Greetings, Viceroys!

With this update, we’re diving into the world of home décor! Complete Deeds and progress your Viceroy career to unlock new collectible items that will cozy up your home.

What’s new:

• Collectible decorations
• 8 new Deeds (Seals)
• New conversation topics
• Idle farmers indicator
• And more!

You can check the full list of changes and our design notes below.

DEVELOPER NOTES

As you might have guessed from the name of this article, today’s update is the second part of the Guidance and Lore system. It brings new conversation topics with Aunt Lori, a bit more structure to the early game, and most importantly – collectible decorations for your home in the Smoldering City. So without further ado, let’s dive right into the details.

First, the new collectibles. In the past, we’ve talked about how we wanted to add some new cosmetic rewards to the game, especially for higher-tier deeds. Up until now, many of them have only rewarded players with experience points – and while that can be a meaningful reward at lower levels, deeds like Prestigious Expedition 20 are completed by players who have long since reached max level.

With Guidance and Lore Part 2, we hope to change that by introducing a new type of decoration – collectibles that will be displayed in your home in the Smoldering City. These are purely cosmetic and are awarded for completing certain deeds. You can also get little snippets of lore by hovering over the reward icon in the deed panel. There are currently 27 items available, with more to come in the future.

We also introduce several new conversations with Aunt Lori. The most notable of these are unique interactions with her after the first few settlements and after successfully reforging each of the four initial Seals (Bronze, Lead, Silver, and Gold). The goal here was to provide some structure and to guide new players through the early game by giving them clear goals to strive for (as well as a sense of closure after completing the Gold Seal). In the future, we will add a similar interaction with Aunt Lori for the last 4 Seals.

There are also several new, more general topics of conversation when interacting with Aunt Lori. She can now tell the player a few new stories (such as about the Fishmen or the Foxes) and give more advice based on the player’s actions in previous games. There is also a new dialogue option in the “There’s something I don’t understand…” branch that is meant to explain how the Blightrot mechanic works.

As with every update, this one brings a few community-inspired UX improvements, balance changes, and bug fixes. Most notably, we’ve added two new settings to the Options menu – “Idle Farmer Indicator” and “Species Panel Open by Default”. We also changed the human farming specialization icon and improved the wording of several in-game descriptions. In terms of balance, we changed the penalty in the Master Blueprint Cornerstone (to count resource charges instead of nodes), changed the objective of the Obsidian Loremaster world event (to require Forbidden Events, not just Forbidden Glades), and added an option to control season length in Training Expeditions.

Finally, let’s talk a little bit about the near future. As you may have noticed, this update mostly focuses on fleshing out the game structure and making it easier for new players to get started. That’s because we’re slowly approaching the 1.0 release of Against the Storm, and we want the game to be as polished and accessible as possible. At the same time, we’re avoiding any major core gameplay changes before it comes out of Early Access.

Some studios out there take a longer break from updating their game right before the 1.0 release, just to come out of Early Access with a bang in the form of a huge, fancy new feature. However, our development philosophy has always been very different. We believe that our strength lies in extremely frequent and highly iterative updates rather than large but rare content drops. For this reason, we will still continue the bi-weekly update schedule as normal.

And while this may be sad reading for some of you, fear not – there will still be a yet unannounced surprise feature coming with 1.0. It just won’t be as groundbreaking as fishing or a new species.

As always – 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. One of the best things you can do to help indie games is to leave a Steam review. If you’ve had a chance to play Against the Storm, we’d love to hear any feedback, positive or negative. Thanks!

CHANGELOG

Changes marked with ⚡ were inspired by community.

New content and features

• ⚡ Added earnable decorations to the player’s home.
  • Home decorations are special collectible items. They are automatically added to the player’s home in the Citadel.
  • Collectibles can be acquired by finishing certain deeds in the Citadel (the exact list of changes in Deed rewards can be seen in the “balance” section of this changelog).
  • There are 27 collectibles in total.
  • Each collectible has a small snippet of lore when hovering over its icon in the Deed panel.
• ⚡ Added 8 new Deeds.
  • The Bronze Seal – Reforge the Bronze Seal.
  • The Lead Seal – Reforge the Lead Seal.
  • The Silver Seal – Reforge the Silver Seal.
  • The Gold Seal – Reforge the Gold Seal.
  • The Platinum Seal – Reforge the Platinum Seal.
  • The Cobalt Seal – Reforge the Cobalt Seal.
  • The Titanium Seal – Reforge the Titanium Seal.
  • The Adamantine Seal – Reforge the Adamantine Seal.
  • The rewards for completing the new Deeds are all new home decoration items. Every reforged Seal will grant you one piece of the Viceroy’s uniform to be displayed in your home in the Citadel.
• Added new conversation topics with Aunt Lori.
  • The main focus of the new topics is to add structure to the first half of the game and to give players a clearer sense of direction. 
  • Aunt Lori will now offer unique conversations after reforging each of the first 4 Seals (Bronze, Lead, Silver, and Gold). She also has some unique dialog after the first games after the tutorial.
  • There are also numerous new stories she can tell, a new tip based on the player’s actions in previous games, and one new topic explaining the Blightrot mechanic (after selecting the “There’s something I don’t understand…” option).

