Swords 'n Magic and Stuff News

Our annual Witch's Eve Festival has arrived in Tirawyn!

Be sure to visit Hope Harbor on Azura as well as Moonberry Farms in the Farmlands and Sleepy Haven in the Sleeping Glade. All available seasonal items from the last two years are available again along with plenty of new items to collect. Don't forget to grab your costumes and masks and head around town to trick or treat to earn candy and exchange for tickets.





Ping Perfect is our official server provider for Swords 'n Magic and Stuff. You can head to https://pingperfect.com/gameservers/swords-n-magic-and-stuff-server-hosting.php to sign up for your own always-up server for your family and friends to play on using their super simple dashboard. Later this week we'll be launching our very own official servers via Ping Perfect so you'll always have a place to meet up with friends.


[h2]Here's the patch notes for this update:[/h2]

New:

• Witch’s Eve vendors in Moonberry
  
• Witch’s Eve seasonal items being sold
  

Improved:

• Pets no longer block your projectiles when fighting
  
• Pets are faster now and can keep up with you on a mount
  
• When dismantling a pet house, the pet is now dismissed
  
• The new greenhouse no longer has a floor so you can use dirt plots in them
  
• Grimwick - after first defeat, cheaper to redo and has repeatable loot options
  
• Watering cans quality now affects the watering radius
  
• Pet houses spawn pets above the floor inside houses
  
• Input settings menu for both keyboard/mouse and controller
  
• A tome that spawns helpful creatures - they now have better aggro and attack
  
• Wasp Companion is now far more aggressive and attacks faster
  
• Smashable pots in the Farmlands and Sleeping Glade with their own loot table
  
• Switched to dynamic navigation for our AI for improved path finding
  

Fixed:

• Bellows not adhering to sound controls
  
• Beekeeper’s Lodge no longer has the door stuck through the ceiling
  
• Various spelling errors
  
• Sleeping actually restores your health and magic
  
• Mooki Feathers deciding to delete themselves after logging out
  
• Quest board typos
  
• While dead, you no longer hear sounds from all over the world
  
• Various typos in item descriptions
  
• First person view not rendering items properly
  
• Some foliage that was not visible on some graphics settings
  
• Duplicated mushrooms in a cave
  
• Vendors no longer reset their sell menu at midnight, now at 7am
  
• Magic bar not showing the correct amount of magic increase with two staves equipped
  
• Portal from Astral Plane back to Farmlands not working
  
• The corruption in Windless Woods now disappears after killing all three shade instead of just one
  
• Dedicated Server owner’s now have admin rights for plots
  
• Dreg’s dialog and requirements for his quest
  

Spooky Friday, friends!

As we get closer to Witch's Eve, we get the question over and over of "are all the previous seasonal items going to be available again this year?" The answer is YES! Any weapon, furniture item, food, recipe, outfit, etc. that has been available the past two years WILL be available again. So if you missed out on anything, you still have a chance to grab it. There will also be NEW items available this year. It's a two week event, so plan your time! (Reminder: Witch's Eve is October 19th through November 2nd)



In other news, we've been working on some quality of life bug fixes and improvements along with Witch's Eve. One improvement is with watering cans. Now when you upgrade their quality, they can water a bigger radius. So all of you that upgraded your watering can just for fun, now have a purpose!

Another improvement was made to our Grimwick battle. Not only did the requirements for redoing the fight after defeating him change (reduction in resources greatly), but we've added a lootable chest after defeating him, similar to how our Frostfall Golem works.

Louis has been working away at making controller support more friendly. He's changed up quite a bit and it's getting to a better configuration to start with. This is still being worked on, so I don't have too many details yet.

Last notable improvement for the week is looking into a better way to split stacks that is move intuitive. While we've also been adding more tutorial cards, we want to try to make systems that make sense. Splitting stacks is a quest we get asked often, so we're looking into what we can do.

