Release 5

April 24 - 27, 2014
 * Combat and Magic Skills: Finally you will no longer be confined to auto attack now that a wide array of combat and magic skills will be at your disposal. To let you test out a wide variety of these skills we will give you a bunch of skill points to allocate up and down as you wish. This allocation of points will automatically build your deck. Skills can be locked in your toolbar or left unlocked so they can be used in combos during combat.
 * 35 (of 171) Skills: Here is the skill list for R5. Most of these are in a very simple first state so some of them are missing secondary effects, like movement (Trip, Tumble, etc.), speed (Ice Fist), etc.
 * Blades:
 * Thrust
 * Double Thrust ("double swipe")
 * Whirling Blades
 * Bludgeon:
 * Crushing Blow
 * Knockback
 * Heavy Armor:
 * Defensive Stance
 * Inner Strength
 * Light Armor:
 * Dodge
 * Tumble
 * Medium Armor
 * Glancing Blow
 * Trip
 * Polearms:
 * Push
 * Puncture
 * Ranged:
 * Aimed Shot
 * Disabling Shot
 * Piercing Shot
 * Shield:
 * Deflect
 * Shield Bash
 * Air:
 * Gust
 * Discharge
 * Lightning
 * Death:
 * Death Touch
 * Death Ray
 * Corpse Explosion
 * Earth:
 * Stone Fist
 * Root
 * Fire:
 * Flame Fist
 * Fireball
 * Life:
 * Healing Touch
 * Healing Ray
 * Purify
 * Resurrection
 * Sun:
 * Light
 * Searing Ray
 * Water:
 * Ice Fist


 * Linear Lighting Model: As part of an ongoing effort to improve our visuals we have have switched from gamma lighting to linear lighting. This makes a lot of the details in our textures more visible but it has required us to touch every shader, texture, lighting setting, etc. in the game. Note that this is still a work in progress.
 * Add On Store Conversion: Our backers now have the ability to convert their add on store purchases into credits that can either be applied to their pledge or used for other add on purchases.
 * Weekend Access Keys: We added functionality to support weekend access to potential backers
 * Journal: Results of conversations with the characters in our world will now appear in your Journal. This should aid questing tremendously without going as far as exclamation points overhead.
 * 'Crafting: We have increased the number of starting recipes to give players a wider array of recipes so that discovery can be more intuitive.''
 * 'Compass: Navigating through our scenes can be quite challenging so we have added an on screen compass to help guide you around''
 * 'Overland Map Polish: We continued iterating on the overland map. We added panning and zooming, animating objects (waves, windmills, etc.) and visibility of your party members''
 * 'Combat Floaties: For those of you craving more information about what exactly is happening in combat we have added combat numbers that appear overhead during combat if you have Names Overhead toggled (via the N key)''
 * Health Bars: Discerning status from the health dot alongside the name in R4 did not work for many of you so we have moved to a more traditional health bar
 * New Creatures:
 * Chest Mimic
 * Skeleton Archer
 * Satyr Mage
 * Satyr Archer


 * Traditional Combat Shortcut Bar: While we are still heavily committed to card style combat we quickly realized when playtesting this very early version that we don’t yet have enough supporting features (deck building, skill locking, etc.) in place to make it fun.
 * AFK Mode: When you type /afk or you are idle for a while your character will sit on the ground and [AFK] will be appended to the character name
 * New Vale Scenes: We shifted focus to more Vale scenes so we could create a more complete area of the game (replacing placeholder maps) versus proceeding to the main map.
 * Kingsport Sewers: An intense adventure area under Kingsport infested with the undead!
 * 'Standard Scenes: No more placeholders!''
 * Road through the forest
 * Road through the grassland
 * Road through the hills
 * Grassland
 * Player Forest Village Variation 2: We used this plus Forest Village 1 to create a total of 10 Player Towns on the Vale


 * Player Housing: We have added 12 new player houses (4 Rustic, 6 Wood & Plaster, 2 Duke Castles) and as mentioned above we increased the number of locations that players can place houses to a total of 13. That raises the number of lots to around 600. With that change we have decided that for R5 we will no longer impose a time limit on ownership.
 * Death System: OooOoooOOOOooo! Death will now turn you into a ghost. Current thinking about the death system will be shared at a later date.
 * Main Continent Scenes: Finally players will get to see their first maps on the main continent including a city that is part of the story, adventuring areas, and a player town.
 * Interactive Areas: Don’t you wish you could move that chair in the tavern to have a better view of the front door? Public areas like taverns will now be flagged as interactive areas. This will allow more freedom in those spaces by allowing the moving but not taking of items.
 * AI Behaviors: NPCs will now start to have schedules and change behavior according to the time. This will include things like going around turning on the lights around town as the sun goes down. NPCs will also now react to players taking and breaking stuff so watch out when you try to steal that loaf of bread!
 * Books: Books will no longer just be decorative objects! Read lovely poems and stories written by our very own community in the game. Try to collect them all!

Additional Information

 * Release 5 Instructions
 * Release 5 Known Issues

Videos
The Mad Hermit's Guide To Pre Alpha 5 video:

Perspectives

 * A Royal Illumination on Release 5 by Lord British
 * Release 5 Impressions & Release 6 Revised by Darkstarr
 * Release 5 Post Mortem by Chris Spears