The lights have been seen over the water for as long as anyone in the hamlet can remember. This week they come closer. Wild wisps now gather wherever you work and fight, your guardian can hold the ones you catch, and every spell draws on them. Beyond the hamlet, the west coast opens up, with a new port, the ruins of Caolas and a boat to the Order of the Wisp.

Wild wisps and Calling

• Wild wisps now appear as you work, fight and explore, each kind drawn to its own place: embers to fires and forges, brooks to water, roots to trees and fields, breezes to the open hills, stones to the mine and rot to the wounds of a fight. Click one to call it.
• Calling is now its own skill. It decides which wisps you can catch and how many your guardian can hold.
• A wisp with a stronger will than yours may slip your hold, so a stronger Will helps you catch the greater kinds.
• Give caught wisps to your guardian to store them as charges. You can see what he holds on the Equipment tab.

A new spellbook

• Every spell now belongs to one of the six kinds of wisp: ember, brook, root, breeze, stone and rot, two spells each. Each cast uses a charge of its kind. Bolt, Lance, Siphon and Nova are gone.
• Bind now draws on root wisps, and its stronger form, Tanglewind, comes at Will 32.
• Will has been rebalanced, so spells now keep pace with melee and archery.

Wisp gems

• Mining now and then turns up an uncut gem: sapphire, ruby, emerald, moonstone, quartz or onyx, small, medium or large. Better ore turns up bigger gems.
• Cut it with a chisel (a steady hand might cut it perfectly), then light it with a wisp of its kind.
• Set a lit gem in silver at the furnace for rings, necklaces and amulets, or fit it to a Wispelm Staff. A staff gives free charges of its kind while you wield it, until its wisp is spent.

The west coast

• Follow the shore west from the hamlet to a new port on the Sound, with the Salt Barrel tavern, Morven's tackle stall and fishing off the piers.
• Across a causeway lie the ruins of Caolas, an old harbour town left empty for a long time. Something there has caught your guardian's eye.

Sanctum isle

• Once you've finished First Light, Jory the boatman will sail you to Sanctum isle, home of the Order of the Wisp.
• It has a bank, a Will altar, a training yard where Brother Corin teaches spells and buffs, groves to chop in, the island's one wispelm tree, and a library with books worth reading.

New quest: What the Light Remembers

• Old Hamish at the port knows a story about treasure in Caolas. Follow it, and the Order may tell you what your guardian really is.

Fixes

• Right-click a worn item on the Equipment tab to examine it.

If you play on Windows or Android, download the new version from the downloads.

Will is at the heart of Aethermere, and this week it got the attention it deserved. Spells and Guardian buffs have been reworked, there are four new spells that do more than deal damage, and the first hour of the game does a better job of showing you where to go.

Spells

• Each kind of spell now plays its own way: Bolt is quick and cheap, Lance pierces armour, Siphon gives you back Will Points as it hits, and Nova hits hardest but casts slowest.
• In multi-combat areas, Lance also strikes the enemies lined up behind your target, and Nova the enemies around it.
• Spells look the part: wisps of light in each spell's colour, a shaft of light for Lance, a burst for Nova, and sparks flying home to you from a Siphon.
• Spell damage now counts towards who gets the loot.

Four new spells

• Bind (Will 7) holds an enemy in place.
• Dim (Will 15) weakens an enemy's attacks and defence.
• Wisp Path: Kingsford (Will 20) lets your guardian lead you through the Aether to the capital.
• Mend (Will 27) slowly heals you.

Guardian buffs

• Battle Focus, Eagle Eye and Channel boost your melee, ranged or spells, and the new Wisp Ward guards you against every attack. Each has five tiers, unlocked as your Will grows.
• Run one attack buff and the Ward together. Buffs drain Will Points far more slowly than before.
• Your guardian glows in the colour of the buff you have on.

The Will bar

• Every spell, buff and echo has its own icon. Right-click or hold a slot to change or remove it.
• Fighting back with a spell in hand no longer walks you up to the enemy, and running out of Will Points keeps your spell selected.

A warmer welcome

• New arrivals are met by Elder Wynn, who comes out to greet you on the green and shows you into his house.
• Not sure where to go next? Anyone with a quest for you is marked with a gold diamond on the minimap, and the quest tracker lists things you can do between quests.
• Wander off from your quest for a while and a reminder in the game chat points you to your next step.

Garrow's Apprentice

• Garrow now teaches you to fight. He kits you out with a bronze helm, sends you to clear the tunnel rats from his coal, then explains your equipment, armour and the metal tiers.
• You can take it up while fetching the fire cradle for the Elder. The Awakening no longer has a fight in it.

Fixes

• Arrows and spells fly over fences, railings and crops again, but not through walls, trees or rocks.
• Click or tap a worn item on the Equipment tab to take it off.
• Equipping more of the arrows already in your quiver adds them to it, instead of swapping the quiver out.
• The game uses much less memory, so it runs better on phones.

