Changelog

0.6.0 (2026-10-24): Together

Reasons to play together: a shared ruin, a world boss, community events, and the moderation tools to run a server for more people. Plus the Aetheria Wiki.

The Aetheria Wiki is online at https://vps-207979dc.vps.ovh.us/wiki/ (open it from F2 help, the Esc menu, the launcher's Wiki button or the dashboard). It's rebuilt on every server update: every command, crop, item, part, affix, enemy, perk, recipe, manual, build piece, event and notebook goal, straight from the game's data, guides for every system (the manual, split by topic), "Your first hour", Help and FAQ, the changelog and roadmap, with search.
Moderation: player reports go to a report queue on the server dashboard (with the chat lines), where a moderator can dismiss, mute for 24 hours, kick or ban. Bans are by account, timed or permanent, and a banned player is told why and until when at login.
The Friends panel lists everyone you've muted, with Unmute buttons.
The Relay Commons: a big shared ruin (level 5+) everyone online explores together. Glitches respawn and chase the nearest Poncho; everyone who helped with a kill gets their own loot, and crates are personal (refill for you after 5 minutes).
The Great Warden, a world boss: every 3 hours it wakes in the shared Warden's Arena (level 5+), with a warning in chat 5 minutes before. Everyone online fights the same one; its health grows with how many Ponchos are there. Beat it within 15 minutes and everyone who did at least 2% of its health gets Loop Cores, Glitch Cores, XP and a shot at a Legendary part by mail.
Loop Core (new material) and the Warden Assembly recipe: 3 Loop Cores + 2 Glitch Cores make a Legendary part.
Mail can carry a whole rolled part now.
Community events: the server works toward one goal together (hand items in at Mendwell's new Event Board, or harvests and glitches count by themselves). Meet it in time and everyone who helped gets rewards by mail; the top 3 get a Mendwell Trophy decoration. Started from the server dashboard. First three: The Great Potato Drive, Glitch Sweep and Harvest Festival: Corn.
Balance pass (v0.6): the Great Warden has 500 health per Poncho (was 900; a typical level-5 Poncho does its share in about 6 of the 15 minutes), a 40% Legendary chance (was 25%) at your best item level. The Relay Commons drops loot at your own best item level with depth-6 glitches (was a fixed item level 45, a shortcut at level 5). The Potato Drive wants 10,000 (was 20,000), and admins can size any event to the crowd. ./tools/godot.ps1 balance now covers the world boss, the Commons and events.
Faster: the Loop Warden's marked tiles are worked out once instead of every tick, and sent as a pattern instead of a tile list.

0.5.0 (2026-10-24): Tools of the Trade

Programming quality of life: autocomplete, a blocks-first start, nested blocks that look nested, a step-through debugger, and a script library with run_script(). Plus the mailbox opening and in-game bug reports from after 0.4.0.

