You may need to clear your cache
before embarking on your first adventure.
The first
adventuring location, "The Heart of the Woods", is now available! This is the first location, geared towards players who have just started and ranges in difficulty from level 1-2 cats.
As explained in the pre-adventuring update, not-cats will be capped at a maximum level 4 until the next location to prevent you from getting too far ahead (and to save you from the temptation to grind to the higher levels at painfully slow rates.) What this means is that there are many features implemented into adventuring that won't show up just yet. Class abilities are designed and implemented up to level 13, so you can think of this as just a taste of what's yet to come.
Since this is beta, it's likely we may continue to tweak monster stats/groups, drop rates, etc.
Adventuring Tips
Keyboard Controls
Adventuring should work via mouse/mobile touch or using key controls. I personally use exclusively key controls to get through adventuring. The relevant buttons will auto-highlight as you go, so much of the time you can just hit enter, but you can also tab (or shift-tab to go backwards) between the options and spaces.
Difficulty Level
This location is just the first location, so the first portion of it can be quite easy. The second portion becomes more manageable once your cats reach level 2 and unlock some of the level 2 abilities (or once you add in a small supply of items or even just a single friendship). My first playthrough of the location was on a fresh/brand new account and it took me three attempts to get to the end and defeat the boss. With individual variance, I would expect it to take you 2-5 times to get through.
There also seems to be some individual variation in how fast people move through adventuring. For example, it took me a week to finish a single run, but another person to test it got through in a single day.
If you are an established player with a lot of resources and relationships, you will likely fly through the location on the first go, though the last zone will still pose some challenges. If you're looking for a more challenging experience, feel free to try a few no-item runs as if you were brand new to the game.
Classes
Some classes are more entry level than others for a variety of reasons. Some classes have a higher start-up cost of items, and others have fairly core mechanics to them that will only show up later on. Some examples are below:
- Ranger and medic require a healthy stock of items to be functional. Getting yourself a supply of crossbow bolts and bandages is essentially a pre-requisite to these classes.
- Bards, while still useful enough, do not unlock their core feature before level 4 (being able to attack and deal damage with spite against bravery). They still have some good stuff, but they will become much more of a threat later on.
Skills
Some skills are much more useful than others in certain areas, so there is a definite learning curve to figuring out which ones you really want. Don't be afraid to give all of your cats the same few ones if you find some are particularly vital.
Something Looks Off
If anything ever looks particularly odd or like it's not working right, try refreshing the page. That tends to help sync everything up. We've worked out most of the major quirks now though, so hopefully it will not be too necessary.
The Economy
With the introduction of resource grinding, the pace of the game may shift and the values of items will very likely change. This is normal and expected. Additional money sinks are also going to be coming somewhat soon.
Shifting Seasons
Winter weather makes melee attacks a little weaker, and the rest of the year's bad weather primarily affects range attacks. Fortunately, most of you are fairly established and well-resourced now, so it shouldn't pose too much trouble for you. Since the weather effects impact monsters as well, get your crossbows ready to do some damage.
Adventuring Changes
- After some testing, a Harmony Cap has been implemented, meaning your cats are capped to a harmony of their highest level + 1. This prevents you from running in with a group of four littermates and dealing like 170 million damage a hit at level 1.
Known Adventuring Bugs
- The line of sight system still has some... "quirks" that need to be worked out. It's not always as intuitive as it could be, and there is a certain amount of "seeing through solid walls" allowed (it thinks you can see through the line between two blocked squares. This visually feels okay for monsters, but it feels Really weird when you're seeing through a huge solid wall. I'm still trying to work out why this is happening.
- The timing of die rolls / buttons hiding and unhiding / movement of health bars is still... off. Every time I fix some of it, something else gets messed up.
- Apostrophes in ability descriptions display as html code instead of apostrophes
Upcoming Changes
- Currently it is not possible to open the level-up bundles you get. A revamped box-opening system is coming in the next update to remedy this.
- At some point I would like to recolor the dice and ability/skill icons. They're very bright on darkmode. I have disliked them since I made them, but I made a pact with myself to not redraw them again until after adventuring was done (because I'd already wasted weeks doing it multiple times). Adventuring is now done, so I will probably get around to this eventually.
- I'd like to add the ability to rearrange/reorder your abilities. Right now leveling up and adding new abilities has no respect for your muscle memory.
How to Block Certain Monsters
While my art style leans fairly "cute", the game still does have some soft horror aesthetics and themes (Nothing too extreme, at least not much more intense than Nestor themselves). If there are items, monsters, etc. that bother you, below are some instructions on how to use an adblocker to block images in adventuring and on cats/in scenes/in the inventory. I've also provided the urls of some of the monsters that I know might fall into this category for some.
Squid said
First you'll need an adblocker, then you can right click and inspect element on the image of the cat:
You should see something like this. Copy the url of the item you'd like to block in question, so as an example we could choose https://www.pixelcatsend.com/images/clothing/scythe.png
Depending on the adblocker, you should in the settings have a place to add a custom filter, it might be under advanced settings. You can then copy the url into there. If you'd like to block both the icon and the image as it shows on cats, you can even add just "/clothing/scythe.png" so you don't have to grab both urls, but I won't promise it might not ever interfere with another site if some other site happens to have an image with that path end.
Cats or scenes will then show up per usual without that item. You may need to do a hard refresh for the change to take effect after adding it to your adblocker (hit ctrl while hitting f5).
If you don't want to open up inspect element, you can also go to the item database. This bit of text under the item's name is the filename of the image. You can just add "/images/clothing/imagename.png" and "/item_icons/clothing/imagename.png".
/decor/spider_trapdoor_1.png
/decor/spider_trapdoor_2.png
/decor/spider_trapdoor_3.png
/adventuring/monsters/spider_trapdoor_1.png
/adventuring/monsters/spider_trapdoor_2.png
/adventuring/monsters/spider_trapdoor_3.png
Snake Monsters
/decor/snake_vine_1.png
/decor/snake_vine_2.png
/decor/snake_vine_3.png
/adventuring/monsters/snake_vine_1.png
/adventuring/monsters/snake_vine_2.png
/adventuring/monsters/snake_vine_3.png
/decor/snake_vine_1.png
/decor/snake_vine_2.png
/decor/snake_vine_3.png
/adventuring/monsters/snake_vine_1.png
/adventuring/monsters/snake_vine_2.png
/adventuring/monsters/snake_vine_3.png
Creatures with Plants/Mushrooms on them
/decor/deer_grapevine_1.png
/decor/deer_grapevine_2.png
/decor/deer_grapevine_3.png
/adventuring/monsters/deer_grapevine_1.png
/adventuring/monsters/deer_grapevine_2.png
/adventuring/monsters/deer_grapevine_3.png
/buildings/pup_fungus_1.png
/buildings/pup_fungus_2.png
/buildings/pup_fungus_3.png
/adventuring/monsters/pup_fungus_1.png
/adventuring/monsters/pup_fungus_2.png
/adventuring/monsters/pup_fungus_3.png
Creatures with Many Eyes
/decor/corrmaple_juv_1.png
/decor/corrmaple_juv_2.png
/decor/corrmaple_juv_3.png
/adventuring/monsters/corrmaple_juv_1.png
/adventuring/monsters/corrmaple_juv_2.png
/adventuring/monsters/corrmaple_juv_3.png
Soft-Eldritch-Horror-y
/adventuring/monsters/shadow_nestor_1.png
/adventuring/monsters/shadow_nestor_2.png
/adventuring/monsters/shadow_nestor_3.png
Update continues in the next post
