The Dwarves of Glistenveld News

[h3]🎄Christmas Mode🎄[/h3]
Glistenveld is getting wintery as Christmas Mode is enabled (until Jan. 7th)!
In Christmas Mode, you will experience the following changes to the game:

1. Atmosphere - The place is looking wintery with a change of colour palette and mist!
   
2. Christmas Roots - Roots have now been decorated with Christmas lights! Unfortunately there are no blink patterns you can change...
   
3. Presents - Random presents will appear in each map, some buried in cave walls to be mined out, others in water to be fished for and some just laying around! Each contains one of six small random gifts!
   
4. Chests - Chests are now decorated as 'locked' presents!
   
5. Snowprints - All units will leave prints in the frosty dirt, giving you insight into their habits!
   

[h2]Patch Notes[/h2]
[h3]The big stuff:[/h3]

1. Iron Weapons - For now these reside in the Iron Armour tech, but you will be able to craft Battleaxes, Warhammers and Halberds for your warriors! The battleaxe deals bonus bleeding damage, the warhammer stuns and knocks enemies back, and the halberd has a 2 tile reach! We have yet to decide where to put these in the tech tree, so enjoy the overpowered Iron Armour tech until then!
   
2. Caverns Mode - A new version has been released featuring: Lava caves! Complete with a new enemy, new resources, and various fixes and improvements for the mode. We want to keep the lava caves mysterious, so no further details will be provided!
   
3. Configurable beds - Beds can now be configured to disallow particular dwarves from resting in them, based on class or trait. Want to separate those noisy-nostrils from the group? Well now you can!
   
4. Dwarf-list UI - To help you manage your clan, instead of only being able to see levels & abilities, there are now 2 new views: Equipment & Traits! Also improved description of current activity in Abilities view, and selected dwarves will now be highlighted here as well!
   
5. Battles - Besides fixing a number of bugs relating to dealing crits and damage in general, the icons for block, parry, dodge & fumble have been improved and other icons like 'hold' or stat labels have been made less intrusive during combat.
   
6. Skirmish - Various improvements including more fish in regions like Mines, and a fix for the chaotic pathing style occasionally getting stuck.
   
7. Instruction panel UI - Minecarts and tracks have been moved into the Resources tab, since their role is to cart resources around. Infrastructure buildings have been better lined up so alternate or similar buildings appear in the same place on the next page.
   
8. Resistances - There are many types of damage or effects in the game: bleed, frenzy, fire, knockback, and we've finalised our design on enemy resistances. Currently you'll have to use trial and error to identify them, but we'll work on making this clearer in a future patch. If you guys like how another game conveys this information, feel free to share!
   
9. Map Tables - You can now inspect the traits of any enemies within the radius of your map tables, allowing you to take more strategic action against them!
   
10. Ruins Music - New music has been added for ruins regions in all modes and during waves in Stronghold Defence!
    

The small stuff:

1. Items - More picking up & dropping item animations. Fun fact: this uses the same code that enables NPC dwarves to jump gaps in the campaign. We spawn item particles that jump to the Dwarf's location!
   
2. Prioritising instructions - Until now dwarves that were hungry would ignore you when you tell them to prioritise a build and go eat instead. Although this behaviour makes sense, we felt it would be better if they performed the build anyway, but received the Aggravated trait instead.
   
3. Storage arrangements - Any storage you own with arrangements set now have little signposts with an asterisk, to help distinguish between global and specialised storage.
   
4. UI improvements - The recipe popup when hovering over items to craft now features a description of what that item is for. Stats & Accomplishments UI now have icons for each of the statistics. Dwarf-list and other scroll-type UI, as well as the tech-tree, now have a subtle opening animation and SFX. When any building is claimed a dashed border will now appear around it; this used to only happen with items. Double clicking a building that is being claimed will centre view and highlight the dwarf that is claiming it.
   
5. Sneaky goblins - Some goblins will feature a new trait which makes them a little stealthy!
   
6. Item piles - Some items in storage will now appear in a more organised, sensible manner.
   
7. Antidote Potion - This wasn't being consumed automatically when encountering green gas or draugr frenzy cry.
   
8. AI logic improvements - Engineers were claiming entire piles of items for crafting, preventing other engineers from working similar jobs if items were not well distributed. Dwarves with nothing to do were still holding onto items instead of putting them away. Held units when told to interact with something would invariably stand on top of it, rather than next to it. Dwarves will now search for meals within a larger radius between jobs. When assigning equipment to dwarves, they will now search across a much larger radius.
   
