Non-STEAM Download links near the bottom of this message!
Finally! It is finally here!
When the last larger update was released (part two of the “massive update”) I’ve said “I hope this is not a standard!” when talking about how MASSIVE it was. Well, here we are, this is - in theory - still part of what we planned for the “massive update”! However it was so much (and it has been so long) that we decided to jump up a version number again…
So, welcome to 0.9.6! The update that finally finalizes all the stuff we wanted to do before dwarves! Yay!
We are calling it The Mercantile Update in reference to what is probably its biggest, boldest and buggiest feature, a complete overhaul of how merchants work in the game. The new system includes lots of things that the community has desired for a long time like visible merchants, nicer looking stalls and markets, a more dynamic economy, ways to influence what merchants you get and even special ways to obtain farming and herbalist seeds that do not require the random trader event!
Of course, this is just a part of the update and, as usual, we have a lot of other nice things like a bunch of new quests and events, dynamic weather, shooting stars, a new legendary weapon and armor, crypt changes, more reliable dragonborn king questline, the wonderful art of pottage, changes to veggies and new crops… Whew. The list goes on, so… Read the patch notes!
Important
As always, we encourage you to start a new game for this update! And remember, most mods will need some time to update so go easy on the ones you choose!
Once more, we apologize for taking so long to release this version. It was planned for December 2022, but… Things happened!
Finally, as always, we would like to be really grateful to all of you for the continued support. ACE exists because of all of you, and because of the original developers that left such a wonderful legacy to all of us, so we can build upon and nurture this amazing community! Our most sincere and heartfelt THANK YOU!
By the way, if you’re feeling grateful as well, we have finally started to accept donations to support ACE! Yes, after 4 years you can finally share a little bit of love with the people behind the project so no update better than the MERCANTILE UPDATE to do some advertisement, right?!
And if you are one of the several people that has supported us already, thank you very much for believing in what we do!
Supporters get their name added to a new monument called the “Community Shrine”, there’s still time to get your name in on one of the probably upcoming patches and fixes!
Let’s get practical now!
Stonehearth ACE
Previous release thread | Our official Discord Server | Our GitHub Repo
Pre-Release 0.9.6 - THE MERCANTILE UPDATE
Download non-Steam Version | Download older versions
Important
If you are still playing a 0.9.5+ game and is really invested on it, you may continue by downloading the older version by following the link above!
0.9.6
Known Issues
Please do not report these:
- The inventory of the new Silk Road caravan quests and merchants is incomplete, with many of the asian-themed decorations and armors still missing. This will be fixed on one of the upcoming patches that will probably come in the next few days.
Similarly, merchant stalls graphics are currently stuck to the “default” decorations. In the near future, each merchant type will have a sign of their own and you’ll be able to tell them from each other through the sign; for now, however, they will all use the default sign. Sorry for the inconvenience!(Partially fixed on 0.9.6.2)- Because of the issue above, merchants selling pets will have their pets sitting on top of the table! Which looks absurdly funny and cute, mind you… So you might thank us for this issue, at least for now! Please enjoy it while it’s not fixed.
- Sometimes, when clicking the “Shop Icon” on the Mercantile Overview to see the wares of a merchant, the shop might not open. This is not really a bug, but might be reported as one. It happens because the shop bulletin is already open (but not read). It should be in your alerts panel if you click it.
The quest storage may not work properly if items are carried straight from the ground (dropped by a crafter, etc.) to them because these items fail to be “registered” in the “Town Inventory” (which usually happens when they get properly stored in a container), thus preventing the quest from being completed. There are, however, steps for a workaround(Fixed on 0.9.6.2)The town limit for “Disposable Turrets and Traps” is not being properly tracked.(Fixed on 0.9.6.2)
View Patch Notes
GOOD-BYE, TOMTEE!
- Frostfeast has been deactivated.
- All unlocked recipes (and obtained items) will, of course, remain!
- Tomtee and the Frostfather will be back… Maybe sooner than you think!
GET MERCANTILE, WITH STYLE
- We’ve completely overhauled the way merchants (and market stalls) work! We’ll now explain the details and all you need to know to start using the system:
- All existing market stalls are now renamed “Old” and will only serve as decorations. Merchants can no longer be called from them.
