Version: 3.15 (beta)
Released: Oct-28-2012
** Saved characters from the previous version are compatible with this
version. **
- improved: required item and raw material selection in crafting/building
Items, tools and raw materials required for crafting/building are
selected automatically if they can be found from character's inventory
or nearby on the ground. Automatic item selection always uses the
best tools and raw materials available. Only the weight based
materials need to be selected manually from character's inventory,
ie. "4 lbs of fur".
- improved: skill improvement options for a new character
The basics stay unchanged: there are number of option points to be
used to improve your skills. However, you may not only improve your
skills but also degrade them.
- and [-] keys used to change skill'
values. There are two new character generation methods: "easy" and
"too easy". These two new methods allow to degrade a skill below its'
initial level to gain extra option points. The original character
generation options ("quick and easy" & "custom") haven't changed.
The new character generation methods allows easier and more free skill
adjustment as follows:
* Custom -- easy
Five options points to improve skills, but it's possible to gain
more. Skills can be improved two steps above their initial level,
and degraded one step below their initial level. Degrading a skill
below its' initial level gains you an extra option point.
* Custom -- too easy
Five options points to improve skills, but it's possibile to gain
more. Skills can be improved three steps above their initial level,
and degraded two steps below their initial level. Degrading a skill
below its' initial level gains you an extra option point.
* The good old "Custom" method stays as our standard, traditional
way to create a character with five options points to improve
your skills. Plaint "Custom" method allows to improve skills one step
above their initial level and doesn't support degrading the skills
below their initial level.
- balanced: item prices
With the help of various historical sources and a few modern studies
all the item prices have been checked and balanced. Item prices are now
linked and relative to value of a squirrel hide, which is kind of a
basic "currency". This "squirrel hide currency" stays a hidden factor,
but gives us a historically accurate base for item pricing.
MIGRATION NOTICE: The items your character has obtained in the
previous version are valued according to their old prices. You can
expect some of your old metal weapons, armours and hides to appear
less valuable than expected.
Few notes about certain item types:
* hides
In general hides are more valuable than before. However, relative
value between different types of hides hasn't changed dramatically.
The most valuable furs of them all are those of lynx, bear, glutton
and wolf. Of smaller animals, the most valued hides come from
beaver, pine-marten, fox and polecat.
* fur clothes
Fur clothes are slightly more valuable than before.
* metal weapons and armours
In general many of the metal weapons are more valuable than before.
Especially the imported armours and weapons can be very, very
valuable.
- overhaul: quality tags
All the items are now prone to quality tags. If there's no specific
quality description displayed (eg. you see a plain "sword") the item
in question is of average quality. There are five different levels of
quality and the quality descriptions may vary among different
item types.
MIGRATION NOTICE: Some of your old items may now appear quality
tagged even if their quality wasn't present in the previous version.
This is because items have always had quality values, but only now
they have come visible for the character.
- added: varying quality items for NPCs
NPC equipment is assessed based on the wealth of their culture.
The more wealthy cultures have finer and better quality equipment.
This applies to personal inventories of NPCs, and also to
storehouses/community equipment. The more primitive and less wealthy
cultures can nevertheless produce and possess fine crafts, but the
amount and variety of "luxury" items is far greater among wealthy
cultures.
- added: character's starting equipment is assessed based on the wealth
of their culture
The more wealthy culture you belong to, the finer and better better
quality equipment you start with. For example, a fresh driikil„is
character may possess masterwork weapons and fine clothes and armours.
The more primitive and less wealthy cultures start with that much
more rough equipment. However, the common weapons and tools
are usually of at least decent quality for all the cultures.
