Tales of the Rampant Coyote

Adventures in Indie Gaming!

Frayed Knights Levels Up – More Frayeder and Knightier!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 6, 2011

Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon has been updated to version 1.04. Yes, if you blinked (or slept, unlike me) you missed versions 1.01 through 1.03. That little story will be worth a blog post of its own. The important part is that we’ve made some improvements to the game. These are primarily bug fixes for technical issues and important gameplay issues, but I managed to sneak in some typo corrections and some handy but minor interface tweaks.

If you own the full version of the game, you can grab the update (and all future updates) here:

Frayed Knights Updates Page

The patch is pretty small (but significant!), so it’s a quick update.

For new purchasers as of today, their version is already updated to 1.04. They will not need to apply this patch. Not that I think it will damage anything if they do.

The demo will be getting updated. It is currently only updated (at some locations) to version 1.01, as the later changes were all in non-demo content (specifically, the Eastern Wilderness).  But I’ll be bumping the version number anyway to help avoid confusion. The demo will not have a separate patch. Patching a free demo seems weird.

For those who are curious, here is the list of (almost) everything changed in this update. Version 1.04 only fixes an issue introduced in the (briefly available) previous patches:

New Features:

  • You can use the standard keyboard numbers 1-4 to choose the target friendly character in Spell target selection menu.
  • The critical hit bonus of a weapon is now displayed in item data window in the inventory screen.
  • Spacebar acts the same as the enter key for advancing dialogs and other windows.
  • Venric’s store now has a short bow and a chain mail hauberk. This only affects new games, not existing saved games.
  • Character base attack and defense scores (with current equipment, including shields) now displayed on character sheet.

Feature Changes:

  • Slightly improved chance of success on searching.
  • Luck provides a small bonus for searching.
  • Hidden items now have a slightly larger discovery radius.
  • Line-of-sight checks added to certain hidden items to avoid detecting items on another floor.
  • Change text in options menu from “Full Screen Video” to “Play Full Screen” to prevent some confusion.
  • Removed penalty for search checks for triggered traps. (Meaning – it’s a trap you just stumbled upon without searching it out first)
  • Slight increase in all character’s magic defense to compensate for bug-fix on magical attack hit chance.
  • Slight position change of some hidden objects to make them less annoying to find or work better with line-of-site checks.
  • Added dice roll on results for magical attacks.

Fixed Issues:

  • Hitting “escape” to close the journal no longer screws up your controls.
  • Restoring default key controls from options menu now works correctly.
  • Fixed bug where swapping characters prior to Benjamin leaving party would permanently remove one party member.
  • Fixed issue with Ol’ Hoss’s quest where the hidden stash may not be detectable if another hidden stash had been uncovered.
  • Skipping empty save-game slots no longer causes crash or broken game state.
  • “Blank” merchants in saved games force a refresh to defaults on load: No more getting left with empty merchants forever.
  • Fixed a spot in Pokmor Xang where player could get stuck on crates in left guardroom.
  • Removed the magical disappearing signpost in nighttime Ardin.
  • Fixed corner of a house in Ardin that was floating slightly above the ground.
  • Tweaked screen resolution filters to prevent unplayably small resolutions or prevent playing in native (or higher) resolutions.
  • Fixed the very ugly defaulting to 16-bit in full-screen mode.
  • Fixed bug in Energy Conservation feat that was often preventing it from reducing endurance costs.
  • Canceling the travel menu with the escape key no longer leaves player stuck in area border zone.
  • Exiting other windows will no longer leave the main screen in combat mode when combat has ended.
  • Fixed bug with certain types of dice rolls (particularly spell hits & searches) that was producing reduced success rates.
  • Fixed bug where incapacitated characters with autofade would still fade at the beginning of combat. I know autofading uses no endurance, but I had no idea it required that little exertion! 🙂
  • Shield bonus now works for weapons in primary hand.
  • Eliminated shield bonus on non-magical weapons except for parrying dagger.
  • Darkened empty drama star sockets.
  • Fixed Various typos. Not including this on.

Have fun!


Filed Under: Frayed Knights - Comments: 8 Comments to Read



  • Curiousity said,

    How many beta testers did you have for this game? I’m surprised none of them caught some of the stuff that I and others came across or offered any UI suggestions.

    I’m thinking the Mount & Blade/ Minecraft style of charging low while game is in rough state, than raising the price as the game gets further along in development is the way to go for indies as you will get more valuable feedback from wider audience and incorporate that into the final product.

  • Rampant Coyote said,

    Actually, we were in much better state than many mainstream, AAA games released for the PC. For *any* game of this size, the developers could iterate on bugs, improvements, and feature requests from now until Doomsday. We debated the idea of doing early (paid) beta access, and for some games (particularly multiplayer or those with much more dynamic, non-story-heavy content), it would be a good way to go, but not for a game like this.

  • UDM said,

    Out of curiosity, you really should contact RPS to do a write-up on this. Like, seriously. I find it disturbing and hard to believe that they haven’t even picked up on FK’s trail yet, not pre-release and definitely not post-release.

  • Rampant Coyote said,

    I’ve sent them 2 or 3 emails. I hope they’ll say something, but I haven’t heard back from them.

  • skavenhorde said,

    They’re too busy posting dragon Minecraft stuff 😛

  • PAK said,

    I, too, as a TOTRC reader of four years who is just now leaving his first comment, sent RPS an email when Jay first announced the trailer. But Alex Meer doesn’t like me I guess. 🙁

  • Demiath said,

    As for RPS, I created a forum thread there on release day and RPS community veteran Vinraith later started another one, but so far we’ve obviously seen nothing official from the staff. I guess you can’t expect every site to cover every game – especially not given that RPS is not exactly IGN in terms of its resources – and I also have a feeling that the staff simply isn’t very interested in old school RPGs apart from those trendy commercialized roguelikes and a few polished and streamlined dungeon crawlers such as Legend of Grimrock. Maybe it would have been different if Kieron Gillen was still there, since he covered Knights of the Chalice back in 2009 after reading my thread about it.

  • skavenhorde said,

    They have a ton of indies posted and yet not this one which is unique amongst the horde of shooters, sidescrollers and other indies.

    A quick mention wouldn’t kill them since they seem to be very supportive of the indie scene.

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