Greetings, Flameborn!

We're very excited to finally release Wake of the Water, our brand new update, which adds dynamically simulated water to Enshrouded, as well as an entire new playground filled with watery goodness (and scaly evil): Veilwater Basin. Located between the Blackmire and the Albaneve Summits, this new high-level area is full to the brim with beautiful beaches, forgotten temples, underwater ruins, and much more.

First, as usual, here is a trailer introducing the update if you're a visual learner kind of hero:

Wake of the Water is our most ambitious update so far and the changelog is significant, so strap in, you're gonna be here for a while! But if you're in a hurry or you don't wanna read, you'll find the customary highlights in video format here:

Changelog for Update #7 v.0.9.0.0

The revision of Update #7 is 844087

Highlights

Dynamically simulated water

It is finally here! Update 7 “Wake of the Water” introduces a whole new way of experiencing the world of Embervale.
Water is now available for all players, both as part of the exploration and as a new tool for base building. Jump headfirst into one of the many, many vast new lakes and explore the mysterious world hidden beneath the surface, discover treasure, and dig up new and unique resources. But don’t just enjoy water as a new region to explore; take it home to your base. Build with it and let it flow through your gardens and living rooms.

Embervale update

• In all biomes of Embervale, water has been added in the form of naturally occurring ponds and lakes. While early areas of Embervale have only smaller bodies of water, later areas, and especially the newly added biome, boast vast and deep lakes.

• Water in Embervale is not only for decoration, but it also adds a completely new layer of exploration and new challenges. With limited oxygen, players need to weigh risks and rewards while searching for exclusive resources and loot chests in the depths of the lakes.

Water gameplay highlights

• The ability to swim and dive in open water has been added to all Flameborn–no need to unlock it.

• While diving, managing the remaining oxygen adds a strategic element to exploration. Keep your eyes open for additional ways to increase the time underwater - such as equipment, food and others.

• Using weapons or other means of combat is not possible underwater, so stay vigilant and avoid any close encounters with dangerous foes, or step outside to finish what they started!

• In Enshrouded, water is a fully dynamic, simulated part of the world. Flameborn can redirect flowing water, create new canals and waterways as they see fit.
  

Fishing

• With this update, fishing is also introduced as a new activity and source of cooking and crafting materials, and depending on your luck, also other goodies. Common fish can be fished in all open waters with any bait; more interesting catches have a higher chance at specific fishing spots and when using more refined bait. Watch out for suspicious turbulences on the water surface indicating fish-rich areas.

• The first fishing rod is craftable in the personal crafting menu. Better fishing gear is available from the huntress, Athalan Skree and from a new survivor who specializes in fishing and who can be found in the new Veilwater Basin. He will also help with providing better bait.
  

Building with water

• As part of the crafting progression, several new tools and placeable props have been introduced that allow adding, removing and transporting water. Some of them can be used deliberately on demand, others operate automatically over time.

• Water can be used to rotate water wheels and thereby power new crafting factories.

• Water gates are now available, allowing players to control the flow of water through their base.

• Some new farm crops can only grow when covered in water.
  

A new biome: the Veilwater Basin

• Update 7 introduces a completely new biome, expanding the journey for high-level Flameborn. Located between the Albaneve Summits and the Blackmire, a dense tropical forest sprawls between large lakes and rivers, covering ancient ruins and dark secrets.

• A new kind of enemy lurks within the dense forests and blue waters of Veilwater Basin: the hateful Drak.

• Numerous new resources can be found among the trees and in the ground of the new areas, leading to a host of new items, recipes, building blocks, armors, plant seedlings, decorative props for the player base and many, many more.

• This, of course, comes with plenty of new quests and rewards, farm animals, survivors, and skill points.
  

Next tier of progression

• The new maximum level for Flameborn is now 45.

• New and more powerful versions for all weapon types will drop from enemies and chests. Lore weapons can now be freely crafted at every tier, once unlocked.

• The next level of armor can be crafted. In the new biome, new armors are available both as sets and as individual armor pieces tailored for specific gameplay purposes.

• New skills can be unlocked in various areas of the skill tree.

• Additional spells are available for mages; also, new arrows are available for ranged combat.

• New potions and foods can be crafted and produced.
  

Greatswords

• With greatswords, a completely new weapon type is now available. Greatswords can now be found in chests starting in the very first biome. Additionally to the new weapon, new skills, item perks and supportive armor pieces are now available. Combined, this creates many options to hone player builds towards this new gameplay.
  