- modding add: [noquality] tag
[noquality] tag can be used with diy-items to:
a) ignore quality of the finished item
b) ignore quality of the raw material/item required
If [noquality] is used in item header the finished item will always
be of average quality. For example, in case of bandages there's no
good reason to have them quality tagged. So our header goes like:
.Bandage. *COMMON* [noquality] [patch:10]
If [noquality] is used on {raw material/item} line the quality of
tagged item doesn't affect to finished item quality. For example,
if we don't want quality of a tree trunk to affect in our attempt
to make a club:
.Club. *COMMON* /30/
{Slender trunk} [remove] [noquality]
{Cutting weapon} <Axe>
Unless [noquality] is used, the finished item quality is based on
calculations described in the news sections:
- "impact of raw material and tool quality/usefulness"
- "skill mastery level impact on produced item quality"
In most cases varying diy-item quality is desirable - but not always.
- added lots of plants
Crowberry, mother pipe, bear pipe, dog pipe, wolf pipe, clayweed,
bog bean, marsh calla, water lily, lake reed, milkweed, burdock
and more.
Some of the new plants carry their common english names - and some
have "unreal worldish" names.
With new plants comes some new features:
* there are some true aquatic plants
* it's possible to collect roots of some new plants
To do this, you need to harvest them down and then tresh.
Thanks for the plant graphics go to brian.shapiro.
- added: possibility to collect young leaves from a sprout
Plants that yield leaves can be harvested for young leaves as soon as
the plant is somewhat grown. When such a plant is being picked you'll
be asked if you wish to collect its leaves. Picking the leaves of a
sprout will harm its growth, but this way you'll get to utilize the
very first greens of the spring.
- improved: flour making
Agriculture option "grind" now accepts also certain roots and seeds to
be ground for wild flour.
- added: HERBLORE-skill (and removed FORAGING-skill)
Herblore is the ability to recognize individual plants and their
properties. The most common plants are known to everyone, but
knowledge of the rest depends on your character's culture and his
herblore skills.
* Unknown plants are displayed in different, blurred color and have
vague randomized names. For example, if rye is unknown to your
character it may appear as "unknown cereal".
* You may use herblore skill to recognize either growing plants, or
plants and their parts in your inventory. Upon using the skill you'll
be shown a dialog displaying all the information you know about the
plant in question.
* You can learn plant properties by using them, even if you wouldn't
be able to recognize plant's indentity. If your character has
learned plant properties by experience the effects are shown as
your character has noticed them. Only when a plant's identity is
recognized you'll gain information about the known effects in full.
* Even if the plant has been recognized by sight and identity, it
doesn't mean you've learned all of it's properties. Learning the
plant completely after its identity has been recognized sometimes
calls for developing in herblore in general, and more experimenting.
* MIGRATION NOTICE:
Herblore knowledge for a migrating characters is created from a
scratch, according to their culture and base attributes. As a result,
some of the plants your migrated character possesses may now appear
unknown to him/her. They still are the very same plants with the
same properties, but it may take a while to make your character
learn it.
* See HERBLORE game encyclopedia entry for more information.
- added: possibility to use herbs also in dressing the wound
Previously only cleaning the wound and applying a compress allowed
usage of herbs. Now you can slip something soothing under the bandages
as well.
- overhaul: impact of raw material and tool quality/usefulness
* raw material quality
Quality of raw materials used in crafting now affects to quality of
finished item. Shortly, you can't make good out of bad. Basicly the
quality of finished item can't be higher than the average quality raw
materials used.
* tool usefulness
Some tools are more handy for certain tasks than the others. This is
a good old, and clear game mechanism, and player is always informed
when certain type of tool is preferred for the task.
Usefulness of the tool foremostly affects to how long it will take to
complete the task, but now it also affects to quality of crafted item.
If an item is crafted with an unhandy tool the maximum possible
quality is degraded according to tool used. The more unhandy the tool,
the less perfect the resulting item can be expected to be.
For example: you can't carve fine wooden bowls with a stone-axe any
more. However, with a good quality stone-axe you may still succeed
better than with one of average quality.
* tool quality
Tool quality affects foremostly to quality of resulting item, but also
to time required to complete the task. You can't craft the finest and
perfect items with poor quality tools. The system here is biased
towards degrading resulting item quality for using poor tools, rather
than requiring superior quality tools for superior results. An
average axe in the hands of skilled craftsman is all he needs to make
fine items. However, high quality tools can be important to substitute
for disadvantages of unhandy tools.
