This Merchant Life
This Merchant Life full launch
This Merchant Life is leaving Steam Early Access after two years, version 1.0 launches on August 30th! Check out our fancy new launch trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFgxINR0Phw
Big thanks to everyone that provided feedback, ideas and bug reports while we've been in Early Access, I think it's fair to say it's come a long way and we couldn't have done it without all that help!
The game will continue to be updated and improved after launch and all additional content and features will arrive in free updates.
Version 0.84
Balance
- Three skills changed. 'Bargain Hunter' now causes cut price events to last longer, rather than increase the chance of cut price events occuring. 'Everything Must Go' becomes 'Delivery Service' and instead of making cut price events reduce prices more it instead makes high demand events last longer. Finally 'Timing is Everything' becomes 'Alert' and instead of doubling the changes of high demand events occur it instead gives the player an additional heart to their max health.
- Reduced road event chance down a bit more as journeys now take longer in general.
- Limited Event and Limited Combat Avoidance both bumped up a little, so both are more spaced out on the road.
- Bumped the cost of the first three upgrades for each cart area up a little.
- Added hero available to recruit in tavern to current tavern save/load.
- Cost of buying 10 x Hides in the Overloaded Merchant road event (18) reduced from 500 to 200 coins to make it worthwhile.
- Reduced cost of buying a book from the Travelling Library road event (14) from 500 to 200 coins, and the cost of borrowing one from 100 to 50 coins.
- Selling price for 8x Grain in the Travelling Brewery road event (127) increased from 250 to 360 coins.
- Selling price for 4x Ale in Celebrating Adventurers road event (126) increased from 500 to 600 coins.
- Selling price for 5x Hides for Iron Hide road event (121) increased from 400 to 450 coins.
- Selling price for 3x Herbs for Cheese Merchant road event (116) increased from 450 to 500 coins.
- Bee hives cart part now repair the cart 3% when arriving in a settlement rather than 5%.
- Adjustments for cart speed changes made more granular. Increases to cart condition drop rate and fighter morale drop rate based on cart speed increases bumped up significantly so that cart speed is less OP.
- Cart wear upped slightly from 0.7 to 0.85.
UI
- Some new UI elements and tweaks for combat screen background, xp bar at top of map screen, top HUD bar for map screen, current city indicators, info button, cart capacity panel, reward panels for events.
- Prevented zoom in on map beyond starting zoom level
- Sell buttons on exotic market screen now correct button visuals.
- Caravan sidebar max stats for stat bars reduced down a bit more.
- Fixed a number of minor text overlaps and alignment issues.
- Added missing amount of coin from sale text for a number of sale options in several road events.
- Tweaked option text for option in road event Priest Appears to make it clearer that healing is for your guards and not you.
- Changes to the weight penalty thresholds due to the effect of a heatwave are now displayed in the mouseover text correctly.
Fixes
- Adjustment to the Skills sidebar to prevent a potential bug where after loading the game a skill point could be spent without purchasing a skill properly, causing many problems.
- Fix to some missing elements on SecureSave.dat file creation
- Fixed event 50 requiring a different resource than cloth to sell for that option to be available.
- Fixed the bonus from the skill 'Cart Enthusiast' (reduction in cart upgrade prices) not persisting once the game was saved and then loaded.
- Two starting road stats tweaked to correct initial values.
- Game now detects day/night state upon loading without needing the caravan to travel first.
- Added an extra check in resource calculation which should prevent resource totals dipping into the negative, even if there are issues with specific event scripting.
- Added some other missing requirement checks for a few road events (50,52,136)
- Adjusted rewards for road event Forest General Trader (54) so that you can't trade something away and receive less than the expected amount back due to a lack of space, by making rewarded goods in this case the same amount as for goods traded away. Also made Ale for Iron trade less bad for the player by making it an even swap!
- Adjusted the costs for one of the Sick Wagon (34) road event options to explicitly require gold and to require the player to have enough to make it fit better with the event result text. Removed the time costs for this option as well.
- Added check so that if a mission is failed on the road due to time running out, that mission slot is immediately selected as the current slot, which means road events reliant on having a currently empty mission slot for certain options will now correctly have those options immediately available.
