Over the past months, many of you have raised concerns, questions, and frustrations about permadeath (haven't we all?). This is something that we have been discussing a lot internally, sharing much of the same concerns that you all have. Today we want to share some of our thoughts on this topic and how we’d like to evolve it going forward.

Firstly we believe that dying is an essential ingredient in the Book of Travels soup. We don't want to fall into the trap of trivializing dangers and risk, removing the edge from gameplay moments such as combat and survival. Therefore, our current plan is to keep both the life petals and ‘physical death’ but add depth, meaning, and gameplay to the player character’s post-death journey. Here is a spoiler free breakdown of the sequence of events that we are currently considering:

• Life is dependent on your life petals in accordance with original design.
  
• Characters can die, and seeing someone else die will ignite a special quest regarding mourning and closure.
  
• Your items will be stored by your grave, collectible only by you.
  
• Ghost forms can travel the world interacting with other ghosts.
  
• There is a path to be discovered to get resurrected. A way to gain ‘passage’ back to the land of the living.

Where this will fit into our current update schedule, we have yet to entirely work out, but we will get back to you as soon as we have a better idea. For now, we just wanted to shed some light on our thoughts regarding this important part of the player experience. We hope you like the direction we are headed in with this and that you continue to stay with us on the road ahead! If you are interested in some insight into some of the inhabitants of Braided Shore’s beliefs on life and death, you can read a few tidbits from our vault of lore below:

Life and Death Death is a topic surrounded by much speculation and study in Braided Shore. In the modern mythos, life and death are thought of as being synonymous with land and sea, echoing the stormy, mysterious origins of the Asken settlers that now call Braided Shore their home. The shore between life and death is seen as a realm of passage between the two worlds. Mystics calling themselves “shore walkers'' have dedicated their mortal existence to exploring this uncharted middle-land, risking death, insanity, and perhaps even worse.

In other cultures, such as the Malku Su, death is a completely foreign concept. Malkus believe their race exists as a finite number of eternal spirits. Should their bodies perish, their spirits are carried by lightning to nest with their goddess until a worthy Malku Su family is rewarded with a child. The goddess then chooses one of the nesting spirits to bestow to the newborn, thus perpetuating the journey of the Malku Su Soul. This mysterious circularity has shaped the mentality of the stoic Malku Su for countless generations and drawn awe and wonder from other species.

Until next time,
Jakob, Oliver and the team at Might and Delight

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1152340/Book_of_Travels/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1783460/Book_of_Travels__Cup_of_Kindness/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1849710/Book_of_Travels__Soundtrack/


Sign up on our mailing list for news about our game at https://m-n-d.games/BoT/Steam/update.

When you play Book of Travels there is no linear questline, instead every player will have their own journey and stories to tell. Find out more about how our game design works to make your journey unlike any other...

Book of Travels is now available in Early Access on Steam. In Chapter Zero parts of the Braided Shore will be open, and among the places to visit is the gem of the region – the city of Kasa. Read more here.

Join our super friendly Discord to exchange ideas on all things Book of Travels as well as art, games and books. Join here.

Everyone here at Might and Delight sincerely hopes that you’ve had an enjoyable and invigorating holiday season. 2021 was a huge year for us, both in terms of wonderful milestones and challenging hardships. But now we’re turning our gaze forwards, because 2022 holds plenty of exciting things for Book of Travels.

Right now we’re deep in the trenches working on those things, two of which we’re aiming to have completed and rolled out in the near future. First off, we’ll soon be adding more levels to be explored. A mountainous forest level to the west and a hidden underground outmark called the “Underbelly”. We know that some of you are very keen on more land to get lost in, so rest assured that Braided Shore will keep growing.

On top of that we’re getting close to finalising our new character customisation tools. Soon you’ll be able to further change the appearance of your very own Traveller with hair, color options, and more! We’ll share more details about this a little further down the line, and we think you will be pleased with what we've been working on.



While we are a much smaller team in the beginning of 2022 than we were in the beginning of 2021 (as detailed in this post from last year), we don’t plan on shrinking our ambitions for Book of Travels. Everything that we’ve confirmed we’re going to do is still on the table. Our workflow has obviously seen changes recently but again: Book of Travels will stay on its course to becoming the RPG experience of our dreams.

And of course, on top of bringing more content to the game we will keep working hard to iron out kinks like bugs and performance issues. We've seen some concern regarding this on the forums, but just because we're working on new features and content doesn't mean that we're not focused on fixes. Both additional content and fixes are being worked on simultaneously by different people on the team, so we're definitely not done with bugs yet.

