Hey guys!

A goal we've had for BitCraft for a long time is to properly incentivize players to create settlements and outposts across the world which can act as sanctuaries of civilization in distant or dangerous biomes, and functionally act as a place for anyone to come process raw gathered cargo before making the full trip home (benefitting the settlement owner in the process). At the same time we've been very cautious to avoid upsetting the current balance of both having larger towns which congregate dozens to hundreds of players and the overall rate of progression through the tiers. With this update we are making some changes, hopefully in a way that furthers our goal while minimizing the impact on the things we are happy with.

This update introduces the concept of profession-specific research for claims, which can be done for a fraction of the cost of unlocking all professions (current tier unlock research will stay), allowing you to more easily create a higher tier outpost settlements or progress in a smaller group to high tiers while only focusing on a few professions. The way this fits into the existing research, is that in order to unlock the specific profession, you need an item only crafted in a settlement which has all professions unlocked. This preserves the cutting edge rate of progression while allowing new claims to progress through specific research much faster. Before you dive into the update, remember this is a first iteration on a new concept for our game and we will be gathering feedback on it to figure out what works and what doesn’t. In particular a game like BitCraft is a constant balancing act, so we will be reviewing carefully how players interact in the new system and if the specific research requirements require adjustments.

This update was technically quite complex to implement and a few changes came down to wire, and some didn’t make it in. In particular we are going to have (but don’t have in this update yet) a clear indication on the map for which claims are “Towns” (meaning that they have all professions unlocked) and which are “Outposts” (specialized in only a subset of professions). In particular, beyond giving traveling players information on what claims offer what, the goal is to give towns more visibility and prestige as they require more effort and larger groups to progress.

Added

• New claim research UI, allowing claims to specialize in specific professions
• New Hexite Exchange UI, allowing players to purchase items and services for shards
• New audio for the Giant Crab boss

Changed

• Buffed the output of Empty Buckets for tiers 5-10
• All claim tech is now researched instantly
• All buildings construction recipes of a tier are no longer gated solely behind the "Tier" upgrade and are now instead gated behind their respective profession claim tech
• Tier upgrades unlock the ability to research the claim techs of that tier (eg, tier 3 unlocks the ability to research tier 3 township or tier 3 farming) as well as the ability to build storage, housing and walls of that tier
• Township research is exactly as expensive as upgrading to a new tier is now and it automatically researches all profession tech of that tier (for example, tier 4 township would unlock tier 4 fishing, foraging). This means that if you plan to research everything, these changes shouldn't really impact your progression
• Individual profession research is much cheaper and should allow players to specialize claims more easily. Upgrading a single profession is about 1/9th of the cost of upgrading to a township
• To research individual professions, players will need to craft "Outpost Research" at a Township of the tier they're trying to progress their profession to. This means that someone in the world must research township of a given tier before anyone can progress their individual profession research to that tier
• Additionally we've moved a few things from Rumbagh to the claim tech tree
• Market and Bank kits have been removed and instead settlements will have to research the ability to build these. Players can convert existing market and bank kits to hex coins by right clicking them
• Banks can be researched by a Tier 2 Settlement
• Marketplaces can be researched by a Tier 4 Township

Fixed

• Move on Map not working with the WASD control scheme
• Charged Heart V having the same stats as Expanded Heart IV
• Showing automoderated messages to other players
• Naming error in hay bale items and buildings
• Whispers being disabled by default in the General tab
• Mounts that are following the player sometimes getting stuck on pavement
• A rubber-banding issue when traversing cliffs

Known issues
There appears to be an issue when having a pet deployed already and deploying the new pumpkin qitt pet. You'll need to first store the other pet before deploying it for him to show up.