Greetings, Viceroys!

The Cycle is nearing its end… Today’s update is the last before 1.0 release. As we’re wrapping things up, the update might feel smaller than usual and hence it’s honestly dubbed “Modest Update”. Despite that, we still managed to snag some new features for you:

• New conversations with Lori
• Rebalanced Ancient Seal objectives
• Mouse buttons rebinding
• Option to disable all ingredients and/or recipes by default
• 9 New Achievements (for already existing Deeds)
• And more!

Before we continue with the design notes and the full changelog, we have a couple of small announcements.

STEAM AWARDS & SALE

Steam Autumn Sale is in full swing and you can get Against the Storm 35% off!

The Sale also comes with The Steam Awards nominations and that’s why we’d like to ask for your support by nominating Against the Storm for the Labor of Love Award. We know there will be a lot of competition for this award (we have a hard time picking one ourselves!), so your nomination means the world to us.

You can cast your vote here:

1.0 RELEASE DATE ANNOUNCEMENT

We’re thrilled to announce that Against the Storm’s 1.0 version will be released next month on December 8!

The 1.0 update will include the Queen’s Hand Trial – a new mode designed for the most experienced of Viceroys. You can learn more about it in the Release Date Announcement post.

DEVELOPER NOTES

As you already know from the intro to this article, Against the Storm is leaving Early Access on December 8th, 2023! So because of this, today’s update is a very special one – it’s the last biweekly Early Access patch before the 1.0 update. So what can you expect?

First of all, “the last biweekly update” does not mean it is the final patch in the game’s history. We will still continue to support Against the Storm and bring you meaningful updates after December 8th! However, it does mean that the update cadence will slow down a bit. The 1.0 launch is a good time to slow things down and let players enjoy the full Against the Storm experience without drastic changes every two weeks. It is also a good time for the team to take a breather, evaluate the game from afar, gather feedback from all the new players, and plan the next move.

We will share more of our post-1.0 plans and hopes in the future, so stay tuned! And for now, let’s move on to the details of today’s update.

With the aptly titled “Modest Update,” we bring you a lot of balance changes (mostly to Seals and events), some much-anticipated UI tweaks (mouse keybindings!), and some new content in the form of new achievements and conversations with Aunt Lori.

First, let’s talk about balance. As we said in one of our previous dev notes, the last few updates before 1.0 are mostly focused on cleanups – efforts aimed specifically at parts of the game that have not aged well in the face of the barrage of updates over the last year. So today, we bring you changes to three areas in particular – Seal objectives, Glade Event rewards, and Order rewards.

Since the Seal objectives were first introduced to the game, there hasn’t really been a dedicated balance pass for them. As a result, there are some inconsistencies in this system – some tasks are too easy, while others are disproportionately difficult. This has led to a stale meta and an overall gameplay experience with only a few interesting choices. So over the past few weeks, we took a closer look at the Sealed Forest and decided to shake things up a bit. We completely overhauled some of the Seal objectives and adjusted the numbers on almost all of them in hopes of making the final settlement of a cycle a little more interesting and varied.

Moving on to the next balance issue – rewards. In this update, we wanted to address some of the issues with the resources given for certain activities (namely Glade Events and Orders). We found that there was a small bias towards certain goods in the game, most notably meat, insects, mushrooms, pottery, and biscuits. This is mostly because the first versions of Against the Storm were very dependent on these types of items, and only with time has the content become more varied. So now is a good time to change that and introduce some more variability.

But balance isn’t the only thing coming in this update. We also tried to fill in some gaps in the game’s content. That’s why we’ve added 9 new achievements across all platforms (a few modifier achievements and the Fox Utopia Deed were missing), and we’ve introduced some new conversation topics with Aunt Lori (activated after you reforge the Cobalt, Titanium, and Adamantine Seals).

We also took the time to add some highly requested UI improvements. Most notably, you can now freely map mouse buttons to any action in the game, disable all recipes in newly built production buildings by default, see cycle effects in the embarkation panel, and stop all rain engines at once with a single button press. There are also numerous text changes, localization improvements in all languages, and bug fixes.

Phew, that was quite a lot to summarize in one short note… As always, you can see the full list of changes in the changelog below. And now, let’s shed some light on what the near future holds for Against the Storm.

