Beta 2.6 Postmortem

Beta 2.6 turned out to be another long one in terms of bug fixes and improving the new additions we brought forth in the release. We got up to six patches before eventually moving on to the next major update.

Some things of note within the beta 2.6 release and minor patches included:

• Added a “Simulated Turns” multiplayer mode, which allows time/turn passing as long as players are performing actions, otherwise the game will be paused.
• The Debug Tools mod has been completed redesigned and has a brand new feature set. Shout-out to Yuudaari for this!
• Added NPCs to the game that will spawn rarely and randomly in your world that you can barter and trade with. It was a bit too rare at the start, but we recently tweaked this a bit. Although, as it turned out, it may need some more tweaking for longer games.
• You can now pathfind/move automatically to a tile using ctrl + left click (or middle mouse click) by default.
• You can now use adjacent tiles with items or containers as a source for crafting ingredients and recipe discovery. This was later improved to also be used for dismantling/disassembling as well.

Almost all of these have been suggested by the community and were eventually considered high-priority additions. You can see a full overview of all of the 2.6 changes here: http://www.waywardgame.com/changelog

Beta 2.7 Plans

One of our main goals and focus for beta 2.7 will be replayability and variety. Although, we still want to prioritize what the community votes for in the game, it is important to keep an active playerbase as well. To this end, we are adding in some new features that weren’t necessarily the most popular in terms of votes, but thought would help the game sustain a healthy following as we develop. Some of these ideas include:

Server Browser

Finding people to play with is hard and laborious. To help everybody (including those that graciously hosted dedicated servers in the past), we are replacing the “Friends” menu with a server browser that will show all public multiplayer games (or ones that your friends are in).

Daily Challenge

The daily challenge mode in Wayward has never been the most engaging. It’s basically just a harder version of the game with no saving. We want to redesign this from the ground up to be a quick pick-up game with unique modifiers and goals/challenges. We envision these games to last around 30 minutes to 1 hour in length (from start to death or win).

Custom Game Mode

A great side effect of adding in custom modifiers for the daily challenge is we can add a custom game mode where players can pick and choose them for their own normal game. Things like decreasing hunger/thirst rates, disabling creature hostility, modifying reputation rates, and more.

Beta 2.7 Reveals

We don’t have a great amount to show yet as everything is still kind of sitting in a state of “half-done”, but there are a few things we can at least preview.

Tooltip Improvements

Tooltips are getting a face-lift! World tooltips are much easier to read/scan and feature expanded information.

Desert Improvements

The desert areas are about to look a lot better and feature some more unique content. We’re adding three new plants, a new desert creature, and even a new tile into the mix.

Wells

Wells are coming to beta 2.7 as part of the “Item Idea Contest” that we held over the last month or so. Find more information on the contest below.

Wishlist

As always, we are offering a streamlined way to get your suggestions and ideas in for beta 2.7 as well develop it. While there are tons of things we have already added, we still have a few months of development to go before the next release.

Wishlist thread: https://steamcommunity.com/app/379210/discussions/0/3397295779072447621/

Wishlist poll: https://poll.ly/#/P0m1znKL

Item Contest Winners

We got a ton of item submissions. Thanks for all of your ideas! Sadly, we can’t pick them all to win a place as some of the next new items to be featured in the game, but we made notes on everything submitted. So it’s possible your idea may be a future addition.

Take a look at the winners and winning items here: http://www.unlok.ca/wayward/item-idea-contest/

Steam Chat

In a weird turn of events, it looks as if Steam is getting to be a bit more like Discord, and Discord a bit more like Steam as of late. Wayward now has an official Steam Chat, although, we are unsure if this will actually take off the way our Discord did.

Steam Chat Invite: https://s.team/chat/LKlicomi

Wayward on YouTube

In the last bit of news, it looks like Wayward finally has YouTube category. Sadly, it appears to be auto-generated with no way of updating or changing any of the information. But at least content creators can now use “Wayward” as the category instead of defaulting to Minecraft or something even less relevant which was the only option in the past. If you have created some content on Wayward on YouTube, we would appreciate it if you could update the category on your videos.

Wayward category: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdN_GdZLMwmPKvE_sX2ab_w

We’ve finally reached the end of the beta 2.6 series of patches. On to greater things with the commencement of beta 2.7 development! While this is normally the time for us to go silent on the news front, please make sure to follow us on social media or join our Discord server to stay up to date on all the development previews and discussion while we work on our next major update.

