Happy Wednesday everyone! Welcome to this MoonWard going Forward blog! Once again it's me Mr. Slate with some updates on the state of MoonWard.
Before I begin - next patch will come out a week: Tuesday 28th of November 2023. As usual there will be a video on Saturday detailing the new additions. Also... this means the last version for the year will be out on the 19th of December. I'll have to do something special!
Last couple of months have been hard. Between EGX, baby Slate and doing some contracting on the side to fund MoonWard I've barely had any time to work on it. That being said I still managed to do 2 of the 4 points I planned for in this time, as well as a brand new feature - item infusion. What I failed to do is write one of these for October. I honestly forgot... October was rough!
The coming release will contain mostly quality of life features, polish and bug fixes. With one notable exception - I added new areas and dwellings, including new bounties, and made area and county images county-specific. These new images reinforce the lore. County one now has locations like factories and quarries, reflecting the modern industry prevalent there, while county two has more traditional dwarven architecture emphasizing stone and gold, including town houses and dwarven factories.
So let's see what I've got planned for future releases after next week.
Disposition. Same as last time. Named, non-bounty characters will remember your previous interactions and will like/dislike you based on your conversations. This can result in bonus rewards when finishing main/side stories, hidden conversation options, new practise partners, hidden stories etc..
Underground. I didn't have the time for this content. This would be a new universal biome, however I will try to use them sparsely because the game is already suffering from requiring too much writing. It would house dwellings like ruins, caverns, mines and yes... sewers.
Notes. An in game encyclopedia with collectable entries. The basics will be unlocked by default but there will be books awarded by completing adventures. At the very least, notes will give helpful combat tips against specific enemes or simply expand the lore. Reading these books will award a small amount of xp, unlock a note with some images and be sellable like any other valuable.
New enemies. Without going into too many details, I think there are holes in the enemy roster and I'd like to fill them.
Overall, MoonWard is getting close to feature complete. I expect the patch in January to be one of the last (if not the last) for the demo before the full release some time in spring 2024. Otherwise, MoonWard is stable, there are very few bugs I'm aware of and it'll go through another QA round before full release so hopefully that will be everything covered.
Please keep an eye out for the release trailer on Saturday and I hope to see you again next Tuesday for the patch notes! Have a great week!