Hello all, and happy new year! 2022 is just about over, that sort of just whisked by. Before 2023 I wanted to put out a quick news update just to keep everyone informed. Given that there were just two sales on Steam there are likely a good number of people who haven’t seen one of these before.

To keep things brief, I like to put out a (relatively) short post at the end of each month just to keep people up to date on what I’ve been doing. For those unaware I’m a solo developer for Verdant Village, although I do pay a few lovely people to do the art and sound. This means that progress is admittedly a bit slower than I would like, but I do what I can to put out regular updates.

Speaking of, some of you may remember my last post saying that I was going to try to move towards a monthly update cycle. Smaller updates, but more frequent just to keep things from stagnating. This is still the plan, but as predicted, December was, as always, a bit of a mess with all the holidays. I am relatively close to having a patch ready to go, but I probably didn’t pick the best thing to tackle during a month with limited time.

So, what have I been doing? Modifying ranching mostly. Ranching is one of those systems that went into the game a long time ago and while it functioned there were always some things missing. What I’ve been working on are a couple of things. First, you’ll be able to let animals outside finally. When animals are outside they can graze. I’ll compare to Stardew here because it’s the easiest example. In that game you can grow clumps of grass to feed your animals. I didn’t want to just copy that, and I wanted something a bit more quantifiable.

As a result, there will be a new crop specific for feeding animals that are in pastures. It does renew and grows in all seasons outside of winter so its basically plant it, and with irrigation you can just leave it sit all year. This crop can’t be bought it has to be found in the plains left of your farm to give that area more significance.

Aside from this crop there are also a few more. Specifically, 4 that will alter the forms of cows and chickens so they look different and yield different things. And of course, there is a crop you can feed animals to have them give birth to another animal.

All of these systems pretty much had to be built from the ground up or required modification of old code to allow for them, hence why its taking a bit. Unless something goes horribly wrong I have every confidence that this patch will be ready for the end of January. After that hopefully we’ll keep on track for once a month updates. I won’t 100% guarantee it because sometimes larger systems are just going to take too long for one month of work but hopefully I’ll keep on track.

Small aside, I am also splitting my time at this point for combat. I have an artist who has been tireless working to make sprites for the system. According to one of the many folders on my desktop I have 40 enemy sprites waiting. That whole system is still very much in the works but I like to mention it just so people know I haven’t forgotten. It’s the long-term project while I work on smaller things for monthly patches. Once there is more to say I’m sure I’ll talk a bit more in depth. The whole system has gone through several iterations and I’m currently doing lots of math and living in excel to try to balance stats out and such.

So that’s about it for now. To all those who bought the game recently I hope you are having fun. More content will be on the way as soon as I can manage it. One last thing I thought about and wanted to add here was something of a recap. I don’t normally do this because it feels sort of like saying “look what I did” and I’m not that vain. However, I was thinking that a lot of people might be new and I don’t know about everyone else but I’m often concerned when I buy an early access game, because you never really know how fast development is going or when the game will get an update, etc. I can’t imagine anyone would want to sift through old patch notes so below I compiled a list of everything that was done to Verdant Village this year. I figured it may be an interesting read for some or I thought it might serve to quell some concerns with having bought early access.

Thank you all again for your support this year. I’m excited to bring more content to the game and see what you all think. As I said at the start, happy new year, I hope you all had a good 2022 and wish you an even better 2023!

2022 Update Recap

Additions list

• Added 5 NPCs to the game
• Added 17 quests to the game
• Added 6 zones to the game (this count includes house interiors)
• Tree seeds can now be cooked into a small snack, this recipe is available from the start
• Added small bee sprites to apiaries, so now you can be afraid of getting stung while collecting honey now
• Added a visual movement to water in the world so it now moves up and down slightly
• Barley and Rye seeds are now available in the general store year-round, minus winter
• Placing fishing traps in the ocean now has a chance to yield shrimp
• Added a path from the Narbell Farm to the Dig Site, no unlocks required
• Added jam making
• Added the Compendium (In brief this is an internal database that tracks most things in the game, as well as has tutorials)
• Added Achievements (in game these are challenges, some correspond to Steam achievements, however there is cap on how many you can have so not all of them unlock a steam achievement. Additionally, those of you who are patching will likely get a few by default as some are given via non-repeatable events)
• Added full tale for 1 NPC
• Added 1 new exchange shop (Small note, it doesn’t have all its items yet, so expect it to expand in the future)
• Added 1 archeology keystone dig
• Added Mail System
• Added another biome to the mines for floors 75 through 100, before it was just lava land for 50 levels now the lava biome is only 25 levels like the others
• Additional mine biome comes with its own set of fish as usual
• Added cloud save functionality to Steam versions of the game

