Hi guys. We’ve reached the point where we’re ready for you to test an early version of Alpha 11! This new release on our Steam Latest branch includes the much awaited crate feature, the cook, and a ton of performance enhancements. You can find more information about the Steam Latest branch and what all this means here at our Release Process page. For now, here are your patch notes!

Patch Notes for develop-2477

Embark!

When starting a new game, you can now see portraits and roll attributes for your hearthlings. (Mouse over the attributes to see a description.) You can also give your hearthlings new names and purchase inital starting equipment.

Crates

Carpenters can now craft crates to store and organize your items. Crates come in two sizes and function much like mobile stockpiles. This means you can move them to where they are needed. For example, you can load up a crate with wood and then move it near a construction site. Or, put a food crate in your dining hall!

Backpacks for All

All hearthlings are now equipped with a backpack that can hold up to four items. This makes them much more efficient at restocking items as well as other tasks. You can see the contents of their backpack on the character sheet.

Preview of the Cook

The cook profession has been enabled. There are only two recipes at the moment, but we will be adding many more later. Uncooked food now spoils after a few days, so don’t overproduce it! Prepared food lasts longer but will also eventually spoil.

Attributes

Hearthling attributes now have more of an impact on the game. Over time, we’ll continue to add more effects. An example of some of the effects currently in the game:

• Diligence increases crafting speed.
• Curiosity increases experience gain when crafting new items.
• Inventiveness increases chance of crafting fine items.
• Muscle increases weapon damage.
• Stamina determines duration of hearthling sleep.
• Courage determines change to flee in combat.
• Compassion affects maximum number of trapper pets and improves sheep wool production and reproduction rates.

Performance

Other Changes

• You can now specify the seed used to generate the world so you can replay a map.
• The fog of war has been lifted when selecting your starting location.
• Portraits added to the unit info pane in the bottm left corner. Clicking on the portait brings up the character sheet.
• Added many tooltips to the character sheet and building designer.
• Show armor and weapon bonuses on the character sheet.
• Hearthlings can now pick up and place items on multiple levels instead of just at foot level.
• Hearthlings no longer pop up when placing large furniture.
• Hearthlings no longer build ladders when they can reach the item from ground level.
• Removing ladders now shows the undeploy icon.
• When moving items, their initial facing is preserved.
• Clicking units in the party window will now select and zoom to them.
• When buying and selling items, the reticle no longer obscures the quantity.
• Hearthlings now sleep in the center of the bed.
• Enemies no longer gain experience and level up.
• Incompatible saves can no longer be loaded.
• Game speed hotkeys have been moved to ~, 1, 2.
• The debug console hotkey is now ctrl-shift-c.

Crash Bugs

Other Bugs Fixed

• Manually extended auto-placed ladders can now be removed.
• Renaming structures no longer causes the camera to move.
• Fixed hearthlings floating on top of chairs while eating.
• Fixed issues when saving/loading the game while a hearthling is sleeping.
• Fixed hearthlings sleeping twice in a night.
• Fixed error in the scaffolding manager.
• Fixed error when placing items in buildings.
• Fixed bug trying to restore destroyed items on game load.
• Fixed save/load issues with farms.
• Fixed error with shepherd looking for more sheep.
• You can now save the game before placing the banner.
• Rotating an item while placing it now correctly rotates its collision shape.
• Crafter workbenches now have the correct collision shape.
• Fix camera zooming away when focusing on carried item.
• Fixed lots of small UI issues.

As usual, if you give this release a go, let us know about any bugs you find at discourse.stonehearth.net.