Kingdom Unlocked Update V.0.8

[p]Surprise Traveler![/p][p][/p][p]What once was supposed to be just a small optimization update, became something much, much more... Dear Adventurers, let me introduce you to the Kingdom Unlocked Update, which brings Chronicles of Vaeltaja: In Search of the Great Wanderer to version 0.8! This may not be the Winter Wilds update yet, but I can guarantee that it is something considerably better than just a new VSync and some other performance improvements I originally planned for the September's update. This update not only improve performance, but also brings lots of different improvements, new content, new equipment and bug fixes, not to mention the interiors for every house in Twin Falls, The Great Forest and Pramea. The kingdom is truly unlocked, but beware that sometimes you have to earn your way into someone's home. [/p][p][/p][p]Before we get to the patch notes, I want to highlight some of the main features in this update and I start with the main character class: Guide. When getting higher levels the main character starts to feel weak compared to other classes and the main reason for this is the 'jack of all trades' nature of the class. Guide has more skills than others and needs most of the stats, especially if you want to find all the secrets, so it felt unfair that all the Stat and Skill tomes had to be used to the main character. Therefore I after this update the main character will get one extra stat point and two extra skill points. This change helps the Guide class to keep up with others and allow more freedom to use tomes to other characters. [/p][p][/p][p]House of the Adventurers finally opens in the town of Pramea and it brings something new: Quest Administrators arrive and they have some smaller Tasks for you to take on (nothing too fancy, mostly monster part hunting). Tasks are not restricted to Quest Administrators, so you have a chance to come across them in other places too. Tasks are not recorded to the Quest Journal, same goes for Mysteries. Find your way into the Twin Houses in Pramea or the Forest Manor in the Great Forest's Hidden Village, and you'll find out soon enough what are Mysteries! Just prepare to do a little bit of dungeon crawling and you may even find a new type of puzzles... Tasks and Mysteries will be added more in the future.[/p][p][/p][p]Woodcrafter arrives to Twin Falls Forest North and he will craft bows, crossbows or staves, if someone brings him the materials. He opens his workshop same time as the Blacksmith. Talking about equipment; There are new staves that grant different spell casting skills to their wielder, which means that caster classes can temporarily cast spells that don't belong to their character classes. Staff skills will be used like any other skill, but it consumes approximately 40% less energy than casting the same spell as a class skill.[/p][p][/p][p]Some side-quest have gone through some optimization and they now take more conditions in account. I encountered couple of occasions with some old saves that caused issues with some of the optimized side-quests, but I was able to fix the ones I found. The Quest Journal entries may have some issues with the right entries, if you have already started or completed the listed quests. But that doesn't prevent them from being completed. There shouldn't be any problems if you haven't activated those quests yet. While I do my best to support the old saves, a new game always works the best after each update. That said, old saves have always worked for me after each update, and the only compatibility issues have been with the Quest Journal entries and some bugged side-quests that I have fixed. The main questline hasn't gone through any changes, so it will work as good as always with the old saves too, so does the side-quests not mentioned in the patch notes. I am sorry for the possible inconveniences and hope that there won't be any.[/p][p][/p][p]There are so many new things, improvements and fixes that would take too much space to write down, but I have to mention that the update finally brings variety to battle music. Twin Falls areas still use the same battle music, but the Great Forest, Pramea, Marsh of the Condemned and Lake Road now have their own battle songs. Dungeons on the other hand share a mutual battle theme. Fog covered Pramea will also sound much more spooky now and has its own battle music.[/p][p][/p][p]Finally, a few words about the performance improvements: After I managed to implement the new VSync, which is more effective and even allows to choose from 30fps or 60fps, I started to do some experimenting. Soon I realized that the way the MZ3D plugin (which allows 3d games to be created with RPG Maker MZ) handles the lighting, causes a lot of stress on the CPU when using 2d sprite shape for individual trees. That lead me to change all the trees and decoration plants to use cross shape, which is much lighter on the CPU. Unfortunately they don't reflect the player's torch or lantern light as nicely as the 2d sprite shape, but boost in performance is so big that I decided to prefer the performance. I will look into the lighting system, and if I can improve it, I will do it in the future. The Great Forest and the saved town of Pramea are still the most demanding areas, but the new Vsync should smooth things out to some extend and prevent the bigger dips in frame rate that may have happened in the past. Rest of the new stuff, improvements and fixes can be found in the patch notes below.[/p][p][/p][h2]PATCH NOTES[/h2][p][/p][h3]New Stuff:[/h3]

