Hello everyone!
Another update for Blacksmith Master is ready! I'm trying to address as much feedback and reviews as possible, so for the next few updates, expect new features, as well as reworked old features that are causing issues and confusion. :)
Also, if you’ve spent some time with the game and feel like leaving a review on Steam, that’d really help me out. I’ve been going through reviews constantly to figure out what’s working and what isn’t — a lot of the changes in this update came directly from stuff mentioned there. No need to write anything fancy or long, but even a few honest lines make a difference.
Thanks again for all the support and feedback — it makes a big difference.
Upgraded Smelters
The first thing I want to address is the issue where, in the mid-to-late game, you need too many assistants crafting ingots, and it becomes a bottleneck really fast. It was really obvious that, besides upgraded furnaces, I should also add upgraded smelters, which can produce 2 and 3 ingots simultaneously. You need to unlock these upgrades in the mastery tree. :)
Restock Resources Overhaul
One of the most frustrating things in managing the workshop was restocking ingots. You had to drag an assistant to the "Restocking ingots" column, then manually choose the source and destination for transferring. With many storage facilities, the number of assistants grew exponentially. It was also really illogical how restocking wood and ores worked one way, and ingots completely differently. That's why I decided to merge both duties into one, just called "Restock resources".
Now, besides selecting wood or ore, you can select any ingot, and the assistant will do all the work :)
For this to work, I was missing one piece, and that was a way to mark ingot storage as either "source" or "destination" for restock.
Obviously, you want ones close to smelters to be the source, and ones close to blacksmiths to be the destination.
I also read a lot of feedback on how you guys want certain storages to be used only for smelting, and others used only for crafting items, because blacksmiths were constantly coming to the smelting area to take ingots.
Taking all this into consideration, I added new settings for each ingot storage, allowing you to choose whether to allow or block certain actions.
Mastery Tree & Stronger Miners
For readability, I also added two new rows to the mastery tree, but that's just the first step. In the next update, I will introduce a completely reworked mastery tree that allows for much more control over what you want to unlock. :)
Finally, there was one more improvement that addressed a significant issue - the inability to produce enough ores in the mines. Upon analyzing the situation, it became evident that miners wasted a lot of time traveling back and forth to collect ore.
That's why I added a new upgrade to the mastery tree - stronger miners. When you unlock it, they will be able to carry 2 ores at once, improving their performance by a huge margin.
Bug Fixes
Certain elite traits will not appear in the pool if you have already hired workers who have them.
Alt-tabbing out of the game will not cause a lot of sounds to be played when you come back.
Continued improving performance for certain situations.
Thank you for taking the time to read this blog post. We look forward to seeing you in two weeks for the next update! ~Luka