Hot off the heels of our latest newsletter, we are opening up our development branch to test all the latest additions and a poll to help name this release. If you plan to partake in the testing of this release, after loading the game you will be greeted with a new special dialog explaining the current issues and/or status of the development branch including some bugs we are looking for feedback on. It will be quite buggy for the first little while!

Naming Ideas

Here Be [strike]Dragons[/strike] Drakes

New

• You can now "stack" and "unstack" like items. Item stacks display as if they are the "best" item in the stack, with a quantity of how many total items are in the stack. You can hold "ctrl" to temporarily expand the stack your mouse is over.
• Merchant trading has been redesigned.
• Added wheelbarrows, allowing you to push and pull additional storage.
• All container dialogs throughout the game (your inventory, held containers, container doodads, vehicles, NPCs) have been ported to the new UI system, fixing some longstanding issues and improving performance.
• Added armor stands, allowing you to store armor and weapon sets visually with the ability to quick-swap certain builds.
• The actions drawer now supports selecting a specific item type from a list of all discovered item types, and selecting a range of qualities.
• Ice and puddles (on certain terrain) are now slippery and will cause slippery movement for players (with certain footwear) and some creatures, more so if jumped upon.
• Added a "heel" or "follow, but don't attack" command for tamed creatures.
• Added crucibles, a new device for smelting ores.
• Added a new type of skeleton that can appear from skeletal remains based on alignment and other factors.
• Added a new "shadowy" creature.
• Added a new magical property "persistence" which increases max item durability far beyond normal means among other bonuses.
• Added aberrant versions of all fish.
• Minecarts can now push other minecarts. The faster the tier of minecart, the more minecarts can be pushed.
• Added conifer resins, pitch, and glue for use in new recipes and reinforcing.
• The chance to craft mastercrafted items is now revealed at 100% skill.
• Added two new books.
• You can now drag actions from context menus to the action bar.
• Added fish bones and glue.
• Added notifiers when dual-wielding is enabled/disabled.
• There is a new custom creature spawn rate multiplier option that will allow you to scale the rate at which creatures spawn including disabling it altogether.
• Added two new milestones and modifiers to do with creature spawn rates.
• The "Move All" and "Move All of Quality" actions can now be bound to the action bar.
• Added an audio cue when encumbered or overburdened.
• You can now set maxed skills as your in-game title.
• Added an automatically updating notice to launching the development branch of the game.
• Magical Binding now has a new action and use involving attack and defense bonuses.
• Added a number of new sound effect variations around inventory management.
• Added "Thaumaturgic", a new milestone and modifier for finding every type of magical property.
• Added the "Runekeeper" milestone and modifier.
• Added a new milestone, "Curator" for discovering every item quality.
• Added the "Dedicated" milestone and milestone modifier, allowing players to set one that raises faster than all others, while the rest raise very slowly.
• Added OLED burn-in protection for HUD/UI elements.
• Added a multiplayer option to pause server when desync occurs.
• Each island now progresses or "ticks" independently.
• Added a new help article about "Item Protection".

