10/10 city-builder on Steam gets big discount and a new update

Eremite Games / Hooded Horse

While we’re looking forward to the release of Manor Lords later this week, its publisher Hooded Horse has another tasty treat for fans of the city-builder genre in store – 2023’s best city-builder, Against the Storm, is getting a fresh update.

Update 1.3 for Against the Storm is adding a challenging Glade Event to the game in the form of the legendary River Kelpie, a water demon trying to lure your settlers to their doom. This event comes with a new working effect and reward for completing it, though Eremite Games is being coy about revealing these – must be something fun!

In addition, three fresh Legendary Cornerstone are coming to the game, enhancing play styles that are heavier on the Blight side of life. Update 1.3 has some adjustments for many existing Cornerstones in store as well, not only tweaking their balance but sometimes fundamentally changing how they work. Developer Eremite Games explained that this became necessary to adapt them to all the new content that had been added since they were first designed.

With balance being a big theme in this update, you’ll find that a lot has changed when you log in after the patch, especially when it comes to difficulty in the early game – but you can dive into all that with the full Against the Storm update 1.3 patch notes below.

In case you haven’t picked up the game yet, Against the Storm is off by 35% on Steam right now, providing you with a great opportunity to correct your mistake.

Against the Storm update 1.3 patch notes

New content and features

Added a new Dangerous Glade Event:

• River Kelpie - A legendary, shape-shifting aquatic spirit that lurks near water and mesmerizes travelers. It is said that whoever acquires the Kelpie's bridle will be able to control it.

Added 3 new Legendary Cornerstones and one Rare perk:

• Mark of the Sealed Ones (Legendary, yearly) - A faint image of an underwater landscape shimmers inside the ancient jewel. While the Ancient Hearth is being corrupted, resources sacrificed in it burn 50% longer.
• From the Shadows (Legendary, yearly) - Confused, empty-eyed creatures emerge from the Hearth. Each time Voice of the Sealed Ones triggers after the Hearth reaches 100% Corruption, 3 new villagers appear in the settlement.
• Blightrot Pruner (Legendary, yearly) - Blightrot spores aren't technically eggs, but they taste the same. You gain 5 Eggs when a Blightrot Cyst appears in your settlement.
• Long Term Contract (Rare, traders, orders) - Workers who are assigned to a workplace that matches their comfort specialization receive an additional +2 Resolve from the "Comfortable" effect.

Balance

Changed the rewards for Hearth upgrades:

• The +2 Resolve bonus from the first level was redistributed to all other Hearth levels. Now the total Resolve gained from a fully upgraded Hearth is +3, but the first level only gives +1.
• Encampment (Level 1) - Gathered around the blazing fire, folks keep each other's spirits high. Global Resolve is increased by 1 and the Ancient Hearth's resistance to corruption is increased by 150.
• Neighborhood (Level 2) - Some viceroys say aesthetics don't matter out in the wilds, but you know better than that. Global production speed is increased by 10% and global Resolve is increased by 1. The Ancient Hearth's resistance to corruption is increased by 150.
• District (Level 3) - The town is booming with activity and industry thrives. Workers have a 10% higher chance of producing double yields and global Resolve is increased by 1. The Ancient Hearth's resistance to corruption is increased by 150.

This change was done so there was less need for micromanaging populations across multiple level 1 Hearths. We hope that this will make upgrading a Hearth to higher levels a bit more rewarding.

Rebalanced some Embarkation Bonuses:

• Additional Villagers - changed the cost bracket from 1 - 2 to a constant 2.
• Royal Permit - changed the cost bracket from 2 - 3 to 1 - 2. The Royal Permit now gives 3 rerolls instead of 1.
• Amber - changed the cost bracket from 2 - 5 to 3 - 5.
• Wood - increased the base amount of Wood from 30 to 40.
• Packs of Provisions - changed the cost bracket from 2 - 4 to 3 - 4.
• Parts - changed the cost bracket from 3 - 5 to 3 - 4.

