Summary: There’s what seems to be a black copy of each tree that peeks through when at a medium distance with Z-fighting. It isn’t there when zoomed in or far out. Gets very annoying with movement.
Version: release 453
I can’t provide much more information. I haven’t played in ages, so the changes causing this might be from a few weeks ago.
Hmm… I have a snippet from a year ago (august '14):
-That tree is watching us, right?-
I always thought it was my graphic card 
it totally does look like a hearthlings head 
Better than the hills watching!
http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_original/1423255259442024619.jpg
Just a thought, maybe it has to do with modding? I’ve never had this issue before. Only the tiny speckling issue.
it’s basically 2 trees being rendered in the same spot, causing the area where the 2 overlap visibly to look black. the same thing happens when you try designing a floor on the same y value as where you’ll auto-place the roof, with the roof and floor tile occupying the same spot, only generally that causes the colour to be lighter instead of darker. it’s just a graphical glitch.
I think this is wrong… In Stonehearth when 2 entities overlap, normally they appear white-ish, not black. You can see in my screenshot, the left side of the tree with eyes that it’s overlapping with the other tree, and it’s lighter, not black. 
Also on the shadowed area on the left there’s the same behavior. And in @phector2004 's screenshot on the bottom left too. Otherwise the overlapping trees would be in the exact same spot.
I’ve actually seen both brighter and darker from overlap (not necessarily stonehearth, but in general), though it is true that for the most part, anything in stonehearth that overlaps is lighter. even so, the behaviour of the dark spots suggests it’s an overlap, and that this is merely a graphical glitch. and by overlap I don’t mean “1 tree’s side is overlapping another tree’s side” but rather “there are 2 trees being rendered in the same spot”. it’s being rendered twice when it should be only rendered once. whether that is due to the graphics card or the system is hard to determine, as unless the game crashes and shows you what happened when it crashed (rendering the same object twice), you won’t even get a confirmation from the system that it is being rendered twice. and generally, this error doesn’t cause crashes anyway. it just looks weird, ugly, or spooky (THE TREES HAVE EYES!).
my experience with other games suggests that this is merely a double-render overlap, and it only happens when the tree is being rendered at medium distance. unless your system is crashing, the bug is pretty much harmless to all but your eyes, and maybe your sanity (THE TREE MOVED!).
not that I’m saying your issue is unimportant, I hate the glitch too when I get it, as it’s visually unappealing, especially when it moves around due to the camera moving.
just wondering, what graphics level do you guys play on?
1366x762 fullscreen, shadows set to 1 or 2, no AA or AO.
Interestingly, I wasn’t given the option to turn on ‘High end graphics’ this time around. Obviously it is not very playable with gfx cranked up on my old-ish machine, but I used to take some nicer screens with it all turned on. I take it some graphics changes have been made the past month or two, but I might have a look at any installed mods if I get time. Last update I had the whole ‘stonehearth.smod’ unpacked and sitting in the mods folder messing up any changes in the newer version!
Mine’s currently this:
But I think that I’ve seen the black z-fighting since ages ago. Not sure if since the very beginning, but certainly earlier than when @phector2004 says.
hmm… it probably doesn’t have anything to do with the graphic setting then…
I just looked up what “z-fighting” was (I was familiar with the phenomenon, but not the term) and… wow I was just stating the obvious this whole time then, wasn’t I lol. “Z-fighting is a phenomenon in 3D rendering that occurs when two or more primitives have similar values in the z-buffer. It is particularly prevalent with coplanar polygons, where two faces occupy essentially the same space, with neither in front.” I guess it was obvious from the very beginning that this was a case of double-rendering lol
So it’s really a z-fighting issue, after all
This is the hard part 
@not_owen_wilson , do you think that is mostly related to the graphics card or is there another reason?