Improvements

• The milestones dialog now displays milestone icons & can be resized to display multiple columns.
• Added particle effects to crafting/dismantle/disassemble actions with colors based on the item.
• Dripstones and stills now show a purification counter in their tooltip.
• Dripstones and stills now have variable turns taken for desalination based on type.
• "Animal Glue" is now "Bone Glue" and will only require bones instead of bones and offal.
• The "Keep Sort Active" option has been replaced with simply persisting the selected sort in containers. When manually reordering items, the sort changes to display "Custom" instead of a sort, as no sort is active anymore.
• Efficacy, success, quality chances and percentages are no longer shown when not meeting the requirements (as they were not accurate).
• Action slots no longer automatically switch to "best item" until you attempt to use the slot a second time. (Thanks muzzy!)
• Some milestones are now hidden entirely until you complete previous milestones, to make the milestones dialog a bit less overwhelming. (IE Survivor reveals Weathered reveals Seasoned.)
• Advancing island turns is now nearly instant at the cost of accuracy.
• Options for the action bar are now accessible via a new button alongside the + and - buttons.
• Improved the performance of displaying non-craftable items, and of dimming out irrelevant items in containers when one or more are highlighted.
• Improved performance of tooltips.
• Orb of Influence has been renamed to "Cracked Orb" to be used as a new magical component for unlocking the "alter" action.
• The "active container" highlight is now a tab on the side of containers. You can click the tab to manually set the active container instead of using the container the game thinks is best.
• The "open container" action now makes the container active if it's already open.
• Grabbing or clicking on an item from a container no longer makes the container active, allowing you to use the item "quick-move" feature between containers.
• Fires will now be more visible on tiles that contain items. (Thanks DerSimon!)
• "Copal" has been removed and replaced with "Hide Glue" with similar uses/efficacy.
• Changed some default action binds away from WASD keys, for example, Dismantle and Disassemble which caused many accidental actions.
• You can now use the mouse to organize all items of a type or quality within a single container.
• Doodads that block line of sight will now illuminate their surrounding tiles properly when on fire. (Thanks muzzy!)
• When building or picking up containers, the container dialog now stays opened.
• The skills and milestones dialogs now save their sort options when reloading the game. (Thanks !)
• NPCs will now prefer to attack their attacker instead of the nearest player.
• Killing creatures via traps, tamed creatures, or fire now provides the correct loot quality bonuses. (Thanks Art Shrival!)
• The days and alignment server details now are a cumulative total and average respectively across all islands.
• Improved support for slow multiplayer connections.
• NPCs can no longer spawn within line of sight to a player.
• "Dig With Hands" is no longer available on piles of rocks or other doodads. (Thanks muzzy!)
• Changed the "Rest" action to auto-use only when you have the "tired" status effect.
• Trampling fire now produces messages for partial/failure events.
• Equipment slots and action slots can now be inspected with the Inspect dialog.
• Puddles now provide audio/visual cues when stepped on.
• The islands dialog now displays waves as decorations between the islands.
• Updated the appearance of the weight tooltip.
• Equipped lit torches now provide heat.
• You will now receive a warning when overwatering small plants. (Thanks Ze!)
• Holding alt while slotting an item or action in the action bar now slots it with auto-use enabled.
• Container weight is now revalidated on reload (for save compatibility). (Thanks Veeyu!)
• NPCs will now attempt to move off of dangerous tiles.
• The "dangerous" creature tier has been renamed to "vicious" to differentiate it from the "danger level" mechanic.
• You can now sort milestones by "recent".
• Puddles now decay faster if walked on, but last a bit longer by default.
• The doodad version of "skill" magical properties will now have an "encircling" affix.
• Action slots containing an item now highlight when the mouse is over the item in your inventory.
• You can now navigate backward and forward through your Inspect dialog inspection history.
• Useful item hover binds are now described in the inventory management help article.
• Your carry & max weight now display in your inventory dialog with a tooltip.
• Updated some old references in the help articles.
• You can now click on most tooltip links to open that tooltip in the Inspect dialog, rather than needing to press shift+right click in all cases.
• New items were added to the challenge mode's "get item" quests.

