Huge Enshrouded update delivers the community's most-requested feature, plus musical instruments for jam sessions
The co-op fantasy survival game gets a bard, a biome, and a big fix for quests.
Keen Games just delivered the community's most-requested feature for co-op fantasy survival game Enshrouded: player-based quest progression has finally arrived in today's update, meaning you won't be shut out of quests just because other players on your server have already completed them. Hooray!
"All missed quests are listed in the quest journal, which can be toggled on at any time, allowing players to personally complete them with or without their friends," says developer Keen Games, noting that the community has been asking for this feature since Enshrouded launched into early access in January and that it collected 19,000 votes from players on the game's feedback board.
But that's not the only change to get excited about in the huge new Melodies of the Mire update, which is live now. There are also melodies. And mire!
Let's do melodies first: a new NPC has surfaced in the world named Valory the Bard, and when you awaken her she'll teach you how to craft musical instruments like a lute, flute, harp, and drum. Having a jam session around the campfire or playing solo in the wild will increase the duration of your rested buff, which saves you from making a trip back home to take a restorative nap. Instruments are a fun addition to Enshrouded: ever since 2007's Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl, sitting around the campfire strumming some tunes has been the primo way to unwind in a dangerous world.
There's a new biome to explore as well, called the Blackmire, located far north of Revelwood. It looks like an interesting place to explore: there are big bouncy pads for making bounding leaps up the rocky landscape and lots of ruins and forts to explore and conquer. Watch your step, though: there are some slurpy swamps filled with a tar-like substance (probably why they call it Blackmire) that will suck you under if you land one of your bounces in the wrong spot.
A few notable quality of life features are hiding in the patch, too, like a transmog system so you don't need to sacrifice style for function, along with a toggle to hide helmets and gloves while wearing them. Daggers have also been added, and you don't have to settle for just one because you can dual-wield 'em.
There's a whole lot more in today's patch, so if you've taken a break from Enshrouded it sounds like a great time to revisit it.
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Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.