Today, we are releasing a small-ish update focused on bug fixes primarily, but also improving some user experience items and addressing some common complaints.

More to come as always!

Bonus tip: Wayward has a save back-up feature built in. By default, the last 10 times your save game file has been saved, a file backup will be available in your Wayward folder within the “backups” folder. More information on this is available here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2854947692

Bonus promo: Like pretty much any game in existence, Wayward is part of the Steam Summer sale. Snag a copy for yourself or a friend at -30% off during the sale: https://store.steampowered.com/app/379210/Wayward/

New

• There is now a world cursor, showing the tile you are selecting for actions.

Improvements

• Increased crafting range for adjacent containers to include corners.
• You can now excavate when there are no open tiles below you (except in the case of deep water).
• Increased the render limit on human equipment. (Thanks tr1ger1n86!)
• Ascend/descend now appears at the top of the action menu.
• Shippers will now move to lit or unlit lighthouses in the case they ever get lost at sea.
• Added a slight background to messages so you know where game screen actions cannot be performed and where message dialog actions can be.
• You can now preserve some items that are not edible.
• Clay filters now mention what type of water they deal with. (Thanks Treahblade!)
• You now “place down” vehicles instead of building them.

Balance

• Motes now receive minimum magical property value rolls.
• Motes now drop less frequently on non-aberrant creatures.
• Ectoplasm, wisp dust, and magical aspect/essence now take slightly more time to decay.
• Added a hard merchant cap to each island.
• Increased restock rate slightly for merchants.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed “exude” items not working properly when multiple of them were in a container at the same time. (Thanks Daxtfer!)
• Fixed everybody sleeping in a multiplayer game not properly fast-forwarding time. (Thanks Khadgar!)
• Fixed “Start with None” crafting recipes not working properly.
• Fixed “Reset Unlocked Crafting Recipes” option not working. (Thanks Khadgar!)
• Fixed scarecrow scare radius not being used properly when attempting to spawn creatures. (Thanks Hiran!)
• Fixed some potential errors happening when burning items. (Thanks Echora Tallit!)
• Fixed some actions not saving the magic item’s unique name.
• Fixed shippers getting stuck in some situations finding the port. (Thanks Vinn!)
• Fixed dug items not gaining any magical properties. (Thanks kustoxv2!)
• Fixed a multiplayer desync related to creature commands
• Fixed various UI issues when playing as a client in a multiplayer game.
• Fixed NPC dialogs staying open while you move away from NPCs when in multiplayer.
• Fixed an issue where you couldn’t place vehicles down in some cases even though you could ride them.
• Fixed NPCs waiting around forever if a multiplayer client leaves while talking to them.
• Fixed containers not updating weight when crafting. (Thanks kustoxv2!)
• Fixed "Creature Idols" not assigning a territory to the creatures it spawned, causing issues with milestones. (Thanks Markus Faust!)
• Fixed reinforcing items with Persistence, losing durability. (Thanks kustoxv2!)
• Fixed being able to “ride” a vehicle that is too damaged to match the functionality of placing it down.
• Fixed a desync with shipper’s inventories. (Thanks Khadgar!)
• Fixed a hidden milestone never being revealed.
• Fixed some specific crafts not needing fire to disassemble them. (Thanks Kulze!)
• Fixed being able to disassemble items without fire when they should have required it as per their original recipe. (Thanks Rheo!)
• Fixed trapping not granting kills for quests.
• Fixed recipes unlocking normally with Rouseabout. (Thanks Markus Faust!)
• Fixed winterberries decaying into two twigs.
• Fixed consuming returning disassembled items with the wrong magical properties.
• Fixed Persistence items getting incorrect values from doing specific actions like dismantling, digging, etc. (Thanks tr1ger1n86!)
• Fixed autosave timing not being accurate. (Thanks tr1ger1n86!)
• Fixed repairing sometimes using the fallback to tinkering when it shouldn’t have been.
• Fixed ranged actions moving tiles when standing on top of a doodad. (Thanks kustoxv2!)
• Fixed most actions not working with “Target Hovered Tile” and certain ranged actions like casting and throwing moving to perform the action.
• Fixed the idle bind descriptions being outdated. (Thanks Feral Grumpicorn!)

Technical

• Improved recipe crafting performance slightly.
• Reduced the time it takes to save the game on large saves.

Modding

• Fixed "human.turnEnd()" event not always being emitted.

Mods

Debug Tools

• Fixed a multiplayer desync when updating creature tamed state.
• Fixed the durability not accounting for "Persistence" items.

We’re starting this week off with the long-awaited Runekeeper Update #4. In this update, you’ll find tons of bug fixes of course, but also some brand new systems/content and many improvements as well. There was a big focus on recent suggestions and quality of life changes here. And, if you were running into performance issues before, this update should help a lot in that regard too!

