Since the release of Tavern Keeper last November, we have published over 70 updates ranging from adding quality-of-live features, responding to player reports, and (of course) bug fixes, but now our First Major Update is here!
This is the result of months of work, including another six weeks of refinement in our experimental branch (thank you, testers 💚).
Update 1 has some major features that we have wanted to bring to the game, and was also majorly influenced by your feedback. We’ve got an incredible range of players, and we can’t wait to see how you all take these new features and create some amazing taverns. Let’s dive in!
Key Features of Update 1
Color Picker
Go wild and customize the color of any item in Design Mode. Each object has a number of colors associated with it. Click on the object and you’ll be able to change each one individually, including the hue, turning it metallic or shiny, and generally making it look exactly how you want.
This extends to any item in Design Mode - make a spooky tavern of only dark, moody colors, or a verdant palace of forest green. Your choice! 
Steam Deck Verified ✅ & Controller Support
We heard your requests and went all-in implementing full controller support throughout the game and are happy to say that Tavern Keeper is now also officially Steam Deck Verified ✅
Adding controller support was a huge undertaking. Our UI is handcrafted (and hand-animated!) in 3D, which meant that we had to implement this from scratch! But this also meant we were going through our entire UI and we took that opportunity to make several improvements which benefit everyone, regardless of whether you play using a controller or use keyboard and mouse.
Some noteworthy highlights:
You can now scale the UI text to your liking.
Right-click to close is now implemented and the new default so you can close any windows or de-select objects quickly by right-clicking (an often requested feature).
There are more control bindings, you can now configure shortcuts to open the staff schedule, open the hiring screen and many others.
Additionally, we’ve added 16:10 screen support, integrated with Steam Input API (which means you can customize the controller bindings for pretty much any controller using Steam) and made sure you can switch between keyboard / mouse and controllers seamlessly.
Arcane Orders
We’ve heard your feedback that manually managing every single stock order can be cumbersome, so we added the Arcane Order system as a response. Sign an Arcane Order contract with any shop on the worldmap, set minimum and desired stock amounts and have your staff automagically order items.
You can also specify delivery times so you can have all your arcane deliveries arrive in a particular span of time. This enables you to optimize your staff schedule and ensure that fresh deliveries can be stored away promptly in your storerooms when they arrive.
You can set priorities, a daily budget, a money reserve and the cost of the arcane orders scale with our difficulty settings making this system add another level of strategic depth to the game.
Tavern Keeper Workshop
Since release, players have created tens of thousands of custom design templates and have shared many of them using our share-code system, but there was no easy way to discover them in a central place.
Now, we have created a bespoke section of our website called the Tavern Keeper Workshop, which will allow you to publicly list your own creations and discover items published by other Tavern Keeper players!
You’ll also be able to:
build a library of items you like
create collections of items
favorite items
discover fresh or trending creations
The item library you build on the workshop automatically synchronizes to the game so you no longer have to manually copy/paste sharecodes.
If you want to get a head start, click here to check out some featured items.
The Workshop is our foundational feature to support creative players even more in the future. It allows us to feature designs, and featured items may appear as patron gifts in your game!
⚠️ Tip: If you are one of the many players who have created amazing Designs and you want to share them more easily with players, just log into the Workshop with the Steam account that owns the game and you can publicly list your existing designs for everyone to see.
More Random Stories
Update 1 adds eleven new randomly occurring stories to encounter as you play. From disgruntled employees to enterprising smugglers, the world of Tavern Keeper continues to grow.
Additional Features
More Design Pieces
We added 391 more design pieces to Design Mode, further extending the big catalogue of building blocks available to you based on the feedback from players. There are now more basic building blocks with many curved, round and chamfered shapes. We added more flat icons which come in handy for posters and artworks and there’s a selection of flowers, organic shapes and broken bottles too.
Together with the Color Picker Tool, this unlocks even more creative flexibility for your designs.
Decorate Animated Objects
Previously any moving parts of objects were inaccessible to the Design Mode which meant you couldn’t decorate them. This was frankly robbing(!) you of the opportunity to make, let’s say, any genius decorations to the outhouse door for example. This egregious oversight has now been corrected - in fact, you can now make a completely custom outhouse too if you so wish. Go for it!
Design Sockets
This is a bit more of an advanced feature but if you've ever tried to design your own chairs and tables, you’ll have noticed that they automatically react to where they are placed, so if say, you place a 4-seater table against a wall, the chairs that don’t fit in this location will automatically disappear. Generally pretty helpful!
This previously worked for custom designs too, but the Design Mode guessed which parts belong to a chair based on the visual position, which wasn’t always correct. Now, designers can override in which “socket” a design piece belongs to, via the Object Hierarchy, which will make it much easier to create the exact layout and decorations you want.
Roasts
Unlocked at 2.5 tavern stars, Roasts are a new meal type. Take a single big chunk of meat, mushroom or sunroot and roast deliciously over a fire. Compared to soups or stews, they are easier to manage as they only require a single ingredient but beware: they also spoil quicker!
