{"json":{"game":{"name":"ASHVALE","description":"New in 0.8.76: the whole planet is open. Walk, paddle or fly anywhere on the globe - every continent, island and sea - and your place is kept wherever you stop. Spring brings the sugar bush. A great forest of maple and birch now stands between Ashvale and Ziibiing, with an iskigamizigan (sugar camp) at its edge. The game has a temperature now, and in the two weeks before the maples bud, on a day that thaws after a night that froze, the ziinzibaakwadwaaboo (maple sap) runs: long-press an ininaatig (maple) with an empty bucket to collect it, one bucket a tree a day. Peel wiigwaas (birch bark) from a birch, once a year a tree; Ma'iingan trades ojiitad (sinew) for a deer hide, and Migizi folds you a biskitenaagan (birch bark sap bucket) from two wiigwaas and a sinew - or buy an akik (pail) at the Ashvale store. Boil sap at any fire into zhiiwaagamizigan (syrup), and again into ziinzibaakwadoons (maple candy). Nookomis asks for sap, syrup and candy every spring, and the first time she gives you a Quillwork makak of your own, the roomiest pack there is. The people of Ziibiing watch the world: Animikii tells the weather, Ziigwan the plants and birds, Waabigwan the moon and its name - thirteen moons - and Makwa the sun, the stars and the planets. New trees: cedar and tamarack in the wet woods. Ziigwan carves a gaandakii'iganaak (push pole) from tamarack and bawa'iganaakoog (knockers) from cedar; without them two in a canoe simply paddle together, with them they go ricing. If your partner drops out of the game in a canoe, they ride on with you and come back where the canoe is. Trees of a kind bud together, maples turn every shade from orange to scarlet, the wild rice sleeps through winter and ripens by mid August, and examining an item with an Ojibwe name shows its English too. On phones, a long press opens the game's menu, not the browser's. In 0.8.75, the @ashvale Bank's answers reach your game again. After you signed in, most of what the Bank sent back - that your save was kept, the things others dropped near you, the trees they felled and the canoes left at the bank - could go astray; now your game keeps listening. In 0.8.74, West End. The two houses and the crossroads on the Saltmere road are called West End now, which is where they really lie. And your game saves more surely: if a word from the @ashvale Bank went astray, your next save could be turned away as if you had played on another device, and the game stopped - now the Bank knows your own saves and keeps taking them. In 0.8.73, one device at a time, fixed. Opening ASHVALE now always takes over from an older game of yours - an old message could sometimes stop a brand-new game just after it opened. In 0.8.72, one straight road. The cobbles now leave Ashvale between the Eastend houses and run as one straight road all the way to Saltmere - no more branch round the fishing pond - and carry on through Saltmere's main street down to the harbour and along the waterfront to the pier. The gas lamps stand down one side of the road now, twice as far apart. Odric and his broken wagon are back beside the road where it runs now. The quests point the true way: since Ashvale moved to the northern hemisphere every north, south, east and west in the stories, the signs and the carvings has been measured again from where things really lie, so Saltmere is the harbour to the northwest and the chapel carving sends you south. The hawk flies twice as high. Fly off from a fight and no blade or bite can reach you, but archers and spellcasters can still shoot you out of the sky. And you walk straighter, without zig-zagging back and forth on the way. In 0.8.71, Eastend. Ashvale has grown past its east fence along the road to Saltmere: two new timber houses face each other across the cobbles, a footpath crosses the road between them with a gas lamp on either side, and a town guard keeps the crossroads. Pax the painter has moved into the north house, where there is room to dry a canvas, and Modulus the surveyor is out at the new crossroads measuring it for the third time this morning - their errands now send you to them there. In 0.8.70, the sky. The sun, the moon and the planets are real bodies now, scaled like our own: the sun and the moon each half a degree across, the moon lit by the sun so its phases are true, and its month 29 and a half game days. Real stars fill the night - the constellations as we know them and the Milky Way - and Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn wander among them on their real orbits. There are eclipses: the moon slides across the sun and the day goes dim, or the moon passes through the planet's shadow and turns copper. The people around the fire in Ziibiing watch the sky and will tell you when the next ones come. Ashvale now lies in the northern hemisphere, so the year has turned: it is winter. Tilt your view past the lowest point and you slide into your own eyes to look up at the sky, zoom in a little, and follow the sun, the moon or a planet across it; others see your head turn to where you look. The hawk flies in first person, looking down at the land or up at the sky, and perches still in the branches. The Lake Castle is back, with its own castle stone. Canoes stay where you leave them, lying along the bank, for a whole game year; two paddlers go four times as fast as a run and share the work; the person in the stern steers, and a landing gives no new canoe while three are left nearby. If you leave while paddling, you come back in your canoe. The campfires in Ziibiing cook, and the wigwams face the rising sun. Your game follows you safely from device to device: an older device can no longer put back what you changed on another. In 0.8.69, canoes. Step out of a canoe and it stays where you left it, afloat at the bank, for anyone to