The time has finally come to release human NPCs into Card Survival: Fantasy Forest.
First of all, be warned, This has been a big update for us, the biggest so far.
For all of you brave souls in the beta branch, know that NPCs are big systems and there is only so much Neo and I can test in the limited time we had. There are no major bugs or issues that we could find, but there could always be some that escaped us, and balancing still needs a lot of work. :)
We will be pushing lots of hotfixes over the following weeks, both with bug fixes, balance tweaks and some minor missing features.
It is also worth pointing that NPCs are complex, and some of their systems will initially appear a bit obscure to most players. We'll be working on making these things clearer and easier to understand.
And for now, we'll try to explain things as good as possible in this announcement.
Also, no art. There was too much to do so I really didn't have to make art for the NPCs. Fortunately we made it so you can upload your own custom portraits, so I don't think it should be much of an issue. :)
We'll be adding some official art as I get the time to work on it!
Now, let's talk about the actual NPCS.
Human NPCS:
Human NPCs are called partners in the game, and they can be selected through perks or requested from the trader.
You can create your own custom partner or select one of the existing ones (and edit them).
We have included 6 partner presets:
- The Craftsman: A nice and helpful husband.
- The Dreamer: A less industrious but more romantic partner.
- The Untamed: An independent self-reliant man.
- The Hearthwife: A nice and helpful wife.
- The Spirited: A more adventurous, companion to go on adventures with.
- The Muse: A beautiful, but difficult partner, that won't really help much, at least not initially.
I recommend you start with the Craftsman or the Hearthwife. :)
The other partners are more difficult, still need to be balanced better, and are missing some features that will make them feel a lot more unique.
Partners can eat, drink and sleep and help you in a lot of different ways. They can skin, flesh, tan, butcher, clean your house, keep your fire going, make your bed, forage, gather wood, chop down trees, gather mud, make mudbricks or clay, keep your gardens healthy, harvest your crops and more.
They can also equip clothes on their own, based on comfort and temperature, and of course can also die of starvation or hypothermia, and leave you if you neglect them for long enough.
The Duty System:
Partners help through a contextual duty system.
These duties, for now, belong to two different types.
Marked Duties:
Lots of items in the game can be marked for a duty. For example, you can mark a fire for the "firekeeping" duty. This will cause your partner to take care of that fire, so it never runs out of fuel.
It is worth pointing out that some duties can only be performed if the right tools are available. For example, a carcass can be marked for skinning, but your partner will only skin it if they have a knife.
Here's some of the marked duties available at the moment:
- Firekeeping
- Bedkeeping
- House Cleaning
- Mud Gathering
- Harvesting Patches and Fields.
- Gardening
- Foraging
- Wood Gathering
- Skinning
- Fleshing
- Butchering
- Cutting down trees.
Inventory Duties:
Items in your partner's inventory will be processed automatically if they are feeling grateful enough to you, provided they have the right tools to do it.
They will for example, turn any nettle stalks in their inventory into fiber, and then process that fiber further into twine. Or grind any dry herbs, if they have a hammering tool in their inventories.
Inventory duties can be toggled off through dialog, if you don't want them processing things.
Here's a list of some of the inventory duties available at the moment:
- Fiber Extraction
- Cord Making
- Pounding Sinew
- Making Meat and Blood Filler
- Making mud bricks.
- Making Clay.
- Gutting fish.
- Butchering small animals.
- Grinding herbs.
- Pressing Cheese.
Favour:
Partners, like the player character, are not machines, and need to be treated well if one wants them to stay, be helpful or even survive.
Favour is at the heart of this system. It accumulates over time based on how happy the NPC is with you and gets spent whenever they accomplish tasks for you.
Partners will be more likely to perform duties if their favour is high, and will become less helpful the lower their favour gets.
It is important not to ask too much of your partner initially or they will quickly grow resentful.
Depending on your partner's personality, it's better to start slow, with just a few simple tasks, ideally ones they like, and gradually increase their responsibilities as their trust in you grows.
It is also a good idea to disable their tasks if you see they're getting resentful, so their favour has a chance to recover.
