Youkoso!
With Ikigai (生き甲斐), which is Japanese for “a sense of purpose”, we’re bringing you the first expansion of the perk-based progression system. Embark on the path of a warrior and experience an entirely new combat system or choose a more peaceful route and discover streamlined production mechanics. There are many more exciting additions, so dive in and let us know what you think!
Note: Start a new game to take full advantage of new features. Playing from a save is also possible, although some changes may reset your production or require passing a season to fully take effect.
New perk trees
Develop your in-game character from a rag-tag refugee into a legendary figure, by improving four ways of life!
Leader. Gain Dynasty XP to work your way up the Leader perk tree and unlock benefits for the whole Dynasty. Leader perks provide new and unique recipes, lower villagers’ consumption of resources, and affect the wealth of the entire Nata Valley.
Craftsman. Craft, build, and acquire resources to build up the Craftsman perk tree and become better at crafting and harvesting resources. Enjoy faster building skills and improve your yields from farming.
Warrior. Kill enemies, clear bandit camps, and hunt animals to increase your Warrior standing and unlock new abilities, become a tougher and more skilled hunter, or make your weapons and armor more efficient.
Monk. Discover and open new shrines and make offerings there to level up the Monk perk tree and unlock powerful jack-of-all-trades perks, mostly related to your personal stats and trading skills.
The system has been revamped to allow for deeper perk tree mechanics, like multilevel perks or locking one skill behind another. The user interface has also been improved, turning what was just a proof-of-concept into a fully-fledged feature.
This is just the first expansion of the perk tree. More perks will be added in future updates, as we receive your feedback.
Brand new combat (basics)
We have been working on a new combat system for months and, although we’re not yet done with it, we want to share the foundational part of it with you, so that we can be guided by your feedback as we continue development. Expect several elements of the system to be unfinished, but also prepare for a big leap forward, compared to previous versions of the game.
We’ve built entirely new Souls-lite combat mechanics from the ground up. It includes full-body attacks that you can chain into cool-looking combos to break your opponents' poise and knock them back or down. There are quick attacks, as well as heavy attacks that can be interrupted based on your own poise level. Using heavier attacks, armor or weapons will make it harder to stop you, but you will also burn through your stamina faster.
Then there’s the AI. Opponents will now try to avoid getting stabbed and will spread all around the player to attack one by one. Enemies are now varied in difficulty, and the more advanced ones will require you to dash, block, or parry. Performing perfectly timed parries is the fastest way to stop their combos, break their posture, and deliver the finishing blow.
The combat system is focused on skills, but also on utilizing gear. Weapons will now have their own parry and block effectiveness, as well as different damage values, and will affect your encumbrance. Armor, in turn, will provide a significant boost to your defenses, so if you prefer a more economical playstyle, you can invest your time to craft the greatest gear worthy of the best Japanese smiths and defeat opponents much more easily, without worrying too much about your survival.
And if you explore the map carefully, maybe you’ll find a new hostile settlement ready to take you on?
Note: new combat includes fighting with Yari, Katana or Tanto against human enemies. Animals and other handheld weapons use the previous system.
Improved production system
Managing your villagers' work will now be much easier! Redesigned workplaces will offer better visual clarity, while improved notifications and warnings will better inform you of any production issues. Here are some specifics:
Each worker has a work capacity pool that you can allocate to any number of recipes being produced at a given workplace. Previously, the system was limited to 4 production slots. Now, one worker will be able to handle any number of unique recipes at low efficiency or just one at full efficiency — the choice is yours!
You are now able to assign production tasks to a worker at any time, even if you don't have the necessary resources or tools. Your workers will produce as much as they can for the day and then wait for more resources.
Missing resources and tools will be automatically gathered by workers to achieve the production level you assigned. For example, after adding the missing item to the dynasty's storage, your worker will automatically take it and produce the assigned recipe by the end of their workday.
The effectiveness of tools was reworked to make production even more efficient and to make it easier for you to meet your villagers' needs. Better tools will allow you to get more products from the same number of resources and work.
The production results section now shows exactly what a given recipe produces and how many of your villagers' needs it will satisfy.
The recipe cost section now displays information about the required season or access to resource sources.
The tool and production results sections now display useful tooltips, for example, listing all tools compatible with a given recipe.
You are now able to manually remove recipes, workers, or tools from the workplace if you want to halt or modify some chains of production.
Remote storage access
When building, crafting, or providing resources for your production station, you now have access to items in all of your global storage, while inside the village. No need to transfer items to personal inventory first!