Saved scripts: a script library above the editor. Save as, Load and Delete (up to 10, saved with your character).
Subroutines (new Engineering perk, tier 2): run_script("name") runs a saved script from inside a program, sharing its variables and functions. Its lines don't count against the motherboard limit.
Step-through debugging: Pause, Step and Continue buttons, and breakpoints (click left of a line number in Text, or the circle on a block). While paused, a box shows the line about to run and your variables. Works online too (it all runs on the server).
New players start with blocks. Typing programs (the Text tab) is unlocked by proving you've got loops and choices: the new end-of-chapter-1 goal Loops and choices (an if inside a loop) gives Grandpa's Typing Manual. Characters who were already past the first loop keep typing. Chapter 1's hints now talk about blocks, and clicking a sensor tile adds a move block when Blocks is open.
Nested blocks look nested: a block inside a loop or if moves right as a whole, and a coloured rail runs down from the loop or if to its last block, so the program's shape shows at a glance.
Autocomplete in the code editor: a dropdown as you type (after 2 letters, or Ctrl+Space) with the commands Poncho knows and their inputs (plant(crop)), constants, your own variables and functions, keywords and built-ins. Tab or Enter accepts. Commands he hasn't learned show greyed out with the manual or perk that teaches them.
A new opening: every farm has a mailbox. The first notebook goal is now simple: grow and harvest a radish (the starter program plants them; you start with 3 radish seeds). Grandpa's Waystone arrives in the mail; place it (it goes up at once) and go sell your radish in Mendwell. Town, chat and other players are now minutes in instead of chapter 5. Older characters get a mailbox and, if they have no Waystone, a Waystone Kit in the mail.
Mail (from the notebook and friends) is collected at the farm mailbox, or at the Mendwell bank.
Report bugs from the game: F8 (or Esc → Report a bug). Version, place and recent messages go along; solo reports are sent the next time you play online. They land on the server dashboard's new Bug reports panel.
Fix: the Mendwell bank (and other town tabs) looked empty right after a deposit until reopened. The items were always safe; the screen now updates when the server's answer arrives, and the server sends everything right after any action.
Fix: in Mendwell the sensor grid covered the waystone (and blocked walking near Poncho); it's hidden in town and on friends' farms now.
Fix: swapping parts while a program runs used to be refused with the reason only in chat (it looked like equipping did nothing). Swapping now stops the program, and the workbench shows the result.
Fix: item tiles (bag, workbench) only took clicks on their margin; the whole tile works now.
Fix: the tile info under the cursor was hidden behind the bottom buttons; it has its own bar above them.
Right-click an item in the bag to throw it away (asks first).
Launcher: readable text (it was drawn at ~40% size), and it shows the history of earlier updates.

0.4.0 (2026-10-24): The Shared World

Online, Aetheria Bloom is now one world: the live server at wss://vps-207979dc.vps.ovh.us, Discord login.

The launcher (AetheriaLauncher.exe): pick Stable or Beta, updates itself from the server (only the files that changed), keeps the previous version as a backup, puts it back if a new build won't start, and has Repair. Beta keeps its own saves.
One Mendwell for everyone online: see other players' Ponchos walking around with their names, click the ground to walk, and "Here: ... · N online" in the town bar.
Chat: talk to everyone in town (speech bubbles over Ponchos), /w name whispers anyone online, /r replies, /mute, /unmute, /report. Filtered and rate-limited.
Friends: add friends, see who's online and where, visit their farms (look-only, even when they're offline) and leave notes, choose who may visit yours, and mail them items via the bank.
Smoother online play: the server sends only what changed (a busy farm went from ~500 KB/s to ~2 KB/s), your game grows crops itself between updates, and a dropped connection reconnects on its own.
The Loop Warden's warning tiles now show online.
Soak-tested: 30 bot players (half farming with programs, half walking and chatting in town) for 3 minutes over real connections: no errors, no disconnects, no memory growth. It caught a slowdown (26 ms average ticks, spikes to 137 ms); the server now checks slow-changing data twice a second instead of every tick: 7 ms average, worst 42 ms, a fifth of the bandwidth.
For the server's admin: a password-protected dashboard (players, live log, charts, debug console, chat and report logs, kick, chat bans).