Preferences:
Partners can have different personalities and likes. This will affect how fast they build up favour and how likely they are to perform some tasks over others as well as how costly they are for them. A partner might like methodical tasks, while another will prefer physical ones, etc..
There are different types of duties in the game at the moment:
- Methodical: Weaving, grinding, etc...
- Physical: Felling trees, chopping wood, butchering, etc..
- Nurturing: Firekeeping, Tending Gardens, Cleaning, etc...
- Creative: Playing music, carving wood, etc...
- Nature: Gathering Wood, Foraging, etc...
Many duties don't belong to one specific category but to multiple.
Relationship System:
Partners are complex systems, just like the player. They have gratification, wellbeing, morale, hunger, appetite, satiation, etc...
Some of their systems are still not in (like the immune system), but there's already enough for them to work properly.
The idea with partners, is that you help them, and they help you back in return. But for this to work, they need to trust you.
Trust builds over time, based on your partner's personality traits, on how grateful they feel, how much they like you and how well you treat them.
Once trust is high enough, affection will start increasing, and things will become easier. With your partner progressively having more favour to spend, and therefore becoming more helpful.
There are other factors that play a big role too. For example. if your partner is attracted to you, and if it eventually becomes infatuated, that can really help them generate favour and trust faster as they will be more actively interested in you.
Relationships usually go:
- Partner builds trust until they're comfortable with you.
- Partner starts growing affection towards you.
-Partner can become infatuated if they are attracted to you, in which case things get easier.
Dialog System:
Communicating with your partner and giving them attention is essential to keeping them happy.
Both you and your partner have a stat called "connection" which goes down over time and can only be increased by communicating with others.
Partners will want attention if their connection starts getting low, and will start feeling neglected if you don't speak with them for too long.
To leave room for imagination and make the writing manageable, we've made the system work on an abstract level. So basically you choose what you want to express on an abstract level (gratitude, affection, attraction, needs, etc...) and your partner reacts positively or negatively based on the interactions between both of your stats.
There are two main dialog windows for partners: Expression and Direction.
Directions:
Direction is a simple menu, mostly practical, where you can ask partners to do the following things:
Follow/Stop Following:
This one causes your partner to follow you constantly or to stop following you. Following costs a little bit of favour, so keep that in mind, especially for partners that have a tendency to go resentful easily.
Mark as Home:
This is essential. You should always mark your house or camp as your "home". This will cause your partner to return there when they stop following you, or when they are done doing some duties away from you.
Process/Stop Processing Inventory:
This one toggles your partner's inventory duties. This is important if they are helping you transport goods you don't want them to process.
Expression:
This is the main dialog menu, where most communication happens.
Here you communicate with your partner and produce different results based on yours and your partner's stats. Effective communication is not guaranteed, and players can easily make things awkward or anger their partners by spamming interactions or expressing the wrong things.
Social skills, attraction levels, assertiveness, empathy, trust, affection and other factors play a big role in determining how each interaction goes.
There is also a stat called awkwardness which is especially important.
It accumulates with repeated or failed interactions and can quickly mess up most attempts at communication if it gets too high. So if you noticed you failed an interaction, take a break and wait until your partner doesn't feel awkward anymore (by checking their details tab) before attempting further communication.
There are many ways to communicate in the Expression menu:
Casual Talk:
This one is a generally safe option. Low risk for awkwardness but rewards are usually minor. Can be used mostly for relationship maintenance, especially at the beginning. When you need to give attention to your partner but you don't want to risk a bad interaction.
Listen:
Can be found in the "Express Care" submenu. This is another low risk interaction, but one that has a greater effect on your partner. It is one of the best actions to generally use, especially with more difficult partners, but requires high focus levels to work.
Express Gratitude:
Also found in the "Express Care" submenu. Ideally used when favour is getting low. It's the most likely to work when partners are getting just a bit resentful, not too resentful or grateful.
Express Affection:
Also an "Express Care" option. A good interaction that mostly only works once there's real affection between you and your partner.
Express Attraction and Intimacy:
These two interactions only really works if there's attraction between you and your partner, and will play bigger roles in the future, once you can start families.
