Last week, we worked on version 189 and shipped it on Friday night – too late to record a feature review or post a Steam update. Sorry about that! Things happen. In today's update, we cover both version 189 and version 190 (released today).
CONCEPT
Following up on the features that we introduced in the last week's version (sustenance reserve, hunger and starvation; and cooked food items), we bring in a number of awesome things: food resources, cooking pot, ten recipes for cooked food and – finally! – a whole bunch of fully functional personal traits. Let's jump into the details –>
SUSTENANCE POINTS, PARTY PANEL & COOKED FOOD
As a recap from the last week, the party now has a sustenance level that is replenished by consuming cooked food. The current state is displayed in the travel mode, with a detailed tooltip:
At the start of each day, every party member consumes 2 sustenance points (by default – traits and diseases may affect this). When the reserve goes below zero, the party enters the hunger zone (-5 to mood of every character, every day), and when the reserve gets below 50, the party begins to starve (-10 to mood of every character, every day).
To replenish sustenance points, the party needs to consume cooked food, which can be done via party profile:
There are 3 cooked food items which cannot be produced, but can only be found as a part of the event loot:
- Hardtack (horrible taste, but good sustenance);
- Soldier's ration (the taste is pretty crappy, but not as bad as that of the hardtack);
- Traveller's ration (the taste is neither good nor bad; it's the best that one can have, of the long-lasting food items)
FOOD RESOURCES
A new feature that we shipped today: food resources.
They are like natural resources –
- seeded across the maps
- re-spawned according to their own rules
- collected simply by stepping on them
Food resources are used in cooking, and result in cooked food.
Currently, we have 4 different food resources, related to biomes:
- Wetlands: slugs and locust buds
- Forest: gifts of nature and gnawed carcasses
As you can see, a party of mages is not really great at hunting or fishing. As any library-dwelling folk, they can barely pick up what's left by others 😜.
CHANGES IN HOW CONCOCTING WORKS
Before we get to cooking, let's first talk about the changes we've done with concocting:
- now you need to appoint an alchemist to concoct anything
- every action of concocting costs 4 fatigue to the alchemist (default, traits may change this)
- every action of concocting results in 1 substance, but some traits may change this to 2
- depending on the personal traits, concocting may improve or worsen the alchemist's mood
INTRODUCING: COOKING!
Finally, finally, finally: the cooking is in the game!
To cook, you need 2 ingredients, both of which must be food resources. But unlike concocting, they can be the same thing.
- there's currently 10 recipes for cooking food in the game
- generally, taste depends on ingredients
- generally, using ingredients from different biomes results in cooked food that has higher sustenance
- than the food cooked from ingredients belonging to the same biome
PERSONAL TRAITS
This is by far the most important feature that we ship today: now, different characters respond differently to the same situations –>
- some are spooked by ghosts
- some are curious about the dead
- some enjoy cooking, and get a mood boost from it
- some hate concocting, or earn extra fatigue when engaged in it
- some won't mind retreating from any encounter
- some take pleasure in the destruction of their opponent
- some hate to see others die
- etc etc etc
Back in 2020, we agreed that making different characters respond differently to the same situation was at the heart of the game – and finally it's here!
WHAT'S NEXT?
With a bit over a month left until Steam Next Fest, we've got 2 big issues to chase: the encounter flow – making it faster, but also logging everything in the chronicle – and the campaign screen, which places the specific map (e.g. Prologue) in the context of the whole campaign. We're going to start working on those next week.
Have a great weekend!