Best wishes,
Oliver & the team at Might and Delight

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1152340/Book_of_Travels/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1783460/Book_of_Travels__Cup_of_Kindness/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1849710/Book_of_Travels__Soundtrack/

Sign up on our mailing list for news about our game at https://m-n-d.games/BoT/Steam/update.
When you play Book of Travels there is no linear questline, instead every player will have their own journey and stories to tell. Find out more about how our game design works to make your journey unlike any other...
Book of Travels is now available in Early Access on Steam. In Chapter Zero parts of the Braided Shore will be open, and among the places to visit is the gem of the region – the city of Kasa. Read more here.
Join our super friendly Discord to exchange ideas on all things Book of Travels as well as art, games and books. Join here.

First of all – I and the entire team would like to extend our most heartfelt thanks for the loving support you showed us after we posted yesterday's studio update. It's been a challenging couple of months, not least of all emotionally, but seeing you express your faith in us and our game like this is deeply invigourating. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you. Now, on to the matter at hand.

Today we’re happy to announce that the official soundtrack of Book of Travels is available for purchase on Steam. Of course, if you’re a Kickstarter backer of a pledge level that includes the soundtrack, you will get a key through Backerkit without having to buy it. For everyone else, the soundtrack will cost $8,99.

The music of Book of Travels is obviously a big part of what makes Braided Shore and its atmosphere what it is. It was produced and composed by Josef Tuulse and Retro Family, and it was definitely a labour of love for them to bring this world to life with their musical prowess.

I would love to take this opportunity to tell you more about this music, how it came together and why it’s so special to us. But no matter how much I admire what they managed to accomplish through their artistry and musicianship, I don’t feel it’s my place to do that. Therefore I reached out to Retro Family to write a little something for the fans themselves…




"Thank you for listening and getting lost with us in Book of Travels. We are very proud of this soundtrack and hope that it will transport you to the adventures of Braided Shore.

What's unique about the music in Braided Shore is that everything is played and performed live by the trio, which makes the music come alive and breathe. The style and instrumentation were experimented with until we came up with something that matched the feel and pace of the game.

The Oud, Darbuka and flute are heavily featured instruments, and traditional music from Turkey, Armenia, Egypt, Greece and Iran served as a big influence in creating this beautiful soundtrack. It was a challenge to learn these instruments and make them all blend together. Another great experience, or obstacle, was to mix classic RPG music with that of classical Ottoman music and to make it work for the game. But in the end I think we did a wonderful job and the result is something we are very proud of. Enjoy!"

- Retro Family

Retro Family consists of Jokke Pettersson, Alfred Andersson and Ulf Wahlgren.

It goes without saying that Book of Travels would be lesser without the music that these gentlemen dreamed up for it, and judging by how many of you that has reached out to me asking about when the soundtrack will be released I think it’s fair to say that many of you would agree with that sentiment.

Thank you for your continued support, and enjoy!

Best wishes,
Oliver & the team at Might and Delight

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1152340/Book_of_Travels/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1783460/Book_of_Travels__Cup_of_Kindness/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1849710/Book_of_Travels__Soundtrack/


Sign up on our mailing list for news about our game at https://m-n-d.games/BoT/Steam/update.

When you play Book of Travels there is no linear questline, instead every player will have their own journey and stories to tell. Find out more about how our game design works to make your journey unlike any other...

Book of Travels is now available in Early Access on Steam. In Chapter Zero parts of the Braided Shore will be open, and among the places to visit is the gem of the region – the city of Kasa. Read more here.

Join our super friendly Discord to exchange ideas on all things Book of Travels as well as art, games and books. Join here.

The past months have been the most revolving, intriguing and emotional that we have ever experienced at our studio. Releasing Book of Travels in Early Access and trying to keep up with the logistical and emotional aftermath has been both fun and challenging. It's safe to say that this period has been unique for us.

It's in the wake of these events that we reach out to you with some important news. With the ambition to be both transparent and concise, we want to share the current status of our company to you all. Our goal is always for you, our community, to know who we really are – whatever that may be.

In light of the launch not going quite as well as we had hoped, we have had to make some rather big, and difficult, cutbacks to our beloved team. In order to stay alive, we have been forced to cut down our team from around 35 people to 10 people. Saying goodbye to so many skilled, trusted and loved Might and Delighters has been, without a shadow of a doubt, our most difficult test in our 11 year history.