After today’s patch, we’re in full preparation mode for the 1.0 release on December 8. You can also expect the next update to arrive on that day. It will include the previously teased Queen’s Hand Trial – a hardcore, permadeath mode reserved for only the most skilled Viceroys. You could call this the ultimate challenge for those who find Prestige 20 too easy.

Other than that, we only have one thing left on the Early Access roadmap, and that is to get the Steam Deck Verified status. Unfortunately, this endeavor has proven to be more difficult than we anticipated. Over the past few months, we have been slowly working on small improvements to the Steam Deck version of the game, but we never quite got there. Our initial plan was to make the game just a little more accessible, but it quickly turned out that that wasn’t enough, and our plans evolved into a big effort of making the game playable with a controller.

But we quickly realized that this was too big a task for our small team, and that we would probably not be able to come up with a good solution in such a short amount of time. So we decided to approach this like any other problem in the game – step by step, through iteration.

So with today’s update, we are introducing a very early and rudimentary version of basic controller functionality (for Steam Deck only). This essentially means that if you select a gamepad control layout on the Steam Deck, the game should correctly recognize your inputs and display controller glyphs.

Since this is a very early and barebones version, some features are still missing. We still recommend playing with the old control layouts created by the community (or the one we published, called “Keyboard and Mouse (Legacy)”) for the optimal Steam Deck experience. We hope that in the future we will have more time to work on this and give you a much better solution.

Normally, this would be the place where we thank you for your feedback and link you to all the platforms where you can leave your suggestions, but we’re going to do things differently this time. Today we just want to thank you all for your amazing support throughout the entire Early Access period. Without you, Against the Storm wouldn’t even be half as good as it is today. We hope that you have enjoyed going on this wild journey with us, and that you are as excited for the future as we are.

May the storm be gentle on you,
Eremite Games

CHANGELOG

Changes marked with ⚡ were inspired by community.

New content and features

• ⚡ Added 9 new achievements.
  • Over the course of Early Access, we added a lot of new deeds to the game, but we didn’t always tie them to platform-specific achievements. This led to some weird inconsistencies, like having deeds for all 5 playable species, but only 4 corresponding achievements (for Beavers, Humans, Lizards, and Harpies). So today we decided to fix that.
  • PSA: The 9 new achievements are not available on the Epic Games Store yet, but we should be able to release them within a few days. If you achieve them in the game by that time, you will get those achievements once they become available on the platform.
  • The new achievements are as follows:
    • Abandoned Settlement – Win a game near the Abandoned Settlement modifier.
    • Frosts – Win a game near the Frosts modifier.
    • Land of Greed – Win a game near the Land of Greed modifier.
    • Overgrown Library – Win a game near the Overgrown Library modifier.
    • Petrified Necropolis – Win a game near the Petrified Necropolis modifier.
    • Ominous Presence – Win a game near the Ominous Presence modifier.
    • Gathering Storm – Win a game near the Gathering Storm modifier.
    • Untamed Wilds – Win a game near the Untamed Wilds modifier.
    • Fox Utopia – Win a game with 30 Foxes, 15 x Fox House, 1 x Tea Doctor.
  • If you have already completed the Deeds listed above, you will automatically unlock the new achievements when you start the game after this update.
• Added new conversations with Aunt Lori.
  • The new conversation topics are activated by reforging some prestige Seals. 
  • The new dialogue with Aunt Lori should give some additional closure to players progressing past Viceroy and provide a background for the upcoming Queen’s Hand Trials.

