Master’s journey. The legacy of Aetheria—and this game—belongs to you.

Stay inspired,

Jeron Moore
Executive Producer / Game Director, Quest Master
Apogee Entertainment


[h2]Final Major Update Launching December 12th, Next Thursday[/h2]

Hey guys, Julian here - just wanted to confirm to everyone that the final major update will launch next Thursday on December 12th! I hope everyone is excited! It will be quite the chilling experience, but there's a lot of cool new dungeon parts and mechanics, and of course an entirely new theme, to try out!

See you next week!

[h2]Spectral Rod & Spectral Blast[/h2]

A new magic rod variant arrives, the Spectral Rod!

It shoots out Spectral Blasts, a devastating magic projectile that can curse enemies. When enemies are cursed, they run away in fear from the player or are blocked from performing their attacks.



If, however, you the player gets cursed, you are blocked from using your sword for the duration of the curse.


[h2]Spectral Boomerang[/h2]

The Spectral Boomerang, similar to the spectral blast, curses objects it hits! It can of course also reveal invisible objects in the radius of its spectral light, just like all spectral objects.




[h2]Spectral Slumbering[/h2]

A new bat variant, the Spectral Slumberwing, is a naturally menacing foe that will curse anyone it touches.


These otherworldly creatures don't play around.

[h2]Fixed Diving Physics[/h2]

Previously, you were able to dive into floor tiles, which lead to weird clipping issues and hampered with diving design.

I'm glad to report that I was able to work around this physics limitation and the issue is now fixed.




[h2]Asynchronous Dungeon Loading[/h2]

I've made an effort to replicate asynchronous loading of dungeons as much as possible. Unity, being a single-threaded engine, doesn't actually properly allow accessing engine related APIs, like spawning objects, on separate threads, which is less than ideal, but loading dungeons now does not fully freeze the game window and the loading bar moves more smoothly across the screen now.


[h2]Halloween Event Extension[/h2]

Unfortunately the automatic account creation system broke silently a few days ago, which prevented new players from getting the Halloween Badge. Thus, I decided to extend the Halloween Event over the weekend until Monday, December 2th, so log in and claim that badge if you haven't already!


[h2]Quest Master is 20% off during the Steam Autumn Sale! [/h2]

Whether you’ve been waiting to dive into our Zelda-Like Maker or are thinking of gifting it to a friend, now’s the perfect time—with thousands of community-made dungeons to explore and create!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2094070/Quest_Master/

[h2]Blueprints[/h2]

A new huge addition to the game, blueprints, are here!

[h3]Blue- what?[/h3]

Blueprints allow you to save a selected area to disk (and Steam Cloud of course!), allowing you to copy and paste it whenever and wherever you want, in any dungeon!


It's as easy as pressing save!


Paste them anywhere!

This way, you can reuse contraptions for example.

You can also upload them for everyone to enjoy, similar to dungeons. Of course, blueprints need no clear check though, which means their upload happens in seconds!

[h3]The Blueprint Browser[/h3]

The new Blueprint Browser is the central hub where al the magic happens. Here you can browse through your own blueprints, search for online ones, and reuse your favorite blueprints!

You can also search by name, which works in all three tabs.






[h3]Grid and Room Outlines[/h3]

To make room for the new blueprint browser, we removed the dedicated buttons to toggle the grid and room outlines.

These are now accessible in the settings menu, and you can also bind toggling them to a hotkey now. They are not bound by default.






[h3]Quick Share[/h3]

In addition, you can also use the CTRL+C and CTRL+V shortcuts to both copy and paste selections in and from your system clipboard.

This means after copying a blueprint, you could paste it into Discord for example, in case you want to quickly share a project you are working on!


[h2]Shadows Can Now Equip Rings[/h2]

[h3]The Ultimate Power[/h3]

You can now give Shadows Rings!

They can carry up to how many rings your current Ring Box fits, so if you have the Big Ring Box, you can give each shadow a maximum of 2 rings at once.



[h3]Always Access Rings In Part Book[/h3]

You now also don't need to use the Ringless tag to access the rings inside the part book to allow giving Shadows rings even without the tag. Note however that for collecting rings as the player, you still need the ringless tag of course.


[h2]Improvements To Searching For Dungeons By Name[/h2]

Some of you might have noticed that searching for a dungeon by its name was quite difficult in the past, as the dungeon browser returned way too many search results that didn't match up enough with what you were searching for.

