Update 1.8: AWESOME ACHIEVEMENTS

[Nikki Severin 1130]

Hey there, Ylanders! 

Update 1.8 is finally here so hop in, WE'RE GOING EXPLORING! ⛵

We've done so much polishing, we can practically see ourselves in this shiny new update! We also added some great new features, which were based on the feedback from our player community! 

With 1.8 we are staying on course with taking major steps to improve Exploration and give you the best possible experience when playing Ylands. We hope that these changes will give each type of player something to look forward to and spend some quality time in the beautiful world of Ylands. 

Let's jump right into some of the new features and polishing that's been done! 

A quick overview of what's happening in 1.8:

Multiplayer game flow polish
Exploration Tutorial
Achievements and Titles
Support of larger maps and ylands
Mass pickup action - collect all the items of the same name at once
Traveling with your tamed animals
New Mystery Ylands
Quality of life improvements
Mobile ambience improvements

Multiplayer game flow polish
First of all, you've been asking for this on, loud and clear. Joining Multiplayer games was no easy feat. But worry not, we heard you. From now on, there are fewer steps, it's more intuitive and most importantly - it works! 

Exploration Tutorial
Have you tried surviving in the land of Ylands but it was too complicated to understand everything? Or you tried to bring in a friend but they didn't know what to do? From now on, you can use the tutorial, which teaches the basics of survival. You learn how to start a fire, how to craft basic tools, how to build a raft and much more! Grab your friend, sit them down, launch Exploration and have them do the tutorial. They can learn at their own pace, learn as much or as little as they want. The tutorial is optional and only launches when you start a new exploration adventure.






 

Achievements and Titles
Being back on track with working on Exploration is an achievement for us for sure, but we also want you guys to have a sense of achievement, which is why we added Achievements! Some are hidden, some are not, some have multiple tiers, some do not, but all are awesome! They are even connected to Steam, so you will get to see them on your Steam profile as well! Some of these Achievements even give you titles, which can be displayed next to your name, so go ahead and show them off! 





 

Support of larger maps and ylands
Making maps smaller was something that wasn't a popular choice, no technical limitation is popular but this time, it was necessary. But larger maps are back! We put in a tremendous amount of work into giving you back larger maps, so with 1.8, a map can be up to 8x8 kilometers! That should give you some serious ground to cover on your exploration voyages! And what's more, we added more space between ylands so that navigation to those is a bit more challenging as well, so don't forget your compass! 

Mass pickup action
Gathering resources, especially in the early stages of the game was a bit of (or a lot of) a clickfest. Carpal tunnel level bad. But we got you. Mass pick up action is now in the game! Simply hold your right mouse button to pick up all the nearby resources of the same name. Go get all the grass. All the rocks! All the sticks! All the logs! This should make your early game much easier in terms of getting the stuff you need. Less clicking, more playing! 

Traveling with your tamed animals
Having a strong bond with your favorite animal is an extremely important part of our (not only) in-game lives. It breaks your heart when you have to leave your beloved horse, bear, deer, ostrich or you name it, behind. But we said: "No more heartbreak!" and ended this chapter of animal abandonment. You can now bring your animal Companions with you! Don't forget to build them a proper shelter though!







New Mystery Ylands
Now that you have a lot more land to cover and discover, you can collect those Exploration Points and spend them on some brand new Mystery Ylands! We'll keep adding those in-between updates too, so don't forget to keep checking the game for new Mysteries to solve! 







Quality of life improvements
Ships were not easy to claim. Workstation tabs were switching in a strange manner. Which ship on the sea is mine actually? Which is my avatar holding this item in their hands but not this one? Yeah, it was pretty confusing. Which is why we grabbed some developer cloths and got to polishing. We polished away and made sure that many little annoying details are now all fixed up. 

Mobile ambiance improvements
And we didn't forget about our mobile players either! Apart from some less obvious fixes, we also made sure that everything just looks nicer! Colors look better and water effects look more realistic now! 

There are of course many more changes, improvements, fixes, additions and tweaks. We honestly can't wait to hear what you guys have to say about this update. The best person to sum up the feelings of the dev team about the direction of Ylands is none other than the Project Lead, Aleš Ulm, himself: 
"We’re very excited about seeing new and returning players coming back to Ylands and giving us their feedback. This is incredibly important and a major driving force for the dev team. Rate us on Steam if you like the direction in which we’ve been going, so that we know that our work is making people happy and is making sense. That thumbs up (which you can always change, if we fail you), telling your friend that devs at Ylands have come back to their senses, that's the fuel we're now running on."

 

Well, 1.8 is finally out, let us know what you think and most importantly...

Keep Exploring! 
 

And even more importantly... 

Stay Classy, Ylanders! 

 

[elitefirneral 4]

I love this update. I am the one who used it  at exact 6 o clock.

[Igor Q. 519]

Wonderful update, love the idea of the tutorial, as it's a really big step to get new players adjusted to the game.

 

Question regarding animals and indirectly, the shelter. Are there real consequences to not using proper shelters? On one hand, I support creativity and such, but similar to Minecraft, creating a shelter doesn't feel like a rewarding accomplishment such as keeping you safe...

