==== Announcement ===

Finally Early Access is upon us! The steam has gone live and everyone will be able to play the Early Access version, which boasts many new features, including factions quests, the Yamakai faction and a rework to several of the systems you all helped test during the demo testing.

And with that, some notes on my thoughts going into the release. Feel free to skip this bit if you just want patch notes.

Over the last year I've had many people help test the game, give their feedback, critical and pleasant - all which was super appreciated. With every bit of feedback we've gone away and made changes, tweaks, added new things taking on board the players feedback. The pace of my development as a solo developer was intense and unwavering - and yet there are still things I want this game to achieve - There is a reason the map is absolutely enormous, I understand that makes things harder and take longer. I welcome this challenge. I've remade the map 3 times to get to this size which I think provides the world big enough and "real" enough for me to build the game world upon.

So with that said, scope creep, too much too take on, all of the usual... I embraced it, and continue to from time to time. Everytime I add another mechanic in the game, it explores something new. Everytime I tweak an NPC, the interactions feel more real. Everytime players play it, they come back with weird and wonderful ideas.

The exploration space of this game is so enjoyable, I could see myself exploring it for the next few years happily - even after the 4 years I've already spent on it. I don't think I was ever trying to make a game, I'm trying to make a machine, a machine that allows players to invent, explore and do weird things. I believe this mindset doesn't set you up for making a solid and tight small RPG, I don't know where it leads us if I'm honest, but I know player will enjoy exploring and breaking the machine.

Do I think we're ready for the public? No... But isn't that exactly what early access is for? I really need more feedback, help and testing to finish the game. With that, it's important the price point of the game reflect the reality of the product as it stands, which does still have bugs, and not all the quests and stories I want are in (although it does have pretty much every feature!). With that said I thought it was important to set a realistic price for the game while we are in the early stages of Early Access. This price will likely change as time goes progresses and the product becomes more solid.

==== PATCH NOTES ====

Are existing savefiles compatible?
- No - Please create an entirely new savefile

New:

- Added Morale to faction members
(Decreases with negative actions such as sleeping on floor or starving)
(Increase with positive actions such as eating, and sleeping in comfortable beds)
- Added Loyalty to faction members
(Decreases while morale is low)
(Increases while morale is high)
(Can cause members to fall out with the faction leader)
- Albear mutation, your little mutating buddy who can help revive you from the dead.
- Discoveries system, this is a learning aid to help understand the world and how to survive in it
- Introduced a game director which can help balance the games spawns, traders, loot and generate interesting encounters
(The game director is currently customized by tweaking the different difficulty settings in advanced start)
- Skin/Harvest any creature
(Different species provide different resources)
- Morale and Loyalty stats which are effected by food quality, bed quality and other factors
- Sleep anywhere without a bed, decreases morale over time
- New stats screen bringing inspiration from Rimworlds stat screen, to show more of the hidden stats
- New stats screen for objects too
- New player card (bottom left), tighter and frees up some screen space
(Can be scaled in settings menu)
- Mutations system & screen completely redone
Taking inspiration from Stellaris traits and Project Zomboid traits.
Should be a bit easier to look at, measure and experiment with mutations now
- Founders and Founderkin can now build using cash rather than resources (toggle-able)
- Can now uproot resources to get rid of them completely
- Resource nodes (e.g. trees, rocks) now get consumed and are removed after being fully harvested
- All containers in the world are now locked and require hacking
- Can now show labels for Pickup Items (Defaults to Left Alt)
- People in the world now speak and interact a lot more with the player
- All animals now have their own factions
- Ice Bandits faction, Yamakai Faction, Lokals Faction, FTC Faction now added (But not all towns and quests fully implemented)
- Many more faction related quests to improve faction reputation and change the relations between factions
- Ice Peak, Nugarden and Olgarden, the first three towns for the Yamakai faction
- The Caverns, the first town for the Lokals faction
- Bogden, the first town for the FTC Faction
- Ability to speak to Animals, this can cause quests to spawn from Animals.
- New world states which trigger on certain events, days and faction states.
- Some more AI interactivity which paves the way for new tech in future, e.g. picking up dead or injured allies.

Fixes:

The list is huge and the full breakdown is on github, but here are the last few check off:

- Revive should now be more consistent
- Re-added the speed controls
- Wild spawning tweaked
- Renamed BP to Science to make it easier to understand
- Animals no longer stay upside down after death or sleeping
- Doors should no longer disappear
- Stealing and faction reactions should now be consistent and make sense

==== LINKS ====

Discord: https://discord.gg/CmSFawGNeU

Wiki: https://licenseto.wiki/

Website: https://www.jamdonutgames.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@jamdonut

Twitter: https://x.com/AJamDonut

Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/jamdonutgames