0.3.0 (2026-10-24): Grandpa's Notebook

Grandpa's Notebook (N): chapters of goals with Grandpa's notes, hints and rewards. Chapters 1-3 cover the opening through the first ruins. A goal strip under the status bar shows what to do next.
Some shop items (Hobbyist Board, Tin Heat Sink, Horticulture/Navigation/Functions manuals) now unlock through the notebook. Older saves keep everything they could already buy.
Setting: everyone is human; the Great Loop is the reason people fear robots. New intro lines.
Soil chemistry: every tile has Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium and pH, from a natural soil map. Each crop has its own pH range and nutrient needs. The scarcest nutrient sets the harvest (30%-120%), wrong pH cuts it more. Harvests take nutrients out; beans fix nitrogen. Plants show symptoms (yellow = low N, purple = low P, brown edges = low K, stunted = pH).
Soil tools unlock as you go: Compost (notebook ch. 1), Urea (ch. 4), and new Horticulture perks: Soil Science (take_sample(), the Soil Lab, get_lab(), soil map on M, Lime/Sulfur), Nutrient Balancing (Phosphate/Potash), Field Probe (live probe()), Precision Spreading. New spread(Urea)-style command. "Fertilizer" is now Compost.
Land: the farm is now a 96 x 64 valley of 4 x 4 plots. You start with Grandpa's corner; buy more on the Land map (L), next to land you own, for a rising price. Wild land can't be farmed. Notebook chapter 2 gets "Room to grow". Old saves keep their farm as the starting corner.
Big maps: pan with WASD/arrows or middle-drag, F to follow Poncho, zoom out further. The farm is drawn in chunks and crops grow in half-second batches, so a fully planted valley stays smooth.
Potatoes (the currency) all fit in one bag slot.
Build mode (H): paths (Poncho rolls 10-30% faster on them), fences, stone walls, hedges, gates and ten decorations. Ghost preview, drag to paint lines (Shift for areas), rotate, demolish (half refund), undo. Wood, Stone, Planks and Bricks in the shop.
Wild land: the valley is full of brush, trees and boulders (Grandpa's corner starts clear). New plots must be cleared with clear(direction) before farming or building: brush gives weeds, trees give wood, boulders give stone. look(direction) sees what's next to Poncho. Weed Compost recipe. Notebook chapter 2 gains "Elbow grease". Land bought before this update stays clear.
Storage: Chest, Silo (crops, sell straight from it), Seed Vault and Compost Bin (weeds and crops turn into Compost). Click one to open it. Programs use deposit(), deposit_all(), withdraw(), stored() and scan_structures(); item names like Wood and PotatoSeed work in code.
Working buildings: Well, Sprinkler, Beehive, Charging Dock, Greenhouse and Field Lab. They start as construction sites that Poncho finishes with build(direction). Wells and sprinklers water crops in range, bees grow harvests, the greenhouse speeds growth, dock() cools Poncho, the field lab makes soil tests free and fast. New notebook chapter 5, "Homestead", unlocks them.
Signs and banners you can write on (click them; read_sign() in code). Text is filtered.
Rare decor from ruins-crate kits: Loop Obelisk, Rusted Robot, Old Fountain, Grandpa's Tractor, Windmill.
Blueprints: save an area you built and stamp copies anywhere (Build mode, Blueprints tab).
Mendwell, the valley town: build a Waystone to travel there. Request board (deliveries for the townsfolk), town trust (Wary to Beloved: better prices, trader goods, cheaper land), a market with daily prices and a rotating trader, and a bank. Notebook chapter 6, "Into Town". No programs in town.
Online: the travel buttons no longer disappear with the speed controls.
Shed upgrades (crafting bench, Shed tab): Workshop, Barn, Homestead Hall, with new recipes (planks, bricks, cheaper circuits and cores), more bag slots and a shop discount.
New crops: Radish (fast), Beans (restore soil here and next door), Corn (needs rich soil, sells well).
Selling: the bag's Sell list buys radishes, beans and corn.
New commands: get_crop(), plus get_soil(), get_neighbors(), get_ripeness() from the new Agronomy manual. Notebook chapter 4, "Tired Soil".
Economy fix: a potato harvest now gives 2 potatoes and a seed potato back (it used to give 1 potato for a 5-potato seed, so farming lost money).
Hover a farm tile to see its soil, crop, ripeness and water.
Fix: exported builds rejected plant(Potato) and other commands with inputs.
The Loop Warden: every fifth ruins depth is a boss room. The Warden marks tiles in a fixed loop (rows, columns, ring, cross), blasts them, then vents for 6 seconds with its shield down. New sensors danger(), scan_danger(), boss_open(). Beating it drops Duskberry cuttings, glitch cores and a 35% legendary chance.
Duskberry: a perennial bush. Plant it once and pick it 5 times; picking it unripe pricks Poncho. Likes acid soil (pH 4.5-6.0). From the Warden, or the Mendwell trader.
Syntax Manual: Memory: dictionaries ({key: value}, get, keys, values, items, pop) and remember() / recall() / forget(), which keep values between programs and in saves.
Notebook chapters 7 "The Deep Relay" and 8 "Memory".
The Aether Lily: the endgame crop. 5 minutes, and it needs water the whole time (it drinks every 40 s), soil health 80+, and 3 different crops next to it. Neglected, it wilts; healthy, it gives its bulb back. Notebook chapter 9 "Bloom" (the last one). Mendwell's Beloved requests want lilies.
Notebook goals can end with a line from Poncho (story beats).
Balance pass: Duskberry regrows in 60 s and sells for 5 (it was either worthless bought or far too strong free); a spent bush leaves a cutting. Trader cuttings 2 for 90. ./tools/godot.ps1 balance prints the economy (crop income, notebook rewards, XP curve, land prices, the Warden fight).

