This is a bittersweet news for me because in theory this will likely be the last "Road to" major update news for Blade & Sorcery, as the next stop is going to be 1.0, full release. Can you believe it has been almost 5 years??
Blade & Sorcery started out as a small arena wave fighter in 2018, and since then has massively outgrown its original conception. Through the incredible love and support of you guys who backed us and believed in us, a studio was born.
As a result, the little arena game that could has been overhauled and expanded in scope twice in the past 5, with 4 of those years being extended early access development. Some of you absolute legends have been with us since 2018 and have followed along with each update, watching the simulation grow bigger as more features get added; the ups, the downs, the mods breaking, lol.
Well, for this final update the Warpfrog team are putting everything we have into the 1.0 Crystal Hunt / Progression Mode update and it will be our biggest update yet. We hope to do you guys proud. ːp2cubeː
Now, let's take a peek at what is coming in 1.0!
Crystal Hunt, aka "Progression Mode"
Something that would come up again and again from players was a wish that there was "a point" to Dungeons; that the player have something they are working towards to add a sense of progression or completion to the game.
In the past this was beyond our scope of feasibility, but since 2018 we have expanded the Warpfrog team to 21 fulltime and 6 part-time staff so that we would have the capability to make this hypothetical progression gamemode a reality.
This was actually really freaking tricky for us, lol.
The original game was a pure simulation sandbox, so huge swathes of the mechanics and features were already developed and in place; to add a progression mode meant now adding a more gamey mode that complimented those already developed mechanics - this is unusual because it was like game designing backwards.
However, thanks to the much expanded team compared to the early days, we were able to retool our brains for this task and create Crystal Hunt; a gamemode that has progression, but is not too gamey. A story, but is not a full blown RPG or railroaded experience.
What Crystal Hunt is composed of exactly is basically three components: A story / player motive, a new dungeon biome, and a new gamemode, which I will now delve into all three.
The Story
The Dalgarians: An obscure and ancient race of people from millennia ago.
Supposed masters of magic, little is actually known of them beyond folktale and hearsay, as ancient history became myth and legend through the annals of time.
Indeed, for most common folk the only undeniable evidence of their existence at all is the unmistakable mark they left behind on the landscape of Byeth: The Tower.
Perched on a small island atop the Khemenic Sea, the Dalgarian tower resides... inaccessible due to the raging magical storm that permanently surrounds it.
Its contents, unknown. Its purpose, lost through time. Countless foolhardy adventurers have lost their lives in futile attempts to penetrate the storm. Even merchant ships trading between Eraden and Khar-Tib will sail for miles and miles around the storm than brave going near it, with exception perhaps of the few daring Sentari sailors whose famed reputation for seamanship rises from skirting the edge of the storm.
And so, the secrets of the Dalgarians have gone undisturbed for centuries.
But something has happened.. Buried deep in the rugged landscapes of Byeth, ancient Dalgarian ruins have revealed themselves. Their massive doors have inexplicably swung open to reveal passage to the crumbling halls swallowed by otherwise non-traversable mountains.
The first pioneers who dared brave these halls unearthed a slew of archeological findings on the Dalgarians; incredible structures with magical integration like non-other.
But more so, another fantastical prize was revealed; at the depth of the chambers, a source of ancient magical power was unearthed... what folk simply refer to as "the Crystal".
So began the great Crystal Hunt.
Within weeks, powerful factions of Eraden began mobilizing their forces in an attempt to seek out and secure the entrances to these Dalgarian chambers and their treasures within, occupying crumbling outposts of the old world as forward operating bases while they comb out across the landscape.
Due to the corrupting effect of magic on humankind, unsanctioned magic in Eraden is illegal. As such, some such as the Queen of Eraden seek containment of the Crystals, whilst others like the magic-obsessed cult, The Eye, obsessively seeks its consumption.
Enter the player; just one of many swept up into the Crystal Hunt adventure, but unlike others, has been tasked with a special quest given by the obscure Dalgarian Archeological Society.
Seeking more than the magical powers the crystals provide, The Society are dubious and assembling a bigger picture of these recent events.
They seek answers; the timing of the Dalgarian chambers revealing themselves, the crystals, and the most burning question in all of Byeth: What are the secrets of the Dalgarian Tower?
About Lore
If you follow any Warpfrog social medias, you may have seen me mention how I am always apprehensive to use the word "storyline" in this game, even though there actually is a storyline.