Understandably, many of you will wonder how this is going to affect the game going forward. We have suffered a setback and as a result the production pace of coming content WILL be affected. We want to be transparent regarding that. However, we also want you to know that the team that remains is determined and hell bent on two things: surviving and bringing the best possible content to the game. We will do whatever it takes to keep Book of Travels going, and continue to bring it and the company forward together with you.

We want to end by sharing this sentiment; Might and Delight have always been a company that has thrived on the edge and in the margins. We have always sacrificed much in order to bring our visions to life, sometimes going against the smartest strategy in favour of a path closer to our hearts.

In the coming days we will be releasing the game's Original Soundtrack and today we published a donation-like DLC called ”Cup of Kindness” that you can pick up if you wish to further support the project.

We sincerely hope that this news, grim as it is, reach you well. With hope to continue the journey together.

All the best,
Founders Anders, Jakob & Dev Team

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1152340/Book_of_Travels/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1783460/Book_of_Travels__Cup_of_Kindness/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1849710/Book_of_Travels__Soundtrack/


Sign up on our mailing list for news about our game at https://m-n-d.games/BoT/Steam/update.

When you play Book of Travels there is no linear questline, instead every player will have their own journey and stories to tell. Find out more about how our game design works to make your journey unlike any other...

Book of Travels is now available in Early Access on Steam. In Chapter Zero parts of the Braided Shore will be open, and among the places to visit is the gem of the region – the city of Kasa. Read more here.

The T in TMO signals an alternative to the more common industry standard MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game) putting 'tiny' in the place of 'massive'. That means fewer meetings, which we think means more magic... Read more here: What is a TMORPG?!

Join our super friendly Discord to exchange ideas on all things Book of Travels as well as art, games and books. Join here.

Dear Traveller,
Today we've brought you yet another small but much needed patch of changes and fixes. It contains some of the most frequently requested fixes to boats and endeavours. Thank you for your valuable feedback, it really does make Book of Travels a better experience for everyone. Keep it coming! Now to the list:

• The Guise skills now last for longer (10 minutes -> 30 minutes).
  
• Added a black border to the loading screen for alternate aspect ratios.

• Fixed an issue where the interaction with an endeavour was delayed.
  - NOTE: Due to this fix, players might see other players teleporting to endeavours to interact with
  them. This is a known issue, but needed for the current solution.
  
• Boats should now start as soon as the "Time to Depart" counter is done.
  
• Boats should now visually move when they start from standing still.
  
• There should no longer be a black screen lingering for several seconds in some cases when changing level with a vehicle.

Best wishes,
Oliver & the team at Might and Delight

Dear Traveller,

In a little more than an hour, at 2pm CET (5am PT), we're pushing out a new patch of fixes to Book of Travels. Most of you probably know this now, but anyone who is still online playing by then will get disconnected as the update is being applied.

• If the player is given an item as part of an interaction, a prompt will now tell them if their inventory is full and therefore could not receive the item.

• Fixed various issues with Achievements not triggering correctly.
  
• Events that spawn on specific days now spawn according to local time instead of according to the UTC time zone.
  
• A case of some day time dependent events appearing or not appearing at the right time of day solved (i.e., some night events not appearing at night and so on).
  
• The Carpet Seller in Bat Saha no longer sells the skill ‘Knot of the Infamous’.
  
• Knot of the Infamous now has the correct name and description.
  
• Occasionally getting stuck when changing levels on a train solved (this fix also solved some overshooting when stopping for trains).
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the HUD to disappear when spamming the HUD buttons.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused swapping places of items to duplicate the favorite icon on both items.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the favorite icon to be displayed on pocketed items that were not favorited.
  
• Toggling the hood now matches the animation.
  
• Conjure Flowers now works on the correct terrain type.

Best wishes,
Oliver & the team at Might and Delight

It’s been a while since one of these community updates were posted. Since last time, the team has been busy with ironing out bugs (as usual) but also with getting our first Skill and Achievement Packs ready for you. We’re pleased to announce that they will be released today! As you are aware, we refer to our Early Access period as “Chapter Zero”, and as such we like to call these content drops “Pages”. This is the next Page.

Let’s talk skills first. There are six of them in today’s content drop, two of which were designed by backers of our Kickstarter campaign! Being able to invite our audience to directly participate in molding Book of Travels with us is one of the wonderful benefits of having done that campaign, and we’re very happy with how that collaboration has taken shape so far.

So without further ado, here are the new skills that your Traveller will be able to learn from now on:

Glitterfall
Wind: South
Type: Knot

This spell sets the air alight with a glamorous waterfall of sparkles. Credit goes to Ashley Corkill for coming up with this spell.

