Hey Everyone!
Welcome back to our first regular Community Post since our Combat update! We spent a long time deep in the trenches of the last update, so this post is a bit of a return to normal for us.
Now that we’ve got the Combat Update in your hands, we want to take a look at what’s coming next. We still have plenty to do to complete our Roadmap, but today we want to focus on one thing - our next Major Update.
⚔️Combat Update Recap
It’s been incredible to see everyone jumping into the Combat update and observing all the different builds and paths you seem to be taking to progress. The passion that everyone brings to the discussions and feedback truly is something special.
If you somehow missed the massive update that launched a couple of weeks ago, you can read all about it here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/major-update-2-9-158836406
Since the major update we’ve also launched 3 additional updates (one was released alongside this news post), which implements changes and additions based on initial feedback, fixing a large range of bugs and balance issues, and adding in new artwork. If you’re curious, you can check out those updates here:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/melvor-idle-2-v0-159434467
https://www.patreon.com/posts/melvor-idle-2-v0-158925715
https://www.patreon.com/posts/melvor-idle-2-v0-160101996
If you think that looks like a lot of work, you’d be right. This update took us over 4 months - the previous major update landed in January, but we’d already started work on this one before then. Ultimately it made sense to bundle all of this content in one giant update like this, since everything in here is dependent on the core systems that combat enables.
With that said, we don’t intend to jump straight into another update of this scale. Our next update will be smaller and more focused, and won’t take nearly as long. This means we’ll have new content in your hands much sooner than before, and it’s also a lot less stressful for us - keeping track of all the moving parts in an update as big as our most recent one is not easy 🙃
Regular Minor Updates
We plan to continue to release regular Minor Updates as we make our way towards the next Major update. These minor updates will include the usual bug fixes, alongside any feedback we can implement with ease (Balancing, quality of life etc).
👀What’s coming in the next Major Update?
The next Major Update will focus on 2 core features: Astrology and Combat Mastery Guild.
💫Astrology
Astrology is a skill you all know from MI1, and its addition will impact pretty much every other part of the game. Adding Astrology now is a bit of a no-brainer for 2 main reasons:
1 - There's now enough content in the game that Astrology will make a meaningful impact on your progress. Adding this skill any earlier would have left it feeling empty and pointless, whereas it can now make enough of an impact to be worth investing your time into.
2 - We’ve already got the content for Astrology planned out. While it will need some tweaks and adjustments, the core content is well understood and ready to be implemented.
Coolrox will be switching focus to Astrology once he’s knocked down most of the major bugs introduced in the Combat update. We’ll share more about what Astrology looks like in Melvor Idle 2 a little closer to release.
⚔️Combat Mastery Guild
One notable omission from the Combat Update was the Mastery Guild for Combat. There’s not a huge amount more to say other than: we’ll be fleshing out and implementing the Combat Mastery Guild in the next Major Update. Once again, we’ll share more details once we’re a bit further along.
👀Anything else?
We’ll also be bringing along all the usual add-ons - feedback implementations, bug fixes, balance adjustments, and other tweaks.
Alongside these usual suspects, we do also have a couple of other items that might make their way into the update. These will only be added if we’re 100% confident that we can get them implemented without pushing the timeline of the update or compromising on quality. Those additional items are:
Quests (Part 1)
UI Rework (Partial, layouts only)
The reason we specifically call out the above as a maybe is because they are being worked on in tangent to what’s already planned and in development. A majority of the foundational work required to implement the two above major features is completed by others outside our core permanent team (Narrative writing for Quests / design of UI).
Those features are vital in getting us to an eventual Early Access launch, so having them into the game ASAP is definitely on our wishlist.
📅When’s the next major update launching?
Hopefully before the sun dies out. We’re still working through the bugs and issues from the Combat update, and we haven’t even launched our Combat update surveys (yes, plural) yet.
What we will say is that we’re aiming to get this update out a lot faster than the Combat one. We’re deliberately keeping the scope manageable so that we can get back to a more regular rhythm of content drops. As always, we’ll keep you updated as we progress, so make sure to keep an eye on our Dev Update posts.
🏋️ What the team have been working on
Here’s what the team has been working on since our last post!
Development
Malcs:
Lots of focus on bug fixes and feedback implementation from the Major Update.
Assisted Prat with getting Astrology planning finalised and ready for development.
Coolrox:
Mostly worked on bug fixes and technical changes for feedback implementation for the Combat Update! There’s been a huge backlog of bugs to fix, which are too varied to dive into here.
Game Design
Prat:
Helping to fix content and balance issues around Combat and associated skills. We’ve already identified (and shipped) lots of changes, and will be continuing to fix more issues as we go.
Now also working on Astrology. Astrology already has most of its content laid out, but it needs additional attention for balance and consistency with all of the game’s new content taken into account.
Artwork
Tapi:
Currently focused on all of the outstanding Item artwork! Check out the examples below, featuring the Mortar and Pestle, Runecrafter Tiara, and Experimenter Book!
Ash:
Continuing to work on Monsters! Most recently working on Dragons and Wyverns - check out the Elder Wyvern, coming soon to a terrifying encounter near you!
Conclusion
We hope you’ve all been enjoying the Combat update! It’s been great to see you all playing and discussing all of the new additions. All of the feedback, bug reports, and suggestions we’ve been getting on Discord have been incredibly helpful - keep it up!
If you haven’t joined our Discord server yet, make sure you hop in - you can find it here:
(Make sure to link your Discord and Patreon accounts in your Patreon Account settings, that’ll give you the roles you need to access the MI2 section)
See you around!
- Althalus