I hope you're all doing well.
First, we wanted to let you know that we have finally updated the main branch with all of the NPC content, so partners should now be available to all players.
They still need a lot of work, but they are stable enough that we believe they could be enjoyed by most and could certainly use more players to help us find more issues with them.
And now, let's go to the new content:
Bees:
Bees are finally in.
You can now find wild bee hives in the forest and can harvest them for honeycombs. Use a torch to smoke them, so they're safer to approach and so you can capture some bees to start your own hives with.
Artificial beehives called skeps can be built and will produce honey based on the amount of flowers in the area, with different plants now blooming in different seasons. Heather, Clover, Peas and Flax will bloom during summer for example, while Turnroot, Wood Sorrel and King Cup will do so during spring.
Bee Skeps will feed on the flowers in the area and gradually increase their population. Once this reaches its cap they will start swarming, at which point a basket can be used to trap the excess bees and start a new bee skep.
Honeycombs can be extracted from skeps for both honey and wax.
Honey is a nutritious and sweet food item that can be used as seasoning, disinfectant or fermented into mead.
Wax can be used for making candles, and will have other new uses in the future.
Animal Spirits:
We've added a few new animal spirits that start arriving on the later years.
These will receive more work in the future but their first versions are already available. :)
Craftheart:
A fox trickster spirit that can start appearing in the later years to good and happy trappers.
He will sometimes taunt you, and will often trigger your traps for the fun of it.
Those few who manage to capture him will be able to learn how to call on him for his spells and powerful blessings.
Grimbard:
A new badger spirit that can be found in his mysterious burrow. He can appear in the later years to people that have good homes.
Provided you are in the right mental state, this spirit can be traded and communicated with.
As the badger he is, his initial stock consists of bugs and mice, but as your relationship improves he will expand it to have more useful things, such as flint, fireroot and acorns, and eventually even greenstone and spirit acorns. He loves bugs, mice, acorns, fireroot and turnroot.
He can also provide a blessing that is stronger than the usual badger blessings and also provides sanctuary.
The Stalker:
A new paranoia system has been implemented, causing this state to potentially trigger if you isolation and fear are high for extended periods of time.
If your paranoia gets to high, a new wolf spirit can sometimes start appearing.
He will track you down and watch you from the shadows, further increasing your paranoia and waiting for long periods of time until the time is right to attack. Only an altered mindstate will let you see him while he's stalking you.
Defeating him can grant you access to his calling ritual which can greatly increase your tracking and chasing skills as well as your alertness, at the cost of keeping you paranoid!
White Stag:
It can sometimes be found in the later years by more experienced hunters. Successfully chasing it can grant some powerful hunting and combat blessings by granting you access to an enchanted Sacred Grove.
General Changes:
Trader Visits:
The general trader now comes to visit you wherever you are, and only goes to the usual green clearing after greeting you. That way it's easier to know when he has arrived, specially for new players.
Duck Spirits:
Ducks have now souls. Their spirits can aid you with waterproofing, spearfishing and swimming, and love crayfish, leeches and bugs.
Performance improvements:
We have continued with performance improvements, including substantial stat-check optimizations.
All in all we have measured that our tick lag seems to have improved by 25% with the changes done in this update, which should be specially noticeable in long runs (500 plus days).
Coming Next:
We have some very big updates coming, and our plan is to release a second character and the mountain area of the map before the end of the year.
This is our roadmap for the remaining essential update content of 2026 in vague release order:
New Lands:
A new large mountain region to the north featuring:
- Multiple new caves and a new extensive cave complex.
- New wild animals. (reindeer and wild mountain goats)
- Different biomes with gradually more sparse vegetation.
- Colder temperatures (thanks to a new localized temperature system)
- Lots of steep areas. (making going up harder, but creating great opportunities to use your skis and sledges!)
- Permanently snowed areas. (for year round snow gathering)
- Areas that can only be accessed by climbing. (and can lead to secret caves and valleys)
- The mountain summit! (for the best views in Fantasy Forest)
New Animals:
Sheep:
Sheep will be purchasable from the animal trader, and will provide you with their milk and wool. Wool will let you craft comfortable warm clothes as well as many new products.
Reindeer:
These large animals will move in herds and will be a good source of meat in the northern areas. They will also be tameable, and their milk usable for drinking and making cheese, becoming an alternative for those who want these products without having to trade for cows.
Wild Mountain Goats:
We will also be adding wild goats in the steeper areas of the mountains as a wild alternative to sheep.
While they will produce considerably less wool than their domesticated counterparts, their wool will tend to be of higher quality, and they will also be cheaper to maintain, as they'll be able to eat almost anything.
New Character:
Our original plan was to release the witch, but we have decided to instead release the tourist, since it's a player favourite and we're already closer to having all the features required for a fun tourist adventure.
The tourist will make a comeback. This time his plane will "Isekai-crash" near the mountain tops in the middle of winter and he will have to do his best to survive in very inhospitable conditions.
