The Herbal Medicine update introduces viruses, burns, food poisoning, and new injuries. To deal with these new challenges, your sapiens will need to find a number of new plants that can be researched and combined into medicines. This update also brings improvements to the graphics, AI, and user interface, and provides a whole lot of smaller fixes and improvements too.
Herbal Medicine
Viruses are a new threat, which can be introduced by some visiting sapiens, especially if you recruit them. You can help stop the spread by isolating infected sapiens, but this will become a lot easier to manage once you have researched medicine.
You can now allow sapiens to eat raw meat, however there is a high risk of food poisoning, which they can get in other ways too. They can also get burned around fires, so you might want to find some aloe and keep some burn medicine stored.
To create medicine, you'll want to investigate one of the seven new plants. They can be hard to find, so you might need to explore further out.
AI improvements
Sapiens are now more social, with better head movements and conversation flow. They will now run for urgent tasks, like providing medicine, or hunting, and they are better at choosing which task to complete first.
They also now move and behave more naturally, and there are optimizations to help improve performance with large tribes too.
Graphics, Performance and More!
This update features new models, animations, shaders, and textures, so the world feels more vibrant and alive. Despite this, you should see a higher frame rate, with a number of renderer optimizations, and some new options to increase performance further. And there are a bunch of bug fixes and quality of life improvements too.
Full Release Notes:
Herbal Medicine
Adds viruses which can be introduced by visiting sapiens, and spread through your tribeAdds food poisoning, which can occur if you allow them to eat raw meat, or store raw and cooked meat togetherAdds a risk of getting burned while delivering fuel or crafting at kilns or campfiresInjuries can now occur while doing more activities like chopping trees or miningNew medicine skill, research, and craftable itemsAdds 6 new plants and the elderberry treeAdds fired and unfired bowlsSapiens can now die from starvation or hypothermia, and these systems have been rebalancedSapiens will seek fire when they are very cold, and stay there until they warm upCampfires and kilns now melt the snow near byMany craftable items must now be researched individuallyAdds a new immunity traitAI improvements
Sapiens now interact with each other more, and talk to each other while seatedMany improvements to the AI with how they prioritize and choose tasksSapiens will now run when hunting, and for urgent tasks like treating with medicineAs running makes mammoths easier and safer to hunt, they now take more spears and provide a little less meatImproved pathfinding, with smoother movements and walking animationsImproves a number of other sapien animationsMouth movements while talkingInjured and sick sapiens will now go to bed, and their outcomes will be better if they sleepGraphics and Performance
Significant optimizations in many areasMany improvements to shaders and rendering quality, including more vibrant colorsAdds new options to toggle bloom and ambient occlusion, and adds a lower quality water optionImprovements to a number of models, especially thatch buildings, which also have a slightly larger window allowing you to fly throughNewly crafted log drums and balafons will now display the correct wood typeOther Changes
Decorative items will no longer go rotten or despawn, until they become usable with "allow use"You can now dig and fill steeper slopesNew notification text when you move too far from your tribeNotifications are now color codedSome status effects like injuries can now be more severe, and are colored red/orange to indicate thisNotifications now stay up when the game is pausedYou can now build anything out of split logs to complete the tutorial goal, not just a split log wallThe tech tree has been redesigned to make more senseBalafon crafting now requires wood working instead of tool assemblyPlaying any musical instrument will complete the music tutorial taskUndiscovered items now don't show what they are in the resources panelBug Fixes
Named objects will now preserve and display their name when carried and moved aroundFixes bug where bamboo didn't grow backFixes issues with selecting pathsFixes bug with issuing orders in multi-selectFixes bug where mammoths could become invisible after a successful huntFixes bug where the order of sapiens changed when you changed their role assignmentsNo longer follows symlinks when deleting worldsMany other minor fixes