- Adjustments to required space in cart to ensure that it covers the overage is swapping and receiving more than you trade away. Also reduced to just 1 space in cart for explicitly free collection options as opposed to purchases (where enough space in cart is required for the entire amount to make the purchase).
- Adjusted the 'GainGoods' event result type used in a couple of events to work more like other gain resource result types, which should sort out a few issues the old format was causing with resources going over capacity, incorrect resource reward amount messaging etc
- Also adjusted the 'LoseGoods' event result type to work more like other road event results as above.
- Meeting Jack Knife road event (where you can purchase weapons) now not available until you have unlocked rare goods.
- Ensured a couple of road events, one forest and one heartlands, can't be triggered before combat elements of the game are unlocked in month 2 and at level 2.
- Fixed a couple of combat road events so that options are properly available to attempt to intimidate potential attackers if you have a strong enough security force.
- Fixed the Self-Maintaining wheel covers part being far more effective than intended at reducing cart wear from travel.
- Fixed issues with the Furnishings cart part causing decimal mission rewards and also being applied to non-living cargo...
- Added delayed checks to cart's target rating so that it is calculated after all of a cart's stats have been resolved, fixing issues with target rating appearing super high until the cart moves after loading game.
- Planters and Mining Equipment cart parts now generate resources at a slower rate, and correctly update cart capacity.
- The correct regional scenario is now shown and active immediately upon loading the game without needing to initiate travel.
- Horse hats now correctly make the caravan immune to the effects of a heatwave immediately upon being applied, including immediately after loading the game.
- Mounted Sextant combat avoidance should now work correctly.
- Post battle player injury calculations adjusted so that the Crossbows cart part works correctly in reducing the chance of injury after losing a battle.
- Got the cart defence stat to correctly work during the looting phase of combat again.
Version 0.83
Systems
- Added trainer available to save/load for current settlement.
Balance
- Some scaling to XP rewards from explore events based on global reputation.
- Time to complete missions increased by roughly 30-40%
- Rebalanced Payback mode to be less impossible.
UI
- Added lots more hints.
- Side trait mouseover boxes only appear if any bonuses are applied from that side trait.
- Tweaks to max stats for stat bars - not absolute theoretical maximum, but more realistic maximum.
- Added no missions available here message for mission screen if all current missions taken.
- TAKE MISSION button reacts correctly when mission can't be taken in terms of visuals and sound effects.
- Built in a delay to hub button activation after finishing an explore event to prevent accidentally clicking through from the explore event continue button to a town hub option.
Fixes
- Fixed issue where cart capacity could appear to exceed maximum after gaining resources from explore events.
- XP bar updates immediately from selling zero stock goods in settlements, previous only updated when leaving towns.
- Rounded some rewards/costs for road events that are now scaling and might end up with a decimal.
- Ensured various XP rewarded text matched the actual amount by taking into account all modifiers that can be applied.
- Fixed issue with Cart Icon Type and HUD Type being uninitiated until player goes into the options menu.
- Fixed issue with Hero Deployment Time sometimes being incorrect (despite being displayed as the correct amount).
- Fixed faction type not being saved for current town, causing them to default to Elysande if you saved at a settlement with a faction HQ and went there before leaving the settlement.
- Fixed the Hall of Mirrors event coming up when and where it shouldn't, should now work as intended (only triggering in a specific settlement after a flag is set to on by a choice in another explore event).
- Fixed the UNLOCKED box appearing over text on the Unlocks sidebar if you didn't have enough money to unlock it (despite it being already unlocked).
- Fixed the UPGRADE button appearing on the cart screen after initially loading the game if the player hadn't unlocked the cart upgrade tier requirements.
- Stopped the borders for charters flashing during travel.
- Corrected the smaller event option buttons having slightly different text borders when moused over and not moused over.
Version 0.82
Systems
- Heroes joining the caravan during the story no longer replace existing heroes of the same class if you have one currently hired - they accompany the caravan but not as fighters.
- The initiation system for combat missions has been revised a little so that it should be impossible to complete a journey on which a combat mission should take place without it actually happening!
