Are you ready to start growing? Plant splicing is now available in-game! Make your favourite crops produce more or grow faster by creating a Plant Splicing Station for your ranch!

As of the update today, players who have bought all of their ranch expansion regions can start a new quest by talking to Farmer MacDonald, who has decided he wants to help you explore the world of plant splicing. The reward? Your very own Plant Splicing Station!

Once you have the station, harvesting crops on your ranch will start counting towards Crop Research Goals. Each crop has a certain number of harvests (of that crop) that you must do before you can try to level it up. Once you reach the Research Goal you can begin to research an upgrade for that crop. This research will take time, and will be more difficult and time consuming based on the crop's level. When the research is complete, you’ll either have successfully leveled up the crop (increasing its production or decreasing its growing time) or you’ll get a boost to your success chance and can try again. Each level will take more harvests of the crop to meets its research goal and the max level of each crop is 10, at which point the crop will, on average, be about 20% better.

While researching a crop, harvests of that crop won't count towards its next level research goal, but you can still harvest different types of crops to start working on their goals.

There are also a variety of new achievements for dedicated Plant Splicers, some of which come with exciting titles.

Happy farming!

Talk about your splicing on the forums  

FAQ:

Can I research rare seeds, like Magic Beans, Super Blueberries, or Mushrooms?

- No, those plants cannot be researched. Only normal fruit and vegetable crops can be modified using the Plant Splicing Station.

Ring in the Year of the Sheep in Egg Breaker Adventures with the return of the special mini event challenge Monkey!

For the duration of the event, special challenge eggs will temporarily replace all normal challenge eggs, and the eggs will appear at a higher than usual rate. Players can earn 12 event prizes, with three additional rare prizes for the toughest of the tough challenges: a special new hammer, trophy room item and a Chinese Fan Hat!

Players may also purchase two new hats in the Chinese New Year themed hat packs, available for the duration of the event! The Dragon Hat which increases the chance to win Gold and Stars and the Ram Horns which increase the chance to win Hammers and more event tokens.

This event will run from January 28, 2015 until February 4 2015 @ Noon PST.

Talk about the event here!

Get ready to compete: leaderboards are now in game! Check them out by clicking the Rankings button in the top-right corner of the game (near the mail and settings buttons).

You’ll have the chance to see where you rank and play hard all week to claim the top spot. Then every Monday at 12:00 AM PST, if you’re in the top 10, you’ll get an awesome banner to equip in your Back clothing slot. The banner is yours to flaunt in multiplayer runs and fishing expeditions until the next time the banners are awarded (the next Monday). The number one spot receives a banner with extra flair.

The 7 categories of ranking which will receive banners are:

• Battle rating
• Paragon level
• Single player mission aggregate score
• Single player heroic mission aggregate score
• Multiplayer mission aggregate score
• Arena rank
• Experience accumulated (the game will now track the experience you receive from doing missions in order to give you a rank but it will not be used to instant level you when new content is released)

Ties in rankings will be broken by character age (characters created earlier will be higher in rank.) This may change in the future.

The rankings will accumulate for a season and then reset to give everyone a fair shake at top prize. There will be more information as we get closer to the first seasonal reset on Monday March 30th 2015.

And while you are chasing ranks you can now look awesome doing it. With 5 full sets of clothing to buy individually or in a pack, because who doesn’t want to look like a Pirate, a snazzy Tuxedo, a Fire Elemental, a Goblin or a Skeleton? Plus a whole bunch of pieces to customize your look, from wings to sunglasses or a real wizard hat.

As well, now you can buy gems in multiple quantities from the Store making it easier to craft the higher levels. And you’re going to want that because gems have received some serious buffing!

And we’ve been hard at work ironing a bunch of bugs. Check out the patch notes for all the details.

FAQ:

What is the Arena leaderboard ranking based on?
The Arena leaderboard is based on your single-player arena ranking. Fight in the arena to increase it!

What is the Battle Rating I’m being ranked on?
The Battle Rating rankings are based on that highest Battle Rating you've ever attained, regardless of what it currently is.

Will the experience I earn on the XP leaderboard go towards future levels?
No, experience gained after you reach max level is counted on the leaderboards solely for ranking purposes. When the level cap is raised, everyone will start out at the same point.

Talk about all the changes on the forum!

