Goblins of Elderstone News

"Hail Warchiefs!

With this update we finally bring you Warhall priorities to help defend against your many enemies. This release also has many balance changes and the usual swath of UI improvements and bug fixes. You will find that the game pace is a bit slower and more controlled now – as we have added features over the last months and years the game has increased in complexity and the pace of the game that it had when it was still early in development no longer makes sense when you have all these new spinning plates with dozens of goblins running amok! We look forward to your feedback on these changes, so please come join us on discord and let us know what you think.


Features:

• Gods will now awaken the need for worship sequentially, after reaching certain population thresholds, goblins in the village will gain a need for the next god.
• The Trek UI has had a full overhaul and rework.
• The Warhall now has strategies that can be used around changing the behavior of goblins during combat. Vigilance greatly increases all goblins’ vision, Cautious stops goblins from straying too far out of the village and Bloodthirsty changes targeting priorities from closest to lowest health enemies.
• Placing down buildings will now highlight their relevant resources if they are a resource gathering type building, or any threats on the map if they are a defensive building.

Balance:

• Revised breeding curves to decrease the frequency of new goblins being born.
• The number of resources delivered to meet a goblin’s needs is now a 1:1 ratio—it matches the amount needed instead of it being based on the expected duration of use.
• Revised building construction costs.
• Revised goblin food need amounts.
• Decreased total resources available on most resource nodes.
• Decreased maximum resource nodes spawned for trees.
• Increased min/max number of resource nodes spawned for elder resources.
• Decreased base carry amounts for basic resources.
• Revised trek success chances.

UI:

• Needs wheel, temples, spell book, and diplomacy screens have been updated to show the gods as they awaken in different stages from dormancy.
• Region map now has icons for settlements with an active diplomat that takes you to their Diplomacy screen.
• Trek UI has been updated across the board, with animations for the results screen to allow the player to see what changed during their trek more easily.
• New notification categories, with some new notifications for the king assignment and gods awakening.

Bugs:

• Sound levels should always be adjustable from the options menu now.
• Town watch will now try to work in shifts to avoid leaving their post unguarded.
• Fixed visual bug with trek success chances."

Bug Fixes:

• Upgraded buildings were being set invisible when in a burning state.
  
• Goblins are no longer getting stuck transporting invalid resources.
  
• Lingering floating text after corpse sacrifices at the temples.
  

Hello Heroes!

The day has finally arrived where all the heroes of Elderstone can gather at your local Tavern, ready to be hired for your grand adventures and raids! These heroes are very special – some of them are designed by our very special Kickstarter backers and we also have the very first goblin adventuring party from the Goblins Comic! Please check out the web comic if you don’t already know about it. One of the heroes is even from a Novel loosely set in an alternative version of Elderstone written by our resident goblin writer - go and read Stormbane!

This has been another monumental update bringing us so much closer to Beta. We have made tons of improvements to all the systems and fixed many bugs but are most excited about the new Tavern building where you can hire these new heroes.

We hope you love this update and please come let us know what you think on Discord.

Thanks again for your support, we couldn’t do this without you!


[h2]Features: [/h2]

• Added 7 new Kickstarter Backer heroes, 4 Goblin Adventure Party Comic heroes, and 6 other heroes to the game.
• These heroes can be hired from the new Tavern building and will stay with you for several years.
• You can hire up to 6 heroes at a time.
• Heroes that do not get their contracts renewed will leave the village.
• Every Summer, the list of available heroes to hire at the Tavern will be renewed.
• Heroes can help defend the village and can provide powerful bonuses to a trek when assigned as their party's leader.
• If your Tavern gets destroyed, your heroes will stay if you rebuild the Tavern, and their contracts are still active.
• Added in new goblin traits Insomniac, Immune, Pious, Strong, Savage, Hot-Blooded, Hippie and Speedy.
• Added a Satisfaction meter for goblins which helps you see their overall state based on their current moods.
• You can now click on the village Happiness meter on the HUD to display an overview and breakdown of the satisfactions for each of your goblins.
• Riots now only occur when a goblin’s satisfaction is below a specific threshold.
• Added a warning system for conditions and needs affecting percentages of the village population as a new HUD element.
• Warnings can be clicked to lead a player to which goblins are affected, which buildings can fix that warning, or what building needs to be built.
• Added dissatisfied notification to warn players when goblins have hit their riot threshold.
• Updated game start cave scene.
• Added resolution render scale in the options menu.
• Mood bars in the goblin stats window now animate depending on whether increasing or decreasing.
• Related buildings now show Efficiency for the building as a whole and the individual goblins that work there.
• Crafting animation speed is now based on a goblin’s Efficiency.
• When a construction site is missing resources, the game will now inform the player by displaying a message in the log window every so often.
• Log messages regarding a missing resource for a construction can be clicked to lead players to the required building that provides that resource (either its construction site or in the building menu).
• Added additional tooltips on Clan Creation screen and the Spellbook.

