Patch notes: Calder Mere and the first Early Access update

Thank you to everyone who jumped in during the first days of Early Access. This update brings a whole new region to explore after Russet Vale. It also fixes a lot of small things that got in the way, makes playing in a group better, and gives your life skills something to work towards.

New region: Calder Mere

Long ago a star fell east of Russet Vale and left a great crater. Rain filled it, reeds grew, and people built their homes on the water. That’s Calder Mere: a shallow, misty lake of teal water and silver reeds, with lilac trees on the islands and moon mushrooms glowing in the dark. More stones fall here than anywhere else, and the people of the Mere have always lived alongside the eggs.

This year the stones fall every night. A month ago a rift tore open over Calder, the walled town on the crater’s rim, and it fell in a single night. Its people fled down to the fishing village on the water.

Reedholm

Reedholm is a village of stilt houses and plank walks, packed with Calder’s refugees. Captain Harrow and what’s left of the Calder Watch are holding the causeway with too few people, Mother Tarn is keeping the peace between villagers and newcomers, and Wenna is feeding everyone from her cookhouse. Out on Kingfisher Point, Professor Finch of the research guild has set up a field camp with Fennick from Russet Vale. She wants specimens and eggs, and gives you the Lunari Register, a book that fills in a page for every Lunari you meet, study and fight.

The eggs in the shallows are behaving strangely. Some hatch early, some hatch angry, and at night figures wade out to the egg beds and carry eggs away. Where they take them is the start of the story.

What you’ll do there

A full story for levels 20 to 30, with dozens of quests.
Explore the water. Wade through the shallows, swim the deep middle, find your way through the reed maze, climb the beacon towers on the rim, or cross with Perrin once his ferry is running.
Come back at night. The eggs glow under the water, new things come out to hunt, and on nights near the full moon rifts open in the moonfields. Anyone nearby can help close them.
New creatures, from snappers and fen wolves to the Hushed, people of the Mere who heard a low chime and answered it.
The Drowned Star, a new dungeon under the Mere for groups of three, with normal and hard modes. Fennick’s quest takes you down around level 25, and after that you can queue for it with the group finder.
New armour sets at levels 25 and 30.
Fishing on the Mere, with help from Wenna for the quest fish (see Quality of life).
A home on the water. Reedholm has its own housing street, the Moorings. Ring the bell on the village walk to look for a plot.
Reedholm’s request board and its furniture set (see Town request boards).
A carriage post. Walk up to Reedholm’s post once to unlock it, and then you can ride there from the other big towns.

Calder itself waits on the rim, held by whatever came through the rift. The Watch means to take it back, and before long they’ll need your help.

How to get there

Finish Russet Vale’s main story, which ends with A Letter for Rook, and reach level 20. Quill, back in Russet Vale, brings you the guild’s answer: they have a field team on the Mere, and they’ve asked for you by name. Follow Russet Vale’s east road out of town until the ground falls away.

Also new

Town request boards

Primrose, Tavarin, Sheaf’s Cross and Reedholm each have a request board. Every board offers three new requests a day: deliver crops, fish or a dish, play a song nearby, or build something at a workbench.
Requests pay exp (2%, 3% or 4% of your current level, depending on the request) and Town Tokens. The boards reset at 00:00 UTC.
Spend Town Tokens at the board on that town’s furniture set: four pieces per town that no shop sells, from Primrose’s Rose Arch to Reedholm’s Lily Lamp, Drying Net, Reed Stool and Eel Basket. The Sheaf’s Cross board also has the Russet Cowboy Hat for your wardrobe.

The shipping crate

Put the fish, crops, dishes, instruments and fishing rods you’ve made in a shipping crate at home, and it pays you in gold the next morning, game time. You can also ship furniture from your home’s storage.
New homes come with a crate. Anyone can buy one from the furniture sellers for 120 gold.
The crate shows what it paid last time.

Six new emotes

Ta-da!, Peace Sign, Look Over There, Hand Heart, Shy and Thumbs Up. Everyone has them, each with its own face. Find them in the emote panel or on the pad’s wheel.

Feedback from inside the game

The menu’s Report a bug button is now Feedback, a form you fill in without leaving the game. Pick Bug, Idea or Other, write what happened, and choose whether to attach a screenshot and your game state.

Loot and items

Item stats and comparison. Gear now shows its stats, with green and red lines against what you’re wearing in that slot. Bag tiles get an arrow on upgrades, and gear your class can’t wear says so. This works in your inventory, in shops, in chests and in the mail.
Walk-over pickup. Materials, potions and other consumables, and quest items are picked up when you walk over them. Gear still waits for a press, so you choose what to take.
Loot all. Opening a chest shows a window with everything inside and its stats. Take it all with the button, F, Space, Enter or Y on the pad.
Junk. Seven drops with no other use (Moon Dust, Slime Jelly, Spore Cap, Heartwood Twig, Wolf Fang, Boar Tusk and Arrows) are now marked as junk. Shops have a Sell junk button to sell them all at once.
When your bag is full the game tells you once, and the Bag tab turns red.
Bows have never needed arrows, so the caravan no longer sells them.

