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(+1)

Finally got a chance to check out all the updates. Been having fun with it so far! Noticed a few bugs, tho:

  • Helena can't heal outside of combat any more. I don't know if this was an intentional change. When I go to the skills screen, and switch to her, Flesh Blood is grayed out and nothing happens when I try to use it. Also, Raise is able to be used outside of combat, but that doesn't make sense because allies are revived automatically outside of combat.
  • In the cave by the waterfall by the hideout, if you go down the stairs, and to the south end of the room, there is a nook. I thought there might be something there, so I pressed the interact button ("c" on my keyboard), but that threw an error and it crashed. This doesn't seem to happen elsewhere in the cave.
  • Leaving that same cave at night makes everything really dark, as if you were still inside the cave.

I haven't found a blood stone yet, which I think is what's necessary to learn magic. I'm excited to try that out. I think I've learned everything in the science skill tree, but I don't see a recipe for making syringes like the one you get as a reward from Tadeus, or anything similar. I was hoping to play around with mutation. Is there more to the science skill tree I haven't discovered yet? Does it require trial and error to discover more alchemy recipes?

Also, I mentioned the prices of alchemy ingredients and products way back when I first tried this game. I think you may have fixed things a bit so now one doesn't lose money making weak healing powder, but the prices still seem a bit wonky. I understand this probably isn't a priority, but I thought I'd lay out my observations.

  • Cata Plant and Reg Leaf are the most plentiful and easiest to come by. They sell for 5 each.
  • Corpse Weed and Razorbark are *significantly* more rare. Despite that, Corpse Weed sells for the same (5 each), and Razorbark actually sells for less (2 each).
  • Weak Healing Powder requires four ingredients that could be sold for 17 silver total. However, it only sells for 10 silver, much less than the raw ingredients could be sold for.
  • Weak Healing Powder can be bought for 20 silver, but with vendor discounts, it's very easy to obtain for 19 silver.
  • Therefore, selling the raw ingredients and buying Weak Healing Powder is only very slightly more expensive than making one's own.
  • Drowsy Hemp, Ocean Collard, and Fake Wintercress can be sold for 10 each. The ingredients for Bear Oil or Venom Flask could each be sold for 37 total. Bear Oil and Venom Flask sell for 75 each. That seems fine.

If you're interested, I think the simplest solution would be to just make Cata Plant, Reg Leaf, Corpse Weed, and Razorbark sell for 2 silver each. This would offer a strong incentive for the player to make their own Weak Healing Powder, both for their own use and for selling. It still wouldn't make a ton of sense that Corpse Weed and Razorbark sell for the same despite being much more rare, but oh well :P

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Found another bug that seems to prevent me from making the magic pebbles. The rock refiner in Helena's room seems to work fine, but when I try to use the crafting station on the right, the game crashes.

Also, I was wearing glasses when I turned in the blood stone and got my initiate robes, and now they're gone :P

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Thanks for reporting all those bugs. Especialy with those pictures. It really helps a lot. 

I fixed all of them and uploaded new version 0.14.1. Changelog is in this post at the bottom. This version should be fully compatible with saves from 0.14.

However, I was unable to replicate the vanishing glasses. I put them on and finished the "one of us" quest. I got my powers, went to the monolith and I still had them. Did I do everything like you did, or did you do something differently?

As for your questions and suggestions:

Science together with machinery is still very malnourished. If you look at the roadmap in previous posts, you can see I'm planning on improving it drasticaly in June. This means not only new recipes for crafting and alchemy table, but also new uses for old and new items, new stations, new events and more. Tadeas will teach you most science skills, but Olaf also has some if I remember corretly. There are some hidden recipes but I wouldn't really try experimenting for them since they are hidden for a reason (The items either don't work correctly or are too OP or too weak).