Summon Spirit Familiar
Wind: West
Type: Knot

This spell summons a travel companion from the spirit world to the binder’s side. Credit goes to Dennis, Savinien and Kaz Floyd for coming up with this spell.

Keen Eye
Wind: East
Type: Passive

Your sharp eyesight allows you to highlight collectibles around you more often.

Knot of the Infamous
Wind: West
Type: Knot

This spell permanently changes the knot binder’s eye colour to a random hue.

Rain Ward
Wind: East
Type: Passive

The natural power of rain resonates strongly with you, strengthening your resolve and raising your Ward as a result.

Knotbinder’s Fervour
Wind: North
Type: Passive

The mystical energies that surround you sometimes makes your knot spells take effect instantly.



Now, how you actually acquire these skills for your Traveller is going to remain a mystery. And you wouldn’t have it any other way, surely? We are going to say that these skills will be in the possession of certain inhabitants of Braided Shore, and we do encourage you to share your findings with your fellow Travellers on popular meeting grounds such as the Steam forums or our Discord server.

How fast will you be able to claim them all?


Like already stated, the Skill Pack isn’t the only thing to get added to Book of Travels today. We also have the first Achievement Pack. Below you will find a list of the ones that the game gets right now. We won’t tell you how to achieve them though! There will be more to come as we continue fleshing things out during the Early Access period.

Note: Unfortunately, these won’t be unlocked retroactively if you already have fulfilled the requirements. They will need to be earned from scratch.

• Survived Character Creation!
  
• Journey Started
  
• Reached Safety
  
• Bat Saha
  
• Dandelions
  
• Learn Vellan
  
• The Dandelion
  
• First Trade
  
• Gather Your Party
  
• Party of Heroes
  
• A Bag of Riches
  
• Robbers Delight
  
• And other, hidden achievements!

Lastly, I would once again like to take this opportunity to thank you for your support. We believe in the vision of this game, and it’s incredibly gratifying to see so many of you doing the same. Needless to say, this batch of content is the tip of the iceberg of what we’re planning for Book of Travels and its future. Have fun with these new additions in the meantime, and we’ll talk again soon.

Best wishes,
Oliver & the team at Might and Delight

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1152340/Book_of_Travels/

Sign up on our mailing list for news about our game at https://m-n-d.games/BoT/Steam/update.

When you play Book of Travels there is no linear questline, instead every player will have their own journey and stories to tell. Find out more about how our game design works to make your journey unlike any other...

Book of Travels is now available in Early Access on Steam. In Chapter Zero parts of the Braided Shore will be open, and among the places to visit is the gem of the region – the city of Kasa. Read more here.

Join our super friendly Discord to exchange ideas on all things Book of Travels as well as art, games and books. Join here.

Dear Traveller,
Today, at 14:00 CET (06:00 PT), we're updating Book of Travels with a host of various changes and fixes. As usual, anyone that's online playing at that time will be disconnected as the patch is rolling out - so try to plan your playtime accordingly.

• Players can now cancel casting knots and brewing teas by walking.
  
• When using a skill that requires you to target a character, hovering over a targetable character will now highlight them. Untargetable characters will not be highlighted even if they have interactions while in this state.
  
• Level transition buttons now align properly to passages and portals in the world.
  
• Implemented new animations for musicians.
  
• Various new text descriptions for skill items, skill effects and reagents added.
  
• Removed direction text for indoor gates.
  
• Polished the look of the Flower Kettem texture.

• Fixed various bugs that caused the player to teleport on click instead of walking.
  
• Prompt messages no longer get queued up if the same prompt is already set to display in the queue.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused skills to not be able to target other characters.
  
• The cave wall in the Jade Urn no longer fades from inside the cave.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the Careful trait to trigger a prompt when close to a non-hostile NPC that the player could duel with.
  
• Fixed the "New Foundry Special" item name that was mentioning it to be a bread, instead of a beverage.
  
• Added missing icon for Fake Pearl Studs.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the name sign of a hovered character to flicker.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused notes on the map to be placed in a horizontal line when logging out and back in. They should now always stay in the position they were placed in.
  
• NPCs gambling animation should no longer sporadically twitch.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused Kelim's Gate to be available outside of Nomad's rests.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the "out of breath" audio to play when running out of stamina while in animal form.
  
