Newly added:

· Added Mounted Knights, powerful ally units that can charge through enemy formations during defense, significantly enhancing the player's ability to handle large enemy groups in the late game.(Horses can be purchased at the Stable, similar to buying weapons and tools from the Blacksmith. Villagers will equip them)

· Added new Elite Units: the Dwarf and the Paladin. They can be recruited from the Viking Tribe once certain conditions are met. Elite units feature unique additional mechanics.

· The Blacksmith in the Viking Tribe can now help you upgrade the attack skill of Swordsman units. This interaction becomes available after meeting some conditions.

· Added a new enemy unit: Elite Orc, known for its toughness and aggressiveness.

· The beggar Camp can be upgraded now after integrating it into your fief.

· Crop yield is reduced during winter. Make sure to prepare accordingly in advance.

· Randomized the contents and locations of forest treasure chests.

· Added an explosion effect that triggers when the Orc wizard's projectile hits a unit.

· Added shadow effects for units that similar to the player character's shadow.

· Added a new construction complete sound effect that plays when building or upgrading walls and structures finishes.

· Added purchase and drop sound effects for tools and weapon equipment, enhancing feedback when acquiring items.

· Added a sound effect for the generation of background walls.

· Enriched the forest background with more vegetation. (I was planning to add seasonal animals in the future to make the forest feel more alive.)

· Added some miscellaneous oddities.

Changes & Balancing:

· Modified the layout of the top resource UI bar. It now displays the specific count of different unit types for both side.

· Reworked the maximum durability for walls at all upgrade stages. Health now doubles with each upgrade. Higher-level walls are now more durable, while lower-level walls are more fragile compared to before.

· Increased the base HP of Monster Spawnstones.

· Spawnstones will not counterattack during the player's first attack (This should make the early game rhythm smoother).

· The strength of the Spawnstone's counterattack now scales with the number of spawnstones already destroyed.

· Increased the base attack power of Mushroom Monsters; it is now equal to that of Wolves.

· The player character can no longer attack enemies initially and must learn this ability later.

· Slightly increased the player character's base movement speed (by approximately 15%).

· Adjusted the highlight effect when the player character enters the forest (It's now more noticeable than before, and a previous shadow misalignment bug has been fixed).

· Optimized the Archer's target acquisition logic at night. They can now detect and turn around to shoot enemies approaching from behind (This was a rare occurrence in previous versions where Archers couldn't detect enemies coming from behind during night).

· Decreased the base HP of Swordsmen.

· Increased the base HP of Knights.

· Reduced the food production rate of Peasants. Food is no longer as abundant and can't be squandered as freely as before.

· Optimized the Peasants' save logic. The state of the farmlands they are cultivating is now also saved. (This prevents peasants from needing to re-cultivate land after loading a save).

· Nuns can now do healing at night.

· Orc wizard's projectiles now disappear after flying for a certain duration (if they don't hit any hostile units).

· Adjusted the quantity of starting resources in the fief's initial treasure chest.

· Adjusted the initial spawning logic for level events and Monster Spawnstones.

· Tweaked the UI display for Victory and Defeat screens.

· Adjusted the Main Menu UI layout and optimized German text display (The panel would previously overstretch to the right due to the longer text length. While not a complete fix, the stretching is now less noticeable. A simple and effective solution seems to be implementing text wrapping, which is also how the Steam client handles German UI. I will try this method in the future update).

Bug Fixes:

Fixed a bug that prevented NPCs from correctly initiating pursuit when monsters entered their chase range during the day.

Fixed a bug that prevented the Orc wizard's projectile from changing direction.

Fixed a bug that caused a game error when the Coin Collector NPC was attacked.

Fixed a bug where the Slime's attack hitbox was larger than its visual attack animation indicated.

Fixed a bug that caused inconsistent movement speed when running left vs. right.

Fixed a bug where the ingame menu interface would not reset after closing the Pause UI.

Fixed a bug that prevented the roadside lamp on one side from being triggered again after a failed player march.

Optimizations:

Optimized unit code, significantly reducing their performance cost! (This was the biggest achievement of the month, reflecting a deeper understanding of code for me and a fundamental improvement in efficiency. Previous review mentioned lag with many units, which discouraged adding new content until this better optimization method was found. Indeed, all the content in this update was added subsequently.)

Optimized the player character's attack hit detection for more natural swing animations.