Shields, Cooking, and Death

You can now increase your cooking skill by putting meat on a fire until it browns. You can add logs to the fire to keep the flames hot even while cooking. Don’t leave it too long or it will burn.

Shields are a lot of fun. I hold a wooden buckler in my off-hand and even though I suffer a 400ms cooldown penalty with my weapon it’s worth it to level up my shield block skill. With a higher level I can dodge more hits. I let a wolf and snake hit me repeatedly to level it up and every now and then the actual shield graphic of the particular shield I’m holding will pop up in front of my character with a clank sound. No damage taken! Though I wasn’t watching my hunger bar and eventually I lost all regen and died while staring at my shield blocks.

Now when you die there is a fade to black effect and a sort of obituary announced to all. For example: “Derp Victor has fallen! They were level 4 and skilled at knitting. They were killed by a polar bear.” It then asks you to create a new character, followed by the game fading back into view as you start again. I may have lost my yarn but at least I got to keep some of my knitting abilities. The familiar ‘All hail…’ text in teal is back.

Now the stage is set so I can implement a sort of traits system, though I’m still ironing out the details with it all. I also need to add a lot more plant life and streamline the existing seed planting. Check back for more updates soon.