Fix for an issue with Fishers Cove; the wrong map version ended up in the release pipeline.
Easter Eggs & Root Beer (Patch Notes 34)
🐰Easter Mode🐰
Hope you're ready for the hunt as Easter Mode is enabled (until April. 30th)! In Easter Mode, you will experience the following changes to the game:
Atmosphere - The environment has a different look and feel.
Mobbits - Mobbits are larger than normal, and provide more meat!
Easter Eggs - You will find easter eggs sprawled about everywhere, even hidden in the walls! You can harvest easter eggs using the gather instruction, and they can be stored on tables similar to meals. How many can you find? (Find out at the bottom of the Stats window)
Map Tables - Among other resources, Map Tables will be able to highlight any nearby Easter eggs in your minimap!
Pet Mobbits - It's what you've all been waiting for! Collecting 50 easter eggs in a level will earn you a pet mobbit!
Patch Notes
The big stuff:
Clan Creation Menu - Clan creation has moved to its own section in the main menu. Now, instead of creating a new clan each time you start a new game, you create a clan first, which you can then play with in all 3 main modes: campaign, skirmish and caverns modes!
Clan Creation - We've also added 2 new features to clan creation. A description area where you can write lore about your clan, and a starting technology for you to choose. Now when you play new games in the campaign, skirmish or caverns modes, you start with your chosen tech already unlocked. We hope this enables for more personality to the clans you create. Both options have a default value, so if you just want to skip through and jump into the game you still can.
Brewery - This new tech unlocks the brewing of beer! Root beer can be drunk by your dwarves to restore stamina, a small amount of hitpoints, and makes them drunk! Dwarves can take Root Beers with them just like meals.
Instruction List - A new management UI will now appear in the list when you click the Dwarf icon in the Instruction Panel (bottom-left), the same way you can open the Dwarf List and By Laws. Rather than listing all your dwarves, this UI lists all the clan instructions you currently have, grouped by type. From there you can open any respective assignment UI and assign/prioritise/remove any instruction you see fit.
Battle-Hold - A new type of hold button, next to the regular hold button. While the hold button is supposed to hold a dwarf in place, the battle-hold won't hold them still, but instead prevents them from performing any action other than attacking enemies and fleeing to recover hitpoints. This should help allow a bit more autonomy during assaults with larger groups of units.
Storage Signposts - A new building that helps your dwarves correctly prioritise storage. In cases where players want to build multiple separated bases, priority storage was an issue. You may have observed a dwarf walking across the map to deliver items miles away. Now their range is limited to 20 tiles, but this can be extended by building signposts, that connect regions of storage together.
Storage Auto-Collect - A new button allows you to toggle a group of connected storage to automatically assign pickup instructions when they become full. This is mostly useful for minecart drop-off points. Note: You can set this option for food barrels and tables as well.
The small stuff:
Potpies - Along with unlocking root beer, the Brewery tech also allows you to cook up a new type of meal: Potpies! By combining a regular meal with root beer, potpies gain the effects of both for that extra kick!
Tables now use the same system as food barrels for prioritising specific meal / potion types, for easier setting.
Storage Arrangements - New button 'Apply to Neighbours' makes it easier to change a group of storage from one type of arrangement to another. When switching the first storage, click Apply to Neighbours and any connected storage that had the same previous arrangement will be changed. This functions like a paint-bucket tool.
Storage Priority - The new behaviour surrounding storage signposts replaces the priority numbers in storage arrangements. Instead priority is determined simply by how restrictive the storage is. A storage that only allows 1 type of item will be prioritised over one that allows 2 or 3, which will also be prioritised over one that allows more.
Assignment UI - In the case of building and supply instructions, using this UI to tell dwarves to prioritise something immediately now applies to the specific building selected, rather than the instruction as a whole like other types of instruction.
Eating & Resting - Fixed some confused dwarf behaviour, most notably when both food and rest are needed.
Radius Markers - When selecting or placing buildings that have a functional radius (such as support posts, map tables or the new storage signposts), all buildings of that type now mark a collective perimeter, so you can see the total coverage! This also applies when hovering over their respective build buttons in the instruction panel.
New Setting - New setting under Gameplay that allows you to configure what a dwarf does when they first spawn from a spring. Do they immediately go rest and eat? Or do they wait for your instruction?
Various other fixes & improvements, including minecart behaviour, losing/ignoring 'move building' instructions, and roots sometimes appearing invisible when buried in a wall.
That's all for now, stay safe and Happy Easter!
