Dear Pioneers,

The latest Beta test of our upcoming Mining Update 0.7.0 is out now!
Please tell us what you think on Discord or in our Open Beta discussion forum on Steam.
Thank you for your support and have fun testing our new features!

Top 3 Highlights

• Subsurface mining including the famous Geologist
• New enemy faction “Scavs” expand their territory and exploit mining resources
• New player combat units and production chains for gold and steel

Features

Please note that most of the new features require a fresh start of a game session as the required resources and enemies are not placed on the map in older saved games.

Geologist

• The islands of Pagonia now contain subsurface resources.
• The Geologist’s Hut hosts up to 3 Geologists.
• The Geologists can travel quite far and also outside your own territory. Like Explorers they may run away from enemies or become their victim.
• Geologists need to be supplied with rations for their journeys.
• The Geologist can search any scree and stone plateau for mining resources hidden below.
• Beside coal, iron and silver there is gold and nickel to be discovered.
• Anything discovered will be marked with a signpost reflecting the findings. If something has been found in an area for the first time, a notification will appear for the player.
• Surface resources remain in place, but their amount is reduced considering the additional subsurface resources. The overall mining resource amount is slightly increased to reflect that they are harder to find and obtain.

Mines

• Five mine types are available now to harvest subsurface resources: Gold Mine, Nickel Mine, Iron Mine, Silver Mine and Coal Mine.
• Three Miners holding a pickaxe are necessary to operate a sub-surface mine, they go down using a mechanical elevator
• The miners working in a mine need nutrition food supply, similar to the miners working in huts on the surface.
• Additionally, the miners need one softwood beam each time they travel down to extend their tunnel system
• The Miners will not always find resources, even if there are some nearby. The success rate depends on the number of suited resources nearby. If a deposit is small or depleting, some or all may return empty-handed. The displayed efficiency rate of the building will inform you about the current condition.
• If a mine is unable to find any more resources because the nearby veins are depleted, the miners will stop working, no longer consume food / use softwood beams and a notification will inform you.

Scavs

• The nasty Scavs will compete for territory and resources with the Pagonians. Note that the Scavs are a new and challenging enemy type completely different from the Pagonian faction.
• Their base is called “Grimy Bulwark” and serves them as a smithy to craft their tools / weapons / armor as well as a place to store their mining resources.
• In general, most Scav units wear thick armor and are hard to defeat, but the new player unit type “Blade Dancer” (see below) targets their weak spots with fast moves to knock them out efficiently.
• The Scavs have various different unit types:
  • Creepers use stone to extend the Scav territory. If the Scavs find copper, they are able to produce more tools and armor for new creepers and expand faster.
  • Stonebreakers harvest any stone and metal resource available on the surface. Both coal and iron is needed for their tools, but they are weak in combat.
  • Pit Watchers protect the weak Stonebreakers as they are specialized for combat. Their weapons and armor also need iron and coal.
  • If the Scavs find silver, they can produce the sophisticated tools for their Orescrapers. They are able to build a Pit and harvest metal resources below the surface, but they are weak in combat.
  • Greedy Watchers use steel weapons and will only appear if the Scavs get their hands on nickel. They are a serious enemy to overcome.
  • Vicious Watchers need both steel and gold for their armor and weapons, and are the strongest enemy in Pagonia for now.

• If the Scavs find and harvest enough limestone, they are able to raise a new base within their territory. The units will distribute between the old and new base and continue to spread. Stop them before they become too strong.
  
• If all units of a Scav base are defeated, the base will collapse. All nearby territory will become neutral again and all resources that were still stored in the base will be on the ground for you or other Scavs to take them.
  

New objective buildings:

• The “Monument of Knowledge” is the second iconic building (after the “Light Spire”)
• Currently, it can be requested by neutral villages to be built by the player
  • Note that we plan to add functionality to those iconic buildings, but we do not have details to announce for that, as of yet.

• A golden statue has been added to the objective buildings, which can be requested by neutral villages
  

The Furnace

• Is a new building which uses coal to melt and merge iron ingots and nickel ingots to produce steel ingots.
• The furnace is an advanced buildings and needs cement to be built.

New commodities (resources, products, weapons, armor)

• Gold ore and nickel ore can be discovered by the geologist and harvested with the gold mine and Nickel mine.
• Gold ingots and nickel ingots are produced in the smelting works adding coal to the ores.
• Gold coins are produced in the mint and have a value of 6 if they arrive in the Treasury.
• Steel ingots are produced in the new building Furnace, which combines iron ingots and nickel ingots using coal.
• Steel can be used to produce various new equipment at the weapon smith: steel daggers, steel halberds and steel maces. Besides that, the weapon smithy can also craft iron daggers now.
• Steel shields are produced at the armor smith and steel padded armor combines leather or cloth with steel and is now available at the Tailor’s Shop.
• All new commodities can appear in trade and gift offers of the Pagonian villages
• All objectives have been extended to include the new commodities.