- There are now 3 Tiers of market structures for each material (wood, stone and clay). They’re called: “Market Stand”, “Market Stall” and “Market Booth”. The material cost of the first two is also much more affordable than they used to be in the base game.
- Merchants will now physically appear in the world when they visit and they’ll seek to occupy a market structure to buy and sell their goods. You can only host one merchant per day if you have no market structures, and the merchants are limited by the tier of the structure and the town. For example, a Tier 3 Merchant will not visit a Tier 2 town.
- Tier 2 Merchants will need Tier 2 or 3 structures, Tier 3 merchants will need Tier 3 structures. Tier 1 merchants can use any structure.
- Merchants will always arrive in the morning (around the same time as the Daily Update) and leave at the end of the day. During the time a merchant stays in town, you can interact with them at will - which means you can’t “close” a merchant by accident anymore, they’ll spend the day in your town and you can access their wares at any time!
- The amount of merchants that will visit you depends on a variety of values like your town’s worth, gold amount and how much you’ve traded (sold and purchased from other merchants) before. The more you trade and the richer your town, the more daily merchants you’ll get! (As long as you have enough structures for them to occupy)
- When you get your first merchant, a message will show up and summarize the Mercantile system a bit for the player to understand.
- There’s also a whole new UI window for the player to understand these things called “Mercantile Overview”. (Default key is
t
). - The overview has two tabs. The first tab will show all the active merchants currently in town. You can click them, their stall, their shop icon and such to quickly access these. You’ll also notice merchants now have Categories, represented by an icon.
- At the top of this tab, you’ll also see a small text informing you how many daily merchants you can get. On the bottom of the tab, you’ll see all your market stalls, per tier.
- On the second tab, called “Preferences”, you are able to see all their categories. Hoving over their names with the mouse will display the kinds of things they sell and the kinds of things they pay more for. You can also influence how more likely to get a certain category you are (or completely block a category from arriving) by “spending” your “encourages” and “disables”. The amount of each is determined by the town’s tier.
- Finally, on the right side of the “Preferences” tab, you can see all your exclusive stalls and toggle their functionality. More on exclusive merchants soon.
- Once a shop is open, you’ll also notice something new in the “Sell” tab. Merchants now have desires, things that they will pay more than they normally would for. These are the “Wanted Items” and they’re different for each merchant, with the description of each category giving an overview of what to expect.
- It’s meant to be very intuitive, however. Think like this: a carpenter will want wood, or maybe a better saw, or crafter clothes. A blacksmith might want ores, coal, a strength tonic or beer. A forager might want a backpack, weapons, baskets, and so on. Learn the needs of different merchants (and how to spot good opportunities) to maximize your profits!
- You’ll also notice that the amount of money merchants bring is smaller than before. This is intentional, and the idea is to fight the early game inflation by having players need to work a bit more to amass larger fortunes. The higher the tier, the more money merchants will bring, which should ensure a more healthy and steady progression.
- Additionally, this should encourage players to obtain money through some of the new methods like selling Wanted Items and using the new shop displays to get money from travelers (more on that later).
- Because of that, all existing merchants have had their inventories overhauled. To compensate for missing or swapped goods, there’s also a bunch of new merchants!
- For example, a lot of things have been moved away to different shops, carpenters, masons and potters don’t sell their raw resources anymore (they want to buy it instead!), there are logging camps, quarries and clay pit merchants to sell you these now! Take the time to read the categories’ descriptions and learn the new dynamics of trade!
- Also, to adapt to the new system, the text bits of many of the merchants have been edited to feel more consistent with what happens in-game.
- There’s also a special kind of market structure, “Exclusive Stalls”. These are market structures that can host unique merchants that come with their own benefits. Exclusive stalls can be unlocked through different means, try to find all of them out!
- One final consideration: This is an incredibly massive change/new mechanic, and there will obviously be imbalance at first. Please make sure to share with us your experiences with it!
TOWN BONUSES (Yes, we nerfed Cunning! )
- Town bonuses have been slightly modified to host some new exclusive stalls. All Tier 1 and Tier 2 choices (Banner and Hearth) have an exclusive stall attached to them.
- Banner of Vitality: This banner will now allow you to create a “Herbalist’s Guild Market Stand”, which attracts a merchant that specializes in Herb Seed Bags that unlock herbalist crops!