take again - for a whole game year - so nobody is left stranded on the far side of the river. A canoe now goes three times as fast as you can run, and it keeps to the middle of the river instead of cutting across to the bank. In 0.8.68, the seasons come alive. In spring the broadleaf trees sprout little clusters of leaves at the ends of their branches that swell into full crowns, each tree a few days apart; the snow melts away in patches over a couple of weeks and the green grass comes through, and the small flowers, grass tufts and mushrooms come back one by one. In autumn the coloured leaves lie only under the trees that drop them, and they go when the frost comes - then the ground turns white. The pines and other evergreens stay green all winter with snow on their boughs, and the bare branches carry a line of snow along their tops. It only snows in winter now. The wild rice grows through the year too: shoots after the ice goes out, tall green stalks by midsummer, heads that darken to dark burgundy, and the grain is ripe only from late August to early October - the ricing season - before the stalks go to straw. Careful on the ice in spring: when the thaw comes, anyone still standing on a frozen lake falls through, wakes at the town portal, and everything they carried sinks to the bottom of the lake. Fishing that lake may one day hook it back up instead of a fish - and the more lies on the bottom, the better the chance. The sun and the moon now show in the sky, where they really are, the moon in its true phase. You walk on top of the ice now, not along the lake bed. Viewing another player's stats asks their game for them instead of showing all ones. In 0.8.67, the seasons. The planet leans on its axis and the year is 365 game days, so spring, summer, autumn and winter come round in turn, opposite in the two hemispheres, strongest toward the poles and barely felt at the equator. In autumn the broadleaf trees turn gold, russet and scarlet at full leaf, then each drops all its leaves within a couple of days of the others in late autumn, covering the ground in their colours until the frost. The small flowers, grass tufts and mushrooms die back with the leaf fall. In winter the trees stand bare, snow lies on the ground and the lakes and ponds freeze hard enough to walk across - but the sea, the bays and the running rivers never freeze. In spring the first leaves sprout from the ends of the branches before the crowns fill in, and the small plants come back one by one once the snow has gone. The weather keeps the season: where it is winter and cold enough it only snows or clears, and it never snows anywhere else. Fog now lies in great soft sheets at a few heights over the ground. Loading is much faster - going into a wigwam, the cave or through a portal used to stall the game for seconds, and now the loading screen comes up the moment you choose to go. The wigwams have a loading screen of their own: birch bark walls and the glow of the fire. With sadfrogltc: town guards keep the peace in Ashvale and Saltmere and light the lamps and torches at dusk and put them out at dawn; antidotes now also ward off poison for a while; Vorth's rosary can be worn; the Red Pyre has its pews and altar; and directions in the quests agree with the true-north compass. Fixed: a quest kit you sold or dropped (like the Even Grove saplings) is handed back when you talk to the one who gave the quest. In 0.8.66, with sadfrogltc, the Red Pyre and the Even Grove. In the Spider Cave lie the bones of Edric, a Vorthan of the Red Pyre, his ghost still keeping watch; his note leads to Mother Wenna of Saltmere, and his orange robe and Vorth's rosary are yours to find. Out at the Even Grove, Vael asks you to plant saplings where the woods were cut, and then to deal with the three who have been troubling it. Saltmere has a Town Hall with Mayor Calder and a bank counter, and the old chapel has a bones yard and a true-north compass. Wren the tailor now sells hats, capes and robes as NFTs instead of giving them away at the start. Day and night now turn every two hours, and a moonless night is starlight: a sky full of stars and just enough light to find your way. Fixed: after a death, what you dropped could also show up in your chest, and picking it back up could leave you with two of everything. In 0.8.65 Ziibiing, an Ojibwe village on the river south of Ashvale - follow the skinny trail down from the village. Six birch bark wigwams stand in a circle round the communal fire, bark sewn over a cage of bent ironwood, their doors to the east; step inside one and sit by its fire. Seven people of the village in Woodland regalia - jingle dress, ribbon shirts, otter fur turbans, beaded bandolier bags - and a birch bark makak that holds your things like the Ashvale chest. Take the jiimaan (canoe) from the landing and paddle the river, alone or with a friend; it turns in arcs like a real canoe. Down the river the water widens into a lake of manoomin, wild rice, dark heads nodding over the water. Ricing takes two: one stands in the stern with the push pole, the other sits with the ricing sticks and knocks the rice into the canoe. Mishoomis, sitting cross-legged in his wigwam, wants twenty handfuls, and has a really special gift for whoever brings them. Also new: a hand-laid cobblestone road with stones of every shape, and proper models for the Saltmere Enchantery's ember staff, storm staff, venom dagger and snare bow. In 0.8.64 signing in on a new device now waits for the @ashvale Bank to hand over your character, and asks again until it answers, so you start exactly where you left off instead of as a new adventurer. In 0.8.62 your game follows you. The @ashvale Bank now keeps your whole character - skills, bag, gear, quests and where you stand - under your wallet, so you can sign in on any device and carry on