Stonehearth ACE 0.9.5.7f Released!
Greetings, hearthlings! 
The day has finally come to say good bye to Frostfeast… But don’t worry! It shall be back!
These are very sad times out there as we enter a huge humanitarian crisis that affects us all. We sincerely hope everyone in our community is as safe and well as possible. 
We’d like to remind everyone to always be kind, always be respectful and we hope that this new update will bring some joy to your upcoming days! 
Unfortunately, we did not manage to make the last few “bigger” changes we wanted for this version - lots of things to do - but we did manage to come up with a pretty nice patch anyway! 
Some very good QoL changes, some fixes to long-running issues and some balance changes to leave this version in a very nice place so we can focus the work on upcoming stuff!
So let’s get reading!
Quickfix 0.9.5.7f
Frostfeast
- After some additional time, Frostfeast is now over! Like last year, any town that has already started the quest will still be able to finish it! Towns that have not started it, however, will not be able to start it anymore - unless it has silently started already (the quest starts some days before it actually appears to the player - only time will tell if that’s your case! )
Added
- There’s now a command on water wells to more easily remove them. Removing an upgraded water well (using the new command) will drop the materials for the main body upgrade (and some wood from the roof if one is present)
- We’ve fed the hearthlings’, pets’ and town names’ tables with a lot of new names for all the three kingdoms. Some of them are “fantasy” names based on real names and some are straight up real/common names for certain areas and periods of the world.
- Light Shields, equipment. There’s now three new shields that can be crafted by a blacksmith: “Light Bronze Shield”, “Light Iron Shield” and “Light Steel Shield”. These are meant to be used by scepter-wielding Clerics. The ACE “standard” of not having multiple jobs disputing the same equipment pieces (unique progression) is restored. (The only exception remains the “Rabbit Hair Shield”, as intended)
- Because of the change above a new “class” of shields has been added: Medium Shields. All regular (Footman) shields are now medium shields;
- (For Modders!) If your mod has shields and you’ve been using ACE mixins, you might want to change any Footman shields to use the “medium” shield mixin now!
- (For Modders!) Added some extra functionalities (effects) for the universal storage component.
Changed
- After a positive response of ~85% of the people that responded to our consultation, we decided to move on with the color-coding changes to military outfits and equipment. All Knights will now have shades of red; Archers have shades of green; Footmen have shades of blue. Clerics have lighter colors and gold. Their circlet gems represent their faction.
- We also improved and tweaked the details on some of the models a bit more.
- The blacksmith workbenches have had their models “rotated” so that the “front” matches the direction they can be worked on. Apparently it caused a lot of confusion with the placement arrow (which indicates the front of an object, not the usage side!) was not on the sides, where anvils can properly be used from. You might have to replace your anvils if they were in cramped spaces.
- Improved the synchronization of the sounds and the work animations of masons and blacksmiths. It shall still break if the game pauses or changes speed (since the sound continues playing) but it looks much better when observed in natural game speed now.
- For blacksmiths, we’ve also added additional spark effects.
- We’ve changed most of the storage containers in the game to allow for hearthlings to be able to access them from one (or two for some) blocks below. That allows for - for example - coffers to be placed on tables or built blocks; or crates to be stacked up and used. Please note that since they have a reach of one (or two) blocks, you can’t stack 10 crates and expect it to work
- Additionally, we’ve removed the “enforce patrol” status of certain objects like urns or crates.
- “Decorative Flower Fields” will no longer be automatically patrolled by military units.
- Omelets will now accept any vegetable instead of specifically carrots.
- Nut Pralines now require Sugar specifically (instead of any sweetener).
- Added a tiny “offset” to shields’ models when equipped to prevent Z-fighting between the item and the wearer’s arm. This is added through the shield mixins so it should be automatically applied to modded shields if they’re using ACE mixins.
- Rayya’s Children footman armor has been renamed “Scale Vest” and Northern Alliance’s knight armor has been renamed “Lamellar Armor”
- There are some other name changes to equipment to adapt to the new shield category tiers; knight shields are now called “Heavy” shields (or Kite shields for the Northern Alliance); the previous light shields are now just shields (Bucklers for the Rayya’s Children; Round Shields for the Northern Alliance) and the new cleric shields will occupy the “Light” category names.
