Twas the day before that Christmas thing, when all through Steam; not a creature was stirring, except for a Wayward release! We are pleased to announce the release of our 11th major update on Steam entitled "Horizons". Wayward is also a part of the Steam Winter Sale this year at -20% off: https://store.steampowered.com/app/379210/Wayward/ Take a peek at what you can expect to see in this release: https://youtu.be/jgahWzMnVuI The preview video only shows a small portion of the features in this release, so if you are brave enough, venture down further to the wall o' text:

New

• Added a new "islands" dialog, acting as a world map. It's unlocked when obtaining a sea-worthy vessel, which allows you to travel to inspect and travel to nearby islands.
• You can now sail to any island within a certain distance, the travel time and cost dependant on the distance traveled.
• Several islands can now be loaded at a time, allowing for quicker travel and allowing players in multiplayer games to be on different islands from each other.
• Added a new "Seafaring" skill which increases travel distances, reduces hunger and thirst costs when traveling, and more.
• Added a new "Volcanic" island type and biome with new resources, tiles, interactions, and creatures.
• Added the ability to assign quickslots with tool-based actions (similar to "Carve with Tool" previously from the action menu). Alternatively, you can perform actions here by opening a new menu as well with "Shift + Q or Shift + Right Click". These actions will automatically pick the best tool for the given action.
• Added ability to assign action menu actions to the quickslot bar.
• A new item quality, "Relic", has been added. Relics have a high amount of magical properties, but have low starting durability and are dropped exclusively from aberrant creatures and treasure chests.
• Added a "Rejoin as a new player" button to the death screen when dying in multiplayer games that have "clear ghost data on leave" option enabled.
• Added a "Respawn in Casual Mode" button to the death screen when you die while in a permadeath mode so you can continue playing your save.
• Merchant NPCs will now spawn and restock based on the number of buildings (walls/floors) constructed on an island, and will decrease in odds the further out you are from your starting island.
• Added a couple of new craftable "scarecrows" that you can place down to prevent or reduce the likelihood of creatures spawning and/or movement around them (depending on the creature).
• Added a new armor set of "armored scale" with unique properties/usefulness.
• Added needles for all types of metal.
• Added a pangolin creature to the new "Volcanic" island type.
• Added mysterious and coveted "Dryad", a plant-like creature with unique properties and loot.
• Added "Master of All" milestone and milestone modifier for getting all skills to 100%.
• Added the "Traitor" milestone and milestone modifier.
• Added a new form of grass called "Tanglehead", spread throughout the arid and volcanic islands types. Dirt will no longer be native to arid islands as a result.
• Added a new magical property "Regeneration", which repairs/restores durability on items over time.
• Added a new magical property, "Aptitude", which multiplies its effectiveness in crafts.
• Added a new interaction with wisps.
• The main menu buttons and tabs across all menus now have associated icons to improve UX.
• Sailing to new islands now raises your cartography skill.
• Starting at 40% cartography skill, the islands map and item tooltips now show which map items are associated with each island.
• Introduced the concept of spores to mushrooms and ferns.
• There are now non-tattered versions of shirts and pants that are available to craft.
• Added an "Open Backups Folder" button to the save data section in the options menu.
• You can now drag and drop save files onto the game to import them.
• Added +dev command line switch to dedicated servers to enable developer mode.

