Well I had hoped this would be the combat update but it wasn't meant to be, more on that below since its a big wall of text! Instead there are still Plenty of changes in here and it means Enchanting is now available. I've already touched on most of the changes in my previous posts but I will summarise them all here for anyone that missed them. Since this update turned into me focusing a lot on balancing I've also tackled a ton of bugs that cropped up whilst testing.
Once your totem has reached a high enough level you will unlock the Enchanting Bench and Essence Gatherers. Gatherers will collect resources based on where they are placed in the world. Enchantments can be learned from either the challenges or as rewards from chests in either Dungeons or the Lost Civ.
There is also a tech tree added for Enchanting for you to spend perks on to get some improvements. Its pretty small currently but I suspect it will grow once I see how Enchanting matures.
You can now craft boots and rings which give a better variety of things to enchant.
Enemies will now level up based on various factors whilst you play. What this should address pretty quickly is that feeling of "why can't I find leather strips?" since you will find the higher level enemies right away rather than having to complete a challenge first.
I've addressed one of the biggest flaws with A.I so that they now have some basic pathfinding. This means they should find you more consistently instead of appearing to walk away mid fight.
Enemies will also start combat much faster and skip showing their damage animation before attacking.
There is still a lot of room to improve for them but this is a decent step in the right direction.
Overall a lot of small tweaks have been made. For example I reworked a lot of perks in the talent tree to get rid of smaller incremental changes, so instead of having to spend 3 perk points to get a 3% increase each time, you now need to spend just 1 point for a 10% increase. To compensate, your perk points will have been refunded to be spent again. This should feel like you have more perks to play with as well to feel like you can invest in some of the more QoL perks for things like cooking and farming.
There should also be a Lot more animals in the world now so it feels more alive but to compensate for this I've drastically reduced the spawn rate for meat.
The tech tree and tech tokens have been completely removed. Instead you unlock decorative blocks by completing mini objectives and the core tech (things like Alchemy Bench) are unlocked automatically as you level up your Totem.
Now that it finally makes sense to have more than 1 base, portal crafting has been enabled. Now you can place portals near your Essence Gatherers to quickly check on them.
Also it felt like not enough portals/dungeons spawned in the world so their spawn rates have been increased. In existing worlds, this will now clash and could result in an excessive amount of portals being spawned but they should be consistent in fresh worlds and freshly explored areas.
Combat...its a tricky thing to get right at the best of times but I'm starting to understand why combat is so simple in this genre. Lets start with my aims. I've been replaying Kingdom Hearts(KH) lately because despite its childish setting (it is aimed towards kids afterall) its one of the best examples of combat I've seen. Its simple, yet it has depth, and its satisfying. So I've been trying to break down what works so well for it despite the majority of its combat being 'just mash A'. This is why I thought it was a good example to follow since I don't want to move away from being able to mash attack in Aiyana. What I learned is that KH offers good decisions. You typically fight groups of enemies with a mixed composition. Some fly, some have high health, some cast magic so in combat you have to decide things like 'which enemy is closest to me', 'which is on lowest health', 'which is most dangerous' which ultimately leads into the thought of 'who should I kill first'. All these decisions stem from having a diverse group of targets but in Aiyana, combat is typically 1 on 1. None of these decisions are available and I think this is the biggest reason that combat in Aiyana feels like there is lots of room to improve. The first problem is that if I have groups of enemies roaming the world, performance will fall over. I've already tried to address this with things like the Treant, you see one of them, trigger the fight and then he summons allies to join in. So I'm considering changing animals to more consistently summon groups like this, e.g a wolfs initial howl might summon more wolves to join the fight. The other side to this though is that diversity, just a group of wolves isn't likely to solve this problem so it feels like what I need to do next is work towards new enemies that have more unique identities. Adding in a whole bunch of new enemies, with more distinct fighting styles, is a LOT of work so it doesn't feel right to delay what is already a big update until I have a lot of new enemies when I can instead try to release them one at a time.
