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Stoneshard News

Hotfix #1

[h3]BUGS & STABILITY[/h3]
  • Fixed Snake-related crash
  • Fixed crash happening during trading

[h3]BALANCE[/h3]
  • Low-tier enemies had their Damage and Health reduced by 5-10% to have more gradual difficulty curve
  • Rebalanced Pain Limit formula and Pain Gain from injuries.

Stoneshard Is Out In Early Access!


Greetings!

We'd like to thank all those who've been supporting us all this time. Our game is about to enter into the next stage, and we hope we can see it through together.

You can purchase the game here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/625960/Stoneshard/

You can learn about the development plan and see answers to the most frequently asked questions in the previous news post.

Cheers!

3 Days Before Release! + Roadmap Early Access FAQ


Hello everyone!

As a reminder, it’s just 3 days until the Early Access release! That’s why we’d like to answer some of the most frequently asked questions as well as tell you about the current status of the game, what will happen during the EA, and our plans for the future.

Early Access is just the beginning of the long way, which we are yet to walk with your support. There are still lots of mechanics and content to be added. We’ll need approximately 2 years to implement everything we’ve planned.

Let’s start with the most important part - the current content. Right now the basic gameplay cycle is pretty much in place. Combat, dungeon crawling, health system, character development, and economy are all functional.

To fully explore all the content with one character, you’ll need around 7-10 hours, which is roughly translated into gaining 8-10 experience levels.

Currently in-game content includes:
  • Two settlements - Osbrook and Mannshire
  • Two types of dungeons
  • Three enemy factions: brigands, the undead, proselytes
  • 16 types of contracts
  • 200+ items and 100+ abilities
  • Hunting
  • Health system
  • Economy


Unfortunately we couldn’t implement everything we had planned by February 6, so some of the content (new boss, a couple of new skill trees, expanded dialogues and so on) will be added with the first update – Trollslayer, which will be released in March. This february will mostly be spent on fixing reported bugs and adjusting balance.

For now, let us introduce our roadmap:


Keep in mind that new content and features are not limited to things listed in the roadmap, they only represent high priority targets. The listed dates are an approximation and may be subject to change in the future versions of the roadmap. We may also add or remove features at our discretion.

Frequently Asked Questions


  • Supporter pack. It will be available on release for $10 and will include OST along with two unique starting items (they don’t offer major gameplay advantage). In the future the pack will be expanded with, among other things, a digital manual and an artbook. These items are granted automatically to every purchaser of the Supporter pack, there will be no need to buy them separately.
  • The Prologue. It will be included in the main game, so you won’t have to download and play the Prologue as a separate game. It also doesn’t matter how you complete it or what items, experience, character build, etc. you acquire there -- these things are part of the story of a separate character. If you’ve already finished the Prologue, you’ll be able to start playing in an open world right away.
  • Permadeath. Even though the game is balanced around permadeath mechanic, enabling it is purely optional, and you’ll be able to turn it off when starting a new game. If you play without permadeath, you can resume your game from the latest save.
  • Save system. It’s only possible to save the game in taverns. To save your progress, you need to find a tavern, rent a room, and sleep for any amount of time. Unfortunately the game’s engine doesn’t allow saving anywhere and anytime when the game is this expansive.
  • Progress wipes. Large updates which add new mechanics will likely lead to save file incompatibility. However, if you want to continue playing as a character from a previous version, you can rollback to the previous version of the game via Steam game options.
  • Languages. English, Russian, Chinese, German and semi-official fanmade Polish will be available on release. We also plan to add the following languages soon: Spanish, French, Italian, and Brazilian Portuguese. The work on them will begin soon after the EA release. In the future we also plan to add Korean and Japanese localizations.
  • Multiplayer and co-op. They are not planned, the game is an exclusively single-player experience.
  • Achievements and trading cards. They are planned, but not for the nearest future.
  • The main story is not yet available. For now there is only a sandbox mode, where you can travel between the settlements, fulfill contracts, and explore dungeons. We want to finish the game mechanics and content first before we add the main story as a single large expansion, which will arrive right before the game leaves the Early Access.
  • Full keyboard and gamepad support. At the moment the controls are designed for the mouse, but we plan to improve keyboard controls in the future and add gamepad support.
  • Mac and Linux. The game will be available for Linux on release. Mac OS support will be added later, the date is TBA.
  • GOG release. It’s planned, but not for the first few months.