Important updates (it’s like highlights, but different)

Update 7 introduces some very significant changes to the gameplay experience. As it is always best to be prepared, here are some of the biggest changes:

Balancing update

• Weapons, shields, armors, rings and food buffs have received a big overhaul:

• All weapons, rings, shields and armor have been checked for inconsistent stats, incorrect perks and other issues.

• Weapons have been reevaluated in terms of stats and perks to better match their appearance and fantasy.

• Durability has been increased for all weapons, and durability now increases correctly with the level and quality of weapons.

• HP, mana and stamina regeneration have been re-balanced. While the overall regeneration rate is lower, more items now give access to regeneration boosts, allowing players to tweak their builds for powerful regeneration if they so choose.

• The item details UI has been improved. Stats and details are now much easier to read with a cleaner overall look.

• Lore weapons can now be crafted on each tier once they have been unlocked. Additional lore weapons have been added to the game. With rebalanced stats, lore weapons are now a real option for players to fill gaps in their arsenal until more powerful loot has been found.

• More enemy weapons are now dropping from enemies at all tiers. Enemy weapons can now drop at any quality level, up to legendary.
  

Treasure chest rework

• The drop chances in all treasure chests have been reworked to significantly increase the chances for epic and legendary weapons in silver and especially in gold chests. For more details, check the “Game world and quests”-section of the changelog.

• Silver and gold chests can now drop 1 additional item on top of what already dropped in previous versions of the game. 

• Treasure chests now save their state for a fixed amount of in-game time. This means that emptied chests stay emptied, even when players return to the main menu and load the world again.
  

Water pouches and crafting with water

• Water pouches have been reworked. As water is now a simulated part of the world, the water as consumable and resource for recipes has also been reworked. For pouches, this means that they now have a fill-state of water instead of simply representing a static portion as previously. As a consequence, the item can no longer stack in the backpack. Existing stacks have been converted while keeping the amount of water - up to the maximum fill-state of the new pouch.  

• Water pouches can be filled in many places in the world: open water, wells, water barrels and even crafting factories if they carry water.

• Crafting factories that produce items with water as part of the recipe now contain the ability to store water themselves. If the water container is empty, they can also rely on the water in nearby wells or the reworked water pouches.

Water-related protection features

• The Flame Altar has a new feature: it can remove all simulated water in a base with one button press. This can be useful in case the base was either flooded from nearby lakes or when a happy accident happened during building with water. We all have that one friend who likes to flood the base when everyone is offline...

• Server hosts can now set up a new default guest role called “Visitor”. This role prevents terraforming outside the base, making it harder to do mischief with water sources outside the base. As always, dedicated server admins can freely add or remove the new setting in custom visitor roles.

• Added access to water-gameplay related features to the corresponding server roles.

• Flame altars always have oxygen bubbles around them, letting players teleport and respawn safely. This will come in handy for the inevitable Atlantis player builds we’re expecting to see very shortly.

Respawning at save points

• Previously, when logging out of the game and then re-entering, Flameborn always found themselves in the last-visited base. With update 7, players will now respawn at either the last-visited base or at the last-visited save point. This allows parties to take a break during a Hollow Hall run and then continue their adventure from the last visited save point within the Halls.
  

Still working on it

• We will watch very closely how water behaves for the players and we will continue to improve the simulation with feedback coming from the community.

• Work on improving the performance, especially around water simulation and when travelling through the new biome, remains a top priority.

• After the significant update of both the balancing and stats of gear and the increased drop chances for high-quality weapons we will continue to monitor the game feel, observe the changes and what parts still need tweaking. Make sure you share your feedback!

• Balancing the Fell Dragon Youngling is an ongoing topic for the team. While we want to have a challenging highlight, we are also aware that this boss can be an obstacle in the progression for some players. While we monitor the situation, remember that the game offers tools to make your life easier in this challenge, including boss-specific tweaks in the difficulty settings.

• We are fully aware that the shader compilation times are a major pain point for many. Work on improving the situation started a while back already, but the rework is not yet on the stability level we need. We will continue to work on this with a high priority.

Changelog

Water

• Water has been added as a dynamically simulated gameplay element. It can be found in the open world in lakes, ponds and similar, and it can be freely added and removed by players in their bases. Only in bases will placed, removed or redirected water be saved.

• The movement abilities of the player character have been extended, and they now include swimming, diving and new underwater interactions.

• Pathfinding and movement support have been added for water-based and amphibious enemies.

• Reworked land-based enemies, farm animals, pets and survivors to avoid water if possible and to react correctly should they get fully submerged.

