This is easily the biggest update to This Merchant Life since is hit early access, which is pretty exciting, we hope you like it!
Key additions: The guild house system is now implemented as intended, with varying bonuses depending on where you build them. Multiple save slots! Visual customisation of the player! Three new resources and five new crafters! A new sidebar showing faction relationships and overviews of each town. Lots more audio effects, with much needed music and sound effect volume control. A bunch of UI tweaks and quite a lot of new art.
Systems
- Implemented Guild House system more fully; different towns offer different bonuses when a guild house is built in them, most of these bonuses being unique. Building a guild house now costs coins, with the cost escalating with every one that is built.
- Player can now customise visual appearance on character create screen - over 30 options to select in total, hundreds of potential combinations
- Added location type: apothecary, where you can heal for a fee
Content
- Added five additional crafters - Meat Merchant, Potter, Winery, Monks, Dye Makers
- Added three new common resources - herbs, fruit and wool
Balance
- Market events now affect stock levels as well as prices at markets
- Increased length of time for market events from 36/72 hours min/max to 72/144
- Increased required special trade number to increase town reputation by 1 from 10 to 25 trades
- Slight rebalance of resource costs in Archon, Artemis and Mandrake, reducing number of resources that are above average price there. Upped prices in a few other towns for some resources to compensate.
UI
- Added a new side tab: Guild. The main screen of this tab shows the current guild rank and the standing that the player's guild has with various important factions in Peregrine. Sub-screens within the tab for each region show the player's reputation in each town, the status of the locations within each town and the status of guild houses within each town (as well as the bonus for each).
- Adjusted the travelling panel along the bottom of the screen, incorperating icons and details on game speed
- Currently active sidebar tab is now layered above the others, pops out a bit, and the sidebar also receives a coloured stripe for that tab
- Fixed small alignment issue with reputation bar
- Added XP earned indicators for crafting, arrival, first arrival
- Building cost types now displayed as icons rather than pure text
- Made building bonuses green
- Changes to description of goals (relating to guild, not player)
- Fixed auto-press on explore event issue
General
- Added a save slot system with five slots to use
- Simplified town save data files
- Added music volume slider to title options menu and ingame pause menu
- Added sound effects to buttons and ambient audio to town hub screen
- Added sound effects volume slider to title options menu and ingame pause menu
- Game speed while travelling is now toggled by space, rather than requiring it to be held down
- Added special outcomes to road events, allowing for some friends and crafters to be learned off on the road
- Added guild house data, road data, starting fighter data, new resources, building new flags to save/load
- Crafting now earns 100 XP a time
- Fixed issue with escort missions not scrubbing correctly if you lose a battle before completing them (when the cart defence roll was also failed)
Upcoming Version - Player customisation
Just wanted to keep you informed of work in progress for the next update, which will be with you within a week or so!
We've added player customisation, so you'll be able to alter the look of your character when you create them.
If you have any ideas for other variations/items/options you'd like to see in player customisation, let us know and we may add them in a future update!
Next Version and Save Games
Hello Merchant Fans, just wanted to give you a heads up that existing save games won't work in the next version, which is likely to arrive within the next two weeks.
On the plus side, this is partly because the next update will bring with it multiple save slots!
Version 0.42
This update has been quite a while in the works! The key addition is the locations system, which adds specific places within settlements that players can visit directly once they've learned of them. There are seven locations added with this update, a lot of the work in this update was on the structure and functionality of the whole system, so expect lots more locations added soon to flesh this system out!
There are also some fixes for particularly annoying bugs that had been hanging around for ages, such as the auto-travel when clicking on specific settlements bug.
In addition, some nice quality of life improvements are included, such as buy all/sell all buttons on the market and overviews of cheap and expensive resources available when mousing over settlements on the map screen.
Please note that saved data about settlements may be affected by this update - particularly reputation levels.
Fixes
- Added short delay to TRAVEL button appearing when clicking on a settlement, fixing issue where cart would sometimes automatically start travelling to the next settlement (happened from Oxtown to Arrow due to relative positions on map).
