We know we've been relatively quiet in comparison to our normal frequent updates - and for that we apologize! This has been an intensive 3 weeks since launch with no shortage of work, updates, bug fixing, balancing, feature addition, and much more. While we don't normally do patch notes, I wanted to give you guys an idea of what exactly has changed since launch and what we are doing right now all the way up to the end of the month! Its a big list so buckle in.

What We Have Done

- Gutted the Admin Shop Economy: One feature that was extremely hard to nerf was the admin shop; with it being such an integral part of the server, we knew nerfing it would both draw some praise and some negative feedback. We decided to better stimulate the player economy and slow down the progression, it was best to remove a large chunk of items that could be bought and sold and to limit said items to a basic subset, requiring the majority of end game items to be found and sold player to player. Don't worry though! There is still plenty of money to be made :).

- Voting Overhaul, Points System, & Crate Rewards: We have completely overhauled how voting and voting rewards work - now as you vote, you will earn rewards that feel worth your vote, these rewards including vote coins and vote crate keys! There are some pretty awesome rewards in this crate, but there are multiple other crates as well which can be purchased for Points. While points are locked behind exchanging vote coins for them, there is plans to integrate points acquisition in other forms as well to help stimulate the points economy a tad more and make earning points not only a task limited to voting for the server. Of course, there will be a lot of balancing to make points a challenge to acquire as the rewards earned with points can boost progression exponentially. Notice - None of these crates are or will ever be pay to win; The only crates that can be bought for real world currency are those that provide cosmetics only.

- Thematic Changes to the World/Server: When we started the server, we were fairly comfortable with just being a standard SMP RPG server with a lot of cool content and hours of fun - but this did not help us to stand out in any way. We quickly realized that changes had to be made to ensure we remained fresh, exciting, and unique to every other server. Our first move was to find a theme that adequately fit the server. When we first launched Bone Voyage in 2023, the original staff team and me always joked that the server sounds wayyy to much like a pirate-like server to be just a standard SMP RPG based in a semi-medieval setting. Now on our second, much more improved launch, we decided to take this seriously and begin attacking what should have been the server's theme from the start. From here on, the server is being developed in the direction of being a Pirate-Themed SMP RPG. If you have kept up with our lore channel in the Discord, you can see that we have been slowly moving this direction, and our newest builds have reflected it as well.

- AFK Room: A small change, but we have added an AFK room where you can earn rewards for AFK'ing every 3 minutes. Just type /warp AFK before getting up and let the money rollll in.

- New Engaging Areas of Spawn: We have added a couple of fun little areas in spawn to help boost spawn engagement - these are the Fishing Ponds, Auctioneer, & Player Mall. While the player mall is still a very heavy work in progress due to finding the right feature set to match its needs, it is fully built and rentable to any who want to secure a good spot early!

- Bug Fixing & Misc Balancing: This is the hidden improvements we have made that would take a book to write out - Hundreds of minor and major improvements to balancing and bug fixing are and have been implemented and you will notice these continue to be quietly rolled out, improving gameplay and decreasing playtime issues.

What We Are In The Process of Doing

- Advertising & Professional Graphics Acquisition: We have been hard at work to raise the funds to get a new set of graphics so that we can resume advertising - and thankfully we did it thanks to you guys! Thank you all so much for your support and look forward to an updated graphic set/new trailers and dev vlogs in the very near future.

- The Fisherman's Guild Update Change: To add to the previous bullet, the Fisherman's Guild Micro-Update will now be titled "A Far Voyage". This will no longer be a minor update, but a massive content expansion giving us a new spawn area, a plethora of new quests, items, and much more. The Fisherman's Guild and its quests will be looped into this update. Due to the exponential size increase of this expansion, we cannot give an exact date on completion - but we are making extremely steady progress. Stay tuned for more information in later updates

- Creating the 2026 Graphic Roadmap: While this has taken a backseat, we are still planning to release it by end of month. We do not want to give too much away, but there are a lot of plans for things such as dungeons, map expansions, and more :).

- Custom Loot Drops: With us having a few custom items that are scarce in the world, we realized we'll likely need mobs to have a low % chance to drop said items. This is a top priority currently and expect this change very soon.

- Improved AFK, Daily Quest, & Chat Game Rewards: We are currently attempting to balance the reward systems from these features so that they are worth engaging, but also not broken to the point of providing an unfair advantage.

- Wiki Documentation: As much as we have tried to avoid making a wiki - we know that it is unavoidable as we add more and more features. We are hoping to have a server wiki out at the end of the month as well.

- Improvements to Announcement Messages: We want our announcements to actually be helpful and provide you guys with tips for gameplay, links to important tools/features, and more. 

- Minigames/Possible Parkour: Adding minigames is something we are considering to help stimulate the points economy - this is pending research and will likely be added in a future update post December.

- Continued Research into Spawn Interactibility: We want to continue improving ways players can interact in and around Spawn so that the server feels like a community - not like a solo adventure. 

- Changes to Land Claiming: This is a massive change we plan to put information out on well in advance - Please keep your eyes peeled for a Discord announcement titled "MOVING DAY". To ensure you are on to claim your base.

There is so much more behind the scenes that has happened or is planned for the future and we hope to hear suggestion from you guys on what we can improve/add. Thank you all so much for joining us these last 3 weeks and we shall see you at the Month Anniversary <3.