The Last Plague: Blight News

Another update with fixes and balance changes thanks to everyone's great feedback!

Balance:

• Greatly increased stick and long stick generation around groups of sparse trees
  
• Increased generation of pine branch drops across all trees
  
• Reduced starting infection level of all predators
  

Fixes:

• Fixed backpacks placed on the floor not showing their inventory when used
  
• Another attempt to fix fast-looking clouds in the water's reflection on some hardware
  
• Fixed held items not being placeable on floors/bridge by clicking near the character
  
• Hide toggled "show nearby items" labels during sleep
  
• Finally fixed long-standing issue where felled trees infinitely fall underneath the ground in rare cases
  
• Fixed large stones having shadows turned off when not that far from the camera
  
• Fixed repairing not working for taken-apart buildings after the previous update's fixes to the damaged building repair process
  
• Fixed missing hint text on the soaking basin to explain small stone or hammer requirement to take it apart
  
• Fixed item repair window not refreshing button state of other repair options when the first repair is completed
  
• Fixed leaf roof on four tall posts not protecting items on the ground from the rain
  
• Fixed floor placement colliding with the posts it is snapped to
  
• Fixed UI scale at 150% hiding the time control popup when the crafting UI is open
  
• Fixed grinding wheel stand icon position issue in repair menu when the grind wheel stand is used
  
• Prevented interactions like building or taking apart from damaging the held item if it's not a required tool, causing cases of a held small stone breaking when constructing a building that doesn't need it
  

Other changes:

• Reduced max fuel for mud brick kiln and reduced max stack sizes for mud brick kiln slots
  
• Added "can't pour" hint message for clay molds when holding molten copper
  
• Changed up starting hint text around attack controls by further explaining how holding the key down affects the attack
  
• Added new "Fires cast shadows" graphics setting that can turn off shadow casting from the fire pit to increase performance a decent amount
  
• Removed "start stockpile..." option for non-player inventory slots to remove potential item duplication exploit
  
• Stockpiles are now shown in the "highlight nearby items" state
  
• More consistent water reflection rendering and potential performance increase when MSAA is used
  
• Switched UI scale options to be in increments of 10% with a max of 150% instead of 175%
  
• Added weights to a few of the heavier objects like iron ore, ingots, and large stone
  
• New requirement for buildings like the fire pit to be only placeable on the terrain
  
• Renamed "Post" to "Medium Post" to reduce confusion during the tutorial and added the tall post as an optional completion criteria for the first task
  
• Updated shelter building tutorial task description to make tall post usage benefits more clear
  

Another bunch of bug fixes and quality of life changes in this update, thanks for all the reports! The building process should be a lot less error prone now with less incorrect collisions and proper state setting, and clay gathering should be a lot less finicky and quicker.

Fixes:

• Fixed rare issue where interacting with the UI a certain way causes all input to get locked and stops the character from being controlled and the main menu from being opened, forcing a hard exit of the game
  
• Fixed stick rafters incorrectly colliding with the support beams they should be connected to and preventing placement
  
• Fixed building system state tracking so that removing a diagonal support beam correctly refreshes the state and allows placing stick rafters in the new rectangular shape
  
• Fixed weird looking terrain ridges near lakes in the world generation. Will need to start a new game to get the fixed world generation
  
• Fixed repair UI not updating and resetting properly when a repair completes
  
• Fixed repair of fuel burning buildings like the fire pit from clearing out all fuel and extinguishing the fire
  
• Fixed fast moving clouds in the water's reflection on some hardware
  
• Fixed clay candle mold crafting recipe incorrectly outputting in the hardened version instead of soft version
  
• Fixed gates not moving if connected between posts or tall posts due to collision issues
  
• Fixed bedroll from being placeable on plank and stone floors
  
• Fixed missing recipes for melting hardened tallow back into liquid tallow, and smelting hardened copper and ingots back into molten copper
  
• Fixed accidental attack if weapon is equipped and you click on an NPC, potentially hitting them
  
• Fixed a bunch of missing and wrong map tiles for areas around lakes
  
• Fixed sounds like fire pit burning/cooking from being present on fire pits that aren't ignited or cooking when coming back to camp
  
• Fixed certain buildings like lean-to not allowing you to take them apart due to infinite walking from the character
  
