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• Bug Fix: Being disconnected from multiplayer then reconnecting would cause your character to "skip/walk" upon reentry. This issue has been fixed.

• "Rare/Unique" weapons and armor.

• Ironforge Town/Castle Area

• Blacksmithing Apprenticeship 80 - 90
• Staves skill will now provide a bonus to all spell casting while a staff or wand is equipped based on skill level.

• Toggable Automovement using mouse.
• Ability to see skill bonuses on stat/skill menu and also get notified when they are applied/unapplied.
• Item Quantity On Shortcut Action Bar

• Gravecrawlers

• Ability to control speed of time.
• Improve Lighting System / Lighting Range

• Level 2 of Crypts

• Q7 - Collect the evidence

• Poisoning

• Additional Language Support

Latest News

Gravebind One Year Update

Over the past year we accomplished a lot and introduced a lot of new content for players to enjoy. While we didn’t complete the full phase two map, we completed a large number of items on the list and some especially key ones. So below I want to walk through what we got done and then where we didn’t quite meet our own expectations and some challenges we ran into and how our focus will be adjusted over the coming months and year.

What we got done

1. Introducing Multiplayer: We got an MMO mode implemented in late winter and have spent a lot of time focusing on that over the past several months. I think the players that have engaged in it have found the play experience to be fun with a few repeatable quests and an open world feel. We will continue to expand the world and functionality of the MMO mode.
2. Custom Player Housing: Another important area to the game and to us personally was customizable player housing. We implemented a system that has allowed players to purchase a property, design and construct their own houses. Overall, the feedback has been positive and players have enjoyed this feature. We continue to add new property locations for players to purchase as the existing properties get bought up. Additionally, we look to continue to expand the housing system with new pieces for players to experiment with as well as new furnishings. The Carpentry skill will also add some new unique pieces for players to construct themselves.
3. New Explorable Areas and Monsters: We added several new areas for players to explore and enjoy over the past year as well as introducing numerous monsters. New areas include West Brimstone an ruined town overrun by orcs, an orc fort, lower levels of the mines filled with new kinds of dangerous monsters including a dragon as well as most recently introducing the catacombs an extension from the crypts that leads under the forest to the lower level of the mines with new kinds of undead and monsters for players to fight. We have also introduced a couple of repeatable mini-boss quests for players to fight including a Bone Lord and Root-Rot a fleshly rooty abomination in the catacombs and of course we are continuing to expand and add new areas and monsters to the game.
4. Blacksmithing and Leatherwork: Crafting skills for blacksmithing and leatherwork were introduced over the past year, and soon carpentry will be as well in the next couple of weeks. Crafting skills work differently than other skills as they require players to complete apprenticeships to advance their skill caps introducing a different aspect of skill gain. Overall feedback has been pretty good in this area other than not yet being able to get to 100 skill in these yet which we are actively expanding the apprenticeships in the next couple of patches. One of the hold ups with these are typically that they require us to add new areas and resources for players to craft at/with. So they require those dependencies to be in place first. One of the things we will be adding specifically to blacksmithing in the next couple of months is the ability to create Jewel studded armor.
5. More Weapons and Magic Armor: While magic weapons were in place at launch we did also get magic armor in over the past year as well and have added a few more weapons for players to acquire as well as the introduction of “unique/legendary” weapons as super rare drops. We still have more weapons and armor in the queue to add as well.
6. Spells and Potions: There are now over 40 spells in the game across the five schools of magic (more than twice from last year at launch). We are continuing to grow this number as well but we feel like progress in this area was good. We also introduced all kinds of potions for players to experiment with boosting not only health and mana but resistance, magic power, strength, and stamina. In the coming months we will be introducing level 2 potions for bigger boosts and even further when we introduce Alchemy.
7. Game Manual: We did put some effort into a game manual for players and while it isn’t perfectly up to date in all areas we believe it to be an important part of making the game playable and accessible to players. We encourage everyone to utilize it on our website when you have questions that we cannot immediately answer.

