Hello everyone! I'd like to post this longer-form post to accompany our previous devlog and go over the details behind the changes we made. The feedback we've gotten from the playerbase over the last few months is that banditry is very difficult, and not terribly rewarding; players don't generally walk around with much to lose, burglary is next to impossible, and it's hard to even stop people in the first place to demand things from them.

Well, that's all about to change. In addition to adding a ton of new furniture to decorate your burrow with, we've rebalanced the way people carry and store items to make it much easier to steal from them. Furthermore, being knocked out in combat carries an actual penalty now besides being looted: you will accumulate scars which reduce your stats until they heal. Additionally, we've added an item you can craft and deploy to stop people in their tracks briefly, so that you can initiate conversation with them.

We will also be doing away with the current "closet" meta that makes it possible to secure items in open burrows beyond any possibility of accessing them, bar catching the person opening them in the act and knocking them over. Countertops will in the future no longer effectively block movement, so you can't rely on hiding stuff behind them or on them behind doors. We're giving people plenty of grace period to adjust to this, given how many items there are laying around in stores right now.

Instead, you'll be able to use chests and display cases to lock up items safely and show what you sell. We've found in testing that the use of these containers massively reduces the footprint of burrows, so it should free up a ton of room in them that was previously dedicated to storage. This furniture has to be crafted, and importantly, even the burrow owner requires a key if they want to keep people out of it. That key can be stolen, meaning that nothing is totally inaccessible except in locked burrows.

That's not to say that everybody will be out griefing and robbing each other. Combat characters are still difficult to equip and maintain, and we still have strict and enforced rules on when you're allowed to attack and loot people. And it's much harder to carry away lots of items out of someone's burrow, so even if someone steals your key they probably won't be able to clean your burrow out unless you give them lots of time to do it with. Plus, if you carry the keys, it's not possible for you to get robbed while you're offline. Potential thieves have to interact with you.

Mainly, we hope this will serve as a deterrent to make people more afraid of bandits: if you don't have the combat prowess to stand up to armed critters, don't do it, or they'll make you really regret it. Plus, it's a good reason to travel with a guard, giving combat characters who don't want to play bandits more value to hire. The balance of these systems is still early and we will adjust it according to feedback.

Additionally, the new furniture includes training dummies (so no more attacking yourself to practice skills), and mailboxes and deposit boxes, making postal services totally viable for players to set up, either as a courier or postmaster. And if someone's ordered something crafted for you, and they have a deposit box, you can just drop it off for them whether they're online or not! Very convenient. As usual, the economy revolves around player initiative, so the only limit is your creativity.

And finally, we've added a bunch of new critter sprites for sleeping and such to replace the temporary ones that have been around forever. Two races are still in progress which we will add with the next update. Here's a compilation of them!

If you're interested in an online Redwall-inspired fantasy RPG in an immersive persistent world, check out our website: https://farwoods.net/

We have a (somewhat outdated) trailer there and a lot more info on the game!