As for mutations, you should be able to make weak mutagen if you learn from Tadeas. You can also get it by killing some enemies. Using it directly will lower your integrity. Once it reaches 0, you will mutate. There are minor and major mutations. Minor are not visible and they increase your atributes a bit. Major are visible and they change some things. Few NPCs will refuse to talk to you if you have major mutation, Hunters around the map will turn hostile and kobolds will let you enter their cave without attacking you or finishing the fish quest. You can wear the church robes to make NPCs talk to you again. Chosing the "Mutant" background at the start of the game will give you one major mutations, make your maximum integrity 50 instead of 100 and you will lose some integrity every week, esentialy making you mutate more over time. Right now, there are only lizard mutations, but I want to add atleast four different ones in the future. Those strong syringes can be get from the dungeon in the forest:

Kill Kobolds or bandints. Once your character kills about 50 of them alone, Mr. White will appear in front of your hideout. After that, go to the ruins with stairs in the forest. Talk to him again and use the empty spot next to the gate. Now you can enter the "random" dungeon. At the end, you can find best weapons in the game as well as mutagenic syringes and items you can exchange for training with Mr. White.

And as for the prices, the ingame economy is still broken, mainly because I didn't really touch it since the early development. In early private versions, there were no crafting points so you could make infinite amount of items as long as you had the resourcess. This made making money insanely easy and made working close to pointless once you unlocked all the recipes. I "fixed" that by basicaly aplying the runescape economy model, where crafted items are cheaper than the raw resourcess. Things changed by adding the crafting points, but I still want to add some mechanics to limit the posibility of someone finding easily made items and then selling them for insane amounts of money. 

I believe I have to do the folowing before I can seriously start adjusting the item prices.

  • Certain NPCs should buy only specific items.

It never really made sence why someone would by hundreds of feathers when he had no use for them.

  • NPCs will buy different items for different prices

This change will only get better as the development progresses. Meeting new NPCs will open new trade oportunities. Adventurer will pay more for a healing potion then for example an alchemist. Blacksmith will pay less for a gold bar then a jeweler.

  • Selling one item type over and over again should lower its price

This is pretty obvious. Selling hundreds of wood logs should lower their price since the market will be flooded with them.

  • More things to buy

It's nice to have a nicely developed economy system, but it is pointless if there is nothing to buy for the money. Right now, money is mainly used for learning recipes or buying some minor items like food or healing. And once you buy some armor, tools and weapon, there is nothing to buy. I want to change that. Renting a house, room in an inn, renting a large field, hiring mercenaries, buying expensive working stations, hiring workers,... I have plenty of ideas that are more interesting than boring expensive weapons and armor.


I plan on working on most of those bullet points in upcoming months. If everything goes as planned, I will release animal husbandry together with NPCs buying only certain items and maybe items having different prices for different people. This should be relatively easy to do and once I have that finished, I will start working on adjusting prices of all items. Might happen next month.

Again. Thank you for reporting all those bugs and writing suggestions. It relly helps me a lot and it also feels nice to know that someone cares enough not only to report bugs, but also to write suggestions.

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Hmmm, I'm unable to reproduce the problem with the glasses, too. I suspect I must have reloaded my save at some point, but forgot I didn't have glasses then. I apologize.

Ah, that all makes sense. Thank you for such a thorough reply! I'm excited for more updates :)

I've befriended the kobolds, and have been avoiding the bandits so far. I had no idea at all that Mr. White was already in the game! Where did I miss the hint on how to get him to appear? Do the insane kobolds count toward the 50?

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I started a new game, and noticed a few things that *might* be bugs.

  • I took the Psychopath trait, but I lost mood when I killed an insane kobold. Do I misunderstand what this trait is supposed to do, or is this a bug?
  • Billy was at Suong's house on my first day, so I went there, and saw a cutscene with her for the first time! I thought it was really cool! I've always encountered Suong for the first time outside of her house, so I've never seen it before. Is this intentionally a cutscene that doesn't happen in every playthrough, or is this an oversight? Maybe it only happens for Psychopaths?
  • I get the "Soon to be fat" achievement as soon as I look at a travel sign, and not the first time I actually fast travel. This has always happened, but I just now thought to mention it. Maybe that's how it's supposed to work?

After being mistaken about the glasses, I thought it prudent to double check all of these. I started yet another new game as a Psychopath. Billy was at Suong's and the cutscene happened, and then I went and killed an insane kobold and my mood was reduced. I got the "soon to be fat" achievement as soon as I looked at the sign, same as always.

