Swords 'n Magic and Stuff News

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
  

Hello there!

I hope you guys have been enjoying Frostfall again!

Somehow I missed a very important step in setting up the Steam Achievements and I thank you guys for being my guinea pigs for them! This patch fixes them and should allow you to start working toward getting all of the current achievements.

This patch also fixes a couple other minor issues that I got around to, but nothing major.

I hope you have a great Christmas if you celebrate and a Happy New Year!

Patch Notes:

1.7.7 Frostfall Patch

Fixed:

• Lightning Strike spell fixed
  
• Sleeping in beds now regains health for clients
  
• Steam Achievements are now officially working
  
• Frostfall Chest properly closes after you initiate a second fight with the golem
  

Happy holidays, adventurers!

Welcome to the 4th annual Frostfall Festival!

This event will last 2 weeks (ending on January 4th) so jump in now and visit Hope Harbor or Sleepy Haven and speak with the snowmen there to to get access to the exclusive event zone, Snowpeak.

Frostfall isn't the only big news for this update though! I've also done a bunch of work on performance this update and I'm hoping you'll notice a big jump in frames per second. With this update, we've also hopefully fixed the bottleneck we had on the CPU, which means that the graphics settings in-game should now have a much more pronounced effect on your framerate. So if you're looking to grab a few more frames, try dropping your graphics settings down a bit.

Lastly we've also introduced..... STEAM ACHIEVEMENTS! This is a pretty big milestone for us because it's been in the works for a while. We're starting small with only 13 achievements, but with each update you'll likely see a few more being added.

Oh, and did I mention the game is currently on sale for Steam's winter sale? Well it is. Now is the best time to jump into Tirawyn, or grab a copy for your friends so you can explore together!

If you weren't aware, I also livestream the development of Swords 'n Magic and other game development related content over on Twitch. If you haven't caught a stream lately, you're missing out! Check out streams here.

And finally here are the patch notes:

New:

• Miner’s Cap now has a real light
  
• Bendy Stick is no longer flame resistant
  
• 13 Steam Achievements
  
• Frostfall Festival!
  
• PvP is back! (In an experimental form, so expect bugs, especially with spells)
  
• Use the /pvp command to flag for PvP. You can only attack other flagged players. Toggling PvP mode off triggers a 5 second delay to prevent cheesing.
  

Improved:

• Full gamepad support now available on character selection and creation screens
  
• Increased character slots from 5 to 10
  
• /Emotelist command changed to /Emote
  
• Can now change your difficulty from the pause menu (not for Forgotten characters!)
  
• Studded Glove recipe changed from bow string to coarse thread
  
• Tiny Crabs are now also weak to blunt weapons (poor guys)
  
• Nails can now be crafted at level 0 blacksmithing
  

Fixed:

• Puck was found guilty for lying about giving you her dagger AND some coin
  
• Jenk’s bugswatter has been confiscated
  
• Fixed some quest-related typos
  
• Lore books and other small objects no longer unhighlight when obscured by your giant head
  
• Using the /Emote command no longer shows the /Who list as well
  
• Lightning Strike spell has been recharged at a local Tirawyn charging station
  
• Forged in Honey quest has been patched so you can’t lose the quest items by leaving dialog early
  
• The stump puzzle in Windless Woods no longer locks you out of the veiled chest
  
• Hide Tooltips option in your journal now works as expected
  
• Fixed architecture snapping so building walls and pillars snap rotate correctly finally
  
• Removed random orange leaves in the goblin camp due to season changes
  
• A certain secret recipe can no longer be picked up through a solid object
  
• Glowstalk and Tanglewort now filter as crafting items in your inventory
  
• The Gatekeeper’s eye can no longer escape the clutches of the audio menu