Some of you may have noticed that your ships are sinking quicker if you have set up a MOD and have installed the new Pacific update. This is not a bug, but does require a slight tweak to your MODs.

In the damage calculations, for every point of damage that gets through armour, a weapon gets a chance at scoring a critical hit.

Before, the way it was using a critical hit chance multiplier that's lower than 1 meant that non-heavy weapons were almost never scoring a critical hit. Now that it's using that value more accurately, the very high damage values in the mod mean there's also hundreds of chances of getting a critical hit, each adding a ton of extra damage, and so blowing up a ship very quickly.

If you want to dial back the damage your mod should use a greatly reduced critical hit chance multiplier for weapons with greatly increased damage. Or reduced critical hit damage, though some critical hits also have effects like disabling ship systems, which would in that case still be much more common.

Hope that helps!

Greetings, Knights!


We did it! After 25 updates and patches throughout Early Access, we made it to 1.0!



It’s been an incredible experience to see where we started and how far we’ve come and seeing our vision become a reality has been truly rewarding. Throughout this journey, we’ve been blessed to receive tons of positive feedback and support and we’re very appreciative for all the comments and suggestions to help improve the game. Ember Knights would not be what it is today without you, our amazing players!



Now, if you joined us during our Early Access, you’ll know that working with the community is what we do. If you’re new to Ember Knights, trust us when we say, just because we’ve reached 1.0, it doesn’t mean we’re done with Ember Knights – not by a long shot!

On that note, let’s take a peek at what’s coming in our 1.1 update, available the week of September 18th.


We’re in the final stages of wrapping up everything for our first scheduled postlaunch update. We wanted to take our time with this one to make sure we heard from as many of you as we could. Well, we’ve listened and we believe we’ve put together a really great update for you! Without spoiling too much, we’ve put together some highlights below.

The Praxis realm is getting a big and much needed overhaul and that includes the following:

• Rewards! They’re now all over the place and decisions matter!
  
• New room types including Healing Rooms, Offering Pits, Miniboss Rooms, and more
  
• Enemy balancing and area hazard adjustments

To help a wider range of players, we’ve added another layer of difficulty options. On each save slot, you’ll have the option of selecting Easy, Normal, or Hard to better suit your experience and mood.

To add more customization to your Knight, we’ve brought back an asset we made a long time ago, even before our Combat Demo, added a bunch of improvements and polish, and made it our brand new, Ember Shrine. So long Ember Pit!



With the Ember Shrine, you’ll be able to choose your flame color and outfit independently of each other, so instead of 14 color combinations, you’ll now have 196! Keep an eye on the Shrine for more customization options down the road…



One of the first things you’ll notice is a bit of a new look for the Nexus. We’ve reworked the Weapon and Skill areas and gave the Compendium a little bit of love. You may even see a Steward catching up on some light reading.

We’ve made a HUGE number of QoL improvements which cover Skills, Relics, Endgame Modifiers, Endless Looping, Healing Rooms, Mimic King, Anville, and so much more!

As always, when 1.1 drops, we’ll include the complete patch notes and be prepared, it’s a big one!



As well as putting together the 1.1 update, we’ve also prepared a pretty significant patch for the Switch. We’ve received word from Nintendo that it’s been approved and scheduled to release today, September 12th!



This patch will include a bunch of optimizations specifically for the Switch as well as all the content and fixes currently available on PC.

We’re still figuring out the best way to keep the Switch version as current as the PC version and we’ll be putting out updates for both, as close to each other as we can, but given the differences in submission processes, we expect the Switch updates to lag slightly behind the PC updates.

Thank you for the questions regarding online multiplayer but we don’t have an update on this at the moment.


In addition to preparing the 1.1 and Switch updates, we’ve also been busy putting our thoughts together for new content and features for the future. It’s still way too early to share any big news but looking ahead at 1.2, we’re starting to work on the following:

• Wightsbury balancing
  
• Anville balancing
  
• Ember Tree updating
  
• Weapon & Mod updating
  
• New relics

Some really exciting things are in the works but we can’t spoil any of that quite yet!


An edition of Nexus News wouldn’t be complete without highlighting some of our amazing community members!

Firstly, we have to again acknowledge our Discord member, Tfeh for his amazing accomplishment of being the first and only person to finish the DEMONS challenge!



If you haven’t yet seen the run, you can check it out here:
As promised, he now gets to work with us to design a new relic! We worked together on one already but unfortunately, it didn’t play nice with our existing systems so we’re back to the drawing board. We’re planning to include this joint collaboration in our 1.2 update.

