Hello and welcome to DevBlog #80!

This time, we have more or less pinned down the release timing for the Hunting & Tailoring update. And we'll be showing off a bunch of new QoL features this update is going to bring with it. Plus as an extra we have a sneak peek on what should be released few weeks after this update along with some other new features!

Let's get started!

Release schedule for Hunting and Tailoring

We are currently on the last stretch of balancing and adding in the last bits of content needed for this update to go live.

We're currently looking to release it on 11th of March! But if in our final testing some needs arise or more polishing or testing would be needed, we'll release it on 18th of March.

As we're also releasing a new server that will be handling the over-the-air updates, we're a bit more limited on what date we can release this on as we need one where we can stay up late fixing any possible problems that the new server might have.

There will be much longer than usual maintenance due to the server work, so be prepared for that. We'll announce more accurate server maintenance times once we're closer to the release in a DevUpdate.

Quality of Life

Not only will this update come with a truckload of new content, but we've been hard at work adding some QoL that will be shipping with the update too.

Here's an overview on some of them!

All Attributes page

There's a new view to see all currently active attributes in the game

We've added a new page to the game where you'll be able to see all of your active attributes. This new page is accessible from both the Gear page and from the main activity view, by pressing a new button.

In this view you can also filter the activities based on what's giving them. If you want to only see what your tools give, or for instance what your tools and your pet gives, all of that is possible here.

It also shows things such as the "overleveling" bonus you get to your work efficiency.

Reworked attribute listing UI

Attribute listing page has been improved to make improve its readability

While working on the show all attributes page, I also overhauled the look of the listed attributes. Functionally it's the same, but I added more colors, contrast, padding and other goodies to make it much more easier to navigate if you want to open up the nested extendables.

Open X amount of chests

I'll need to improve the width of the slider still, but you'll be able to open any amount of chests now!

One of the requests we've had for some time now, but it's finally here: now in the treasury view you can use a slider to choose the amount of chests you want to open.

Keywords page in WalkPedia

You can find all keywords and how many items yoi have with those keywords from WalkPedia!

This was already mentioned in the last devblog briefly, but it's now ready. You can now in the game tap on any keywords (like light source) and see all of the items that have the keyword.

Main UI overhaul

The main UI has been refreshed a bit to increase the available vertical space and clarify the buttons!

This was partly done as a performance improvement, fixing some parts of the logic to make the game run faster. But while at it I also did some improvements to the main view of the game based on all of the feedback we've got from the community.

We also "hid" a bunch of the always shown descriptive texts in the views under the question mark buttons. This makes the views fit more information and remove some of the clutter that the long texts caused.

Performance improvements

I've also done a ton of general performance improvements to the game, trying to address problems especially common on Pixel devices (ANR issue). While we can't say for sure if these fix those, the current testing shows that the performance has improved quite a lot. So at the very least, I think it's safe to assume that this should make those less frequent and hopefully we will find solutions that fix those issues for good.

Crafting now remembers choosing a fine material

Crafting view now remembers if you've chosen a fine material

Another minor thing we've heard a lot of people asking for! But now in the crafting UI if you choose a fine material, it actually selects fine materials once you choose a recipe as the inputs.

And more

These are just the main ones, but naturally the update will include a bunch of small improvements, bug fixes, and more. We'll release the full changelogs later!

World Map rework

While zoomed out, you'll be able to see the different realms of Arenum!

This is still very much WiP, and something that our new developer Crushy has been working on!

The original world map in the game was coded a long time ago, and to make it be more performant and support more cool stuff people have been asking for, we've been reworking it from scratch.

The new world map, which should be released few weeks after the content update with some other new features, improves on several the original in multiple ways:

• You can see where your friends are in the new world map.
• We have improved the performance massively, making it a lot smoother.
• The route markers no longer overlap in places where there are a lot of them, making it much cleaner.
• Zooming out you can see the borders of the different factions in the game. We're still debating if Syrenthia will be shown or hidden :D
• Improvements to seeing what locations you haven't explored & you only have rumors for.
• Support added for things like quest markers.

Things that we'll aim to add include:

• Having a way to search the locations and do some filtering.
• Seeing a bit more info when zoomed in about the locations (like has a bank, services it got, and something about the activities)

Seeing your friends on the map alone is pretty cool, I'm personally quite excited to finally be able to see all my friends there!

Still WiP, but not there are no longer overlapping routes, which makes the map look a lot cleaner!

Until next time

That's all for today!

We're hoping that we can get all of the necessary missing pieces ready for the release on 11th, but as said, if that doesn't work out we're certain that it's then going to be released on the 18th.

I know it's weird to have two release dates here (the other could be considered a fallback date), but we really want to get this out as soon as possible and it's very difficult to give a clear date and time when there are still a few things missing. And I know there's a ton of excitment, so we want to deliver as soon as it's ready. With the accompanying server update however, this is a bit trickier than usual.

I hope you enjoyed the DevBlog, and see you again on the upcoming DevUpdate and the next DevBlog!

Keep walking and stay hydrated!