Improvements

• The quality of terrain (including fertile soil) now affects the speed at which plants grow. The better the quality, the faster the growth.
• The island name, game options, modifiers, and any quests are now displayed on game start and arrival at a new island.
• The pause menu has been updated to show the island name and modifiers separately from the pause status and menu options.
• You can now quickslot multiple of the same item (to assign them different actions).
• You can now use crafting quickslots even when you no longer have the item.
• Quickslots have been partially moved to the new UI system, enabling the ability to move them to any edge of the screen. The default position in new saves is the bottom.
• Added three more quickslots to the quickslot bar.
• Quickslots now have a highlight animation when being used.
• Islands now have randomized names.
• Sped up menu animations, removed some "instant" menu animations because they caused flashing.
• Converted "gathering" to chopping and mining. A tool's damage type will no longer affect resource gathering as tools will now have their own "Chop" and "Mine" properties.
• "Carve With Tool", now simply "Butcher", as well as all the new tool/auto action will now use protected items unless they are at 0 durability and will warn you before breaking if you have the option enabled.
• "Chop" is now the default action for axes (except for tin-based tools) instead of "Carve", now named "Butcher".
• The "Carve" action is now called "butcher" to reduce confusion of its purpose.
• Non-consumed required items can now be used in crafting while protected when they are over 0 durability (cannot be destroyed in the craft).
• Added a multiplayer option to delete ghost data when players leave (so players can rejoin as a new character).
• You can now customize the order of menu bar buttons, and even remove buttons or add new dividers if you wish.
• Items now mention when they are used as part of a craft in the tooltip under "uses".
• All island types now have a unique fog of war color/tint.
• When starting a multiplayer game/server, only auto-pause the game when the turn mode is Real-time.
• Ghosts can now travel to previously visited islands.
• Reworked menu tabs highlighting to work based on distance, rather than just appearing as active when on screen.
• The disabled mod warning will now be cleared after going into the mod menu.
• The "quests" and "notes" menu bar buttons are now hidden until you have gained at least one quest/note in any game.
• There are now tooltips for item/action menus that explain how to use them in conjunction with quickslots.
• Loading screens that previously showed progress as a percentage now show a progress bar.
• Removed some loading animations in cases where they would be near-instant.
• Removed lag spikes when players join or leave multiplayer games.
• Removed the max saves limitation. You can now have as many saves as your disk space can fit.
• The "continue game" button on the main menu now shows the name and preview image of the last-played game.
• Increased fade-in speed when starting a game or when traveling to other islands.
• Players that are ghosts no longer affect turns in simulated turn mode.
• Reorganized the options menu and added additional tabs to make it easier to find things.
• The gameplay section of the bindings menu is now split into additional sections, "Items", "Quickslots", and "Context Menu."
• Improved the layout of the dedicated server menu, and cleaned up the code allowing messages to display.
• The sections of the bindings menu are now collapsible and start out collapsed.
• The message dialog's close icon is now displayed as a "minimize" icon when messages are assigned to a quadrant.
• You can now craft snowmen with wooden poles or branches. (Thanks Ashery!)
• Decreased the footprint/size of action menus slightly.
• Added an animation to multiplayer servers being shown.
• Reduced size of "Reached max backup limit" dedicated server messages.
• Merchants will now move when players idle while facing them, giving players a chance to escape situations where a merchant might block them in if they traded with them.
• Improved reliability of the multiplayer "Run Connection Tests" button.
• Tweaked the look of disabled elements when UI opacity is disabled.
• Added better item cloning/syncing for dug up crafted tiles and flooring. (Thanks Ashery!)
• "Collect Object with Hands" is now named "Pickup Doodad". Badderlocks and piles of rocks are now gathered normally instead of needing to "collect" them.
• Improved the graphics for wooden gates, especially when opened so that they are more apparent that they are open.
• Increased performance of the main menu & load game menu when many large saves exist.