Thanks to feedback, we’ve also further rebalanced soups and stews. Soups and stews now give more portions and the optional third ingredient slot further increases portion size. Now soups, stews, and roasts all have their own strengths and tradeoffs, allowing for more varied strategies.
Large Barrel Rack
What’s better than a barrel rack holding three barrels? A Large Barrel Rack holding seven of course!
This new furniture piece also unlocks at 2.5 tavern stars, gives your storeroom that rustic barrel storage look and slows down spoilage more than the earlier drink storage options. Unlike the smaller rack, it does not have to be attached to a wall.
More Efficient Simulation
With Update 1 we have reworked and improved large swathes of the underlying systems, especially focusing on CPU usage. The game should run better and smoother throughout.
Additional Quality-of-Life Features
And of course that’s not all! There are many more smaller changes that address player requests, optimization, and more.
Here are some highlights (the full changelog follows below).
Holding down Q/E now fine-rotates the camera. You can still use click and hold on the middle mouse button, but this should give you more flexibility.
Build Menu is now faster, has better filtering and can be browsed with scroll wheel or shoulder buttons.
Game Speed 3 no longer oscillates and is smoother and faster.
You can now prevent rooms from auto-merging when building rooms via modifier key (toggle it by using Alt or Left Bumper + D-PAD Right on gamepad).
The finance button now shows upcoming payments and the tooltip shows a detailed breakdown of loans and wages.
You can now reclaim more of your screen space with the collapsible build menu.
And much much more…
What’s Next?
With Update 1 generally available now and given the sheer amount of changes, we’ll observe if there are any remaining issues we missed and deliver further updates if necessary. If you spot anything that doesn’t seem right, please feel free to press F3 in-game to report it.
Other than this, it’s onward on the journey through Early Access (see our Roadmap). We’ve been hard at work on Update 2 for a long time which will introduce a whole new level ⭐, bringing your story under the mountain into the realm of the dwarves and introducing a bunch of exciting features, content and mechanics.
Until next time: Happy tavern keeping,
Patrick
And The Tavern Keeper Team
Changelog
Here is the full changelog with some more details:
New
Color Picker Tool in Design mode
Full Controller Support
Steam Deck Support and Steam Deck Verified
16:10 screen aspect ratio support
Arcane Orders: Sign arcane contracts to automagically stock up your tavern when running low
Tavern Keeper Workshop and integration
New meal type: Roasts
New furniture: Large Barrel Rack
391 New Design Pieces in Design Mode
Ability to decorate animated objects
Ability to assign decorations to Design “Sockets”
UI Text is now scalable to your preference
Eleven new random stories
Featured Tavern Keeper Workshop items may appear as patron gifts (opt-out under Settings)
Quality of Life
Added Right-click to close and deselect (now the default)
Collapsible Build Menu
Scroll-wheel support in the build menu
Long press Q/E now fine-rotates camera
Press Alt (or Left Bumper + D-PAD Right on gamepad) while building rooms to prevent same-type rooms from auto-merging
Reworked autosave to run on configurable intervals
Confirmation popup when building walls or rooms would demolish existing objects
Worldmap now displays shop markers and clicking them navigates to the region and opens the shop
You can now instruct sleeping staff to do a job (and they will begrudgingly wake up and do it)
Added command to instruct sick staff to stay in bed until fully healed
Ability to disallow normal drink barrels to be used in fire extinguishers
Added control binding for toggling walls (default to End key or Right Bumper + X with gamepad)
Design Mode Object Hierarchy now supports multi-selection dragging and shift-click, shift-control-click behaviours
New icon on items in larder overview if stock-deliveries are underway
Clicking items in the shop or arcane orders will highlight existing stock in the larder overview
Digital/analogue clock preference is now remembered
Finance button now shows upcoming payments and tooltip shows detailed breakdown
Improvements
Enhanced story options for end-of-level stories
When multiple Janitors are cleaning, they now coordinate better
Soups and stews now give additional portions
Optional ingredient in soups, stews now gives bonus portions
Build menu now uses thumbnails and is much faster to navigate
Placing decorative lights on furniture now contributes real brightness on the atmosphere system
Hearths can now be built in hallways
Staff now get a bonus when in a higher-tier staffroom
Game speed 3 no longer oscillates
Improved patron feedback when patrons can’t book a room
Build and Design Mode now remember page positions
Clone tool now shows the cost to clone an object on hover
Context-menu now shows inline control bindings
Light decoration scaling now scales the light range
Banned rooms on staff now display with a clearer room overlay
Problem banner now moves out of the way of the larder overview
Tavern log now shows details about orders and deliveries
Missing ingredient message now shows more details about what is missing
Clicking a furniture a second time now selects the room it belongs to (allowing you to select a room that’s covered in carpets for example)
Toilet now shows a ‘needs maintenance’ visual when it requires servicing
Text decorations no longer clutter up the Design Mode menu
Staff schedule now remembers what page you were on
Dragging roles onto the schedule UI no longer skips hours when you drag too fast
Off-duty staff now serves dishes from the food window if no one else is available
Chef skill bonus now applies more granularly, not just at the end of the meal
Skills of all chefs are used to calculate final flavor rating of a dish
