The Black Grimoire: Cursebreaker update for 19 September 2023

Greetings again, adventures!

Summer has come and gone, we're a little behind on many of the features we originally envisaged in our spring roadmap, but we do have a new content update for you! This update brings with it quests and environmental changes to the forests southwest of Thornhill City, as well as a number of gameplay additions and changes.

It also kicks off a prequel quest for the haunted Greywall Dungeon we're working on, which will offer separate story content and layers of incrementally more challenging enemies, culminating in a boss fight with the 'Ghost of Greywall'. We're aiming to release the dungeon in our next autumn update, accompanied by achievements-system we've also been working on.

But for now we wish to deliver a content update involving a mix of ghosts, trolls and lumberjacks. In our usual fashion, you'll find a showcase of the major features included in this update below, as well as more exhaustive patch notes at the very end.

Quests and Environment

Environmental changes, the 'Prowler's Thicket'

We're rebranding the forests southwest of Thornhill City / south of Harshwind Village as the Prowler's Thicket, leaning heavily on its troll inhabitation, while at the same time we've made it accommodate our new Thornbark Sawmill woodcutting minigame - more information on that below. The emphasis is once again on improving the sense of exploration; running into this forest you'll find new quests and things to interact with, new resources and items to hunt, where before it was all quite barren.

New quests introduced in this update are the following:

Quest: Echoes of Suffering

Prequel Quest to the upcoming Greywall Dungeon

[table noborder=1]
[tr]
[th] Starting location[/th]
[th]Ratcliffe Village chapel[/th]
[/tr]
[tr]
[th] Quest length[/th]
[th]Medium[/th]
[/tr]
[/table]

Following the shockwave from Gabrius' magic that sent tremors across the land, some among the mining village of Ratcliffe face a disaster. The nearby Sallowstone Mine has caved in, causing all workers within to perish. The prospector Phillip Arden is the lone man who survived and the player may find him in the chapel building contemplating the fate of his friends.

It is not only their deaths that trouble him, though, as he claims the spirits of his friends soon sprang up as ghosts haunting the mine. The old prospector appeals to the player for help, to find a way to bring peace to the ghosts of his fellow miners, to allow them to pass into the afterlife where they belong...

Quest: A Daring Rescue

[table noborder=1]
[tr]
[th] Starting location[/th]
[th]Harshwind Village, central square[/th]
[/tr]
[tr]
[th] Quest length[/th]
[th]Medium[/th]
[/tr]
[/table]

Entering the small Harshwind Village, the player now encounters a woman in distress. Her father, who also happens to be the mayor of the village, has failed to return home from a hunting trip into the woods. Instead the rest of his hunting party who managed to scramble away claim that they were ambushed by the forest trolls.

In the scuffle the poor mayor was lifted by one the trolls and hauled deeper into the woods, no doubt to one of the nasty lairs the trolls inhabit, to await his fate. Are you willing to go look for him?

Quest: Logging Issues

[table noborder=1]
[tr]
[th] Starting location[/th]
[th]Thornbark Sawmill, building by the small stream.[/th]
[/tr]
[tr]
[th] Quest length[/th]
[th]Short[/th]
[/tr]
[/table]

Before getting the Thornbark Sawmill churning, the player must first aid the sawmill foreman with a slight hitch that has seized the operations. The sawmill's access to the clearing where they acquire all their precious logs of Wildsfir has become blocked by a suspiciously large tree trunk. Seems like a simple obstacle to break through, yet the foreman seems reluctant to send his own men...

The Thornbark Sawmill & the Shaman

Much in the same vein as Shearston Ranch in our previous update, the Thornbark Sawmill offers an alternative way to gain woodcutting experience while also offering a range of unique rewards. The sawmill processes a new type of wood called Wildsfir into planks, rewarding you with tokens you can spend at the foreman on a range of new items, such as Deep Forest garments.

Sometimes while splitting the logs you may find a strange blue gem, the Mystic's Amber, also found on the forest trolls. These are desired by the reclusive shaman Thor Ganesh, found some ways off from the sawmill.

Quest: Staple Foods

[table noborder=1]
[tr]
[th] Starting location[/th]
[th]Any Stablehand[/th]
[/tr]
[tr]
[th] Quest length[/th]
[th]Short[/th]
[/tr]
[/table]

Talk to a stablehand anywhere, do them a small favor, and they'll reward you with Horsy the Pack Mule! Besides offering companionship, Horsy serves the very important task of carting items cluttering your inventory at inconvenient times to your bank / storage. Simply 'use' any item on Horsy to quickly store it away for later.

