Indie Archaelund: RPG that combines 1st-person exploration with 3rd-person TB combat - now available on Early Access

[DavidBVal]

Hello Codex. There has been another update recently, 0.7.9. And I'm working around the clock to have 0.8 out in April as I had planned, but it might very well slip into May, I am afraid.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1082970/view/7057778465256955863

Update 0.7.9

Content changes & adjustments

• Added a small dungeon past the Peninsula outpost, with a new associated quest (Level 4 recommended!). If you already found certain letter in a skeleton past the outpost, the quest will be automatically added to your journal.
• Added more varied minor loot from humanoid enemies, in concordance with what they wear and use, although in many cases it may be ruined/broken after combat.
• Spells added in the last update(Minor Miracle, Regrowth and Outrage) are now available in their respective vendors.
• Some Rank II spells have slightly increased their willpower cost (Regrowth, Fire Arrow, Blizzard Shards)
• Meditation
  skill now restores a bit more willpower after each fight (from 1WP/ rank, to 2WP/ rank, but still capped at half the spent WP)

Features & Improvements

• Added new recipes for Crafting skill up to difficulty 6 and Alchemy difficulty 5.
• New option added to browse all Talents, search or filter them. You can access the new "Browse all Talents" button from the Talents section in the character window, or at character creation. Keep in mind some talents are NPC-only, or hidden, and won't appear in the list.
• Elemental Protections are now displayed in a clearer way, with the old icons (fire, ice, etc) instead of the colored shields.
• Maximum spells known are now displayed more clearly in the character window.
• When camping, you can now
  see your party members
  sitting around the fireplace. Animation and poses will be improved in the future.

Bugfixes

• Performance: there should be a small improvement in loading times and memory usage.
• On Mythology window, hovering over an enemy's Protections or Resistances will now display proper information.
• Alchemy and Crafting window: Pressing ESC will now close the window properly.
• Alchemy and Crafting window: ingredients available to the party are now correctly counted.
• Some skeletons didn't have proper sounds. Fixed.
• Description for Psalm of Renewal now correctly states it heals 2d6, not 1d6.
• Party lighting from torches and spells was not correctly updated in some cases, fixed.
• Magical Research talent now is subject to normal limit of spells known per rank.
• Fixed geometry issues in Nessera Caves.
• Fixed many typos and other text issues.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Hello Codex. There has been another update recently, 0.7.9. And I'm working around the clock to have 0.8 out in April as I had planned, but it might very well slip into May, I am afraid.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1082970/view/7057778465256955863

Update 0.7.9

Content changes & adjustments

• Added a small dungeon past the Peninsula outpost, with a new associated quest (Level 4 recommended!). If you already found certain letter in a skeleton past the outpost, the quest will be automatically added to your journal.
• Added more varied minor loot from humanoid enemies, in concordance with what they wear and use, although in many cases it may be ruined/broken after combat.
• Spells added in the last update(Minor Miracle, Regrowth and Outrage) are now available in their respective vendors.
• Some Rank II spells have slightly increased their willpower cost (Regrowth, Fire Arrow, Blizzard Shards)
• Meditation
  skill now restores a bit more willpower after each fight (from 1WP/ rank, to 2WP/ rank, but still capped at half the spent WP)

Features & Improvements

• Added new recipes for Crafting skill up to difficulty 6 and Alchemy difficulty 5.
• New option added to browse all Talents, search or filter them. You can access the new "Browse all Talents" button from the Talents section in the character window, or at character creation. Keep in mind some talents are NPC-only, or hidden, and won't appear in the list.
• Elemental Protections are now displayed in a clearer way, with the old icons (fire, ice, etc) instead of the colored shields.
• Maximum spells known are now displayed more clearly in the character window.
• When camping, you can now
  see your party members
  sitting around the fireplace. Animation and poses will be improved in the future.