• Added two new items (Sea Marrow and Porridge) to the random item pool in Caravans in the Embarkation Screen.
• Increased the base amount of Oil in starting Caravans from 10 to 20.
• Changed the cost of Blight Post upgrades.
• Instead of a choice between Pipes, Tools, and Parts, they now always cost Pipes.
• The resource numbers have been significantly reduced and differentiated between the two available upgrade levels.
• Level 1 now costs 2 Pack of Building Materials and 4 Pipes.
• Level 2 now costs 3 Packs of Building Materials and 6 Pipes.
• Buffed most of the Blight Post upgrades.
• Mobile Sparkcasters - increased the speed boost from 25% to 30%.
• The Triple Ignition System - this upgrade now also affects Blight Automatons.
• Alchemical Forge - this upgrade no longer increases production speed, but instead adds a 50% chance of producing double the amount of Purging Fire.
• Manned Lookout - this upgrade no longer gives a flat global bonus of 25% slower Blightrot Cyst generation. Instead, it now gives a 10% bonus for every worker assigned to the upgraded building.

Rebalanced several Cornerstones:

• Alarm Bells - the chance for double yields is now based on Corruption per minute instead of the Corruption percentage.
• Market Shift Plan - lowered the number of trade routes required to disable this effect’s drawback to 3 (from 5).
• Overexploitation - added a 30% gathering speed boost and lowered the node charge bonus slightly (from +15 to small nodes and +40 to large nodes, to +10 to small nodes and +25 to large nodes). Also changed this effect’s drawback - it no longer increases hostility, and instead spawns one Blightrot Cyst every time a resource node is depleted.
• Queen's Gift - this effect no longer gives 250 Hearth Resistance for every 2 woodcutters. Instead, it gives 150 Resistance for every woodcutter.
• Counterfeit Amber - this effect no longer has a drawback of increasing the Blightrot Cyst generation rate. Instead, traders will now have 1 less blueprint or perk on sale.
• Cannibalism - increased the amount of Meat gained for villager deaths from 30 to 40.
• Cheap Construction - this Cornerstone has been removed from the pool.
• Driving Water - this Cornerstone has been removed from the pool.
• Trade Hub - this Cornerstone no longer slows down Reputation gain from
• Resolve. Instead, it decreases the Reputation gained from fulfilling Orders by 50%.
• Crowded Houses (Stormforged) - this Cornerstone now increases the time between breaks by 25% instead of shortening the break time itself.
• Prosperous Settlement - this Cornerstone now has a drawback. Scouts work 10% slower on Glade Events.
• Protected Trade - increased the amount of Hostility reduction from 10 to 15. Added a drawback - this Cornerstone now lowers the amount of Resolve gained for fulfilling Complex Food needs by 1. Because of these changes, some Stormforged variants had to also be adjusted.

Rebalanced two Forest Mysteries:

• Forest Offerings - now gives 40 food instead of 30 for every Dangerous or Forbidden Glade Event solved during Drizzle.
• Leakage - now decreases the Hearth’s Resistance by 300 instead of 200 during the Storm.

• Changed the balance of the Sadrath the Wise World Event. Players will now get 40 Food Stockpiles instead of 25 for 10 Artifacts.
• Faction upgrades will no longer appear after a certain threshold in the Smoldering City in the Queen’s Hand Trial mode.
• Rebalanced the Untapped Wealth Forest Mystery. It now doubles the amount of secondary goods gatherers bring back from harvested nodes. Previously, this effect was described as an increase in crit chance, but under the hood, it just increased the amount of secondary yields by a small percentage… which did absolutely nothing, as the numbers were too small. So this change is more of a bug fix.
• Disabling a recipe in a service building now automatically opens up the Consumption Control panel.
• It’s no longer possible to disable a service while having the same need enabled in the Consumption panel.
• Disabling a service need in the Consumption Panel will stop the service building workers from transporting goods related to that need.
• Changed the first World Map layout after the tutorial. It now should have a few more modifiers and more biome variety.
• The Forsaken Altar can no longer be demolished, but can be moved.
• Tweaked the early Cornerstone drafting in favor of some early-game effects.

