Goblins of Elderstone News

The new update is now live and this update we focused heavily on navigation/pathfinding issues as well as behaviour bugs. It took WAAAY longer than we wanted it to but we are really happy with the improved goblin behaviour and movement in the village. We also added a few new cool things; in true goblin Christmas spirit they now steal from each other as well :)
Happy Holidays everyone!

New Features:
-Added Riot state for missing items so that goblins without the correct tools, can devolve to murdering coworkers for theirs.
-Added a crowd event system so that if a goblin sees another goblin involved in an event they will remember it. They will be more likely to join in when looking for new tasks. (Currently system only incorporates riots but will be used for combat and festivities later) (also made the crowds for riots not gather all in a single spot)
-Many new sound effects added to various UI.
-Smoke particles added to buildings which burn wood for heating.

Balance Changes:
-Campfire storage increased to 40 logs.
-Bumped up all resource delivery priorities for warren and campfire jobs.
-Breeding now occurs every three years instead of seasonally to help spread the influx of new goblins.
-Increased the number of years worth of storage that goblins put away in the warrens.
-Riot Catharsis is now an instantaneous condition instead of over time to force gobs to move away from the idea of rioting once a madness action like murder or fire is complete.
-Increased general mood for goblins starting a new village.

Bug Fixes:
-Major pathfinding problem solved so that finding out a goblin cannot reach a goal state no longer leaves them dumbly standing still.
-Fixed the geometry near the edges of the map so there is no more hidden navmesh behind the outer edges of the map. (was causing goblins to walk into walls indefinitely)
-Fix for when loading a winter save, so that resources that do not grow in winter, no longer display available resources.
-Normalised some of the Navmesh weighting to reduce the steering wobble when moving round close to some resources.(edited)
-Fix for a crash to do with Priests Healing during winter.
-Fix for the fight/flight response when goblins take damage from enemies.
-Changes to the building placement system to show previews with the available links between not yet complete buildings. Should fix up issues with strange/unlinked walkway placements.
-Fix for how incorrect missing food was being calculated for rioting.
-Fix for incorrect 'goblin condition' displayed in their UI after a story moment occurred.
-Updated our old setup for animations to use a state machine, hopefully fixing all issues round goblins stuck in an animation.
-Fix for directions on goblin moods sometimes not rotated correctly to display mood changes

Greetings clan!
It sure has been a long time since the last update! Always feels like time flies by us way too fast however. Spring is upon us here in the southern hemisphere and Elderstone needed a good old spring clean as well. This update we put a priority on cleaning up more of the UI - a process we started with the needs and goblin UI changes we made last update - and also diggin deeper into our navigation and pathfinding bugs that cause us all so many headaches.


The needs wheel has been swapped around showing what the clan has and needs much more clearly now.

Although it's still not perfect (and will take a long time still to get closer to perfect) you will find your goblins are much more responsive to jobs and will get stuck or go braindead a lot less often now.

We also made several visual improvements to the snow, water and forests that you will hopefully like.


Our new pine forests have a lot more charm now

The game start has had an overhaul - now the game will start paused and give you time to look for an ideal starting location before placing your campfire. The inventory in the UI now shows the total resources in your village more accurately and new job priorities have been added to the job management window to further help you control your growing tribe.


Several balance changes have also been made to the game, the most significant of which is a change to what goblins burn for firewood. They will now require logs instead of sticks to keep the goblins warm and cozy in their homes and at the campfire.

This update therefore does not have too many “shiny and new” features but instead should be more robust and nicer to play. We always have this battle between wanting to put in new feature and focusing on improving what we already have, so we hope you are happy with the new update and we look forward to doing smaller updates going forward where possible to keep things interesting as well as improved.

Thank you as always and good luck with your villages!


Patch notes:

New Features:
-Added some noise to the snow so its lies less evenly on the ground.
-Added new tiles to the grass biome for the outer edges.
-Updated art assets (pine trees, elder trees, goblin uniforms, flowing water and better still water)
-Cloud cover changes when snowing.
-Added random loading screens.
-New Lost Goblin logo/intro.
-Clan needs UI that is opened from the Warrens has been majorly overhauled to better explain and detail the new goblin needs changes.
-Updates to the tutorial and beginning village placement for easier understanding (also starts the game paused).

