Hi Chefs! The long awaited Tidehaven update is here! This is our largest major update, and introduces a brand new area, with a lot of new features and improvements!
Tidehaven is a fishing outpost located in the sea, south of White Ash Harbor. The settlement was built from the wreckage of a crashed whaling vessel and has since grown into a small community serving the region’s sailors. This mid-game area unlocks midway through ACT 2 of the main story.
The mysterious takoyaki chef T.E.C. (not his real name) will be formally introduced in the quest Towards Tidehaven. Learn about his past and uncover his dark connection to Tidehaven.
Four Tidehaven-related quests have been added! These four quests mostly wrap up the story surrounding Tidehaven, however, Tidehaven will still play a role in the final main storyline.
Towards Tidehaven
This new main story quest unlocks after you complete The Source of Inspiration. Partial completion of Towards Tidehaven is now required before you can continue to The Critic. After meeting the requirements, you must go to sleep once, and head to the town center to begin.
Heart of Steel
T.E.C.’s First character quest. This quest requires the completion Towards Tidehaven and reach Acquaintance status with T.E.C.
The Android and the Crab
T.E.C.’s second character quest. To begin, complete Heart of Steel and become his Close Friend.
Sharks in the Pond
This late-game miscellaneous quest offers a valuable reward. It requires the completion of Heart of Steel and Danger at the Eleventh Hour (ACT 3).
Hop on over to Tidehaven in early summer and experience the annual Midsummer Feast! Select a food stall, assemble a team, and compete against other food booths to earn the most tickets. The Midsummer Feast is a two-day festival held on Summer Days 6 and 7. Brand new unique recipes and decorations can be obtained through this festival.
Tidehaven introduces a new feature: NPC-operated restaurants! Visit these restaurants during business hours to see lively dining rooms filled with staff, customers, and delicious dishes. This feature primarily supports story and immersion, but certain restaurants may become playable during quests.
Fish farms become available once you unlock Tidehaven! They allow you to produce Salmon, Tuna, Yellowtail, Seaweed, Squid, Lobster, Clams, Scallops, Sea Urchin, and eventually even Caviar. Deep-water and shallow-water farms produce different resources at different rates. Starting a fish farm requires a Fish Farm Starter.
You can also enhance your farms with fish feed! Combine spare ingredients to create feed and increase your fish farm harvests. Several fish feed machines are located inside Tidehaven.
Alongside the new Tidehaven content, we have been working on several restaurant mechanics and quality-of-life improvements.
This new restaurant mechanic unlocks after you complete Into the Mines (available in ACT 1). This bulletin board offers a fresh weekly challenge based on events around White Ash Harbor. Complete the challenge before the end of the week to earn town Contribution Points and a unique Ingredient Bundle! This system can affect which kind of NPCs and customers appear around town, which items are available in shops, and even the weather. Weekly challenges are randomized from a group of 15 unique challenges per season!
Note* the Harbor Weekly introduction will only unlock on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, to give enough time to complete the first challenge.
There are now multiple random npc and customer types : Tourist, LELSH Employee, Fishermen, Construction Worker, Hiker, and Fancy NPC. Each type possess a unique look and different dialogues.
We would love to hear your feedback on the Harbor Weekly mechanic, as it offers many possibilities for creating fresh challenges for your restaurant.
Because there are now more ways to earn town Contribution Points, weekly donations of Credits or Materials are capped at 200 points. Epic and Legendary materials can no longer be donated to the contribution box.
Unlocked alongside Harbor Weekly, Market Spotlight highlights a different seasonal ingredient each week. Using the highlighted ingredient in your dishes boosts both Dish Quality and Customer Satisfaction. The weekly spotlighted ingredients are fixed every year.
Early in ACT 2, you will unlock the ability to highlight a recommended dish for guests. The selected dish will be ordered more frequently, and the Recommended Dish menu will open automatically when you open your restaurant.
By popular request, you can now change the wall styles inside your buildings! Available wall styles include Red Brick, Red Wood, Tatami, Yellow, Modern, and Cyberpunk. Three new flooring styles have also been added.
We have received many requests for a more readable font option, as some players struggle with the pixel fonts. We have added an easy to read sans serif font. You can now switch to a non-pixel font in the display settings. We will likely make further adjustments to the pixel font to improve its readability.
D-pad UI navigation has now been implemented. To support this change, UI inputs have been separated from gameplay inputs. UI navigation controls can no longer be remapped on controllers, but gameplay controls remain rebindable.
Running is no longer interrupted when using tools or picking up items.
Additional sound effects have been added to various UIs.
The save system has been improved to reduce the risk of data loss or “Frankenstein” saves caused by cloud or cross-platform saving.
Some basic ingredients will be added to your house fridge when you unlock your home, to make completing the first few Research Nodes easier.
For all characters that have character quests, their "character category" quests must be completed before you can romance them. Currently, this applies for Uriel (1 Quest), Aloys (1 Quest), Hasel (1 Quest), April (2 Quests), Nacim (1 Quest), Mae Lou (1 Quest), and T.E.C. (2 Quests). Down the road, this system will allow us to write better character progression, in relation to romance.
Fixed numerous minor bugs and rare glitches throughout the game.
Fixed various UI glitches.
Corrected various text errors.
We hope you enjoy the Tidehaven update! Feel free to join our Discord to chat with our community and post suggestions or bug reports. We will be more active in the Discord for the next 2 weeks to help with any issues.