Express Need for Help:
This interaction consists of you asking your partner to help more and will generate a substantial amount of favour if successful. It has the power to offend them if it fails though.
Express Need for Emotional Support:
In this interaction is successful, your partner will help your restore some morale.
These are the options available at the moment, but we'll be tweaking and adding additional ones over the following months.
Partner Expression
Partners can also express themselves on their own. And will let you know if they're too hungry, feel to neglected, are feeling attracted or grateful, etc...
We will be adding more options here in the future, so partners can get greater autonomy, and feel more alive.
Partner Creation:
Partners are built with perks, just like player characters.
You can either build them from scratch through the custom partner perk, or edit existing presets through their respective perks.
Personality:
A partner's personality can really change your experience with them. Through these perks you should be able to determine what kind of duties they will prefer, how helpful they are, and how quickly you can progress through their relationship.
Attraction:
Attraction is important, so you should make sure your partner and your character are compatible, unless of course you want some extra challenge.
Partners in Fantasy Forest are not player-sexual, so you need to make sure that they will be attracted to your character if that's what you want.
Appearance:
The game tracks lots of partner visual features, from hair length, colour and type, to hip or should width, jaw size, or eye separation. These traits not only help make partners more real and substantial but also have a real effect on their attractiveness, masculinity and femininity values.
It is worth pointing out that some of these visual traits can equipped directly with perks, while others only emerge indirectly, through the effects of hormones, height and weight.
Knowledge
Knowledge perks grant skills to the partners. These are not active at the moment, as partners don't currently have skills connected to the duty system, but they can already be equipped in preparation for the future.
The Future for NPCS:
This update is only the first step for NPCs.
We have a lot of things planned that we'll be releasing over the following months.
Some of the biggest things you can expect are:
More Marked and Inventory Duties:
Lots more duties with which to enrich the partners, including smithing, playing music and carving.
Expedition Duties:
These are complex duties that will have the Partner go on a trip for some time, and then return once they're done.
Examples of these are extensive foraging trips, trap checking, fishing and hunting.
Marking Blueprint :
The ability to make blueprints so that your partner can complete it for you. Especially useful for expensive multi-step duties like road or house building.
Cooking Duties:
A new complex type of duty that will have partners processing food items and cooking for themselves and for you.
Combat:
Partners participating in combat, making taking on more dangerous enemies a bit more manageable.
Family Making:
The ability for partners to get pregnant (or get you pregnant), babies, toddlers, children and teenagers.
New Advanced NPCs:
Hunting dogs, pack animals, familiars, human travellers and hunters, improved traders.
New Partner Deaths:
The ability for partners to get sick or get hurt and die from wounds.
Dialog Improvements:
Improvements to the dialog system, including quality of life changes and many new options.
Version EA_0.66 and Patch Notes since the last announcement:
- Added partner creator with all its perks.
- Added complex duty systems.
- Added partner physical, mental, attraction and social systems.
- Added 6 partner presets.
- Added the ability to request partners from the general trader.
- Added npc equipment system.
- Blood now coagulates directly into solid blood curds.
- Fixed a bug where flours and grains did not get preserved inside cellars and containers.
- Fixed a bug where the Second Boar was fleeing to the wrong area.
- Wheelbarrow can now transport powdery materials such as clay.
- Releasing the Spirit of a Mouse or a Frog now takes 3 minutes.
- Fixed the bug with Boars stuck in the same area not attacking the player or doing anything else.
- Fixed the Wood Sorrel has dried notification.
- Fixed a bug where rain was reducing mosquitos twice.
- Quern no longer shows progress durability.
- Fixed a bug preventing the move from Boggy Meadows to Black Mire during the night.
- Fixed a bug with inconsistencies when adding and removing powders to clay jars.
- Pottery Wheel now speeds up the creation of Crucibles.
- Cellar improvement no longer unlocks if you have a tree log on board. Research is now needed.
- Added the new Metal version of Fire Striker to Camp Filter.
- Fixed the name of the Iron Spear.
- Fixed a bug where Animals bought from the trader would initially have an undefined satiation value.
- Powder Salt now also removes a bit of spoilage when applied just like salt used directly from the containers already does.