Balance

• Merchant NPCs will no longer spawn completely randomly when a new island is generated but rather can spawn near abandoned houses and other pre-generated templates (in addition to player-built bases).
• Increased the spawn cap of merchant NPCs and is based on the number of buildings (walls/floors) are constructed on an island.
• Giant rats and spiders no longer spawn at 0 reputation (at the start) on coastal islands.
• Aberrant creatures will no longer spawn at neutral (0) reputation, meaning they won't spawn on world generation with default reputation settings.
• Increased amount of guaranteed items that are in treasure map treasure chests.
• Sharks will no longer be aggressive towards players that are not in water.
• Lit doodads (campfires, furnaces, etc.) and fires can now produce hotter temperatures (depending on their fire stage/level of stoking). (Thanks Anketam!)
• Found/looted items will no longer be guaranteed to disassemble to their exact quality; however, rarely, they can surpass its quality.
• You can now swim to other islands without a boat once reaching 80% swimming skill.
• Friendly merchants will no longer walk over plants that can be trampled.
• Re-balanced many weapon/tool gathering capabilities with the new "Chop" and "Mine" properties applied. There will be a bigger gap between the two depending on the weapon/tool. Many weapons will perform worse as tools now as a result.
• Scales and animal hides no longer count as "fabric". Other fabric types and sources now drop and are found more commonly to compensate for this.
• There is now a chance of dismantling items into one higher quality, but also a greater chance of producing lower qualities as a trade-off.
• Tweaked resource gathering item quality slightly so that quality items drop a bit more frequently at lower skill/tool tier levels especially for resources that have an increased quality.
• Increased the extra durability given with the "Crafter" milestone modifier. Durability is now doubled (up from 1.4).
• You can no longer gain multiple skill points (decreasing reputation each time) per single chop/mine/gather action.
• Chop and Mining (previously gather) actions reputation loss will now be affected by tool's action tiers.
• Magical reputation properties will no longer get rerolled between benignity/malignity when transmogrified (this is reserved for "altering").
• Iron has been made slightly rarer, while limestone has been made a bit more common on ice cap islands.
• Certain plants have been removed from the "Arid" islands types and moved to the new "Volcanic" island type.
• Lava has been made rarer in coastal and arid island types.
• Cotton bolls will now dismantle into cotton and cotton seeds.
• Lockpicks can now be crafted directly from cactus spines instead of having to craft a cactus needle first.
• Increased the time you can be without seeing a merchant NPC before it has a chance to wander away.
• Increased weight bonus granted from boats' paddle action tier by 2.5x.
• Boats' paddle action tiers no longer decrease the stamina reduction of carrying too much weight while sailing.
• Reduced hot and cold insulation on scale armor.
• Lockpicks now require two needle-like (or spines) to craft (up from 1).

Bug Fixes

• Fixed recipes not being discovered properly from adjacent containers.
• Fixed merchant NPCs able to be spawned inside blocked doodads like walls.
• Fixed entities standing on walkable doodads rendering above tall doodads. (Thanks riftborn!)
• Fixed the magical reputation properties not being properly accounted for when doing reputation cap calculations. (Thanks SMMFO!)
• Fixed quicklotted items automatically restocking items that were already quickslotted in another slot, causing multiple issues. (Thanks Neo Blitz!)
• Fixed a game freeze when resetting chat filters. (Thanks Luxodjen!)
• Fixed some cases where crafting/dismantle highlights were not updating properly. (Thanks Anketam!)
• Fixed back equipment rendering over top of tall doodads when standing on top of a doodad and behind another doodad. (Thanks TheLukeyBoi!)
• Removed most action shortcuts due to inconsistencies and issues caused by this system and replaced with the new action quickslot system.
• Fixed dragging quickslots dropping the item on the ground instead of clearing the quickslot.
• Fixed the old/new tooltips being able to overlap each other on equipment.
• Fixed possibility of items breaking without prompts being shown in some rare cases.
• Fixed no tools being effective for gathering tile events (honey fungus, tumbleweeds, etc.). (Thanks Ashery!)
• Fixed quick moving items (with Shift + Left Click) ignoring filtering. (Thanks riftborn!)
• Fixed shutting down multiplayer games sometimes showing "Lost connection" errors instead of "Server shutdown".
• Fixed the tooltip describing why you're unable to join a multiplayer server only showing when you're not hovering the server's metadata.
• Fixed many actions being performed when they shouldn't have been able to (without any visual feedback and sometimes passing turns) in multiplayer games.
• Fixed a few WebGL memory leaks.
• Fixed occasional errors when joining games from the multiplayer menu.
• Fixed a rare multiplayer desync that could occur when players were joining a server.
• Fixed exploits related to crafted tiles and flooring. (Thanks Ashery!)
• Fixed multiplayer desyncs related to updating options.
• Fixed the mercantile note not triggering for all instances of starting trades. (Thanks Ashery!)
• Fixed miscellaneous UI data sometimes not being synced to the server in multiplayer games, based on update order.
• Fixed some quickslot bugs when loading very old saves.
• Fixed containers within chests getting extra reduced weight. (Thanks riftborn!)
• Fixed an issue where large, contiguous regions of temperature producers could cause a stack overflow.
• Fixed some buttons with only an icon no longer having a background.
• Fixed instances where certain items were spawning on merchants in the wrong island type.
• Fixed status effects not updating immediately when moving between cave and overworld
• Fixed status effects not updating when teleporting.
• Fixed rare multiplayer desyncs related to random map templates.
• Fixed the craft action not having a tooltip when inspected.
• Potentially fixed exporting large save games freezing the game indefinitely.
• Fixed errors loading certain saves for games created on version 2.5.7 or lower.
• Fixed a brief menu flash when exiting a game or canceling out of the pause menu.
• Fixed featherweight not being applied properly to inherited items. (Thanks Ashery!)
• Fixed the messages dialog's scrollbar being too far over in small UI scales.
• Fixed the island at -1,0 always having the same seed as 0,0. (Thanks riftborn!)
• Fixed doodads/tile events being converted to the wrong doodads/tile events when upgrading older saves.
• Fixed dropdown-based settings getting reverted when going back into custom game settings after accepting them.
• Fixed resetting unlocked crafting recipes not working.
• Fixed allowing protected items when copying maps. (Thanks riftborn!)
• Fixed an issue with the raft animation.

