Melvor Idle 2 Development Progress Update (September 2026)
Hey everyone!
It’s been a couple of months since our last progress update! Since then, we’ve been working on adding a few key new additions to the game, and also making our biggest pass so far addressing balance and feedback, bugs, performance, and the game’s look and feel.
If you missed our last progress update, you can see that here:
Malcs
We’ll take a look at our roadmap soon, but since this is a slightly bigger post than usual, we wanted to give a bit of an overview of the most important information.
But first, an introduction!
After staying behind the curtain for so long, it’s time for me to finally introduce myself! I’m Althalus, the Community Manager for Melvor Idle 2.
I took over from the legendary Strawhat last September. I’ve spent the last year (and a bit) helping Malcs and the team to manage the awesome Patreon playtesting community for Melvor Idle 2. I’ve spent a lot of time lurking in Discord, writing news posts (including drafts of some of the previous public updates), analysing survey feedback, helping with Patreon issues, and sending out a seemingly endless stream of Steam Keys.
We figured now was a good time to introduce me to all of you! I’m going to be the main point of contact for all of your questions and feedback throughout Early Access, and I honestly can’t wait. Being part of this game’s journey has already been amazing to this point, but tbh it’s been pretty hard to keep my mouth shut 😂
In case you’re worried, Malcs is still very much part of writing all of these updates, and he’s still an active part of the game’s community. What I’m doing is not intended to completely replace his involvement, but given the amount of work involved in bringing a game to life (and managing the team that’s creating it with him), it’s important for him to be able to offload the day-to-day tasks. My job is to let him stay as involved as he wants to be, while filtering out the distractions.
TL;DR - What’s the news?
Here are the big headlines:
- Melvor Idle 2 is planning to participate in Steam Next Fest on October 19th
- We are still on track for an Early Access Steam launch in 2026
Here’s the usual progress update:
- Since our last post, we’ve introduced 2 major new features - Astrology, and the Combat Mastery Guild.
- We’re now working on a range of updates including an overhaul of the game’s visuals, new QOL features, balance changes, bug fixes, and engine improvements.
- We’re also working on implementing the first portion of the game’s main storyline, which includes a host of new and unique enemies.
Development Progress Infographic
Here is our update progress infographic. It shows what content is currently available for Testing, what's coming next, and what’s still to come.
Note that this is showing planned major features up until v1.0. Early Access will launch prior to everything being completed.
Steam Next Fest
We intend to include a demo version of Melvor Idle 2 in Steam Next Fest, which will run from October 19th to October 26th.
Way back near the beginning of our development journey, we promised a public playtest of Melvor Idle 2 in 2026. Steam Next Fest presents us with a great opportunity to make good on that promise, while giving us a really great framework to work with.
Next Fest is an awesome promotion for upcoming games, and it centres around demo versions of upcoming games. It lasts for a week, and it brings in an incredibly diverse group of players.
This combination - a focused demo, with a limited time window, and players with a wide range of interests and experience - is a perfect combination for what we need from a playtest right now. Our awesome Patreon community constantly gives us great feedback on our newest content, and on the late-game experience of the entire game. What we really want to focus on with Next Fest is the new player experience, and how our game feels to play for everyone from our core audience to players who’ve never touched an idle game before.
We’re still working out the exact details of what will be included in the Next Fest demo. We’ll have a dedicated news post for Next Fest once that’s locked in, so please let us know if you have any questions - we’ll do our best to address them in that post.
We’re still on track for Early Access in 2026
The headline more or less speaks for itself here. We’re not ready to confirm an exact date yet, and there’s still a lot that can happen in the next few months - for example, if the feedback from Next Fest tells us our early game experience isn’t ready, we might need some more time to smooth it out.
All of that aside, we’re pretty confident that we’ll be able to launch our Early Access version this year. As you’ll see from our Progress infographic, we’ve implemented a huge amount of the core content of the game - far more than Melvor Idle featured when it launched in Early Access on Steam way back in 2020.
