The Wandering Village News

Dear Onbu Riders
A new update has made its way onto the testing branch 😀
Get your wares ready for the all-new trader!


Trader Design Process:


We’ve also reworked the poison system.
The poisonous fungus now spreads slower, making it more understandable and manageable. Infested plants drop spores that can be distilled and sold to the trader to turn a nice profit - if you dare live with the risk!


Plus, there are some new buildings and two new hostility modifiers!

A lot of stuff is currently happening on our Discord -> https://discord.gg/S8EHFp67bd
You can now vote for your favorite features to be added in future updates.
We’re also voting on the creepy decision whether you should be able to feed your villagers to Onbu or not 🍔🧑🦕👀
Come join and let us know what you think 🙂

Before you jump into the new update, some info:

📙 We would greatly appreciate your help with translations over on our Discord.
🐛 Please report bugs using the in-game feedback tool in the top right corner of the screen.
✅ You can make videos for Youtube/stream the testing branch content if you like.

This preview is not yet fully functional with controller and misses some localisation.
Please note that builds on the testing branch might screw up your game saves!
So if you want to make sure, better make a backup first. Here's how.

How to access the update:


Full Patch Notes:

New Features
----------------
- Added trading. Once you have constructed a trade post, traders will arrive in regular intervals. This allows you to trade excess resources for other resources or knowledge.
- Completely rebuilt the system behind the spreading of poisonous fungi. The infection does no longer spread over the air; plants have to physically touch the infected ground to be affected. Our goal was to turn it from an “all hands on deck” emergency event into a more creeping, festering danger. It’s a lot easier to bring under control especially on lower difficulties, but can turn into a problem if ignored for too long.
- There’s now a reward for carefully managing the infestation on Onbu’s back. Harvesting grown fungi yields spores, which can be processed and sold to the trader for a high price.
- Added a setting to disable all gamepad input
- Two new happiness-related Hostility Modifiers, raising the maximum hostility from 14 to 18. Are you up for a challenge?

New Buildings
----------------
- Trade post: Allows traders to land on Onbu. Additional trade posts increase the amount of resources traders can bring.
- Commune: An improved version of the boarding house
- Mansion: An improved version of the cottage
- Spore Distillery: Can process poisonous spores into valuable essence, highly sought-after by traders

Improvements
----------------
- Workers who are waiting for a doctor now display a speech bubble
- Decisions encountered while scavenging also utilise trading mechanics, meaning they’ll also accept food other than bread now
- Decontaminators now burn poison out of the ground in a large radius, making them a lot more powerful compared to manual harvesting

Bugfixes
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- Fixed that harvest tool drag affects plants on construction sites
- Fixed wrong worker animation for gourmet kitchen
- Fixed nomad events having no image

Balancing
----------------
- Needs increase interval on Novice has been slowed down (every 12 days → every 20 days)
- Needs increase interval on Adept has been slowed down (every 10 days → every 20 days)
- Needs increase interval on Veteran has been slowed down (every 8 days → every 10 days)
- Needs maximum on Veteran has been increased, due to addition of Mansion (12 → 14). Other difficulties remain unaffected.
- Happiness ceiling has been increased on Adept and Veteran due to the addition of the Mansion.
- Changes to how Onbu’s trust works, which should reduce cases of “death spirals” (where having a streak of bad luck would decrease Onbu’s trust further, and lead to shaking).
- Seawater Collector: increased Saltwater production per cycle from 3 to 10
- Water Evaporator: changed recipe from (9 Saltwater → 9 Water + 1 Salt) to (10 Saltwater → 8 Water + 2 Salt)
- Reduced the moratlity rate of the ‘Placebo’ update for the Village Doctor from 10% to 5%.


We’re looking forward to hearing your feedback!

Cheers & Thanks for your support,
Stray Fawn Studio

Bugfixes

• Added fix to unstuck buildings with unfinished missions and missing workers
  
• Fixed bug where doctor could treat workers while on mission
  
• Fixed some Arabic translation issues
  
• Returned settings button for platforms primarily using keyboard and mouse
  
• Fixed bug where village vanished after loading
  
• Fixed gamepad highlighting where it would not return the color to an unpressed state
  
• Changed Icon for Food Management to lessen confusion with food overview in topbar
  

Dear Onbu Riders,
We just released a major update for The Wandering Village!
This update is all about the villagers, improving their AI and revamping the happiness mechanics in the game.

We visualised the scavengers flying around

Added new buildings

A new food management screen

Turned the game’s UI upside-down

And more :D
Check out the full patch notes here:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1121640/view/3976182640090938414

A huge thank you to all our testers and translators, you really helped us a great deal :)
We hope you enjoy this new update and we can't wait to hear what you think!
We’ve already started working on the next update which will introduce a flying trader to the game along with a big rework of the poison mechanics.

Over on our Discord, you can now post your ideas for features/improvements that should be added to The Wandering Village and vote for your favourites. Our team will regularly look at the top 10 highest voted ideas and see if we can include them in future updates of the game.

Thanks for reading and see you all soon,
Stray Fawn Studio

New Features

• Complete overhaul of how villager needs work:
  
  • Villagers productivity will no longer fall below 100%.
    
  • Instead, villagers can leave if their needs aren’t met.
    