I'm glad to report that this is now fixed, as it turned out to be a bug with the underlying mod.io API.

The search is now way more accurate and should help you find the dungeon you want.

In the following example I was searching for "Tower of Winds", and the game now solely returns 2 dungeons, perfectly matching with my query, whereas before it was returning 30+ pages of dungeons.




[h2]Retry From Checkpoint Hotkey[/h2]

You can now bind a key of your choice to retry from last checkpoint. it is not bound by default.




[h2]File Location Updates[/h2]

In order to allow automatic file transfer from demo to full game and to allow unique save data per logged in steam user, I had to make certain accommodation to where user data is located.

The new locations for save files are as followed:

[h3]Windows[/h3]

AppData/LocalLow/Apogee Entertainment/Quest Master/

[h3]Mac[/h3]

~/Library/Application Support/Apogee Entertainment/Quest Master/

[h3]Linux[/h3]

~/.config/unity3d/Apogee Entertainment/Quest Master/

While the old save data locations are still acknowledged by the game to support backwards compatibility, I encourage everyone to manually move over their files from the old location to the new one if possible.


[h2]New Anti-Piracy Measure[/h2]

A newly implemented anti-piracy measure prevents playing the game when it cannot establish a connection with the Steam client.

This does not mean that you cannot play offline (you absolutely can!), however if you try to execute the QuestsMaster.exe file standalone without Steam being open in the background (having Steam offline still works fine too), the game will shut down after the splash screen.

I'm honestly not sure how bad of an issue piracy is with Quest Master, but I figured I'd might as well add it.


[h2]Last Week Of The Halloween Event[/h2]

A friendly reminder that the Halloween Event ends on November 29th, so if you haven't grabbed the exclusive goodies yet, make sure to do so before the time runs out!

Hey guys!

Just a quick notice that I'm delaying the update until tomorrow. I'm feeling really sick out of the sudden, could have been the cold (I tend to never dress well enough for it lol), but I'm getting to bed early today in hopes of feeling better tomorrow.

I'd prefer to stay on sight when the update drops, as it's arguably the biggest weekly update mechanically speaking so far.

Hope everyone is looking forward to it!

- Julian

[h2]The Daily Dungeon[/h2]

Many of you probably know of the Featured Dungeons system.
Unfortunately, maintaining it is too much of a time investment for me, so I decided to implement a new type of community spotlight - the Daily Dungeon!


[h3]The Daily What?[/h3]

Each day, a new creator is chosen to have one of their dungeons be featured on the latest Daily Dungeon Board outside the workshop!



Being featured as the Daily Dungeon is also rewarded with a new badge!

We also made the change to remove the silhouettes of badges that you have not claimed yet, as several people have expressed distaste for fear of missing out in relation to badges that are no longer claimable, like the Demo badge.


[h2]Spectral Fire Bars[/h2]

This new variation of the fire bar will reveal invisible objects in its light radius.




[h2]Metal Fire Bars[/h2]

This new variation of the fire bar is substantial and does not deal damage. Instead, it pushes objects away!




[h2]Elevating Bats[/h2]

You can now make bats elevated, requiring you to jump to reach them!




[h2]Steam Cloud Now Synchronizes Your Created Dungeons[/h2]

As some of you might remember, we tried to implement a custom cloud system using mod.io because Steam Cloud refused to synchronize the dungeons that you make.

Unfortunately, after many weeks of tweaking it, we abandoned the idea because it didn't turn out well enough for our liking and always had residual issues.

Randomly, I tried configuring Steam Cloud to synchronize created dungeons again—and this time, it worked! I have no idea why since the configuration is exactly the same as last time. So, I assume Steam fixed an internal bug that prevented it before.

Your created dungeons now synchronize using Steam Cloud, so you can switch between PC and Steam Deck seamlessly and continue building your dungeons!


[h2]What's Next?[/h2]

This week's update was a bit smaller since we are hard at work on next week's update. And no, it won't be the next major update just yet. But we have something handy planned that you will enjoy immensely!

Have a friend interested in Quest Master? You can save 10% on the Quest Master x Super Dungeon Maker Bundle!

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/41984/Super_Dungeon_Maker_x_Quest_Master/

If you haven't, join our Discord!
You can also follow us on Twitter/X.

As a reminder, the Halloween Limited Timed Event is active until November 30th, so you have half of a month to unlock the limited-time exclusive rewards in Quest Master!

Cheers!