I guess the biggest takeaway here is that I've realised that just improving enemy A.I or the overall feel of swinging a sword isn't likely to be enough so I'm rethinking what will be involved to improve combat. I'll still try to do these things as well, but I don't want to have said I am delivering a combat update only for it to feel underwhelming.
I didn't really tackle the core of what I was hoping to tackle with combat so my plan is to focus on bugs for a while to ensure all these new features are stable and then to spend a bit more time on enemy A.I. It would be nice if they are a bit smarter about you attacking them from above for example.
However I'm conscious I have a lot of house keeping tasks building up such as tackling world file sizes, manual saving and more controller support. It also feels like since I've been thinking so much about combat lately that now is a good time to tackle at least 1 new enemy type.
I've also had a couple bugs reported around inventory corruptions and portals dumping you in mid air so I'll try and address them.
Added a new perk so enemies have a chance of dropping a pickup that restores a small amount of health
Moved the consecration spell to be unlocked mid/late game because its far too powerful
Reduced how many wind effects are active at once
Changed dyes max stack count from 1 to 99
Fixed new item outlines sometimes getting stuck to items on the quickbar
Added better spawns to Lost Civ chests
Fixed portals getting renamed whenever you used the dungeons tab of the map
Fixed not being able to select a dungeon properly from the portals UI
Fixed the hover spell just not really working at all (a bug fix for something else seems to have utterly broken it)
Forced the lava lord to always be a max level enemy (he sort of always was anyway I've just ensured he is for consistency)
The lava lord is now immune to slow
Changed Consecration spells final perk to reduce armour instead of causing stacking damage since it was far too strong
Rock Volley now reduces armour further (20% from 10%)
Fishing collisions where a touch too forgiving so they've been reduced
Fixed portals only taking you to the same dungeon instead of a new one for each portal as originally intended
Moved some crafting recipes into their own tab to prevent the lighting group being too full and needing a scrollbar
Fixed various cooking recipes unhelpfully labelling needed ingredients as 'veggies' instead of what item needed (E.G carrot)
Fixed the item for a Night Bear Head showing the sheeps head as its mesh
Fixed the drain life healing orbs knocking you back as they hit you
Added a safety feature to expanding structure builder fences in an effort to prevent a crash
Fixed the alchemy scrollbars resetting to the mid point, which made brewing lots of potions a bit tedious
Fixed the weakened armour status icon being bigger than intended
Fixed the bear and night bear trophies not having an icon
Added info for how many times a meal has been eaten to the Lore screen
Fixed worlds being listed twice in the Load World screen
Fixed sometimes being able to see through the world when you reach the bottom
Fixed crafting the backpack not showing the misc equipment section if you crafted it before the bag expansion
Rebalanced the leather strips needed for the bag expansion and backpack
Rebalanced every talent tree so there are less perks with small increases. E.G instead of spending 1 perk for a 5% increase 3 times, you spend 1 perk for a 15% increase
Added a new perk to the combat tree so enemies sometimes drop healing orbs
Fixed bugs that would cause you to see animals with the wrong animation or a ghost version of animals on screen briefly
Updated enemy A.I with some basic pathfinding so its much better around handling corners etc
Fixed lunging enemies (usually wolves) from being able to finish a lunge inside the world
Updated the explosion visuals for Earth Elementals to have a bit more gravitas
Fixed the held torch mesh not being visible when moving between worlds
Adjusted where Earth Elemental health and level bars sit so they are easier to see
Prevented benches etc from being opened whilst still moving, which prevents them sometimes being in slightly the wrong position
Fixed the block blueprints not being visible after a challenge is complete (they would still behave properly otherwise)
Fixed animal heads causing a freeze once selected
Fixed a pretty horrific performance drop in the Lost Civ
Added a forward arrow to chests
Updated the night sky with a proper skybox
Increased the spawn rate for almost all day time animals by roughly 75%
