Solace Crafting News

We had a debilitating bug plaguing the beta branch causing quite a bit of concern and negativity. Rightly so as it was pretty game-breaking, and something I would have liked to have fixed in just a few hours after it was reported. Unfortunately it was not a bug. Bugs you can track down and squash, and I've got a LOT of experience doing that. I couldn't find this one and called in help to try and figure it out. We finally found it this morning and it was actually a timing issue, meaning the code was correct and working, but sometimes things would happen in the right order, sometimes they would happen in the wrong order. It was a very elusive problem and I'm sorry it took this long to get it sorted out.

This patch should have that cleared up, ore nodes have been repaired and had their spawning locations upped a bit. Early next week I should have more ready to talk about, but we always want to make sure we don't get ahead of ourselves ːsteamthumbsupː

v 1.2.0.3 2025.3.22
- Fixed an animation timing issue causing combat and harvesting modes to get stuck and become unresponsive
- Fixed the old sledgehammer showing up on the player model and removed a lot of outdated code
- Fixed ore not mining properly
- Increased ore spawns in Grass and Swamp biomes

You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin, or you can verify file integrity to trigger it.

To opt into Beta you only need to go to your Steam Library, right-click on Solace Crafting, select Properties, click on the Beta tab, and opt-in to the beta.

Join us in Discord!

Interested in supporting development of Solace Crafting? Please consider becoming a patron via Patreon!

Hello everyone, and welcome to the fifth Producer’s Letter for Solace Crafting.

I’m Fab, and today we'll take a moment to contemplate the journey so far and look towards the future for our next step.

We embarked on a hell of a journey with this overhaul, one that will likely take us late into 2025 for all the core changed envisioned to fully materialize. As you’ve seen from work gone into the beta branch over the past few months, this is a complete rebirth of the game. It is also a structural changes to operating procedures, both things in full respect of what keeps some of you so faithful: the actual soul of the game, and the personality of its creator, Kyle.



After causing substantial chaos on the beta branch through autumn and the first part of winter with all the stuff we’ve rewired, we’ve used the past couple months to bring the branch back to its original playability in line. The goal is then to update the main branch and resume the game’s regular life cycle, while continuing its profound transformation into a better, sharper, tighter version of itself.

As the latest post announced, two areas of focus will be tightening the gameplay loops (or bringing them in when they’re missing) and deploying user content and modding tools. To us, this is really the essence of this next phase: making Solace Crafting and its worlds, yours.

Remember the world customization screen when you create a new world? Well, what if that kind of control was not just a one-off thing at world creation. Rather, we envision it as an entire relationship with the world extending not just to biome setup, difficulty, resource abundance but contents, lore, rules, you name it. We want to make you architects of destiny within the planes Khora.

In the latest patch, we’ve updated the graphical elements for houses and towns; this is just a small beginning. Not only are we going to improve their looks and config, but we’re overhauling the building system to be more responsive and easier to produce beautiful homes with.



Dungeons should soon follow, with new assets coming in. As part of the user generated content approach, we fancy the concept of you being able to build and share your own dungeons too. We’re not quite there yet but it’s certainly on the horizons. Either way, sharing your creations is going to be a key dimension of this next update cycle.

The foundational updates to the world creation system continue with the implementation, shortly, of new tools enabling us to dish out a lot more new areas to populate worlds. I’ve kept on referring to this as “static islands in a procedural ocean”. The idea being that right now, the world is fully procedural, right? PoIs were the first step in a transition. Just the same way you currently encounter PoIs, which are static (as in they are pre-built objects with built-in variability), you will encounter entire world chunks, mini-worlds, in effect, giving your experience a lot more anchoring and familiarity as each biome acquires its set of locales. We’ve been validating tools for that, so finalized development and implementation will be coming this spring. The goal is to give your Solace Crafting world a sense of wonder and exploration, a sense of grounded and tangible and at the same time enhancing replayability by making worlds more meaningful and surprising.



Additionally, one more word on gameplay loops, which have been mentioned a few times here previously but it’s really something that is going to be key to take Solace Crafting to its potential. By gameplay loops, we certainly do not mean theme park-like play circuits. Simply, we mean the flow of goals, tasks, incentives and underlying systems into one another that give structure to your experience. Whether you decide to step out into the wilderness or go craft a new weapon, each should organically take you through a sequence of events, thoughts and emotions that is much more purposeful and rewarding and is more than “stuff to do in the game” and more like building Solace Crafting-specific experiences.