- Banner of Strength: This banner will unlock the “Miner’s Guild Market Stand”, a very reliable source of cheaper ore and fuels, all in one!
- Banner of Cunning: Finally, the third banner will unlock the “Gold Trader Market Stand”, which allows the Royal Mint to visit with a merchant that sells gold, silver and gold flakes at their real manufacturing price! They also buy trophies for a good value.
- Additionally, the other bonuses of the Banner of Cunning have been tweaked to be less of an obvious choice. The “extra inventory” brought by merchants has been reduced to 50% more. The “extra gold” brought by merchants was removed. The “extra value” of items sold has been reduced to +10% +1 gold (which should improve the value of very cheap things like resources); The bonus speed on roads has been reduced to x2; However, we added a new bonus, one that reduces the “cooldown timer” of merchants before they can visit again by 25%.
- Hearth of Cheer: With this Hearth you’ll unlock the “Farmer’s Guild Market Stall” which enables you to be visited by their merchant who sells Crop Seed Crates! Yes, that’s right, you can now reliably purchase farming seeds! Farewell, punishing RNG!
- Hearth of Makers: This town choice will unlock the “Sculptor’s Guild Market Stall”, a store that specializes in selling these special and somewhat rare statues that you could previously only find in Tier 3 merchants.
- Hearth of Glory: At last, the third hearth choice will unlock the “Engineer’s Guild Market Stall” and their very unique merchant who sells special turrets and traps that do not require an engineer to be placed! They will, however, break after a while…
- (For Modders) We’ve changed Town Bonuses to have values provided from settings’ JSONs that we’ve added to the “Town Bonuses” folder under
data
. Please note that if you change the values, you still need to update the related localizations, though!
UN-BEET-ABLE VEGGIE CHANGES
- Wrapping up the changes we’ve started on the last big update, with the introduction of “hearty” and “savory” vegetables, we’re now adding a new category of vegetable: leafy greens!
- Recipes can now ask for any vegetable or a specific type of vegetable like hearty vegetables, savory vegetables or leafy vegetables. Most recipes were adapted due to this change.
- Leafy vegetables are easily accessible by all playable kingdoms.
- Basket of Cucumbers, vegetable. This somewhat unique veggie can be used both as a leafy green OR hearty vegetable! It can only be obtained through merchants, however, having no associated crop (yet, at least)
- Turnip Greens, leafy vegetable. Sometimes produced by harvesting turnips, this is the main source of leafy greens for The Ascendancy.
- Lettuce, Cabbage, Beetroot, crops. There are also some new crops. Lettuce is known to the Rayya’s Children and Cabbage is known to the Northern Alliance. Beetroot is present in most biomes and can be harvested and boxed by the Herbalist, learning the crop. Beetroot is very special because it produces a good amount of both hearty vegetables and leafy greens.
- The three new crops have very unique “megacrop” rewards! We look forward to see your discoveries!
- All crops have been revisited and had their timers and yields updated. The description for all crops has also been updated to better portray these properties.
- The “Growth Time” property of crops has also been expanded and now has 7 different levels (shortest, very short, short, fair, long, very long, longest) to better inform the player of how long something takes to grow.
- Finally, all the foodstuffs that come in baskets have had their models updated. There are now new types of baskets - all of similar color but different shapes - and each shape represents a specific type of foodstuff. (for example: fungi, nuts, fruits, hearty vegetables, etc.)
- This change includes some “odd” models from the base game, like the Golden Gourds, that used a unique basket.
- Peasant Salad, Veggie Rolls, Fishwrap, foods. These new foods will make great use of the new leafy vegetables. Additionally, “Imperial Salad” is now a Chef’s Special recipe.
- Salad Lover and Salad Disgust, traits. These new food preference traits are all about the newly added leafy greens and its related foodstuffs.
GET THAT CAULDRON STARTED WITH POTTAGE
- Added “Campfire Pot”, workbench. This tool is crafted by the Cook but can be acquired early on by choosing certain loadouts. It can be used to prepare Pottage.
- Pottage is a new type of “communal” dish that can be made and maintained by any hearthling. To start Pottage you also need “Broth”.
