Originally posted by warby in #announcements / Heartwood Online Discord:

What a wild ride this past year has been. New friendships have flourished, guilds have amassed, and the competitive spirit thrives! We have seen some truly incredible players join the Heartwood Online community, and we could not be happier to have you all here! This community is truly the heart of Heartwood.

With your help, we’ve accomplished many things this year. To celebrate this monumental occasion, we invite you to celebrate the first Dryad Bloom with us.

Many eons ago a forest Dryad developed a mysterious connection with the Great Constellation. Since then, generations have celebrated this union with fireworks, flowers and well wishes. This festival only happens when the Great Constellation is in the sky, so enjoy it while it lasts!

We cannot thank you enough for being here with us while we continue to develop Heartwood. This past year has been an incredible experience for us, and we are truly excited to work alongside you all in shaping out this amazing game.

Originally posted by Davro in #patch-notes / Heartwood Online Discord:

v0.4.9 - Patch Notes

Happy One Year Anniversary!
The First Annual Dryad Bloom Festival has begun! A temporary questline and items have been added to celebrate Heartwood's first year in Early Access.

• Crafting experience bonus added for Magic Recipes
• Certain ranged attacks from enemies are no longer homing. Projectile speed increased to compensate
• Reduced startup time for Health Regeneration after leaving combat
• Additional materials acquired from gathering gear bonuses are now indicated by colored font
• Adjusted crafting recipe for the following items: Oppressor, Pillar of Balance, Bone Splinter, Bone Blade, Elder's Crown
• New visual effect for moving items in inventory UI
• New visual effect for representing damage taken on enemy NPC health bars
• Updated font color for Critical Strike, Modified Damage, Enemy Damage
• Bonus damage modified by abilities like Freeze or Invisible are now represented by a new font color
• Updated player HP bar layering so that they are always visible among groups of monster health bars
• Updated party experience formula to reduce penalties based on level differences between party members
• Added a cooldown for changing servers that is incurred after consecutive server changes within a duration
• Reworked attack speed (Players will notice a slight baseline improvement from the previous version)
• Added functionality for placing useable items on the ground
• Updated enemy logic to reduce "stacking" of sprites
• Updated quest UI to include accept and complete function
• Added functionality for kill tracking
• Added new functionality for NPC dialogue
• Added tags for Developer/Moderator in chat UI
• Player name/guild/title sizes have been slightly reduced
• Added new block SFX for when damage is fully mitigated by shield block
• Added new running SFX for mounts
• Added new mount summon SFX for Stonejaw and Turtle mounts
• Added new SFX for Stonejaw/Turtle enemies
• Updated SFX for Freeze spell cast
• Updated SFX for player death
• Converted numerous SFX from stereo to mono for better spatial positioning
• Fixed a bug with boss aggro that was causing summoned enemies to only attack the summoner
• Fixed a bug that would cause enemies to hold aggro even when changing rooms
• Fixed a bug that would sometimes cause monsters to chase invisible players
• Fixed a bug that would sometimes cause recently tagged monsters to reset to their starting position, then become aggressive again
• Fixed a bug that caused enemy health bars to show as grey/tagged for party members
• Fixed a bug that would prevent the lowest level party member from receiving experience for enemies that are 4 & 5 levels lower than them
• Fixed a bug that would cause monster experience to be based on the level of the party member who delivered the killing blow
• Fixed an issue with the scrollbar on crafting UIs
• Fixed an issue that required a restart of the game after disconnecting from inactivity
• Fixed an issue that was causing falling leaf animations from trees to show on the wrong sprite layer
• Fixed an issue that was causing rock breaking effects from ore nodes to show on the wrong sprite layer
• Fixed visual bugs with Ancient Fox mount
• Updated positioning of player sprite on Fox mounts