Hello everyone!
Update time!
First, we wanted to let you know that we have updated the main branch to EA_0.65.
This should make all the new tools and features from the quality of life update available to most players.
An now, the update. This time we're introducing many NPC improvements.
Let's go straight to the content:
Blueprint Duties:
Partners can now work on blueprints. All you have to do is assign them to them and make sure they have all the right ingredients available, and then they'll work on them until finished.
With this partners should be able to help you build roads, fields, cabins, mudhuts and practically almost any blueprint you can do yourself.
Of course partner favour and personality will still play a role in how effective and ready to work they are. :)
By the way, partners can still not work on embedded blueprints (like looms or crucibles), but they will be able to in a future update.
Note: We had an issue with improvements (like roads or house features), so this are currently disabled. We'll push a hotfix for them as soon as we can. ;)
Expedition Duties:
Three new duties have been introduced. These will set your partner to go on a special expedition with a high degree of autonomy. Basically they will leave you to do something, and come back once they have succeeded or the conditions no longer apply.
These duties can be activated from the "directions" dialog, and they're all under the new "Complex Tasks" section.
As with other complex NPC features, these still need balancing and polishing. But we'll be working on improving them over the following updates.
Fishing Duty:
This one will cause your partner to search for the nearest body of water with fish, and fish until most of the good fish are gone, then to move to the next body of water and continue fishing, and so on and so forth. And then once they have enough fish or it's starting to get dark they will come back to you.
Foraging Duty:
This one will cause your partner to start exploring the neighbouring areas and foraging them until there's nothing left. Then they will move to a new area and keep foraging. Once they've foraged enough or it's about to get dark they will come back to share their findings.
Hunting Duty:
This last one will cause your partner to go on a hunting trip, provided they have a spear equipped. They will wander the forest and attempt to track animals. If they manage to hunt one they will bring it back to you, and will otherwise return when it starts to get dark.
This last duty was quite complex and still needs more love, so we'll be further improving it in the near future. ;)
General Partner Improvements:
Partner UI:
Partners now have an icon that shows they're busy working on something, and have a text in their description describing both what they're doing and what they're thinking of doing.
Partner Art:
I added some new undefined partner art so you no longer have to stare at the ugly face you all know and love. You can now also change your partner's art mid game. ;)
Partner Toggles:
Partners now differentiate inventory duties into processing and crafting duties and let you toggle them differently. That way you can tell a partner to extract fiber out of nettle without making cords.
Partner Skills:
Partners skills now properly affect their actions and the things they craft, just as it is with the player.
Their skills also improve over time.
Smithing Duties:
Partners can now work on smithing tasks such as striking metal bars and blanks. They can place them on fires to heat them up and then strike them until ready.
Creative Duties:
Partners can now play flutes and drums and make you happy (or stress you) based on how well they play. They can also benefit from you playing instruments and can make wood carvings on their own if they're feeling like it.
Spiritual Duties:
Partners can now release spirits from dead animals and can like spiritual activities depending on their personalities. There's now a new perk that makes them more spiritual too.
Other Duties:
And of course we added many new duties that were missing. Such as:
- Crushing bones and make bonemeal.
- Mining from flint veins.
- Storing food in marked containers.
- Peeling fireroot and cattail roots.
- Placing and removing leather from stretching frames.
- Threshing wheat and rye.
- Harvesting Wood Sorrel and Cattail.
Coming Next for NPCs!
We have a lot of new NPC features coming in no particular order, which we'll be mixing with normal updates that should be adding new late game content.
Working Stations:
A new features that let's you mark places as work stations and causes partners to go there during the day if they're not following you, so that they can complete any tasks available in the area. And once it's dark they go back home to rest and be with you.
This is ideal for NPC you want taking care of gardens, animals, traps, gathering wood, etc...
Allied Combat and NPC Health:
The ability for NPCs to participate in combat as an ally, making it more feasible to take on more dangerous beasts like bears.
Also the ability for NPCs to get wounds and get sick, giving them a new way to die!
