Medieval Frontiers News

[p]Build Version 2843[/p][p] [/p][p]This patch includes various improvements and fixes.[/p][p] [/p][p]Highlights[/p][p]- New: Fully rebindable controls for everyone (Key Bindings menu), with modifier support and localized labels.[/p][p]- Major tutorial and early-game overhaul, including a refreshed “A New Home” progression, new pop-ups, and Journal integration.[/p][p]- Extensive localization pass with hundreds of context-accurate updates across all supported languages.[/p][p]- Visual and performance polish: motion blur disabled by default, improved lighting and foliage, and expanded display/monitor settings.[/p][p]- Balance updates: longer days, instant pickups, refined durability and encumbrance, animal respawns, and smarter NPC behavior.[/p][p] [/p][p]Gameplay[/p][p]- Balance and pacing[/p][p]  - Day length increased by 25%.[/p][p]  - Pickups are now instant; added weight to some items and slightly reduced overburden penalties.[/p][p]  - Adjusted general item decay and axe durability per hit; axe damage rebalanced.[/p][p]- Animals and wildlife[/p][p]  - All animals now respawn; fixed cases where animals had incorrect health.[/p][p]  - Dead animals can be picked up again; chickens drop fewer eggs, lose hunger more slowly, and can drop feathers again.[/p][p]- Heat and survival[/p][p]  - Warmth detection is more reliable: campfire hitboxes and building validators no longer block warmth checks.[/p][p]- Workers and AI[/p][p]  - Workers stop gathering when morale is low; added safeguards to reduce AI stalls and “stuck” behaviors.[/p][p]  - Fixed tasks mistakenly marked as possible; improved worker state handling and death behavior.[/p][p]  - NPCs now use health potions and medication from their inventory when needed.[/p][p]- Crafting and building[/p][p]  - New sitting log with proper build cost.[/p][p]  - Gambling table polished, now placeable indoors, with updated decals.[/p][p]  - Workbench visualizer added for clearer placement and interaction.[/p][p]- Items and inventory[/p][p]  - Quick selection bar now saves/loads.[/p][p]  - Inventory category for clothing added; dye color icons and clothing color info now show on interactables.[/p][p]  - Item names now display correct plurals; elixir description updated.[/p][p]  - Crafting wheel adjusted: fox entry removed; wolf entry added.[/p][p] [/p][p]UI and Controls[/p][p]- Key Bindings[/p][p]  - New Key Bindings menu available to all players.[/p][p]  - Rebind most actions (including Shift/Ctrl modifiers); multiple binding slots per action supported with live preview.[/p][p]  - Localized action names and improved categories; bindings persist across sessions.[/p][p]  - Numerous fixes for context registration, primary interaction, preview, and submit actions.[/p][p]- General UI[/p][p]  - Settings menu refinements; clearer audio option names; controller scheme now hidden while settings are open.[/p][p]  - Center marker can display current time and temperature.[/p][p]  - Pop-up system reworked: improved positioning, proper save/load, and localized confirmation prompts.[/p][p]  - Build menu naming and HUD icon updates (radial menu, item icons).[/p][p]  - “Hide Tutorial” option temporarily disabled during the tutorial overhaul.