Much of this release improves on the mechanics of merchants and addresses some of the issues spotted from the modding changes found in the last patch with other improvements sprinkled in as per usual.

Speaking of beta 2.7, don’t forget to check out our “Item Idea Contest” here: http://www.unlok.ca/wayward/item-idea-contest/ – Three winners here will get their item idea added to the game in beta 2.7.

Improvements

• You can now cancel out of resting.
• More than one merchant NPC is now able to spawn per world.
• Healing merchants will now remove their hostility against you.
• “Carve With Tool” now provides an item break confirmation when the option is enabled.
• You can now pour out water on to other players to soothe their burn injuries.
• Merchants and other players (when PVP is enabled) can no longer spawn within a player’s view.
• Merchants will now be burned when standing in fire (or lava).
• The game will now continue to fade in even when the game is paused.
• Messages are now displayed top-to-bottom when in an upper quadrant.

Balance

• There is now a reputation loss or gain (instead of a guaranteed loss) when tamed creatures fight other creatures (based on if their target is hostile or not) and is applied specifically to the owner.
• You can no longer jump over players and NPCs.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed save errors on some hardware by reducing the amount of memory required to save the game (this will also make saving the game faster).
• Fixed mods failing to load when joining a server, if a mod needed another mod as a dependency but the loading order was incorrect.
• Fixed the game not quitting if it had been reloaded.
• Fixed items not lighting on fire when dropped onto lava from a player’s death or broken container.
• Fixed an error on opening the options menu after using the “Enable All” button in the mods menu.
• Fixed the “Enable All” button in the mods menu not updating the mod check buttons visually.
• Fixed a regression where the mod options button was not hiding/showing when a mod is enabled/disabled.
• Fixed a regression where mods were not able to use this.getPath() before image paths.
• Fixed tile changes not saving in modded world layers.
• Fixed a regression where mods were not able to import the Mod class by name.
• Fixed a regression where menu bar buttons registered using mod.addMenuBarButton loaded images from the wrong path.
• Fixed responding “no” to enable/disable “required mod” interrupts not cancelling enabling/disabling the first mod.
• Fixed errors caused by loading a save which had previously had a mod enabled with custom stats.

Modding

• Added “inter-mod registries”, for mods to provide things to others (or not, if the target mod is not present).

Mods

Troposphere

• Fixed taking damage as a ghost when falling from the troposphere.
• Fixed emptying a water tile in the troposphere spawning a dirt tile in its place.

Balancing Tools

• Now compatible with Debug Tools 2.0.

Debug Tools

• Other players besides the host on a server now do not have permission to use Debug Tools by default (this can be changed by inspecting the player).
• Fixed a bug that caused panels registering as hook hosts if you disabled debug tools after loading a game with it.
• Fixed an error when closing the Debug Tools dialog.
• Now supports other mods adding custom panels, inspection panels, and entity inspection sections.
• Fixed adding items to inventory producing multiple items based on how many times you opened the inspect dialog.
• Fixed items from mods loaded after Debug Tools not appearing in “Add Item to Inventory” inspection dropdowns.
• Actions can now be used while moving.

Have you always wanted to see a certain item in Wayward? Or maybe you are tired of seeing an idea sitting on the todo list and want to push it along faster? Now’s your chance!

Submit your item idea along with any details you wish to provide (description, actions, abilities, etc.). The top three submissions (based on feasibility, appropriateness, and concept) will appear in-game in the next major release and the winners will receive a free Wayward key! We will also be choosing a handful random submissions that will receive a free Wayward key for their effort!

Deadline: October 20th, 2018

Submission form: https://goo.gl/forms/g2pWKTdJkfFFJqjD2

Disclaimer: Proposed item ideas may or may not already exist within on our todo list and may already be in production. Full implementation of any item idea will be under our discretion and direction. Winners will be credited in an upcoming major release changelog and blog post. The first person to submit an idea will have priority for winning. Don’t lawyer me, bro.

Have fun!

Winners:

Wells by Adrien S. Enzo

Wells have been on the todo for quite awhile. It’s also one of the most requested items and features. Luckily Adrien S. Enzo submitted it first, so he gets all the credit! Fortunately, it’s a win-win for everybody as this will be a great item to reduce some of the tedium of water gathering. You’ll be able to build wells out of rocks, sandstone and clay bricks.