This also means further updating the RPG aspects of the game, starting with character creation, to give it that “assign stat points and create your build” experience.

And finally, another word on visuals. We are still transitioning to more marked and game-specific visuals. Currently, we’re very bright and somewhat cartoony at times. Understand that what we want to keep is the freshness and vibrancy that make the visuals more catchy and easy on the eyes but the style will evolve. This is still a kind of reset phase. Our ideal scenario is to pay homage to the 90’s rpgs and old school fantasy we grew up with while achieving a crisp, modern, enchanting look. Tall order but we’re preparing that meticulously, collecting refs and hands to help us through this process.

That’s it for today!

We have so much to do but as you’ve seen over the past few months, we are committed and bold. As you’ve seen with Kyle for the past few years, he is relentless. So one by one we’ll clear all the necessary steps to take the game where it needs to go and deliver you many great experiences both along the way and at destination.

Hey everyone,
Kyle here, super excited to drop a massive beta update just in time for the Steam Spring Sale! 🎉

Though we're still keeping this on the beta branch, this has been a long time in the works, and brings back a lot of functionality to all the new and improved systems.

What’s new in the beta update?
✅ Major system upgrades – We’ve overhauled key parts of the game to deliver a stronger, more dynamic experience, including a new Points of Interest system, and steadily evolving action combat system.
✅ A fresh foundation – While content is still growing, this update lays the groundwork for bigger and better things ahead with heavily revamped world generation.
✅ Completely re-imagined art direction – Greater contrast and more colorful all around, this new style allows us to create and work with assets as a greatly improved speed.



What's soon to come?
✅ Powerful new dungeon generation – Allowing us to seamlessly connect caves and dungeons, as the first step towards more long term goals for deep and rewarding dungeon crawling.
✅ Community-driven content – We’ll soon be introducing tools that will let YOU create dungeon rooms, quests, and points of interest—your creations will become part of the game!

Steam sale – Get it at a discount!
For a limited time, the game is on sale! If you've been waiting to jump in, now is the perfect time. Not only do you get a discount, but you'll be among the first to help shape the next wave of content.

How you can help
🔹 Play the beta! Let us know what you think—we’re actively improving it.
🔹 Leave a review! If you enjoy the game, reviews help a ton during Steam sales.
🔹 Join the community! We’re building something great together, and your ideas matter.

Find something that isn't working? Let me know, I'm quick to fix problems as long as I know they're there!

This update is just the beginning of a huge leap forward for the game. More content, more tools, and more ways to play are on the way! Thanks for being part of the journey.

🔥 Play Now & Grab the Sale While It Lasts! 🔥

To opt into Beta you only need to go to your Steam Library, right-click on Solace Crafting, select Properties, click on the Beta tab, and opt-in to the beta.

Join us in Discord!

Interested in supporting development of Solace Crafting? Please consider becoming a patron via Patreon!

v 1.2.0.1 2025.3.14
- Most skills are working with the new systems, though they are a work in progress, and scheduled for a complete redesign
- Character customization is now working with the new systems, though body morphs are not yet available
- Added stalks to most biomes
- Added more combat points of interest
- Revamped biome noise a bit
- The starting area will now flatten out a 75m ring at a static height and always spawn the starter platform at the same position
- Removed over 5GB of old assets
- Retextured building pieces until the replacement system and models are ready
- Added more tools and weapons, still an ongoing process
- Player health and damage once again tied to stats
- Monster health and damage once again tied to spawn distance
- Town buildings temporarily replaced with a generic building
- Town NPCs temporarily replaced with nudists (actually they're wearing underwear)
- In game armors replaced with new models, though some duplicate still, more to come
- Fixed tool damage not properly applying during harvesting

Introducing the new Point of Interest system! Very happy to get this new piece of tech up for testing. Please remember these new changes are taking place on the pubic "beta" branch until we further implement the wide array of changes that are being worked on.

I also recorded a video update that goes into explaining this a bit near the end, and in general what's going on, how we got here, and where we're headed:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

In short the PoI system spawns points of interest throughout the world, each of which is then capable of randomizing and controlling its own sub-components. So for example the new bandit camp can spawn with trees enables, ruined walls enabled, a set of chairs around a campfire may or may not spawn, and so forth.



The PoIs included in this patch are only combat encounters, but we'll be adding landmark, harvesting, crafting, building, and social encounters as well. The landmark encounters in particular are being designed to create large geographical/natural structures that can be seen from a great distance allowing players to better orient themselves in the infinite planes of Khora.

