itch.io

A lot of work has gone into the game lately: beekeeping is now fully implemented, the Scurren equipment set is complete, the new alchemy system is finished, and I’ve fixed hundreds of bugs along the way.

Beekeeping

While exploring forests and meadows, you can now find wild beehives.

Destroying one is not exactly safe — you’ll have to survive the angry swarm — but you can recover honeycombs and capture some of the bees living inside. These can be gatherers, builders, defenders, larvae, or, if you’re lucky, even the Queen.

Once you have a Queen, you can build a primitive clay hive and start your own colony around her. Place the hive on the meadows and the family will begin gathering resources and producing honey.

But your colony is not alone.

Other wild bee families live on the same meadows, and they may attack your hive to steal the Queen, larvae and honeycombs.

Of course, you can do exactly the same to them if you think your colony is strong enough.

Alchemy

The entire alchemy system is now finished.

Recipes still define what you’re making, but they no longer define the final effects. Those now come from the actual ingredients you prepare and use.

Plants can be dried, ground, infused, extracted, filtered, concentrated, heated, diluted and mixed. Every step changes the material itself — its mass, concentration, available compounds and side effects. Nothing simply gets a hidden “better/worse” multiplier.

Carriers matter too. Water, honey, fish oil, wax, blood and worm juice extract different compounds and behave differently depending on whether you turn the final mixture into a drink, salve, compress, weapon coating or even an aerosol cloud.

The same recipe can therefore produce very different results depending on how you prepare it.

A simple Aloe + Plantain remedy could become a basic healing salve, a concentrated medicine with much stronger healing, or a badly prepared mixture that barely helps and causes severe nausea.

There is no purity score and no random final crafting roll.

The game simply simulates what you made and shows you the result.

The goal is simple: easy to use if you just follow a recipe, but with plenty of depth for players who want to experiment with the chemistry behind it.

Scurren / Windmill Equipment

The equipment branch connected to the Scurren Windmill instance is now complete as well.

All recipes have been reworked, and the full equipment set can now be crafted from actual resources.

To begin crafting it, you first need to find the workbench blueprint inside the Windmill instance. Once the workbench is built, the equipment recipes become available.

The craftable set currently includes 12 pieces of clothing and armor, a sword, a one-handed mace, a two-handed mace and a shield.

There are also 16 extremely rare Scurren equipment pieces that cannot simply be crafted. These can drop randomly from Scurren creatures.

Rare equipment can be repaired and upgraded, so finding a good piece is only the beginning.

If you manage to craft or obtain equipment of Quality 3 or higher, attachment slots start opening.

There are currently 7 equipment attachments and 4 weapon attachments, providing additional armor, defense and damage.

I also finished the core equipment system itself.

Every equipment piece now has two important defensive values:

Armor directly reduces incoming damage.

Defense is effectively the durability and health of the equipment itself — another layer of health standing between the player and serious injuries.

Injuries are still being worked on, and equipment will play a major role in protecting the player from them.

I’ve also reworked several lootboxes and fixed hundreds of bugs across the game.

Thanks for following the development.

See you in Runelight.

The fish cooking branch is finally complete.

After a ridiculous amount of reworks, fixes, and art generation, all 40 fish recipes and their blueprints are finished. There’s still plenty of testing ahead, but the full system is now in place.

Fish can be butchered into mince, chunks, and fillets, with the available cuts improving as your butchering skill grows. Each species keeps its own attributes and flavour profile, while the form determines which recipes you can make. The meat also uses shared art masks tinted to match the fish species, so we don’t need a separate drawing for every cut of every fish.

Cooking is built around actual weight, preparation methods, ingredient combinations, and seasoning. A recipe can accept different fish species and valid preparation methods, while the ingredients determine the final flavour and attribute distribution. There are also separate rules for Pearl and Mutant fish, giving rare catches a real purpose in the kitchen.

The important part is that we now have a complete reference for future cooking branches. Meat is next, using the same foundation with mince, steaks, and large cuts.

Also 

Giving Runelight’s People a Past

Most of my recent work has been on the people of Runelight. I've been going through their backgrounds, personalities, relationships, professions, and the things they actually want from the world.

I wanted to get beyond “this is the cook” or “this is the fisherman.” Who were they before Runelight? Why did they end up here? Who do they trust, who do they avoid, and what are they hiding? What would they do if the player never showed up?

I've also been working out their specializations and progression, so getting to know someone can gradually reveal more than just another shop or a new dialogue option. Some characters have a lot to teach you. Others have plans of their own, and helping them doesn't necessarily mean you understand what you're helping with.

A big part of this has been connecting their stories to each other. Two people can remember the same event differently, know different parts of the truth, or have a relationship the player knows nothing about. I want those connections to matter, rather than having every NPC exist in their own little bubble.

