Greetings, Viceroys!

Homeowners, rejoice! Old Farluf’s Fixer Uppers are now open for business. In return for a little investment, you can improve your villagers’ living standards and get useful effects that will improve their resourcefulness.

But that’s not all! Here’s what’s new:

• Species-specific House Upgrades
• New Cornerstones
• New Citadel Upgrades
• Rebalanced World Events
• House slot lock
• UX features

Continue reading for the full changelog and our design notes. And don’t miss the plush giveaway!

BEAVER MAKESHIP CAMPAIGN

Together with Makeship, we just launched a giveaway in which you can win 1 of 2 Beaver Villager plushies!

To participate, follow the instructions in the post:

The giveaway ends on August 10 at 2:00 pm ET (6:00 pm UTC).

DEVELOPER NOTES

In today’s update, we bring you a lot of new content, balance changes, and UI improvements. We’re talking house upgrades, new Cornerstones, new Smoldering City upgrades, specialization icons, better overlays, and much, much more.

The biggest addition is the ability to upgrade species-specific housing. Very early on in the project, we played around with the idea of a fully-fledged upgrade system for most buildings in the game, but eventually decided against it. At the time, it didn’t make much sense and added some unnecessary complexity. We implemented upgrades only in a few select places in the game. But recently, motivated by some interesting suggestions from the community, we looked back at our early plans and decided to introduce an upgrade system to one more type of building – species-specific houses. Our main goal is to introduce more depth and interactivity to an aspect of the game that until now has felt pretty static.

So how does it work? Just like you would upgrade a Mine or the Archaeologist’s Office, you can invest extra resources into houses and unlock unique effects for your villagers (using a dedicated tab in the UI). There are two levels of upgrades for every species house, each with two possible improvements to choose from. While the first level has some common bonuses (like more room or increased movement speed), the second one contains one generic effect and one species-specific perk (depending on the type of house). Buying an upgrade will also slightly change the look of the building itself.

To unlock House Upgrades, you must first purchase the corresponding Smoldering City Upgrades:

• Beaver House Upgrades – Brass Forge Level 11
• Fox House Upgrades – Pioneers’ Gate Level 12
• Lizard House Upgrades – Monastery of the Vigilant Flame Level 12
• Hapry House Upgrades – Vanguard Spire Level 11
• Human House Upgrades – First Dawn Headquarters Level 10

Four variants of the Harpy House

Human House Upgrades

Settlement with different House variants

But housing upgrades are not the only new piece of content coming in this update. We’re also introducing 7 new Cornerstones, most of which are focused on two very specific branches of the game – rainpunk and exploration. We tried to create new effects that would boost these playstyles and create some additional synergies. There are already numerous perks in the game supporting a whole array of different strategies (resolve, trade, farming), but not quite enough Cornerstones rewarding wider exploration or the extensive usage of rain engines.

Aside from all of this, there are also 5 new Smoldering City upgrades to unlock, giving you access to the new housing features and increasing the usual stats a little. This time we didn’t reshuffle the existing upgrades too much (just one of them had its rewards changed), and all the new ones are added on top of the tech tree in the Citadel.

In terms of UI and UX, we added quite a lot of exciting new quality-of-life features, as well as some much-needed improvements here and there. Most notably, we added the option to lock housing slots and introduced specialization icons to worker portraits. We changed how big nodes are displayed when using the resource overlay, and expanded the Hostility tooltip to include values broken down by their source. We also changed how clicking on a notification on the HUD works (it now opens the corresponding UI panel instead of just highlighting it), and we took the time to standardize some problematic tooltip descriptions (for world events, a few Deeds, and effects increasing double production chance).

Specialization icons

Resources Icons (default keybind: B)

Lastly, this update also brings numerous bug fixes, and some minor balance changes – mostly to do with the rewards and objectives in World Events, the reappearance of a Forest Mystery removed a long time ago (Vassal Tax), and a slightly increased spawn rate for Rainwater Geysers in the Cursed Royal Woodlands.

And now… let’s talk about the upcoming Sealed Forest Update! While we’re still not ready to fully release it, we want to give you an opportunity to get an early look at it and share your feedback with us. This means we will release an Experimental version of the new biome in the coming days! Stay tuned for more info!

