Prepare your rain coats and your winter thingies, because weather is about to get crazy!
As you all know, Alpha 24.4 (aka. release 811) has come, and brought the unexpected! As well as some other things.
This is a generic feedback thread for this release (as well as some other things). So let’s get going…
Weather!
Yes, so much yes! This new feature is the absolute star of this release, and it rocks.
From what I have seen so far, the hearthlings seem to randomly get a positive or negative thought for any given weather condition. Even nasty weather gives positive thoughts to some! The same person who hated a specific condition can like it the next time it reoccurs.
Fog!
Fog is this misteriously misty thing that sometimes comes to pester us all. One would think that a heavy fog might be more… noticable. But really, I was only able to tell there’s fog, because the forecast thing told me so. Though, admittedly, I wasn’t paying that much attention, and I was focused on telling my folks what to do.
Oh, and the mist beholds some surprises for us, too! Undead. They do nothing, really… some lonely zombies standing around. Generally not that interesting, just a touch of surprise. It’s really cool that they come, but they should perhaps also leave when the fog ends. Right now they don’t seem to..
Undeads in the mist brings up a different topic, though… Undead in the night. When the undead were first added, it was presented as a “spooky threat to our people in the night,” but apart of a couple random zombies, goblins and orks and the like still seem to rule the night.
Thunderstorm!
-
This nasty bastard struck one of my poor hearthlings for 40 damage!
-
Trees that are struck by lightning instantly get dematerialized, and turned into wood to be collected manually.
-
This may bring up a concern though… what about all the scattered wood that remains and are not collected? The reason, that we were told, that is behind the “hard cap” of inventory space is so that there won’t be infinite piles of items scattered all over, hindering performance. Given enough thunderstorms, a considerable number of unattended items may be left behind.
-
Lightnings hit trees at an alarming rate, which further adds to the concern listed above.
-
-
I imagine a thunderstorm can become a really, really nasty thing in hard mode early game. If it hits before we get healers, and happens to hit our only footman while he/she fends off some nasty zombie… well…
Snow!
Santa Claus might be just around the corner. Ho! Ho! Ho!
-
Overall, not a big deal. It slows our hearthlings, which may be a minor nuance when we’re in a hurry to get something done. But no biggie.
-
The “snow” accumulates over time on top of things (though, a few things don’t seem to get snow, like the weaver’s loom and things). In my opinion, it’s perhaps a bit too translucent, and should be a bit more whiteish.
-
I wish hearthlings could make use of those winter coats our weavers can craft, and that could perhaps negate the slowing effect.
Let’s continue with some general throughts about the progression update:
-
Rayya’s Children and Ascendancy get the same bonuses
- This isn’t necessarily an issue, though it would be a bit more interesting if we had to deal with different bonuses when playing a different kingdom.
-
Hearth of the Makers? More like Hearth of the Bankers!
- I should have thought of this in my previous big feedback post when it was first out. To me it seems a bit odd that this hearth deals with “making” by putting our money into an invisible bank. This really is a minor issue, it just bothers me more than it should.
-
The shrine names for RC don’t match with the recipes at the potter.
The Ever-burning Flame and the merchant who never came
Ah, yes… so this is a story worthy of its own category in this post.
So my first playthrough earlier today was with Rayya’s Children, and so I breezed through the first two progress tiers, only to arrive at the third, and face this decision…
I decided I want legendary weapons.
The thing is… the recipe to craft the shrine includes things like sunflowers and fox lilies. Here comes problems.
- Where do they come from?
- They aren’t in the map, so the only logical way would be to wait for a merchant who has the seeds or the plants themselves.
Sound easy, huh? Yeah… so I sat in front of the game, letting it roll forward in speed 3… merchants came and merchants went. Nobody had the things.
This went on for a loooong time. Eventually I got my 30th Hearthling. Had I chosen to craft a different shrine, I would have been done hours ago. At this point, I did what every reasonable person would have done after spending a long and frustrating time in front of the game. I quit.
-
The primary problem here is that the only source of the materials to complete this as RC are traders. But traders are super unreliable. This needs to be looked into, otherwise a lot of folks might get frustrated and disappointed.
-
Furthermore, nothing indicates how one is supposed to come across these misterious sunflowers and fox lilies. A perfect way to confuse new players who have no idea what’s going on. Besides… Is there even a merchant who sells them?
Music
Ultimately, I never got to check out the Tier 3 music, which is a shame. Hopefully I get around to do it eventually.
Still, I have turned back my in-game music, which I don’t usually do. Then, when the first monsters attacked, I was instantly reminded why I turned it off in the first place…
The music that goes on in peace time is generally nice. But the combat music is way off… So repetitive and so obtrusive. Plus every random goblin that comes in sight of my town triggers the thing. Arrgh!
Please, add an option to the settings to let us disable combat music.
Random things
These may not be related to this release, but I took note of them during the playthrough to try it, so here they are.
-
Why is the Cancel Tasks command’s icon a broom? Doesn’t seem to make any sense.
-
Having played through RC (as mentioned above) after having ignored them for a long time, I’d like to point a few minor gripes
- The default tier 1 blueprints of Rayya’s Children are just soooo much better and prettier than Ascendancy’s!
- The tier 1 (non-crafter) buildings of Ascendancy are so bland and boring in comparison. Some of them don’t even have plenty enough windows, so those inside complain about things being cramped. They really could use a revision.
- Plus Ascendancy doens’t even have their versions of many crafter workshops that RC has, like the Mason’s shop and a kitchen!! RC has a default kitchen building, as an Ascendancy fan, I’m so jealous.
- The default tier 1 blueprints of Rayya’s Children are just soooo much better and prettier than Ascendancy’s!
-
RC goblin campaign and Mer Burlyhands
- Whatever is Mer Burlyhands (the Ascendancy herald guy) doing in the desert, pestering RC people about refugees?
- Why are there Ascendancy refugees in the desert?
- Note that this only became a relevant issue after the progression quest/lore were added.
So that’s all I’ve got for now…
I welcome everyone to leave their own feedback for the update below. (As well as feedback about other feedbacks.)
