Sealed Forest Update out now! New biome available!

Greetings, Viceroys!

It’s time to venture into the Sealed Forest - a mysterious and hostile biome with unique mechanics and a completely new victory condition.

Withstand terrible plagues and use the new Beacon Tower to summon aid directly from the Citadel. Find and collect the lost parts of the Ancient Guardian to summon it and close the broken Seal.

What's new:

• Sealed Forest biome
• Seal reforging mechanic
• Plagues
• Beacon Tower building
• 12 new music tracks

Continue reading for the detailed Ancient Seals guide and the full changelog.

P.S. Steam Strategy Fest is in full swing. If you haven’t picked up Against the Storm yet, you can get it with a 35% discount until September 4:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1336490/Against_the_Storm/

CESSATION MINI ALBUM AVAILABLE

We have a little surprise for you! We just released the Against the Storm mini album titled "Cessation", composed by Mikołaj Kurpios. The album consists of 6 tracks (including the brand-new music from the Sealed Forest) and is available on major streaming platforms. Enjoy!

LISTEN TO THE NEW ALBUM

The remaining tracks will be released as Part 2 of the game's OST in the future. Stay tuned!

PLUSH CAMPAIGN ENDING SOON

Due to the success of the Beaver Villager crowdfunding campaign, we were able to extend the campaign's period by 10 days to give you more time to get your very own limited-edition plush!

The new end date is September 12. It will no longer be possible to obtain the plushie after that day, so don’t miss it:

GO TO THE PLUSHIE PAGE

Each plushie comes with an exclusive "Beaver villager in peril" background art.

You can learn a little more here:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1336490/view/6347313345428050770

DEVELOPER NOTES

The day has finally come, the revamped Sealed Forest is here! As this massive update is solely focused on the new biome, we have decided to forgo the usual developer note structure and instead jump right into a detailed summary of all the new features, and a recap of how this new addition ties into the World Map.

What are Ancient Seals?

Ancient Seals are old, intricate structures built to hold a primeval, malevolent force at bay. As time passed, they became weaker, causing the mysterious Sealed Ones to slowly reclaim dominion over our world.

Your task as the Queen’s Viceroy is to settle the lands and journey to the heart of the Sealed Forest where you must reforge the Seal to imprison the evil gods.

There are 8 different Seals. The farther away they are, the higher their difficulty and the more Seal Fragments are required to repair the shattered Seal. You can acquire Seal Fragments by establishing settlements, overcoming negative Modifiers, and solving World Events encountered on your caravan's journey.

Ancient Seals on the World Map

Your Caravan

At the start of every Cycle, your caravan departs from the Smoldering City. You can upgrade your Caravan permanently with Smoldering City Upgrades that add new Embarkation Bonuses, increase the Embarkation Range, and much more. You can also modify the Caravan temporarily with Royal Resupplies and World Events.

Royal Resupplies are special rewards awarded for settling near negative Modifiers. You can choose from three different one-time bonuses: increased Vision and Embarkation Range, Reserve Embarkation Points, or additional Seal Fragments.

Royal Resupplies

Reserve Embarkation Points are a separate pool of non-rechargeable Embarkation Points that can only be used during a single Cycle. You may want to save them for the most challenging endeavors. You can also improve your Caravan by solving World Events. But tread with caution, your decisions often come with a trade-off or can present a unique challenge.

World Event - Wandering Eremite

The Sealed Forest

Once you gather enough Seal Fragments, you can travel to the Sealed Forest - a grim, uninhabitable biome, where the Ancient Seals lie and where your governing skills will be put to the test. A game in the Sealed Biome can only be attempted once per Cycle.

Ancient Seals spread corruption around them making the Sealed Forest an extremely hostile environment. The flora in this region is bizarrely mutated, with overgrown trees containing extra resource charges.

Sealed Forest Trees

A broken Ancient Seal is hidden within the depths of the Sealed Forest. You must search for clues in surrounding glades to locate it. Every glade contains a Guidance Stone that points to the location of the Ancient Seal.