• An equipped Offhand item should now properly toggle off when using the Deep Rest skill.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused items to move around in the inventory after swapping the places of two equipped rings.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused having the ‘Cheap knotted cord message’ in your inventory to break certain UI elements (such as tooltips, or using skills).
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the ‘Party’ tutorial to show up for all party members if at least one member had not yet seen the tutorial.
  
• Map notes are now properly removed from the database when their text contents are removed.
  
• The ‘Learn’ button on skill cards is no longer interactable if you already have the skill in your skillbook.
  
• Fixed various culling issues with background clouds.
  
• Players should no longer clip through the train when sitting down while travelling.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused hostile NPC name tags to not show up when pressing Tab.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused textboxes to not properly pre-scale to their largest size in an interaction. This created instances of the text box being different sizes in one dialogue, and making the “next” button jump around to different places.

Best wishes,
Oliver & the team at Might and Delight

Book of Travels stream.

I hope this little update finds you well on this fine Monday. Last week I sat down with one of our programmers, Arvid, to talk about the work the team is doing to make Book of Travels a little better every day, as well as how your valued feedback reaches them.

Now, for anyone who is wondering what Arvid does I’ll make a quick introduction. He is in charge of the user interface (UI) and player interactions. The UI is incredibly important since it’s pretty much the visual language through which you, the player, engage with the game. Just like I’m sure you’ve experienced yourselves, I have been turned off from otherwise interesting games because of their UI’s being too complex, too cluttered or even visually unpleasing – so it’s definitely one of those things that absolutely needs to be just right, and even though I personally think Arvid’s done an excellent job with Book of Travels’ UI so far it’s still an ongoing process.

And as previously stated he works a lot with making player interactions smoother and more efficient. An example of this was how he made lighting a fireplace better since its inception. Previously it worked like this: you clicked on the ground to spawn the fireplace, and your character had a little fireplace construction animation. However, the actual fireplace started to form after this animation during which your character would just be stuck in a standing position. When the fireplace was put where you wanted it, you had to click on it again to light it on fire, which had its own little animation. Arvid made it so that putting up the fireplace and lighting it was fused into one player command rather than two. So that is one example of the work he is focused on.


Screenshot captured by: Con


Speaking of fireplaces, after launch we discovered that some players was using them to grief other players. Since we didn’t want Travellers to be able to stand in the fire, they were made into solid objects that you can’t walk over. This fact was abused to essentially trap others in corners and against walls. That is an example of how the community made us aware of a problem we didn’t foresee, and we made sure to fix that as soon as possible. Right now, you can walk right over it but Arvid told me that they plan on making it so that you take damage if you for some reason would willingly stand still in the fire.

And as we’re on the subject of player feedback making its way to our team, I thought I’d take the opportunity to clear up how that process works. I’ve had some of our more dedicated members of our community approach me with concerns about it. Doesn’t the more critical feedback get buried in less urgent issues? Is the latest piece of feedback the one to get looked at last in the pile?

The short answer is no. We’re always primarily looking for “good” feedback, so if someone reports an issue that is completely detrimental to the experience, whatever that may look like, and provides us with lots of useful information on how this issue occurs – we will look at that before smaller problems. Our QA department is in charge of going through all feedback we receive. They look at an issue, try to replicate that issue with the information they get in the bug report, and then they pass it on to our programmers, who in turn start working on fixing that problem.

One might also ask questions like “I’ve reported bugs X and Y weeks ago, why aren’t they fixed by now” and the answer is that not all of our programmers are specialised in every field. Arvid, for instance, would be the one to look at bugs related to the UI, whereas a combat bug would go to someone else. In other words, we don’t often have large groups of programmers working on the same thing. Furthermore, some problems take longer to solve for various reasons. So don’t worry, we are hearing you and we’re working tirelessly to optimise, bug fix and otherwise make Book of Travels better and better. It just takes time.

If you’ve managed to get to the end of this post, I thank you for your attention and I hope I could provide some clarity to what our work flow looks like in regards to your feedback. Until next time!

Oliver & the team at Might and Delight

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1152340/Book_of_Travels/

Sign up on our mailing list for news about our game at https://m-n-d.games/BoT/Steam/update.

When you play Book of Travels there is no linear questline, instead every player will have their own journey and stories to tell. Find out more about how our game design works to make your journey unlike any other...

Book of Travels is now available in Early Access on Steam. In Chapter Zero parts of the Braided Shore will be open, and among the places to visit is the gem of the region – the city of Kasa. Read more here.

Join our super friendly Discord to exchange ideas on all things Book of Travels as well as art, games and books. Join here.