For example: using a fine knife to craft a club may sometimes prove
better results than working with a crude stone-axe - even if an axe
would be initially preferred for the job.
All in all; tool quality and tool usefulness now play together in
complex and advanced manner making it important to use handy,
appropriate and good quality tools if you are after the best possible
results and efficient working pace. The player is now also informed
not only about tool usefulness, but also about effects of its
quality, when crafting or other tool requiring jobs are started.
- added: weapon quality affects to their impact
High quality weapons receive a slight bonus to their impact.
Poor quality weapons have their impact slightly degraded.
- improved: skill mastery level impact on produced item quality
This is a fundamental addition which affects to all items that are
produced by using your character's skills; crafting, cooking, building
and so on.
Finished item quality is now assessed based on your crafting success
modified by your mastery level. From now on, novice craftsmen can
rarely produce top quality items and highly skilled craftsmen can trust
that the skills they've achieved won't fail all too easily. Skill rolls
are made normally, there can be failures and successes, but failures of
a master craftsman may be superior to the successes of a novice.
For example: a character with 30% mastery in CARPENTRY tries to craft a
wooden shovel but succeeds only marginally. The resulting wooden shovel
will be of poor quality. If a character with 85% mastery in CARPENTRY
tries to craft a wooden shovel and also succeeds only marginally the
resulting wooden shovel will be of decent quality - not fine but no
poor either.
Moreover, complete novices can't produce top quality items no matter
what. They may be able to produce decent crafts, but only when there's
enough mastery in the play the finished items will be of superior
quality. The odds to produce better quality items in more steady
fashion now grows in line with skill mastery levels.
- improved: batch crafting - varying quality allowed
Skill roll is now made separately for each item produced allowing
finished items vary in quality. Most of the produced items will
probably be of even quality matching your applicable skill level
and performance - but it's possible to find some pleasant or
unpleasant surprises in the mix.
For example: if you make batch of 10 arrows you may obtain 5 decent
ones, 3 crude and 2 curved arrows as a result.
- improved: batch cooking - varying quality allowed
The rules and expected results are the same as in batch crafting.
- added: smoking and drying decreases weight of the food prepared
Drying decreases prepared food weight the most, but smoked food is also
significantly lighter. This gives smoked and dried food a great
advantage for it's easier to carry, but still as nutritious as it ever
was.
- changed: harvesting (stealing) village crops - not allowed anymore
Living off the stolen crops is naturally still possible, but it makes
the villagers angry. In addition, when practising any unallowed
behaviour in the village there will be a dialog to cancel your action
if someone tells you to stop. This will help you not to make villagers
angry unintentionally.
- balanced: base attributes of skills
Attributes (strength, dexterity etc.) determining the base level of each
skill have been checked and balanced.
- balanced: skill starting levels for all the cultures
It is still so that some cultures tend to be more skilled, and some
are average, and some are weaker. But the relative superiority/inferioty
of certain cultures is balanced from what it used to be. There are no
dramatic changes, but minor surprises can be expected.
- updated: game encyclopedia entries for all the cultures
A few new lines here and there.
- added: moddable starting skill levels and base attributes
There's ini_skills.txt file which can be edited to change starting
levels for each of the cultures. Also the base attributes (strenght,
dexterity etc.) determining the skill base can be modded.
- added: customizable skill hotkeys
Refer to ini_skills.txt to customize skill hotkeys.
- re-arranged: skill hotkeys (ALT+skill key)
Default hotkeys for using skills have been re-arranged.
- changed: key command to view skills screen - it's LOWER case [s ] now
It will probably take few moments to get accustomed to this,
but a reminder is displayed upon pressing the old skills-key.
- improved: skills-screen
Skills-screen has been stylized for clearer outlook and easier
tracking of skill development:
* The bars displaying skill mastery are colored according to skill
level, ranging from red (low) to green (high).
