DYSMANTLE News

The new (sort of intermediary) update is finally here! This one opens up a small new playable area connected to Sunburn Desert, which serves as an entryway to the next area after this one. This one is a bit harder to describe without spoiling too much, but you'll be introduced with the Crown Archaeological Expedition lady (and her audio logs), and start to dig deeper to the island's ancient past.





[h2]Myth Tablets[/h2]

You may remember these previously from the tombs. Well, they have now been relocated above ground. Ultimately we decided we want to have hints about the island's ancient past spread wider and have you encounter them earlier in the game. If you'd start a new game now, you'd be bound to discover one when you follow the main quest line.

If you have already cartographed the spot where a Myth Tablet is located, it's automatically revealed as Point of Interest in your map. You can find the "first" one near one of the four Link Relays you may have activated.

[h2]Tomb Rewind[/h2]

The tombs now have their own physical Rewind button (in the spot where the Myth Tablets previously were). It can be used to reset the tomb. Note that it may still be more convenient to simply use the Restart Tomb button in the System menu. (Also if you're really really stuck that's your only option. That or the tasty Amber Pills.)

[h2]Item Upgrade Levels[/h2]

Item upgrade levels are now shown in the Invent screen, and more items have them in general (mostly trinkets). Some of the items were rebalanced to take this into account, so you may encounter some changed stats. We'll continue tweaking this later as well.

[h2]New Game Options[/h2]

When you're starting a new game, you'll be now presented with some initial options. But if you've already started your journey, don't worry, all of these are configurable in the Options menu later as well. Yes, these options also include whether to show emojis or not.





[h3]ADDED[/h3]
- Access to Fool's Canyon.
- Level Cap is now 30.
- New craftable "Bandolier" (Level 30).
- Myth Tablets are now located all over the island. (If you've fully discovered the area, they should automatically show up as map icons.)
- Tombs have Reset button. (Note that there's also Reset Tomb option in the menu.)
- Initial Game Settings when starting a new game (same settings available in Options screen).
- Upgrade levels are now shown in Invent screen.
- Showing upgrade change effects as unified 'from -> to' text.
- Showing Keys in Collection.

[h3]CHANGED[/h3]
- "Stop Monster Respawning" automatically completes if you have a transmitter installed in Capernaum.
- Wolves are more aggressive and spot the player easier.
- Grenades and throwable bombs are now thrown a bit further with quick tap action.
- Most of the trinkets now have three upgrade levels and their effects have been adjusted accordingly. Generally they start out weaker, but in the end surpass the old effects they used to have.

[h3]FIXED[/h3]
- Music volume updated properly in audio options.
- Enemy AI improvements for cases with supporting actors and ground height differences.
- Tweaks to link tower activation animation.
- Auto-collect checkbox does not have a focus anymore when material info screen is opened with a gamepad.
- Fixed issues with fuel duration calculations in sawmill/smelter.
- Selecting Save & Exit while sitting by campfire does not reset hit points to 20 anymore.
- Fixes and tweaks to how falling works.
- Enemies cannot start to fight with each other mistakenly anymore.
- Exploding slime does not cause damage to thrower's friends anymore.
- Improved Mutated Hurler's throwing direction prediction.
- Fixed a bug where the player could run backwards after pressing a melee attack button.





Next we'll have a very short Easter break, and continue full steam ahead with the next update next week. In the upcoming patch, you'll be continuing your expedition deeper into the jungle east of the Fool's Canyon as shown on the map above.

The next update is expected to be out in two weeks if everything goes well. But, again, do note that these are just estimates: we don't want to push out anything (too) broken etc.

Happy Easter!

🗿

Friday -- what a nice day to drop an update right before everyone working on the game is leaving the (virtual) office!

Hold on to your Cowboy Hats and Ice Brinks, and get ready to embark on the Sunburn Desert! What to expect on your sunny holiday?

☑️ Vultures
☑️ Lots of sand
☑️ Cacti

Among other things, you'll be tracking a Lost Convoy, visiting Mandrake's Diamond Mine, and squatting the Shady Mansion. That's all I can say to avoid further spoilers.

So we're making steady development progress. Over half of the island is now playable, but there's still a lot of work to be done.





[h2]Builder's Kit Improvements[/h2]

We've fixed lots of small things regarding the Builder's Kit. All the things you've built will now show up on your map. We've also added a new Teardown Efficiency invention which enables you to get all the materials back from the stuff you've built.

