New Major Update: Explore the Deep!

Voyagers! We are so excited to release our latest major patch: Explore the Deep!

The ocean is one of the most unique parts of Voyagers, and we've wanted to add more to the underwater spaces for so long! It was a TON of work, but it's finally here and we cannot wait for players to swim to new depths, explore sunken ruins, and encounter new ocean enemies.

To celebrate, Voyagers of Nera is going to be on sale from June 25th until July 9th, so hop in and tell your friends!

Alongside the patch, we also have a ton of exciting events happening during this time!

Plushie Pre-Order Campaign

This update has a special place in our hearts :D We are so excited to announce that we have a pre-order campaign available through Makeship! We know players have wanted plushies of their little pals for so long - hopefully we can finally make that happen!

If you don't know, Makeship Campaigns are based off of successful pre-order fulfillment. So if you are excited to bring a little Spirit home with you, make sure to pre-order ASAP!

The pre-order petition closes on July 5th, 9:00am PT

PRE-ORDER NOW! https://www.makeship.com/petitions/spirit-plush

Twitch Drops are back!

During this sale, Twitch drops are live along with a brand new reward that goes with this update - a Twitch Diver's Knife! Watch any Voyagers of Nera streamer to unlock the Knife and all the previous rewards: Twitch Mana Flare, Infused Skimmer, Infused Sail, Infused Watering Can! Or subscribe / give a gift sub to earn the Infused Glider

Charity Bundle!

On top of all of this, we are very happy to share that we are partnering with the Whale and Dolphin Conservation group to offer a Charity Bundle.

Voyagers of Nera Whale and Dolphin Conservation The Whale and Dolphin Conservation group (WDC) works tirelessly to help rescue and rehabilitate injured sea animals, retrieve ghost fishing gear that endangers sea animals, advocate to end cruel farming practices all while educating people every day about how they can contribute to and protect our planet.

This DLC is cosmetic and non-gameplay impacting, and 100% of proceeds go to the Whale and Dolphin Conservation. Thank you for supporting their work and helping protect the oceans that inspired Nera!

Community Contests

And last but not least, we have two contests going on right now in our Discord! Enter during the patch window for a chance to win prizes like special Discord roles, exclusive emojis to use in our Discord, and even game or Founder's Pack keys!

For Content Creators - The Triathlon👣

This contest is for video content creators! Run, surf, sail, and glide through a specially crafted race course designed by our amazing community member Rias_Grimm and enter for a chance to win. Run the race on stream live, and send us the VOD to enter. The top 5 best times will win prizes! See more details here and enter our Discord to participate!

• Entrants must have the 'Island Creator' role in Discord (which is free to claim for any content creator who joins our server)

For All Players - WANTED: A Legendary Creature🔍

We are looking for a screenshot of a particularly sneaky creature — take a screenshot of what Nera creature you think this is! If you have the correct creature, your name will be submitted into a raffle! You won't know if you have the correct one until the end of the contest. The answer will be revealed and then the winner will be chosen from the raffle! Three winners will receive prizes! Join our Discord and look under the Community Events Hub to participate.

Leave us a Review!

If you haven't left us a Steam Review yet, we would deeply appreciate it! They're a huge help in spreading the word to new players and we LOVE player feedback. We read every single review and so many of the updates to Voyagers come directly from your feedback and reports (including loads of stuff in this update).

Now, let's go to the patch notes!

Explore the Deep Patch

Players come to Nera to explore a magical ocean world full of dangers, mysteries and surprises around every corner. The ocean has been a huge draw for players, and you've been asking for more content to discover underneath the water.

In this major update, we have totally re-imagined the underwater space. The world is now filled with ancient, sunken ruins - remnants of Echoes who tried to save Nera before you - waiting to be discovered. There are lost sanctuaries built by Spirits that house mysteries and surprises. And there are new underwater enemies, tools, resources and new diving mechanics to truly make exploring the deep feel like a fresh adventure.

Even though our main focus was the underwater update, we didn't forget about what's above sea level!

We've also significantly expanded what you can discover in the world, including new discoverable recipes, hideouts from previous Echoes, new lore, an overhaul to our gear power up system and more!

Keep reading below to get an in-depth view of all of the major features and content in this patch.

🏦Sunken Ruins

Nera was once a region teeming with life and magic. Spirits and magical beings inhabited the world, living peacefully in Sanctuaries and villages across all of Nera - but the Deep gained power, raised the Spires and corruption flooded the world… engulfing much of Nera in a rising ocean.

Remnants of this lost civilization are all around. You'll need to dive to explore through these Sunken Ruins, and learn more about what Nera once was. There will be various types of Sunken Ruins throughout the world. Some may merely be a sunken archway or crumbled pillar, while others may be small villages or crumbled sanctuaries that you can dive and swim through, explore and collect loot.