At the most recent TEDxVictoria, I (Eric) had a chance to share why I love video games. My talk was formed from a random collection of ideas that had been rattling around in my head from some time. While I found it quite a process to distill these ideas into a talk, I found the results to be quite rewarding. Ultimately, this is the talk that I wish I could have heard when I was 12 years old.

Hi Everyone!

With everybody patiently waiting for the new Jungle content to be completed we thought you could use some new missions to tide you over!

The Brotherhood has found some very shady characters and they want you to take them out. With 3 new mission levels you can do just that...while earning more paragon tokens! Playable solo as single player or with friends as multiplayer, you get to track down some new evil villains in a rowdy Tavern, a spider infested Forest, and a blazing hot Desert.

Click on the "Bounties" tab in the Paragon Brotherhood to see the day's available bounties. Bounties award Paragon Tokens when successfully completed. You can do as many bounties as your stamina and multiplayer limits allow, but your first one each day will award double the Paragon Tokens.

This update also includes some significant performance tweaks to our game engine. For now we're restricting these tweaks to the tutorial forest, the first forest mission zone, the forest multiplayer mission, and some of the new bounty missions, but if they work out we'll be implementing them in all zones and missions in a future patch.

Tell us what you think of the update here! 

Happy Birthday Nate!

It’s that time of year again! Help celebrate Nate Dragon’s birthday by getting it set up for him.

First and foremost, whenever Nate is involved, safety becomes a priority. Find Safety Coins in the bushes and bring them to the stations in the Commons to stock up on protective gear.

Then it seems Nate needs decorations and activities to set up in the Commons. Go out daily and find things for his party.

New for 2015:

We’ve added a new quest that will be unlocked as the event goes on. Keep your eyes peeled for a fiery good time! (Requires the Town Hall to have been built)

Event Achievements - POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT!!

There are a total of TEN possible Achievements to earn in the Nate’s Birthday 2015 event:

Achievements Returning in 2015:

Safety First - You completed a turn-in at each of the Safety Stations.
Safety Inspector - You completed 50 turn-ins at each of the Safety Stations.
Without a Hitch - You helped Nate with all of his Birthday quests!
Neverending Supply - You completed each of the Birthday event daily quests 3 times

Added/Changed for 2015:

Tiny Little Arms - You bungled each activity station while dressed like a Dragon
Nate's Stash - You bought all the 2015 Nate's Birthday event items! *
Firefighter - You put out a fire and saved a building in the Commons! [Requires the Town Hall built]
Dragon Slayer - You scared off a dragon and saved the Commons!

We have 2 achievements from previous year's events, which may be earned by spending some Bush Bucks, if a player was not present during the initial year:

Nate's Inventory - You bought all the 2014 Nate's Birthday event items!
Just Like Nate! - You bungled each activity station while dressed like Nate.

*The Nate’s Birthday mini-golf piece is not included in the Nate’s Stash achievement, and therefore it is not required to purchase it.

Pet Packs:

It's dangerous to go alone, so you should have a friend! Check our newest sidekicks for you to consider:

2015 Pet Packs



Kate (Cat Nate) - Replaces up to 30% of Nothing wins with Gold
Puffy the Dragon - Reduce Nothing chance by up to 30%
Dynobug - Replace up to 25% of Nothing wins with energy, mana, or power


2014 Event Pets available for Bush Bucks:



Boy Dragon - Burns up to 25% of your Nothing wins, turning them into random energy, mana, and power
Girl Dragon - Burns up to 25% of your Nothing wins, turning them into random energy, mana, and power
Dragon Kitten - Increases your chance to win puzzle pieces by up to 15%


This event runs until Friday January 30, 2015 @ Noon PST.


Post your thoughts and feedback here! 

First off, we’re glad to see everyone is enjoying playing the game. It’s awesome to know you love Shards of Titan as much as we do!

I’m sure you are all very curious about what we’ve been working on. Rest assured new content is underway! We have a lot features in the works, but our primary focus is currently on the next major campaign area, the Jungle Shard.

While it is too early to give a scheduled release date we would like to share some progress on the upcoming content. The Jungle will include at least 7 new major mission areas. That means over 30 new single player missions! There will also be new multiplayer areas to explore with your friends, and the level cap will be raised!

Also in the works is a guild revamp, an addition to the Brotherhood system, and some more goodies.

