Howdy,

So this week was mostly dedicated to redoing tools. Specifically tools which the player uses to harvest resources with.

Starting with the largest change - there are no more resource collection skills. I've been wanting to go skilless for a while - since I don't think grinding is very fun in this sort of game - so there we have it.

Instead, if you want to mine better, chop down trees faster and so on, you have to get the right tools for the job.

Just like weapons, tools come in four materials - from stone to Orium. And just like weapons, the better the material, the better the effect.

Resource collection tools have 4 main effects - they help you work faster, and earn more resources - those two are pretty obvious. What's not shown but works in the background is a product of the "weight" system for collecting resources which I'll go into a bit.

Some resource sources can give one of multiple resources, or nothing at all. For instance, hitting a rock will sometimes give you stone, or copper, or nothing at all. Similarly, all three kinds of wood come from the same tree.

What better tools will do is reduce the chance of earning nothing. And additionally, higher level tools will increase your chance of rolling a more valuable raw material. So if you're mining with an Iron pick on a rock which can give you iron, then you'll increase the chance of earning iron ore.

This leads to the next thing implemented this week - the multi-rock (not actual name). The stones generated on the home island now can provide any of the ores - provided you've unlocked the material earlier.

Islands will still have separate rocks, so focusing on those will give you the most resources if you want a specific type.

That's it for this week. I'm nearing the release as it were - but still have some things to do. Next week I'll work on a "minor" revision to crafting.

Til then