Quality of Life Update and Main Branch Merge

Hello everyone!

I hope you're all doing well.

Main Branch Merge:

First, today we'll be merging all the new features up to 0.64f into the main branch.
This should be make the following features available to all players:
- Stew improvements and overboiling system.
- Firepit, Barrel fermentation, frying, pies.
- Container and cooking station changes.
- Swamp Areas.
- Beavers, leeches, bog myrtle, kingcup, alder and peat.
- Bog Iron, Bloomeries, Forges and iron tools.

News:

Next update is going to be the NPC one. Probably the most important update we've had so far!
Plissken is going to be coming here soon and we'll be spending the next month working together at my place so we can get it all ready as fast as possible.

We don't have a release date for it yet, but it will take at least a month and should include:
- Human NPCs Creator Interface.
- The ability to start with Human NPCs or meet the mid-run.
- The ability to befriend and romance human NPCs.
- The ability for human NPCs to help with numerous tasks.

And now, lets check the content for the current update!

New Tools:

We've added a large amount of new tools and devices to make crafting and processing items more efficient. Here's the list!

Handsaw:

A new tool that can only be made out of iron. It does most of the things an axe can do but can speed up many woodworking tasks. It is also a requirement for many of the new advanced woodworking recipes we're introducing for this update.

Treadle Loom:

A new, more advanced type of loom that can make cloth faster and with higher quality. It requires a high weaving skill to unlock and requires a handsaw to be crafted.

Spinning Wheel:

A new, advanced tool that can replace the spindle. It can create twine and yarn extremely efficiently and requires a high weaving skill and a handsaw to craft.

Fiber Break:

Another weaving-related tool that can make extracting fibers from nettle and flax a lot more efficient.

Pottery Wheel:

A specialized pottery tool that can help you make clay containers faster. It requires a handsaw to craft.

Wheelbarrow:

A new item for hauling items around. It's better than the travois and specially fast when when used in combination with roads.

Cloth Sack:

A new type of container made with cloth. Light when empty and able to store large amounts of grain, ash, leaves, clays or similar things in a manner similar to clay jars.

New Spiritual Things:

Swamp Hag:

The hag pond now has a hag spirit, which can be accessed only by brave individuals. When approached she can offer some bargains and teach some insights. More things will be added to her in the future. Bargains come with advantages and disadvantages and cannot be reverted once struck, but there will be a way to do it in the future (for a price).

Humming Widow:

Another hag spirit from the mosquito pond. She wanders the swamps under the right conditions carrying her swarms of mosquitoes with her.
Her pond can be used to get her blessings, enchantments and summonings, which protect against mosquitoes, swamp fever, and leeches and provides blood pressure recovery. Her spells can help keep blood from coagulating, dispel mosquito swarms and stop wounds from bleeding.

The Hollow:

Butchering animals without releasing their spirit will cause hollowness to increase in the forest. Once this gets high enough some strange things will start happening. You might find strange meat inside animals or get visits from scary hollowed out spirits.

Beaver Spirit:

Beavers now have spirits, with their blessings, enchants and summonings available.
Their blessings help with woodworking, making such actions faster.

Miscellaneous Additions and Changes:

Blueprint Search Feature:

We've added a search bar for blueprints, so it's now easier to find what you want to craft.

Stack limits:

We introduced a limit for some common items like leaves and needles after which they will no longer spawn in the location when foraging or clearing. Basically your character no longer gathers them if they have enough in the location.
This should help prevent the accumulation of crazy amounts of items and help with performance.

Trapping Bait Improvements:

Larger animals will now ignore small food bait, making it easier to trap smaller animal if you use the right bait. So you'll no longer get bears or boars triggering all your snare traps and deadfalls!
Here's a list of the small bait large animals won't be interested in:
Seeds, Pine Nuts, Bugs, Leeches, Butter, Fat, Fish Scraps.

Mining Improvements:

Using pickaxes for digging mine shafts or mining ore from veins makes things actions considerably faster, making ore mining more productive than before.

Syrup making Improvements:

It now takes considerably less time to turn sugary liquids into syrups. The smaller the container the faster this will take.

Flood Changes:

High river water levels will no longer trigger the item destruction event. Instead this will just slow down travel time and hydrate and damage gardens.
We will bring back item destruction in the future as a flood "river spirit" that will pick up items and carry them down river. Just not yet. ;)

Wolfsbane Coating:

We removed the tranquilizer coating and tweaked the wolfsbane one. It now works differently, requiring less dosage to kill targets but a few hours to take effect. In addition to this, boars that have fallen unconscious due to this poison can be captured and domesticated.

Charcoal Mounds:

This new blueprint can now be used to produce large amounts of charcoal at once.

Fire Strikers:

They can now be forged from iron and have a success rate based on their quality.

