Greetings Lords & Ladies,
This update focuses heavily on Quest & Dialogue improvements, wrapping up Villager Death & Affliction systems, Gamepad Support, Performance Optimizations, UI polish, Resource Balance, and continued work on the Kingdom & Ledger systems. This update finalizes our Life & Death Update.
Below are the major highlights included in this update.
Key Highlights
Apothecary Expansion & Infirmary Beds
Villager Death & Knockout States
Graverdigger Functionality
Post Crafting Flow Economy Balance
Merchants Stall
New Quessts & Unique Villagers
Full Controller Support
Villager Deaths
The Affliction and Death systems have been finalized with Graverdigger functionality, the addition of infirmary beds, and knockdown mechanics for wounded guards in battle.
Villager Deaths - Villagers can now properly enter knockdown, bedridden, stabilization, revive, and death states
Players & Healers can stabilize critically injured villagers using medical supplies
Villager deaths are now recorded in the Chronicle
Infirmary Beds - Villagers who are sick and infected will seek out infirmary beds within the Apothecary.
Gravediggers are now functional, and will take corpses to burial plots.
Added HUD notifications for villager knockdowns and deaths
Gamepad Support
We have officially updated with full controller support, so for all you controller players - thank you for your patience. You will now be able to have a playable experience on controllers.
Merchant Stall
The new merchants stall allows you to spend coin on essentials via a merchant trader. So in the case of winter of unforeseen circumstances, players will have the option to convert some coin to much needed emergency supplies.
Added the ability to purchase certain items directly from Merchant Stalls
Expanded economy support systems for future trade progression
Quests, Dialogue & Unique Villagers
A massive pass was made across narrative content and introduces new unique character interactions & Heroic Villager recruitment.
New & Expanded:
Cecilia Questline
Sir Topher Questline
Leonard Questline
Witch Questline
Baron Intro Questlines
Improvements Include:
Dialogue polish and pacing updates
New voice lines and facial animations
Improved quest flow reliability
Better save/load handling for narrative events
More robust abandon/recovery support
Improved waypoint handling
Additional protection against critical quest NPC deaths
Ledger integration improvements for quest tracking
Post Crafting Overhaul Resource & Economy Balance Pass
A major balance pass has been completed across harvesting, crafting, food, fuel, and wildlife systems. This is following up on our previous update which featured an overhaul to our crafting and behavior flow for villagers.
Updated Systems:
Wildlife resource density and spawn balance
Animal herd sizes and seasonal respawns
Resource node sizes and harvest outputs
Foliage regeneration timing
Crafting recipe costs and production times
Food nutrition values
Medical item effectiveness
Firewood and charcoal fuel values
Armor durability and warmth values
Masterwork crafting requirements
Additional Changes:
Elderberries are now labeled as Medicinal Elderberries to better distinguish them from edible berries
Hunters now spend less excessive time away from settlements
Smaller wildlife nodes added near starting regions for finer resource balance
Combat & AI Improvements
Combat and AI behaviors continue to evolve.
Improvements:
Better death handling for creatures and NPCs
Improved hunting behavior
Better AI combat targeting and focus logic
Creature ragdolls no longer block navigation
Improved combat interactions with gamepad controls
Reduced excessive backward dodge behavior
Better handling for hostile/friendly overrides
Archers are more dangerous
Combat speeds have been increased and tuned for more visceral combat experiences.
Performance & Optimization
Significant optimization work has been completed across the project.
Optimization Passes Include:
Niagara scalability and fixed bounds updates
HLOD optimization improvements
Texture memory reductions
Icon texture compression and standardization
Reduced excessive draw calls on carry assets
Optimized cloth and equipment textures
Improved widget optimization systems
Better activation/deactivation handling for distant actors
Additional AI and spawning optimizations
Several large art assets and icons have also been reduced in memory footprint to improve overall stability and performance.
Support Notes
•Hybrid Laptops - We have adjusted defaults for new players, to launch in borderless fullscreen to prevent fullscreen lockups during rendering pipelines especially for hybrid laptop GPU's if you're a hybrid laptop user, ensure you have a discrete GPU set
•Prefabs - If you save a prefab that is the same name as another prefab (ie default prefabs in game) there may be conflicts which results in ghosting build parts - we have addressed this by utilizing coding strings that generate when a prefab is created, but if you notice any issues, be sure to manually rename your prefabs (ie Woodcutter A, B, C) and in general because the game is in early access, clear your prefabs folder in any event steam workshop prefabs cause any issues in your game.
Additional Features & Improvements
UI & HUD
Updated resource icons
New armor and weapon icons
Improved HUD notifications
Updated building menus
Better crop/farm interaction handling
Improved interact wheel functionality
Improved workstation and proprietor menu behavior
World & Art
Additional environment polish passes
Updated camps and POIs
Improved navigation under cliffs and around bandit camps
Lighting updates for Character Creation
New village and environmental props
Additional hairstyles and character assets
Ledger & Kingdom Systems
Added support for tracked/displayed quests
Improved quest categorization
Better event cleanup and handling
Additional Ledger polish and integration improvements
Stability & Fixes
Numerous save/load fixes
Fixed quest persistence issues
Fixed several UI lockups
Improved spawn handling
Fixed interaction edge cases
Fixed multiple affliction and AI state bugs
Fixed several crashes and invalid pointer cases
Thank you again for your continued support and feedback as we continue expanding Noble Legacy throughout Early Access.