Hey Craftsmen and Craftsladies, It has been a few months since the last update, so I thought I'd post a little dev log about upcoming features and things that are currently being worked on. A lot of people have expressed frustration with Electric and Alloy tags being too much of a grind, so two new areas are being added to the game to help out with that.

New Areas

Marriage

Improvements / General

A small patch update has been deployed that fixes a few small issues and adds new promotional items. Follow The Last Craftsman on Twitter for more news about getting codes for those items! Patch Notes:

• Added a new machine in town that accepts promo codes
• Added new music for Autumn days
• Lowered the number of items obtained from Savorleaf crops
• Fixed an issue causing cats to hatch from dog eggs
• Fixed an issue causing light objects to appear smaller when first placed
• Fixed an issue causing the night music to continue playing after waking up
• Changed one of Moth's contracts so it no longer psychologically assaults players
• Fixed various typos and missing text

I've added a few QoL features, fixed a few issues, and added more tutorials to help out new players.

• Changed the Data tab in the Action Menu to show potential discoveries instead of raw data.
• Multiple tutorials added at the start of the game to better inform players.
• Changed the styling of letters so they can give better hints (HINT HINT)
• Added quest markers to the map to show the approximate area of the quest objective.
• Made it possible to quickly add or remove items from containers and machines by holding Shift when interacting with them.
• Fixed issues caused by switching tools and moving while fishing.
• Lowered the ambient sound of heavy rain to be more in line with other weather effects.
• Fixed a missing fish index when using the Vibrant Lure.
• Reduced GPU load of trees and other swaying objects.

Streamer and friend BootStill2Big graciously streamed The Last Craftsman to celebrate the new update and sale!

The mini-update is now live! This updates much of the graphics in The Last Craftsman, adds Cooking, and Pets. (Pets are currently obtained from the Mystery Shop next to the General Store on Mondays!) Patch Notes:

• Cooking has been added. At Rank 2 the player will have a few kitchen related furniture items available in the Researchler.
• Added new food buffs for the new dishes
• Added 2 new crops
• 3 types of Meow Ambrios and 3 types of Bark Ambrios are sometimes available for purchase at the Mystery Dealer. These Ambrios can be hatched via a Pet House discovered in the Researchler.
• The player sprite has been updated
• Players can now choose their eye color
• Players can now have facial hair (where applicable)
• Added several new clothing items (including the coveted Theseus head replica)
• All character portraits have been updated (Except Theseus, he was already perfect)
• The scenery of some locations have been updated (This may cause grass to grow in strange places on old save files)
• Beck had a baby
• The highlight and gathering effects have been updated to match the UI
• Bushes and Grass are more detailed and there are more varieties
• The Last Craftsman's robot garbage is now harvestable for some free starting metals (Only in new games)
• Added more dense vegetation on player's property (Only in new games)
• The Researchler has been updated and now separates new discoveries by rank
• The Researchler now marks "important" items that are necessary to progress the game
• Added a new quest and cutscene after obtaining the Omnitool to demonstrate its power
• Increased the starting weight capacity and maximum energy
• Increased the stamina regeneration of the Hot Spring
• Added tilled soil to planted crops
• Added several new notifications to alert players of new features
• Added new Summer music
• The music now fades out to signal when night falls
• Added new ambient sound effects during seasons and weather events
• Added new footstep sound effects based on what the player is walking on
• Changed the ambient lighting over time so dusk and dawn are visually represented
• Added several new tutorials for different sections of the game
• Improved drop rates of some items (gems in rocks specifically)
• Improved CPU usage when a large amount of foliage exists in a saved game.

It's been 2 months since the launch of the Livestock Update and things are moving along quickly on the next mini-update. In the next update, there will be many visual improvements made to the player and various areas of Gear Springs.