Hitching Post by Xechorizo

Xechorizo submitted this as “tether”, but the functionality will remain the same. It will be an item that can be built into the ground that will allow you to hitch tamed creatures so they stay put. This will be very useful for tamed creature management.

Hardtack by RatElemental

It’s probably not the baked item that most people wanted, but it’s a start! Hardtack will be the first “baked” item to be added to Wayward. This item is a bit sneaky because we also had to add in five other items just to support it (including pans, flour, and dough).

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Although we could only choose a couple of items to go in for beta 2.7, these are not the only items appearing in the next major release. We’re already at over 30 new items in the release. We also made notes on all of the other submissions for future consideration.

Special thanks to everybody who submitted, but especially: kenov511, DanekJovax, Arnkh, GlerkTheFlurp, and Mitzthekitty who won a free Wayward Steam key!

We haven’t quite yet started on the next major release, but instead have been plugging away on getting Wayward more stable, improving systems, and balancing the game. There has also been a lot of work and development put into new modding support.

Something of note is that we released a new “Compatibility Branch” that should help anybody experiencing freezing, saving or graphical issues with the game. Please check this branch out if you are having one or more of these issues. More information on changing branches is available here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=721479594

Another thing to note is that we rebuilt the official Debug Tools mod from scratch using the new dialog and UI system. Among the ton of new features in it, it’s now a great example case if you want to poke around in the code for your own modification. Shout-out to Yuudaari on that one! Check it out on the Steam Workshop here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=474819610

Improvements

• In “Simulated Turns” mode, the game tick now occurs simultaneously with the player turn. The next game tick is still delayed by the same amount of time.
• Plant spreading will now no longer cross doodads that block movement (walls, fences, etc.).
• Multiple changes have been done to items produced when many items burn, including many fixes/consistency improvements.
• Piles of ash can now burn away with enough time.
• Doodads will provide more accurate and consistent items when burning, especially during different growth stages or stages of resource gathering for plants.
• Items in fire (that can be burned) will now reduce in durability until eventually burning instead of sometimes instantly producing burned items.
• Some items may now produce multiple items when burning (such as logs producing multiple charcoal). Crafted items will now also be more consistent with what they burn into based on what was used in the craft.
• You can now connect to a server with required mods disabled. The game will automatically enable them for you and disable them after disconnecting.
• Items that can spawn creatures on decay or break will now be able to spawn on a wider variety of tiles.
• A saving screen will now show when exiting the game by closing the window.
• You can now disable the custom cursor in the options menu.
• Added some information about crafting fertile soil within the gardening help article.
• Mods in the multiplayer menu now show their multiplayer compatibility in their tooltip. (Thanks black silence!)
• Ghosts can no longer write notes.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed difficulty appearing as a number instead of a message. (Thanks NB!)
• Fixed players being briefly invisible when they join a multiplayer game in simulated turn mode.
• Removed incorrect checks for under player when using an adjacent tile for sleeping.
• Fixed the help article filter matching formatting code within article text.
• Fixed a bug that would allow you to re-roll legendary item properties by crafting, then disassembling the item.
• Fixed walk to tile sometimes displaying the wrong path in multiplayer.
• Fixed being able to use the “/pause” command in single player/turn-based mode.
• Fixed container weight display not updating when using consumables within them.
• Fixed a rare issue where over repeated uses of the options menu the game may begin to become laggier (due to a UI leak).
• Fixed unpublished mods marked as unloadable: false warning the user every time they load the save. (Thanks CloneDeath!)
• Fixed imagePath loading mod resources from the game’s root rather than the mod’s root for stats, status effects, menu bar buttons, and more. (Thanks CloneDeath!)
• Fixed not being able to use class instances with methods as descriptions in some mod registration functions. (Thanks CloneDeath!)
• Fixed the “cannot be run on this system or browser” error screen fading in rapidly, and disappearing to loading screen.
• Fixed a bug where creatures could continue attacking dead players/ghosts.
• Prevented connected clients in multiplayer games from visually manipulating the state of game pausing (even though it had no impact).
• Possibly fixed an issue where saving never completed.
• Fixed an issue that caused worlds last used for multiplayer in simulated turns mode to stay as simulated turns mode in single player.
• Fixed incorrect weight set for coconut containers of goat milk.
• Removed ability to dismantle books as weight can be incorrect after opening books and revealing other/new items.
• Fixed possible desyncs when crafting and starting fires.
• Fixed the region that allowed idling from the mouse movement bind being sized incorrectly depending on the zoom level.
• Fixed an issue where some creatures could get stuck when spawning from treasure chests.
• Fixed each mod only being able to add one NewUi Dialog.
• Fixed walk to tile issues near world edge.

