It’s Thursday, My Viceroys!

Pack some jerky and put your favorite raincoats on – it’s time to settle new lands! Remember, fortune favors the bold, and the forests hold many hidden treasures for those who dare to explore them.

What’s new:

• New small glade events:
  • Treasure Stags (3 types)
  • Wandering Traders (3 types)
  • Rainpunk Drill
• 4 new perks
• New timed order
• And more!

Continue reading for our design notes and the full changelog.

PSA: later today (at 5:00 pm UTC), TactiCon launches on Steam. It’s a festival organized by our publisher – Hooded Horse – dedicated to all kinds of strategy games, filled with sales, demos, and talks.

IMPORTANT: Due to the fact that we didn’t receive the translations on time, the update is not yet localized into German, Spanish, French, and Brazilian Portuguese. The new texts are instead temporarily displayed in English.

We deeply apologize for the inconvenience and we’ll release the hotfix with the remaining languages as soon as we receive them.

ROADMAP UPDATE

When we launched Against the Storm on Steam last year, we aimed to stay in Early Access for around half a year.

Fast forward six months and we’re here today with only one big feature left on the roadmap: Tutorial improvements.

And yet, we believe that there are still some aspects of the game that need our attention. What’s more, the list of your suggestions keeps growing and we ourselves have some ideas for the new content.

That’s why we decided to spend a couple more months in Early Access, delivering bi-weekly updates, and occasionally some bigger updates with major features. The next one is already in development!

The next big feature is the World Map Cycle overhaul. It is meant to introduce a goal, a failure state, and an overarching structure to each World Map Cycle. We will remove the Factions’ ranking system (but not the Factions themselves) and encourage you to plan a “mini-campaign” at the beginning of each Cycle.

On the World Map, we will generate a set of special tiles, containing Seals. At the very end of the Cycle, you will be offered a choice: to either finish a cycle on the spot or try to close one of the Seals to which you have access. If you succeed, you will be rewarded with meta resources and progression. Your task is to plan the journey, reach the picked Seal, and win a final game in special, harsher conditions.

We are still working on the details so this is all subject to change.

For now, the remaining big features will remain a mystery and we’ll only announce them one at a time. This is because the possible 1.0 launch date is to some extent beyond our control and we need to stay flexible due to unknown external factors.

Big content updates aside, we are also committed to providing better support for the Steam Deck and we’ll try our best to reach the bar of Steam Deck Verified standard.

tl;dr Here’s the updated Roadmap:

DEVELOPER NOTES

Today’s update focuses on small glades as we’ve gotten quite a bit of feedback over the last couple of weeks about this particular area of the game.

The main highlight is the addition of new and unique event types that can only be found in small glades – Treasure Stags, Wandering Merchants, and Rainpunk Drills. All of them are beneficial (similar to caches and camps) and don’t pose a threat.

• Treasure Stags – mythical beasts found in the forest. Once discovered, they flee to a nearby dangerous glade, where they stay for a short period of time. If you open the dangerous glade within the required time limit, you will find them and be rewarded.
• Wandering Merchants – hermit traders not tied to the Merchant’s Guild. Once they are found in the forest, a trader icon will appear on the HUD, and you will be able to trade with them for a short while. When the timer runs out, they leave. Wandering Traders have fewer resources and perks on sale (compared to normal traders), but their assortment is unique.
• Rainpunk Drills – abandoned pieces of machinery found in the forest. They can be disassembled or repaired. Repairing a Rainpunk Drill spawns a few Copper Ore or Coal nodes in close vicinity.

Rainpunk Drill

Treasure Stag

We’ve gotten quite a lot of feedback about small glades, mostly about how they are too punishing for the reward they offer, and one of the main propositions floating around was a decrease in the amount of Hostility gained for discovering them. While we agree with the need for improvement in this area, we don’t want to devalue dangerous and forbidden glades as a side effect (as they are the epicenter of interesting decisions and risks in the game). By design, small glades are supposed to be somewhat of a sub-optimal (but safe) choice. 