Version EA_0.65 and Patch Notes since the last announcement:

- Fixed a bug where stews could accumulate very intense flavours over time.
- Added handsaw, treadle loom, spinning wheel, fiber break and pottery wheel.
- Implemented wheelbarrow.
- Added cloth sack and its storage system.
- Added hag to the hag pond, night broth and 3 bargains.
- Added humming widow to the mosquito pond and as well as her blessing, enchantment and spells.
- Added beaver spirits and blessing.
- Added hollow spirit and its mechanics.
- Added blueprint search feature.
- Added max stack mechanics.
- Made tweaks and improvement to wolfsbane coating.
- Added charcoal mounds.
- Fire strikers can now be crafted.
- Made improvements to the trapping with regards to baits.
- Made the pickaxe a lot stronger.
- Adjusted the times cloth takes to be made.
- It is now possible to use Ice skates when traveling between swamp areas which have water.
- Forge and bloomery now unlock when you have enough smithing skill.
- It now takes less time to turn sugary liquids into syrups.
- Tweaks to flood, including the removal of the flood event.
- Reorganized many material tags to solve many blueprint ingredient inconsistencies.
- Sharp axes are now better at removing overgrowth than stone axes.
- Added missing Peas have taken message when they grow in the Garden Plot.
- Ravaged Crops no longer increase discomfort.
- Kingcup can now be overboiled into stew.
- Significantly reduced the amount of stones and heavy stones that were dropping while clearing in most of the River Areas North of the Waterfalls.
- Significantly increased the amount of stones and heavy stones that drop while clearing in Pine Slopes.
- Leaves and Needles no longer add fuel to Fires.
- Kiln, Forge, Bloomery and Furnace no longer give Charcoal when they run out of Fuel.
- Fixed a bug where spearfishing and swimming in Swamp Ponds never gave you any Leeches.
- Fixed a bug where the Ferocity combat move was appearing on Spirits other than the Badger.
- Little Pieces of Fat no longer spoil into Rotten remains.
- Fixed the winter art for Beaver Dam.
- Fixed a bug which caused the Deer Grove to have Mosquitos in Winter
- Escaping Chickens and Cows no longer increase Partridge and Boar Populations.
- Removed the Wisp Start, solving the issue where players were starting with too many items to carry.
- Beaver Lodge no longer loses stability during winter if there is a Beaver Living inside it.
- Starting stones, wood and leaves now only apear in area you actually start in.
- Fixed a bug where drinking Teas made with Powders straight from a Jar did not apply their specific status effects.
- Spoiled powders now transfer less spoilage to the Tea they are added to and should no longer instantly turn Tea into Unsafe water.
- Bread Loaf can no longer be placed on a Plate and can no longer be spiced. Individual Slices need to be spiced instead. Same with Cheese Wheels and their Cuts.
- Flour can no longer be soaked and Soap can no longer be made wet in Soups, Broths, Stews and Potages.
-Fixed the Winter Art for Frozen Ponds.
- Fixed a bug with Alder Firewood not giving any fuel or fragrance.
- Fixed a bug which caused issues when enchanting Leather Quivers.
- It is no longer possible to wash small clothes and leather skins in Soups, Broths, Potages and Stews.
- Smelting durability now only shows when its higher than 0.
- Butchering a duck carcass now takes at least a minitick.
- Patridges, Chickens, Cows and Boars can no longer starve in Trader Inventories.
- Fixed the shovel image which shows up as requirement when building a Tanning Pit.
- Added Raw and Boiled Kingcup to the Food Filter.
- Added Barrels, Clay Basin and Fermentation Bins to the Water Filter.
- Fixed a bug which caused the Map to open when Wheat Grains take in the Garden.
- Fixed a bug where it was not possible to fill Containers with Water in Heather Marsh.
- Reduced how much food you get when throwing Fat into the Enclosure. Fat Chunks can now also be thrown in.
- Fixed a Typo in the Wolf Pass Card description.
- Rye and Wheat Hard now properly give grain satiation instead of nut satiation.
- Refreshing a Sap or Resin Tap now takes a mini tick.
- Campfires, Fireplaces and Ovens now properly dry Wood Sorrel.
- Newly Built Improvised Shelters now remember and drop the item types they were built from.
- Metal slags, dusts and ores can now be unstacked.
- Reed clothing is now unlocked only by reeds, straws and meadowgrass.