Personality Improvements:
New features to give them more task autonomy and make them initiate dialogs on their own more often, so they can feel more real. Also improvements to make their dialog systems deeper and more interesting.
Improved Partner Food Interactions:
The ability for partners to eat food from plates, as well as the ability to cook and serve the table so you can eat what they prepare.
Non-Human NPC Allies:
In the form of pets (like dogs or cats) or familiar spirits.
And now, the patch notes:
Version EA_0.67 and Hotfixes since the last announcement:
- NPCs now tell you what they are doing or are most likely to do next in their details window.
- NPCs show a little icon on their card when they are in the middle of doing something.
- Fixed a bug with the Commissions screen where the "talk/trade/commissions" buttons would appear.
- Fixed a bug where the NPC trading screen would glitch if you placed something inside a container that was in the middle row.
- Store Food duty is now working.
- Flint Veins can now be mined.
- Partners can now use stretching frames.
- New inventory duties added (crush bones, crush bone pieces, peel fireroot and cattail root, thresh rye and wheat sheaves, release spirit), these actions are done more effectively if the right tools are present.
- Creative Partners will now sometimes perform creative tasks instead of idling.
- Implemented partner wood carving.
- Implemented partner flute playing.
- Clay Basins can now be placed inside Campfires.
- Implemented expedition duties (foraging, fishing, hunting).
- Implemented blueprint duties.
- Added new custom partner and perk art.
- Partner art and name can now be changed mid-game.
- Implemented processing and crafting inventory duty distinction.
- Connected partner skills to duty system.
- Added smithing duties.
- Added creative duties such as flute and drum playing and wood carving.
- Fixed a bug that was causing foxes to enter enclosures.
- Outdoor Enclosures and Cabins are now considered to have a door and animals can no longer enter them.
- Fixed the bug with Partners not being able to use the Fireplace for Warming up.
- Fireplace can now be assigned ownership (this is however not necessary for the Partner to warm up).
- Fixed the bug which caused Fishing Bait baited traps to only work properly when the player is present.
- Enclosure Research sooner, requiring only that you have a long stick.
- Fish and other tiny animals now open on their description tab to make it easier to release their spirit.
- Fixed a bug where players would get stuck in the combat screen when a Primeval Wolf escaped.
- Butchering Calves now always give Stomachs when butchered.
- Fixed the Bug with Blood coagulating into a single blood curd instead of scaling with the amount of liquid.
- Fixed a bug where very old saves would be broken after the NPC update.
- Temporarily removed Partner's bio so that it doesn't hide important statuses in the main tab.
- Fixed a bug where liquid fat would not revert to solid fat and disappear after cooling.
- Added a "Help" tab to the NPC inspection window with some tips.
- Fixed a bug where cards info would not appear when clicking on them.
- Fixed a bug where Partners could get stuck performing long duration duties because they kept constantly forgetting what they were doing.
- Partners now show what their Home location is in the "Details" tab.
- Partners now start with their Home set to their spawning location.
- Bed keeping Duty now properly works on the improvised shelter.
- The player no longer escapes to a different area when retreating from non-aggressive encounters.
- Firekeeping Duty mark now stays on the campfire if it is extinguished and turned back on again.
- Dry Peat Turf now shows up in Camp Filter.
- Fixed the Twine Flexibility Icon.
- Inspect Garden duty no longer appears twice in the Garden Plot duty list.
- it is no longer possible to make clay bowls out of plaster.
- Fixed the bug which prevented a full storage pot to be used in Water Spirit Summoning Ritual.
- Torch now takes a minimum of 3 minutes to make.
- Changed the message when Milk transforms into Curdled Milk.
- Repairing the Levee with a Piece of Dirt now destroys the dirt.
- Grey hair colour is now exclusive with other colours.
- Fixed a bug where animals could still enter houses with doors, because doors would only start working after saving and loading.
- Fixed a bug that was causing floods to happen in some indoor environments.
- Fixed an issue that was causing some inventory duties to apply to objects outside of your partner's inventories.
