May 20, 2024

APICO - ellraiser

Hey Beekeepers!

The time has come for the final farewell, and with it the final of the three free content updates - A Hive Of Industry!

This update introduces a new process for honeycore crystals that allow you to melt them down and reform them into new crystals, which can be used to craft a whole host of new automation machines that'll do a lot of your beesywork for you - to get started check out the new quests in the book, you'll notice a few new ones added just to help new players with the newer content that's been added over the years!

Some ideas for you to try with your new arsenal:
- gather honeycombs and move to crates (or shipper to sell) using hoppers
- auto quick-queen to put offspring back into the same hive using hoppers
- auto-gather all seeds clogging up a centrifuge using hoppers
- move empty+filled frames between a hive and auto-centrifuge using hoppers
- move honey+water to a fermenter and then apicola to bottler using ploppers
- sell bottler output automatically using hoppers and shippers
- move water from raintanks/desalinator to barrels using ploppers
- auto harvest logs + replant trees using loggers
- make a steady supply of sawdust bricks using loggers, shredders, and hoppers
- supply smokers with flowers automatically using pickers and hoppers
- grow any nearby saplings/acorns faster using sprinklers
- gather resin from multiple treetaps and move to an infuser using ploppers

There's also a whole host of new things: pets, decoration, new tools, more bees, more butts, seasonal events, new music, more quests, a MP server you can host yourself, a new area through the door...

There's also lots of things that have been on the backlog or have been requested by you all, I've tried my best to keep a good balance between what I've always wanted the game to bee and what all you bees what to see - check out the patch notes below for more! Hopefully there's a lot of "oh nice!" moments. I'll still be doing bug fixes of course, but for new stuff this is finally goodbye! <3

Speaking of bugs, there's bound to be some introduced in this update - I've spent a lot of time testing everything but there is only one of me, so if you find something please report it and I'll get fixing!

Outside of that, I just want to say thank you to everyone who's beeen on this journey, whether it's been from the buggy days of the old HTML build, or just recently popped by because of a sweet sale, I'm extremely grateful to you all. APICO was the first game I ever made and I never really expected anything to happen from it, let alone have it start a full-time gamedev chapter in my life. I've learnt a lot of lessons and made a lot of mistakes but I'm very proud of my messy lil bee game, worts and all.

If you can't bear to say farewell to APICO bee sure to keep an eye on Mudborne, as it'll be a spiritual sequel of sorts with some of the stuff you love from APICO - lots of stuff in the works I've yet to really reveal and a new demo later this year, so keep an eye out for that!

Otherwise, so long, and thanks for all the bees! :') <3
Ell

Patch Notes

Honeycore Crystals

Changed Bobbee's stock to sell new items used in making your own crystal machines and tools
Changed the Forge to finally have a use, allowing you to melt Honeycore into Liquid Crystal
Added Resonators, which allow you to solidify Liquid Crystal into different forms based on the environment
Added the Resonance Meter, which can check the resonance of the environment, try exploring different areas and sounds!
Added sev- I mean six different Crystals that can be created
Added the Crystal Workbench, sold by Bobbee, which can be used to craft new automation items and crystal tools

Automation Machines

Changed Auto-sawmill, Auto-centrifuge and Auto-squeezer to now be craftable at the Crystal Workbench (sold by Bobbee)
Added 8 new automation machines, also crafted at the Crystal Workbench
Added Hoppers, which let you gather items from output slots and move items to input slots automatically
Added Shredders, which let you quickly turn logs/planks/sticks into sawdust
Added Loggers, which let you harvest and replant trees automatically
Added Pickers, which will automatically gather nearby flowers, leaving 1 of each species to still spread
Added Sprinklers, which use water to automatically grow nearby saplings and seedlings instantly
Added Condensers, which let you combine multiple canisters/frames/tools into 1 item with the durability of all items condensed
Added Ploppers, which let you gather and distribute liquids between machines automatically
Added Shippers, which let you sell items to the mainland automatically

Crystal Items

Added Crystal Chests, each type of chest shares its inventory with all other matching chests, no matter where they are!
Added 5 new late game tools, crafted at the Crystal Workbench:
Added the Crystal Axe, a powerful axe that can chop multiple trees down at within the same area
Added the Crystal Hammer, an enhanced hammer that can break the bigger honeycore crystals down to size!
Added the Crystal Shovel, capable of removing delicate coral beehives, as well as the coral itself once restored
Added the Tuning Fork, which can skip the current track playing from any Jukebox/Tapeplayer/Gramophone/Radio
Added the PWNHAMMER, an otherworldly hammer that can break things not meant to be broken...
Added the Relocator, a strange magical item that allows you to move objects with their contents intact...