Online play (M0-M3, 2026-10-22 to 10-24)

Play Online: connect to a game server; the server runs your farm and Poncho, and the game shows it live.
Log in with Discord (once the Discord app is set up), then Continue as <name> for 30 days.
Intro tips are remembered online too.
Player manual (docs/MANUAL.md): controls, screens, G-Script, commands, loot, crafting, perks, examples.

0.2.0 (2026-10-22): loot, crafting and progression

Diablo-style loot: every part rolls rarity (Common to Legendary), item level and up to 5 random affixes from 15 (4 tiers unlocked by item level), with generated names like "Overclocked Calyx Pro CPU of Fortune". Loot beams, rarity-colored callouts, and tooltips that compare against what's equipped.
7 legendaries with rule-changing powers (free loop checks, attacks that vent heat, never fleeing, bumper crops, hopping walls, extra loot, faster cooling).
New stats: loot find, crop growth, experience, fear resist, plating, double harvest, shop discount.
Syntax Manuals: Sensors, Horticulture, Navigation and Functions teach new commands and the def keyword. Read them from the bag; your first ruins crate always has one.
Crafting bench (C): salvage parts into materials, craft recipes, reroll affixes, upgrade rarity, temper parts past their normal maximums.
Levels and perks (P): Poncho levels to 30; spend points in a three-branch perk tree with capstone powers (including the new Sprinkler). Respec for potatoes.
Depth ladder: clear a ruin's depth to unlock the next; deeper means tougher enemies, more crates and better loot. New enemies: Static Wisp and Rust Brute.

0.1.0 (2026-10-21): first playable

Fresh rebuild of Aetheria Bloom from a blank project.

G-Script: a Python-like language with its own interpreter. Loops, conditions, functions, lists, friendly errors with line numbers and "did you mean" hints. Runs a few lines per tick so the CPU stat matters and an endless loop can never freeze the game.
Programming: text editor with highlighting and live line tracking, plus a Blocks view of the same program. Click Poncho's sensor grid to insert moves.
Farming: till, plant, water, fertilize, harvest. Crops need water, and fertilizer speeds them up. Potatoes are money; the shop sells seeds, fertilizer and starter parts.
Hardware: 14 parts across six slots with rolled stats and rarities. The workbench shows Poncho with his parts wired around him. CPU = lines/second, motherboard = program length, heat sinks keep him from overheating, servos = speed, sensors = reach, cargo = bag space.
The ruins: a new layout every trip, with crates of loot and glitch drones whose hits heat Poncho up and scare him. When he's anxious he abandons your program and flees to you, then gets back to work.
Saves (autosave too), pause menu, settings, help screen, first-run tips.
Launcher that updates the game from a private GitHub builds repo (download, verify, swap, relaunch, automatic rollback), plus tools/release.ps1 to build and publish playtest releases.