Salt Development Blog

While Salt is definitely a game about freedom and exploration, it's always nice to have a sense of objective and subsequently, a sense of accomplishment. Quests allow us to give players something to work toward and it adds meaning to a lot of the content in the game. 

For example, let's say you haven't done any quests and you've played a ton of hours and obtained a lot of really nice loot. You may get to a place where you think, "What's the point of even killing pirates anymore? I've already got all the loot!" This kind of rips a lot of the meaning from the content in the game.

One way to get around this problem is to add quests that involve all types of content in the game, adding more replay-ability and reasons to play. To use an in-game example, there's an NPC known as the Sea Hunter. As part of his repeatable quest, you have to obtain Sea Hunter Tokens and turn them in for a random loot drop. These tokens can be found on a lot of different enemies and therefore adds meaning to content you may have "out-geared."

Depth and Lore

Another benefit of quests is the opportunity to add depth and a sense of lore to the world. This aspect particularly arises during the main quest. If you choose to go down that path, you'll discover a lot of information about the world and it's inhabitants. While not every quest reveals some secret information about the game, we do try to include interesting lore and depth in many of the quests and quest related items. 

In addition to adding objective, meaning, and lore to the world, quests also give us the opportunity to help players discover content they may have otherwise missed. For example, if you play the main quest in the game, you'll end going to multiple island types, encountering a lot of different enemies, fighting bosses, discovering new NPCs with side quests, and getting better loot along the way. While we do still have secrets in the game that you have to discover on your own, quests give us a good way to introduce players to the various types of content in the game. 

We are always adding new quests and objectives in Salt, particularly when new content comes out. In our next update for example, you'll finally be able to get your hands on musical instruments through a new NPC known as The Composer. He will have a series of quests with increasing challenges that will you reward you with some rare instruments for completing these quests.

Stay tuned for more information on that update soon!

Of course, to chat with friends you're going to want to invite them. So we've implemented the ability to see your friends list and invite players to your game. 

Say hello to the ghost pirate. Don't worry, we're just using him as a fun placeholder to test other player's characters in the world. You will have a fully formed pirate body when it's all said and done! 

Currently we have it to where you can see other players moving around in the world. You can also see other player's boats and ride them. This was a big milestone for us to hit and while we've still got a lot of kinks to work out, it's coming along well. 

Our next update is going to introduce player instruments. These instruments will be items you can click on that will play a song and apply a buff. Each instrument has it's own unique song but we are exploring possibilities of adding multiple songs or version to instruments. As an audio guy, I've been very excited to implement instruments into the game as it gives players a little bit more control over when they want to hear music. 

In order to get your hands on some of the new instruments, you'll have to talk an NPC known as The Composer. He will get you started on a set of quests that will reward you with some nice instruments and have you feeling like a true musician in no time. 

This week we've also started to look into adding achievements into Salt. We are very excited about achievements and we think it's going to give some new goals and challenges for our players. We'll update more on this as we get further along in it's development. 

As I said before, we are still working hard on multiplayer and making great progress in that regard. We'll be posting a blog update soon giving you a look at some of the progress we've made and what's yet to come. 

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

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. 

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. 

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!

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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! 

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. 

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. 

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.

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. 

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. 

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. 

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!