Development across Depths of Erendorn has continued at pace over the past month, with the team delivering wide-ranging improvements across all major disciplines to strengthen performance, stability, and overall world quality. Work has spanned character and creature development, interface and client optimisation, server-side systems and gameplay reliability, alongside continued enhancements to environment, audio, animation, and visual effects. 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
Over the past month, the 3D modelling team has continued to broaden both character diversity and creature development across Depths of Erendorn, with a strong focus on strengthening the identity of populated areas and key in-world assets. A range of civilian clothing variations has been created for human male and female NPCs, including new shirts and outfit sets such as a forest druid ensemble, helping settlements feel more varied, grounded, and regionally distinct. Alongside these additions, further NPC placement passes have been carried out across multiple settlements to enhance environmental density and reinforce a stronger sense of activity within inhabited spaces. In parallel, the team has also progressed major creature work through the continued redevelopment of the Vaznarite, revisiting its core proportions and silhouette from the ground up to resolve earlier design issues and establish a more coherent foundation for future detailing and animation.
.png)
.png)
Programming
Client
The Client team has focused heavily on improving performance, interface systems, and combat clarity across Depths of Erendorn, delivering a series of major structural and usability upgrades. Significant work was completed on the Ability Hotbar refactor, introducing pooled ability widgets, a slot-based architecture, and the foundations for future drag-and-drop customisation, alongside a number of fixes to combat-related effects such as cooldowns, consumables, and haste interactions. In parallel, extensive optimisation efforts targeted large-scale performance issues, leading to the implementation of occlusion-based ticking for animation blueprints, improvements to cloth simulation handling, and the resolution of memory leaks and animation edge cases that impacted long play sessions.
Overhead health bar performance concerns also prompted ongoing system reorganisation to improve scalability in dense gameplay scenarios. Alongside these backend improvements, the team expanded player-facing functionality with the introduction of a spell-book panel and an ability inspector system, improving access to character build information and combat readability for both allies and enemies, further strengthening the overall usability and responsiveness of the client experience.
Server
Through the past month, the Server team has delivered extensive improvements across dungeon generation, world systems, and core gameplay reliability in Depths of Erendorn, with a strong focus on enhancing both structural consistency and moment-to-moment responsiveness. Dungeon systems saw major refinement through improvements to layout generation, including new external wall creation, updates to internal structures, lighting, and ceiling systems, alongside revisions to cellular automata logic to produce more varied and engaging encounter spaces. Spawn behaviour was also adjusted to support improved set piece integration and more coherent room composition, while event sequencing fixes ensured consistent dungeon flow across all areas. In parallel, performance and efficiency were improved through optimisation of enemy spawning logic and reduced overhead during generation.
Beyond dungeon content, the team introduced contextual NPC greeting systems for towns, zones, and patrol groups, strengthening world interactivity and immersion. Core gameplay stability was further improved through fleet-wide time synchronisation, combat reliability fixes, improved XP handling, and refined target management. Loot and item systems were expanded with better rarity handling, rebalanced drop logic, and the addition of unique rewards, while backend enhancements addressed group management edge cases, character name uniqueness, diagnostic logging, and a range of tooling upgrades to support ongoing development and live operations.
Sound Design
Over the past month, the Sound team has significantly expanded and refined the audio identity of Depths of Erendorn across gameplay, UI, and environmental systems, with a clear focus on improving responsiveness, clarity, and world atmosphere. Core gameplay audio received important updates, including revised combat victory and defeat sounds, alongside expanded UI feedback for key interactions such as character selection, button inputs, and adventure summaries, helping to strengthen moment-to-moment player clarity. Environmental audio work saw major growth, with interactable objects now fully supported with dedicated sound effects and event reward audio expanded through multiple variations to better represent different outcomes.
Across the wider world, ambient soundscapes were developed and implemented for key screens and regions, including login and character select areas, as well as biome-specific environments featuring coastal waves, rivers, waterfalls, wind, wildlife, and location-based ambience for cliffs, ruins, forests, and mountain zones. In addition, closer integration with animation work has improved the connection between sound and in-world actions, such as blacksmith interactions now triggering in response to specific behaviours, supporting a more reactive and cohesive settlement experience as the overall audio system continues to evolve.
Environment Art
Over the past month, the Environment team has continued to enhance the visual quality and atmospheric depth of dungeon and cave spaces across Depths of Erendorn, with a focus on improving both performance and environmental readability. Significant work has been carried out on lighting and structural refinement, including improved crystal lighting setups, cave wall scaling adjustments, and broader compositional tuning to strengthen the sense of scale within underground spaces. Fog systems have also undergone continued iteration, with reduced intensity, more irregular dispersion, and the development of a scrolling fog effect to introduce greater variation and movement within enclosed environments.
Alongside these atmospheric updates, major material improvements have been delivered, including height map-driven cave floor enhancements for increased surface variation, the transition to virtual textures for improved performance efficiency, and fixes to legacy material issues affecting decals and crystal rendering with Parallax Occlusion Mapping. These combined updates contribute to a more consistent, optimised, and visually cohesive dungeon experience throughout the world.
Animation
Over the past month, the Animation team has continued to expand character diversity and improve behavioural fidelity across Depths of Erendorn, with a strong focus on strengthening both population variety and world responsiveness. Significant work has been carried out on NPC implementation and refinement, including the integration of new female human civilian meshes, expanded hairstyle options, and initial implementation of the dwarf character set with beard support, all contributing to a broader and more varied range of characters across settlements and populated regions. Alongside these additions, ongoing animation and behavioural work has continued to enhance ambient actions, idle states, and combat-related animations, improving consistency and variety across both exploration and encounter scenarios. Further adjustments to NPC placement and final polish passes have ensured newly introduced characters sit naturally within their environments, reinforcing a more active and believable world as animation systems continue to evolve.
Visual Effects
Over the past month, the VFX team has continued to advance both environmental presentation and gameplay effect implementation across Depths of Erendorn, with a focus on improving visual clarity, atmosphere, and encounter feedback. Significant progress was made on the game’s loading screen effects, including the development and refinement of a large ambient crevice-based effect, with ongoing adjustments to scale, colour balance, and motion to ensure stronger integration within the scene. Supporting texture work was also revisited, with subUV elements recreated to improve clarity and prevent visual artefacts at larger display sizes.
Alongside this, the team continued working through the remaining event implementations across the development sheet, delivering additional visual feedback for a wide range of gameplay interactions. While some events still rely on placeholder assets during production, the underlying VFX and trigger systems have been further refined, helping to improve encounter readability and strengthen the overall visual identity of in-game events as they progress toward final asset integration.
That’s it for this month’s devlog, but have you seen our monthly roundup of April yet?!