The reason I am trepid to use the word "story" and downplay it is because I never want to accidentally imply that the game will be an RPG with NPC characters, dialogue choices, or some kind of big omniscient narration that guides the player through a on-tracks experience.
Relevant to everything to do in game design, we feel that there has been a unsatisfying trend in modern gaming which is to spoon-feed players, and hit them over the head with a hammer to make sure the player "gets it".
For us, we have always harkened back to an older era of gaming in the late 90s and early 2000s where instead of endless UIs, overdone tutorials and waypoints up the wazoo there was some emphasis put on players using their brains not just to complete the game, but to actually figure out the boundaries of game itself through experimentation, trial and error.
This can create niche appeal, but the cool part is that when you find your audience who love it, they will tend to love it, and these folks may find gaming experiences like this more meaningful and memorable as they grow older. This is in contrast to the more modern trend where many games will try to appeal to everyone with very middling-impact, broad and soft strokes; following tried and tested popular trends that are lukewarm enough to content the masses whilst avoiding upsetting anyone.
We have always rejected this approach in lieu of giving the player more benefit of the doubt that they are capable and motivated to explore the game and its boundaries, and our vibe is if you like this in a video game then that is cool, and if you don't like it that is okay too. So when it comes to our lore and story, our approach is no different.
Without any kind of handholding narrator to act as guide, the first way a player might explore our worldbuilding is through environmental storytelling. This is conclusions through inference; for example, if you walked into a bedroom and saw an ashtray and cigarettes on a desk, you might infer the person is a smoker.
Similarly for us, the use of environmental storytelling in the exploration of Dalgarian ruins will be based on your inferral of our environments. No one will come along and tell you that you are right or wrong, but something I am really secretly hoping and looking forward to is for there to be times when the community pool together their theories and discoveries about our world.
The second way a player can absorb lore is much more direct - via written text or images. This could be literally a written note the player finds from one of the Crystal Hunt factions, or it could even be some ancient text found in a Dalgarian ruin itself.
But maybe you understand us enough by now to know, even that is not something we would make too straightforward. ːwftogrinː
If it were to be a cohesive world and make sense, then ancient texts by the Dalgarians would be written in, well.. Dalgarian!
That means, break out your cipher! I'm actually not joking lol. ːwizardː
By now you can maybe understand that there is potential for different player experiences playing Blade and Sorcery.
If you are the kind of player who just wants to casually fight your way through the game but would enjoy some kind of motivation to get you through to an ending, then you can absolutely positively play Crystal Hunt this way. You can take the game at face value and there will be a propelling force to get you to the end of the game. You will have a good time and enjoy the game as a straight up action game.
Alternatively if you are the kind of player who enjoys worldbuilding and a more demanding gaming experience, then is an option there for you to dig deeper for a self-guided tour of our deep lore. For some, the digging and discovery is the reward itself, but in fact if you are this kind of player you may find your reflection upon the game world is altered, and have a different experience to other players.
Or, you may be a player who enjoys something somewhere in between. ːsteamdanceː
For anyone wondering about the Dalgarian stone tablet above, yes it can be translated and probably won't be not too difficult for anyone experienced in ciphers. But do note this was just an early day test message for us messing around, so the font above is now outdated compared to the final game, plus the final game cipher may be a little trickier. ːtmntdonː
The Dalgarian Dungeons
Now let's get into the actual Dalgarian Dungeons themselves; if you have played "Outpost" then you will probably have a good idea what to expect.
The Dalgarian Dungeon is an entirely new dungeon biome and set of rooms. Everything was hand designed from the ground up to tailor to our story.
This has been a huge project undertaking for the environment team at Warpfrog, as they were tasked to build out an entirely new Dungeon on the same scope as Outpost, but unlike Outpost which is very medieval-inspired in design, the Dalgarian Dungeons required a full blown novel art direction to create something entirely new, ancient and mystical feeling.
The dungeon room pool size will be approximately akin to Outpost in room count; I believe at the the moment there is about Dalgarian 40 rooms compared to Outpost's 60. But one thing you will notice compared to Outpost is how absolutely massive some of these rooms are.
The ancient Dalgarians' architecture is a whole different animal compared to the modern structures of Byeth, so when it came to level design we really wanted to emphasize that. What is really missing from these preview images is a human for reference of scale, but maybe that is better because hopefully it will make your first VR visit here special to see it for yourself.
