Greetings Viceroys!

In this Experimental Update (Early Access v0.25.0.2E), we want to address your feedback regarding Trade Routes and introduce a bit more depth to this system.

HOW TRADE ROUTES WORKED

Until now, Trade Routes were in a strange place design-wise. Originally, back when we had our first demo, they were created as a means of acquiring goods the player couldn’t otherwise produce. Additionally, most of them were balanced in the player’s favor and it was easy to receive more than you paid for in a given Trade Route. Later, we tried to even the scales and always exchanged goods at a 1:1 ratio. This was fair, but not really “fun”.

Now, a few months after release, things have changed. The initial need to fill holes in the settlement’s economy is no longer there – recipes are overall more balanced, “bad RNG” was reduced in both perks and blueprints, traders have a bigger pool of goods available, and biomes provide a lot of secondary and tertiary resources when gathering.

We also received a lot of feedback from you, our Community, about how you were expecting more depth and excitement from this system. So this is the perfect time to do something about that.

WHAT WE CHANGED

From now on, Trade Routes will be a system focused primarily on selling goods for profit and establishing relations with nearby settlements, while Traders remain the main source of goods and Cornerstones. Our big idea here is to create two distinct branches of trading in the game – export (Trade Routes) and import (Traders). This also means that we needed to rebalance almost all prices for all traders (it’s now way less profitable to sell resources directly to traders, and more profitable to use Trade Routes for that purpose).

The way you interact with Trade Routes will be familiar to anyone who has used the system before. You need a Trading Post, and you can access the Trade Route panel by selecting the icon in the top right corner of the HUD. Once in there, you will find goods your closest neighbors are willing to buy from you. These are called Offers. Offers change each season and depend on the biome a settlement is built in.

There are three main parameters to keep in mind: payment (how much the settlement is willing to pay for a desired good), travel cost (how much it will cost to send a convoy), and travel time (how long the Trade Route will take). After accepting an offer, goods are sent to the selected town. You will be able to collect the Amber from the sold resources after the Trade Route’s travel time completes.

Each successful trade with a neighbor will increase your Standing with them. The more a given settlement likes you, the better future offers will be, and the more goods the settlement will be buying.

WHAT WE’RE INTERESTED IN

Our main goal with this change to Trade Routes is to enhance trading-focused builds, give other settlements more meaning, and introduce more depth and room for strategic decisions to the entire system. We also wanted to create a feeling of excitement when you find the best deals and use your wit to “cheat the system”. The two main things we are interested in are:

• What do you think of this new direction for Trade Routes? Are the goals outlined above met?
• How do you feel about the balance? Are there attractive offers and interesting decisions? How do you feel about the nerf in prices when selling to traders directly?

If you decide to give it a try, please share your thoughts with us on Discord, Reddit, or other channels:

Thank you for your constant support and may the Storm be gentle on you!
Eremite Games

HOW TO PLAY EXPERIMENTAL UPDATES

Experimental Updates are kept on a separate branch. In order to play it, you need to install Against the Storm – Experimental Branch.

The Experimental Updates will in many cases be in a very raw state. Changes are not localized, there can be bugs, and the balance might feel way off. It has a separate save file from the main version and your progress can’t be transferred from the Experimental Branch to the main version.

You can also use the developer console on the Experimental Branch. Discover the developer commands here: Experimental Branch.

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