Friendship Changes

This update brings some changes to Friendships in order to improve how you connect and interact with other players, as well as some quality of life improvements to Friend Gems. If you want to read more about it, please check out our Developer Blog post!

• The Proximity Chat is now unlocked at Friendship lvl 1, instead of lvl 3. Now you can unlock proximity chat by introducing yourself to other players.
• The open chat with other members of the same fluffalo train ride and sit & chat will remain unchanged.

Reminder: If you ever find someone acting against our Community Rules and Guidelines, please follow the guide on how to Mute, Block and Report other players here.  

Friendship Gems

• We have added more ways to get Friend Gem: now you’ll also be able to earn them from co-op harvesting and participating in World Events together. Now, you get:
  • 10 automatically every day
  • in co-op harvesting: 2 for small harvestables; 3 for medium harvestables; 4 for large harvestables 
  • For certain World Events: 2 for Yearning for the Mines and Fluffalo Parade, 4 for Dance Party, Rudi’s Boss, and Gifting Trees.
  • 1 friend gem per harvested resource (excluding the harvestables that give co-op loot)
• The current cap of earnable Friend Gems in a day is still the same: 50
• We’re also removing the friendship gem offering cap. You can interact with your friends and offer them as many Friendship Gems as you’d like to level up in a single day
• We have increased the value of Tier 2 and Tier 3 offerings, as they will reduce the number of gifts you have to give to a friend to reach a certain level. 
• We changed the Friend Gems art! 🩷

Waystation Goals

• Introducing the Waystation Bounties – community individual objectives you can complete to advance goals and to help maintain your waystation. They will show whatever your waystation needs and set it up as a goal to complete together.
• Bounties will give a small reward on completion to the person who did it, but once a Goal is complete, everyone in the Waystation can redeem its reward!
• You can find the Bounties in the nested top-left menu or track them in your Quest Log
  • This UI is a first iteration and will likely evolve in future updates of the game

Equipment Progression ⚒️

As we mentioned in our Developer Blog last week, we’re revamping how Equipment are upgraded and enhanced as of this update. 

• We’re implementing a new system to upgrade your tool and new tiers of progression:
  Basic ➡️ Fine ➡️ Superior ➡️ Exquisite
• You can upgrade your tools by gathering equipment-specific Expertise through harvesting. When you have enough Expertise, you’ll see a “Enhance Equipment” marker. This means it’s ready to update, and you can level up their tier in a Forge!
  • You can then apply a Trusty or Lucky enhancement to a tool after it has been upgraded to the Exquisite tier
  • When the Trusty / Lucky tool enhancement durability runs out, your equipment will regress back to their Exquisite variant, not all the way back to Basic, so don’t worry about that!
  • Higher tier tools can harvest better resources – you’ll see a “Better with Superior Axe” prompt whenever you could get better rewards
• Amano added a Forge at his camp to make it easier to upgrade tools that you can use for convenience when exploring the wilderness!
• Unfortunately, this means that your current Axe, Machete, Pickaxe, Shears and Shovel will be set to the first equipment progression step (Basic), and any Trusty/Lucky enhancements will also be lost. We want to do this now, while the game is still in Alpha, and our population is relatively small. 
• These changes won’t affect the Fishing Rods and Scrub Brushes for now – we’re still working on some technical specifications and balancing around those tools, so these adjustments will come for them in a future update. We’ll keep you posted!

Quests and Activities

• We have added new Rank 5 Friendship Quests for Candlewic, Nibbit and Joule
• New Foot Race tournament
  • On your marks: The new Foot Race tournament is kicking off in the wilderness – race against others to learn who is the fastest wanderer of the Crosslands – and get rewards!
  • Want to build your own? During the event, the Race Starting Gate, Race Checkpoints and Race Finish Line items will be sold in a Vending Machine next to the Finish Line in the Wilderness so you can buy and set up a full customizable track course in your waystation! 
  • Right now, there are no timers – but we plan to implement them in the future so you can check and work on beating your PB!
• New Timed Dance Party
  • The Spirits want to PARTYYYY so DJ Fuzz EE is holding a secret warehouse rave 🥳
  • Every hour, on the 30 minute mark, a new party starts and you can ask others to join or play music to fill up the party meter
  • (You’re all special guests so you don’t have to worry – you’ll be notified a few minutes before the party starts and when it’s about to start so you have plenty of time to join in!)
  • If you manage to get the party going, you all get Beacon Energy as a reward!
• We also added a new Checkers variation to the Big Game Board world event in the Wilderness!
• We implemented a fix to improve Villager’s detection in photographs so you can complete Nibbit’s photo quest
• Now, Storm Aftermath messages automatically delete themselves once the reward is claimed

