We are glad to see so many of you have enjoyed Farthest Frontier already. Your reception and support have been phenomenal and we thank you all for being with us on this journey so far!
Over the past two months, we have released 4 updates and respective hotfixes aimed at addressing the most pressing issues preventing you from having an enjoyable experience. Needless to say, we are just getting started!
Now you might be looking forward to v0.7.7, but who needs that when we are going straight to v0.8.0! Yes, our next update is going to be a big one. Today we wish to shed some light on what is in store for you!
If you have not had a chance to read our first State of Early Access, we recommend you check it out, as it not only reflects on some of what we have added already, but on what is still to come.
Weād like to preface this preview by making it clear that this update is still very much a work in progress, and what you see can and will change. This preview is also not all-encompassing. There is a good chance we will sneak more changes in as we go. With that out of the way, letās take a look at v0.8.0!
Table of Contents
As promised back in our first State of Early Access, a new batch of buildings is coming in v0.8.0. This assortment of decorations will give you new ways to beautify your cities and make them distinctly your own.
Enjoy Ornamental Trees, Flower Urns, Bench Plazas, new Fence types and more! In total, there are 12 new buildings, and thatās not including their upgrades!
Your towns will also benefit from a new entertainment building in the form of the Festival Pole. This new structure comes alongside a rebalance of entertainment needs so you should find fulfilling your peopleās desire for entertainment to be much more manageable.
Weāve heard your feedback that some of Farthest Frontierās systems can be challenging for new players, especially those checking out town builders for the first time. While we already have a handy Game Guide, nothing compares to immediate assistance provided from within the game.
For this purpose, we are dramatically expanding the availability of tutorials within the game. Everything from Crop Fields and crop rotations to the Trading Post screen and building repairs is getting detailed information to help you familiarize yourself with the depth that Farthest Frontier has to offer.
To make sure everybody is on the same page, we will be resetting tutorials for everyone in v0.8.0.
We are working on several improvements to villager AI, some of which may not be ready for v0.8.0, but there are two that will be available as soon as v0.8.0 goes into Public Playtest.
We have overhauled builder priorities so they handle build tasks more intelligently. This means that if a combination of roads/buildings/walls/upkeep construction occurs at the same time, builders will distribute themselves throughout these jobs until they are all completed.
Likewise, builders will be more efficient about handling road and wall construction sites, treating them as multiple build tasks rather than one large task that could sometimes end up with just one builder. This should result in roads and walls, and their respective upgrades, being built much faster than before.
Grocers are the second bit of AI that you can look forward to already. Grocers are currently bugged in that they are not properly stocking the homes in their work area. This bug has been resolved in v0.8.0.
Not only that, we have upgraded their AI so they are better about not only stocking their markets, but also keeping nearby shelters stocked for all their needs, including food, firewood, water, soap, herbs, and luxury goods.
This means all your villagers will be spending less time stocking their shelters and more time performing the tasks you need them to be doing. This will also help in instances where a shelter has all of its inhabitants performing duties as guards or hunters and never stopping by their home to stock it, which in turn prevented the structure from upgrading.
Desirability is one of Farthest Frontierās central mechanics. You need to raise desirability in order to upgrade your shelters, which in turn not only nets you tax revenue but helps unlock higher town tiers.
Itās a very important system, but one that was somewhat obscured in terms of providing you all of the, erm, desired information. With v0.8.0, we have updated the Shelter UI window to not only give you a breakdown of the desirability tiers necessary for upgrades, but the tooltip will give you a detailed rundown of every nearby structure that affects that shelterās desirability.
No more guessing why your shelter isnāt upgrading or why itās at risk of abandonment!
In addition to that, we have also updated the icons when placing new structures, so you can not only see the total desirability for each shelter, but also how much of an impact the new structure will have on them.
Combined, these two changes should give you everything you need to get those shelters upgraded to manors in no time!
We always make an effort to squeeze in some quality-of-life changes based on player feedback wherever we can, and v0.8.0 is no exception.