- Lighting a fire with a lit tinder or bracket fungus no longer increases the fuel amount.
- Brain Mush, Bones and Tendons now give a tiny bit of Food when thrown into Enclosure.
- Releasing a Spirit of Tiny Animals such as Birds and Fish now takes 3 minutes.
- Fixed a bug where Meat Hook could be hammered more each time its rope is removed and hid its quality away since it currently has no effects.
- Snow now fills up Barrels, Cisterns and Basins which are located under the open sky.
- Partridges, Chickens, Boars and Cows you no longer want or need can now be released into the wild (increasing their approppriate populations).
- Cows and boars can now be stacked and unstacked just like Partridges and Chickens.
- Adding ingredients to a Pie no longer reduces its quality.
- Crafting a fiber break now properly reduces beaver Urge.
- Fixed a bug where some blueprints would always be marked as new every time you reloaded a save.
- Reduced the amount of Quality loss when adding new items to the Stew and it now scales of how much thickness the item adds as well as its own quality.
- Summoning Ritual now allow for Spirit Mushrooms or Fly Agaric as ingredients in place of Fairyweed.
- Wheat straw, rye straw and dry meadowgrass can now be used instead of dry reeds in Fire Magic Rituals.
- Chicken and Duck Carcasses can now also be used in place of Partridge Carcasses in Fox Enchantments, Summonings and Callings.
- Leather scraps are now about half the weight, you need twice as many of them to stitch into a small leather and you get 4 when cutting it small leather. (Old small leathers that were made in the past should still cut into 2 though.)
- Fixed the art for unplaced Iron Meat Hook.
- Frostbite Wounds now heal twice as fast.
- Clay jars can now store less powder than before, but light powders such as Fairyweed Powder now last considerably longer.
- Fixed a bug where Wheat Straw could not be used to make an improvised bed.
- Fixed a bug with Fire Striker removing its Flint away would make it increase its durability.
- Fixed a bug where White Bronze Skinning Knives were displaying themselves as generic metal knives.
- Fixed a bug where Witchstone vein in the Death Chamber were not mineable with pickaxes.
- Fixed a bug that was preventing you from making Fly Agaric Tea from boiled Fly Agaric.
- Fixed a bug where Enraged Wolf Pack would attack even when a character had the wolf protection perk.
- Dry fodder can now be toggled to stack and unstack.
- First Step of Flatbow construction can now use a Drawknife instead of a standard cutting tool to speed it up and increase the quality of the final product.
- Added Cattail Fluff to the Camp Filter.
- Renamed "Domesticated Animals Hunger Durability" to Satiation.
- Increased the weight of Dry Fodder to better reflect the big amount of items it is made from.
- Added the word Dirty to the name of dirty intestines, kidneys and stomachs to emphasize more that they need to be cleaned first.
- Vomiting no longer reduces morale directly but significantly reduces gratification instead.
- Updated the description of the Log Piece.
- Alder Bark can now be used to make Bark Sandals.
- Fixed a bug where bears, wolves and the moontouched would not drop a carcass when killed.
- FIxed a bug where too much liquid ash and quick lime was getting destroyed when used from a container on garden plots.
- Boars and other animals now prioritize food lying around in the area before going for gardens, fields or domesticated animals.
- Partridges eat small and tiny foods before big ones.
- Fixed a bug where the Moontouched would be Tranquilized after every combat regardless of whether the player hit him with a Poisoned Weapon or not.
- Survival Gear Perk now starts you with a new metal version of Fire Striker and a piece of Flint instead of the old Fire Striker with Flint.
- Fixed a bug where stomach would get absorbed into the stew after only 15 minutes.
- Fertilizer can now be transformed into its "liquid" form by putting it inside an empty sack, storage pot or a similar container that can hold "liquid" powders.
- Combing fibers with a hackle now gives weaving skill instead of tailoring.
- Fixed a bug where Oak Blight would check for Boar population instead of Doe population when slowing down the Doe and Stag respawn rate.
- Weighted Loom, Threadle Loom and the Spinning Wheel now all add some Sanctuary to the location.
- Reworked how metal tools and weapon blueprints are researched (researching the tool automatically unlocks its blanks and casts without further research).
