Hi Stoneheads,

Before we get into project announcements, we have a few in-game updates to share!


After 9 long years of development and 4 years of Early Access, the team is ready to fully launch Stone Story RPG! A lot of work has gone into making this game, and we're thankful for each and every player that has supported the game along the way.

We've got quite a few plans in store on the road to launch, and we hope you'll join us for the ride!


We're excited to bring new items to add to your in-game collections! This update introduces new "Golden" cosmetics for your gear.



Golden items come in sets based around Lost Item skins. Each set consists of 5 Golden items; collect all 5 and you earn the corresponding Golden Lost Item!



These lustrous item skins can be found in Golden Chests, which are obtained in-game through a variety of ways.

One such way to claim a Golden Chest is to make use of the new Referral System!

The Referral System is available in-game after you have completed any weekly quest on your Quest Stone (Weekly Quests are obtained through the Legend quest, "Remnants of Five").

Access Referrals via the Quest Stone, copy the code shown on-screen, and share it with a friend. When they redeem it in-game, both of you will earn a Golden Chest!



Want to test it out for yourself? Use the code SSRPG for a one-time gift!


Mark your calendars, because we've got a host of events coming up for Stone Story RPG:

• Jun 22 - Jul 9: Summer Solstice Event (Currently on-going!)
  
• Jul 14 - Jul 16: Triple XP Weekend
  
• Jul 22 - Jul 23: Free Enchantment Rerolls
  
• Jul 27 - Aug 2: Launch Events (New items & In-game Rewards)
  
• Aug 4 - Aug 6: Triple XP Weekend
  
• Aug 10 - Aug 13: Double Ki Weekend

We’ve come a long way together, haven't we Stoneheads?

Back in 2019, we had a clear vision for Stone Story RPG. Much has changed in the past few years, but we continue to drive the project forward with those original goals. That said, it’s become increasingly difficult to to survive in gaming, let alone as an indie developer.

It’s with that context that we ask for your understanding as we plan to increase the price of Stone Story RPG from $19.99 USD to $29.99 USD upon transitioning out of Early Access.

That said, we do have a price-free alternative!


Stone Story RPG will be free-to-play and globally available for Android and iOS on July 27th!

The mobile port of the game will have near identical content to the PC version and will be F2P. Some systems and functions have been added for use on mobile, but for players looking to have the full SSRPG experience, this version will be functionally the same.

A key difference in the mobile build is that some of the shop prices will be different, but if you have played Stone Story RPG on PC then you will be able to transfer your progress back and forth across platforms.

We hope that you all look forward to its release!

The price change will take effect upon exiting Early Access. Until then, be sure to pick the game up while it's discounted.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/603390/Stone_Story_RPG/


The team has gone back and forth on this, as we understand that price is a sensitive issue when it comes to video games. At the end of the day, we need to be realistic about the cost it takes to create a product like a game.

The passion behind the project has carried it to heights we never thought possible. Having people across the world enjoy our game has been an absolute highlight in all of our careers. After all, who are we making games for if not for the players?

But passion can only go so far when we need to balance that out with development costs. It’s taken the team a lot to create Stone Story RPG, both in terms of time and money. When you look at SSRPG as a product on its own, it’s done great! We’re exceedingly happy with the critical and commercial response it’s gained over the past few years.

However, we can’t ignore the real human cost that went into making the game and continues to go into it. When you factor in the time and work of the talented, hard-working people behind the scenes, we’re actually losing money.

So, to keep the team going, even beyond Stone Story RPG, we’ve determined that raising the price was the best solution.

This was always going to be a hard message to push out, and we can only ask for your understanding and patience as we lay the final pieces down on this chapter of our team’s work with Stone Story RPG.

-SSRPG Team

New
- Free Re-rolls event.

Improvements
- Re-rolls added to the Mutate workstation.
- All enchanted items can now be selected at the Mutate workstation.
- Lowered the SFX volume of book pages flipping.
- Tuned the inventory UX by lowering the delay when interpreting a long press as an item drag.
- Update translations on several languages.

Bugs
- Forest music would sometimes not stop when entering the shop for the first time.
- Music would sometimes not transition correctly when finding the Moondial.
- Fixed bug where pressing on edge of the re-roll button would close the dialog.
- Fixed the name for "Haunted Gate" that would show incorrectly in some languages.

