I have a horrible cold so I've been sitting in bed watching Deadwood with my cat, but work is still getting done!
Fixed an issue where crop harvesting was yielding no crops.
Fixed a longstanding bug where corpse dissection always only gave you 15 minutes of proficiency training regardless of how long the dissection took. Dissection training is now relative to the size of the creature you're dissecting. The base rate is now 15 minutes of training, increasing by one for every step of size category above tiny. This effectively triples the rate at which you learn weakpoint proficiencies from dissecting human-sized enemies, and pentuples it for hulks. Using clean surfaces or NPC helpers speeds up dissection, but it does not reduce the amount you learn.
NPC helpers now learn weakpoint proficiencies from things you're dissecting at a slightly reduced rate. Previously, they did not learn at all.
Passengers in moving vehicles now learn the piloting proficiency for that vehicle type (car, boat, helicopter) at 20% the rate of the driver. Previously, they did not learn at all.
It is now possible to learn the helicopter piloting proficiency during gameplay. As you cannot fly a helicopter without the proficiency, at present the only methods are to find a random NPC who has it, recruit them, and ask them to train you, or to recruit such an NPC, switch to them, and fly your main character around as a passenger. The base learning time for this proficiency is 20 hours, so it will not come quickly in any event. Expect more methods (and a guaranteed helicopter pilot NPC) to make their way into the game soon-ish.
Fixed an issue where throwing a weapon which was in a sheath was using the default obtain cost and not granting you the discounted cost for drawing from a purpose-built container. This should make throwing items out of sheaths, bandoliers, etc. noticeably faster, but may make it slower to throw an item which is in a backpack. In any event, it is now equivalent to (w)ielding the item and then (t)hrowing it.
Fixed an issue that was causing about 40% of random NPCs in the game to be generated at an emaciated body weight. This was an existing issue from DDA that I thought I had previously fixed, but my fix didn't address the underlying issue, so I rewrote the code. NPCs now generate between 50% and 120% of their ideal body weight, heavily weighted toward 100%. As time passes, they will trend more underweight, but you will not see them starving. I intend to later add a separate chance for an NPC to be obese or very underweight which has some more interactivity (specific professions, quests, spawn conditions).
Added short steel and bronze spears. As the name implies, these are shortened versions of the regular spears, similar to what a Viking or a Zulu warrior might have used. They are faster and slightly less damaging than regular spears, and can only be used in melee, but they suffer no penalty for being used this way. They are crafted from the full-length versions with just a wood saw and a couple of minutes.
Increased the damage for pickaxes and gave them proper to-hit values. Added Sweep Attack and Brutal Strike to their technique list. They're quite slow, but you really don't want to get hit with one.
Removed the old unused backgrounds from the obsoletion list. Backgrounds don't need to be obsoleted, so putting them in there just makes them continue to show up when they shouldn't.
Added sledgehammers to the earthworking tool itemgroup, though rarely. This will make them infrequently spawn in many more places.
Added lump hammers to more itemgroups, to similar effect.
Updated the itemgroup for shoes, adjusting spawn rates and adding shoe types that ought to have been there and weren't. This should result in a wider variety of shoes spawning in the world.
Audited to-hit values for pens, scissors, and shears.
Removed the duffel bag from the cattail-gathering quest random NPCs can give.
Renamed the motorsports background to driving, making it clearer that it's just there to grant the driving proficiency.
Made Shell and Chitin Carapace/Crustacean Carapace mutually exclusive. Stacking these mutations was a bug.
Mandeep Singh no longer spawns with a scimitar, instead having a kirpan like his father. He also has a school bag so he can hold onto his items better and shouldn't throw any more errors.
Removed some of Alonso's items as he had nowhere to keep them, since his pants are missing. The cudgel was also making him look sort of menacing when he's mostly just hiding in the bathroom because his pants are missing.
Changing professions during character creation now resets your stats, start location, traits, and backgrounds, as there were some odd issues that were popping up when people repeatedly switched professions while having many traits selected.