Bellwright August Update Patch Notes

A new update has just arrived for Bellwright and it fixes several issues in the game such as various instances of crash and changed the bandit migration issue. The update also improves the performance of the and adds several bug fixes. You can read the patch notes below.

Patch Notes

August Update brings major balance overhauls of weapons and armors that improve progression and combat feel, and make the long-awaited Gear Presets feature so much more useful when planning your army loadouts, group combat improvements that make soldiers stay in formations, and pages upon pages of other important changes like villager nicknames and block assist.

We’ve also expanded gameplay settings with options like hunger and food spoilage speed, experience gain, how fast equipment breaks, and other things like damage multipliers. If you’re someone who likes to tweak the game to your liking to save time with the grind, give yourself an additional challenge, or just experience the game in a different way, let us know what other setting you’d like to see!

The change that’s most noticeable as soon as you load the game, however, is definitely improved performance. We’ve been working on all kinds of optimization for a while now and would appreciate your feedback on how the game runs for you before and after the update.

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Notable Changes

Added Gear Presets – now you should have an ability to assign gear presets to NPCs depending on the role, including creating and editing custom ones for your needs.
Reworked combat skills experience – defeating enemies grants a certain amount of exp depending on their type, which goes into strength/agility and weapon skills, depending on the weapon used, and part of it is shared with teammates who are fighting nearby.
Rebalanced gear – various changes to Armor types and overall progression, including adjustments to their stats and speed reduction values. Now you and your NPCs also have to meet strength requirements to equip Armors (disabled by default on old saves).
Added new gameplay settings – Weapon and Armor Skill Requirements, Hunger Speed, Food Spoilage Speed, Skill Learning Speed, Equipment Breaking Speed, Raids on Outposts, Multiple Threats at Once, and Melee and Ranged Damage.
Added a way to mitigate speed reduction from armors; expanded Strength skill with mitigate speed reduction value that reduces the impact
Made companions run away from combat when hungry instead of switching to workers.
Added an ability to give villagers nicknames.
Added displaying neutral villagers on the map.
Added melee block assist setting enabled by default.
Significantly improved GPU-related performance.

Equipment & Items

Added a distinction between different armor types.
Split T2-T3 Medium and Heavy armors into separate research branches.
Adjusted speed reduction of armors according to their type.
Adjusted armor stats according to their new tech tree positions.
Made some of the gear unlock together with buildings where they’re made.
Significantly decreased Iron usage in T2 armors.
Slightly buffed stats of T2 gloves.
Swapped some of the assets of helmets and pants to match their looks to stats.
Replaced Blacksmith with Weaver as a research requirement of Leather Reinforced Gloves.
Replaced Tin Ore with Tin Ingot required for Studded Shirt.
Made pants at Tanner’s Hut not require a profession.
Added Strength skill requirements to all armors.
Adjusted skill requirements for some of the T2-T3 weapons.
Adjusted armor values and speed reduction of T1 gloves.
Added craftable clothing to Weaver Hut.

Tweaked weapon sizes to improve combat gameplay and feel.
Split One and Two Handed swords into separate research branches.
Adjusted weapon damage values based on progression changes.

Reduced cost of Bronze and Iron arrows.
Made T2-T3 bows and arrows unlock separately from each other.
Made Iron Arrows craftable at Workshop instead of Blacksmith.

Introduced Steel later in T3 progression.
Replaced Copper Nails with Iron Nails in difficult bandit camp loot.
Added missing knowledge book tiers to be dropped as loot.
Made arrow packs not stack if they aren’t full.
Fixed spoiled food disappearing if it spoils during a shipment.

Fixed extra arrow usage when firing the last arrow from a quiver.
Fixed wrong calculation of arrows left after replenishment.
Fixed Strap’s description saying it’s made of iron.
Fixed Broadsword icon.

Skill Progression

Rebalanced Shields skill range bonus to be -5%/+5%.
Increased experience gain for melee skills from hits and blocks.
Made Labourer skill increase the speed of building for villagers.
Buffed Lubomir’s Hunting and other skills.

Fixed not gaining experience for hits in practice fights and against animals.
Fixed gaining experience from attacking corpses.

Villagers

Set movement speed debuff to -20% when a villager is hungry.
Made villagers equip bags as separate containers instead of extending their inventories; makes them respect container rules.
Added visible “Settlement of Origin” for villagers.
Fixed movement speed debuff not working.
Lowered movement speed debuff of injuries from -50% to -20%.
Made workers sheath their weapon when switching from companions.

Added overhead icons for hungry companions.
Made companions sheath their shields on non-combat orders.
Decreased waiting distance for stocking up.
Improved companion stock up queue to prevent pedestrian traffic jams.