Customization

• We have added a basic decoration vending machine in Entry Lands for new players who have not yet been assigned a waystation. This will become available for all players in a future update of the game!
• ICYMI our Upcoming House Changes blog post earlier this month, we are introducing some changes to decor dyes, wall and flooring options. With the 14.9 update, you won’t be able to use decor dyes on walls and floors anymore. Instead, we’re introducing a brand new (smaller for now) selection of wallpapers & floors.
  • As part of the update, we have moved trim to exist on wallpaper textures rather than on the mesh; so your old walls will no longer have the brown trim mesh along the top and bottom edges
  • We’ll add more flooring and wall options in future updates. We want to learn first how you’re feeling with the current selection before introducing more, higher rarity ones.
  • What about my currently dyed walls and floors? Painted walls and floorings will stay as they are and won’t be reverted to default, and you won’t lose their “old dyes” as long as you don’t paint over those items. It is possible that – as some of those dyes change or get archived in future iterations of the game – they can be reverted to default in the future, but we will let you know in advance!
• We’re also adding a few of the building kit pieces you suggested! Some more building kit pieces will arrive in future updates of the game, so keep your eyes peeled

• There are also some new textures to Roomie’sDoor!
  • As some of you already noticed, you can also move Roomie! Now you can spend quality time and take selfies with your Roomie :happyroomie:
• We also added a brand new Long Wavy Hair hairstyle and a “two-tone” version for the Space Buns and French Braids hairstyles.

Wilderness

• We have implemented an improvement to the Bramble Harvest Bonus mechanic: now, the flowering bramble visibly grows with each bramble patch hit. Clear the flowering portion last to earn the harvest bonus!
• Need help harvesting? Now you can call for others when gathering wood from big stumps or mining ore nodes

Rainbow Time Bonus updates

• You can now gain Bonfire charges gradually by spending time at a bonfire, at the end of the storm your charges are converted to Rainbow Time.
• Just hanging out with others near a bonfire should give you max rainbow time pretty easily, so you shouldn’t need to worry too much about the charge rate; but we’re giving some numbers for those who want the math.
• Bonfire Charge Rate
  • 0.1 charge / sec per person up to 4 people
    • Min: 1 charge every 10 sec alone
    • Max: 1 charge every 2.5 sec at 4 people
  • Max of 100 charges; at which point you are guaranteed the max duration of the Rainbow Time Status buff after the storm
• This will not change the cap on Rainbow Time – which is currently 4 minutes

ART & UI

• Updated the Recycling Bin art around the world to incorporate elements of the Crosslands!
  • Note: we changed the Village Recycling Bin location, now it’s near Maya instead of near the Trolley.
• We also updated the daily harvest limit UI
• Updated some resource and material icon arts

Known Issues List

Please keep in mind that this is still an Alpha, so many icons, quest objectives, animations, and other art may be temporary or placeholder.

• Some destinations may appear greyed out in the Travel menu. As a workaround, reopening the menu can make the destination accessible while we’re working to fix the issue.

How do you like the new update? Let us know your thoughts and impressions on our Discord server or subreddit!

No, you’re not seeing double – we do have a new update this month 😅

With the new 14.8 update, we introduced tons of changes to the frequency of Storms, Rainbow Time Bonus, and how they affect waystations – to address some or the feedback you all provided regarding needing more clarity on how much contribution is needed to maintain a waystation safe from the storm.

Speaking of waystations, we are surveying players about their participation in waystations. Please respond whenever you have the chance – it shouldn’t take more than 8 minutes and it helps us immensely!

Now, let’s get into the patch notes details!

Storm Updates

With the 14.8 update, we will be introducing some changes to the Wilderness and Waystation Storms.

Wilderness Storms

• The Wilderness will now see more frequent storms we’re calling – you guessed it – Wilderness Storms. 
• Unlike waystations, the wilderness doesn’t have any beacons to protect them, so storms happen there more often. There will be around 9 storms a day, each happening with 1 to 2 hours between them.
• Their duration was not changed: each storm will still last between 5 to 10 minutes. You’ll also receive a warning 3 minutes before each storm hits.
• Now these Wilderness Storms can also happen during tournaments, since they are a part of the world. Good thing there’s a bonfire near the Pier!

More Storms → More Rainbow Time!

• Bonfire Sweet Bonfire 🔥 staying close to a Bonfire will not only protect you from the storm, but also grant you Rainbow Time Bonus effect.
  • This effect grants
    • 2.5x climbing speed!
    • 3 Beacon Energy Drops on harvest instead of 1
  • This effect lasts
    • Half of rainbow time if you were alone
    • All of rainbow time if you were in a group
• After each Wilderness storm, there will be 4 minutes of Rainbow Time
• Storms will no longer provide any Storm Mushrooms nor refresh harvestables, but they will spawn Beacon Energy Drops in the Wilderness instead (as part of Rainbow Time)
• During Rainbow Time players can now find Beacon Energy Drops throughout the world that you can harvest one at a time
  • If you have the Rainbow Time status effect active, you will receive 3 Beacon Energy Drops from each harvest instead
  • There is a limit of 60 harvests a day
  • You can trade 100 Beacon Energy Drops for 1 Beacon Energy in your Waystation vending machine
  • Beacon Energy Drops will disappear after Rainbow Time

What about Waystation Storms?