- Once started, hearthlings will drop certain ingredients in the stew, making it progressively better - what we’ll call “level”. You can check what is needed next by reading the description of the Pottage.
- If too many people eat from it before it receives a new ingredient, the pottage will not run out. Instead it will go down in level. If the Pottage continues being consumed on the first level, then it will run out and will need to be restarted.
- If a Pottage reaches the maximum level it will also be consumed until it’s empty, however the last level has an amount of servings equal to all previous levels combined.
- Improved the description of the Broth food item (and its recipe) to include its new importance in making pottage.
- Broth can now be purchased from Tier 1 merchants.
- To make pottage (and other placeable food and drink items) behave more nicely, they now support multiple people grabbing servings simultaneously. This can result in hearthlings having to change their plans in the middle of the way (because what they were going for was completely consumed)… But such is life, right?! First come, first served!
BECOME FAMOUS WITH RENOWN!
- Renown, gameplay mechanic. Renown is directly tied to the already existing “Titles” mechanic in ACE. In essence, it provides a numerical “value” to every title - and a total renown sum to each hearthling’s titles - which can be used as a way to “measure” the worthiness and history of a hearthling in a fun way!
- Social interactions with renowned hearthlings will provide happy thoughts. The higher the renown, the better the thought! If lazy lings are not working, at least get some joy out of all that talking!
- When two renowned hearthlings talk, they’ll both get benefits based on their relative renown!
- Additionally, you can now toggle a setting that will make the game auto-select titles based on their renown, so even if they acquire something new, they’ll always display their most incredible feat as their title!
- You can check your hearthling’s total renown (and the amount added per title) in the same “Component Info” window where you could previously see their obtained titles! Just click the information
i
symbol next to their name in the unit frame! - Braggart, Modest, hearthling traits. Braggarts are show-offs and will earn more renown than normal whenever they get a title, while modest hearthlings will end up getting less renown. They also get some other minor bonuses like compassion and diligence for modest lings or courage, menace and inspiration for braggart ones.
PREPARATION IS ESSENTIAL, LOADOUT CHANGES
- We’ve reviewed all the loadouts for all the playable kingdoms and made some balance changes to encourage some loadouts that are usually less preferred. They’ve also been tweaked to evidently display each option as a “slightly more challenging than the previous one” progression, while still providing unique benefits for their challenge.
- The amount of items per loadout neatly decreases by 1 per row now.
- The amount of starting gold has been buffed, being greatly increased on the “Money Solves all Problems” loadout, finally making it quite reliable as the name suggests!
- Food for Days got slightly buffed by the addition of Pottage on most kingdoms, so it can be a bit more competitive with Merchant Caravan. It was added to Merchant Caravan for the NA that has a lot of balance towards the Hunting Party loadout.
- The Northern Alliance “Food For Days” will count with a starting farmer now, however.
- Some other minor changes like healing potions for the military loadout or more gold to noble entourage should make them at least tempting or worthy of consideration.
- An additional “job talisman” to Merchant caravan aims to reward what the loadout is about: having more options for starting jobs.
QUALITY OF LIFE & PERFORMANCE
- With this update (as we get closer to ACE 1.0!) we’ve decided to give special attention to some QoL and even a few potential “performance improving” features!
- You can now hold the
SHIFT
key when clicking “Build” while on building mode to - like when crafting - make sure that all the objects necessary for that building will be queued on the top of the lists of their respective crafters. A tooltip reminding the user of that has been added to the “Build” button. - Also on building mode, you’re now able to hover over missing objects from the “building materials” list to see what are you missing: a certain crafter, what level or if it’s a recipe that you do not have unlocked.
- We’ve added and changed some hotkeys around to be a bit more consistent and also to cover some important features that had no default hotkeys. Opening a character’s sheet (with the character selected) is
Tab
. “Gather & Replant” command can now be used withShift+H
. “Cancel Task” can be used withShift+X
and the “Destroy” tool withCtrl+X
. “Forage” and “Hunt” (Northern Alliance) now have hotkeys as well:Ctrl+H
andCtrl+Shift+H
, respectively. For the place menu, “Dig Water Well” is nowCtrl+W
and “Build Fence” isAlt+W
, “Move Items” isAlt+M
and “Undeploy Items” isAlt+U
. For zones, “Bush Farm” is nowCtrl+F
and “Decorative Flowers” has been set toCtrl+D
. “Underfarm” is not usable yet but has been set toCtrl+U
. Finally, “Trapping Zone” has been changed toShift+T
and theT
key was given to the new “Mercantile Overview” tab. - The name tag space in the unit frame has been increased, which means that many objects or names that were too long (and displayed a “…” at the end) should now be possible to show completely! Some names might still get cut, but the increase should help for a lot of things.