exactly where you left off. It is packed small, saved as you play and as you leave. Fixed: the chest no longer offers things again that you already took or used, which happened on a new browser or device. A cobblestone road now runs from Ashvale's square out of the east gate all the way to Saltmere's west street, with the gas lamps along its verges. And lamps and torches light the same at every distance - no more change in the light as you walk up to one. In 0.8.61 the night lights reach as far as you can see. Every street lamp, torch and campfire now throws a pool of light on the ground all the way out, so a lit road shows its lamps glowing far ahead instead of only the few beside you, and more of the lights nearest you really light the scene. In 0.8.60 gas street lamps light the road from Ashvale to Saltmere - iron posts with glass lanterns standing along the verges of the trail, Ashvale's east road and Saltmere's west road, lit from dusk till dawn - with road lights by sadfrogltc. Saltmere's street torches stand on the verges now, not in the road. The Spider Cave's torches are small torches set into the rock down both walls, leaning out at an angle. A torch you drop stands upright in the ground and keeps burning, lighting the dark round it, and the torch in your hand points forward. The wraith has left Whisperwood: wraiths now haunt only the Spider Cave, far below. The world is ready before you get there: trees, land and towns are built beyond what you can see, so nothing pops up as you walk or fly, the distant woods no longer turn white, and a hawk sees nearly twice as far. And the Auditor stands clear of the church eaves. New in 0.8.59: Prayer, by sadfrogltc. Every monster now leaves bones to bury for Prayer experience; pray at the altar in Ashvale's new church and raise one of three protections over your head - from melee, from arrows or from magic - while your prayer points last. Father Aldous has an errand for you, The Wayside Prayer, out to a broken wagon on the Saltmere road and on to Mother Wenna at the new Saltmere Chapel, who gives you a Monk's robe that makes your prayers last longer. And the nights follow the real moon: bright at full moon, pitch black at new moon, when only torches and fires light the dark. Also fixed: drinking an antidote no longer breaks your hitpoints. In 0.8.58 day and night. A sun circles the planet once every twenty-four hours, and wherever you stand its height sets the light - bright days, orange dusks and dark nights under a faint blue moon - and the shadows fall the way the real sun shines. Night is dark, so the general stores now sell a hand torch: hold it in your off hand and it lights everything eight paces round you. Other glowing things light the dark too - the Spider Queen's Crown gives off a soft violet light. In 0.8.57 the Spider Cave. Follow the trail west from Whisperwood's road to a rock outcrop in the woods and climb down into the dark: one long winding tunnel lit only by torches, with giant rats, cave spiders, giant spiders, a swamp monster in a flooded grotto, wraiths, the Ash Knight, the Spider Queen and, at the very end, the Lich of Ashvale - the end of Elder Maren's Ashen Crown at last. Everything down there hunts you and follows you anywhere, even up into the daylight. Spiders poison you: your Hitpoints orb turns green until it wears off, or until food or an antidote (now at the general stores) cures it. The Queen drops spider silk, potions and gold, and now and then her crown, a numbered collectible. The far end of the cave comes up near the village. Also new: send a private message to anyone playing with /@name and your message, at any distance; and the ASHVALE Atlas shows the contacts who have you in their address book too, while they play. In 0.8.56 a timber wolf den out on the open grass north of Whisperwood - four wolves, so step carefully north of the woods. Ponds in the wild lie flat now, their water meeting the shore all the way round. And sounds carry like they should: a fight, an axe or a fire is heard up close and fades away over fifteen paces, so the whole valley no longer rings in your ears. In 0.8.55 the woods have ways through. No patch of ground is walled in by trees any more, so deer, boar and players never get stuck in a thicket, and the thickest woods are a little thinner - Whisperwood too, where one of Iria's timber wolf dens was shut in. The desert grows saguaro cactus instead of pines. North is the planet's north now: a red dot on the rim of your minimap always points to it, and tapping it turns you to face it. And your place is kept wherever you stop - a hawk over the open sea comes back over the sea, and anyone left where nobody can stand wakes on the nearest shore, not back in the village. In 0.8.54 the ASHVALE Atlas knows where you are. Open it from the Games tab while signed in and a blue dot marks where your character last stood - the You button flies you down to it. In 0.8.53 the chest is quicker. Tap a thing in your chest or your bag and it moves across at once - gear and other NFTs one at a time, and for Gold, logs, fish and every other token a number pad pops up, the game's own keys on screen with a little screen, Max, OK and Cancel, so you choose how many without your phone's keyboard; Max never asks for more than your bag can hold. Long-press or right-click for Take 1, Take N or Examine. On a phone the chat box now rides up above your keyboard while you type and settles back down when the keyboard closes. In 0.8.52 Iria waits on the Whisperwood main path, pale as the mist, with two tasks - cook her a chicken, then bring her three timber wolf pelts from the dens west of the north pond - and her blessing, the Gift of Angels. With it comes the Ring of Angels, one of one: worn, it catches you when a hit leaves you under a fifth of your hitpoints and carries you home