Floating Islands are here! The second of three encounters designed to facilitate in the next step in progression. These big boys are nearly a kilometer in diameter, and have a number of satellite islands around them. For most of the satellite islands the only way onto them is to build! Luckily there is a fair amount of stone and timber on the main island for just such purpose. The resources on the main island are a new type called basic resources.

Basic resources are resources that do not progress with the rest of the game, meaning they are always tier 0, and will only reward a maximum of 10 per node. This system, for example, has now been applied to all of the rocks and stalactites in the caves so you can clear them out of the way if they are in your way, but won't necessarily be something to go hunting for (normal stone nodes in the caves remain as they were). The resources on the floating islands are basic resources because it's a frozen hell up there!

Temperature control was added pretty early in the game, but never really turned into an actual system. I will be working on improving that and making it a useful part of progression, or rather a prerequisite to special places like the floating islands. We all know having to change your hat every time you cross into a new biome gets old fast, but I believe I have some good ideas in store for temperature management in the near future.

An air meter has also been added for when swimming under water. It will slowly move towards zero, after which you will start taking a percentage of you maximum health as damage. Returning to the surface of course will begin to fill it up again. I was going to wait until breathing potions and enchants are added in, but it's not really a gamebreaker if you can't swim 800m to the ocean floor in one go just yet... soon? I also want to add falling damage, though I do plan to go easy on it. Falling damage however I do want to wait until there are sufficient counter-measures in-game before turning it on, such as feather fall enchants and potions.



Also found on the floating islands is a new resource called aetherstone. These rocks require a hardened pickaxe in order to harvest them which is not yet craftable! So beta players won't be able to start collecting them just yet, but aetherstone and the other two elemental stone types will have their uses made clear shortly.



Please note that world encounter generation prior to this patch was generating placeholders for floating islands a the rate of 1 per 4 terrains, meaning they were everywhere. This could even cause them to overlap and is just way too many of them in general. I've updated the /forceworldupdate command so that you can append 'false' in order to prevent the repositioning of buildings:
/forceworldupdate false
This will reset a worlds map, encounter, and resource data so that you have a much more "reasonable" amount of floating islands, to the tune of 1 per 8x8km "chunk" (don't worry, they're easy to spot) without having to reset your building, town, and solace data.

Next week is Golden Week here in Japan, the longest break of the year. I will be working when I can, but I may be slow to respond for a day or two, here or there.

v 0.4.6 - 2019.04.25
- Added basic resources, that remain at T0 regardless of location
- Added elemental stones that require special upgraded tools (wip) to harvest
- Added floating islands to the world, accessible via portals beneath them
- Added a second positioning check after Recall due to a number of reports of falling through the world
- Added a breath meter for when underwater

You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin.

To opt into Beta you only need to go to your Steam Library, right-click on Solace Crafting, select Properties, click on the Beta tab, and opt-in to the beta. This beta version is only available to Windows 64-bit users.

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