Minor Ruins

Small ruins are remnants of the world before, scattered throughout each of the biomes. They have basic resources around them, and become more dense when near some of the larger Ruins cluster.

Village Ruins

These Village Ruins can sometimes have just one lone house washed away by time, or several buildings where a group of previous Echoes once lived. They will often have loot and special resources.

Lost Sanctuary Ruins

The largest Sunken Ruins will house a special resource: a Precursor item. These items are now required to upgrade the Spirit Anchor. Large Ruins will also offer unique challenges that will test your mettle. The Bubble Plants will only get you so far if you're foolish enough to dive deep without preparing...

Ruins Detector

Some of the large Ruins can be tricky to find - look out for these statues around the biomes! They will guide you to the nearest large Ruin.

🤿Depth Mechanic

We will be deepening our water mechanics by adding a Depth limit. Depths will be defined around the biomes - each biome will have some shallow areas, some mid-depth areas and some very deep areas.

At the beginning of the game, you may be able to just dip your toe into the deeper waters if you prepare with oxygen potions; but as you progress and gain new gear - like the Diver's Reed - you’ll unlock the ability to dive further and explore the deepest corners of Nera.

Alongside this, we have done some overall gameplay tuning to the start oxygen value, how quickly oxygen drains, and how drowning works so that they feel appropriately balanced for these new features.

Diver's Reed

The Diver's Reed is a new type of equipment that will increase your diving limit.

• Default Diving Limit

  • 30m Max Depth Limit

• Diver's Reed

  • +20m Max Depth Limit

• Deepwater Diver's Reed: +50m

• Abyssal Diver's Reed: +70m

There will also be Vestiges (see later patch notes) that can imbue these to further increase their Depth Limit.

Pressure Sickness

If you swim past the depth limit, you will experience pressure sickness. This will cause your oxygen to drain extremely quickly. Hope you brought a Bubble Tonic!

New Consumables

We have added new types of consumables that can be used to extend your time spent underwater.

• Bubble Tonic

  • Restores 30 oxygen

• Bubble Salve

  • Restores 50 oxygen

• Bubble Potion

  • Restores 100 oxygen

Bubble Plants

There are now Bubble Plants around the ocean floor. Swimming over a bubble plant will restore your oxygen fully, as well as any other players nearby.

🔪Diver's Knife

There is now a new type of gathering tool: the Diver's Knife. Many underwater resources like Seaweed and Clams now require the Diver's Knife to harvest them. We have also introduced a new underwater resource type which will be a resource that can only be gathered under water. These will be used to craft things like weapon and tool imbuements, new color variations of lighting options, and more!

This can technically attack enemies as well, but it is primarily a gathering tool, so it does very little damage. You know what they say - never bring a knife to a Deepling fight!

• Stone Diver's Knife

  • Harvests Seaweed, Glowstone, Clams, and Tidestone

• Sharpstone Diver's Knife

  • All of the above, as well as Bulb Kelp and Galestone

• Tidesteel Diver's Knife

  • All of the above, as well as Bubblesac and Rootstone

• Amberite Diver's Knife

  • All current underwater resources in the game

🦈New Underwater Enemies

Alongside all of these underwater updates, we wanted to introduce more enemy types - including our first ranged underwater enemy!

• Deepling Thresher

  • This enemy will first appear in the Reef and beyond

  • This enemy has a rapid melee attack, and a ranged electric attack. If hit by the ranged attack, the player will be stunned for a short time

• Shockjelly

  • This enemy will appear in all biomes

  • This enemy is not innately aggressive, and cannot be killed.

  • This enemy will patrol an area. If the player touches it, they will be stunned for a short time.

  • Once activated, the shock effect goes on cooldown for a short period. During that time, the player can make contact with the Jellyfish with no consequences.\\

• Glimmerling

  • This enemy will appear in all biomes, but is quite rare. You'll be able to spot it shining in the sea.

  • This enemy is not innately aggressive.

  • If hit, this enemy will drop some loot! Chase it down and hit it until it disappears to get greater rewards!

⚔️Underwater Combat Improvements

Now that you're spending so much more time underwater, we thought it would be a great time to make some targeted improvements to underwater combat.

• Blocking

  • Shields can now be used underwater

  • Enemy attacks can be blocked or parried under water, just like they can be on land

• Stagger

  • Underwater enemies can now be staggered. Hit them repeatedly to fill up their stagger meter; once staggered, they will be stunned for a short time.

• Dodging

  • Perfect Dodge now works underwater - this is hopefully also a nice buff for those using the Path of Wind!

  • Underwater dodged has enhanced VFX and SFX to be more obvious

  • Improved interaction between dodging and ascending/descending in water so that dodge behaves more reliably

⛵Boat Balance and Steering Options

We have made several changes based off of player feedback, as well as adding some quality of life features that we thought would go hand-in-hand with this update!