• Reworked water pouches and crafting recipes using water to strengthen the connection between water as a crafting resource and the simulated water of the gameworld.
  

Game world and quests

• A new region has been added to the gameworld: Veilwater Basin. It can be reached through the Blackmire region and through the Albaneve Summits. Enemy levels suggest a level 35 character with good equipment. This vast new area is home to abandoned human settlements, dense tropical forests, half-sunken ancient ruins, dangerous wild beasts and the deadly Drak. And if you dare venture into this unknown part of the world, bring a towel!

• The level of the Flame can now be raised to 9, if the necessary ingredients for the Flame Altar have been found.

• Added many smaller and larger lakes and ponds to the previous biomes.

• Added numerous fishing spots all over the open waters of Embervale.

• The drop chances in all treasure chests have been reworked. The chance for legendary weapons has been significantly increased in silver and golden chests, respectively, with even higher chances in the Shroud variations for each chest. Epic weapon drop chances have also increased for all silver and gold chests. While the chances for rare weapons are almost the same for silver chests, they are significantly reduced for gold chests. Uncommon and common weapons drop chances have been lowered in the silver chests.

• Armor and rings are no longer dropped from gold chests. This change increases the overall reliability of loot from the golden chest.

• Silver and gold chests can now drop 1 additional item on top of what already dropped in previous versions of the game.

• Fixed numerous level design issues all over Embervale, such as frustrating terrain topologies, incorrectly placed objects, incorrect loot drops, and enemies or wildlife not spawning as intended.

• Further improved and polished points of interest in the Kindlewastes region.

• Reworked the settlement “Shorewatch” in the Kindlewastes.

• Reworked the Shroud areas south of the Pikemead city area.

• Fixed an issue that caused less roaming wildlife in the Nomad Highlands than intended.

• Reworked collection quests to guide players correctly through the steps when they found quest-related objects before the quest was triggered.

Gameplay and combat

• Raised the maximum level for play characters to 45. Accordingly, the new maximum level for weapons is 50 after full upgrading.

• Added a fishing mini-game. All the player needs is a fishing rod, some bait and open water. For really impressive catches, look out for disturbed water surfaces, indicating especially promising fishing spots!

• Added several new skills to the skill tree:

  • Upwards Slash Attack - Allows an in-air attack with each melee weapon when an attack is performed in the first half of a jump-arc.

  • Splash Dash - Forward lunge while swimming or diving.

  • Whirlwind Crescendo - Allows two-handed weapons to trigger a whirl attack at the end of the attack's chain. You're allowed to yell "Demaciaaa!" when you do it.

  • Kick - When attacking out of block with any melee weapon, this skill now triggers a kick that deals stamina damage to enemies and interrupts enemy spellcasting. If there's any madness that needs to be dealt with swiftly.

  • Fisherman’s Resolve - Increases Fishing Endurance by 30 %. This allows extended battles with hooked fish.

  • Wet Dog / Wetter Dog - Reduces the Stamina and Stamina Regeneration Reduction from the Wet and Soaking Wet debuff from 50% to 25%. Very handy. Brief reminder that you can respec your skills at the nearest Altar!

  • Titan Edge - Damage with the Greatsword is increased by an additional 10 %.

  • Last Meal - Food Buffs persist through death, but they last half as long.

  • Expose Weakness - Landing a Critical Strike with Daggers increases damage dealt to the enemy by 25 % for 3 seconds.

  • Magical damage resistance / one for each magical damage type - Reduces magical damage received by 5% for the selected type.

  • Shared Misery - When receiving Shroud Damage, all players in a 20-meter range receive +15% increased Shroud Resistance for 30 secs.

  • Righteous Fire - Healing with a spell triggers a burst of fire that deals 50% of the heal amount to nearby Fell Enemies. We see you, battle medic players.

Multiplayer

• Hosts of dedicated servers can now configure filtering tags that help players who are looking for a new server to join to find a perfect match. Tags include “LookingForPlayers”, “BaseBuilding”, “Exploration”, “Roleplay”, and also individual language tags for the language spoken on the server. Please read the enshrouded_server_readme.txt for more information! Respectfully yours, -people who write documentation

• Reworked the Join menu to make use of the new dedicated server tags for filtering the server list. Additionally, filtering for voice and text chat requirement has been enabled.

• Admins now have two options to remove misbehaving players from the server:

  • Kick players - this removal option was already available in previous versions of Enshrouded. It is a quick and simple kick from the server, and it allows clients to rejoin the server once the host has opened a new session.

