Anvil Empires Windows game

Originally posted on Steam on May 27, 2024. We are catching up on the backlog and will eventually post the devblogs here as they are published.

Disclaimer: Features discussed in this post reflect what is currently under development and not necessarily what will be shipping with the next test. Anything mentioned below may change at any time due to the experimental nature of Pre-Alpha development. Nothing mentioned here should be taken as a promised feature or addition to the eventual game.

Tavern

One ongoing goal is to make Towns (previously called Settlements) more useful and integrated with player's core gameplay. Players should have more reasons to go into Town and moreover to interact with other players there. The Tavern is a structure inside Towns that provides an area for social activity and offers gameplay benefits as well.

Food items can be purchased at the Tavern like Bread and Pie, as well a new type of Food item: Mead. When Food or Drink is consumed at the Tavern together with others, players will receive a Rested Status which will boost Stamina regeneration rate for a period of time. The more players that are in the Tavern, the longer the Rested Status will last.

Central Marketplace

Another new Town structure is being added to facilitate trade between players more effectively. The Central Marketplace allows players to sell their items to other players. There are several key differences between the Central Marketplace and the Marketplace Shops from prior tests (which has been obsoleted and will be removed from the game).

First, items from all players in a Town are sold at the same location now meaning players looking to buy items can conveniently view and buy goods from one central location. Second, players selling items have finer control over their Sell Orders. They can sell different batches of items at different prices and earnings from each order can be withdrawn separately. Finally, all the details of the market can be viewed from the world map screen. Information on every order, including the Seller, Quantity, and Price are all visible right from the map. Beyond the initial version of this structure, additional functionality is being developed like the ability to place down Buy Orders to be fulfilled by other players in the future.

Town Changes

Other big changes are coming to Towns and in how they interact with Homesteads. Homesteads are no longer tied to any given Town and can be built completely independent of them. That is, Homesteads can be built anywhere in the world and don't need to be built within the vicinity of a Town. After looking at player feedback and reexamining the goals of Homestead, it was decided that a more organic relationship between Homesteads and Towns would be ideal, rather than a forced one. This required a big reworking of our core Town/Homestead code but we believe this is an important foundational change for the future.

The goal is for the Tavern and Central Marketplace to help build that natural relationship between Homesteads and Towns. To further push into this, two other structures are being added to Towns. First, there is the Town Workshop, which will be the Town variant of the Workbench/Advanced Workbench. As a natural byproduct of Homestead progression, players will accumulate resources that they can refine into useful materials at the Town Workshop during their trips into Town. For example, Ash is now used as an ingredient to produce Mortar and excess Malachite is used to produce Copper Nails. Second, the Merchant no longer spawns in the world and is now a structure that is built in the Town. Players making trips into towns can use their Silver to purchase materials like Wood Planks.

Be sure to add Anvil Empires to your wish list on Steam. If you want to join the community, head over the to official Discord server or Subreddit.