to Ashvale, then rests an hour, or ten minutes once Iria has blessed you. Iria and the ring are the work of sadfrogltc, the first player to add to Ashvale through its open repository. Your character now plays on one device at a time: open ASHVALE somewhere else and the older game stops, with a button to play there instead, so nobody sees you flicker between two places. And when a new version comes out the game saves and tells you, so you know to leave, refresh your Games tab and come back in. In 0.8.51 the wild herds stampede. Attack one deer, goat or hare and the whole herd bolts together, all the same way, away from you - they run about twenty-five paces, graze where they stop, and wander home a few minutes later, so a hunter gets one good shot. And the Feather Headband: a collection of twenty, a beaded red band with one black-tipped feather, never sold and never earned, all twenty with @apple. In 0.8.50 the Big Chief Headdress - a war bonnet of white feathers tipped in black, one of one, never sold and never earned, worn by @apple. Gold, rune stones and anything worth 100 GOLD or more now stay where they fall until somebody picks them up, held by @ashvale for whoever finds them, even after everyone has left. Lose the connection and the game tells you, with a Reload button, instead of letting you play on alone. The people of Ashvale and Saltmere look out over their streets now, not all the same way. In 0.8.49 ASHVALE loads much faster - about 40 seconds down to about 15 on a slow phone - and the world now loads in parts: only the towns near you, the rest as you travel. Arrive somewhere new through a portal and a swirl of portal light carries you there while the town loads. Long-press or right-click another player to see their combat level, and View stats shows all their skills. Tap a quest in your Quests panel to read its whole story in the words of the one who gave it, and remove it from the log if you like - your progress stays, and the giver takes you back where you left off. Fenn, Rowan, Cobb, Mabb, Tolly and Bryce have faces of their own now. In 0.8.48 the wild places are wilder. Deer move in herds of twenty to thirty, wild boar in sounders of six to twelve, hares two or three to a form, and timber wolves in packs of seven to fifteen, and they are met more often across the map. No wolf pack stands within six hundred paces of the village well any more, so the last thing Fenn the tanner asks for is the long walk it always was. The village folk have re-counted everything they tell you - his herd counts, the warden's hare and deer distances, the marsh deer and the cook's venison all say what the land actually holds now, and the marsh deer graze south of Saltmere, where they are; the old line pointed the other way. In 0.8.47 the Quests panel reads its own names properly, so a quest that wants logs says \"bring 8 logs\" instead of \"bring 8 logses\", and a deer, a trout or a salmon is the same word at any number. In 0.8.46 the camera sees through walls, roofs and trees that get in the way of your character; stairs in tall houses work properly; long-press another player to trade with them or follow them; you wake at the portal of the last town you were in. Every line names the villager who gave you the quest and the thing you actually have to bring or slay, with how many you have and how many you need - it used to guess, and it guessed wrong. And there is a new thread in Ashvale: Fenn the tanner keeps frames of skins drying on the lane below the east road, and nobody in the village knew he had them. Six rat pelts to start, eight off the hares, three boar hides, two from the timber wolves, and a word said to Pip at the end - then he hands you his own mithril skinning knife, the only one in the valley. The cook at the kitchen range off the well is Hob now, and still teaches anyone who brings something cooked. Ashvale and Saltmere are rebuilt - timber-framed plaster houses with tiled roofs, brick gables, glass windows and open shutters, each house in its own colours, and Saltmere's tall harbour houses four storeys high. A 3D fantasy RPG on a whole small planet of your own: two continents in a wide ocean, island chains, rivers that run from the mountains to the sea, deserts, rainforest, taiga and snowy peaks, with weather that follows the climate. Walk out of Ashvale village, take the trail down to Saltmere, a harbour town on the coast with docks and tall houses you can climb, and fight, chop, mine, fish and cook your way across the world. The trail has an end now: Cobb the elder gives the last quest, and a stone that brings you back to the harbour whenever it wakes. Perla the net-mender sends you out onto the harbour marks with a net, a rod and a pot. Silas the mason has a job going at the north gate for anyone who can chop, mine and keep their word. Mabb the sailmaker is re-cutting the north boat's sail and wants willow, deer leather and a word said at Bela's counter. Pip the apprentice has a pump to build to clear the winter water out of the mine, and wants tin, hare skins, two wolf pelts and the fall of the ground off the surveyor. And Auditor the clerk has one line in his ledger that has never balanced, and will close it with gold out of the village's own seam, both the mithril stones in the parish, slow-burning maple charcoal, and a word said to Pax by the blue door. Latency the warden keeps the north gate, the torches and the road up the range, and his thread is a ladder made of wood: hares on the stubble, four deer hides for a case, six lengths off the nineteen yews behind him, and a word said to Orin at the Saltmere anvil. Meet other players standing exactly where they are. Your progress carries over.","version":"0.8.76","players":"Solo or