Hey Vikings, we're super proud to deliver our next major update which includes some big community requests like the ability to remove the indestructible rocks as well as a host of new buildings, new weapons, the long awaited party system, a fuel management overhaul and much more!
We’ve got a more detailed description for you here or you can skip to the bottom for the full changelog. Have fun!

New Features and Content

Unremovable rocks are now removable!

Probably one of the oldest and most burning requests is allowing our fine vikings to remove the large decorative rocks littering the landscape. Well your prayers have been answered and the Norse God of Destroyable Rocks has blessed us.
To remove these decorative rocks you’ll have to use Explosive Sacks, which should make mines even more precious. Craft an explosive sack, place it by the rock which you want to destroy and detonate it. All rocks, regardless of their size require just one sack to be removed, just make sure you place the explosive device as close as possible to the rock. Happy landscaping!

New Buildings

Besides adding new buildings, this update continues our efforts of bringing all buildings up to tier 2. Note: we call the “pit” buildings tier 0, the sticks and bark “huts” tier 1, and the plank and thatch “houses” tier 2.
Without further ado, here are all the new things you can build:

The Armorsmith and Improved Armorsmith

We moved all armor making tasks to a new building: the armorsmith. This is essentially a hyper specialized workshop which will exclusively handle armor production.
The first Armorsmith is able to craft linen and leather armor pieces, while the Improved Armorsmith is able to handle metal armor.
This addition also helps us lighten the load of the Workshop worker’s AI.

New Item: Leather Scraps Gloves

We’re also adding in a new pair of leather gloves, in case you got tired of the old linen ones. They’re more durable and provide better defense against the elements.

Proud Chieftain's House and the Party System

The Chieftain’s Hut House can now be upgraded to the next tier, benefiting from increased durability, becoming paintable, and unlocking a brand new mechanic: the party.
After the Proud Chieftain’s House is built you will gain access to the brand new villager party system. What this essentially does is it allows you to assign villagers to your party.
Once in your party, your villagers will follow you around, fighting off hostiles that get too close, but, most importantly, you will be able to issue direct orders to them.
You can target resources and order villagers to harvest, pick them up, or carry them. You can target enemies and order your villagers to engage and you can also benefit from their added carrying capacity.
Just remember that they’re still your fellow vikings and they will need to eat and rest in order to survive.

Improved Charcoal Maker

Something’s burning in your village, and it’s no longer just firewood. The Improved Charcoal Maker allows you to burn a wide variety of resources and turn them into coal. Burning priorities can be set from the task menu.
You can reorder them left to right, with left being the highest priority, and you can also outright prevent some types of fuel from being burned.

Fuel System Overhaul

While on the topic of the Charcoal Maker, it’s a good time to mention that we’ve reworked how fuel is consumed and how fuel types are chosen by villagers.
All fuel-burning structures now feature a new task in their respective task menus, so you get much more control over what gets burned for fuel and where.
AI improvements have also been made to the way villagers look for fuel and how they keep fires lit.

New Resource & Fuel Type: Fish Blubber and Fish Oil

Fishing has just become more worthwhile with the addition of Fish Blubber. This fatty resource can be obtained from harvesting various types of fish and can be cooked at the Coooking House into Fish Oil.
Fish Oil can be used instead of Resin, so now you get more control and more choice when it comes to keeping your runestones and lanterns lit

Improved Kennel

The dog’s house is getting a nice upgrade as well, boasting increased durability, while also allowing you to paint it to your liking.

Healing House

The new healing house is stronger and can be painted, making it a fine addition in the new collection of plank and thatch buildings.

Improved Market

The new market building increases the number of workers to 3 and comes with 3 fresh new carts ready to take your precious goods to the far reaches of your territory. As before, it’s far sturdier and can be painted.
Like in the case of the regular Market, you get a slight discount in building cost when creating a Market with three carts as opposed to building 3 individual carts, and they’re also quicker to build since there’s one build site for all three of them.

Lookout

If you’ve ever wanted more in-universe means of getting a bird’s-eye view of your hard work, this is where the Lookout comes in.
The Lookout is an excessively tall tower which features a custom camera setup so you can see further in the distance and at a wider FOV, perfect for taking screenshots or just chilling on top of the world.
The Lookout can be found under the Decorations tab.

New Skeleton and Draugar Variants

Our scouts’ reports bear ill tidings, as the skeletons and draugr seem to have unearthed new ancient weaponry. Your undying enemies will now come equipped with new warhammers, battle axes and bows. Beware the Bashers, who wield one-handed hammers and shields, the Bonkers who wield mighty two handed warhammers and the Headsmen, wielders of dreadful two handed battle axes. Bronze swords and axes have also been replaced with Draugar variants, so they all fit nicely together.
Your new enemies will also drop their weapons when harvesting their bodies, which brings us to our next addition…

Tinkerer’s Table

The Improved Metalworker features an all-new workstation revealing a new mechanic! The Tinkerer’s Table allows you to study ancient enemy equipment and gain knowledge on what these weapons originally looked like.
The studying process is an arcane one and during the process the item is broken, surrendering precious crafting materials and progress towards unlocking new crafting recipes.
You can either carry out this process yourself or you can assign villagers to study the means by which your immortal foes make war.
Every rusty weapon reveals a distinct recipe for a Reforged Ancient version of it. Reforged weapons are superior to their regular iron counterparts in terms of durability and damage.