Bugfixes

• Performance: there should be a small improvement in loading times and memory usage.
• On Mythology window, hovering over an enemy's Protections or Resistances will now display proper information.
• Alchemy and Crafting window: Pressing ESC will now close the window properly.
• Alchemy and Crafting window: ingredients available to the party are now correctly counted.
• Some skeletons didn't have proper sounds. Fixed.
• Description for Psalm of Renewal now correctly states it heals 2d6, not 1d6.
• Party lighting from torches and spells was not correctly updated in some cases, fixed.
• Magical Research talent now is subject to normal limit of spells known per rank.
• Fixed geometry issues in Nessera Caves.
• Fixed many typos and other text issues.

You're missing the make barbarians available to humans fix dammit.

 

[DavidBVal]

You're missing the make barbarians available to humans fix dammit.

Lore-wise, makes little sense for the setting to simply remove the restriction. The premise is that 99% of human population was devastated, and only an island colony survived. That colony (isle of Varannar) had no original human inhabitants, and is already very detailed in Exiled Kingdoms.

But there is a possibility. I plan to add Background Talents, and the player must pick one for each character at creation, many of them racially restricted. One of them could define your human character as adopted at birth by one of the Varannari clans as their own. That would allow them to play as Barbarians or Witches, and add other modifiers. I intend these talents to be a small selection (maybe a dozen in total) because they may be linked to certain quests in the game later on. This won't be added until 0.9 is out or nearly out, however.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

You're missing the make barbarians available to humans fix dammit.

Lore-wise, makes little sense for the setting to simply remove the restriction. The premise is that 99% of human population was devastated, and only an island colony survived. That colony (isle of Varannar) had no original human inhabitants, and is already very detailed in Exiled Kingdoms.

But there is a possibility. I plan to add Background Talents, and the player must pick one for each character at creation, many of them racially restricted. One of them could define your human character as adopted at birth by one of the Varannari clans as their own. That would allow them to play as Barbarians or Witches, and add other modifiers. I intend these talents to be a small selection (maybe a dozen in total) because they may be linked to certain quests in the game later on. This won't be added until 0.9 is out or nearly out, however.

Hey I can wait. Game is great otherwise.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1082970/view/4205875729090017066

Update 0.7.10 released
This release introduces camp encounters and the Disarm Traps skill
With the latest implemented features, we're just one update away from 0.8. It's been an intense 4 months of development, and looking back it's amazing how much has been achieved.

Here is the changelog for today's update:

Content changes & adjustments
-
Camp Encounters
added. Your party may be attacked by monsters while they rest in dangerous locations! The risk level is displayed in the camping UI, and increases after repeated camping in the same area, especially when foraging instead of using supplies. Survival skill reduces this risk.
-While in exploration mode, poison effects will be suffered every 30s instead of every 3s. The Vitality check to reduce poison power is now harder (had a bonus previously, which has been removed). This makes antidotes and poison-healing spells more relevant. These changes have no effect during combat.


Features & Improvements
-Skill
Disarm Traps
implemented. Beware, new traps added, and now chests can be trapped!
-Since a new skill was implemented, after loading an old save you can now reset your skill points(only once per character).
-You can now browse a discipline's spells from your Character Window (hover over the discipline and press F1). This should help you decide which disciplines to train. Limited to current Rank+1.
-The game will now autosave after camping (if there was no encounter), and also at the game start.


Bugfixes
-Solved an issue in Rasagor's conversation that allowed to retry certain dialogue check.
-Solved an UI align issue with spell descriptions.
-Enemy 'Protections' were sometimes showing incorrectly on Mythology window. Fixed.
-Fixed an UI issue that would often position incorrectly the 'tooltip' when hovering over an UI or map element.
-Fountain of Discipline was showing an incorrect name on the map.
-Fountain of Protection bonus was not being applied correctly to your characters. Fixed.
-Some spells were showing a duration info with decimals. Solved.
-Status effect duration during camp rest showed several glitches, fixed now.
-Fixed many typos and other text issues in dialogues and journal entries.