New player units

• Blade Dancers are skillful fighters which are the best answer to the well protected Scavs.
  • They can be recruited in the Adventurer’s Guild
  • The Blade Dancer needs light armor and iron daggers, has a combat value of 5 and a 50% combat bonus against any Scav.
  • The Swift Blade Dancer uses padded armor and steel daggers, has a combat value of 10 and a 100% combat bonus against any Scav unit type.
  • The Champion Blade Dancer uses steel-padded armor and steel daggers, has a combat value of 15 and a 150% combat bonus against any Scav.

• Some extensions and modifications have been made to the guards:
  • The new Elite Guard uses a steel halberd, chainmail and has a combat value of 15. It also claims almost three times as much territory each time it uses a borderstone.
  • All guards have a 100% combat bonus against Scav “Creepers”.
  • Veteran Guards have an increased combat value of 8 now (before: 6). They also claim almost two times as much territory each time they use a borderstone compared to the simple guard.

• There is also a new soldier available:
  • The new Elite Soldier uses a steel mace, steel shield and chain armor and has a combat value of 20, which is the highest combat value of a player unit.

Improvements

Content

All predefined maps have been recreated to enable the new features.

• The visuals of many areas (e.g. lakes, stone plateau, etc.) have been improved.
• They all contain subsurface resources now.
• The maps “Unfriendly Neighbors” and “Dangerous Hills” are now with Scav enemies.
• The objectives, trade and gift offers have been adjusted and improved.

A dropdown now allows to enable or disable specific enemy types before creating a map.

• You can disable an enemy type, e.g. disable all Spectres.
• You can choose only one enemy type, e.g. create maps with Werewolves or Scavs only.

Gameplay

Farming balancing changed

Impact of sediment types has been increased to ensure that unsuited terrain has a significant lower production output:

• Best: 100% plants grow up (as before)
• Good: 50% plants grow up (was 75% before)
• Poor: 25% plants grow up (was 50% before)
• Very poor: 10% plants grow up (was 25% before)

Also a few changes for individual plants:

• Pumpkin on Sandy terrain: was “Best” => is changed to “Good”
• Pumpkin on Dusty terrain: was “Poor” => is changed to “Very poor”
• Wheat on Sandy terrain: was “Poor” => is changed to “Very poor”

Tavern shows a history of meals served

• For each meal currently produced, the type of meal, the ingredients used, and the total nutrition / comfort value are displayed.
• The current state for each meal (shopping, cooking, serving, served) is shown.
• Beside the meals currently in production, the last 6 finished and served meals are shown.
• For each meal ingredient, the nutrition value and comfort meal value is displayed now in a tooltip

Residences and Cottages show a history of meals consumed.

• The residences and cottages show which meals have been consumed recently.
• The current state for each meal (consuming, returning home, finished) is shown in the tooltip.
• The value of the comfort meal is displayed and the food ingredients used are displayed in the tooltip.

Mines, mining huts and quarries show a history of meals consumed.

• The current state for each meal being consumed (consuming, finished) is shown in the tooltip.
  • Note that the “stock” section already shows meals incoming or available.

• The value of each nutrition meal is displayed and the food ingredients used are displayed in the tooltip.
  

Rebalanced the amount of diggers ordered by construction sites.

• Some building types did not order enough diggers, which means leveling the ground was slow in steep terrain.

Explorers now use less rations during exploration.

Visuals

• New plants for rock plateaus
• Better plant variety in grass land
• New option to control the quality of animations in the distance. This can reduce CPU load significantly when many units are on screen.
• New shadow rendering quality level “Ultra”
• Added enemy camp destruction VFX

Audio

• New music track “Challenging Fate”
• If a building is selected, a sound effect which reflects the building will now be played.
• Audio improvements and mixing

Misc

• Several UI layout improvements
• Lighting setups now have a description in the map setup window
• Improved error reporting in case of desyncs
• Added bonus track “Challenging Fate“ to the soundtrack

Fixes

Visuals

• Fixed: Particle effects are no longer visible through fog of unexplored
• Fixed: Removed small jump in animation of units when entering or leaving a building
• Fixed: Two residents could stand in the same spot in front of a residence
• Fixed: Added missing demolish building VFX

Misc

• Fixed: Several crashes
• Fixed: Several desync reasons
• Fixed: Unreachable points of interest should no longer occur
• Fixed: Cases where two deposits were overlapping on some maps
• Fixed: Bread is now regarded as main dish in the Tavern

Known Issues

• Scav High Tower, Scav Mine and Monument of Wisdom still have placeholder models and visuals that will be improved and swapped out during Open Beta
• Mint work animation is not working as intended right now and will also be fixed during Open Beta
• Missing Monument of Wisdom model & icon
• Missing Golden Statue icon
• Missing objective icons
• Missing notification icons
• Placeholder Scav Mine model
• Placeholder Scav Claimer model