No new buildables have been added in this patch though, but more stuff coming soon(ish)! We'll want to fix all the issues regarding this before you can unleash your inner builder. You'll also need some context before you can/want build the turrets for example.

[h2]Amber Pills[/h2]

Consider this. You've ran deep into the desert without proper outfits. You've ate all your food items on the way just to stay alive in the sweltering heat, and you've finally managed to reach a distant but safe campfire. Victory? Not really, because you can't really get back out from the desert anymore if you've already eaten all your food items.

Amber Pills to the rescue! These tasty treats now have an additional long press use for swallowing a handful of pills instead of just one. Use this and you will awake near the first campfire at your home shelter. So even after series of bad decisions you can now always return home. (Just don't tell that to your skeleton.)



[h2]The Old Train[/h2]

You may remember this screenshot with the dude wondering what to do with the train. Well, you'll now be introduced with your very first train. Note that this isn't the same one you'll find there near Mandrake's. (Also, to avoid Early Access disappointments, you can't ride the train just yet.)



[h2]Quest for Stopping Respawning Monsters[/h2]

Some players seem to be disappointed when they see the monsters respawning after resting at the campfire. Some see this as a reliable source of certain materials. You can choose how you want to play it, but we'd like to make it clear that you CAN in fact stop the respawnings. It's your only way to get Mana Beads, which will become very important as you venture further.

We've now added a new quest to highlight this, so expect to get a new quest after leaving the campfire the next time. If you've already installed the transmitter to that particular link tower, don't worry, installing it to any new link tower will complete the quest!



[h3]ADDED[/h3]
- Access to new area 'Sunburn Desert'.
- Level Cap is now 29.
- New craftables: Proximity Mines (level 28), Safari Outfit (level 26, same as winter coat).
- New quest: Stop Monster Respawning that's triggered after you leave a campfire when you're at least XP level 3.
- Graphics option: vertical sync.
- Controls option: lock mouse cursor inside window.
- Added fourth main tool inventory slot.
- Added Invention: Teardown Efficienciency which gives back all of the building materials when breaking an object you've built.
- Showing things you've built on the map.
- Amber (Mana) Pills long press action now takes you back to home shelter (for situations where you've managed to get too far and have no other way back).
- Own tooltips for keyboard in some screens.
- If you've disabled auto-collect for some material, now showing auto-collect disabled text when near those materials. (To avoid getting bug reports about this.)

[h3]CHANGED[/h3]
- Dropped material pick up radius is reduced for 10 seconds to prevent accidental pickup.
- Reworked Criticals. Gained bonuses are now additional instead of percentual increases.This should both make the criticals work as intended and make it a lot clearer to the player what their critical chances are.
- Rebalanced numbers for modifiers and trinkets related to critical hits. Affected are Critical Hit Chance, Backstab Critical Chance, Critical Hit Damage, Counterweight and Acupuncture Needles.
- Buffed Machete attack speed by 5%.
- The quests "Preparing For Winter" and "Sweltering Heat" now trigger once the player meets harsh temperatures for the first time. This also unlocks required inventions for the quests. Further, due to this change, "Ice Brick", "Hot Water Bottle", "Fur Hat" and "Cowboy Hat" have had their level requirements removed.
- Moved a number of inventions in the invention tree to more logical places (No effect, if already unlocked).
- Nerfed a number of food recipe effects that were too good for their own right.
- You can't build in Tombs.
- Builder's Kit can't be used if enemies are too near or targeting you.
- Balanced material requirements for smelter products.
- Faster load times.

[h3]FIXED[/h3]
- Sawmill unlocking when crafting Builder's Kit. (To unlock Sawmill, just go and use the Sawmill once more in the north.)
- Some edge cases with wrong temperatures in certain areas.
- Monster scanner now counts stationary monsters too.
- Not showing up new monster slain popups for creatures that don't have a collection entry.
- Usual fixes to graphical glitches and typos.
- More clarifications for some quest descriptions and objective texts.
- Fixed gamepad tooltips showing up in cases where they shouldn't.




The next update will focus on Lore and Ancient Myths. It will contain only a small new area update, but that one will prepare you for your journey into the next area after that. Much excitement!

🌵

Update time! In this update you'll be entering deeper into Narrows Vale, avoiding trapping pits, investigating Sanctuary Farm, and melting some iron at Pike's Steel Manufacturing to fix that broken Link Tower. You will be using your very own Smelter -- one which you've built with your own greasy hands.

