Hey everyone!

I know it has taken altogether too long to get a new update out and I appreciate you patiently waiting. This update focuses on improving stability and polish across nearly every part of the game. You’ll find dozens of bug fixes alongside performance improvements and new quality-of-life updates. There’s also a fresh batch of tuning for NPC behavior, fish spawning, and weather systems, plus a few fun additions like the new Codex window, stone walls, and a “Mouse” boss scenario among others.

(Image and cover courtesy of discord member and wiki master Kingfisher)

(Image courtesy of discord member LassoJack)

Let's take a look!

Codex

The codex is a new window (opened with the '/' key) that shows you all the things you've discovered in the game. It's meant to be a single location to show you helpful tooltips on various items, blueprints, plants, etc.

It also shows you the things you've haven't discovered (the name at least) in the world. These are denoted by ? and some of these entries will show you flavor text or possibly a hint as to where to find them in the tooltip.

Bosses

I've re-enabled a boss that used to be in the game but had some bugs that needed to be addressed. Plus I've added a new boss that is based on one of the game's legendary patrons (TwistedSteele!). I won't spoil too much about them, but here's a preview:

Improved New Game Screen

I also did some working polishing the new game screen. Hopefully you find it much easier to use and read. I tried organizing elements in addition to adding some functionality to current inventory lists.

Cooking Items

I added several new items to supplement the cooking profession. I quite like this addition as it makes cooks stand out and adds more character to the individual settlers.

Moss Kuplin

I added a new critter that the Gwdir can create called the Moss Kuplin. This creature is intended to help out with hauling, but is also quite good at evading. Maybe a valuable addition to defenses?

Various UI Polish

I did even more clean up on notifications and I added some new ones to help communicate work and combat failures/successes. Hovering all notifications should give you a much better detailed tooltip explaining the why and how of things.

As well, I went through a huge amount of tooltips to add more lore and flavor descriptions, and I added new icons for all plants. So they no longer share the one.

Hermit Status

All the single (non custom) settler loadouts now apply the "Hermit" status to the settler. Those that still want to play more of a hardcore mode without this can do so with the custom loadout.

Skill Failures

I added in a new system to jobs called Skill Failures. The intention of this is to add some progression to jobs. I feel that, previously, jobs were way too forgiving and there was no real sense of "getting better" for individual settlers. You could easily change your settler professions around and it didn't quite matter. Now, if you put a settler onto making, say, Rutile, they will struggle to make these. Whereas, your master blacksmith will have no problem. To me, it's a much more satisfying experience to have this difficulty at first and it showcases the difference in materials a lot better.

This system is a small part of a larger plan for jobs. I will also be adding "Critical Failures" and "Critical Successes" to jobs. These will act more like mini events. For example, if you have a settler roll a critical fail in something like summoning they might summon a hostile creature. Or, perhaps they turn themselves inside out. A master blacksmith might imbue their perfectly crafted sword with a special buff, making it a legendary item.

I think things like this help the professions and skill progression feel more dynamic and interesting. I'm excited to add these very soon and I hope that excites you too.

There's lot more but I'll save that for the patch notes!

1.0.38.4 Patch Notes

🐛 Bug Fixes

• Closing the room designation menu was not remembering your last selection when re-opening it.

• Make fodder required animals skill instead of cooking.

• Sometimes entities would have thirst appear after re-loading a game. This was due to the drink from well buff not being permanent.

• Iron Ingots were set to automatically build in foundry and should be manual by default.

• Flying entities would not find suitable locations in the air to move to and would end up always on the ground.

• Flying entities were unable to leave the map when perched in trees.

• Selections would not apply to multiple z levels. So, for example, mining would only be applied to the current z level you were on. This made it impossible to create a vertical tunnel.

• Not necessarily a bug, but snow was spawning in a horizontal scanline. Now, it spawns randomly around the map.

• Snow and weather spawn rates were not properly checked. This would cause checks farther to the left of the map to have a lower rate of spawning. Now, the spawn rates are checked uniformly.

• One raid would still happen despite raids being toggled off.

• Ice block could not be mined and did not permit mining.

• Staff of focus was giving a buff to ???. Should now be for Magic Combat skill.

• Archenthrall target gathering wasn’t executing correctly.

• Void stabilizer powered state wasn’t triggering so blueprints like Archenthrall could not be started.