More to come as always! The next update will be an even bigger update, likely in the form of the next major update, instead of this mini major update…

Bonus Promo: Join us on Discord! It’s the most active place to talk about Wayward: https://discordapp.com/invite/wayward

Bonus Tip: Going forward, crafting recipes are now unlocked automatically as you discover and/or craft new items. You no longer have to have the items in your inventory all at the same time to discover new crafts with them.

New

• Magical items are now generated with shorter, unique titles. You can now filter items by their magical property names.

• Added a new rare item drop that has a single magical property that is based on the creature it came from.
• Added an excavate/collapse action attached to shovels that will allow you to specifically create cave entrances/exits. You can now create new cave exits underground.
• Added a new magical property, “Terror” for scarecrows.
• You can now see how many turns are left before you can invoke within the item tooltips with 50% Theurgy skill.
• You can now see exact creature health values at very high levels of anatomy.
• Added a toggleable warning when dumping or dropping items into the void/water.
• You can now see your territory tier in the “Other Stats” tooltip.
• You can now remove all UI global save data in the “Save Data Removal” options.

Improvements

• Milestones now reveal in greater detail their effects.

• Added additional alerted icons based on creature difficulty.

• Traveling or sleeping can now grow doodads more than one step at a time based on how long you are gone/sleep for.
• Added a new property for creatures that dictate their alertness radius for attacking the player, and made some modifications for all creatures.
• Caves/lava can no longer be found randomly when digging, except for when digging deep holes. This can no longer happen while mining rock.
• The Starter Quest has been updated with new progression due to defaulted action slot changes.
• Scarecrows now benefit from their quality to improve their radius.
• Scarecrows now reveal their area of effectiveness via tooltips.
• Mysterious parchments and magical inscriptions can no longer be upgraded. (Thanks Andrej27!)
• Improved the order of tile events so that fire and tumbleweeds would not appear under others or each other.
• You can no longer sleep or rest when a hostile creature is next to you. (Thanks muzzy!)
• Fixed some item actions not being usable outside of the main inventory (like transmogrification, altering, enhancing, etc.). (Thanks Hiran!)
• Fire will now persist on grass tiles, eventually burning them completely.
• You can now butcher things while they are on fire (at risk of burning yourself). (Thanks sechsauge!)
• Reduced the delay for ascending and descending cave entrances.
• Escape will now cancel out of an item drag.
• The milestones dialog now has a warning when milestones can’t currently be unlocked. (Thanks DerSimon!)
• Improved the tooltips for dripstones.
• Added a way to refresh the mod list when Steam overlay is disabled.