QoL (Quality of Life)

• Barn and Coop animal UI (the book) will now darken slots to show how many total spots are available in the building for livestock
• Added a tooltip to the Watering Can and Hoe to explain that they can be charged when used
• Chests can now be picked up with the carpenter mallet, however they still need to be empty to do so
• Trees will no longer allow you to plant them if they are too close to another tree where they wouldn’t fully grow
• Cooking station now shows your totals for what ingredients you are using next to the cost of an item
• Cleaned up the code around the object placement UI so that it is no longer overlapping other UI elements regardless of its position
• Stack limits for all items in the game have been raised to 99. The exception to this is stone and various woods which remain at 200
• Removed the “Topics” button from the dialogue menu. This was done mostly because the current button doesn’t really do anything and its probably more misleading to new players than anything. It will reappear once that system is implemented properly
• Extended the discovery notification background for alchemy to more fully fit all the text that appears on it
• Added currency values to the descriptions of items. Gold was already shown but now uses the icon, and the archeology currency will appear on the appropriate items
• The silo will now check if feed needs to be distributed when the silo UI is closed. In short if your silo ran out of feed and then you added more to it that day to compensate you now won’t have to manually feed the animals that day as well
• Silos will now automatically add extra feed to a tier 3 building if you buy and place an animal in such a building
• Changed dirt tiles to turn back into grass after one day regardless of their watered status
• Added a small effect to keysprites in the mines to make them slightly easier to find, this will hopefully also compensate for those who are hard of hearing or just play without sound
• Added a meter to the fishery UI to show how close fish are to spawning an egg and how close eggs are to hatching
• Chest inventory search functions now search chests based on distance to the player instead of via the arbitrary array indices. In short, this means if you cook something at the cooking station and it needs to pull ingredients from a chest it will pull those things from the chest that is physically closest to the player instead of potentially from some random one on your farm
• With the addition of Lauren to the game the inn now has two different menus you can order from depending on who is currently running the inn
• When scrolling your hotbar a small text prompt will now appear above the hotbar to indicate what you have selected
• Changed objects that you pickup manually to disappear as the player reaches down to pick them up
• Made a very small visual change to the interaction guide
• Changed object placement to round to 1px for objects that don’t adhere to the grid. This still allows creative freedom but if you want to line things up to look nice it is no far easier to do
• Changed the collision on the bottom wall of the player house to match other interiors
• The shipping chest now operates on all of your chests as well as your inventory
• The forge now operates on all of your chests as well as your inventory
• Cleaned up the forge UI slightly
• Added the pickup sound to all objects in the game not just the ones you pick up manually. This is something I was sort of back and forth on, if you have an opinion on it feel free to let me know
• Animals will now stop walking when being milked/sheered
• Added SFX to objects such as looms and drying racks for an extra indication that you have interacted with it
• Added falling leaves to trees in autumn
• Made several minor changes to the world environment including some shadows, a deeper layer of grass and other minor modifications to spruce up areas
• Made a large change to the terrain in the upper right corner of The Whistling Fields zone. The purpose of this change will be made known at a later date
• Updated Main Menu and Exit Game buttons to match the rest of the UI
• Slightly modified settings menu to look a little nicer
• Quest rewards are now visible to the player in the quest log when a quest is selected
• Quests can now be pinned in your log to keep them at the top of the list
• Alchemy breakdown has been changed so that you are no longer limited to working from only your player inventory. How you select items to breakdown has also been modified
• A certain flower has had its name changed to Clivia Lily as its old name was insensitive. Apologies to anyone who was offended, I had no idea the old name was also a slur
• The forge can now be moved once it is repaired, this can be done via the building menu with Simeon
• Made an alteration to the message you get when you haven’t reached floor 10 of the mines and try to use the minecart, this is to prevent confusion
• Gave cooking slots a small plate for the stack information so the text is more readable
• Added code to ensure that you cannot double bind keys in settings
• The quest log now shows your current, available, and completed quests
• Fish are now filleted in a separate tab in the cooking station which allows you to choose what to fillet
• Alt currencies will now only appear in the inventory screen when the requisite shop has been discovered
• Alt currency trade ratios will now appear when hovering an item in your inventory next to the gold sell price (This only happens when you have unlocked the shop)
• The dock below your home has a shadow now (why did it not before? I have no idea)
• Gutted the old tutorial system in favor of the compendium to keep things consistent
• Changed several UIs back to their older versions in a push to make UI more consistent in general
• Modified the popup notification code to place notifications on a separate layer so they don’t get caught behind other UI
• Made slight visual changes to items in stores
• Added simple item descriptions for furniture items as all other items have them
• Made slight updates to the map (more to come as it still isn’t fully accurate)
• Altered setup to allow demo saves to turn into normal game saves if you buy and play the demo first