Fixed a couple of scenarios that would prevent animals from spawning at all after a load
Swapped the requirements for Copper and Tin armour so that copper armour needs wolf fur and tin needs rabbit fur
Reduced the spawn rate for meat drops fairly significantly (to compensate for more animals being spawned)
Fixed full furnaces loading with their bars inside themselves instead of on top
Fixed a scenario that could destroy tools that are unequipped and on the HUD rather than on the toolbelt
Updated compost UI to match enchanting UI
Increased the spawn rate of portals
Added info for insect types killed to the lore and stats screens
Fixed chests filling slots with empty loot and spawning less loot than intended
Rebuilt magic light droppers in an effort to optimise some severe frame drops in the lost civ
Added chemical element icons over various metal items in an effort to make it easier to distinguish between them (E.G copper armour now has a Cu symbol)
Fixed most plank blocks not being in the planks group
Added controller support to the new tech UI
Updated the durability of stone tiled blocks to be consistent (reduced durability in most cases)
Fixed Orthoclase steps not acting as steps
Fixed the setting to mute portal audio not saving/loading properly
Added a new setting to mute audio whilst paused
Removed the networking up achievement from the achievements list (it was already disabled internally)
Added a Dig Deep achievement
Fixed the show border visuals checkbox not working for totems
The store duplicates button for chests now properly takes items from inactive additional hotbars
Added a farming & ranching tab to the crafting UI
Fixed sometimes seeing/hearing a chest closing when closing other objects such as compost bins
Fixed portals in water sometimes teleporting you right back to their destination
Tweaked the unlocked spells message so its a bit nicer when unlocking spells with longer names (E.G Emergency Parachute)
Updated Alchemy UI to let you select which potion type to brew if a combo of ingredients could result in multiple potential buffs (previously the strongest was always choosen)
Fixed an excessive amount of insects spawning if you use portals to teleport a short distance multiple times
Added a new perk so enemies have a chance of dropping a pickup that restores a small amount of health
Moved the consecration spell to be unlocked mid/late game because its too powerful for a first spell unlock
Reduced how many wind effects are active at once
Changed dyes max stack count from 1 to 99
Fixed new item outlines sometimes getting stuck to items on the quickbar
Added better spawns to Lost Civ chests
Fixed portals getting renamed whenever you used the dungeons tab of the map
Fixed not being able to select a dungeon properly from the portals UI
Fixed the hover spell just not really working at all (a bug fix for something else seemed to have utterly broken it)
Forced the lava lord to always be a max level enemy (he sort of always was anyway I've just ensured he is for consistency)
The lava lord is now immune to slow
Changed Consecration spells final perk to reduce armour instead of causing stacking damage since it was far too strong
Rock Volley now reduces armour further (20% from 10%)
Fishing collisions where a touch too forgiving so they've been reduced
Fixed portals only taking you to the same dungeon instead of a new one for each portal as originally intended
Moved some crafting recipes into their own tab to prevent the lighting group being too full and needing a scrollbar
Fixed various cooking recipes unhelpfully labelling needed ingredients as 'veggies' instead of the item needed
Fixed the item for a Night Bear Head showing the sheeps head as its mesh
Fixed the drain life healing orbs knocking you back as they hit you
Added a safety feature to expanding structure builder fences in an effort to prevent a crash
Fixed the alchemy scrollbars resetting to the mid point, which made brewing lots of potions a bit tedious
Fixed the weakened armour status icon being bigger than intended
Fixed the bear and night bear trophies not having an icon
Added info for how many times a meal has been eaten to the Lore screen
Fixed worlds being listed twice in the Load World screen
Fixed sometimes being able to see through the world when you reach the bottom
This first release is me tackling the easier to solve bugs that have appeared. I still have some open ones that are a bit harder to track down (inventory corruptions, getting stuck) that I'm hoping to address in 0.5.0.2.
