Ho ho ho,
Santa is coming with gifts for those of you who have been good gamers this year. We have the first 3 "impossible" difficulty special locations available, featuring multi-tile boss enemies and unique resources that allow crafting of artifacts that become part of world history.
Here's the full changelog for today's update.
Added
- Military Dispatches:
You can dispatch soldiers to a tier-5 (impossible) location from the Military Map. It costs gold, and part of the proceeds will go into the company's coffers.
The army will travel to the POI and wait for you to join them for 30 days.
During dispatches, you can order your soldiers to charge (new button next to minimap), and they will move toward the closest hostile enemy.
Dispatches also have their own battle reports available during dispatch (also next to the minimap) or afterwards, via the new 'Dispatches Forces' button on the Military Screen.
Leaving the dispatch location would force the army to retreat to their hometown.
- Artifacts:
A new category of items with some special rules. You can see the artifact list on the Knowledge Screen, along with their history events and stats.
They can be crafted using tier 5 materials. Artifacts can also be named (from the crafting screen if it was created by the player, or from the knowledge tab if we own it and it was not named yet).
Artifacts are never lost - when destroyed (e.g., by player dying, region being forgotten, etc.), they are instead 'lost' and can be rediscovered by NPCs during world simulation. You cannot salvage artifacts.
Finally, they can be passed around - inherited by descendants, found by NPCs if lost, or claimed during battles.
- New Christmas-themed special location for the Snow biome.
- A random impossible location (T5) is guaranteed to spawn and be visible when starting a new world.
Changed
- State Overview: 'Available family jobs not filled' problem will only show when there are available worker slots AND unemployed adult family members that can work in them.
- You can see your own armies waiting at T5 locations on the world map screen.
- You cannot join defensive battles when the defenders are dispatched to a location.
- Defensive battles when defenders are not present are automatically lost. The enemy can raid the settlement without any issues.
- Only lost conquest battles will cause the disbandment of the defending company. Other types of battles (raid for wealth, soul harvest, etc.) may eliminate soldiers, but the company will persist.
Fixed
- Clicking outside the dropdown while it is expanded will deactivate it, instead of blocking input.
- You should now be able to pick up items that end up under the river tiles by using the context menu (e.g., chicken eggs).
- Prevents moving entities between settlements (also to level 1 settlements) by clicking on them, switching the settlement in the tab, and assigning them to military slots.
- Vampire mums will love their tasty offspring and family members, even if they are not undead yet (and will converse and train them).
- Fixed position numbers in the settlement list in the overview screen on 2560x1440 resolution.
- Fixed stat allocation buttons so they will not be rendered partially over each other in the equipment screen on 2560x1440 resolution.
- Fixed items that had a dexterity bonus were also showing incorrectly as equal to intelligence/willpower bonuses.
- Fixed a rare crash in the Knowledge Screen.
- Fixed the carpenter building being able to produce Maple Wood from Pine Logs.
- When a companion kills an entity that provides some benefit, like unlocking a new recipe, it's rewarded adequately to the player character.
- Reptilion Carpenter is correctly assigned to the Carpenter building instead of the Woodcutter.
- Pressing hotkeys while naming your state should no longer switch screens.
- Fixed a rare crash related to combat.
Modding
- The resource component was expanded by the "granted_passive" field, which evaluates as a passive id. Items crafted with resources that have "granted_passive" will grant that passive when equipped.
- Added a "poi" console command, which can be used to force the spawning of locations of specific difficulty (1 easy to 5 impossible) around the world player position.
- Added new component to support Multitile entities: Chained.
- Added engine support for dynamic character creation in fonts, enabling translations in more languages.
- New Passive Effects: Bonus Attack, Dark Vision, Stamina Percent on Kill (see modding docs passives list).
This will be the final feature update for Soulash 2 this year. With multi-tiles in place that we can expand further with additional AI functionality as different behaviors are needed, we're well-positioned to focus on the final major feature (v0.10 World Events) that will complete my overall game design planned for Early Access, in addition to polishing what is already available, expanding State Management that many of you asked for, Steam Deck support, and the 1.0 release that will come with story continuation after the events of the first game.
After the New Year, I'll review all your suggestions on our Discord to determine which fit the game and are in demand. Please hop in and leave your votes under the features you'd like to see added to the game. I'll update the Roadmap in January and include what's left ahead before the 1.0 stable release, which I hope we'll be able to deliver sometime in 2026.
Thank you all for playing Soulash 2 and for sharing your excitement with me. I wish you many more hours of fun in the coming year.
Merry Christmas and a happy New Year to you all,
Artur