Balance Changes

• Oil and Stock have been increased to 60g and 80g respectively to balance out being able to craft them
• The mines have had ore spawns rebalanced. Coal should now be far more abundant and it exists in every level of the mines. Other ores have also been balanced to be easier to find in their respective levels
• Planted berry bushes have been calibrated to be more profitable. Each bush regrows more quickly now, listed below. Also the sell prices for each of the seeds have been reduced by 30g Strawberries regrow in 2 days Raspberries regrow in 1 day Blueberries regrow in 2 days Cranberries regrow in 2 days Blackberries regrow in 1 day
• Lowered construction time of most buildings by a few days
• Lowered upgrade time of barns and coops
• Increased the drop rate for animal fat from all animals
• Fishing XP has been modified to give more XP per fish given the time it takes to catch one
• Fish traps now grant minimal XP when a fish is retrieved
• Slightly increased Hoe XP to compensate for the tool not being used that often
• Irrigation Pipes now water all 9 tiles around themselves as opposed to the 4 directions (up, down, left, and right)
• Irrigation Pipe orders have increased to 8 pipes per order
• Tree tapping restrictions have been lifted and trees on your farm can now be tapped in all seasons outside of winter
• Watering Can charge patterns have been changed to be square instead of diamond shaped
• The Watering Can now has more charges at each level to compensate for the new watering patterns, charges per level are 15, 36, 48, 64, 80, and 100
• When hunting, the tracks left by a fleeing animal last longer
• Hunting animal spawns have been rebalanced to be more even across the board, also a bug was addressed which was making the spawns lopsided towards particular animals
• The “Close Shave” perk will now always grant the player a 3rd wool when sheering a sheep
• The Profit buff from fermenting is now, well, more profitable. There should be a much larger gain when fermenting drinks for profit,
• Dynamite rooms in the mines will now spawn chests instead of other random objects like stamina crystals or buff pillars
• Stumps that are dug up now fade faster as the animation was a little strange before
• Decreased the material cost of fences and paths by about 5 of the required material
• Dark furniture recipes now require pine sap to be made
• Removed spice plants from spawning in any area that isn’t grassland
• Modified additional forage spawns given via the forager perk, you now get fewer
• Increased stack limit of all items to 999
• Modified stamina drainer spawn rate in mines to keep them from spawning as often
• Modified stamina drainers to remove some barricades surrounding their spawn location so you won’t have to knock down barricades to reach them as often, note that this can still happen but the chance is reduced
• Altered fermentation ingredients to have fewer health and stamina restoring properties and instead a far more varied assortment
• Changed several fermentation ingredients to allow players to gain the tracking buffs from brews they make
• Modified several quest requirements to make them more manageable (less of a grind)
• Increased the number of objects that can be bases in fermentation
• Changed bases in fermentation so that they are doubly effective in whatever benefit they give
• Altered tastes of fermentation items to be far more balanced with far fewer sweet tasting items
• Altered prices of the items at the inn so that they are not cheaper to buy than they are to sell
• Changed wheat seed sell price to 10g from 30g
• Added more immediate rewards in the form of gold or items to most quests (For those who have already completed the quests only the gold rewards will be retroactively applied, rest assured you have not missed any significant items)
• Removed the requirement of owning a chicken for the first hunting quest to make hunting easier to start
• Increased all raw fruit stamina gains slightly to make them mildly viable as an uncooked snack
• Slightly modified keysprite effects to make them more visible

