Greetings, Viceroys!

We’ve been tinkering with the game again and have released a new update with new content and improvements.

Here’s what’s new:

• 3 new World Map Modifiers
• Hauler system overhaul
• Option to play with 4 species in Training Expeditions
• Fishing Hut panel improvements
• Depletion progress bar in resource overlay

You can get right to the game, or continue reading for our design notes, full changelog, and information about settlement saves.

DEVELOPER NOTES

The main focus of today’s patch is a revamp of the hauler system. This has been a frequent topic of discussion within the community, and there have been many ideas on how to improve this system. Today, finally, we’re overhauling haulers (pun intended).

When we first introduced this mechanic, we treated it as a bonus feature – something players wouldn’t need to focus on, but could benefit from if they had some spare workers. Over time, however, it became clear that there were several issues with it. Haulers often weren’t very helpful, and could sometimes create small logistical hiccups, such as ingredient pileups in production buildings.

While we were aware of these issues, we chose to take our time and carefully consider how to address them. We didn’t want to rush a reactive fix that might swing too far in the opposite direction, making haulers overly powerful or forcing more micromanagement on players.

In the end, we believe we found a solution that strikes a good balance. With the new 1.10 update, you can now set hauler priorities per building type through a new tab in the Main Warehouse UI. This allows you to, for example, have haulers focus primarily on farms and gathering camps, while only occasionally servicing production buildings.

In addition to priorities, you can also decide whether haulers should carry ingredients, products, or both. By default, they handle both and prioritize products over ingredients, but you can disable either option to create more specialized “one-way” haulers.

With this overhaul, we also updated the internal logic of haulers. They now prioritize larger stacks of goods instead of always taking resources from left to right in a building’s storage. This should prevent situations where, for example, a Woodcutters’ Camp is full of wood, but haulers carry a small amount of a secondary good simply because it appears first in the UI.

However, haulers still retain some of their previous limitations. They only operate within a certain range of their warehouse, so if farms are set to the highest priority but are out of range, haulers will service other nearby buildings instead.

Haulers also won’t transport goods to or from Fishing Huts, service buildings, or glade events. Fishing Huts work differently from other buildings – resources are stored in pond nets rather than inside the building itself, and an important part of the mechanic involves deciding when to reel in the nets versus waiting for the pond to become fully depleted, as well as managing the logistics of a large haul.

There are two main reasons why haulers don’t service glade events. The first is technical – events differ significantly from production buildings and follow many special rules, making them difficult (or even impossible) to accurately compare and prioritize for haulers.

The second reason is related to balance. Haulers would likely make many glade events much easier, and we don’t feel that is necessary right now or that it would improve the game.

But enough about haulers. This update also introduces new challenges in the form of World Map Modifiers. With 1.10, we’re adding three new effects: Guild Territory (you start with only 1 villager per species), Sacred Grove (settlements can have 4 species), and Ancient Spire (seasons have random durations).

While we’re excited for you to try all of the new modifiers, Sacred Grove is the one we’re most eager to hear feedback about. The ability to play with more than 3 species has long been a community request, and while we still don’t think it fits normal gameplay, a special modifier felt like the perfect opportunity to experiment a bit and bend the rules. Also, with this addition, you can now pick up to 4 species in Training Expeditions.

As with every update, this one also includes a wide range of UX and UI improvements. Most notably, we wanted to address two mechanics that seemed to cause a lot of confusion for new players: Frogs not living in shelters, and Fishing Huts not storing pond resources in their internal storage.

To improve clarity, we updated shelter descriptions and changed the Frog homeless icon and tooltip. For Fishing Huts, we added a new “Nearby Ponds” section to the building panel, showing fishing progress and allowing players to quickly jump to a selected pond.

Lastly, as always, this update includes a variety of bug fixes, text adjustments, and localization improvements. Many of these were directly inspired by your feedback, and we’re extremely grateful to anyone who contributed to this update. Thank you!

Screenshot inspired by Mahony: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3710898955

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!

UPDATE 1.10 CHANGELOG

⚡ Changes inspired by the community.
🐸 Changes related to the Keepers of the Stone DLC.
🦇 Changes related to Nightwatchers DLC.