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Right now, there are three enemy classes. Animals, humanoids and abominations. Killing animals and humanoids lowers your mood. Abominations lower your mood by just encountering them in battle. Ordinary kobolds are considered humanoids,insane kobolds, and other freaks are abominations, so only killing bandits and ordinary kobolds counts.

Psychopath trait will remove mood penalty from killing animals and humanoids, but you will still get the penalty for fighting abominations so it works as intended. However, non-psychopath characters are better in the long run.

There is a mechanic that makes your character more used to killing the more you do it. At the start, killing an animal will give you penalty, but after about 30 of them, you will no longer get penalised. 

Humanoids are slightly different. The penalty for killing them at the start is huge. Large group of kobolds can easily lower your mood by 32. However, this penalty gets lower the more you kill. After about fifty kills, the penalty turns from 4 to 3 and it gets progressively lower. And after about 200 kills, you will actualy be getting a bonus mood instead of negative. Psychopaths don't receive any bonuses no matter the amount of kills.

Character backgrounds fall into two categories. Minor and major. Minor give you some small buffs to stats, give you some simple skills or cheap items. These don't change the way your character plays and you can completely ignore these bonuses if you want. They just give you the general idea of what you want your character be in the long run. Major backgrounds change the way you play the game much more, but also come with a disadvantages. Psychopath is a good choice for combat focused characters, but (in the future) it will make your social life harder. Mutant makes your character grow stronger over time, but some NPCs will refuse to talk to you and some will outright attack you. I will be adding more of these in the future. What I have right now is just a small taste.

The Suong introduction is intentional and plays out the same for every background. It plays differently depending on the location you meet her for the first time. Inn and forest are the same. House has a variation with Billy and without Billy. 

The game actualy has quite a few of these "hidden" features. I don't remember all of them, but here are a few:

If you have Olaf and Billy in a party and get into a fight, shoot an enemy with Olafs shotgun. If you do that and if you increase relationship with Billy to about 20, he will give you a simple quest. Go and buy him a shotgun. It is quite simple and if you solve it, he will be using this new weapon instead of his blunderbuss. There are multiple ways to solve it. Things like taking his money and keeping the gun, forgeting to give him the gun a giving it to him late,... You get the idea.
The second meeting with Mr. White in the ruins goes slightly differently if you have Suong with you.
There is also one NPC that appears on one of the beach maps for two weeks and then dissappears. He will give you a simple quest. The things is, I don't really remember if that quest still works.
Cutscene that plays at Billys farm after killing some kobolds plays out differently if you wear church robes.

I want to have as many of these as possible in the final game, so that repeated playthroughs are more entertaining and always show something new. I tend to slip in one of these into most updates without really writing about them into the changelog.

The achievements require some more work, since some of them have wonky triggers. They should all work, but they either trigger too soon or too late. I will check on them.

Also, The friendly kobolds in the cave and the hostile kobolds in the forest are suposed to be different clans. It is not yet apparent, since I don't have the graphics for them yet and they don't really have any dialogue or quests. You can kill the wild ones without any fear of angering the cave kobolds.

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Wonderful! Thank you again for such a thorough response! I appreciate you being willing to take the time to reply to my inquiries. It makes me anticipate future updates more, as well as helping me to better enjoy the game as is!

I don't want to take up more of your time that could be spent working on the game :P However, I really like little secrets like those you mention, but am not great at finding them. Perhaps you could eventually include some sort of hint system in the game? Maybe like a fortune telling npc that appears randomly on the map sometimes, and gives cryptic hints on how to find a new secret? I'd really enjoy something like that! Anyway, just something to think about :)

I released a major patch recently so I'm taking a small break. Replying won't slow me down a bit.

As for the hint system, I had one in the game few versions back, but I removed it when I was overhauling timed events. You could ask NPCs about news and they would tell you if they saw some traveling trader, random monsters or some timed quests. 

I will be introducing this system back in the future, but I will keep most of the "hidden" events a secret. To a degree. As the lore and dialogue gets properly added into the game, talking with other people or reading books will give you enough hints to find out about them, but they won't spell it out loud. For example, Billy will say how he hates his blunderbuss off handedly and that he would like to see what Olaf uses as a weapon one day. Good enough hint for people to know what to do next.

This is going to get added however in far future, since I want to finish other things before focusing on dialogue.