There's still a lot to implement and test, but the background work is giving me a much clearer picture of who these people are and how their stories fit together. It's been one of the more interesting parts of development lately.

I also see people starting to show up - rarely, but they do drop into the game, which is great. It’s only now that I’ve realized just how far from ready it is to show to anyone. But despite that, I’ve made it mobile-friendly (landscape mode) of course, it’s still very rough, but the world is taking shape.

If the game or its world has piqued your interest, feel free to ask anything on Discord. It’s hard for me to gauge the difficulty level since I’m the one creating it, and things look different from a player's perspective.

See you in Runelight.

Benedict & the New NPC Economy

I’ve finished the first major NPC built around the new economy and relationship systems: Benedict, the merchant from the capital.

He visits the village only from the 1st to the 7th of each month, and he absolutely hates coming here. The shard is poor, dangerous, no longer pays tribute, and Benedict’s real job is partly to watch whether the settlement is becoming prosperous enough for the Crown to care again.

Benedict has four main roles:

• Numismatist — buys rare cleaned coins, but only above 95% preservation.
• Royal Intermediary — brings the King’s Orders and Grants.
• Premium Reseller — sells expensive, high-quality capital goods that let players skip long crafting chains.
• Exporter — buys valuable local goods that can be resold in the capital.

His shop uses only Royal Coins. His goods are intentionally expensive, but usually powerful and high quality. Most are still fragile.

Trust & Reputation

NPC relationships now have two resources:

Trust is accumulated through helping an NPC.
Reputation represents major relationship milestones.

Both can also be spent on favors: discounts, better sale prices, information, reserved goods, private stock, special imports, and other exceptions.

Reputation is no longer gained automatically at 100 Trust. Reaching 100 Trust unlocks a personal task from that NPC.

Benedict’s first Reputation task is simple but very specific:

Give him a copper coin with exactly 100% preservation.

He does not buy it. It is a gift.

Future Reputation levels will require progressively harder personal requests tied to each NPC’s interests.

Learning NPCs through dialogue

The Journal now contains detailed NPC dossiers.

The important part: it only shows what the player has actually learned.

At first, you know almost nothing about Benedict. Through dialogue, trades, discoveries and higher Reputation, new information gets recorded:

• what goods interest him;
• exact coin requirements;
• his interest in gold, silver and gems;
• export opportunities;
• hidden services;
• royal information;
• available favors.

So dialogue is now part of the economy rather than just lore.

Export trading

Benedict sells each player one jar of milk per visit for 25 Royal Silver.

After drinking the milk, the jar remains. It can be filled with honey or one of five jams, labeled, and turned into an export product.

After unlocking Benedict’s Exporter role:

• Honey Jar base value: 30 Royal Silver
• Jam Jar base value: 35 Royal Silver

Final value scales through the existing rarity/quality system.

Royal Orders & Grants

These are two separate systems.

Royal Orders are the King’s ridiculous personal ideas.

The first one:

The Greatest Candle in the Kingdom
The King wants a gigantic candle.
Required: 10,000 kg of wax.

Future Orders will be handcrafted and get their own illustrations.

Royal Grants are practical large-scale purchases: fish, mushrooms, meat, plants, and other resource categories. Their value depends on the actual rarity, quality and properties of what players deliver.

Benedict can also sell capital rumors for Trust, giving hints about future demand without directly revealing next month’s requirements.

This entire system is designed as a template for other NPCs: each one will have their own interests, relationship progression, personal requests, economy, knowledge, favors and reasons to keep interacting with them long-term.

By the way, the season has changed (a new month has started) and the rare Eshamoor season has arrived, changing the usual approach to the game. Interesting, since the chance is about 5%. Of course, it is absolutely not done, not even started, but all locations have a different appearance.

See you in Runelight.

I’ve been working on several core systems lately, and quite a few of them are now reaching a much more complete state.

Fishing has been expanded and reworked. I’ll be adding new bait from other worlds, along with more fish species. I also expanded the fishing map and improved fish behavior, bait preferences, and many of the systems behind how fishing works.

Aquatic creatures have also been reworked for the Lake event, where players will be dealing with pollution, cleaning up the lake, and fighting the threats that appear as a result of it.

Cooking received another major balance pass. I rebalanced dishes, satiety, acclimation, and ingredient weights. At this point, I consider the core cooking system essentially finished — what remains now is mostly adding more content, ingredients, and recipes.

I also completely rebuilt the cave generation system, something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. Caves can now contain 10 rock types, 15 ores, and 5 other materials, giving mining and exploration much more variety.

The lifecycle of the new cave generation has also been extended to one in-game month, which is equal to one full season. This gives caves enough time to develop and change before the next generation cycle.

At the same time, I’m continuing to work on finishing the core of the profession system — progression, usefulness, rewards, and the systems connected to profession growth.

