Highlights: Major AFK automation expansion—Royce auto-chops and deposits wood after his first trade return, easing early-game micromanagement before you hire a Woodcutter; Cooking Standing Orders for work meals and feed; Blacksmith blade standing orders (iron/diamond); Filtering Basin / Sand Pit yard-capacity gold upgrades. Also extends store-to-inventory state retention (including penned animals), fixes fed-livestock false deaths and stale drop claims, and lowers endgame story-passage repair costs.
New Content
- Traveling Merchant · Royce Forestry Assist: After Royce's first off-island trade and return, while idle on the island he auto chops trees → picks up wood → deposits to storage (same flow as a Woodcutter)—slower than a hired Woodcutter, 5-item carry cap, no gear bonuses; won't chop coconut trees; only reachable trees. Stops automatically once you build the Trading Post; finishes depositing carried wood before departing on trade runs. Push notifications on carry full / no storage / deposit failed.
- Cooking · Standing Orders: New Standing Orders button at the far right of the Cooking category row—set target counts for 5 work meals (Fish Rice Bowl, Egg Rice Bowl, Pork Cutlet Bowl, Seafood Noodles, Rich Soup Noodles) and 5 feeds (Basic / Medium / Advanced / Vegetable / Protein). 0 disables a recipe. When stock (incl. in-queue) falls below target and ingredients allow, chefs auto-queue 1 batch; standing tasks priority over manual reservations. Requires a placed Kitchen and completed Chef tutorial; blocked in DEMO.
- Filtering Basin / Sand Pit · Yard Capacity Upgrades: Panels show current/max and gold upgrade buttons. Default cap 75, 5 tiers, +50 per tier (max 275). Filtering Basin: 30k / 100k / 250k / 500k gold; Sand Pit: 15k / 50k / 150k / 500k gold. Production stops when full.
- Abyss · Old Hammer Chamber Sign: Clickable sign in the Old Hammer Chamber explains the area is a "set piece" and points you to the Echo Stele Miner story chapters; seen state saved. Corpse story text in the chamber also shortened.
Gameplay Improvements
- Early-game relief · Royce wood: Fills the gap before a Woodcutter—Royce keeps basic wood flowing during the simple-trading phase so you can focus on selling grain, repairing bridges, etc., instead of constantly clicking trees yourself.
- Automation · Cooking standing orders: Set targets once—work meals and daily feed auto-cook when stock runs low, with standing priority; red dot when short on materials, locked, or queue full.
- Automation · Blacksmith blade standing orders: Standing Orders now include blades—Basic restocks Iron Blades, Advanced restocks Diamond Blades, aligned with Gem Workshop cutting upkeep.
- Passive buildings · Capacity upgrades: Expand yard storage to reduce how often you must return to collect when passive output hits the cap—better idle pacing.
- Buildings · Extended store state: On top of 1.0.5.6 upgrade-level retention, storing then re-placing also keeps:
- Animal Pen: Uncollected resources to storage first; tamed animals stay on the island and rejoin when you re-place the pen; Trading Post horses stay equipped (can't store/relocate during an active caravan).
- Blacksmith: Smelting priority queue, fuel preference, manual-stop flag.
- Gem Workshop: Cutting queue, blade preference, manual-stop flag.
- Trading Post: Merchant favor, order progress, cooldown, auto-refresh timers (not in-transit caravans / sell buffer).
- Compost: Auto-compost toggle.
- Fishing Spot: Fish/silt counters.
Drops · Ownership timeout: Worker-exclusive drops release ownership after 45s if the original owner hasn't picked them up (and isn't locked on / carrying them)—prevents ground items stuck forever after interrupted work; orphaned owner IDs cleared on load.Livestock · Naming: Chicken numbered names skip IDs containing digit 8 (8, 18, 80…).Bug Fixes
- Livestock · Fed protection: Fixed a safety timer that could kill animals while ageing was paused during feeding—death now only at true lifespan end.
- Achievements · Perfectionist: Further hardened cross-save re-check—when all prerequisites are unlocked on your Steam account, it can backfill on a different/tainted save; every 10s retry after entering the world (pauses while game is paused).
- Drops · Load: Fixed drops keeping dead owner IDs after load, making them unpickable forever.
Balance
- Damaged Railway III (story passage): Repair cost fir ×80 + iron ingot ×91 + stone ×100 + 90k gold / 20 min → stone ×5 + fir ×5 + 100 gold / 10s—narrative-only link, symbolic cost.
- Collapsed Cave (Old Hammer Chamber entrance): Repair cost multiple advanced mats + platinum ×15 + 120k gold → stone ×5 + 100 gold / 10s.