Quest Rework: The Foreign Raider

This was a quest we pushed a few updates back and we were never fully satisfied with it. Then in our last update it appears to have been disabled half accidentally. So this time we rewrote the quest and added a few additional phases to it.

Assuming you're on a save where you haven't yet completed this quest, upon entering the newly improved militia camp west of Haywind, you'll encounter Deputy Rieler who's looking for help in taking down high value bandit targets. He'll want to know you're up to snuff first though...

Traits

In this update we again continue our never ending quest to flesh out the trainer traits system. This time we've focused on including the base "tier" traits with desirable bonuses beyond the placeholdery experience gain increases that they've previously offered.

Woodsmanship tier traits now for example buff you with "Pathfinding", which increases your movement speed outside of combat, while cooking tier traits unlock options to learn local cooking recipes (with unique buffs) at various taverns in the world.

Equippable items you create with smithing, tailoring and crafting can now gain a 'critical success' from trainer traits, producing an exceptional quality of that item. Exceptional items have increased stat bonuses and earn you more coin when sold.

Combat skill trainer traits will reward you with various base stat bonuses outside of items, while alchemy traits increase the duration of your beneficial potions.

Mining and fishing tier traits still remain in the works, but will be coming soon™...

Random NPC Encounters (making the game world feel more alive)

We have added a number of background conversation that play out between NPCs in the world as the player draws near. These have basically always been in the game, but previously they have been few and far between. We've worked on better, more efficient ways of implementing these and we're aiming to plant a lot of them around the game world, as they do wonders for immersion and making the game feel more 'alive'.

At best they can also inform about the environment or story and where effort can be spared, they can evolve as the player progresses through quests. This is in fact how the background conversations already worked in quests in our previous update (Shearston and Aurfield) and this trend continues in our latest quests 'Echoes of Suffering' and 'A Daring Rescue'.

We'll also be implementing more of what we call "aggro barks" from now on, which potentially give hostile npcs something to say when engaged in combat.

It's possible to sink quite a few of these into an open world as large as we're working with though, so this will be an ongoing process for the future as well.

Achievements Sneak Peek

Our achievements system still needs to bake, but for now we can offer a sneak peek into what we've been designing. Various feats you complete in the game will net you your usual Steam achievements, but in game the system goes beyond that. We wanted achievements to offer a way to track content in game, so we've created a window to do just that, where achievements and progress are listed under varying categories.

As an example, looking under the categories of Story / Haywind you would find achievements relating to side-questing in the Haywind area.

As you may notice, we've made it possible to include rewards within the achievements, which can be collected at your leisure. We could for example include small tasks from villagers etc. you encounter, which don't constitute as fully fledged quests, but could still be rewarding to do in this way.

The achievements could largely reward with achievement tokens also, which may be spent at an "achievement shop".

FULL PATCH NOTES

That's it for this time! Finally, here we have more detailed patch notes for those who may be interested.

New:
4 new quests:

• "Echoes of Suffering"

• "A Daring Rescue"

• "Logging Issues"

• "Staple Foods"

• New village - Thornbark Sawmill

New harvestable resources:

• Woodcutting: Wildsfir, level 25

New equippable/consumable Items:

• Lantern of Soulsoothing

• Woodworker's Outfit

• Troll Crossbow

• Deep Forest Garb

• Deep Forest Hood

• Symbol of the Deep Forest

• Deep Forest Bracers

• Wildsfir Hatchet

• Haunted Pickaxe

• Bracelet of the Troll Berserker

• Antler Helm

• Willow Staff

• Willow Wand

• Snail Roll

• Ore Hauler's Stew

• Woodland Skewer

• Grainwater Flatbread

Random Npc Interactions

• Added an interaction between Helga and Furrball in Timberwell
• Added an interaction to Timberwell fisherman
• Added interactions to Opticus Aluminar
• Added an interaction between guards at the deputy's camp near Aurfield
• Added an interaction between a farmer and his cow on the fields near timberwell
• Added an interaction between two hunters by the road after exiting Spruce Shade's Rest
• Added an interaction between two villagers at Timberwell's well + smaller interactions to other villagers
• Added a number of new npcs to Ratcliffe mining village with interactions
• Added an interaction to Ratcliffe sword merchant
• Added interactions to "Mountain Rescue" npcs Madam and Master Hubbs
• Added an interaction to Ratcliffe mining foreman
• Added several interactions to Haywind militia camp in the fields west of the city
• Added interactions to Fog's Dwindling tavern.
• Added a number of new interactions to Grainwater tavern.
• Added a small interaction to the Haywind smith
• Small interactions to Thornhill and Haywind guards
• New interactive merchants at fenwater village market
• Aggressive barks to an unrecorded amount of hostile npcs as they attack you, for example the great mudclaw.