Balance

• Crafting recipes now also unlock when you have seen all the items that go in a craft, rather than needing them all available in your inventory/adjacent containers.
• The reduction of swimming skill gains is now reduced as the skill levels up, making it a lot easier to max out.
• Reduced the stamina cost of using wheelbarrows and increased their capacity slightly.
• It is now harder (based on skill) to mine for minerals and ores and harder to get logs from trees.
• Wells will now regenerate water faster.
• The “Crafter” milestone modifier now adds a bit more crafting difficulty.
• Some creatures can no longer accept being petted, and some aggressively so.
• You now need to dig a deep hole before placing a well.
• Increased the base health/strength of merchants.
• Fire spreading now transfers a lot less of its decay to adjacent tiles.
• Raspberry bushes now contain more raspberries.
• Directly offered items no longer need to be crafted by a player to be accepted by a creature to tame them.
• Reduced the amount of items that a creature can produce/drop on a tile to 3.
• When corpses decay or are removed, items on top of them will sink in water or drop into voids.
• Consuming water tiles will now consume the full water amount instead of just rarely, to fix more water exploits. (Thanks Anketam!)
• Increased cold insulation on cloaks.
• Reduced the durability and cold insulation values on mage robes and added a fire vulnerability to them.
• The “Artificer” milestone modifier no longer gives you a magical essence, but rather the ingredients to potentially craft one.
• Dryads can now only spawn in territories that are tier 3 and above.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed some doodads, allowing certain (very) exploitable actions to be used from a distance. (Thanks quick!)
• Fixed durability/decay bars and magical animations not showing at 0.5/0.75 scale. (Thanks chromosomelocomotive!)
• Fixed “Persistence” items generating with incorrect durability when gathering. (Thanks DerSimon!)
• Fixed the “Masochist” milestone, progressing on deaths from creatures it should not have been. (Thanks Anketam!)
• Fixed collapsed caves not showing as collapsed visually when setting down tiles over top of the other side.
• Fixed the crafting dialog not updating recipes correctly.
• Fixed plant spreading not working properly when sleeping or advancing time. (Thanks psusi!)
• Fixed the creature tamed marker disappearing after uncaging a tamed creature.
• Fixed auto use actions skipping a tile when last facing a direction instead of moving. (Thanks the_cirada!)
• Fixed errors when attempting to consecrate many high-quality runes. (Thanks Hiran!)
• Fixed fire and other tile events not being visible over vehicles.
• Fixed the default axle type being tin instead of wood for minecarts. (Thanks kustoxv2!)
• Fixed copper minecarts being flammable.
• Removed certain very heavy items from being offered in merchant inventories, leading to issues refreshing their stock. (Thanks Hiran!)
• Fixed carpet and wooden tracks not burning properly.
• Fixed tile events not burning properly.
• Fixed the durability bar sometimes not updating when reinforcing. (Thanks muzzy!)
• Fixed not being able to use an action using a keybind in the action menu when it was the same as a disabled action. (Thanks muzzy!)
• Fixed torches with hoarding getting incorrect values. (Thanks Hiran!)
• Fixed a certain region of the screen not allowing clicks in real-time mode. (Thanks Hiran!)
• Fixed allowing magical property “Persistence” items from breaking on repair when protected. (Thanks the_cirada!)
• Fixed not being able to pour water or start fires in deep holes. (Thanks Hiran!)
• Fixed item decaying not working during travel/sleeping/forwarding events.
• Fixed being able to mine certain tile events.
• Fixed the wrong object being used in describing a warning when trying to gather from a tile that was on fire.
• Fixed tamed creatures slipping through walls. (Thanks typesoshee!)
• Fixed a potential error happening when digging. (Thanks Echora Tallit!)
• Fixed tile weight limit being checked for items in many instances where it should not have been including player death, container breaking, and more. (Thanks crowsandlions!)
• Fixed magical properties not being discovered in some instances like crafting or digging. (Thanks crowsandlions!)
• Fixed lighting not getting cleared correctly. (Thanks muzzy!)
• Fixed some creatures that could only be tamed using offered items not getting the correct happiness levels. (Thanks crowsandlions!)
• Fixed torch and candle magical properties getting re-rolled when lit. (Thanks AlP!)
• Fixed some rare items from not being able to receive the “Aptitude” magical property.
• Fixed tooltips not appearing after dragging and dropping an item onto a tile. (Thanks Vombat!)
• Fixed some skill milestone modifiers not being checked on game load. (Thanks Markus Faust!)
• Fixed hobgoblins setting down traps over water and other inappropriate places. (Thanks riftborn!)
• Fixed container weight not updating after traveling. (Thanks Feral Grumpicorn!)
• Fixed refining or reading some items not updating container weight. (Thanks Nobody Important!)
• Fixed “metabolism potency” not showing properly on item tooltips. (Thanks Anketam!)
• Fixed too much glowing/illumination, causing the opposite effect. (Thanks Bad Dreams!)
• Fixed the “regeneration” magical property not working on doodads. (Thanks DerSimon!)
• Fixed context menu and submenu bindings only sometimes working. (Thanks muzzy!)
• Fixed errors when trying to inspect distant lighthouses. (Thanks Anketam!)
• Fixed many memory leaks, causing slowdowns when playing for an extended amount of time. (Thanks TheBlackHand!)
• Fixed getting more resources from holes by abusing water routing tactics. (Thanks muzzy!)
• Fixed skipped quests not being completable after the fact, causing them to stay active forever. (Thanks sƃnı̣tNIⱯP!)
• Fixed detection of overlay enabled state on Mac & Linux.
• Fixed quest requirements not being removed from the pause menu when skipping quests.
• Fixed holes appearing underneath plants/doodads from creature spawning. (Thanks DerSimon!)
• Fixed path to tile attempting to move over holes. (Thanks DerSimon!)
• Fixed the “Luck” stat not having an icon.
• Fixed All Follow command text. (Thanks Feral Grumpicorn!)
• Fixed indicating an item stack for trade not causing the stacked items to appear if the stack hasn’t been opened previously.
• Fixed highlighted stack items not appearing if the stack hasn’t been opened yet. (Thanks muzzy!)
• Fixed item menus being broken on stacked items in certain contexts. (Thanks DerSimon!)
• Fixed the rest action on “best item” making you move forward a tile.
• Fixed a right-click issue on macOS. (Thanks HelixA2!)
• Fixed shippers being able to use the cargo they’re shipping. (Thanks inquisitiveToast!)
• Fixed the game not always loading when using Wayland on Linux.
• Fixed auto-use not working correctly when backing up with a wheelbarrow. (Thanks Ursa (lovesthesoundof)!)

