Blog

Prepare for the bandit invasion!

What's up guys!

It's finally time to gear up for the highly anticipated "Bandit Invasion" update! I hope you're all doing well and are as excited as I am. I know it has taken a long time for this update to arrive, and for that, I apologize. Lots of stuff can interfere with development as a solo developer and I hope you guys can understand this.

Luckily the update is just around the corner and is going to bring a host of exciting changes to the game. Let me walk you through some of the key features:

Sleeper System

One major change in this update is the sleeper system that I implemented. Your character will persist in the game world, even when you're offline. This means that even when you're not playing, your character will still be in the game world sleeping on the ground. This feature will make the game world feel more immersive and will also make it impossible to simply log out with your most valuable items to keep them safe as you can still be killed by other players while you're offline.

It's important to note that once you log in after the update, your character will remain in the game world, so make sure to have a safe place to log out, like a house for example.

Now you're probably thinking about what will happen if you simply log out at Okura Village which is a safe zone. Well, that's the other major change... Okura Village will be removed because it would defeat the purpose of the sleeper system. With characters sleeping in the village, the system would become useless.

Trading Wagons

With the removal of Okura Village, the need for shops also had to be addressed. I tackled this by creating trading wagon NPCs that will travel across the map. The trading wagons will sell random goods with a limited supply that changes every hour and will also buy and repair your items.

The advantage of roaming trading wagons is that you can build your village anywhere on the map and still have access to a shop as they will pass by eventually. This means that building close to Okura Village is no longer necessary to reduce travel time.

Bandit Camps

The next big change that the update will bring is the introduction of bandit camps. These camps will be randomly scattered throughout the game world adding a new level of excitement to the game. You will be able to raid these camps and gather loot, with the added challenge of other players interfering during your battles. I can't wait to see players team up to take down these camps.

The camps will spawn with varying difficulty levels that will be indicated by star icons. The difficulty will range from one-star camps to four-star camps meaning even solo players will have a chance to join in on the action. When a new camp emerges, all players will receive a notification and the location will be visible on the world map. This also includes camps that had already spawned.

Camps will be populated with bandits that will come in the form of both melee and ranged units. There will also be crates and barrels to smash for extra loot and most camps will contain a bandit commander or multiple commanders/bosses for you to defeat. All sorts of random loot can be found at the bandit camps and one new rare item in particular (which drops mostly by the leaders), the Enhancement Stone, will bring a lot of change to the game.

Enhancement System

The new enhancement stones will introduce the brand new item enhancement system which will make it possible to enhance/upgrade your weapons, tools, and armor. This will bring major changes to the game as a fully enhanced weapon, for example, will have double the damage output, while a fully enhanced axe reduces the time to cut a tree in half!

The enhancement system will have its own tier system in terms of rarity, and items can be enhanced up to four times all the way up to 'Legendary'. However, this is no easy task as it will require quite a lot of enhancement stones and gold but it will definitely be rewarding as it will give you a major advantage in combat.

Food Buffs

Equipping yourself with the best set of enhanced armor and weapons is an essential step to becoming stronger in combat. However, I wanted to take this a step further and introduce food buffs. Currently, the food system only serves to fill the hunger meter and the higher-tier recipes provide limited benefits. That's why I developed a food buff system that temporarily increases player stats. These food buffs will be categorized based on the stat they increase, allowing players to stack multiple buffs at once. Along with updated existing recipes, the system will also introduce brand-new cooking recipes that will provide these buffs.

For example, one new recipe, the chicken skewers, will require honey to make. For this, I added wild bees to the game. Players will be able to catch wild bees, put them in a bee house, sow some wild flowers, and start their own honey-producing empire.

This will add a fun new layer to the food system and provide players with even more ways to increase their strength.

When can I play?

That's it for this blog! Of course, there will be even more stuff, improvements, and bug fixes coming your way but that is for you to discover when the update launches.

In conclusion, the "Bandit Invasion" update is going to be awesome and will bring lots of extra content to the game. I hope you guys are prepared, and if not, you still have a few weeks left to prepare because the new update will officially launch on the 3rd of March 2023!

Don't forget to comment down below and let me know what you think, I would really appreciate it! Also if you haven't already, you can join our official Discord channel by clicking here.

See you in-game soon!

Cheers,
Royall