Thank you guys for your patience while we work on getting all this out to you!

Check out some screenshots from the new shard below!


You can almost believe you are in a real jungle, wandering around under a canopy of these trees.




What’s a jungle mission without a rogue Panther or two (or more) to kill? These cats definitely have claws.




And here's a sample of the area you will be fighting in.




Talk about these changes here!

Colleen Ireland has received the Dedicated Pilgrim achievement. The requirements for getting this achievement are to visit our offices in Victoria, BC after actively playing our games for five years or more. Colleen dropped by on December 26 for a brief tour (our offices are not large) and chat. Peter and I enjoyed swapping stories with Colleen. She has been playing our Egg Breaker games since the beginning and it was great to hear her perspective on the games. Afterwards, Colleen shared that her visit to our offices was one of the highlights of her trip to Victoria, BC.

Congratulations Colleen on your achievement!


Colleen and Peter pose in front of a whiteboard (Thanks for the tree Nick!).

Over the holiday season, my daughter and I (Eric) made a gingerbread house version of the Shards of Titan Town Hall. We looked at all of the stages of the Town Hall and we thought it would be best to tackle the level 5 version. Still, it was a lot of work! In total, we spent about 4 days planning, baking, assembling and decorating the Town Hall.


What Should It Look Like?

First thing was get a reference screenshot of the level 5 Town Hall from the game. We thought about maybe doing the final stage of the Town Hall, but we weren't sure how to go about making the round tower. And we figured that the level 5 stage was ambitious enough!


Planning the Gingerbread House

Once we had a reference image, we mocked up the final gingerbread house in a light cardboard. We did the Town Hall in 25mm scale. Not only did this allow us lots of room to make a great looking gingerbread house, but it also meant that it works with my D&D figures. You can see two test figures in this picture.


So Many Pieces!

Next I made a template for every piece of gingerbread that we would need. Normally, I wouldn't make doubles of pieces that are the same size. However, this is the most complicated gingerbread house that I have made and making a individual template for every single piece of gingerbread that we needed seemed like the best approach. Having already done this once for the scale model, my daughter was now tired of cutting out templates and so I was left on my own to complete this step.


Lots of Tasty Gingerbread

At this point, all of the gingerbread has been made, cut to size, scored (for the wall sections) and baked. In total, we used 28 cups of flour to make all of the gingerbread for the Town Hall. We had quadrupled the recipe from our old "Joy of Cooking" cook book. Sadly, we quickly saw that we wouldn't have enough gingerbread and so we made another quadruple amount of gingerbread.


The Team

Here is the team hard at work putting the building together. My youngest son helped a little. However, my daughter worked with me the whole time.


Ready for Decoration...

It took lots of royal icing to glue everything together. However, is really sturdy.


Candy, Candy and More Candy!

We used crushed purple hard candies as shard crystals. It turns out that our local candy store was closed for the holidays, so we had to go all over town to find hard purple candies. I would have never thought that they would be so hard to find!


Decoration In Process

We had most of the town hall decorated by this point. I wasn't sure how we would come up with something for the windows, but we ended up cutting Airhead candies to the right size.


All Done and Ready to Eat!

Here it is this morning... at the office and ready to eat!


The Main Entrance

The view for visitors to the Town Hall.


Visitor at the Main Door

A shady visitor wishes to visit.


Wishing Well

Here is the well (Smarties) where you can make a wish (or perhaps fish too!).


Shard Quarry

What town would be complete without a shard quarry? Candy rocks and little bits of shard crystals with a few guards. A miner is ready to start digging.


Stealing from the Town Hall!

While there are lots of guards at the front of the Town Hall, two thieves (who happen to be identical twins) are sneaking out of the back.


Remains After Destruction

Folks have eaten and this is all that is left now.

Our first content update of 2015 for Bush Whacker 2 is a whole new floor for your Skyscraper!

I mean, it's not much of a skyscraper if it's only got one floor, so for those of you who've already built the base, head back to the construction worker and help him add a second floor! Once it's complete and you've helped move in some tenants, the Skyscraper will provide a new set of daily quests for you to do. Note that you'll only ever be offered either a Skyscraper daily or an Inn daily each day, so the total number of daily quests and Satchels you can collect per day hasn't changed. Have fun!

Discuss this update on the forums!