Music:

• Grainwater tavern "Whimsical Whistle of Everlasting Delight"
• Thornbark Sawmill areas "On the Prowl"

Misc:

• Miranda, a quirky tonic merchant opposite grainwater tavern
• New ore mining location near Fenwater

Changes:

Quests:

• Full rewrite of a previously implemented quest "The Foreign Raider".

Misc:

• Environmental changes to new Prowler's Thicket.
• Slight improvements/edits to journal entries to early main quests.
• Wearing staves now comes with a new animation holding them upright.
• Changed coins received from quest 'In Search of a Bride' from 150 to 350
• Cleaned up / edited certain peasant dialogue lines in Timberwell.
• Edited certain peasant dialogue lines in Grainwater.
• Clarified tooltips on a number of consumables.
• Simplified item name "Faintly Glowing Bead" to "Glowing Orb"
• Included a variety more harvestables and hostile npcs to wide areas west of Haywind
• Filled Grainwater groceries shop with a bunch of actual groceries.
• Added Barnsy's flaming arrow ability book to his shop for the rare event the player loses the book before learning the ability.

Scavengers:

• Included a recovery option for near enough all unique quest reward items at the Scavenger's shop - nothing is ever lost for good!

Skills:

• Alchemy: changed level required to pick sweetgrass to 12.
• Alchemy: changed level required to craft mild antipoison to 14.
• Alchemy: changed ingredients required to craft mild antipoison: 1 Empty Vial, 1 Cavern Puffball and 5 Sweetgrass.
• Alchemy: changed ingredients required to craft swiftness potion to include empty vial.
• Alchemy: changed ingredients required to craft firestick mixture to include empty vial, and mushrooms.

Traits:

• Novice Spellslinger trait now increases base mana by 5
• Experienced Spellslinger trait now increases base mana by 5 and mana regen by a slight amount
• Novice Shieldbearer trait now increases base health by 5
• Experienced Shieldbearer trait now increases base health by 5 and health regen by a slight amount
• Novice and Experienced Swordsman traits now increase attack speed with melee weapons slightly
• Novice and Experienced Marksman traits now increase attack speed with ranged weapons slightly
• Novice and Experienced Potioner traits now increase potion durations slightly
• Novice and Experienced Wright, Outfitter and Blacksmith traits now give/increase chance to craft exceptional quality equippable items
• Novice Saucemaker trait now unlocks options to learn local cooking recipes from taverns in Timberwell, Grainwater and Ratcliffe
• Experienced Saucemaker trait now unlocks option to learn local cooking recipe from tavern in Fog's Dwindling
• Novice Lumberjack trait now grants Pathfinding, which increases movement speed outside of combat.
• Experienced Lumberjack trait now increases the movement speed bonus from Pathfinding.

World Map

• World Map can now by default be scrolled using any of the mouse buttons, as opposed to only the left mouse button previously
• Renamed/Added world map pointer to Prowler's Thicket (forest southwest of Thornhill)
• Added world map pointer to Golemwoods (forest southeast of Thornhill)
• Added world map pointer to Harshwind Village (west of Thornhill)
• Added world map pointer to River Aure
• Added world map pointer to Ruins of Greywall

Fixes:

• Added a generic tavernkeepers to harshwind and south thornhill taverns.
• Reduced Grainwater inn and similar type building's camera collider, which would often get in the way in an irritating way.
• Reduced stablehands' wandering distance slightly to prevent them from walking too far off.
• Adjusted banker barks so their unlikely to shout the same thing at the same time.
• Adjusted banker's and many shopkeeper's interact distance to be more in line with what one would expect.
• Ghost form Gabrius now correctly disappears from spruce shade crypts after progressing the main quest, as he should have done.
• Fixed Haywind's smith Forvan's npc spawner so that he always shows, instead of only spawning when entering the bounds of his forge
• Fixed visual glitches inside a few houses in various areas.
• Fixed a number shop doors that didn't automatically open.
• Removed several signs from Haywind houses that served no purpose.
• Fixed a typo from Wrathful Torrent spell tooltip.
• Removed certain unobtainable items from skill milestone lists.
• Corrected the name of Rancher Eryk's interactable cart on Haywind side.
• The quest reward popup window for 'Battle of the Shearston Estate' now indicates that the alchemy recipe for crafting firestick mixture is unlocked, which it should have previously done.
• Deer now have loot

As usual, feel free to follow us on twitter and/or Discord for future news and updates.

Stay tuned and happy gaming!

Regards,
Pura
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