- Mission, faction mission and tavern fighter data for the current settlement now saved in full. Explore available for current settlement also saved.
- Friend meeting availability added to save/load data for current settlement.
- Faction missions received at Archon now randomly alternate between the two Queens rather than always being for the same Queen.
- Can now only purchase timber during market tutorial, and a convenient urgent demand for timber in Archon will ensure a profit rather than a loss is made from this tutorial trade!
- Challenge mission types now failed if losing combat before completing them (as with escort missions)
- Search missions now fail if losing combat on the return leg of the journey, having found the required item/people.
- Collect missions now only fail if losing combat on the return leg of the journey, having collected the required item/people.
Balance
- Base costs of common resources increased, costs of rare and exotic resources decreased. Making a profit trading early on should be easier, but more of a challenge in the mid and late game.
- Town resource stocks now scale based on global reputation, becoming larger as global reputation increases (and balancing out issues where increased speed around map wouldn't give resources enough time to restock in mid/late game).
- Town resource stock regeneration speed also scales based on global reputation, increasing as global reputation increases
- CaravanBaseSpeed reduced from 0.25/2.5 to 0.2/2, slowing travel speed down a little across the map
- The increase of caravan speed on the map from each point of cart speed stat increase is reduced, as is general caravan speed as a consequence
- Speed bonus from Side Sails part reduced from 20% to 10%. Part description text on cart screen now details actual percentages for this part.
- Halved baseline cart repair cost across all difficulties. The repair cost increases more slowly from making early cart upgrades, but increases much more from later upgrades. Essentially cart repair should be a good deal cheaper than it was early in the game, and more expensive than before in late game.
- Level requirement for Tier 2 charters reduced from 10 to 8, and Tier 3 charters reduced from 16 to 14.
- Fighter wage costs scale with global reputation, starting lower than before and rising to higher with each tier of progression.
- Hero wage costs scale with global reputation, rising to higher amounts at the higher tiers of progression.
- Thresholds for caravan target level adjusted so high target ratings less prevalent.
- The range of adjustments made to chance to be attacked by target rating reduced a little
- Systems for Limited Combat Avoidance and Limited Event Avoidance moved from being calculated per frame to per hour of travel, and duration of effects increased
- The skill "Panic Stations" now increases Deployment Time at the start of battle by 2 rather than 1, and then skill "Tactical Accuracy" now increases Deployment Time at the start of battle by 3 rather than 2
- Hero deployment time increases to 3 at level 5 and 4 at level 8
- XP rewards from victory in combat now scale based on global reputation
- Cart wear reduced as cart now spends longer being judged to be travelling after bug fix in this version (0.1 > 0.08)
- Atton starting recruitment level reduced from Tier 3 to Tier 2, Archon reduced from Tier 3 to Tier 2, Centuria reduced from Tier 2 to Tier 1. Jarl increased from Tier 2 to Tier 3, Artemis increased from Tier 1 to Tier 3.
- Adjusted balancing for how often the cart is likely to get attacked per hour, making it generally less likely, particularly increasing the much higher chances that previously existed at high target ratings.
- Added some easier initial combat mission types with lower coin rewards, for settlements where player's reputation is below 20.
- Enemy numbers in road events increases a little more quickly as you move through the global reputation tiers.
- Enemy numbers for combat missions now scale somewhat based upon global reputation (although less than road event combats). Combat mission rewards also scale with global reputation.
- Search mission coin rewards reduced around 20-30%.
- EscortGoldDistance, which defines the base coins reward level for most mission types, reduced from 200 to 150.
- Reward modifiers for collect and challenge mission types also reduced.
- Reduced enemies somewhat for the Conspirators faction mission type.
- Shifted around a few locations between Artemis and Centuria, so that the Dye Makers crafter is now in Artemis, removing the issues from having two crafters in one location. The tailors from Artemis now moves to Centuria, which makes sense as it's known for it's weavers! Resource costs and availability for Dyes adjusted accordingly for these two locations.
Content
- 11 new event illustrations added.