⚡ The Acid Rain Forest Mystery now also affects Pipe production.Balance

• ⚡ Rebalanced the Seal objectives in the Sealed Forest.
  • We noticed several inconsistencies in the Sealed Forest objectives. Some were too easy compared to other options in the same tier, and others were way too hard. This led to a very stale meta and not much variety in decision-making. We decided to address this in this update.
  • Heart of Amber – now requires players to deliver packs of goods instead of buying perks.
  • Heart of the Forest – now requires players to solve Cache events instead of gaining reputation from resolve.
  • Golden Blood – now requires players to gain standing instead of trading.
  • Blood of the Stag – now requires earning Reputation from Glade Events instead of making Empathy/Corruption/Loyalty decisions.
  • Crystal Feathers – now requires delivering Amber instead of gaining a certain level of standing.
  • Queen’s Feathers – now requires fulfilling needs simultaneously instead of over time.
  • Essence of Corruption – now requires using any type of water instead of all three types.
  • Almost all objectives (not just those listed here) have had their numbers adjusted.
  • We also adjusted the easier version of Seal objectives (only available for the Bronze Seal).
• ⚡ Decreased the time needed to make Porridge in the Field Kitchen from 168 seconds to 126 seconds.
• ⚡ Increased the amount of fertile soil spawned around Homestead ruins.
• ⚡ Renamed some perks mistakenly called “Reinforced Tools” to avoid duplicates.
• ⚡ Changed the name of all +X Insect production perks to avoid confusion with Meat production perks.
• ⚡ Changed the name of all +X Storm Water production perks to avoid name duplicates.
• ⚡ Removed an incorrect version of the Forge Trip Hammer perk offered as an Order reward.
• ⚡ The Acid Rain Forest Mystery now also affects Pipe production.
• Revamped two Archaeologist’s Office upgrades.
  • Ancient Strength – this effect now increases the carrying capacity and movement speed of scouts instead of increasing the carrying capacity of all workers in the settlement.
  • Carved in Stone – this effect no longer scales based on Ancient Tablets and now increases glade event working speed based on Reputation Points gained from completing glade events. The working speed bonus has also been reduced from 10% to 7%.
• Changed the tier of the Pickled Goods recipe in the Beanery to one star instead of two.
• Rebalanced resource rewards for almost all Glade Events in the game.
  • We noticed that a lot of events were biased towards certain goods (like meat or mushrooms) or could drop the same resources needed to solve them.
  • Some events also had very little resource variety (less than 9 types), while others were packed with different goods (for example, caravans had more than 30).
  • Based on this, we decided to go through almost all of the loot tables and adjust drop rates, add new goods, and remove over-represented resources. 
  • While this balance pass is not meant to ensure perfect resource distribution, it should result in rewards that feel a bit more varied (and perhaps open up some play styles based on more exotic goods).
• Rebalanced resource rewards across multiple Orders. The goal here was similar to the resource changes in the Glade Event rewards – to spread out rarer resources and reduce distribution imbalances.
  • Garden Life – removed Clay, added Fabric.
  • Shelters – removed Mushrooms, added Berries.
  • Relics – removed Meat and Insects, added Eggs and Berries.
  • Advanced Trading – removed Bricks, added Leather.
  • Restoration – removed Meat, added Berries.
  • Risky Expedition – removed Insects and Stone, added Eggs and Plant Fiber.
  • Human Influx – removed Incense, added Jerky.
  • Trapper’s Trial – removed Biscuits, added Skewers.
  • Royal Gardens – removed Biscuits, added Scrolls.
  • Charity Fair – removed Biscuits, added Pickled Goods. 
  • Lost Knowledge – removed Biscuits, added Wine.
  • Advanced District – removed Bricks, added Leather.
  • Human Relatives – removed Mushrooms, added Vegetables.
  • Lizard Relatives – removed Meat, added Skewers.
  • Rations for the Citadel – removed Barrels and Biscuits, added Waterskins and Porridge.
  • Harpy Villagers – removed Incense, added Scrolls. 
  • Ruins – removed Barrels, added Pottery.
  • Coal Fever – removed Biscuits, added Porridge.
  • Copper Fever – removed Biscuits, added Skewers.
  • Knowledge – removed Incense, added Porridge.
  • Human Majority – removed Stone, added Planks.
  • Lizard Majority – removed Insects, added Skewers.
• Slightly buffed traders found in Small Glades. 
  • Increased the number of goods available in their inventories.
  • The base number of perks and blueprints offered by glade traders has been increased from 2 to 3.
  • Increased the amount of Amber available when trading with glade traders.