  • Ban players - this new method removes players from the server and adds them to a persistent blacklist. Should they attempt to re-join the server in the future they will automatically be rejected by that server - unless the admin removes the name from that list. Note: banning is available both for peer-to-peer hosts and dedicated servers.

• Added a UI widget for adding selected players to the ban-list, viewing the ban-list and for unbanning players.

• Added a new permission setting for server hosts: allowing or disallowing terraforming or interactions with the open world outside of bases. The new permission is set to “not allowed” in the newly available “Visitor” role that admins can use for players on their servers.

• Added the “Visitor” role as an option for peer-to-peer hosts and made it available as a preset in the configuration file for dedicated server admins.

• Further improved the dedicated server details view when selecting a server from the list in the Join menu.

• Fixed an issue that caused several friends playing on one peer-hosted server to show up incorrectly in the Join menu.

• Improved the network code of Enshrouded. The game now better detects changing network conditions, which helps to adapt to higher or lower pings and bandwidth in real-time. The goal is always to provide the best possible experience, depending on the quality of the connection.

User Interface

• With this update, input customizations have received a major improvement. Note: Please excuse the change of some of the default bindings, as it might disrupt your muscle memory. We reviewed the control schemes globally and made adjustments in response to community feedback, and also for consistency and maintainability.

• The game now allows customization of menu actions.

• The game now allows customization of input modalities, meaning players can now define whether an input triggers its action on "tap" or "long press" and similar cases.

• Exposed some gameplay actions for customization that were not previously available.

• Reworked the key/button rebinding menu, among others, with these changes:

  • Added indication of conflicting bindings, and the ability to jump to or between issues.

  • Added indication of changed bindings for a more convenient overview.

  • Cleaned up mixed use of gameplay actions and menu actions, which were previously prone to cause conflicts.

• Reworked the UI in the item details menu to allow a better overview and to have a cleaner overall look.

• Added support for the display of remaining oxygen time underwater and other water-related UI elements.

• Improved tooltips for the primary and main attributes in the attributes screen. It now includes individual contributors to better inform players of the various sources that constitute the final sum.

• Improved the item compare widget. It now excludes ingredients and aligns the thumbnail image correctly.

• Added the information of the new content to the attributes menu such as the new weapon type, new damage modifiers, oxygen, new contributors to the rested buff and others.

• Chests or crafting factory interactions with controller input no longer use separate right-stick bindings for backpack/storage and backpack/action bar transfers. Instead, the Quick Move action (which is still on the Y-button by default) now shows its transfer direction and allows adjusting it while the button is held. The last used direction is maintained, so the button press can now easily repeat your current intention.

Building, survivors and farm animals

• Several new tools and placeable props have been added that allow adding, removing and transporting water. Some of them can be used deliberately on demand, others operate automatically over time.

• A new type of prop unlocks in the newest progression tier - Water Barriers. With these, builders can block water from entering specific areas while allowing players to transition freely between water or dry areas of underwater bases.

• The rake tool's terraforming radius can now be adjusted manually and the tool can now be used to dig small ditches or irrigation canals, thanks to a shiftable depth of the cursor. Additionally, the finetune mode has been made available for the rake, allowing even more precision when designing the landscape.

• The first set of harvesting tools now has reduced stamina costs to mitigate the necessity of taking long pauses while chopping trees or digging for ores.

• Added a new type of seedling to the game: underwater seedlings. Seedlings such as rice need to stand in water and algae can only grow when fully submerged in water.

• Added a new option for players to use plants creatively. With the new tool, the watering can, players can view farming information for each plant, such as soil information, growth state of the plant and others. As part of this new information widget, players can now also limit the growth of individual plants in their base. This can be used to stop young trees from growing into their full-grown versions, as one example.

• The menu of the summoning scepter for Survivors has been completely reworked. It is now in alignment with the layout and functionality of the building menu.

• Fixed cases in which survivors couldn’t be placed in a player base.

• Survivors now pause a while and engage in (quiet) conversations with each other when they meet other survivors while roaming the base.

• Survivors and animals now try to avoid standing in the way of Flameborn building in their base. They react to the cursor of the building hammer, specifically.

• Further improved pathfinding and roaming behavior for survivors and animals. Additionally, improved their detection of holes in the terrain and in buildings.

• Survivors can now engage in conversations with players more than once per roaming phase. Previously, they would sometimes ignore the player when trying to talk to them if the player did so a second time shortly after finishing a conversation. It wasn’t too bad, but rude nonetheless.

