Greetings Viceroys!

Don’t be fooled by the title, we’re not adding 19th-century magicians from Christopher Nolan’s movie (which, by the way, we recommend). Instead, the new update introduces features aimed mainly at players who are looking for even more challenges:

• New system: Prestige (optional ascending difficulty levels)
• New building: Altar (sacrifice meta resources for perks)
• New perks
• And more!

Once you give it a try, let us know what you think!

Let us know what you think once you give it a try! And if you enjoy the updates, you can do us a great favor by rating the game on Metacritic.

Continue reading for our update notes, or jump straight into the changelog:

• Developer Notes
• Changelog
• Suggestions Tool

DEVELOPER NOTES

Hello everybody! It’s Thursday, so you know what that means – another update and more developer notes. In the last couple of weeks – as we’ve been slowly sliding into the Phase of the Citadel – you may have noticed that we lowered the difficulty of normal maps, and added some power-ups into the Upgrade Tree in the Smoldering City. This, as a result, made the game easier for new players and those looking for a more casual experience after a long day at work. But these changes were also done in preparation for today’s shiny new feature – the Prestige system.

Difficulty selection

The Prestige system is dedicated to our most hardcore players, as it is an optional difficulty ladder of 18 levels above the Impossible difficulty. You can access it after you beat your first Impossible map, and you progress to higher Prestige Levels by beating the lower ones (so by winning a Prestige 1 game, you will unlock Prestige 2, etc.). Each Prestige Level introduces one new challenge on top of all the modifiers from previous difficulties, so on Prestige 18, you will have 18 effects that influence your settlement. We can’t wait to see how you fare against these impossible odds.

Although the new Prestige System is designed to give you a hardcore experience, we don’t want to just throw impossible challenges at you without any new way of overcoming them. That’s why we’re also introducing the Forsaken Altar – an ancient shrine to long-forgotten deities, where you can pay with Citadel Resources and your villagers’ lives to gain enhanced versions of existing Cornerstones. The Forsaken Altar is only available with Prestige difficulty.

Forsaken Altar Panel (hover over icons to learn more)

Last but not least, we also changed the way you choose a difficulty for your game (partially in preparation for the upcoming World Map revamp). Previously, a map’s difficulty was determined by its distance to the Citadel. Now, you can play on any tile on the World Map and decide which difficulty you want to tackle in the Embark Menu. Although the previous approach was interesting and encouraged some form of expansion on the World Map, we felt that ultimately it fell flat, as each Cycle, players felt forced to play easier games to get to the more challenging runs. Plus, the old approach was unintuitive to new players, as they could start a Hard game without even knowing it.

We hope you enjoy the new additions to Against the Storm! As always, feel free to share your feedback on our Discord server or using the official feedback tool.

CHANGELOG

Changes marked with ⚡ were inspired by community.

New content and features

• ⚡ Added the Prestige System – an optional difficulty progression for hardcore players.
  • Prestige difficulty is available after beating at least one game on Impossible.
  • There are 18 levels of Prestige. To progress to a higher Prestige level, you need to win a game on the lower level first.
  • Each level has a unique modifier adding an additional challenge to the game. 
  • Prestige modifiers stack with each level. This means that on Prestige 18, there will be 18 negative effects influencing your settlement.
• ⚡ Added the option to choose a map’s difficulty before starting a run. 
  • The difficulty is no longer dependent on a map’s distance from the Citadel. It can instead be chosen after selecting a tile on the World Map.
  • Citadel Resource amounts are no longer displayed on the World Map, as they are dependent on the chosen difficulty.
• ⚡ Experience points for each game are now scaled based on difficulty. 
  • Normal: 30
  • Hard: 60
  • Very Hard: 90
  • Impossible: 150
  • Prestige: 200+
• Added a new Prestige building – the Forsaken Altar.
  • The Forsaken Altar is only buildable in games on Prestige difficulty. 
  • To use the Altar, you have to first acquire an Altar Activation from Reputation Points (marked on the Reputation Bar). The Altar is only usable during the Storm.
  • You can buy new and more powerful versions of Cornerstones at the Altar (so-called Stormforged Cornerstones), or upgrade your existing Cornerstones. 
  • The payment for Stormforged Cornerstones are Citadel Resources (Food Stockpiles, Artifacts, and Machinery), and sacrificed villagers.
• Added 4 new Cornerstones
  • Dye Extractor
    • Normal – Gain 10 Pigments for every 6 Copper Bars produced.
    • Stormforged – Gain 16 Pigments for every 4 Copper Bars produced.
  • Free Samples
    • Normal – Gain 1 Part every time you sell goods worth 30 Amber.
    • Stormforged – Gain 2 Parts every time you sell goods worth 20 Amber.
  • Advanced Fuel
    • Normal – All fuel recipes are +33% faster.
    • Stormforged – All fuel recipes are +33% faster and produce +33% more goods.
  • Forsaken Seal
    • Normal – N/A
    • Stormforged – An artifact of the Forsaken Gods. Gain one charge of a Cornerstone Reroll at the beginning of each Storm.
• Added 29 Stormforged variants to existing Cornerstones:

