Major Update 05: The Spider Islands (Version Number "Early Access 0.5.12154 ")

[Gary]

We have released a Major Update, called "The Spider Islands".

This pulls together all of the new content and systems we had released in the Beta Branch since our previous Major Update.

Important!

Before we look at the latest changes, some important house-keeping: in order to play the new content, you will need to start a new game. The latter two Quick-Starts have the world unlocked for you to explore, along with port screens to allow you to customise your ship and crew.

If you wish to resume your playthrough from a previous build, then you may switch over to this older version of the game via the Beta Branches system:

1. Go to your Steam Library
   
2. Right-click on Abandon Ship and select "Properties"
   
3. Go to the tab marked "Betas"
   
4. In the drop-down box, select the one called "0.5.11395 – Shattered Empire Version"
   
5. Wait for the game to finish updating, you should see the branch name listed after the game name.

If you’re up-to-date on the Beta Branch (i.e you already have the items listed below) then your saves will be unaffected.

The Spider Islands

You can read a post that describes all of the main new features here:

https://steamcommunity.com/games/551860/announcements/detail/1608261029763621814

This includes the following major changes:
• Spider Islands New Region Unlocked
  
• Cannibal’s Lurk New Region Unlocked
  
• Peril’s Cauldron New Region Unlocked
  
• New weapon: Spider Egg Launcher
  
• New weapon: Snake Venom Gun
  
• New weapon: Ghost Mortar
  
• Ship Weapon Layout System
  
• Ship Visual Blueprint System
  
• Coastal Defences
  
• Massive optimisations on systems running on “Medium” and “Low” quality settings.

There have been a lot of other fixes and improvements, and the list below covers everything else:

Loading and Disk Usage Optimisations

• Improved boot-up time, so the game reaches the main menu faster.
  
• Font glyphs are now cached over time at the start of the game to avoid a hang on minimum spec machines when getting to the Prisoner Unlock screen (because the italics font hasn't been built yet).
  
• Auto saves no longer occur when entering ports, exiting bridges or entering whirlpools. These were unnecessary given autosaves happen either just before, or the player wouldn't lose any progress. On minimum spec machines, this reduces slight hitches that could occur.

Bugs

• Fixed the Statue Island Map from being discovered from the start of the game.
  
• Resolved an issue if a “wait for port” node was waiting for a sub-graph to complete and the player quits and reloads, which could prevent the quest from completing.
  
• Fixed instances where it was possible for icebergs to hit the player ship from the front, even if they were equipped with an icebreaker.
  
• Howling Sea gates that led to the Cold Sea were being unbarred too early.
  
• Set up casual difficulty to have 2 Golden Shipwrecks in different maps (it used to always put two in one map).
  
• Rearranging of ship components in the Journal is no longer allowed in the Sea Arena. This caused a bug where the ship would sail off the screen, and the player had to exit to main menu to fix it.
  
• Fixed new move and move-and-interact Ship Exploration commands not occurring when trying to move to the node already being moved to. This fixes instances where clicking on ports and gates would send the ship to those points, but not interact with them.
  
• Fixed AI sometimes getting stuck trying to heal at a sickbay table.
  
• Paused monologue that plays when you defeat the Kraken, stopping instances whereby the weather could be heard behind the monologue.
  
• Kraken Grab Stab tentacles no longer flinch, stopping the unsightly clipping when using a mortar on the Kraken as it is going under the ship for a Hull Grab.
  
• The disable wait ambush modifier could break, meaning that you could be ambushed while waiting in instances where you shouldn’t be ambushed.

Miscellaneous Polish and Improvements

• World Map now has icons to show if the port is discounted or unavailable.
  
• Fog and Poison Fog icons will now appear on the world map.
  
• Disabled ambush while waiting in the Ice Sheet, Kraken Sea and Devourer maps.
  
• The guarding ships in the Plague Map were using the Ghost icon, they now have their own icon.
  
• Added Cave Islands to all other biomes.
  
• If a Trade Route's port is disabled (fire, cult controlled) the trade route is now "disabled" and goes black.
  