Balance

• Removed the concept of "ingots" and replaced it with a "smelted" version of ore, reducing amount of consumed materials needed to do metalworking.
• Merchant and shipper spawning rules have been reworked so that the chance of additional NPCs is decreased for each additional NPC of that type already on the island. Additional flooring tiles also no longer increases the chance of them spawning besides what civilization score they provide. (Thanks Nameless!)
• Tin armor no longer has vulnerability to cold damage.
• Invisible and mystery milestones will now display their name/description/progress after reaching 50% completion.
• Increased cold and blunt vulnerability on bronze armor.
• Decreased the maximum amount of hours you can sleep for.
• Trampling fire can now increase or decrease its strength along with its ability to spread/be stomped out.
• Reduced the amount of ore per resource tile slightly.
• Increased the difficulty of crafts advanced through master slightly, making efficacy/skill more useful at higher levels.
• You can no longer go over the reputation/alignment cap. Anything that checked for this will now just check that you are at the cap instead.
• The "Alter" action no longer consumes the item, but instead uses its durability as a "charge".
• You can no longer jump while swimming.
• Initial skill(s) now start at a much higher value including all milestone modifiers that affect starting skills.
• Merchants no longer stock magical essence. (Thanks Veeyu!)
• Reduced maximum durability bonuses for qualities and reinforcing slightly.
• Tongs are now required for any blacksmithing craft or disassembly that requires fire.
• Tin items no longer require a sand cast flask when disassembling them.
• Dripstones will now take longer to desalinate in general.
• You can no longer disassemble dripstones and they now have a reduced weight when crafted.
• Increased the default rarity of non-normal quality items and magical properties slightly, but increased the bonuses provided through action tiers to get quality items.
• Skeletons will now fall back into remains after killing a player.
• The chance of receiving a mastercrafted item now scales based on skill as well as the previous random chance and efficacy percentage with more weight being placed on skill/efficacy rather than pure randomness with higher caps on each.
• Mudskippers now accept more raw fish types and forms.
• Shippers now have a bit more offensive capabilities.
• Aberrant fish no longer can move under the player.
• Shippers no longer stop to attack creatures if they are actively shipping items.
• Shippers no longer can have their boats damaged by creatures. (Thanks Nameless!)
• Creatures have reduced hostility towards shippers that are currently on a job.
• Skeleton attack damage has been decreased.
• Attacking your tamed creatures now decreases their happiness further.
• Decreased the skill check for tilling as well as increased the chance at gaining skill when failing.
• Reduced chances of hardened coils spawning on lava.
• Increased shark's attack and health values.
• Increased the minimum amount of turns to sleep/rest.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed tooltip tile quality color not updating when hovering over while it changes.
• Fixed being able to import global save data as a game save and vice versa. (Thanks tr1ger1n86!)
• Fixed a build item animation appearing for a frame or two when hopping between vehicles. (Thanks Veeyu!)
• Fixed Move Item actions not displaying a red message and preventing use when the item(s) don't fit in a container.
• Fix ride action on an adjacent minecart picking up the current minecart.
• Fixed being able to run some actions on-top of players that are connecting to the multiplayer server.
• Fixed being able to have games with "undefined" names on dedicated servers.
• Fixed action menus not updating "can use" status when other players move in front of where you are facing.
• Fixed generated tiles always being damaged when dug up. (Thanks muzzy!)
• Fixed "unknown" items showing up as "1" on the ground, or blank in messages instead of "unknown" items.
• Fixed protected black powder being consumed.
• Fixed action slot usage not updating when going up/down levels or when teleporting.
• Speculatively fixed the possibility of items going to -1 decay. (Thanks muzzy!)
• Fixed item hover effects being disabled by the decay/durability bars. (Thanks muzzy!)
• Fixed decayed items not benefiting from "Hoarding".
• Fixed the defense inspect not updating changes to base defense values.
• Drastically improved the performance of opening the actions drawer by slotting an item without a primary use.
• Fixed aberrant spawn customizations tooltips showing incorrect titles. (Thanks !)
• Fixed the available ingredients for crafts/dismantles showing protected items that won't be used in the count. (Thanks muzzy!)
• Fixed assign to action slot binds not working.
• Fixed the actions drawer considering many actions applicable with any item type.
• Fixed cage names showing a variable in certain situations. (Thanks !)
• Fixed tooltips not updating in the world when moving.
• Fixed seawater not able to take over deep swamp/fresh water. (Thanks King Smidgens!)
• Fixed gathering swamp water not reducing water levels properly.
• Fixed dismantle tooltips disappearing quickly in real-time mode. (Thanks Silverspeedy!)
• Fixed water contamination logic failing when intersecting three different types of water. (Thanks King Smidgens!)
• Fixed low maximum durability items being repairable when protected even though repairing would destroy the item. (Thanks BeautifulNova!)
• Fixed mudskippers not being correctly spawned.
• Fixed tooltips occasionally flickering when moving.
• Fixed dismantle output looking janky in tooltips.
• Implemented a speculative fix for some mod registrations (for example, bindables) internally caching too early, causing some to be left out.
• Fixed the "reputation" label not working correctly in the multiplayer server browser.
• Fixed fires able to be in exist but in the "extinguished" status. (Thanks muzzy!)
• Fixed the daily challenge name being done in local time instead of UTC like the seed. (Thanks muzzy!)
• Fixed line of sight not being calculated when stepping outside of a cave after loading a save. (Thanks muzzy!)
• Fixed protected seeds being plantable. (Thanks muzzy!)
• Fixed disassembling items re-rolling magical properties. (Thanks muzzy!)
• Fixed some fairy ring templates not working.
• Fixed line of sight not being recalculated when placing walls. (Thanks muzzy!)
• Fixed the player sprite wiggling on coordinates equal to the power of 2.
• Fixed "blank" items being generated from burning. (Thanks tr1ger1n86!)
• Fixed sometimes not getting a starting skill.
• Fixed efficacy being inaccurate when using grouped items. (Thanks Aresff!)
• Fixed map dialogs staying opened after traveling. (Thanks muzzy!)
• Fixed the "replay" button not forwarding to the new game menu from the death & win screens. (Thanks BeautifulNova!)
• Fixed many instances of actions appearing in item right-click menus that are irrelevant and impossible.
• Fixed the bindings menu being blank when playing on a really old save with old saved bindings.
• Fixed errors in messages no longer having tooltips.
• Fixed decayed items not being able to be unequipped on NPCs. (Thanks Nameless!)
• Fixed item move actions not having tooltips.
• Fixed no sound effect playing when reorganizing items in your inventory.
• Fixed dripstones appearing lower on the tile.
• Fixed the "Apocryphal" milestone not triggering after using some magical component actions.
• Fixed stat bars animating in tooltips.
• Fixed creatures appearing over top of trees in certain instances.
• Fixed path to tile only moving one step at a time or prematurely cancelling movement.
• Fixed the reset options button not actually resetting some options like font style, audio, or language.
• Speculatively fixed auto actions not executing in multiplayer games under certain conditions until server is restarted.
• Fixed item-related memory leaks. (Thanks SwordForTheLord!)
• Fixed fire trampling being too common over decreasing/increasing its spread.
• Fixed NPCs not tracking damage from traps, fire, and other non-combat damage events.
• Drastically improved the performance of having large numbers of action slots and large numbers of visible items.
• Fixed raw clay mortar and pestle not being disassemblable. (Thanks muzzy!)
• Fixed teleporting using stamina when encumbered.
• Fixed ferocity display not being accurate. (Thanks Sensakuma!)
• Fixed protected items being shown in red when they could be used in disassembly. (Thanks muzzy!)