• Sometimes text wasn’t wrapping correctly in big text blocks.

• Job visuals weren’t updating correctly. This would cause transitions between the same job to not display properly.

• The unlocked/locked visuals were blocking ambient light which would cause a shadow around things like trap doors.

• Entities would not drop into blocks below a trap door if the block contained a platform.

• Notification order was incorrect after a certain amount had been created.

• Room jobs were not appearing at workstations.

• Some skills were not toggleable in the default skill permissions tab even though they were not locked.

• The tooltip for the diet group showed up as ???.

• Some diet items were not changing priority when edited.

• Some of the auto-equipment generation wasn’t filling all slots.

• There was an error when shift-adding a new room without one selected.

• Free Caged Animal was set to Auto for Hunting Grounds. Now, only Capture Entity is set to Auto.

• The nation expand/collapse of the settlements list on the overworld map wasn’t working.

• Astracube was flagged as an obstruction which would keep the stockpile room from allowing them inside.

• Fixed an issue where eat/drink jobs could not be created if the entity was in an empty block (no plants, items, anything).

• Tooltip delay settings weren’t working.

• Fixed an incorrect hotkey icon on the overworld map for “Deselect” showing the left mouse and not the right.

• Plants were not expiring when planted in the wrong season.

• Some plants would float in the air.

• For stockpile jobs, entities were not filling their inventories completely.

• Entities were not being set to player faction on job capture success.

• Newborns were not spawning with age 0.

• When target entities run away during combat, the player attacker was incapable of attacking successfully.

• Some fish weren’t spawning correctly in biomes.

• Jobs could unintentionally be placed below previous jobs. This would happen because the previous job wasn’t blocking the placement from cascading downwards when ‘single layer placement’ was off.

• Melon had a typo in its season id causing it to not grow in spring or display text correctly.

• Plants could automatically be planted in seasons they don’t grow.

• The background for some tracked professions was the wrong color.

• Pregnant status for non-humans would show pregnant human tooltip.

• Tin, Copper, and Coal weren’t properly spawning in Barrens and Desert biomes.

• Some NPC entities weren’t spawning with handheld items.

• Some fish spawned hidden.

• Some tooltips (e.g., egg item) were throwing errors under the hood which would keep the tooltip from appearing.

• Glass blocks weren’t transitioning correctly.

• Entities would drink from water blocks before using items in water troughs nearby.

• Duplicate toggle icons were showing up on some permissions lists.

• Several group counts were displaying 0 for the tracking settings lists.

• Prohibited entities would show up duplicated in target lists for jobs.

• Prohibited entities were still being used for target jobs. e.g., Leech Life (Ardyn).

• Racial tech was being unlocked when entities were captured instead of when they become citizens.

• Raiders were spawning as neutral.

• Some plants, after being planted in a farm, were not properly being marked as Mature. e.g., Mirtle grass.

• Market items were showing an incorrect “Merchant capacity exceeded” error when buying from merchant.

• Some entities given an attack order would have a ‘stuttering animation’.

• Some attacks weren’t being used because of an out-of-range attack check error.

• Entities were unable to fight in the water.

⚙️ Tuning / Content / Polish / Misc

• Updated mod project to 1.0.38.4.

• Added more tooltip info when hovering over a room in the world. This is when the room designation window is open.

• Killed entities will now award less XP.

• NPC’s now have a higher chance of leaving the map after a certain amount of time has passed.

• Improved pathfinding performance.

• Reduced damage over time from freezing.

• Body temperature is now reduced with some randomness involved. A roll is checked against the difference between body and ambient temperature. As the difference in temperature increases, the body temperature has a greater chance to lower each minute.

• Added some additional logic for NPC’s to move as a group.

• Added a tooltip to the top-right weather graphic to show the current weather and temperature range.

• Enabled thief scenario. Thieves will appear when your settlement has Ren. Entities can spot thieves if their paths cross.

• NPCs can no longer become each others companions.

• Spike traps are now damaged when an entity triggers them.

• Added repair job to fix damaged props (such as spike traps damaged by entities walking over them).

• Spikes now do more damage.

• Remaining ancient props now require void cells to be powered and used.

• Added unpowered icon above Ancient props to indicate when they don’t have a Void Cell powering them.

