Fernwild 1.7.1: skills, relics, and a Tavern between runs
Quite a bit has happened since the creature voices and doors in 1.2.0. Fern now earns experience, learns skills, collects relics, and has a Tavern where the game keeps track of what she has survived.
The latest version is 1.7.1. Here is the catch-up.
Kills, cleared rooms, and bosses now give experience. Levels earn points for five active skills: Volley, Dash, Snare, Thorn Ring, and Hawkeye. They run on cooldowns without spending arrows. Skill slots open as you level, and upgrades cost more as they get stronger, so a run needs a little thought about where those points go.
There are also 31 relics. Clearing an ordinary combat room offers three to choose from, or coins instead. They change your bow, movement, quiver, skills, and what enemies leave behind.
Collecting them all would make Fern rather ridiculous, so only equipped relics affect her. You begin with one slot, gain a second at level five, and a third at ten. The rest wait on the bench. Swapping at the pedlar is safe; opening the relic screen during a fight leaves the room running and stops Fern from firing. That decision costs you a few seconds of attention.
Beating The Hollow One opens The Long Hunt, an endless mode that starts at the difficult end of the story and keeps climbing. It cycles through the environments and bosses, with its own records.
Between runs, there is now the Tavern: a painted room with the Hearth, a Trophy Wall, a Run Book, Tails’ basket, and the door. Its controls work with a mouse, a controller, or a thumb, and the clickable areas follow the things in the painting.
The Hearth has more upgrade ranks and five new purchases, including better coin income, more frequent hidden caches, fuller quiver pickups, and a starting skill point. A third starting life becomes available after defeating The Hollow One.
The Encyclopedia remembers the creatures, relics, and skills you discover. Filling it in now earns embers at milestones, giving you something useful from a run even when the boss gets the final word. Existing discoveries receive their rewards too, once. Previously earned trophies are recognised in the same way.
The Run Book keeps your last twenty finished runs, including their seeds, results, stats, skills, and equipped relics. Short seed codes make an interesting layout easier to replay or share.
Progress transfers now live there too, under Carry your story. Export a code to back up your profile or import it on another device, including discoveries, trophies, and run history. Sound and touch settings stay on their own device. There are proper Copy and Paste buttons now, which matters when an iPhone will not offer its usual paste menu inside the game.
And then there was the phone testing.
Relic taps no longer undo themselves, long lists scroll under a thumb, and descriptions stay inside their panels. Ricocheting arrow storms have better-controlled sound playback and cached artwork. Killing several monsters together no longer stacks little slowdowns into a stutter.
Clearing a room also removes its remaining hostile projectiles before the reward cards appear. No more choosing a relic and being hit by something the previous room left hanging in the air.