Hi everyone!
We are working hard to prepare everything for the closed testing of the game, and we have recently made some improvements to the building and crafting system that we wanted to share with you.
There are a total of 9 harvesting and 9 crafting professions in the game. Harvesting professions focus on collecting various types of resources (such as wood, stone, and iron) and then processing them into more advanced materials (lumber, stone blocks, and iron ingots). Crafting professions allow using these materials to create new items and equipment. In one of the previous development logs, we covered crafting professions in more detail. Here is the link if you want to check them out: Ars Notoria Journal #4
Previously, harvesting professions were much more simplified than crafting ones. They had less equipment available, no harvesting skills or abilities, and the progression was quite limited (only rarity tiers for equipment and resources). However, since collecting resources is an important mechanic during all game stages, especially in the beginning, we decided that making them fully functional professions instead of simplified ones would be a significant improvement.
Harvesting equipment
We have added new types of equipment for each harvesting profession and organized them according to their functionality and bonuses. Here is an example of a lumberjack’s tools and the order in which they are unlocked.
The lumberjack’s equipment can be divided into two main groups: the first group is tools for harvesting and processing wood, and the second group is equipment for trading. This way, you can set up dedicated lumberjack workshops that can help you collect wood and obtain more advanced materials from it, as well as selling excess resources if needed.
- Axe - a basic tool that allows you to cut down trees more efficiently. You can unlock it right from the start of the game by acquiring some wood, and it can be crafted directly from your inventory.
- Log Storage - increases the available global storage for wood. Resources don’t use the same inventory as normal items (like armor, swords, or consumables), and there is separate global storage for them accessible anywhere. By building expansions like Log Storage, you can increase the size of storage available for the specific resource.
- Circular Saw - an instrument that allows processing wood into lumber. You can load wood into it, and after some time, it will be converted into lumber automatically.
- Lumber Storage - increases the available global storage for lumber.
- Tar Kiln - a kiln that can produce tar from wood. It works in a similar manner as Circular Saw and will automatically convert all the wood that you put into it to tar.
- Tar Storage - increases the available global storage for tar.
- Debarker - a tool that increases the wood processing speed of nearby Circular Saw and/or Tar Kiln and can also automatically load resources from the global storage (after the specified threshold) and put them into corresponding instruments. After resource processing finishes, it also transfers obtained materials to the global storage.
- Sawmill - a large machine that helps to harvest logs. Its efficiency depends on the number of trees within its range, and it will regularly provide you with extra wood logs.
- Workbench - allows assigning workers to collect wood for you. Their harvesting speed depends on the tools they are equipped with (better quality axes will allow collecting more wood) and their skill level.
- Counter - a place where you can assign a worker to sell excess wood, lumber, or tar for you.
- Stand - allows displaying resources for sale and increases the selling speed.
- Platform - storage where you can put materials for selling or specify a threshold for each resource after which it will be put on sale automatically.
- Sign - provides various bonuses to selling resources.
Most of the lumberjack’s tools aim to increase the efficiency of collecting wood and automation of this process, but it’s also important to make sure that manual resource harvesting doesn’t become devalued and less relevant. There are certain mechanics to prevent this. Only basic crafting resources can be obtained this way (81 resources in total divided between 9 harvesting professions), and unique resources (142 resources in total) still need to be collected by the characters manually. Basic crafting resources are usually used in large quantities for building and crafting (for example, when constructing fortified bases/outposts or settlements), and having various workshops to help with their harvesting can make it less tedious. At the same time, unique resources are pretty rare and usually hidden in more dangerous places, so gathering them manually while exploring the game region with your combat squad is more common. Overall, we want to make harvesting equipment a nice addition to the process of collecting resources, but not a complete replacement for manual harvesting.
Harvesting skills
Other new additions to the harvesting professions are skills. Previously, only crafting professions had dedicated skill trees, and we felt that harvesting professions were missing some kind of progression. So we decided to implement harvesting skills as well. Here is an example of a woodcutting skill tree.
The skill trees have different branches that focus on various areas of the resource gathering process. Some provide bonuses to harvesting speed or quantity of obtained resources, while others grant more unique abilities, like allowing you to plant trees for woodcutting or increasing their growth speed. The skills are designed to work together with harvesting equipment and complement it. For example, you can plant trees within the range of the sawmill to improve its efficiency, or obtain an ability that increases the amount of harvested unique resources, which is not possible to achieve with only harvesting tools. Workers who can be assigned to help you with resource gathering also benefit from improving their skills, and their efficiency depends on their skill level.
There are also various quality-of-life improvements regarding the building menu and its user interface. We added the ability to switch between equipment rarity levels directly in the menu, added indicators for missing resources and locked tools, as well as refined the process of auto-alignment of building parts to the terrain.
That’s it for today’s update. Thank you so much for checking it out!