Patch Notes

Read This First — Character Reset

Your account is not being deleted. Your login works exactly as before. All old characters were reset for this tester build: log into your existing account, your character list will be empty, and you create a fresh character. Current options for this test: Human Female, as a Monk or a Ranger.

A Big Download, Once

This patch is close to a full download. The project's internal folder layout changed, so the delta patcher has nothing to match against. This is a one-time cost — future patches go back to downloading only what changed.

The Playable Human

• The Human is the playable race for this test, with a full high-detail Female body: real face, eyes, skin and hair.
• Character creation is all new — pick your class, spend your stats, and BECOME THIS.
• The character select platform shows your actual character, not a photograph of one.

New Class — The Monk

Twenty-seven abilities built around open-hand combat. Damage numbers are first-draft and part of what this test is for.

• Melee attacks: Quick Palm, Low Sweep, Driving Knee, Twin Palm Assault, Stonebreaker Fist, Circle of Falling Leaves, Skyward Kick, Dragon-Coil Sweep, Crushing Elbow, Hundred-Hand Barrage, Five-Point Ending, Heaven-Splitting Palm.
• Defense and healing: Guarded Form, Mending Breath, Iron Body.
• Ranged: Spirit Lure, Echoing Challenge, Focused Burst.
• Tactical: Pressure Strike, Focus Mark, Still Heart, Flowing Step, Unshaken Will.
• Passives: Inner Focus, Centered Breathing, Martial Awareness, Weapon Discipline.

New Class — The Ranger

Twenty-seven abilities built around the bow.

• Bow and blade: Head Shot, Triple Arrow, Quick Shot, Hunter's Cut, Piercing Shot, Sweeping Shot, Whirling Cut, Rapid Volley, Rain of Arrows, Finishing Shot, Barbed Arrow, Wildmark Crosscut.
• Survival: Field Dressing, Guarded Retreat, Survival Instinct.
• Special shots: Long Draw, Binding Shot, Pinning Shot.
• Utility: Track Quarry, Brushcloak, Wayfinder's Pace, Wild Harvest.
• Companions and focus: Call Wolf, Call Black Panther, Call Hawk, Hunter's Mark, Predator's Focus.

Combat and Animations

• Attack animations run through a proper combat timing system: the damage lands when the strike lands, and the arrow leaves the bow when the bow visually releases — not when you press the key.
• Quick Shot fires once per press: one draw, one release, one arrow.
• Left mouse swings a three-hit melee combo — two strikes and a heavier finisher, chained with your own timing.
• Each class has its own spellbook and its own hotbar, and each keeps its own arrangement when you switch.
• A starting character now connects most swings instead of missing four in ten.
• Death: RELEASE returns you to the camp, standing and able to move. No more being trapped where you died.

The World

• The spiders walk again — legs, bite, web, leap and death animations are all back.
• The Risen Soldiers stand and fight like the dead men they are instead of freezing in place.
• Maelen stands on the ground with his feet where feet go, and greets you properly.
• The window title finally says the game's name.

Fixed

• Switching characters no longer carries the previous character's quest progress, level or stamina across.
• For this test every ability is unlocked from level 1, so you can try the whole book straight away. Level requirements come back on in a later patch.
• Abilities missing their icon art show their name instead of an invisible tile.
• Trade window ACCEPT and CANCEL buttons work.
• Players can no longer spawn under the terrain.
• Loot messages say what an item is instead of telling you that you cannot wear a spider leg.

Known Issues

• Many ability animations are temporary stand-ins, and some abilities show no animation yet.
• The Ranger's blade abilities use temporary animations.
• Utility, tracking and animal-companion abilities do not have their final effects yet.
• Class damage and balance numbers are first-draft — report anything that feels absurd.
• Hair is using a safe rendering mode while we finish the fancy one.
• The Risen Soldier does not block yet.
• Chat: some testers report messages not appearing where expected — report exactly what you typed and which tab you were on.

