Fish & Guilds: A Behind the Scenes Look at the End of Q1 2026

Hey there! I’m Lartu. It’s been a bit since the last time I wrote an entry here. Today I’d like to talk about the final milestones of the Q1 2026 roadmap, the Fishing Rework and Guilds, and a few other things we’ve been discussing here at Stonehollow Workshop. This is going to be a long post, so brace yourself!

Bigger Team, Bigger Office!

These past couple of months have been very busy for us, both on the development side of things, and also when it comes to Stonehollow Workshop as a company.

We’ve not only been working on a bunch of new quests, several new features, the recently redesigned wiki, the Easter event, and the “PvP” event (hehe), but we also moved to a new office, implemented a new office schedule, and added several new members to our team.

Our new office before we covered the walls with your lovely Eterspire fanart.

We’re now a total of 16 people working on Eterspire. That’s so many! We were only 6 people a year ago, and just 3 at the beginning of 2024. This growth has allowed us to tackle bigger features, move faster in some areas, and continue growing the game and its community in ways that simply wouldn’t have been possible before. But, of course, growth also comes with its own challenges. 

A big part of the beginning of 2026 was spent onboarding all of our new team members, getting them familiar with our tools, our stack, our processes, and, naturally, Eterspire itself.

Luckily, all of our new members have been excellent additions to the team, and they’re already bringing a lot to the table. We now have dedicated Content Creation, Engineering, and Community & Communications teams, each with their own responsibilities and increasingly established processes. This should allow us to put out higher quality updates, communicate more clearly, and keep building a better Eterspire in a more organized and sustainable way. In the last update, we released three quests at once. THREE. This would have been unthinkable just a month ago. It’s unbelievable, we cannot be happier!

But all that said, growing hasn’t been the only challenge we’ve faced in 2026. It’s been a challenging year so far, and that has impacted our Q1 2026 roadmap a bit.

The Economics of Early 2026

Maybe the best place to start talking about the roadmap delays we’ve had to undergo this quarter is to mention our economic results. When we attended GDC in February, one of the common themes that constantly popped up around us was the terrible state the video game industry was in. This was caused, apparently, by a number of reasons, including, but not limited to, a strong correction of how much players spend compared to the post pandemic peak, a market saturated by a huge number of launches, changes in the way store algorithms pick which games to display and how often, and a decrease in mobile game spending.

The halls of the GDC Moscone Center in San Francisco.
We attended lots of amazing lectures there that have enlightened us in many key areas.

January hadn’t been a good month for us in terms of revenue: we actually finished January at a loss, not a huge one, but it’d been over a year since the last time we were in the red, and it was frightening to get back there. To put things into perspective, our sales in January dropped to about half what they had been in December. We weren’t quite sure about the cause, but we were hoping that it was seasonal, a spenders correction after Christmas and the end of the year. To be quite honest with you, this explanation wasn’t convincing to me. But I opted to be cautious and wait, and follow our February results up close, day by day, to see if they were improving. If they were, seasonality would’ve been the cause. It wasn’t. February ended up redder and worse than January. Worryingly low sales, action was needed.

Last year we were cautious when it came to spending money. We grew our team little by little, keeping development in house, costs low, moving maybe less quickly than we’d have liked, but keeping money in the bank in case a rainy day came. When February ended and the terrible results were already settled, we sat down and calculated for how long we could operate at this level of loss. Fortunately (and for having done things right) we could operate like this for a few years, nobody would lose their job, and the game would stay afloat. But something had to be done to improve our numbers. This, in turn, forced us to review our priorities and delay some of the features we had promised, using that time to pay closer attention to the core Eterspire experience and the Eterspire Store.

I’ll spoil the ending a little bit here: our numbers have gotten better and April won’t end at a loss. Which is amazing, not being in the red means we can operate indefinitely, as long as our numbers don’t go into the red again. Being cautious has paid off: I need both hands to count the number of MMOs we’ve seen go under during Eterspire’s lifespan, mostly because of having spent too much, too carelessly.