Once he manages to establish himself, he'll have to work hard to build himself a proper home and even start a family of his own.
Additional Things:
In-Game Wiki:
One thing we'll be doing soon is adding an in-game encyclopaedia like the one we had in tropical island. We wanted to leave this for the end of the project, but we have realized that the game is becoming so complex that we feel we'll have to do it now, even if it's less efficient for development.
So you can expect it soon. ;)
Performance Updates:
Performance updates will continue as we still have many things we want to optimize and improve.
We're hoping to make the experience as smooth as possible.
Late Game Content:
We'll continue working on adding late game content, including improvements to the trading system, family building, late-game challenges and big projects such as improved mining and specialized automated structures.
And now, to the patch notes:
Version EA_0.69 and Hotfixes since the last announcement:
- General trader now visits the player before going to the green glade.
- Ducks now have a spirit with its own blessings and enchants.
- Added new paranoia system.
- Implemented Stalker spirit.
- Implemented Grimbard spirit trader.
- Implemented White Stag spirit.
- Implemented Craftheart spirit.
- Added bees.
- Implemented beekeeping system with all its products.
- Reduced the gratification granted by the willow effect.
- Fixed a bug where the Options button in the top-right corner would be unclickable when playing in windowed mode.
- Fixed a bug with card durability number changes that spawned too many numbers and slightly affected performance.
- Fixed a bug with pins moving around when you were away from a location, or sometimes when you dragged and dropped cards into a location.
- Performance improvements.
- Fixed a bug where using a bag with dry leaves or needles stored inside them on a garden plot would cause the whole bulk to be destroyed instead of just reducing the amount.
- Fixed a bug where large trees would not respawn unless all large trees in the area were cut down.
- Stews made from Partridge eggs no longer give too many calories.
- Fixed the art for the blooming bog myrtle bush.
- Fixed a bug with Bark Sandals sometimes not showing their Usage durability.
- Fixed a bug where Partners would not gain bonuses for using specialized tools when performing their duties.
- Added firekeeping duty to the firepit.
- Fixed a bug in Southern Lake Bank where cut down Pine Tree would not respawn unless you cut down the Birch Tree as well.
- Filling Water from Ice Holes at Marshes now gives Unsafe Water.
- Cows now eat dry fooder with the least amount of quantity finishing them one at a time instead of eating them all slowly at the same time.
- Fixed an issue where filling a Clay Basin which has a tiny bit of water from rain with hot water would make the water not hot enough to make Leather Armor.
- Fixed a bug where separating Yarn into Cords gave 4 twine instead of 2.
- Partners now place gathered bark and mined flint into their inventories.
- Traders Cow now starts with advanced pregnancy.
- Fixed a bug that was causing Alder Grove Nettle Patches to get deleted after one tick was spent in the area.
- Fixed a bug where releasing a squirrel spirit would not hide its enchantment tab.
- Fixed a bug where maxed out nightmare fuel would not cause nightmares.
- Removed the Rynd BP from unlockable blueprint tabs. It is unlocked together with a Mill through a trader dialogue.
- Leather blueprints now autofill metal knives first, followed by flint knives and finally sharpened stones.
- Drinking Urine now requires a confirmation.
- Fixed a bug where getting a Flint Enchant at the motherlode was giving fire affinity instead of flint affinity and reducing fire urge instead of flint urge.
- Workbench presence no longer makes the spindle yarn from the twine recipe instant.
- Making Fishing Bait now takes a minimum of 3 minutes.
- Handsaws now have the proper trading price.
- Fixed a bug where high water amount turnroot was not recovering from dormancy.
- Dyed Leather Coif now properly applies its Profile bonuses.
- Iron Strikers now have their proper trading price and can no longer be smelt down, having to be reworked instead.
- Fixed trading scaling for Appleweed, Garlic, Spirit Mushroom. Fly Agaric and willow bark.
- Fixed Spirith mushroom powder liquid weight.
- Newly Made nesting Boxes now remember what type of planks they are made from and drop them when dissasembled.
- Drastically reduced the reliance on coroutines for game logic to improve performance.
- Fixed a bug where multiple enclosures would point to one single location when the partner had finished the enclosure while the player was away. The patch does not fix saves retroactively for now.
- Fixed a bug where the path card to a newly built room in a hut or cabin would not spawn.
- Starting location is now a mandatory Perk and it defaults to the River Clearing.
- Fixed a bug where sometimes newly created characters would spawn without starting natural resources.
- Fixed an issue when making soap through blueprints.
- Windows, Earthen Floors and Plastered Walls effects are no longer global.
- It is no longer possible to use low thickness stews to water garden plots.
- Many more items are now locked when on use so that it's no longer possible for both the Partner and the Player to work on them at the same time.
- Weighted looms now drop drop generic long sticks and twine when disassembled, if they can't remember what they were built from.
- Fixed a bug where blueprints that completed in less than 1 tick would not consume their ingredients.
That's all for now.
See you all for 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/
