It’s been a while since the last update as I’ve been occupied with my regular dayjob, but I’ve still managed to fit in a bunch of quality of life fixes and additions. I have also started work on dungeon bosses, with their basic concept being completed and scripting of the battle mechanics nearing completion. Here’s a sneak preview of one of the boss fights!

There’s four dungeons that have to be completed, both by me and you, the player, in order to retrieve the Wanderboots. I’ll share more screenshots of the other dungeons as they’re getting closer to completion. 

This patch also brings some new systems online, such as the new cooking system! More about that below.

Cooking v2

Good food is an important part of life, even for your player character. That’s why I’ve updated the cooking system to version 2, with some new enhancements. Creating recipes now requires a set amount of ingredients, instead of the old system where it always required only one of each. There is also a new XP bar at the bottom of the screen that shows your progress towards the next cooking level. 

Cooking skill perks have also been implemented as well to accompany the new cooking system. Your cooking skill will also reduce your chance of burning food.

Please note you have to create a new character for this update to work correctly!

Now that that’s over with, here are your regular patch notes:

Known Issues

• The buttons to sort the item list have been temporarily disabled due to them crashing the game under certain circumstances. Functionality will be restored once I figure out how to fix it.
• Some sprites may be misaligned.
• Crafting Caf or Tea through alchemy requires a vial.

Added

World

• New cave in Uspya.
• Cabbage plants to some farms.

Quests

• New museum artifact to find and retrieve.

Systems

• Map Legend screen and toggle button to the map screen. This shows you what the different icons on the map mean.
• New cooking mechanics; Cooking something now requires a set amount of each ingredient before it can be made. 
• New puzzle type; flipping tiles. 
• Camera Speed setting. Allows you to choose how fast the camera will snap to the player character position.

Gameplay Stats

• Food made.
• Food burned.

Items

• New museum artifacts.
• Three new dishes to purchase at Olaf’s Cuisine in Nagana.

Crafting

• New recipes known from the beginning of a new game.
• New Alchemy recipes.
• Lots of new cooking recipes.

Audio

• New audio option: Music Type. Choose between Loop and Sporadic music modes. Loop is the classic mode we’re used to by now where the music will change and play constantly. Sporadic will instead play music every now and then at random intervals.

Changed

Graphics

• Updated the graphics at the Fiks gate.
• Updates the graphics at the Blackrock gate.
• Updated snow graphics in the Usmor region.
• Lewis now has a bookshelf that will update whenever you deliver a book to him.
• Implemented proper graphics for the Servant Outfit.
• Updated graphics on the itch.io store page.
• Updated banners for Aslary, Sedresh, Usmor and Wudryia to a new style.

World

• Updated multiple caves to the new wall style.
• Visual changes to the Fiks Museum.
• Visual changes to Uspya Wizard Tower.
• The Merchant in Valvinas will now sell various items and only show up on certain days.
• Visual changes around the island of Wudryia and the city of Lundar.

Interfaces

• Updated UI element graphics with more detail and shading.
• Updated cooking interface with new elements like an XP bar, more visible recipes at a time and displaying how many you have and how many is required of an ingredient.
• Adjusted color of statistic preview text when looking at equipment.

Skills

• Adjusted and implemented perks in the Haggling skill.
• Adjusted and implemented perks in the Alchemy skill.
• Implemented Experience gains when crafting potions using Alchemy.

Fixed

Systems

• Clicking the “Default” button in audio settings would not write the new audio levels to the ini file, resulting in audio levels going back to what they were before clicking the button when restarting the game.
• The player character should now know how to create both a basic dough and bread from the start of a new game.
• Hardcore mode not reducing gold payout from completing quests.
• Cooking food should now properly reward Cooking skill experience.
• Errors when a ghost would see and lose sight of the player character.
• Some skill perks were not applied correctly.
• Visual fixes to character creator maps.
• Lighting not being set correctly when loading a saved game inside houses or caves.
• Players wouldn’t get potions through Alchemy.
• If caught with a bounty by Usmor guards, the player would be sent to jail in Aslary instead.

World

• Lamps in Blackrock should now be lit properly at night.
• Some caves where the player wouldn’t always be centered in the camera view.
• Various collision volumes.
• Some areas where tiles would be clipping inside each other.
• Some interiors where the player could get out of bounds.
• Not being able to enter the post office in Kugrom.

Items

• Some items that had no value. 
• Error when attempting to craft Dough.
• Some item graphics that were off-center.
• Errors when selecting certain potions and ingredients in the inventory.

Graphics

• Some terrain tiles would have glitched blending.
• Hendrig the Ghost losing his legs while walking.

Interface

• Some scaling issues in several interfaces.
• Pressing “Escape” while in the death screen would softlock the game.
• Some UI elements were offset in the Cooking interface.
• Various buttons that were still using legacy code to play audio when selected and/or pressed.
• Typos or wrong information in Options interfaces.
• Not being able to use directional input to change pages while reading books.
• Innkeeper portrait not being displayed when attempting to rent a bed.
• Navigating the Inventory using movement keys should now always update the item information on the right side of the screen.

Sailing

• Leaving port should no longer spawn the player ship inside an NPC ship.
• NPC ships should no longer spawn inside the player ship if idling near a port.

Quests

• Parsing error in the description for one of the museum artifacts when the player picks it up.
• Error in Artho’s dialog tree, preventing Museum Quests from starting.
• Items can now be handed in properly to the Museum.
• Not being able to talk to Sir Cala about joining the kings guard after completing the Outpost questline.

Audio

• Lowered default volume of sound effects when starting and completing quests.

Misc

• Error when changing the existence of Estate Agents while the game is loading.
• Error when killing Sam inside his cave.
• Janet’s portrait missing in some dialog boxes.
• Updated Janet to use the new shop system.
• Guards in Kugrom not having any dialog.