Greetings Viceroys!

The time has come for what it’s widely known as Update 18 aka Homecoming Update. This astonishingly hilarious pun is a reference to the new routines of villagers who now fulfill their needs at home. But that’s not all!

What’s new:

• Villager routines
• 19 new Cornerstones
• 15 new Deeds
• 2 new Citadel Upgrades
• And more!

Continue reading for the full list of changes and our remarks regarding the routine changes and what is likely to come after.

PS The Update’s cover was inspired by Arbitrarius’ Forestpiercer design. You can find more screenshots and a video below.

DEVELOPER NOTES

We’re hot off the heels of the World Map revamp, and already working hard on a new feature we want to release in a couple of weeks, so with this update, we bring you some smaller changes, focused mainly on perks, deeds, overall balance, and a changed villager routine.

First off – villager routines. If you played the latest Experimental Update, you probably already know what this means. We wanted to try something new and decided to change how villagers fulfill their needs. Until now, workers never really visited their own homes. When they needed to rest, they simply walked to the nearest Hearth and fulfilled their needs there. Houses were effectively just stat-boosting buildings with no real physical impact (you could easily take advantage of this by building them in remote places or in the middle of the forest). From now on, however, people will return to their homes during breaks, and rest, eat, and satisfy their needs there (the only exception are homeless people, they will still go to the Hearth).

House residents and their workplaces. 

With this update, we also improved how villagers are assigned to homes, and we added the option to move all houses in the settlement (at a cost, however). Additionally, after feedback from Experimental Update, we decided to give you a preview of a villager’s workplace in the housing UI, change how some professions are assigned to homes (scouts and builders), plus a special alert when a villager lives too far away from the place they work at. We also included an option to adjust said alert in the settings window.

We know that there are still some hiccups here and there (the Makeshift Hearth losing a portion of its importance for example), and we want to address them in future updates, but if even our best efforts won’t make this mechanic bearable to some of you, we will simply remove it. Think of this as a transitional phase rather than a final design. As to what the future holds – one sneak peek we can share right now is that we’ll probably introduce some sort of mechanic tying houses to Hearths (bonuses for placement near Hearths, for example).

Our main goals with the housing change were to: strengthen the city builder core of the game (by creating new gameplay around housing areas), better define the role of homes, encourage players to build more aesthetically pleasing settlements, and breathe more life into the towns in general. We know that this adds an additional layer of things to keep in mind while playing, but we hope this is a step in the right direction, into a more organic city builder experience.

Other than that, this update also brings a few new additions in terms of content. The most notable being 19 new Cornerstones with effects like increased housing capacity, cheaper Trade Routes, or a chance for double rewards from Glade Events. There are also 15 new Deeds, 2 new Citadel Upgrades, a new modifier on the World Map, and a bit of balance strewn in between.

Some new Cornerstones.

As always – we hope you enjoy these new additions and feel free to let us know what you think about them (Discord might be the best place for that). And if there are any features you’d like us to consider in the future, create a suggestion on our official feedback tool and vote for other ideas you care about.

Have fun and may the storm be gentle on you,
Eremite Games

CHANGELOG

Changes marked with ⚡ were inspired by community.

