Alpha 0.0.74 — Performance, Audio & Everyday Fixes

Alpha 0.0.74 brings performance improvements, refreshed audio, dungeon polish, and fixes for equipment, achievements, dialogue and save loading. Here’s what’s changing since Alpha 0.0.72 HF1.

The highlights

• Less work behind the scenes: improvements to CPU usage, water updates, equipment calculations and save recovery.
• Keep working on your masterpiece: revisit and edit your completed tavern posters during the current session, even after finishing the quest.
• A better-looking adventure: further Goblin Cave lighting and torch updates, corrected room scaling, and improved weapon poses.
• More reliable everyday play: fixes for starter achievements, lingering item tooltips, duplicate trolls and incompatible multiplayer connections.

Performance

Players should notice improved performance, particularly where repeated background work was taking time away from gameplay. We’ve reduced unnecessary work while keeping the existing gameplay and visual settings.

• Reduced repeated equipment-stat calculations, item-data decoding, water queries, animation updates, UI checks and world-renderer lookups. Pub-game visuals also do less repeated work each frame.
• Fixed save recovery repeatedly capturing already-pending critical changes every frame. New critical changes still trigger prompt retention, and normal saving and exit handling remain in place.
• Reduced job-scheduling overhead on Windows PCs with 64 or more logical processors. Smaller CPUs and other platforms retain their existing worker settings.

Some numbers from testing:

• In a standalone Windows build comparison of an included set of optimizations, average main-thread CPU time fell from 4.28 ms to 3.77 ms—about 12% lower. This was a solo-host test at Ultra, 1920×1080, on a Threadripper 7970X with 64 logical processors. Both comparison pairs improved.
• In a separate multiplayer test with a built host and an Editor client, the affected save-recovery service fell from 10.84 ms to 0.23 ms per frame on average, with its temporary allocations dropping from roughly 162 KB to 2 KB per frame. These are Editor-client measurements of that service, not a standalone FPS result.

Results depend on hardware and what’s happening in the game. These measurements cover specific test conditions and included changes, rather than a guaranteed FPS increase for every player; occasional save-recovery spikes remain.

Audio

• Reworked water-entry sounds for walking, running and jumping into shallow or deeper water. Splashes can finish playing without cutting one another off, and entering a swim blends the entry volume appropriately.
• Dungeon trap sounds now fade with distance from your character, so camera zoom no longer changes how loud nearby axes, spinners and rolling rocks feel.
• Fixed other players’ jump and roll sounds playing at full volume across the map; these sounds now play from the player’s position and fade with distance.
• Updated skateboard grinding sounds and adjusted skateboard sound falloff.
• Rebalanced enemy attacks and the overall mix, with updated routing for town-entry and level-up sounds.
• Restored the skate park’s music where surrounding town or forest music could take over, while keeping its rebalanced playback volume.

Inventory, Posters & Controls

• Completed tavern posters can be reopened and edited—even after finishing the quest. Your artwork stays visible and re-editable during the current session while the world scene remains loaded, and editing does not remove your earned objective credit. Completed posters also retain their original colors instead of receiving a green tint.
• This is our first step toward lasting artwork. Drawings are not yet saved between sessions and are lost when the world scene reloads or you relaunch the game. We’re working toward keeping posters across sessions and giving players a dedicated place to create and display art, such as an art gallery.
• Fixed item tooltips remaining over gameplay or reappearing after their inventory, slot or source window was closed or replaced. This also covers fish-collection tooltips.
• Restored inventory tooltips that could be incorrectly hidden by the normal HUD or inactive chat.
• Posters now use the same interaction reach as other objects, so opening the painting window and receiving objective credit agree on how close you need to stand.
• Pressing Escape in free camera now exits free camera without also opening or closing an underlying menu.
• Added the missing Pop Shuvit action hint to the skateboard controls.
• Corrected checkbox highlight alignment in Gameplay settings.

Combat, Creatures & Quests

• Improved bow firing poses and aiming while moving, and corrected hand placement for supported greatswords, two-handed axes and hammers.
• Fixed ragdolls revealing hidden equipment, tools or consumables.
• The Dragon Nest Guardian respawns after 10 minutes following its defeat.
• Fixed the world troll spawn accumulating extra trolls over time. The encounter returns to its intended single troll.
• Collecting the starter staff, hat and beer mug now grants the corresponding individual achievements through the introductory quest.
• Screaming flowers now steal 1 gold when you trigger a scream by stepping on them. Standing on one does not repeatedly charge you, and an empty wallet stays at zero.
• Fixed animation-sampling issues affecting Willem’s belly reaction and the flower’s hit reaction in player builds.
• Restored the burgundy highlight on NPC dialogue options. The highlight now follows the current row when switching between mouse, keyboard and controller, instead of lingering on an old option.
• Successfully using Unstuck now closes your active NPC conversation and releases its camera and controls.

Dungeons & World Polish

• Added a further lighting and torch pass across Goblin Cave rooms, including room, hallway and obstacle variants.
• Corrected generated Goblin Cave room scaling so authored room scale does not compound with the dungeon’s existing scale, keeping room layouts and doorway placement consistent.
• Restored a missing floor tile in the Crypt.
• Made dungeon departure notices smaller and kept them behind the ready-up forms.
• Updated overworld terrain and scenery placement.

Multiplayer & Save Recovery

• Added explicit multiplayer build-compatibility checks and clearer messages when a session uses an incompatible network build. Update both games and start a fresh host session when joining across versions.
• Recovering conflicting cloud progress no longer automatically ends an active host session and disconnects its guests. Local changes remain pending until a normal return to the menu can safely reload the recovered progress.
• Fixed cloud-save startup rejecting valid saved decimal values, including fish-weight records, because of harmless differences in number formatting. Saved values remain intact, and unsupported data still stays protected.

Thank you to everyone playing the alpha and sending us reports. Your feedback helps us track down the performance problems, awkward interactions and multiplayer issues that are hardest to catch alone.

Please keep the reports and suggestions coming. See you in Debauchery & Magic!