• Fixed red/green outlines for post placement not showing up over the water
  
• Taking apart a roof piece will dump the materials below the roof to avoid them getting stuck up top
  
• Fixed broken run animation for Cloaked Figure
  
• Fixed missing repair functionality for walls and other non-hammer built buildings
  
• Fixed tutorial task text for hardening the clay bowl to be in the kiln instead of the fire
  

Other changes:

• Clay gathering is faster and less finicky, with more clay collected per gather
  
• Clay clumps drop if trying to gather clay from the ground and your inventory is full to avoid losing the clay
  
• Holding left shift + clicking the craft button now queues 5 recipes at a time to reduce the amount of clicks needed
  
• Changed player icon color and made larger to be more obvious on the map
  
• Reduced player-made map marker text size
  
• Allowed the escape key to close the crafting/building menu if the search field is focused but empty
  
• Gathering from the terrain doesn't stop if your character slides away due to a steep slope or item underneath
  
• Added stockpile support for pine branch
  
• Changed damage text color to be orange for player hits
  
• Adjusted a few shelter tutorial task descriptions to make things a bit clearer
  

Small update to address balance and some of the issues mentioned in the feedback so far. Thanks for all the great feedback so far!

There are still some intricacies with the building system that need to be ironed out, some edge cases that will prevent placement of roof pieces in certain situations. This will continually be addressed in further updates. Appreciate your patience!

Balance:

• Greatly increased generation chance of Dogbane plants
  

Fixes:

• Added missing recipe for Clay Candle Mold to allow you to create candles and use the alembic
  
• Fixed missing repair buttons in the repair menu in 4k resolutions and higher
  
• Fixed some roof pieces not being reachable by the character due to being too high up (ex. when placed on 4 tall posts)
  
• Fixed support beams being able to be placed in positions where they collide and overlap, which would cause some issues with roof placement later on
  
• Fixed a few objects like sticks and pine cones noticeably disappearing when a bit further from view
  
• Fixed issue that causes eating a stack of food items in the inventory to constantly change which inventory slot shows the progress bar
  
• Fixed rabbit skeleton being way too small
  
• Stability increase to hopefully remove chance of the game's input locking up when interacting/eating and clicking quickly
  
• Fixed item pickup interaction being interrupted if the character slides away slightly from the item due to steep terrain or nearby objects pushing the character
  
• Fixed edge case where moving large amount of items from a stockpile could cause item stacks with negative amounts
  
• Fixed pine branches flying around wildly when dropped from chopped young trees
  

Other changes:

• Adjusted translation of Dogbane plant
  

Watch the developer play the game!

Hey everyone,

Things have been a bit quiet since the last few updates but rest assured the game continues to grow and gain exciting new features and content day by day. Major update v0.6 has been released just in time for Next Fest February 2023!

One of the biggest new features is the building system that's been in the works for a while. A lot of thought was put into it to make sure it's interesting and flexible enough to allow for a ton of creativity and unique designs, not restricted by rigid piece sizes or grid based systems. The shelter layouts use posts driven into the ground as the basic building blocks, allowing you to connect them together in any position to later build roofs and walls between the posts.

Hope you enjoy the demo!

New features:

• Building system that allows you to build shelters out of sticks, leaves, mud, planks and stones
  
• Intricate terrain modification system that complements the building system. A shovel was added to allow for digging, raising terrain, and leveling terrain for floor piece placement. Collecting clay is now a process that directly modifies the terrain rather than gathering from objects
  
• New terrain types, new nicer looking visuals, overhauled terrain generation to look even more natural and interesting
  
• Extended story content around combating the Blight that sets up things for the eventual full story in the Early Access release later this year
  
• New attack swing holding mechanic to allow for greater timing precision and damage output when fighting enemies
  
• New distillation process to extract essential oils using a copper alembic, created from copper molded into copper sheets and using new candles as a heat source
  
• Standing torches, candles, and lantern as new lighting options for your camp at night. Candles can be extinguished by the wind so building wind-blocking shelter is key to protect them
  
• A few new resources, a new smaller tree used primarily as a tall post for building shelters
  

Other changes:

• Various CPU and rendering performance improvements
  
• Bunch of new craftable items and structures
  
• Tons of bug fixes