We have exciting news today - the public beta for the awaited Artisan update goes live! All of you can get your hands on the patch right now and test all the great new additions to the game. Please be advised, that while this version went through extensive internal testing and a lengthy closed beta, there are still issues we are aware of and will be fixing them in the upcoming days so if you want to enjoy a smooth experience, please hold off your excitement just yet, until the update goes live on the main branch.
In order to join, right click on the game in your library, select Properties, Betas and find the "artisanbeta" branch. If you encounter any bugs or have any feedback to share, we would love to hear from you! Share them here on Steam forums, or come join our dedicated Discord server.
There is so much to get excited about with this new patch. With significant optimizations for the pathfinding that now runs natively on parallel cores and is managed more efficiently, there is a noticeable improvement in the frame-rate, especially on larger maps. New quest mechanic and redesigned royalty system is a lot of fun, and inviting nobles to host them at your villa adds a nice extra bit of immersion.
Thank you all who have been part of the closed beta, including our community members on our Discord and those participating in the Fulqrum Champions program. We can't wait to hear more feedback from all of you! So let's have a look what are all the changes introduced in this patch.
Performance Optimization
- Path computed in one direction is now used in reverse order for opposite direction.
- When world grid changes, only paths that are impacted by the change are recalculated.
- Pathfinding is now distributed over multiple frames and threads using a BurstCompile job system.
- All visitors now share a common pathfinding map instead of each family calculating their own.
- Prioritization of path search for NPC over animals and further limiting animals use of pathfinding in a single frame.
- New option in the settings to serialize pathfinding data. It will increase save and load time, but prevents spike on reload.
Replaced Nobles with Artisans
- Chapel is no longer used by artisans. They share the church with everybody else.
- The Tavern was removed. Artisans arrive through the inn.
- Inn now also serves mead and wine.
- Donations to clergy no longer reflect noble families. The clergy simply expects the player to donate a calculated amount of valuables over some time.
- Theatre is now visited by everyone, including peasants.
Added a New Class of Noble Houses
- Nobles houses are generated automatically at the start of the game.
- Their growth is stimulated automatically outside of the map.
- Noble houses can be viewed in the population book in a new Nobles tab.
- Noble houses now accept ruling family marriage proposals instead of the previous artisan families.
New Quests and Deliveries
- Noble houses and royalty offers optional delivery quests for extra rewards.
- New Loading Site structure added that is used by villagers to prepare deliveries.
- Players can also grant resources to noble houses or a royal family which is sent away through the delivery system.
Hosting at Vila
- Players can now invite a noble house to be hosted at their villa.
- The noble house will spend a certain amount of days and consume the meals of the player.
- After they leave, the relationship with the player will change based on how satisfied they are with the quality.
Combat Power
- Villagers in the military regiments now display their combat power.
- Combat power is a function of their equipment, age, health, training, skills, blessings, and other buffs and bonuses.
- Total combat power of a regiment is used when delivering military as a royal tax.
- Combat power is now displayed in the population book
Royal Taxes Updated
- Royalty now only expresses their demand in terms of the gold value of delivered resources and the total combat power of delivered soldiers.
- Players can complete the taxes through deliveries or sending regiments to war at any time during the year.
- The Tax Evasion mechanic was removed. Instead, having a Master of Coin appointed will boost the rewards and contributions made through deliveries.
- Royalty also offers optional quests that provide extra money and favor points.
- Royalty also offers a list of bonus equipment, which boosts the combat power a certain regiment contributes with.
Changes to Professions
- Ropemakers can now utilize Loom to create a new Carpet resource. This resource can be used to build new floor-type carpets. Five different carpet patterns are added.
- Alchemists no longer make health, magic, or stamina potions. Instead, they make love potions that peasants consume to boost their pregnancy chance, exotic mixtures which can be used as a cooking ingredient, or transmuted gold, which can be minted into gold coins or granted to nobles as a valuable gift.
- Glassmakers now also produce glass bottles, which are required to make potions. New options to manage priorities
- Priority screen is updated and shows more detailed information.
- The player can update how much material a family is stocking for production.
- Player can also limit production if a family has stock over a certain amount.
- Player can also restrict tax-deductible options, to prevent villagers from consuming taxed resources to produce other taxed resources
New Cooking Management Options
- The accounting management screen has a new cooking tab.
- Players can set custom targets for cooking meals and toggle if families are allowed to supplement high-quality targets with a lower quality meals.
- Logic for cooking was also updated so that families will continue cooking higher quality meals even if they have plenty of lower quality meals, to meet their targets.
- It is possible that families go over their target if multiple people start cooking at the same time.
Other Changes
- Rework the internal system for generating new families.
- The notification system was reworked to allow more flexible data transition. As a result, several notifications were updated to provide more information about their context.
- Storage management screen now has copy/paste option.
- CTRL+Select when clicking on a buildable object will now select that object from the build menu. "The number of UI screens was improved for performance.
- Inns can now be toggled in the context menu to prevent selling beds and meals to locals Small UI changes
- Notifications now distinguish between source and target. Players can click separate buttons to move the camera to them.
- Zone context menu was reworked to separate the quick-build menu into structures, furniture, and storage. Buttons to switch between tiered collections were added to quickly access different quality furniture and storage.
- New option in the settings to display a contrasted version of the HUD