The Loot Window

Right-click a body and a window opens showing what was on it. Click a line to take that one thing, or take everything. You can take the fang and leave the silk.

• Spiders carry named things — Spider Silk, Chitin Fragment, Venom Sac, and rarer pieces off the big ones. Web Stalkers carry a Heavy Silk Bundle and sometimes a Stalker's Fang.
• Your kill is yours for two minutes. After that the body is open to anyone.
• Bodies last three minutes instead of twenty-five seconds, and stay a further minute after being looted so they can be skinned later.
• There is no inventory yet, so what you take pays out as experience. The items and the list are real; the bag is next.

Spiders Come Apart

Kill one and it bursts into pieces where it stood, and the pieces stay. This took most of a day and six attempts — it stood there, then it bounced, then it launched itself over the treeline, then it launched the player over the treeline.

The Forest

• 1,868 spiders, all inside a hand-drawn boundary that follows the real edge of the woods.
• None inside a tree trunk, none floating, none standing out on the open glades — the clearings are clear on purpose.
• Maelen's clearing is kept empty for 90 metres around him.
• Spiders notice you at 9 metres instead of 18. With this many of them the old range meant every spider you could see was already coming.
• The road from Maelen to the webbed hollow is the safe way through. Stepping off it is a decision.

The Risen

• All ten Risen Soldiers stand in three fallen patrols along the road to the hollow, the first at about 100 metres. They were scattered across the whole island before, which is why nobody found one.
• They can be killed now. The swing only ever checked for spiders, so a Risen Soldier could chase you, hit you, and be invulnerable.
• All six Web Stalkers ring the webbed hollow. Find the place and you have found them.

Fixed

• You can click on things. Creature collision ignored the channel the cursor used, so every living creature was see-through to the mouse.
• You can click Maelen. His model had no physics asset, which means no collision shapes at all — every setting on him was correct and completely ignored.
• Corpses can be selected and looted. On death the body used to lose all collision.
• Dead things are never red — grey-gold while there is something on the body, plain grey once picked over.
• Sitting shows a REST tag on your player frame.
• Nameplates are larger and sit lower over people's heads.
• The loading screen holds until the world has finished arriving.

Patch This One

Version 0.5.0 dropped you on a beach four kilometres from the game. That is fixed — you start beside Maelen's clearing again, facing him, with the forest ahead of you.

The Forest Is a Forest Now

• 1,868 spiders live in it. There were 100. You will not walk far without meeting something.
• They are spread across the whole hill — woods, clearings and open hilltops alike. No more empty half of the map.
• Every spider is on the ground. Several hundred were standing on tree branches or floating in the sky.
• Breed names are back: Duskfang, Frostfang, Venomfang, Emberfang, Shadowfang, Sunfang, Wood Stalker, Bristle Weaver, Marsh Creeper and Stone Spider. Same skin, same breed, same name, every time.

You Can Look Up

The camera would only tilt twelve degrees above level, so the canopy was unreachable. It reaches sixty-two now — which matters in a forest where things are meant to come at you from above.

Fixed

• Spiders had two names floating over their heads. Now one, with the level in front of it.
• Every spider was carrying an invisible second spider built from engine spheres and cylinders — ten spare parts each, 1,800 across the forest. Removed.
• The game was over its ray tracing memory budget with that many creatures in the world. Spiders are out of the ray tracing scene now, at no visible cost.

Targeting Works Now

Before this patch you could not click on anything — not Maelen, not a spider. Tab only ever found spiders, so the Risen Soldiers could be killed but never selected, and the target frame invented numbers for anything that was not a spider. All of that is fixed.

