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

Wow...It's just over 5 months since launch and Heartwood has grown so much. It's been a blast working with such an awesome and supportive community.

The last 2 updates were holiday events. Although holiday events are fun, they don't offer the same long term benefits as permanent content. (Unless you were lucky enough to snag a Pumpkin Staff 🎃)

Now that the holidays are over we're back on the dev grind and finalizing some lasting features, or in gamer lingo... sweet, juicy, CONTENT. That said, we know you've been eagerly waiting for an update and we're excited to share some info on that today.

🧱 Update 1: QoL (dropped today)

Today's update includes a lot of important core features that will help us develop future content more efficiently like housing, pets, new talents/spells, and much more... Along with these dev team improvements, this update includes a handful of bug fixes and quality of life features such as:

• New Overseer mechanics to prevent boss holding 😉
• Party loot improvement
• Leaderboard fix
• Chat fix
• Many system improvements, see ⁠📄 patch notes (below) for more info.

🐺 ⚔️ Update 2: Shadowfang & PvP (next update)

The one you've all been waiting for...

• Expanded map size for more adventures
• New gathering resources
• New crafting tiers
• New equipment/gear
• New free to earn mounts/cosmetics via quests and drops
• A slew of new enemies & npc's to interact with (like those elusive wolf men)
• PvP arena!
• PvP dueling. 1v1 anywhere in Heartwood
• Improved survivability and ability tweaks to balance classes and make soloing more pleasant.
• Reputation, quests, and new legacy marks!
• And other secrets... 💫

Also, a few fun stats:

• 962,647 accounts
• 5,383 jailed players (Brutus is watching) 🍅
• Total exp for all players: 169,372,719,446

The dev team's malnourishment and sleep depravation have lead to profound hallucinations in the form of new game features. 2024 is going to be a great year for Heartwood.

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

v0.4.5 - Patch Notes

• Added /age command to check character play time
• Added 'last seen' for friends and guild members
• Added a 'Logout' button to character select screen
• Logout option on Dashboard now takes players to Character Select screen
• Hat visibility setting saved on logout
• Mounted status saved on logout
• Fixed a bug that would cause players to be stuck in guilds even after leaving or being kicked
• Fixed misc bugs with Leaderboards
• Fixed a bug that would cause players to get stuck in place when dismounting by casting a spell
• Fixed a bug that would cause the chat text box to lose focus, allowing hotkeys to function while chat was active
• Updated channel names in chat channel select dropdown
• 'Group Loot' used to drop items only for the party member who delivered the killing blow to a monster. Common drops are now cycled through party members in order. Rare and uncommon items are still rolled on
• Updated Overseer to prevent griefing and holding boss
• Updated reconnect method to prevent frequent disconnects when playing with weak connection
• Fixed party loot settings UI
• Added a confirm button for requesting account deletion