Balance Changes:
-Goblin needs/desires for resources are now only activated once the certain buildings are built, these resources are no longer displayed in the inventory screens until the tech level is reached.
-Added in new job priorities that can be set for hauling/construction/stoking fires.
-Changed fires to burn Logs instead of Sticks.
-Made the priority for the delivery of Logs to the campfire change based on the temperature.
-Snow now stops falling prior to start of spring.
-Trade Hall now costs logs instead of sticks.
-Logs are now gathered faster and are more abundant for the woodcutter to gather from trees, Planks cost less to make.
-Global Inventory UI will now include resources that are currently being stored in work buildings and warrens (but not including those used by crafting jobs)
-Task to take the wood from the woodcutters hut to the storage has a higher priority now.
-Pausing or stopping crafting of a resource at a crafting building will mean that the resources for that job will stop being delivered and will reduce the villages need for it.

Bug Fixes:
-Fix for the goblins considering the wood at the warrens that's used for warmth while sleeping, meant there was warmth/fuel at the campfire.
-Fix for full resources icon not being displayed correctly on all buildings.
-Changed the Job priorities menu so the top resource row is fixed in place.
-Updated the level generation system to allow us to force Iron and Stone mine nodes to spawn if there was none available.
-Fix for buildings not crafting second tier craftable items.
-Fix for the camera behaviour while the game is paused, also how building placement physics is updated while paused.
-Did a physics pass on the level removing much of the objects the camera was interacting with, allowing for a smoother camera, but also adding more chances of clipping models.
-Fixed Wraith material to not take snow during winter.
-Campfire lights will no longer turn on at night without an active fire.
-Skeleton HP bar moved to correct position.
-Shade meshes below trees will now spawn in correctly after loading a save file.
-Fixed a drag and drop issue when choosing a Hier when your King dies.
-Story moment issue where resources which should have been taken, were being given is fixed.
-Job Priorities not being active in the menu after you changed a goblin back to a peon is fixed.
-Fixes to how we calculate the resource distribution during level generation

Hey all you wonderful goblins!
A new winter has arrived in Elderstone and it's prettier than ever!

We have been super hard at work and outdid ourselves yet again with the biggest update to the game yet, even bigger than the previous update. All the suggestions and feedback and bugs reports have been taken in an listed and although we obviously can't address every single issue with each update, we certainly are working our way through them. A few key highlights we have added in this new Alpha are a brand new and much improved UI for the goblin stats and moods, these should be much more clear to you now and will help you better understand what affects the goblins’ mood and behaviour.

Goblins now also all have randomised faction attributes known as the WTF levels. These are levels in War, Trade and Faith and influence the goblins stats in various and important ways. High War attribute give a goblins more hit points and damage, while high trade will make the goblin a harder worker and a high faith score will mean more healing and magic if they are assigned to faith jobs such as priest and shaman.
On top of that goblins can now occasionally be born with traits that affect them in either positive or negative ways. These traits include “lazy”, “berserker”, “worker” and some other with more to come.



The big new art upgrade is a new snow shader and particle system. Winter will now look even better with falling snow and the snow slowly collecting on the ground and on all the buildings and rocks and terrain. The goblins also make deep paths in the snow as they wade through it. We worked really hard on making this look nice and still be performant so we hope you enjoy this updated winter look - more improvements like this will come over time.

Some of the smaller but equally important improvements include new loading screen hints to help you, slower day and night to give you more time to prepare for each winter, lots of small balance changes to make the beginning of the game easier and many more small changes.

We have fixed a lot of bugs and goblins behaviour issues and improved performance overall. Of course this is still Alpha and there will always be bugs and issues as we develop the game, every time we add new features or improve something, there is a risk of breaking something else, this is how development works and we will keep doing our best to make sure the bugs are low but also not stop from pushing forward and adding exciting new content and features.

I want to take a moment to thank our amazing community of fans, players and testers, especially the clan on discord who have been invaluable in providing feedback, suggestions and bug reports. Please join us there to help us if you haven't already and make some wicked new friends.

New Features:
- Added Goblin Traits which change a goblins job stats and can affect their moods.
- Random faction levels, the goblins are now born with predispositions to War, Trade or Faith based roles. ( WTF levels xD )
- Update to the Goblin Stats menu to reflect the previous changes and more easily get this information across to the user.
- New path following setup for goblins. Should be less stuck goblins and smoother movement.
- SNOOOOW!!! Snow Drifts during winter + snow particles.
- Added loading screen hints.
- Grass and Post Processing changes to improve framerate.
- Improvements to the Goblins perception and reactions to enemies.

