Solace Crafting News

The summer survey results were quite clear, people love to craft! So that's what I've been focusing on and this update has a lot of new content for non-beta players.

There are a total of 34 new weapons and shields to be found on the skills trees and crafting NPCs, as well as 3 new types of jewelry with 5 new jewelry slots to equip them in, each able to be crafted from any of the 5 new precious metals. These first 15 Jewelry recipes do not have stats of their own, but do provide extra slots for enchanting. Slots for crafting and harvesting clothes have also been added, though the recipes for which are still being worked on.



Town NPC had been turned off for some upgrades, and were sorely missed. Now back in-game, there's still a lot more planned for them and their buildings, including a system to allow the building of custom structures to summon villagers into, as well as a way to connect villagers from one town to another.

Enchanted Stones are in with this patch and are the third "Town Encounter" along with Coal Mines and Limestone Quarries. Unfortunately this system is not entirely obvious in-game yet, and we get a lot of questions about it in Discord. I will definitely work to try and make how these things work more apparent in-game, but in short they are called "Town Encounters" because you need to build up a town nearby them to make use of them. A Miner can mine coal from a Coal Mine, and so forth. These then allow you to upgrade your towns and town buildings further with the higher "tech" building resources they are used to make.



The next major update with this patch has to do with biomes. The new swamp biome is in with a new resource (silver), but the entire biome generation system has been upgraded to make way for many more biomes to be added along with future updates. This new system makes it possible to specify the minimum and/or maximum level of certain biomes, or even to specify certain locations with specific biomes. Using this the starting area is now specifically set to the grass biome with the nearest neighbors being set to desert, mountain, and ocean. Meaning you will need to travel at least 8km to reach beyond these four starter biomes before you have a chance to run into any swamp or other biomes added in the future.

Because of these changes old saved games will need to be updated. The upgrade system is an imperfect tool but the alternative is to force everyone to start a new world, which I have tried to avoid from day one. You may end up with some buildings in weird places as they try and adjust their positioning to the new biomes, but it's still better than just wiping everything clean.

Thank you to everyone participating in Early Access, all our active members in Discord, and especially to our supporters on Patreon! I have some ideas for making Patreon more engaging we've been talking about on Discord I hope to reveal very soon.

Lots more in the works with storage and organization, crafting clothes, tools, facilities, solaces, and more!

The condensed patch notes are as follows:
Crafting
- Added 34 new weapons/shields learnable via town crafters and crafting skill trees
- Added 12 new crafting skills (stats/icons are a wip)
- Added Copper, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Iridium and their ores (only copper (caves) and silver (swamps) can be found so far)
- Added Earrings, Necklaces, and Rings, for each of the new precious metal types
- Increased minimum armor of non-simple armor to 1

Towns
- Town NPCs are spawning again
- Added Enchanter I - IV (WIP)
- Added Enchanted Stone town resource to mountain biome
- Added Magical Siphon and Siphoner town buildings to Magical Essence gathering from enchanted stones
- Changed town building snapping to step 1m at a time instead of 3m

General
- Added swamp biome
- Changed desert biome topography, rocks, and added circling vultures (just an effect, don't try to build a giant tower to catch them)
- Changed biomes to generate in 8x8 chunks with 2km blending somewhere within the 6km of the south and eastern edges
- Added defense and offense ratings to adventuring stats
- Changed the player icon on the map to display player direction
- Added the ability to turn with the keyboard (default Q & E) while the map is open
- Added harvesting clothes, crafting clothes, and jewelry equipment slots (WIP)
- Added crafting professions stats window
- Changed two-handed weapons to apply double the speed reduction from any applicable crafting skills
- Changed all terraforming changes to be slightly lower than listed to keep buildings from sometimes spawning a millimeter beneath flat ground

You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin.

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

A number of small fixes prior to pushing this version to the live branch. Just to be safe I will push it to beta once more. If all goes well this version will go live tomorrow.

v 0.5.5.4 2019.09.09
- Increased minor light enchant to a base of 5 with 1 per level and to show that the maximum player light is 100
- Removed world biome settings that no longer apply
- Fixed player light (illumination) enchanted items not recalculating player light properly on equip/unequip
- Fixed player light (illumination) not updating immediately when changed
- Fixed many items display their code instead of name on enchanting tables
- Fixed a terraforming problem causing raise to not work and flatten to go too low
- Fixed being able to plant trees over trees
- Fixed town portals and solaces placed/built on floating islands
- Fixed buildings and dropped items on floating islands

You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin.