A lot of the recent work has been focused less on adding isolated features and more on getting the underlying systems into a state where I can start filling them with content.

More than 60% of the planned volume has already been completed, but now this figure can be considered finalized.

Another huge update.

I’ve finally finished the core of the cooking system. The first part I’m going to properly expand and rework is fish recipes.

There are currently 15 species of fish in the game, and every species can appear in 7 different variants: small, medium, large, fatty, with roe, pearl, and mutated. Each variant has its own practical use — for example, small fish can be useful for fermentation, large fish for more complex stuffed or baked dishes, fish with roe can be processed for the roe, and so on.

Dish complexity, quality, and rarity now directly affect how much permanent attribute progress the player gets from eating it. Complexity itself depends on things like the number of ingredients, spices, and the flavour composition of the final dish. The idea is to make complex cooking actually worth the effort instead of just mass-producing the simplest possible recipe.

Location buttons and action buttons have also been moved to a new, cleaner visual style.

Everything that can be grown in farming pots now has a proper place in cooking as well. Vegetables have their own attributes, recipes, and uses in more complex dishes. Some can also be baked — for example beetroot with honey or carrots with honey.

Resource generation has been expanded too. Individual gathered resources now have their own weight, so two mushrooms, crabs, plants, or vegetables of the same type don’t necessarily weigh the same.

I also reworked the login page a bit so it gives a much clearer idea of what the game actually is before you enter.

And, as usual, there was an absurd amount of bug fixing, testing, cleanup, and smaller improvements along the way.

See you in Runelight.

A bit of routine work on the ground - testing clay and structure colors.
Further, more in-depth work on the creation of blueprints from ideas, sketching of construction blueprints, processing of the butterfly showcase into a boss fight prototype, expansion of cooking, and transition to the finalization of crafting in the scurren instance.
It will also be necessary to work on the creation of runes - operators, and to rework the professions, since they have become obsolete with the development of the project.

I’ve finished working on farming, stockpiles, and quality-of-life improvements. I accomplished a massive amount of work, and the results truly surprised me. I completely removed all the individual pottery images and replaced them with a single "master" image for each type of item; all the production stages are now generated from this master image based on the clay colors.

also completely reworked the work of runes, which, by the way, I like incredibly much. Runes will now be combined into runic words, each rune acts as an operator (Create, switch, appy, if (something), repeat, etc)

This opens the way to the creation of runes for each new god, and a collection of incredibly interesting runic words that can be used both with a glove and inserted into equipment. Runes are not just combat, they will work for everything, including ancient helpers.

Runes are one of the pillars supporting this world; consequently, they are an integral part of progression and exploration. The next step is finally filling the game with content. We need to add a full-fledged cooking system—not merely a stopgap with five recipes, but a proper profession, a distinct discipline, and a vital part of the game.
Yesterday we wanted to engage in farming and plant a seed, which took us several hours of grinding. Chains and processes work perfectly. Everything is confidently approaching 60% of what I want to see in the playable version of V0.1

Reworked visuals and combat mechanics of bugs. Children's imaginary money (reward for tournaments) still has no value, but soon it will be possible to buy something with them. I am planning to redo the butterfly show event (Alma event), I want to make it like a boss fight, in which you will damage the bosses (judges) with your butterflies according to their evaluation criteria.

The player's land has received a major visual update. It is also now possible to build here. Now in the process of testing the crafting of equipment (and what is worn on the hero) with the help of crafting tables and resources from the scurren windmill dungeon) the player also has the opportunity to buy an additional piece of land from a merchant from the capital, he received another piece of land 10 by 10 (as in the screenshot)

It is possible to create and insert attachments into the equipment, if the quality and rarity allow of course. Quality and rarity reveal slots for attachments. A lot of attachments are planned, which will allow you to prepare for different situations and battles, since there are about 12 types of damage in the world, both weapons and monolith energy.
I spent a lot of time on the spiral of progress, if you can call it that. Added the ideas of primitive paper, primitive clay, and primitive rope. These resources are needed to create tools of uncommon rarity or higher. Primitive crafts have extremely low wear, but will help advance in spirals of progress.

all materials in crafting and construction receive the lowest rarity in the group. That is, if all of your bricks are rare and one is common, then the entire kiln will become a common rarity. With quality, otherwise, quality is the sum of all ingredients or resources in an item divided by quantity, and your skills are also involved.

Hand of god
I was also asked about the hand of god event, and apparently the start is too difficult for the players, I understand. All progress is based on artifacts in essence, and therefore I recommend starting with the raid artifact, to get it you need to completely clear the first meadows location on the beehive map. Try to kill the boss and mini-boss before the alarms go off, as each alarm makes the enemies stronger.

