Greetings, Viceroys!

Whether you’re a newcomer, learning the ropes of Viceroy’s duties, or a returning player seeking to refresh your memory, rest assured, we have you covered! The update introduces two new tutorials focused on trading, Hostility, and Rainpunk. But as always, that’s not all!

What’s new:

• 2 new tutorial missions
• Replayable tutorial scenarios
• 48 new icons
• Building counters
• And more!

You can find the full changelog and our update notes below.

DEVELOPER NOTES

As we teased in the last update notes, we wanted to take some time before the 1.0 release to focus more on new players and their experience when first learning the game. Over the course of the last few updates, we’ve introduced a number of changes to this end (UI improvements, Aunt Lori dialog), but there was always one more thing that needed to be done – new tutorials that focus on some of the more complex mechanics of the game, such as trading, Hostility, and Rainpunk.

So that’s what we did in this update! We added a new panel with all the tutorial missions in the world map view, and we added two new optional scenarios called “Trade & Hostility” and “Rainpunk & Blightrot”. Both are very similar to the original two tutorial missions that every player gets to play at the beginning of the game. They introduce a topic in a short and concise way with explanatory text and camera movements, and then let the player explore the game freely in a custom scenario centered around a given theme (for example, in “Trade & Hostility”, most orders and blueprints are centered around trade, encouraging the player to try out that particular playstyle).

Now let’s talk about balance. Some time ago, we stated that there would be no major, game-changing overhauls before the 1.0 release – and we still stand by that! But we do see some places in the game that need a little tidying up. So in this update, we took a look at the resource and reward distribution in some Dangerous and Forbidden Glades, and rebalanced some negative Forest Mysteries. In the next update, we will take a quick look at some other aspects of the game and try to clean them up a little as well.

So when it came to the balance of glades, we noticed that some Forbidden Glades had too few resources, and some Dangerous ones had too many. Some even outperformed their Forbidden counterparts. That’s why we decided to slightly reduce the maximum amount of goods a Dangerous Glade could contain and increase the minimum value of Forbidden Glades. This change might sound big, but due to the random nature of the game, there were only a few variations of Dangerous Glades that were way too generous (about 18%).

We also tweaked a few things in the loot tables for various Glade events. It turned out that some Dangerous Events had resource rewards comparable to their Forbidden counterparts, and some Forbidden Events would give far too few perks and goods for completion. So we decided to balance things out a bit by reducing the number of goods in many Dangerous Events and buffing loot tables for a lot of Forbidden Events.

Finally, in terms of balance, we also looked at some Forest Mysteries, as many players pointed out that some effects were too easy, while others seemed too punishing. There aren’t many changes here, mostly increases and decreases to the Hostility requirements, but there is one significant overhaul. The Stagnant effect has been changed so that it no longer increases break time, but instead reduces the time between breaks.

Let’s move on to the UX changes. In this update, we added effect names (“Comfortable”, “Proficient”) to specialization tooltips, replaced 48 existing icons with new custom assets (for Sealed Forest effects, prestige modifiers, house upgrades, etc.), improved the wording in many places (especially for time-sensitive world event objectives), added planting and harvesting times to farm recipes, and added building counters to building cards in the construction menu.

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

• Introduced a new “optional tutorial” system and added two new tutorial scenarios to the game.
• Hostility & Trade – unlocked right after the World Map Tutorial. It’s a custom scenario that explains Hostility and Forest Mysteries in more detail and focuses on building a trading-oriented settlement to familiarize players with the trading mechanics.
• Rainpunk & Blightrot – unlocked after gaining access to the Rainpunk mechanic. This scenario explains how to use Rain Engines and Rainwater, teaches the player about Blightrot, and focuses on building a settlement based on heavy industry and metal production.
• Optional tutorial scenarios can be accessed in a new pop-up window in the World Map view. The window is located on the left side of the screen and can be expanded or collapsed as desired.
• When entering the world map for the first time, the tutorial pop-up will also list some additional “read more” topics. Selecting these will take the player directly to the in-game encyclopedia.
• With this change, the “Replay Tutorial” button has been removed from the ESC menu. To replay a tutorial, simply select a scenario from the tutorial pop-up (the first two tutorial missions are also available there).