Fixed workers not holding ground when their only weapon is in a tool slot.
Fixed a crash related to containers missing when villagers try to deliver items.
Fixed villagers sometimes not being interactable after loading a save.
Fixed villagers getting stuck delivering during auto-harvesting.
Fixed villagers getting stuck harvesting with a one-off order with 0 amount.
Fixed villagers requesting items for crafting from multiple sources.
Fixed a very rare bug when a villager ends up without a settlement.
Fixed workers getting stuck when attacked with only a weapon in their tool slot.
Fixed villagers sometimes getting stuck when trying to harvest resources for construction.
Fixed companions sheathing their shields in combat when receiving any new order.
Fixed archers running away from battles when they shouldn’t.
Fixed bonus damage from traits not applying for NPCs.

Structures

Added ability to remove input items if crafting hasn’t started yet.
Added previews of interaction points when placing a building.
Made cooking over a campfire increase Cooking skill instead of Crafting.
Made construction sites scale up the number of workers with tiers of buildings.
Added specific messages of what blocks placement of a building.
Rebalanced Town Hall research recipe to require more advanced T2 resources.

Fixed Pit mining not working when the player is far away from the mine.
Fixed villagers getting stuck under the Mining Hut’s roof.
Fixed constructions sometimes getting stuck when loading a save in a way that only player can interact with them.
Fixed disabled groups and items not applying properly when copying storage rules.
Fixed job categories for Campfire and Drying Rack.

Combat & Enemies

Improved group combat AI to better maintain formation when fighting close to each other.
Prevented accidentally hitting neutral NPCs while in battle.

Fixed camp guards sometimes getting stuck far away, making it impossible to clear the camp without finding them.
Fixed patrols sometimes getting stuck in place indefinitely.
Fixed brigand parties getting confused and walking away from their destination if met somewhere half-way.
Fixed battles getting stuck when villagers are hiding inside structures.
Fixed raids not disabling properly if they were already planned.
Fixed NPCs sometimes getting stuck while in combat.
Fixed NPCs fighting too passively while holding position.

User Interface

Added gameplay customization screen to character creator.
Added a popup notification when the player levels up a skill.
Added settlement names to raid and reclamation notification popups.
Added a popup notification when the player recruits a new villager.
Added a list of destroyed buildings to the raid report.
Added notifications for won and crushed rebellions.
Added volume size to popups of equippable containers.
Added durability bars for equipment in the Squad menu.
Added the word “Broken” to the tooltips of broken items in addition to broken icons.
Combined inventory and equipment in the stockpile management screen, so it doesn’t require scrolling.
Unified building renaming screens when opening them from different menus.
Tweaked building screen to improve usability.
Added showing real time for researching.

Fixed a warning when missing a smithing tool.
Fixed a warning when tool skill is insufficient.
Fixed floating damage numbers not showing for clients in co-op.
Fixed stuttering when using food or durability sliders for the squad.
Fixed Melee and Arrow Piercing damages having the same names in tooltips and traits.

Quests

Changed Copper Ore to Iron Ingots in the Lost and Found quest objective.

Fixed crashes during “Safety First” and “Run of the Mill” quests.
Fixed a crash when completing “Special Delivery” quest.
Fixed “A Village in Need” quest getting stuck if the player presses ESC during Lubomir’s talk.
Fixed a crash related to starting “Crasmere Sigil” quest.
Fixed duplicated dialogue lines in “Self-preservation” quest.
Fixed recruitment menu not showing up if player doesn’t have enough renown to hire outside of Lubomir’s quest.
Fixed not being able to pay 100 coins right away in “Special Delivery” quest.
Fixed Forged in Copper quest title to be Hunter’s Help.
Fixed crash in co-op related to killing a quest NPC.

Sounds

Improved army commanding voice over to add more feedback that orders are given and received.
Improved various sounds related to armors in and out of combat.
Improved various taunting voice overs.
Prevented other NPCs from talking when the player is already in dialogue.
Improved sound behavior of NPC voices and animals.
Tweaked sound air absorption for wolves.

Fixed wrong sound effects on hitting some of the rocks.

Performance & Visuals

Updated FSR from version 3.04 to 3.1.
Added sharpening settings that improve visual quality when using upscaling.
Made graphics settings apply automatically to allow previewing visual changes.
Improved field of view setting to allow precise values.
Improved visuals of snow gathering on grass and small foliage.
Added a new setting to choose Global Illumination separate from the quality.
Reordered Graphics Settings by order of performance impact.
Added sky bloom bleeding effect dependent on exposure.
Tweaked color grading slightly.
Tweaked some of the bonfire lights for better visual effects.
Reworked and improved various tree visuals.
Improved and added various drop bags for seeds.

Fixed textures sometimes not loading properly.
Fixed snow collecting on food when cooking on campfire and smoking rack.
Fixed Smelter effects not working properly for clients in co-op.
Fixed stutter when applying various non-graphics settings.
Fixed bloomery sometimes disappearing and appearing.
Fixed leaves appearing when hitting Staging Ground.

Improvements & Fixes

Improved Unstuck feature in cases where previously it didn’t work.

Fixed crash related to killing a deer when it’s stuck.
Fixed some of the GPU crashes related to opening the map.
Fixed the first sleep in a tavern not being free if the player has money.
Fixed respawn progress of animals getting reset when saving and loading.
Fixed not sheathing a weapon or a shield after a quick use of both weapon slots.