If you’re up for an incredibly difficult challenge, definitely give DEMONS a try. After all, Tfeh is likely lonely being the only person to hold the special Discord role, DEMONS CHAMPION.


Speaking of challenges and records, check out this incredible speedrun from Discord member, QuirkyTurtle!


This sub 7 minute run is currently the world record! Amazing stuff!

If you're interested in speedrunning Ember Knights, check out the official leaderboard here: https://www.speedrun.com/ember_knights


If you're looking for more information on Ember Knights, check out the player-made Wiki here: https://ember-knights-game.fandom.com/wiki/Ember_Knights_-_Game_Wiki

A huge thanks to zza675, Sky, Kif, Diamondara, and all other contributors!


Don’t worry if making videos isn’t your thing. We also love to share incredible artwork that we receive. Check out some awesome pieces below!

Arlan in deep thought, likely anticipating our upcoming dev stream where we talk Ember Knights trivia. Made by Discord member, Lost


An incredible model of a Steward admiring a Nexus flower. Made by Discord member, Bullseye Buttonmasher


Esper has a daughter!? From Discord member, Витëк


A meditating Knight by Discord member, Rush


Praxis never looked so evil. Check out this piece by Discord member, Rai


“Made in Chicory: a colorful tale!” – Discord member, Yarn


With the drop of 1.0, we’ve also been fortunate to see so many exciting gameplay videos and streams. Check out a small sample of some of our favorites below!







If you haven’t yet joined our Discord server, we’d love to have you. We’re now over 5,800 members and growing every day!

https://discord.gg/emberknights

It’s an incredible resource for game information, tips, multiplayer matchmaking, and more. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again – without a doubt, we have one of the best and most welcoming gaming communities around!



We'd like to take the time to acknowledge and sincerely thank everyone for taking the time to leave a positive review. We're closing in on 3,000 and for small studios like us, they're incredibly important. So, from all of us at Doom Turtle, thank you!




With that, I think we’ll close things off for now. Thanks for reading and your continued support!
See you next week for the release of 1.1!

Doom Turtle

• Fixed builders that were not repairing some equipments
  
• Fixed gaters that were not assigned to medbeds in some specific cases

Hello Miners,

We’re trying this “Below Decks” series as a way to share more moments from the studio, and give a look into what’s under development. In the future, you can expect some bigger stuff and proper sneak peeks, but we’ll start with something light for this one. Hope you like it. :)

-GSG_Aaron (new content writer)

It’s a Tuesday afternoon in August, and Harpa’s focus for the day is troubleshooting the upcoming sausage hat. The sausages are simply too wiggly.

Harpa Ellertsdóttir, 3D Artist at Ghost Ship Games, is making a new hat for the dwarves. You might not call it a hat by any conventional definition, but the dwarves will be using it as such. It’s a metal bucket with a leather chinstrap, and a big bouquet of sausages flopping out the top.

But making the perfect wiggly sausage hat is easier said than done.

“Right now the sausages are very stiff. They used to be a lot more floppy,” she explains. She’s fine-tuning the hat’s physics setup using Unreal Engine. She punches in some numbers in the model’s properties, and the sausage links go limp, drooping down over the rim of the bucket. She resets the physics, then tests the individual sausages to see how they behave. Each one jumps when she clicks it, responding with a playful little bounce. But one sausage starts misbehaving.

“These ones are wiggling fine, but this one’s wiggling all on its own. It was wiggling normally before, which is concerning,” she says.

Christian Øelund, Senior Technical Artist, rolls his chair over to her desk to help troubleshoot the rogue wiggler. In Maya, they adjust the sausages’ properties for Dampening and Stiffness. But this only makes the rebellious sausage even more wiggly.

“I’m getting hungry looking at this,” Christian says.

“I’m not, I hate sausages,” Harpa says. She used to work at a gas station back in Iceland. “I had to do 12-hour shifts there, and every day I would come home smelling like hot dogs. It’s like my past is haunting me through this hat.”


The 'Sausagebucket' hat as shown its final form, with its bones showing, and with physics colliders visible.

Everybody knows you don't want your wiggly sausage hat to be too wiggly. But where’s the sweet spot?

When it comes to silly hats, Harpa’s approach is to make things as jiggly as possible, without causing problems. Wiggly elements shouldn’t clip through the dwarves’ beards and armor, nor should they completely freak out and defy physics in certain situations.