Mini-Patch
Fix for rendering issue when hovering over minecarts / other vehicles
Christmas Mode (Patch Notes 33)
🎄Christmas Mode🎄
Glistenveld is getting wintery as Christmas Mode is enabled (until Jan. 7th)! In Christmas Mode, you will experience the following changes to the game:
Atmosphere - The place is looking wintery with a change of colour palette and mist!
Christmas Roots - Roots have now been decorated with Christmas lights! Unfortunately there are no blink patterns you can change...
Presents - Random presents will appear in each map, some buried in cave walls to be mined out, others in water to be fished for and some just laying around! Each contains one of six small random gifts!
Chests - Chests are now decorated as 'locked' presents!
Snowprints - All units will leave prints in the frosty dirt, giving you insight into their habits!
Patch Notes
The big stuff:
Iron Weapons - For now these reside in the Iron Armour tech, but you will be able to craft Battleaxes, Warhammers and Halberds for your warriors! The battleaxe deals bonus bleeding damage, the warhammer stuns and knocks enemies back, and the halberd has a 2 tile reach! We have yet to decide where to put these in the tech tree, so enjoy the overpowered Iron Armour tech until then!
Caverns Mode - A new version has been released featuring: Lava caves! Complete with a new enemy, new resources, and various fixes and improvements for the mode. We want to keep the lava caves mysterious, so no further details will be provided!
Configurable beds - Beds can now be configured to disallow particular dwarves from resting in them, based on class or trait. Want to separate those noisy-nostrils from the group? Well now you can!
Dwarf-list UI - To help you manage your clan, instead of only being able to see levels & abilities, there are now 2 new views: Equipment & Traits! Also improved description of current activity in Abilities view, and selected dwarves will now be highlighted here as well!
Battles - Besides fixing a number of bugs relating to dealing crits and damage in general, the icons for block, parry, dodge & fumble have been improved and other icons like 'hold' or stat labels have been made less intrusive during combat.
Skirmish - Various improvements including more fish in regions like Mines, and a fix for the chaotic pathing style occasionally getting stuck.
Instruction panel UI - Minecarts and tracks have been moved into the Resources tab, since their role is to cart resources around. Infrastructure buildings have been better lined up so alternate or similar buildings appear in the same place on the next page.
Resistances - There are many types of damage or effects in the game: bleed, frenzy, fire, knockback, and we've finalised our design on enemy resistances. Currently you'll have to use trial and error to identify them, but we'll work on making this clearer in a future patch. If you guys like how another game conveys this information, feel free to share!
Map Tables - You can now inspect the traits of any enemies within the radius of your map tables, allowing you to take more strategic action against them!
Ruins Music - New music has been added for ruins regions in all modes and during waves in Stronghold Defence!
The small stuff:
Items - More picking up & dropping item animations. Fun fact: this uses the same code that enables NPC dwarves to jump gaps in the campaign. We spawn item particles that jump to the Dwarf's location!
Prioritising instructions - Until now dwarves that were hungry would ignore you when you tell them to prioritise a build and go eat instead. Although this behaviour makes sense, we felt it would be better if they performed the build anyway, but received the Aggravated trait instead.
Storage arrangements - Any storage you own with arrangements set now have little signposts with an asterisk, to help distinguish between global and specialised storage.
UI improvements - The recipe popup when hovering over items to craft now features a description of what that item is for. Stats & Accomplishments UI now have icons for each of the statistics. Dwarf-list and other scroll-type UI, as well as the tech-tree, now have a subtle opening animation and SFX. When any building is claimed a dashed border will now appear around it; this used to only happen with items. Double clicking a building that is being claimed will centre view and highlight the dwarf that is claiming it.
Sneaky goblins - Some goblins will feature a new trait which makes them a little stealthy!
Item piles - Some items in storage will now appear in a more organised, sensible manner.
Antidote Potion - This wasn't being consumed automatically when encountering green gas or draugr frenzy cry.
AI logic improvements - Engineers were claiming entire piles of items for crafting, preventing other engineers from working similar jobs if items were not well distributed. Dwarves with nothing to do were still holding onto items instead of putting them away. Held units when told to interact with something would invariably stand on top of it, rather than next to it. Dwarves will now search for meals within a larger radius between jobs. When assigning equipment to dwarves, they will now search across a much larger radius.
AI performance - AI for mobbits, spiders and goblins were doing some naughty things and overloading the pathfinder in some circumstances!
Rendering performance - We've been finding various areas to improve performance, such as unnecessary animation changes off-screen, piles of items being rendered one item at a time etc, though still more work needs doing on this front!
Various other fixes & improvements, including mushrooms not responding to changes in moisture until harvested, and improved rendering of the save/load previews.
That's all for now, stay safe and Happy Holidays!