online","multiplayer":true,"family":"ashvale","genre":"rpg","play":"c879bc1f5f3cfc1300b9f24252a47ce395028dc65fc78a0ab3004a9f272649f5","cover":"28d1007491d413d4c07cce95d43eff4c54600cffd78661ff3456606a15493210"}},"raw":"{\"game\": {\"name\": \"ASHVALE\", \"description\": \"New in 0.8.76: the whole planet is open. Walk, paddle or fly anywhere on the globe - every continent, island and sea - and your place is kept wherever you stop. Spring brings the sugar bush. A great forest of maple and birch now stands between Ashvale and Ziibiing, with an iskigamizigan (sugar camp) at its edge. The game has a temperature now, and in the two weeks before the maples bud, on a day that thaws after a night that froze, the ziinzibaakwadwaaboo (maple sap) runs: long-press an ininaatig (maple) with an empty bucket to collect it, one bucket a tree a day. Peel wiigwaas (birch bark) from a birch, once a year a tree; Ma'iingan trades ojiitad (sinew) for a deer hide, and Migizi folds you a biskitenaagan (birch bark sap bucket) from two wiigwaas and a sinew - or buy an akik (pail) at the Ashvale store. Boil sap at any fire into zhiiwaagamizigan (syrup), and again into ziinzibaakwadoons (maple candy). Nookomis asks for sap, syrup and candy every spring, and the first time she gives you a Quillwork makak of your own, the roomiest pack there is. The people of Ziibiing watch the world: Animikii tells the weather, Ziigwan the plants and birds, Waabigwan the moon and its name - thirteen moons - and Makwa the sun, the stars and the planets. New trees: cedar and tamarack in the wet woods. Ziigwan carves a gaandakii'iganaak (push pole) from tamarack and bawa'iganaakoog (knockers) from cedar; without them two in a canoe simply paddle together, with them they go ricing. If your partner drops out of the game in a canoe, they ride on with you and come back where the canoe is. Trees of a kind bud together, maples turn every shade from orange to scarlet, the wild rice sleeps through winter and ripens by mid August, and examining an item with an Ojibwe name shows its English too. On phones, a long press opens the game's menu, not the browser's. In 0.8.75, the @ashvale Bank's answers reach your game again. After you signed in, most of what the Bank sent back - that your save was kept, the things others dropped near you, the trees they felled and the canoes left at the bank - could go astray; now your game keeps listening. In 0.8.74, West End. The two houses and the crossroads on the Saltmere road are called West End now, which is where they really lie. And your game saves more surely: if a word from the @ashvale Bank went astray, your next save could be turned away as if you had played on another device, and the game stopped - now the Bank knows your own saves and keeps taking them. In 0.8.73, one device at a time, fixed. Opening ASHVALE now always takes over from an older game of yours - an old message could sometimes stop a brand-new game just after it opened. In 0.8.72, one straight road. The cobbles now leave Ashvale between the Eastend houses and run as one straight road all the way to Saltmere - no more branch round the fishing pond - and carry on through Saltmere's main street down to the harbour and along the waterfront to the pier. The gas lamps stand down one side of the road now, twice as far apart. Odric and his broken wagon are back beside the road where it runs now. The quests point the true way: since Ashvale moved to the northern hemisphere every north, south, east and west in the stories, the signs and the carvings has been measured again from where things really lie, so Saltmere is the harbour to the northwest and the chapel carving sends you south. The hawk flies twice as high. Fly off from a fight and no blade or bite can reach you, but archers and spellcasters can still shoot you out of the sky. And you walk straighter, without zig-zagging back and forth on the way. In 0.8.71, Eastend. Ashvale has grown past its east fence along the road to Saltmere: two new timber houses face each other across the cobbles, a footpath crosses the road between them with a gas lamp on either side, and a town guard keeps the crossroads. Pax the painter has moved into the north house, where there is room to dry a canvas, and Modulus the surveyor is out at the new crossroads measuring it for the third time this morning - their errands now send you to them there. In 0.8.70, the sky. The sun, the moon and the planets are real bodies now, scaled like our own: the sun and the moon each half a degree across, the moon lit by the sun so its phases are true, and its month 29 and a half game days. Real stars fill the night - the constellations as we know them and the Milky Way - and Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn wander among them on their real orbits. There are eclipses: the moon slides across the sun and the day goes dim, or the moon passes through the planet's shadow and turns copper. The people around the fire in Ziibiing watch the sky and will tell you when the next ones come. Ashvale now lies in the northern hemisphere, so the year has turned: it is winter. Tilt your view past the lowest point and you slide into your own eyes to look up at the sky, zoom in a little, and follow the sun, the moon or a planet across it; others see your head turn to where you look. The hawk flies in first person, looking down at the land or up at the sky, and perches still in the branches. The Lake Castle is back, with its own castle stone. Canoes stay where you leave them, lying along the bank, for a whole game year; two paddlers go four times as fast as a run and share the work; the person in the stern steers, and a landing gives no new canoe while three are left nearby. If you leave while paddling, you come back in your canoe. The campfires in Ziibiing cook, and the wigwams face the rising sun. Your game follows you safely from device to device: an older device can no longer put back what you changed on