Hivemother's Chamber

The Hivemother Door now has it's own menu similar to gates, and only requires 18 specific bees to open
After opening the game now lets you go to a new area by clicking on the open door...
This new area acts as your final checklist to 100% the game!
If you already 100%ed the game you just need to go up to the door, go through when open, and to the center to get both the new achievements

Pets

Added Pets! Choose from 16 different critters you can find or buy to be your new BFF
Added the Donator, sold by Skipper, it lets you donate special produce to the mainland in return for cute pets!
Added some seasonal pets, found during Hivemas and Hallowbeen (including the competition winner dino!)
Added the other competition finalists via the Nutcracker's special produce - 4 in total

Bees & Butterflies

Added the Oracle, crafted at the Crystal Workbench, it lets you foretell the outcome of a queens offspring - with scary accuracy!
Added Pressurised Hives, crafted at the Crystal Workbench, that allow you to keep deep sea bees above ground!
Added Netted Frames, bought from Abbee, these fancy frames prevent any seeds from being collected and clogging up your extractors!
Added Bug Hotels, sold by Sto & Codey, these allow you to use bee produce to attract bugs to eat it, leaving lots of flora for the biome they're in!
Added the Fragile Bee, found in large honeycore stalagmites, that produces glass shards to let you craft your own bottles (finally free of the skipper monopoly)
Addeda couple new bees and a butterfly for the seasonal events (see below)
Added a small indicator to bees with the "beetrice" trait in beeboxes/beebanks
Added "warnings" to show on beehives if Royal Trumpet or Perpetunia is nearby to explain the effect
Added a "degrumped" label to the bee tooltip for degrumped bees
All special produce now has either a special use, or is used for special crafting, solitary bees, bug hotels, fishing, alchemy, or getting pets
Hovering over a beehive/apiary will now show a mini lifebar UI to quickly see how long a queen has left without opening the menu
Books now show the exact number you have repopulated for each social bee, solitary bee and butterfly
Beenjamin now has hints for all main bees, including coral and underwater bees
Beeboxes and Beebanks now have some basic filtering and sorting for the 6 main traits
Reef Skipper caterpillers have changed their mind and would now like seaweed instead of seashells, thanks!

Decoration

Changed dyes to be much more saturated and colorful rather than being a weak tint (far more noticeable on flooring and marble too)
Added over 50 new decorative items! Who says I don't give ya nuffin
Added Beetrix's Workshop, sold be Beetrix, it allows you to craft lots of the new decoration items
Added Abbee's Atelier, sold by Abbee, it allows you to craft even more of the new decoration items
Added the Hive Wand, a craftable tool at the workbench that lets you turn wooden walls and flooring into honeycomb variants using honeycomb!
Added Plinths, craftable items that can be used to display any item on a pedestal (crafted at Workbench using walls)
Added new Marble Pots, sold by Skipper as part of his special items
Added the number of the dye being currently used by the brush to the paintbrush item slot

Seasonal Events

You can now celebrate Hivemas and Hallowbeen in the world of APICO, along with the NPCs!
Hivemas will activate during the whole month of December (in the real world)
Hallowbeen will activate between October 23rd and November 7th (in the real world)
You can manually turn these events on and off at any time of the year in the Settings > Accessibility menu
You can also activate these events for just a single day using the two new Apicolas (one for each season)
During Hivemas, look out for presents, a new social bee + solitary bee, and 6 new pets!
During Hallowbeen, look out for grave markers, a new social bee + butterfly, and 2 new pets!
Added a couple of seasonal-themed hats, try them out at the Dresser!
Festive bees+butterflies are not required for getting the book overview rewards or final chamber unlocks

Misc. Stuff

There is a 10% chance that rainstorms will become "honeystorms" (50% when using the rain idol)
During Honeystorms your luck will increase across all aspects of the game
Added Apise Carpet, a fancy carpet you can craft at the Workbench that you run faster on!
Added a smaller variant of the hydroponic pots for aquatic flowers (crafted at a Workbench)
Added a few Terraria references, there's 8 to find!
Updated the two bookshelf menus to have fancy designs to display your progress + stats
Updated the credits and the credit "postcards" to add to the ending story
You can "shift-click" buy on gamepad by using the quick move button to buy items

Music

Moth has composed a final farewall to you all for the world of APICO, with 9 new tracks added to the in-game music!
You can purchase these new "golden" tracks from Mothense during a honeystorm
There is also a special seasonal song for both Hivemas + Hallowbeen, which you can also get from Moth's specials during a honeystorm
Added the Radio, a special machine that will play music from all the tracks + tapes you've bought/discovered (crafted at crystal workbench)

Quests

Added 10 new quests to help cover some of the older content update content as well as new content so things are a bit clearer
Tweaked some of the rewards for some quests

