Survival game Nightingale just delivered a feature players have been asking for since the game debuted in early access in February: offline mode. As of today, solo survival fans will no longer be at the whims of servers in order to jump into the fae realms of the gaslamp fantasy base-builder.
Offline mode isn't the only new feature in Nightingale version 0.3.0. Players will also now be able to build from storage, another highly requested feature that means resources can be used for construction even if they're not in your inventory. It's proximity-based and togglable, too, meaning you can earmark containers not to be used in construction if you're saving resources for a different purpose or don't want to accidentally use a friend's stash while building.
There are new monsters to encounter in the world as well, and apex creatures will now come in three tiers, with higher tiers delivering higher quality drops. New NPCs have also appeared, including some major historical celebrities like Edgar Allan Poe and Joan of Arc. Help them out with their quests and you'll gain access to new gear like Poe's writing desk and J of A's sword. (Is it okay to call her J of A? Probably not.)
Important for such a stylish game, there are new items of clothing available in the patch, like a dapper sniper's hat, plus scarves which make an elegant alternative to jackets. You can also now adjust your character's looks right from the main menu, so you can keep tweaking your face and body or completely redesign yourself whenever you want.
But among all those changes, offline mode is probably the highlight of the patch for a lot of players. The initial response to Nightingale was good, though server issues were an early problem, and that goes double for people playing solo: there are few things as aggravating as trying to play a game by yourself but having your fun interrupted by a server issue that doesn't feel like it should have any effect on you.
I spoke to Aaryn Flynn, CEO of Inflexion Games today about the new patch, and he said the creation of offline mode was always intended, but originally it was planned further down the early access road. Nightingale "had been so deeply imagined as an online experience from day one," he said. "As an early access title, we had just felt that we would start with [online only] and then bridge ourselves [to offline mode] over time."
That plan changed once Inflexion realized how many players were interested in an offline solo experience, and the studio prioritized the community request. Now, Flynn is hopeful to bring back players who may have drifted away from the game shortly after it launched.
"You only get one chance to make a first impression," Flynn said. "That's just how we work as human beings. And so the onus is now on us to do the work to communicate with them, and say that perhaps the thing that you were looking for is now there. It might be offline mode, it might be some other changes that have been happening, or other adjustments or bug fixes."
There's still more to come: Flynn says the team is working on new realms and additional endgame activities, improvements and expansion of Nightingale's building system, plus features like cloud saves and character migration tools. To get a look at everything in today's update, here are the full patch notes.
