Against the Storm update 1.5 is now rolling out on PC (Steam). According to the official Against the Storm patch notes, the latest update 1.5 added quality of life improvements and gameplay optimizations.
Since the last patch, players are facing a number of problems with the game. Today’s Against the Storm patch 1.5 will fix a few of these issues.
Check out more details below.
Against the Storm Patch 1.5 Notes – November 27, 2024
New content and features
- Added a new biome – the Ashen Thicket.
- In this biome, you start next to an ancient Cornerstone Forge. There, you can craft 3 Experimental Cornerstones in each game.
- To craft an Experimental Cornerstone, you will need a Thunderblight Shard – a rare, lightning-infused crystal obtained through mining in the Ashen Thicket.
- To create a Cornerstone, you must choose a condition and a reward/effect. The effect stacks based on how many times the condition is triggered. Both conditions and effects have a random rating (stars). You can choose an optional penalty to increase the rating of either the condition or the effect (indicated by a line connecting the penalty to one of them). Finally, you can choose an icon and name your new Cornerstone.
- There are two biome passives in the Ahsen Thicket.
- Deeply Hidden Riches – Gain a Thunderblight Shard for every 40/80/120 vein charges mined (Copper Ore, Coal, and Salt). You can receive up to 3 shards, each requiring more resources to be mined.
- Royal Mining Operation – The crown is investing heavily in the region’s industrial development. For every 80 units of Copper Ore, Coal, and Salt used in crafting, an automated rainpunk cart will be assigned to one of your warehouses.
- The Ashen Thicket has the following resources:
- Trees: Wood, Resin, Berries, Sea Marrow
- Nodes: Roots, Vegetables, Eggs, Fish, Algae, Plant Fiber, Leather, Clay
- Ore: Copper Ore, Coal, Salt
- To be able to see the Ashen Thicket tiles on the World Map, you need to start a new Cycle.
- The Ashen Thicket is a mining-focused biome, with its effects and bonuses tied to that specific play style. There are also slightly more mining veins in this biome than in other ones.
- Added a new World Event with a unique effect – the Forsaken Town.
- This World Event requires players to play a settlement that is already in progress, started by another Viceroy. This means that there are already some blueprints selected, some cornerstones picked, some orders active, some glades discovered, a few buildings built, etc.
- The choice in this world event is to go immediately or to negotiate the price. Choosing the “Negotiate the price” option will cause the settlement to deteriorate further, but the reward for completing it will be greater.
- This event has a slightly higher spawn rate than other events. Our main goal with it is to add more variety to Blightstorm Cycles, shake up the early game, and create more interesting games that can lead to trying different strategies.
- Added a new resource – Salt.
- Salt is obtained in the Mine and requires Salt veins.
- The byproduct of Salt veins is Sea Marrow (with a 30% drop rate).
- Added Salt to multiple existing recipes.
- Biscuits
- Paste (as a substitute for Dye)
- Crystalized Dew
- Incense
- Jerky (as a substitute of fuel)
- Waterskins (as a substitute of Meat and Oil)
- Added Salt to some traders and trade routes for settlements in certain biomes.
- Added Salt to reward packs from the Hooded Trickster and Strider Port.
- Added Salt as a reward in some Glade Events.
- Added Salt as a resource alternative in solving some Glade Events.
- Salt is now also a byproduct of Kelpwood Trees in the Coastal Grove and Water Strider Molt nodes.
- Added Salt veins to the Ashen Thicket, Sealed Forest, and Coral Forest.
- Added 3 new orders related to Salt.
- Salt Miner
- Salty Delivery
- Salt Fever
- Added a new perk related to Salt.
- Salt Pick – +1 to Salt production. Gain an additional Salt every yield (from gathering, farming, fishing, or production).
- Added a new type of Rainpunk Drill that can spawn in small glades. It spawns salt veins after being repaired.
- Added 2 new Forest Mysteries.
- Fish Flood (Drizzle) – +3 to Fish production. Gain an additional Fish every yield (from gathering, farming, fishing, or production).
- Shedding Season (Drizzle) – +3 to Leather production. Gain an additional Leather every yield (from gathering, farming, fishing, or production).
- Added 2 new Cornerstones.
- Fish Scraps (Epic, yearly) – For every 100 units of Fish and Scales used in crafting, gain +1 to bait production when converting a Pack of Crops into Ground Bait in a fishing hut.