  • Productivity can still be boosted above 100% if villager happiness is kept above certain thresholds.
    
  • Population level has been removed, so all needs can be worked on from the start of the game.
    
  • Villager demands will increase over time, so make sure to keep them happy.
    
• Massive UI rework:
  
  • The topbar is now centered, with the most important information taking center stage.
    
  • Research, scavenging, Onbu mission and status effect widgets were redesigned. They are now grouped together and always visible at a glance.
    
  • Various UI elements have been re-arranged in a way that brings related information closer together.
    
  • The resource panel can now be filtered by category.
    
  • The tutorial UI was redesigned.
    
  • Many icons were reworked.
    
• The new food management window lets you control which types of food your villagers are allowed to eat, giving you more control over food quality and variety.
  
• The new Gourmet Kitchen allows you to produce high-quality food to make your villagers happy. You want more uses for salt? We hear you!
  
• Festivals held by the Community Plaza and the new Town Square now give a big temporary boost to happiness. They also provide a small passive happiness boost while they are fully staffed.
  
• Scavengers have received a big visual update. They will now take off and land when heading out on and returning from missions.
  

New Buildings

• Gourmet Kitchen - Produces gourmet food from a variety of ingredients
  
• Flophouse - Provides a lot of housing for villagers, if you’re willing to sacrifice some quality and poison resistance
  
• Boarding House - An improved version of the Flophouse
  
• Town Square - Early-game building to boost happiness through festivals
  

Improvements

• Buttons show tooltips for a short time when using the gamepad
  
• Gamepad navigation improvements (ex. grid navigation in resource display and storage buildings, more categories in radial menu, topbar navigation in general)
  
• Added disable all/enable all buttons for storage buildings for easier usage
  
• Added a news panel to the main menu to inform you about new patches and features
  
• Glossary entries with detailed info on the difficulty modes, accessible from the ‘New Game’ menu
  
• The Onbu interaction menu can now be hidden like the building menu
  
• Added icons to indicate whether resources in a building can be stored, removed or both
  
• Workers now prioritize transporting harvested resources into storage if there is free space
  
• Improved Onbu's behavior to choose between sleeping or eating depending on the severity of each need
  
• If world map locations are stacked, multiple clicks toggle through them
  
• Improved prioritization of which food resources to transport to food stands
  
• Added new music and environment sounds for events
  
• New tutorials for food variety and festivals
  
• Added sandbox setting to prevent villagers from leaving when they’re unhappy
  

Balancing

• Berry Gatherer is much less productive at lower efficiency percentage values, but gains a bit of productivity above ~80% efficiency
  
• “Weak Immune System” hostility modifier: effect reduced from +100% to +50%
  
• Infested plants no longer spawn on Onbu’s back when it is heavily poisoned
  
• Research time for all research in the initial tier reduced by 25%
  
• The chance to encounter nomads in the world has been raised significantly, making it a bit easier to get more villagers
  
• Poisonous locations now also lower villager happiness while Onbu crosses them
  
• Population level no longer exists, since it doesn’t serve a purpose anymore with the new happiness system
  
• Decoration capacity now depends on the building type rather than the village level. For example, tents can only be decorated up to a value of 2, thus contributing less to the overall decoration value
  
• Wild mushrooms now grow in patches
  

Visual Improvements

• New shrine visuals
  
• New burned plant visuals
  
• New rain cloud visuals
  
• New icons for potions and medicines
  
• New ground transitions between grass and dirt
  
• When clicking on an object that workers are transporting materials to or interacting with, it now shows the workers' paths
  
• Building radius/area of effect now shows an outline to make it clearer
  

Bugfixes

• Fixed bug where research and worker management windows could not be closed via shortcut
  
• Fixed bug where worker focus could not be broken with key movement
  
• Fixed bug where key bindings were mapped to mouse movement instead of being removed
  
• Fixed bug where Onbu had a stomach ache even though a laxative was given
  
• Fixed a bug where scavenging locations would not be cleared if a worker died during the mission
  
• Fixed bug where Onbu slept in water
  
• Fixed many small UI bugs
  
• Fixed Placebo upgrade for Village Doctor not working properly
  
• Fixed tombstones counting as poisoned workers in tutorial
  
• Fixed Onbu sometimes not eating food on an island when also very tired
  
• Fixed issue where food on islands sometimes didn’t disappear after being eaten
  
• Fixed a bug where workers that died on a scavenging mission could cause issues
  
• Fixed unclickable decision button on world map locations
  

Dear Onbu Riders,

It's that time of the year again: The Steam Awards are coming up!
We would greatly appreciate if you would nominate us for the 'Labor of Love' award ❤️



While we have you here, there is a brand new update available on the Testing branch, starting now :D
This update is all about our little villagers, improving their AI and completely revamping the happiness mechanics in the game. We also added some new buildings and turned the game UI upside-down (hopefully for the better)

Some things, especially the UI, are still work in progress, but we would love to hear your feedback early on, ideally over on our Discord. Controllers are not properly supported in this version (yet!), the tutorial is a bit broken and we're still missing some loca.




Here is how you can access the update:



Thank you very much for checking!
See you on the Discord :D

Cheers & Thanks,
Stray Fawn Studio

PS: The game is currently 25% off during the Steam autumn sale.