Halloween Mode (Patch Notes 32)
Halloween Mode
Glistenveld is getting spooky once again with Halloween Mode enabled (until Nov. 10th)! In Halloween Mode, you will experience the following changes to the game:
Atmosphere - The atmosphere of the game is more dramatic with fog and a change in colour palette!
Pumpkins - You will find random pumpkins in each level. You can harvest these to get a tasty pumpkin stew, which dwarves treat as equipable meals!
Webs - You will find random webs that stick to units and slow them down, or feed the spiders!
Bats - When you start a new skirmish mode game, you'll find a few more bats roaming the tunnels!
Bubbling waters - Water has turned greenish and bubbles.
Green blood - Units and creatures flash green when injured, instead of red.
Patch Notes
The big stuff:
Boulder Trap - A new type of defence, triggerable either by pressure plate or manually with a dwarf. The released rolling boulder will bowl over anyone in its path (friend or foe), trigger pressure plates and explode into fragments of stone on impact with walls! If the boulder rolls over another Boulder Trap in its path, that trap will open and take the boulder as ammunition. This allows multiple traps to be used to preserve the boulders and create a lethal perpetuating defence!
New Level 8 Abilities - Until now the Warrior was the only class to have a complete set of level 8 abilities. New Miner abilities include Tunnel King (while mining, motivates nearby dwarves to work faster) and Tunnel Whisperer (hears echos through walls to reveal nearby caves & rooms). New Forager abilities include Trusty Pan (Attacking has a chance to stun their target) and Beard Farm (Periodically grows mushrooms from their beard). New Engineer abilities include Silver-Tongue (Trading with a Trade-Stall gives back gold coins or very rarely an artefact or magic ring) and Tinker Bot (Allows the Engineer to pick up items from a distance, even over obstructions).
Ability UI Update - Choosing a new ability for your dwarves used to only show your current choice. The new UI shows all future abilities for that class as well, similar to a skill tree. This should allow for more strategic decision making.
The small stuff:
Personality-specific Dialog - This was already implemented behind the scenes but never explicitly shown. In some dialog, the nearest dwarf to the action might interject with a comment, relevant to their personality trait. This will now be accompanied by their trait in brackets, showing the relevance of their personality to that remark.
Tech Tree - Viewing techs in the tech tree now provide useful links directly to the relevant Guide entries, for further reading!
Building bridges - Engineers were always picking up 9 stone regardless of how much stone was actually required to complete the bridge.
Inspired & motivated - Recently we've been adding rising / falling particles over dwarves to show their buffs / debuffs. Inspired and motivated are the latest buffs to include these new particles.
Skirmish - Added hidden gem crystals around spawns, some of which are buried (similar to roots).
Missing descriptions & guide entries - A number of spider-related objects were missing descriptions, and added a bunch more missing entries to the guide.
Minecart Storage - Fixed some issues with minecarts & storage arrangements, in particular to do with picking up buildings.
Placement ghost - The 'ghost' that appears when you're about to place a building has been upgraded to have better detail, and should no longer appear so pixelated.
Draugr - A unique ominous battle music now plays when fighting Draugr in particular.
Various other fixes including the option to 'Send Home' allies not working as intended, and tutorial refinements.
That's all for now, stay safe and Happy Halloween!
Mini-Patch
Fix for resting spiders causing issues for the pathfinder (most noticeable in the endgame). Fix for tabbing through buildings ignoring which team the buildings belonged to.
Summer Sale Livestream (Updates + Giveaways)
In celebration of the Steam Summer Sale, we are announcing giveaways as well as exciting new updates for The Dwarves of Glistenveld!
Join our Discord and post: 'for Glistenborg!' in #game-chat!
For an additional chance to win:
Post a dwarvish name (first & last name) worthy of adding to the game in #ideas-suggestions
Post an idea for a cool new building or mechanic to add to the game in #ideas-suggestions
Post your own created artwork of a Dwarf in #art-screenshots
Play the demo and post a screenshot of a fun moment you had in #art-screenshots
All entries close tonight at midnight GMT! We will then post the giveaway draws in #announcements and announce the winners!
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nyskogames/
Discord: https://discord.gg/RsYJbBhxRe/
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/nyskogames/
Armour & Palisade (Patch Notes 31)
Fellow dwarves! We've received reports that goblins have started building palisade walls around their bases! To combat this, we'll be sending over new schematics to equip your Warriors with new chainmail armour!
Livestream Tomorrow:
By the way, we're livestreaming tomorrow (Friday 28th June) at 7pm GMT / 3pm EST, to announce steam key giveaways and exciting new updates for The Dwarves of Glistenveld! Hit the follow button over at twitch.tv/NyskoGames, or join our Discord if you don't want to miss it!