UX/UI improvements

• ⚡ Added the option to freely rebind mouse buttons to options other than just camera movement. 
  • You can now rebind additional mouse buttons, not just the default three.
  • Keep in mind that it’s possible to bind multiple functions to the same button, and this can lead to unexpected behavior.
• ⚡ Added an option to disable all ingredients in recipes by default.
• ⚡ Added an option to disable all recipes in production buildings by default.
• ⚡ Added a tooltip explaining why the Rainpunk & Blightrot tutorial scenario is locked for some players.
• ⚡ Ore veins can now be clicked to display a UI panel similar to that of resource deposits.
• ⚡ Cycle effects are now shown in the Embark Panel when selecting a field on the World Map.
• ⚡ You can now stop all Rain Engines at once by holding Shift and clicking on the Blightrot icon at the bottom of the HUD.
• ⚡ The Seal Contract UI now selects the next Seal by default when you finish a Cycle, unless you manually change the selection. If you select your own Seal at least once, the UI will no longer automatically progress through the Seals.
• ⚡ Added information about the duration of the Petrified Egg blessing gained from the Stormbird Egg world event.
• ⚡ The Gathering Knowledge biome effect now clearly states that the bonus does not apply to Woodcutters’ Camps.
• ⚡ The names of different standing levels in trade routes are now capitalized.
• ⚡ Resources listed in the “base goods” tooltip in the Embarkation Panel now follow the same order as on the in-game HUD.
• Added 4 new custom icons in place of old existing art.
  • Seal Fragments
  • Caravan Wagons (modifier reward)
  • Supply Package (modifier reward)
  • Obsidian Box (modifier reward)
• Improved the spacing in World Map Modifier tooltips.
• Changed the keybind tips in some tooltip footers to display LMB/RMB/MMB instead of a generic “click”. 
• Main menu buttons are now responsive to cursor hover.

Bug fixes

• ⚡ Fixed an issue where the Land of Greed modifier would spawn next to the Bandit Camp modifier (and be drawn with it in Daily Expeditions).
• ⚡ Fixed a bug where certain Deeds could be completed after a settlement run (and given to the player in the next run).
• ⚡ Fixed a bug where players would get a “no ore left” message after disabling production in the Mine.
• ⚡ Fixed a bug that caused some animations to glitch and produce strange artifacts when the game was paused.
• ⚡ Fixed a bug where the negative consequence of the Altar of Decay was not disappearing after solving the event.
• ⚡ Fixed an issue where the Commenda Contract world event still had an incorrect description in the tooltip (“before year 8” instead of “before year 8 ends”).
• ⚡ Fixed a bug where the first caravan choice in the Embarkation Panel was not highlighted when selecting a world map tile.
• ⚡ Implemented a massive amount of fixes and improvements to almost all language versions of the game.
• ⚡ Fixed a bug where some perk descriptions in the in-game encyclopedia were incorrectly formatted in Simplified Chinese.
• ⚡ Fixed a problem with incorrect descriptions of fuel consumption effects. They all now clearly state that they reduce fuel consumption, not increase burn time.
• ⚡ Fixed a bug where saves imported from the demo were unplayable. 
• ⚡ Fixed a missing icon for the Badge of Courage perk.
• Fixed a bug that caused the camera to be positioned incorrectly on the world map after skipping the second tutorial.
• Fixed a bug that caused Cycle effects to overlap with the Tutorials panel on the World Map.
• Fixed a bug where one of the UI headers in the Tutorials panel said “Construction” instead of “Missions”.

Other

• ⚡ Improved overall game performance in almost all biomes. 
• The Steam Deck version can now read gamepad input and display controller glyphs.
  • This feature is only available on Steam Deck and will only become active after you change the input type or control layout to a gamepad.
  • We have updated the recommended control layouts available in Steam Deck. There are now two: “Gamepad with Joystick Trackpad” and “Keyboard and Mouse (Legacy)”. The first one shows controller glyphs, the second one shows mouse and keyboard glyphs (it’s the same layout as before, controls are identical to PC).
  • Please note that this is by no means official controller support. This is just a way to enable basic controller functionality on Steam Deck, and a first step in a long (and probably painful) journey.
  • We still recommend playing with the “Keyboard and Mouse (Legacy)” layout for the best Steam Deck experience.
• Tweaked some in-game sound effects and music tracks.

The current game version is 0.64.1.

COMMUNITY CORNER

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