- Overzealous Architects – Driven by boundless ambition, Frog architects can’t resist sketching plans even in their spare time. For every 5 fully upgraded Frog Houses, you will receive a random blueprint. After 4 blueprints, this Cornerstone will disappear.
- Added three new deeds.
- The Ashen Thicket (platform achievement) – Win a game on the Ashen Thicket biome.
- Miner’s Paradise – Win a game in the Ashen Thicket biome, and on Viceroy difficulty (or higher).
- The Emberwright (platform achievement) – Create 20 Experimental Cornerstones in the Ashen Thicket.
- Added a new comfort decoration.
- Industrial Chimney – unlocked by completing the Miner’s Paradise deed.
Balance
- Revamped the Feeling Lucky deed.
- The old Feeling Lucky deed was renamed to Feeling Extremely Lucky and it’s now a hidden deed, not tied to platform achievements.
- In its place, we added a new version of the Feeling Lucky deed, which requires players to find just the Rainpunk Foundry blueprint in the Coastal Forest.
- Reduced the production times in the Mine.
- Coal – from 40 seconds to 35 seconds.
- Copper Ore – from 40 seconds to 30 seconds.
- Rebalanced the resource requirements in the Strider Port.
- Reduced the total amount of resources required for all expeditions by an average of 10-15%.
- Resource requirements now increase by a small amount every time an expedition is sent, rather than increasing by a larger amount every two expeditions.
- The requirement for complex food starts one expedition later than before. As a result, the first 3 expeditions can be sent out using only raw resources.
- The requirement for service goods starts one expedition later than before. As a result, there is one less expedition for service goods and one more expedition for complex food only).
- Resource requirements will now increase by a smaller amount with each level of additional investment for a higher chance of extra loot.
- Changed how biomes are generated on the World Map. The distribution of all of them should now be more or less even, with the exception of the Cursed Royal Woodlands.
- Blightrot Cyst-related Orders now scale based on the Blight-related difficulty modifiers. This means that on higher difficulties, where more Cysts spawn, the Order requirements are harder, and on lower difficulties, the same Orders are a bit easier.
- Workers transporting goods will no longer choose the Warehouse that’s closest to them in a straight line, and will instead take into account roads and open glades.
- Idle scouts will now start walking from the Hearth to their assigned Glade Event as soon as the last resource/item is being brought to the event.
- Lowered the number of Beaver Houses required by the Beaver Colony Timed Order (from 6 to 5).
- Changed the rewards for the Forum order. Removed the Advanced Press perk and Dye, added the Woodworking Tools perk and Reeds instead.
- Skipping the entire tutorial from the options menu now starts players off with 10 Food Stockpiles.
- Biscuits can now be made using Eggs.
- Removed Eggs from the Pie recipe.
- Removed the Fishing Hut blueprint from the Master Blueprint Cornerstone.
- The Master Blueprint Cornerstone penalty no longer lowers fishing speed.
- The Master Blueprint Cornerstone penalty now disappears after using 250 gathering node charges instead of 300.
- Slightly increased the overall number of events spawned on the World Map.
- Changed the building category of the Cannery to Food Production instead of Industry.
- Increased the Hearth Corruption Resistance bonus from 250 to 1500 in the Miracle of Strength buff in the Beacon Tower.
- Removed the Porridge recipe from the Apothecary. Added Dye instead.
- Removed the Dye recipe from the Cookhouse. Added Porridge instead.
- Added some missing resources (Fish, Algae, Scales, Boots, Paste) to random reward packs (from the Hooded Trickster or effects like Seized Inheritance, etc.).
- The Giant Beast effect (Drainage Mole) now also affects fishermen. The description was also updated to reflect this change.
- Rebalanced level up rewards.
- Based on community feedback, we have decided to lower the level requirements for unlocking certain species (specifically Frogs, which were previously unlocked at level 13 and will now be unlocked at level 9).
- In order to make this change, we also had to rearrange many of the building unlocks, as they are inextricably tied to the species. For example, playing with Foxes but not having access to the Beanery and Tea House would be very punishing.
- These changes are a little too complicated to describe in plain text, so we decided to put them in a table.
UX/UI improvements
- Added a randomize button next to the settlement name text box in the Embarkation Screen. This text box will now also show a randomized name from the start.
