Greetings, wanderers!

The 15.0 update brings the much anticipated Housing Update we went over in a previous Developer Blog, as well as some meaningful changes to Beacon Energy, potted plants, waystation overgrowth charms, new percentage-base tournament rewards and a complete shop overhaul in the Village Center!

Check out the details below.

Big Housing Update 🏡

With 15.0, we’re bringing a complete revamp to players’ homes layouts, detachment of visiting permissions from friendship levels, new onboarding quests and tutorials, a brand new progression track for your home and a big wall item refactor!

Layout Changes ⛰️

• There’s no place like home, and there’s nothing that feels more like a home than our own personal island in the clouds!
• Your home will no longer be an apartment in a waystation – instead, it’s a remote mountain peak in the Entry Lands.
• Expand, build and decorate to your heart’s desire – not only are you able to create new rooms for your home by using building pieces, you can alter and take apart the original structure to change your house shape as much as you’d like!
• Enjoy the great outdoors and decorate your personal garden with pre-placed foliage options – with more to come and ways to acquire more in future updates 🌳
• You’ll be in good company in your new home, as now Maya also has a permanent place in your mountain peak!

🚨 REMINDER 🚨Due to the home layout changes, all of your items – including furniture, decoration, and building pieces – were automatically sent to your home storage with the release of 15.0.

Visitor Permissions 🔑

• We have detached the house visiting permissions from Friendship Levels, giving you more autonomy to choose who gets to visit and admire your beautiful home – or not!
• You can set default visiting permissions for friends or strangers in your home settings ✉️
  Easier to access: we made some changes to the travel menu to make it easier to find and visit your friends’ homes;

Introductory Quests and Tutorials ❔

• As we approach beta, we’ll be implementing a lot of changes to the new player experience based on the feedback and first impressions players have shared. This means that new players will get access to their homes much earlier in their journey!
• To make them feel right at home, we also added new tutorials to teach new players how to use build mode, craft furniture and install recipes in crafting stations. This means that the first few days will feel a little different.
• This also means that the circumstances when and where you meet Roomie will also change – and we changed his Friendship Progression track to match -, but it doesn’t mean he won’t have problems for you to help him with! 😅

🚨 Please note: 🚨 if you have started playing before 15.0 but have not yet been assigned to a waystation, your progress was reset so you can experience the new initial quests and are not unable to complete older quests that have now been removed.

Home Prestige 🌟

• We’re introducing a new progression track for your home: Home Prestige! As you participate in Mr. Kit’s decorating challenges, clear your land, and get likes from your friends and visitors, you’ll level up your home, raise your home decor limit and unlock new decor and building items in shops!
• For now, the only shop affected is Roomie’s, with unlocks in more shops to come in future updates.
  You can track your progress in a bulletin board close to the trolley
• Roomie will explain Home Prestige and Mr. Kit’s decoration challenges to new players as part of the new introductory quests, starting with his “Plant Friend” quest!

Wall Item Refactor 🖼️

• We did a complete refactor of wall items like posters, framed pictures and other wall decorations to turn them flat and allow for overlaps and more placement options!
• Now, flat wall items can be layered – a bear portrait can sit behind an antler mirror, and regular items like a coat rack can be placed on top of flat ones – making for a fully customizable decor experience!
• This also means that the unplaceable space between wall and floor items will no longer exist and now you can place items flush to walls. No more bookshelves too far from walls!

Potted Plants V2 Update 🪴

• As announced on #fox-thoughts last week, we will be introducing some more changes to Potted Plants in this update!
• Plants now have one additional happiness tag besides lightning that is unique to them, so each type brings its own perks and challenges!
• Some plants are now “fragile”, meaning they can die if they are left without water for too long.
• Water Sources: we have adjusted prices, water capacity and daily water recharge amount for the watering can, as well as turned multiple water-themed decor items – such as the fountain, sprinklers, spigot and water pump – into water sources 🚰
• Potted Plants Cap: the current cap starts out at 5 potted plants and seeds, but you can raise it up to 25 potted plants as you level up your Home Prestige! Please note that this is just a starting point, and these limits will likely be increased in future updates.
• Visitors will no longer trigger your plants to dry out when visiting.
  • We’ve also added an additional confirmation step on the “Destroy Plants” option so no more plants get killed accidentally 🥲
  • Now visitors can also fertilize and play music to plants in order to help you with gardening!
• Last but not least, we also fixed the issue where some plants wouldn’t dry out at Tier 1

