Swords 'n Magic and Stuff News

Well I may have accidentally broke some stuff.

Turns out I missed a couple edge cases where you could accidentally soft lock yourself out of being able to attack again until dying or restarting the game.

This was due to the new updates on dual wielding and attack cooldowns that would ensure you couldn't spam attack and accidentally cancel an attack, resulting in missed damage.

We also ran into a bug where weapons stored in your bank would not be automatically enhanced on startup. This should be resolved now, but in case you run into a situation where you do find a weapon of Fine or greater quality that is not displaying enhancements, you can place it into a community chest (or a personal storage chest on your property) and it will automatically grant you enhancements and unlock them for you. You can also use a prismatic stone in a pinch, but free is always better I've been told.

This hotfix addresses these issues among a few other minor, but quick fixes I threw in. Thanks for your patience and understanding!



At last, here are your patch notes:

1.7.11 Patch Notes

Fixed:

• Can no longer get soft locked out of attacking and dodge rolling
  
• Scythes now do cleave damage again
  
• Conjure Mending Fairy works as intended again
  
• Weapons in bank should now properly be auto-enhanced
  

Improved:

• Conjured Mending Fairy heal amount is now scaled by weapon damage used to cast the spell
  

Hey everyone!

After the Frostfall event I introduced some much-needed weapon attack balancing, but also introduced a very annoying staff swing speed bug. While I fixed that bug a while ago, I did the whole feature creep thing where I made a new system that took longer than I expected to finish.

This update introduces a bunch of bug fixes, storage chest sorting/filtering and weapon enhancements!

Weapon Enhancements are a way to add some more semi-permanent progression to your character in the form of stats attached to your weapons. Weapons of Fine or greater quality will have these stats revealed and you'll unlock the ability to activate these stats while your weapon is equipped once you meet the weapon's class level requirement. Don't worry! There's a new tutorial card waiting for you once you pick up your first Prismatic Stone so you can read all about how the new system works.

And what's a Prismatic Stone, you ask? Well it's a weapon stat randomizer device. You use it from your inventory, choose a valid weapon to enhance, and watch as the stats are shuffled for you. You can buy these stones from the Sleepy Haven magic shop (near the bank), or find them in locked chests scattered around Tirawyn.

What's next?

I've been working hard on the Treasure Hunter update which should be ready soon and is at the top of the priority list. In this update you can expect to find buried treasure throughout the world with the same loot you'd find in locked chests of that zone, but also a new item called artifacts. Artifacts can be traded in at the Treasure Hunter's Guild in Sleepy Haven in exchange for reputation. At certain reputation levels you can then purchase special treasure maps which will lead you to secret buried treasure somewhere in the world. These treasures will have rare and unique, one of a kind items you can't find anywhere else in the game. We've had this on the to-do list for quite some time now and I'm excited to nearly be finished with it. I think it'll add some extra content to the world while we keep working on Delver's Pass, the Azura storyline, skill trees and of course, dungeons.

There's a lot coming up and I hope you're as excited as we are.

At last, here are your patch notes:

1.7.10 Patch Notes

New:

• Weapon Enhancement System
  
• Prismatic Stones
  
• Cooked Fish recipe learned at level 4 cooking
  
• Bank sorting/filtering
  
• Storage sorting/filtering
  

Fixed:

• Hunting for Treasure Hunters quest fixed up to work in multiplayer
  
• Archer Tomb Key now properly removed when used (future update planned for the quest rewards here)
  
• Slimes no longer drop slightly used swords
  
• Fixed an issue with carry capacity stacking
  
• Sen now appears and disappears appropriately on the tutorial quest outside the orc training camp
  
• Fish leaderboards finally have default NPC leaders again
  
• Fixed a clothing/mask duplication bug!
  
• The bunk beds at The Gate in Windless Woods now have the correct description
  
• Crates in Farmlands are now dropping the correct items
  
• Staff attack speed greatly increased
  
• Windless Woods stump puzzle fixed. Can now open it as expected.
  
• Magic ice crystals in Azura can now be melted with the fireball spell
  
• Ella’s Bakery no longer sells potato seeds (Aren’t baked potatoes baked goods??)
  
• Nature shrine for “Hunt for the Tome” can now be interacted with after the initial time
  
• Fishing leaderboard sound now affected by volume controls
  

Improved:

• Quest items now more performant and update their status without a game restart
  
• Can now craft higher quality weapon (Up to Masterwork) if your crafting level is sufficiently higher than the weapon level
  
• Weapon/Tool quality now affects the item’s value and can be sold for more gold to vendors
  
• Lucky now affects the quality you craft weapons at
  
• Can no longer store weapons in collections (But your existing weapons can be removed at any time, or can remain in your collection as long as you like)
  
• Attack animations can no longer cancel each other out (with some exceptions)
  
• Changed from a software to hardware cursor to help performance and hopefully fix an issue with some ultrawide and 4k resolution screens
  

Happy Saturday!

Today I'll be hosting the January Community Play Together on the official US server at 5pm PST (about 4 hours from now). I'll be hanging out in Discord on voice chat and in-game chat. Feel free to hop on! Depending on how many people show up, it can be anywhere from an hour to three hours of playing.

If you haven't caught Michael (Kindred) streaming, you have been missing out! He's been streaming pretty consistently and showing off new things we are working on. He's been on both Twitch and YouTube so check those out!

