Solace Crafting News

[h2]Introducing the Solace Builder – Build Your Sanctuary[/h2][p][/p][h2]1. What is the Builder?[/h2][p]The Solace Builder is a standalone creative tool designed to let you build your own sanctuaries, homes, fortresses, and villages in Khora, the endless world of Solace Crafting. You can design structures and environments using the same systems we use to create the world of Solace Crafting, giving you hands-on access to shape and personalize your space.[/p][p]This early demo allows you to start building right away, experimenting with layouts, aesthetic details, and environmental storytelling. Your builds will eventually be exportable into Solace Crafting through save files and Steam Workshop support, letting you live and adventure inside the spaces you’ve designed. Not only will the building interface be implemented directly into Solace Crafting, the build files from staff and community alike will be used to populate the world with curated hand-crafted content.[/p][h2]2. Why Are We Releasing This Now?[/h2][p]We’re sharing the Builder early because we want you to be part of this process. By testing, experimenting, and sharing your creations and feedback, you help shape the Builder’s future as we refine the system toward our planned Steam release in September.[/p][p]Our goal is to make the Builder a robust, user-friendly creative tool for players and a platform for artists and students to distribute curated content within the Solace ecosystem, ensuring we build a player-driven world while supporting human creativity in game development.[/p][p]We have a lot of improvements and developments planned. The nature of such modular, parts-based creative tools involves lots of complex use cases that may reveal all kinds of unexpected situations. [/p][p]Different players will use the tool in different ways to create different things, and run into different glitches, bugs and interesting situations. Help us root them all out! We've got a lot of content and features still left to implement.[/p][h2]3. Our Roadmap[/h2]

• [p]Early Demo Release on Itch.io: Play around, test, and share feedback.[/p]
• [p]Wishlist on Steam: A dedicated Steam page for Solace Builder will go live soon to prepare for the September launch.[/p]
• [p]Extended Functions: Landscape modification, lighting and atmospherics, parts deformation, UI, UX and QoL improvements.[/p]
• [p]Cosmetic Packs and Cultural Themes: Horse Lords, King’s Men, Firstborn, and Quaintlanders cultural packs will add new building parts, furniture, flora, and decor options.[/p]
• [p]Biome and Companion Expansions: Post-launch updates will add themed biomes, animals, and NPC companions to enhance your builds.[/p]
• [p]Steam Workshop Integration: Export your sanctuaries directly into Solace Crafting.[/p]

[h2]4. Our Vision[/h2][p]We believe in empowering players to build and personalize the worlds they play in, creating spaces that feel meaningful and personal. We’re also committed to building systems that support creators, artists, and students by giving them a platform to share their work within the game ecosystem, ensuring that human creativity thrives in game development.[/p][p]The Builder is the next step in expanding the Solace universe, making it a world shaped by its community.[/p][h2]Download the Builder Demo Now[/h2][p]Download the Building Demo via Itch.io[/p][h2]Join the Discussion[/h2][p]If you have questions, want to share feedback, or want to hang out with other builders, join us on the Solace Crafting Discord.[/p][h2]Screenshots and Media[/h2][p][/p][h2]Closing Note[/h2][p]Thank you for your support, whether you’ve been with us since the early days of Solace Crafting or are just discovering our world through the Builder. We’re excited to see what you will create.[/p][p]
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[p]Hello![/p][p]It's been some time we haven't given a public update to the steam page: we've been very busy. We've been pretty active on Discord, so this is a good reminder to join us there if you haven't already: you'll get more real-time previews and feedback on what's cooking.[/p][p]We have lots to announce and discuss and truth be told, we've been trying to figure out how to split it, to not overload. So bear with us as we do a bit more figuring out for a while longer and in the meantime, we can show you some screenshots of the progress we've been making revamping the game visuals and world feel. We hope you enjoy them![/p][p]We'll see you very soon with the next Producer's Letter, long overdue.
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Lots in this beta patch, though I need to make it clear this is another foundational bug fix / optimization patch, not bringing in a lot of new content or systems.

As we finish up dealing with these little bugs and kinks in all the new systems we've implemented I've also been hard at work on an entirely new building system and a standalone tool specifically for building design. We'll be doing a deep dive into that in the near future. It's hard, but it's always best not to get ahead of ourselves as we'll make everything clear and available as soon as it's all ready.

We've had some pretty deep discussions in Discord lately regarding the future of the game as well. Everyone is welcome to drop their two cents as we make the tough decisions moving forward with Solace Crafting!

Lot's to come!
Happy adventuring.

- Malkere

v 1.2.0.4 2024.5.13
- Fixed some resources looking for "axe" instead of "hatchet"
- Fixed sledgehammer not coming out
- Fixed tool strength not being used properly in such cases
- Upscaled terrain resolution 4x
- Improved terrain performance
- new plains noise
- object height problems fixed
- new plains noise not flattening starting area fixed
- stopped objects from spawning in the first 32m
- Fixed stone tools being smithing recipes
- Fixed stone tool recipes showing up twice
- Fixed equipping stone sledgehammer tutorial step not updating
- Fixed sickle wind not working/throwing errors
- Fixed sickle damage not working properly
- Fixed environment biomes calculating at old heightmap 256 res scale
- Improved player torch lighting and repositioned to light up face better
- Disabled player auto-facing nearby targets during combat/harvesting
- Monsters are granting exp
- Bandits are dropping loot
- Players will now attack in the direction the camera is facing
- PoI loot will be saved once interacted with
- Fixed map UI using old biome math
- Fixed a harmless bandit error
- Fixed staff & tools sizes
- Fixed attacks movement
- Fixed sledge hammer double hit
- Fixed stone club
- Fixed some weapons wind costs
- Fixed a missing mace

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!

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.