Changed some level up rewards:

• Level 9 - unlocks the Blightrot Pruner Cornerstone instead of Cheap Construction.
• Level 12 - unlocks the From the Shadows Cornerstone instead of Driving Water.

UX/UI improvements

• The max. zoom out distance in settlements is now 66% higher than before.
• Changed how the precision tree marking tool works (the smaller pointer activated by holding Shift).
• Going into “precision mode” now changes the pointer to a 3D cylinder instead of a flat circle.
• The cylinder is the size of one tile and snaps to the grid, making it easier to select single trees.
• Changed the highlight colors and opacity for marked trees to improve their visibility in all biomes.
• Added a “housing status” tooltip that is displayed when hovering over the homeless icon in the top left corner of the HUD.
• This tooltip shows the number of homeless villagers, free spaces in shelters, and free spaces in advanced houses.
• Changed the resource tooltip layout. The “produced in” building list was moved to a separate line to make the entire tooltip more readable.
• “Flawless” building variants have been removed from the list to keep it shorter.
• Added species names to resource tooltips for Complex Food and Consumable Items, so players will know at a glance how a good might be used.
• All goods on the resource bar in the top part of the HUD can now be clicked. Clicking a resource will open the Recipe Panel.
• The results screen at the end of a game now shows a summary of the attempted world event - whether it was completed or failed (plus the details like time and the exact objective numbers).
• Added a setting to auto return goods to the Main Warehouse if an ingredient was disabled in a recipe. To change this setting, simply go to the Gameplay tab in the Options menu.
• Added a Seal overlay to the World map (Seal icons pointing at the edge of the screen where a Seal is located). To enable them, simply hold Alt while on the World Map. The default keybind for this can be changed in the Options menu.
• Houses of species that are not yet present in a given run are hidden by default (until the first member of a species joins the settlement).
• Added a “show house entrances” setting to the Options menu.
• Changed the “use water” Order objective on the HUD to specify that the rainwater has to be used in engines.
• Changed the short version of the “complete trade routes with multiplier” order objective on the HUD. It now displays the required multiplier as well.
• Improved perk/effect sorting on the HUD. Effects with the same label should now be displayed next to each other.
• Perks and orders mentioning glades now have dangerous/forbidden icons in their description to make things clearer.
• All events that can be converted into a positive decoration now state the exact bonus (how much resolve, how many goods per minute, etc.) in their description.
• Added a separate icon to worker slots to distinguish the “going to take a break” action from other “going to” activities.
• To cancel an ongoing Glade Event, the “cancel” button now needs to be held (to make it impossible to do this by accident).
• Changed the time information in the Glade Event panel. It now shows “estimated time”, to make clear that the timer is not exact and can be influenced by random events or worker behavior.
• Added a “save warehouse limits” setting to the Options menu. Turning it off will reset the minimum values set in Warehouses at the start of every game.
• The wildcard panel can now be searched by descriptions (so also produced items or rainwater types) and not just building names.
• Changed the offer sorting in the trade route panel.
• Offers are now sorted and displayed as available based on a base value (instead
• of the multiplied value after selecting a higher goods count).
• The trade offer slot will now highlight why a given offer is unavailable.
• The Demanding and Decadent species attributes in the in-game encyclopedia are now displayed as plain numbers.
• Improved the wording in the tooltip for the Demanding species attribute in the in-game encyclopedia.
• Added resource icons to a few perk descriptions that were missing them.
• The last textbox of the first tutorial will now automatically disappear after a few seconds.
• Storage limits are now automatically disabled in the tutorial.
• Buildings added by biomes (such as the Archaeologist's Office or Beacon Tower) no longer highlight the category they are added to at the beginning of the game.