This new update finally introduces one of the missing major features: building, Do note that this is the initial implementation of Builder's Kit. We will be fine tuning everything and opening up more build categories in the upcoming updates. But it's finally here!

[h2]Highlights[/h2]

[h3]Builder's Kit[/h3]

You can unlock Builder's Kit invention only in Narrows Vale at the moment. Building itself is pretty simple. Just equip Builder's Kit, pick an object to build, and place it in any allowed position. We'll be unlocking more building categories and improving the tool in the future. You'll be eventually building more machines, furniture, decorations, simple walls, and defensive structures like turrets. But that is not available yet. At the moment you can simply build Smelters and Saw Mills to enhance your Iron, Steel, Titanium, and wood production capabilities.

You can build pretty freely anywhere you want, but we may need to tweak this too when you guys figure out how to completely break the game... again.



[h3]Accessibility Options[/h3]

We're adding new options tab for accessibility. Not sure how you feel about the emojis being there, but it seemed a better place for them than the game play tab. We'll probably be adding more options as we get better sense of what you need and want.



[h3]Borderless Fullscreen Window[/h3]

Sadly, the previous update with exclusive full screen tweaks broke the game for some people. The game screen could just freeze with sounds and music still playing. We're very sorry for this. Luckily many of you were kind enough to help us debug through it and come up with a solution.

So everything should be better now as we've moved to a borderless fullscreen window implementation which should work a lot nicer in all situations. Alt-tabbing is now swift and pleasant. The performance should be better than before as you don't have to run the game in your desktop resolution to take advantage of this. Let us know if you experience any issues with the new code!

[h2]Change Log[/h2]

[h3]ADDED[/h3]
- Access to new area 'Narrows Vale' (Part II, west side)
- Builder's Kit (accessible in Narrows Vale near the smelter).
- New Skill: Builder.
- Level Cap is now 28.
- New craftable: Material Magnet (level 27).
- Accessibility Options tab.
- Accessibility Option for color blind mode.
- Accessibility Option for reduced blinking effects.
- Accessibility Option for trypophobia.
- Reset to Defaults buttons for Options screen.

[h3]CHANGED[/h3]
- Gamepad cursor focus is moved to Cook button after clicking already cooked recipe button to automatically fill in the ingredients.
- Default UI scale is smaller on PC.
- Save slots now show player level, play time, and location.
- Clearer wording on both Checkpoint Terminal quests.
- Improved player's melee targeting. Target locked enemy is now always the primary target when attacking.
- Fullscreen mode is now always borderless fullscreen window.
- Link Tower scanner now shows all monsters in the area (even those you haven't discovered yet).
- Buffed "Magnifying Glass" with an extra effect.
- Improved invention tree readability and changed some invention positions. (Already unlocked inventions will stay so)
- Thumb up emoji not shown in inventory screen if emojis are disabled.
- Outdoorsman outfit only equippable at a campfire.

[h3]FIXED[/h3]
- Bug report screenshot with low detail settings.
- Graphical glitch when toggling shadows in graphics options.
- Graphics options presets affect all the settings.
- Skill change text now only shows effect for the skill and its previous levels.
- Hundreds of issues relating to floating objects and graphical glitches.
- Decals shake with the object actors when they're hit.
- Decals deleted when walls turn into rubble.
- Quest tab now correctly hides tracking checkboxes for completed quests.
- Incorrect descriptive text relating to some items and inventions.
- No longer showing invention number bubble for recipes you need to first find on the island (like katana).
- Opening the map does not reset filters anymore.




The island development is progressing in schedule so far. We're still on track for Summer 2021 release. As we've mentioned in the Early Access box, we will also be increasing the game price at least in some regions. This will happen likely before the next update. (One (rather embarrassing) reason for this is that our EUR price was actually lower than we planned, but another one is simply that the game is moving towards the full release and is slowly missing less and less features / game area.)

So what's up next? The next area after this one will be a completely new biome located south of Narrows Vale.



We're hoping this to be available in two weeks as well. Meanwhile, remember to consider joining our Discord Server #dysmantle to hear occasional feature leaks and whatnot: https://discord.gg/bhJds2R .

Thank you for all the dysmantling!