Technical

• Updated Electron to version 35.
• Upgraded to TypeScript 5.8.
• Fixed a performance issue related to messages and magical sprite animations. (Thanks Hiran!)
• Items in a pile are now culled after a certain amount in a stack. (Thanks the_cirada!)

Modding

• Stopped including Typescript dependency when publishing mods. (Thanks muzzy!)
• Removed unnecessary rimraf dependency from mods. (Thanks muzzy!)

Mods

Debug Tools

• Removed the curse stat (for now).

Magicology

• Added an icon for the “Magicology” skill.
• Staves no longer weigh as much.

TARS

• Fixed getting stuck trying to attach a water container to a water still when there’s a flying creature over it.
• Fixed getting stuck due to slippery tiles.
• Will now prioritize the spawn point location when looking for a location to build a base.
• TARS is now less likely to venture to dangerous places.
• Fixed TARS getting stuck trying to dig deep holes.
• Learned how dripstones actually work.
• Improved Quantum Burst Mode speed.
• Reduced stuttering when moving.
• Fixed the dialog header not always updating when moving.
• Will no longer pickup items from dangerous tiles when organizing the base.
• Will build at least 1 water still in addition to drip stones.
• Fixed various pathing issues.
• Will now pick up items when the solar still is blocked.
• When looking for water, take into account the amount of time it will take for purification.
• Fixed movement issues related to tamed creatures.

Hello there, I hope you all have enjoyed/are enjoying your holidays! We have another batch of fixes and improvements ready for tonight. Thank you all for your reports and for helping us diagnose and troubleshoot many of these issues.

We are continuing to monitor several ongoing issues; mostly to deal with memory leaks and container UI desyncs. These likely will continue to persist although will be much improved with this release.

Bonus promo: Check out our feature voting site to vote on plenty of the most requested features to help define our future priorities! https://www.waywardgame.com/vote

Bonus tip: Reputation, karma, benignity, malignity or whatever you want to call it has been removed! Creature difficulty is now based on territories. Creatures get harder and harder as you expand outwards on your island, or if you travel to a new island, creature difficulty will be inversed and get harder as you travel towards the center. Creature territories can be modified using some in-game mechanics related to runes.

Improvements

• Improved the action slot tooltip, with new iconography, support for all the different choices for which item to choose, and support for all the different action slot types.
• You can now use the “Stoke Fire” action with nearby items, not just items in your inventory.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed “Move to Inventory” being an option for an item stack in your inventory if an item stack of the same item type is in another container. (Thanks Sophie!)
• Fixed a number of actions menu & action slot memory leaks. (Thanks muzzy!)
• Fixed a container UI desync when an item changes type, such as consuming an apple or gathering liquid. (Thanks Deo!)
• Fixed a container UI desync when you pick up an item with your inventory set to “Recent” and the first thing in your inventory being an item stack of a different type.
• Fixed a container UI desync when moving a protected item into a recently sorted container with a stack of the same item type at the start.
• Fixed item movement actions being unavailable on stacks in protected containers.
• Fixed “use hovered item” action slots using the “best” item if the hovered item is invalid. (Thanks whutch!)
• Fixed stacked items in protected containers not being handled correctly, causing you to be unable to move a stack out of a protected container. (Thanks DerSimon!)
• Fixed stack displays without a number being added to container UI in specific cases. (Thanks Andrej27!)
• Being hit by a creature that deals no damage now also discovers the “Defense” stat. (Thanks Sophie!)
• Fixed the combination of “Target Hovered Tile” and “Use Best Item” displaying weirdly.
• Fixed item type translations sometimes appearing with two icons.
• Fixed items that have a damage type but no attack value being able to get “Fire” magical properties. (Thanks inquisitiveToast!)
• Fixed the Thaumaturgic milestone modifier not disabling the special magical property count handling from mastercrafted items.
• Fixed hostile creatures using cave entrances when alerted and on the same layer as you.
• Fixed void dwellers trying to move into other void dwellers.
• Fixed action slots that move items around in containers not updating “Use Hovered Item” slots. (Thanks whutch!)
• Fixed a specially crafted string payload in chat causing the game to freeze.
• Fixed trapdoor spider AI causing the spider to sometimes go back into hiding while chasing you.
• Fixed trapdoor spider AI causing the spider to sometimes wander while you’re nearby.
• Fixed trapdoor spiders giving away their position by revealing that they’re alerted. (Thanks Goliat!)
• Fixed a multiplayer desync related to creature AI.

Technical

• Improved the safety of the event system by heavily encouraging the use of “owner” objects when subscribing. When the “owner” objects are removed or disposed of, any events it subscribed to are also automatically unsubscribed.

Today we have a patch ready that will hopefully give you all some extra cheer to start off the holidays with plenty of bug fixes and improvements!