[6Cowa6Bunga6 55]

Great update, but taking 15 mins to sail to a new island on the fastest ship in a straight line with engines. yah no thanks. 
is there gonna be a new drill or upgrade for the drill? since we got bigger maps
can we get being able to buy gunpowder back? explosives was best method to dig, now that's not viable 
is there gonna be an electric furnace. smelting 5k iron with 30 furnaces is no fun. automatic furnace you deposit iron ore into 
the Q menu is just cluttered now with the text I find.  maybe make the text visible only when mouse over?


a faster ship base would be nice to build on, the steam boat seems to slow for the large maps
with the amount of water increased, maybe add some things to do in the water. maybe bring back water mechanics?

Edited November 14, 2021 by 6Cowa6Bunga6

[Igor Q. 519]

@Nikki Severin

I just started a fresh file to try out the tutorial. (only for 20min)

Here are some things I suggest be changed

-We need an option to re-read hints that we missed or forgotten.

- Crafting items with empty hotbar slots should automatically be assigned a slot. (Might confuse newer players where their items went)

- Sleeping may cause the player to start starving with a blinking screen.  This should prompt a cook food quest or disable starvation altogether.

- Lighting a torch is a little bit confusing. It should specify that you need to drop the torch onto the ground AND THEN light it. At this point we never "learned" how to drop items on the ground.

- Somehow I got myself to be in standing position while rowing the bamboo raft

[XXon 31]

I have played this patch for way too long. Many, many hours.

Epic scale is good. The islands are Uuuuge and that's great on a horse. The ocean is very large and the boat is slow. I also notice several things. If I want to visit many ylands and raise my score for that, or if I am looking for a level 3 yland, let's say, I always stay at the edge of the map. I go south, on a fresh map and I visit the closest yland, which is close, a straight shot, really easy. I go north, new map, visit one island. Back and forth with new maps. This is Waaaay faster than sailing across the map to maybe/maybe not find another yland. Great job on making clouds look like ylands, you fooled me twice now, plus the weather effects. I really do like being lost at sea and I wish currents would push the boat off course randomly or in a storm get pushed around. It is boring just going straight.  Also, sort of related, the bow needs recoil so I must realign for each shot, right now I just hold the mouse still and it always, always hits which is very boring.

So. The distances between ylands on each map is too far. The ylands on the edge are too close to the edge. Just move things around a bit, that would help. That way I don't skip map to map, which is lame. I suspect you have twice as much water between interior ylands related to the edge because nobody thought about the surrounding water times two. Just reposition the ylands, the yland size and the ocean size seem fine for now.

Also. When I return to my home map I randomly (?) spawn all the way across the map and must sail incredibly long repeated voyages from this spawn point to my base yland. I spent a long time trying to figure out how this operates, if I sail off the map here, where do I end up on the next map. It seems a bit random? It makes it irritating to get home to my base. It makes me build my base on a boat and have no home yland. Even without the random quality it seems to have, it once again encourages me to 1) build my base on an edge yland never the center one, too far. and 2) jump map to map repeatedly without seeing any of them except one yland. I want to spawn near my base everytime. Otherwise, I hover real close. I go a little north, a little west, that's it and I just hop maps.

 

Edited November 17, 2021 by XXon
crappy reply.

[Indian Chief 239]

Had a break for a while. Looking at getting some play time over Christmas.
Really pleased you've added in steam achievements... I wonder who mentioned those
Just wondering how I can achieve the tutorial after doing it before it was an achievement?
Hope to see this area see even more love in the future, maybe include achievements that require you to play with others.
e.g 10 ylands visited with a friend
10 ylands visted with 3 or more friends
trade x amount worth with a friend

Last point on the steam achievements. Once you're happy with them, and a player achieves all of them they unlock a unique item... Maybe a choice between a unique pet or costume.

Merry Christmas

[spiritchaser28 918]

12 hours ago, Indian Chief said:

Just wondering how I can achieve the tutorial after doing it before it was an achievement?

You can reset your starter Yland to get the tutorial achievement.....I know some people don't like this option because they may have built a lot on their starter yland.....maybe as a suggestion @Nikki Severin ....is there a way to work around this for people that want the achievement but don't want to delete their starter map?....Maybe give some other qualifications for the qualified Ylander achievement.....like basic recipes that have been unlocked? I Dunno...maybe as an alternative you could get the achievement by building your first boat? That requires a few workstations, crafting knowledge and some basic recipes that are unlocked...

Edited December 12, 2021 by spiritchaser28

[Nikki Severin 1130]

15 hours ago, spiritchaser28 said:

You can reset your starter Yland to get the tutorial achievement.....I know some people don't like this option because they may have built a lot on their starter yland.....maybe as a suggestion @Nikki Severin ....is there a way to work around this for people that want the achievement but don't want to delete their starter map?....Maybe give some other qualifications for the qualified Ylander achievement.....like basic recipes that have been unlocked? I Dunno...maybe as an alternative you could get the achievement by building your first boat? That requires a few workstations, crafting knowledge and some basic recipes that are unlocked...

We'll definitely try and come up with something ?

[spiritchaser28 918]

13 hours ago, Nikki Severin said:

We'll definitely try and come up with something ?

Some people need the tutorial.....but I think maybe the achievement can be completed in a couple different ways? Just thinking of options.

I personally am saving the qualified ylander achievement for last LOL. I didn't really have anything on my starter island so it was no big deal to reset the map, but I know a few people that have built quite a bit on theirs.

On a sidenote....I only have 4 more achievements to complete  Yay!

Edited December 14, 2021 by spiritchaser28

[Indian Chief 239]

I'd love to see an achievement for collecting the new gold coins. Lots of different ways you could add them
Collect 50, 100 and 500 coins