Balance

• ⚡ Added Waterskins as a possible ingredient in the Pickled Goods recipe. 
• ⚡ Changed the Waterskin recipe. It now gives 10 Waterskins instead of 5, and requires slightly more ingredients.
• ⚡ Changed the Skewer recipe. It now gives 10 Skewers instead of 5, requires slightly more ingredients and takes 90 seconds to complete instead of 45.
• ⚡ Building a Ranch no longer requires Parts.
• Rebalanced the Citadel Resource rewards for Daily Expeditions. It’s now: 8 Food Stockpiles, 3 Artifacts, and 3 Machinery (multiplied by the difficulty level). 
• Rebalanced score multipliers for the Daily Challenge:
  • Normal – from x1 to x0.5
  • Hard – from x1.5 to x1
  • Very Hard – from x2 to x1.5
  • Impossible – from x2.5 to x2
  • Prestige – incrementally growing by 0.1 per level
• Added Parts as a required building material for Mines. 
• Lowered the production time of Copper Ore in the Mine from 50 seconds to 40 seconds.
• Lowered the chance for additional Crystalized Dew when mining Copper Ore (from 10% to 5%).
• Rebuilding player structures destroyed by the Storm are no longer counted towards Orders and Cornerstones that require rebuilding ruins.
• Changed the Trader price reduction in the Special Discount Citadel Upgrade. It’s now 5% instead of 10%. 
• Rebalanced multiple Cornerstones (non-Stormforged) in the game:
  • Cosmetic Specialization – changed the requirement from 50 Cosmetics to 100. 
  • Religious Settlement – changed the requirement from 50 Incense to 100.
  • Training Grounds – changed the requirement from 50 Training Gear to 100.
  • Vineyard Town – changed the requirement from 50 Wine to 100.
  • Cannibalism – changed the amount of Meat per villager death from 30 to 25. 
  • Spices – changed the requirement from 50 Biscuits to 100. 
  • Sacrificial Rituals – increased the Storm duration reduction percentage from -25% to -33%.
  • Ancient Stabilizer – increased the Storm duration extension from +25% to +33%.
  • Improvised Tools – lowered the number of Simple Tools given to the player from 5 to 4.
  • Over Diligent Woodworkers – changed the requirement from 5 Planks to 10. Increased the number of Barrels given to the player from 2 to 3. 
  • Value Added Tax – changed the requirement from 5 Packs of Trade Goods to 6.
  • Pocket Knives – changed the requirement from 10 Vegetables to 12. 
  • Leftover Crops – changed the required good from Grain to Herbs, and changed the reward from a Pack of Crops to a Pack of Provisions. 
  • Rain Collector Filter – increased the time requirement of the Crystalized Dew recipe in the Rain Collector from 30 seconds to 20 seconds.
  • Small Distillery – changed the requirement from 10 Sparkdew to 20, and changed the amount of Crystalized Dew given to the player from 4 to 5.

UI/UX improvements

• ⚡ Added a bindable shortcut to open the Order window ([G]).

Bug fixes

• ⚡ Fixed a bug with the Scout Proficiency Citadel Upgrade not reducing working time for Glade Events. 
• ⚡ Fixed a bug with the Worms after Rain Forest Mystery being generated in biomes without Insects. 
• ⚡ Fixed an issue with the Human Influx daily modifier being generated in games without Humans. 
• ⚡ Fixed a bug with the Sacred Flame Ritual killing villagers instead of forcing them to leave the settlement. 
• ⚡ Fixed a bug with the Forum having a smaller footprint than the building model.
• ⚡ Fixed a bug that caused some villagers to get stuck after removing the Hearth they were resting at. 
• ⚡ Fixed a bug with the Species Needs Panel missing the favoring effect icon.
• ⚡ Fixed a bug with the Special Discount Citadel Upgrade incorrectly increasing prices instead of decreasing them. 
• Fixed an issue with two Orders being named the same (Cups and Glasses). 

Other

• Increased the game’s overall stability during loading and on the World Map.

We’re super grateful to everyone who contributed to this update. Your translations, suggestions, and reports are extremely appreciated!

Please make sure to update the game. Also, you can always track the progress of reported issues on our Public Bug Tracker.

SUGGESTIONS TOOL

If you want to request new features or suggest changes to the existing ones, please use our new suggestions tool.

Suggestions Tool

Posting suggestions is easy:

1. Go to feedback.eremitegames.com/
2. Login or use anonymously
3. Make sure your suggestion hasn’t been posted already
4. Start typing in the Create Post panel on the right
5. Submit

Make sure to vote on other players’ ideas as well to help us identify their priority. We treat it as the main source of information for the purpose of planning new content.

Please continue to report bugs via the in-game Reporting Tool or on our Discord and Reddit.

SHOW YOUR SUPPORT

If you want to help us grow the Against the Storm community, there are a few things you can do:

• Let your friends know about the game
• Share our content and announcements on social media
• Share your gameplays on relevant subreddits like r/Games or r/PCGaming 

Truth be told, we appreciate all kinds of support. Be it feedback, words of encouragement, or casual activity on Discord. It helps a lot and we’re very much grateful!

Now, enjoy the new update and let us know what you think!

May the storm be gentle on you,
Eremite Games team

Current Early Access version: 0.28.1R

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