But that doesn’t mean that they have to be boring. And that’s what we’re trying to address with this update. Our goal is to make small glades more interesting in general by creating new gameplay opportunities and giving more rewards for discovering them. That’s why in previous updates we introduced changes and mechanics that would make that a reality (and shift the balance around between different sizes of glades). Most notably, we added essential camps, gave small glades a high number of Drizzle Water Geysers, added event choices, rebalanced the tool economy, added new perks that rely on opening glades during the Storm, and gave Foxes special abilities tied to Hostility (check this thread for more information). This is of course an ongoing process, and you can expect more small events and general balance changes in the future.

Let’s now move on to some other changes coming in this update. We added four new perks, introduced a new timed order, changed the recipe balance in the Brickyard (three-star Brick recipe, yay!), adjusted event spawn rates in small glades (so there are now more events in general), and improved fuel consumption effect scaling. This last change is more of a technical fix than a big rebalance – to avoid situations in which a firekeeper is doing their best to deliver resources to the Hearth, but the fire goes out anyway (and a notification keeps appearing and disappearing constantly).

Lastly, there are some UX and UI improvements coming with this update. Most notably, we added the biome summary tooltip to the trader panel, the order pick pop-up, and the wildcard panel, and we changed the resource tooltip in order objectives that require you to sell goods (the tooltip now informs you about the buildings that can create said goods). We also fixed a lot of bugs, as is tradition with every patch.

Thank you all for providing feedback and suggestions for the new update. If you’d like to share your ideas for upcoming updates, here are some useful links:

• Steam Discussions, Discord, Reddit – discuss the game with the community and share your impressions
• Feature Request Tool – suggest specific new features

May the storm be gentle on you,
Eremite Games

P.S. If you’ve picked up Against the Storm and have been playing it, make sure to leave a Steam review! They help a lot!

CHANGELOG

Changes marked with ⚡ were inspired by community.

New content and features

• ⚡ Added 3 new types of glade events dedicated to small glades.
  • These events are not dangerous and are designed to increase the overall attractiveness and viability of small glades. For now, there are 3 categories of such events, and more are to be added in the future.
  • Treasure Stags (3 types) – mythical beasts found in the forest. Once discovered, they flee to a nearby dangerous glade, where they stay for a short period of time. If you open the dangerous glade within the required time limit, you will find them and be rewarded.
  • Wandering Merchants (3 types) – hermit traders not tied to the Merchant’s Guild. Once they are found in the forest, a trader icon will appear on the HUD, and you will be able to trade with them for a short while. After the timer runs out, they will leave. Wandering Traders have fewer resources and perks on sale (compared to normal traders), but their assortment is unique.
  • Rainpunk Drill – an abandoned piece of machinery found in the forest. They can be disassembled or repaired. Repairing a Rainpunk Drill spawns a few Copper Ore or Coal nodes in close vicinity. 
• Added 4 new perks. They are only available in Dullahan’s Mystery Boxes and can be bought from the new Wandering Merchants.
  • Badge of Courage – A famous Viceroy emblem passed down from generation to generation. Discovering a glade during the Storm lowers Impatience by 0,5.
  • Lucky Charm – A strange talisman made from an extremely rare gemstone – blue Amber. Grants 1 additional cornerstone reroll charge.
  • Firekeeper Letters – The exchange of knowledge between firekeepers can be very beneficial. The maximum number of sacrifice stacks in the Ancient Hearth is increased by 1 for every 2 ongoing trade routes.
  • Makeshift Water Tank – Increases the tank capacity for every type of rainwater by 50.
• Added a new timed order.
  • Supply Thy Neighbor – with the objective to complete valuable trade routes. This order was added in place of the old Outerwear order (which was disabled after the addition of species abilities in the Sentinels of the Forest update).