🛠️

New update is now here! This one expands the game area in the south by opening up the Checkpoint Rho. Among other things, you'll be checking in to Blue Ponds Motel, kicking tires at Fincher's Auto Salvage, and wondering when you'll be able to get to that broken Narrows Vale Link Tower (spoiler: in the next update). And yes, that's a katana in the update banner above.

As usual, to avoid more spoilers I'm not going to say much about the area itself, but I do want to make clear that this is Part I of the new area Narrows Vale. The next part will be available in the next update. So expect to see some under development barriers there.

In terms of overall progress, I'd say the island is roughly 40% complete now, and we're making good progress with the next areas as well.




[h2]Update Highlights[/h2]

[h3]Modifier Categories[/h3]

Modifiers are now listed in more user friendly manner in the inventory screen and organized under offense, defense, and misc categories.




[h3]Sharper Textures[/h3]

You may have noticed the game build size increase with the latest update. The biggest reason is that we now have 4x sharper textures included. You can finally drool after that pizza billboard in sharp 4k. (Spoiler: we also have a new non-pizza billboard now, and more coming soon.)




[h3]Quest HUD[/h3]

Quest HUD items can now be minimized and maximized by clicking the icon with mouse. This interaction is not available with gamepads, but you can of course toggle tracked quests in the pause menu Quests tab.




[h3]New Monster[/h3]

There's a new monster type/variant added in the new area. Don't want to spoil it, but here's an anonymous teaser.






Here's the full change log:

[h3]ADDED[/h3]
- Access to new area 'Narrows Vale' (Part I, east side)
- More radio messages to replace static.
- Level Cap is now 27.
- Graphics options / resolution screen has display index selection.
- Showing Material names when hovering mouse over game screen material slots (mouse only).
- Showing Material names in Carried Materials screen when focus is over a material slot.
- Showing Material names in Collection Material grid.
- Quest HUD items can be minimized by clicking the icon with mouse.
- All Modifiers listed in categories in Inventory screen.
- Audio option for pausing sounds and music when app window is out of focus.
- Gameplay option for pausing the game when app window is out of focus.
- Audio option for playing copyrighted music (streamers can use this to avoid having to clear the copyrights for videos).
- New player character remarks for different situations
- Higher resolution textures.

[h3]CHANGED[/h3]
- A message is now played when the player tries to destroy an object that is required for a quest.
- The player is now able to throw the monster lure.
- Modifiers now listed in more compact form.
- Another slight change to "Tomb of Timing".
- Low health indicator isn't triggered as easily.
- Skills now shown in the order picked in Collection.

[h3]FIXED[/h3]
- Saving options controller type selection. (Note that both controller types can still be used simultaneously.)
- Fixed cases where quest related objects would become indestructible for good after completing the quest and quitting the game.
- Showing player hit points bar properly when resuming game.
- Alt-tab crash fix and improved fullscreen mode handling.
- Several cases of positions in "Canaveral" where people were getting stuck.
- Some rare cases where the player could still trigger miniboss cutscenes after initiating the fight.




The next update will bring you the second part of Narrows Vale. You can expect it to be available within two weeks. Stay tuned!

🚗

After a very nice and refreshing holiday break, we're back on track with the updates! And this is a big one.

Version 0.6.6 brings access to a new area called ⚓Frore. It's linked to Hibernus (beyond checkpoint Kappa), and can be entered now that most of those blue transparent dev barries have been removed. Note that there are still some of them left blocking the way.

I don't want to spoil anything, so no comments on the area itself -- besides that it does include The Ark, which is NOT accessible yet. #soon(ish) #ark #ark-life

All in all this means we're almost half way there in terms of the island surface area. Not everything in those areas is accessible, so wouldn't dare to say we're actually half finished. But making steady progress I think.




As usual, the level cap has been increased +1. You'll be able to craft yourself a fancy new Winter Coat and pick up one new Skill if your XP is already hanging around the cap area.

We've also done one scary thing that we should have done in the first Early Access release... The game binaries are now 64-bit only. This fixes tons of issues and greatly improves the game stability on some systems. Looking at (opt-in) Steam hardware stats, nobody is playing this on 32-bit Windows, but if you are, please contact us at dysmantle [at] 10tons.com and we'll work something out. Meanwhile, you should be able to continue playing the previous build available in 'previous_default' branch.

[h2]Highlights[/h2]

There's also tons of other tweaks and improvements. Highlighting a few of them here.

[h3]Monster Radar[/h3]

After the previous Link Tower Ascension update some of you have had problems locating the remaining monsters in the areas. You'll hopefully appreciate the new Scanning functionality which shows the remaining monsters on the map.