You absolutely need to see these rooms in VR to appreciate the job the enviro team did at making them look gorgeous. As always, we are continuing to support and push PCVR to its limits.
Although much of the dungeon biome is interior, there are also some (enclosed) exterior locations to give some vibe of the massive mountain canyon passes the ruins are hidden in.
How the Dalgarian Dungeon fits into the story and gameplay will be revealed when you play Crystal Hunt.
There are some dungeon specific mechanics and others surprises in store for these areas, but we will save that for another day. ːtmntdonː
Crystal Hunt Gamemode
Now for the main meat and potatoes; Crystal Hunt is the new progression gamemode, so here is how it will work:
When you start the game you can make a separate character for each gamemode.
For sandbox mode, everything is unlocked right from the start - all maps, weapons, armours, all dev cheats, mods, and we will even see about adding an option so you can pick and choose about adding the crystal hunt skills to your sandbox character. This would totally spoil unlocking skills legitimately in Crystal Hunt, but that's up to you.
In the same vein, we have thought a bunch about usage of mods in Crystal Hunt and have decided that the best thing to do would be allow mods, but we will splash a disclaimer to give you a heads up you are likely to ruin the experience, or potentially even bork your save. Our vibe is if you wanna run through Crystal Hunt with a handgun or give yourself unlimited crystals you are definitely gonna break the game experience as we intended, but hey, that is up to you to decide.
For Crystal Hunt mode your character starts as a nobody, stripped of everything. No magic, no weapons, etc. By the time you get to the end of Crystal Hunt, your character will (in theory) will have progressed in power that you are more powerful like the sandbox character, and beyond.
As you progress through the gamemode, you will find loot which is currency you can use to buy things from a shop, and crystals which you will use to unlock new skills as well as progress through the game to reach the ending.
The story will be fed through lore the player can find in game, the depth of which is completely up to the player and their engagement with the material. A player can choose to ignore everything related to lore and still complete the game.
Now let's break down what this all means:
The Crystal
This will be what the whole Crystal Hunt gamemode is all about; the most valuable resource you can find in Crystal Hunt mode is the crystal itself which comes in two varieties, Crystal Shards and Crystal Cores.
Crystal Shards are a smaller, less powerful source of magic in the world of Byeth. Being more commonly found in nature and less destructive, they are usually used by sanctioned sorcerers of the courts, though local folk will sometimes utilize them to perform a couple of parlor tricks. (in secret of course, given magic is not allowed in Eraden!)
In game terms, the shards will be used to unlock new skills from the skill tree.
Then there are the much sought after Crystals Core themselves.
These are the very rare resource found in the Dalgarian ruins and what you and everyone else is chasing. Crystal Cores can be siphoned of their magical power to make a sorcerer more powerful.
In game terms, this is the currency you will use to unlock new skills branches, which you can then invest your shards.
Crystal cores can be also be merged to unlock even more powerful tiers.
In this way you could say that sorcerers who have a lot Crystal Shards may be more robust magicians, but those with Crystal Cores will be more powerful magicians.
Skill Tree
The skill tree is the main component to how you progress in power in Crystal Hunt.
Since U10, an age old questions for Blade & Sorcery has been "What is the obelisk thing in the Home?"
While some of you guys were stuffing cups and other stuff in the holsters (lol) a few of you guessed it - I can officially reveal the obelisk is where you will unlock your skills.
Crystal Cores can be placed in the obelisk slots to unlock the progression UI; functionally it is working, but sadly it still a bit too WIP that I don't have any nice video previews of this interaction yet. When we add some nice vfx to it I can post some previews.
As for the skills themselves; I know many folks are dying to know what are the actual skills, because we have been so tight lipped about it.
Some of you guys may have been secretly worried that we were maybe gonna stuff the skill tree with boring +10 this or +10 that. If you did, repent heathen!
Our skill tree is stuffed with actual content! ːpraisesunː
There are no boring number crunches (except for as you grow in magic power your magic casting gets faster) and each skill on the tree is either a new feature to unlock or an enhancement / augmentation of current feature.
[EDIT: Little edit here to clarify - there are no new element features but rather augmentations to gravity, fire and lightning]
This basically means you have ways to change the behaviors of spells you are familiar with - for example, adding an ability to bounce your fireballs off walls, set enemy on fire, suspend yourself in the air with gravity, or create chain lightning effects between enemy metallic armours.
The player starts off Crystal Hunt as a powerless character; even the basic lightning, fire and gravity spells you know from sandbox are stripped.