The big stuff:
Iron Armour - A new technology found alongside Iron Tools, that unlocks iron chainmail for your Warriors, giving them bonus defence! This chainmail can be combined with iron helmets to make 'full chainmail', which provides the benefit of both pieces of armour! We will also be adding more to this tech in a future patch.
New Combat FX - Battles have been made more satisfying with new sound effects for when a unit scores a crit or simply grazes their target, as well as an explosion of particles on strong impacts! Also added a sheathing sound when battles conclude.
Idle Unit Notifications - You will now be notified when you have dwarves of a particular class that have nothing to do. These notifications are intended to help you manage your clan, but they can be ignored.
Goblin Palisade - Goblins expanding their base will now build palisade walls around it, which will need to be destroyed before you can enter! Unlike stone walls which require miners, palisades can be destroyed by any class.
Enemy AI - AI camps had a habit of throwing all their units at you, even if you weren't near their base! We've been adjusting this behaviour so they only throw some of their units at you, among other AI improvements.
Doors - Doors (as well as the new palisade walls) now block line of sight, similar to walls. To see through a door, you will need to stand a dwarf by it, or place a lamp-post on the other side!
Tutorials - We've moved the original tutorials into Extras and polished up the dynamic tutorial, with the intent that new players will be able to learn the game while playing any mode of their choice! We hope this works to make the game more enjoyable to pick up.
Minecart Mayhem - A new puzzling minigame where you play as a member of clan Kindlewick as he hunts for treasure! The first 4 levels are complete, and the remaining levels will be introduced in a future update.
The small stuff:
Mineral Textures - Stone, Gold & Coal now have some new sprite variations.
Old Tracks - Now have a more 'broken' appearance, to better distinguish them from your own tracks.
New Icons - Updated some outdated or inconsistent icons, including the Engineer's class icon.
Removing Instructions - Fixed a bug where removing instructions wouldn't always stop units from working on it.
Skirmish Mode - Updated quick-start to include a food barrel, and updated some icons to be more distinguishable.
Sound System - Fixed an elusive bug where many sounds would stop playing after some time playing the game.
Various other bug fixes and improvements including updated difficulty setting descriptions, and not being able to use the Escape key to enter the escape menu while in dialogue.
These past few months we've been hard at work on chapter 3 content! We are excited for the next few patches that will introduce a new rolling boulder trap, steam vents, iron weapons and more!
That's all for now, stay safe out there!
Easter Eggs & Runestones (Patch Notes 30)
Fellow Dwarves! A new exciting technology 'Runestones' as well as manned ballistas, and a myriad of bug-fixes come with this year's Easter patch!
🐰 Easter Mode 🐰
In Easter Mode, you will experience the following changes to the game:
Atmosphere - The environment has a different look and feel.
Mobbits - Mobbits are larger than normal, and provide more meat!
Easter Eggs - You will find easter eggs sprawled about everywhere, even hidden in the walls! You can harvest easter eggs using the gather instruction, and they can be stored on tables similar to meals. How many can you find? (Find out at the bottom of the Stats window)
The big stuff:
Runestones - Runestones are a new unlockable building that, when placed, can be marked with one of four effects: Forging, Growth, Resistance and Warding. Forging speeds up forges and can reduce the amount of ore required for smelting. Growth creates moisture which speeds up mushroom & sapling growth, and can also trigger the power-slider combat ability. Resistance reduces incoming damage dealt to your dwarves and buildings. Warding prevents undead creatures like Draugr from reawakening. As Runestones are used they will charge up energy which will eventually release and spawn an elemental!
Elementals - In this patch elementals only appear in caverns mode or as a result of Runestones charging, but they will feature more in future patches. Each runestone triggers the respective elemental: Fire, Water, Rock & Wind. Each elemental has its own special ability unlocked when it reaches level 2.
Manned Ballistas - This one is a game-changer in our opinion! Now when you select an engineer or warrior to interact with a ballista, they will 'man' it and remain in position. Then whenever enemies come close, your unit will automatically rotate the ballista around and fire at them! Your dwarves are smart enough not to fire at allies in the way, but sometimes their shots might not meet their mark. Their accuracy is determined by combat level, so if you use a high level warrior, fewer shots will miss.
Spiders - Rebalanced and redesigned some behaviours. Level 1 spiders can no longer lay eggs. Spiders will now only flee if their hitpoints are very low, which means harder-hitting dwarves have greater chance of defeating them without having to chase. Higher level spiders will flee sooner. When a spider mother is attacked, it calls for help. If it then dies, all nearby spiders will flee from battle for a while.