To ensure that Deep Rock Galactic’s wiggly hats behave “normally”, each hat goes through a rigorous testing regime.

On her second monitor, Harpa runs the prototype sausage hat through these trials, testing every situation it’ll meet once it’s in the dwarves’ hands. She cycles through all the armor models, to make sure there aren’t any stray sausages causing clipping issues. Then she cycles the test dwarf through different animations: dancing, getting downed, reviving, pressing a button, shouting “Rock and Stone” – and notes how the sausages respond. Somehow, the rogue sausage from earlier has fallen back in line.

Structurally speaking, this isn’t a very complex hat, but the wiggly sausages make it a bit of a rascal. ”Programming the physics makes this hat a little finicky. Not all hats are like this,” Harpa says.

Each new hat crosses at least five different desks at Ghost Ship Games, ping-ponging around between artists, art directors, QA testers, and the Founders. All told, Harpa estimates this sausage hat represents about 12 to 15 hours of work.


LEFT: Our muse. RIGHT: Two slappable, wiggly palm trees from the Space Beach Party.
Deep Rock Galactic certainly isn’t the first game with wiggly hats, but we do our best to contribute to this proud tradition.

As Harpa sees it, these jiggly elements are fun because they look a bit broken, but in a purposeful way. It’s hard to be serious when you’re wearing a floppy hat. She pulls up an image of a wacky waving arm inflatable tube guy, the type known to flap around in front of auto dealerships. “This is like, the funniest thing ever. It’s peak comedy,” she says.

Generally speaking, Deep Rock Galactic is at its wiggliest during seasonal in-game events, when the Space Rig gets special decorations and the dwarves get new hats.
Among all the wiggly items in DRG, Harpa gives special historical importance to the inflatable palm tree, introduced to the Space Rig during the summer 2022 Space Beach Party.

When designing that tree, she recalls a “eureka moment” in a conversation with Lead Artist Jacek Oczki that has since inspired the crew’s approach to wiggly bits.

“He saw the model for the palm tree, and was like, ‘Cool, but can you slap it?’ After that, everything’s been a lot more jiggly and slappable.”

The jiggly 'Sausagebucket' hat will be available during this year’s Oktoberfest 2023 celebrations aboard the Space Rig. The party kicks off this Thursday, September 14th, at 13:00 CET.

Rock and Stone!
With Love,
-The Ghost Ship Crew

Hey!

Sorry for the bumpy start with this patch everyone.

For anyone that opened the game during the few minutes the bad patch was up, this next patch will fix your save files from not showing and unlock them.

Unfortunately (or fortunately for some) if you opened the game during the 0.6.02 patch, your skill-tree will be reset when you log back in. All of your skill points will be refunded and you can spec the skill tree back up with the same skills you had. It just might have moved some of the weapons around on your hotbar, which you can access from your storage as per usual.

We have been working pretty tirelessly to patch the game and sift through feedback to make everything runs super smooth. Throughout that process a bug slipped through our fingers that caused this issue. So the next patch will likely be a few days out, once we have got some proper rest and have the time test the heck out of our fixes to make sure nothing gets through again. We are just a small handful of developers making a very big and complex game, so it can be a little tough to keep up at times like this. Thank you all for your patience and kind feedback though, we really appreciate it!

We also added some new backpack retrieval options! We heard some feedback from players feeling the difficultly of the dungeons a little too harshly. So we've now given Alex (at the 1st town) the Druid (at the 2nd town) and the Sorcerer (at the 3rd town) the ability to go collect your backpack for you, for a small fee. This can help if you're struggling during a section of the game and would rather just pay a little gold, mushrooms, or dark essence to get your backpack back.

• Added new backpack retrieval services to Alex and the Druid. They collect a dropped backpack in the world for a small fee.
  
• Added 3 new custom map icons for mining locations.
  
• Added Lightstone dust and stone drops to lightning projectile tower.
  
• Made the shipwreck armor locations a little more noticeable.
  
• Increased healing from mushroom stew and lowered its crafting cost.
  
• Lowered falling tree damage to player.

• Fixed bed respawning in the caves not working and causing player to sometimes fall thru map (sorry for anyone that experienced this).
  
• Fixed player being able to die during level changing.
  
• Fixed visual glitches from egg sacks and other prefabs using particles that make crazy colors fill the screen.
  
• Fixed one of the hunger skills not saving.
  
• Fixed music not fading when changing levels.
  
• Fixed save file duplication issue.
  
