Spheres, Fossil Jewelry and Letters from Town
Hello, rockhounds! This update is all about giving your finds more to do than sit in the cabinet or go to Mags. You can now grind your best rough into polished spheres, turn fossils into jewelry, and help your neighbors find the stones they're dreaming of. We've also rebalanced the economy so the climb to your next dig permit feels earned again.
New: The Sphere Machine
Turn chunky rough into polished display spheres, the way real lapidaries do it.
- Saw a cube from your rough, three pairs of cuts. Keep the feed pressure steady or the blade wanders. The end pieces are kept as slabs for the cab grinder.
- Grind off the corners on the bench grinder.
- Round it in the cups through coarse, medium and fine grit (a bag of each tumbler grit). Keep it wet, keep the pressure even, and reseat the stone when the wear runs uneven.
- Polish it on the felt cup.
The stone spins in the cups as you work it, and the felt has its own soft polishing sound. Hold the mouse or the Space bar to press. Each step starts with a short spin-up while the needle climbs to the green, and nothing counts against your sphere until it's up to speed.
A row of stage badges over the machine shows where you are (Coarse, Medium, Fine, Polish), and the slurry changes color with each grit.
Things can go wrong: run it dry and it glazes or cracks (quartz especially), press too hard and you'll grind flat spots, and fluorite may split clean in two along its cleavage.
Spheres can be made from agate, jasper, jade, Petoskey and Charlevoix stones, serpentine, datolite, hematite, quartz, fluorite, marble, thundereggs and Franklin ore. Every stone keeps its own pattern. Each card shows how big a sphere your rough will make: bigger stones and cubes make the biggest spheres.
Finish a Franklin sphere and hit Lights Off to admire it glowing green and red for as long as you like (any chips or cracks show in the dark too).
Display spheres on the new sphere stands (wooden rings, brass tripods and acrylic cups).
Buy the Sphere Machine from Mags (Tools > Workshop, 450 coins), then find it at the Lapidary Bench, the Workbench, or as Cut a Sphere at the Jeweler's Bench.
New: Fossil Jewelry
A new station at the Jeweler's Bench.
- Shark tooth pendants: glue on a bail cap (pick the cap that fits the root, mix the epoxy, set it straight, wipe the squeeze-out) or wrap the root in wire. Sand tiger, tiger and megalodon teeth each have their own look, in copper, sterling or gold.
- Trilobite pendants: nibble the shale to an oval, drop it in a bezel cup, and push the bezel over in a star pattern. Out of order and the metal puckers! The bug is turned to lie along the oval, so the whole trilobite shows.
- Crinoid bead necklaces: string 5 to 9 crinoid stems, biggest bead in the middle.
Each step puts the right tool in your hand: nippers for the shale, a bezel pusher, round-nose pliers for the wire, and a stir stick for the epoxy.
Some fossils come out of the ground ready to wear: about one in three shark teeth and one in four crinoids. The rest show grayed out in the drawer until they've had a visit to the fossil prep bench, and stopping the prep early is fine, since any rock left over just lowers the value a little. Mags now sells bail caps, bezel cups and waxed cord (Metals > Findings), or you can cast caps and cups from your own casting grain.
New: The Request Board
A corkboard now hangs in the living room (the quilt moved above the front door). Each morning there may be a new letter from one of the Crafts Fair regulars, asking for something special:
- a fine specimen, a big one, or one from a certain place
- a birthstone pendant, a cabochon, a sphere, a labeled specimen, or a set of different minerals for a classroom
They pay well above value, and every filled letter sends a thank-you card for your board (18 to collect). Sometimes they add a little extra: a tip about a site, some supplies, or a specimen from their own collection. Letters have a few days before they lapse, and there's never a penalty for missing one.
New: Aunt Opal's Old Equipment (new saves only)
In a brand-new game, Aunt Opal's lapidary saw and casting kiln start out rusty and broken. Mags can have them restored (600 and 400 coins), so cutting and casting become something you work toward. Until then they show grayed out at the benches, with a note saying why. The restored saw runs the slab saw, the faceting machine and the sphere machine's cube cuts. The kiln runs lost-wax casting.