Balance Changes:
- Increased the time of a daynight cycle from 300 to 400 seconds.
- Increased the number of goblins in a warrens and grandhall to 10 and 12 respectively.
- Important notifications will now slow down time to normal speed.
- Scavenger Hut and War Hall now requires Planks.
- Temple now requires logs so you can built it earlier
- Faith Hall now requires Cloth.
- Brewery now produces Ale also (from Berries)
- Council goblins no longer need Meat
- Productive Condition now reduces Laziness, several other small balance changes to conditions.
- Tool needs reduced on goblins by increasing their lifespan.
- Tutorial no longer on by default + Tradehall moved to be last in the chain.

Bug Fixes:
- More rebalancing to the breeding values for goblins, Copperface also now offers Fertility instead of Moneybags as his neutral god power.
- When a goblin successfully burns down a building all rioting goblins gain the catharsis buff.
- Temporarily removed the End of Season report while we give it a revamp.
- Fixed building resources to not change colors.
- Fixed the sleeping icon to not stay present when cycling through goblins.
- Fix for goblins not going all the way up to buildings to interact with them in some cases.
- Updated the Clan Create screen to reflect the new traits and show more of the relevant goblin stats req to select a goblin for your tribe.
- Fixed some news feed text colors.
- Crash fix from loading a save with a Goblin Under Attack notification active.
- Buildings can no longer be placed on inclines.
- Updated collision volumes on some trees which were not blocking building placement correctly.
- Increased the frequency paths/walkways are generated to more likely have the displayed path equal the final result.
- Updated multiple items tick functionality so that building placement while paused works correctly.
- Several updates to sound volumes.
- Fix for a crash from one of the story moment results.

Coming Soon (some not so soon):
- More buildings and resources
- Improved needs and feedback for not fulfilling needs
- More enemies
- More gods
- Region map gameplay with raiding and traiding
- Heroes
- Diplomacy with other races and the gods

A really big update from us! We focused on the story moments and many small and big improvements!

New Features:
-Several new story moments!
- changed the birth rate calculations
-Added Winter versions of herbs and hemp. Now you will still be able to see where these resources are on the map in Winter.
-Added 'Game Auto-saved' in game messages.
-Changed watch tower patrol to stand at the top of the buildings.
-Building the second warrens is now one of the last step in the tutorials.
-Enemies will always congregate in the village.
-Added a goblin killed enemy message.
-Changed story quest resources to be added to global resource hud.
-New Notifications for Enemy spawning, overcrowding, sound added to goblin under attack.
-In game message for storage at capacity.
-Changed the interaction points on buildings to use the 'least busy point' reducing stacked goblins at buildings/build sites.
-Added Status actions to Story moment results allowing more
interesting occurrences.
-Added message when population loses all males or all females.
-Added shortcut for opening the main menu 'esc' key.
- added a highlight for region selection of your village
- several new sound effects
- added a blue light to the skeletons to make them spookier and easier to see!
- updated many building lights
- made several of the fonts smaller to prevent text spills
-Performance Improvements.(edited)

Bug Fixes:
- priests now take the dead to the temple properly
-Fixed the save file loading order in the Load Game Dialog.
-Fix for goblins not going to the closest storage building to deliver resources.
-Fix for goblin movement speed when running away from an
enemy.
-Fix for goblin king death handling.
-Fix for Storage resource cap issue when destroying a unbuilt
Storage Hut.
-Fix for autosaves not transitioning weather changes.
-Fixed the t-pose skeleton for enemies that died offscreen.
-Fix for story moment message spam when interacting with UI.
-Fix for Dropped resources not being picked up.
-Fix for camera becoming stuck following goblins on clicking
the hazard notifications.
-Arrow Projectile adjusted.
-Goblin Killing enemy log fixed.
-Fix for goblins to correctly carry frogs.
-Fix for some enemies not approaching the goblin village.

thanks to everyone that has helped with their time and feedback and positive comments and support!

New Feature:
- Priests will now find corpses and bring them back to the temple to be cleansed, reducing the dead that will spawn in winter and slowing the rate of disease spread.

Bug Fixes:
- Priests will no longer lock up when trying to go heal a goblin.
- Fix for scavenger getting stuck when collecting resources.
- Dropped resources are now more likely to be re-gathered.

Balancing:
- Temple costs in planks reduced allowing you to get Priests earlier
- Shaman Hut cost reduced.