- Starting career stat boosts now save and load correctly
- Added instructions to calculate capacity levels after some event types that had previously been missing them
Systems
- Added system to allow for region specific road events (i.e events that only occur on forest, heartlands, mountain or coastal roads).
- Added system for up to four unique locations that can be discovered and visited directly for each settlement
- Added lots of additional counters and modifiers for status/relationship with various characters and factions
- Added location type: friend - which allows you to visit specific people you meet, spend time with them and develop friendships
- Added location type: crafter - which allows you to exchange a set number of required resources for a number of crafted, more valuable resources
UI
- Added low and high prices panel when mousing over settlements on the map
- Added capacity count to caravan side panel
- Adjusted when tutorial boxes show up
- Escape to exit main menu
- Some settlement UI doesn't appear if market forces UI is already there
Market
- Added Buy All and Sell All buttons
Misc
- Set the title screen to play a random song from the soundtrack rather than than the same one every time
- Limited town reputation to 100 max
- Adjusted depths of settlement and road objects so UI always overlays them
- Adjusted map position (and relative map objects and paths) so there is more room over to the far left of the map
Version 0.41
This update is mainly a much needed balancing pass, dealing in particular with trade cart stats and upgrades. There are also lots of bug fixes, especially for combat and combat missions.
Balancing
- Adjusted speed calculation so speed upgrades aren't massively overpowered. Road speed now much more important than it was.
- Adjusted cart upgrade stats, moving some upgrades around to balance relative value of each upgrade and try to make choices a little more interesting - less okay at everything upgrades, more focused heavily on one or two stats. Maximum possible cart defence reduced.
- Adjusted cart upgrade costs. Everything is more expensive (total cart upgrade cost now 75,000, over 6 times what it was before). Added a multiplier calculation to costs, so basically each upgrade level ramps up in cost quite a bit, and there is a particular price jump from tier 1 to tier 2 upgrades.
- Tweaks to base cart speed, target rating calculation and chance of combat events
- Updated the level curve, it's quite a lot steeper now
Cart Screen
- Upgrade stat boosts now shown with pips rather than just text
- Stat bars now display cart stats vs cart max stats, rather than caravan stats vs caravan max stats. Caravan max stats are basically the cart stats with added modifiers from various sources outside of upgrades, so this should be clearer without them shown here.
- Cart defence vs security is now a bit clearer
- Various small tweaks to layout of upgrade details
Fixes
- Fixed issue where assigning then unassigning a fighter could lead to endless combat as game thought a fighter was still there
- Fixed issue when unassigning a fighter different to the currently selected fighter
- Fixed issue with combat missions not working correctly after loading a game.
- Fixed issue with combat missions not clearing correctly, leading to empty combat mission fights
- Goods are looted from your cart as intended now - not ALL of your goods at once
- Losing a combat mission now fails the mission even if your cart defences stop the cart being looted after the battle
- Some minor fixes to a few caravan stat and perk calculations
- Tidied up combat screen showing player having won sectors that there wasn't a fight in
- Minor UI fixes
Misc
- Added combat rounds count, max of 8 rounds
- Seperated out status resolve from combat mission resolve as part of fixing a few combat mission issues
- Show resource types stolen on battle result screen, basic implementation for now
Version 0.4
This is a pretty big update, primarily focused around adding extra content - 52 new events should add a lot more variety! There are also two more tracks added to the soundtrack, various UI tweaks and bug fixes. Additionally, you can now name your merchant, while all mercenaries will also have names.
