Dustgrave's Explorer Update is now available!

Hello Adventurers!

We just released the Explorer Update for Dustgrave, a new major update bringing radical improvements to balance, progression, quest structure, and quest variety!

We spent the last few months working on the content and polish the game needs for its final release, and since we don't want to break existing savegames, this update only features some of what we've been cooking up!

Changelog

Quests, Narrative & Simulation

We have improved and expanded the dynamic quest system to support larger levels with more content, challenges, and enemies. Some Quests in Dustgrave felt underwhelming and repetitive, so we created and implemented new structures to spice things up.

• New extended variants for Rescue, Defend, and Investigate dynamic quest structures, featuring bigger levels to explore, filled with dynamic content, additional ways to solve quests, and increased experience and loot to make the extra effort worthwhile.

• During Investigation Quests, your companions will now bark when close to a major clue and a marker will appear on them. No more pixel hunting!

• Kidnappers in Rescue Quests now carry keys you can use to free the prisoners without relying on fighting or negotiating to progress.

• During Defend Quests, more enemies will roam around the location. Taking care of them will prevent ambushes once the endangered NPCs are found.

• Drastically increased the variety of clues spawning in Investigation Quests.

• Quest Rewards have been reworked to give different factions and civilians more specific and thematically relevant packages.

• Added 20+ new dynamic locations.

Combat & Balance

• All encounters have been reworked to provide a more varied, balanced, and interesting challenge. NPC parties now revolve around specific themes and their composition is much less randomized. You will no longer have to face random hordes of Infested doing a little bit of everything, or the occasional Vultures party full of archers dashing around the level.

• Legendary Item modifiers can be rerolled in the Upgrade Panel (previously only used to increase an item's Tier), requiring money and a dedicated crafting material.

• Added several new Unique Weapons and redesigned existing ones. They now have specialized designs or grant unique modifiers unavailable on Legendary ones.

• Added new modifiers to all Legendary Items.

• Rebalanced the cost of most items in the game, to ensure a smoother and more rewarding progression.

• Due to the increased cost of many items and increased value of rewards, selling prices have been reduced a little.

• Factions parties on the map now will no longer spawn with just two people in them. What were they supposed to do with two people?

• Added new consumable Items and their respective recipes.

• Non-faction Traders now have a 50% chance of having a Unique Item in their inventory.

• Faction traders' inventory has been redesigned and will now include a more varied selection of goods.

General Gameplay

• Increased the player party's running and stealth speed. Walking around levels felt too slow, so we increased running speed by 25% and stealth walking speed by 10%.

• Added new tooltips in some panels to show detailed info regarding stats or other game concepts.

• Added more loot around quest levels to make exploration and interaction more rewarding.

• Added a dedicated 3D model for Infested Broodmothers.

• Added new tutorial pop-ups, loading tips, and fixed existing tutorials.

• Modified many Action names to better reflect their theme.

Fixes

• Fixed an issue with the Fog of War on the world map being reset or not loading properly.

• Fixed a minor memory leak affecting status effects and special modifiers that caused savegames to grow in size over time.

• Fixed a bug that could trigger a fight with the kidnapped people you were supposed to rescue.

• Fixed other potential issues with kidnapped NPCs, making the quest more resilient overall.

• Fixed several issues with the world simulation, including some that could break or abort quests. Settlements will no longer get abandoned for no reason!

• Rebalanced the numbers determining a Settlement's prosperity.

• Abandoned Settlements will now have 0 Prosperity. As they should. They are abandoned. What kind of economy could they have? They were not meant to have a GDP.

• Fixed several traders not spawning with a proper trade specialization and defaulting to a generic trader profile.

• Fixed all modifiers giving extra Action Points.

• Fixed the Veteran perk not behaving as intended and its descriptive strings not listing all modifiers.

• Fixed the Quick Reflexes perk not working as intended.

• Fixed the Like The Wind perk not working as intended.

• Extended support for more screen refresh rates, to support TVs or niche monitors.

• Fixed several minor UI issues across the entire game.

• Fixed several issues and edge cases with special modifiers not being applied as intended.

• Academian and Cathar faction traders can now be accessed after getting to the respective relationship threshold.

• Fixed a few rumor-related barks not triggering.

• Fixed some quest-related barks not triggering.

• Fixed a few navigation issues in some locations that made moving around clunky.