As you progress, you will choose what you want to unlock and invest in, so you will design your character build as you go. You could invest in a little bit of everything to be a broad character, or you could dump all your skills points into one tree branch and become a specialized type of character, like a fire mage, gravity mage, or even just a physical melee guy.
The skills can range from both magical powers to physical abilities.
To give an idea of how crazy we went with the skill tree, if you were to recreate the sandbox player as you would know it, that would account for approximately 20% of skill tree. The rest is new content. (I say approx because we are not finalized) It's madness, yes.
Although I'm showing clips of magic here, there is also a Body branch on the skill tree, which is oriented towards more melee favouring builds.
Unfortunately this is still undeveloped right now so I have not much to preview for it, but for now enjoy this one sneak peek at a Body skill -
There is enough content in the skill tree alone to justify its own news, so at a later date we can return to this and do a deep dive into skills with more previews. ːsteamdanceː
Loot
A big component of Crystal Hunt is the loot you are gathering in Dungeons. Loot will go into your inventory to be later be sold to purchase weapons and armour.
Fair warning is that this is still something under heavy design development right now, so some stuff I may say here can be subject to change --
At the moment the concept is that loot can be hidden in the dungeons in containers, most likely in side rooms. The idea there is to give just a little incentive that the player who explores may get a little extra pocket change.
We are aiming to avoid that annoying modern game trend of loot spam, where you are on autopilot just spamming the pickup key. We would rather that finding loot is more rare like actually finding treasure.
You can also find loot at the end of Dungeon runs as a little reward, but it will be actual physical stuff you loot from a stash and not just a gamey mechanic of gold awarded from thin air.
In the gif above please note that it is just an internal test of containers and loot. How it will be presented in the actual game is still tbd. The tests are working pretty well though and it feels nice opening containers and looting!
The Shop
You've probably heard "The Shop" being mentioned a bunch of times in the context of Crystal Hunt, but likely everyone else, you probably never really knew what to expect.
A few people have thought that by "shop" we meant some kind of book or UI menu used to purchase stuff, kind of like how you can spawn things in the book in sandbox -- Not at all!
Our shop is an actual shop (but with a possibly unexpected cosmetic twist) where you can buy things by physically taking them from the shelf and taking them to a counter to purchase.
Needless to say, it was incredibly difficulty to design a VR shop experience while adhering to our stubborn refusal to implement any UIs and other gamey elements, lol. ːer_sweatː
The shop will also be something you can invest your loot money in to upgrade the store and expand the purchase selection.
There are other surprises too, but I'll leave it at that for now!
New Armours
What else in 1.0 besides Crystal Hunt you say?
The upper tiers of armour have finally been implemented into the game both for player and enemies.
Check out these Rogue (leather) and Officer (plate) armours:
The Officer armour is particularly freaking hard to fight against as it is full coverage, minus some small gaps. This means unless you are particularly finessed with a blade, blunt weapons and magic (especially electricity!) are better for dealing with these guys.
For the player, there are some gameplay mechanics coming with armours too.
A player who opts for a less protective "wizard build" attire can now actually reap some benefit to doing this beyond just looking cool.
Certain wizard gear and staffs will grant spellcasting speed boosts, which means playing as a full blown spell slinging wizard is now a very legitimate option, albeit at the cost of being more fragile to damage.
New Weapons
Not including shields or anything like that, did you know there are already 38 weapons in vanilla U12 Blade & Sorcery??? I mention this just because I often read people say that Blade & Sorcery has "like 5 weapons" and I am always like wtf who first peddled this misinformation, lol. ːeaglegagː
Finally coming in 1.0 are the last of the tiered weapons!
Not counting new shields or arrows or anything like that, there are 37 new weapons being added, which beings the total to 75 weapons for 1.0. ːlunar2019piginablanketː There is a huge chance I miscounted the amount of new weapons or that we may add or remove to that before release lol, but my ballpark will be about right.
These are weapons covering just about everything, from swords, axes and polearms, to staffs and bows; finally we have different arrow types too!
"Tiered weapons" is referring to the weapon qualities which range from the lower poor quality weapons to fancy upper tier ones. However we are trying make all weapons functional - I am always harping on at Warpfrog about the concept that a player should be able to complete the game with a rusty dagger if they so choose.
