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  3. Weekly Report from 05/05/25 and Roadmap to the Update.

Weekly Report from 05/05/25 and Roadmap to the Update.

Hello everyone!
I'll try to provide you with small weekly updates from time to time about what's happening with the development.

I won’t be giving a super detailed report or a day-by-day breakdown, as that would take too much time. Instead, I’ll briefly outline what’s been going on.

At the end of each update, I’ll also share how I’m feeling mentally, my general thoughts, and what tasks I have planned before the big upcoming update.

Since the last news post, a lot of work has been done. However, I lost 12 days due to being seriously ill and was barely able to work. Still, aside from the sick days, I managed to accomplish the following:

1 Created a major quest about Svarog’s Forge, which begins in Red Yar and will conclude near the end of the game. The forge will allow players to craft Legendary items using rare materials that aren’t easy to find.

I won’t spoil the details, but the quest features Dragon and a fight with him.

It’s a complex quest that took a good amount of time—lots of dialogue, a bunch of conditions I had to implement as a developer, and plenty of tag-related headaches. But the quest itself turned out great.

2 Polished some of the more complex mid-game quests. Without going into detail, they involve a lot of characters and a large clash between the guards and the undead. It was quite a bit of work.

3 Started building the Dark Forest location where various evil creatures will live. The location is about 50% complete.

4 Made 4 small quests for Could Yar.

5 Began creating a massive ice cave/pass/tunnel beneath the mountain in Could Yar, which will be inhabited by various monsters. This tunnel will eventually serve as a shortcut between Could Yar and Red Yar.

6 Started working on the location for Dark Knight boss - Koschei, his dungeon and private chambers.

7 Spent several days fixing a particularly annoying bug where quests were being duplicated. It’s a long story, but it wasn’t easy to resolve.

8 Completed a huge number of small tasks and polish related to the main storyline quests. (There’s still quite a bit of polish work left to do.)

9 Created materials and visual effects for freezing, burning, and poisoning spells and enchanted weapons.

At the moment, my mental state is stable, though I’m a bit worried about not hitting the update deadlines I set for myself. I want to release it faster, but real life keeps throwing new obstacles my way—mice in the house, health issues, surprise visits from the tax office, paperwork, family matters, etc. For big companies, these things wouldn’t slow development much, but when one person is making the game, each of these interruptions can seriously delay progress, and that’s what frustrates me the most.

I’m capable of getting a lot done in a single productive day. Each good day brings the release closer, and every day lost to real-life stuff pushes it back just as much.

I can only hope for your understanding and am doing my best to work as fast and hard as I can. I have no other choice.

On a brighter note, I was kind of glad to hear that GTA 6 got delayed—because if "Elder Legacy" releases a little later than planned, I was worried the media space would be completely taken over by GTA.

Here’s a rough plan of the work I still need to do before the next update (which will essentially include almost the entire game except for the swamps). The time estimates are approximate—some tasks might be completed faster than expected, others might take longer:

Quest polishing – 1–2 weeks

Engine cutscenes and text-based cutscenes – 3 days

Quest rewards, XP, and XP balancing – 1–2 days

Fixing tags in old saves – 1 day

Programming additional quests – 3–6 days

Volkhv magic and abilities – 2–5 days

New monsters (animations, sounds, creation, placement) – 3–5 days

Bosses – 4–5 days

NPC appearances and their animations – 3–5 days

Combat system polish – 4–6 days

Bulletin board tasks – 2 days

Miscellaneous notes and tasks from Telegram – 3–5 days

Game balance – 3–5 days

Placing resources, items, and chests – 1–2 days

Economy balance – 1–2 days

Implementing new voice acting – 1–3 days

Sounds and music – 2–3 days

Books and lore entries – 2–3 days

Traps, puzzles, and dungeon logic – 3–4 days

Visual polish – 3–5 days

Small islands you can sail to – 1–3 days

Lighting improvements – 1 day

Bug fixing – 3 days

Cutscene illustrations – 1–2 days

Treasure maps – 1–2 days

Monster loot, vendor inventories, and crafting – 1–2 days

Card game for the rest of the game – 1–3 days

Platforming on cliffs – 1 day

NPC mouth movement during dialogue – 1 day

Summoning allies and transformations – 1 day

Testing and final adjustments – 1 week

So yeah, it’s a lot—but as you can see, each task by itself doesn’t take that long. On average, 1–3 days per task. The problem is that there are just so many tasks, and I’m doing them all alone. That’s why development takes so long. This is all pure work time, which can easily get disrupted by everyday life.

With this update, the game will expand significantly. The current Early Access content will feel like just a drop in the ocean.

Now that you have a clearer idea of what’s going on, I hope the wishlist drop-off will slow down. My mistake was doing everything silently—but believe me, I am working, and working a lot. You can't imagine how many lists like this I’ve made since the game entered Early Access.

All the best to you all!