9. AI performance - AI for mobbits, spiders and goblins were doing some naughty things and overloading the pathfinder in some circumstances!
   
10. Rendering performance - We've been finding various areas to improve performance, such as unnecessary animation changes off-screen, piles of items being rendered one item at a time etc, though still more work needs doing on this front!
    
11. Various other fixes & improvements, including mushrooms not responding to changes in moisture until harvested, and improved rendering of the save/load previews.
    

That's all for now, stay safe and Happy Holidays!

[h3]Halloween Mode[/h3]
Glistenveld is getting spooky once again with Halloween Mode enabled (until Nov. 10th)!
In Halloween Mode, you will experience the following changes to the game:

1. Atmosphere - The atmosphere of the game is more dramatic with fog and a change in colour palette!
   
2. Pumpkins - You will find random pumpkins in each level. You can harvest these to get a tasty pumpkin stew, which dwarves treat as equipable meals!
   
3. Webs - You will find random webs that stick to units and slow them down, or feed the spiders!
   
4. Bats - When you start a new skirmish mode game, you'll find a few more bats roaming the tunnels!
   
5. Bubbling waters - Water has turned greenish and bubbles.
   
6. Green blood - Units and creatures flash green when injured, instead of red.
   

[h2]Patch Notes[/h2]
[h3]The big stuff:[/h3]

1. Boulder Trap - A new type of defence, triggerable either by pressure plate or manually with a dwarf. The released rolling boulder will bowl over anyone in its path (friend or foe), trigger pressure plates and explode into fragments of stone on impact with walls! If the boulder rolls over another Boulder Trap in its path, that trap will open and take the boulder as ammunition. This allows multiple traps to be used to preserve the boulders and create a lethal perpetuating defence!
   
2. New Level 8 Abilities - Until now the Warrior was the only class to have a complete set of level 8 abilities. New Miner abilities include Tunnel King (while mining, motivates nearby dwarves to work faster) and Tunnel Whisperer (hears echos through walls to reveal nearby caves & rooms). New Forager abilities include Trusty Pan (Attacking has a chance to stun their target) and Beard Farm (Periodically grows mushrooms from their beard). New Engineer abilities include Silver-Tongue (Trading with a Trade-Stall gives back gold coins or very rarely an artefact or magic ring) and Tinker Bot (Allows the Engineer to pick up items from a distance, even over obstructions).
   
3. Ability UI Update - Choosing a new ability for your dwarves used to only show your current choice. The new UI shows all future abilities for that class as well, similar to a skill tree. This should allow for more strategic decision making.
   

The small stuff:

1. Personality-specific Dialog - This was already implemented behind the scenes but never explicitly shown. In some dialog, the nearest dwarf to the action might interject with a comment, relevant to their personality trait. This will now be accompanied by their trait in brackets, showing the relevance of their personality to that remark.
   
2. Tech Tree - Viewing techs in the tech tree now provide useful links directly to the relevant Guide entries, for further reading!
   
3. Building bridges - Engineers were always picking up 9 stone regardless of how much stone was actually required to complete the bridge.
   
4. Inspired & motivated - Recently we've been adding rising / falling particles over dwarves to show their buffs / debuffs. Inspired and motivated are the latest buffs to include these new particles.
   
5. Skirmish - Added hidden gem crystals around spawns, some of which are buried (similar to roots).
   
6. Missing descriptions & guide entries - A number of spider-related objects were missing descriptions, and added a bunch more missing entries to the guide.
   
7. Minecart Storage - Fixed some issues with minecarts & storage arrangements, in particular to do with picking up buildings.
   
8. Placement ghost - The 'ghost' that appears when you're about to place a building has been upgraded to have better detail, and should no longer appear so pixelated.
   
9. Draugr - A unique ominous battle music now plays when fighting Draugr in particular.
   
10. Various other fixes including the option to 'Send Home' allies not working as intended, and tutorial refinements.
    

That's all for now, stay safe and Happy Halloween!

