A lordly castle.

Where else?

Portalarium has turned to Ten Ton Hammer to be the first to preview each pre-alpha Test Release, so it’s nu surprise that they did the same for Release 4. This Release promises to be a fairly significant improvement over Release 3, most notably because it should include combat and quests. Oh, and of course Release 4 will include the overland travel system; we’ll get to explore the Hidden Vale in its near-entirety:

10 Scenes: The Hidden Vale, a hidden island north north east of the mainland, will be complete with 10 scenes including towns, wilderness, caves, and dungeons.

Those tired of being restricted to an urban existence will have the opportunity to chart new untamed lands in this new release, as well. Owls Head, Kingsport, and Braemar will now be joined by various caves, dungeons, and wilderness scenes to help finally complete the Hidden Vale.

Other features of this release include improvements to crafting:

Backers can expect new recipes when they log in to check out release 4, but that’s just the tip of the crafting iceberg. The folks at Portalarium are also adding in the ability to gather resources for this release. Skinning, lumberjacking, and mining are all expected to be available for backers to try out.

The combat system is evidently fairly rudimentary in Release 4, albeit with good reason:

There is combat in this release, but it’s relegated to the most basic auto-attack. You can kill virtually anything and much of it will have loot to pick up once it’s dead. You might think this is my chance at a little yellow journalism, but you’ll be as disappointed as I because I found out that what we’re not seeing is going on behind the scenes.

The team has added a great deal of clothing, armor, and numerous weapons to the game over the last several months, and Starr tells me they’re now adding in a lot of the values and stats for them during this release. Backers playing the early access won’t see the results of it, but that data has to be there in order for the more complex combat system to be implemented.

The loot tables for the creatures inhabiting New Britania need to be populated, as well.

And hey…screenshots, because of course there are screenshots:

The game has also seen a significant amount of optimization and refinement, and so should run rather better when it becomes available next week. This one sounds like a quite promising stride forward…worth checking out come the 27th.