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

• ⚡ Species-specific houses can now be upgraded.
  • There are two levels of upgrades for every species house, each with 2 possible improvements to choose from.
  • Players can choose one upgrade per level. Upgrades cost Packs of Building Materials and may also require a secondary resource. 
  • The first row of upgrades contains general improvements (more room, movement speed). The second row has one general improvement (Resolve) and one unique effect (different for each species).
  • To upgrade a house, you have to select it and navigate to the upgrade tab in the building’s UI.
  • Once purchased, upgrades are not refunded when a building is destroyed.
  • Upgrading a house also slightly changes its look.
  • To unlock House Upgrades, you must first purchase the corresponding Smoldering City Upgrades.
• ⚡ Added 5 new Citadel Upgrades.
  • Dim Square Level 10 – more caravan goods (moved from another upgrade) and trader arrival time reduction.
  • Brass Forge Level 11 – upgrades for Beaver Houses, global production speed increase.
  • Pioneers’ Gate Level 12 – upgrades for Fox Houses, villager speed increase.
  • Monastery of the Vigilant Flame Level 12 – upgrades for Lizard Houses, Hearth burning duration increase.
  • Vanguard Spire Level 11 – upgrades for Harpy Houses, additional node charges.
• ⚡ Added 7 new Cornerstones.
  • Secure Perimeter – Securing the deadliest corners of the forest will make it a lot less terrifying. Every discovered Forbidden Glade lowers the Hostility gained from Dangerous Glades by 2 and from small glades by 1. (the bonus is added retroactively)
  • Farsight – Scouting ahead makes it easier to prepare for the worst. Discovering a small glade increases the working speed of scouts investigating Dangerous or Forbidden Glade Events by 50% for 120 seconds.
  • Blight Filter – A crystalline filter designed to mitigate the negative environmental impact of infused rainwater. Blightrot Cysts appear 50% slower when using Rain Engines, but Reputation from Resolve is generated 90% slower for the next 2 Reputation Points.
  • Market Shift Plan – Big strategic changes always come with an adjustment period. Every neighboring town offers +2 more trade routes, but no trader will arrive in your settlement until you complete at least 8 trade routes.
  • Master Blueprint – A collection of architectural drafts from a very early period in the Citadel’s history. Unlocks all camp blueprints and upgrades all small camps to their advanced version, but gathering speed is decreased by 50% until you deplete at least 10 resource nodes.
  • Obsidian Runestone – A complicated runic structure, designed to shield the hearth from corruption. The Ancient Hearth’s resistance to corruption is increased by 500, but Blightrot Cysts will take 5 more seconds to burn until you destroy at least 12 of them. 
  • The Sparkcaster – A more compact version of the famous Blight Fighter flamethrower. Blight Fighters move 30% quicker.

Balance

• ⚡ Rebalanced multiple World Events.
  • Cloaked Wanderer – choosing to assault the wanderer will now grant 10 Seal Fragments instead of 8. The Cloaked Wanderer’s Vengeance effect will now kill 8 villagers instead of 10.
  • Forsaken Gods Followers – choosing to join the ritual will now require you to win a game before year 8 (instead of 7). Winning the challenge will give you Mushrooms and Reserve Embarkation Points instead of Sea Marrow.
  • Crashed Airship – choosing to provide fuel will now require you to win before year 8 (instead of 7). Winning the challenge will give you Pipes and Sea Marrow (instead of just Sea Marrow).
  • Gambler – lowered the Food Stockpile bet from 30 to 20.
  • Commenda Contract – lowered the required value of completed trade routes from 200 to 150 Amber.
  • Fire Moths – choosing to destroy the Hearth will now give you 3 Wildfire Essences instead of 2. The Desecrator penalty will now trigger every time you sacrifice for 90 seconds (instead of 50 seconds).
  • Mosquito Nest – choosing to hunt down the swarm mother will now reward Reserve Embarkation Points in addition to Insects.
  • Somber Procession – choosing to give provisions will now remove 3 Reserve Embarkation Points instead of 4.
  • Stormbird Egg – choosing to steal the egg will now apply the Stormbird’s Anger debuff for the next 2 games instead of 3. 
• ⚡ Lowered the requirements for all Rushed Delivery Deeds. They now require fewer completed timed orders.
• ⚡ Slightly increased the spawn rates of Rainwater Geysers in the Cursed Royal Woodlands.
• Reshuffled a few upgrades in the Smoldering City.
  • First Dawn Headquarters Level 8 – removed additional caravan goods, added the Plantation Embark Bonus.
  • First Dawn Headquarters Level 9 – removed the Plantation Embark Bonus, added the Herb Garden Embark Bonus.
  • First Dawn Headquarters Level 10 – removed the Herb Garden Embark Bonus, added Human House upgrades.
• Reintroduced a previously disabled Forest Mystery – the Vassal Tax. It requires players to pay Amber each year under penalty of gaining Impatience. We decided to reinstate this effect due to the recent introduction of the payment panel.
• Rebalanced the Scientific Agreement perk. It now requires 12 dead villagers for a wildcard blueprint and has a lower drop rate from Mystery Boxes sold by Dullahan.