With the new year, Michael and I sat down and planned out what we aim to accomplish this first part of the year. We took our roadmap into consideration and decided to change one thing for winter:



While we would still like to adjust the crafting, the combat needed a bit more love so we can get those dungeons out. If you want to take a look at what is changing with combat, join a stream or check out the past streams. We've got stats coming to weapons and the ability to change those stats through items. Our testers have been loving playing with it and we've gotten really great feedback through streams and testing. Last thing we need to tackle is how to save these new stats in our collections system. We wish it was easy, but it never is. Once that's all taken care of, we'll get this update out! We've got until March 19th (the end of winter) to get it out and still be on track, but we're hoping another week or two tops.

Treasure Hunting is about 80% done. The mechanics are all set and tested. All that's left is to add the treasure around the world, draw some maps, and get the building and NPCs update in Sleepy Haven. We're anticipating a February release for Treasure Hunting.

Bug Catching has been a hot topic for us lately. We're really excited about it and have a lot of fun ideas for it. We're planning for a March/April update for it, but that's a very rough estimate.

Then we'll be tackling the Azura storyline which will introduce our first official dungeon. Spring officially ends June 20th and that's a ton to tackle before then. The above is the order we plan to tackle things, but they can be switched around and adjusted as needed. Delver's Pass is the next area we want to sprinkle into the Spring updates, so it gets worked on occasionally on stream.

Hope to see you tonight! That's it for today.

-Janna & Michael
Kindred Games

Hey everyone!

Well, I know I promised 3 more days of Frostfall and you got practically a whole new week. That's because I went a bit crazy with some long standing bug fixes this week and did some tweaking to weapon swing timing, which took some extra testing.

Melee combat was feeling a bit sluggish with arbitrary delays between swings, so we wanted to fix that up and make it feel more fluid. Because I wanted to get the build out, this means that melee weapons are going to be a biiiiit overpowered right now being able to attack much faster without changing damage output to make up for it. But that'll come soon.

Lastly I took some time to make our Steam achievements retroactive for some events you may have completed prior to the update. But I want to point out that doing this eats up a lot of development time. Not so much for the achievements, but other updates to quests and such. Adding in bandaids for existing characters like this can also open us up to a lot of bugs because of all of the exceptions we have to add to the code. As a rule, we strive to always be building the game with a new player experience in mind, but we do our very best to ensure we're never breaking existing characters or losing any of your progress. Please be patient with us when some content needs to be redone on a fresh character, as the game is still in Early Access and as such, a beta state.

Finally, let's talk about what's coming next this year!

With Frostfall out of the way and the new year upon us, we're so excited to dive back into work on Delver's Pass, Treasure Hunting and the Azura storyline. Lots of awesome updates coming this year and we can't wait to share our progress via Discord, Twitch and here on Steam in the form of the Dev Digests.

At last, here are your patch notes:

1.7.9 Patch Notes

New:

• Full controller support for augment stone menu
  

Fixed:

• Frostfall and Grimwick achievements can now be obtained by existing characters who have completed these quests prior to the achievements update
  
• Conjure Feast now spawns reliably in any location
  
• Fixed an issue with weapon augmentation
  
• Painter’s Panic quest now correctly checks for the amount of wolves defeated
  
• Can no longer upgrade the whistle item
  
• Vervain’s camera position is now fixed
  
• Getting locked out of your jump in multiplayer servers is fixed (to the best of my testing ability)
  
• Jed’s doll and other quest items fixed up and can no longer be dropped from inventory
  
• Food with health recovery now recovers every 5 seconds instead of 1 second
  
• Goblin chest lid taped back in place
  
• Fixed a typo. Just one.
  
• Jed now gives you a quest when you ask him about his fear of crabs
  
• Boss related achievements are now retroactive for old characters (One achievement is not retroactive yet, but will be fixed in a future update, so hang tight!)
  
• Logs and other resources shouldn’t drop their loot through the ground anymore
  

Improved:

• Melee weapons swing speed reduced to prevent awkward pauses between swings
  
• Spiderfang Dagger poison affect buffed from 20% to 40% chance to trigger
  
• Spider cave crate loot improved
  
• Loading splash screen updated
  
• Wolves and boars drop more meat
  
• Weapons (other than bows) have had their attack speed simplified to fast, average and slow due to varying combo attack speeds making the number inaccurate
  
• Damage numbers now pop up in randomized locations so you can read them easier when attacking quickly
  

Hey everyone!

I know the Steam Winter Sale is over, but thanks to a few bugs with our last patch, we decided to push another update for you and extend Frostfall by a few more days so you can get your hands on some of that more rare loot that wasn't available until now.

Enjoy the last few days of the holiday before we move to spring!

Here are the patch notes:

1.7.8 Frostfall Patch Notes

New:

• Added a new secret weapon to the Farmlands - Good luck finding it!
  

Fixed:

• Frostfall Chest Loot Table updated
  
• Aldor’s run animation fixed
  
• Azurian Quiver now shows and grants appropriate stat buffs
  
• Nature Altar interaction issues resolved
  
• Jed’s Doll is back and can no longer be interacted with unless on Jed’s quest
  
• Other quest items also locked out until on the quests to prevent losing the items
  
• Vanishing and regular Item Displays now cull properly based on distance
  
• Server connection timeout issues should be resolved for most people
  
• Valeria’s alchemy tools should now be interactable again while on her quest
  
• Defeat 50 X achievements should now work correctly (defeating an additional one will trigger missing achievements)
  
• Meri and other NPC’s should no longer be T-posing when loading into a zone quickly
  
• Clients can now gain health from sleeping in beds
  
• Chest interaction issues after respawn seem to have been resolved
  
• Bee Hugger quest trigger now works appropriately