Chefs no longer wait for bread to finish baking when a side dish was ordered
Patron message about missing side dishes now shows details
Improved timing of the spoilage alert to be more useful
Reserve for context menu on storage now shows more useful information
Groups no longer try to fulfill optional needs before required ones
Temporary job applicants from stories no longer stay in the job pool forever
Staff now better take patron patience into account when taking orders
Staff can now maintain furniture (such as the stoves) in staffrooms when they are off-duty
Nerfed the Fear of the Dark trait
Better idle wandering behaviour on staff
Staff no longer wander far from the locker before their shift starts
Doors can now be placed closer to wall-corners
Beds can now be placed a little closer together
Staff locker can now be placed a little closer to other furniture
Staff names in wage tooltip are now clickable and support large lists of staff
Gugamush gazettes no longer spawn with generic (non-Orc) content
If you ignore random stories, they no longer respawn endlessly
Building/dragging rooms performs better and stutters less
Searching in the Build Menu is now faster
Improved ambient occlusion performance
Late-game save files are now up to 50% smaller and load faster
Optimized and improved many of the games systems
Enabled several actions to be bindable under controls
Improved selection highlights on build menu and in the schedule UI
Improvements to localizations across the board
Fixes
Achievement narrations no longer interrupt the narrator
Build menu search is now more robust
Schedule dialogs didn’t update to 24/12h clock setting
Disabling a soup/stew on the tavern menu no longer removes it from the soup pot
Chef flavor-bonus was incorrectly calculated
Chefs sometimes did not fulfill food orders
Chefs sometimes fetched partial ingredients when they needed a full basket
Several cases of stuck staff
After a fight broke a tap and it was rebuilt, the drink could remain off-menu
Servers sometimes walked to far-off taps when a closer tap was available
Servers sometimes served drinks directly from barrels
Spoilage rate was incorrect in some cases
Shelf-life on ingredients that are carried no longer show as ‘infinity days’
Soups were not spoiling in the soup pot when they should have been
Several cases where cooking got stuck
Some ingredients got stuck to the floor when staff dropped them
Refilling the fire extinguisher used sometimes drink barrels even if extinguisher barrels were available
Low stock alert sometimes was shown for items with plenty of stock
Bread-oven stirring animation could in rare cases produce a giant dough ball
Patrons who try to wander to an inaccessible taproom position no longer get stuck
Patrons could rate the tavern down for services that couldn’t exist
Socialize need sometimes stayed unfulfilled when it should not have been
Patrons could get stuck waiting to dry at a heater (after rain) even after they were already dry
Patrons sometimes got stuck after a conversation
Patrons sometimes tried to go to bed in the midst of booking a room
Patrons couldn’t always retrieve their room key at the registration desk
Patrons could get stuck at the dartboard after saving and loading
Patrons would try to use an empty scroll rack
Patron gifts sometimes appeared extremely tiny on the floor
Sleeping characters were visually offset from the bed when they went to bed after a fight
Footlocker stayed locked and closed if a patron fled the tavern due to a fire
Visiting groups could get stuck in conversation
Patrons sometimes double-rated their beds
Patrons were sometimes rating bars and tables
Bulletin board with a price of 0 was not rated by patrons
Group satisfaction display was inconsistent
Historic pawns on the Patron Attraction Board sometimes incorrectly showed that the tavern was closed
Bulletin station got dirty outside but wasn’t cleaned unless manually instructed
Incorrect alerts of missing cleaning gear and mops when staff was finishing a cleaning task
Mop could get stuck to Staff after their polish task was interrupted
Dogsbody could get stuck inspecting stock and ignored other tasks
Staff could not be renamed if they appeared in a story
Several cases where staff could get permanently stuck
Staff could take items from rooms they were banned from, even though the item was available elsewhere
Staff on leave could still start a fight or be pulled into one
Staff sickness alert badge information was not always correct
Staff who stress-slept while standing would sleep for a very very long time
Some tasks remained assigned to specific staff when they were fired
Some custom templates had the wrong build cost
Tables couldn’t be placed flush against a wall if there was another table on the other side
Building the same wall back after deleting it, no longer fails if props where snapped it
Decorations did not always give the right refund amount
Grouped items in Design Mode could deform when using undo/redo
Sometimes furniture was left in a squished state after building
Discounted build items didn’t always work well with filtering in the build menu
Decorations on wall could contribute decoration value to the wrong room
Filth atmosphere overlay could tint a prop green when it should not appear
UI would stay hidden after ESC-cancelling a build room action mid-drag
Booked entertainer time in the Stage info panel was off by one hour
Accommodation tavern menu would show incorrect info on what patron will book which room
Bankruptcy alert badge was off by one hour
Bankruptcy handbook triggered when taking a loan
Some items were stuck outside after delivery
Playing the starter level on Challenging could sometimes cause chaos events to start a fire
New job applicants notification didn’t trigger when it should
Soup pot sparks could sometimes fly through a wall
Some rooms spawned infestation nests even they should have blocked nests
Fixed several typos
Fixed several issues with tooltips across the game
Fixed many miscellaneous errors and exceptions