[p]House interiors to every house in Twin Falls (including River Side Farming Community), the Great Forest (including the Hidden Village) and Pramea[/p]
[p]Pramean House of Adventurers[/p]
[p]Quest Administrators to both House of Adventurers[/p]
[p]Tasks[/p]
[p]Pramean Twin House Mystery (includes a small dungeon)[/p]
[p]Pramean Jungle House Mystery[/p]
[p]Hidden Village's Ghost Manor Mystery (includes a small dungeon and new type of puzzles)[/p]
[p]Woodcrafter[/p]
[p]3 new craftable bows, crossbows and staves[/p]
[p]Staff Skills and new staves[/p]
[p]Staff of Flames, Staff of Spark and Staff of Gust added in the Magic Shop's inventory in Castle Town[/p]
[p]Staff of Freeze, Staff of Fireball and Staff of Tornado added in the Magic Shop's inventory in Pramea[/p]
[p]Staff of Quake and Staff of Blizzard added in the Grand Wizard's and Traveling Merchant's inventory at the Lake Road[/p]
[p]New Rings: Adventurer's Silver Ring and Adventurer's Gold Ring[/p]
[p]New Guide Skill added in the Weapon Merchant's inventory in Pramea[/p]
[p]Guide will now get 2 stat points and 5 skill points on level up to balance the character development[/p]
[p]Talking Nikaru added to somewhere (finally some more use for Nature Speech and more will come in the future)[/p]
[p]Aftermaths to some side-quests (these don't continue the quests, but shows what happens to some NPCs after certain quests)[/p]
[p]Travel Crystal (a new tool that helps to get around, just be sure to visit the Grand Wizard after the Temple of Prophets has been solved)[/p]
[p]Goo of a Rotten Fish added (be careful with this, because most NPCs don't like its smell, but it can be useful and someone might even love it, and remember that the Fisherman in the Lake Road can hold it for you when you need to get rid of it)[/p]
[p]Loot added into every house in Pramea (just remember that stealing lowers Reputation/Honour, but some NPCs may allow you to take their belongings if you help or talk to them first)[/p]
[p]Two digging spots added to the Hedge Maze[/p]
[p]Some new decoration to Pramean Administration[/p]
[p]Finished decoration to Nelana's House in Pramea[/p]
[p]All the Anuna now have a proper dialog in the Hidden Village[/p]
[p]Rich Farmer outside the Castle Town has some new dialog when he trusts you enough (just keep doing some good deeds and eventually he will change his attitude)[/p]
[p]New dialog to the Great Forest's Farmer, once you solve his quest and visit his house (you may even meet his wife)[/p]
[p]New dialog to Zeena, once you visit her house after helping her by returning her daughter's doll (she may be hiding something)[/p]
[p]Piece of Evertree added as a rare drop to Possessed Trees[/p]
[p]Names added to some NPCs (there may still be a few that lack names)[/p]
[p]Ending added to the side-quest 'A Quiet Place'[/p]
[p]Dialog added to the silent Evertree in the Witch Grove[/p]
[p]Battle backgrounds to Forest Manor in Hidden Village and House in the Pramean Jungle[/p]
[p]New battle background music to The Great Forest, Pramea (also when covered by the fog), Lake Road and dungeons[/p]
[p]New background music to fog covered Pramean area and Halls of Onkalo[/p]
[p]Partially new UI sounds[/p]
[p]New music will play when resting in Inns[/p]
[p]Icons for Potion of Courage and Potion of Unleash[/p]
[p]New better Vsync with options: 30fps, 60fps and Off[/p]
[p]New better Frame Counter, which shows actual frames, not theoretical like the old counter did (RPG Maker can't push the frame rate past 60fps)[/p]
[p]Hole sprites added on ceiling in catacombs and in the 'Islands Underground'[/p]
[p]CRT Effects (includes only Scan Lines) with the options: On and Off[/p]