As always, let us know if you spot any other issues!

Bonus tip: You can perform actions automatically as you walk around using action slots. If you are checking out this update as a brand new player or coming back with no previous save data, you’ll see a couple of these actions already added to your action slot by default. If not, simply configure an action slot using right-click and checking the “Auto-Use” option. This can be used to emulate the previous “Auto pick-up” option.

Bonus promo: The Steam winter sale is upon us! Wayward is currently -30% off until January 2.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/379210/Wayward/

Improvements

• New players will now get default actions assigned in action slots to hopefully help the player learn basic actions and UI.
• There are now direct keyboard hotkeys (which can be rebound) to pick up an item "Ctrl + G" or pick up all items "G".
• You no longer need to discover 20 actions in order for the “Auto-Use” option to become available.
• Removed outdated help information on picking up items. (Thanks Ursa (lovesthesoundof))!

Bug Fixes

• Fixed action slots not working sometimes. (Thanks muzzy!) (For both the initial report and figuring out how to reproduce it consistently.)
• Fixed an additional edge case with scrolling that led to zooming in that direction no longer working and also broke action slots. (Thanks Feral Grumpicorn!)
• Fixed an issue where tooltips would be duplicated. (Thanks muzzy!)
• Fixed the sort dropdown in container dialogs saying a different sort than the collapsed label when first opening the dialog.
• Fixed some container UI desyncs. (Thanks inquisitiveToast!)
• Fixed throwing not getting the correct damage type. (Thanks inquisitiveToast!)
• Fixed some action bar setup weirdness when dragging items into slots — could cause things like empty slots with an action in the corner, or cause the action you’re trying to assign to clear the item or cause the item to clear the action even when they’re perfectly compatible. (Thanks Vallivanting!)
• Fixed a rare case of infinite recursion when hovering over a “Use Hovered Item” action slot. (Thanks Goliat!)
• Fixed container weight as displayed in the dialog becoming incorrect after travelling. (Thanks muzzy!)
• Fixed items not updating after/when traveling.
• Fixed rare multiplayer desyncs when traveling.
• Fixed cut hide not being flammable. (Thanks DerSimon!)
• Fixed the “ascend” or “descend” action showing up in the tile context menu for tiles other than cave entrances.
• Fixed importing custom game options reducing multiplier values. (Thanks Ghon!)
• Fixed dedicated servers showing “1” players when 0 players were connected and other server stat inconsistencies.
• Fixed gathering piles of rocks using the botany skill. (Thanks Crows!)
• Fixed some tyypos. (Thanks TheBlackHand!)

Technical

• All entities and tiles now have a “debug” object that can be printed in the console with the ".debug" property, a much cleaner representation of the data for each object than the actual object instance.
• Added the "ref(refId)" function for use in the console, for resolving the object of a particular reference ID.

Mods

Debug Tools

• Using the “inspect” bind now assigns all inspected entities and the tile to variables in the console to make debugging easier.

TARS

• Fixed some navigation issues related to slipping on ice.
• Improved how items are moved into backpacks.
• Fixed issues building solar stills & sailboats.
• Improved corpse butchering.
• Improved where it builds sailboats.

Tonight we are releasing a small patch to address some of the issues found so far in Runekeeper. More to come as always after a big major update!

Bonus tip: You can combine items into stacks within your inventory by using Ctrl + left-click on the item you want to stack. You can change this binding in the options.

Bonus promo: We are now on Bluesky! Follow us here: https://bsky.app/profile/waywardgame.bsky.social

New

• You can now use shift + scroll to move stacked items to or from the active inventory.

Improvements

• “Repeat from action history” mode now turns itself off when doing anything other than repeating an action to prevent accidental usage. (Thanks muzzy!)
• Added support for displaying the correct keys for alternate keyboard layouts. (Thanks muzzy!)
• Coastal water-based templates now feature gravel instead of dirt.
• Cave entrances now attempt to be surrounded by more passable tiles.
• Added the ability to get runes through dismantling.
• The Ascend or Descend action is no longer discovered by default for new players in order to further simplify the initial actions drawer, and must be instead discovered by right-clicking (or using the spacebar in front of) a cave entrance and using the action, or by using the dedicated Ascend or Descend binding.

