Hey Everyone!

We hope you’ve all been enjoying the beautiful sights in the sky now that Astrology is in the game! Or if not, maybe you’ve been grinding away at those combat masteries. Either way, we’re really happy with how the major update has gone so far, and we’re excited this week to share a bit of information about what’s coming next.

First off, let’s have a quick look at what we’ve just launched:

✨Astrology and Combat Mastery Guild

Last week we launched our latest Major Update, which centred around 2 key features: Astrology and the Combat Mastery Guild.

We’re going to summarise the changes here in case you missed them, but if you’d like to read about the update in-depth you can check out the patch notes here:

https://www.patreon.com/melvoridle/posts/major-update-2-0-166253112

Astrology

Astrology is a new skill where players study constellations and gain knowledge. This knowledge allows players to gain Minor and Major bonuses for other skills. It’s a simple, zero-risk skill that grants wide-reaching boosts for nearly every other part of the game.

Astrology has been a major milestone addition for us. Because it has such a range of effects, it marks a major point in our ability to fine-tune the balance of the game. It’s really one of the last missing pieces of the puzzle for the early game experience of Melvor Idle 2, so getting it added to the game now opens up a lot more opportunities for us to start tweaking that experience.

Combat Mastery Guild

We also implemented the Mastery Guild for Combat, which is another major milestone for us. Combat was a huge addition to the game, and the Mastery Guild’s addition brings us much closer to having a complete combat experience implemented.

Other Changes and Additions

We also made a range of other adjustments and improvements, such as:

• Major changes to the balance and progression of Thieving

• Loot History improvements for Thieving

• Significant improvements to Tooltips across the game

• Bank UI changes to improve the experience of using the Bank

• New items for Combat

• Adjustments to terminology in Combat to help with clarity

And a range of other changes, balance tweaks, and bug fixes. More details on all of these changes are available in the Patch Notes (linked above).

As always, we’re continuing to watch how everyone interacts with all of this new content. We’ve already released 3 hotfixes and two minor updates to address some of the bugs and issues that have been raised.

👀What’s coming next?

We’re now at an interesting point in the game’s development. The majority of the “core content” - skills, items, combat, etc. - is now playable in some form. We’re also getting to the point where testing becomes more challenging. With so much content in the game, it now takes a long time to see it all.

We’re also now at the point where the most important aspects of the early-game and mid-game experience are in place. Up to now there’s always been some key element missing here, meaning it was hard to look at that experience and assess how it was shaping up.

With all of that in mind, we’re planning to shift gears a bit for the next phase of our development.

There will still be new content

As you’ll see, a lot of our focus over the next while is going to be on improving what’s already in the game. That doesn’t mean there won’t be any new content. One of the major goals for our next phase will be the introduction of our Main Storyline.

This is a huge narrative undertaking, and it will bring together the lore of Melvor in a way we’ve never really done before. We’ve been working on this in the background for a while now , and we’re nearly ready to introduce the first few chapters.

We’ll talk more about what shape this is going to take down the line.

Focusing on the Experience

We’ve been putting a lot of time and energy into the game’s content - the skills and how they interact with each other, combat and its encounters, and all the other major parts of the game that make up the core identity of Melvor Idle 2. 

For our next phase of development, we’re going to be changing tack a little bit to focus more on the experience of playing the game. That means looking at a few key areas:

User Interface and User Experience

We’ve been talking for a long time about our Big UI Update. We’ve been working with an external studio to design and develop Melvor Idle 2’s UI, and it’s starting to come together. One of our next goals is to implement this UI where we can.

We’ve already started on this in some places. The artisan skills are using the layout of our new UI design, just not the complete style or polish. Some other skills will be getting this treatment - using the UI elements we already have, but with updated layouts. This allows us to get important feedback about the experience of using these new layouts. After all, there’s no use in making everything look pretty if it doesn’t feel good to navigate and play with.

We want to introduce updated Woodcutting and Mining UIs as a priority as we feel the current UI falls flat and is quite overwhelming with the information it attempts to display all at once.

Performance and Technical Improvements

We’ll also be turning our eyes to some of the underlying technical aspects of the game.

The game’s performance hasn’t caused any issues for us yet, but we want to keep it that way. There are plenty of places where we can optimise what we’ve implemented to ensure the game runs smoothly on as many devices as possible.

There are also many areas where the game’s tech could use some love. Things like resolution scaling and support for unusual monitor aspect ratios, improvements to cloud saving, stability improvements, fixing bugs, and loads more.

Addressing Feedback

We also have a laundry list of great suggestions to get to. These have come from Discord and (very notably) from our Surveys. Working through these suggestions will mean making very wide-reaching changes, and some of this feedback is from a long way back.

We’ll talk more about what we’ve changed based on feedback once we’re ready, but we know there are going to be some changes in here that have been asked for for a long time.

Catching up on Art

We’ve added a lot of content to the game over the last few months. Tapi and Ash have been working tirelessly and making some absolutely incredible art, but the list of assets we’ve asked them for has been getting longer and longer.  This shift in focus will also give them a chance to catch up to the current state of the game, which should help make the experience feel more complete.

Timelines and Expectations

As usual, we won’t be committing to a release window for the next major update until we’re confident in it. This development cycle isn’t quite as clear in its targets as our previous ones have been, so lots can change here.

As always, we’ll keep you up to date on our progress here on Patreon. We hope you’ll continue to give us your suggestions and feedback while we go!

🏋️ What the team have been working on 

Here’s what the team has been working on since our last post! 

Development

Malcs:

• Has worked on implementing Act 1 into the game! This is almost in a complete and finished state. Act 2 implementation will begin shortly.

• Bug fixes, bug fixes, bug fixes!

• Discussions with Prat are ongoing reviewing the most recent Survey feedback and scheduling the implementation of feedback related changes.

Coolrox:

• Back from his time off! Primarily working on bug fixes and improvements to the most recent Major Update.

Game Design

Prat: 

• Now focusing on our backlog of Survey feedback!

  • This means going back through our surveys to find feedback we haven’t addressed yet, and using it to find ways to improve each skill and system.

Artwork

Tapi:

• Working on bosses and enemies for Combat! Check out the Scar Golem (scary guy)

• Also working on new items, mostly relating to Astrology.

Ash:

• Lots of Combat backgrounds! Have a look at the examples below - the Misty Thicket, and the Hobgoblin Encampment!

Conclusion

Thanks for checking out this week’s news post! We hope you enjoyed the insight into what we’re focusing on next, and please do keep your feedback coming. The discussions we see every week in Discord inspire and motivate us to make this game the best it can possible be.

If you’d like to join the discussion on Discord, you can get involved here: https://discord.gg/melvoridle

- Althalus and Malcs