[h2]We're excited to announce our new partnership with Ping Perfect.[/h2] Ping Perfect is our official server provider for Swords 'n Magic and Stuff. You can head to https://pingperfect.com/gameservers/swords-n-magic-and-stuff-server-hosting.php to sign up for your own always-up server for your family and friends to play on using their super simple dashboard. Later this month we'll be launching our very own official servers via Ping Perfect so you'll always have a place to meet up with friends.


To end today's digest, I wanted to let you all know about this month's community event! We'll be hanging out on Discord playing the Witch's Eve update on Sunday, October 23rd at 11am PST. I'm excited to get all the decor and decorate my house for Witch's Eve. See you all there!

-Janna

Happy Friday, friends!

We're back on our regular Friday development digests, but not for long! We're approaching our holiday events, which are limited events to get all your holiday items.

This year's Witch's Eve Festival will run from October 19th through November 2nd. That's two weeks of fun! The team has been working on a few quality of life updates for the Witch's Eve event and we have quite a few more quality of life updates in the works.

Here's our updated roadmap:


In December I will announce when Frostfall will be available. Expect two weeks of fun there as well.

I hope you all have been enjoying the Windless Woods! We're super excited to jump into Bone Reach after the holiday season and get another zone out. After working with all of the trees, the baron land will be a nice change. As always, we've been listening and reading all of your comments and feedback and using it to make the game better. Some of these do take longer than others, so we can't do everything at once, but that is why we wanted to focus on quality of life updates during this holiday season.

Short and sweet update! See you next Friday!

-Janna

Hey all!

Just a few more fixes on our Windless Woods update. Thank you all for your feedback and bug reports. We're going through them as fast as we can! This Friday expect a development digest with a new roadmap and the release date of our Halloween event!

Patch Notes:

Improved:

• Boar farming quest: Taylor will now check the boar area when you go to complete it to make sure no boars are there. There won’t be an update to the quest log once the boars are gone from his area.
  
• Placeable foliage has the wind material instead of a not moving material
  
• Timeless Rose Trinket shows the correct amount
  
• Aiming when using staves
  
• Raincloud Tome now has longer duration and is bigger
  
• All Shrubrian construction crates now require Elderwood logs instead of planks to not be locked behind the Carpentry skill
  
• It is now possible to get a crit on the ancient honey ore
  

Fixed:

• Dying during the battle in the archer crypt will no longer keep you locked out to retry
  
• A few issues with the archer crypt loot
  
• Lute projectiles now heal properly
  
• Can no longer hear a tome’s healing sounds from across the map
  
• Overgrown pergola can now be walked under
  
• 
  

Windless Woods Patch 1.5.2

Hey everyone! We planned to have a small patch to address Windless Woods update bugs on the 26th, but we ended up doing an emergency patch to address big issues earlier. And with the big things mostly out of the way, we wanted to spend a bit of extra time working out a lot of the other, smaller bugs with this update.

We heard you guys weren't happy with healing with the new magic system and we wanted to course correct as much as possible without compromising our vision for the new magic system.

The new magic system fixes a few major issues with the old system. One of these was the absolute cheese tactic of healing yourself over and over to level your life skill. Adding a magic resource fixed that, but we ran out of time to get all the cool healing spells we would have liked into the update, and we definitely failed at balancing the ONE tome we did get in.

This update addresses that by introducing two new healing spells and balances all the spell tomes way better. I think I speak for the entire dev team when I say that we're way happy with the new balance and I have a feeling many of you are going to be switching to a mage build here soon.

To go along with the new spells we also added a new feature for casters that lets you attack quickly with your basic ranged attack and hold your attack button to begin charging your spell. This feel so fluid and fun to use that we just had to rush it out in an update for you.