• Significant text performance improvements.

• Tree populations in forest biomes have been decreased.

• Crop plant populations (wheat, berries, etc) have been increased.

• Added Wood Hatchet item.

• Added Wool/Cloth Apron item.

• Added Wool/Cloth Chef’s Hat item.

• Cloth items are now called “Linen”. i.e., Linen Pants instead of Cloth Pants. Cloth is now just the material type. i.e., Linen Cloth, Wool Cloth, etc.

• Cleaned up some requirements text for making ink to make in clearer.

• Removed “Can Be Butchered” from Honey Bee.

• Added some visuals to diet items to indicate when they have affects for consuming.

• “Cooked Foods” in diets are now just “Meals”.

• Added the Legendary Patron item “Twisted Steel”

• Added “Mouse” boss scenario.

• Capturing animals now has a chance to fail.

• Entities now have a chance to escape from cages. This is a random roll each minute that compares: roll out of (cage toughness + 1) * 2000 ≤= entity stats (level + evasion + toughness). If there is no open space to exit to beside the cage, they will break it.

• Cages can now be locked by faction.

• The hermit loadout now starts the settler with buffs to several skills.

• Newly spawned entities (with no parents) will get a natural bonus to their core skills for their starting profession.

• Added a Clear Plants job to jobs menu to clear all plants regardless of being mature.

• Tons of cleanup on notifications.

• Clicking a notif previews that are stacked will now open the notif window on the notif group page.

• Clicking a notif in the Notifications window takes you to the notification.

• Added stone wall prop.

• Improved overworld map searching to highlight names and focus camera on searches.

• Prison cell occupants now require captured faction by default.

• Tavern occupants now require citizen faction by default.

• Added inline text icons for all plants.

• Added a ton of new description text and codex hint text to tooltips.

• Added tooltip to location coords to show permitted paths from location.

• Added a “Codex” window that shows info for discovered items, plants, statuses, professions, skills, etc.

• Temperature input hotkey is now ‘ and codex now uses /.

• Re-enabled Deen and Chicken Greg scenario.

• Re-enabled Desert Shimmer scenario.

• Added a ton of tuning/polish to starting loadouts.

• Starting items that have a random chance are no longer added to the default uniform loadouts.

• Added “Poor Diet” status for when entities eat items they shouldn’t in their diet.

• Added remaining Moss Kuplin art and data.

• Added skill check failure and tutorial step.

• Clicking a new discovery will open the codex, focus its entry, and expand its info.

• Increased natural fish spawning chances.

• Fishing skill now increases range that fish are lured to fishermen.

• Added notifications for fishing. These show whether fish are lured as well as caught.

• Fish now show up in the population panel.

• Kotha armor now unlocked with Fishing II.

• Added job state for permitted seasons. This is to keep plants from being planted in the wrong season.

• Added season info to blueprint tooltip.

• Planting jobs in rooms have been separated out by plant rather than be put in “plant standing” and “plant ground cover”, etc. This is to make it easier to see what is available for planting, see and edit plants by season, and differentiate skill level requirement.

• New entity natural bonuses have been tuned down from max of 15 to max of 5.

• Tuned starting NPC level to be based on avg sapient player level instead of kingdom level.

• Tuned base health for Ancients from 250 to 350.

• Tuned NPC starting items to more accurately match the player’s progression.

• Tuned NPC spawn count to more accurately match the player’s progression.

• Added better list feedback for when entity is selected (on lists where selection is possible).

• Added some extra tooltip info to target requirements to show when there are prohibited targets.

• Lowered XP for fishing.

• Increased rate at which fish rise to the surface.

• Fish now despawn after 24-48 hrs of idling. This is to allow for the redistribution of new fish across the whole map.

• Made the game background dark instead of light. See, I do listen! xD

Ok, so what's next? I'm going to start work on adding new content. This update has a few new things, but I'm going to add a lot more in the next one. I'm also doing some exciting work on rooms and professions that will add a lot of uniqueness to settlers. Excited to share more about that soon. And, lastly, I will continue to try and improve the game based on feedback. I know the tutorial and game tips in general need work. I want to flesh those out more. I also want to improve the equipping and uniform flow some more. It has some pain points.

Anyway, that's all for now. Thanks for reading this far and I hope you enjoy the new update!

Waylon