The glowing altar is here, and snowballs!

 

With the Glowing Altar you can combine two pieces of equipment with a decent chance of creating something stronger. In this way you can finally manipulate and upgrade runes. This is nice for reducing junk equipment and turning it into something more valuable. There is also a new powerful enemy, and giant snowballs you can throw at your friends or foes, and some other changes. Continue reading for more details.

New enemy: Yeti – Moves and attacks slowly but hits extremely hard. Can also throw snowballs at you, and will drop some on death. Snowballs can slow and do a tiny amount of damage, though they aren’t fatal if thrown by a player. There is also rare chance to find these giant snowballs by digging in the snowy part of Galebrook.

New underworld structure: Glowing Altar – This mysterious structure is more common in the deeper parts of the underworld, and its inner mechanisms are fairly complex. When you combine two items the dominant item will attempt to absorb better traits from the lesser item. The dominant item is usually determined by level requirement, unless one of the items is custom (smithed or named), in which case that will be the preferred item. Equipment can be named on these altars just like on anvils.

You can offer gold to the altar to boost its power, though it is optional. This increases the chance of upgrading traits, and reduces the chance of the altar disappearing after use. Items of a similar power level (or even better the same type) have better results when melding. Gem bonus slots have a chance to transfer completely, and will not upgrade or downgrade.

Runes behave differently, they upgrade by 1 until maxed out if the absorbed item has the same or a higher level rune. Higher levels will have a greater pull and have better results. Similarly runes can downgrade if they are mixed with inferior runed items, but the chance of upgrading is always higher than downgrading. A fully powered glowing altar will guarantee at least one rune upgrade if it is available. If the items are of the same type then even natural plus bonuses (+1/2/3) can be absorbed.

Other changes: Dogs can’t be re-tamed while they remain at 50% or more loyalty. Locks can’t be applied onto other locks, and can’t be despawned by road placements if they are padded with gold. Individual item quantities are now capped at 1 million. The Shroomie healing indicator always shows the correct direction now, instead of occasionally failing. Aside from some small bug fixes the only other changes since the last patch were listed in the dev notes posted previously on the forums.

I’d like to focus on some bugs and lag improvements through winter break. Hopefully the new castle will be ready by January as well, maybe even the new boss. Have a great weekend and thanks for all your support which keeps this game free and updated regularly 😀