[h3]Unified Options[/h3]

The new Unified Options screen now combines the several options screen (Gameplay, Graphics, Controls Audio) under one life-embracing experience.



[h3]Depth of Field[/h3]

There's also a new experimental Depth of Field effect, which works kinda nicely most of the time. However, if you find it distracting, you can always disable it in Graphics options. We'll probably be tweaking this further.



[h3]Material Stacks[/h3]

Some of you tricksters have tried dropping your whole Orange Storage Box worth of materials on ground at the same spot and... it doesn't end well ːsteamfacepalmː So materials are now dropped in stacks (if you drop more than 5 at the same time). This makes the save file smaller and reduces the amount of actors (in game objects) on screen, which helps performance-wise. This feature isn't very photogenic.

[h3]Map Point of Interest Filters[/h3]

Then there's a brand new Map Filters menu which can be used to customize your view on map Point of Interests. That should be helpful when trying to find all Fishing spots for example. You can also hide all completed icons which makes the remaining items pop out better.



[h3]Tree Stumps & Wall Rubble[/h3]

There's also one rather embarrassing thing that we've noticed. We've spent MONTHS and MONTHS designing and carefully crafting the island, and now you guys are suddenly just smashing everything to pieces. The problem is that the environment looks a lot less attractive with all the objects gone, so we're now making sure parts of that stuff remains after the destruction. For example we added some wall rubble before, and we've now added tree stumps - nature's own gravestones.



[h3]Localization Preparation[/h3]

Behind the scenes we're also preparing for the upcoming localization process. But alas, the support for the Turkish language is not coming any time soon. But I think we've been able to solve all the issues of localizing this sort of open world game, so all is well in those regards.



But I think that's more than enough feature highlighting. Here's the full change log:

[h2]ADDED[/h2]
- Access to new area 'Frore'.
- Level Cap is now 26.
- New craftable: Winter Coat.
- In-game cutscene skip support (not all cutscenes support this yet). Hold down mouse buttons, space, or gamepad A/B to skip.
- Map point of interest filters menu.
- Depth of Field effect (simple approximation) in Graphical Options.
- Showing completed Quests in pause menu.
- Added Unified Options menu.
- Added Gameplay Option to remove Material Tracking Notification Animation bouncing.
- Showing farmed plants on world map and minimap.
- Key combo Control+U shows/hides UI. Useful for grabbing screenshots without the UI elements.
- Slightly reduced miniboss colliders sizes, so they should fit through narrow doorways.
- Material stacks. Dropping bigger amounts of materials results in tighter stacks and doesn't bloat the save file.
- Link Tower now has 'Scan Monsters' button option after you've installed the Radar. It shows remaining monster locations.
- Cut down trees now leave tree stumps.

[h2]CHANGED[/h2]
- Timed Chests are not hidden from the map after opened to make it easier to track them.
- Made the "Hibernus" tomb a bit easier.
- Made "Hedgefield" tower area slightly smaller so all enemies needed for ascension are encounterable.
- Nerfed "Dentured Fangs".
- Enemies don't just blindly follow animals any more if there are other targets.
- Fishing quest now takes previously fished fishes into account.
- Now using 64-bit binaries.
- Slight wording change to "Endless Trash" to avoid confusion re: digging.

[h2]FIXED[/h2]
- Crash that could happen when opening up the map.
- Window cursor being offset after starting the game or changing display config.
- Critical hit damage increases are now calculated correctly.
- Oddly placed broken wall pieces are now also destroyed when nearby walls get destroyed.
- A bug that permanently prevented materials being collected.
- Shadow cast rendering bug.
- Various crash bugs that happened when playing longer sessions.
- Ruthless Pitcher should not respawn any more when ascending.
- No longer possible to change secondary item while aiming a throwable.
- Sleeping now increases the related medal progression correctly.
- Fixes to option saving.
- Tab key doesn't change pause menu tabs if bound to inventory or map.
- Usual fixes to graphical bugs and glitches.
- UI optimizations for screens with lots of items.



After these two northern areas, the next area update will grant access beyond the southern Wall Checkpoint Rho. You can expect this area to be available in the next three weeks. We may also drop another feature/fix/feedback update before that, but we'll see. The next area after that is also being worked on, (spoiler: it's a new environment type), so you should expect that to be released very soon after the next one.

⚓