Priorities: Core Experience

As I mentioned above, we were forced to change our priorities. The first one was improving the core Eterspire experience. This is something that, of course, benefits all players, but it was mostly aimed at new players. Our user acquisition numbers had gone dangerously low, and people were leaving the game earlier than ever before.

This can be explained by a number of reasons, but the fact that the game was running worse than ever was a big one. We worked day and night to improve its performance during Q1. We made it, the changes released in Eterspire v68 and v69 have the game running better than ever before.

Enraged mobs and remnant AOE attacks have made combat so much more engaging.

Then the way the game felt also had to be improved: our desire to make combat encounters more engaging brought forth the Enraged Mobs and their AOE attacks, the improved targeting system, improvements to the control scheme and its feel, etc. Sometimes it’s hard to recognize this when one is in the heat of the situation, but the experience for a new player is infinitely better than it was six months ago. We are still working to improve this, I’ve talked in a previous post about how we are working to make the game more “fun”, since it’s a game and it’s supposed to be, first and foremost, fun; but, all things considered, the conclusion is that more new players that actually stay in the game after their first session means a healthier population of active players, which is both positive for the game and its current player base and, obviously, our finances.

It might (not) surprise you that most players actually leave the game after talking to Arami for the first time in the Adventurer’s Guild. And that if a player reaches level 20, they most likely will reach level 160. Something is deeply wrong in the first 20 levels of the game, and we are working to fix it.

We have also been designing a daily system, with quests and rewards to try to give players a hook to open the game every day. We are carefully planning this in a way that is not annoying (I’d say “in the least mobile-game-like possible”). You wouldn’t believe how important this is. Google Play, for example, decides whether to show your game to potential players (or not) based on a metric they call “Stickiness”. This is calculated by doing DAU divided by MAU: your daily active users divided by your monthly active users. If this number is below 8% (meaning, less than 8% of your total monthly users are active every day, on average), you disappear from the stores. Google has already warned us about this. We are doing our best to prevent this from happening, lest Eterspire fall into the dark void of delisted games! You see now why early retention is something we care so much about?

All in all, release over release our metrics regarding all of this have improved, so having spent time on this was certainly the right choice and definitely a success, but it took time off other tasks we had. Particularly Guilds, because Tejo and the Engineering team had to delay designing and programming them to implement some of these changes. The game is much better now because of them, but this meant we, most likely, weren’t going to meet our Q1 promises. The Fishing rework wasn’t affected by this particular point, though, because that lay mostly on the Content Development side. 

As I mentioned in the first section, our company is comprised of three teams: Engineering, Content Development, and Community & Communication (“ComCom”). The Engineering team implements new features and systems. The Content team implements quests, items, new maps, NPCs, etc. A delay on the Engineering end usually doesn’t affect Content and vice versa. That’s why we’ve been capable of continuing to release quests and new maps while working on these engineering changes.

But that doesn't mean the Fishing Rework wasn't affected at all.

Priorities: Monetization

Ah yes, money! Monetization was the other area we focused very heavily on during this quarter, this one mostly after the February numbers were in. Lots of things had to change if we desired to stay alive in the long term.

As Head of Strategy, I was in charge of this, and I decided to approach this in a more scientific way than usual. Every release I’d tweak some stuff (like the Eterspire Store, the way lootboxes look when they are opened, the way prices are displayed), etc, to see if we could get more players to purchase Eterspire Infinite or Crystal Packs. We knew our store wasn’t the best by any stretch of the imagination, and I wanted to make it look and feel better. We tested it with real people, we took notes, we iterated on it a lot.

The new Eterspire Store is clearer and better looking than the previous one,
which was too cluttered and harder to read.

This may sound vain (it sounds to me while I’m writing this, too money oriented for my taste), but it’s a reality that we are a company that has to pay our team for their hard work, we have to pay for the office we inhabit, and for many other expenses that come with running a game this big, so money is not something we can turn our eyes away from.