Improvements
- Added line numbers to the Mind Stone UI.
- Resources no longer appear in Mind Stone workstation screen.
- In case of invalid loadouts, the Utility Belt now equips any remaining items, if possible.
- Workstation tasks when upgrading Ouroboros and Star Stone now show the "New!" indicator.
- Improved some achievement names in Portuguese and Japanese.
- German translation of Giant Treasure changed to "Mega-Shatz".
- Added support for more glyphs that can be flipped in sprites.

Bugs
- Stonescript: Fixed crash when using reserved words as function names.
- Stonescript: Fixed hud disable filters that would cause flickering.
- Titanic Accord: Fixed a performance issue when Pallas uses the Sight Stone.
- Fixed Uulaa's shop that would only clear the "restocked" after visiting twice.
- Fixed bug where a new save would sometimes not start at Rocky Plateau.
- Fixed the Fareyellow achievement that was not completing in Mushroom Forest.
- Fixed edge cases in achievements "Midnight Farmer" and "Finally, a Wizard".
- Fixed offline farm calculations for Caves of Fear 5-stars.

Changes
- Hamartia: UI changes, such as arrows in Locations screen, no longer appear before finding the Quest Stone.
- Poena now has the 'humanoid' tag.
- Polished treasure descriptions in Mushroom Shop when translated to other languages.

Bugs
- Fixed crashes when unmaking or breaking apart items while the quest Bad Business was active.
- Fixed bugs when switching between different saves.
- Fixed bug where the navigation selector would often start in the wrong position.
- Fixed importing of save data where extra space at the start or end would cause it to fail.
- Fixed ambient sound of water during the "Cross Deadwood River" cinematic.

An odd wind blows once again-- Stone Story RPG’s Hamartia Event returns!

From now until Friday, May 19th, you have a chance to earn a shiny treasure!

The Hamartia Event operates on a milestone format: In order to upgrade your reward, you must defeat bosses and add those victories to the counter.

For the Hamartia Challenge, the game’s bosses will gain new resistances (while some will gain new weaknesses). Use the Sight Stone to aid you, but don’t get too comfortable: every day at noon (local time) these attributes change.

Read below to see what this new set of challenges entails.



While boss immunities are random each day, they are the same for all players. Collaborate with others on the Steam community forums or the official Discord server to efficiently tackle these goals and ensure that a valuable shiny treasure will be yours!

For the duration of the event, rerolling enchantments will cost 90% less Ki. Use this opportunity to experiment with each new day of rotating boss resistances.

Higher tiered rewards will raise the threshold on the milestone requirements. At the end of the event, each player will receive their own shiny treasure. These shiny treasures will give players a random shiny item they don’t already own, in addition to other mysterious rewards...

New
- Dysangelos Perfected has a new ability: Adaptive Defense.

Balance
- Decreased Lifesteal on ranged weapons, from 12 + 1.5/Lv -> 8 + 1.5/Lv

Bugs
- Fixed the advice given by Dysangelos after defeating Angry Shroom.
- Fixed XP dialog at the end of locations that would sometimes show the wrong information and not play VFX.
- Fixed Xyloalgia's tail animation.
- Fixed a bug where the Ki indicator could briefly disappear at the top of the screen while receiving items in Shop.

Additions
- The Hamartia event is back and is set to repeat yearly.
- New [Skip] button added when opening all treasures.

Improvements
- Halved the costs to mutate basic items and runestones.
- Item selection container now scales for different screen resolutions.
- Improved the UI layout of Hotspring Shop.
- UI content that is smaller than its container can no longer be scrolled.
- The Ki indicator at the top of the shop is now aligned to the center of the shop's content.
- The [Export] button no longer appears if you have zero save files.
- The [Codes] button is now disabled if you have zero save files.

Bugs
- Fixed a bug where the Bronze Key could fail to drop from Pallas.
- Fixed a bug where daily quests could cause the game to continuously save progress, multiple times during a run.
- Fixed a bug where rainbow and shiny sprites at the edges of a clipped view would bleed their effects outside of the clip.
- Fixed a bug in the Saved Games screen where pressing too quickly on the Export/Import buttons would close the dialog.

Time to level up, Stoneheads - 3x XP Weekend is here!



For any new players or seasoned adventurers looking to push their limits, this event is for you~

From now until April 30th, Stone Story RPG will be running a 3x XP weekend. All XP gained will be triple the normal amount!

Step in time, Stoneheads - The Bolesh 2x Loot Event is happening now!



From now until April 24th, Stone Story RPG will be running a 2x Loot Event. Complete runs in the Caves of Fear to earn this extra loot.

