A Painted World

The whole of the Aethermere has been repainted. It's a big change, so it's marked experimental: if you'd rather keep the classic look, turn off Painterly look (experimental) under Settings > Graphics and the game remembers your choice.

The world

• Hand-painted skies by day and night, with clouds that drift slowly overhead.
• The ground is painted too, with its own colours for every region: meadows, sand, snowfields, tundra, marsh, autumn woods, pine forest, heath, canyons, volcanic ash and the Lampless Reaches.
• Each region has its own light and mood. Swamps sit in a green haze, the north is cold and blue, and mornings everywhere come in warm and golden.
• Roads are soft packed dirt in the wilds and paved stone in towns, and they blend into one another neatly where they meet and fork.
• Grass is thicker and full of wildflowers.
• Trees have painted leafy crowns, and pines and willows have been redone to match.
• Caves and dungeons get painted rock walls and floors, including both cave systems in the Lampless Reaches.

Water

• Seas, lakes and rivers have been redone. Waves roll across open water, foam laps the shore, and rivers run downstream with the current.

Footprints

• You, other players, creatures and mounts leave footprints in sand, snow, mud and dirt roads. Every mount leaves its own kind (hooves, claws, bird tracks or little crab dots), and dodge rolls kick up dust or snow.

Outlines

• Outlines now default to Screen-space at 40% thickness on Medium and High, and everyone's outline setting has been reset to this once. You can change it again under Settings > Graphics > Advanced. The ground, grass and anything under water no longer get outlined, and the line stays crisp with anti-aliasing on.
• Trees, rocks, gathering spots and crafting stations now light up with a thick, clean outline around their whole shape when you point at them.

Screens

• A new painted title screen, and a painted loading screen when the game first starts.
• Boats, carts and lifts show a painting of the place you're leaving while you travel, and Lamp-stone jumps, Home Recall and the Reaches skiff get their own painted screens. Dungeon entrances and exits hold a painted screen a little longer, so you can actually see it.

Characters

• The starter tunic fits properly now. Shoulders slope down from the collar into a rounded cap, and the sleeves come out from underneath it instead of sitting on the side like a separate box. It moves with you when you run, swing overhead or cast, and looks right on every build.