Balance

• Increased animal taming and bartering (trading) reputation gains.
• Reduced the weight of limestone and limestone powder.
• Reduced the stoke value of charcoal due to its new abundance with the other burning changes.
• Items are now damaged when dropping to the ground on player death in casual and when breaking chests.

Modding

• Updated the “Modding Guide” with a new tutorial for creating the “Hello World” example mod among other changes and fixes.
• Added the GetZoomLevel hook, for overriding the default zoom functionality.
• Added the PostFieldOfView hook, called when the field of view has been initialized.
• Added a GetTilePenalty hook, used for manipulating which tiles should be preferred using “walk to tile”.
• @HookMethod now does type checking on the method it decorates. If the method is not a valid hook, it will error.
• Added the GetCameraPosition hook for implementing a custom camera.
• It is no longer necessary to mark mods with only customizations as “multiplayerCompatible”, and it is no longer necessary to mark mods with no scripts or customizations as “multiplayerClientside”.
• Added multiple decorators such as @Mod.instance, @Mod.log, or @Mod.saveData for injecting a mod’s objects into fields.
• Added the GetMaxSpritesForLayer hook for changing the maximum number of sprites that can be rendered in a SpriteBatchLayer at once.

Mods

Debug Tools

• The Debug Tools mod has been completed redesigned and has a brand new feature set.

Troposphere

• You can now use “walk to tile” to walk directly into a hole in the troposphere, but in all other cases you will path around the hole.
• Increased the base durability of the nimbus.
• Fixed artifacting of the overworld during movement.

Ridiculous Hairdos

• Marked as compatible for multiplayer.

Technical

• Released a new “Compatibility Branch” that may resolve some compatibility issues on some hardware configurations.
• Updated Wayward to Electron 3.0.0-beta 6.
• Improved the performance of calling most hooks.
• Tiles can now have multiple overlays.
• Added new properties to IActionArgument.

We have been plugging away at another batch of bug fixes, modding goodies, performance upgrades, and other changes with a focus on quality of life improvements. Hopefully something for everybody to enjoy! Some stand-out features include:

• Replaced the multiplayer menu with the world menu, allowing you to change your turn mode and tick rate in an existing world.
• Added an item breaking warning for dismantle and disassemble requirements.
• You can now ignite torches with other torches or fire starting devices directly in your inventory.
• Doodads that cause status effects will now warn players when attempting to walk over them.
• You will now only lose half the stamina (based on item weight) when failing to craft items.
• Fixed extreme performance hits from static in-game UI, especially when old messages are removed and scrolled.

It looks like we are getting close to wrapping up beta 2.6, but we still have some remaining unsolved issues as of yet. These include:

Character not appearing: https://steamcommunity.com/app/379210/discussions/1/1708438376927559767/

Freeze while saving: https://steamcommunity.com/app/379210/discussions/1/1759104257594700977/

Game freezing: https://steamcommunity.com/app/379210/discussions/0/1759104257593707044/

We are waiting on any additional information on these issues. Please let us know if you find anything! Instructions for reporting on each is located in the linked threads.

Read more…

As noted with our last release, we were working on some issues relating to performance. Now, some weeks later, we think we have something available that will help the majority of people that had issues previously (especially on lower end machines). This required much more extensive testing than normal for these minor releases, which is why it took a bit more time, and also why you’ll find that this changelog may not seem very minor. This won’t be the fix for all performance issues, and probably won’t be the end of the beta 2.6.x series, as we still want to wrap up a few items before focusing on our next major release.