After completing the game's port to mobile we've unified the PC and mobile code bases into a single one. This update is the result of that union, bringing over many of the architectural changes and optimizations needed for mobile. As we interacted with mobile players and gathered their feedback, many other improvements and bug fixes made their way into the game and are also part of this massive update.

This takes us closer to our next major goal: Exit from early access and full global release. More info coming soon.

Due to the magnitude of this update (the entire game engine has been touched in some way) as well as the importance of our upcoming global release, please let us know if you see anything weird that could be a new bug.

Additions
- Added "Triple-XP Weekend" event.
- Added Import/Export buttons to the bottom of the Saved Games screen.
- Added drop % numbers to treasures in the Mushroom Shop.
- Added a Wand pickup to the start of Scary Chamber.
- Added special dragon skin for Nagaraja, for use in Lunar New Year event.

Fishing v0.7.0
- Improved performance across the entire fishing mini-game.
- Lowered the difficulty to catch speedyfins.
- Reworked to use the new UI system instead of advanced draw.
- Gameplay feel is different due to all the changes.
- Fixed the encoding of FishingGame.txt to UTF-8.

Quests
- Optimized Croaked, Roof Overhead, Remnants of Five and Bad Business.
- Lowered the requirement to play Roof Overhead and Remnants of Five.
- Lowered the number of Snails required in Croaked (2nd Frog).
- Lowered the difficulty in Roof Overhead.
- Minor increase to the enemy requirements for the AEther daily quest.
- Cauldron Collective: Fixed bug where some players were unable to complete the Vampiric Potion step.
- The Initiate: Fixed cultists staying on screen in some resolutions.
- Remnants of Five: Fixed case where you could complete the quest during a 2x Ki event and earn 40 crystals instead of 20. This situation could risk the delicate balance in the FTUE design.
- Croaked: Fixed a UX issue after feeding Kevin. If the Ouroboros screen appeared and you pressed the pause button, it would send you to Locations instead of Quests screen.

Improvements
- Greatly reduced the size of save files. The game will automatically rework your file upon next save.
- Swapped the drop order of Ouroboros and Quest Stone.
- Offline farming now gives guaranteed minimum loot if the selected difficulty is lower than the highest unlocked difficulty for the location.
- Progress now saves after opening all treasures, exiting the Mushroom Shop, completing a Legend quest or crafting anything on the Anvil.
- The Mind Stone can now be powered on/off from the item details popup.
- Polished the cinematic when approaching the Mushroom Shop for the first time.
- Lowered the requirements to upgrade Star Stone for the first time.
- Changed the border color of button [Claim Reward] in daily quests to green.

Balance
- Increased the Ki Crystal rewards for completing R&D goals.
- Increased Hatchet damage to Xyloalgia from +2 to +3.
- Minor change to the enchantment drop rates for Omega treasures.
- Minor change to loot drop tables, so total enchantment rates are the same.

Misc
- Engine upgraded to version 2021.3.18
- Added a limit to the number of save files that can be created.
- All locations now have specific sorted positions in the Locations screen, regardless of the order in which they were unlocked.
- Reworked the loading architecture.
- FTUE: Rocky Plateau is now disabled until workstation is completed.
- Removed progress saving when the application becomes paused by the OS.
- Added unique ID to save files.
- When entering your character's name, empty space at the beginning or at the end are now deleted.
- Minor CPU optimizations to Stonescript.
- Added proper handling of UTF-8 "BOM" encoding when importing scripts.

Bugs
- Fixed a critical bug where save file sizes could balloon out of control, due to multiple copies of offline farming stats.
- Fixed critical issue where the game could get stuck with a blank Locations screen, in the very early game.
- Fixed crashes that could happen when talking to the sweeper NPC in Temple.
- Fixed a crash when playing for the first time.
- Fixed a crash when pressing the side navigation buttons very quickly.
- Fixed a bug where the Locations container would sometimes scroll to the top.
- Fixed one of Dysangelo's help texts that was not localized correctly.
- Fixed Stonescript errors when box drawing with custom user-defined styles.
- Fixed Stonescript bug where some UI component properties were not resetting when recycled.
- Eliminated a few rare cases of players being stuck with no input.
- Fixed a rare crash in shops when there's pending treasures to open.
- Fixed a bug where fast-clicking on buttons that are bleeding off their parent dialog windows would close the dialog instead of triggering the button.
- Fixed bugs in draw.GetSymbol() and canvas.Get() where some glyphs would return incorrectly.
- Fixed a legacy bug where it was possible to win a location star and not save progress properly.