Looks like October has come and gone here, time for another look into development. There’s been a lot of work going on, but not a lot of standout developments to really dig into. Last month I talked a bit about combat and showed off a few monster designs. Work is still proceeding on that front, but my attention has turned pretty squarely onto this next small patch.

It’s been a bit since Verdant Village has seen a patch. Admittedly that is my fault. I meant to be a little more frequent with patches, but the changes I wanted to make kept growing/giving me weird issues to deal with. First and foremost, there are a number of bug fixes or changes to smooth out smaller issues. Aside from that, gates are being added in for placeable walls. These took longer than expected. I believe I said before that I’ve had them partially implemented but I paused on them for reasons I didn’t remember. Well, when I went back to finish the job I remembered why I stopped. In short, they have not been easy to get working, and involved a fair bit of tinkering to get them figured into the existing wall code.

Aside from that, the other big change is alchemy which is more wide reaching both in the current game and the future. I’ve been analyzing a lot of how Verdant Village is constructed. One of the things I looked at was quests. A lot of quests were setup to give alchemy recipes (and combat components but that’s less important). I decided I didn’t like this. While it might make sense for Quent or Petra to give you an alchemy recipe it didn’t make much sense for most of the other characters.

Because of this, the next patch is changing alchemy. Instead of being handed recipes you’ll be doing something that is far more in the spirit of alchemy as I see it. The alchemy UI will have a new section that allows you to mix and match items to discover recipes on your own. I figure this would make more sense in terms of gameplay and it keeps quest rewards from just becoming more of you getting a random recipe. I figure that’s a little more passable with things like cooking recipes since cooking is a common skill. However, it doesn’t make sense for Sven the smith, who is an old grumpy man with no interest in alchemy, to teach you an alchemy recipe.

Aside from those two things a lot of this next patch is just QoL. Things like rocks and forage objects spawns now operating separately based on their zones which should result in a more even spawning of objects in the world. This will solve problems like no rocks spawning in the swamp for instance. Fish traps have been reworked to actually be worth the trouble. The current iteration in the game is technically useful, but the chances of a fish trap actually catching more than one fish before breaking were way to high.

Some of the spawns in the mines were changed. Livestock got some updates, specifically a bug to finally fix feathers not dropping, and another change to make truffles from pigs a generally better system.

Like I said at the start, a lot of little things. Changing alchemy is the big thing this patch, which unfortunately feels like treading old ground as it isn’t a brand-new system. I’m hoping that this will be the last time I decide to rework a major system in general.

With any luck this patch should hit in the next week or two. Bar any huge complications I’m mostly done, although I do have some outstanding bugs I’d like to look into before I release anything. Still, you can probably expect something in the first half of November. Thanks again for your patience and I hope you all are having fun playing Verdant Village so far.