Out to the coast

Since the Ranged update I’ve mostly been building outwards. Until now, everything outside the Gilded Gate lay east of it: Thornwood, Tallow Cross, the Gloaming and Halcyon. West and south of the gate there was nothing. This update fills that in, and a lot of the time went into making the new places worth the walk: somewhere to fish, something to mine, somebody to fight, and a bank not too far away.

It’s a long one, so here’s the short version first.

Head south out of Tallow Cross and you’re on the Coast Road. It runs past the last farms of Tallow Vale at Vale’s End, over Marren Brow, and out across the heath to the sea. It’s about two minutes at a run, and there’s a lot to stop for on the way. The Carters’ Rest has a fire circle and benches looking down over Lake Marren, and the heath beyond it is all gorse, heather and granite tors, with a cairn on the high point.

Watch out for Gorse Hollow. It’s a dip in the heath north of the road where a band of shore bandits has made camp, and the hollow is a multi-way fight, so walk into the camp and you can have several of them on you at once. One of them has taken to working the road itself.

At the end of the road is Gullhaven, a fishing town on the mouth of the River Wend. The square has a great iron anchor in the middle of it, the Salted Cask on one side (with a range, so you can cook your catch) and Gullhaven Bank in the corner. Go down from there and you’re at the harbor: stone quays, the boats tied up, and the breakwater running out to the harbor light at its end.

There’s a fish market, the boat sheds and the net loft on the north side, Fishers’ Row’s whitewashed cottages and the Ropewalk. South of the harbor is the High Ward, behind its gilded railing, where the Marina Club keeps its yachts. Out past the harbor there’s Gull Strand, with its dunes and upturned boats to sit on, Seal Rocks and the salt pans. The town is busy too: fishers on the quays, salt workers raking the pans, and an old sailor or two watching everyone else work.

The other way to the coast is straight down from the Gilded Gate, on the Drovers’ Track. It’s a muddy cattle track through the Greenmarch: hedged fields, cows and sheep, dry stone walls and lone oaks. It follows the River Wend, which now runs all the way from Silverlake down to Gullhaven’s harbor. From the gate to the square is about three minutes at a run.

Brindle Green is the hamlet a third of the way down, with a well, a fire circle and a few benches on the green. Past it are Tinker’s Knoll, Drovers’ Ford, where the track crosses the Wend, and Wendside Farm. There’s trout to catch at Brindle Pool and the ford, and shrimps in the lower Wend just above Gullhaven.

I wanted the first stretch outside the gate to be a gentle place to be a new Contractor, so near the gate nothing will start a fight with you. That includes the giant rats in the hedgerows, which are mean-looking but leave you alone unless you go for them. Further down, it gets less friendly. Cutpurse Copse, a ring of trees a little way off the track, has highwaymen in it. Stay on the track and they won’t bother you. Wander in and they will.

The Greenmarch’s western edge drops straight into the sea. Whitecliff Shore is a long line of white chalk cliffs, sheer in most places, with sea stacks standing off them and gull nests along the top. The Society, being the Society, has declared it a protected viewing area. There are benches and signs at the best lookouts, and a Shore Warden who’ll tell you about viewing permits. Ask him how to get one.

There’s one way down. Smugglers’ Steps leave the Drovers’ Track, run over the cliff top and go down the face to Smugglers’ Cove, a little beach with a sea cave at the back of it. Somebody’s been landing crates there, and the smugglers who look after them don’t like visitors. They won’t jump you on the Steps, though, so you can always back out the way you came.

Fishing used to be a pond, a lake and a few spots on the river, the same few fish wherever you went. Now every fish has a place it lives and a level, and getting better means moving on to new water, from the shrimps at Silverlake to the harpoon spots at the end of Halcyon’s piers.

Fishing spots also move now. Every so often a spot goes quiet and turns up a little further along the bank, so you will sometimes have to follow the fish.

The new place I like most is Pincer Pools, on the rocks at Gullhaven’s south-western tip. You rake the pools for oysters, which sometimes have a pearl in them, and put out a crab cage once you’re good enough. There’s a fire right there on the rocks, and the bank is under a minute’s walk away.

Everything past crab is for members: tuna and swordfish off the pier ends, and squid and rock lobster in the crab cages, at Halcyon’s marina and around Gullhaven’s harbor.

You make the oyster rake (Artisanry 23), the harpoon (28), the eel trap (35) and the crab cage (36) at a workbench.

Mining got the same treatment. Every rock has its place now, from copper at the gate to marble in Halcyon’s Demesne. The trouble with mining out in Thornwood was always the walk to the bank, so the Wayside Inn has a bank chest out front now. Ironstone Knoll’s iron, silver and coal are about a hundred steps from it, instead of nearly three hundred, and the gem rocks at the Charcoal Burners’ Clearing are under sixty.

Tallow Cross has a smithy now too, in the old stone house on the lane south of the market. Hester sells pickaxes from bronze to mithril, and the workbench in there is free for anyone to use. You can smelt your bars without leaving town, straight from bank notes if you like.

Until now, everything that wanted to hurt you had to walk up to you first. Not any more. Some enemies cast spells now, and they do it from a distance. The barrow wights in the Sallow Barrows throw a grave-cold bolt from six tiles away and use their blades when you get close. There are ghosts on Hollowmere’s north shore too, pale things that drift in the fog and wail at you from wherever they can see you.

Seeing you is the important part. A spell needs a clear line, the same as your arrows do. Walls and buildings block them, and so do trees and big rocks. Fences don’t. So if a caster is giving you trouble, get something solid between you. It will come around looking for a clear shot, and you get to pick where you meet it. Yes, that means safespots.

Armor matters more now as well. Heavy metal armor is weak to magic: a platebody makes spells more likely to land, not less, while leather actually resists them. The Gear tab shows your Magic defense next to your Defense, so you can see where you stand. While I was in there, I also corrected how much metal armor gets in the way of a bow. A platebody now costs you 15 Ranged accuracy, a full helm or a kiteshield 3, and a med helm nothing at all.

There’s new trouble to find, too. Most of it is in the new places above, and a few brown bears now live deep in Hunters’ Wood, well off the paths, where they would like to be left alone.

Up at the windmill on Windmill Hill, in Tallow Vale, lives Elodie. She’s never been further than Tallow Cross, and she has a great many questions about the Society and the Contractors it sends through the Vale. A Little Company is her quest, and it’s a slow one on purpose. It plays out over several visits, and each new step waits until you’ve been away for a while: a day, a level gained or another quest finished, whichever comes first. She likes to write, so you’ll need a mailbox in your room before she’ll start.

I won’t spoil where it goes, but there are flowers from a long way off and a walk down to the pond, and it doesn’t end when the quest does. It’s a Beginner quest, Long. Speaking of which, every quest in the Quests tab now tells you how hard it is and how long it takes before you start it.

Sound. There are sound effects now: swings and bow shots, monsters landing hits, food cooking (and burning), the hammer at the workbench, axes, pickaxes, the plop of a line hitting the water, and level-ups. Your own sounds play in full, and everyone else’s fade with distance. If you want them quieter, the Sound section in Options has two new sliders, Sound effects and Area sounds.

Halcyon feels lived in. The city’s townsfolk keep a routine now. They stroll about, sit on the benches, fish from the water’s edge and go home for a while, instead of all standing around in one spot.

Dropping. You can always drop a whole inventory where you stand now, so power-fishing works the way you’d expect.

Bows. They’re carried the right way round. They used to flip edge-on while you raised them, which looked about as wrong as it sounds.

That’s everything. Go and see the sea.