UI
- Cart target rating is now directly affected by road security score (rather than it being applied afterwards as part of the overall chance of attack calculation) and this is indicated on the target rating mouseover.
- Added % indicators for cart condition to make it clearer
- Minor UI tweaks to the Unlocks charter sidebar
- Added a warning message on the combat screen if the player has any security but presses to continue to the movement phase of the battle without any of them deployed to the battle
- Added trait quote mouseovers.
- Minor text alignment tweaks on town Mission screen.
- Added Thanks and Attributions sub-pages in the Credits screen.
- Pips added to trait panels on the Profile sidebar to indicate what level each of the player's traits are at. These are also added to the trait requirements when they are needed to meet friends (along with numeric indication of the required level here).
- Added mouseovers for market force icons on the market screen.
- Changed display of empty mission slots on the town mission screen, with missions moving up as those above them in the last are taken.
- Changed display of empty recruitment slots on the town tavern screen.
- Sidebar buttons flash when they have initially been unlocked and not yet accessed. The skills tab also flashes whenever the player has unspent skill points available.
- Mission completions and failures are now called out more prominently, with the missions sidebar being shown with a success or failure message whenever either of these occur and an audio cue as well. Old mission failure and mission success HUD messages removed.
- Added the option to select HUD types - 'Standard' (same as previous) and 'Alternate' (closer to older implementations that didn't have issues with map mouseovers on screen resolutions above 1920 x 1080).
- Tweaks to placement of mission action buttons, and glow effects added.
- Settlement status bar fades in as caravan approaches that settlement, fading back in as it leaves.
- Added town status icons with mouseovers to the Town Hub and Town Info screens.
- Town details icons with mouseovers added to the Town Info screen (recruitment level / cart repair / apothecary).
- Enemy indicator during the deployment phase of combat now indicates whether a single enemy or multiple enemies are going to attack from that direction.
- Sidebar mouseovers now appear above Road Event UI.
- The fighter leaving the caravan notification on the Town Hub screen now shows the fighter variant, and works for more recently added fighter classes.
Fixes
- Cart stats now update correctly for all cart upgrades
- Repair costs update immediately after making an upgrade
- Fixed minor overlap issues with main story goals on the top of screen HUD bar
- Losing a battle in multiple directions no longer increases the total damage to the cart or the player to multiples, the max is always one set of damage
- Players can now only take one combat mission at once. Partly to fix several issues that could occur when this was the case. Possible still with faction missions if taken in the same location, but seems to handle it correctly anyway.
- Fixed crash that occurred during game creation sequence if player pressed the enter key.
- Fixed incorrect chances of unusual region scenarios occurring outside of the forest region.
- Fixed issue which was sometimes causing a delay in time passing while the caravan was moving, which also led to time estimates for journeys always being longer than the amount of time that actually passed.
- Fixed issue with many trainers only training wits, and reverting them to the numbers of other traits beforehand.
- Fixed side traits that don't offer faction and/or settlements bonuses displaying that you had a reputation bonus at or with "None"
- Fixed issue where horse hats would only appear for the first two horses
- Corrected time costs for the LoseTime event outcome to use the right amount and not apply Erin's time saving bonus.
- Road event UI should now show the rewards taking into account the various boosts and modifiers that can be applied rather than just the baseline amount.
- The Silver Sun encounter on the road event now gives Intel specific to the Silver Sun's HQ, if the player takes that option.
- Meeting a stranger on the road event now requires the player to have a weapon good to be able to sell it to the stranger!
- Fixed issue with the veteran bonus counting itself multiple times in battle (once per round) as if that was multiple fighters.
- Fixed a number of issues with the security and defence scores not updating correctly after fighters were killed / moved / withdrawn
- Fixed an issue with leader bonus applying after the fighter with that trait was no longer fighting in that quadrant
- Adjusted UI during combat movement phase so correct and currently baseline (no dice applied) security vs enemy defence stats are displayed
- Fixed an issue where moving a fighter to the opposite quadrant in combat wouldn't update the security score in those quadrants correctly
- Stopped Grey Bards story search message appearing on two town hub screens during an earlier story chapter instead of the correct one.
