Hey all! Here's a small update before the weekend: - Added chest for gold. Gold will fill up on your way to 5000. - Made dust more noticeable (dust is still removed on lowest settings). - Adjusted exam to only need a 60% to pass. - Removed conflicting pigeon data in the People Almanac. Pigeon information only appears on quests now. - Fixed issue with exam in which the x's were offset for page 3. - Added the ability to burn quests in the fireplace. - Added extra particle effect to Almanacs to make them more noticeable. - Added extra crosshairs: Traditional crosshair, high visibility dot, and larger dot. - Changed UI for Hint Almanac to make it a bit more cohesive.

Hey everyone! Hope everyone is doing well. Here is a minor update with some quality of life improvements. - Fixed collision on planter outside by wall. - Adjusted when quests expire to be longer. Some quests (such as the 3rd) were too short of a duration for starting the game and learning where everything is, planting and researching. - The amount of time left for a quest now shows up when you open the quest. - Gold, Karma, and the Day number now appear for the duration the reward letter is opened. - Lantern Fire is removed for "Low" graphical settings. - Added a couple karma to most quests, particularly hard quests or ones with a difficult client. - Bumped up karma for low paying quests. - Bumped up gold reward by 5-15 per quest. - Lowered fireplace volume slightly as it was a bit loud. - Fixed menu music not looping with new engine upgrade. - Birds are louder outside now. They were hard to hear if the music was turned too high. - Changed physics on bottles to be less crazy but they still move to see the liquid move around. - Removed the word "distilled" for Witch Hazel. This was confusing as you needed to read the ingredient almanac in order to know that the Witch Hazel comes pre-distilled. - Adjusted the hint for quest 10 to be more obvious as it could of been taken the wrong way previously. - Fixed low texture resolution for flowers and most mushrooms. (A couple mushrooms will need new textures). - Added fallback if Auto Settings can't find monitor resolution to default to 720p. - Fixed Field of View not persisting through to the main level from the main menu. - Added ability in Pause menu to change Gamma as well as a reset to default gamma button. - Removed logos etc replaying anytime the Main Menu opens from quitting from the game to menu. Only plays on start up now. - Added a random offset for spawning reward letters so they won't hit each other as often upon spawning.

Hey Everyone, I hope everyone is doing well in these strange times. Here is a relatively big update for the game. - Added LUT (colour look-up table for post processing colour adjustment). - Added a plant preview. When a player now holds a seed/spore bag over an acceptable garden patch a preview of the fully grown plant will be displayed. - Changed brick material. - Added seeds to extend how long a pigeon stays around for (Feed them with the interact button, default is "E" for keyboard). - Added pigeon whistle to call the next pigeon in the queue. - Added an outside. - Moved poetry book outside. - Upgraded engine to 4.24. This fixed a wall seam visual issue that was introduced with the last upgrade to 4.21. - Added it so if you accidentally take something out and don't want it you can just put it back by dropping it over where you took it out. If you put a quest or reward letter in one of these spots it will just get reset to it's original table. - Added auto-detect optimal quality settings to main menu. This is just a one click to set up the optimal settings for the game based on your computer. - If you manually put textures or shadows on low then decorational decals will be removed. - Added sunbeams. - Added various sound effects. Known issues: All platforms: - 1 Planter outside needs collision adjustment. Flowers can still be planted in it but grown plants fall through it. To be fixed in next update. Linux Specific: - When using the auto-detect quality setting it doesn't seem to be able to read a screen resolution. It will default to 0x0 (in the options menu) and this will need to be set to a value before any options are changed. Potentially fixed: - Linux users were having high mouse sensitivity problems. This was fixed in my tests of the newest build for myself as I noticed the mouse sensitivity was lower playing the game than using Ubuntu. It seems to have been an Unreal issue as it was fixed with the engine upgrade to 4.24.

