Ultimate Blacksmith Tycoon Update (EA r170) Patch Notes

We're sorry for two disruptions around save data in quick succession. This update fixes both: saving becoming impossible / saves being lost, and the older saves missing from the load list that our own fix caused.

First, the important part

Your save data has not been deleted. Your older saves are still on your PC — the game simply stopped listing them. Installing r170 and launching the game restores them to the list automatically.

Fixes

• Fixed older-version saves disappearing from the load list. r169 added a step that clears old history entries when storage runs low. Because previous-version history entries carry the oldest dates, they were always cleared first — and clearing them frees no space at all, so the process kept going and removed them all. Previous-version history is now excluded from that clean-up entirely.

• The list is repaired automatically. On the first launch of r170, the game re-detects the older saves still present on your PC and re-registers them. No action is needed on your part.

• Fixed saving becoming impossible after long play sessions. The cause was internal data used only for the combat-log playback display being written into the save file in full. The longer you played, the larger each save became, until it exceeded the space available. Since that data is only used for display, we no longer save it. Each save is now roughly a quarter of its previous size, and saving is faster.

• Fixed existing saves and auto-saves being wiped when a save failed. The save process deleted the old data before writing the new data, so a failed write could leave nothing behind. It now writes first and only removes the leftover data after the write succeeds — if a write fails, your existing saves are left untouched.

• Improved behaviour when storage is full. Previously only one old history entry was cleared before a single retry, so saving could remain impossible. It now clears old history entries until there is room, so saving no longer keeps failing (the most recent save is always kept).

• Existing saves are compacted automatically. On startup, the unnecessary data above is removed from your existing saves. If you had already run out of space and could no longer save, simply launching the game restores your ability to save.

• Capped how much transaction history is stored. This was another contributor to save bloat. The history shown in-game is unchanged.

Please note

• If your list still doesn't come back, please contact us via "Feedback / Report a Bug" in-game and we'll look into it individually.

• HP bars shown when scrolling back through an old combat log will no longer appear after reloading a save (the log text, your progress, and rewards are all still kept). This is part of what makes saves smaller.

• If you have already lost save data: this update prevents future loss but does not restore what was lost. That said, recovery from Steam Cloud or an earlier backup may be possible. Please contact us via "Feedback / Report a Bug" in-game and we'll look into it individually.

We're sorry for two disruptions in quick succession. The root cause was that our tests never reproduced a long-played save. We've added an automated test that catches this exact failure so it can't happen again the same way.