Greetings adventurers! We have another content update for the game. This time we're finally bringing trainers into Thornhill city as well, and they'll have plenty of new abilities and skill improvements to sell. This update also adds two new quests into Thornhill city, alongside other smaller features, improvements and bugfixes. More details below! This will be the last Early Access content update for some time, as we're working on sweeping changes to transition the game out of its Early Access state. We'll still be delivering bugfixes and otherwise update on our progress through blog posts. [h1]The Academy of Masters[/h1] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37778218/5d9c77e7b4bb68557a6a776dd95a083dcec9a78c.png[/img] Within the Academy of Masters you'll find trainers for all the skill disciplines, who may expand your powers and abilities now all the way to level 50. The trainers will also ultimately provide crafting stations as furniture to be obtainable for player homes, as well as special tool racks. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37778218/e9d33101934afafe9677e9b02f327d851f06d7f9.png[/img] The advanced combat skill trainers provide a number of abilities to be unlocked, such as leaping at your opponents or firing exploding arrows at them, to make combat a little bit more active and to give further tools against challenging boss opponents. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37778218/5433b7edb75f4ea0b136ca8b2a89ecbe0fb17416.gif[/img][img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37778218/27e1ae15d36f1224350eb36ced114f8925a9a0bf.gif[/img] There are more utilitarian abilities to unlock as well, for instance you're now able to turn logs into river canoes near bodies of water to make traveling around the map more convenient. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37778218/c490d58748b2a8abb2cd74e09a5d07e971d91867.gif[/img] [h1]New Quest: Tribulations of Higher Education[/h1] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37778218/d7c2d15945747214f40298d9217ba2108a3515fb.png[/img] [table noborder=1] [tr] [th][img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37778218/d37b511347e5c5e0776b633aec4c7c8b991062b6.png[/img] Starting location[/th] [th]Thornhill Academy[/th] [/tr] [tr] [th][img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37778218/777ba94122f7055783e005dccc5ebaf2b8072fa6.png[/img] Quest length[/th] [th]Medium[/th] [/tr] [/table] The Thornhill Academy has a lot stricter standards of admission than Haywind College! Not just anyone can be let in, you know. You'll have to impress the instructors and the headmaster in a new quest "Tribulations of Higher Education", which you can start by talking to the academy's Headmaster Trevelyan. Within the quest you'll gain access to a sheltered area accessed within Thornhill city, which will contain all the crafting stations within a single location. It serves much the same purpose as the crafting guild in Haywind, adding an easy go-to alternative for when you need to access one of those workbenches. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37778218/85fef7cae8a3031a5937fc5ed19caa9f3cddc56b.png[/img] [h1]New Quest: Historical Undertaking the II[/h1] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37778218/76c25ab8bfe95e9a63be8065675b83ae436f7ebb.png[/img] [table noborder=1] [tr] [th][img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37778218/d37b511347e5c5e0776b633aec4c7c8b991062b6.png[/img] Starting location[/th] [th]Thornhill's Preservation Society[/th] [/tr] [tr] [th][img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37778218/777ba94122f7055783e005dccc5ebaf2b8072fa6.png[/img] Quest length[/th] [th]Medium[/th] [/tr] [/table] The Curator of Thornhill's Preservation society has a new task to further open up Thornhill's catacomb area. It should no longer cause confusion regarding to what extent that dungeon is accessible. In theme with the Curator's previous quest, completing his task will unlock additional new furniture to decorate your homes with. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37778218/ba34f2df64eabfa47fba7b526f7eb9403a7d5c6c.png[/img] [h1]Other Changes[/h1] [h2]Life at the Smuggler Village[/h2] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37778218/d15963728aec7f3b76ae95427092d2f08dc3d323.png[/img] Our previous update on the swamp smuggler's village left the location looking very unpolished. To be fair, it's not the only one of its kind in the game as of currently, but we took the opportunity to give the building interiors appropriate decoration and lighting. Additionally the location is now packed with miscellaneous, highly interactive npcs, which should breathe some new life to the place when traveling through. [h2]Updated Pathfinder![/h2] We're now updating the game with a new, completely overhauled pathfinder. From the beginning the absolute most commonly occurring bug report we keep receiving is the player character becoming stuck somewhere. The new pathfinder ought to resolve the majority of these issues, though ironically it may also have introduced some new ones. If you encounter getting stuck somewhere, somehow, please do keep reporting on these. We'll do our best now to regularly iron out any remaining wrinkles regarding this issue. [h2]New Settings for Optimizing Performance[/h2] We're aware of the stuttering issues in the game and continue looking into solutions to address the fundamental causes. We've mentioned potentially reworking a lot of the houses before, which in their current state are causing problems especially in/near the large cities. For now, we've brought a few additional settings into the game that should hopefully help alleviate the issue if you're running into unbearable stuttering: [list] [*] Disable Background Characters - hides "useless" characters that cannot fight or be interacted with, should improve performance in crowded areas like cities, at the cost of making them look more empty. (At the moment selecting this also removes most background conversations between random npcs...) [*] Reduce Movement Quality - improves performance and stutters, at the cost of less smooth character movement [*] Lower Characters Load Speed - improves performance by limiting the rate at which characters are loaded, but might result in more characters visually 'popping' into view [/list] [h2]Notable Bugfixes[/h2] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37778218/cc6b87bd09724ce03f99ce4e50b99b840348c667.gif[/img] [list] [*]The large pillars in the main quest's final boss fight now successfully block the spinning spell that slowly follows the player [*]Screen sometimes turning black and game freezing during boat travel [*]Interacting with Horsy the pack mule sometimes resulting in multiple Horsys [*]Arakite hammer can now be used for refining ore [*]Fixed three trainer spells - Deadly Strikes, Flight of Arrows and Meditation - to have cooldowns and mana costs, which they previously did not have. [*]Adjusted all hostile npc stats and loot within thornhill catacombs [*]Fixed broken combat stats on some trolls and adjusted all trolls stats, for instance to include hp regeneration. [*]Added trader icon and right-click trade option to Agathe in swamp village after her quest is complete, which was previously missing. [/list] [h1]Next Steps[/h1] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37778218/40f0633c20774569d628c67b5bfb5b32abfe0184.png[/img] At this stage we're pausing larger updates, as we're focused now on delivering some sweeping changes, sorting out all clearly unfinished things and trying to polish out as much jank as possible, so as to haul the game out of Early Access. Before then, we'll still deliver small updates in the form of bug fixing where needed. We'll also do our best to write dev blogs to showcase our progress and what will be coming in the "release" update of the game. Thank you all for the continued support, feedback and for playing the game as much as some of you already have - thank you, and happy gaming! Regards, Pura [url={STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37778218/1cef0cb9a4965046e3f72edfc2c36bd6d8531a88.jpg][img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37778218/247aa3eb17d926c35e32b2c1920b1021b6c8e16a.jpg[/img][/url] [url=https://discord.gg/gsBnQAbJ6t][img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37778218/85f1405872107bb94b9cc4556c6786a5badda02b.png[/img][/url]