• Storms that also hit the Waystations will still exist, and they will still cause storm damage to the waystation and the items placed in them
• The Rainbow Time duration has been reduced to match the Wilderness Storm duration
• We have also updated the onboarding quests to reflect those changes

Important note: we are aware that there is not a very obvious differentiation between Waystation and Wilderness storms currently in-game: This is something that we plan to improve in the future!

Waystation Status & Size Update

Waystation Capacity Updates

• We believed that calling it Waystation “Size” or “Rank” didn’t accurately reflect what the progress bar meant – it’s not that waystations will get bigger nor get more players as players contribute more and more to the beacon, it means that members will unlock access to higher building limits and other features. So we changed the name to “Waystation Capacity”.
• We have also made changes to better reflect the relation between the Storms and Waystation maintenance:
  • Now, Waystation Capacity will only apply gains and losses after a Waystation Storm
  • The “View Waystation” screen also allows players to check pending progress toward the next Capacity level and see the changes that will happen with the next storm.
    Currently there is an issue that doesn’t show pending progress in the progress bar ➡️ check #known-issues for more information
  • This means players will have heads up when their Waystation is heading towards drain

Waystation Status

• Raise the alarms! Now when players go to give offerings, they will see the current Waystation Status that indicates whether the Beacon is receiving enough Beacon Energy to sustain itself.
• The status is based on how many daily contributions the Beacon is receiving 🆚 the daily drain of the waystation, proportional to the time in the day

Current Statuses

The in-game names of status vary with your Waystation’s Capacity since it changes the gravity of each states, but here is a general overview:

➕ Radiant: Your beacon is receiving more than enough contributions and should grow. 
⚙️ Sufficient: Contributions are enough to sustain the Beacon but may not lead to growth.
💔 Insufficient: Contributions are not su1rpassing the Beacon’s daily energy requirements
⌛Post-Storm:  This is current status for the remaining hours of the day after the Storm, as well as the first 12 hours of the next day – to allow new contributions to come in

Storm Results

• We also show the number of bonfires set up and the total items with storm damage in the Waystation
• After storms, players will receive a ✉️letter in their inbox that tells them if their waystation’s Capacity level increased, decreased or stayed the same
• No spam 🛑: you’ll only receive letters if you contributed to the Beacon before the storm
• This letter will also include a Beacon Spark as a gift for contributing to the Beacon ✨

Waystation Destruction

• Waystations will be destroyed by the storm if after a storm, the Waystation reaches Capacity 1;
  • We added statuses to give warnings when under Capacity 5 to help waystation members rally and prevent this. 
• When waystations are taken over by the storm, players will be transferred to new waystations.

But that’s not all!

Activities

• Waystation Mural
  • Following your feedback, we will be testing a longer-term Waystation Mural activity! Mark your calendars: we have a Waystation Mural scheduled for 2/27 that will last 28 days.
    Every week a new set of paint colors will be available.
  • We have increased the amount of paint you get in a day from 10 ➡️ 60
    These paint changes are also applied to regular 1-day Waystation Murals too. 
• Rudi changes: we have introduced some economy changes to balance the expensive store items on Rudi’s Shop
  • We increased the amount of Rudi coins scenario activities give
    • Previously some scenarios gave much more than others; we increased the value of most activities to come closer to the output of the highest ones
  • We also merge the specific Rudi Resources world event with all of his appearances – now, whenever Rudi shows up, folks can also exchange resources for Rudi Coins 
• We have added new layouts for the Shrineworks Switchboard activity

Quests

• We have implemented some fixes for the Facing Fears and Lost Spirits quests:
  • Fixed a bug so the quests are available when Named Spirits are shown, instead of when players migrate to a new waystation. 
  • Made the Urns inspectable for clearer signaling on what is and is not discovered.
• We have added two new quests for Kasu and one additional quest for Amano!

Art, UI & Sound

• We have added a few more ambient Spirits, and also given them names! 
• Improved sound layout in the Settings screen
• We have added new dialog animations for Kasu on level 1 & 2 friendship
• The bassochord has a new improved sound

Bug Fixes 🐛

• Fixed a bug where collections were showing multiple entries because of stats (angst, weight)
• We also fixed the issue that was causing the fishing rod range to be reduced by a lot – it should now be back to normal!
• Players won’t be stuck in Villagers homes after completing their corresponding quests. No more awkwardness! 
• Fixed a bug where players couldn’t interact with Signs during Storms
• Fixed a bug where Lunkers were shown entirely offscreen when caught
• Fixed a bug where players could get blocked in the Bearly Traversable quest

💠💠💠💠💠

14.8 Known Issue List

Please keep in mind that this is still an Alpha, so many icons, quest objectives, animations, and other art may be temporary or placeholder.

• We are aware that the Waystation Capacity progress bar does not show pending progress between waystation storms

Thank you all, as always, for your continued support! Let us know what you think about the update on our Discord community or our subreddit!

See you in the Crosslands,
Spry Fox