If you are still dealing with performance issues and don’t want to wait, there’s a number of options and possible solutions available for you. We recently released a guide on this, “Wayward Performance Guide” available here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1438746684

As you’ll see below, this release was hardly all about performance, and more about balancing, improving, and fixing bugs in the game. A common issue we have seen in multiplayer is new players struggling. This is due to the very fast paced nature of the game when not playing in turn-based mode. To combat this, we have introduced a brand-new mode which adds a simulated turn-based environment for more strategic and dynamic multiplayer gameplay, allowing turns to only pass if players are actively performing actions. We’ve also opened up adjacent containers/items to be used in disassembling/dismantling fully, further decreasing some tedium in inventory management. This is just a few of the highlights; take a peek down below for more goodies.

Have fun and keep suggesting your ideas and reporting issues!

New

• Added a “Simulated Turns” multiplayer mode, which allows time/turn passing as long as players are performing actions, otherwise the game will be paused.
• Added adjacent container dismantling.
• Added a /save chat command.
• Added an option to disable auto saving.
• Added an option to toggle adjacent container crafting.

Improvements

• Added support for using multiple movement binds at the same time.
• Added support for adjacent containers for disassembling/dismantling requirements.
• Decreased saving and loading time, especially for dedicated servers. The file size of saves has increased due to this change (although exported saves will still be compressed).
• Added an extra check to see if you are already facing a crafting requirement before turning to face the first instance found.
• Added display of skill use reputation impact within crafting tooltips.
• Merchant NPCs will now spawn on game saves that do not have them (from previous versions).
• All hard-coded bind hints will now show what your actual binds are (instead of using the defaults) within the Starter Quest.
• Added more information to the stats help entry to explain how their maximum values work.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed dismantling ignoring the order of items if no turn was passed after sorting items. (Thanks CMDR Kargen Dracos [INR]!)
• Fixed an issue where some players were experiencing the game freezing/crashing while saving.
• Fixed occasional uncaught errors related to multiplayer connections (when hosting a dedicated server).
• Fixed the attack damage label values not updating.
• Fixed a bug where both the character selection and main menu would appear when joining a game from a player’s Steam profile with Wayward closed.
• Fixed an issue with some integrated GPUs that caused incorrect colors and other rendering glitches/visual artifacts.
• Fixed an issue where disassembled items could result in items with higher minimum durability than their maximum. (Thanks CMDR Kargen Dracos [INR]!)
• Fixed a bug that would cause keyboard controls to become stuck after holding them down while pressing the chat focus bind. (Thanks AbstrXact_Data!)
• Fixed the chat bind working when an interrupt is visible.
• Fixed the “Menu Enter” bind not working on input interrupt menus.
• Tumbleweeds may now drop their resources on adjacent tiles as dropping on the same tile did not allow it to grow. (Thanks Arnkh!)
• Fixed an issue where some books could contain items that resulted in you weighing more after opening them. (Thanks CMDR Kargen Dracos [INR]!)
• Fixed a bug where weight did not update after learning from an old educational scroll.
• Fixed the “equip hovered item” bind still toggling the equipment dialog when you’re hovering an item.
• Fixed an extra space appearing in Starter Quest completion messages.
• Fixed legendary strength items not effecting max weight when equipped. (Thanks Arnkh!)
• Fixed an issue that caused dialog filters to filter incorrect items in.
• Fixed an instance where hitting locked chests or creatures barehanded with hand protection provided no benefits.
• Fixed gathering with hands not damaging your equipment enough, leading to this method being better than gathering with an actual tool. (Thanks Arnkh!)
• Fixed swimming animations not resetting after travelling.
• Fixed an issue where legendary skill items could potentially result in percents with more than 1 decimal point. (Thanks Arnkh!)
• Fixed a bug where legendary attack damage was not applying to melee weaponry. (Thanks Arnkh!)
• Fixed a bug where loading saves without previously loaded mods would still attempt to add modded items, skills, etc. through normal means.
• Fixed move to tile not stopping movement while moving in front of an NPC. (Thanks Arnkh!)
• Fixed +load for dedicated servers not generating a new world if the save specified did not exist.
• Fixed the dismantle filter getting reset after passing a turn. (Thanks Arnkh!)
• Fixed renamed containers not displaying their new name until they are closed and re-opened. (Thanks CMDR Kargen Dracos [INR]!)
• Fixed the menu bar overlapping quickslots when there are enough menu bar buttons at certain resolutions.
• Fixed some text being removed when switching languages.