Bug fixes

• Fixed a bug where moving a construction site in a game with the Corrosive Torrent modifier would permanently remove the delivered resources.
• Fixed a bug where the Cornerstone icon would disappear from the HUD when all other icons in the top right corner were active at the same time.
• Fixed a bug where the upgrades panel in the Blight Post had an incorrect tooltip.
• Fixed a bug that prevented players from cycling between Dangerous and Forbidden Events.
• Fixed a bug that caused specialization bonus tooltips to not appear in the building UI.
• Fixed a bug with the Vassal Tax Forest Mystery not appearing in normal games.
• Fixed a flow issue in one of the dialogue options with Aunt Lori (about Zhorg).
• Fixed a bug where searching the encyclopedia for various buildings and previewing ruin/reputation blueprints would sometimes show incorrect results.
• Fixed a bug that caused the tree selection tool to be slightly inaccurate under certain circumstances. Also, fixed a slight 3D model offset in the Scarlet Orchard trees.
• Fixed a bug that caused the time to incorrectly reset after reaching 24 hours in the History tab in Smoldering City.
• Fixed a bug where the Like a Machine Deed would be completed after losing a game.
• Fixed a bug where the particle effect around completed orders was displayed in other UI windows.
• Fixed a bug that caused some small glades to not open properly.
• Fixed a bug where an incorrect footer was displayed under the Purging Fire resource tooltip.
• Added a cap of 20 housing slots to all houses to avoid UI size issues (e.g. when the Urban Planning perk is triggered many times).
• Fixed a bug with an incorrect label in the Vitality effect.
• Fixed a typo in the Forbidden Ritual effect.
• Changed the name of “Nauseous Spores” to “Nauseating Spores”.
• Changed the wording in the trader assault popup.
• Added some missing text (“this effect is only active when the corresponding glade event is being worked on”) to several working effect descriptions.
• Renamed the “Lumber Mill Efficiency Test” Order to avoid confusion.
• Fixed multiple typos and inconsistencies in the Simplified Chinese version of the game (Sealed Ones, Blight-related terms, Prestige, dialogue with Aunt Lori, Alarm Bells, Wild Growth, upgrades, perks).
• Fixed multiple typos and errors in the Korean version of the game (building names, profession names, tutorial text, world events, generic perk descriptions).
• Fixed multiple typos and inconsistencies in the Polish version of the game (species descriptions, perk descriptions).
• Fixed multiple typos and inconsistencies in the Japanese version of the game (Hearth Defect, Advent of Flame, upgrades UI, dialogue with Aunt Lori, From the Ashes, wiki, destruction tool).
• Fixed a few typos in the French version of the game (Secure Perimeter, gameplay settings).
• Fixed a few typos in the Turkish version of the game (order objectives).
• Fixed a few typos in the German version of the game (Tightened Belt, Forsaken Gods Followers).
• Fixed a typo in the Spanish version of the game (Forsaken Gods Followers).
• Fixed a typo in the Russian version of the game (Small Altar Box).
• Fixed a typo in the Traditional Chinese version of the game (Alarm Bells).
• Fixed a bug with incorrect shading on some trees in the Sealed Forest.
• Fixed a bug where players in the tutorial would get the Royal Resupply after an update.
• Fixed a bug with missing spaces in building lists in resource node tooltips.
• Fixed a bug that caused the tab buttons in the Trens panel to be inconsistently sized.
• Fixed a bug that caused the Blight Post and Hydrant to be available in games without Blightrot.
• Fixed a bug where Firekeepers would not have a status icon next to their worker slot.
• Fixed a bug with a missing sound effect when opening the Consumption Control panel.

Other

Added new custom icons to multiple places:

• Ghosts
• Haunted ruins
• Two Order objectives
• Blight Post upgrades
• The “comfortable” Resolve effect
• Citadel Upgrades - factions
• Converted Glade Events
• Five Legendary Cornerstones

• Improved the overall performance of the game, especially in settlements.
• Added an option to modify the game’s localization using a .json file.
• Added credits to the game. They are automatically shown after reaching certain milestones in the game, but can also be viewed after clicking the “credits” button in the main menu.