Outside our window, winter suddenly decided to turn into spring. Birds are going wild, the snow is long gone, and the sun☀️ has finally remembered about us. Not sure how it looks where you live, but here the sudden change gave us a serious boost of positive energy.

We pushed one update on Tuesday, and now it’s Friday, and here comes another one. It really feels like the game is moving in the right direction. Your positive reviews and thumbs up 👍 really give us wings, but we’re definitely not slowing down. We keep writing down your cool😎 ideas and adding them one by one. Besides what we already have planned, you keep throwing in really good and inspiring suggestions. We’d love to implement everything in real time, but game dev always takes a bit longer than we’d like 😅

At the same time, we’re working on the island of our arch-enemy, and we honestly can’t wait until the moment we can finally show it to you in full glory. It’s getting bigger, darker, and more dangerous every week 🏝️

• Improved Building window:
  
  • Bigger structure icons
    
  • More vibrant structure icons
    
  • Added symbols that will communicate if buildings need mana or if the connection is optional.
    
  • Now the building name will also be displayed above its icon.
    
  • Different icon backgrounds now better match the style of the crafting window.
• We've added a new effect for the Essence Collector to indicate when Essence is turned into
  Knowledge Essence.

• Bonding Agent engineering skill requirement increased.
  
• Gears engineering skill requirement decreased

• Better environmental guidance to the entrance of the Eskoim Laboratory on Ruptured Canyon Island.
  
• Fixed a co-op bug where the client and host saw different stone values at the top of the screen.
  
• Further fixes for a bug where the client in co-op saw unconnected buildings despite them being connected.
  
• Fix for settlers' behaviour where they were standing still after interaction with another settler
  
• Improved behavior for settlers that are scared by monsters. Previously, they could loop their behavior, going back and forth when an enemy was nearby and they wanted to pick up an item or repair a structure.
  
• Now settlers will be less likely to get stuck near walls.

Your feedback, reviews, and thumbs up 👍 really keep us going. We read everything, note your ideas, and keep pushing updates one after another. Sometimes we’d love to do things faster, but game dev always takes a bit of time 😅

Join our Discord[discord.com] if you want to share ideas, report bugs, or just hang out with us and the community.

See you in the next update!

Star Drifters team ⭐🚀

I'm reporting back with another update, bringing us closer to the gameplay loop we envisioned :)

This time, we introduce you to a new building called Essence Collector. It collects essence from defeated monsters within its radius and turns it into Knowledge Essence.
Knowledge Essence can be consumed to give you instant EXP, but it is also used to craft a newly added Technology Points** Techspark crafting recipe. So now you can farm EXP from waves even if you haven't killed any of the monsters attacking and left all the fighting to the defensive towers! And now, Techsparks are craftable, though not easy to craft; they are now renewable.

**You may also notice that Technology Points are being replaced with Techsparks. Until now, Technology Points existed both as an item and as points in the UI, which wasn't very clear and didn't really serve much purpose. With Techsparks, we're clarifying this system - rewards will now go directly to your Techspark pool instead of appearing as an item in the inventory. This is just the first step, and in upcoming updates, Techsparks will become an important resource used in new mechanics, including more advanced crafting.

We've also made a package of other improvements that you can check below in the changelog :)

Now, we are working, among other things, on another new structure that will be able to trigger waves on demand, and a new type of monster wave that will taint neutral points on the map, such as berry bushes or bee hives!

Changelog for Update #37

• New Structure: Essence Collector
  
• New Item: Knowledge Essence
  
• New Crafting Recipe: Techspark - Yes, now you can craft it!

• Now buildings have a fixed order in the building menu, so it will be easier to remember a structure’s place in this tab.
  
• Added colored hints in the new inventory menu
  
• Added a pulsating effect as a hint for which character can use the chosen item.

• Now Berrybread and Waterfern Rolls have the proper item category.
  
• Flowershroom now respawns properly.
  
• Fixed bugs with Acidshroom and Flowershroom quests not completing correctly.
  
• Fixed character animations properly triggering when leveling up in the character tab.
  
• Fixed instances where animals, settlers, or monsters would fall through the floor.
  
• Fixed cases where settlers would get stuck in rocks or walls.
  
• Fixed disappearing stats in building description windows.
  
• Fixed bug where the Raven Watchtower wasn’t attacked by enemies.
  
• Fixed some cases of problems with building on the 4th island.
  
• Polishing the environment on the islands for better grid generation.

As always, I encourage you to join our Discord[discord.gg] and share your thoughts about the game or just chat about other stuff :)

Let us know how the Essence Collector works in your builds - we're curious to see what strategies you come up with.

See you soon,
Damian + .misha. ;-)
Stardrifters Team