Salt Development Blog

With this update we are introducing Steam Cloud saving, as well as some new content and bug fixes! Let's dive into what you can expect from this update.

Steam Cloud Saving

Salt now takes advantage of the Steam Cloud for storing save data files. Steam will automatically handle uploading and downloading your latest save file data between computers. Along with this, when the game saves data has been altered slightly. Your inventory and other certain game states are no longer saved constantly. Instead, the state of the game will save both when you manually save, and periodically as an auto-save. By default, loading a game will load the most recent save, but you can chose to load the last manual or last autosave by clicking on the gear icon next to the save slot in the Load menu.

A side effect of the save changes is that the game now requires Steam to be running. However, this does not mean it requires an internet connection as it will work just fine when Steam is in offline mode.

Your current save files will automatically be converted to use the steam cloud. No action is required on your part.

New Items

With this update we've also added in some new armor, items, and lore to various places. You can now find new armor sets in both hunting shacks and ancient chests. We've also added a new epic weapon that requires a full set of the new armor to find. In addition to that, we've added some new items to pirate chests and added some new lore books in the game.

New Quest

This update also includes a new quest line involving the search for a mysterious jewel. There's an item that can be found somewhere in the world that will trigger this quest line when turned in. As with most quests, you'll find yourself going to various islands, defeating some tough enemies, and even uncovering new lore and items.

Battle Music

While we do have boss music in the game, we wanted to add some music for fighting tougher than normal enemies that aren't quite bosses. Now when you encounter any pirate captains or commanders, you will have some music to go along with your battle!

Change List

Integrated saving with the Steam Cloud.

Improved appearance of informational popup messages.

Added new battle music for pirate captains, named captains, and commanders

Replaced some ambient sounds with smoother looping versions.

Added a new armor set to hunting shacks.

Added a new armor set to ancient chests.

Added new items to bronze and silver pirate chests.

Added new lore books to hunting shacks.

Added a new quest line with new items and lore.

Increased the drop rate of ceremonial keys from cultists from 8 to 10%.

Fixed some items having the Armor stat instead of Physical Armor.

Fixed some recipe descriptions.

Fixed missing texture on augmented moonrock sword.

Fixed poacher’s lure. It can now be equipped as bait.

White ink no longer requires a red flower to craft.

Made bamboo on jungle islands consistent with other islands.

Well, it looks like 2016 has come and gone already! It was a good year for Salt and we wanted to go over some of the major content highlights of the past year, as well as what you can expect in 2017.

A Look Back

Quest and Player Journal

One of the first major additions we made in 2016 was the introduction of the player journal. We wanted players to be able to log their adventures and write down any interesting things they found such as locations, discovery details, etc. We also wanted the journal to automatically keep track of quests so that the player would be free to continue exploring and not worry about forgetting what their quest details were.

Cartography

Along with the journal we also implemented a brand new cartography system that gave players the opportunity to create charts of their world. We always loved watching the community share coordinates and interesting places they discovered, and we wanted to make that even easier and more fun with the in-game charts. We also added a cartographer NPC that rewards you for map accuracy.

New Pirate Islands

In 2016 we added a brand new end game pirate island to challenge players even with the best of gear. With these new islands we added pirate forts and multiple new pirate types, including bounty hunters and even a Pirate King Boss. Of course we also chocked it full of new items, rewards, and even related quests.

The Main Quest

While Salt is a game primarily about freedom and exploration, we wanted a main story and quest line to give players a sense of objective and depth to the world. This past year we completed the implementation of that story line, adding a fun end game boss battle and a whole lot of new loot.

Island Distribution Change

One of our favorite changes we made in 2016 was a change in our island distribution system. Over time as we added more and more content into Salt, things weren't really spread out evenly. The way the old system worked, it was quite common to encounter a lot of islands without much content and vast stretches of ocean before reaching more island clusters. With the island distribution change, we spread content out more evenly, giving players a much higher chance to find new content frequently.

Pirate Graves

A fun addition we made this past year was the introduction of pirate graves. Now when exploring the world you can find little tombstones with a description of how the person died, as well as a nice lockbox. We added multiple lockboxes with lots of loot for replayability.

New NPCs

We also introduced three new NPCs this past year with multiple quests and a ton of items. These are friendly characters known as the Sea Scholar, Fisher, and Hunter. Each one has unlockable levels of items as well as a repeatable quest that gives you rare, epic, and even a chance at legendary item.

Island Music

This past year we also introduced our first ever island exploration music. Now when exploring large natural islands, there is a chance for music to play during the day and at night. We made the music non-obtrusive so as to add to the feeling of exploration and not take away from anything or be too distracting.

