Learn what's new in this change log for Aether Story. This content was added under the Alpha 3 umbrella, but almost feels good enough to have been its own Alpha release!

New Feature: Adventurer Guide

A new welcome screen has been added that greets you each time you open the game.  This welcome screen, titled the Adventurer Guide, guides players to relevant activities and goals to keep them engaged and helps answer the question: what should I do now?  You may open the Adventurer Guide any time after being logged in by clicking the newly added "Adventurer Guide" button next to the minimap.

• Suggested Activities - shows a recommended list of activities for you to do. In the future this list will be custom tailored and created just for your progress in the game. Meaning it will be dynamic and update according to what you need to do next.  However, currently it is fixed with 3 activities that could help you get the most out of the game.
• Latest News - this shows the last 4 blog posts and if clicked will open the blog post in your web browser. This helps you not miss any blog posts, like this one.
• Alpha 3 Goals - are goals that reward you for helping us test in every alpha cycle. More on that next...

The biggest point to the Adventurer Guide is allowing you to track your "Alpha Goals".  Alpha Goals will change every "Alpha Cycle" and will be achievements you will want to aim for. By completing each goal you will gain "Alpha Tokens".  Different goals reward a different amount of Alpha Tokens!  Alpha Goals are designed to be a challenge, but if you are dedicated to the task you will surely achieve each goal! Goals are account wide, which means you only need to complete them one character. Doing them on multiple characters will not earn you extra Alpha Tokens!

Alpha Tokens are a special currency that you can collect by completing goals.  They are bound to your account, and you can earn them on any character by completing goals. They stick with you before any potential Alpha reset. And reward you for doing the maximum potential in every Alpha cycle.  This is to help reward you for maxing out your character even if it gets reset. The Alpha Tokens will carry through to the next Alpha, all the way to the release of the game.  There you will be able to spend all the Alpha Tokens you earned by purchasing special cosmetics and other useful items.

Each Alpha Cycle the Alpha Goals will change and you will lose out on any unearned Alpha Tokens. So be sure to complete all Alpha Goals every Alpha Cycle.  An Alpha Cycle changes when a new major Alpha patch come sout.  Currently we are on Alpha 3.  But once Alpha 4 comes out a whole new set of goals will be released, and any Alpha 3 goals you failed to complete will be gone!  Get the most Alpha Tokens and complete the Alpha 3 goals today!  Alpha 4 is right around the corner.  Be sure to catch the live Twitch Dev Stream to ask how the progress on Alpha 4 is.

New Feature: Cooking Profession

The first profession to be added to Aether Story, cooking, as been released! The profession allows you to become a Chef by training in the cullinary skills.  This profession lays the groundwork for all future professions, and is more of a tech demo of how all the other professions to come will function.

• To get started with Cooking be sure to visit the Chef in the Domhan Outpost Inn.  He will give you a book he wrote about cooking.  Reading this book will give you a general idea on how cooking works.  But it is totally optional.
• Recipes - there are 11 recipes in the game.  These can be found by completing quests, purchasing them from merchants, or rare drops in chests.  If you want a hint as to where to find an unknown recipe you can check the Cooking Station and read the hints there.
• Ingredients - there are many ingredients added to the game, and many more to come.  You find ingredients a few ways: you can either loot them in chests, buy them from merchants, or you can gather them from the ground. More on nodes below.
• Cooking Station - crafting stations will be added for every profession, and interacting with it will open a new menu allowing you to craft items using materials. In this case for cooking, fireplaces, campfires, and cooking stoves serve as your Cooking Stations.
• Gathering Nodes - randomly spawning, shared loot nodes now appear around the world.  These allow you to collect a renewable resource, and in this case cooking ingredients.  This system will be extended to include other resources for other professions as well.  Since these nodes are shared you are racing other players to collect them. But don't worry they will respawn in time.
  They do blend in with the world, but in the future you will get a perk you can invest points into that allows you to more easily spot them.
  Note: you cannot see some resource node types until you complete the quest that unlocks it

To learn more about Cooking check out the blog post that outlines the feature in more detail.
Introducing the Cooking Profession

New Feature: World Map Menu

The World Map Menu has just been released and still has so many more improvements and features planned for it.  Let's break down what it currently does:

• Press the "M" hot key while walking around or open the Main Menu (ESC) and click the "World Map Menu" button.
• The World Map allows you to see your position in the world as a big blinking dot on the map.
• Points of Interests scatter the land which you may click on to learn what each is.
• Discovered Telepads are also shown.
• Your position does not show up if you are in an interior map.
• Coming in the next couple weeks: The World Map Menu will have a drawn parchment map graphic instead of showing the minimaps stitched together.  This is currently in the works and will be added soon.
• Down the road so many more features can be added to the World Map Menu, including showing quest markers, party members, and more!

Other Changes:

• Items:
  • Honeycomb is now classified as a container. Containers are items you can "use" from your inventory to loot the items they contain.  In this case, Honeycomb contains honey and beeswax if you are lucky.
  • A ton of new eatable food, ingredients and recipes have been added to the game for the Cooking Profession.
  • Chests and Merchants around the world have had their loot tables changed to support cooking.
• Quests:
  • A new introduction quest to cooking has been added to the Chef in the inn.
  • All quest givers that rewarded you with cooking recipes now teach legacy players who already completed the quests the recipe when revisiting them.
• Misc:
  • Entities in the world should no longer render special icons on the minimap. All entities are now dots.
  • Certain entities have been updated to give you cooking recipes by talking to them.
  • A cow has been stuck on a ledge in the Rookery entrance map. She climbed up the stairs for a bite of grass, but is now too afriad to step down the stairs to leave.

Bug Fixes:

• Memory leaks have been addressed and the game should no longer crash after long play sessions.  This bug fix took over two weeks to complete and involved refactoring the entire user-interface system. You may learn more about this in this blog post.
• Players should no longer appear to be walking in place after teleporting.
• New players: items looted from chests should now properly appear in their inventories.
• Anti-cheat snapbacks and being slowed by being over encumbered should no longer interact with each other poorly.
• Settings should now always save when closing the Settings menu.
• Idle detection should now once again log you out if you are idle for more than 20 minutes.
• Anti-cheat snapbacks should occur less often.
• Anti-cheat should now more reliably stop speed hackers from moving too quickly.
• Joining a Party should no longer cause your EXP bar to read 0/0.
• Monthly Donation Funding Goal should now properly update within minutes of new donations instead of being cached for days.
• The Inventory screen now loads more quickly.

Are you ready to join the fun?

You may download the early Alpha access easily through itch.io:

We are really enthusiastic to have you play our game! Being a small indie game
dev company, we depend on your support to keep us going.
Please consider making a small donation to help us fund the continuous
development of Aether Story! It will really help us out.

If you already have Alpha Access, head on over to the Game Downloads page and download the new Launcher Setup Installer!

Please join us on the live Twitch dev stream (almost nightly) to share your feedback, and experience the game with several other players. During dev streams are when most people play.  Be sure to follow us to be notified of the next stream:

• Discord: discord.gg/phanxgames
• Twitch: twitch.tv/phanxgames
• Twitter: twitter.com/phanxgames

See you there and thanks for reading!