- Fixed a bug that would get the game stuck on launch while converting saves to the new system.
- Added some feedback messages on the save conversion process at the start of the game.
- Fixed a bug where Iron Slag could be crushed or milled into Greenstone Powder.
- Added the Iron Hammer blank to the list of items that can be remade into an Wrought Iron Bar.
- Added the Iron Pickaxe blank to the list of items that can be split into 2 Wrought Iron Bars.
- Fixed the art for pickaxe and hammer heads when they appear in their respective tool blueprints.
- Badger no longer gives Weststone blessing.
- Fixed a bug where Kingcup could be dried and would turn into dried nettle as a result.
- Fixed the Map Icons for new areas.
- Fixed a bug where willow blessing would get stuck at a certain level and stays there.
- Swamp Water Level is no longer visible.
- Tweaked trader iron tools quality.
- Metal Hammer now gets most of its quality bonus from the smithing bonus it applies and less from flat quality bonus for every hit.
- Fixed a bug which caused swamp mosquitoes to appear during Winter.
- Extinguished Forge now accepts Iron Blooms.
- Fixed a bug with a Metal Hammer where Metal Trader was not interested in paying more for it.
- Lit Furnace will now also unlock Forge and Bloomery Blueprints like the Extinguished one already does.
- Fixed winter art for Bog Iron Patch and Beaver Lodge.
- Fixed the stability icon for Beaver Lodge.
- Fixed a bug where a Mosquito or Hag Pond freezing would not freeze back into its original version but a generic Pond instead.
- Fixed a bug where you could soak fairyweed powder in a Soup or similar Stew like liquid and turn it into Fairyweed Tea.
- Fixed a bug where you could soak fireroot powder in a Soup or similar Stew like liquid and turn it into Firewater.
- Added Ice Pit and Firepit to the appropriate filters.
- Chicken Eggs can now be used to make Egg Dough.
- Cow carcass now drops 16 fresh skin scraps instead of 8 when consumed by a wild animal.
- Fixed a bug where a non-frozen river would show frozen river art in Winter.
- Primeval Wolf Coat now gives 10 Profile between 22:00 in the evening and 04:00 in the morning.
- Fixed the passive effects of Mine locations to have passive effects of Caves instead of Cabins.
- Dried Calf Stomach can now also be used to make Water and Stomach Pouches.
- Clay Cauldron can no longer hold powders in their liquid forms. Only Clay Jar can.
- Raw Fish Filling can now be added to Pies.
- Fixed the bug with "Remake Iron Bar" and "Split into Iron Bars" setting quality to 0.
- Fixed an issue that was making game ticks more laggy.
- Fixed a bug where using a mallet when making a metal hoe would increase original metal quality instead of tool quality.
- Removed instances of a false positive error message when converting save files at the start of the game.
- Ingame Map now properly displays that there is no more connection from Flooded Grove south to the Boggy Meadows.
- Roasting Bog Iron now takes only 1 tick and oven no longer accepts it.
- Added missing Path and Hunting Fences Improvements from Alder thicket south to the Bleeding Woods.
- Fixed a bug where when Moontouched and Forest Beast escaped the fight, the player did not have any options to choose from.
- Gloves now need to be directly equipped to protect you when harvesting Nettle and Wolfsbane.
- Eating Blood and Meat Pasty is now a Carnivorous Action.
- Alder Tanning Liquor now properly tans Fleshed Skins.
- Fixed a bug which instantly turned crafted Iron Torcs and Twisted rings back into Nuggets.
- Ponds now once again give Unsafe Water which becomes safe after boiling it for 15 minutes.
- Fixed a typo in the description for Roasted Bog Iron.
- Fixed the Metal bar description to better match the fact that some materials cannot be heated up on any fire.
- It is no longer possible to soak fresh and dry fairyweed you need to dry and grind it first.
- Fixed the general status Icon for Bog Myrtle Effect.
- Fixed a bug which prevented the drink action when done on swamps, bogs and marshes.
- Added Bog Myrtle and Leeches to the Food Filter.
- Fixed capacity for the extinguished Bloomery.
- Trout Blessing action now hides once you gut it once.
- Gutting a Pike now removes its Spirit.
- Clay Cauldrons can now be toggled to unstack.
- Small Alder Trees now drop Alder Long Stick when cut.
- Firm Cheese now displays a proper message if it cant be pressed because you need to Pee Instead of hiding the button.
- Cooking a Raw Squirrel now reduces the Spoilage by a little bit.
- Fixed a bug where Moontouched would sometimes get blocked from spawning.
- Oaken Staff Blueprint now properly displays that it requires an Oak Long Stick to be made.
- Added description to garden-frown Kingcup plants.
- Fixed a bug where fat could not be dragged into flatbread.
- Bog Myrtle Powder placed inside a Clay Jar now displays its description.
- Fixed a bug where placing down Primeval Wolf Leather did not give any Sanctuary
- Dry Heather Stems can no longer be placed in the Garden.
- Added Nettle Stems have taken and Heather has taken message when fresh Nettle or Heather stems are planted.
- Bird meat stacks can now be unstacked just like the regular meat can.
- Leather Quiver can now be Enchanted.
- Fixed some instances of no feedback showing on a card when an action is being blocked.

That is all for this update.
And now.. back to work.

See you all for the next announcement!

Reminder: All fixes and new content are added to the public beta branch first.
If you want to access them you can find the instructions on the link below. Be warned though, things are less stable there and are likely to undergo balance changes quite frequently! :)
https://steamcommunity.com/app/2868860/discussions/0/600774299444324511/