Stonewards Early Access - Later Summer - Version 0.2.0

Hi everyone!

We are super excited to release our first major roadmap update!

On top of all the big core features we originally planned, we worked extremely hard to pack in as many of your requests, suggestions, and feedback as possible. Your support and reports since launch have been incredible, and they directly shape the future of Stonewards.

Here is everything new in this update:

New Features

Mercenaries

• You can now hire Mercenaries in the Hub to assist you during your next run.
• Mercenaries can be especially useful for solo players who want some extra help.

Weekly Leaderboard

• Added a new weekly leaderboard in the Hub, with scores earned from your runs.

New Equipment

• New weapons: Mace, Legendary Bow, Legendary Small Axe, Double Small Axe.
• New Rings: Explosion Combat Range, Magic Range, Heal on Block, Digging Speed.
• New Upgrade Tomes: Compass Range, Team Attack, Team Max Health, Precious Treasures,Forge Boost.
• New End-of-Wave Reward: Mercenary Damage.
• Rogue can now use dual-wield weapons.
• Added new Lore Pages to discover.

Crafter

• Added a new powerful healing potion to the Crafter.
• Added craftable wooden direction signs that can be placed to help navigate caves.

Daily Quests

• Added Daily Quests, with a new set of objectives available each day.
• Daily Quests can be viewed from the Quest screen, along with the time until they refresh.

Multiplayer

• You can now reconnect to an active run after disconnecting, restoring your inventory, Health, and run upgrades.
• Players can now join friends or public sessions already in progress. New players joining mid-run will start at Level 1.
• The Lobby Browser now shows the current location and Wave for active sessions.
• Hosts can now ban players from their lobby.
• Improved public lobby discovery so more available sessions can be found worldwide.

Controls & Settings

• Added input remapping for keyboard/mouse and controller.
• Sprinting on controller now uses toggle behavior, while keyboard/mouse sprint remains hold-to-sprint.
• Added separate options to invert the vertical and horizontal look axes.
• Added separate horizontal and vertical look sensitivity settings.

Visuals

• Added visible character hands to weapons in first-person view.
• Added an option to hide first-person character hands.

Quality of Life

• You can now press Tab in the Hub to view your character’s class stats.
• Healers can now see teammates’ Health above their characters.
• You can now hold the craft button to quickly increase the quantity instead of clicking repeatedly.
• Added notifications when players connect to or disconnect from a session.

Balance

• Gold Bonus now increases the amount of Gold earned instead of increasing the chance for Gold to appear.
• Removed the Difficulty Ring from the upgrade pool while we rework it.
• Added a small Gold reward option when there aren’t enough available Ring upgrades to fill all upgrade choices.
• Artificer bomb damage now scales with the Artificer’s Attack.
• Over-100% Scaling: Values above 100% can now trigger an effect multiple times. For example, 150% guarantees the effect once and gives a 50% chance for a second activation.
• Stat rebalances: For Bouncing Projectiles, Bonus Projectiles, Critical Chance, Critical Heal, and Bonus Max Health.
• High-value scaling rework: They can still be pushed higher, but now have stronger diminishing returns at extreme values for Jump Height, Movement Speed, Sprint Speed, Melee Attack Speed, Ranged Attack Speed, and Digging Speed.
• Knockback Chance & Dodge: Once they reach their maximum effective value, they will no longer appear as upgrade choices. If there aren’t enough valid Ring upgrades left, Gold can appear instead.

Bug Fixes

• Added additional ground detection checks that should help prevent players from falling through terrain or being teleported into nearby cave rooms while mining.
• Added additional physics checks when releasing Chests, which should help prevent them from clipping into terrain or being launched unexpectedly.
• You can now climb a ladder with a chest.
• Fixed some Dungeon props dropping Iron instead of Copper.
• Items can now be dropped in the Hub.
• Chest upgrades are now generated from each player’s own unlocked upgrade pool instead of the host’s.
• Fixed additional projectiles spawning from an outdated firing position.
• Fixed the Lore Bookcase sometimes disappearing in multiplayer.

Normally we included everything, but with everything we packed into this patch, we might have forgotten a thing or two!

Thanks a lot everyone ❤️

Banana Tiger Studio

P.S. Leaving a review on Steam takes just a minute, helps us gather feedback to keep improving the game, and gives us a huge boost of motivation!