What Didn’t get enough Attention

1. Quests: While we added a couple boss quests they didn’t have much story or dialog and we didn’t focus on any core quests over the past a year which for us was a bit of a let down, especially for our single players. Over the next few months our focus is going to shift back to quests both core and side now that we have more world areas accessible we can add more quests.
2. Game Content and Decoration: Just over the past couple of months players have begun helping out with some world decoration. This is something that takes a great deal of time to add detail for and I haven’t been able to give it as much attention in earlier months resulting in emptier houses or less lush outdoor areas. Now with the additional help we are able to progress with this a bit better. I also plan to add in more décor to work with to diversify interior and exterior decorations.
3. Backlog of Equipment, Monsters and Townsfolk: Many thanks to our 3d artist for completing so many models/renderings for us over the past couple of years. I owe him much credit for making Gravebind possible. I have a large backlog of his work to get loaded into the game still; so my apologies for keeping him waiting to see his work in the game. Often the hold up isn’t loading the art itself into the game as it is scripting the monsters, items and spells that go a long with the artwork. I do my best to make things have uniqueness and purpose to them.
4. Other Minor Features: Riddle Chests, Lock Pick Scenarios and more single player settings were some minor things we didn’t get done with that we will still be doing but are lower priority at this time. We will also be expanding the player status menu at some point in the coming months to include much more information such as Chance To Resist, Chance To Hit and more of this type information to help players with character development.

We have a patch for Lumberjacking, Carpentry, a new blacksmith apprenticeship, some new town areas, another higher forest level monster, and new hexagonal buildings that should be out in the next few weeks. Be sure to check out our in-development area on https://gravebind.online for the most up to date information.

Thanks for reading and we look forward to another year of development!

Progress On Phase II

With yesterday’s release of housing, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on what has been accomplished from our second phase road map so far and give everyone an idea of what is to come next that I am getting started on.

In the first five months of early access release, we have completed a number of items in green and partially implemented parts from the dark blue cells. I have also made it a priority to work on fixes/features that players have given me direct feedback on. From the table above my focus has been primarily on trying to knock out the bigger more difficult items from the list rather than focusing too much time on the smaller known features.

While I am pleased with the progress overall, I think it will become important to have more explorable areas for players as I am now beginning work on MMO Multiplayer mode; so I will be making MMO multiplayer and adding some new explorable areas a priority over the next couple of months. This will also open an opportunity to do a couple more story quests for single player after that as I need some additional areas to finish the next batch of quests.

MMO Multiplayer will take the majority of my focus over the two to three months however I will be doing some smaller updates from time to time with some of those being more explorable areas, more housing locations/accessories, and more monsters to battle.

Once MMO Multiplayer is stable enough to start to allow smaller groups of players to experiment, I will be looking for players who are most interested in helping test it. If you have an interest please direct message me on discord for an opportunity to do this. The first round of testing I will probably only be taking five to ten interested users. From there we will gradually add more and more users until issues are at a minimum and we can open it up to everyone.

Early Access Release To Steam!

I am excited to bring Gravebind into Early Access marking a new phase in its development! Over the past two years I have spent much time building out the gaming engine and with the help of Deco Games as well as friends and family, the game has been able to reach this point and while we still have a long way to go with the development of the game, I wanted to pause to say thank you to everyone who helped with bringing Gravebind into existence. So, thank you to all of you who helped! Also a special thank you to PV Games for graphical assets, Eric Bowser for great music, and the other artists and musicians published work on GameDevMarket place.

Please check out our Game Manual on specific features listed below.

