Its been a long time coming, but the update is finally here! This build contains changes for pretty much the entire game, while sticking to the core foundations.
The changes are too long to list, but I've pretty much touched every area of the game, including, combat, crafting, items, art, animations, movement, enemies, bosses, fishing, cooking, exploration, map, UI.
The most major change is the addition of the home ship (unlocked through npc interactions found in the world), which will allow the player to sail to new islands. These islands will be the main addition in future updates, which will new offer unique features, biomes, items, etc. The world travel screen can be accessed by opening the new map while aboard the ship.
A whole new bunch of items have been added to discover and unlock, and items should generally be a bit more interesting(depending on rarity), with new stats, unique abilities, and set bonuses!
Artifacts, a special form of permanent unlocks, can also be found throughout the world, such as maximum life, the ship travel, new abilities such as dash, and a bunch of WIP upgrades.
With currently 700+ items, the old mix and match crafting system meant there were simply too many combinations of items, so has been replaced by a quick craft system. The old system has been moved to certain crafting disciplines(cooking and alchemy), which will still require the correct combination to unlock recipes.
Combat and movement has been updated to feel more snappy and responsive, as well as enemy behaviours and attack patterns. Enemies will act slightly different depending on their architype, and now longer get stuck trying to navigate to the player.
Most of the art has been redone, including tiles, items, spells, particles, enemies, and the GUI.
The Future:
This update contains a whole host of engine improvements and systems, which should make future content a lot easier to work with, and hopefully a lot quicker to implement.
I'll continue to iron out all of the (inevitable) bugs that will pop up from the massive amounts of code changes, or any other issues such as balance and gameplay.
While working on new islands, I'll also being adding new bosses to existing islands to flesh out the game progression, as well as new biomes and all that comes with.
Thanks to everyone who's stuck around this long to continue supporting the game, and I hope that these changes breathe new life and experience to the game!