Hey everyone! Happy New Year! Here is a very important update fixing a bug that came to my attention recently. I pushed the build last night so please make sure to update the game! - Fixed a bug where a pop-up could interrupt the Hazard game in some instances. - Fixed a bug where a quest would get in a state where it could not spawn as intended. - Added Current Quest Status Almanac. This allows you to view the status of all incomplete quests currently available in the queue (whether they are active, inactive, expired or already received an item). - Added Hint Almanac. - Added extra explanation to distinguish a fly trap from insect repellent. - Added fireplace extinguish SFX.

Hey everyone, here is a small update. I know some of you have bought the game and are under the minimum required specs (but can still run the game) so I've added it in that if a player selects LOW shadows and/or textures then various "fluff" items with a lot of shader complexity will be deleted. This will help reduce the load on your graphics card. The items to be deleted on low shadows and/or textures are as follows: - Dust particle effect. - Coal fire on the stairs (this is dynamic lighting along with a particle emitter which is costly, gets replaced by a static light). - Several vine leaves. - Several wood whips scattered throughout the level. - Several leaves that are scattered through the level. Other stuff: - Fixed physics material sound SFX for wood (this broke in the UE4 engine update from 4.19 to 4.21 but I originally missed it). - Improved Volume balancing for SFX. - Added open SFX for opening quest/reward letter/almanacs/pause menu/exam. - Added close SFX for opening quest/reward letter/almanacs/pause menu/exam. - Added page turn SFX for flipping through pages of the almanacs/exam. - Lowered default mouse sensitivity (unfortunately this probably won't help people with driver issues/who are under spec). If you send in a bug report (dearapothecarygame@gmail.com) it would be great if you could include: 1) What graphics card you have. 2) What specific OS you use (Win7,8,10 Ubuntu etc along with if it's 32 or 64 bit). 3) If you're on Windows what DirectX version you have/Linux what shader model and drivers you are using. As it is only myself working on this game, the more information you can provide the faster I can provide a solution. :)

Hi everyone, This update includes the new engine upgrade and there are no known bugs on supported machines. If you think you've found a bug then please email dearapothecarygame@gmail.com. Changes: - Music Slider in Pause Menu can now go to 0 to turn music off entirely. - Fixed various bugs brought on by Unreal Engine upgrade (4.19 to 4.21). - Changed font and font colour on all parchments with white writing back to black. If anyone has issues reading anything, please let me know. - Environment improvements. - Fixed rotation on Wall Texture with windows. - Various Lighting Improvements. - Added more artwork. - Added more windows. - Added poetry book. - Added Win/Lose SFX. - Added dice SFX. - Added two new songs. - Decreased overall game size, Linux build size reduced by half. - Linux build now supports Vulkan and will launch with Vulkan by default on machines with the Vulkan API installed.