Balance

• Removed the ability to get hurt (or bleed) from gathering most plants with no tool/hand protection.
• Carving corpses will now provide positive reputation in cases where the creature was hostile. (Thanks Aaron!)
• Treasure guardians will now be more difficult at lower reputation levels.
• Attacking creatures or hitting locked chests barehanded (without hand protection) can now cause bleeding.
• Doubled spyglass durability.
• Only tamed chickens will now lay eggs. Clucks-be-gone!
• Added a larger lower range for exceptional/legendary item durability that are found or transmogrified (does not effect crafted items, which have a much larger cap).
• Using your hands will now use more stamina than using tools for gathering, harvesting, digging, and attacking.
• Decreased base aberrant spawning chances, and further decreased the chance as your reputation is raised.

Technical

• Upgraded to Electron 3.0.0 which should improve compatibility and performance, especially on lower-end machines.

A new batch of fixes is ready for you all!

We are currently looking into some performance issues related to some integrated GPUs. If you are having performance issues and have a discrete graphics card, make sure the game is actually using it (there has been some reports of some cards/drivers defaulting to integrated). As for the performance issues – we will continue to look into them, which now appear to be caused upstream (which we are waiting on an update for).

Two fixes we are shipping with this release are “possible” fixes. One is regarding the issue where containers dialogs would not show when opened and the other was keyboard movement getting “stuck” until a mouse click was made on the game screen. Please let us know if you are still getting these after beta 2.6.2.

We appreciate your patience while we address the remaining issues with the beta 2.6 release.

Bug Fixes

• Possibly fixed a bug where sometimes keyboard movement and controls would become “stuck” until a mouse click was made on the screen.
• Possibly fixed containers showing behind the game screen rarely (making it so it appeared as nothing happened when you tried to open containers).
• Fixed an oversight where you could only rest on the ground with a bedroll placed under you. (Thanks CMDR Kargen Dracos [INR]!)
• Fixed sleeping on a bedroll you are facing not checking for fire adjacent to facing tile (but rather the tile you started on). (Thanks Theodis!)
• Fixed an issue where multiple tooltips would appear if the information updated while your mouse was still hovered over it. (Thanks sechsauge!)
• Fixed the possibility of players timing out while the server is saving. (Thanks Valdig!)
• Fixed a multiplayer desync caused by healing tamed creatures. (Thanks MrAmazing!)
• Fixed a rare chance that players were unable to join a multiplayer game that they previously disconnected from.
• Fixed a bug that made you bleed inappropriately when starving to death, drowning, taking poison damage, and many other things.
• Fixed the filter not working in container dialogs. (Thanks Banaman!)
• Fixed items getting held in cursor after dying while dragging an item.
• Fixed crafting tooltips reporting incorrect item amounts based adjacent containers/items. (Thanks Arnkh!)
• Fixed resting/sleeping screens closing when players join in multiplayer.
• Fixed treasure maps not having the tops of trees in the “drawing”.
• Fixed sugar canes not producing resources to gather when budding and fixed some wording on their description. (Thanks Fangthane!)
• Fixed death in multiplayer games not triggering ghost vision or closing certain dialogs when in hardcore difficulty.
• Fixed the middle mouse button failing to move to tile in many situations.
• Fixed message sources (filter editing) not being translated for the Starter Quest.
• Fixed some notes missing spaces by italicized words.
• Fixed some wording issues within the Starter Quest completion messages. (Thanks CMDR Kargen Dracos [INR]!)

Improvements

• Move to tile will now stop when taking damage from stamina/encumbrance.

Balance

• Slightly increased the weight of coconuts (as sometimes dismantling them would produce items with unrealistic weights).

Modding

• Added PreSaveGame and PostSaveGame hooks
• Added a ShouldStopWalkToTileMovement hook.

Mods

TARS

• Fixed an issue where TARS would attempt to place items continuously within the same container.
• Fixed message sources (filter editing) not being translated.
• Fixed TARS randomly attempting to go into the water and end up killing itself tragically.
• Fixed an issue where TARS would keep trying to rest while at -1 stats, leading to eventual death.

Technical

• Added a backgroundThrottling option for reducing resources when Wayward is minimized/not in focus. This is only intended for use in single player games.

Hey all, we are just delivering a small patch tonight to address some of the beta 2.6 launch issues as well as a few improvements thrown in. We fixed up some major performance issues as well as corrected some pretty big multiplayer bugs.