Guidance Stone

The sooner you reach the Seal, the better. Viceroys don't embark to the Sealed Forest to establish settlements or gain Reputation. The Queen expects them to reforge the Seal… or die trying.

Reforging a Seal

To reforge the Seal you must reconstruct the Ancient Guardian by obtaining its heart, blood, feathers, and life essence. There are three different variants of each part. Acquiring one of them will require a display of remarkable finesse in a certain aspect of managing a settlement.

Ancient Seal Panel

Once you obtain a part, you will be rewarded with an Epic Cornerstone and a new array of objectives will be revealed. After assembling all four parts, the Scorched Queen will breathe life into the Ancient Guardian - the only entity capable of closing the Seal.

Ancient Guardian

But beware! The mere presence of the Ancient Seal summons foul plagues on your settlement. Every Storm, a new plague will be unleashed, hindering your efforts to resurrect the Guardian.

To oppose the tormenting force of the plagues, you can construct a Beacon Tower - an ancient structure that allows you to summon aid directly from the Smoldering City and choose from 9 temporary support abilities (with a limited number of charges).

Reforging each Seal will not only grant you the Queen's appreciation and extra resources. It will also push back the Blightstorm and prolong the Cycle permanently.

The future

The Sealed Forest was one of the largest items on our Early Access roadmap. Now that it’s finally out, the only things left on there are the tutorial improvements, Steam Deck verification, and (as always) community-inspired changes. But fear not! We also have plans for yet another big feature, although we are not ready to reveal anything substantial about it just now.

In the very near future, we will most likely focus on a few smaller size updates again, with more UX and UI changes, bug fixes, and smaller gameplay improvements. And once we’re ready, we will show you the next big and exciting thing coming to Against the Storm.

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

Number of changes: 56
Inspired by community: 91%

Changes marked with ⚡ were inspired by the community.

New content and features

• ⚡ Revamped the Sealed Forest biome. It now has a unique mechanic, new visuals, and a new win condition - a hidden Seal that needs to be found and reforged in order to win the game.
  • The Sealed Forest is a special biome only present around Seals on the World Map. It’s accessible only once during each Cycle, as a “final boss encounter”.
  • Deep inside the Sealed Forest, an ancient, broken Seal is hidden. To find it, players have to look for Guidance Stones in surrounding glades and triangulate the Seal’s location.
  • To win a game in the Sealed Forest, players need to successfully reforge the Seal. This can only be done with the help of an Ancient Guardian.
  • Ancient Guardians are old, magical constructs created by an old civilization. However, thousands of years of being exposed to the Storm and the influence of the Seal have taken a toll on them. To make use of them again, players have to reconstruct them.
  • To reconstruct a guardian, four parts are needed - the heart, the blood, the feathers, and the life essence. To acquire a part, players need to complete special, challenging objectives.
  • All objectives can be seen in the Seal panel. Each guardian part has 3 objectives assigned to it, testing the settlement’s performance in different aspects (industry, well-being, exploration). To acquire a part, only one of these objectives must be completed. After collecting a guardian part, the next set of tasks for the next item will be shown.
  • Completing a Seal objective not only awards a guardian part but also gives players a free Epic Cornerstone choice.
  • Seal objectives have two difficulty settings - for games at the Settler/Pioneer difficulty levels, and for games at Veteran and above.
  • The mere presence of the Seal causes terrible plagues to appear in the settlement. Plagues are randomly generated every year and are only active during the Storm. They can be anything from a simple production speed decrease to a powerful curse that spawns a dangerous or forbidden glade event near the Hearth.
  • To help players survive in this harsh environment, a new building is at their disposal - the Beacon Tower.
  • The Beacon Tower is a powerful ancient structure that allows players to summon aid directly from the Citadel. It gives access to three types of temporary support abilities: supplies, bells, and miracles.
  • Support abilities are active only for one season and have a limited number of uses per category.
  • Hostility works differently in the Sealed Forest. It doesn’t increase with assigned Woodcutters. Instead, it grows by 2 points for every 10 felled trees.
  • There are two types of trees in the Sealed Forest - small and big ones. Small ones have only 2 resource charges (like normal trees in all other biomes), and big ones have 20 charges.
  • Trees in the Sealed Forest give wood, meat, sea marrow, and leather. Wood is guaranteed, the other resources have a 10% chance of dropping.
  • The Sealed Forest has the following resources:
    • Berries
    • Mushrooms
    • Roots
    • Meat
    • Insects
    • Reeds
    • Clay
    • Sea Marrow
    • Copper Ore

