The Easter Update (Patch Notes 8)

Happy Easter everyone!

New Features:

1. Easter Mode - For the next few weeks, easter mode will be available! In easter mode, there are easter eggs sprawled about each map, and mobbits are larger than normal. You can disable this under Options > Gameplay > Seasonal.
2. Tunnels - Tunnels have a new feature in both the campaign and caverns mode! In some levels of the campaign, you may find goblin scouts appearing from some tunnels. If they see a threat they may even bring reinforcements next time. If you want to keep their numbers now, you'll want to either avoid them or wipe them out. In caverns mode tunnels chosen at random will glow red and start spawning random enemies.
3. Goblin Warriors - A new class of goblin that focuses on exploration and combat. These guys can call for reinforcements, so watch out! More details in the recent blog post (link below). We've updated the campaign and tutorial with these guys.
4. Wells - A new tier 2 tech for the tech tree is 'Wells'. Wells are a building that upgrade Claims, and further increases your population cap by 1, while also having a lot more hitpoints. So for example, if you claim your first spring, you can then spawn 3 new dwarves. If you then upgrade that claim to a well, you can spawn a 4th dwarf.
5. Iron Tools - Iron tools used to be part of the smithing tech, but has been moved to its own tier 2 tech. Smithing has gained the ability to make helmets instead (see below).
6. Helmets - Now part of the smithing tech, helmets are a wearable armour item that protects your dwarves in 2 ways. First, that dwarf will no longer suffer critical damage when they fumble in combat. Second, when they're low hp and a hit would normally defeat them, the helmet is broken instead, protecting them from that last hit. More details in the recent blog post.
7. Caverns Mode: Clan Colours - In the latest caverns mode (V0.36), you can now choose a clan you played with in the campaign, and your dwarves will match the name, colours and emblem that you chose.
8. Caverns Mode: Starting Conditions - Also in the latest caverns mode, you are given the option of how you start the game. There are 3 options for this release: 'Regular start', 'traveling settlers' and 'goblins everywhere'. Regular start is the same setup as before. Traveling settlers starts with 6 dwarves and no buildings assembled, but the adjacent caves are already connected to you. Goblins everywhere is like regular start, except that a) goblin camps more common, b) goblins can randomly appear in almost any type of cave. If you're looking for an extra challenge, give this one a try!
9. Dwarf Names - We've done some work on our name generator, and now dwarves will have much dwarfier surnames! More details in the recent blog.
10. Meals - We've removed 'Moderate Meals' and renamed 'Basic Meals' to 'Meals', which now provide a fair amount more nutrition than the ingredients that went into them. There are now 3 recipes: The first crafts 1 Meal, the second 2 meals, and the third 3 meals, each taking the same time to craft. This allows you to craft a lot of meals rapidly if you have the food variety to do so.
11. New & Altered Abilities - We've made a variety of changes to abilities. Some replaced, some added; the full details can be found in this blog post: Root-pulling Stubborn Guzzlers. As a quick summary, for miners: Structure-sense and hard-hat have been merged, heavy-hauler and toothed-pick are two new level 5 abilities, and tunnel-vision is a new level 8 ability. For foragers: moisture-eyes has been replaced with root-hugger, root-puller is a new level 5 ability, and creature-friendly is a new level 8 ability. For warriors: rock-puncher has been replaced with wall-puncher, and back-breaker is a new level 8 ability. For engineers: reconstruction is a new level 8 ability.
12. New Traits - We've added 7 new traits to the game. Negative: Accident-prone and berserker. Neutral: Stubborn and Kleptomaniac. Positive: Thinker, guzzler, and candle-bright. See the blog post link above for more details.
13. Walls - When you build walls now, your clan's emblem will appear on top. Coupled with this change, allies will no longer mine walls that belong to you. This problem was most noticeable in caverns mode.

Fixes & Improvements:

1. CPU Usage - Fairly significant improvement to CPU usage. We shifted some performance hungry threads to the back-burner, as they were (most of the time) non-essential.
2. Caverns Mode - Bug fixes and balance improvements: Some of the quests and objectives weren't working properly, and one of the trade-stalls was supposed sell schematics. It could be really hard to find roots so roots can now be found on the edges of caves, plus rivers should now have fish. Various cave generations would conflict, resulting in tracks underwater or buildings blocking paths; we've resolved most of the conflicts.
3. Dwarf/Goblin AI - Both dwarves and goblin AI teams now build more buildings, and work and fight more intelligently. More work needs doing, as they can still get stuck in certain circumstances, but it's made progress.
4. Smarter Engineers - If Engineers are carrying the right materials, they will now build from what they're carrying, instead of returning to storage first. This may not yet be the case for bridges / walls. Carried items are also taken into account when enabling building options in the instruction panel.
5. My Fort - The last level of the campaign was fairly easy to beat. On top of introducing goblin warriors to this level, we've made some improvements that means it requires a bit more strategy to succeed without sustaining losses.
6. Storage & Food Barrels - When using the 'Move Building' option to move storage or food barrels, the items contained within them will also be moved. This allows you to quickly move your storage zones around or place food barrels further along in the map.
7. Food Barrels - Now displays a graphic showing the food that's contained inside them. Mushrooms, fish and meat are shown if any of those are contained inside the barrel.
8. Saving & Loading - Some fixes to saving & loading. We noticed that meals and tools weren't being saved, and some stats were stacking. Storage configurations were also not being saved.
9. Particles - Some particles associated with units weren't scaling correctly, including the red outline when a combat ability was active.
10. Trade Stalls - There were bugs with trade stalls having multiple dwarves standing in them, and also being unselectable. This should now be fixed.
11. Attention Dialog - The little popup speech-bubbles when a dwarf has something to say were persisting and becoming outdated. Most of these should now erase themselves if attention is no longer needed.
12. Minimap - Some levels, especially caverns mode, the minimap was creeping off the edges of the UI. This is no longer the case.
13. Dwarf-List - The dwarf-list UI is now much more compact by default, so that it doesn't impede so much on the game view. If you click 'Show Abilities', the full UI emerges as before.
14. Cooking Station - The crafting queue icons were being erased in some circumstances, making it appear that all the crafts had been completed.
15. Selection & Instruction UI - These UIs have various updated icons, and we've added some graphics for the stances and equipment sections.
16. 'Use' Buildings - Most buildings that don't actually have a function when performing the 'use' action on them will no longer give you that option.
17. Steam's Stop Button - In the steam library, after you hit play, the button switches to 'stop'. This stop button was having trouble stopping the game from running, and it would freeze instead. This is no longer the case, and the game will now stop on command.
18. Various Bugs - Fixed a variety of bugs including tomes not doing anything, idle AI walking onto beds or traps, and some UI problems with the world map screen.
19. Also, the feedback form is now back in action!

We've released a blog post talking about the latest changes, including a few screenshots: The Easter Update.

Please let us know if you run into any issues, or if you have any feedback or suggestions for us, tell us about it either in the Discussions board or on our discord!

That's all for now, have a good Easter!