After a very nice and refreshing holiday break, we're back on track with the updates! And this is a big one. Version 0.6.6 brings access to a new area called Frore. It's linked to Hibernus (beyond checkpoint Kappa), and can be entered now that most of those blue transparent dev barries have been removed. Note that there are still some of them left blocking the way. I don't want to spoil anything, so no comments on the area itself -- besides that it does include The Ark, which is NOT accessible yet. #soon(ish) #ark #ark-life All in all this means we're almost half way there in terms of the island surface area. Not everything in those areas is accessible, so wouldn't dare to say we're actually half finished. But making steady progress I think.
As usual, the level cap has been increased +1. You'll be able to craft yourself a fancy new Winter Coat and pick up one new Skill if your XP is already hanging around the cap area. We've also done one scary thing that we should have done in the first Early Access release... The game binaries are now 64-bit only. This fixes tons of issues and greatly improves the game stability on some systems. Looking at (opt-in) Steam hardware stats, nobody is playing this on 32-bit Windows, but if you are, please contact us at dysmantle [at] 10tons.com and we'll work something out. Meanwhile, you should be able to continue playing the previous build available in 'previous_default' branch.

Highlights

There's also tons of other tweaks and improvements. Highlighting a few of them here.

Monster Radar

After the previous Link Tower Ascension update some of you have had problems locating the remaining monsters in the areas. You'll hopefully appreciate the new Scanning functionality which shows the remaining monsters on the map.

Unified Options

The new Unified Options screen now combines the several options screen (Gameplay, Graphics, Controls Audio) under one life-embracing experience.

Depth of Field

There's also a new experimental Depth of Field effect, which works kinda nicely most of the time. However, if you find it distracting, you can always disable it in Graphics options. We'll probably be tweaking this further.

Material Stacks

Some of you tricksters have tried dropping your whole Orange Storage Box worth of materials on ground at the same spot and... it doesn't end well steamfacepalm So materials are now dropped in stacks (if you drop more than 5 at the same time). This makes the save file smaller and reduces the amount of actors (in game objects) on screen, which helps performance-wise. This feature isn't very photogenic.

Map Point of Interest Filters

Then there's a brand new Map Filters menu which can be used to customize your view on map Point of Interests. That should be helpful when trying to find all Fishing spots for example. You can also hide all completed icons which makes the remaining items pop out better.

Tree Stumps & Wall Rubble

There's also one rather embarrassing thing that we've noticed. We've spent MONTHS and MONTHS designing and carefully crafting the island, and now you guys are suddenly just smashing everything to pieces. The problem is that the environment looks a lot less attractive with all the objects gone, so we're now making sure parts of that stuff remains after the destruction. For example we added some wall rubble before, and we've now added tree stumps - nature's own gravestones.

Localization Preparation

Behind the scenes we're also preparing for the upcoming localization process. But alas, the support for the Turkish language is not coming any time soon. But I think we've been able to solve all the issues of localizing this sort of open world game, so all is well in those regards.

Change Log

But I think that's more than enough feature highlighting. Here's the full change log:

ADDED

- Access to new area 'Frore'. - Level Cap is now 26. - New craftable: Winter Coat. - In-game cutscene skip support (not all cutscenes support this yet). Hold down mouse buttons, space, or gamepad A/B to skip. - Map point of interest filters menu. - Depth of Field effect (simple approximation) in Graphical Options. - Showing completed Quests in pause menu. - Added Unified Options menu. - Added Gameplay Option to remove Material Tracking Notification Animation bouncing. - Showing farmed plants on world map and minimap. - Key combo Control+U shows/hides UI. Useful for grabbing screenshots without the UI elements. - Slightly reduced miniboss colliders sizes, so they should fit through narrow doorways. - Material stacks. Dropping bigger amounts of materials results in tighter stacks and doesn't bloat the save file. - Link Tower now has 'Scan Monsters' button option after you've installed the Radar. It shows remaining monster locations. - Cut down trees now leave tree stumps.

CHANGED

- Timed Chests are not hidden from the map after opened to make it easier to track them. - Made the "Hibernus" tomb a bit easier. - Made "Hedgefield" tower area slightly smaller so all enemies needed for ascension are encounterable. - Nerfed "Dentured Fangs". - Enemies don't just blindly follow animals any more if there are other targets. - Fishing quest now takes previously fished fishes into account. - Now using 64-bit binaries. - Slight wording change to "Endless Trash" to avoid confusion re: digging.

FIXED

- Crash that could happen when opening up the map. - Window cursor being offset after starting the game or changing display config. - Critical hit damage increases are now calculated correctly. - Oddly placed broken wall pieces are now also destroyed when nearby walls get destroyed. - A bug that permanently prevented materials being collected. - Shadow cast rendering bug. - Various crash bugs that happened when playing longer sessions. - Ruthless Pitcher should not respawn any more when ascending. - No longer possible to change secondary item while aiming a throwable. - Sleeping now increases the related medal progression correctly. - Fixes to option saving. - Tab key doesn't change pause menu tabs if bound to inventory or map. - Usual fixes to graphical bugs and glitches. - UI optimizations for screens with lots of items.

What's Up Next

After these two northern areas, the next area update will grant access beyond the southern Wall Checkpoint Rho. You can expect this area to be available in the next three weeks. We may also drop another feature/fix/feedback update before that, but we'll see. The next area after that is also being worked on, (spoiler: it's a new environment type), so you should expect that to be released very soon after the next one.