Noon is over
The world keeps time now.
For a long while almost everywhere outdoors sat at permanent noon. Mileth dimmed at dusk, and four of the roads out of it did, but step onto a prairie or down a forest path and the sun just hung there, bright as midday, forever. Hezkore flagged how strange that was, so we went and fixed the lot of it. Almost every outdoor map runs the day/night cycle now: the town squares, the roads between them, the fields and forests, the deserts and the beaches, the open seas, even the fairgrounds. They brighten through the morning and go dark at night, right along with the hour on the clock. Cast Nis if you want to know how far off sundown is.
Indoors stays out of it, which is the whole point. Shops, inns, houses, and the caves and dungeons keep their own light, so the Mileth Crypt is as black as it ever was and the Inn as warm. It is only the open sky that turns. Better than three hundred maps that used to stand in flat daylight have a time of day on them now.
If you find an outdoor spot still stuck at noon, or a shop that has started dimming when it has no business doing so, tell us. Those are exactly the edges we want to hear about.
You can fish now
Down at the Abel Fish Market there is a man called Kamel who, until today, stood behind an empty stall with nothing to his name. He has wares now. A Fishing Rod and a tin of Fishing Bait.
Buy both, equip the rod, keep the bait in your pack, and walk out to the Abel Coast. There are fish moving in the shallows along the shore. Click one and you reel it in.
Most casts land you a Fresh Cod, which eats like a small meal and mends about a quarter of your health. Now and then you hook a Fresh Blowfish, and that one is a gamble: half the time it is a full meal, the other half it stings you on the way down. Never enough to drop you, just enough to make you wary of the next one. Rarer still is a Mushroom Cap. And every so often a fish darts off with your bait for nothing, or you drag up an old boot.
One click on a fish, with the rod worn and bait in your pack, spends a single bait and rolls for the catch:
if (roll < 15) // a fish makes off with your bait, nothing reeled in
else if (roll < 27) Give("Old Boot");
else if (catch < 4) Give("Mushroom Cap");
else if (catch < 34) Give("Fresh Blowfish");
else Give("Fresh Cod");
The rod runs 50,000 coins and the bait 200 a throw, so there is some outlay up front. The fish themselves sell cheap, on purpose. Fishing is meant to feed you, not to make you rich.
Deeper into the trees
Last time we opened the east gate and the first stretch of the Eastern Woods. We kept walking.
The circles past the goblins are sorted now too, the whole way out. Push past the all-goblin circle and the woods get older and rougher. Hobgoblins first, bigger and meaner than their smaller kin.
Then the Shriekers, which are not goblins at all but walking mushrooms, squatting in the deep circles in real numbers.
Deeper still you start meeting the fey. The Wisps, quick little knots of light that are easy to take lightly until one is on you, and past them the Faeries.
The whole run now reaches down to about level seventy-six in the farthest circle, so the woods carry you a good distance past where the crypt left off. The loot keeps pace. The goblins and hobgoblins give up their skulls and the odd Wooden Club, the Faeries drop a Faerie's Wing, and the wisps and faeries deep in will, every so often, hand over an Ard Ioc Deum, the strongest healing potion in the game. Worth the trip alone.
A word on the wisps, since it will catch people out. Not all of them come for you. The ones in the shallower circles keep to themselves and only swing back if you start it. The ones deeper in have no such patience. Same wings of light, different mood, so the calm one a few circles back is no promise the next will leave you be.
As before, the rarest things on these lists, the gem and god-touched gear families, wait on systems we have not built yet, so for now you get the skulls and the wings and the potions and the coin.
Two paths out of the deep woods that used to dead-end work both ways now: a northern one into the Singing Sylvan Glade and a southeastern one out toward Grasslands 18. The far circles are not the cul-de-sac they were.
They read right, too
Small but satisfying. The woods have their proper names now. Walking them used to throw up a jumble, "Eastern Woods 5th Circle" here, "Eastern Woodlands 7" there, "Desolate Wastelands" off in the corner, no two of them agreeing on how to count. Glance at the map name or use your Look skill and you will read "East Woodland 7-1", "East Woodland 14-1", and the two odd ones out, the Enchanted Garden and the Wasteland, the way they ought to.
A door in the woods, and the goblin behind it
There is a hut tucked into the trees off one of the deep circles. Its door used to be painted scenery. You could see it, you could not open it. It opens now, and someone is home.
Baki is the one goblin in the whole wood who would sooner talk than bite. He keeps clear of his warring kin out in the circles, minds his little hut, and will tell you about both if you ask. "Hsss, hold your blade, Aisling. Baki means you no harm," is how he starts. He sells nothing and teaches nothing. He is simply there, which is the whole of his charm.
Anyway. Go fish, watch the light go off the water, then take the east gate and see how far into the trees you can get before something with wings decides it has opinions about you.