- Firing fighters and unlocking skills should run the security slots update, checking for available spaces for hiring fighters.
- Some fixes and reorganising of how veteran bonuses are applied, maintained and removed in combat.
Version 0.81
It's an update jam-packed full of UI tweaks, bug fixes and balance changes. There is also some lovely new art to depict some of the events that can occur on the road!
Systems
- If a fighter or hero has more than 50 morale, their pay cost now adjusts to cost proportionally less the closer their morale is to 100 - basically, paying a fighter or hero that is above 50 morale is no longer horribly inefficient cost wise
- Fighters now have a 20% chance to heal their health by one each time your caravan reaches a settlement (if their health is currently below max)
- Chance of non-combat road events is now increased when the cart reaches a certain speed threshold (so they don't occur much less when travel times are significantly reduced)
Balance
- Hero chance to heal by 1 (if health below max) when reaching a settlement reduced from 50% to 25%
- Ranged fighter types (local hunters and archers) now have 0 defence
- Removed the link between fighter morale and initial hire costs, as it made higher starting morale for fighters of little/no benefit.
- Rebalanced fighter initial hire vs wage costs so that hire costs are at a bit of a premium versus continuing wage costs (it costs a bit more to hire a fighter than pay for 100 morale for them). Then rebalanced this down somewhat.
- Rebalanced hero initial recruitment costs (now higher)
- Adjusted skills in the Recruitment tree, Tavern Trawler now +1 hire slots rather than +2, Friends in Low Places now +2 hire slots rather than better recruits available and Leader now +3 hire slots rather than +2. Leader and Scary Friends skills swap places in the tree so that Leader is the final skill in the tree.
- Building Guild Houses at Arrow and Hallbright now increases starting fighter morale by +12 for each rather than +8
- Small rejig to town recruitment levels, including Centuria (1 > 2) and Arrow (2 > 1)
- Changes to some Guild House bonuses. Guild Houses at Woodforde and Artemis now increase fighter talent chances kingdomwide, at Mandrago reduces trainer costs kingdomwide and at Mandrake increases recruitment level in the city by 1.
- Pratchet's hero bonus changed to be 'fighter morale increases by an additional amount' bonus that was previous assigned to Sigurd, and values for bonuses vastly reduced (they were probably game breakingly high before)
- Sigurd's hero bonus is now increasing fighter's chances of healing when they reach a settlement
- Some road events that result in the player gaining or losing coins or XP now scale the rewards/losses based on the player's global reputation level
- Some road events with options that have coin costs to access now have coin costs that scale based on the player's global reputation level
- Explore events also have scaling gold rewards/losses based on the player's global reputation level. Some entry cost coin requirements for options also scale. A few fixes for coin requirements for explore event options.
- Scaling added to gold stolen by traitor priest and max base amount also increased a little
- Hero morale falls more slowly
- Hero morale reverts to 50 if fired or if they leave after it reaches 0
- Woodforde and Serenity no longer offer cart upgrade and repair services
- Grain no longer has market effects apply to it (logic is that it's too much of a staple)
- Removed +1 security bonus from Sailor career background.
- Coin costs for some combat events (where coin based bribes are possible) now scale based on global reputation.
- Apothecary costs scale based on global reputation.
- Explore events are only available 33% of the time and not all the time.
Content
- Added two-stage road combat events for gaining the Battle Banners and Mine Equipment cart parts
- Added explore events for gaining the Horse Hats and Horse Flags when your riddle trait is high enough
- Three additional cart parts are now available to buy from the cart store in Lancer - Metal Wheel Covers, Cart Furnishings and Off Road Wheels
- A new repeatable Archon-only event allows the player to Unlock the trainer Culvert if they didn't select the correct option in a unique explore event
- 15 new event illustrations
UI
- Visual representation for hired fighters on the security sidepanel if their current health is below their max level (through injury)
- Added tutorial popups for each town panel. All tutorial popups can now be turned on by pressing an info icon, so the player can view them whenever they wish from the relevant screen. Revised and updated existing tutorial popup text a little.