If you play on Windows or Android, download the new version from the downloads.

The capital has been rebuilt from the ground up. Kingsford is bigger and busier, with new districts to explore inside its walls, and there's a world map to help you find your way.

The Crown Quarter

• Walk into the King's palace: the throne room, the great hall, the kitchens, the King's chamber and the treasury, with doors between the rooms.
• Visit the cathedral, the Great Bank on Palace Square and the Merchant Council house.
• Grow flowers in the new physic garden by the North Gate.
• The nobles of the Crown Quarter have deep purses, and sharp eyes for a wandering hand (Thieving 17).

Merchants' Row

• A weaponsmith, an armourer and a bowyer and fletcher now sell iron and steel gear. Look for their sign posts on the canal walk.
• The city watch keeps its barracks by the West Gate.

Loom Ward

• The Worshipful Hall of the weavers' guild has a spinning wheel anyone can use. Bring flax or spider silk.
• Orla the goldsmith sells rings, necklaces, amulets and the moulds to cast your own.
• The dye works by the east water gate colours the canal downstream.

The Market Cross

• Laid out afresh around the old king's statue, with the food stalls, the Market Hall, the Crown and Anchor and a bank.
• The Crown and Anchor now serves ale and food, and the fish stall (up to salmon), the butcher and the bakery have more on offer.
• Wat the leatherworker sells leather boots and gloves as well as his leather body.

The world map

• Press the new map button on your minimap to see the whole world, with a key to every bank, shop, forge and fishing spot. Drag to look around, scroll or pinch to zoom.
• The map on this website works the same way now.

Also new since our last update

• Night time glows: wisps light the ground around them, fireflies fill the meadows, windows and fires glow, and front doors open and close.
• An orc camp has appeared on the moor beyond the Loch, and the clan road leads over the Braes to the Clansmen's camp.
• Defeated monsters leave a wisp of energy, every spider drops spider silk, and forest spiders lurk in the Hamlet Woods.
• The Gull and Lantern is bigger, the Northfields watermill has its wheel back, and the anglers fish for real.
• The Android app no longer closes when you press Play, and the world loads faster.

If you logged out inside Kingsford, you'll wake up on the hamlet green.

Two new places this week, both up the North Road out of Kingsford, plus a pile of fixes and changes from your reports.

The Lochside

• Leave Kingsford by the North Gate and follow the road to the Loch and its travellers' inn.
• Wenna serves ale and food at the bar, and the regulars are happy to chat.
• Catch pike in the Loch with a rod and a spinner (Fishing 25). Fergus sells tackle on the jetty, and there's a fire there to cook your catch.
• Visit the standing stones on the moor between Northfields and the Loch.

The Mounth

• The North Road now carries on past the Lochside, up to the mountains and the dwarves' gate.
• The gate warden has words for any human who comes knocking, and he'll want to know if you've heard of a dwarf called Bevan.
• Climb the goat path over the gate for the view, past the waterfall to the crows' rock.
• Traders and carters camp along the road. Watch out for footpads in the woods.

New looks

• Fir trees are now birch trees: chop birch logs and fletch birchwood bows (Woodcutting and Fletching 30). Any fir logs or bows you already had are birch now.
• Oak trees are easy to spot: broad and dark green.
• More trees, bushes and flowers along the roads and fields between places.
• The bankers wear black, and they're all simply called Banker.
• The Aetherwane acolytes look like the people they once were, and footpads are ordinary highwaymen, no two in a gang quite alike.
• Players flinch when they're hit, and fall to the ground when they die before waking up in the hamlet.
• The Cinderforge mine has a new entrance, and coming back up out of it is much quicker.

Easier to use

• Shops let you buy or sell 1, 5, 10 or any amount you type, and sell all of an item at once.
• Watering cans hold enough water for five patches, and tapping a well fills every can you're carrying.
• Using an item is easier to cancel: tap it again, tap anywhere else, or close your pack. Items that don't go together now say so.
• You can click anywhere on Cinderforge's furnace and anvil.
• You're told when you run out of arrows.

Fixes

• Birchwood and wispelm bows can be strung without a knife, and a mithril axe head now fits a handle.
• Walking to the Cinderforge anvil no longer says you can't reach it.
• The furnace shows the ore going in, and the anvil hammer swings the right way round.
• A window no longer sticks out of a cottage wall in Cinderforge, and the Lochside's lanterns no longer slide about as they flicker.

Farming has grown from a few vegetable patches into a skill of its own. Here's everything you can do with it.

Your own patches

• Every patch you farm is yours alone. Nobody else can see your crops, pick them or get in your way.
• Crops keep growing while you're logged out, so plant before you log off and harvest when you're back.

How it works

• Clear the weeds with a hoe, water the soil with a watering can (fill it at any well), plant your seeds, then come back and harvest.
• Every step gives Farming XP, and the harvest gives the most.

