Version 0.8.0 is out. It brings a new skill, Runecrafting: you mine moonstone from meteorites that fall across the world, and bind it into runes at old altars. It also brings three new spells and a whole swamp to explore. Get it from the download page, or play it in your browser, which is always up to date.
Runecrafting
Runes have always come from shops or monsters. Now you can bind your own.
Moonstone falls from the sky. Meteorites land across Midland: pitted rocks in scorched hollows, a clump of them at a time. Take a pickaxe to one and it gives moonstone, pull after pull, until it crumbles to dust. Then another falls somewhere else. Anyone can mine the same meteorite, and they share what’s in it. There are usually three out in the world. Every so often there’s a meteor shower, and more come down.
Mel, the Duke’s mage at Morningside Castle, knows about them. Ask her how to find one and she’ll give you a lodestone, which leans towards the nearest meteorite. She only gives one, so if you lose it, the frogmen of the deep mire sell them.
Every rune has its own altar. Stand next to it, open the create menu (C, or choose the altar on the map) and bind your moonstone, one at a time. Each moonstone makes one rune, and more as your Runecrafting level rises.
| Rune | Level | |
|---|---|---|
| Air | 1 | north of the east road, before Hadrian’s Crossing |
| Water | 5 | in the swamp |
| Earth | 9 | south of the east road, before Hadrian’s Crossing |
Mind, fire, sol, lunar and the rarer runes have altars of their own, which will turn up in later updates.
The altars are old, and some of them are particular about when they work. The frogmen’s elder says each one listens to a different part of the sky. Nothing in the game will tell you more than that: it’s for you to work out, and to share if you want to.
Three new spells
| Spell | Magic | Runes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moonveil | 14 | 1 lunar, 2 air | For a minute, monsters that aren’t already fighting you don’t notice you. Attacking ends it. |
| Mark | 18 | 1 lunar, 1 cosmic | Marks the ground where you stand. You have one mark, and a new one replaces it. |
| Recall | 20 | 2 lunar, 1 law | Brings you back to your mark. It takes ten seconds, and leaves you moonsick for ten minutes before you can cast it again. |
Like Home teleport, Recall is broken off if you move or get hurt while you cast it, and costs nothing if it is. Both now tell you how the spell is going while it gathers, and tell you if it’s broken.
The swamp
North and west of Morningside Castle, the ground goes soft. Expect rain.
- The Mire has frogs, toads and their giant cousins (levels 2 to 10). Giant toads only go for someone who walks right up to them, and leave seasoned adventurers alone, so the paths are safe. The water altar stands in the middle of it, on a causeway.
- The Deep Mire is over the plank bridge. The frogmen live there: talk to Elder Oomla, or trade with Brekk, who sells reed pipes, bogweed (a pipeweed with green smoke), reed wine, runes and lodestones. Beyond their camp it’s dangerous: drowned spirits (level 28), ghouls (34) and bog thralls (40), around the Sunken Ring. Thralls sometimes carry a bog-iron cleaver.
- Old Maud keeps a fire for the hermits further south. She’d rather you left before dark. On most nights it wouldn’t matter.
Fixes
- The game’s colours are the same in every terminal. In some terminals, friends showed up tan instead of green, and error messages were dark grey and hard to read. Every colour is now chosen so it looks the same wherever you play, in the browser too.
- Greyed-out monsters now mean what they’re meant to: you’re above the level they attack, so they’ll leave you alone. Before, a monster turned grey once you were 10 levels above it, even if it would still attack you.
- Items waiting to come back (the inn’s beer and meat, once someone’s taken them) no longer show up in the nearby list (K).
Updating
Version 0.7.0 no longer connects, and the game will ask you to update. Download 0.8.0 from the download page and replace your old folder, copying across guest.toml if you play as a guest. The browser version is already up to date.
Thanks for playing. Come and say hello on Discord.