The artifact gives a multiplier for trophies obtained from bosses when invading other maps. It is important that you can take only 1 artifact trophy per race, so I skip the first one from the boss and try to get the second one.  Thus, the creatures with the trophy will receive a x0.5 bonus at the start, which will allow you to go further and get more rewards.

The activity is not very large, if you wish, you can certainly take out more points, if you do not lose them or do not leave them in the store, but perhaps this advice will help someone start easier.

Also, the quest chain is temporarily broken, due to the fact that I am transferring dungeons to new mechanics and visuals, and the nerax swamp now does not give fake resources.

...also worked with paints, creating map fragments and blueprints, but we’ll save that for the next update.
See you in Runelight.

Two years ago, I was really surprised by how difficult it is to create a proper inventory system. Good luck - starting something new is always very exciting.

 combat is finally done (the mechanics part, at least)

Big one today. The core combat system is finished. Like, actually finished — not "finished until I rip it apart again" finished.

The last piece was fighting enemy heroes. I had everything in place — creature AI, archetypes, skills — but the fights felt flat. Safe, even. You could just walk away from anything, and the enemy hero felt like a fancy mob, not like an opponent.

So the whole thing got reworked:

Move + action for everyone. Before, any action ended your turn instantly. Now every unit moves AND attacks (or uses a skill) in the same turn. Sounds small, writes completely different fights.

Retreating has a price now. Step out of melee range and you eat a free hit. Skills that dash or teleport you out don't trigger it — so escaping clean is something you spend a skill on, not a free button.

You command your creatures directly. Two markers over each creature — move and attack. Every order costs leadership equal to the creature's evolution, so you're constantly deciding who gets your full attention and who fights on their own AI this turn.

Enemy heroes act like players. They kite, they keep part of their swarm in reserve and summon mid-fight, they hide behind their creatures and make you cut through the line to reach them.

Fights start near the center of the map now too, so no more five turns of walking at each other.

What's left is the pretty part: animations and effects for a few hundred skills. That's a mountain of work, but the foundation under it won't move anymore.

Also a bit about villages (raid into the darkness system)

What Village Raids Are Actually Going to Be

I’ve been working on a new location type for a while, so I figured it was time to explain what it actually is instead of just posting random screenshots.

The idea is abandoned villages.

Not another dungeon with houses instead of corridors, but an actual settlement: larger, more open, with houses, paths, yards, and useful buildings spread around the area. The people who lived there are either gone or have turned into something worse.

At first, villages were mostly meant to be another place to loot basic materials like pottery, cloth, clay, and similar everyday resources. You go in, take what you can carry, and get out. Some buildings might need to be cleared, while others could be avoided if you’re careful.

That already works, but it felt like villages should have a bigger reason to exist.

One of those reasons will be animals.

The current plan is that animals can only be found during village raids. There won’t be another place where you can reliably get a chicken or rabbit. You’ll enter a village and hope you get lucky, with chances possibly being somewhere around one in a thousand.

So even if most runs only give you basic materials, there’s always a small chance that this is the run where you bring something much more valuable home.

Villages will also have different levels of wealth, and I want that to be visible directly in the location.

A poor village might only have a few small huts. A wealthier one could have a forge, a mill, animal pens, and other useful structures visible before you even enter.

The idea is that you should be able to look at a village and get a rough idea of what might be inside. You can then decide whether it’s worth clearing, which building you want to reach first, or whether you should grab something valuable and leave.

The enemies also need to be more interesting than a hundred versions of the same mutated villager.

I’m planning to use the archetype system that already exists in the game, with aggressive enemies, swarms, support units, ranged threats, and other specialised roles. A large village should feel like an actual encounter with some structure to it, not just a pile of health bars.

The larger idea is that villages will also connect directly to MyLand.

Forges, mills, animal pens, and other buildings found inside villages are also things you’ll eventually be able to construct on your own land. The same building can exist as something you raid in the world and something you later build for yourself.

That also creates a more natural way to unlock blueprints.

Instead of finding a forge blueprint as a random item inside a chest, you could find an actual forge in a village, inspect it, and learn how to build one.

You find the building in the world, understand how it works, and then recreate it at home.

None of this is close to finished, and this isn’t a release-date post. It’s more of a general look at where the system is heading.

Right now, I’m still focused on combat visuals, so village raids will be parked for a while. I mostly wanted to write the idea down properly before it turned into another folder full of screenshots and unfinished notes.

The visual side has honestly been the most enjoyable part so far. The game has gone from flat 2D tiles to locations that are starting to feel like actual places, with proper walls, roofs, worn paths, and recognisable buildings.

When the Monolith’s light disappears, the lands are covered in darkness.

Dark creatures can be found in hidden areas of some instances. They can also travel through the darkness, gather resources for the player, and sometimes bring back news from settlements.