Playing together

Shared kill credit. When you kill an enemy, everyone in your party nearby (within 40 m, and alive) gets the full exp, their own gold drop and the kill for their quests. No more racing your friends for the last hit. A member more than 10 levels below the enemy still gets the gold and quest credit, but not the exp.
Parties on carriages. When the party leader takes a carriage, party members within 10 m come along. Each pays their own fare.
Full-party bonus in dungeons. The dungeon queue makes groups of three, so three players now count as a full party and get the +10% loot bonus.
No more waiting forever in the queue. If a group hasn’t filled after 90 seconds, the queue sends in the players it has, even if that’s just you.

Combat and classes

Packs and elites

Enemies in Tavarin, Russet Vale and Calder Mere now come in packs of three to six. They have twice the health and hit a little harder, but give 30% more exp and gold, and the whole pack fights together.
Some pack leaders are elites, with one or two traits: Swift (faster), Shielded (takes less damage), Vampiric (heals from its bites), Volatile (explodes a moment after it dies, so roll away) and Wrathful (hits harder and faster when low on health). Elites are tougher and drop much better loot.
Enemies no longer give up and run home to heal while you’re fighting them from range.
The Moon-touched Wolf was too strong for its level: health 1,000 to 850, attack 26 to 20.

Warrior

Rage no longer drains below 20, so you always have enough for a Power Slash at the start of a fight.
Blade Combo base damage 100% to 92.5%, and each rank now adds 15% (was 10%).
Damage per rank: Power Slash +30% to +40%, Lunge and Whirlwind +20% to +30%, Sunder +30% to +50%, Earthquake +40% to +60%.
Sunder base damage 300% to 340%. Earthquake base damage 200% to 260%.

Magician

Arcane Beam was doing most of the Magician’s damage. Now the other spells do more of it:

Arcane Beam 72% to 65% per tick, and it has a 2 second cooldown (was 0.5 s).
Fireball 240% to 300%, cooldown 4 s to 3.2 s, +40% per rank (was +30%).
Thunder 180% to 240%, cooldown 8 s to 6 s, +35% per rank (was +25%).
Arcane Missile 125% to 135%.

Rogue

The Rogue pulled far ahead of the other classes in the late levels, because its critical chance grows with every level. Its ranks now scale more gently:

Dagger Flurry base damage 60% to 75%, but each rank adds 2.5% (was 10%).
Keen Edge +1% critical chance per rank (was +2%).
Pounce 80% to 90%. Its ranks now only lower the cooldown.
Nettle Sting hit 140% to 65%, venom 45% to 20% per tick. Its ranks now only lower the cooldown.
Moonstar Toss 80% to 60%.

The Archer is unchanged. After this pass the four classes deal about the same damage at levels 15 to 30.

Bosses

Corwin Thresh’s health goes from 198,000 to 214,000, to match the stronger Magician spells.

New players and the tutorial

Pick your class sooner. The four class masters in Primrose now take you on from level 2 (was level 5), which is where the tutorial ends. Ready for the Wilds now sends you to the meadows first, then to a master, then for armour. If you’re partway through the quest, your progress carries over.
After you pick a class, banners show your new skills and the keys for them.
The tutorial now opens on the caravan camp at dusk instead of a black screen, and the first lines play on their own.
The tutorial camera no longer starts zoomed in too close.
The potion button now shows the potion it will drink, so Wren’s tonics appear on it as soon as she gives them to you.
Dialogue boxes move out of the way of open panels, and the tutorial’s objective updates as soon as you equip the sword.

Quality of life

Key rebinding. Settings > Controls lets you rebind the game’s keyboard and mouse controls, two keys per action, including the potion key. Every key shown in the game updates to match. The gamepad layout stays fixed for now.
Comfort settings in Accessibility: Screen shake (Off, Low or Full), Hit-stop and slow motion on or off, Reduce flashes, and Damage numbers on or off. These only change what you see, never how the fight plays.
UI scale in Settings, from 85% to 150%.
Mounts each have their own speed. They all used to run at the same speed. Now the horse is fastest, Clover the cow is in the middle, and the pig is a little slower than before.
Quest fish you can actually catch on Calder Mere. Wenna now gives you her Spare Line when you finish A Rod for the Mere. While a quest asks for Mere Perch or Mire Eels, they bite twice as often and you hook them at least half the time. The Watch Is Hungry, The Smokehouse and Eel Pie no longer take close to an hour of fishing.
On Calder Mere, Brask’s stall in Calder sells Moonfield Bread, so A Meal for the Astronomer doesn’t require baking.

Keep the feedback coming, through the new Feedback button, our Discord or the Steam forums. It decides what we work on next.