Environment Improvements

Player Improvements

Portraits

Cooking

Pets

The last LAST batch of hotfixes:

• Added a tutorial after obtaining the Omnitool.
• Reworked Volt Generation so Engines will generate energy over time instead of once per hour.
• Reworked Volt fuel consumption so the Engine will run longer with higher quality fuel. (Generally this extends the amount of time an Engine will run per item consumed)
• Slightly improved the Volt production of Solar Panels and Windmills.
• Fixed an issue where Coke and Gems could not be placed in the Alloy Furnace.
• Fixed an issue where Machines would fail to create an item unless there was enough remaining Volts to create the next item.
• Fixed an issue where players were not receiving the Short Sword and Energy Bangle mods for completing the quest to unlock mods for Theseus.
• Fixed issue where the Chaos Engine only did extra damage when affected by everything BUT Freeze.
• Fixed an issue where dropping a Volt Chest would actually just drop a broken Alloy Chest instead.

Should hopefully be the last batch of quick updates before I can take a break.

• Updated the Fluffy Nut icon so it doesn't look so much like Copper Ore.
• Added a new drink to Ryan's Monster Foods.
• Added a confirmation dialog when ending a dungeon early.
• Added a cancel button to Contracts in the Notes panel (although the person who put the contract up won't like it)
• Rebalanced Transporters and some other machines to make them more useful.
• Rebalanced the reputation gained from contracts to make Ranks 3-7 less of a brick wall.

Another batch of daily hotfixes (Shout out to Zorboni and SpookyBadger for finding these issues!)

• Added Theseus Health Bars to the dungeon navigation and event room screens.
• Lowered the damage dealt by the boss of the 2nd floor dungeon.
• Added a "Loot All" button when completing a dungeon.
• Fixed a bug where unlocking a new Theseus mod always said you unlocked the same one over and over.
• Fixed a bug that caused the Theseus mod unlocking event to happen more frequently than intended.
• Fixed a crash that occurred after unlocking all of the Theseus mods on a floor.

A few more bugs have been fixed:

• Readjusted the amount of Ore that spawns in the cave (should be MUCH more now)
• Increased the Ore value of copper, iron, and gold ores.
• Increased the sell cost of almost all crops to make farming profitable at all times.
• Fixed an issue that caused the 2nd part of the Theseus Mods quest not to trigger.
• Fixed an issue where some trees would get stuck before they fully grew.
• Fixed an issue that caused the Carbuncle mods to have 1/100 the intended drop-rate.

A few minor bugs found during the launch of the Livestock Update have been squashed.

• Capture Crates will now properly capture animals when the catch chance is less than 100%.
• The Guild will now send you mail congratulating you on achieving Craftsman Ranks 5, 6, and 7.
• Added Red tag to Strawbeets.
• Fixed an issue that caused the Crafting search bar to constantly lose focus and reset.
• Fixed an issue that caused the Delivery menu to appear as if you could not drop items inside of it (you still COULD though, I'm not THAT bad of a programmer).
• Fixed and issue where the resources spent when crafting were appearing under menus.
• Fixed an issue where cancelling out of the fishing minigame would cause players to get stuck fishing until they actually caught something (Pete put this bug in).
• Fixed an issue where the clothes vending machine was devouring items dropped inside of it.

[previewyoutube=5NmN11uFBIo;full][/previewyoutube] After months of frantic work, the Livestock Update is finally ready! This is just the first of two MASSIVE updates to The Last Craftsman. The two major additions are the new farm animals that can be acquired to help collect daily resources and the new Mods for Theseus that will dramatically change the way you combat enemies in the ruins. Along with those major features, there's also housing upgrades, more clothing, more items, full controller support, new mods, new everything! This update just about doubles the size of the game! Coming up in the future, there will be one small update to add Cooking so players can more easily obtain food items as well as some minor improvements to the game generally. After that small update, the work will begin on the second major update to finish all of the townspeople relationships and improve the story aspects of the game. I deeply appreciate the time everyone has spent with the game and hope you'll have lots of fun with the new update! Patch Notes:

• Native Controller support has been added (Game should work much better on SteamDeck)
• Livestock have been added to the game. [spoiler]Unlocks by visiting the Forest after achieving Rank 2[/spoiler]
• You can now discover, craft, and equip Mods on Theseus. [spoiler]Quest obtained after completing the first dungeon[/spoiler]
• Housing upgrades can now be purchased. [spoiler]Andres the Blacksmith shows up in town after the second week of Spring[/spoiler]
• Craftsman Ranks 5, 6, and 7 have been unlocked.
• At rank 3 and 6 you will now be able to take on 7 and 9 contracts at a time respectively.
• 2 new levels to the ruins have been added with their associated quests.
• 3 new basic enemies and 2 new bosses have been added.
• 2 new Card packs have been added.
• 10 completely new tool mods have been added as well as new ranks for existing ones.
• Rebalanced the price, energy cost, and rank of some mods (You may find that you can't equip mods after unequipping them because of the energy cost increase)
• New clothing can be purchased via a vending machine in town. [spoiler]There is a known bug where the vending machine sometimes only sells soup.[/spoiler]
• Your inventory now highlights usable items.
• Televisions can now be turned on to see what the weather will be like tomorrow.
• Research items now show a silhouette of the item and a hint as to what type of item it is.
• Added a few new hair style options.
• Added animations to the enemies in the ruins.
• Rebalanced many research and crafting recipes to require less materials. (Colors in particular)
• Increased the capacity of chests to make upgraded ones more valuable.
• Some lamps can be turned on and off. (Not all of them... still working on it)
• Added some visual improvements to the town and surrounding areas.
• Trees and rocks have more variation.
• Removed the high tag threshold for the Blast Furnace.
• The Mayor now moves slower than other NPCs.
• Added lightning and thunder to thunderstorms.
• Added better splash screens at the start of the game.
• Fixed a bug that caused Rachel not to show up in your list of friends.
• Fixed a bug that caused some areas and weather conditions to be brighter than intended.
• Fixed a bug that caused two background tracks to play when pausing the game while in a card battle.
• Fixed a bug that allowed players to add random extra items when delivering Contract requirements.
• Fixed a bug that could cause tooltips and popup windows to get cut off by the edges of the screen.

Due to some personal issues (I have to move across the country), I've had to delay the next update for The Last Craftsman. Originally I wanted to release it towards the end of July, but a lot of things got in the way and I decided to slow down development a little bit and focus on increasing the overall quality of the game. That said, the new update will certainly be out before the end of the year (Winter is PEAK cozy game season.) The good news is, this has given me a little bit of extra time to add even more new stuff to the game! The past few weeks have been spent adding a ton of new mods for Theseus to use in the ruins. These mods will change the way cards work, modify dungeon layouts, and add unique bonus effects to the game. Here are just a few of the many MANY mods that Theseus can equip
Theseus will be able to equip 1 Weapon mod and 1-2 Trinket mods based on their energy cost. I'm really looking forward to seeing the kinds of powerful combinations people create with decks catered to their mod choices! In other news, I was interviewed by Jesse's Indie View to talk about the development of the game and he is currently holding a contest to win a free copy of the game. So you should definitely give it a watch and subscribe to his channel if you want to learn more about The Last Craftsman and get a chance to play the game yourself (or give a copy to a friend!) [previewyoutube=4ogY_W16roI;full][/previewyoutube]

This month has been kind of a quiet one for me. Most of the changes have been bug fixes or balancing tweaks. A ton of progress has also been made for controller support and button remapping, but those changes will have to wait until the next big content update. Today though, I want to focus on the upcoming Livestock addition to the game! In the next update, you'll stumble upon James in the Forest pondering over a mysterious egglike object...
These eggs are known as "Ambrios" and they hatch into all kinds of different animals! Capturing, hatching, and breeding new Ambrios will be incredibly useful as each animal has many different variants that will yield all kinds of unique materials.
In order to catch new Ambrios, you'll have to build a Capture Crate. Placing one of these down on your property will attract different animals who will leave their Ambrios for you to collect. The type of Ambrio you catch will depend on the item you use as bait.
Once you have some Ambrios, you can begin hatching them. Simply build a Barn, then put the Ambrios into one of the hatching slots. After a few days, your new furry/feathery friend will appear! These animals will immediately start producing new materials for you to utilize however you see fit. Animals can also be freely returned to their Ambrios if you want to switch out new ones for different seasons.
The work's not done yet though, because every animal also has a "Pedigree". If an animal has a high Pedigree, it will produce better materials and more of them! The Pedigree that an animal is born with depends on the quality of the Ambrio used to hatch it.
Capture Crates will always return a "Wild" Ambrio, which is the lowest quality. If you want animals with a higher Pedigree, you'll have to keep multiples of the same species together in a Barn. When there are enough in the Barn, they have a chance of breeding and offering you a new Ambrio of a higher quality! You can also increase the chance of getting a higher quality Ambrio by giving them lots of pets and feeding them nice food to increase their Happiness! I'm sure everyone will be happy to hear, the entire thing is being built with the same QoL improvements as the other parts of the game. Animals will not need to be fed every day to produce materials, you won't need to enter a separate building just to feed them, and you don't need to be near them to interact with them. This is the first of many update previews to come. If you'd like to receive chaotic spur of the moment updates, I'm going to start posting those to the Discord server as they are developed!