Thank you for all your feedback! Enjoy the update and the patch notes:

New:

• Staves can now perform ranged basic attacks even when a tome is equipped - single click to use a basic ranged attack; click and hold to cast your tome
  
• Stablemaster at The Gate
  
• Custom ports for dedicated servers
  
• Direct IP connection for dedicated servers
  
• Essential logging for dedicated servers
  
• Overhaul of naming multiplayer servers to better customize your server
  
• Servers can be “pinned” to the top of the list
  
• Icons showing up to the left of the server have tooltips to show what they mean
  
• Ping added to servers
  
• Two new spell tomes - both healing!
  

Improved:

• Ferry between Azura and Farmlands is much faster now by default
  
• Added another anchor shrine near Jan and Borris
  
• Default keybinds for the ammo wheel (previously was ctrl+scroll wheel) are now Q and E. Feel free to change this back or to whatever you’d like in the escape menu
  
• Some quest items now can not be dropped to prevent losing them (will be adding this to all quest items eventually)
  
• Various quests from previous zones corrected to the right zone
  
• Timeless Rose trinket now shows what it does in the tool tip
  
• The Lute has magic regen now
  
• Focus affects spell damage
  
• Adjusted collisions on staves basic healing projectile to make it easier to hit targets
  
• Key bindings in the escape menu
  
• Lightning Strike not hitting enemies correctly
  
• Adjusted Healing Aura
  
• Balanced all tomes currently in game
  
• Stables now sell more companion snacks
  
• Sen located in the Windless Woods no longer requires a second conversation to give you an item he wants to share
  
• Multiplayer aspect of Treasure Hunter’s quest
  

Fixed:

• Fired the disgruntled postal worker hoarding everyone’s mail from Mo and Milo
  
• Removed debug lines from the spirit wolves spell
  
• Mage shield no longer drops through the ground
  
• When finishing the end of the storyline, the title given can now be received by respeaking to that same person in the Eyre (she forgot to give it to you when she said she was going to)
  
• Purifying weapons can now be added to collections without having to relog
  
• Sendu’s Gift now has crits
  
• The Eyre home blueprint has all the correct materials now
  
• No more debugging lines on the healing tome circle
  
• Some audio not being affected by your sound settings
  
• Removed unobtainable test weapon from collections
  
• Boar farming quest not recognizing the boar
  
• Can no longer buy things through walls in the Eyre
  
• Fixed walls at the Gate
  
• A few quest markers
  
• Storm Aura visuals last as long as the spell
  
• Stairs in the Druid Temple now act as they should
  
• Overgrown Pergola can now be placed
  
• Camera issues in the Archer Crypt
  
• You can no longer lose tomes by changing which one is equipped
  
• Purifying planks no longer gives you sword experience
  
• Can no longer get stuck on a log near Aldor’s house
  
• New mount no longer growls loudly over and over
  
• Various quests from Farmlands saying they were Windless Woods
  
• Bridge House Plans can now be placed again
  
• If you lose some special seeds from Fiora, you can talk to her to get them back
  
• Using the seedmaker for newer seeds now gives you the right wild seeds
  
• Dawn Chorus now works as intended
  
• For the second time, the ice cave quest has been fixed
  
• Pesky Ghost no longer restarts if talking to the NPC’s out of order
  
• Wonky stairs
  
• Rebel’s Revenge quest now properly works
  
• Corruption part 3 no longer restarts by doing things out of order
  
• Ray’s quest updated for better wording
  
• If you backed out of dialog during the Snail Search quest, you can return to pick your reward
  
• A Budding Romance quest where you couldn’t see the NPC
  
• Forged in Honey quest fixed up
  
• Using Chaos Splinters no longer causes a game crash
  
• Theodosia now gives the proper dialog
  
• Hunt for the Tome quest fixed up
  
• Crystals not respawning at the end of Corruption part 3
  
• Merchant at the Gate no longer shows you random stuff in your inventory in their sell menu
  
• Seals in Ramshackle will now only sell you the correct amounts of items to prevent issues in inventory
  
• Birdhouse furniture item can now be placed anywhere on a plot
  
• Can no longer hear the Lute from far away
  
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