General Changes

Renamed "Acclimatiser" to "Adapter" to avoid people thinking it changed the climate bees liked
Increased amount of pots made when crafting them (now 4 per craft)
Flowers in pots now have unique sprites so they look nicer and fit better with the pots types
Added some visual distinctions between different frame types
Fishing rods now show a small icon for the color of lure you have equipped (if any)
Increased amount of flora gained from composters a bit (but the new bug hotels are a better source of flora if you need volume)
Increased smoker burn rates a little bit to help that sawdust go for longer
If you hold "E" while holding "R" to respawn (L+R with A on gamepad) you'll respawn at Skipper's pier instead of your respawn point (you didn't dismantle that pier, right?)
Captain's reward boat for completing all the fishing looks... slightly different
The flower book now explicitly lists the flower's trait buff or the special effect nickname shown on tooltips (if any)
Reduced the number of seeds got from frames in an extractor/centrifuge/seperators
The map now shows the other areas, including underwater, geode caves, and the dream, which also fixes issues with crystal hive markers
Social Bees that need honeycore crystals can now use all size crystals as well as crystal seedlings nearby
Pots are now under the beekeeping section of the workbench to try and help show why they can be useful (prevent flower spread from bees)
You can now craft empty bottles and incense bottles using the glass shards produced by the Fragile Bee
Repopulation targets for Solitary Bees and Butterflies has been reduced from 20/12/5 to 15/10/5, meaning you need 5 less to fully repopulate each
Couple buy/sell price tweaks here and there, mainly for Codey & Sto's stock
You can now drop a single item from a stack on gamepad by picking up the stack and pressing Y over an empty slot (X still drops half the stack)
Added a visual indicator of being blessed by the Hivemother (receiving Grandpa's Axe) in the top left corner
Added the anvil to the "use with" icon list for tools to remind people it exists
You can now use watering cans on seaweed/shell piles once you've restored that reef
You can now use watering cans on algae/kelp that hasn't grown yet (don't think about that too much)
Watering cans now have durability (so better save your now unlimited fancy watering can from 3.X)
Reduced the "hunger" of caterpillers a large amount
Reduced the time it takes for cocoons to hatch into butterflies by a third
Reduced how long butterflies last for in the butterfly hotels (you can still use Butterfly's Friend to keep it longer for buff usage)
Expanded the Magazine Rack so that you can fit all social bee mags in one
Added a small tip on the expanded flower tooltips to mention you can place them on grass walls/hedges
Having Pepetunia or Royal Trumpets near your beehives will now show a warning in the beehive menu
Mined honeycore crystals that regrow chance to grow into the "larger" variant during the next full moon
Having the game completed now makes for a 50% blessed chance permanently (instead of 100% chance before)
Paintbrush now shows the number of dye currently active in the item slot
You can now find books in the Lost + Found
Nerfed candles soz fletch

Achievements

You can now view achievements from the home screen in a new fancy achievements menu!
For non-Steam + Switch players you'll need to play a bit to see achievements you already met the criteria for unlocked here
For Steam players you can click on an achievement you've unlocked to force unlock it in Steam if for some reason it failed to proc
There's only 2 new achievements, I still wanted to make sure new players got rewarded for some of the new content, but consious of the completionists! (If you already had 104%ed the game then should be easy to get these outstanding ones as you'll just be interacting with the new area and will only need the Fragile Bee from bonking the large crystals)

Modding

Fixed the crash with Silk Moths + Butterfly boxes
Fixed not being able to select shop or dialogue for modded NPCs on a gamepad
The modding menu is now available on the SteamDeck
Updated to use latest mod.io APIs as old ones were discontinued
You can specify whether your custom tanks are distribute or gather tanks for Plopper purposes (distrib by default)
Added api_define_pet() to let you define your own pet item
Added api_define_preview() to let you override an object placement preview sprite
api_slot_set now has an additional parameter to specify if you want a menu change triggered (default false to prevent infinite loops)

Accessibility

Added a new A11Y option to remove the per-species fishing RNG chance, meaning as long as you have the right conditions + lure you'll get the species you expect rather than apicarp/junk
Added a new A11Y option to manually set the season to Hallobeen, Hivemas, or None. By default these seasons activate to match real-life times

Multiplayer

Fixed an issue where having a lot of beehives would cause a noticeable lagging every 1s when walking around
Fixed an issue with beehives offscreen that the host hasn't walked near yet sometimes not ticking down when a client is near them
Fixed smokers not being tied to the host world properly leading to mismatched smoker properties
Fixed nurserys + butterfly hotels not syncing visually
Fixed nurseries setup by clients not updating the butterfly repop counts for all players
Fixed habitats placed by clients not having the correc biome for the host
Fixed client map discovery not being saved correctly between sessions
You can now enter a custom IP address to use for Beenet for people who want to host their own Beenet! The main Beenet server is NOT going down anytime soon so YOU DO NOT NEED A CUSTOM SERVER!
You can get more info on how to host your own server here and get the source code for the server here
Using a custom server will not change any multiplayer functionality at all, however there is some setup required

