Stoneshard News

Hello!

While more large-scale features are still under development, we’ve decided to start a series of posts dedicated to the Stoneshard setting to finally share some bits of lore with our community.

Since the start of development, the game’s lore changed several times, until we come to the variant suiting everyone. If at first we planned to show a rather typical high-fantasy sword-and-sorcery world, we distanced from this initial concept the more and more as the development went on. Maybe some of remember something about the Last King, an undead army and other things – at the moment everything from the list was either scrapped or completely reworked.

As a result, we came to a rather mundane medieval world, where the influence of the magical and otherworldly is rather small, and Aldor is a small once-kingdom, stuck in a civil war between three rivalling factions. In the game you’ll have to constantly balance between them, because gaining allies in one particular faction will always mean making some enemies in the other ones.



The Council is a group of the most influential Aldor feudals, united around the Regent-Queen and her young son Verne – allegedly the legal heir.

Inora, King Etbert's last wife, married him several months before his untimely death. This marriage was a complete surprise for the whole court - even the nosiest gossipers were surprised by the news. The sudden death of the monarch, soon to follow, became the basis for the rumor that Inora had killed her husband – and her son Verne, born after the Etbert’s death, doesn’t have even a single drop of royal blood in his veins.

Nevertheless, there were plenty of people who believed the Queen. Thanks to her natural cunning and diplomacy, she managed to find many influential allies among nobles – who formed the Council later.

The backbone of the Council consists of two seemingly opposing groups. The first is the Etbert’s old guard – the loyalists who held important posts during his reign. They see Verne as the legitimate successor of the dynasty, which they faithfully served all their lives. The second group consists of those who fell into disgrace during the King Etbert’s rule. For them supporting Inora is a reliable way to regain lost influence and reintegrate into the court life.

However, all of them pursue the common goal: to put down the insurrection and destroy the rebels; restore the crown’s power throughout Aldor; and raise Queen to the throne.



The Great Magistrate is a union of city councils, rebellious aristocrats, as well as artisan and merchant guilds – all fighting for their independence from the royal court.

The roots of Great Magistrate formation lie in the long-standing conflict of King Etbert and the city of Brynn. Having come to power, Etbert deprived Brynn of its free city status. This autocratic move earned him enemies among Brynn’s influential families. And all these years they only waited for the right moment to restore trampled justice.

After the king died and the Inora laid claims to the throne, the Brynn’s city council unanimously voted to quit Aldor, if it would be ruled by an impostor. Surely, the burghers were somewhat deceitful – they weren’t going to tolerate any more power over themselves, and Verne’s unclear origin was just a good excuse. Many neighboring settlements, tired of feudal oppression, followed their example. This union was called the Great Magistrate – since any decisions are discussed by representatives of all the member settlements.

Thanks to the rich treasury and the wide use of mercenaries, the Magistrate fought with the Council on an equal footing, not yielding even an inch of its land. The obtained status quo was finally consolidated after the outbreak of the Crimson Plague – frightened by the unprecedented illness, the parties declared a truce to curb the epidemic.

Taking advantage of the resulting respite, the Magistrate only grew in power, rebuilding everything destroyed by war and sending ambassadors abroad. By the way, this gives the Council another significant reason to call Magistrate followers traitors – as they say, the Magistrate’s ties with Jacinth elves are much closer than is required for commerce.



The Gray Army is a folk uprising that has taken on an enormous scale recently. The composition of the Gray Army is quite dissimilar – the majority are peasants and artisans, but there are other groups as well: former brigands, clerics-in-doubt, broke feudal lords and Magistrate or Council armies deserters.

For several years, the common people meekly endured all the war: they fought under the banners of the Council and the Magistrate, paid wartime taxes, watched lawlessness and violence, suffered from hunger and disease, and died – by thousands. However, the longer the war went on, the louder the grumbling became.

These moods were skillfully used by Nir – a man of unknown origin, and therefore even more mysterious and frightening. A former monk; runaway slave; criminal on the run; feudal lord, who lost his mind after losing his title – there are so many rumors regarding his possible past, the safest bet is not to believe any of them.

The philosophy of the movement is quite confusing and controversial – mainly because only Nir himself grasps it fully. The rest only has to interpret the scattered fragments of his statements – the so-called Words. The Gray Army considers immoderation and incontinence in all its manifestations to be the most important cause of all evil. Nir believes that the ability to find and keep a fine line is paramount, and only in this way people can protect themselves from corruption.

Due to the multiplicity and desperate courage, the Gray Army managed to occupy numerous territories, having won several settlements from the Council and the Magistrate. Now the Army is looking forward to the end of the truce – to finally finish off all those who deny their dogmas.

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That's all for today. Stay tuned for the next update about some game mechanics in two weeks!


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Hello!

For the past month and a half we were very silent since we were busy preparing, releasing and supporting closed alpha test. Because of this we didn’t have enough time to develop new features, and thus there was nothing to tell you about. Today we’ve released the last patch for alpha version, which means we’re back into action again! Therefore, today's devdiary is an filler one - we'll talk about alpha test results and plans for the future.