  • Although the Sealed Forest has a different win condition than all other biomes (reforging the Seal instead of collecting all Reputation points), Reputation points can still be collected as usual and will unlock blueprints and lower Impatience.
    
  • The Sealed Forest has new unique visuals - terrain, trees, seasonal effects, fog, camera effects, etc.
    
  • There are 12 new unique music tracks available only in the Sealed Forest. There are also numerous new sounds and ambient effects.
    
  • The Seal is tended by a Seal Keeper, Rahatiel, who guides Viceroys through the process of reforging it. Every time a new guardian part is acquired, he will offer a bit of additional context. Every guardian part also has a lore description when hovering over it.

Balance

• ⚡ Changed the objective of the Great Expansion Timed Order from having one level 3 and one level 2 Hearth to having two level 2 Hearths.

UX/UI improvements

• Changed the wording in the French version of the Decadence stat tooltip in the in-game Encyclopedia to make it clearer.
• Improved the wording in multiple places in the French version of the game (decadence stat tooltip, all mentions of ancient seals).

Bug fixes

• ⚡ Fixed a bug that caused some buildings to break if a worker got killed the moment they got assigned.
• ⚡ Fixed a bug with the Game History tab sometimes closing on its own.
• ⚡ Fixed an issue with the Seal Contract UI sometimes incorrectly labeling the Bronze Seal as “Gold”.
• ⚡ Fixed a bug that caused stacked bonuses from Cornerstones like Exploration Expedition to disappear after the first timer ran out.
• ⚡ Fixed a bug with tracked goods not immediately appearing on the HUD after being added to the storage for the first time.
• ⚡ Fixed a bug with a missing tooltip in the Into the Ruins order.
• ⚡ Fixed a bug with the Unbearable Smell effect from the Blight Filter Cornerstone now displaying its tooltip correctly.
• ⚡ Fixed an incorrect description in the tooltip of the Inspiring Work effect.
• ⚡ Fixed an issue with a duplicated reward in the ruined Provisioner building.
• ⚡ Fixed a bug with the Worker’s Rations Cornerstone being given to the player after catching a Treasure Stag.
• ⚡ Fixed an issue with some forbidden glades not uncovering correctly.
• ⚡ Fixed an issue with resources being incorrectly ordered in the Crystalized Dew recipe.
• ⚡ Fixed an issue with resources being incorrectly ordered in the Purging Fire recipe.
• ⚡ Fixed a few typos in the Polish translation of the game (Beanery Worker profession name, glade event tooltips).
• ⚡ Fixed multiple typos in the Traditional Chinese version of the game (profession names, mining tooltips, upgrades, alerts, dialogue, intro).
• ⚡ Fixed a typo in the Thai version of the Royal Resupply reward.
• ⚡ Fixed a typo in the German translation of the Roaming Swarm World Event curse.
• ⚡ Fixed a few typos in the Korean translation of order objectives tied to rainwater usage.
• Fixed a visual glitch on some brick wall textures.

Other

• ⚡ Added 12 new music tracks to the game, exclusive to the Sealed Forest biome.
• Improved the sound performance of the game and changed how effects are loaded into memory.
• Changed the main menu background.

The current game version is 0.58.2.

COMMUNITY CORNER

Check out some of the best community screenshots, artwork, and memes from recent days. Click to unfold:

For more artwork, memes, and screenshots visit Steam, Discord, and Reddit.

We wish you a great time with the new update and a happy weekend!

PREVIOUS UPDATES

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