0.9.3 Tool Upgrades

Meowllo! It feels like yesterday that I just wrote that giant patch note that was for character customization. I think it was also in April, no? Both rec and I got a lot of motivation from the positive feedback from the past couple of updates, so we really went ⭐ all-out ⭐ for this next big update: Tool Upgrades!

🌱 0.9.3 Ongoing

This patch isn’t just this singular one: we have a couple of other things, including a Seed Spreader to sow more than one tile at a time, that we want to implement before moving onto the mines.

Over the next couple of weeks, look forward to MIAO and Obelisk re-balances, as well as new food items to help the game move smoothly from early into mid game. As always, recursive will diligently write save migrations, so your save files and progress won’t be affected!

💎 Jeweler’s Table

The star of the show: the Jeweler’s Table is here! All tool upgrades will be made at this handy little station.

In Snacko, the main way to improve your tools actively and passively is by affixing gems. Currently, there are 8. Citrine, Emerald, Lapis, Ruby, Aquamarine, Amethyst, Opal, and Diamond.

Each gem gives different effects based on which tool it’s slotted on, and you can combine them to really suit your play style!

Some gems give multiple effects, being balanced out by both a buff and debuff. Maybe you can try to cancel some of those out with other gems…?

Any gems affixed to your tool can be removed at the Jeweler’s Table by using 5 Fire Fragments. The gems you used will get refunded to you, so we really encourage playing around with them once you’ve farmed up some gems to see what vibes with you!

You can even go really silly and do…whatever this is. You know, if you affix all rubies, fishing kinda becomes like mini golf. It becomes an angle and power bar guesser…

I did waste quite a bit of time playing around with this when we were testing…

Anyways, this applies to other equips, such as the Bow, Kart, and Summoning Bell.

Each time a gem is successfully affixed, it raises your tool level by 1, up to 5. So you start out with level 0 (no upgrades), all the way up to 5.

Each level, the amount of gems required increases by one.

So, for example, if you do want to follow in my clown footsteps of affixing only rubies to your fishing rod, you will need 15 rubies total to reach the max level.

The required number will be shown in the Jeweler’s Table, so no fret if that just went over your head!

✨ Effects

To help facilitate these new additions to the game, we’ve added a “Player” info panel in the Status portion of your journal. Please check it out once you have some tools upgraded to see what effects you have!

These effects are split into “Passive” and “Active”.

Active means that you’ll have to have it equipped (it’s the tool visible on your tool bar), or you have to be actively using it (like chopping down a tree).

Passive means that as long as it’s in your rucksack, you’ll be able to reap the benefits. This is for things such as move speed buffs and a passive incremental stamina restore.

You can also view per tool inside your rucksack easily!

There are way too many different effect combinations to cover in these notes, so I’ll leave it at that. There are 40 of them, so please experiment to your heart’s content!

🏹 Resource Gathering

In the past, there weren’t that many uses for the bow and arrows you could craft outside of speed running the shrines with a specific technique, or for taking down the few enemies in the mines.

Now, everyone can enjoy the pleasure that is shooting arrows!

Arrows now deal damage to resources. By upgrading your bow using a gem that gives a damage modifier, you could one-shot a tree. Or, you could add a bunch of +Extra Shot to your bow and end up with a spread shot.

Another thing to help make the whole experience of resource gathering feel better includes another re-balance of some resource health. Specifically, the old buildings in town are now easier to destroy.

It’s also now easier to see how much you have left to go as resources now display an HP bar. Enemies have the same bar, but in red.

When you’re out of stamina or using the wrong tool, the HP bar won’t show. If your tool is not high enough level, the HP bar will turn gray. We hope this makes it more clear why you can’t hit something!

Some of the later game resources in the forest or tundra have more health, but it should be offset by your tool upgrade effects.

This update also comes with the addition of a “defense” for resources: some resources will require your tool to be above a certain level in order to damage it. These go from non-upgraded tools in the town, farm, and Grassy Plains, to level 1 in the Desert Canyon, level 3 in the Mushroom Forest, and level 5 in the Frozen Tundra.

To help with the transition into this new upgrade, if you have affixed gems in your tools, we have refunded those gems into your overflow inventory. You also gain a free Emerald as a returning player in the mailbox.

New players who haven’t yet finished the Plains yet will have a quest posted to the bulletin board after the Plain’s Obelisk completion. Returning players can find that quest on their bulletin board as well. Nobu will teach you the basics, as well as give you some materials to help you on your way, so make sure you grab his quest!

We’ll be keeping a close eye out on balance and these recent changes in the upcoming weeks and tweak as hitches come up.

📫 Other

We’ve made some optimization to the fishing mini-game. If you were noticing high fan speeds or battery drain on your Deck when fishing frequently, we hope this will drastically improve your experience!

We also hope that with the variety of different effects you can apply to your fishing rod, those who find trouble reeling in fish can utilize the “start closer” or “fish speed” modifiers to make the mini-game more accessible.

It’s rough getting into early game stamina sometimes, right? Mikan has graciously opened up her kitchen to you! You can now use the stove at your BFF’s house.

To prevent potential softlocks, although this hasn’t happened yet to our knowledge, we have also added a usable workbench by Nobu’s house.

The “close” button on the Journal has moved! Instead of being in the top right, it’s now in the bottom right. This should help navigation with the gamepad feel smoother as it will no longer snap to the close button when trying to navigate to the right page. You can still close out using buttons and ESC like always!

We’ve also polished up the gamepad experience in the Skills page of your Journal. Although not all skills are currently being given EXP properly, most of the stats are still being tracked and will be retroactively rewarded to your save files once we are ready to implement all of them.

…And that’s the bulk of it! Nobu, as well as the “Upgrading Tools” book in your bookshelf should go into more detail on the specifics of the process.

We hope you have fun with this update! We’ll be pushing out other incremental additions and changes to 0.9.3 for a bit, so look forward to further improvements~

Thank you for your support! As always, any questions or issues, feel free to ping us in Discord any time 💌