AI Territory - Allies in caverns mode will now avoid building, mining or gathering resources near your buildings, based on a new territory system. This system is hidden but essentially each building is given a weight based on its type and distance, and nearby buildings are counted up to determine whose territory a particular hex belongs to.
Draugr Heads - Draugr can be a thorn in the side, especially in caverns mode. Well, now you can roll their heads around and move them out of your way! No, you can't play footie with them, but you can hide them in the closet!
The small stuff:
Schematics & Barrels - You can now obtain these resources using the gather instruction, rather than having to select a dwarf and interact with them manually.
Call for reinforcements - This button used to be hidden away in the escape menu, since it only applied in the campaign and would only be used rarely. Now the dwarf button in the instruction panel on the bottom left opens up a sub-menu which provides the dwarf-list, by-laws (if it is unlocked) and call for reinforcements. To maintain previous UX click patterns, you can double click the dwarf button to open up the dwarf-list without having to move your mouse into the new menu.
Build Wall - If items are in the way of a wall instruction, a pickup instruction will now be automatically assigned and executed before the wall is built.
Engineers - Fixed some behaviour where they refused to build a building that they clearly had access to without putting it back in storage first or trying to build a new one. This may still occur under certain circumstances, further testing is necessary to confirm this.
Repair - Increased engineer's priority of repair instructions.
Guide - Updated with a new look & feel. More entries have been added and some have been rewritten for clarity.
Various other fixes including ambient SFX panning, some voice lines not triggering, removing random dwarf complaints from the dialog history.
We've also been hard at work on Chapter 3 assets and content, some of which we cannot reveal yet, but we will continue to trickle in updates regarding Chapter 3 in future patches & blog posts! That's all for now, stay safe out there, and Happy Easter!
The Christmas Patch (Patch Notes 29)
Fellow Dwarves! Glistenveld is getting wintery as Christmas Mode is enabled (until Jan. 7th)!
Patch Notes
🎄Christmas Mode🎄
In Christmas Mode, you will experience the following changes to the game:
Atmosphere - The place is looking wintery with a change of colour palette and mist!
Christmas Roots - Roots have now been decorated with Christmas lights! Unfortunately there are no blink patterns you can change...
Presents - Random presents will appear in each map, some buried in cave walls to be mined out, others in water to be fished for and some just laying around! Each contains one of six small random gifts!
Chests - Chests are now decorated as 'locked' presents!
Snowprints - All units will leave prints in the frosty dirt, giving you insight into their habits!
The big stuff:
Configure Farming Plots - With a Farming Plot selected, you can now configure what the plot will choose to harvest by toggling each item on/off, like mushrooms, roots, etc.
Instruction Assignment UI - Revamped this UI. Before it had a secondary panel which looked unintuitive. Now you can assign workers, see who is currently working on the job and prioritise them immediately in the same panel! This panel is now sorted by distance, so you can see who is nearest/farthest from the job.
Minecarts - You can now choose whether minecarts prefer traveling right or left at a Y junction! Also fixed an issue where clicking 'drop items' with a minecart selected wouldn't drop items properly if they took up too many tiles.
Mining / Harvesting FX - New 'breakage' particles appear whenever your units mine cave walls or rocks, or harvest mushrooms, roots etc.
The small stuff:
Fishing - You can now tell a forager to fish a specific location by right clicking the water, or tell them to prioritise a fishing instruction.
Picking up items - Unlike most other actions, there was no pop-up menu when you right clicked a pile of items on the ground. Now units will still default to picking up, but you can tell them just to move, or to pick up specific items instead.
Mining cave walls - Similar to picking up items, right clicking cave walls will now present a pop-up menu if there is something else that can be done besides mining. All actions should now have the same consistent behaviour.
Building Walls - Fixed an issue where you could build normal buildings over the top of certain entities, but not walls.
Map Table - Selecting an object to find in the minimap would render all buildings you owned, sometimes obstructing areas of the minimap.
Accomplishment counters - When you mine gems or harvest wood, a little stat number appears showing you how many you've collected in this map!
Unit Portrait - Clicking a unit or object's portrait multiple times will now cycle through units or objects of that type.
Hit Effects - Reworked the maths for hit effects like bleed, poison and splash damage. Before they were tied to individual hit cards, which meant the chance reduced as units leveled up in combat (and gained new cards). This is no longer the case. A bleed effect with 33% chance will now always hit one every 3 attacks.
Battle Lines - Warriors should no longer claim the same battle-line tile at the same time.
Various other improvements, including new selection SFX & when a storage is selected, clicking on the item button will now open that item in the guide.