Crafting and Inventory Changes

In 2016 we also made some nice additions and changes to the crafting and inventory system. For crafting, we added a new recipe discovery system so that you could see all potential recipes of an item, which gives you a reason to go look for new items and helps you discover some potential recipes you may have never known existed. We also added in some sorting options to help keep your inventory a bit more clean, and added the ability to drag and drop items.

Overall, 2016 was a great year for Salt. In addition to adding a lot of new content, we fixed a lot of bugs and made a bunch of small improvements to the game. Now, let's talk about 2017.

Whats to Come in 2017

Our main goal for 2017 is finish the implementation of multiplayer and release Salt out of early access. We also plan on implementing some other things such as Steam cloud saving, achievements, and other improvements. We are making some great progress on multiplayer and will share more information about that soon.

Thank you everyone so much for supporting Salt and allowing us to continue developing this game. We are very excited for this year and can't wait to see what the future holds for Salt and it's community.

Hey everyone! We wanted to let you know that Update 1.9.2 is now available on Steam! This update brings a lot of great new features that we are excited about. Let's dive into some of the content you can expect to see in this update.

Sea Hunter NPC

This update introduces a new quest giver in the world known as the Sea Hunter. Like the recent introduction of the Sea Scholar and Sea Fisher, the Sea Hunter will feature five quests that unlocks vendor items as you progress. Once those are completed, you'll be able to do a repeatable quest for a random rare loot drop. Each of these NPC's contains about eight new random loot drops from the repeatable quest, some of which are epic and at least one legendary.

Pirate Graves

Salt is all about exploration and discovery, and so with this update we wanted to add in another new piece of content for you to discover: pirate graves. Throughout your adventures you will now find tombstones occasionally on islands with grave text and often times, buried treasure. The graves will have a chance to either have bronze, silver, gold, or a ceremonial lock box. These lock boxes can be opened with a key of the corresponding color and will contain a piece of loot.

You probably already have some bronze, silver, or gold keys laying around, but with this update we've also introduced ceremonial keys. These keys will be used exclusively to open ceremonial lock boxes, which will contain a rare item. You can obtain these keys from various places throughout the world so stay on the lookout!

Inventory and Crafting Changes

In addition to new content in the world, we've also made some adjustments to the inventory UI and the crafting system. For the inventory, we've added the ability to drag and drop items and the ability to sort your inventory by a few different filters.

For the crafting system, we've now adjusted it to where when you craft multiple items, it will craft each item individually, gradually increasing the speed as it goes. We've also completely revamped the crafting discovery window to show you any and all recipes that can be made with the item in the crafting window. This will show you recipes you could potentially make but don't have all the required items for yet. This adds an almost quest-like element to the crafting discovery system that sends you out on the hunt for various items in order to craft something new.

New Island Music

With this update you will now occasionally hear music while you are exploring islands. This music will only occur on large natural islands, so as not to interfere with combat and things of that nature. Our goal with this music is to be unobtrusive but add to the feeling of exploration and wonder when exploring islands. There will be new exclusive music for daytime island adventuring and for nighttime.

Patch Notes

We've made a bunch of other small changes and fixes that you can read in the full list of patch notes below:
- Added a new NPC to be found in the world.
- Added pirate graves.
- You can now drag and drop items within the inventory. This allows you to sort it as you please. Each inventory section can be sorted individually.
- Added a button to auto-sort your inventory.
- New music can occasionally play while exploring some islands.
- Added new recipe discovery features. When adding one or more crafting items to the crafting window, all recipes which require those items appear in the recipes window. Recipes that need more components than what is in the components window will be greyed-out (but still selectable). This allows players to discover recipes that they may not have the required items for yet. Note that although most recipes can be previewed, some "hidden" recipes will not appear at all in the crafting interface until all components have been added. Only a very small number of recipes are hidden.
- The recipe list is now scrollable.
- Crafting multiple items will no longer happen all at once. Instead, each item will auto-craft individually, with each subsequent craft being faster.
- Changed method of acquiring bamboo poles. Players must now manually pick up rare, slightly greener bamboo stalks that spawn in normal bamboo clusters. Running through them no longer has any effect.
- Help menu items are now marked as seen as soon as its corresponding notification appears.
- Smoothed out transition between when the loading screen is done and play begins.
- Improved performance of some trees and foliage.
- Some NPCS who would spawn too close to the water and be submerged by tides have been moved up the beach a bit.
- Changed "Armor" stats on some pieces of equipment to "Physical Armor".
- Bamboo and palm trees are now affected by wind.
- The Old Pirate Hat can no longer be looted multiple times.
- Fixed a bug that would allow for multiple applications of set bonus effects after death.
- Changed the way sea scholar final repeatable quest works.
- Fixed an error that would occur when trying to place a boat into a chest.
- Fixed map to cartographer and sea scholar not having a location.
- Fixed an uncommon error where pirate forts would be placed at the wrong location on an island.
- Fixed some deer hide recipes incorrectly stating the number of deer pelts required.
- Fixed the description on the White Deerhide Cloak to properly convey what it does.
- Fixed bug where multiple Sea Scholar NPCs would sometimes appear on the same island.
- Fixed description on Red Spotted Mushroom to indicate what it does when eaten.