If you still have questions, you can ask them in the comments below. That’s it for now.

Thank you for your support and see you on February 6!

7 Days Until Release + Early Access Trailer

Hello everyone!

We’re here to remind you only 7 days left until Stoneshard launches in Early Access on the 6th of February! For those of you still wondering, the price tag will be $15 for the US / 15€ for the EU.

To celebrate this, we’ve just released our launch trailer. Check it out!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

In the coming week prepare for more news and updates, including our Early Access FAQ, development roadmap and other interesting things.

Cheers!

Devlog: Tweaks Changes


Hello everyone!

This devlog is dedicated to a variety of small tweaks and improvements, which have accumulated over the last few weeks.

[h3]Cooking[/h3]
Casual cooking is the best way to ease your mind after slaughtering the whole bunch of bandits.

Ever since the old Prologue, many players have been complaining that there are no uses for raw meat. In fact, we do have a fairly complex cooking and ingredient system planned, but implementing it is a very complex task, so it won’t be coming any time soon. Nevertheless, there is already a need for some option to cook meat acquired from hunting - that’s why we’ve added a small placeholder system, which will allow roasting it. To do it, you will need to find a campfire or an oven, start a fire, and cook raw meat through the context menu. Simple, fast, filling.

[h3]Expanded Map and More Dungeons[/h3]


With the addition of a new village (we’ll tell you more about it in the next devlog), the necessity of expanding the map became rather apparent. As a result, the map is now almost twice as large. Every village is also surrounded with its own dungeons, which are repopulated with enemies after a certain amount of time.

[h3]New Items[/h3]



The amount of available equipment has been increased with the addition of new, regular gear, as well as some special, unique items. Unique items can only be acquired in a single copy and are often gained in a very specific way - during certain encounters or as a rare drop after killing an appropriate miniboss. These are not legendary items, so they don’t have any unique properties, but they are generally better than the alternatives of the same level. All preset characters also start the game with two unique items, unobtainable in any other way.

[h3]Purses & Bags[/h3]



During the closed beta, many players complained that inventory space is too limited and is too fast to get cluttered with gold. We’ve fixed this problem with the addition of purses - special containers, which can only hold crowns. A purse only takes up two inventory spaces, while being able to hold up to 2000 coins, saving lots of space.

Backpacks are equipped in the cloak slot, adding 12 extra spaces, which increases your inventory capacity by almost 25%. Why just 12 spaces? Because that’s the exact amount of space taken up by a backpack if you put it in your inventory. We wanted to avoid the situations when players fill their inventories with many backpacks to maximize their inventory capacity. In our game the small inventory size is vital for balance and is an important tactical element, meant to encourage players to plan and optimize their equipment.

We don’t plan to add item stacks, as they interfere with the sense of size for each individual item. However, we plan to add more bag types for different items, such as tubes for storing scrolls, alchemy pouches for potions and ingredients and so on.

[h3]Geomancy Tweaks[/h3]

Geomancy is the most unique magic school in the game at the moment. However, it had many problems: it was fairly independent from gear, and it could become an absolute weapon from level one if used correctly.

Our task was to fix it without affecting other well-loved abilities. As a result, Runic Boulder, the cornerstone of the skill tree, was the only ability which got significantly rebalanced. Its problems included overly strong bonuses, lack of cooldowns, and no adverse effects of using the spell. These factors resulted in preventive boulder spam before each battle instead of placing boulders tactically.



To fix this, we’ve rebalanced the effect of Runic Empowerment, making it less versatile. We’ve also added a small 2 turns cooldown between raising boulders, as well as introduced energy cost for maintaining them. Each boulder now drains 2 energy points per turn. If your character’s energy runs out, the summoned boulders crumble. On top of this, boulders crumble if the caster loses sight of them, so it’s no longer possible to lure enemies into rooms with pre-casted boulders.

Little QoL-improvement. Now you don't need to re-cast boulders to get rid of them.

Some other geomancy spells also had their numbers tweaked: for instance, stone spikes and stone armor durations have been reduced. To compensate for that, energy costs for all geomancy spells are lower as well - it’s now possible to create more complicated spell combinations without running out of energy. Thanks to these combined changes, geomancy now feels way more tactical, while still being very powerful in skilled hands, remaining just as fun to use as before.

That’s all for now. Until next time!

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