This patch also introduces a variety of upgrades to the player controller, combat, and monster AI. Certain combat actions will now make use of a resource pool called Wind. This is similar to what might be called Stamina in other games, as it will quickly recharge and allow players to continue fighting on a very short-term time scale, whereas Stamina in Solace Crafting is planned to be used for much more important decisions with lasting effects. Some new weapons and weapon swapping/equipping logic is still being improved, and we've also got two new monsters that didn't quite make it into this patch that I should have in and uploaded shortly.

Happy gaming!

- Kyle

v 1.1.1.5 2025.1.22
- Complete rewrite of encounter/PoI generation systems
- Dungeons and caves are spawning again though still unpopulated and void of resources
- New procedural locations system spawning wolf dens and bandit hideouts
- Added more harvestables including ore and stalks (not yet intended final solution)
- Added wolf loot logic and animations
- Added bare hand harvesting animation
- Combat enhancements and tuning
- Improved bot hit reactions
- Player step sounds
- Slash effects
- Combo finisher logic added for 2 handed weapons
- Weapon attacks now use "wind" resource pool
- Character's again teleport home and revive on death
- Most weapons that have not been reimplemented yet will default

You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin, or you can verify file integrity to trigger it.

To opt into Beta you only need to go to your Steam Library, right-click on Solace Crafting, select Properties, click on the Beta tab, and opt-in to the beta.

Join us in Discord!

Interested in supporting development of Solace Crafting? Please consider becoming a patron via Patreon!

Hello everyone, and welcome to the fourth Producer’s Letter for Solace Crafting.

I’m Fab, and today we'll take a moment to reflect on the past few months, what was done and what remains to do as we approach the first live update for Solace Crafting!
First of all, we want to take a moment to thank the overwhelmingly positve reception of our efforts by you, the players. What we've been doing has been rather disruptive at times for the main game: months without updates, a lot of hush-hugh, more recently we even broke a few things etc. Yet, in every comments section available, the community has cheered us on or supported our efforts. Very validating, as it's not only a rather unique undertaking, completely transforming a live game, but also a very unique set of circumstances we're doing it in.

But we're so enthusiastic and hopeful in the first place that this reception pushes us to the next level. And so now, without further ado, let's talk about what we've been doing and what's coming.

A major update of this last segment has been the combat system. Despite its nature as an exploration/crafting game, Solace Crafting will still feature plenty of combat and that's a part of the game that has to be very satisfying on whatever axis it hinges on. Is it the controller? Is it the numbers? It is the enemy AI? For us, it's a little bit of all that. The goal is to keep the experience comfortable, dynamic and accessible without turning the game into a souls-like or a spreadsheet simulator.
This foundational updating process was big. As a matter of fact it took the full focus of a single developer over the past few months, still ongoing, but the results are very encouraging.



Right now we are wrapping up the updating of Bot Behaviors, making the encounters with them more interesting by giving them personalized ways to respond to combat encounters, where they can be aggressive, enraged, turtling, avoidant, etc and shift dynamically from one mindset to the other depending on the development of combat situations. This should conclude the first cycle of combat updates, transforming the experience completely



Points of Interest are another major feature, tied to every aspect of the game. They will stand out in the landscape, giving you more of a sense of exploration, adventure and discovery. We are concentrating the resources and valuables into them, whether loot or harvest, centering that part of the game upon a notion of expedition.



Think of a mix between what the current dungeons, monoliths and towers do, but in a lighter, more relaxed format: a bit of a surprise box of a gameplay experience. Bots may or may not patrol or lurk these spots, as they too would tend to flock around them. Following this update, the new open world experience would divide into relaxing, scenic strolls in the landscape to forage for resources, and PoI spotting and exploration to collect prized stuff in greater abundance.

Most of these items are intended to be present in the first major update of the live branch in January, where Solace Crafting will take its bold first step into its future. It will completely shed its old skin to acquire the whole new look you've seen in all these previews so far. 80% of the old game's systems and mechanics should remain there, supplemented by all the new stuff. And from there on out, the live transformation process will begin, updating and improving everything.

Our vision for what Solace Crafting should be is strong. Many of you have said for years that the foundation to make a great game was there. We also believe it is: both strong enough in its positives, and identified enough where it's lacking, to provide us a straight road to shoot for a place of honor in the public's heart.

- Fab