• Reduced turning acceleration on the Scouter hull so that it does not feel so twitchy when interacting with the tiller

• Added an Auto Return Steer option, which is ⚠️ now the new default option ⚠️

  • When enabled, the tiller will return to zero if the player is not actively press left or right.

  • This can be changed in the Gameplay Settings menu.

• All boats now have greater turn deceleration, meaning you should be able to zero out turns faster

• All boats now have increased control value deceleration, meaning you can return to 0 throttle and steering faster

• Collision damage capped at 15 for all boats

• All boats now have significantly more storage space

  • Scouter Hull: 16 Storage Slots

  • Skiff Hull: 20 Storage Slots

  • Barge Hull: 28 Storage Slots

New Boat Station: Looking Stone

• The Looking Stone can be built on the boat, and used to look at a different camera view either under the boat, or high above the boat

• Players can use the Looking Stone view directly at the object itself, or if they are steering the boat they can use it with hotkeys without having to stop steering - this should be ideal for solo sailers!

• Players can also use the Looking Stone at the same time if one of them is using it through the Steering, or if they build multiple Looking Stones.

🗺️Discoverable Recipes

We have added a new way to find and learn recipes. Throughout the biomes, both on land and under the sea you'll find a capsule known as a Sealed Item. Once gathered, these can be brought back to the Arcanist Station to unseal them. They will either reveal a recipe item or a magical crafting material.

These recipes will include things like special crafting recipes or buildable item recipes.

There is a different type of Sealed Item per biome, each with unique rewards.

• Arcanist Station

  • Unlocked at level 4 in the Knowledge Tree

• Recipe Items

  • These will be received from unsealing items in the Arcanist station.

  • Place them in the hotbar and use them to learn the recipe, or hover the item and use middle mouse button within the inventory to use them and learn the recipe.

  • If you should find that you have a surplus of recipe items, these can be converted into Mana Crystals at the Manaforge.

🚪Locked Doors

Players have told us how much they love the story of Nera and their desire to learn more about the world - and there’s so many more stories we can tell!

We feel that stories can be experienced in many ways. Sometimes that can be direct, like reading a specific piece of lore - but that can also be through the environment, like seeing a cave with mysterious markings or finding an abandoned camp from another character.

We wanted to incorporate more story telling through the environment and allow players to discovery what Nera may have once been like.

Around the biome, you will find notes that contain key codes. These key codes match a door somewhere within the same biome - often they will provide hints on where to find these doors! Search for the door, enter the code and discover what awaits you!

There are 7 Locked Doors in the world currently. Each Locked Door will contain a unique reward or unlockable item, as well as some written lore.

We can't reveal too much here without spoilers 🤫, so you'll have to discover these for yourself!

👻Restorable Spirit Shrines

Long before players got here, Spirits inhabited the world – but they were forced into hiding by The Deep. As Echoes, your mission is to push back The Deep and restore magic to the world of Nera. As you adventure and explore the reaches, defeating Deeplings and conquering Spires along the way, you will be able to restore destroyed Shrines.

Once restored, Spirits will inhabit this shrine and they’ll provide gifts to you. These gifts will respawn over time, so you can visit these Spirits over and over to see how they’re doing and grab any goodies.

There are 3-4 shrines per biome in various locations and they will give out specific rewards for the biome that they're in, so make sure to keep an eye out!

New Gear Upgrade System - Vestiges

As part of this patch, we took this opportunity to give a big glow up to our Imbuement system. Players have been asking for ways to upgrade items like gathering tools, skimmers and gliders as well as more interesting ways to upgrade gear. We are so excited to introduce this feature!

We believe this system will offer a much wider range of customization and create new opportunities to craft gear around things like weapon playstyles and spirit companions.

If you have previously imbued weapons or armor from the old system, unfortunately these will not work with the new system. You can continue to use them, but you will not be able to imbue them with any Vestiges. Make new weapons or gear to be able to use this system.

Upgradeable Items

One big improvement in this system vs the old one is that you can upgrade nearly everything, including:

• All gathering tools

• All weapons

• All Armor pieces

• Skimmer

• Glider

• Diver's Reed

• Focus

• Shields

How to use Vestiges

Players can now craft Vestiges, which can be imbued onto nearly any type of gear to make them more powerful.

Each piece of gear has a pre-determined number of slots for Vestiges, between 1-2.

Vestiges can be crafted at the Imbuing Bench and fused with the equipment to imbue it with new power. Once fused, the Vestiges are consumed - so if you want to imbue all of your gear, you’ll need to craft more.

Vestiges can be removed from a piece of gear, however the Vestige will be destroyed in the process.