[/p][p] [/p][p]Tutorials, Journal, and Wiki[/p][p]- Comprehensive tutorial rewrite with new slides, clearer guidance, and Journal integration.[/p][p]- “A New Home” early-game overhaul completed; added a shelf tutorial/quest after the trading post.[/p][p]- “Open last tutorial hint” feature added; tutorial entries now save and load.[/p][p]- Wiki updates:[/p][p]  - Decay article unlocks after your first item breaks (with a new voice line).[/p][p]  - Wolf entry unlocks after your first wolf kill (crafting wheel updated).[/p][p] [/p][p]Quests and Story[/p][p]- Bridge quest split into its own main quest; quest order improved for readability.[/p][p]- Egg quest now completable at the wall campfire.[/p][p]- Multiple fixes and text updates across quests and dialogue.[/p][p] [/p][p]Visuals and World[/p][p]- Lighting and environment[/p][p]  - Torchlight adjusted; default time-of-day improved.[/p][p]  - Simplified color grading and improved dawn performance.[/p][p]  - Foliage and seasons: tuned seasonal leaf brightness; reduced grass color variation; updated winter building visualization.[/p][p]  - Beech tree polycount optimized; fixed pit house seam and a rock’s backside; removed submerged stones and mushrooms.[/p][p]  - Buildings correctly block navmesh where required; improved validator presets.[/p][p]- Additional polish[/p][p]  - Workbench/building visualizer improvements.[/p][p]  - Motion blur disabled by default for clearer visuals.[/p][p] [/p][p]Audio[/p][p]- Mix and routing pass: improved player mixer, heartbeat routing, and buff submix; general soundclass clean-up.[/p][p]- Reduced heavy breathing/panting; stamina-ducking rebalanced to keep key sounds audible.[/p][p]- New/updated cues: jump, wind, chicken minigame success, buffs, doors.[/p][p]- Storybook audio restored; dialogue polish for several characters.[/p][p]- Asset housekeeping and naming clean-up.[/p][p] [/p][p]Performance and Settings[/p][p]- Display settings expanded:[/p][p]  - Choose the active display/monitor in-game.[/p][p]  - Monitor-specific resolution presets with aspect-ratio fallbacks.[/p][p]  - Manual “Rescan Displays” option; reduced background monitor polling to lower overhead.[/p][p]- Enhanced user settings enabled; input actions refactored for responsiveness.[/p][p]- Various level/asset cleanups for stability.[/p][p] [/p][p]Bug Fixes[/p][p]- Fixed Escape key behavior and double-trigger issues in UI flow.[/p][p]- Prevented NPCs from teleporting to 0/0/0 on load.[/p][p]- Fixed worker death handling and bow swapping.[/p][p]- Corrected undergarment clipping; restored missing overhead texts.[/p][p]- Fixed hammer not updating in trading UI.[/p][p]- Resolved HUD quest loading issues; corrected Bridge quest text.[/p][p]- Animals no longer die incorrectly while carried; chickens behave reliably in-hand.[/p][p]- Multiple collision, navmesh, and validator fixes across buildings and decorations.[/p][p] [/p][p]Localization[/p][p]- Large, context-aware localization updates across:[/p][p]  - German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Chinese.[/p][p]- Additional proofreading and typo fixes throughout UI, quests, and tutorials.[/p][p]- Key Bindings UI prepared and localized.[/p][p] [/p][p]Thank you for your continued feedback—please keep the reports coming![/p]