* In addition to bars and percentage values also a verbal description
of skill mastery is now displayed; novice, skilled, talented etc.
* Natural aptitude to learn and develop a skill is also displayed.
This is an old factor which now becomes visible for the player.
Natural aptitude affects to pace of skill improvement and it is
determined by your character's physical and mental attributes that
form the skill base level.
* Initial skill mastery is displayed within the mastery level bar as a
shaded section. This shows the mastery level your character started
with and gives you an idea of long term development of your skills.
MIGRATION NOTICE: Initial skill mastery for migrated characters
isn't functional but is set to your current skill levels when
the character is first loaded into this version.
* Skills that have improved during the present game day are marked.
This gives you an idea of short term development of your skills.
- added: STEALTH-skill
You can hide and sneak as usual, but the fundamental change here is
that sneaking is now linked to this proper and visible skill which can
be improved over time. Mobility rate of a sneaking character is about
a half of his walking speed.
- modding changes: flora files
* flora file extension has been changed from ".urw" to ".txt".
Old ".urw" extension still works, but for the sake of simplicity
lets take flora_*.txt naming as a standard.
* new root usage related flora tags: [ROOT_SIZE] and [ROOT_USE]
If [ROOT_SIZE] is specified for a plant that is other than
[root] type it will yield also roots. Possible values:
XS/S/M/L/XL
[ROOT_USE] can have two values: "cooked" and/or "flour"
"cooked" requires boiling of the root before it's pleasant to eat.
"flour" indicates the root can be used for wild flour.
For example: [ROOT_USE:cooked flour]
[ROOT_USE:flour]
If root use isn't specified the root can be eaten raw.
* new HERBLORE related flora tags: [HERB_KNOWN] and [HERB_COMMON]
These two are related to implementation of HERBLORE-skill.
[HERB_KNOWN] tags the cultures that know the plant by default.
[HERB_COMMON] tags the cultures for whom this plant is commonly
known. These cultures get a bonus to recognize the
herb/plant by default.
Tag values: all, eastern, western, northern, kau, kie, dri,
isl...etc. culture abbreviations.
Examples:
[HERB_KNOWN:eastern] - eastern cultures know this herb/plant
by default.
[HERB_COMMON:kau kie] - this plant is common to Kaumolaiset and
Kiessel„iset.
- fixed: bugged fish price
All the fish, raw or cooked, had the same price value regardless of
their type or weight. That's fixed now.
- fixed: inventory crash upon dropping the last item
- fixed: NPCs not healing from their injuries
This was broken and NPCs never healed. Fixed now.
- added: possibility to quit the game by clicking "close the window" button
(X'ing out)
If a character is being played this is equivalent to [Q]uit command
and confirmation to save the character will be asked.
Otherwise X'ing out will close the game quickly.
- fixed: animal unpacking exploits and annoyances
It's now possible to unpack items from your pack animal in storehouses
without craftsmen getting involved. Also, unpacking animals while
standing on pile of items will now take into account only the items
that animal was carrying; this fixes the storehouse exploit and allows
precise unpacking.
- fixed: items getting removed from under the construction to be built even
if the process was aborted
- balanced: exhausted and penalized combatants
Attacking a prone enemy is always advantageous for the attacker even
if the attacker is suffering from serious physical penalty.
If both combatants suffer from penalties exceeding their combat skills
the more skilled is still advantageous.
- fixed: 'Warfare' quest not completing if the Njerpez were finished with
pets or companions.
- added: start menu option to show/hide registration license info
This goes for those who make "let's play" videos and don't wish to
display their registration name.
- added: start menu option to enter your registration code again if you
happen to mistype it
- improved: displaying previous topic in game-info browser
Title of the previous topic is shown along with backspace (back to
previous topics) button information.
For example: [<--] Back to "CULTURES"
- added: new character portraits
Three new male portraits and one new old female portrait.
Some of the new pics replace the old ones so it's possible that your
migrated character may also have changed his face in this version :/