New content and features

• ⚡Added three new World Map Modifiers.
  • The Sacred Grove – A revered monument commemorating the peace forged after the Great Civil War. Your settlement is home to 4 species, but you cannot choose newcomer groups. Each Drizzle, you gain 1 random villager for each discovered glade (including the starting glade).
  • Guild Territory – By royal decree, this land falls under the dominion of the Merchant Guild. Only its appointed representatives may settle here and decide who is granted the right to stay. Instead of arriving with a caravan, you begin with a single Guild envoy per species.
  • Ancient Spire – An ominous structure made from a material not known to contemporary scholars. Clouds swirl around the tip of this giant tower. Seasons have random durations.
  • The new modifiers won’t appear in the ongoing Cycle. They can start showing up in the next Cycles.
  • The new modifiers were also added to the Daily Expeditions pool.
• ⚡ Overhauled haulers.
  • Added a “Haulers” tab to the Warehouse panel.
  • The new tab lists all building types serviced by haulers, divided into two sections: products and ingredients.
  • Players can use checkboxes to decide whether haulers should carry ingredients, products, or both. If both are enabled, haulers prioritize products.
  • You can set a priority (- 99 to 99) for each building type. Higher priority buildings are serviced first, while buildings with the same priority are treated equally.
  • When collecting goods, haulers now prioritize larger stacks instead of going left to right.
  • Priorities are global for all haulers in the settlement, not just those assigned to a specific warehouse.
  • Haulers don’t haul from ponds, service buildings, and glade events.
  • Default hauler priorities can be set in the Options menu, in the Gameplay tab.
• Added 3 new Deeds.
  • The Sacred Grove – Win a game near the The Sacred Grove modifier.
  • Guild Territory – Win a game near the Guild Territory modifier.
  • Ancient Spire – Win a game near the Ancient Spire modifier.
  • To preserve 100% achievement completion for players, the new Deeds don’t have corresponding Steam achievements.

Balance

• ⚡ You can now pick up to 4 species for one settlement in Training Expeditions.
• ⚡ Detonating the Blight Bomb in the Catastrophic Experiment World Event now not only spawns Blightrot Cysts but also immediately activates them, corrupting the Hearth. 
• ⚡ Explosions can now destroy Geyser Pumps.
• ⚡ Changed the reward for completing the Venturesome Leader timed order. It now rewards the player with the Frequent Patrols cornerstone instead of the Exploration Contract cornerstone.
  ⚡ Changed the Forbidden Essence objective in low-difficulty Seal games. It no longer requires delivering 4 Ancient Tablets.
• Reduced the maximum housing capacity of a single house or shelter (from perks, upgrades, and Cornerstones) from 20 to 16.
• Lowered the drop rate of the Farsight and Lost in the Wilds cornerstones in years 5+.
• The time required to complete the Fishman Totem glade event now scales with difficulty.
• Removed the Trading Post from the first tutorial mission to avoid confusion.

UX/UI improvements

• ⚡ Added a “Nearby Ponds” section to the Fishing Hut panel to make it easier to see that resources are not being collected at the Fishing Hut, but in nets at the pond. 
  • Ponds in this section display a circular progress bar showing remaining charges.
  • Clicking a pond icon in this section will open the pond panel.
• ⚡🐸 Changed the homeless icon for Frogs and the tooltip text when hovering over it to make it clearer that homeless Frogs won’t move into Shelters.
• ⚡🐸 Updated the Shelter and Big Shelter descriptions to include information about not housing Frogs.
• ⚡ Decorations can now be cycled through using the arrow buttons in the UI or the keyboard arrow keys. Instead of switching only between identical objects, cycling now moves through all decorations within a category: Comfort, Aesthetics, or Harmony.
• ⚡ The resource overlay (B) now shows how depleted a node, pond, or vein is with a circular progress bar.
• ⚡ Added a checkbox in the options menu to save tracked goods between settlements.
• ⚡ Added a checkbox to the options menu to show only available trade routes by default when opening the trade routes panel.
• ⚡ The warning shown in order objectives (when you lack the required blueprint) now also accounts for holy, flawless, and purified building versions.
• ⚡ The Worker Overlay (ALT) now also displays a trader arrival timer above the Trading Post.
• ⚡ Retroactive order objectives for need satisfaction now display current progress in their tooltip.
• ⚡ Changed the wording in the “join the hunt” decision tooltip in the Ghost Town World Event to make it clear that players need to catch/release the Spectral Stag and also win the game.
• ⚡🦇 Changed the wording in the “win them over” decision tooltip in the Hanged Viceroy World Event to make it clear that winning without villagers leaving also includes exiling them.
• ⚡ Updated the Warm Welcome Forest Mystery description to clarify that it increases the rate of Reputation gain from high Resolve.
• Changed the “gathering” UI header in the pond panel to “fishing” to further clarify that these are two separate activities.
• Added information about the maximum possible bonus to upgrades and perks that increase the number of housing spots.