Settlements have different levels of darkness. The higher the level, the more mutated the creatures become.

The new instance is quite difficult, but also interesting. Our tester and I could not complete it, but we still managed to get some loot. Our characters are not very strong yet, so that probably made it harder.

Creatures captured in Monolith Shards are very helpful here.

Here is a small preview of the mid progression.

Thank you so much for taking the time to check out the game.

That small triangle is simply a button for hiding the chat. I have not yet adapted the interface for a wide range of screen sizes, so new players may need to collapse the chat for now. Thank you for pointing this out.

Now, going through your feedback point by point.

The game has tactical combat, which will be a very important part of the overall experience. The main focus will be cooperative battles where a team of players fights against creatures of the world.

You can also capture Monolith creatures and summon them into battle on your side. You will be able to give them direct commands, which should allow players to create different tactical combinations and strategies.

Regarding changing your nickname: yes, I will add that today. I honestly did not give it much attention because the game is not even in pre-alpha yet, so thank you for mentioning it.

As for the tutorial in general, I completely understand your point. Tutorials are often one of the most annoying parts of games.

However, the main problem is that the game contains a large number of mechanics that are not immediately obvious. I genuinely have not found a better way to teach players the basic actions without some form of tutorial.

This also includes the story quests. There are currently five of them, and together they introduce the player to all the major parts of the game that already exist. They also establish the story behind the global points of interest, which will require teamwork in the future.

At least so far, every tester who tried to play without following the tutorial told me that they had no idea what they were supposed to do.

Regarding attributes, I will add proper descriptions in the future when I work more deeply on the cooking and character progression systems. For now, this is roughly how they work:

Strength

• Maximum HP: HP = Strength × 5
• Maximum carry weight: Carry Weight = Strength × 5
• Increases unarmed and blunt damage
• Mining: your Strength, together with the tier of your pickaxe, determines which levels of wall hardness you are able to break

Agility

• Affects turn order in combat
• Increases dodge chance
• Increases movement speed
• Reduces the damage you receive while blocking

Intelligence

• Determines the number of Find and Study slots: Slots = 1 + floor(Intelligence ÷ 5)
• It will also be used for working with blueprints, paper, research, and many other systems

Stamina

• Determines the size of your Stamina Points pool: Maximum SP = Stamina × 5
• SP is spent on mining, since each swing costs stamina
• It is also used by combat abilities that have a stamina cost
• Gathering resources consumes SP as well

Psyche

• Determines the size of your Monolith Energy pool: Maximum Energy = Psyche × 5
• Psyche is related to runes, Monolith Energy, and other connected mechanics
  

I gave you a map, you can open it with a button M on keyboard, or press right button on it, and then use.
There is a search button at the top left, it will help you find resources, but only where you have already explored.

In the second quest, you will have a moment to get acquainted with the hand of god event, at the moment I have only transferred the windmill map to a new visual, but don't let that put you off, there is quite a lot of content if you like the roguelite genre.

It is best to start by going to the Beehive and clearing the first map 100% (completing all nodes); this will unlock the first artifact, enabling you to launch trophy raids, which provide a boost to the entire team.

Name change is available in the character tab.

I also recommend trying fishing, to get the idea of creating a fishing rod, you need to find all the parts of the fishing rod in the inventory, you will get the rope from the quest, the stick can be found in the world, and the hook can be bought from the fisherman for rusty copper coins. I am not sure that you will be able to catch fish normally without tutorial, but I promise to add it soon.

a bit more of new visual and enchanted creature

New dungeon map generating system and visual. 

An incredible amount of tests behind me, and unfortunately even more ahead. I feel exhausted, but to distract myself, I started working on the visuals and the feeling of combat. I still don't really like the visuals of the creatures, and I even tried to remake them several times, but there are too many images. 5 creatures with 5 evolutions, 3 types (normal, monolith and enchanted) and this is only for one new god, and there are already 5 of them + the event world.

I plan to work deeper into the combat system, reputation and activity. Due to the lack of players, I plan to close access to the game for a while, I will probably share updates after I finish the combat system and darkness. Thanks for your attention, and see you later.

And yea, still no elves here(

Technically, there are no direct races to choose from in the world, but indirectly, other fragments of monoliths (worlds) are approaching the Runelight world (the one where the player appears) that can be raided or established relationships, which means that we can add any race to one of these fragments (worlds), the main thing is to add it beautifully (lore and world). I can't promise an elf race in the near future, but it will still be an event in one of the months.

Well, according to the game's lore, our monolith (what illuminates the Runelight world) is a predator, so we won't be able to play as the elves, we will either destroy their world or help.

Quick follow-up to the mining post, because the chain finally reached its far end: the jeweler.