- Made improvements to powders to make them more consistent with each other.
- Sacks can no longer be filled with Water.
- Reduced the Weaving skill required to unlock Hackle, Funnel Trap, Bark Sandals and Weighted Loom to be in line with recent changes to Weaving skill gains.
- Reduced the Weaving Skill gain when crafting Funnel Traps and Bark Sandals to be in line with how much you gain when making Baskets or Reed Clothing.
- Making ropes now gives Weaving Skill.
- Fixed a bug where the oven would still sometimes give charcoal when running out of fuel.
- Fixed a bug in the Mosquito Flats North Travel action when its path is frozen or flooded which was taking you to the wrong place.
- Swamp Start Perk now gives you alder instead of oak wood.
- Garden Plot Inspect Action now has a tooltip when it cant be performed.
- Fixed a bug where the Garden Plot could not be destroyed if Care was higher than 0.
- Fixed a bug where the bear cave exit would not spawn.
- Fixed a bug where blueprint cards would say "X does not have enough of Y" when drag and dropping the wrong ingredient.
- Saves that were broken with empty locations should now fix themselves as you play.
- Fixed the animal and metal trader initial dialog linking into the general trader dialog tree.
- Drinking Water from Containers no longer takes time.
- Cooking Pot Blueprint is now properly affected by the Pottery Wheel.
- Fixed an exploit where you could take 10 ash items from a container when there are only 2 inside.
- Extinguished Kilns no longer accept dry leaves as fuel.
- Fixed a bug which prevented Hare Leather from being trimmed.
- New Huntsman runs now start with Wolf Protection Perk.
- Placed Fiber Break now gives 25 sanctuary.
- Fixed a bug where new environments would sometimes be empty, locking the player.
- Reduced the unlock requirements for Reed Coat, Spindle, Fiber Break and Spinning Wheel.
- Stag Carcasses now drop antlers when they spoil or get consumed by animals.
- Fixed an issue where the Morale Status bar and the morale detailed description screen where showing conflicting information.
- Fixed the art for the Handsaw shape in the Handsaw tool blueprint.
- Knife Sheath can now be renamed.
- Fish scraps now give proper nutrients and can be used in stews.
- Bog Myrtle Leaves can now be used in stews.
- Improved the description for Arrowhead blanks and shapes.
- "Remake Iron Bar" recipe now accepts both unfinished and finished tool and weapon heads.
- Removed the max stack size for twigs when collecting resources.
- Smith Perk now starts with Forge and Bloomery completely unlocked.
- Reduced the amount of Pottery Skill required to unlock a Pottery Wheel.
- Reduced the penalty to skill gain for Weaving and Pottery when making items you already made and penalty now gets reduced after some time has passed.
- Crafting Twine, Yarn, Small Cloth, Medium Cloth and Large Cloth now gives Weaving Skill instead of Tailoring.
- Tailoring skill gain penalty now gets reduced after some time has passed.
- Reduced the material cost for Cloth Sack from 2 Large Clothes to a single one.
- Workbench no longer speeds up the crafting of Yarns or Twine when using a Spinning wheel.
- Workbench no longer speeds up making Pottery out of Clay.
- Fiber break, Spinning Wheel and Treadle Loom can now be placed and picked up and only works if placed in a location.
- Iron Handsaw now has a lot less durability than axes and is worse than metal axes when cutting down small trees and brushwood.
- Fixed the Heather Stems Dried message.
- Fixed the Cloth Sack name.
- Added the Heated Version art for Iron Fire Striker.
- Fixed some instances of environments not properly loading and the game getting stuck with no environment card.
And... that's all for now!
We'll be tweaking all these new systems quite a bit, so expect lots of hotfixes over the following weeks. ;)
Please let us know if there are any specific duties or traits, physical or mental, that you would like us to add and we'll do our best to add them as soon as possible!
Until the next update!
Reminder: All fixes and new content are added to the public beta branch first.
If you want to access them you can find the instructions on the link below. Be warned though, things are less stable there and are likely to undergo balance changes quite frequently! :)
https://steamcommunity.com/app/2868860/discussions/0/600774299444324511/
