v0.31 - Rebalancing early game

This patch is game breaking and needs a New Game.

Rebalancing Early Game

Time for another patch while waiting for the Major patch that is cooking. This time early game has been rebalanced and a good amount of bug fixes have been done and should make things much smoother early on.

The game has always been on the harder side but especially Early Game could become brutally hard due to Trading being the most, or only, viable way of starting out, Early combat were always a money sink due to little reward and hefty costs.

The balancing between doing missions (skirmishes), battles and dungeons early game are now more equally rewarding. It should also be similar to early Trading which before was the only viable way for progress due to the risks in other areas.

To mitigate the early game balancing all early missions have boosted Rewards, and they are now much better weighed towards the danger.

There is also a bonus base line of scavenged coins in Battles making early fighting more rewarding and progressing. Many Junk items are now also worth more depending on rarity.

This makes Early days much easier and rewarding while not impacting mid to late game where you need to have a foundation of Settlements to support a larger army.

Recruitment Cost Change

On the flip side recruiting soldiers before had a cost cut on their starting equipment. This is now removed due to being exploitable. And recruiting is now much more expensive generally.

This forces Players to start recruiting simple Villagers and micro-manage their equipment to build them up. While recruiting more equiped soldiers is a convenience late game rather than the go to.

Use of AI becomes zero use

We have been using placeholders for 2D avatars which were AI generated but always meant to be replaced by a proper 3D Character Creation. This is still true, We are looking for a talented Character Artist to help making head and hair for all races.

However a decision was taken to remove all AI placeholdes, including the Loader screens, which are now replaced by some human painted ones. But much less options until we have the final 3D Character Creation

This marks a new era moving forward where we now have 0% AI in the game. All assets in the game are produced before AI existed so feel very safe on this now :)

Special thanks to Amarum and Rigo1 that have helped testing and reporting! :)

Fixes

• Fixed large Scorpions sting attack

• Combat AI could attack Animals which they shouldn't (hens, pigs, sheep etc)

• Removed Budgeted Mesh on Combat Characters

• Several quality of life improvements on the Dialogue system

• Fixed weapon hit on Destructible furniture

• Increased distance that Details are shown on World Map for Characters, making it easier to see army power from afar

• Fixed a bug where you could continue with 0hp

• Fixed a issue when entering Battles after continuing as a Child in family

• Added new studio intro reel

• Multiplayer fixed a bug with replicating hp in combat

• Fixed a issue to open Family Panel in Multiplayer

• Fixed coin rewards to be shown in Victory panel and be correct for Fight Pit and Arena

• Fixed so World Characters inside Settlements doesn't show their widget

• Fixed a issue to heal in a Church when on very low hp

• Fixed mission Knock n Roll to use a back alley skirmish

• Fxed mission Vigilante to use a back alley skirmish

• Fixed mission Mother and Child having wrong POI icon

• Fixed mission Bear Problem that could spawn two POI's when started

• Fixed a bug in Settlement UI where Player could open Character Panel, close it and then able to right click to start moving while still in the Settlement

• Fixed a bug in the Market where Players could sell for higher amount of items than they had in inventory

• Start Mission now has first task to buy armor then recruit a soldier before building your first House

• Removed Trolls from Bandits lvl 25 spawn table (was super rare but when it happened they wrecked havoc on the World Map)

• Settlement Crafting UI has new categories and each item now has a indicator if it can be crafted with Players inventory

• Bosses in dungeons have reduced Toughness that before made them more like bullet sponges, and we all hate bullet sponges ;)

• Added a default Skirmish level instead of flunking out if it was missing for a particular event

• Fixed several Settlement Events having wrong Skirmish level set in the event

• Fixed Combat Characters in formation to always face in walking direction rather than target direction that could make them strafe in the beginning

• World AI now opens the Dialogue when Attacking rather than going straight to combat that made it confusing at times

• Player Camera in combat now has a scaling brightness depending on time of night rather than just a day/night setting that was not enough

• Fixed a bug in Settlement Crafting that could lock amount to 1 making it annoying to craft a lot

• Settlement Crafting now trigger Player coin update event so HUD coins update

• Fixed Iduna Swiftblade getting proper Memory Tag of have joined Player before

• Wolves on World Map now has reduced awereness so they don't charge from large distances

• Inventory item comparison (holding shift while hovering items) now only tries to check armor and weapons

• Settlement Manager UI has been redesigned from the ground up

• Added support for Skirmishes/Dungeons to have interactible items that have conditions like must have a key in inventory which is used in upcoming new missions to make more interesting levels

• Remade all 3 bridges on the World Map that before could make characters stuck or fail collision

• Fixed a issue with AI vs AI Sieges and Player trying to join Defender side could trigger infinite loader due to a reference issue

• Removed Close button in Death Panel where Player choose next in lineage to continue as

• Next in line after death should now reset XP and not inherit it

• Next in line now clear any registered Dialogue After Combat

  Fixed showing Children name on Family Panel home view

• Fixed an issue in the Mission system that could fail to get Mission reference in the start nodes activation script, resulting in cleanup after mission to fail

• Fixed Family Panels lineage tree to show infinite depth

• Fixed keybindings to be saved and loaded