Hi everyone,
Last two weeks I continued working on the “Lore Update”. As I explained before, after we acquire the treasure map, we will be able to check the map with a right click for whereabouts of the treasure. As the game creates the treasure map, it also creates a small 1x1 treasure island at the open seas. But this island is hidden. It doesn’t show on the world so hero needs to come to one square near it with the help of the treasure map.



As our hero goes near the island, it becomes visible and stays visible even after the hero lives its vicinity. After that, the treasure map in the inventory is marked with a check mark showing that this map location is found. Hero can delete or sell it. He can still go to the treasure island since it is already found. Note that vendors don’t give much gold for treasure maps, because they can’t be sure if there is any treasure there.



These small treasure islands are dangerous places. There is a treasure chest with lots of gold and a valuable unique item in there, but they are heavily guarded.

Treasure island battlemaps are somewhat tricky. The treasure is at the center of the map and there are impassable deep water tiles everywhere to slow down the hero. But hero can use levitation, teleportation or invisibility to take the treasure and run. He doesn’t need to kill any enemy to open the chest.

I also changed the Lore page design to show the read books better. It now can show the book cover and the writer of the book too.



Another improvement is something I was thinking to do for some time. It is about potion crafting and ingredients. There are simply a lot of ingredients and it makes potion crafting somewhat hard. Some of them also look similiar. For example, there is a bat blood and a snake blood. There are lots of vials like vial of pearl dust, vial of gold dust etc.

There are 79 ingredients for potion crafting. And this number was even bigger before. I already simplified some of them. For example there were different insect legs for all insects, like giant cockroach legs, centipede legs and giant mite legs. Now they are all insect legs. And there is still a bat wing and an albino bat wing.

In the older versions of the game, there was no potion crafting and these ingredients were used as a loot to be sold to the Alchemist Tower. So, for years, I added and added these things without being able to estimate what will happen once I add the potion crafting mechanism.

This inflation of ingredients diminishes the value of ingredients and makes potion crafting more complicated than it should be. It is also hard for inventory management.

In the current version of the game, every ingredient is used for one or two recipes. I want to change that so every ingredient is used for 3-4 recipes. So I needed to cut out some similar or less interesting ingredients. Some of them I didn’t want to cut out but I did it anyway.

Less ingredients mean gathering the necessary ingredients easier and smoother inventory management which is always a plus. Long story short, I came to the shocking realization that the game might be better off without Rat Whiskers.

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading. May the tides bring you triumph!

Hi everyone,
Another bugfix.

• Tomato Salad with Goat Cheese was not working properly.

Hi everyone,
Here is a bug fix update.

• Some unknown food recipes were shown as known recipes.
  
• If we save inside a dungeon or battlemap with a unique item in one of the chests there, unique item was not saving properly.
  
• Some unique items in some chests were spawning a different unique item everytime we load the game.

Hi everyone,
This week I worked on the books. Books and reading them are important elements of the upcoming “Lore Update”. Hero will be able to read books and gain that precious “Lore”. Here is how it works: If there are no enemies around, we can right click on a book, and an opened book GUI comes up.

On the right side, you see how much lore you will gain from this book, how many hours it will take to read it and how much food you will consume while you are reading it. This may be crucial information while you try to read the book at the wilderness. Note that hero can catch cold while reading book at the wilderness.

On the left page, you can see the book’s name, writer, publish date and the town it was published in. There is also a sub-header that gives a hint about the content of the book. These are all procedurally generated so the logic may be questionable sometimes. But it suits the name of the game after all.





Books may be read in 5-15 hours and grand Lore accordingly. First, I thought that the books may be read in 30-50 hours in several sessions. But then there will be lots of different books like half read books, full read books etc. So for the sake of simplicity, I decided that the books should be read in one go.

After reading the book, there will be a tick sign on the book icon to show that it has been read so that hero can see which books he can sell to shops.

Another thing I worked on is related to the last update. Daggers were missing from the unique items pool, so I worked on those. They will have a default critical hit modifier and another modifier like burn or freeze, that can scale from 15% to 25% percent. They will also be very light and will use really low stamina while attacking.



That’s all for now. Thanks for reading. May the tides bring you triumph!

Hi everyone,
Here is a small update.

• Raised the level cap from 40 to 50.
  
• Corrected a typo within the hunting the rabbit incident.

Hi everyone,
This week work on “Lore” update continued. As I mentioned last week, lore is a new type of resource that hero can collect in various ways: like listening to bards or finding altars. He can then spend this resource to purchase treasure maps or skill points etc.

One of the main ways to collect lore is by reading books. Hero can read books anywhere as long as there are no enemies around. But it takes some time according to book’s lore potential. It may last between 1 to 8 hours. Hero can not a read book when he is hungry. After reading the book, the book will no longer have any lore to give, so hero can sell it.

I also rearranged the journal to have two pages navigated with tabs. One is named “Overview” which is the same as the journal in current game. The other page is called “Lore”. In this page, hero can see the total lore he accumulated, from which sources and how much lore he has left to spend. He can also purchase two different kinds of treasure maps, skill points or attribute points.



Treasure map can be a common “Treasure Map” or a “Legendary Treasure Map”. Legendary treasure map’s rewards will be roughly double the common treasure map’s rewards but their purchase price will not be double. So they will be profitable nonetheless.

A new skill will be introduced which is called “Lore Mastery”. This skill will make lore accumulation easier. Every point in this skill will increase the lore gained from books by 5%. So if the hero maxes out this skill up to 20, he will gain 100% more lore from books. Along the way, he will gain some perks for gaining more lore from bards, historians, statutes etc.