Balance

• ⚡ Changed the recipe tiers in the Brickyard.
  • Bricks – from 2 stars to 3 stars.
  • Crystalized Dew – from 2 stars to 1 star.
• ⚡ Increased the overall spawn rate of beneficial events on small glades (caches, camps, and the new types – traders, rainpunk drills, and stags).
• ⚡ Slightly lowered the arrival time of traders that were immediately called to the settlement. 
• ⚡ Rebalanced all effects tied to fuel consumption rates, and changed the minimum fuel levels in the Ancient Hearth. The maximum possible value for fuel consumption effects was decreased by around 20 percentage points.
  • Previously, if players had a particularly unlucky set of modifiers and effects, the game would show notifications about insufficient fuel reserves even if there was enough wood/coal/oil, and a Firekeeper was working without taking breaks. This was because FIrekeepers would refill fuel after reaching a certain threshold, and that threshold was too low. 
  • Humid Climate – changed the fuel consumption rate increase from 25% to 20%.
• ⚡ Moved the Vanguard Spire Level 5 Citadel Upgrade to level 10 (from level 8). This was done so the essential Fox House wouldn’t be unlocked before having access to Foxes.
• ⚡ Changed the requirements in the Advanced Outpost Order to avoid repetitions (it now requires a level 3 Hearth instead of level 2 on higher difficulties).
• ⚡ Changed how the game chooses workers when assigning them to a workplace. From now on, the algorithm will look at two factors to find the optimal worker: the distance from the workplace and the time left before taking a break.
• Changed the rewards for the Brotherhood order. Removed the Working Hard and Smart perk and added the Vessel of Incense perk instead.

UX/UI improvements

• ⚡ Added the biome summary tooltip to the order pick menu, trading panel, and the wildcard panel. You can now hover over the round resource icon next to the NPC portrait in these windows to see what resources are potentially available on your map.
• ⚡ Changed the name of the “Sheltered” need to “Basic Housing”.
• ⚡ Added a list of buildings that can produce a given resource to the “sell goods” order objective tooltip. 
• ⚡ Changed the name of the Human Resolve order to avoid confusion. 
• Improved the wording in the Guild Catalogue perk description (to state clearly that traders can have more perks or blueprints, not Cornerstones). 
• Changed the description and name of the Resolve effect applied by the Converted Harmony Spirit Altar to avoid confusion.
• Changed the name of the Experienced Scout perk to Scout’s Toolbox.
• Changed Xiadani’s title from Wandering Merchant to The Guild’s Outcast.

Bug fixes

• ⚡ Fixed a bug with the Makeshift Extractor (a decoration created by converting the Fuming Machinery glade event) not adding rainwater tank capacity.
• ⚡ Fixed a bug with the “move” button in the Trading Post now working in maps with the Levitating Monument modifier.
• ⚡ Fixed a bug with the “move” button in the Trading Post not working when another building was selected before clicking on the Trading Post.
• ⚡ Fixed an issue with perk timers resetting after reaching more than 59 minutes.
• ⚡ Fixed an incorrect label for the Degradation working effect in the Petrified Tree glade event.
• ⚡ Fixed a bug with scenes loading twice and breaking the game in some rare cases.
• ⚡ Fixed a bug with the game crashing when Twitch auto-login was enabled and the initial chat connection failed. 
• ⚡ Fixed a bug with the construction mode breaking when double-clicking on a Geyser Pump.
• ⚡ Fixed a bug with the construction mode breaking when placing multiple buildings one after another and selecting villagers at the same time.
• ⚡ Fixed a bug with the Trader indicator not changing positions after moving the Trading Post.
• ⚡ Fixed an issue with species portraits being slightly off-center in the Consumption Control panel.
• ⚡ Patched up some holes in the Clan Hall building model. 
• ⚡ Fixed an issue with the Embark Screen having inconsistencies between UI elements.
• ⚡ Fixed a typo in the Family Gratitude perk description in the Japanese version of the game.
• Fixed a typo in the Unearthly Element effect description in the Polish version of the game.
• Improved overall stability and fixed numerous smaller bugs behind the scenes (these errors had no real visible representation in the game, but once they occurred in the background, they would influence mechanics and systems in weird ways).

COMMUNITY CORNER

Check out the latest community memes on Steam:

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