You can look forward to these and more:
- Professions Window will preserve settings between reloads. This means that if you have a habit of reducing worker counts in various professions using that window, all of your preferred values will be maintained even if you save and load.
- The placement grid has been updated to be much easier to see, especially on overlays and snow.
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The Flatten Tool will be MOAR. We have taken the existing Flatten Tool and increased its power. Weāre sure even this wonāt be enough for the sculptors out there turning mountains into fortresses, but itās definitely an improvement!
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Barns will generate Milk by default (the toggle for milking will be removed).
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In addition, cows will be able to graze on fields to improve their fertility. But be aware: cows will gladly devour any crops you have planted (watch out, deer, you have competition!), though savvy farmers will have clover ready for them to eat.
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Finally, barns will generate waste during the winter months, which can be transported to Compost Yards for additional compost.
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The builder cap of 100 will be removed. Send your laborers forth and pave over the frontier!
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Condemned buildings will be salvageable and relocatable. However, attempting to relocate a damaged or condemned building will add the repair costs to the relocation job, so no more avoiding building maintenance with relocation tasks! We are aware that there is currently no way to prioritize a building repair task, and we plan to add a solution for that. That said, changes to builder AI should help alleviate that somewhat.
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The Wall Tool has been updated with a Priority option. Coupled with the improved builder attention to walls, your defenses should be getting built in no time.
Most every update is going to include some degree of balance changes, so you can look forward to some in v0.8.0 as well.
First up, weāve been reading your feedback regarding raids. We have made changes to raider difficulty across the board. This means raids should be more manageable on Pioneer and Trailblazer difficulties. And, for the vanquishers out there, we have increased the difficulty on Vanquisher further. The hardest difficulty in the game has fallen behind over the past two months and we want to bring some of that challenge back!
Outside of combat, cows have received a nerf to their food generation. Barns used to have a number of bugs that made them unreliable food sources, what with cows vanishing into thin air and all. Since those issues have been addressed, barns have become a bit too potent. They will still be a powerhouse in v0.8.0, but not nearly as potent as before.
Entertainment requirements have been rebalanced and will be much more manageable. You will have a much easier time providing entertainment for your villagers with Theaters, Pubs, and the upcoming Festival Poles.
On that note, happiness bonuses have been rebalanced. Maintaining high happiness will actually net you improved work rate and combat efficiency!
Bug fixes and performance are an ongoing effort and youāll be hearing about them throughout Early Access. No single update is going to be the magic bullet for all issues, but you can generally look forward to incremental improvements with every patch. For v0.8.0, here is some of whatās in store:
- Optimized snow shaders for improved performance during Winter.
- Fixed an issue where collapsing sections of building UI windows (ex. Storage or Items Produced In The Last Year) could cause the game to hang.
- Fixed an issue where soldiers could end up wounded and then garrison the barracks where they would remain in wounded stasis.
- Fixed an issue where soldiers would not drop their weapons when dying from non-combat causes. This also fixes an issue where raiders stealing arrows/bows/weapons would not drop them when killed.
- Fixed an issue where building relocation build sites could become rotated from the original buildingās facing.
- Fixed an issue where saving the game after a late planting in a crop field and then loading could cause the harvest to be missed.
- Fixed an issue where Breweries would display the āNo Entertainmentā icon. Sorry, brewery tours are permanently cancelled.
- Fixed an issue with laborers not correctly prioritizing soil mixture tasks. Previously, laborers would score soil mixture very low, resulting in the tasks almost never getting done.
- Fixed an issue where traveling merchants arriving at the Trading Post would immediately leave.
Thereās no doubt you are wondering when v0.8.0 will be out. Thereās a lot to unpack here and we want to make sure that what we put in your hands is as fun and bug free as possible. If everything goes smoothly, we expect to have v0.8.0 in the public playtest branch by the end of the month, with the full release in November.
For more information on public playtests, stop by the Playtester FAQ.
We hope youāre excited for Farthest Frontierās largest (and still growing) update yet!
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