Indie sandbox MMO Illarion adds new runes, bardic music, and a farming rework with its latest update

The developers behind Illarion, the cute indie F2P sandbox MMO we first covered last spring, are ready for you to serenade everyone in the game world, albeit with your clunky and not-terribly-accurate rendition of “Freebird.” One player’s serenade is another player’s audio torment. The patch notes say outright that the game’s bardic music is clunky and far from perfect, but you can now write your own music sheets and play your own tunes. How powerful the system will ever be is limited somewhat, but hey, bard music systems! Who doesn’t love that, aside from the players who have to listen to it when it’s bad?

Let’s not focus on that; let’s focus on the reworking of farming with five new vegetables (which don’t currently have recipes but will be useful in the future) and adjustments to things like growth time and crop yield. There are also four new runes for rune magic (complete with puzzles), new death penalties for those who eat dirt more frequently, limitations for magic gems that increase physical defense, and more. Check out the full rundown of changes on the official site.