Beacon Energy Changes

• In order to reduce some confusion and simplify some processes, we have decided to remove one of the three Beacon-related items from the equation. So, with the 15.0 update, your Beacon Drops will be converted into Beacon Energy in a 20:1 ratio. You can claim your converted Energy in the mail in-game.
• Beacon Energy can be offered to your waystation beacon to convert them into Sparks in a 100:1 ratio in batches of 100, 200 or 300.
• Don’t worry – we’ve made some adjustments to Tournaments, Storm Lanterns, and the Spirit quests to make the rewards proportional to the new ratio.
• We have also removed the daily beacon offering cap, so now you can turn in Beacon Energy as often as you want.
• Beacon Energy will keep the Beacon Energy Drop art and icons, as its visuals fit the Rainbow Time and Storm better;

Waystations 🛙

• With 15.0, we’re making some changes to Waystation Overgrowth Charms, and they will work more similarly to Tree Medicine;
• Now, instead of three different types of Overgrowth Charms (Small, Large, Huge), there will be only one type – and more charms are needed according to the size of the overgrowth;
• Each Waystation Clearing Charm now costs 1,000 coins, and there is a new cap to buying clearing charms – you can buy one a day;
• These changes make it so the overall cost to remove charms is increased, but the cost per person becomes a lot lower, especially if a lot of people contribute. This also removes the need to trade coins with others to gather funds to buy overgrowth clearing charms.
• The old Waystation Overgrowth Charms will be removed, and the coins you paid for them will be refunded via mail.

Wilderness and World Events 🌳 🏅

• Based on your feedback, we have removed some of the bumpers from harder Shrineworks Switchboard variants. Thank you all for your input!
• We have added percentage-based rewards to tournaments! This means that from now on, more players will get proportional rewards according to their position in the leaderboard, instead of just the Top 3.
• You can also filter the leaderboard to show just your friends
• New Wilderness Fog of War: explore the Wilderness to reveal the Map 🗺️

Shops Overhaul – Part 1 🛒

• We’ve added some new Shopkeepers to the Village! There are now two Clothing and two Decor vendors. All 4 of these Vendors are still works in progress and will get more stock and more variety soon!
• We also added a new Dye vendor who sells access to some Clothing dyes! In future updates, we’ll be adding more types of Dyes to this vendor, as well as giving players other ways to unlock and purchase Dyes.
• Joule is now selling Gliders 🪂
• Keep an eye out for Shops Part 2, coming soon, where we will continue to expand the places and ways you can buy and earn Cosmetics and Decor.

Quality of Life Improvements 💎

• More customization options: we added 3 brand new outfits – the new Sporewood Outfit, Raincoat Outfit and Rainstorm Outfit.
• Since chat is now unlocked at Lvl 1 Friendship, the Expressions menu will no longer open after meeting a stranger;
• We have removed seasonality from some resources – such as paper, ink, wood, wool, pigment base, and wood stumps – to simplify the resource inventory experience;
• Players now have the option to accompany music while sitting.
• Players can now buy Gift items from Marj, instead of crafting them. Salt and Sugar are no longer used – you can Recycle them for their old cost.

Bug Fixes 🐛

• We applied some fixes to items that were accidentally missed and could not be dyed, such as certain stairs, steps and railings.
• We also changed some restrictions and some stair cases will now accept decor dyes as well as floor dyes. Angled building roofs will be dyeable with decor dyes again, instead of with wall dyes, and flat building roofs will be dyeable with floor dyes (because it leads to some cool results!)
• We fixed a bug where Nuts, Fruits, and Greens were not showing seasonal icons in the reward screen

15.0 Known Issues

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

• Build Mode in your House shows your Waystation rank (Initiate, Architect, Elder, etc.)
• Build Mode in your House has a temporary icon for the Potted Plants cap
• Steps are not included in the starting Building Kit set
• Visiting your House will show a misplaced items error until you place the Fluffalo Weathervane
• Extra Passing Spirits are spawning in the Village but don’t ask for anything

Download the update on Google Play (Android) or App Store (iOS)!

With this release, the game will become available in the App Store for iOS players ✨ This means that TestFlight won’t be necessary anymore, and iOS players will need to reinstall the game via App Store instead