[p][/p][h3]Optimized, Improved and Fixed Side-Quests[/h3]

[p]Husband in Distress Quest[/p]
[p]Broken Sword Quest[/p]
[p]Farming Supplies Quest[/p]
[p]Pramean Silk Quest[/p]
[p]Fisherman's Quest (though you cannot complete the second quest just yet)[/p]
[p]Family Heirloom Quest[/p]
[p]A Cat and A Knight Quest[/p]

[p][/p][h3]Other Changes and Improvements[/h3]

[p]Individual trees and plant now use 'cross' shape instead of '2d sprite' to improve performance[/p]
[p]Some enemy mobs in Smuggler's Cave, Hedge Maze and Ser Hammerstone's Grave respawn to make sure that certain monster parts can be obtained, if necessary[/p]
[p]Some changes and/or additions to enemy mobs in Twin Falls Cemetery Area, Southern Forest and Beach, The Great Forest North[/p]
[p]Castle Town's House of Adventurers opens at 7am[/p]
[p]A small change to the layout of the town of Pramea (the wall around the Pramean Administrator is now a little bit longer and the fountain beside it a little bit smaller)[/p]
[p]Magic Map disabled in the Witch Grove (like it originally should be, because it is such a mysterious place)[/p]
[p]Optimized most of the torches and lanterns (including the player's tools)[/p]
[p]Optimized the lighting in the Temple of Pramea[/p]
[p]Optimized every digging spot in Twin Falls areas, the Great Forest, Lake Road and Islands of the Prophets[/p]
[p]Optimized magical barrier in the Great Forest[/p]
[p]Optimized the entrance to the Halls of Onkalo[/p]
[p]Increased the damage of some Warlock and Saint spells[/p]
[p]Many NPCs optimized[/p]
[p]Title Screen lever height adjusted[/p]
[p]Small editing to the Witchgrove Games Splash Screen[/p]
[p]Stunner skill description improved[/p]
[p]Some small overall optimization[/p]
[p]Slightly adjusted a cloud position in the Pramean Jungle[/p]
[p]Removed Spring Water spots from the dungeons, because they were using the old mechanic (there weren't many anyway)[/p]

[p][/p][h3]Fixes:[/h3]

[p]Magic Map can now map 'Islands Underground' Southwest and Northwest entirely[/p]
[p]Minimap now works properly in Twin Falls Forest South[/p]
[p]Some weapons can now properly cause states, such as Bleeding and Cripple[/p]
[p]One of the levers in the 2nd floor of the Temple of the Prophets is now in it's right place[/p]
[p]Bedroom doors now work properly in Twin Falls and Pramea[/p]
[p]No more graphical errors when interacting with some of the Travel Stones[/p]
[p]No more texture overlapping in Pramean Jungle near a fake wall[/p]
[p]No more texture overlapping in Hedge Maze near a fake wall[/p]
[p]Dusk Cloak description corrected[/p]
[p]Stereoscopic 3d effect no longer break when moving mouse cursor while vsync is on (when using Nvidia 3D Vision)[/p]

[p][/p][p]That's about it and I'm almost exhausted just writing the whole thing! There is a chance that I have forgotten to mention some minor improvement or fixes and my notes mostly looked like some weird hieroglyphs, so who knows... But now it's time for me to get some rest and let you enjoy these many new things and changes![/p][p][/p][p]See You in Twin Falls, Traveler![/p][p][/p][p]Best Regards,[/p][p]Jani/Witchgrove Games[/p]