Greetings, medievalists!
The new major update titled “Terraforming & Cats” is now live on Steam, Epic Games Store, and GOG. It includes: terraforming, custom difficulty, new animals and behavior, as well as various other tweaks and improvements.
Watch the video below to see the update’s highlights and if you want to go into more detail, check beneath the video for the full patch notes:
Now, on to the update – we’ll separate it into different segments:
Terraforming
The ability to create natural dirt voxels and slopes has been added to the game. To unlock them, you’ll have to research “Terraforming” in the Research tab. Here are a couple of things to know about this feature:
- A new resource has been added to the game: Dirt.
- Dirt is acquired by mining dirt, grass, and rock voxels.
- Dirt piles will also appear on the map when you start a new game.
- Building dirt voxels/slopes is similar to building walls/stairs, with the main difference being that upon its creation, you will not be able to select it.
New animals and behavior
Animal population has expanded! Say hello to your little friends: pheasants, donkeys and cats. Also, say hello to the upgraded logic for all animals.
- Cats and Donkeys will appear as domestic animals, while pheasants will appear as wildlife on the map.
- Animals like dogs, wolves, cats, foxes will attack other animals when hungry.
- Foxes, dogs and cats only attack small animals.
- Wolves, on the other hand, will attack different targets depending on their hunger level. If they are just a little hungry, they’ll go for smaller animals. But if they are starving, they will go for bigger ones, maybe even settlers. They can even attack other wolves.
- All wild animals will target domestic animals rather than wild ones.
- Foxes will randomly trigger a need to hunt down small domestic animals when awake, even if they are not starving, just hungry. They can even go through fences (let’s imagine that they jump over), so tread carefully.
- When cats, wolves, foxes and dogs are turned into pets, they will have the option to do vermin control (pest control) just like some animals haul and battle.
- Pest control allows those pets to randomly target wild rats, rabbits or pheasants from time to time (cats do it most often), to help clean the map of those… well… pests. Turning this option off will, of course, make them not do this.
- Yes, you can make trophies out of the new animals, too.
Custom Difficulty
We have added the option for you to choose custom difficulty when choosing game mode. This will allow you to fine tune some parameters of the game session. Here is the explanation of the parameters:
- Event Strength Multiplier – Change the strength of the events like blight, weather events and raids. The higher the number, the more challenge the event will provide.
- Wound Severity Multiplier – Adjust the severity of wounds inflicted upon your settlers. The higher the number, the harder it is to tend the wounds and they’ll have more severe effects on attributes.
- Animal Spawn Rate Multiplier – Change the rate of new animal spawning on the map. Higher numbers indicates faster spawn rate.
- Plant Yield Multiplier – Adjust the amount of resources you get from cutting/harvesting plants.
- Mine Yield Multiplier – Adjust the amount of resources you get from mining voxels.
- Settler Mood Value – Change the chance of settler rebelling. If you lower this value, they’ll rebel more frequently.
- Enemy Hitpoints – Want to give more health to your enemies? (Why?) Increase this value.
- Hitpoints Recovery – Change the speed of health recovery. Higher numbers indicate faster recovery.
- Rotting Speed – Indicates how fast the food will rot and lose freshness. Increase this value if you want to experience rotting hell. Dev’s note: Rotting hell is not suggested.
- Decomposition Speed – Indicates how fast the resources/equipment will lose health based on factors like rain and temperature.
- Barter Value – Set this number higher if you want better bargaining deals.
- Chance Quarry Retaliates – You know how when you try to attack/train wild animals, there is a chance for it to fight back in the process? Lower this value if you want to avoid those situations.
- Global Work Speed – Want your settlers to work faster? Increase this number.
- Thunderstorm – Turn on/off Thunderstorm event.
- Blighted Crops – Turn on/off Blighted Crops event.
- Hostile Animals – Don’t like those aggressive wolves appearing on the map? Turn them off here.
- Domestic Animals Event – You don’t like that friendly animals spawn on your map? Turn them off here. Also, why would you do that?
- Hailstorm Event – Turn on/off Hailstorm event.
- Cold Snap – Turn on/off Cold Snap event.
- Heat Wave – Turn on/off Heat Wave event.
- Enemy Raid Events – You’ve started the game in Standard or Survival mode and don’t like the idea of enemy spawning? Maybe you need more time to prepare your settlement before the battle? You can control that here.
- Use Seeds – Some players didn’t like the introduction of seeds and how the farming process evolved. Shame. We really like it. Turn off this option if you want to take farming to the original version where no seeds are required. Keep in mind that this will essentially make seeds useless.
- Enemies Have Trebuchets – Some people don’t like when enemies appear with trebuchets in regular raids. In those cases, this option will disable them. HOWEVER, if the enemy can’t find a clear path to a door that leads to your fort, the AI will see this as turtling and will spawn a siege version of the raid that will have trebuchets.
Two things to keep in mind:
- You will be able to change these options at any point in the game’s options.
- If you are playing in a peaceful mode, you will not be able to spawn raids/enemies.
Changing some parameters mid-game can create weird behavior. Example: Turning off trebuchets will not work if the raid that’s already happening has trebuchets. Or – you can turn off the raid completely, but they will not turn off attacks from factions coming to get a hostage back etc.
Quality of life improvements
- Plants in the wild have gained more nutrition. This way, wild animals will not eat all of the saplings and young plants as soon as they spawn.
And that would be all for this update. Have fun folks and remember to…
Stay medieval!