Painting System Overhaul

Building and clothing painting remains one of the most underused mechanics in the game so we decided to streamline the process a bit.
For clothing and armor, dye can now be applied directly from the inventory instead of going through the painting process at the Dyer.
Painting buildings has also been made easier, so hopefully moving onwards villages start getting more and more colorful!

Armor and Clothing Decay

Previously armor and clothing was indestructible which made clothing production quickly obsolete.This will ensure a constant and slow burn of items making flax production and clothing storage a necessity.
The change also makes better clothing much more valuable, so getting your villagers out of the flimsy shirt age will be something budding tribe leaders will have to concern themselves with.

Make sure you check the changelog below for the complete list of changes!

FULL CHANGELOG

New Features and Content

Unremovable rocks are now removable!

Players can now use Explosive Sacks to remove the infamous unremovable rocks;

Make sure to place the bombs as close as possible to the rocks;

New Buildings

Armorsmith and Improved Armorsmith

Armor has been separated from clothing and removed from the Workshop recipes;

The armorsmith works like a dedicated workshop that can only produce armor parts;

The Armorsmith produces leather and linen equipment, while the Improved Armorsmith can craft metal armor.

Proud Chieftain's House (Tier 2)

You can now upgrade the Chieftan's Hut to better version made of planks, beam and thatch;

Can be colored, like all plank buildings;

Unlocks the new Party System.

Improved Charcoal Maker

The new charcoal maker allows you to burn a wider variety of resources to produce coal.

Improved Kennel (Tier 2)

A plank version of the Kennel has been added, boasting increased durability;

Can be painted.

Healing House (Tier 2)

A plank version of the Healing House has been added, boasting increased durability

Can be painted.

Lookout

The Lookout is a decorative tower usable only by the player;

The tower is exceedingly tall and allows you to get a bird's eye view of the village;

The tower top features a custom camera setup with custom FOV values, allow you to see further in the distance;

It's perfect for taking screenshots of your sprawling villages.

Villager Party System

Players can now take Villagers with them on adventures!

Once the new Proud Chieftan's Hut has been built, you will be able to assign villagers to your party, similar to the Militia System.

Armor and Clothing Decay

Previously clothing and armor were indestructible, which is no longer the case;

This change is meant to make constant clothing production relevant;

This change is also meant to make better quality clothing more rewarding;

The worst clothing items will survive around 3 seasons before they need to be replaced.

Fuel System Overhaul

Players can now select which fuels the villagers can burn, and their priority;

This feature concerns the Improved Charcoal Maker, Healing Hut, Healing House, Barbecue, Cooking Hut, Cooking House, and all Runestones.

New Resource: Fish Blubber

Added Fish Blubber that can be converted into Fish Oil at the Cooking House;

Fish Oil can be used as fuel for Stone Lanterns and Rune Stones;

Fish Oil is designed as an alternative to resin and making fishermen more valuable.

New Item: Leather Scraps Gloves

A more durable set of gloves as an alternative to the linen ones.

New Workstation: Tinkerer Table

The Improved Metalworker now features a Tinkering Table;

Players and villagers can study and deconstruct looted enemy items to unlock new blueprints;

Each studied item provides progress towards a new blueprint;

Studied items are also salvaged for crafting resources, like scrap metal;

Villagers can be assigned to study items;

Added a metal scraps storage to the Improved Metalworker.

New Items: Reforged Ancient Weapons

All Draugar weapons now unlock their "Reforged" equivalents;

Reforged Ancient weapons are superior to iron weapons;

Players will have to deconstruct multiple instances of each weapon to fully unlock these new recipes;

Reforged Ancient weapons are available to be crafted at the Improved Metalworker;

Current Reforged Ancient weapons are: 1H/2H Battle Hammers, 1H/2H Axes, 1H/2H Swords, shield, bow and arrows.

New Skeleton and Draugar Variants

To be in tune with the new Reforged Ancient weapons, we've added new Revenant variants wielding new hammers and axes;

These new variants can be found in existing enemy biomes;

New enemy variants also take part in Bloodmoons and Winter Invasions.