- You can now “Collapse” (or expand) item categories in the “town inventory”, “place objects” and “shop” screens by clicking their name. A little arrow marker will point out if a category is expanded or collapsed.
- Additionally, these categories have been reordered and will follow a more coherent logic. Your wealth, workshops, tools, consumables will be near the top; Resources and production around the middle; and most placeables, furniture, building parts and mechanisms at the bottom.
- Finally, there’s also a new “Search Bar” on many of these screens like the “town inventory” or “place objects” menu! Rejoice!
- We’ve tweaked the “Loading Screen” messages and added several dozens of new tips! Make sure to always read them, you might find something you didn’t know!
- While browsing a merchant’s wares, hovering over any equipment piece will now let you see the level, equipment type and jobs that can use it.
- While viewing a crafter’s workshop you are now able to toggle, per category, which crafters are allowed to execute recipes from that category. Crafters are displayed in order from lowest to highest level. This should allow users to divide the work of certain professions, like having a Cook that will exclusively craft ingredients while the other cooks meals; or having a blacksmith that will only smelt ores while the other forges weapons and armor.
- Are all your cheese vats, wine casks (and any other
transformable
entity) empty, with orders, but you don’t remember which one is producing what? Not sure how many of them are making vinegar or which cheeses are you going for? Worry not! You can now see what “choice” is currently selected by opening the “Component Info” window! (The little informationi
symbol on the unit frame, next to the object’s name) - Whenever you accept a new quest that involves delivering items, you’ll now receive a special quest storage crate that serves to collect (and protect) the items needed for the quest! It will always appear near your town banner, so make sure to have enough room. You can enable or disable it at will, and you can also dump the contents in case you urgently need them back - otherwise they’ll remain in there, protected from being used and allowing you to more easily complete your quests without having to worry about eating or crafting things by accident!
- The Quest Storage system can be further tweaked to your preferences in the game settings through new ACE gameplay settings that allow you to disable it completely or have it spawn but be disabled to receive items. Default setting has everything completely enabled.
- Most items that have
model_variants
- that is, different appearances randomly selected - will now show their actual appearance on “ghost form” (when you place them); That should help decorators a bit! This applies to merchant stalls, many of the Frostfeast decorations and such. - Pets will now reembark with their owners! Never again will you leave your beloved animals behind! (And yes, this includes dragons!)
- Additionally, you may now transfer the ownership of pets! This doesn’t include pets that have a special bond with their owners (Animal Companion trait) but applies to all other pets like the ones domesticated by a Trapper, bought from a merchant or hatched from an egg.
- There’s now a new gameplay setting for always keeping the game paused when loading up a saved game, even if the save had it running when it was made. This should greatly improve the experience of loading a game when you have a developed, busy town - possibly avoiding crashes and loading faster! Because of this, the setting is
on
by default. It can be turned off but we don’t recommend it. - There’s also an experimental gameplay setting for limiting network data that could potentially help with multiplayer performance in busy games or games with very large storage (like when using a mod such as “Ethereal Storage”). We’re unsure of the actual benefits of this change yet, so please let us know if you test it out!
- There’s also another new gameplay setting for choosing a “Backup” localization language. We recommend always using “English” for this one. The backup localization is used as a second option reference for when the game is unable to find a string for your main language. It is very common for language mods to be outdated (or to not support all your other mods) and whenever that happens, users would see the weird string address instead of an untranslated string. This option should address this issue, showing the untranslated string instead.
- Fixed a game-interrupting issue that caused crafting to get stuck when certain ingredients are impossible to be reached. Crafters should now give up and move on to the next recipe.
- Fixed the “Can’t find crafting ingredient” alert (from ACE settings) that has been apparently malfunctional for a couple of years! Woah!