My plan was simple: try to find “quick wins” that could help us increase our sales quickly. Things that didn’t require much work but that would yield significant results (what some companies like to call “Low Hanging Fruit”). All of this, of course, without enshittyfying the game. I hate mobile games that are just a galore of pop ups and limited time offer crap. That’s not a game, that’s garbage.

So I updated the way the Eterspire Store looks, the way our lootboxes were displayed, the way Crystal Packs were displayed, introduced regional prices (which I coded on the flight back from GDC to Buenos Aires, mind you!), and had the engineering team implement an incredible metrics dashboard to track our progress on this. The results have been, thankfully, very positive, and, while the month isn't over as I write this, I'm sure, extrapolating the numbers we have so far, that April will be a net positive again. We are back on track!

I’ll continue experimenting with the Eterspire Store, but my limits are clear: I don’t want to make the game pay to win or unfair. I want to experiment with selling new cosmetic sets outside lootboxes at a premium price, or adding evergreen consumables to the store (for example, reroll runes that you can make yourself or maybe purchase for some crystals, adding another way to obtain them that also helps us keep the boat afloat). I promise not to introduce problems to sell you the solution, as many games do, although I cannot promise I won’t make mistakes along the way. I’ll do my best to fix them quickly! But it must be kept in mind that, if we want Eterspire to survive the test of time, we have to monetize it well enough, in one way or another.

All this said, if I must be honest, I’m not a huge fan of microtransactions. I would rather have a single subscription, maybe $12.99 or $14.99 or something like that (regionalized) per month, and just sell that to players. That’d be a godsend, because subscriptions allow devs to focus all their energy on making the best game possible, instead of requiring divided attention between working on a cash shop and working on the game. But I’m not sure that’s possible at this stage. We’d need a critical mass of subscribed players to be able to sustain ourselves on subscriptions alone. But maybe someday! Ideas are obviously welcome, the comment section is open below.

All in all, the key takeaway from this section is that I’ve spent these past months working to improve the way the game monetizes, to try and save us from going under. I believe I’ve been successful at doing that, and neither the game nor the company (nor any of our team members) are at any sort of risk. But since I was in charge of the Fishing Rework (surprise!), that had to be pushed to the backburner to accommodate more pressing issues. I’m honestly super sorry about this. I was also hyped for the fishing rework, because it would also open the door for more lifeskills in the near future. But it’s halfway there, so the wait won’t be long!

Fishing, Guilds, Delays

A bit of a tl;dr, because it’s been said like a million times already: everything I’ve talked about up until this point has also affected some of the features we had already announced, particularly the Fishing Rework and Guilds. So, unfortunately, we are a bit behind schedule with both.

The Fishing Rework in particular was something I was personally working on, but due to the shift in priorities I mentioned earlier, I sadly wasn’t able to find enough time to finish it before May.

With that said, both of these features are still coming soon (the safest bet is at some point in May). We’re working on them as you read this! They just need a bit more time in the oven, and we don’t want to release either of these systems in an unfinished state.

Once we started working on them, we realized they encompassed a lot more than we initially expected, especially because they interact with so many other systems that are already in place. Because of that, we want to take things one step at a time and make sure we can make them the best they can be.

Since both features are already in development, though, we wanted to use this post as an opportunity to share a few more details about what they’ll be like once they’re out!

The Fishing Rework

The main goal of this rework is to make fishing much more rewarding, and to make it mesh a lot better with the rest of the game’s progression.

The first step towards this is making fishing actually worth doing. After the rework, fishing will give you combat EXP, and it will also be a decent method of obtaining gold. On top of that, some non-fishing content will have fishing level requirements. For example, you might need level 40 Fishing to start a quest, or level 60 Fishing to access a Remnant.

This way, there will be an actual incentive to level the skill beyond just watching the number go up. There won’t be an opportunity cost to training fishing instead of combat (balanced so combat still makes sense, though, of course!). Fishing will also have cosmetic rewards, which we’ve teased in the past. You’ll be able to exchange fish for a specific currency, which can then be used to buy unique fishing cosmetics. Higher level fish will give you more of this currency.