We are in the process of finalizing the content for the 1.9.2 Update and plan on pushing to the testing branch within the next week or two. Today we want to go over what you can expect in this update, as well as some other things we've been working on!

Update 1.9.2 - What to Expect

This update will be another one of our content updates while we are implementing multiplayer. If you've been following us for a bit, you'll know that since multiplayer implementation is a long endeavor, we wanted to release small updates during that process so that you would still have fun content to experience while you wait on multiplayer.

With our next update we are introducing three major new changes. These changes will include a brand new new NPC and quest giver known as the Sea Hunter, pirate and NPC graves that can be discovered throughout the world, and the introduction of island music to some large natural islands.

Sea Hunter

The Sea Hunter NPC will be much like the Sea Scholar and Fisher, where you will able to complete a number of quests, rank up to earn new vendor items, and eventually do a repeatable quest for a chance at a nice loot drop. Each of these new npc's are meant to tailor to a certain playstyle. In Salt, we've always wanted players to feel like they can play the game the way they want and still be rewarded for it. The Sea Scholar rewards players for exploring and finding lore books, the Sea Fisher rewards players for fishing, and the Sea Hunter will reward players for fighting and hunting down particular enemies.

NPC Graves

Salt at its core is an exploration game about discovering new content, and as such we try to constantly introduce new places and things for the player to discover. With this update we'll be adding in a new piece of discoverable content that we are calling NPC Graves. These will basically be tombstones that you'll find scattered throughout the world, and if you have a shovel on you, you'll be able to occasionally dig up a lockbox and get some nice loot.

The graves will feature four different lockboxes: bronze, silver, gold, and ceremonial. Each one of these will require a key of one of those types. The ceremonial lockboxes will contain very nice high end items and will only be able to be opened with a ceremonial key. These keys will be introduced in this update and will be found in various places.

New Music

We are also introducing brand new island music in this update. This music will only occur occasionally on large natural islands so as not to negate the feeling of combat or intensity on other islands. The goal for this music is to add to the relaxation and exploration aspect of the game while roaming around some calmer islands. To begin with, there will be three daytime island songs that can play and three night time island songs that can play. We will likely add more in the future.

What Else Have We Been Working On?

In addition to the 1.9.2 Update, we've also been making some good strides in other areas. Robert has been working hard on designing a new recipe discovery system and overhauling the current crafting system to be more intuitive and streamlined. We will talk more about this in a future update. John has also been working very hard on the multiplayer update and we are making some great progress there. We still have a ways to go but we will be sharing some more info on that soon as well.

Thanks for reading and as always we would love to hear your feedback!

Hey everyone!

We've been busy here at Lavaboots working on a bunch of new content. The past month we've been working hard on Update 1.9.2, multiplayer implementation, and a bunch of polishes and changes that we think you are going to like a lot. If you haven't read up on it yet, go read this post so you can get an idea of what our next update (Update 1.9.2) will entail. With this update we are introducing a new NPC with quests and over 30 new items to earn, NPC Graves that you can discover with buried treasure, and brand new island music.

Today I wanted to share some of the new music we've been working on with you.

New Island Music

With Salt, we've always wanted to keep the music unobtrusive and so we originally opted to only have music play occasionally at sea. We believe that too much music can be overstimulating and actually take away from the immersion of a game. Walking around on an island listening to the birds, wind, and waves hitting the shore can really immerse you in the game, and we didn't want music to take away from that.

That being said, we do think that some island music could be beneficial in the right setting and with the right restrictions. We've decided to introduce new music for large natural islands. These islands are usually quite big and do not contain enemies. This means a good bit of time spent on these islands is pure exploration and walking across the land. We figured these islands would be a good place to introduce some light and occasional music.

I've composed specific songs for day and night time that will be able to play while you are exploring large natural islands.

Here are some of the songs you can expect to hear soon.

Day Island Examples

Night Island Examples

Soundtrack Update

We'd also like to note that we've updated the soundtrack to include the boss music in the game as well. You can stream the soundtrack in its entirety for free here. We will eventually be releasing a downloadable copy of it when the game releases.

Thanks for reading as always we'd love to hear your feedback!

Today we wanted to give you a guys a brief preview of some of the content you can expect in the next update. We are still working hard on multiplayer implementation, and that is coming along well. As we've stated before, we want to release smaller content updates during the process of multiplayer and this will be another one of those updates.