It starts back in the mine. When you wash the rubble you dig out — the same rubble you'd otherwise toss — you sometimes turn up gold, and every so often a raw gemstone. Ruby, sapphire, emerald, topaz, diamond, amber. They're rare, and a rough stone tells you almost nothing on its own. It's a lump. You don't know what's inside until someone who knows stones takes a look.

That's the first job — appraising. A trained eye reads the stone: what it's worth, what it would give you, and how much of it is dull, ordinary, or clear. Because a gem isn't one solid thing. It's got patches of dull and clear scattered through it at different angles, and a good appraiser can see them. A bad one is mostly guessing.

Then you cut it, at a simple bench on your own land. This is the part I like. Cutting isn't "press button, get better gem" — it's carving. You grind away the dull patches to expose the clear stuff underneath, and the clearer the cut, the stronger the stone. But every gram you grind off is weight you lose, and weight is what unlocks a stone's power in the first place. So you're always trading: shave it down for a purer, sharper bonus, or leave it heavy and keep more of what it does. Push too far and the whole thing can shatter into dust — though the dust isn't wasted either, it ends up as pigment. Get it wrong early on and you'll crack a lot of stones. That's the cost of learning.

After that it goes into a setting — a ring, an amulet, whatever you can build — and the metal matters. A rich stone in a cheap setting gets choked; it can only give as much as the setting can carry. Match a good gem to a good setting and it opens all the way up. And what does it give? Depends on the stone. A ruby leans into strength and health, an emerald into agility and dodge, a sapphire sharpens the mind and helps you learn faster. Rings and amulets are how you shape your character beyond just eating well — this is the mid-game, the stuff you chase once you've got your footing.

I've been posting these mining updates piece by piece, so here's the wider picture now that it all clicks together.

The chain is closed. It starts in the mine — you dig, you wash the rubble, you turn up ore, coal, the odd gemstone. The smelter melts the ore down and cleans it into metal. The blacksmith takes that metal and makes your tools and gear. The jeweler cuts the gems and sets them into rings and amulets that actually change how your character plays. And it loops: your worn-out pickaxe goes back to the smelter as scrap and becomes metal again. Nobody in this chain stands alone. The miner needs the blacksmith's pickaxe, the blacksmith needs the smelter's metal, the smelter needs the miner's ore. Four jobs leaning on each other.

Each one is its own thing, not a menu of recipes. Mining is that minesweeper-ish game of reading walls and bracing before you dig. Smelting is hauling ore and coal into a cocoon, feeding it peat, pouring the melt into a mould — and slowly learning to refine metal cleaner and cleaner, which matters more the deeper the game goes. The jeweler's cutting table is the one I keep coming back to: a rough stone hides dull and clear patches at odd angles, and cutting is carving away the dull to expose the clear, trading raw weight for a sharper bonus, one wrong slip away from cracking the whole thing to dust.

Under all of it, one thing you won't see but that holds everything up: every skill in the game now levels the same way. Generous when you're new, slower as you climb, no hard ceiling, and better materials teach you faster. One law instead of the four tangled ones I had before.

Some of this is live, some is still rough, and a few pieces — the forge, the furnace, armor, steel — are scaffolded but waiting their turn. But the shape is here. And honestly, once this settles, it's about half of what I want Runelight to be. The bones of the world are in.

There is a huge amount of work ahead, but I am very pleased with what is already here. I am even afraid to imagine how all this will have to be tested for balancers.

the mines got a lot deeper.

Been heads-down on the mining update for a while, and it grew into something bigger than I planned.

Mining used to be "hit rock, get ore." Now it's its own little game. You walk into the cave with a pickaxe, some water, and empty bags, and you dig. But the rock isn't safe everywhere. Some tiles are weak, and if you break into one without bracing it first, the ceiling comes down and you die. You respawn at a monolith, banged up, and your dropped gear is still sitting back in the cave — so you can go get it, if you're willing to head back in before the cave resets for the day.

It ends up playing a bit like minesweeper. You learn to read the walls, work out where it's dangerous, and prop up the risky spots before you dig through them. Lime for the supports is scarce, so you can't brace everything — you have to pick your spots. Harder rock needs a stronger arm and a better pickaxe, which means good food and a blacksmith. And that's the whole idea: mining is the front of a chain now. The miner digs, the smelter melts it down, the blacksmith forges it, the jeweler cuts the gems you turn up. Each one leans on the others. Your worn-out pickaxe even goes back in the furnace to become metal again.

The other half of this update you can't really see, but it mattered more. Skills used to level up in about four different ways depending on which skill it was — a real mess under the hood. I ripped all of that out and rebuilt it as one system. Every skill in the game now grows the same way: quick and generous when you're new, slower the higher you climb, and no hard ceiling — you can keep pushing as far as you've got the patience for. Better materials help too: bring back a rare, high-quality resource and you learn from it faster. Same with the weapon in your hand when you fight.