Crafting

• A new type of prop is now available for crafting: editable signs, plaques and road-signs. Once placed, the signs can be interacted with to write descriptions on them. Note: The feature is now available in its first iteration. We will continue to work on it and update it with more improvements in the future.

• Many recipes now allow alternative input resources. For example, torches can now be crafted using all types of wood.

• Stack sizes for resources and crafting materials have been adjusted to present a more unified approach. When adjusted, the numbers were aligned at the highest previous example within a type of resource - meaning, no stack size is now smaller than in a previous version of the game.

• The output of food recipes has been unified. All food recipes yield now 5 food items.

• The output of building- and roof blocks has been unified. All building block recipes now yield 100 blocks, all roof block recipes now yield 50 blocks.

• Added roman numerals to recipes for decorative props that are mostly variations and previously all shared the same name.

• Reworked all crafting recipes containing water as a resource to now work with water portions instead of water pouch items. Water charges can be derived from the water contained in the crafting factory itself, from wells in the base or from filled water pouches.

• Rainwater can now be collected in specific water barrels to be used as a crafting resource, for filling a pool or using for irrigation, among others.

• Crafting factories that work on recipes that contain water have their own water storage capability. This storage can be filled in several ways: by adding water with a water tool such as the watering can, by pulling water from a nearby well via a simple button press or by adding filled pouches into the inventory.

• Crafting factories can now have a new requirement: force. In update 7, the needed force can be provided by setting up a rotating water wheel in the player base, or alternatively by setting up a windmill in the player base.

• Finally, the tier 1 Explosive Powderball has a crafting recipe.

• Added a golden version to all monster head trophies.

Customization

• Added 2 new unique hairstyles.

• Added several vibrant new hair colors and armor tinting palettes.

• Fixed several beards not fitting perfectly to some of the head shapes, including female heads.

• Added new vanity items.

Audio

• Added new music tracks for the new regions in the game world.

• Added a new instrument for jamming with the party: the handpan drum.

• Added a new configuration slider in the sound options, allowing for the definition of the music frequency from seldom to constant playing of music.

• Added several new sound volume sliders for various features the game.

• Sound volume can now be set individually for the following features:

  • Master Volume Music User Interface

  • Player Voice Ambience Instruments

  • Pets

  • NPC Voices

  • Water

• Implemented a new sound technology for correctly playing sounds for flowing or still bodies of water in a dynamic, simulated environment.

• Increased the fidelity of rain sounds.

• The sound now increases and decreases more correctly depending on the amount of actual rain at the player’s position.

• Fixed and reworked several older enemy sounds.

• Climbing ladders and climbing walls now have the correct sounds, depending on the material of the ladder or wall.

General improvements

• The code controlling the playing of player animations has been reworked. This provides the basis for additional features and expanded options for player animations in the future.

• Improved the visuals for reflective surfaces such as ice and the new water surfaces by using ray-traced specular reflections.

• Added visual improvements to clouds in the sky.

• Further improved the visual quality of the dynamic global illumination: The quality of global illumination has been improved considerably by using 4 times more samples per probe, making them faster and more stable. Also, probes now use real surface textures instead of simply the voxel colors, which results in a lot more accurate and consistent direct lighting.

• Direct & indirect lighting is now more consistent, more natural and pleasant-looking.

• Incorrect light leaks through volumetrics, such as fog, have been reduced. Also, issues with emissive materials that caused incorrect light over too far a distance have been fixed.

• High clouds are now contributing to the overall global illumination.

• Fixed incorrect global illumination around vegetation. For instance, the silvery sheen of foliage has been reduced when in shadows.

• Tents now use light scattering, increasing the brightness inside tents and coloring the light in accordance with the tent material.

• Improved the lighting and visuals of the atmosphere during specific times of day, such as the golden hours.

• Further improved the light intensity calculations and coloring of the sun and moonlight.

• Improved visuals and fixed several issues with the rendering of materials in the game world and on the characters. Especially, visual issues with the roughness of materials have been addressed.

• Point lights can now be used as spotlights. This new technology is used in the new miner's helmet item, as an example.

• Several issues with SSAO have been fixed, such as noise reduction. Also, more details have been added to SSAO.

• Fixed several localization issues. A big “Thank you” to all the players who posted loca issues or improvement suggestions in the various social media channels!

If you read this far, thank you for sticking it out! We hope you enjoy Enshrouded's seventh update. Let us know what you think below, and on Feature Upvote in our Update 7 megathreads, too!

The team at Keen Games.