Under the Elm · published · build 25066562
Identifying used to be one button. You'd bring an unknown mushroom back, press Identify, and the game would tell you what it was. It worked, but it wasn't really foraging - the mushroom in your basket was a lockbox and the button was the key. Worse, the mycologist skill tree ended with a perk that skipped it entirely, so the deeper you went, the less of the game you played.
So it's gone, and grandmother's desk has taken its place.
Now you lay a specimen out on the desk and look at it properly - the cap, the stem, the base - one at a time. Each part gives you a written observation in her hand. Then you open her field guide and go looking for the page that matches. When you find it, you say so. The book closes only when you're right.
Her half of the guide is readable from the very first day. That felt important. A book that hides its contents can't help you identify anything.
Seven species in the wood have a dangerous double, and six of the seven are indistinguishable from the real thing once they're in your basket. The tell is in the ground - how it's growing, what's underneath it - which means the only way to be sure is to crouch down and look [i]before[/i] you pick. If you don't, the desk will tell you honestly that it can't be certain, and Fern is your way out.
The mycologist capstone has been reworked. It no longer skips identification; it sharpens it. A specimen gives up everything at once, and the guide starts catching what doesn't fit.
A crash that could happen when your basket filled up
Energy going haywire when harvesting with master tools
Spoil timers missing on stored and unnamed specimens
Unknown specimens couldn't be stored in chests
Buying from Petra was blocked even when you had room