Balance

• Increased the amount of natural cave spawns across all biomes.
• Reduced or removed the chance of gaining runes based on the tier of territory you are in.
• The “Auto Pickup While Moving” option has been removed in favour of the action slot “Auto-Use” and “Target Hovered Tile” options, which obey the same turn-passing rules as manually picking up items.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed the Starter Quest not working properly in certain situations. (Thanks K4_E!)
• Fixed quickmoving items to containers with an “open” stack of the same type causing a desync where the new items either display at the start or the end.
• Fixed “Dig” and “Enchant” actions not properly awarding runes.
• Fixed a multiplayer desync that occurred when joining a game while another player was resting.
• Fixed being able to import milestone modifiers that aren’t unlocked. (Thanks ApocRider!)
• Fixed choosing an action in the actions drawer not defaulting the “Target Hovered Tile” option to the correct state.
• Various item bindings are now disabled entirely when dragging an item to hopefully prevent some UI edge cases. (Thanks muzzy!)
• Reduced the chance of the starting water source from the Starter Quest going into the ocean.
• Fixed the “bleeding” status effect overlay not working.
• Fixed an infinitely long durability bar when dragging an item that’s about to break. (Thanks muzzy!)
• Fixed non-modifier action slots being used when releasing the modifier first of a modifier action slot. (Thanks muzzy!)
• Fixed creatures not becoming alerted when attacking you.
• Fixed explored areas on the map not always getting revealed in multiplayer games.
• Fixed the pause button being invisible with certain options set. (Thanks Soul5hadows!)
• Fixed being able to gain “Theurgy” skill by refining or reinforcing runes. (Thanks Rheo!)
• Fixed the Runekeeper milestone modifier only updating the “last received rune” when receiving multiple runes at once. (Thanks muzzy!)
• Fixed the Runekeeper milestone only progressing when receiving multiple runes at once. (Thanks muzzy!)
• Fixed the Doctor milestone not being possible to progress. (Thanks muzzy!)

Modding

• Re-enabling a mod will now re-initialize languages and stylesheets. (Thanks GWIDON!)

Mods

TARS

• Fixed a multiplayer desync when traveling to another island.
• Fixed TARS not idling correctly in multiplayer games.
• Now tries to stay off ice & other slippery surfaces.
• Fixed getting stuck when connected to a multiplayer game while encumbered.
• Fixed navigation issues when using sailboats/swimming.
• Improved objective planning.
• Fixed an infinite loop when trying to gather water.

Welcome to “Runekeeper”, the biggest update to date!

If you have been following along through the updates and newsletters, you will know that through many iterations and scraped ideas, we finally have a replacement for reputation: creature territories. Creatures and difficulty will increase as you move out into different parts of the island or travel to new ones. You can also modify this system slightly using a new mechanic involving runes and deities (there’s a mini spoiler in the new trailer below). Be free, and play however you want now without having to worry about managing your reputation! Share your thoughts on this new system or on any of the other changes we put out this time around. It’s a big one!

We also have a new trailer for 2024/2025 (it’s close enough, right?).

---

Some stand-out features this time around include:

Creatures now have simplistic “territories” — creatures near your spawn point are now easier than creatures far away, and creatures will stay in their original areas more often.

You have attracted the attention of multiple unknown forces — deities. As you survive and make decisions, these deities will award you with tokens in their likeness. Invoke them, and in turn, receive their blessing.

You can now “stack” and “unstack” like items. Item stacks display as if they are the first item in the stack (respecting your sort), with a quantity of how many total items are in the stack. You can press “ctrl” to temporarily expand the stack your mouse is over.

Added wheelbarrows, allowing you to push and pull additional storage.

Added armor stands, allowing you to store armor and weapon sets visually with the ability to quick-swap certain builds.

You can now right-click on any visible location to perform actions there, your character will automatically walk to wherever they need to.

Added a new action bar that gets filled with context menu action history as you play.

Merchant trading has been redesigned.

The full novel changelog can be read through below:

Read more…

As described in the latest newsletter, the development branch has been out for quite some time now, but we were waiting on addressing some issues before announcing an update in this post. The creature spawning/reputation/rune changes are in and after going through some iterations, is at a good level of polish now. We have also been adding tons of new things as well (like usual). Just a recap for those not following along:

• Reputation AND alignment are gone!
• Creature spawning is now based on territories/zones. Read more about that here: https://steamcommunity.com/games/wayward/announcements/detail/4346622097173088568
• New stat and status effect UI/tooltip system.
• Tile targeting for actions (including ranged targeting).
• Runes and deities now have unique effects to do with creature spawning.
• Less bugs?
• More bugs?

There’s a few issues that are remaining, but we are getting close to a new release! If you are feeling like doing a playthrough with the new system in place, we would love to hear your feedback!

Here Be Dragons Drakes

As always, we would encourage you to back up your saves before trying this development branch of the game. By default, you can find your backups and save folders in the main Wayward directory. You can also export saves and global save data in-game if needed.

More information on how to change branches here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=721479594

Report any issues you spot!