• Click a creature to select it. Clicking never attacks.
• Right-click selects and acts — talk to an NPC, search a thing.
• Tab picks the nearest enemy in front of you, then the next one out.
• A coloured ring marks your target: red hostile, yellow neutral, green friendly.
• Names float over nearby creatures, with a health bar that only appears once something is hurt.
• The level number in front of a name is coloured by how dangerous that creature is to you — grey, green, white, yellow, red.
• Escape drops your target. F1 targets yourself. The system menu lives on its button.

Quest: The Missing Among the Webs

Someone from the settlement went into the forest and never came back. Maelen followed their tracks as far as the clearing. He cannot go any further.

• Hail Maelen with H, or right-click him. A window opens with what he has to say — and a choice. Nothing enters your quest log unless you accept it.
• Slay 8 Forest Spiders, slay 3 Web Stalkers, and search the webbed hollow deep in the trees.
• Return to him and choose the moment the quest ends.
• What you find in the webs is not what you went looking for.

New in the Forest

• Web Stalkers — bigger, tougher, and they come at you on sight.
• 72 more spiders, in nests along the road out to the hollow. It gets worse the deeper you go.
• The Webbed Hollow, about 175 metres into the trees. Right-click it to search it.

Fixed

• Maelen could not be clicked at all, with either mouse button. Two separate causes, both fixed.
• The target frame no longer draws a health bar for people who do not fight.
• Tab now finds Risen Soldiers, Web Stalkers and other players — not just spiders.
• Escape no longer throws a menu over your screen in the middle of a fight.
• The spawn point obeys the map again instead of an old line of code.

Get the New Launcher First

• Download the launcher again from the Download page — one file, replaces the old one.
• It is properly signed now, so Windows no longer warns about an unrecognized app.
• File checking takes about a second instead of ten minutes, and patches download several files at once.
• It automatically removes outdated game files — the cause of the grey quest giver.

New

• The Risen have come to the spider forest — dead soldiers standing their old posts. They notice you, they keep coming, and they hit back.
• Rest: press X to sit. Health and mana recover much faster while resting; moving, attacking or being bitten stands you up.
• Hail: press H near Maelen, or right-click him, to talk. Talking is how quests are taken and turned in.
• Mana regenerates now.
• A loading screen covers the way into the world — no more falling through a half-loaded island.

Fixed

• Maelen the Warden has his colours, everywhere, for everyone.
• Your character name shows on the player frame.
• You spawn on the ground beside Maelen's clearing.
• Spiders crumple when they die instead of standing there.
• The spider forest now holds 100 spiders of every size and breed.

Launcher

• Created the first working Oathlands Launcher shell.
• Added the main launcher background art and logo plaque.
• Added patch notes and current test goals panels.
• Added Play, Repair, Settings, Exit, and Send Error Report buttons.
• Prepared the Play button to launch a packaged Unreal build from the Current Build folder.

Website

• Rebuilt the website into separate pages: About, World, Screenshots, Download, and Patch Notes.
• Cleaned the About page so it only explains the game.
• Added the World Map of Oathlands to the World page.
• Added the Aurelion map section, home of Wayrest.
• Added environment screenshots, settlement art, character concepts, and system preview sections.
• Fixed the Patch Notes sidebar active button behavior.

World & Visual Direction

• Established the dark ancient fantasy visual identity for Oathlands.
• Selected the fallen titan and sword-in-ruins imagery as the main mood.
• Added early visual references for Aurelion, Wayrest, and character concepts.

Launcher

• Make patch notes editable from an external file.
• Add a simple Settings window.
• Make Discord, Website, and Patch Notes buttons open the right pages.
• Improve the local error report file.
• Later: add real update checking and repair logic.

Website

• Add a Races & Classes page later.
• Add faction, settlement, dungeon, and lore pages when enough material is ready.
• Replace the download placeholder once the launcher installer exists.
• Continue cleaning spacing, mobile layout, and gallery behavior.

Game Build

• Wait for current Unreal work to finish before packaging.
• Package the first Windows test build into the Current Build folder.
• Test the launcher Play button against the packaged build.