In general, we’re pleased with how the alpha test went. Despite the limited content, every 10th player spent 10+ hours playing the game, and we’ve also collected lots of suggestions and ideas - that we’ll try to consider during further development. Soon we’ll also send another devpoll to our alpha testers in order to get a detailed feedback on all the aspects we're interested in.



As many had noticed, we’ve changed the release date from the Q1 2019 to 2019 in general. As it turned out, we’re bad at making predictions – it’s quite hard to keep up with the deadlines while constantly experimenting and tweaking things – and without such tweaks it’s hard to make such a large-scale game work well enough. Therefore, for now, we prefer not to give any exact dates, but to focus on the development. We still intend to go Early Access before the end of the year, and a specific date will be announced only when we feel the first public build is almost complete.

The next step in our plan is the transition to the closed beta, which we intend to launch in a few months, late spring or summer. It is unclear how much we’ll be able to fit in a few months, but the minimum roadmap looks like this:

• Transferring to a new engine’s version and then fixing related bugs and crashes
  
• Adding at least half of the abilities for the most part of planned skill branches
  
• Adding all the non-yet implemented types of weapons and equipment
  
• Complete rework of the dual weapon combat mechanics
  
• Finalization of the ranged combat
  
• Some new dungeons
  
• Additional content
  
• Many minor improvements and fixes that take too long to list (such as barter system for trade, for instance)
  

We may also have time to add a new settlement and a number of new game systems, but it isn’t set in stone, so the list above is currently the most realistic.

That's all. In the near future, expect regular devlogs on a variety of topics - including, for example, some details about game’s lore. Also, take a look at our new key art, featuring some of the game's key characters:

Click for Full HD!

See you later!

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Hello!

This devlog is a bit late and therefore kind of off-schedule, as we were busy polishing our today's topic of discussion – bounty system and the associated dungeon, the Crypt.

First, let's clarify the terminology. In our game there’ll be two types of missions: quests and bounties.

First category includes all quests with a scripted storyline and various special content. They are unique and can be completed only once per walkthrough. These tasks include both main plotline missions and various secondary story arcs.

Please keep in mind all English texts are WIP and hadn't been yet professionaly translated and proofread.

And bounties are procedurally generated repeatable quests. Their structure always remains unchanged, but the place and the participants will change. Bounties are offered mainly by village elders, and usually revolve around solving their settlement’s problems. This is one of the best ways to make quick money and improve your relationship with a settlement or a faction.


Some of the bounty-related relics.

As for now, all bounties can be divided into four conditional categories:

• Headhunts. To eliminate a threat, sometimes it’s enough to deal with its leader, an elite enemy who may give you a lot of trouble. By the way, elite mobs are also generated procedurally, but we’ll talk about it some another time.
  
• Rescue. Locals often fall into various dangerous situations. Your job is to get them out of the mess.
  
• Search. Lost relics, stolen artifacts, treasure hunts - you will have a chance to take part in all of this. By the way, nothing prevents you from breaking the contract and leaving the found valuables for yourself…
  
• Interaction. In such bounties you’re required to find a certain place and make a number of special actions to achieve… a needed outcome. Sounds pretty abstract, but, well, that’s how it works.
  

In the future we plan to diversify bounties by adding some new variations and categories. For example, our to-do list contains monster hunts involving some extremely rare and dangerous enemies.

Troll concept. Don't feed him.

It’s worth mentioning that bounties are very dependent on global map situation. For example, if orcs or brigands chose an abandoned fort for their own camp in the settlement’s vicinity, sooner or later they will start to create problems for this settlement – so at some point villagers will offer a bounty on them.

Also, unlike quests, bounties completion time is limited and thus is discussed in advance. Not completing the bounty in time won’t only worsen your reputation, but may also have serious consequences for a bounty-giver.

For instance, if you won’t disrupt the necromantic ritual in the crypt nearby in time, the undead may become significantly stronger in this region, so they’ll make even more trouble in the future. So take your bounties seriously and don’t be greedy – if you aren’t sure you’ll be able to complete them, don’t give people false hope and let them hire some other mercenary.

Nothing like pillaging someone's grandgrandfather's tomb!

In alpha all bounties are focused on Crypts – our new dungeon type. Technically, the Crypt isn’t 100% new – we’ve demonstrated it a long time ago. However, during last month it was completely revamped from scratch to better fit the changed lore and also test our new approach to dungeon procedural generation.

Most crypts in Aldor have hundred-years history and reflect local burial customs. Those who could afford it were buried in impressive stone sarcophagi. Common folks could usually count on an ordinary wooden coffin. Many dead people are also buried with different valuables – as it’s believed that it may help the deceased in their afterlives.

So a trip to the crypt offers not only an oppotrtunity to die from the undead hands, but also a chance to make a fortune… if you’re lucky enough. Anyway, nobody will check the bodies of people who died several ages ago, so that’s probably fine.

Well.... I guess... I'm here?

And as a small bonus – here goes our in-game map item, which shows a small fragment of the global map. Bu the way, this is where the alpha will take place.

This is all for today. See you later!

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Hello!

In today's devlog we will talk about items: food, consumables, valuables and their impact on the economy.