- Player visual appearance randomised each time character create screen is reached
- Special UI addition with speech added to combat intro if player has no guards or heroes
- Removed the big GUILD button that appeared alongside EXPLORE on the town hub, added note about Guild Houses to the Town Hub help text
- Text and display for unlocking trainers, mercenaries, friends, taverns and a mayor in explore events improved
- Some paragraphing and text layout changes made to some explore events, plus a smattering of minor text changes.
- Explore event titles visible.
- Caravan stats going above their pure levels (through short term buffs and bonuses from night time) is now indicated on caravan sidebar stat bars.
- Short term caravan buffs indicated on stat bar mouseovers and with flashing stat icons while buff lasts.
- More details added to mouseovers for caravan stats on sidebar and caravan stats on cart screen in towns, with differentiation made for pure stats (shown on cart screen) and adjusted stats, taking into account temporary bonuses (shown on the caravan sidebar). Details of hero bonus and cart part caravan stat adjustments added to the cart screen stat mouseovers, details of the red line skill bonus when in effect added to the caravan sidebar speed mouseover and likewise for the nonchalant skill bonus for the conceal mouseover.
- Presentation of town status UI elements adjusted. Market forces (low and high demand), tax hikes and rumours are displayed in a bar above the town name when active, with mouesovers for each. Hopefully less cluttered and better able to handle situations where a single settlement has lots of status effects occurring at the same time.
- Lots of small fixes and tweaks to the UI for heroes on the security sidebar, particularly for mouseovers. Fix for Erin not appearing to be correctly at level 3. Some minor UI tweaks for heroes on the tavern screen as well.
- Top speed shown on the cart screen is now actually based upon the cart's pure speed stat rather than being largely static.
- Added previews for total gold that will be earned/spent when mousing over the sell all/buy all buttons respectively
- Repair cost now immediately updates to 0 after repairing the cart on the cart screen
- Some paragraphing and text layout changes made to some road events, plus a smattering of minor text changes.
Fixes
- Fixed issue where morale boosts for towns could cumulatively increase every time you loaded a save game
- Fixed the caravan sidebar transition animation getting stuck part way if you changed to a different sidebar tab before it completed
- Misaligned beehive hat properly aligned
- Autopay now works correctly when waiting in towns
- Negative market force times shouldn't appear on the map screen anymore
- Dog will now appear on the caravan screen if you've found them, and the dog specific road event can now occur
- Event outcomes that heal or damage fighters should work correctly again
- Beating wild animal type enemies in combat should properly provide loot now
- The Red Line skill should now work correctly (bonus to speed when cart capacity less than half full)
- Hero rapport capped at 100
- Issues with market forces not occurring in the game as much as they should have been are much improved, although still occasionally occur
Version 0.8
Systems
- Combatants now have a defence stat as well as an attack stat
- Combat in quadrants is now in two phases per round; player attack vs enemy defence, then enemy defence vs player attack
- The difference between attack and defence scores (with rolls added) results in how many wounds are suffered per quadrant by each side. This means multiple wounds per round and much faster battles.
- Fighters can now be moved to different quadrants between rounds, with a Deployment Time costs
- Fighters can also be withdrawn from the fight with a Deployment Time cost
- Losing the battle now also reduces fighter morale
- Enemy forces can include several different unit types in the same battle
- Three new fighter classes and some new enemy types also added
- Loyalty is no longer a primary stat for fighters. It still exists (and affects how quickly fighter morale drops), but isn't displayed and varies far less between different fighter types.
- Global states (bad weather, unrest, festivals etc) are now region specific, with a number of new state types added (tumult, turmoil, anarchy, tax hike, patrols, crackdown, bad omens, good omens). A region overview icon has been added for each region, mousing over will indicate the rough dimensions of that region and the current region state.
- Trade Traits now give a reputation bonus for one specific settlement and most also give a reputation bonus for one specific faction. Mouse over on trade traits on the profile sidebar to show this, as well as called out on faction reputation bar mouseovers on the reputation sidebar.