Balance

• ⚡ Changed how the penalty of the Master Blueprint Cornerstone works. Instead of requiring players to remove/deplete nodes, it now counts collected resource charges.
• ⚡ Changed the objective of the Obsidian Loremaster World Event. Instead of discovering 2 Forbidden Glades, it now requires completing 2 Forbidden Events.
• ⚡ Added the option to control season length in Training Expeditions.
• Reshuffled a lot of rewards given for Deed completion.
  • First Steps – removed the experience reward, added the Standard Uniform home decoration.
  • The Scarlet Orchard – removed the Thorny Reed settlement decoration, added the Rosevine home decoration.
  • The Marshlands – removed the experience reward, added the Marshglow Fungite home decoration.
  • Coral Forest – removed the experience reward, added the Reefbloom home decoration.
  • Royal Outpost – removed the experience reward, added the Landscape Painting home decoration.
  • Against All Odds – removed the Dullahan trader unlock, added the Pipe Cross settlement decoration.
  • Crimson Soil – removed the Reeds embarkation bonus, added the Thorny Reed settlement decoration.
  • Sparkdew Crystals – removed the Pipe Cross settlement decoration, added the Sparkdew Crystal home decoration.
  • Fishmen Ritual Site – removed the experience reward, added the Fishman Skull home decoration.
  • Prosperity 5 – removed the experience reward, added the Plate of Food home decoration.
  • Dice with Death 4 – removed the experience reward, added the Dullahan trader unlock.
  • Thorough Exploration – removed the Golden Leaf Plant settlement decoration, added the Reeds embarkation bonus.
  • Discovery 6 – removed the experience reward, added the Mole Trophy home decoration.
  • Rushed Delivery 6 – removed the experience reward, added the Sparkcaster home decoration.
  • Export Expert 6 – removed the experience reward, added the Trade Contract home decoration.
  • Stalking Shadows – removed the experience reward, added the Storm Orb home decoration.
  • Unnecessary Burden – removed the experience reward, added the Ibex Rug home decoration.
  • Master Archaeologist – removed the experience reward, added the Inscribed Slab home decoration.
  • Prestigious Expedition 1 – removed the Pipe Elbow settlement decoration, added experience points.
  • Prestigious Expedition 2 – removed the experience reward, added the Pipe Elbow settlement decoration.
  • Prestigious Expedition 5 – removed the Moss Broccoli Seedlings perk unlock, added the Ancient Artifact home decoration.
  • Prestigious Expedition 8 – removed the experience reward, added the Golden Leaf Plant settlement decoration.
  • Prestigious Expedition 10 – removed the No Quality Control perk unlock, added experience points.
  • Prestigious Expedition 14 – removed the experience reward, added the No Quality Control perk unlock.
  • Prestigious Expedition 17 – removed the experience reward, added the Painting of the Ancient Hearth home decoration.
  • Prestigious Expedition 20 – removed the experience reward, added the Duelling Umbrella home decoration.
• Removed two Cornerstones from Deed rewards: Moss Broccoli Seeds and Steel Mattocks. Both are now available from level 1, without the need to complete any Deeds.

UX/UI improvements

• ⚡ Added an “idle farmers indicator” setting to the options menu. Checking it will cause the game to notify the player if farmers are idle on a farm.
• ⚡ The species panels on the left side of the HUD will now remember their state when the game loads. This means that if you leave them expanded and quit the game, they will still be expanded after loading.
  • We also added a “species panel open by default” setting to the options menu. Checking it will cause the species panels to always be expanded when starting a new settlement.
• ⚡ Changed the icon of the human farming specialization to avoid confusion with the forest specialization of foxes.
• ⚡ Improved the wording in the first dialog of the Seal Keeper. It should now clearly state that the player needs 4 different items instead of all Guardian Parts.
• ⚡ Changed the names of Copper and Coal deposits to “veins”, to make it clearer that they are different from normal resource nodes (and that perks affecting resource deposits/nodes don’t work on them).
  • Based on this, we updated all tooltips and descriptions tied to mine upgrades.
• ⚡ Added a footer to resources in the warehouse panel. It now explains that LMB will track a resource and RMB will open a tooltip where the lower limit can be set. 
• ⚡ Improved the wording in the description of the Travel Rations perk, to avoid confusion in regards to its effect.

Bug fixes

• ⚡ Fixed a bug with the Prestige 11 Blight modifier being incorrectly applied to Prestige 10 games.
• ⚡ Fixed an issue with some parts of the forest being incorrectly generated in the Scarlet Orchard, leaving small empty spaces between glades.
• ⚡ Fixed a bug that caused the Ominous Presence modifier to be spawned near the Flooded Mines modifier.
• ⚡ Fixed an issue with coal veins spawning under trees in some glades in the Coral Forest.
• ⚡ Fixed a typo in the German description of the Fishmen Lighthouse glade event description.
• ⚡ Fixed a typo in the Russian description of the Rainpunk Drill effect.
• ⚡ Fixed a typo in the Simplified Chinese translation of the Home button in the Citadel.
• ⚡ Fixed a few typos in the Polish version of some dialogs with Aunt Lori.
• ⚡ Fixed some typos in some generated settlement names.

The current game version is 0.62.1.

COMMUNITY CORNER

Check out the latest community memes on Steam:

CONTINUE READING...