Technical

• The outlines around items in your inventory, containers, and the crafting dialog are generated automatically when the game is loading. This process has been sped up by around 50-60%.
• Improved load times when joining a multiplayer game with players on many different islands.
• Generated item outline sprites are now cached in a better way, potentially preventing some hangs on "Loading Items".
• Refactored the internals of the Mod system.
• Added checksums to save data for save corruption diagnosis.
• Disabled image outline generation logic on dedicated servers.
• Improved the speed of image outline sprite generation.
• Reworked some ActionArgument functionality to allow for custom argument types.

Modding

• Fixed modded ItemTypeGroup's not including nested ItemTypeGroup items.

Mods

• Added item group for craftable items

• Added a "Crash WebGL" button for testing purposes.
• Fixed "Revert Death" being duplicated when canceling quitting the game.
• Fixed changing maximum health not saving/updating properly.
• Healing yourself will no longer disable noclip.
• You can now add all items matching the dropdown filter text to a container.
• Added the ability to increase/decrease stat maximum values.
• The "inspect item" binding now works much more consistently.
• Filtered out heat & cold insulation from the editable stats in the Inspect dialog. (Thanks TheUnnamedStranger!)
• Renamed the Invulnerable option to Unkillable. (Thanks TheUnnamedStranger!)

• Improved determination on what creature is a threat or not.

• Fixed creatures not moving on older saves. (Thanks Tapenki!)
• Fixed cloud water not rendering correctly.
• Cloudstones no longer weigh as much.
• Nimbus is no longer is crafted with snowflakes and increased the feathers/cloudstones required to craft it.