- Road combat events gain extra enemies as player's global reputation reaches set thresholds, making them more difficult and dangerous the more well known the player gets
- Travel speed now begins as Fast rather than Slow when beginning a journey
Balance
- Upped baseline starting Deploy Time from 5 to 6
- Rebalanced fighter stats
- Hunters now always have the Deadeye talent
- Removed variance in Deployment Time per fighter class, now set per class
- Max combat rounds reduced from 12 to 6
- Increased the Global Reputation requirements for story chapters 6 (150 > 200) and 9 (250 > 400)
- Road combat events now have more enemies as player's Global Reputation increases
- Fighter morale now drops quite a lot more slowly than before, but fighter wage costs are higher. Felt you had to pay fighters too often before, and autopay isn't neccesarily a good option if money is tight.
- A few fighter perks altered to fit the new combat system (Weapon Expert, Manouverable)
- Hero levelling readjusted to include increases to their new defence stat
Content
- Variations of appearance added for all fighter classes
UI
- Added region icons on the map and an indication of this region's dimensions on the map when you mouse over the region icon
Fixes
- Fixed issue where combat traits wouldn't activate if fighters were deployed after the first round (Hunter, Paladin, Lawful, Freedom Fighter, Inspired, Veteran)
- Fixed issue where combat traits wouldn't apply their bonus correctly beyond the first round (Foolhardy, Loner)
- Fighter left the caravan message on arriving in towns (due to morale) reinstated
Version 0.73
Systems
- Health dropping to 0 now initiates a crisis event, where the player must pay a percentage of their current coins (percentage varies by difficulty) to heal up and continue
- Market tax for some good rarities now increases at month 4 and month 9
- Each month one settlement will have a market tax hike, where market taxes for that settlement will double for the duration of the month, making profitable acquisitions from here difficult. UI for this is placeholder.
Balance
- Reduced cart condition no longer affects cart capacity stat
- Reduced the chance of road events occuring by 25%
UI
- Added a next button to the hints panel so you can cycle through hints
- The location that intel relates to now shown when gaining intel
- Wait for night and wait for daybreak buttons when in towns - temporary art
Fixes
- Can no longer take a standard or faction challenge mission which reduces your capacity if you don't have enough free capacity
- Added mission faction number to load/save
- Fixed various types of faction missions not correctly awarding faction reputation when completed
- Prevented the player getting looping interactions with friends Io and Muirne through explore events remaining available after they have been met. Also check events that should be on/off immediately after loading a game now.
- Added failsafes that should cause story battles to trigger if they don't work as intended, hopefully preventing progress issues in the story campaign
- Time passing in various in-town events now causes fighter morale to drop, albeit at a much slower rate than it would on the roads
- Market tax takes into account good rarity when using buy all buttons
Version 0.72
Systems
- Added a tutorial system, which can be toggled on/off for all new games. Involves a checklist of tasks to be accomplished and nice glowy buttons!
Balance
- Exotic goods are no longer available to buy in Archon
UI
- Minor rejig to profile sidebar
- Visual redesign of the market screen
- Changed the town name of Bryce to Centuria
- Added Unlock Hints for unknown town locations
- Added building icons and mouseover details for each settlement in the Reputation sidebar
- Added mouseovers of names of discovered locations for each settlement in the Reputation sidebar
Fixes
- Fixed pressing the horse name random select dice in Character Create layering another music track on top of the current one
- Going to the load screen then backing out to the main menu no longer causes another music track to play on top of the first one
- Fixed gems being valued at 0 in Jarl
- Fixed being able to bet on race wager with Rafik when you don't have enough coins, which could lead to briefly having negative coins
- Hopefully fixed issue where charters would increase in cost over time
- Fully prevented being able to access guild house storage without building it (previous fix turned out to be incomplete)
- Fixed Orion 'fomenting' typo
- Fixed monthly global good price changes not working correctly in Payback mode
Version 0.71
Systems
- Added global resource price changes. Three random resources each month have a sizable increase or decrease in price across all settlements.
- Added a market tax. This increases for every purchase you make in a settlement's market, and is paid automatically when you leave the settlement. If you can't afford to pay it, you instead lose one reputation in the settlement. The tax amount increases by 1 for every common good purchased, 2 for every rare good purchased and 3 for every exotic good. This is partly to avert the loophole where you could make small profits by buying goods until the price ticks up and then selling them all again. It also makes borderline profitable trades less desirable and adds a bit more difficulty to trading.