another. In 0.8.69, canoes. Step out of a canoe and it stays where you left it, afloat at the bank, for anyone to take again - for a whole game year - so nobody is left stranded on the far side of the river. A canoe now goes three times as fast as you can run, and it keeps to the middle of the river instead of cutting across to the bank. In 0.8.68, the seasons come alive. In spring the broadleaf trees sprout little clusters of leaves at the ends of their branches that swell into full crowns, each tree a few days apart; the snow melts away in patches over a couple of weeks and the green grass comes through, and the small flowers, grass tufts and mushrooms come back one by one. In autumn the coloured leaves lie only under the trees that drop them, and they go when the frost comes - then the ground turns white. The pines and other evergreens stay green all winter with snow on their boughs, and the bare branches carry a line of snow along their tops. It only snows in winter now. The wild rice grows through the year too: shoots after the ice goes out, tall green stalks by midsummer, heads that darken to dark burgundy, and the grain is ripe only from late August to early October - the ricing season - before the stalks go to straw. Careful on the ice in spring: when the thaw comes, anyone still standing on a frozen lake falls through, wakes at the town portal, and everything they carried sinks to the bottom of the lake. Fishing that lake may one day hook it back up instead of a fish - and the more lies on the bottom, the better the chance. The sun and the moon now show in the sky, where they really are, the moon in its true phase. You walk on top of the ice now, not along the lake bed. Viewing another player's stats asks their game for them instead of showing all ones. In 0.8.67, the seasons. The planet leans on its axis and the year is 365 game days, so spring, summer, autumn and winter come round in turn, opposite in the two hemispheres, strongest toward the poles and barely felt at the equator. In autumn the broadleaf trees turn gold, russet and scarlet at full leaf, then each drops all its leaves within a couple of days of the others in late autumn, covering the ground in their colours until the frost. The small flowers, grass tufts and mushrooms die back with the leaf fall. In winter the trees stand bare, snow lies on the ground and the lakes and ponds freeze hard enough to walk across - but the sea, the bays and the running rivers never freeze. In spring the first leaves sprout from the ends of the branches before the crowns fill in, and the small plants come back one by one once the snow has gone. The weather keeps the season: where it is winter and cold enough it only snows or clears, and it never snows anywhere else. Fog now lies in great soft sheets at a few heights over the ground. Loading is much faster - going into a wigwam, the cave or through a portal used to stall the game for seconds, and now the loading screen comes up the moment you choose to go. The wigwams have a loading screen of their own: birch bark walls and the glow of the fire. With sadfrogltc: town guards keep the peace in Ashvale and Saltmere and light the lamps and torches at dusk and put them out at dawn; antidotes now also ward off poison for a while; Vorth's rosary can be worn; the Red Pyre has its pews and altar; and directions in the quests agree with the true-north compass. Fixed: a quest kit you sold or dropped (like the Even Grove saplings) is handed back when you talk to the one who gave the quest. In 0.8.66, with sadfrogltc, the Red Pyre and the Even Grove. In the Spider Cave lie the bones of Edric, a Vorthan of the Red Pyre, his ghost still keeping watch; his note leads to Mother Wenna of Saltmere, and his orange robe and Vorth's rosary are yours to find. Out at the Even Grove, Vael asks you to plant saplings where the woods were cut, and then to deal with the three who have been troubling it. Saltmere has a Town Hall with Mayor Calder and a bank counter, and the old chapel has a bones yard and a true-north compass. Wren the tailor now sells hats, capes and robes as NFTs instead of giving them away at the start. Day and night now turn every two hours, and a moonless night is starlight: a sky full of stars and just enough light to find your way. Fixed: after a death, what you dropped could also show up in your chest, and picking it back up could leave you with two of everything. In 0.8.65 Ziibiing, an Ojibwe village on the river south of Ashvale - follow the skinny trail down from the village. Six birch bark wigwams stand in a circle round the communal fire, bark sewn over a cage of bent ironwood, their doors to the east; step inside one and sit by its fire. Seven people of the village in Woodland regalia - jingle dress, ribbon shirts, otter fur turbans, beaded bandolier bags - and a birch bark makak that holds your things like the Ashvale chest. Take the jiimaan (canoe) from the landing and paddle the river, alone or with a friend; it turns in arcs like a real canoe. Down the river the water widens into a lake of manoomin, wild rice, dark heads nodding over the water. Ricing takes two: one stands in the stern with the push pole, the other sits with the ricing sticks and knocks the rice into the canoe. Mishoomis, sitting cross-legged in his wigwam, wants twenty handfuls, and has a really special gift for whoever brings them. Also new: a hand-laid cobblestone road with stones of every shape, and proper models for the Saltmere Enchantery's ember staff, storm staff, venom dagger and snare bow. In 0.8.64 signing in on a new device now waits for the @ashvale Bank to hand over your character, and asks again until it answers, so you start exactly where you left off instead of as a new adventurer. In 0.8.62 your game follows you. The @ashvale Bank now keeps your whole character - skills, bag, gear, quests and where you stand - under your wallet, so you can sign in on any device and carry on exactly where you left off. It is packed small, saved as you play and as you leave. Fixed: the chest no longer offers things again that you already took or used, which happened on a new browser or device. A cobblestone road now runs from Ashvale's square out of the east gate all the way to Saltmere's west street, with the gas lamps along its verges. And lamps and torches light the same at every distance - no more change in the light as you walk up to one. In 0.8.61 the night lights reach as far as you can see. Every street lamp, torch and campfire now throws a pool of light on the ground all the way out, so a lit road shows its lamps glowing far ahead instead of only the few beside you, and more of the lights nearest you really light the scene. In 0.8.60 gas street lamps light the road from Ashvale to Saltmere - iron posts with glass lanterns standing along the verges of the trail, Ashvale's east road and Saltmere's west road, lit from dusk till dawn - with road lights by sadfrogltc. Saltmere's street torches stand on the verges now, not in the road. The Spider Cave's torches are small torches set into the rock down both walls, leaning out at an angle. A torch you drop stands upright in the ground and keeps burning, lighting the dark round it, and the torch in your hand points forward. The wraith has left Whisperwood: wraiths now haunt only the Spider Cave, far below. The world is ready before you get there: trees, land and towns are built beyond what you can see, so nothing pops up as you walk or fly, the distant woods no longer turn white, and a hawk sees nearly twice as far. And the Auditor stands clear of the church eaves. New in 0.8.59: Prayer, by sadfrogltc. Every monster now leaves bones to bury for Prayer experience; pray at the altar in Ashvale's new church and raise one of three protections over your head - from melee, from arrows or from magic - while your prayer points last. Father Aldous has an errand for you, The Wayside Prayer, out to a broken wagon on the Saltmere road and on to Mother Wenna at the new Saltmere Chapel, who gives you a Monk's robe that makes your prayers last longer. And the nights follow the real moon: bright at full moon, pitch black at new moon, when only torches and fires light the dark. Also fixed: drinking an antidote no longer breaks your hitpoints. In 0.8.58 day and night. A sun circles the planet once every twenty-four hours, and wherever you stand its height sets the light - bright days, orange dusks and dark nights under a faint blue moon - and the shadows fall the way the real sun shines. Night is dark, so the general stores now sell a hand torch: hold it in your off hand and it lights everything eight paces round you. Other glowing things light the dark too - the Spider Queen's Crown gives off a soft violet light. In 0.8.57 the Spider Cave. Follow the trail west from Whisperwood's road to a rock outcrop in the woods and climb down into the dark: one long winding tunnel lit only by torches, with giant rats, cave spiders, giant spiders, a swamp monster in a flooded grotto, wraiths, the Ash Knight, the Spider Queen and, at the very end, the Lich of Ashvale - the end of Elder Maren's Ashen Crown at last. Everything down there hunts you and follows you anywhere, even up into the daylight. Spiders poison you: your Hitpoints orb turns green until it wears off, or until food or an antidote (now at the general stores) cures it. The Queen drops spider silk, potions and gold, and now and then her crown, a numbered collectible. The far end of the cave comes up near the village. Also new: send a private message to anyone playing with /@name and your message, at any distance; and the ASHVALE Atlas shows the contacts who have you in their address book too, while they play. In 0.8.56 a timber wolf den out on the open grass north of Whisperwood - four wolves, so step carefully north of the woods. Ponds in the wild lie flat now, their water meeting the shore all the way round. And sounds carry like they should: a fight, an axe or a fire is heard up close and fades away over fifteen paces, so the whole valley no longer rings in your ears. In 0.8.55 the woods have ways through. No patch of ground is walled in by trees any more, so deer, boar and players never get stuck in a thicket, and the thickest woods are a little thinner - Whisperwood too, where one of Iria's timber wolf dens was shut in. The desert grows saguaro cactus instead of pines. North is the planet's north now: a red dot on the rim of your minimap always points to it, and tapping it turns you to face it. And your place is kept wherever you stop - a hawk over the open sea comes back over the sea, and anyone left where nobody can stand wakes on the nearest shore, not back in the village. In 0.8.54 the ASHVALE Atlas knows where you are. Open it from the Games tab while signed in and a blue dot marks where your character last stood - the You button flies you down to it. In 0.8.53 the chest is quicker. Tap a thing in your chest or your bag and it moves across at once - gear and other NFTs one at a time, and for Gold, logs, fish and every other token a number pad pops up, the game's own keys on screen with a little screen, Max, OK and Cancel, so you choose how many without your phone's keyboard; Max never asks for more than your bag can hold. Long-press or right-click for Take 1, Take N or Examine. On a phone the chat box now rides up above your keyboard while you type and settles back down when the keyboard closes. In 0.8.52 Iria waits on the Whisperwood main path, pale as the mist, with two tasks - cook her a chicken, then bring her three timber wolf pelts from the dens west of the north pond - and her blessing, the Gift of Angels. With it comes the Ring of