Let's start with the most delicious part: food. Cooking system isn’t that far away, so we’ve added many new types of food, almost all of which have their own properties, rarity and value. The meat is very nourishing and slows hunger accumulation after being consumed; fruits quench thirst and increase immunity; vegetables also strengthen your immunity and often have special effects. For example, garlic will slightly increase your resistance to unholy damage, and leek will slightly increase the speed of detoxification.

Dishes are separate subcategory of food. They usually greatly satisfy hunger, occupy less inventory space and spoil more slowly (or don’t spoil at all when it comes to pickled and smoked products) or have powerful special effects. For now, you can only buy them from merchants, but in the future we will add the ability to cook them by yourself.

Some types of food are highly valued for their healing properties and rarity. Usually, they have an elven origin: figs, ginger, citruses and dragon fruits will be difficult to find anywhere except from stocks of rarely encountered elven traders.

Alcohol deserves a special mention. Since the war was raging around not so long ago, there is not much quality alcohol left and therefore it’s highly values. You will have a choice: to keep alcohol for yourseld to relieve pain and keep morale high enough, or to sell it for additional income. The more exquisite the alcohol is, the weaker are its side effects: drinking country moonshine is… well, very different from consuming brandy or rare elven icy wines.



By the way: we finally added the ability to merge used consumables with each other. Now, if you have two half full bottles, their contents can be poured into one, freeing up a place in the inventory.



And now, the valuables. We want them to become the main engine of the in-game economy: it will be much more profitable for the player to seek various rarities than to collect rusty junk sold for a penny. First, they take up much less space than massive armor and weapons. Secondly, it’s way more profitable: almost all merchants are interested in valuables and are willing to pay pretty well for them.

Different locations will have different sets of valuables you may encounter. In the crypts you can profit from the plundering of sarcophagi - perhaps, among the decayed bones you may find some old jewelry. In the brigand hideouts you may find a lot of different stuff, including rare goods from the plundered elven caravans: porcelain, silks, ivory and spices. And in the abandoned mines it’s possible to find gems and precious ingots.



And to carry all that loot far enough, do not forget to get a roomy bag in advance. And, perhaps, equip some good armor: with such a load you can easily get into a brigand ambush.

That's all for today, see you soon!

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Hello!

Today we will show another new feature, and this time it’s quite a massive one: trade system. Trade is the vital force of our game economy, so we paid a lot of attention to its development. We faced a difficult task – to make trade system both user-friendly and moderately realistic, and we’re quite happy with the result.

Let's start with the context. The game takes place in a country ravaged by a bloody civil strife. But the war is still not over: due to some unfavorable events, all factions were forced to declare a temporary truce, thereby securing a precarious status quo. But at any time their confrontation may resume again. All this impacts the economy: currency is devalued, because of the chaos and production slump many commodities are in acute shortage, and the prices of essential goods are greatly inflated.

Trading with merchant. Clickable.

In Stoneshard you can trade with almost all neutral and friendly characters: from merchants to simple peasants and city guards. But at the same time, it is worth remembering that the wartime economy is pretty brutal: because of limited resources, everyone is primarily interested in securing personal gain – so NPCs tend to overprice their goods a lot and prefer to buy your goods far below their true value.

NPC role also influences trade prices. Depending on what craftsman you’re dealing with, you may expect some price fluctuations on goods he’s interested in. A blacksmith, for example, works with metal, so he’d buy iron equipment more expensively and also sell it cheaper, while merchants and wandering traders, due to their versatility, tend to trade at less favorable tariffs for you. In addition, your reputation level with a particular settlement and faction, some local and world events, and the quality and condition of the item itself will have their impact on the final price too.

Trading with common folk is mostly about bartering few cheap items like food. Clickable.

Other important aspects of trade are NPC interests, their stock and wealth. These parameters are different for each NPC, depending on its role, settlement and faction.

Ordinary peasant possess very few items: usually, food, drinks and tools. They tend to buy the same kind of stuff from your character and won’t be interested in buying armor or potions. They’re also very limited in their funds, so you should probably seek some another person to sell an expensive gem to – peasant won’t have enough money to make this deal possible.

However, the blacksmith's stock is much more impressive: he sells a huge variety of various equipment, is quite wealthy and is willing to purchase some of your spoils of war, though he won’t be interested in buying scroll and potions too. It’s worth mentioning that there are some items which are demanded by almost everyone due to wartime conditions – such as food, alcohol and different valuables.

Trading stock will be regularly refilled: NPCs will purchase new goods instead of the sold ones, and the speed of this process will also depend on the situation in the settlement and the world around.

Repair in action. Clickable.

And finally, repair function. Now battered items can be repaired by a certain artisan for a fee: metal equipment can be fixed by blacksmith, while carpenter and tanner would work only with wood/leather and cloth items respectively. The repair cost depends on the item’s condition and its base price. By the way, you’ll also have an opportunity to fix the item by yourself using a repair kit or an appropriate skill, but the efficiency of such amateurish repair is much lower, and item’s max durability will degrade a little too. Therefore, it’s a good idea to have your most valuable equipment to be repaired by professional craftsmen only.

That's all for today. Until next Saturday!

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