Three kinds of patch

• Allotments grow vegetables: potatoes, carrots, radishes, cabbages, wheat, garlic, parsnips, bok choy, corn, cauliflowers and pumpkins.
• Flower beds grow 13 flowers, from zinnias and daisies up to roses, poppies and bleeding hearts.
• Mushroom beds grow 5 kinds of mushroom. The glowcaps only grow underground.
• Crops run from Farming level 1 all the way to 38.

Where to farm

• The Northfields farm: the allotment by the barn, and a new flower garden beside it.
• The hamlet: a flower bed beside the Elder's garden.
• Cinderforge: mushroom beds on the edge of the charcoal glade.
• The Cinderforge mine: glowcap beds deep underground.

Where to get seeds

• Farmer Brom at Northfields sells the hoe, the watering can, every vegetable seed, and the first flower seeds and mushroom spawn.
• Old Nettle, the herbalist at the Kingsford Market Cross, finally has something to sell: the rarer flower seeds and spawn.
• Farmhands always carry a seed now, and sometimes it's a flower seed.

What to do with your harvest

• Cook it: bake potatoes, and roast corn and pumpkins on any fire or range.
• Bake with it: mill wheat into flour at the Northfields watermill, then bake bread in the farmhouse oven. Add corn for cornbread, garlic for garlic bread, potatoes and carrots for a vegetable pasty, parsnips for a chicken pie, or pumpkin for a pumpkin pie.
• Sell it at any shop.
• Flowers and mushrooms: keep them. An apothecary would know what to do with them, and you may find a use for them soon.

Also in this update

• Axes, pickaxes, hoes and watering cans have new pictures.

• Character creation has been rebuilt. Instead of picking one of a handful of outfits, you now choose each piece yourself: your hair (four styles, or none), your top and your legs, each in nine colours, plus five skin tones. That's hundreds of thousands of combinations, so you shouldn't bump into your twin on the green.
• Not sure what you want? Press Random and keep pressing until something catches your eye.
• Already have a character? Draper Ysolde at the Kingsford Market Cross will give you a new look, free. Right-click her and choose Change look. She starts from what you're wearing, so you can change just your hair colour if that's all you're after.
• Your current look stays exactly as it is until you decide to change it.
• Everyone around you sees your new look straight away.

• The beta is open! Play in your browser, on Windows or on Android, and report bugs straight from the game with /bug.
• Skills got a rework: fifteen of them, each going from 1 to 99, and your skill levels now decide what you can mine, make, grow and wear. Masteries still level alongside and unlock your echoes.
• Better tools really matter now. Iron, steel and mithril pickaxes and axes mine and chop much faster, and axes are put together from a smithed head and a fletched handle.
• A whole new tier: mithril and firwood, for level 30 gear and bows. You'll have to go looking: there's mithril deep in the Cinderforge mine and a stand of firs hidden in the Old Woods.
• Every weapon now comes in tiers at levels 1, 10, 20 and 30, arrows are made fifteen at a time, and wispelm bows wait at 40.
• Light your own fire: buy a tinderbox, use it on some logs, and anyone can cook on it.
• A new bank that works like the shops, Garrow now runs a shop at his smithy, and the mine's creatures leave you alone unless you start it.
• An All tab in chat, smoother trips in and out of the mine, phones that turn either way up, and lots of fixes.
• New on the website: hiscores, a world map, and whether the server's up.

• Skills level from 1 to 99. There are fifteen: Melee, Archery, Will, Hitpoints, Mining, Smithing, Fishing, Cooking, Woodcutting, Fletching, Farming, Crafting and Thieving, with Alchemy and Hunter still to come. Your skill levels decide what you can mine, make, grow and wear, and the new Skills panel shows them all.
• Masteries unlock echoes. Swordplay, Toolcraft, Provisioning and the rest still level as you work, alongside their skill. Your progress carried over, so expect a few level-ups when you log in.
• How hard you hit comes from your Melee, Archery or Will level, plus your gear.
• A new bank. Your items sit in a grid like a shop's. Pick one, then deposit or withdraw an exact amount or all of it, or put your whole inventory away in one go. Logs and other items now stack in the bank.
• Garrow at Cinderforge sells pickaxes, axes, hammers and bronze gear, and buys what you smith. Smithed bronze is now worth more than the bars that went into it.
• Copper and tin come back in a couple of seconds and iron in about five. Coal, silver and gold are quicker too.
• The tunnel rats and cave bats in the Cinderforge mine are weaker, and leave you alone unless you attack them.
• Softer torchlight in the mine.
• Tapping the minimap no longer walks you to the spot underneath it as well.

• Play in your browser, on Windows or on Android, all on the same server.
• Report a bug from inside the game: type /bug in chat, or use Settings and Send feedback. It reaches us with a screenshot.
• Music for the hamlet and the title screen.
• Day and night run on a two-hour cycle that everyone shares, and shadows move with the sun.
• On phones: pinch to zoom, vibration, and bigger buttons along the bottom.
• If your connection drops, the game tells you and tries to get you back in.
• The chat sits in the top left, and you can see the world through it.