From the Path of Beginnings to the Mileth Inn

Most of this update went to the very start of the game and to a sweep of fixes that touch every new character. Skills and spells that unlock at the right level, shop shelves at sane prices, doorways you can actually walk through, townsfolk wearing the right faces.

The tutorial is a journey now

The opening used to be one crowded floor with every teacher lined up across it. It is a chain of rooms now. You wake on the Path of Beginnings and the teachers live in their own houses off it, Myles the wizard, Gerard the gardener, and a new face, Tealor, an arms merchant who sells you a first weapon and shield and shows you how to wear them. You walk in their doors and out again, the way you would expect.

A new character starts the way they should, too. Instead of just the green starter clothes you wake carrying an apple, two slices of bread, and a stick to equip, with a few lines along the top of the screen telling you what you are holding, how to move, and to follow the path East when you are ready.

Out on the Path you meet Kardi, a harmless thing you can swing at while you find your feet. It will not fight back.

We also trimmed the opening to the figures who belong there. A few helpers we had put on the map to fill it out are cleared off, and the two teachers who remain, Bartley and Raghnall, stand on their proper spots.

And it ends the way it should

Finishing is its own moment now. Learn what the teachers offer, follow the path East to the edge of the map, take the warning that this road runs one way, and you wake upstairs in a room of the Mileth Inn to a fading dream and a light swirling around you, before you head down to meet Riona.

That was some dream. It feels good to wake in the fresh straw bed of Mileth. Could it be? I am an Aisling!

You can walk through doors

Here is a quiet one that had been wrong a long time. Most building entrances in town were dead to anyone on foot. The doorway tiles read as solid walls to the server, so the warp that should carry you inside never fired, and there was simply no walking into a shop. About eighteen of Mileth's entrances were like this, the tutorial houses too.

Fixed in the engine. A player can step onto a doorway and be carried inside, while monsters still treat the same tile as a wall so they do not wander through shop fronts.

var openDoor = GetEntitiesAtPoints<Door>(point).FirstOrDefault(d => !d.Closed);
// a doorway is flagged as a wall in map data but is walkable to a player;
// let an aisling step onto a wall tile carrying a warp reactor so the warp fires
var isWarpDoorway = (collisionType == CreatureType.Aisling) && HasWarpReactorAtPoint(point);
if ((openDoor is null) && !isWarpDoorway)
    return false;

Walking into the weaponsmith, the bank, the tavern, or a tutorial house works now.

Learn things at the right level

This is the big correction. Every learnable skill and spell unlocked far too late, two to four times too late in a lot of cases, which left the early game feeling empty. They sit at their proper levels now.

A Monk throws their first Kick at level one instead of five. A Warrior learns Assault at two. A Wizard's fire, Beag Srad, is a level one spell, with the ladder climbing from there, Srad at four, Mor Srad at twenty, Ard Srad at thirty-four.

The elements ask for the right kind of strength now, too. Fire keys off Strength, water off Wisdom, wind off Dexterity, earth off Constitution, instead of everything hanging on Intellect.

A couple of skills changed to match. Kick and High Kick are proper moves on a cooldown, not free extras on your spacebar swing. And the close dagger strike we had called "Stab" carries its right name, Stab and Twist.

Damage and mana are still our own balance and may move once they are played in. It is the levels, costs, reagents, and stat needs that are now set right.

Shops at the right price

The shops were carrying bloated stock at nonsense prices, a wall of endgame blades on a starter rack, rum that cost a fortune. Six of them are trimmed to exactly what they should sell, at the right coin. Walk into Callough's weaponsmith and you see three plain choices:

The tavern pours rum at 100 coins instead of twenty-five thousand, and the armorsmith, tailor, baker, and Dar all carry their right wares at their right prices. A few things the shops should stock but we have not built, a plain shirt, brandy, a parchment scroll, the gems, are noted as gaps rather than faked in.

The right faces

Smaller but satisfying. Fifteen townsfolk and teachers were wearing the wrong body, a mix-up in their appearance. Cian the alchemist, Riona, Aoife at the Hall of Advancement, the tutorial teachers, and others all look the way they should now. Every NPC wears its correct skin.

The opening is the piece I most want to see played. Wander in and walk it if you get the chance, door by door, and shout if anything reads strange.

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