Smelting and forging are next. More soon.

Was deep in testing a huge batch of skill-system changes when I stumbled onto an enchanted creature completely by accident.

I know full well it's just my local test server, and I can't catch it — no shards on me — and honestly I probably couldn't even if I had them, since I'm nowhere near strong enough. But still: my first real encounter, at absurdly low odds. Hard not to grin.

For anyone unfamiliar with how these things work: they emerge into the world out of tumors, but only after devouring the entire contents of one on their own. That ability stays with them afterward — you can feed them fragmented monolithic beings and they'll absorb their skills, potential, and power. This one would make a fantastic leader for a locust swarm guarding the beacon bridge.

There's no worse habit than starting something new before you've finished what you already had going. 

So — naturally — I've started something new.

I've begun laying the groundwork for the "going into the dark" mechanic, starting with the portable beacon.

Walking in the dark is a big social piece of this world. The first expeditions will be cautious and uncertain — players feeling things out.

Whoever carries the beacon can light up the dark stretches of the world. That lets a group extend bridges of light deeper into the darkness, opening a path toward points of interest — for example, the Tomaridema tower. The tower is where knowledge about the monolith's energy is gathered: how to use it, what its place in the world is. There you study the pages of the book, earn knowledge, and work on runes, combinations, and everything else that draws on the monolith's energy.

But waking a darkness that's slept for centuries isn't exactly a smart move. Light it up, and the things that live there — the ones that were asleep until you showed up — start attacking the beacons.

There are four of these quest points of interest scattered around Runelight. Each one is a guild in its own right that anyone can join and help build up:

- Tower — energy and runes. Home for players chasing complex combinations, mobility, buffs, and the secrets of the world.

- Garrison — for the melee crowd: vanguard, brute force, holding the line.

- Menagerie — this one's for players like me. The ones who collect pets, command them, set up tactics and attack chains. They're also the ones who hold the locations while everyone else is offline.

- Crafters — the heart of the world. They process everything that gets brought in, found, or stolen: building fortifications for pets, recycling creature parts into gear, brewing alchemy, and generally shaping the world everyone else sees.

Every point of interest needs beacons to build its bridge. Each one is its own little front that has to be defended against the creatures of the dark — but each is also meant to become a home and a hub of growth for the players who settle there.

And yes — any player can head to any point of interest, and even do well at all of them, if they've got the free time for it. Each point also has its own book that grants buffs and has to be studied.

This is the players' first real meeting with the dark, and honestly the moment they realize how the push toward the capital can begin (the finale of the fifth quest) — the first clashes, the first forays after better resources, and so on.

It's all still on paper for now, but the work has started. After that it's just the small stuff — sit down and do it.

Thanks for reading.

Hey, another small update.

Currently working on the Finds system.

While gathering resources you'll occasionally come across something — a lump of clay shaped like a hand, a shard of old pottery, a small clay figure of a raven. You drop it into a study slot, wait a while, and when it's done you get some profession XP and inspiration.

Inspiration is a per-profession resource. Accumulate enough of it and you can generate ideas — temporary blueprints for things not sold by any NPC. Low amounts give you simple recipes. Higher amounts unlock structures, and further up, things connected to the gods.

A few things worth noting:

- Rarity and quality of a find scales everything: XP, inspiration, study time, intellect required. No hand-tuned values, just formulas.

- A common find is roughly worth ~20 crafting actions of XP. Mythic quality is closer to 1000.

- Resource quality in this game is theoretically unbounded, which means finds can be too — something to keep in mind.

- Rerolling an idea's quality costs inspiration, and the price increases each attempt.

Design is done for Clayworking finds. Now building it.

I'll show you how it looks in the game in a while.

Thank you for your attention.

Let me tell you a little about instances. The old gods have disappeared, along with those who lived here before us. The player is not a person, he is a creature of the monolith. The area that we consider home is illuminated by the light of the monolith, which gives life to everything that is here.

The new gods began a struggle for territory and power. There are 4 instances in the light at this time.

The village mill - captured by Scurren, when the sower and miller tried to expand the mill's basement - they dug into the caves, which awakened the new god.

The goddess Chithex is a spider-like giant bee that has made a home for herself in the middle of the meadows, a huge hive. This instance has become a home for the bees, who have come to consider the place their home. Bees have begun to be hunted by wasp bee-eaters, wax golems protect the structure of the hive, they do not care about those who live there, but the sweet smell of honey attracts honey eaters, who destroy the hive, which is why they have become the worst enemies of golems. And lizards run through the endless tunnels, devouring all those who died in battles, or are too weak to fight back.

There is also a new god, Nerax, who has come to Runelight from the dying world of Nexertia. He has claimed the rivers and lakes as his own, and his creatures will attack anyone who tries to fish.