Concept art for Fishing cosmetics

We’ll also add an actual Fishing Guild, which you’ll be able to enter once you reach a certain fishing level. The guild will have useful NPCs for the skill, as well as fishing spots that will make fishing more efficient.

Lastly, we’ll rebalance how fishing spots and fishing chances work, so that it’s always more efficient to fish for the highest level fish available to you. This way, you won’t have to keep fishing lower level fish even after unlocking a new fish. Fish! Fish! Fish! I don’t think I’ve ever written the word “fish” this many times in my life. It’s beginning to lose all meaning. Fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, fish. I feel weird. Fish.

Some other cosmetic ideas we've had

Once this rework is out, it will also pave the way for all kinds of new lifeskills. It will give us both the blueprint and the systems we need to build new ones in the future, such as Woodcutting, Mining, Farming, Nosepicking, or any other skills we come up with. Fish.

We know players want more gameplay variety, and we’d like lifeskills to become one of the ways we provide that. Ideally, they’ll give players useful alternate progression goals, and help break up the main progression with other activities that still feel meaningful (fish).

Guilds

Ah, yes, guilds. You probably want to know more about these too. Players are constantly asking for guilds. It’s one of the first things new players ask on the Discord. We get it, guilds are very, very important!

Guilds are one of our most ambitious features yet. They will allow players to form groups of many adventurers, all grouped under a guild name. Guilds work like a group chat, or a big party, in that you can add multiple other players to your guild and chat with them in a private, specialized channel, but with the caveat that, unlike regular chat, guilds work across worlds. That means that if half your guild is playing on World 1, and half is playing on World 2, you can see them online and interact with them via the Guild Chat.

A Guild, eh?

Is this all there is about guilds? Certainly not: it’s just the first iteration. We want to go even deeper in the future, adding customizable guild icons, guild banners, even guild halls! But the groundwork had to be laid first for the base features the guild requires. And it is no easy feat, because by no means was Eterspire designed to work across multiple servers the way guilds will.

This is why what would at first look like such a simple feature has been so tricky to implement. But it’s going to be worth it. We’ve seen guilds pop up in Eterspire in the past (is anyone old enough to remember the Bankstanders?) and we want to support them with the systems they need to exist and thrive in Aetera. Of course, your feedback will help us shape this feature, we just had to start somewhere.

Just like the Fishing Rework, the first iteration of Guilds will most probably be out in one of our May updates.

Closing Words: Q2 Roadmap and the Near Future of Eterspire

In the coming weeks we’ll release our Q2 roadmap, like we did earlier this year with the Q1 roadmap. It’s going to include heavily player requested features such as X and Y. It will most probably be out by mid May. Our team is now consolidated and bigger than ever, especially the Content Development team, so we can do things that we never even thought possible before. I’m sure Q2 is going to be amazing!

Bondiola Wednesday!

We have also been reorganizing our company internally a bit. I used to be Head of Strategy, as I said above, and also partially an Engineer, implementing many features, fixing bugs and completing tickets myself. While, having coded the initial version of the game alone, I cannot fully relinquish these obligations, we’ve decided to change my responsibilities a little bit. I will now be acting both as Head of Strategy, making sure our numbers stay healthy, and also as Creative Director, overseeing new quests, areas and content, to make sure they are cohesive and the best they can be. I hope to work very closely with the Content Development team to enable them to make the best possible content they can! Eterspire v73, the first Bogtown update, will be the first result of our collaboration. I hope you like it!

We’ll do our very best to introduce content that keeps high level players engaged and low level players coming, and to bring you more and better content than ever before. And to prove to you that I’m taking this role seriously, I’ve gotten myself a beret to do this mostly artistic job properly. Any Creative Director worth its salt must have a beret!

Lartu: Creativity Extraordinaire

All joking aside, I’m sure you’ll be blown away when you see how the new Bogtown area looks. It’s the best work we’ve ever done. And this is just the beginning.

I’m sure 2026 will be an amazing, amazing, amazing year for Eterspire. A year that has certainly started tumultuously, but that will end up on higher notes than ever before.

Just wait and see.