UX/UI improvements

• ⚡ Added an option to lock villager slots in houses. You can now click on a slot to prevent a villager from moving in. This change is meant as a way of helping players manage villager distribution across multiple hubs.
• ⚡ Added specialization icons to villager portraits when selecting workers in buildings.
• ⚡ Big resource nodes are now marked with star icons when using the resource overlay (B by default).
• ⚡ Clicking on notifications for things like newcomers or orders now opens the corresponding UI panel instead of just highlighting the button on the HUD (outside of the tutorial).
• ⚡ Ingredients can now be changed in disabled recipes in the Recipe Panel.
• ⚡ The Hostility tooltip now shows a breakdown of Hostility values per source. For example: Regular Glades (2 x 15).
• ⚡ Cost indicators for Embarkation Bonuses now change color to red when the player can’t afford them.
• ⚡ All descriptions for timed effects (like Resolve bonuses for discovering glades with the Exploration Expedition Cornerstone) have been rewritten. They now clearly state what they do and where they came from. They also have a neutral frame and new names, although the icon is still the same as their source effect. 
• ⚡ Unified the wording for all effects increasing the chance of producing double yields and gathering additional secondary resources from nodes or trees. It should now be much easier to understand what these perks do.
• ⚡ Added information about cloned events to all perks scaling based on solved Dangerous Events. These perks will now clearly state that duplicated Fishmen Totems and Blood Flowers do not count.
• ⚡ Clarified the decision descriptions in the Somber Procession World Event. It now clearly states that Reserve Embarkation Points are taken away.
• ⚡ Unified the objective descriptions of all Deeds and World Event challenges based on winning a game in X years. It should now always say “win before year X”.
• ⚡ Changed the wording in the description for the Cheap Construction Cornerstone to make it clearer when node charges are being removed.
• Added information about effects being retroactive to the reconstructed Sealed Scorpion and Sealed Spider skeletons in the Scarlet Orchard.

Bug fixes

• ⚡ Fixed a bug with the Blood Sorcery working effect (Fishman Soothsayer) not showing the number of villagers killed.
• ⚡ Fixed a bug that prevented players from settling on tiles between Forbidden Lands and Barren Lands modifiers.
• ⚡ Fixed a bug that caused the Twitch polls feature to break in non-latin versions of the game.
• ⚡ Fixed a bug with farm ruins occasionally spawning too few fertile soil patches.
• ⚡ Fixed a bug with the Wandering Eremite missing a decision description in its tooltip in the French version of the game.
• ⚡ Fixed a bug with the Force of Nature Cornerstone showing a duplicated sentence at the end of its description.
• ⚡ Fixed an issue with the extended view distance incorrectly carrying over from one cycle to the next one (causing the last ring of fields to be unclickable).
• ⚡ Fixed a missing parameter in the starvation warning notification.
• ⚡ Fixed a bug with wildcard perks not allowing players to pick just one blueprint if the maximum is 2 or higher.
• ⚡ Fixed a bug that caused the number of failed towns to be negative in the cycle summary after the tutorial.
• ⚡ Fixed an issue with the Flooded Mines modifier missing information about Hostility scaling.
• ⚡ Fixed a bug with the Forbidden Glade Event missing in the unique insect glade.
• ⚡ Fixed an issue with the Rebellious Spirit Cornerstone being available from Treasure Stags.
• ⚡ Fixed a bug with the Twitch overlay being displayed on top of the Order tracker on the HUD.
• ⚡ Fixed an issue with some UI panels not closing when clicking outside of their area.
• ⚡ Fixed a bug that caused the destruction popup to not appear when trying to destroy species houses. 
• ⚡ Fixed an issue with some Forbidden Glades not being uncovered correctly.
• ⚡ Fixed an issue with the Economic Migration Cornerstone having an incorrect state preview in its footer.
• ⚡ Fixed a typo in the description of the Monolith glade event in Japanese.
• ⚡ Fixed a typo in the Simplified Chinese description of the challenge offered by the Somber Procession World Event.
• Fixed a bug with the Royal Tax modifier missing resource names and amounts in its description.
• Fixed a bug with the negative consequence of Cloudburst not being displayed on the HUD.
• Fixed an issue with neighboring towns in the trading route panel having a click sound even though they are not clickable.

Other

• Improved the overall performance of the game, especially when it comes to post processes and weather effects.

The current game version is 0.56.1.

COMMUNITY CORNER

Today’s screenshots were inspired by NadNrok’s settlement design:

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3010063149

Check out the latest community memes on Steam:

CONTINUE READING...