 

Hey folks, 

Thank you so much for all your feedback and input! This is extremely helpful for us and allows us to improve the game in so many areas. The demo launched on February 19th and since then we've been heads-down fixing, tuning, and improving based on your feedback and our own testing. We shipped 8 updates in the first week alone, and we want you to see exactly what changed. 

This are the things we changed before the start of Steam Nextfest. We are allready working on more improvements that we will probably update today in the evening.  

Let's get into it. 

[h2]⚔️ Gameplay & Balance[/h2] 

[h3]Difficulty & Survival[/h3]

• Difficulty selection now appears and applies correctly when starting a new game
  
• "Cozy" difficulty has been eased, less punishing for players who want to focus on building
  
• Difficulty now scales wolf spawns, clothing decay, and item degradation (tooltips reflect this)
  
• The first in-game day now runs at 0.8x speed to give new players more breathing room
  
• Tired status is now dangerous at 100% and becomes lethal if you keep pushing. Get some sleep
  
• You can now sleep after pulling an all-nighter
  
• Tea now restores Hydration
  
• Health Potions T1 and T2 added with new icons; T2 now correctly heals more than T1
  
• Health regeneration buff toned down; new "Wet" status effect introduced
  
• Status effect feedback adjusted to be less repetitive
  

 

[h3]Combat & Movement[/h3]

• Bow and wolf behavior fully reworked for cleaner, more tunable combat
  
• You can cancel a bow draw again
  
• Jumping now costs stamina; general combat responsiveness improved
  
• Axe animation set updated with refined interaction points and foot placement
  
• Improved camera behavior during wolf encounters
  
• Farm animal QTEs now have a cooldown to prevent spam
  

[h3]Crafting & Building[/h3]

• Campfires no longer start lit when placed. You have to ignite them (warmth/fire buffs work correctly now)
  
• Torches light reliably, stack in inventory, and are listed as Decoration (not workbenches)
  
• Torch option added to the Build menu
  
• Pithouse vertical beams now correctly clean up if you saved mid-build
  
• Ground plot preview added in storage areas for clearer placement
  
• Building blocked near certain ruins to prevent overlap issues
  
• Fire ignition overall more consistent and reliable
  
• Sewing auto-finish now completes as intended
  
• Clothing items transfer correctly between inventories
  

 

[h3]World Interactions[/h3]

• Chickens now stay near their coop
  
• "Find hare burrow" triggers correctly even if you visited the area before
  
• Eggs now function correctly in gameplay
  
• Helpful starter resources added to the starting area
  
• Straw Hat placed in the main level as a findable item
  
• Gambling table interaction zone adjusted for more reliable use
  

 

[h2]🧑‍🌾 Villagers & AI[/h2]

• NPCs continue crafting correctly even when production targets are set high
  
• Villagers stop crafting when work morale is too low (as intended)
  
• Workers now eat more reliably and resume work without unnecessary delays
  
• Worker needs are no longer blocked by a full inventory
  
• NPCs step away from storage after grabbing food to reduce crowding
  
• NPC work inventories are now properly saved and restored between sessions
  
• Fixed worker pannier stacks not showing after loading
  
• Improved "Bring/Deliver" task reliability, no more carrying items away after a behavior reset
  
• Streamlined hauling behavior to prevent loops
  
• General softlock fixes and smoother idle movement for NPCs
  
• Interactables currently used by NPCs no longer show interaction outlines for the player
  
• Sister now has the same dialogue options as regular NPCs
  
• NPC cause of death is now tracked and displayed with appropriate warnings
  
• Villager HUD and needs feedback improved
  
• Better control over NPC starting gear
  
• Smoother foot placement and refined interactions around the chicken coop
  

 

[h2]📜 Quests & Tutorials[/h2]

• New main Hunt quest added with new voice lines
  
• Significantly reduced pop-up interruptions for a smoother playthrough
  
• Tea & Elixir tutorial now appears on first pickup
  
• Removed the Story Book popup to streamline early progression
  
• Added a "Hide Tutorial" option to the New Game difficulty selection screen
  
• Weather tutorial moved to the clothing popup for better timing
  
• Campfire/QTE tutorial reworked for better visibility
  
• Villager tutorial now triggers reliably for the first new villager who joins
  
• First Night quest can now complete if you build a bed and sleep instead of crafting a torch
  
• "Explore the World" trigger adjusted; journal popup removed
  
• Collection quests standardized: rabbits → "hares," holes → "burrows"
  
• Multiple quest text and typo corrections
  
• More precise guidance in the Villager Needs tutorial
  
• Added clear info on missing items in workbench popups
  
• Material list in the HUD now aligned with active quests
  

 

[h2]🖥️ UI & UX[/h2]