Here are some things you can expect in the next patch:

Sea Hunter

In our most recent update, we added in two new NPCs known as the Sea Scholar and the Sea Fisher. With this update, we'll be adding in another new NPC known as the Sea Hunter. Like the other characters, he will feature five quests that allow you to rank up and unlock new vendor gear. After completing his ranked quests, you will then be able to do a repeatable quest for a random drop of rare gear.

NPC Graves

This update will also include new content you can discover throughout the world known as NPC Graves. These will be the tombstones of old pirates, captains, and other various characters. With most of the graves you will be able to read a small bit about the character and how they died. Occasionally these grave sites with contain buried treasure in the form of a bronze, silver, gold, or a ceremonial lockbox. You will need keys to open these lockboxes and they will obtain unique and rare loot.

Island Music

Although music primarily only occurs at sea, we are about to introduce new music for large natural islands. In Salt, we've always made a conscious choice not to bombard the player with music every step of the way. We wanted the natural ambience and atmosphere of the world to immerse the player and we felt that too much music could take away from that. After some recent discussion though, we've decided to add in some occasional music that can play on large natural islands. On these islands you often have some downtime since they are fairly large and don't contain pirates. We thought music might fit these nicely and so you can expect some new unique music for both day and night exploration on these islands.

We are very excited for the next update and can't wait for you to go after some of the new content we've been working on! As always, we would love to hear your feedback.

It's been a fun few weeks at Lavaboots recently. We've made a lot of new changes to the game and we're still chugging along multiplayer implementation and making some great progress in that regard. As you probably know we recently released Update 1.9.1 which added a lot of new content including new characters with quests and items, and some major changes to the island distribution system. If you haven't read up on that update yet, you can do so here.

Today I want talk about some additional changes we've pushed recently since the 1.9.1 update, and some things coming up in the future.

New Map Items

One of my favorite changes we've made recently is the introduction of new map items. You can now find maps in the world that give you coordinates to a certain island type or place. These maps can be found on various NPC's as well as in chests. One of the big reasons we made a change to the island distribution system in patch 1.9.1, was to help players find more varied islands. This is a further step in that direction. This also adds a fun sense of objective and discovery to the world.

Tier 2 Island Visual Changes

Another change we've made recently is further changing the visuals of tier 2 pirate islands. We wanted to make them easier to spot and to differentiate them more from other pirate islands. The islands now have a more orange look to them, both in the grass and the ground texture.

New Item Highlighting

Another small but important change we've made is new item highlighting in your inventory. Now, when you pick up a new item, it will be highlighted in your inventory indicating which item is new. This helps players more in the beginning and adds a degree of intuitiveness to the game.

Misc Changes

In this recent update we've also made some minor changes such as bug fixes and increasing the size of the item description window. We had some issues where, unless you right clicked an item, you couldn't see its full description and effects. We've also made some lighting changes to the merchants, inns, and hunting shacks to be less intense, particularly with merchants during the day.

Upcoming Changes

We have some fun new ideas planned for our next update, which we'll be talking about in more detail in the coming weeks. In short, this update will include another new character known as the Sea Hunter, NPC graves, and new music. The Sea Hunter will be much like the recent Sea Scholar and Sea Fisher. He will have a set of quests that allow you to rank up, purchasing new items. Once you hit max rank, you'll be able to do a repeatable quest for nice loot drops.

In addition to the Sea Hunter we will be adding in NPC graves that can be found throughout the world. Most tombstones you find will have a tombstone text on it, indicating how the person died, and there will possibly be a lockbox buried with them. You will have a chance at finding bronze, gold, silver, and ceremonial lockboxes with unique loot inside them.

In the next update we also plan on adding in new island music. Our goal is to include a few new songs that can occur on large natural islands during the day and night. These will be unobtrusive and only occur occasionally, but will hopefully add to the experience of exploration when on the large natural islands.

Thanks for reading and as always we'd love to hear your feedback!

Steam Cloud Saving

New Items

New Quest

Battle Music

Change List

A Look Back

Quest and Player Journal

Cartography

New Pirate Islands

The Main Quest

Island Distribution Change

Pirate Graves

New NPCs

Island Music

Crafting and Inventory Changes

Whats to Come in 2017

Sea Hunter NPC

Pirate Graves

Inventory and Crafting Changes

New Island Music

Patch Notes

Update 1.9.2 - What to Expect

Sea Hunter

NPC Graves

New Music

What Else Have We Been Working On?

New Island Music

Day Island Examples

Night Island Examples

Soundtrack Update

Sea Hunter

NPC Graves

Island Music

New Map Items

Tier 2 Island Visual Changes

New Item Highlighting

Misc Changes

Upcoming Changes

About Us

Blog Archive

Search This Blog

Labels