We want to chat a bit more about the details behind one of the changes you’ll encounter in Spirit Crossing’s 14.4 update.
Specifically, we’re introducing a refactor of the entire potted plants & flowers system for 14.4. This refactor will impact how you view information about your plants as well as interact with them.
We’re particularly excited about this because we believe it will make interacting with plants much more accessible long-term. Please feel free to give us your thoughts in the Discord!
Here’s a summary of the changes we implemented:
- UI will now provide a much clearer visual of your plant’s current status (e.g. progression and how much water is remaining)
- You can now water your plant at any time (but the requirement will only show when no water is remaining in the plant, as indicated by the above UI addition)
- Music is no longer attached to plant happiness, but instead is used for plant progression
- Pots and plants are now individual concepts leveraged via build mode, for example:
- Build mode now supports the plant & seed moving alongside the pot
- Pots can be stacked on top of one another
- Plant repotting is simplified – simply move them from one pot to another
- Plants can now be “destroyed” (we prefer “mulched”) directly!
- As we refactored the potted plants, we also fixed some errors that caused potted plant yields to be much higher than intended. As a result, we are also making some balancing changes to the game’s economy, meaning that activities other than gardening will have a more relevant role to play. While potted plants, which were always intended to be purely decorative, will no longer be a steady source of funds for players.
This was a big undertaking from a number of members on the team and we’re immensely excited for its long-term impact on plant interactions. We believe this should help simplify mechanics surrounding potted plants & flowers moving forward as well as make their caretaking much more accessible.
In order to implement this refactored system, we’ll unfortunately need to say goodbye to all of our current potted plants and seeds for the 14.4 update.
We understand this may be disappointing, but our goal is for the long-term benefits to make the short-term upheaval feel worthwhile.
We appreciate your understanding and will be glad to hear your feedback about how the new system feels over the coming weeks!
Thanks kindly,
Spry Fox