• Added a Control Scheme screen to the pause menu
  
• New Settings panel accessible from the pause menu
  
• Added Wishlist button to the Main Menu and demo end screen
  
• Motion blur toggle and brightness slider added
  
• "Playtest" wording changed to "Demo" everywhere
  
• Fixed quest log and Focus Construction breaking after viewing trading info
  
• Reset-to-safe-location now works properly
  
• Cleaned up and clarified in-game Wiki entries
  
• Popups now hide the HUD to reduce clutter
  
• Warning added when saving with an empty save name
  
• Radial menu can now be closed with Tab
  
• Cursor changed to a dot; death camera and death popup timing fixed
  
• Delete Save popup is now localized
  
• Debug messages no longer shown to players
  
• Clothing tooltips now show one decimal place
  
• General tooltip and layout improvements
  
• Trading missions now show a packing info widget (cleans up properly if aborted)
  
• Improved text readability for the letter "I" in applicable fonts
  
• Standardized hint pop-ups with new template and reduced frequency
  

 

[h2]🔊 Audio[/h2]

• New destruction sound effects
  
• Unique audio cues for the Chicken Minigame
  
• New and refined workbench/production sounds
  
• Gambling and Wheel of Fortune sounds added
  
• Inventory hover, item pickup, and "inventory full" SFX fixed and added
  
• NPC sleep audio implemented
  
• Campfire and torch attenuation tuned
  
• Footstep volume adjusted over distance
  
• Overall audio mix rebalanced
  
• Voice line routing improvements
  
• UI interaction feedback sounds added
  

 

[h2]🎨 Visuals & Performance[/h2]

• Enabled Nanite on many meshes and reduced triangle counts for better performance
  
• Improved hair rendering to reduce clipping and visual artifacts
  
• Tweaked wheat color for better readability
  
• Fixed visual gaps on the Chausses legwear
  
• Updated shaders for improved lighting and visual stability
  
• Fixed motion blur behavior when combat option is disabled
  
• Reduced noise in flickering lights; tonemapping adjustments
  
• Landscape texture blending and leaf pop-in reduced
  
• Autumn color grading for hazel and beech trees
  
• Indoor campfires no longer get snowed on
  
• Fire "ghost silhouette" artifact removed
  
• First-person arms now render correctly with reduced clipping
  
• Desert Hat textures and normals corrected
  
• Door and pithouse roof normals fixed
  
• Character customization polish: shoes, underwear textures, eyebrow variations, skin shader tweaks
  
• Improved item highlight visibility for feathers
  
• River grass height reduced for better visibility
  

 

[h2]🌍 World & Level Design[/h2]

• Tea kitchen wall collision fixed, doors no longer blocked
  
• Adjusted pit house door rotation for correct opening
  
• Fixed wheat sinking into terrain
  
• Removed unintended fire visual effects from the main level
  
• Improved pathfinding around the well and trading post with new navigation blockers
  
• Reed cleanup: pickupable again, no more floating instances
  
• Additional foliage updates with better collision; more nettle placed in the world
  
• Level border and minor placement cleanups
  

[h2]💾 Saving, Loading & Stability[/h2]

• Added hourly autosave for safety
  
• Fixed a crash at startup
  
• Fixed a crash with Asian language settings (Japanese, Korean, Chinese)
  
• Improved loading stability with multiple struct error fixes
  
• Technologies now reconstruct on load for older savegames based on quest flow and placed buildings
  
• Trading systems have robust fallbacks when loading legacy saves
  
• Blood decals now load correctly
  

 

[h2]🌐 Localization[/h2]

• Massive translation refresh across all supported languages with thousands of entries added or corrected
  
• Full font support for Asian languages (Japanese, Korean, Chinese) across all game text
  
• Enhanced text layout for CJK languages: better punctuation-aware wrapping and justification
  
• Difficulty and UI texts updated; technology/production names clarified
  
• Cleaned up and streamlined the translation pipeline
  
• Context-based retranslation updates across: German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Chinese
  

[h2]What's Next[/h2]
 
We're reading every bug report, every discussion post, and every piece of feedback. The team is continuing to fix, polish, and improve, and you'll hear about it right here.