Fixed 2 ores spawning all the time
Updated the bonus ores perk to be more powerful (from +10% to + 20%)
Fixed animal colliders to properly turn off on death so you don't bump into their bodies (turns out I tried to do this before and it was just broken)
Added a button to regenerate your world but preserve anything within a protection totem, useful for upgrading worlds from older versions
Fixed chests spawning 'Enchanting essence loot' instead of its essence if you enter a dungeon before unlocking enchanting
Fixed the oak animal trophy having an icon with two overlapping heads on it
Fixed The Grand Hall room of dungeons not spawning their lever properly
Fixed the ability to select which potion to brew only working the first time you brew a combo (Thanks for reporting this Janaff)
Fixed structure builder previews rebuilding multiple times per frame and reducing fps (happened with blocks like windows)
Changed the output of stone window crafting recipes from 10 to 4 to match other window recipes
Added half block thickness versions of all window types (43 new blocks in total!)
Fixed metal steps not being craftable (they where flagged as a tech reward but no tech unlocked them)
Fixed a lot of Pine blocks having the wrong colour on the map
Added wedge versions of all steps and disabled steps automatically making corners
Increased how much damage Dungeon Caretakers caused as they level up
Increased the speed of Dungeon Caretakers projectiles by 20% since they where a little too easy to avoid
Fixed projectiles stopping when they hit blocks such as the beams, which in dungeons was problematic
Fixed the Emergency Parachute spell having the old label of Slow Fall
Updated healing orb visuals so they are not visible through terrain
Fixed the dig deep achievement only triggering when you jumped at the lowest point in the world
Fixed the compost bins UI always scrolling with the mouse wheel (requires mouse over the relevant section instead)
Toned down the specular of Palm blocks such as fences
Attempted to fix a source of inventory corruptions caused by using the store duplicates button of chests (this is where 2 icons can share a slot) Testing showed this fix didn't fix the root cause and caused other problems so its been disabled. I'll try again next patch
Fixed a harmless error around a texture of the wrong type being logged each time Aiyana launches
Fixed numbers not displaying nicely on a single line in the enchanting UI
Fixed the displayed power value for the Frost Forged enchantment. The enchantment worked as intended but the power values displayed for it was a combo of wrong/confusing
Similar for the Bonus Damage enchantment except it wasn't just a display value, it wasn't working properly on anything other than bows
Fixed a bug in how enchantments applied to bows calculate their strength to be lower than intended
Whilst challenges are running the arrow indicators to show current enemies will show itself again every minute to help track down any stray enemies that are stuck
Attempted to address enemies being able to push you inside of walls
Fix quality bows throwing an error
Changed hay to be destroyed with an axe instead of a shovel
Fixed tamed animals not spawning if they are kept inside a protection totem!
Fixed the source of an inventory corruption when using the store duplicates option of a chest and having lots of items to fully merge into it at once
Fixed the forward arrow for chests always facing the wrong way
Slightly reduced the spawn chances of sticky goo from Palm trees since its was a touch high
Updated how dungeon levers work so they can be pulled again in situations where they failed to remove the door blocking your rewards (I still don't now why they might fail in the first place but this at least lets you try again if it does)
Fixed the consecrate ground spell being able to hurt and kill tamed animals!
Fixed caves being brighter during the day than at night. The only way I could fix this though was to make caves much darker overall
Fixed seeing lots of small shafts of light when exploring caves
Fixed Essence gatherers sometimes only showing info for 1 of the essence types it could gather if it could gather 2 (it still worked as intended)
Removed insect data from save data, their spawns are instead recalculated on each load. I'm hoping this makes their spawns a bit more consistent
Changed animal attacking logic to be a bit smarter around attacking you whilst you are running circles around it
Speed grow spell can now cast much quicker at higher levels
Fixed an error being thrown when cancelling the speed grow spell
Added full controller support to the world select screen (was only partial before)
Same for character select
Updated the Maps controller support to slightly different controls (triggers instead of bumpers to zoom)