Improved Inari and Jizo shrines
Opening a new Jizo or Inari shrine and making an offering will grant Monk XP. These shrine blessings will now work locally (for each coop player separately). More shrines on the map will be interactive, including medium and large ones. The whole shrine will now be interactable, not just the kami statue, for ease of use. Please note only small shrines will feature a door-opening animation for now, and other kami will be added later.
Improved planting experience
You can now use a hammer as well as a hoe to plant plants in your village. We have improved placement feedback for planting, and we made all plants planted by the player removable with a shovel, if you need to remove some of those badly positioned shrubs. In addition, we introduce new plants for you to plant: two new variants of spotted laurel shrubs and two new variants of ferns.
Other additions and improvements
- Structures now don't block themselves when moving them, so you can adjust their position by small increments.
- Doors now automatically open and close when a player or NPC is nearby (we are looking forward to improving this feature further).
- Low stamina and health will now have visual feedback (vignettes).
- Sakura trees can now be cut down for fruit tree wood and planted. Enjoy your own Spring Sakura festival!
- You will now automatically join a dialogue after teleporting to it in a co-op session. You can still manually join the ongoing dialogue if you approach it without teleportation.
- Buildings now visualize their safe zone when placing a ghost.
- Changed gamepad key bindings to better support the new combat system.
- Ghosts of paths and roads have been made better visible, especially on snow.
- New items were added, including a new flower: a Spider Lily.
- Grass can now be harvested all year round by your villagers in the Forager’s Hut.
- We have improved skin textures for female characters.
- Some female NPCs have new clothing.
- The "Tranquil Tribute" quest now supports the player in obtaining a cooked egg in different ways.
- We have improved some roofs, including adding a straw roof to the Brewery (along with some roof decorations).
- New drinking and eating animations as well as new beverage and meal assets will now be visible when you consume items from your inventory.
- We have made some story and dialogue adjustments to better support the new role of bandits and other enemy types in the game.
- We have removed the village requirement for using the workplace at the Iron Ore Processing Station.
- We have changed the order of heating and beverages needs so that they appear in their unlock order.
- New building model for Forager’s Hut (you will need to rebuild it from scratch).
- You can now build all types of Dynasty storage access furniture in most buildings, including Ice Storage Access furniture.
- Some buildings got a new and improved preplaced furniture setup.
- Added missing fundoshi underwear for some male NPCs.
- Changed dawn time to 5:30 AM so that when you wake up in the first hour of the morning, you will be greeted with early sun rays.
- Add a new furniture grid to Fisherman’s Hut on the porch.
- Improved wolf combat animations, it should now be much fairer to face it.
- Bow damage got improved.
- Adjustments to the Ashigaru armor.
- Adjustments to the animation when changing directions in sprint.
- Adjusted some animals behaviour when attacking.
- Balancing pass.
- Localization updated.
- Village Trader got updated.
- Adding Guard Service Job to Watchtower Special Project
Fixes
- Fixed male refugees having the starting happiness level of “Content” instead of “Happy”.
- Fixed some decorations that were impossible to place on the floor of some buildings.
- Fixed largest Torii gates moss and rope decoration placement.
- Fixed long loading times in the Jobs tab.
- Fixed multiple bugs on the map.
- Fixed furniture upgrades being impossible or not free in the creative mode (with free building on).
- Fixed the game starting almost always with rainy weather. Now you should start with a nice clear sky.
- Fixed some papermaking recipes’ icons.
- Fixed flipped tombstone inscriptions.
Known issues
- You may need to reset production and pass one season for some of the changes to take effect.
- You may need to open and close some full-screen UIs to refresh their values.
- Consumption prediction is not precise due to not considering input items that will be distributed to workplaces, and not available for consumption.
- Forager’s Hut buildings will not be compatible with your save – rebuild them to enjoy the new model.
- After rebinding controls, some interactions (like "rotate right: or "craft more") will become unbound and therefore unavailable. Please avoid rebinding controls until a hotfix becomes available.
- Some players may need to reset their Controls to default to enable new combat, if playing from an older save.
- Combat will switch camera automatically to TPP. You can override this by enabling FPP combat in the gameplay settings, but please be aware the new combat in FPP is not fully implemented yet.
- Sometimes, when coop players are far from each other, and one engages a bandit with a bow from a long distance, the bandits' movement may glitch.
- To fully test out the new combat system, please head on to the prototype bandit camp which can be found near Iwasaki, on the other side of the river to the east.