Technical

• Migrated to ISteamNetworkingMessages for Steam Multiplayer
• Improved performance of moving/dropping items to/from containers and general performance of having containers/inventory opened. (Thanks riftborn!)
• Improved performance of crafting and dismantling items.
• Fixed various memory leaks throughout the game.
• Reduced the Wayward directory and download size by 60%.
• The old hook system has been removed in favor of events. Additional event buses have been added to assist in adoption.
• Gameplay modifiers have been re-coded so that there can be separate instances for each island.
• Synced particle effect simulation with game tick rate.
• Added an option to enable save compression, which can reduce save sizes by up to 80%.
• Reduced size of large games by up to 50%.
• Saving and loading large games is now faster.
• Tile rendering has been optimized to render only what is in view, leading to increased performance and faster loading.
• Upgraded Wayward to Electron 16.05.
• Increased speed of joining multiplayer games by always sending clients a compressed save.
• Added a +syncChecks dedicated server argument.
• Fixed wayward.cmd file to make running wayward commands easier not being in the "wayward/bin" directory.
• The loading screen UI and the code that queues it are now separated, along with prompt UI and the code that queues up prompts for the user.
• Added a warning when attempting to launch newer development branch games on older build time as it can lead to corruption.
• Removed the "limitFPS" launch option as it no longer can function.
• Updated UI frameworks.

Modding

• Mods can now configure the order of custom menu bar buttons, placing them anywhere within the vanilla menu bar button order, or even not showing them at all by default.
• Added support for modding in new UI quadrant components.

Mods

• Changed dialog key bind to "," and toggle to "." (to not conflict with the new Islands dialog key bind)
• Fixed getting stuck while attempting to till a tile with a tamed creature on it.
• Now knows that sleeping with torches in a bad idea.
• Fixed not planting seeds (or tilling the ground) while in "Gardener" mode in some instances.
• Fixed recovery threshold not updating immediately after changing the UI slider.
• Fixed recovery thresholds not being set to an appropriate level on new games.
• Fixed trying to build objects over cave entrances.
• Fixed issues organizing the base when there's nothing to organize.
• Fixed errors related to loading games that previously had Quantum Burst Mode enabled.
• Fixed TARS running out of memory and crashing the game when trying to dismantle certain items.
• Will now craft and use bedding items to rest with.
• Will no longer get stuck when its boat breaks.
• Fixed memory leaks.
• Added a "Move To" panel to the dialog that lets you instruct TARS to move to a specified island, player, NPC, terrain, or object.
• Added a quadrant component to make it easy to view the status of TARS without requiring a dialog. It defaults to the bottom right of the screen.
• Fixed being able to attack without passing turns.
• Added "Terminator" mode.
• Added "Quest" mode.