An island with a name
The world has been reset, keeping the people. Your account, your password, your characters' names and looks, your friends and any staff role stay; skills, bags, gear, coins, hearths, buildings, guilds and the market start again, and every character begins at the camp with the starter kit, as a new player does. Everyone needs this version: older ones are asked to update.
The island is Ava
- The camp has people now. Old Merrin stands at the signpost with the island's story and the first steps in his own words; Quartermaster Hale, Wren and Dagny stand by their stalls with advice on land, crops and fighting. Talk to them.
- The island has regions with names: the Shore, Hearth Meadow, Hollow Wood, the Barrows, Cinder Peak and Crystal peaks. You are told when you cross into one, and the big map writes their names, pins the camp, the cave mouths and the teleporter pads, and names the four lots a first hearth goes on.
- Five storylines, one a region, from the camp's people: three quests each, climbing in level and ending on the region's boss.
- Three new bosses: the Fen Hag in the Barrows, the Mine Warden at Cinder Peak's crater, the Peak Golem on Crystal peaks. Each has patterns of its own and a title for whoever brings it down.
Night means something
- After dark, and underground, creatures of level 5 and up hunt: one that sees you takes your scent, growls, and comes for you with its eyes glowing. It follows eight tiles and no further, never onto the road or the camp, and never within six tiles of any lit fire. Characters under level 5 are never hunted; its first blow is always a tap.
- A meal is armour: at dusk, anyone of level 5 outdoors with no meal is told so.
- Night closes the frame: the view darkens at its corners and drains a little colour, more so in a cave, so the fires are what you see.
- Every creature past level 10 has one heavy blow it winds up on the tile you stand on: a mark for a moment, then twice its swing. Step off it.
The hearth
- Your claim is your hearth, everywhere the game speaks of it, with a ring of stones round an ash pit for its stone. The fire burns while the upkeep is paid, gutters in the last two days, and goes out when it lapses; it lights the night and keeps the hunt off.
- The character window has a Hearth tab: rank, the fire and its days, rooms, fields, animals, thralls by name, the people, and the hearths within reach.
- Three hearths within 48 tiles of each other are a hamlet, six a village. A hamlet can name itself: propose a name from the Hearth tab and more than half the hearths agree.
- Thralls have names and faces of their own, and a new job: a Stoker keeps a campfire or forge fed from a chest, making whatever the chest holds the makings of.
- A station in its own room works a third faster, and a kitchen's fire burns half as many dishes. A cottage's bed is worth a rest.
Weather and seasons reach the rules
- Rain waters crops: a plot rained on since planting counts as watered.
- Winter slows tender crops sown in it by half, makes animals eat twice as fast, and doubles a hearth's upkeep and the rest at home. Autumn forages one more off every bush.
Callings
- At level 30 in Woodcutting, Mining, Fishing or Foraging, choose a calling for good: one more of the skill's goods on every gather, or the skill's first processed good made by hand with no station.
The island asks
- World goals: the Shaper asks the island for something, anybody hands it over at a quest board, and the world hears at each quarter and when it is met. The builder at work wears the Shaper's robe, the first stroke after a quiet spell tells the world which region is changing, and new ground glows on the big map for an hour.