"Mini” Dev Blog: Elderwood, Zeki’s Loyalty Club, and Snails

Hello, Palians!

We’re back with another quick update to touch base on Elderwood, talk about some Premium Store updates, and address the elephant Snail in the room. Let’s crawl right in!

A Peek into Elderwood

We know Elderwood has been at the top of everyone’s wish list, and we’re as eager as you are to bring it to life! This upcoming Adventure Zone has been a significant focus for our team, and we've recently been having fun playing it internally. You may have noticed a bit less gameplay content in recent and upcoming patches—that’s because we’re concentrating our effort on making Elderwood special. We’re tracking toward a Q2 release and can’t wait to adventure with all of you when it goes live.

In the meantime, check out a preview of the Elderwood soundtrack from Palia's composer, Steffen Schmidt!

“This preview aims to evoke some of the mysterious tones and ambiance one might experience in the Elderwood. It was recorded with the talented musicians in Vienna at the legendary Synchron Stage. Composing this track, along with the subsequent ones, has been incredibly fun due to the delicate textures and colors that almost feel impressionistic.” -Steffen Schmidt, Composer

Stay tuned for more details as we get closer!

Introducing Zeki's Loyalty Club and other Premium updates

TL;DR We’re adding more affordable opportunities to get your looks for less money.

Zeki's Loyalty Club

If there’s one thing Zeki loves more than treasure, it’s sharing (well, kinda). Enter Zeki’s Loyalty Club — our way of giving more value to Zeki’s most loyal customers. Here’s the quick version of how it works:

• Zeki’s Loyalty Club is a new way to buy Palia Coins - getting you more for less. You can get up to 1325 Palia Coins for the price of 425!
• When purchased, Zeki’s loyalty club will immediately give you 425 Coins, plus enroll you to get 30 more Coins each day for the next 30 days. If you log in every day, that’s 1325 total - more than 300% of the normal value!

A lot of popular games have an option like this, where you can get a massive discount on premium currency once every month or so. We think this is a great opportunity to help folks find a price that works better for them for their favorite premium item they’ve been wanting. And the system is designed so that even if you miss some days, you’re still getting the best deal on Palia Coins (and at minimum, the normal full value even without logins). For full details, check out the upcoming 0.188 Patch Notes (coming soon!) and then in-game store starting in Patch 0.188.

Expanded Sales and Bundles

Just like in the real world, not everyone values everything at the same prices. In the real world, sales and discounts have been the tried and true method to give opportunities for folks to find the price makes sense to them. We’ve always seen this as true for Palia as well, so we’re going to be meaningfully increasing our discount offerings—bringing you more every week. Here’s how it’s going to work:

• Every Thursday, we’ll rotate in new sales or discounted bundles.
• There will be a range of items, discounts, and bundles.
• Each sale will last a week until we rotate in the next offers on the following Thursday.

We hope these expanded sales will help people get new Outfits, Tool Skins, Pets, and more without breaking the bank. Combined with Zeki’s Loyalty Club, a discerning Palian could get some great new fits for wildly lower prices. And no outfit is off limits - to show this we’re going to kick off with a sale on possibly our most popular selling outfit - Sylph - for 33% off starting Thursday, January 30.

More Earnables

In Palia, there are tons of things you can earn and ways to show off your accomplishments and style - but most of these are limited to your housing plot. We’ve gotten a lot of requests in this space and we agree that there are not enough ways to customize in Palia outside of your housing plot if you’re not a spender, and that isn't the best for Palia. While there are a number of things we want to do here long term, for now we’d like to introduce a new earnable content type: Stickers!

Stickers are a new item type you can collect (and trade!) that allow you to express yourself in your own ways while you’re out and about. We’ll have more to reveal closer to their launch in Patch 0.189. We’re also looking to add more Nameplates that are earnable through a greater variety of activities in Palia that will add even more opportunities to show who you are.

We’re always listening to your feedback, and this is just the next step in our ongoing effort to make monetization feel fair, rewarding, and player-friendly. We’ll be continuing to evolve our stances here so please keep the feedback coming!

Leveling-Up Communication

As for broader communication, it’s been 5 months since the last dev blog, which we agree is too long. This “mini” blog is just a step on the road to more regular updates. So stay tuned!

There have also been a number of instances where we showed items in trailers and other communications that have not actually shown up in the game - which is never our intent. We just wanted to specifically say that moving forward we’re committed to preventing this from happening and communicating clearly if it does (ideally alongside releasing them!). That said, expect to see a notably absent gastropod and an additional furniture tint making their way to Palia for Patch 0.189 and we’re sorry we haven’t gotten them to you sooner!

Final Thoughts

From Elderwood to Zeki’s Loyalty Club to new furniture tints, we’re excited about what’s ahead for Palia. Thank you for being part of this journey with us. Your support, feedback, and passion are what make Palia such a special place.

Until next time, happy adventuring!

• The Palia Team