Here are the key features we released for early access:

1. We’ve built out a playable single player game while laying the foundation and framework for the future multiplayer modes of Gravebind.
2. Customizable male and female characters that visually reflect what you equip along with two ridable mounts with more mounts to come.
3. There are the beginnings of a story you can follow, and we have put together 10 quests that you can go through. We have made a walkthrough guide available in our online game manual.
4. We have built a guided open world feel that allows you to unlock more and more areas as you progress through the quests. As you unlock areas, they are open for you to explore and hold purpose even after quests are completed. Aside from the small portion of the main world to explore, we have completed 1.5 levels of the crypts, 2 levels of mines to explore, a spider cave and a dynamic area where goblin camps spawn. A small town is near complete with most of a larger city also built out.
5. We have a leveling system and a skill gain system in place with lots of combat, magic and other adventure skills to pick from.
6. There are nearly 30 spells across five different skills. Still plenty more to come as well.
7. There are over 40 different creatures to do combat with. Again still plenty more to come here as well.
8. Over 50 different pieces of armor.
9. Over 30 different weapons.
10. You have the ability to adjust difficulty on a world by world basis with numerous settings from tweaking things like magic weapon drop rate, to quest difficulty.
11. Hours of dialog have been written and dramatized speech has been generated for the majority of it and while some voices still need more refinement, we hope that you find this adds to the enjoyable experience of game play.
12. We’ve built a currency system that supports multiple coin types while keeping it simple for players to follow that adds both function and flavor.
13. A Banking system has been implemented with the ability to store additional items and share items between characters.
14. Weve provided numerous quality of life improvements based on the early alpha testing feedback like providing options for automatic corpse opening and automatic door opening.
15. We’ve implemented magic weapons (with armor to come soon) and other enhancements like sharpening, consecration, and fortification.
16. We’ve implemented a material system for armor and weapons, though most found so far are copper and iron this leads into our crafting system for allowing players to craft weapons and armor with different material attributes and colors.
17. We have mining and lumberjacking mostly implemented.
18. Built a day/night system where shops close, npcs go to different places at day vs night, and different events happen at different times of the day.
19. In game tutorial to take you through the basics of the game.
20. 20. We’ve added some support for Spanish and hope to add more languages before long. We believe we have about 85% of the game text translated for players to enjoy.

There are also a lot of areas we want to focus effort improving on that wasn’t as refined as what we wanted for the first early access release:

1. Better portraits for npcs and players. The ones currently in use are place holders, and while we have made an effort to improve some of them, they are not quite the right style we want but before we get someone to work on them by hand, we want to complete the key npcs for the first part of the game so the style is consistent.
2. Some voices in the game are very good while others need improved and this is something we will continue to work at as technology changes and different services become available.
3. NPC intelligence and movement has improved since the first days of alpha but there is still more work to be done in this area as npcs still get stuck on occasion or make repeated bad movements. This is another area we will spend some time improving; in fact I envision this as an item that is constantly being refined.
4. We also want make it so town NPCs are observant of your negative activities in town when they are around you. So when you try to break barrels/crates or pick locks in front of them they warn you then alert the guards if you are seen again. This behavior will be coming sooner rather than later.

So what will I be working on next in terms of development aside from the items mentioned above:

1. One of my next key focuses will be crafting and a work order system, I will likely be starting with Blacksmithing and Carpentry first then start on tailoring/leatherworking, alchemy and stonework.
2. I will begin work on our multiplayer server, most of the code that I have already written is setup to be plug and play with this, its just a matter of writing the part of software that is responsible for holding and tracking maps/objects differently than what single player does. I hope to start on this mid fall and have something for players to try at some point in the winter.
3. I will continue to expand game content, Npcs/Spells/Items/Quests etc…
4. New areas will be added like an Orc Fort, West Brimstone contested town with a treasury quest, Iron Forge and more expansions to existing areas like the crypts.
5. Improved control over NPC followers, like summoned skeletons or your mount.
6. Single player death mode setting for requiring reloading from prior save.
7. Magic armor will be added. Many of the mechanics have already been defined and it’s a matter of implementing them.
8. Custom housing will likely come after we get crafting and some multiplayer functionality done.

These are the key items we will be focusing on next. There are additional items on our early access list as well but this is what we will focus on first. We will shoot to do new feature releases every 4 – 6 weeks but if we are working on a major feature it might take a little longer. I will update the development boards this week and you can follow my progress. Thanks for reading. If you have any questions, want to let us know about issues, or just want to discuss future changes/possibilities, please use our Discord channel to contact us.

We look forward to having you all with us as we develop Gravebind!