Already playing? Nothing changes for you. Your saw and kiln keep working exactly as before.
New: Three Save Slots
You can now keep up to three games going. Load Game on the title screen shows each slot's day, coins, species and sites, with Play and Delete buttons. New Game lets you pick a slot for it, so starting fresh no longer erases your current cabin. Continue always picks up the game you played last.
Your existing game is automatically Slot 1, untouched.
Economy Rebalance
Some players found ways to unlock everything in under an hour. These changes keep the good days exciting without letting one trick buy the whole map:
- Mags now pays 45% for finished pieces (cabochons, jewelry, cut gems, spheres, necklaces) and still 70% for specimens. She's a rock shop, not a jeweler: the Crafts Fair is the place to sell your best work.
- Sell lots of one kind of stone and Mags pays a little less for more of it. Prices recover after a day or two out in the field, so bring her some variety!
- New Spot costs a bit more stamina each time you use it in a day (8, then 16, then 24...). It resets when you sleep.
- Gold and sterling now add a little less to a piece's value (gold wire x1.5, gold settings x1.8).
Heads-up: pieces you already own made with gold or silver will show a slightly lower value than before.
Improvements
- Map cards for sites with a Tier 2 area now have Tier 1 and Tier 2 tabs. Each tab shows that area's own icon, description, finds, goals and fee, and Go takes you to the one you're looking at.
- The amethyst cathedral in the workshop now stands back against the wall.
- The Slab Saw now tells you what kind of cut you're making (a slab, or a cube for the Sphere Machine).
- Fossil Prep: each abrasive powder now explains what it's good for (dolomite suits most fossils).
- Fossil Prep: the sprayer steps aside when you point at a button, so Finish is easy to click.
- Fossil Prep: "Rock removed" now counts the fossil and the rock right around it, so it no longer stalls once the fossil is clean (no need to sandblast the bare edges of the slab).
- Splitting trilobite slabs is clearer: the slab is shown in full detail, the trilobite's layer has a painted bulge with a sliver of brown shell showing (a pebble makes a rounder grey knob - don't be fooled), and the instructions say exactly what to look for. A clean split now always gives a sound, uncracked trilobite and its counterpart.
- The Jeweler's Bench lists how many fossils and stones are ready for jewelry and spheres.
- New text is translated into German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and Russian.
- Faster benches: the Lapidary Bench menu opens faster, and the screens at the Workbench and Jeweler's Bench open smoothly with a big collection. Your stones' pictures are now kept between sessions, so drawers open much faster after the first visit. Stone drawers stay smooth with big collections too: an open drawer only redraws when something in it changes, and each stone's card is made once, so moving the mouse across a drawer of hundreds of stones is smooth.
- Finished pieces get a few different cheers on their done button, and the message you see matches how the piece came out.
- Faceting: Cut a facet! now cuts the moment you press it (it used to wait for the mouse release, so the needle had moved on). Taps are judged on the needle you saw, the light green band now says "Good facet", and the faceting screen runs much smoother with a big collection.
- Seat the stone, Pour! and Tap the chisel! also act the moment you press them.
- Stones still caked in clay or stained show grayed out at the Jeweler's Bench (cabochons, faceting, spheres and wire-wrap) with a note to clean them first, the way a real cutter would - the dirt hides a stone's color and cracks.
- Popups no longer show dark boxes behind the buttons underneath them when the game window isn't exactly full HD.
- Sounds: the rock saws now sound like a real diamond-blade saw, the grinders, polishing lap and the tumbler's rumble are clearly audible, and a few actions that were silent (chipping, glue drips and more) now have sounds.
- The cab grinder no longer stutters as the dome takes shape, and the first moment of each pass doesn't count against your trace while you find the line.
Which features need a new save?
- Work in any save: save slots, the Sphere Machine, Fossil Jewelry, the Request Board, the economy changes, and everything under Improvements.
- New saves only: Aunt Opal's broken saw and kiln. Existing saves keep their working equipment.
Thank you for all the feedback, especially the reports on the economy and the shark tooth jewelry idea. Happy hunting!