Bug Fixes

• Any existing fermentation recipes have been deleted, this is due to a bug with the calculations which is addressed in this patch, a brief explanation is the 4th paragraph in the patch notes
• Fixed a bug where pigs had a chance to disappear or shift barns when finding truffles
• Fixed a bug where dialogue lines would get mixed and interchangeable in the first and second floors of the inn
• Fixed a bug that would cause patching to take multiple minutes depending on how many irrigation pipes you had placed in the world
• Fixed an issue where food that gave the “Sure Strike” and “Prospector” buff would mince the two buffs, with the cooking station reversing them in the effects listing
• Fixed an issue where cooking recipes that were crafted instantly wouldn’t subtract the required heat
• Fixed a bug where the player couldn’t add animals to a barn or coop when it was being upgraded
• Fixed a few bugs relating to the crafting of fish fillets
• Fixed a bug where plants in the swamp cavern were giving cotton as a resource
• Fixed a bug where pine trees could be tapped but not give anything while consuming the tap
• Fixed a bug where you couldn’t place specifically Desert Flooring in any room with specifically a controller
• Fixed a bug where the silo wouldn’t feed barn animals
• Fixed a bug where cranberries were considered a catalyst in fermenting
• Fixed an issue where certain light sources would turn on/off before/after others
• Fixed a bug where Isabel wouldn’t actually sit at the bar in Summer, she’d just walk into it like a broken Roomba
• Fixed a bug where carrots wouldn’t provide the dark vision buff when used in fermenting despite saying they would
• Fixed a bug where wall objects could be placed half way into the walls due to a collision error
• Fixed a bug where NPCs weren’t running the proper schedule when it snowed
• Fixed a bug where cantaloupe seeds would grow more quickly than they were said to. The seeds now take 9 days to grow as the tooltip states
• Fixed an issue that would cause much of a marine décor to be hard to place. The fix unfortunately will move any placed piece to the right, these will have to be manually picked up and moved back
• Fixed a few bugs with marine décor hitboxes
• Fixed a bug where the wool count in the barn book for sheering sheep was incorrect as it wasn’t counting the amount gained properly
• Fixed an issue where truffles could still spawn under objects in the barn
• Fixed a small issue with cow animations
• Fixed an issue where cracked ring, pottery shard, dull knife, and crude etching couldn’t be traded in the artifact shop
• Fixed the Fireblood Potion sprite in the alchemy UI
• Fixed a bug where items in alchemy that you had already discovered all the recipes for would still appear in the discovery listing causing cascading problems
• Fixed a bug where alchemy recipes weren’t paging correctly and they were skipping recipes
• Fixed an issue where certain tiles in the swamp were not shifting correctly with the seasons
• Fixed a bug where the message about the silo running out of feed was running off the message box
• Fixed a bug where archeology fragments were not being distributed properly causing certain fragments to be far more common than others. Namely Divine and Fae fragments should be much easier to find now
• Fixed a visual issue where items in the recipe section of the brewing UI would overlap the UI awkwardly once you got enough of them
• Fixed an issue where selecting fermenting recipes wouldn’t delete the ingredient sprites from the previous recipe selection
• Fixed a bug where flavor compliment multipliers for fermentation wouldn’t calculate correctly
• Fixed a bug that caused fish in the fishery to take an extra day to lay an egg when initially put in the fishery
• Fixed a bug that made all fish eggs hatch at the same rate
• Fixed a bug where ore would spawn awkwardly from seams
• Made changes to the inventory system in the hopes of alleviating a softlock bug. Unclear if this has fixed the problem as I can’t seem to trigger the issue
• Fixed a bug where placing objects too close to doors would cause them to incorrectly z order in the world
• Fixed a bug where chopping down trees in winter could trigger them to come back in a different seasonal state
• Fixed a bug where perks and level meters in the “Perks” tab of the inventory screen would show the description box as huge for a tick before displaying the appropriate information
• Fixed a bug where lightning would still flash even when the game was paused
• Fixed a cascading bug where certain sections of the mines wouldn’t generate the proper tiles to cap walls off the correct way
• Fixed a bug that would create an extra text box depicting your HP in the center of the screen
• Fixed an issue where braziers would lose their shadows when they were lit
• Modified shadow positions for several different objects in the game
• Fixed a bug where minecart tracks in the mines would hide the player’s shadow
• Fixed a bug where the angler buff was not augmenting the fishing minigame as it was supposed to
• Fixed a bug where fermentation barrels would always spawn a drink after a patch. This fix will not take effect during this patch but will work for future patches
• Fixed a bug where Simeon is standing the wrong way when building a fishery
• Cleaned up the fishery construction sprite so the grass will always match the season
• Fixed an issue where the silo wouldn’t hold its animation frame through a patch, I.E. it would have feed inside but show as empty in the game world