Bug Fixes

Fixed not being able to get to the dev area when using gamepad/console
Fixed not being able to use R-stick on gamepad to target above and below for placement when holding L or R to snap
Fixed special dyes not animating - not sure when this stopped working, I think probably like 2.0 :')
Fixed pots not showing different flower variants when placing flowers inside until the game was reloaded
Fixed seeds not showing seedlings correctly sometimes
Fixed highlight arrow on overworld objects clashing with crate/beehive/tank previews
Fixed music players playing on the home screen
Fixed the "degrumped" trait not being stored in beeboxes/beebanks correctly
Fixed the menu tooltips not showing which told you you can drag them and also use ESC as a close shortcut
Fixed not being able to place flowers on hedges when using a gamepad
Fixed slot highlighting not wrapping on the inventory on gamepad
Fixed golden fishing rod not giving higher shiny chance on caught fish
Fixed some dropped items not showing the correct item sprite (honeycore, shellpiles, seaweed, algae, etc)
Fixed Cathemeral bees not lighting up at night
Fixed banners not sitting on walls or fences properly
Fixed special flower effect names not being localised (Attractive, Caffienated etc)
Fixed not being able to replant the swamp trees in the shallow water with acorns
Fixed Abbee's Staff not planting swamp trees on shallow water
Fixed not being able to discover fish via the item (mainly noticeable in multiplayer when sharing fishies)
Fixed Composters not giving correct flora for coral/ocean biomes
Fixed Shipsbane description having the wrong butterfly name (Reef Skipper instead of Stippled)
Fixed a crash occuring if you somehow got another item into the coral slot of a coral tank
Fixed Glitched Bee "crash" text being offset incorrectly
Fixed deep water critters spawning in the white dream water
Fixed the issue where modded butterflies would crash the game when put in a butterfly box
Fixed entering dream achievement not proc'ing when playing in a hosted world
Fixed Perpetunia seeds not being able to be planted in water
Fixed clockwork machines not running when loaded offscreen on loading the world for the first time
Fixed Glowing Dye icon not rendering properly on the Glowing Bee entry
Fixed tooltip of backpack in backpack slot on gamepad showing wrong button
Fixed Heater/Cooler climate modifier icons overlapping other icon
Fixed merchant achievements sometimes not unlocking (pickup a mysterious idol or beebank to retrigger if needed)
Fixed appearance randomiser not always randomising the hair color correctly
Fixed starting a new world resetting your SFX/Music settings
Fixed Heater/Cooler climate modifier icons not showing properly
Fixed mods with custom books being hidden by the butterfly book if they were the first custom book added (BEI mod)
Fixed mod crash with infinite loops on slot changes (uranium mod)
Fixed underwater butterflies not liking the rain (even tho it was lowkey hilarious)
Fixed workbench craft amount buttons/display not aligning properly until you moved for the first time
Fixed not being able to use the golden net on the door on gamepad
Fixed raintanks not filling into any canisters placed inside while it rains
Fixed being able to sometimes select the moon icon in a random place during the day
Fixed smokable bee icons in flower book moving after walking and reopning the book
Fixed flowers being spread by bees when the game is paused
Fixed solitary bee attraction stats not counting for the bookshelf stat info
Fixed trait buffs showing in tooltips outside of just queens in hives
Fixed the titles of some menus + bees being the wrong way round in italian/german/spanish/french
Fixed being able to highlight beebox/beebank GUI outside the top of the menu
Fixed Reef Skipper not liking Sea Cauliflower so when it mutated Shipsbane it made itself sad
Fixed Sunset Butterflies not liking Pondshine so when it mutated Mothlight it also made itself sad
Fixed getting stacks of honey hives or wax canisters when using Seperators
Fixed Barnabee being immune to Charmed Incense and not giving you a sweet discount
Fixed rubber ring sprite showing when walking on ice
Fixed A11Y bee labels overlapping beebox/beebank output slots
Fixed recipes with flowers that dont have hybrids not using up flowers when crafting (no more freebees 4 u)
Potentially fixed an issue where the open inventory menu sometimes became inactive until you reopend it, keep ya keen bug-seeing eyes open!

Crash Fixes

Fixed a crash that would occur if you scrolled the mouse wheel as soon as the game started (why tho)
Fixed the "sc_beebank_change local bid not set before reading it" crash in MP
Fixed the "sc_gui_press" crash that could occur in both SP + MP when using beeboxes/beebanks
Fixed a crash that would occur when putting modded butterflies into a butterfly box