Angels, one of one: worn, it catches you when a hit leaves you under a fifth of your hitpoints and carries you home to Ashvale, then rests an hour, or ten minutes once Iria has blessed you. Iria and the ring are the work of sadfrogltc, the first player to add to Ashvale through its open repository. Your character now plays on one device at a time: open ASHVALE somewhere else and the older game stops, with a button to play there instead, so nobody sees you flicker between two places. And when a new version comes out the game saves and tells you, so you know to leave, refresh your Games tab and come back in. In 0.8.51 the wild herds stampede. Attack one deer, goat or hare and the whole herd bolts together, all the same way, away from you - they run about twenty-five paces, graze where they stop, and wander home a few minutes later, so a hunter gets one good shot. And the Feather Headband: a collection of twenty, a beaded red band with one black-tipped feather, never sold and never earned, all twenty with @apple. In 0.8.50 the Big Chief Headdress - a war bonnet of white feathers tipped in black, one of one, never sold and never earned, worn by @apple. Gold, rune stones and anything worth 100 GOLD or more now stay where they fall until somebody picks them up, held by @ashvale for whoever finds them, even after everyone has left. Lose the connection and the game tells you, with a Reload button, instead of letting you play on alone. The people of Ashvale and Saltmere look out over their streets now, not all the same way. In 0.8.49 ASHVALE loads much faster - about 40 seconds down to about 15 on a slow phone - and the world now loads in parts: only the towns near you, the rest as you travel. Arrive somewhere new through a portal and a swirl of portal light carries you there while the town loads. Long-press or right-click another player to see their combat level, and View stats shows all their skills. Tap a quest in your Quests panel to read its whole story in the words of the one who gave it, and remove it from the log if you like - your progress stays, and the giver takes you back where you left off. Fenn, Rowan, Cobb, Mabb, Tolly and Bryce have faces of their own now. In 0.8.48 the wild places are wilder. Deer move in herds of twenty to thirty, wild boar in sounders of six to twelve, hares two or three to a form, and timber wolves in packs of seven to fifteen, and they are met more often across the map. No wolf pack stands within six hundred paces of the village well any more, so the last thing Fenn the tanner asks for is the long walk it always was. The village folk have re-counted everything they tell you - his herd counts, the warden's hare and deer distances, the marsh deer and the cook's venison all say what the land actually holds now, and the marsh deer graze south of Saltmere, where they are; the old line pointed the other way. In 0.8.47 the Quests panel reads its own names properly, so a quest that wants logs says \\\"bring 8 logs\\\" instead of \\\"bring 8 logses\\\", and a deer, a trout or a salmon is the same word at any number. In 0.8.46 the camera sees through walls, roofs and trees that get in the way of your character; stairs in tall houses work properly; long-press another player to trade with them or follow them; you wake at the portal of the last town you were in. Every line names the villager who gave you the quest and the thing you actually have to bring or slay, with how many you have and how many you need - it used to guess, and it guessed wrong. And there is a new thread in Ashvale: Fenn the tanner keeps frames of skins drying on the lane below the east road, and nobody in the village knew he had them. Six rat pelts to start, eight off the hares, three boar hides, two from the timber wolves, and a word said to Pip at the end - then he hands you his own mithril skinning knife, the only one in the valley. The cook at the kitchen range off the well is Hob now, and still teaches anyone who brings something cooked. Ashvale and Saltmere are rebuilt - timber-framed plaster houses with tiled roofs, brick gables, glass windows and open shutters, each house in its own colours, and Saltmere's tall harbour houses four storeys high. A 3D fantasy RPG on a whole small planet of your own: two continents in a wide ocean, island chains, rivers that run from the mountains to the sea, deserts, rainforest, taiga and snowy peaks, with weather that follows the climate. Walk out of Ashvale village, take the trail down to Saltmere, a harbour town on the coast with docks and tall houses you can climb, and fight, chop, mine, fish and cook your way across the world. The trail has an end now: Cobb the elder gives the last quest, and a stone that brings you back to the harbour whenever it wakes. Perla the net-mender sends you out onto the harbour marks with a net, a rod and a pot. Silas the mason has a job going at the north gate for anyone who can chop, mine and keep their word. Mabb the sailmaker is re-cutting the north boat's sail and wants willow, deer leather and a word said at Bela's counter. Pip the apprentice has a pump to build to clear the winter water out of the mine, and wants tin, hare skins, two wolf pelts and the fall of the ground off the surveyor. And Auditor the clerk has one line in his ledger that has never balanced, and will close it with gold out of the village's own seam, both the mithril stones in the parish, slow-burning maple charcoal, and a word said to Pax by the blue door. Latency the warden keeps the north gate, the torches and the road up the range, and his thread is a ladder made of wood: hares on the stubble, four deer hides for a case, six lengths off the nineteen yews behind him, and a word said to Orin at the Saltmere anvil. Meet other players standing exactly where they are. 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