Fix for resting spiders causing issues for the pathfinder (most noticeable in the endgame).
Fix for tabbing through buildings ignoring which team the buildings belonged to.

In celebration of the Steam Summer Sale, we are announcing giveaways as well as exciting new updates for The Dwarves of Glistenveld!

We're giving away up to 8 steam keys today!


[h3]via Instagram[/h3]
Follow us on Instagram, then go over to our Livestream announcement and tag 3 friends!

[h3]via Discord[/h3]
Join our Discord and post: 'for Glistenborg!' in #game-chat!

For an additional chance to win:

• Post a dwarvish name (first & last name) worthy of adding to the game in #ideas-suggestions
  
• Post an idea for a cool new building or mechanic to add to the game in #ideas-suggestions
  
• Post your own created artwork of a Dwarf in #art-screenshots
  
• Play the demo and post a screenshot of a fun moment you had in #art-screenshots
  

All entries close tonight at midnight GMT! We will then post the giveaway draws in #announcements and announce the winners!

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nyskogames/

Discord: https://discord.gg/RsYJbBhxRe/

Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/nyskogames/

Fellow dwarves! We've received reports that goblins have started building palisade walls around their bases! To combat this, we'll be sending over new schematics to equip your Warriors with new chainmail armour!

[h3]Livestream Tomorrow:[/h3]
By the way, we're livestreaming tomorrow (Friday 28th June) at 7pm GMT / 3pm EST, to announce steam key giveaways and exciting new updates for The Dwarves of Glistenveld! Hit the follow button over at twitch.tv/NyskoGames, or join our Discord if you don't want to miss it!

[h3]The big stuff:[/h3]

1. Iron Armour - A new technology found alongside Iron Tools, that unlocks iron chainmail for your Warriors, giving them bonus defence! This chainmail can be combined with iron helmets to make 'full chainmail', which provides the benefit of both pieces of armour! We will also be adding more to this tech in a future patch.
   
2. New Combat FX - Battles have been made more satisfying with new sound effects for when a unit scores a crit or simply grazes their target, as well as an explosion of particles on strong impacts! Also added a sheathing sound when battles conclude.
   
3. Idle Unit Notifications - You will now be notified when you have dwarves of a particular class that have nothing to do. These notifications are intended to help you manage your clan, but they can be ignored.
   
4. Goblin Palisade - Goblins expanding their base will now build palisade walls around it, which will need to be destroyed before you can enter! Unlike stone walls which require miners, palisades can be destroyed by any class.
   
5. Enemy AI - AI camps had a habit of throwing all their units at you, even if you weren't near their base! We've been adjusting this behaviour so they only throw some of their units at you, among other AI improvements.
   
6. Doors - Doors (as well as the new palisade walls) now block line of sight, similar to walls. To see through a door, you will need to stand a dwarf by it, or place a lamp-post on the other side!
   
7. Tutorials - We've moved the original tutorials into Extras and polished up the dynamic tutorial, with the intent that new players will be able to learn the game while playing any mode of their choice! We hope this works to make the game more enjoyable to pick up.
   
8. Minecart Mayhem - A new puzzling minigame where you play as a member of clan Kindlewick as he hunts for treasure! The first 4 levels are complete, and the remaining levels will be introduced in a future update.
   

The small stuff:

1. Mineral Textures - Stone, Gold & Coal now have some new sprite variations.
   
2. Old Tracks - Now have a more 'broken' appearance, to better distinguish them from your own tracks.
   
3. New Icons - Updated some outdated or inconsistent icons, including the Engineer's class icon.
   
4. Removing Instructions - Fixed a bug where removing instructions wouldn't always stop units from working on it.
   
5. Skirmish Mode - Updated quick-start to include a food barrel, and updated some icons to be more distinguishable.
   
6. Sound System - Fixed an elusive bug where many sounds would stop playing after some time playing the game.
   
7. Various other bug fixes and improvements including updated difficulty setting descriptions, and not being able to use the Escape key to enter the escape menu while in dialogue.
   

These past few months we've been hard at work on chapter 3 content! We are excited for the next few patches that will introduce a new rolling boulder trap, steam vents, iron weapons and more!

That's all for now, stay safe out there!