• Fixed the backpack spawning in the air on death.
  
• Fixed issues causing the Void Troll to not respawn.
  
• Fixed clay vendor from 2nd town not working.
  
• Added missing steak pie recipe to the pantry and other storage containers.
  
• Fixed repairable bridges not properly loading after being rebuilt.
  
• Fixed enemies not moving in the tomb entrance level.
  
• Fixed various spelling and grammar mistakes across item names and NPC dialogues.
  
• Fixed constantly respawning machine parts crate on desert island.
  
• Fixed issues with cursing the tomb levels and them not resetting properly afterward.
  
• Fixed blueprints not disappearing from purchased decoration items.
  
• Fixed Titanium ore showing x/7 instead of x/8
  
• Stopped coal form showing x/10 in storage
  
• Fixed some dungeon warp alters not being enabled by their chest unlock.

Please keep the bug reports coming if you find any issues!

~ Julian

Highlights

• Upgrade to Unity 2022.3.7f1
  Finally, after 2 years of struggling with an old version of Unity, I've been able to update to the latest 2023.3.x release, which will allow me to truly start finishing the game and get everything ready for early-access release!
  
• Refactor Menu system to use UITK and GameFrame
  This one is a major step forward in terms of the User Interface available in the game. This was also a major limiting factor, where now UI components can be added and optimized quickly.
  
• Beta Performances Content
  This has been a major step forward - not a very technical one, and also not very applicable to the playtest version of the game, but additional music has been licensed and will be included with the public demo and early access releases.

Other Updates

• Update ProTips
  
• Update vendor intent position rotations, update placement to set rotation properly
  
• Update Plugins
  
• Refactor GameController instance handling
  
• Check for current intent when setting up animator
  
• Setup character props again
  
• Cleanup performance asset identifiers
  
• Add Beta Content Repo and Addressable Group
  
• Disable Animator OnIdle debug logging
  
• Refactor Character animation management

Release notes:
- More Tutorial Hands on UI in tough moments ( Equip Dagger )
- Quicker loading of the popups
- Popups are able to be updated without a build
- Guild emblems were crashing the game.
- Silo goblin wasn't able to be finished
- Gatcha chest animations
- Early funnel changes.
- Automatic collecting instead of going into and collect ( income objects )
- New Quests Look (Divided into Main and Side Quests)
- Navi look fix.
- New market look.
- New trainer house look.
- [fix] Quest Video Button was blue
- [fix] Gear tabs not appearing.
- [fix] layout issue when posting gear on iPad
- [fix] x5 passive income for free
- [fix] Unequipping gear items after the battle
- [fix] Fighting without a tool
- [fix] Airport layout was broken on landscape

STEAM:
- Fish url's not opening in the fish area
- Auto collecting when not clicked
- The center point was off the character when chat was opened.
- Character was running when clicking on the chat.
- Pet boost value unequal comparing to mobile video ( fair play change )

Bug fix for the last performance update.

- Fix a bug that gamepad input is not recognized while tool window is background.

Changes

• The Dentist Drill now gets destroyed after damaging Billy 3 times.

Fixes

• The Recycle Bin in Tooth Fairy's shop now have the correct discount if you have the Coupons item.

Today is the grand opening of The Isle Tide Hotel! Expect a live-action, interactive mystery movie about an absent father who must rescue his teenage daughter from an eclectic cult before their final night at the Isle Tide Hotel.

Think a British Twin Peaks with a Wes Anderson aesthetic! Or, if that doesn't convince you, how about a grittier Knives Out? There's so much to explore and discover about The Isle Tide Hotel that one playthrough won't get close to telling the whole story.



Why is your daughter estranged in the first place? Will you join the cult to save her? How will you interact with the bizarre people you meet? Each playthrough of The Isle Tide Hotel's branching narrative will be completely different, with seven main endings in your mission to rescue the daughter you've never met. Just remember… don't break the Etiquettes.



Created by brother-sister director-producer combo Harry and Grace Chadwick of Interflix Media, the themes of The Isle Tide Hotel draw on the transformational journey of parenthood and the unique paths that can be taken when dealing with family dynamics.



You don't want to miss our biggest production yet, with a cast including UK icons from shows including Game of Thrones, Call the Midwife and Happy Valley.

It's our biggest project yet. Every decision affects the story and you'll have to keep an eye out for clues - it's on you if you miss something important.

The Isle Tide Hotel is OUT NOW on PC, Epic, Mac, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S|X, Nintendo Switch, iOS, and Android