Bug fixes

• ⚡ Fixed a bug that caused some Daily Modifiers to not be visible on the HUD when playing (Advent of Flame, Scavenging Party, Wine Shortage, Memory of the Forest, Missing Crude Workstation).
• ⚡ Fixed a bug that caused the Fishmen Totem glade event to have 4 Viceroy difficulties listed in the in-game encyclopedia.
• ⚡ Fixed a bug where auto-pause alerts still appeared in settlements near the Shattered Obelisk world map modifier.
• ⚡ Fixed a bug where the worker portrait attached to the cursor in the Workplace Overlay was constrained to the map bounds.
• ⚡ Fixed a typo in the German version of the game (Deeply Hidden Riches).
• ⚡ Fixed a typo in the Portuguese version of the game (events entry in the encyclopedia).
• ⚡ Fixed a typo in the Simplified Chinese version of the game (Friends of the Forest).
• ⚡ Fixed a few typos in the Japanese version of the game (Steel Focus, Clear-Cutting, Land Tax).
• ⚡ Fixed a typo in the Polish version of the game (“burn cysts” order objective).
• Fixed a few typos and inconsistencies in the French version of the game (gathering camps, homelessness).
• Fixed a bug where some deed descriptions were missing the “(or higher)” suffix for required difficulty.
• Fixed a bug where moving an under-construction Fertile Field left the farm range indicator visible.
• Fixed a bug where resource icons in the Blight Post were not outlined in red when the corresponding ingredient had a warehouse limit set.
• Fixed a bug that caused only one hauling cart to disappear when the Dual Carriage System cornerstone was destroyed.
• Fixed a bug that prevented housing spots from being removed if the Urban Planning Cornerstone was destroyed.
• Fixed a bug where clicking service checkboxes in the Commons UI would not open the Consumption Control panel when an effect blocking consumption control was active.

The current game version is 1.10.3.

SETTLEMENT SAVES INFORMATION

As with all major updates, numerous systemic changes require us to close the ongoing settlements to avoid potential issues. As compensation, you’ll receive extra Citadel Resources and a free Royal Resupply.

(Steam only) However, for those of you who weren’t able to finish their settlements and are desperate to do so, we also prepared a temporary Steam branch, where we’ll keep the previous version (1.9) available for two weeks. We recommend that you consider this option only as a last resort.

If you want to finish your current settlement, follow the instructions below prior to playing with the new Over-Haulers Update (1.10):

1. Open Steam
2. Right-click on Against the Storm in your library
3. Select Properties
4. Go to the BETAS tab
5. Enter the access code in the “Private Betas” section. The access code is: LegacyBranch19
6. Click on “Check code”
7. Choose “legacy_branch_1.9” from the drop-down list
8. Wait for the game to update the files
9. Once you finish the settlement on the Legacy Branch 1.9, follow the steps above, but select “None” to return to the main branch.

Warning: Legacy Branch 1.9 is not backward-compatible (returning to it from version 1.10 can cause loading problems) and will be closed within two weeks. Once it’s closed, Steam won’t be able to load the game unless you switch to the primary “None” branch, so we recommend doing it as soon as possible.

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