Hey all, Here is a major update. There are no more known bugs. If you want to report one, please use the support email (dearapothecarygame@gmail.com). Patch notes: - Added an extra screen that says seeds need to be planted and watered on start of game if no save file exists. - Added pop-up that says if a non craft-able item being placed in the crafting zone is not craft-able. - Added pop-up if player puts item on pick up table but there is no pigeon there explaining item is lost and to wait for pigeon. - Added extra logic if player puts a quest where the pigeon will pick up an item, the quest/reward letter will be placed back on quest table. - Added extra fail-safe to check if no saved file exists then to spawn player at location on level load. - Added several changes to make the game easier. At the end of the day, the game isn't supposed to be stressful so the added changes should help. - Bumped up gold by 10-35 on the majority of the quests. - Bumped gold up by 100 on a couple quests near end game. - Added extra Karma from quests from The Headmaster. - Changed exam due date to day 20. - Changed due date for funds to day 50. - Added dirt clump to indicate where an un-watered seed is planted along with a tag saying it needs to be watered when looked at. - Added SFX for planting seeds. - Added SFX for watering seeds. - Added the words "Seeds" and "Spores" to their respective seed/spore bags when you pick them up. - Added version # to menu. - Added UE4 logo game icon for Linux. - Fixed a glitch where combining a non-combinable object would not reset the zones correctly. - Fixed bug where it would show seeds as 12% grown if player tried to plant it in the wrong grow bed. - Slightly lowered fireplace volume. - Locked rotation on all item bags so they're easier to place. - Reduced size of fire that destroys items on pigeon table when no pigeon is there. - Swapped out new game parchment for the smooth edge version as unreal rendered the old one as jagged. - Increased brightness of candle on stairs and on the sides of the fireplace. Moved candle to the left of the fireplace closer to it to light up more of the room. - Switched position of pigeon feathers and magnolia leaves to make it more logical. - Removed rogue wine bottle. I wanted to address the issue brought up before about clipping out of bounds. After adding several fail-safes, talking with other developers about this bug, reaching out to the Unreal Community and user testing I can say that it was most likely caused by an under spec PC, possibly an integrated graphics card. After extra user testing this past week I had a tester that had a under min spec integrated graphics card which caused shadows to not render and default settings to be ignored (high mouse sensitivity, motion blur not being able to turn off). Please ensure you're using a PC better or equivalent to the minimum specs (Linux and Windows have different specs). If your PC does not meet minimum specs this can cause issues such as the level not loading in properly, ghosting and high mouse sensitivity. I plan to release another update in the next couple of weeks that will add more tutorial information (with pictures), a public domain poetry book (this won't change gameplay, just something to read) and upgrade to Unreal Engine 4.21. Upgrading to Unreal Engine 4.21 will be a big update for Linux users as the newest Unreal version will default to Vulkan if the user has the API installed along with minor performance improvements.

Enhancements and Fixes: - Changed minimum mouse sensitivity on the slider from 20 to 1. - Added Music Volume Slider in Pause Menu. - Adjusted crow caw audio balancing. - Changed trees and ivy from being bare for the winter months to just December and January. Extended autumn colours into November and green trees to start in February to reduce bare foliage time. - Moved player spawn a bit farther away from the door and raised it by two pixels. - Moved teleport zone up higher. This was made in case a player was able to throw a quest or reward letter out the window. This way the quest/reward would not be lost. I added it to include re-spawning the player inside the building if they got out of bounds. It was brought to my attention in one of the recent comments that someone was able to get out of bounds by accident. If anyone has any replication instructions/information on this very serious issue please contact me, either through email, PM or discussion. After trying to reproduce this issue on 6 different computer setups of varying age and OS, I have not been able to replicate this issue.

Just a quick update to say that anyone who has downloaded Dear Apothecary on Linux prior to today's store page update should uninstall and redownload the game to fix a plugin issue that is unique to the Steam Linux version (if the Auto-Update does not fix the issue). Steam was including both the Win64 and Linux version causing an incompatibility issue. This is now fixed. If anyone has any questions, comments, etc then please either send an email to the support email or post in the discussions! :)

Happy New Year everyone and hope you all had a good holiday! The Linux build is finally here! I strongly recommend an updated Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and to make sure you are NOT using an old, outdated AMD card. If anyone has any questions, comments, etc then don't be afraid to contact the support email! :)

Happy Holidays everyone! Here are the changes in the latest patch:

• Added a "Help" almanac on the bottom floor.
• Fixed timing on animations for the pigeons and crows leaving the window without an item.
• Fixed particle effect that played indefinitely if a quest was placed on the pick up table if no pigeon was there.
• Fixed odd rotation of quests if they were thrown forcefully.
• Fixed minor typos.
• Added a Windows 32 bit version.

Hey all, I just released an update for Dear Apothecary with the following changes:

• Hanging garlic LOD adjusted.
• Added reminder to do the entrance exam (sorry procrastinators).
• Added camera sensitivity slider to pause menu for mouse/controller input.
• Fixed bug that didn't allow the player to read the negative game over letter, it originally just showed game over screen.
• Fixed loading bug that didn't allow the game to load properly if the player never accessed the main menu options.