January marked a month of steady consolidation and forward momentum across the project, with the team balancing core system development, content expansion, and refinement following recent testing phases. Efforts spanned character and environment work, significant backend and tooling upgrades, and continued iteration on combat, audio, and visual feedback, all aimed at strengthening the game’s foundations. With major systems stabilised and key features brought online, the focus throughout the month has been on improving clarity, reliability, and readiness for broader testing. Together, this work represents another important step toward shaping Depths of Erendorn into a cohesive and scalable online RPG. As always, join us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit for daily updates on Depths of Erendorn. Alternatively, join our Discord for all the latest! - now let’s get into it!
3D Modelling
Across the past month, the 3D Modelling team brought the Forest Druid’s base character to a completed, game-ready state through a focused round of refinement and visual polish. Work centred on a full retexture of the core model, including careful testing of wood grain direction within the skin to achieve a more natural and cohesive flow across the character’s form. The final texture pass introduced new tattoo details, adding subtle variation and reinforcing the Druid’s cultural and nature-bound identity. With the base character finalised, the team produced updated renders showcasing the Forest Druid alongside her latest equipment sets, demonstrating how the completed model integrates cleanly across the full armour range. Together, these updates strengthen the visual foundation of the class and support greater consistency across character customisation in Depths of Erendorn.
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Set Piece Design
January saw the Set Piece Design team make steady progress on the new outpost location, advancing its modular asset set through key structural and material milestones. Core assets were fully UV unwrapped to ensure efficient in-engine use, laying a strong foundation for ongoing texturing work. Material development focused on iterating tile and trim sheets to establish a clear and consistent surface language across the outpost’s buildings, supported by a work-in-progress pass on decorative metal components to refine material treatment, wear, and visual hierarchy. In parallel, PLA assets were introduced to streamline set dressing and improve iteration speed when assembling the location. Together, these efforts define the construction logic and visual identity of the outpost, preparing it for future detailing and decoration as the area moves toward a more complete and lived-in state within Erendorn’s world.
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Programming
Client
Across the past month, the Client team focused on strengthening the stability and clarity of Erendorn’s activity and quest systems, with a strong emphasis on testing, validation, and UI reliability. In preparation for the recent alpha, close collaboration with the Server team helped resolve several progression-related issues, including dialogue-driven quest advancement, accurate profession display, and the reliable presentation of Points of Interest and their associated map markers. Following the test, attention shifted to identifying and addressing residual problems, particularly UI inconsistencies affecting quest visibility and progression flow. This included correcting logic that caused quest entries to be removed too early, as well as investigating edge cases involving dialogue behaviour after friendly entities enter combat. Together, these updates improve the readability and dependability of player-facing systems, supporting a smoother and more coherent gameplay experience as content continues to grow.
Server
Throughout January, the Server team focused on reinforcing the robustness, security, and scalability of Erendorn’s backend while supporting major gameplay features and live testing initiatives. A new authentication framework was introduced, centralising token generation to improve login server scalability, enable key rotation, and support revocable, refreshable access across services, alongside enhanced service health monitoring and server management tools. Significant progress was made around the friends-and-family alpha, with the world boss system brought fully online, new zones and event locations added, and a gameplay metrics pipeline implemented to power Discord leaderboards. Extensive stabilisation work addressed progression flow, experience gain, loot distribution, dungeon rewards, server transfers, cache consistency, and session handling, resolving critical issues uncovered during live play. Additional systems such as scheduled server restarts with automated announcements, expanded admin messaging, temporary access windows, live data reloading, and refined AI timing were also introduced. Together, these efforts greatly improve backend reliability, operational control, and readiness for larger-scale testing as development continues.
Work for this included:
- Discord bot service online.
- Limited game cheats to admins.
- Fix for levelling up causing desynced stats.
- World locations system.
- Remove unbalanced item event.
- Experience gain from combat fixed.
- World Boss spawning system.
- Shoreline and some new areas were defined.
- Entity session join order fixed to stop duplicated entities in the world.
- Vendor transactions now update the gold stat for the player.
- World boss points metrics system.
- Dungeon completion event system triggers added.
- ProgressionData system refactored to ensure no data is lost and adventure summaries were correctly populated.
Sound Design
Across January, the Sound team focused on laying strong foundations for upcoming combat and ability audio while improving production workflows in preparation for broader testing. A significant portion of the month centred on supporting the Revenant’s new abilities, with sound concepts developed in parallel to visual work so they can be synchronised efficiently as effects are finalised. To support faster iteration, the team prepared adaptable, texture-based sound assets and introduced a new synth-driven approach that allows effects to be performed and layered in a foley-style pass, strengthening flexibility and character-specific sonic identity. Alongside this development work, multiple playthroughs were carried out to review the current audio build, identifying missing sounds, bugs, and balance issues that are now feeding into the next round of fixes. Together, these efforts improve readiness, consistency, and creative range across Erendorn’s evolving soundscape as development moves forward.
Environment Art
January saw the Environment team focus on strengthening the structural foundations and exploratory flow of Erendorn’s world through a range of terrain and location updates. River and lake placeholders were introduced to better define water systems and landscape composition, establishing a clear framework for future visual and gameplay refinement. Tree collision issues were resolved across forested areas, improving traversal and interaction consistency, while a new ruins location was added to broaden environmental variety and provide fresh points of interest for exploration. Alongside these additions, work continued on refining PCG-driven flower spawning, with ongoing adjustments aimed at achieving more natural density and distribution across open spaces. Together, these developments reinforce world readability, support future content passes, and continue to shape Erendorn into a cohesive and navigable landscape.
Animation
Across the month, the Animation team concentrated on expanding and refining Erendorn’s combat animation set, with a particular focus on strengthening the Revenant’s visual identity. Multiple new spell animations were added throughout the month, broadening the class’s ability repertoire and improving the readability of spellcasting during encounters. Existing attack animations were also revisited and adjusted to refine timing and motion, ensuring actions feel more responsive and aligned with gameplay flow. These ongoing updates help solidify the Revenant’s role as a distinct combatant while contributing to a more varied and consistent combat experience as animation development continues.
Visual Effects
Throughout January, the VFX team focused on strengthening combat readability and effect reliability while responding to feedback from recent testing. A broad range of ability visuals were reviewed and corrected to prevent unintended behaviour, with lingering or obstructive effects resolved and multiple abilities properly reconnected within their blueprints to ensure they trigger and display as intended. Technical issues affecting cascade emitters were also addressed, restoring missing visuals that had failed to render during combat. Alongside these fixes, the team supported the rollout of the Revenant’s first full ability pass, helping establish a clear and consistent visual language for the class, and began early exploration of improvements to the town portal’s visual presence to enhance readability in the environment. Together, this work improves clarity, consistency, and responsiveness across Erendorn’s visual effects as development continues.
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That’s it for this month’s devlog, but have you seen our monthly roundup of December yet?!