- Fixed an issue where partners asking for attention would get trapped on an awkwardness spiral.
- Clay jars now take less time to craft.
- Increased filth tolerance for cleaning duty.
- Updated Chinese localization for the new content of the NPC update.
- Partially updated Korean localization for the new content of the NPC update.
- Fixed an issue that was causing females to grow too much facial hair.
- Fixed a bug that was causing partners to sometimes gain affection and infatuation too fast.
- Fixed a bug where giving a container to an NPC and travelling around would make the items inside the container turn invisible.
- Partners can now butcher the Beaver Carcass.
- Partners now remember the Firekeeping duty on the Fireplace even if it gets extinguished.
- Fixed many cases of duties the partner wouldn't do if the player wasn't around.
- Rain should no longer fill up open containers inside structures.
- Animals should no longer be able to feed themselves from inside huts, cabins and cellars.
- Partners should no longer be able to perform wood gathering actions from inside structures.
- Fixed a bug that was causing partners to clean obsessively.
- Clothes now properly apply their effect to Partners when the player is not around.
- Fixed a bug that was causing some inventory duties to not get properly toggled on or off.
- Cutting Leather into Smaller Pieces now has a confirmation button.
- Making Firebrew from fireroot pieces now takes 4 ticks.
- Partners are now able to eat stew.
- Brain Mush can now be dissolved into stew.
- Partners can now fill Barrels with Water just like Clay Vases.
- Fixed a bug where Fairyweed powder stored inside clay jars would spoil faster than other powders.
- Fixed a bug where Pouches would apply a flat spoilage reduction instead of a multiplicative spoilage slowdown effect.
- Fixed a bug that was causing Partridges, Badgers, Beavers and Foxes not to eat from traps.
- Fixed a bug that was causing Beavers not to repair or finish their Dams and Burrows.
- Fixed a bug that was causing Manure to cause global discomfort to the player.
- Fixed a bug where partners would drink water when hungry confusing it for stew.
- Partners will now tend to gather or chop larger piles of wood and twigs before stopping.
- Partners now cut down Birch and Willow Trees properly.
- Bears can now eat from Cooking Pots.
- Fixed a bug that was causing partners to get stuck if you traded them a fishing line.
- Fixed multiple partner perk typos.
- I is now possible to wet soap with water collected from the waterfalls.
- Fixed winter art for internal cabin and mudhut rooms.
- Fish scraps can now be cooked on open fires just like raw meat can and will also burn if left too long.
- Partners can now warm up properly from hot ovens.
- Kingcup Growth Percentage is now permanently visible.
- Raw Frogs without spirits no longer have enchantment tabs.
- Crayfish can now be dissolved into stews.
- Corrected raw nettles help section texts.
- Cisterns can now be built inside enclosures.
- Enabled ownership in a few new containers.
- Fixed a bug where average height partners were burning too many calories.
- Balance tweaks to infatuation and appetite.
- Fixed a "can't do two things at once" bug related to duties.
- Rain Cistern can now be demolished the same way Kiln can.
- Fixed a bug where the "Cancel" button and time wheel/fade to black screen would disappear when an NPC did an action while you were sleeping or travelling.
- Fixed Clothes not having their weight reduced when equipped by NPCs.
- Added a little indicator on cards that NPCs are wearing.
- Fixed a bug which prevented Partners from cleaning Enclosures.
- Added Clean Duty to Cave locations.
- Quiver Blueprint is now inside Equipment subtab of the Tailoring tab together with the spear and knife sheath.
- Fixed a bug where Partner would only inspect the left-most Garden or Field.
- Rebalanced weight loss and appetite effects in NPCs.
- Connected weight to appetite in NPCs so they get hungrier when reaching lower weights.
- NPCs now complain less about temperature.
That's all for now!
See you all for the next update! :)
Reminder: All fixes and new content are added to the public beta branch first.
If you want to access them you can find the instructions on the link below. Be warned though, things are less stable there and are likely to undergo balance changes quite frequently! :)
https://steamcommunity.com/app/2868860/discussions/0/600774299444324511/