- Changing the production limit by typing a number in the text box no longer requires pressing Enter to confirm. The change is automatically applied once the focus shifts from the text box.
- Added a description explaining the possible reward choices when hovering the cursor over a Royal Resupply icon.
- Reworded several effects, tooltips, descriptions, and labels to better differentiate between gathering and fishing.
- Resource nodes/deposits found in glades are now called “gathering nodes”.
- Ponds are now called “fishing ponds”.
- Ore/veins are now always called “veins”.
- Camps that collect resources from gathering nodes (Trappers’ Camp, Foragers’ Camp, Herbalists’ Camp, Stonecutters’ Camp, Harvesters’ Camp) are now always referred to as “gathering camps”.
- Fishing Huts and Woodcutters’ Camps are not considered gathering camps and are labeled and referred to accordingly in descriptions.
- All effects and perks tied to either gathering and fishing have been updated to use this new type of labeling.
- All alerts, tooltips, and villager statuses tied to fishing were updated to reflect this change.
- Frog specialization icons in buildings are hidden when the Keepers of the Stone DLC is deactivated/not owned.
- Updated the description of the Overexploitation Cornerstone to clearly state how many Cysts will appear (based on the difficulty level).
- If you have more than one Cornerstone to choose from, the UI will no longer disappear after each pick and stay on the screen until you have selected all available Cornerstones.
- Same thing goes for the Stormforged Cornerstones in the Forsaken Altar.
- Added an automatic scroll feature to the Deeds section of the Settlement Complete window (so it moves down when more than one row of Deeds is unlocked).
- When a trader arrives right at the beginning of Drizzle (because their arrival was previously blocked by the Storm), they will appear in the settlement before the auto pause triggers.
- Added a setting for the default fishing bait mode in the Options menu.
- Modifiers and effects from World Events are now recorded in the Game History tab.
- Building entrances are now shown when selecting a ruin.
- World Map modifiers now show Hostility scaling values for all difficulty levels (in the form of X/Y/Z in the tooltip description).
- Removed the experience reward icon from Queen’s Hand Trial settlements.
- Added building categories to the in-game encyclopedia (displayed just below the name after selecting a building).
- The “Available Housing” tooltip now shows separate values for already built houses and houses under construction.
- The Blight Post entry in the in-game encyclopedia now also shows the Purging Fire recipe on the same page.
- Reworded the button text in the Somber Procession World Event to improve clarity.
- Changed the description of the Gentle Dawn Forest Mystery to mention that the starting glade also counts towards the bonus.
- Updated the descriptions of the Basic Housing need and Shelters to reflect that not all species use Shelters.
- Updated the description of Frogs to make it clearer that they do not live in Shelters.
- The text displayed at the end of a Blighstorm cycle has been changed to make it clearer that players can only embark to the Seal Forest from their last settlement.
- Updated the description of the Crown Chronicles effect to clarify that only ruins found in glades count towards it.
- The icon frame for not yet unlocked Hearth Level effects in the Hearth Panel is now gray (to indicate more clearly that a given effect must first be unlocked in the Citadel).
- Updated the Mine description for clarity.
Bug fixes
Due to Steam character limit, we’ve put the list of all 53 bug fixes on our website:
Other
- ⚡ Improved the overall performance and stability of the game.
- ⚡ Ruins in special glades (partially destroyed settlements, etc.) will now spawn with their entrance pointed towards the road most of the time.
- ⚡ Improved the pathfinding of the Treasure Stag. It should now more reliably choose closer glades.
- ⚡ Added 14 new music tracks available exclusively in the new Ashen Thicket biome.
- Replaced a few icons with new custom assets.
- Alarm Bells (cornerstone)
- Ancient Pact (cornerstone)
- Bone Tools (cornerstone)
- Flame Amulets (cornerstone)
- From the Shadows (cornerstone)
- Mark of the Sealed Ones (cornerstone)
- Queen’s Gift (cornerstone)
- Sahilda’s Secret Cookbook (cornerstone)
- Zhorg’s Secret Ingredient (cornerstone)
- Nest Eggs (restored event effect)
- Termite Nest (restored event effect)
- Unique Ally (restored event effect)
- Clothing (need category)
Known issues
- In some languages, the DLC welcome screen doesn’t include information that the Ashen Thicket biome was also added to the DLC. However, the biome will be generated on the World Map once you start a new cycle.
Download Against the Storm update 1.5 on PC.