Here’s the ever-growing, largely unsorted changelog thus far:

Read more…

Welcome the 13th iteration of the Wayward newsletter, featuring a long-awaited status update, showcasing mods, and other tidbits!

Status Update

Firstly, no, Wayward is not dead. Behind the scenes, but not super behind the scenes, we have been pushing updates to the development branch pretty much the whole time. Unfortunately, we ran into several design snags while attempting to rid the game of that pesky reputation mechanic. Read more about that in the last newsletter if you haven’t already:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/379210/view/3882727783075132076

In order to satisfy all the playstyles with the new rune/deity-based systems, we still had to cling on to flawed progression metrics that could easily be gamed and circumvented to min/max the difficulty all the while being nearly as tedious/confusing as the previous system. We are now scraping that plan and coming up with something completely different. Deities and runes will still be in the mix, but not as a means to curb difficulty, at least directly.

Our current plan is that progression in the game (as in, harder creatures, access to new/better materials) will work more closely like other overworld RPG games instead of creatures of all types randomly spawning around you all based around a flawed, magical number.

Instead, creatures will have territories that increase in difficulty the further away from your spawn point and the further away from your starting island. These creatures like to stay close to their territory and will no longer chase you half across the world. This will allow players to keep their current playstyle and progress further only when they want to (or they run out of resources/things to do).

More information on this system is coming up soon!

Tile Targeting

This hasn’t been the only thing we have been working on of course. We have also implemented tile targeting, meaning you can now hover over a tile and perform actions there using the action menu (via right-click), which means you can actually aim your ranged attacks now!

You can also action slot these types of actions as well to save a few clicks/key presses:

Improved Creature Control

Tamed creatures now have a symbol above them to easily spot which creatures are tamed or not. You can now also control a group of creatures within a small radius using new flute items which can give multiple creatures commands at the same time without having to try to navigate to each of them.

These are just a few small previews of what is to come in what has become the biggest major update to date! Sorry about the wait!

Mod Showcase

Check out some of the recent modifications the community has created!

Blood Rites by SKIPPY

Do something with all that blood laying around! Blood containers, blood drinking, vampires and more!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3299372812

Windows Mod by TTastic

A very popular request, and a planned feature; TTastic does us all a favor and adds it into the game for us (for now!).

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3271896900

Unbreakable Goodies by fercoraya

A remake of the popular “Master Crafter” mod. It makes mastercrafted and relic items unbreakable.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3008033731

Feature Voting

We always like to draw attention to our feature voting site which serves as an informal roadmap for the game. Take a look and vote on the features you’d like to see next:

https://www.waywardgame.com/vote

Discord

To join in to discuss all of the above or anything else related to Wayward, join our Discord!

https://discord.gg/wayward

End of Windows 7 Support

Along with Steam earlier this year, Wayward, going forward will be required to cease Windows 7 support due to upstream software changes. This means the next major release will no longer be supported on Windows 7. That being said, there are technically ways around this and of course, we offer the latest major release versions dating all the way back to May 11, 2016 (beta 2.0.5).

Leave A Review!

If you have a few minutes, please leave us a review on Steam. We use any feedback we get to make the game better!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/379210/Wayward/

Thanks for reading and stay tuned!

Hot off the heels of our latest newsletter, we are opening up our development branch to test all the latest additions and a poll to help name this release.

If you plan to partake in the testing of this release, after loading the game you will be greeted with a new special dialog explaining the current issues and/or status of the development branch including some bugs we are looking for feedback on. It will be quite buggy for the first little while!

Naming Ideas

Here are a few of the ideas we have so far for the name: https://strawpoll.com/XmZRxEvQ3nd

These are mostly deities related, but there are other new things in the update as well to draw inspiration from. Comment any new ones you can think of and/or vote for your pick!

Here Be Dragons Drakes

As always, we would encourage you to back up your saves before trying this development branch of the game. By default, you can find your backups and save folders in the main Wayward directory. You can also export saves and global save data in-game if needed.

More information on how to change branches here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=721479594

Report any issues you spot!

Here’s the work-in-progress changelog so far:

Read more…

Welcome the 12th iteration of the Wayward newsletter, featuring future plans, dissecting current issues, showcasing mods/media, and more!

Beacon’s Call Postmortem

The last major update and the patches thereafter were a big step in improving player experience and smoothing out the starting of the game. Whether it was the addition of dripstones, adding freshwater rivers to the starting island, reputation tweaks, spawning location improvements, or additions to the Starter Quest – there was tons done to refine the early game. While there’s still lots of work to be done here, the feedback has been pretty positive there.