This is a teensy tiny little beta update to balance a few headaches at the start of the game and fix some bugs.

• Purchasing items is about 25% cheaper
• The price of food and drink items have been reduced even further
• The duration of a day has been increased to around 20 minutes
• Players can now choose between 3 different day durations when creating a character (20, 25, 30 min)
• Reduced the Fuel cost to produce Coke, so it will always yield more Fuel than you put in
• A new Paper item can be found in the first level of the Ruins
• A new fish can be caught in the pond on your property, it can also be caught by using one of Pete's Basic Lures
• Optimized the way items are added to the Researchler, which can prevent lock ups when adding lots of items
• Fixed a bug that caused Theseus to get stuck in a wall when loading a saved game

Another round of fixes for small bugs:

• Taking items from containers by dropping them with the mouse now shows the tag discovery notification
• Theseus now actually obtains items from chest rooms. (Thanks to Karlyan for reporting!)

Just knocked out a few quick bugs that I noticed after testing. Nothing major.

• Pressing M, N, or C no longer closes menus, so you'll be able to use the search bar in menus again.
• Fixed a bug where Machining Tables were not able to accept the correct materials.
• Fixed a few incorrect item descriptions

Another small update just to patch a few game breaking bugs. This build will exist on the beta branch to be tested for a few days and then will be moved to the main branch afterwards. Patch Notes:

• Added a subtle visual effect to the environment.
• A notification appears when you obtain an item with a tag that you've never seen before.
• Butterflies and Fireflies will appear during Spring and Summer.
• Leaves and pollen will now appear on windy days during Spring, Summer, and Fall.
• Pete will no longer become permanently stunned when you talk to him before starting his fishing quest.
• Several quests have had additional text added to be more specific.
• NPCs now have softer collision, so they will gently push you out of the way instead of blocking you in.
• Fixed an issue where all fish were using the same stats.
• Spam clicking the Requests Board before it's repaired will no longer repeatedly show the dialog.
• The crafting menu now shows how many items were gained and removed after crafting.
• Selecting a placeable item will automatically close the inventory and begin placing it.
• Selecting food items will automatically open the meal menu with enough food to fill your energy.
• The meal menu now has better feedback to let you know the items were actually eaten.
• Fixed a bug that allowed you to accept Contracts even when you had the maximum.
• Tab buttons now have little tails to show which one is selected.
• Strawbeets and Mecharrots drop slightly more items when harvested

• Opening the eat menu the original way (with no food pre-selected) no longer crashes the game
• Menus now close properly when you open and close them very quickly

Another small update has come to the town of Gear Springs! This is part of a series of small post-launch updates to make minor improvements to visuals and add quality of life features.

• Crops now look much nicer
• Changed crops so they can no longer be destroyed before fully growing
• (You can always pick them back up to retrieve the seeds)
• Research has new effects that better demonstrate how it works
• Fixed a bug where electrical machines sometimes stopped functioning
• Changed some text on Pete's Fishing Quest to make it more obvious that you can't fish

I've opened up a new Beta branch for people who want to help test Controller input and Steamdeck issues. Right away on the new branch you can find an improved layout for Item Stores on smaller resolutions. There's also an experimental option in the Settings to disable UI scaling and opt for higher res windows. The UI scaling does cause some visual glitches here and there, but nothing major has popped up yet. Hopefully these additions help some people out while the Steamdeck and Controller implementation is finished fully.