Why the previous change wasn’t enough
As you might remember, two updates ago, I changed the mastery tree to be much less linear (Update #7: Master Tree Rework) It introduced many more paths that could be taken for progression, but it was not good enough.
Since each mastery still had a fixed price, it was pretty much already predetermined what was possible to unlock and what wasn't. It was pretty obvious that you need to unlock something costing 30 shields before you can unlock something that costs 500.
The new approach
I thought a lot about it, and I wanted to make a change where you can really go any route you want at the start and experiment with each play-through. If you prefer to unlock hiring upgrades first, you should be able to do that. If you want to start producing jewelry as fast as possible, you should be able to do that, too.
To achieve this, I decided to remove shield currency from the game entirely. Now you get a single goal, for example, "Craft 10 items of common or higher quality," and when you do that, you gain the ability to unlock any mastery that you want (that has all the required masteries already unlocked, of course).
What this unlocks
With this new system, you can rush and unlock the silver mine before you unlock the store, or you can rush and unlock advanced metalworking before unlocking the second floor. This gives you a true freedom of choice and enables you to shape your play-through however you want :).
Bug fixes
Besides this big change, I used these 2 weeks to fix bugs:
- Fixed a scenario where you could get stuck during the tutorial.
- Ingot storages that have "use for smelting" unchecked can now accept incoming ingots.
- Fixed miners and lumberjacks walking strangely when you have too many elite workers who boost walking speed.
- Fixed a few mentions of blacksmiths doing design and replaced them with scholars.
Next update
For the next update, I plan on doing something big so that I might skip the next bi-weekly update. I'll share more when I have something to show.
Thank You and Help Shape Future Updates!
Thank you for playing the game. :)
If you have a minute, a short Steam review helps with visibility and tells me what to focus on next. Even a few honest lines about what worked for you, what didn’t, or what you want more of makes a difference.