If you're enjoying the demo, a Wishlist helps us more than you'd think:

[]👉 Wishlist Medieval Frontiers

Found a bug? Let us know in the Discord or in the Steam discussions. We're here.

 

Thanks for playing.

The Active Fungus Studios Team

[p]Starting on February 19, Medieval Frontiers invites players to survive the cold and build a village they’re responsible for. This first-person colony sim moves beyond simple crafting to offer a deep, tactile world where every log placed and every surviving settler carries weight.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p]

[/p][h3]Survival with Consequence[/h3][p]The demo begins where the genre demands: you wake up in the woods, the air bites, and work waits. But Medieval Frontiers quickly distinguishes itself by shifting focus from solo endurance to colony management. This is built for players who want systems that feel physical, visible, and earned.
The atmosphere in the demo lands early. Morning fog drifts through the trees. You hear undergrowth crack while you plan the next hunt or the next build. The forest feels alive. Weather swings from calm to hostile. Your first wooden shelter feels like real protection, a place with weight, warmth, and consequence.

[/p][h3]Freedom over constraints. Building that stays organic.[/h3][p]Instead of picking a predefined building from a menu, you shape a space and define its purpose by what you place inside. A simple shelter becomes a workshop when the right bench and tools move in. Add living essentials and it becomes a home. This turns building into authorship. It also makes layouts personal, because the same village can solve the same problem in wildly different ways.

[/p][h3]From survival to stewardship. A colony you can feel.[/h3][p]This is more than stacking logs. The demo introduces the early loop of gathering, hunting, crafting, and establishing the first settlers. Those settlers matter. They live on routines, carry needs, and respond to their world. As your village grows, planning becomes leadership. The game leans into that shift by letting villagers take on work you set in motion, including construction.

[/p][h3]What the demo highlights[/h3][p]- Gridless Building: Free rotation and terrain-aware placement for natural village layouts.
- The Workbench Principle: Rooms are defined by their contents, not their labels.
- Reactive Villagers: Settlers with routines, needs, and distinct daily lives.
- Atmospheric Pressure: Seasons and weather shape preparation, pacing, and risk.
- Tangible Resources: Food and tools are physical objects with weight and decay, not just UI numbers.
- Resilience Systems: An early look at how illness and health reward careful planning.

[dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p]

[p]New look. Same mission. 🔨[/p][p]Today we dropped our new Key Art for Medieval Frontiers.[/p][p]This is the face of Medieval Frontiers. You against nature.[/p][p]Enjoy the view, folks. Next week, the silence breaks. More reveals, more gameplay, more little details to obsess over.[/p][p]#MedievalFrontiers #IndieDev #SurvivalBuilder #UE5[/p]

[p]@here 🚧 The Gates are Open: Beta Phase 1 Starts Now[/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p]Folks,[/p][p]It’s been a long road of development, coffee, and fixing bugs. It is time for the next step. We are opening the Closed Beta for Medieval Frontiers.[/p][p]Now, we need you: Builders and Breakers! Push the game to the edge! Find major bugs and help us shape the game. Test the logistic systems to their limit. Try to build everything possible. See if the economy holds up or collapses. The foundation is solid. Your honest feedback decides where the journey goes next.[/p][p]What you get:[/p]

• [p]Access to the Raw Dev-Build (Unpolished. Real. Buggy.).[/p]
• [p]A direct line to the dev team in the special #beta-feedback channel.[/p]
• [p]Impact: Your feedback defines the balancing for the actual launch and tells us what mechanics to focus on.[/p]

[p]We are accepting a limited number of testers to keep feedback manageable.[/p][p]Join here [/p][p]👉 https://discord.gg/5tZj9gnx9t [/p][p]Warning: If you are looking for a finished game, please wait for Early Access. If you want to help us shape the foundation now is the time to help us![/p][p]Let’s shape this together.[/p][p]The Active Fungus Team[/p][p]
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