A common gamey design is something like "low quality weapon = low damage" which then promotes a very linear progression concept that X weapon is objectively better than Y weapon because X does more damage. Or that you *need* X weapon by the end of the game because it is the only weapon capable of dealing with the level scaling of enemies, etc. ːsteamboredː
We always sought to avoid this, so instead of a very obvious mechanic such as better weapons = better damage, we are trying for a more latent benefit to higher tiers, such as "functional benefit"; while you could kill any enemy with a rusty dagger, the higher quality weapons may have functional appeal such as extended lengths, hilts, better piercing and penetration of leather, extra stabbing points, etc.
One direct benefit for upper tier weapons however is that they hold a magical imbue longer.
Ruins Rework
Perhaps a little surprise for you - everyone's least favourite map got a major rework!
The Ruins sandbox map was the second map introduced into the game and was built from store bought Unity assets.
In the "Playstation 2 graphics" (as our early day fans would tease ːsteamdeadpanː ) era of the game, the quality of the Ruins was more acceptable in comparison to the rest of the game, but it always bugged the hell out of us, and then intolerably so after the graphics quality improved in U8.
It was long overdo an update.
A little secret roadmap item we have had was this revamp of Ruins for 1.0.
It is a complete makeover in graphics and layout, and the map is deceptively huge. However it still has all the hallmarks of the original ruins, such as the verticality and dark tone.
Don't worry, there is still a chandelier! ːspiffoː
Factions
A low-key change coming is how enemy are presented in the game. Traditionally, the game has always classed factions by their attire, eg gladiator / bandit / mercenary / knight.
We have reworked this so enemy loadouts now better represent the Crystal Hunt factions instead of just their outfit, whether that faction be soldiers of Eraden or sorcerers of The Eye, etc.
This means there could be a spread of outfits with mix-matching in each faction, although you may be more likely to find armoured enemy in the Queen of Eraden's faction for example.
How this translates to the gameplay is that enemy difficulty is now no longer tied to outfits; where before if you wanted to see armoured knights in Outpost, you always needed to play on hard difficulty.
Now it is simply the factions themselves that will determine the difficulty, with some factions tougher than others. Beware The Eye!
Quality of life changes and other little things
Very much this is the "miscellaneous" category; there are lots of small bits and bobs that will be included in the final update.
Most of this stuff we will leave for the release notes, but to give you some examples these would be things like dev cheats, new options, or little QOL tweaks to mod manager, etc.
One notable example, an "uninstall all" button for removing all mods!
The importance of this was not completely evident until one day a player noted he was manually removing all his mods for U12.3 - not a big deal... until he pointed out he had 147 mods installed! ːsteamlaughcryː To that guy - this is for you, lol.
This change should majorly help when you need to clear out all your mods in one sweep.
Another example of miscellaneous items could be micro features, which is to say low-risk, small features that were easy enough to implement without adding dev time, and more importantly without needing too much QA time.
For example, hip quivers.
The full list of what will be included here will continue to be incomplete right up to release and is very much the "let's see" category.
Other Surprises
Of course! You know we can't resist.
Release Date
And now, the million dollar question, when is this all available....
Here is the truth: we don't know! There is so many things half done, so many things not even started, loads of broken things, and let alone we still have the dreaded QA period ahead of us.
The currently estimated ballpark for release is Q1 2024 - we arrived at this ballpark by calculating on paper how much time we think we may need to complete the features, but that absolutely positively does not mean the release date is going to be Q1 2024 guaranteed.
The reason: there is just no possible way to say what can or will go wrong, and stuff always goes wrong.
Here is a random sampling of an inexplicable Monday morning "nah not happening today bro" bug so you can see what I mean:
Any date we give you right now is truly just an estimate based on paper calculations, so please don't be locked into thinking there is any definitive release date or believe any misinformation you might hear about this.
We also wanna protect our staff and continue to avoid Warpfrog utilizing the "crunch time" culture which is a toxic presence in game development. So please guys, don't be upset if we miss our ballpark or have to reassess later down the line. We are trying our best!
The only time you can be sure of a release date is when we drop the 1.0 trailer, which is usually just before the update is ready. And the only reason you can be sure of that release date is because at that point we will already be confident the update is more or less ready to release.
I know lots of you guys are dying for the release and have waited a long time, but hang in there. We wanna make it good. ːsteamdanceː
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That's it for the Road to 1.0 news!
Thank you to everyone who has shown love and support towards our game and studio, and to all the kindness the playerbase show our dev team.
It is a real morale booster for the whole team. ːer_heartː
