Another week another patch. So it hasn’t been long since talking about it (I think) but archeology is here. Took me quite literally all week minus about an hour to implement it in its current state. That said I got around to a few of the more prominent bugs I heard about this week but didn’t have time for much else. Now that this system is done, I’ll be back to doing smaller things and bug fixes in the coming weeks. So, we may as well discuss the big thing first. Archeology, what is it? Well in the real world it’s the meticulous study of history through things you find from ancient cultures. In verdant village it’s that, except way easier and far less time consuming. You’ll start by talking to Ethan who should now have a quest for you. This quest will unlock archeology in the inventory screen.

Full disclosure before we get into this, the assets I requested were made a while ago and the design of things changed a bit in that time. For the moment you’ll be working with a few temporary buttons. If you see something that looks like it was drawn by a toddler, that is my handiwork, and it will be replaced with proper UI soon.

Once you finish this quest for Ethan you will unlock access to the archeology system. He will give you a short briefing on how it works but I’ll quickly explain it here as well. Basically, the game will generate nodes overnight much like it generates plants to forage. These nodes will look like cracks in the ground. You can dig them up with a shovel and you’ll be given either fragments or a keystone. You’ll need a combination of both in order to create an artifact. In essence every keystone will require a certain number of fragments to be created.

A few things to note here. Keystones are not stored in your inventory, when you find one you’ll see a different prompt upon digging up a node. The next thing is that keystones are buried in certain places throughout the world. They are not randomly generated so if you are having trouble finding one check places you haven’t been to. And finally, and this is important for you completionists. While the journal shows a potential of something like 50 artifacts to find know that at the moment there are only 16 keystones in the game. While all the data is entered and ready, I didn’t want to clog the areas that already exist with keystones. I’ll be adding more in as more zones are added. So please don’t tear your hair out trying to find them all because you can’t.

That stuff aside once you assemble an artifact you should be a snippet of lore for anyone who cares about that sort of thing. There’re other things I’d like to do for this system and some polish that is definitely needed in places. However, at the moment this is the baseline system. So, I hope you all have some fun with it, if nothing else its at least another thing to do.

Archeology aside there were some bug fixes but I’ll explain those below. As for the coming weeks I’d like to focus on bugs as there are still plenty to take care of. Aside from that I’m looking at some QoL changes to hopefully smooth over some areas. I also have a long term project of doing some behind the scenes stuff with the code that will hopefully make the game run a bit smoother. I don’t know what the performance is like on other PCs but I’m not sure I’m satisfied with it so I’ll be looking into that.

I’ll also be trying to add in bits of content as I get the chance. I think the next large thing that will be tackled is the z ordering system. Some of you have already noticed characters or your player showing up behind or in front of things they aren’t supposed to. At this point the system in general needs an overhaul so I’ll probably look into that this coming week and hopefully find a solution.

I think that’s the important stuff. Below is a list of changes as usual. I hope you all have fun, and I also hope I’m not writing on here again in a few hours with hotfixes.

Full Changelog 0.19

-Added archeology, see above for details on that.

-Added a quest for Ethan, that may or may not have something to do with archeology, cough cough

-Fixed a bug with pickaxe animations that would create a phantom pickaxe to the far right of the female character on the last frame of the swing only when she was facing left while swinging, what a mouthful.

-Fixed a spelling error in Ethan’s opening line of dialogue. Still unable to spell deserts without googling it however.

-Fixed a lingering invisible wall in the barn near the fences.

-Fixed a spelling error on the close shave perk.

-Fixed a bug that disallowed you from right clicking objects into a chest if you used a chest immediately after looking at the oven tab in your cooking station.

-Fixed a bug where holes dug in the mines during winter would appear snowy.

-Fixed a bug where holes would turn into regular ground tiles after midnight ticked over in the mines. Technically they still do, but you’d have to wait in the same room for 999 in game days, feel free to attempt that.

-Fixed a bug involving the second upgrade of the chicken coop where once upgraded you could no longer access the interior due to a collision masking problem. If you encountered this is should be fixed with the patch. -Fixed a typo in the livestock care tutorial.

-Fixed a bug where if you sold food ingredients in the shipping chest their value wouldn’t be properly added to the totals at the end of the day. An example would be sugar or fish fillets.

-Fixed an issue with palisade walls giving you chests when you destroyed them and not deleting their collision mask either. If you encountered this bug it should fix itself with the patch.