Thank you all for testing and delivering feedback while we correct the problems. There’s still some work to do, so stay tuned for some more minor patches!

Bug Fixes

• Fixed some performance issues on lower end machines as well as many macOS machines (you wouldn’t believe what the cause was).
• Fixed walk to tile not moving correctly in cases of high latency in multiplayer games. (Thanks Amax!)
• Fixed auto harvest still working when both hands are disabled. (Thanks Adrien S. Enzo!)
• Fixed an issue where multiplayer games could increase too large in size due to saved messages, causing players to no longer to be able to connect afterwards.
• Fixed dedicated servers not starting properly when single quotes were present in the name. (Thanks Theodis!)
• Fixed the player count command counting the server in dedicated servers. (Thanks Theodis!)
• Fixed an error that happened when trying to feed/tame previously tamed creatures (from an upgraded save). (Thanks Cort Gdard!)
• Fixed absent players on upgraded server saves receiving 0 in all stats. (Thanks Theodis!)

New

• Added viewing/sending message support to the dedicated server menu.

Improvements

• Merchants will now face you when trading with them.
• Increased the volume of creature movement/taming sound effects.

Balance

• Increased the chance for sharks to despawn when out of view and range from them.
• Feathers are now considered tinder and can be used to stoke fires.
• Decreased the odds of chickens and harpies dropping feathers.

Mods

TARS

• TARS will now use move to tile path previews for movement display (instead of particle effects).

Beta 2.6 “Mercantile” was built with late-game in mind. The addition of trading with wandering merchants (NPCs), new legendary items and old educational scrolls opens the door for a lot of possibilities and added progression. Metal items have also been reworked to be much more worth it and rewarding over early tiers of crafts. Especially in the case of copper, where it is now work hardened/cold worked, giving it a unique use case over iron which still needs to be forged with fire.

As always though, it’s important to grow and help the new players out there getting into Wayward. Which is why we also spent a lot of time focusing on early balancing and making the game a bit easier to get into. Things like completely redoing the help and hint system (now notes), extending the Starter Quest to include more early game problem solving, disabling auto gather by default (no more bloody hands!), and nerfing some early game baddies should help address many of the complaints from new players.

Those newer players also having issues with low item durability (possibly before they figure out the item quality system) should also have a better time increasing durability with the addition of animal glue, making reinforcing much more accessible. And those weight/inventory comments? With the inclusion of being able to craft from adjacent chests, this should help reduce some of the tedium of item management and help new players unlock even more recipes early on.

What about multiplayer? Well, with the new “move to tile” feature, movement should be a lot smoother and more consistent, especially for players that are far apart geologically. We have also fixed up all those lost chat messages by adding in message filtering, allowing players to view just chat messages instead of game and chat messages mixed together. This can also be customized to filter all types of messages in the game.

We aren’t done with the early or late game. As always, we constantly need to be tweaking and improving these things as new content and systems get added. Of course, this is just a small tease of some of the new things in the game. For more information, take a gander at the video and wall of text below!

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Wayward Birthday

Today marks the 2nd year of Wayward being available on Steam. We’ve been calling April 22nd the “Wayward Birthday” for this reason, and because of this fact, we are doing a 20% discount on Wayward today on Steam along with an extension to our “Content Contest“. More details down below!

As always, thanks for coming along for the ride with us as we continue our wayward journey.

Beta 2.6 Plans

We have heard you loud and clear! After multiplayer, the biggest wish for most players has historically been “NPCs”. With beta 2.6, we are making that wish a reality, starting with NPCs (non-player characters) that you can barter and trade with. If you are particularly malevolent, you can also choose to battle and fight them for their goods. As always, we’ll expand on this system going forward to add new gameplay options for them in the future.

To go along with the trading, we also expanded our legendary system, opening up the ability for any item to be legendary with unique new properties, including reduced item weight, bonus stats, extra damage/defense, increased worth, and more!

Another long-requested feature is the ability to use adjacent containers (chests) for crafting. This is something we are working on for beta 2.6 as well!

Of course, I can’t spoil and talk about everything we’ve added and changed so far, but we’re already well over 100 improvements, bug fixes, additions, and balance changes for beta 2.6. Stay tuned for more reveals.

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