Vestige Types

There are many types of Vestiges with many different attributes. Some will increase things like attack speed, while others may enhance the skimmer's speed. Some even have specialized attributes, like the Vestige of Hobb's Bane, which increases the damage dealt to Reef Hobbs.

Some Vestiges will be unlocked through the Knowledge Tree, but others will be found in the world either in Sealed Items or maybe even behind Locked Doors.

📕Compendium

With this update, we realized it is more important than ever to see what recipes you've unlocked, what lore you've discovered... but most critically, what else is left?!

We are introducing the Compendium with this update. Currently there are only two tabs available:

• Recipes

  • You will be able to see all recipes you've learned, whether they are from the Knowledge Tree, a Sealed Item or found otherwise in the world. There are also several ways to filter them, which will hopefully allow you to quickly find what you're looking for.

• Lore

  • You will be able to see all of the lore journals and monoliths that you've discovered in the order they would come in the story.

  • You will also be able to see the notes for Locked Doors, which are denoted by a symbol that matches the door.

❤️‍🩹Quality of Life

Alongside the patch content, we have also made numerous quality of life improvements that we hope will make the gameplay experience smoother!

Controller Fixes

We have fixed a slew of controller issues! We still want to make improvements in the future, such as making more screens navigable by D-Pad or Joystick scroll, but we hope this will get controller into a much better spot.

• Fixed many instances where buttons were not mapped to any controller input (Map, Quest Journal, filtered building modeand more).

• Fixed issue where glyphs would flicker between controller and mouse/keyboard when approaching certain built objects.

• Fixed issues where rebinding mappings for controller would not always successfully remap them.

• Made Player Menu (Inventory, Map, etc) navigable with bumper buttons for switching tabs.

• Fixed issue where closing Monoliths or Markings would result in Settings Menu opening

AZERTY keybind fixes

We have additional fixed several issues making life painful for AZERTY keyboard users. NOTE: You may need to try to re-bind your movement keys and hotbar 1/2/3 to get the fix.

• Ensured Build Mode Create, Move and Delete options follow the hotbar mapping

  • If these aren't working for you, try rebinding them one time to get it to pick up the fix

• Ensured the Cannon would follow the movement mapping

  • If these aren't working for you, try rebinding them one time to get it to pick up the fix

Mirroring Sails

• Sails can now be mirrored for a more symmetrical and aesthetic look.

• Use 'X' while placing Sails to mirror them!

New Hip Lantern

• There is now a Glowstone Hip Lantern trinket earnable in the Reef

Updated Inventory Screen + Hotbar

• The Hotbar now has two more slots to equip items into (9 and 0)

  • This will now allow you to equip an additional 2 items onto your hotbar!

  • The inventory capacity is currently the same size, but it may look a little smaller - but its a visual trick; the inventory screen is wider than it used to be!

• Re-worked the Gear Equipment screen so that the item placement feels more intuitive

Economy Balance

• We have done some re-tuning of the food spawn and drop rates to make Farming feel more useful. We believe we still have some work to do here and plan to make more changes in the future.

• Storage Chests have been buffed across the board

  • Small Basket: 12 Storage Slots

  • Tall Basket: 20 Storage Slots

  • Storage Chests: 32 Storage Slots

Mechanics Balance

• We have increased durability of Stone and Sharpstone Tools

  • Stone Axe and Pickaxe: 120 -> 160 durability

  • Sharpstone Axe and Pickaxe: 160 -> 180 durability

New Buildable Items

There have been a bunch of new buildable items added as rewards for Sealed Items and Locked Doors!

• Stone Sunken Ruins Set

  • Stone Archway

  • Stone Pillar

  • Stone Pathway

  • Stone Stairs

  • Stone Blocks

  • Stone Bench

  • Stone Vases

• Glowstone Stringlight Color Variations

  • Blue

  • Green

  • Purple

  • Stringlights now also have wide and narrow variations, to fit more spaces!

• Candle Sets

  • Pink Candle Set

  • Red Candle Set

  • White Candle Set

• Drums - interact with these to play a beat!

  • Small Drum

  • Tall Drum

• Elderwood Furniture Set

  • Elderwood Chair

  • Elderwood Stool

  • Elderwood Bench

  • Elderwood Lamp

  • Elderwood Bonfire

  • Elderwood Planter

• Signal Stone

  • This is a deployable beam of light that can be interacted with to change colors - this can be seen by all players at a great distance.

• Storage Urns

  • Large Storage Urn

  • Small Storage Urns

  • These are cosmetic variations of the Storage Baskets made with ceramic

• Potted Glow Coral

  • This is a small potted plant for tabletop placement

• Rustic Love Seat

  • This is a smaller, two-seater version of the Rustic Couch!

🐛Bug Fixes