Events
- 42 additional explore events added
- 10 additional road events added
- Trait changes from road events now visualised
Music
- Added 2 additional songs to the game soundtrack
Profile
- Added side traits for resource trading, mission completion and a few event choices
Town Reputation
- Bonus free fighter trips earned when reaching town reputation of 20 and 80
Misc
- Added character create screen to allow players to enter a name for their merchant, will also serve as visual customisation screen down the line
- Added time cost to exploring settlements (6 hours)
- Added randomised names to all mercenaries
- Added detection for large monitors to set resolution down to game maximum rather than use native resolution
- Updates to save games for traits, unique events and tutorial statuses
UI
- Added tooltips for Market Forces indicators on map
- Added message to show game is saving when arriving at settlements
- Fixed XP bar not filling to correct proportions
- UI tweaks on various screens, including empty panels rather than empty space for things like missions, mecenaries
Fixes
- Fixed being unable to take mission when empty mission slot was in the first position
- Fixed issues where Market Events would dry up after a month or two into the game (wasn't resetting them correctly after ending)
Version 0.39
Hello everyone, another update for you! This one is primarily focused on dealing with some progress issues and general confusion surrounding the Goals system. It also has two great new tracks added to the soundtrack and the first implementation of the trait system, which should be pretty cool.
Music
- Added two new tracks to the game
- Added a music manager to shuffle through the soundtrack on the map
Trait System
- Added the profile page, which tracks player traits and also displays player name, player image, original career and current rank. Player traits currently using placeholder
- Added visualisation of traits earned in Explore Event screen
Goals System
- Updated the UI for the Goals panel to make the progression clearer
- Rejigged which goals unlock which game elements
- Added DEBUG button to allow player to complete all goals up to selected goal, this is intended to allow players to continue playthroughs if the updates to the order of the goal unlocks screwed with what they had unlocked and left them unable to unlock things
Guild House System
- Implemented very basic first pass of Guild House System (primarily so players don't get blocked on completing main goals). Reach 50 reputation in any settlement and the option appears on the main town hub screen alongside where the EXPLORE option typically appears.
Combat
- Sped up rolls in combat significantly
Levelling
- Increased level cap from 10 to 20
Balancing
- Increased the chance of status roll taking place up again, this time from 16 to 60. Should make combat missions trigger MUCH more reliably.
- Nerfed the rewards for the 'Free Half Day' explore event which could easily be exploited to make a small fortune
Fixes
- Fixed issue where cart stats weren't loading correctly
Version 0.38
This update primarily focuses on improving the readability of combat, fixing some combat-related bugs and improvements to the mission system.
Save Game Status
Save games from previous version should be compatible with this version.
Combat
- Enemy attacking from this direction indicators now only appear if enemy definitely attacking from that direction!
- Some rejigging of combat code hopefully removing some strange instances (fighters getting damaged by non-existent enemies, dice rolling twice at start of round)
- Lots of tweaks and changes to Combat UI to hopefully make the system much easier to understand
Missions
- Escort missions now only require travelling to a town the player currently has a permit to reach
- Reward for escort missions now based on the distance between the current town and the target town
- Donate missions are now tiered, so that early ones will be easily achievable and only require common resources, progressing to later donate missions will require rarer resources but provide a much bigger reputation reward
Hiring
- Cleared out lots of redundant code for hiring mercenaries, should also fix the issue where you aren't able to hire mercenaries despite having an empty security slot
Travel
- Adjusted paths so they end more centrally within settlements in all cases
UI
- Moved coin UI to the top right of the screen so it's always available regardless of what screen you're on
- Added an options button to the main HUD
Version 0.372
Quick hotfix to deal with some issues that were called out yesterday.
Please note that save games from previous version won't be compatible with this update.
- Some changes to how the Main Goals work, and also some fixes for issues with the system and loading games
- Set journeys to now end at the end of a path, not when caravan reaches a town - should fix issue of never ending journeys
- Fix to cart upgrades not loading correctly
- Alleviated instances of unlicensed teleportation to Arrow...
This Merchant Life hits Early Access!
Hello everyone, I'm extremely excited to say that This Merchant Life is now available to purchase and play!
If you have any feedback / thoughts / bugs, please feel free to let us know in the discussion forums. The last month or so or dev time has largely been spent fixing bugs and trying to get things nice and stable, the next couple of weeks I plan to be responding to any further issues that come up now there are more players to find problems.
Next up feature wise we're looking at a traits system where your actions can all add to various personality stats about your merchant, will will eventually affect how the world responds to you and some of the actions you can take.
Hope you enjoy the game as it stands, there's a lot more to come as we go through Early Access!