I put the lore counter near the gold counter at the bottom hud. There is a tool tip for it that explains briefly what it is. I also make the arrow and lockpick icons bigger in their counters so they are hopefuly easier to recognize for the new comers.

Another new addition is a small but a neat one. As we know, there are quest icons at the right edge of the screen. Now, completed quest’s icon will have a different icon. It will turn green and a tick sign will be on it reminding that this quest is finished and hero needs to go back to quest giver to claim his reward.



As I was working on the new skill, I reconstructed the armor skills. Medium armors were too similiar to light armors and some of them had almost overlapping stats with each other. So I combined them for the sake of clarity. It was something I intended to do for some time but have postponed, thinking if I delete medium armor skill, there will be less dexterity skills than the strength and intelligence skills. For some reason, I wanted each attribute to govern exactly five skills each. This is kind of an OCD which requires to pursue symmetry at all times. But then I made the cooking skill and number of intelligent skills became six. It broke the symmetry. But to my surprise, it didn't bother me as I thought it would. I got used to it immediately. So I quit wanting things to be symmetrical.

There are now two armor types instead of three: light and heavy. Armors made of cloth or leather are light armor, armors made of metal or stone are heavy armor. Most of the medium armors were leathers so they are now light armor. Note that this is just a classification change, I didn't delete the medium armor items.

I empowered these armor skills as well. They contribute more to the hero’s defense. Now the new heavy and light armors feel really different from each other. I will add some additional features like stamina regeneration to the light armors to differentiate them even more. It is also a lot easier to find and suit up same kind of armor to get the bonuses.

I worked on the treasure maps a little and made the edges of the lands more visible. There are some works to be done regarding the maps but I feel it is getting there.



That’s all for now. Thanks for reading. May the tides bring you triumph!

Hi Everyone,
This week I worked on a new gameplay element: Lore. Lore is actually a new currency/resource that our hero can accumulate from various objects or people. Reading books, meeting historians, listening bard songs give lore. Hero can also earn lore by discovering altars, statues and sarcophagi.

Lore will be used to purchase treasure maps, skill points and attribute points. There will be a new lore page within the journal to make these actions. You can also see here the titles of the books hero has read.

There will also be a new skill called lore mastery. Intelligence attribute and lore mastery skill will both govern the lore collecting process. It will be a lot easier to collect lore with higher lore mastery skill.

Another new game play element is the treasure map. Treasure maps will be purchased with lore points. The logic behind is that the hero finds lots of clues in the books, statues, songs etc. and connects them to find a long lost treasure. He may also get lucky and find treasure maps in various places while adventuring. Shady character may sell them too.

Treasure maps are items in the inventory which can be viewed by right clicking on them. They will show a somewhat vague drawing of the overworld map with a red mark indicating where the treasure is. This place will not be marked on the hero’s overworld map like quest locations. Hero will have to go near to it to make it visible and find the treasure.

I decided that the treasure map should be on an old paper with a hand drawn look. But since the map is procedurally generated, it became obvious that it is challenging to make it look like a person has drawn it. I tried some things and came up with this version which is still work in progress. I plan to add the settlements and may also increase the variety of the trees and mountains if it looks good.



That’s all for now. Thanks for reading. May the tides bring you triumph!

Hi everyone,
This is a small update that adds more content to last week's update. As you know, last week we added lots of unique items but there was one kind of items missing: bows. Like other uniques, these bows are powerful items that scale to the level of the hero at the time they are found. You may find these unique bows at the boss rooms and iron chests.

Version 0.90.02
ADDITIONS

• 12 unique shortbows added.

CHANGES

• Iron chests have 35% chance to contain a unique item instead of 25%.

FIXES

• Fixed silver shortbows undead bane buff.
  
• Fixed an issue about shortbow bleed damage. It was not working as intended.

Hi Everyone,
We are ready with a new update with lots of new unique items making the game so much more rewarding. These are powerful items that can usually be found after the boss fights. Unique rings can also be found while fishing. A few of them are rewards at the Artisan's treasure vault. Save files are compatible with this update, but in order to see the new items in the treasure vault, starting a new game is required.

Some of these items have interesting effects like starting/stopping rain or giving the hero more chance to find a treasure while fishing. Some rings can even amplify talent stone damages.

Version 0.90.01
ADDITIONS:

• 48 new unique items added:
  8 rings
  11 amulets
  12 shortswords
  5 greatswords
  6 warhammers
  6 staves
  
• A new weapon trait, "Undead Bane" added. Now all Silver weapons have this trait and they inflict 25% more damage to undeads.
  
• "Scent of Beast" curse added. This may happen when the hero shapeshifts to bear or bat. Speechcraft decreases but intimidation increases. Hero also can not enter towns easily.
  
• Remove Curse potion added.

CHANGES

• Every dungeon's last room chest contains a unique item.
  
• Iron chests have 25% chance to contain a unique item.
  
• Sword in the stone incident drops a unique sword. There are more ghosts that protect sword in the stone.
  
• Tomb at the mausoleum always has a unique item. There are more monsters that protect the tomb.
  
• Trees drop loot bags. They used to drop only wood, but now drop different materials.
  
• Changed some of the drop rates of certain ingredients so that the hero can make health and stamina potions more easily.
  
• "Nigthmares" is a curse instead of a "Sanity loss".
  
• Undeads are now immune to drain life.
  
• There are crystals at the last room of lava dungeon for more loot.
  
• Hyena encounters are more crowded now.
  
• Improved the roll over card on melee damage and ranged damage on the character sheet. Now you can read fire, ice, poison, lightning and bleed damage on the cards.

Hi everyone,
Here is a small bugfix update.

• Exiled Prince's starting weapon damage was miscalculated, making him really hard to play.
  
• Sea serpent starsign poison bonus was not added correctly to the poison damage total.