There is also the goddess Orael, she considers herself the creator of all living things (creatures and plants), which is the reason why players cannot cut down trees. Each instance has five creatures, each creature has five evolutions.

Scurren Mill is a place from which resources can be used to create equipment for the player's melee. Defense, damage. 

Chithex Hive is a place from which resources can be used to create equipment that gives the player Leadership, which allows the player to command creatures that the player has captured for use in combat.

Stinking pit (house of Nerax) provides resources for Stealth, DOT, Evasion, and Heavy Carrying. 

Orael forest is a place that provides resources for managing runes, monolith energy, and everything that is called magic in other worlds.

There is also an instance of the Cloverluck world (the first of 12 event worlds), where equipment is tied to combinations and luck.

In each instance there is 1 creature (the most common creature, 1 evolution) from which you can get a carcass, this is the source of meat, hides and bones. From all other creatures, resources drop out after victory, equipment is created from resources, and then improved (by tier) All equipment breaks in battles, but in each battle there is a chance to get super rare equipment that can be repaired.

Also, interaction with Aldetorckol (he is also a new god) directly affects instances. The monolith infects the creatures, the creatures crawl - form tumors from which copies of these creatures appear (those copies are creatures of the monolith, we can catch them in shards)

This is exactly the reason why I postpone work with instances further and further, now in essence only the scurren mill works as an instance for creating things and improving them (from the essence of 1 evolution) Well, of course, this is one of the professions that also requires a lot of work.

And yes, I saw that someone had registered and decided to see what I was talking about. If you want, write a nickname in the comments to the post, I will give you a map. It has a wide range of functionality, it will help you complete plot tasks, for example.

I'll tell you a little about the map I'm working on, if anyone is interested of course. 

Creating a map is a very complex, but important thing for player. A map is a very important tool that helps with navigation, shows where and what resources are there, and what is the quality or rarity of these resources (if you have explored the location and seen them)

The map is created by the player, piece by piece, sketching the location in which it is located. Paper, paints, and feathers are created by the players, as well as the blueprint (everything is crafted on blueprints). A blueprint can be created by the player from an idea that he gets while working with paper, or buy a blueprint from other players. The main attributes for players who want to work with paper and ink or paints are intelligence and psy (psy is a character's mental state that reflects his ability to interact with the monolith and its light)

The map can be assembled and disassembled into parts to sell, it is also possible to create parts of the map of those locations that are beyond the runelight, groups of players can make forays into the darkness, illuminating the way with a portable beacon, to search for resources, but this will awaken the darkness (the creatures that live there)

https://fragmentsofworlds.com/
Hello everyone!

Well, it seems like it's time to start sharing the development, because it's starting to look like a game. It's going to be a grinding game, there's a bit of a plot now (5 quests) a few mechanics and features. I honestly don't even know where to start, so this post probably won't be very useful, but I'll try.

The game has no genre, there are different mechanics here, and I plan to work on and develop them all. 

Important: I generated all the images using AI, and if anyone protests against this, now you know it.

From the mechanics I can list the following:

You can catch creatures created by the monolith (something similar to Pokemon mechanics) with enchanted creatures (with extremly small spawn rate) but with fun mechanics.

There is very basic cooking, this is the basis for raising the player's attributes. Very basic because there are still very few recipes.

There is fishing, it is very simple if you understand how it works, but from those who tested it -  couldn't catch even one fish for quite a long time.

There is also the Hand Of God event mechanic (it is a roguelite event with meta progression)

Five quests will show all the basic mechanics that the player needs to know, here is voice acting, because there was quite a lot of text.

I started working on instances, I put them off for a very long time, because this is a very very large layer of work. Also, interestingly, I spent a lot of time on the inventory and container system, which surprised me, I didn't think inventory was so complicated.

There is also alchemy, but it turned out to be too complicated, and while there are no injuries in the game, it is quite useless at an early stage.

Also, from what seems interesting to me, there are stone gates that allow you to open a portal to other worlds, according to legend, the monolith that creates the player shines with energy, and people, plants and everything live in this light. And other shards of worlds (with their monoliths) are approaching ours, and at this time it is possible to enter them using a gate and a key. Only the Cloverluck world (St. Patrick's Day themed) is available now, but it's also ready for 30 percent.

and yes, 100% of users have a very serious problem with the fact that they wander around locations and don't know where to go and how to get to the right point, and that's normal, I planned it that way, the world is not big, so you don't have to wander for long here.

I don't know what else to tell, if someone is interested in something from the above - ask and I'll tell you. I will share the development process from time to time, as even five people who will be able to test the project will be a huge achievement for me. And yes, there will be a donation in the game, but it is unique, the player will not be able to buy anything for the donation for himself personally, he will be able to buy world buffs that apply to all players.

And here is some screenshots and link if anyone want to test.