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.

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

15 new pieces of jewelry have been added to go along with the 5 new precious metals: copper, silver, gold, platinum, and iridium.



Jewelry is currently a vessel for enchants. Meaning that they do have inherent stats of their own such as armor or damage. They provide extra enchanting slots to make your character even stronger, and will in the future no doubt have some unique recipes and sets.

Precious metal rarity is different than normal metal rarity. Copper can only be found as common rarity, and cannot be upgraded. Each "rank" after that can then only be found at maximum one rarity higher, so silver can be found up to uncommon, gold to rare, platinum to elite, and iridium all the way up to legendary.

In this patch only copper and silver can be obtained, copper in caves, and silver in swamps. Gold, platinum, and iridium will be added in to higher level content most likely only found beyond a minimum certain distance from the start.

Lot's more to come down this avenue, but I would like to polish up this patch, make sure there are as few bugs as possible with the new biome system, and then push the beta branch to the live branch as NPCs are still turned off on the live branch among other things.

v 0.5.5.3 2019.09.06
- Fixed tanning racks producing thread

v 0.5.5.2 2019.09.05
- Added Copper, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Iridium and their ores (only copper (caves) and silver (swamps) can be found so far)
- Added Earrings, Necklaces, and Rings, for each of the new precious metal types
- Reduced size of silver nodes
- Fixed a bug causing boats to disappear
- Fixed footsteps sounds while driving boats
- Fixed a bug with the new biome manager placing distant objects improperly
- Fixed tower monsters spawning on the ground

You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin.

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. The beta is not available to 32-bit users.

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

Found a rare bug thanks to a report in Discord that I'm not waiting until Monday to fix!

v 0.5.5.1 2019.08.31
- Fixed a rare bug causing player loading to hang

You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin.

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. The beta is not available to 32-bit users.

The new biome generation/management system is in and working at last! It hasn't actually been all that many working days, but anything that takes more than a day or two starts to feel like weeks are flying by. There was some pretty rough math, which I do not have a degree in, required for blending multiple layers of biomes together from different directions with different layers of noise to keep things looking natural and so on.

I haven't had any problems updating worlds (other than the unavoidable building repositioning) or starting new games, but this is a big change to the base world generation system, so I would highly recommend starting a new world or backing up any worlds you don't want to risk getting weird if you're playing on the beta, just to be sure.

To reiterate from last week, the big upside to this new system is that an unlimited number of biomes can now be added in over time without them getting all mixed up within one another.

On that note, introducing the new swamp biome!



There are three new resources in the swamp so far, including silver, though they have been simplified to ore, mushrooms, and stalks for this patch until the recipes that make use of them get turned on. I also have at least two new animals that I'll be adding in to the swamp shortly, which will also provide new resources for crafting.

I also upgraded the desert / badlands a bit as it was kind of just a big flat landscape. There are new rocks, water holes (new topography), and circling vultures (though they're just an effect, please don't try to build a giant tower in hopes of shooting them down!).



The new biome system does allow me to specify locations or minimum and/or maximum levels for biomes, so for example the swamp biome could be set to only spawn at levels 10+, but I thought that better reserved for other, later biomes (volcano? enchanted?). The initial four "chunks" that connect to the starting area are being specifically set to grass, ocean, desert, and mountains, to ensure that there is "easy" access to ore and water starting out.

Now I can get back to the new crafting and harvesting updates with a better system for adding new materials into the world.

v 0.5.5.0 2019.08.29
- Added scrolling to the help windows
- Added swamp biome
- Updated world "update" to mark town building for repositioning to the surface in case of changed surface height
- Changed desert biome topography, rocks, and added circling vultures (just an effect, don't try to build a giant tower to catch them)
- Changed biomes to generate in 8x8 chunks with 2km blending somewhere within the 6km of the south and eastern edges
- Changed player projectiles (spells/arrows) to spawn in front of the player instead of the camera, using a vector generated by what the cursor is over
- Changed Squire's Shortsword recipe from a tier 2 to a tier 1 smithing skill
- Fixed text in the crafting stats window interfering with scrolling
- Fixed equipped bow positioning and angle
- Fixed the recurve bow's rotation and harmless warnings
- Fixed enchanted stone showing up just about anywhere

You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin.

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. The beta is not available to 32-bit users.

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