As we are nearing the end of the year we want to send a heartfelt thank you to everyone who has participated and given us feedback so far, who keep playing the game and support us on our socials, Discord and here on Steam!
It's cold outside here in the Nordic, so us devs have been keeping warm by staying inside and working on new game features for the upcoming "Health & Security" milestone update.
Two of the new buildings in the upcoming update are the Herbalist and Botanist, working together with the Pharmacy and Doctor to provide health services for your folks.
We'll spend a few mini devlogs on explaining the new health system, but here's the short explanation:
After reaching tier 4 you have to tend to the health and well-being of the folks in your settlement. This tier introduces "health" as a concept, where your folks must stay healthy - failing to provide will tank your productivity, and ultimately your population! The health system introduces four new buildings: Botanist, Pharmacy, Herbalist and Doctor, with associated professions, as well as three new resources: wildflowers, medicine and herbs.
Let's talk about two of these new buildings: the Herbalist and the Botanist!
This is a new harvester / farm building which grows and harvests herbs (similar to how farms grow and harvest wheat). The harvested herbs are then transported to the nearest doctor who uses them to provide health services to folks in your settlement. This is similar to how Fire stations require water for fire safety and how the Builder's hut requires plank for maintenance.
This is a new gatherer building - similar to the Berry hut - which gathers wildflowers scattered around the map. Wildflowers are a new resource types which will grow in a few locations around the map (similar to berry bushes but much rarer). After expanding into an area that contains wildflowers, a Botanist must then be built to harvest them. The wildflowers are then transported to the nearest Pharmacy to be used as one of two ingredients to create medicine.
These two new buildings form an essential part of the new health production chain, and in the next devlog we'll talk a bit about how the other two buildings work: the Pharmacy and the Doctor!
Until next time!