Balance

• ⚡ Slightly changed the balance of resources in Dangerous and Forbidden Glades.
  • There were a few possible variations of Dangerous Glades that had too many resources, and a few Forbidden Glades that had way too few. We tried to balance that out a bit by lowering the maximum possible resource count in Dangerous Glades and raising the minimum in Forbidden Glades.
  • This is not a huge change, but it should make Forbidden Glades a little more reliable in terms of resource gathering.
• ⚡ Balanced the rewards given for completing Forbidden and Dangerous Glade Events.
  • We noticed that there were some inconsistencies in event rewards. Some Dangerous Events were giving too much, and some Forbidden Events were giving too little. We tried to even it out a bit by changing the resource numbers for the outliers in each group.
• ⚡ Buffed the Parts recipe in the Rainpunk Foundry and added an additional worker slot to the building. The recipe now requires fewer resources and takes less time to craft. 
• ⚡ Rebalanced a few Forest Mysteries.
  • Eclipse and Nauseous Spores – changed how the Stagnant debuff works for these Forest Mysteries. It no longer increases villager break time, it now shortens the time between breaks by 33%.
  • Unyielding Corruption – it now triggers after reaching Hostility 3 instead of 4. 
  • Rotten Rain – increased the time between Blood Flower spawns from 70 seconds to 90 seconds. Increased the Hostility requirement from 3 to 4. 
  • Devastating Storms – increased the Hostility requirement of this effect. It now triggers at Hostility level 6 instead of 5. 
• ⚡ Slightly tweaked the distribution of nodes in the Marshlands. Egg nodes should appear a little less often now.
• ⚡ Removed all perks with negative side effects from Treasure Stag loot tables and added some new, purely beneficial perks in their place.

UX/UI improvements

• ⚡ When hovering over specialization icons, the tooltip will now display the effect name (“Proficiency” and “Comfortable”) next to the specialization name.
• ⚡ Added 48 new custom-made icons to the game.
  • Sealed Forest biome effects
  • Beacon Tower abilities
  • Species’ housing upgrades
  • Some Order objectives
  • Some rewards in the Smoldering City upgrade tree
  • Prestige modifiers
  • The Settler’s Luck difficulty effect
• ⚡ Changed the wording in the Rebellious Spirit Cornerstones. It now correctly states that the Impatience penalty is applied when a villager dies or leaves.
• ⚡ Changed the wording in all Deed and World Event goals that require players to win in a certain amount of time. All descriptions should now read “before year X ends” instead of “before year X”.
• ⚡ Added visible planting and harvesting times to recipes in farm panels.
• ⚡ Added a building counter to the building cards in the construction menu.
• Added several new loading tips that explain various aspects of the game.
• Changed the “Effects and Upgrades” header in building UI panels to “Effects and Perks”.
• Added tooltips to UI tabs in building panels to help players navigate.
• Improved some text in several places in the UI where keybinds or controls are mentioned to make input hints a bit clearer.

Bug fixes

• ⚡ Fixed a bug where the negative effect from the Altar of Decay Glade Event would not disappear after the event ended.
• ⚡ Fixed a bug where the Golden Leaf Plant was not available after being unlocked through Deeds.
• ⚡ Fixed a bug where finishing the Infected Drainage Mole glade event without any active Blightrot Cysts would not remove the Cyst generating effect.
• ⚡ Fixed a bug where the “Tracked Goods” category was misaligned on the top HUD.
• ⚡ Fixed a bug where worker slots in the Mine were misplaced and out of bounds.
• ⚡ Fixed an offset slider in the internal storage UI.
• ⚡ Fixed an issue with incorrect rewards in the Untamed Wilds world map modifier.
• ⚡ The missing Trader Arrival statistic has been added to the stats section of the Game History tab in the Smoldering City. 
• ⚡ Fixed a bug where the game would remember the consumption control settings and apply them when replaying a tutorial mission.
• ⚡ Fixed a bug where the list of tracked orders would cut into the “Read More” section of the HUD.
• ⚡ Fixed several typos and inconsistencies in the French version of the game (Seal Contracts, Export Specialization perk, dialogue).
• ⚡ Fixed several typos and inconsistencies in the German version of the game (Farluf, Survivor Bonding perk, Wildfire Essence, tutorial text, Pie).
• ⚡ Fixed several typos and inconsistencies in the Japanese version of the game (Earthquake effect, Noxious Machinery effects).
• ⚡ Fixed several inconsistencies in the Thai version of the game (a few descriptions, effects).
• ⚡ Fixed a lot of typos and inconsistencies in the Simplified Chinese version of the game, and improved the overall quality of the translation (biomes, tooltips, dialogue, buildings, upgrades, deeds, perks, events, general UI, encyclopedia, update news).
• ⚡ Fixed an issue where some accented letters in Italian were displayed incorrectly in the in-game encyclopedia.
• Fixed an issue where the Rain Engine tooltip was incorrectly offset in building panels.
• Fixed an issue where Aunt Lori’s “Queen’s Hand” title was incorrectly scaled in some languages. 
• Fixed an issue where the Smoldering City tooltip had the wrong label.

Other

• ⚡ Aunt Lori will no longer be giving early gameplay tips and basic lore information to veteran players. This was done to avoid odd situations where players who have already reached Prestige 20 are given very basic advice and lore that they already know or have deduced from playing the game.
• ⚡ Tweaked the phrasing in some dialog options and openings to make Aunt Lori sound a little more serious. Also added some new opening lines.

The current game version is 0.63.1.

COMMUNITY CORNER

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