• Fixed a bug that was causing all food in the snacks section to have the incorrect sell price
• Fixed a bug where you could continue clicking the Main Menu and Exit Game buttons despite a confirmation prompt being present
• Fixed an issue where controller you couldn’t access the Main Menu button
• Fixed a controller mapping bug in the fermentation UI
• Fixed an issue where the player house after being moved couldn’t be placed back in the exact same location. The solution to this is that the house’s starting position wasn’t aligned to the grid so if you experienced this you won’t be able to put the house back in the same place but the house is now positioned correctly in new games
• Fixed a but where moving your house after upgrading it would cause it to visually regress to an un-upgraded house
• Fixed an issue where it was possible to speak to Lauren normally when she was at the counter in the inn instead of getting the store
• Fixed a bug where if an animal starved it could stop silos from feeding animals in tier 3 structures
• Fixed an issue where opening certain menus would visually reset the portcullis
• Fixed a bug where Caleb would teleport during a specific schedule
• Fixed a bug where secondary cooking slots (any past the initial one you have access to) wouldn’t show proper details
• Fixed a bug where controller support wouldn’t work if the mouse was still hovering certain parts of the game UI
• Fixed an issue where after a patch you would be able to start fermenting something in a fermentation barrel despite it already being the process of fermenting something
• Fixed a bug where gilded truffles generated on a pigs birthday wouldn’t count towards their gilded truffle count
• Fixed a small visual glitch with drop down messages to keep them from stacking as heavily
• Fixed several minor bugs relating to binding keys
• Fixed a bug where the sleep and cancel buttons where mechanically reversed in the sleep menu for controllers
• Fixed a bug where Blessed Powder was pulling the wrong name in alchemy
• Fixed a bug where the “Chef In The Making” quest didn’t properly dole out its rewards on patch
• Fixed a bug where the shipping chest wasn’t displaying stack UI above the items in the slot on occasion
• Fixed several minor bugs revolving around adding augments to fisheries
• Fixed a z ordering glitch with the description display in menus
• Fixed a bug where the text for current pending orders could go out of the UI
• Fixed a bug where the player’s mount shadow would disappear under the ravine bridge
• Fixed a bug where an exchange shop could stop displaying potential trades
• Fixed an issue that caused large gates to not patch properly
• Exchange shops now show the appropriate item shop frame based on if you have the currency to purchase the item or not
• Fixed a variety of monetary and visual bugs from exchange shops
• Fixed a bug on controller where you couldn’t scroll through your quest log
• Fixed a small bug with toggling between quest journal views
• Fixed a bug that would alter the sprite of fishery augments when scrolling them with a controller
• Fixed a bug where you couldn’t remove augments from a fishery on controller
• Fixed a bug where you could use the quick pull from chest button while holding a stack which would lock you
• Added some code as an extra layer to protect against inventory softlocks
• Fixed a bug where rugs you placed in your basement would just disappear
• Fixed a bug dealing with rug placement placing unwanted rugs when transferring rooms
• Fixed an issue with a weapon rack not Z ordering in Sven’s house (It didn’t have collisions on. I troubleshot for an hour and I just had to tick a box)
• Fixed a bug where the Neglected Palate quest gave the wrong rewards
• Fixed a bug where the map pop up to show the zone name could appear behind the player location icon
• Fixed a recipe bug with stone footstools
• Fixed a text bug with the quest “A Noble Dilemma”
• Fixed a small visual bug with Malcom’s sitting animation
• Fixed a bug where specifying the amount of an object you were going to buy wouldn’t charge you anything when you bought it
• Fixed a small visual glitch with characters sitting in chairs and z alignment
• Fixed a bug where placing a carpet while holding more than one of them would cause a small visual glitch
• Fixed an issue where dried deer jerky was using the boar hide sprite
• Fixed a few bugs regarding perk gain SFX
• Fixed a bug where you were supposed to unlock the refinement recipes for barrels and crates (decorative) from Simeon’s first quest (yay?)
• Made a few cosmetic fixes to controller support when dealing with menus
• Fixed a bug where passive functionality on certain items wasn’t always disabled when entering a menu
• Fixed a bug where dyes could be alchemically broken down into fibrous extract
• Fixed a bug where the automatic pickup SFX would play regardless of the item actually being picked up
• Fixed a bug where the portcullis UI wouldn’t reappear after a patch assuming you had it unlocked
• Fixed a very specific bug where holes dug with shovels that then reverted to a tilled tile naturally wouldn’t let the player interact with them
• Fixed the Beginner Carpentry quest summary from leaving the area the text inhabits
• Fixed sprite for the Muskellunge (that’s a fish btw)
• Fixed a bug where cooking instant recipes with a full inventory would use the ingredients but not give you the item
• Added a general distribution through Steam that will hopefully serve to handle extremely rare graphical glitches