UPDATE v0.10 – The Living World

It's been a while, but the time has come. The next major update, v0.10.0 "Living World", is finally here. But first, we finally made a new trailer for the game, since the last one is now 3 years old. You can see it here:

I've shared a preview of what's coming in the last news article, so I'll keep the summary short to the 3 main additions, and you can find more details in this link and the changelog below: view

Settlement Events – Settlements have a life of their own, with events playing out whether or not you are there. Festivals in good times, and rat infestation in bad times. You don’t address a problem, and it may have lasting consequences. Solve it, and the settlement thrives, or maybe just your pockets.

Living Wilderness – The wilderness is now more active. Animal migrations, roaming creatures, strange encounters, and NPC raiding parties competing for your loot. New systems that can become your undoing, or your advantage in the adventures to come.

Dynamic Weather – Weather moves across the map – storms, sandstorms, and heatwaves that change the rules of exploration and the challenges that await you.

Here's the full changelog:

Added

• New settlement events.

• New wilderness events.

• New weather effects.

• New low-level help-wanted type events for different races.

• NPC adventuring groups now roam the world, raiding, looting, and gaining power. Active ones can be found in the knowledge tab.

• Beings from nearby special locations may now raid settlements, including player settlements.

• New Impossible tier location in the Savanna biome.

• Added zoom in/out buttons next to the minimap, supporting both mouse and gamepad navigation.

• New Alchemy milestone.

• New Carpentry milestone.

• New Imbuing milestone.

• New Mushman hats.

• New haircuts for Trolls, Orcs and Goblins.

• New outfits for Humans.

Changed

• Unemployed NPCs now help finalize building in settlements the same way as companions did before.

• Various NPCs may decide to escape to the edge of the map when in danger, leaving the region.

• Some things may now lure NPCs of a specific type to themselves.

• NPC farmers now harvest and replant resources within their building area.

• NPC gatherers may now wander around to gather resources in the settlement region.

• Some NPCs may now pickpocket or rob others.

• During battles, non-military settlement inhabitants may escape to the edge of the map to not get caught in the line of fire.

• Settlement event icons now display on World Map and Starting Location screens.

• Player-made items are now marked during trading.

• Intelligence no longer affects trading prices.

• Tier 5 resources no longer appear in treasure chests.

• Glassblower building can now change Sand into Glass, alongside Sandstone.

• NPCs will try to avoid using AoE-damaging abilities when they may target their allies.

• Knowledge screen now shows disbanded companies' history, with an optional filter to hide them. Companies' descriptions will also mention the reason for their disbandment.

• Battle descriptions now have a different message depending on the war's casus belli.

• Some passives will now display additional information explaining how they work.

• Vampires in companies occupying other races' settlements are no longer aggressive by default.

• If NPCs don't have important things to do, they will attempt to hide from the weather under a roof.

Fixed

• Fixed an issue that sometimes blocked progression of time while working in a building.

• Fixed the flying cursor when zooming in or out in the region map.

• Fixed a rare crash during history simulation.

• Added a few guards for crashes caused by mods.

• Fixed an issue where dead leaders would show up in families on the Starting Location screen.

• Fixed an issue when asking for special locations nearby in conversations, and an invalid location gets chosen.

• Fixed an issue in the Building menu where it could prevent selecting a new recipe once a recipe with a missing tool was chosen.

• Elf Leatherworker now has a tailoring tool.

• Orc Weaponsmith now has a workbench.

• Added more tooltip info to Overload, Electric Speed, and Charged Precision passives.

• Fixed Stone, Stick, Rope, and Live Fence graphics.

• Fixed Common Reed graphic for better visibility.

• Fixed Swamp Grass graphic for better visibility.

• Fixed Storm ability sound effect.

• Fixed some of the portraits.

Modding

• New type of data files - world events.

• New passive effect 'heal_on_damage_type': converts incoming damage of a specific damage type into healing. Configured with `value` (damage type string) and `secondary_value` (heal ratio, e.g. 0.5 = heal for 50% of damage dealt).

• New passive effect 'bonus_knockback_damage_percent': increasing damage dealt on knockback collisions.

• Added a notification on the main menu screen about inability to load mod entities.

• Added loot exclude list support: mods can place a loot_exclude.json file in their mod folder containing an array of entity IDs to remove from the chest drop table.

• Events can spawn Special Locations near a settlement when they begin.

• Special Locations can be marked to be 'only_event' (so they won't spawn on the map during simulation, and only events can trigger them)

• Clearing event-spawned special locations can grant custom rewards.

• Event NPCs can reveal event special locations via conversation (similar to hunters and innkeepers).

• Added 'world_event' console command to trigger world events in the current region, if possible.

• It's now possible to blacklist entities from loot in treasure chests.

• Weather events can now affect tiles with the new 'change_entities_on_start' property.

Since this is a recurring question: The update does not require starting a new world.

The v0.10 update finalizes the game's frame, and we finally have all the major systems in place that I envisioned years ago. Now it's time to deepen the interactions between existing systems, expose more ways for us to interact with the world, balance the economy around how the world works, extend the military side of the game, and finally tackle the biggest question since the conclusion of Soulash 1 - what happened after the entire world turned to ash?

We'll be back on a weekly or bi-weekly update schedule on Thursdays from now on until we start tackling the full release, which should be ready sometime next year. Remember, if you have suggestions for improvements to add depth to the game, there won't be a better time to share them than now. I'll be grabbing as many as I can from our s2-suggestions channel on our Discord.

Thank you all for playing the game, and I hope you'll enjoy the new additions.

Artur