That’s not to say mid-late game players also didn’t get some goodies here either. Ports and shippers offer up a way to transport items across islands. Gems and golems provide a late-game milestone to search out and create. Creature cages add an easy method of transporting creatures, especially across islands. Creature commands provide incentives for making long-time friends with your tamed companions. Bookcases adds bonuses for keeping all the lore and text in the game. These are just a few of the features added in the last major update if you haven’t had a chance to check it out yet.

New Beginner’s Guide Video

Speaking of new players, I recently put out a new updated beginner’s guide video going through the Starter Quest and handing out a few additional tips and tricks while doing so.

Upcoming Reputation Changes

You may have already seen a hint of this change with the renaming of “Reputation” to “Ferocity” which better explains its effects. This is just the beginning of it though. To explain, reputation in Wayward has always been a “difficulty slider”, but one done through in-game mechanics and lore. The whole purpose of it has not been one of ecological commentary, but rather, to provide players a way to modify the game to their liking and playstyle. The issues with it are many but include:

• What increases/decreases reputation is unknown to the player natively and must be discovered.
• Actions can sometimes increase and decrease reputation at the same time, leading to net-neutral changes.
• Some actions can be exploited to gain or lower reputation, leading to a lot of tedious gameplay like using the same action/mechanic over and over again.
• It forces some actions/playstyles that a player may not want to do just because they want to keep a certain difficulty.
• It’s confusing to new players, but new players have to be aware of it so they can tweak their difficulty.
• It’s balanced in a way that over time, the game is supposed to get harder; however, depending on the player’s playstyle this intent can be lost.

Deities to save the day! As paying homage to its roguelike roots, Wayward will be introducing deities, invoking, and sacrifice; a common staple of the genre. While this has been planned for years now, it was always meant to augment reputation, but now it will be replacing it. This system will solve every point above as actions no longer impact the difficulty of the game. You are free to do whatever you want. As you play, the difficulty of the game will increase naturally, but, the player has direct control over this. They can devote themselves to the deities of the island to offset this. Later on, they can even sacrifice collectable runes (dropped to the player when performing actions) to swing difficulty in either direction with a single action.

We would consider adding an in-game difficulty slider to be a failure. We would rather continue to iterate on the concept of dynamic difficulty and I really think we got it feeling really good this time around.

Upcoming Inventory/Container Overhaul

The next piece of the old UI is on the chopping block!

If you are not familiar with the backstory here; we slowly have been redoing pieces of UI to modernize it (maintenance-wise) and provide new features/improvements all of which eventually will allow us to do full controller support. This is something we have to work on over time as it is a huge undertaking and a lot of it is near-invisible to most players. After this one, the next and final one to port over is the crafting dialog.

As an added bonus this time around, we will be adding a much-requested feature that is very much visible to players. Item stacking! Simply CTRL+click an item to stack it together. Hold CTRL to preview the stack, and CTRL+click it again to unstack it.

Development Branch

The development branch where you can test all these changes should be live soon. We are planning by the end of this week to reenable it for all the eager testers out there. Stay tuned for the development branch announcement!

Feature Voting

Something that we always like to mention in these newsletters is that our feature voting page works as an impromptu roadmap for the game – but one where players get to pick what they see as most important. Check it out and cast your vote for upcoming features:

https://www.waywardgame.com/vote

Media Showcase

As has become a yearly-ish tradition, Splattercat has recently released a new video on Wayward. Funnily enough, he mentions the reputation issues mentioned above, leading to the impetus for us to focus on that system.

If you have been keeping up on the updates during this lull in updates, you probably have already seen these teaser videos, but if not, check out a preview of armor stands and wheelbarrows, two highly requested features coming up in the next release:

Mod Showcase

Check out some of the recent modifications the community has created!

Player-Owned Areas by HDJam

Adds the ability to claim areas, protecting them from other players. A great utility for dedicated servers to prevent griefing or setting up custom scenarios/challenges.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2992525255

Quality Tile Colours by Kitsune

Quickly becoming the most popular Wayward Workshop submission, this mod displays small colorized sparkles on tiles and doodads with quality.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2990505230

Jeeves – Unofficial Update by Dark Helix

An unofficial port/update of the once-popular mod, Jeeves by Cringe which allows management of items on the ground – showing them in a container dialog.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2964370715

Fantasy Customizations by Sensakuma

Adds a ton of custom hairstyles (some fantasy-based), exotic skin tones, and more.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2978026244

Quick Stack by FluffyWuffletonTheFierce

A tool for automatically moving and sorting items based on filtered item types and groups.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2854879083

Autumn Sale

If you are reading this before the 28th of November, you still have a chance to grab Wayward for -25% off as part of the Steam Autumn sale.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/379210/Wayward/

Leave A Review!

If you have a few moments to spare after reading this, we would love it if you shared your feedback on the game with us in the form of a Steam review. It helps us a lot!

Thanks for reading and stay tuned!