Crazy week! It consisted of more interviewing, hiring two new developers, helping them get setup, attempting to fix bugs, and planning to move to another state. So yeah, two new developers. This is super exciting since with their help we’ll see development pick up quite a bit. I’ll be sure to introduce them once they’ve settled in.

Crea is now rank #47 on Greenlight! I think next week will finally be the week we get greenlit. Amazingly, I am most excited about this so that I’ll finally be free of obsessively looking at the stats page. But, it is cool to see how many more favorites and follows we have than the top 50 average.

This week I’m wanting to get a new version up that fixes some really bad issues people are running into. I already have a build up for omega testers so if you have access or would like to help test it then head over to the forums. Once I get the green flag from a few players I’ll hand it over to humble to make it public.

The last few days have been crazy! As you may have seen, I decided to look for another developer once again. I have gotten a surprising number of responses from this and have spent the last few days just talking to people. I am trying to take it slow and be as certain as possible when/if I decide to bring someone on board. I did manage to get some work done on Crea earlier in the week.

The first change I made is truly a game changer. It will now be possible to see monsters information when mousing over them. This includes the name, level and HP percentage. The big one here is the level. With this you’ll be able to gauge how strong the monster is relative to you. Additionally it will finally explain why monsters have different stats. The support is mostly implemented for displaying this information at different times. Users will be able to choose to display the monster’s HP bar always, during mouseover, only when the monster is damaged, or never. I just need to hook it into the settings but first I think I need to revamp the settings UI to nicely support more options.

Another welcomed change is that now you get item notifications on what you picked up or crafted. I really like how this turned out.

I have also been working on adding support for animals. They are now hooked into the conflict system. When a region has higher hostility less animals will spawn in it. Now it has an interesting good/bad balance. So far I have got the first animal implemented – Speep!

I’m trying to wrap up what I’m currently working on so I can publish a new update with these changes and all of the bug fixes and balance changes I have made this week as well. I am hopeful this update will be available very soon!

For this upcoming week I will be continuing to interview people for the dev position. I will also be working on adding more animals and refining the underground some. I’d like to make it more cavernous and less holey, with more monsters underground as well as some other interesting things. I’d love the underground to be a really intriguing place to explore.

We are back from visiting family and ready to refocus ourselves completely onto Crea. We hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and a good time with family! Even though this last week was quite eventful, I managed to sneak in some work in on Crea, preparing for the big upcoming update.

First of all, there is a new equipment tier. This new tier includes 4 new swords, 4 new bows, and 3 new equipment sets. As with past equipment, we’ve tried to make each piece unique. There’s the Executioner (sword), which deals more damage the lower HP the user has. There’s the Ricochet Bow, which not only carries over the triple shot of the Winged Bow but also causes the arrows to bounce off walls. There is also the Beast armor set which grants some tasty dash cooldown reduction.

The other noteworthy progress is the introduction of difficulty modes. Right now we only have two modes: Normal and Hardcore. Hardcore has some lovely permadeath, which is going to sting much more than in Terraria because of character progression and you do not drop your items. Over time, I’d love to have Hardcore to be a completely different experience from Normal.

To start with, Aaron and I came up with a “death penalty.” It is not the typical death penalty though. After staying alive for some amount of time you gain a “Perseverance” buff which grants you additional XP and TP. The penalty for death is that you temporarily lose this buff. This has a nice side effect in that Hardcore characters will progress faster than Normal characters. I’m playing around with the idea of the Perseverance buff growing stronger the longer you’re alive. What do you think of that?

This next week we will be implementing three new monsters as well as a new biome. I’m really excited to get these in Crea. They will be great additions!