Hello everyone,
Banks are now deconstructable again - We are not taking any further actions on the multiple banks this week. The developer intent was always that there would be one bank per claim, and the current state of settlements having multiple banks is not good user experience. We have plans to make banks upgradable and expandable in the future, being able to add more slots, tabs, or depth to the storage. This is also important with the introduction of player housing to make sure that the storage you can build in your player house isn't totally invalidated by settlements creating many cheap banks.
Settlement Placement Proximity - We've added a minimum distance that you can place a player settlement from an existing player settlement. We believe this will give settlements less frustration when it comes to a new settlement popping up on your doorstep. This doesn't impact/change the ability for claims to be expanded close to each other. We've been monitoring how players are using settlements and claims in the game over the last few weeks, and we have taken note of several cases that we believe are unhealthy for the game. This is the first of several changes aimed at remedying some of these unintended uses of settlements.
Future Plans
Tool/Equipment Scrapping - Since we designed the tool upgrade system, we were aware that there would be an accumulation of low rarity tools and had always planned to add a way to recycle them for some use. We have nailed down the design we are going with and are hoping to include this in next week's update. The primary use of scrap will be to make further attempts at raising the rarity of a tool. The goal is to not disrupt the value of high rarity tools, while raising the price floor for low rarity tools to prevent them flooring the market and eventually becoming worthless. I'm mentioning this now so you can make an informed decision on what to do with your extra tools over the next week.
Player Housing - We are making good progress on finishing player housing. I wanted to give a bit of info as I've seen many questions on how it will work. Players will be able to buy a house deed from Brico which will give them a house. Players can upgrade their deed with Brico to get a larger house. Your house cannot be destroyed or lost in any way and has no maintenance cost. Your house is accessed by "moving" it into a residential building in the world, this acts as the door in the world connecting to your house. Ruined towns have a residential building which can accommodate infinite players, while player settlements can build buildings which have limited slots. Active players with their house in your settlement will give addition income for the town, creating an incentive to build sufficient housing (similar to coins minted by players using your crafting stations). You can move your house to a new location, including if you are evicted, or if the residential building you are living in is removed. You can customize the permissions of your house similar to a settlement and share a house with other players. We will release some more in depth info and reveal of housing prior to it's release in the game, we can't wait for you all to try it.
Patch-Notes - Weekly Update July 10th
Note: we are aware of an issue on MacOS causing some graphical issues on the map and are working to fix
Notable Changes
Player settlements can not be placed within a minimum range of another player settlement
Banks are deconstructable again (No further actions are being taken on banks this week)
Fixes to how several stats show in the stats window which made them look incorrect
Further improvements to empire map territory rendering and names
Added options to hide some map icons and skip the animation transition (this is an workaround for the map frame drops while we continue to improve the underlying issues)
Added a new type of supply pack crafted by scholars
Added around a dozen new emotes, you can see them in the emote list in the expanded chat area
Added the ability to make fertilizer from Meat and Ocean Fish
Made several buffs to hunting EXP (more EXP per action while hunting and processing, processing takes longer)
All hunted animals now give 3 hides instead of 2 when processed
Fixed the passenger seat on the Ox mount
Updated the stacking size of clay and sand to stack higher
Many buildings are now prevented from being built inside (currently just in Alesi's hideout)
Added Achievements and Titles for skills that were missing them (and new UI to see Skill Achievement)
Updated T4 berries to have much more health and respawn more aggressively to deal with the overall low amount of them (will take effect on new ones)
Fixed several cases where some T7-10 resources would drop the wrong tier of item when destroyed)
Added the ability to deposit coins into Settlement treasury
Entity Labels (toggled with U) can now be customized in the settings (which things you want to see labels for)
Fixed bug where barter stall buildings could have their stock accessed by players with less than co-owner permission
Added the "First Awakened" title to the game (if you own on the hub you will receive next time you login into game)
Added 2 new Types of Pillar Shaping: cobblestone and framed dirt (more of these coming in future updates)
Other Changes
Rangifer has unique color now
Traveler fruit rarity updated to reflect it's rarity/usefulness
Fixed a bug causing camera to get disconnected from your player
Deployables should now include their info in the tooltip (this might be listed twice until we remove the stats from the description text)