This is easily the biggest update to This Merchant Life since is hit early access, which is pretty exciting, we hope you like it!
Key additions: The guild house system is now implemented as intended, with varying bonuses depending on where you build them. Multiple save slots! Visual customisation of the player! Three new resources and five new crafters! A new sidebar showing faction relationships and overviews of each town. Lots more audio effects, with much needed music and sound effect volume control. A bunch of UI tweaks and quite a lot of new art.
Systems
- Implemented Guild House system more fully; different towns offer different bonuses when a guild house is built in them, most of these bonuses being unique. Building a guild house now costs coins, with the cost escalating with every one that is built.
- Player can now customise visual appearance on character create screen - over 30 options to select in total, hundreds of potential combinations
- Added location type: apothecary, where you can heal for a fee
Content
- Added five additional crafters - Meat Merchant, Potter, Winery, Monks, Dye Makers
- Added three new common resources - herbs, fruit and wool
Balance
- Market events now affect stock levels as well as prices at markets
- Increased length of time for market events from 36/72 hours min/max to 72/144
- Increased required special trade number to increase town reputation by 1 from 10 to 25 trades
- Slight rebalance of resource costs in Archon, Artemis and Mandrake, reducing number of resources that are above average price there. Upped prices in a few other towns for some resources to compensate.
UI
- Added a new side tab: Guild. The main screen of this tab shows the current guild rank and the standing that the player's guild has with various important factions in Peregrine. Sub-screens within the tab for each region show the player's reputation in each town, the status of the locations within each town and the status of guild houses within each town (as well as the bonus for each).
- Adjusted the travelling panel along the bottom of the screen, incorperating icons and details on game speed
- Currently active sidebar tab is now layered above the others, pops out a bit, and the sidebar also receives a coloured stripe for that tab
- Fixed small alignment issue with reputation bar
- Added XP earned indicators for crafting, arrival, first arrival
- Building cost types now displayed as icons rather than pure text
- Made building bonuses green
- Changes to description of goals (relating to guild, not player)
- Fixed auto-press on explore event issue
General
- Added a save slot system with five slots to use
- Simplified town save data files
- Added music volume slider to title options menu and ingame pause menu
- Added sound effects to buttons and ambient audio to town hub screen
- Added sound effects volume slider to title options menu and ingame pause menu
- Game speed while travelling is now toggled by space, rather than requiring it to be held down
- Added special outcomes to road events, allowing for some friends and crafters to be learned off on the road
- Added guild house data, road data, starting fighter data, new resources, building new flags to save/load
- Crafting now earns 100 XP a time
- Fixed issue with escort missions not scrubbing correctly if you lose a battle before completing them (when the cart defence roll was also failed)