• "Level up" floating message now appears above the overhead crew icon. Previously it only appeared in the crew icons in the bottom-left.
  
• Keyboard shortcuts are now shown on relevant tooltips.
  
• Added a Discard box in the Ship Management screen.
  
• Added bespoke audio for the recent ship sinking variations.
  
• Tweaked the name placement on the original unique islands to make them more aesthetically pleasing.
  
• Added an "Are you sure?" prompt if you're buying a new ship and have left stuff behind on the old one (some players mentioned they forgot, then lost all their stuff).
  
• Player Crew no longer cheer when the enemy flees.
  
• When completing the Active Quest, another Quest is now made Active.
  
• Whirlpools are no longer interactable if they have no destination (players would attempt to enter the whirlpool in the Duskvale map).
  
• Added Ghost controlled exploration Sea Fort tooltip.
  
• Changing scene now instantly closes the Action Tutorial UI if currently open and completed.
  
• Can now swap crew icon order in the Journal.
  
• Entering port at night made the ship appear too dark in the port menus, so have added a Light to the Render Player Ship prefab, that only gets switched on in specific instances.
  
• All Character commands now display an Order Confirmation UI - this gives better feedback when giving your crew orders, as there were instances where you would click and not receive any UI confirmation.
  
• Character mouse cursor boarding icons implemented, helping to reinforce when you can board and when you can’t.
  
• Implemented "Character Gained" popup UI that appears above the crew discs in the bottom-left.
  
• Characters can now be given an attack command against surprise or torpedo dive Boarding characters. This means you can click on boarding Haliphron and Cannibals when they're climbing over the ship rail.
  
• Keyboard shortcut: Left-Right arrow keys now select crew
  
• Kraken Battle Tutorial - helm is now circled if not manned during Flee Kraken Tutorial
  
• Added latest Newsletter names. Removed those people who have either unsubscribed, or the emails have had a hard bounce.

Balancing

• Tidal Waves now remove Acid.
  
• Haliphron no longer take damage from Acid.
  
• Swivel Guns can now be used against the kraken.
  
• Weapon price balancing: Made the Suppression Gun slightly cheaper, others more expensive (Web Snare, Tackler, Spider Egg Launcher, Sniper, Ship Smasher, Hull Destroyer, Lightning Gun, Hull Crack & Fire Clusterbombs, Barshot, Berserk Dart & Acid Bomb)
  
• Upgrade price balancing - Heavy Spikes and Armour are more expensive, as is the Automatic Water Pumps. Diving Bell and Flaming Gargoyles are cheaper.
  
• Weapon Damage Balancing: Acid Bomb causes marginally less damage. Berserk Dart and Web Snare don't last as long. Suppression gun now lasts slightly longer.
  
• As we tutorialise coastal defences in the opening map, there is now a hull repair flotsam placed along the route to the bottom gate, to offset any damage from the coastal defence that might have been incurred.
  
• Adjusted minor difficulty so that no matter what level you are and which ship class you have, you'll always have a chance of getting the smallest ships. Otherwise if the player had a Man O War, they could only get something as small as a Brig. This means there should be a chance of getting a smaller ship to easily trash.
  
• Ships are now generated with absolute values, thus minimising instances where suddenly higher enemy vessels appeared in very specific circumstances. This could happen if the player leapt up a large amount of ship classes just before they changed map, such as having a Brig but saving up enough money to go straight to the Man O War.
  
• Adjusted Castaway quest so there is a lower chance of negative morale outcomes occurring.
  
• Removed a map from Region 12 so the area flows better.
  
• Some of the "Fleeing Before Battle" events had outcomes that described a "smaller" ship, the other a "larger" one. These outcomes will no longer trigger it the player has the Cutter or Man O War respectively.

We’re making fantastic progress with only four regions left to unlock. Our journey through Early Access has at least one other Major Update before we move to version 1.0, and you can read about what we’re planning here:

Latest Dev-Team Focus

For the longer term plans, visit this sub-forum:

Early Access Roadmaps

Thank-you for your support and feedback, it is greatly appreciated. If you haven’t tagged the game or left a review, please do so – it helps us massively.