[h2]Balance: [/h2]

• Gods not assigned to a Temple can no longer be interacted with in the Pantheon screen.
• Revised stats for Warrior, Scout, Town Watch, and Guard.
• Juju gained from Holy Treks are no longer proportional to the player's current amount.
• Revised how resources are rolled when performing a Scout or Raid trek so that they are based on the resources’ value.
• Increased resource capacity for Storage and Upgraded Storage.
• Revised Gold values for some resources in the Merchant feature.
• Reduced the decrease amount for Happiness on Exhausted and Tired conditions.
• Decreased success chance for Praying to gods in the Pantheon screen.

[h2]Bugs: [/h2]

• Enforcers will no longer cause damage to rioting goblins when arresting.
• Death message about eating will no longer occur.
• Can no longer re-raid a location through the Diplomacy screen loop.
• Fix so that if the Trade Prince is on a trek or sleeping the spring trader still visits.
• Fix for skeleton spawning to no longer slide while doing their spawn animation from below ground.
• Fixing weaver work animation never playing.
• Visual improvements to path rendering.
• No longer throttling character movement components tick rate, as this can cause them to walk off the nav mesh.
• Fix for some buggy UI animation states with Notifications.
• Improving CPU performance for large villages.

In this update we have made further improvements to the new gods interface and added quests that you can complete in order to gain faith with your various gods. Failing them however will also upset them of course! A major quality of life and information improvement is that you will now be able to see goblin tasks and pathing when you select a goblin or any relevant building.

[h2]Features[/h2]

• Added context sensitive overlay to show goblin paths related to a selected object.
• Gods will now issue quests if they are in good standing and have a temple assigned.
• Added a particle beam to the trader to more easily identify him.
• New fog effects for the world map locations and reveals.

[h2]Balance[/h2]

• Fixed some follower conditions to be 3 years long.
• Clan optimism buff now only lasts 8 years, not permanent on founding goblins.
• Reduced Bone ingredient for Voodoo from 2 to 1.
• Removed Voodoo need from some goblin jobs (only Shaman, Necromancer, and Council members have this luxurious need).

[h2]UI[/h2]

• Added tooltip to stat icons on goblin party portraits in the trek parties window.
• Updated faith hall UI to show you an overview of all god relationships.
• Update so changes to the spell book will have a counter on the access button and tabs.
• Added a reveal animation for new god power accessibility.
• Updated flag placement, pantheon creation, world map selection, graveyard and resource UI.
• Added information panels for gods and regional leaders in the diplomacy screens.

[h2]Bugs[/h2]

• Fixed enforcers dealing out capital punishment.
• Fix for flickering tool for blacksmith and iron/stone mine workers.
• Fix for priests clearing corpses but not delivering them to the temple if it was in use by another priest.
• Added the riot food shortage and riot no warrens actions to the king's action lists as they were missing.
• Increased movement speed of rioting goblins so they don't stalk their targets round the village forever.
• Riot cancel status fixed, should no long have the riot conditions outside performing the action.
• Riot steal item fixed, was not activating correctly.
• Increased rioting move speed.
• Fix for overlapping lighting with some of our 3D UI instances.

Small hotfix for bugs related to disease and medicine and some UI tidyup.

Features:

• Fire particle effects on buildings and for wildfires has been updated.
• Construction meshes for buildings have had scaling fixed by breaking up the scaffolding mesh.
• Updates to UI for corpses, graveyards, worg dens, animals and enemies.
• Added notifications for faith needs unlock and building upgrades unlock.

Balance:

• Reduced herbs costs for crafting beer and medicine, and reduced the pigs herb consumption.
• Increased resources per bush for herbs.
• Medicine immunity to disease increased from half a year to three years.
• Increased spread chance of disease, reduced its jump distance.

Bugs:

• Fix for physics settings on ramps and cliffs to stop some errant building placement.
• Barracks no longer consume firewood while unmanned.
• Added in UI to show required resources to repair a building.
• Save upgrade for older versions with an issue with laboratory not delivering medicine to warrens.
• Fix for building pieces dissapearing and reappearing during construction.
• Damaged buildings are no longer tinted the same as an uninhabited one while inhabited.
• Stuck goblins will now try to realign to a safe area before teleporting.
• Fix for snow tesselation in mountain biomes.
• Removed champion units from the priorities menu.
• Only showing clan faith needs in warrens UI once they are unlocked.
• Goblin king/queen will now display with their correct faction breed in the diplomacy screen.
• Fix for merchant not arriving when the player selects disable enemies in the clan create screen.
• Buildings fire sounds should now be cleaned up correctly.
• Fix for the inhabit animation on the trade hall.