Swords 'n Magic and Stuff News

Happy Friday, friends!

The last two weeks have been hectic. First, we had family in town over last weekend. Then our air conditioning unit decided that it didn't want to work right before the big heat wave went over us. Normally our office is hotter than any other room in the house, so with the heat wave and no A/C it was impossible to work in here. That pushed our timeline a few days back as we tried to stay cool. It's supposed to still be warm this next week, but we're hoping it's manageable!

I'd say fishing is approximately 95% done. It's just polish and finishing touches now for the system. We've got a few other things to tidy up (like getting Bonney's Bait stocked!) and making sure everything works together with the byproducts of fishing.

Here's some sneak peeks at what's going on. I (Janna) don't normally like fishing in games, but I really do like this system. It's relaxing and fun!



In other news, if anyone knows a good gif editor, I'm all ears. Steam only allows 5MB gifs and images and I can make gifs just fine, it's getting it trimmed and to the correct size that I can't seem to find a good program.

See you all next week!

-Janna & Michael

Happy Friday, friends!

Glad to be back at it! If you missed our last digest, Michael and I were helping run and teach a summer camp, Girls Make Games, for three weeks in July. That's why we've had a shortage of digests last month. Good news though, we are working hard this week!

Remember back before this latch patch when all the loot tables were iffy and we fixed them, but couldn't get the patch out because of navigation issues? Well those navigation issues were because we changed a setting to get dungeons working and changing the setting back didn't fix it. It was a long tedious process, but eventually got it fixed and patched out. My point in reminding you of this, is that dungeons are going to be a bit more tricky than we thought. We do want to make the dungeons procedural and a big part of that is having navigation for enemies to be able to walk around. We know that dungeons a HUGE requested feature. We'll be slowly working on it and other things at the same time. We want to get more updates out quicker, rather than spend months on large systems.

So with that in mind, we've been working on fishing! The basic system is about to go out to testers and then we'll be adding all the fish in the world! I don't have a timeline for you (it'll be soon!), but a cute tidbit - the fish are measured in Smidgens!



You'll soon be able to spend your days on the docks finding those rare fish or just hanging out with your friends bonding over the water.



TLDR: Dungeons will take longer, but are still coming. Fishing is very soon!

See you all next week!

-Janna & Michael

Hey guys.

It turns out we missed a bit of code in the loot overhaul that bugged out a lot of our unique chests in the game. We fixed the issue, but couldn't find a great way to reverse the problem for anyone who may have missed out on important items thanks to it. Feel free to reach out on Discord if you missed an important quest item and we'll see what we can do on a case by case basis.

Thanks for your understanding. Here are the patch notes:

1.6.2 Patch

Improved:

• Whistle no longer displays any XP bar on HUD when equipped
  
• Wasps no longer poison you. Just the queen.
  
• Secret recipe no longer given away by particle effects
  
• Skills/Classes page in the journal now gives more information about which weapons govern which class and a description for each class and skill
  
• Stone Golem got better loot
  

Fixed:

• Multiplayer joining issue that would cause the game to hang for a long time
  
• Sen now vanishes properly from Castaway Rock so you can’t restart his quest accidentally
  
• Fixed a bunch of issues with unique chests that was causing them to drop the wrong items or no items at all
  
• Fixed an issue with drop rates for all chests globally
  
• Masks can no be properly placed in your collections
  
• Queen Bee now drops her stinger
  
• Fixed floating Kickstarter Fox pet
  
• Earthshard Shield no longer gives mana on equip
  
• Wild Seeds are now random when placed and won’t always spawn the same plant when placed
  
• Meteors drop appropriate loot now
  
• Astral Wolves no longer stay spawned when leaving the Astral Realm leading to a build up of wolves over time.
  
• Removed a sneaky debug arrow from Icicle Storm spell effect
  

Happy Friday, friends!

This month Kindred Games is almost entirely out of office helping at the game dev summer camp for girls, Girls Make Games.

We've been working in our spare time on a patch, however, to address some of the remaining loot issues still lingering in the game after the last major update.

The patch was mostly ready but we ran into an issue with our pathfinding so all the enemies were frozen in place. We're working on getting this fixed up and hope to have the patch out this weekend!

Thanks for your patience! We're excited to get back to work next month on the next content update!

See you all next Friday!

-Janna & Michael

Hey guys.

Just a small patch to address most of the issues from the update. Any other issues you've reported either aren't a priority at this time or we simply didn't have time to fit them into this patch and wanted to get the big stuff out of the way.

Thanks for your patience! Here are the patch notes:

1.6.1 Patch

Improved:

• Blizzard and other slow effects can never entirely freeze enemies
  
• Drop rates tweaked across the board
  
• Improved how loot rolls are handled
  
• Lightning Strike tome sound effect improved
  
• Augmented tools now give more crit chance
  
• Circlet of Trueshot now grants 5 crit chance in addition to previous effects
  
• Can now double jump and hold to glide, no longer requiring a third jump to trigger your glider
  
• Commanding your companion is now more precise, preventing accidentally commanding them to guard allies in combat when you intend to send them to attack
  
• Life Drain effect from shades and Drune nerfed to be more forgiving
  
• Empowered Frostshard trinket now affects Willpower instead of Focus
  
• Potion of Forestry and Mining both increased from 4 to 8 in their respective stats
  

Fixed:

• Magic tomes in shops now receive the proper textures when refreshing on a new day
  
• Enemy status effects will no longer be applied when the attack is blocked
  
• Crit chance stat removed from the focus tooltip when looking at weapons in shops
  
• Watering can should no longer apply wet status to all players in multiplayer
  
• Arrow focus tooltip now shows appropriate stats
  
• Healing companions, allies and yourself grant XP (if they’re not full health!)
  
• Several staves and wands fixed to be the right damage type and skill/class
  
• Conjure Feast tome now scales with caster level appropriately in multiplayer
  
• Dropped cosmetic items can now be stored in collections again
  
• Black horse mount completed rehabilitation and is walking great once again!
  
• Job board quests shown on the world map will now show correct titles and not gibberish
  
• The vandal who stole the “Dance” from the “Dance Lessons” sign was apprehended and the sign has been restored to its former glory
  
• Lute, Earthshard Dagger and Mage Shield items no longer grant Aura bonuses
  
• Mayor Bill’s wife in Hope Harbor finally taught him how to close the door when he leaves his house
  
• Gorgum Snail lantern no longer floating
  
• Hovering over required materials in crafting and in stockpile containers now shows the name of the item needed
  
• Spell tomes now display their class in their tooltip
  
• Removed the empty buff from Conjure Feast
  
• Players who have previously reached certain class levels now earn their titles on login (check your title dropdown. There is no pop up for this)
  
• Potentially fixed or reduced the tendency of being kicked back to the title screen when trying to join multiplayer servers. If you encounter this bug, please let us know! We need more data to better diagnose it.