As we approach the end of 2024, no doubt there are questions about whether v1.0 is still happening this year. In our last State of Early Access update, we outlined our plans for the remainder of Early Access. As you can see, we have rapidly moved down this list, releasing features, optimization, bug fixes, and quality of life improvements roughly every 1-2 months.
So, let us talk about where we currently are, and where we are going. To get the elephant in the room out of the way, yes, we have made the decision to postpone v1.0 to next year. We understand that is not what many of you would like to hear, but several factors have played into it:
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For starters, we feel that performance is simply not quite where we would like it to be yet. We are seeing your grand 3000+ population towns which are no doubt pushing the limits of hardware, but there is still more we could do to squeeze more frames out of the game, and we want to take the time to get it right.
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The second reason is that we are, as history serves, victims of our own tendency to do MOAR. The team is still tinkering with new and unannounced improvements, which predictably bloats the schedule. We will get into some of these surprise additions below.
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The final reason is somewhat business driven. With the holidays rapidly approaching, this is the time of year when big publishers are going to drown the market with advertising, eager for your holiday shopping coin. Similarly, February tends to be a month when everyone’s wallets have just recovered from the holiday rush, so in come the big AAA releases. Next February is already looking packed. December-February is not the time of year, in our opinion, for an indie game to try and get discovered amidst the chaos and noise of big releases. Farthest Frontier has already established itself as a solid addition to the town builder genre, but we want to make sure it has the strongest start possible when it hits v1.0.
We want to deliver to you the best version of Farthest Frontier we can. For this reason, and those outlined above, we are delaying the v1.0 release to Spring 2025. We have a nifty new trailer making this announcement official:
Note: everything you read here is a preview and is subject to change before release. We are liable to do MOAR. Nothing is set in stone, until it is!
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We are pleased to report that v0.9.6 is expected to enter public playtesting in the next two weeks. As previously revealed, this is the update focused on putting more control of the game into your hands.
You can look forward to dramatically expanded custom game options. While playing in custom game mode will disable achievements (not much of an accomplishment if you do it in creative mode after all!), we feel that this will vastly expand your options to play the game the way you want. We will definitely be keeping an eye out for what other customization options you want to have fun with Farthest Frontier.
Speaking of achievements, we feel that achievements should be postponed closer to v1.0, so we are going to split those off into a separate v0.9.7 update early next year. Likewise, the villager idle behaviors will be postponed so that we can give them all the attention they deserve.
Despite these changes to the roadmap, this update has actually grown in scope. The villager VO we planned to add will feature more voice lines. And, alongside the VO, we actually went through the entire game and looked for opportunities where we could enhance the gameplay through audio. You can look forward to your settlement “feeling” livelier with new ambient sound effects, more intense combat, and even some audio cues in response to interacting with UI elements. This is a level of polish we did not have originally slated, but it was definitely worth it.
Similarly, we recently teased a quaint little structure. There have been many guesses as to what this new building will do, and some of you were right on the dot! V0.9.6 will introduce a tier 2 upgrade to the Forager Shack, aptly named the Forager Garden. This upgrade will change the forager from a gatherer building with a work site to cultivating a small garden instead. You will have the option of planting any foraged plants that are available in your settlement’s map (sorry, you cannot plant an egg garden). In addition, tier 1 Foragers will have new priority options, so you can set which foraged items your villagers should gather first.
In less exciting changes, we have observed a spike in reports from users being unable to launch the game, instead seeing a black screen. This issue was alleviated by wiping your documents directory for Farthest Frontier, but that is hardly a solution. After much sleuthing, and assistance from members of the community sharing their findings with us, we have determined that the culprit appears to be OneDrive. Farthest Frontier is hardly the only game experiencing issues because of this overzealous software, but that is small consolation for players suffering from it. To address this problem permanently, we made the decision to migrate the game’s save directory to /Users/Your Username/Saved Games/Farthest Frontier, which is not monitored by OneDrive by default. When you first launch the game in v0.9.6, it will automatically migrate your data for you (this may take a while if you have a lot of saves). If your Saved Games folder is on a drive that is full, you will be able to relocate it to another drive by right-clicking it and selecting Properties. This is an unfortunate frustration all around, but we feel it was necessary to help the users that keep getting their saves stolen, duplicated, and/or lost due to external factors.
We of course have MOAR for you too. Here is a quick run down of (some!) of the additions and improvements on the way in v0.9.6:
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Your settlement’s advances and combat victories (and defeats) will be commemorated with proper fanfare.
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Losing all villagers will trigger a defeat state.
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Boars will spawn from dens instead of out in the world. These dens will be non-hostile by default, so you can leave them up for hunting boars, or destroy them to permanently stop boars from spawning in the area.
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Small Plazas will be placeable beneath fences, walls, and gates.
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Foods will display their spoilage times in the Resources window.
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Barrels will be prioritized to Root Cellars, and you will have the option of toggling them off in specific storage buildings.
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The currently active immigration quest will be viewable again from the top left notifications.
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Ukrainian localization will be available.
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Chickens will no longer report milk production to perform some sort of elaborate tax fraud.
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Invading armies will no longer leave without any gold if you are transferring gold at the same time as paying them.
All this is coming on top of our latest round of optimization improvements.
As we said above, we decided to do one more smaller update early next year before Farthest Frontier hits v1.0 and leaves Early Access in the Spring. First and foremost, this update will introduce the achievements and villager idle behaviors originally slated for v0.9.6, but we expect to throw in our signature sprinkling of…more than initially planned. We do not want to make too many promises here, so we are going to keep things under wraps for now, but with more time to polish and optimize the game, new hotness will no doubt trickle in. We clearly cannot help ourselves.
One thing we do want to expand upon for sure though, is modding. A few updates ago, we did an initial pass on official mod support, allowing you to implement custom decorative buildings, but that was always intended to be the start. We have some ideas for what else we could do to make modding the game an easier experience, but if you are someone interested in modding Farthest Frontier, we want to hear from you! Let us know what we can do to elevate modding Farthest Frontier beyond using Melon Loader.
We expect to support Farthest Frontier for years to come after its v1.0 debut, and supporting the modding community goes hand in hand with that, as it has for Grim Dawn.
Not much to add for v1.0 beyond what was already announced. You can still expect victory conditions and the tech tree as the major additions. What we can share with you though is how awesome the upcoming monuments turned out!
You will have the option of aiming for 3 different victory conditions, each crowned by a distinct monument:
Each of these pinnacle structures will have different prerequisites for their construction, although you can bet the tech tree will be involved in some capacity, and each will bolster your settlement with a passive bonus to highlight your achievements.
As for the Tech Tree, we are still tinkering with the details, but the underlying systems are in place. As such, the UI does not have final art yet but…
…you can expect your options to be rather extensive!
Some of our recent favorites, from the internet for the internet:
Share your best right here on our forum!
I hope there’ll be all kinds of fun cute interesting immersive villager behaviour to make this wait worth it!
Guess ill wait too! 