 

[Abu Antar]

All Events > Archaelund Events >

Update 0.8 is out
The last incremental update that completes the 0.8 roadmap list has just been released
The first development stage of Archaelund Early Access has just been completed with the release of update 0.8. Here is the summary of the changes in today's update:

Content changes & adjustments

• Added a new
  cave dungeon
  in the western coast of the Peninsula, with a new associated quest(talk to Icanos the Loreseeker after completing Three Wanderers quest).
• XP cap raised to 9,900 (maximum level remains at 4).

Features & Improvements

• Skill
  Charisma
  now reduces buying prices in most vendors by 2% per rank(certain factions are not affected).

Bugfixes

• Talent
  Hardiness
  is once more working as per description.
• Scrolls and other limited usage items will now only be spent (and cause an AP spending in combat) after a valid target has been selected. You can safely cancel a target without spending the item.
• Prone enemies were sometimes not counting as flanked. Fixed.
• Party members that ended a fight prone, will no longer show the incorrect prone animation on the next fight.

However, if you haven't played
since release in January
, it's more important to see the changes as a whole. You can read through the whole changelog, but here's a summary of the most relevant changes:

• Two new dungeons in the Peninsula are now accessible.
• Four new quests were added (from 17 to 21).
• One extra companion available (from 2 to 3).
• Skills have been implemented: Survival, Disarm Traps, Charisma, Alchemy, Crafting. Only the Maps & Charts skill remains, since it requires a larger available map to be relevant. Meditation skill was reworked.
• Three new spells added, and many others revised or adjusted.
• More diversified loot, and 20 new items added.
• Many "Quality of Life" improvements made to the UI: selling stacks, browsing talent list, browsing discipline spells, and more.
• Essential UI/Controls features added, such as key mapping, axis inversion, ultra-wide support, framerate limit, etc.
• Almost a hundred bugs were squished!

The Road Ahead
The Peninsula has been a great start, but it's time to move forward! You can read our development roadmap here.

Version 0.9 will be in development for the remaining of the year (maybe a little longer) but it will also come in smaller incremental updates, not in a single big one.

The priority now, with all the game elements in place, is to
expand both the game world, and character development
. More areas, and more character levels and careers. More details will come in time, until then I hope you enjoy the game so far.

 

[agris]

DavidBVal how should we think about 0.8, the game mechanics are fleshed out enough that you have a stable template for expanding content now? i.e. you know traps, encounters, skill checks, etc will work at a mechanistic level, so you can implement content without the fear of having to revisit it for significant balance/mechanics passes in the future?

what's the word on more of the PnP-style environmental interactions like we see in the tutorial with the lowering of the mast to get to the items on the rock island? i hope skill-focused world interactions like that (and much more complex and impactful ones) are on the roadmap.

congrats on the milestone!

 

[DavidBVal]

@DavidBVal how should we think about 0.8, the game mechanics are fleshed out enough that you have a stable template for expanding content now? i.e. you know traps, encounters, skill checks, etc will work at a mechanistic level, so you can implement content without the fear of having to revisit it for significant balance/mechanics passes in the future?

Indeed, that's the whole idea behind 0.8. the most important game elements are already in play. Adding traps and camping encounters, or the new skill system, forced me to revise the whole content. If you look at the video trailer you'll see there's many more areas already made, but I didn't want to implement their content yet and that's why they were withheld from EA.

Something that is still missing: I want to add dynamic content on top of the handcrafted content. NPC encounters on the roads or at the inn. Also expanded rest options. However most of these require more landmass to work, and thus won't be implemented until 0.9.

Also, I want to improve Nessera Caves, add it some special content, maybe a puzzle.

But for the most part yes, 0.8 is very close to the "template" you describe, and other than some little additions and visual improvements, gameplay in the first 15h of the game should be pretty close to 1.0.

what's the word on more of the PnP-style environmental interactions like we see in the tutorial with the lowering of the mast to get to the items on the rock island? i hope skill-focused world interactions like that (and much more complex and impactful ones) are on the roadmap.

Yeah, will add more of those too. I also love those, but always so much to do!