The sixth test build. The Windwrights' spires stand in every world, stars fall and leave skyiron, the night sky is the real one, cave-ins and pit props, sheep and shears, the lasso, wooden signs, smoke that fills a house, teams and bases, and the Fletching skill.
New
- The spires stand in every world. Pale towers rise into the cloud, the first of them a few kilometres from where your world began. Climb the long stair to the top through a gale that never drops, past whirlwinds circling the tower, and the land for two kilometres round opens up on your map.
- Stars fall. Now and then a star comes down near you, by day or night, and cuts a crater where it lands. Mine the fallen star with an iron pickaxe for skyiron and skyglass, and forge skyiron tools, weapons and armour. A skyiron blade bites harder under the night sky.
- The night sky is the real one. The Milky Way, the real stars, a moon that waxes and wanes, auroras on about one night in four, shooting stars every dark night and now and then a whole shower of them.
- Waterspouts. A whirlwind at sea is a waterspout that spins your boat and throws a swimmer, and a storm's whirlwind takes its colour from the storm.
- Sheep graze the Green in flocks. Forge a pair of shears, kneel beside a sheep and shear it for wool, and its fleece grows back. Mammoths leave mammoth wool, which does anything wool does.
- Cave-ins. Dig out a roof of earth or sand and leave it unheld and it groans, trickles dust and then comes down. Prop it with Pit Props and Timber Sets cut to fit your tunnel. Rock never falls.
- The lasso. Twirl it over your head and throw it to rope a cow, sheep, horse or deer and lead it home into a pen, or hamper a goblin or a wolf while you fight it.
- Wooden signs. Write on a signpost, a wall sign, a small sign for a chest or a hanging sign, and draw on them in six paints.
- Every fire smokes, and under a roof the smoke piles up. A sealed hut fills from the ceiling down until the fire chokes and you start to cough. Crouch under it, or build a Smoke Hole or a Stone Chimney that fits your roof.
- Teams and bases. Invite friends into a team from the pause menu. Your home bed claims the ground round it, nobody outside your team can build, dig or open chests there, and your team's chests nearby pay for whatever you craft or build.
- Fletching, a skill of its own for arrows, bows and crossbows. Make them at the workbench with a knife in your pack, get more arrows from a craft as you level, and pick up more of the arrows you loose.
- Dyes come from flowers now, and a Standing Mirror lets you try a colour on your clothes and dye them.
- Gables close a house's ends under the roof.
- Stones and sticks lie in the grass to find without a pickaxe, and the grass gives way round them and round tree trunks.
- Freshly dug ground stays bare for a day, then grows back.
- Make the crosshair your own: shape, size, gap, colours and outline. Paste a Counter-Strike 2 crosshair code to bring yours over.
- Fishing tells you which fish are near your float and each kind's chance of the next bite, and fish live in rivers and lakes above the sea too.
- A Milk Tank holds your milk, and recipes take milk from a bucket you carry or a tank nearby.
- Drop and Trash cells under the pack, two pieces of gear on one quickslot, and your weapons and shield hang on your back when they're not in your hands.
- Press E to pick up the nearest stone, stick or drop without aiming, and hold it to pick up everything in reach.
Improved
- The pack is nine cells a row, with nine quickslots.
- Crafting has a tab of its own beside the Inventory, the character portrait is sharp, and hovering gear compares it with what you're wearing.
- The furnace has a model of its own with an ore opening and bellows, and smelting no longer needs a forge. A forge in a saved world becomes a furnace.
- The tanning rack has its own model with real hides laced into it.
- Every skill earns twice the XP it did.
- One craft makes ten arrows.
- The first quest has you repair the leaf glider instead of crafting a new one, and every landing wears a glider a little.
- Space in the air opens your glider with a shield in your hand.
- A chicken coop holds four hens, one to a perch.
- Boars walk, trot, gallop and root with their own moves, and a dog changes gait more calmly.
- Crows, starlings, gulls and birds of prey are their real size.
- The map names the lands the way the Reach does.
- The health bar is a calm flowing liquid.
- Fieldbook tips are a small see-through note that X really closes.
- Roofs are only the slope and stairs only the flight, open underneath, and there is no gap between storeys, at corners or beside a stairwell.
- Each combat track in the Technology tree grows from its own weapon node.
- The crafting menu is in titled sections, and the Condition section scrolls instead of growing the window.
- Glasshouse braziers, brew kettles and smokehouses burn every kind of wood.
- A well fills a watering can or bucket you crafted.
Fixed
- Picking up a big pile of drops no longer slows the game.
- Monsters in Underhalls and Warden holds no longer hurt you through walls.
- A friend who rejoins no longer rides backwards on everyone else's screen.
- The minimap no longer shows black squares as you move.
Known issues
- A world from before 0.5.0 loses the ground you dug, raised or flattened the first time it loads, as the castles and villages move onto land. Your buildings stay where they are.
- Worlds started before 0.4.0 can get a firefell where nothing was dug or built. Start a new world for the best experience.
- The download is large, about 11 GB. Trimming the assets the game doesn't use is planned.
- Starting a new world can take about a minute.
- Busy places like big fights, storms and thick forest can drop the frame rate on the High preset. Medium or Low helps on older machines.
- Some of the newest text is still in English when the game is set to another language.
- Achievements and Steam Cloud saves only work when you start the game through Steam.
- If the host's game crashes, everyone in the world goes back to the title screen. A world can only be handed over when the host leaves through the menu.
- If something goes wrong, the log is in %APPDATA%\Windreach\logs. Please send it along with what you were doing at the time.