Painting System Overhaul

The painting system has been streamlined

Equipment can now be painted from the inventory

Building painting has been made more accessible

Various Fixes

Fixed an issue where villagers would walk without animations;

Fixed some issues with the Improved Archery painting system;

Fixed an issue where the Water Well would indicate invalid placement positions as valid;

Fixed an infinite loop caused by unlinking boats from the Boat Builder;

Fixed some farm notifications not being displayed correctly;

Fixed an issue where the exploding sack would behave as if "slippery";

Fixed a bug causing the villager stamina bar to always play the follow up animation;

Fixed ambient volume slider not working;

Fixed an issue which caused villagers to sleep in their beds in awkward positions (e.g. under the floor/bed);

Fixed an issue with the market where it would not use proper task quantities;

Fixed the seeds container navigation collider;

Fixed various issues caused by changing the camera setup when entering and leaving some buildings;

Fixed an issue where villagers would not cull correctly (Known as the floating backpacks with eyes bug);

Fixed an issue which occured for the player controller while in a cave;

Fixed an issue caused by destroying buildings with ladders;

Fixed an issue where the Hunter Hut would not upgrade correctly;

Fixed an issue where dogs would disappear when upgrading the Kennel ;

Fixed a bug with the leather shoulder pads;

Fixed a bug where clients would not see the biome boss spawn effect animate correctly, and then it would remain stuck;

Fixed a bug with characters visibility on the map and on the compass;

Fixed a bug that would make the UI unresponsive in some particular cases after opening and closing Menus using the Map;

Fixed terrain level field placement error notification sometimes not showing up;

Fixed an issue where some biome items would be duplicated;

Fixed the "withdraw" option at warehouse water barrels;

Fixed item transfer glitch where items could be lost if swapped with a lower stack size container;

Fixed unpickable arrows;

Fixed villagers getting stuck at runestones and totems;

Fixed player characters floating above ground in certain circumstances;

Fixed Coal Maker pyre burn progress not being saved;

Increased stack size from 10 to 20 for the Warehouse clothing storages.

Balance & Improvements

Increased Cooking House storage interactions;

Increased the availability of offshore fish species;

Reduced the size of the tool rack storage navigation colliders;

Improved Villager navigation in the Metalworker;

Player sliding is tighter and more reliable;

Added a separate display component for arrows at workshops and fixed non stackable arrows;

Category dropdowns in the create task tab are now saved per building;

Villagers will prioritize keeping fuel in their inventory if they need it for work or during cold weather;

Adjusted building costs: all foundation steps now require logs, long sticks and raw stones;

Adjusted some Market and Improved Market parameters;

Players can now view Warehouse tasks without villagers assigned to the warehouse;

Adjusted stack size and requirements for dyes

Coal can stack up to 10 in the Warehouse storage;

Adjusted clothing storage capacities;

Made the Improved Metalworker armor racks colliders bigger and made them non-walkable for villagers;

Added a new building step for the Market where the sleds are visible;

The Fisherman's House is now paintable;

Adjusted durability and decay;

Armor pieces now drop more relevant junk resources;

Adjusted Improved Metalworker build requirements and conditions;

Adjusted Arming Cap resource requirements;

Draugar weapon values have been adjusted;

Runestone workers now complain about needing specific types of fuel;

Garlic soup/stew now cures Cold;

Increased coal storage capacities;

Improved match target (characters position themselves better to perform certain interaction animations).

Fixed a navigation issue causing villagers to get stuck traversing doors back and forth.

Fixed a client join issue where it might get stuck in preparing world if loading near the sea

Visual Improvements

Shader adjustments and optimizations ;

VFX adjustments and optimizations ;

Material adjustments and optimizations ;

UI shader/materials adjustments and optimizations .

User Interface

Changed the button for splitting item stack from Shift to Ctrl;

Added custom cursor graphic for item splitting ;

UI changes to prevent other actions from occurring while harvesting moving or painting an item in the inventory;

Adjusted some player HUD elements;

Fixed some overflowing texts;

Removed progress text from task panels without progress;

Some settlement issues now display the appropriate Outpost name;

Fixed an issue caused by dragging an dropping tasks;

Fixed an issue where some task windows would not resize correctly;

Added the ability to split items with input field functionality;

Fixed some Steamdeck menus;

Fixed gamepad scroll for villagers list;

Gamepad navigation improvements for settings menu;

Fixed some UI issues for workstation menu dropdowns;

Fixed an issue with the pet menu;

Fixed task quantity UI not working;

Gamepad adjustments for task button navigation;

Fixed raven altar showing the capacity bar in UI;

Fixed character remains displaying the wrong icon;

Added a task interaction shortcut to the runestones;

Fixed some issues caused by splitting stacks;

Added a tooltip for split stack for KBM;

Added the ability to "Use" Dyes from the inventory to paint items;

Added different cursor graphics for painting and harvesting items in the inventory menu;

Added settings for Camera field of view;

Added options to hide various HUD elements;

Added input fields for various UI number selectors;

Added lowpass to ambient sound when opening the pause menu;

[*] Added lighting settings in the main menu.

Thank you so much as always Vikings for your incredible support and feedback. We wouldn't be here without you.

Yours Skal-ingly as always,
Sand Sailor