Balance
- Resources now have an average cost range rather than a single figure, meaning there's some variation in prices between towns with resources at average prices. Price within average range varies from settlement to settlement and changes every ingame week.
- Resource stocks in a settlement now remain depleted after you leave, returning back to baseline amounts by an increment each week (faster for more generally common resources and those more commonly found in the settlement). Town stocks go from empty to full again in roughly 3 weeks.
- Resource prices now increase independently for each resource type when purchased, in practise this means that the cheaper common resource prices increase quickly more when bought than they used to (but still less than they drop when sold)
- Chapters in the story campaign requiring gold (asides from the first such chapter with this requirement) will now leave the player with 5000 coins upon completion
- Bonuses for 'Hard Bargain', 'Cart Enthusiast','Complimentary','Sponge' perks increased
- 'Horse Shouter' perk now makes temporary cart stat boosts last twice as long
- 'Act Nonchalant' perk now only increases conceal when the caravan has no guards
- Perks to increase caravan security have both been removed and replaced with perks that increase deployment time at the start of battles
- 'Stacking' perk removed and replaced with 'Fixer Upper', which reduces cart repair costs by 35%
Content
- Portraits for all story characters added plus Riley portrait
UI
- Mouseover preview panel for resource costs is now shown for the town you're currently at from the map screen
- Mouseover preview panels for resource costs are now on the GUI layer rather than the map layer, and thus overlay it correctly
- Added hint mouseover for each story chapter
- Added unlock hints for currently locked heroes on the unlock sidebar tab
- Added Unlock Hints on/off toggle game option
- All town UI panels now appear behind other HUD mouseovers
Fixes
- Fixed issue where newgame flag was on when loading games as well
- Fixed crash that could occur from having one of three special backpack types for your merchant and then beginning dialogue in campaign or payback modes
- Fixed a few issues with which traits heroes like and dislike not being configured correctly
- Buy all and sell all now directly affect market prices rather than doing so indirectly, which was causing market prices to change less when using buy all and sell all compared to manually buying and selling each resource one by one, which was basically allowing a loophole where you could buy all then sell all in the same market and make a small profit.
- Added temporary cart stat boosts to load/save
- Fixed typo that was preventing region and hero events from occurring
Temporary
- Run a script when loading game to avert market prices starting at 0 when playing with older saves
Version 0.7
Systems
- Added a new game mode - Story Mode. Complete a length campaign, with objectives to complete, as your merchant is drawn into a dangerous conspiracy!
- Added a new game mode - Payback Mode. Similar to a mode that was in the game earlier in the year and removed, Payback requires the player to pay increasing costs each month to keep up with debt payments or it's game over!
- Adjusted the bonuses given for some career backgrounds and added 3 new bonuses
- Added hints that appear when your cart is travelling between settlements. Can be toggled on/off on the options menu.
UI
- Added quick overview for the career selection screen, with a toggle to show full details.
- Rejig to the difficulty select screen, moved most of the difficulty details to an expandable tab
- Resource icons only now appear on caravan tab only when unlocked
- Added the ability to name your two horses on the character create screen. Also begin character create with a randomly assigned name for player and each horse already assigned. Some other minor character create screen tweaks.
- Added heroes tab to the Unlocks sidebar, showing the state of all unlocked heroes.
Fixes
- Fixed issue where growing chance with the potted plants and mining chance with the mining tools parts were massively higher than intended, changed from 50% chance per hour to 5% as intended
- Set cart stats to recalculate more often (every hour) to take into account changes of stats during trips from condition change and day/night.
- Reset some variables on load games that weren't previously being reset
- Fixed incorrect assignment of some hero talents
- Fighters sometimes having over 100 morale when recruited definitely fixed, fighter morale being generally inflated when recruited (and town reputation 20 or more) hopefully fixed
- Fixed issue causing crafting not to work, and for crafting number to not be saved correctly
- Fixed a deadstate caused if a battle reached round 12 without either side having won yet