Hello there!
Long time no see :) We’ve been pretty busy with development work (more on that at the end), but it’s about time we do another one of these posts highlighting how different game mechanics work in Laysara. This time, let’s bring yaks to the spotlight!
Yaks in the game’s lore
Yaks are domesticated wild oxen with shaggy hair, humped shoulders and large horns. They can survive altitudes as high as 6000m above the sea level and as such, tend to live on mountains and plateaus. Wild yaks are native to the Himalayan region, which is a huge inspiration for the fictional world of Laysara.
Remember our previous Steam News post about the three social castes in Laysara? Well, yaks are basically the secret fourth. They play an important role in both the economy and traditions. Citizens admire yaks and care for them, making them pets on the one hand, but hard-working and valued members of society on the other.
Applications of the Yakforce
As mentioned before, yaks are quite crucial for the economy. A healthy herd of yaks can provide your kingdom with two key resources: Wool and Milk. Wool is used to weave fabric, which surely is something your people will appreciate given the harsh mountain conditions. Milk can be used to produce Cheese, which is one of the most common food sources in the game, or can be churned into Butter. Butter then can be utilized for brewing Butter Tea and manufacturing Butter Lamps (yes, it is really a thing). So there are quite a few resource chains based on good old yaks, and I didn’t even list them to their full extent!
In the pre-industrial era, yaks are an irreplaceable source of power. Do you need these heavy grinding stones rollin’ to turn grain into flour? Or some way to operate huge bellows to make the furnace temperature hot enough to smelt Ornaments? Heck, maybe you even have to power a whole resource-transporting mountain lift to the very mountain peak? Yep, you guessed it - yaks can do it all!
That brings us to the matter of transportation. You see, you can put only so many bags on a human’s shoulders and expect them to still be able to walk. Using some clever technology, like carts, will get you further, but that’s still not a serious competition for yaks. They will happily deliver all the goods all the way to the second side of the mountain for a handful of feed and a friendly pet.
Last but not least, people just love to be around yaks. A perfect example of that is a Yaks Race (yes, this is also a thing - just google it, I dare you), which attracts people no matter their age or gender, as it’s just so entertaining and ridiculously funny.
Breeding yaks
Alright, there is no prosperous town in Laysara’s kingdom without yaks - I hope we all see this by now. But how we can be sure there are enough of our furry friends around to fulfil all of these various responsibilities we just described? The answer is, of course, yak breeding. In the game, three buildings serve this very purpose:
Yak Pasture
Doesn’t get any more basic than this! A Yak Pasture is just a patch of land with a bunch of yaks wandering around and eating what they find. That’s also the reason why this building gets less effective when you place it on higher mountain zones - less nutritious grass to consume, resulting in fewer baby yaks being born. All in all, a Yak Pasture gives you a few healthy yaks and that’s great, but it takes a ton of space and you’ll quickly start looking for an alternative.
Worth noting, Yak Pasture is the only building unlocked from the very start - you’ll need to increase your Research level to use more advanced breeding facilities.
Compact Yak Breeder
As you can see by the name, this building solves the problem of space by just having yaks tightly packed together. Not the most wholesome thing in the world to do, but you’ll have to compensate for the tight squeeze on our dear yaks by feeding them some high-quality Fodder. This building will provide you with over a dozen yaks no matter the mountain zone you build it in, which is great, but there is one more way to approach the task of having plenty of yaks.
Yak Utopia
This is basically a spa for yaks, with enough space, food and conveniences to make them breed at an optimal tempo. Utilization of Perfumes may seem extravagant at first, but just look at the yaks' happy faces and you won’t question it ever again. And, of course, tons of Fodder to make every single Yak Utopia’s occupant full and happy. One single building of this type increases the yak population by a few dozen, which is exactly what you need if you want to go big with your town’s design.
And that’s how you’ll interact with our furry friends in a yakshell!
Release date status
To be honest, we don’t have any new updates to share in that regard. However, we thought it was worth mentioning that our development work is coming along smoothly and nicely. We hit some really important internal milestones and are now focusing on the final stages of pre-launch development, like translations, bugfixes, optimizations and polishing whatever we can. We leave you with a vague early 2024 release window for now, but it won’t be long before we’ll be ready to make a proper update on that!
Thanks for sticking around and see you in the comments / Discord!
Quite OK Team