As with Next Fest, we’ll be publishing a dedicated news post once we’ve locked in the date for our Early Access launch. In that post, we’ll also go into detail on what’s included (with a comparison to the first game), what’s still to come, and how we plan to make use of Early Access.
Progress since our last Update
The most recent Major Update included 2 major features: Astrology, and the Combat Mastery Guild. Both of these are big ticket items in terms of making the game feel more cohesive and complete.
Astrology is very different from what you’ll be used to with the first game, but keeps its identity as a simple, safe skill that affects nearly every other part of the game with bonuses and modifiers. Reception has been great so far, but as always we’re taking on board the feedback of our testers, fixing bugs, and tweaking balance where needed.
The Combat Mastery Guild is one of the last big missing pieces of the Combat experience. Just like every other skill, the Mastery system for combat in Melvor Idle 2 is completely different from what’s come before.
This update also contained some major tweaks to Thieving, which was a major point of feedback from our players in the last update. It also contained a range of Quality of Life features for Thieving and the Bank, along with all the usual bug fixes and adjustments.
Since then, we’ve also shipped a host of minor updates, ranging from bug fixes and balance adjustments to major changes to the UI of various skills. These are part of our ongoing improvements as we build towards our next Major Update. Let’s take a look at that in more detail.
What we’re working on now
The update that’s now being worked on marks a shift in focus for our team. We’ve spent the last few updates fleshing out the content of the game - adding all the skills and systems needed to make it feel closer and closer to a “complete” experience.
Our next update cycle is focused more on the foundation of the game. We’re spending a lot of time on the User Interface and User Experience. We’re also tackling some key technical items within the game engine, and doing a major performance pass to make sure the game runs smoothly on as many systems as possible. And we’re going back through our backlog of feedback and suggestions, and implementing a host of changes based on the awesome feedback we’ve got from our community - some skills (most notably Beastcrafting and Herblore) have had massive overhauls based on this feedback.
We’re also working on something entirely new - our main storyline. This series of story quests will accompany the game’s usual loop as you improve your skills and level up, while helping to introduce new players to the game’s mechanics, and also introducing the lore of Melvor in more depth than ever before. It also features a whole range of unique enemies and bosses which we can’t wait to show off.
Some of these changes have already been drip-fed into our Minor Updates as it’s ready (mostly UI improvements), while some of the bigger ticket items will launch with our next Major Update. You can see a preview of the new UI visuals on the Steam Page now!
Patreon Updates
We always sing the praises of our Patreon community in these posts, and this one is no different. Our last update was absolutely massive, and our Patreon players have delivered above and beyond what we could possibly hope for in terms of bug reports, feedback, and really great suggestions.
Throughout our development cycles we continue to update our Patreon supporters with progress posts every 2 or so weeks. They also take part in surveys, and constant discussions on Discord that are an absolute goldmine of useful information for us.
As always, we’d recommend you only sign up to Patreon if you want to provide feedback and be part of the game’s development journey. Despite the amount of content we’ve now added, the game is still very much an Alpha and not a completed product. We know a lot of you are excited to play, but for most people we’d highly recommend waiting until we release a public version to do so.
https://www.patreon.com/melvoridle
Conclusion & FAQs
That’s everything we’ve got for this update. We’re really looking forward to getting the first public demo into everyone’s hands during Next Fest, and the Early Access launch later this week.
Our Discord community is still going strong! While we’re still very focused on MI2 development, and interacting with our Patreon testers, the server is still open to anyone who wants to chat about the original game.
FAQs
What platforms is the Patreon Alpha available on?
Windows, MacOS and Linux. Available via Steam or as a standalone client download.
Are there plans to release on Mobile?
Yes, we plan to eventually release the game on iOS and Android after Steam's Early Access release.
Will there be a web version?
Yes, there are plans to release a web version.
If I play the Alpha via Patreon, will my save be wiped on release?
No, there will be no save wipes. Just like MI1, we will support alpha saves all the way into the future.
Speak soon.
- Althalus