- Adjusted the water level when water reaches the “end of the map” to stop at a lower step than 1, forming a nicer water body (and preventing potential overflow)
- We’ve tweaked how irrigation works a bit. It should now consider the amount of crops in a field rather than the size and rotation - which means that water measurements will be less erratic now for fields of similar sizes, regardless of rotation.
- Slightly increased the volume of the “Lucky Day” special music.
- Sunflowers will now point out they’re also an oily herb (can be used to make cooking oil) in their herb, plant and planter descriptions.
- All wall-mounted professional wooden signs can now be crafted without a workbench. Quite often people’s buildings get stuck because they’re waiting for the sign to be crafted - however the player is just waiting for the workbench to be placed in the building. Now signs can all be crafted without needing the workbench and situations like that will be naturally avoided.
- Additionally, some signs that required refined materials (Weaver, Engineer) will now use other resources, further ensuring no workbench is needed to make a sign.
- Metal armor will now be “rarer” on merchants; bronze and iron tiers will only appear after the Hearth Upgrade and not all items will always be available when a merchant arrives. Metal weapons will still appear on Tier 1 merchants (but they will also have a chance of not appearing)
- Some merchants have had their prices adjusted to make early merchants slightly less reliable for acquiring advanced stuff.
- The “renewal” timer for Berry Bushes, Pear Cacti and Cherry Bushes has been increased to roughly 2~3 days (it was less than a day)
- Minor tweaks to the functionality of water pumps and sponges to improve them.
- The combat leash on some enemy spawns (camps, wild spawns, crypts…) has been quite increased, which should result in enemies being able to engage archers now! They got tired of staring contests.
Fixed
- Fixed a typo with the “Advanced Industry” blacksmith perk.
- Tentative fix to an issue where sometimes a hearthling with an equipped “Beekeeping hat” would remove the hat but retain the “net” part of it floating around their heads. Please note that this fix is not retro-compatible and will only be applied to new hearthlings or hearthlings that are promoted to new jobs. Existing hearthlings that do not change their jobs will remain “bugged”.
- Fixed an issue that could be caused because of the lack of healing data on the Dragon Cult Hierophant’s weapons.
- Fixed some issues with the automatic placement of ladders when mining (particularly when certain town objects used as reference were present but not valid (i.e.: being moved by a hearthling to a different placement position)
- Fixed an issue with the placement of “Opaque Beer” when served in a Golden Gourd pot.
- Fixed an issue where bigger crops that have collision (like bushes or trees) were being considered as “light obstacles” and creating shade/reducing sunlight of their own fields. (i.e.: Coffee Plant farms always having low sunlight because of the plants themselves)
- Removed a bugged/unfinished winter worker outfit from merchants.
- Fixed an issue where the waterfalls created by water pumps would not “disappear” if you removed or changed the pipes of that particular pump.
- Fixed some issues with the placement of both water pumps and gearboxes when stacked on each other, which caused their apparent rotation to not match their actual effects.
- Fixed an issue with water pumps that was not allowing them to go through building walls (even though we changed it a while ago) They should now properly go through buildings!
- All those changes also apply to the (still unused) gearboxes and axles.
- There is a small tweak to the AI of getting food from storage as an attempt to prevent or reduce cases of hearthlings “stuttering” back and forth between a certain activity and “getting food”. We don’t think this will completely solve the issue or know if it will help with it at all, so let us know your experience!
- We told those very impolite ogres and varani that it is not okay to go train with the player’s training dummies and targets. They complained a bit but promised they will stop attacking training stuff and will focus on… Doors, of course. They love doors!
EDIT
Some sneaky updates in the past few days, I’m going to summarize them as version f'
- Fixed some issues with the Universal Storage system
- Fixed an issue with iron heavy shields not being properly assigned as Knight equipment
- Fixed a potential issue with training where an entity could get stuck in a “staring contest” with the dummy if their weapon had incorrect data
- Fixed an issue where a dragon could get stuck if “growing” while sleeping (improved the transformation of mounted entities)
- Improved even more the handling of beekeeping hats.
- Training is now slightly more efficient
- We’ve added a display for items’ jobs and levels when hovering over them in shop screens and inventory screens, for example. Now you can see who can use (and at what level) some piece of equipment when browsing a shop!
- Unfortunately the change above doesn’t currently work with the very popular mod “LostEms”. It should work fine once LostEms get updated!
- Small graphical tweak for the wooden Firewood Shed.
We hope you have fun!
And please remember to let us know of any issues you might find!