New content and features

• ⚡ Changed the way villager routines work. Villagers will now fulfill their needs in their homes.
  • During a break, villagers will return to their homes to rest, eat, get clothing, and fulfill their needs. 
  • Villagers are now assigned to houses based on two main factors: proximity to their workplace and preference. They will prioritize the closest home, but choose a more distant species-specific house over a closer Shelter.
  • Housing spots are automatically rearranged if a building is moved or workers are switched around in a workshop. The game automatically tries to find the best housing spots for villagers.
  • Housing spots are not rearranged for builders and scouts each time they are assigned to a new event/construction site, as this would introduce a lot of noise to the mechanic (plus, scouts don’t really rest when working on an event).
  • All houses are now movable, and moving a house now costs 5 Wood. We decided on this because our initial tests showed that there was some sort of decision paralysis when placing houses and workshops in the early stages of the game. It’s impossible to predict how the late-game layout and blueprint roster will look like, so forcing players to commit to a permanent house placement early on felt wrong.
  • The House UI now displays an inhabitant’s workplace beneath their portrait. Hovering over it will show a tooltip with the exact distance. Clicking on it will move the camera to the building the inhabitant works at.
  • If a house is placed too far away from a workplace, a warning icon will appear above it (and next to the icon of the inhabitant in the Building Panel). The exact distance for this warning can be tuned in the Settings Window (the alert can also be disabled altogether).
  • Homeless villagers will still go to the Hearth and fulfill their needs there. Builders (workers not assigned to any building) will also gather around the Hearth. 
  • We are aware that this change might reduce the Makeshift Heart’s role a bit, but rest assured – we will improve this mechanic in the future. For starters, we have plans to somehow tie Hearth to houses mechanically (more details will come soon).
• ⚡ Added two new types of Citadel Upgrades – Town Vision Range and Embark Range. The already existing Embark Range was renamed to Citadel Vision Range, as it only influenced the amount of fields unveiled by the Smoldering City at the start of a Cycle. 
  • More Town Vision Range – Your towns unveil more of the World Map.
  • Embark Range – You can venture one field further on the World Map.
• Added 19 new Cornerstones:
  • Hidden Reward – Gain 1 Ancient Tablet for every 2 Glade Events Solved.
  • Calming the Forest – Every 2 solved dangerous Events lower Hostility by 50.
  • Forest Mitigation – Each solved Glade Event lowers Hostility by 10.
  • Deserted Caravans – Global production is 30% faster but trading is unavailable.
  • Without Restrictions – Villagers have a 10% chance for bonus yields from production, but Consumption Control is disabled.
  • Orderly Storage – All buildings have their storage capacity increased by 10.
  • Tightened Belt – Travel Cost in Trade Routes is reduced by 1. Doesn’t apply to Routes already in progress. This effect scales with quantity.
  • Experienced Scout – Scouts can open chests 30% faster.
  • Friendly Relations – Gain +1 to Global Resolve for every 3 levels of Standing with other settlements in Trade Routes.
  • Well-rested Workers – Just. The. Right. Amount. Villagers with the Leisure need fulfilled have a +10% chance for double yields.
  • Enhanced Blueprints – Builders construct buildings 50% faster.
  • Surprise Child – Gain 1 Lizard for every 25 Eggs produced.
  • Chicken or Egg? – Gain 1 Harpy for every 25 Eggs produced.
  • Shorter Torment – The Storm’s duration is reduced by 33% in exchange for 33% more fuel consumption in the Hearth.
  • Crowded Houses – All houses have 1 more place, but break time for all villagers is increased by 25%.
  • Peasant Supplies – Receive 10 Packs of Provisions for every 10 villagers in town.
  • Deep Pocket – Receive 10 Amber for every 5 completed Trade Routes.
  • Equality – Cost of rerolling blueprints is lower by 10, but Favoring is disabled.
  • Profitable Caution – Scouts work 50% longer on Dangerous Glade Events but have a 50% chance of bringing back double the amount of goods.
• Added 15 new Deeds, all tied to the new World Map Modifiers added in the last update.
• Added a new World Map modifier – the Ruined Armory. Playing next to it will prevent villagers from dying when attacking a Trader.

Workplace indicator slider.

Balance

• ⚡ Reshufled some of the Upgrades in the Smoldering City. 
• We want to slowly move away from stat increases and focus more on interesting gameplay tools. That’s why we removed one Farming Speed Increase and added more embark range on the map. 
• At the same time, we removed one of two Citadel Vision Increase Upgrades, as it made the whole map seem too “small”. Instead, we decided to introduce an upgrade that unveils more of the map when building a town.
• The exact details can be found below:

Balance

• ⚡ Changed the way the Embark Range is calculated when starting from the Smoldering City. Previously, we counted the first circle of hexes around the Citadel as traversed distance, but this was wrong (this space is not playable, as it’s occupied by the mountain). From now on we count the Embark Range from the edge of the Smoldering City. 
• ⚡ Rebalanced a few starting Orders (from the first 3 slots in each game):
  • Botanist – added the objective for building a Plantation, adjusted the RNG of the Order to appear only if the building was chosen in a given game. 
  • Farm Life – added the objective for building a Small Farm, adjusted the RNG of the Order to appear only if the building was chosen in a given game.
  • Foragers’ Camp – added the objective for collecting Insects, adjusted the RNG of the Order to appear only if the building was chosen in a given game.
  • Garden Life – added the objective for building a Herb Garden, adjusted the RNG of the Order to appear only if the building was chosen in a given game.
  • Herbalist – added the objective for collecting Mushrooms, adjusted the RNG of the Order to appear only if the building was chosen in a given game.
  • Hunters – added the objective for collecting Eggs, adjusted the RNG of the Order to appear only if the building was chosen in a given game.
• ⚡ Extended the duration of the Need for Timber Timed Order from 2 minutes to 4 minutes.
• Added 3 existing perks to level up rewards:
  • Profitable Caution – level 14
  • Tightened Belt – level 15
  • Deep Pocket – level 16
• Moving farms (Small Farm, Plantation, Herb Garden, Grove) now costs 1 Plank. Moving the Homestead costs 5 Planks.
• Increased the cost of building a Shelter from 5 to 10 Wood.
• Shortened the time requirement for repairing buildings destroyed by lightning. 
• Added 8 World Map modifiers to the Daily Expedition pool.
  • Forbidden lands
  • Dangerous Lands
  • Monastery of the Holy Flame
  • Ruined Armory
  • Forsaken Gods Temple
  • Corrosive Torrent
  • Levitating Monument
  • Flooded Mines
• Changed the effect of the Forsaken Gods Temple modifier. It now greatly increases the number of Timed Orders in a game, instead of preventing villagers from leaving the settlement.
• Increased the size of the World Map by ~38%. We also increased the overall amount of modifiers and rewards to be found on it. This change was motivated mainly by the fact that we added more movement options and reaching the edge of the map became too easy.  

UX/UI improvements

• ⚡ Added a “Working Effect” label to all penalties active during the time Scouts work on Dangerous Glade Events. 
• ⚡ Added more information to Working Effect descriptions. They all now clearly state that the penalty is only active when a Scout is working on a corresponding Glade Event. 
• ⚡ Updated the description for the Biscuit Diet Cornerstone to better reflect its actual effect.
• ⚡ Changed the “New upgrades available in the Citadel” text in the level-up screen to be shorter.
• ⚡ Changed the description of the Levitating Monument Modifier. It now reflects the effect more precisely – most, but not all buildings can be moved.
• Added a new Gameplay section in the Settings Window, dedicated solely to gameplay elements (tracking orders, housing warning distance settings, etc).
• Changed the descriptions for houses and Hearths to better outline their role in the settlement. 
• Updated some tooltip texts and Atlas description to better reflect the change to villager routines.

Bug fixes

• ⚡ Fixed a bug that caused Citadel Resources found in Glade Events to not be added correctly to the player’s Storage. 
• ⚡ Fixed a bug that caused the terrain beneath towns on the World Map to always be green (instead of having the correct biome color).
• ⚡ Fixed a bug with the Thrill of Exploration Cornerstone reward in the Devilish Curiosity Order not giving Resolve for every discovered Glade.
• ⚡ Fixed an issue with builders hammering empty air after moving a building’s construction site.
• ⚡ Fixed an issue with resource icons being displayed outside of the Storage Panel’s bounds in the Trade Route Window.  
• ⚡ Fixed a typo in the Stormforged version of the Forge Trip Hammer Cornerstone.
• ⚡ Fixed a typo in the Beaver Colony Order name.
• ⚡ Fixed an issue with Factions having the same random town names as the player.
• ⚡ Fixed two missing Deed descriptions in the Polish and Russian translations.
• ⚡ Fixed a rare bug that caused some World Map tiles to display the “this biome is not available in the demo” tooltip text.
• Fixed a bug that caused the Cursed Royal Woodlands to not be included in the claimed territory after playing near them.

Other

• Improved the game’s overall performance.
• Updated a few 3D models for resources. Previously, most goods were represented by crates (on construction sites and when carried by villagers). After this change, these objects should be more varied (planks, bricks, sacks of food, barrels).

We want to thank you for all your contributions and feedback from the Experimental Branch. Your translations, suggestions, and reports are extremely appreciated! You can always track the progress of reported issues on our Public Bug Tracker.

COMMUNITY CORNER

The new Levitating Monument modifier which we introduced in the New World Update inspired Arbitrarius (a player from our Discord server) to create the monstrous Forestpiercer.

SHOW YOUR SUPPORT

If you want to help us grow the Against the Storm community, there are a few things you can do:

• Let your friends know about the game
• Share our content and announcements on social media
• Share your gameplays on relevant subreddits like r/Games or r/PCGaming 

Truth be told, we appreciate all kinds of support. Be it feedback, words of encouragement, or casual activity on Discord. It helps a lot and we’re very much grateful!

Now, enjoy the new update and let us know what you think!

May the storm be gentle on you,
Eremite Games team

Current Early Access version: 0.28.1R

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