Roguefort 0.24.0 — Patch Notes

Hey everyone,

Before anything else, I’d like to say a big thank you to our community pixel artists: ArkHaven, DatSheepDoe, Elfie the Explorer, sometimesihavequestions / Merlin and Briarios. They’ve drawn more than 600 (!) of the game's sprites between them, which is incredible. Roguefort wouldn't look anything like it does without this work and the many discussions that have gone into cohering and developing the visual style. So, I wanted to say thanks again, especially as we get closer to Early Access and there are so many more eyes on the game.

OK, on to the update. This is the biggest one the playtest has had, and since 0.22.0 and 0.23.0 both went out without patch notes, these cover everything since 0.21.0.

The headlines:

Fortress, a new colony mode on the title screen. Found a colony with seven settlers, then dig, farm, make cheese and hold off raiders.
The affineur's bench, where you design your own spell cheese and age it on a cave rack.
Villages, towns and cities rebuilt from the ground up, with real inns where you can rent a room and hear the bard.
Rivers and roads that run across the whole continent, and boats that follow the rivers.
Secret rooms and besieged holdfasts in the dungeons, javelins, and spears that actually reach.
A long pass on the Steam Deck and controllers, a much smoother co-op, and a world that looks very different in all three views.

Most of the new towns, rivers and roads need a new game. An older save keeps every place you've already visited exactly as it was, and places you haven't reached yet are built the new way.

There's also a very long list of fixes further down. Most of them came from your reports, so you'll see a lot of your names in there.

Thanks so much to everyone who's played, sent saves and screenshots, written up bugs, made suggestions and joined in the discussions on Discord. It makes a huge difference. Many of the changes in this update started as one of your reports or ideas, and the game is better for it every time. I really appreciate it, and I hope you enjoy this one!

Tim

Fortress12

Fortress is a new mode on the title screen. Generate a continent, pick a starting site, name your colony and found it with seven settlers.
You don't play one character in Fortress. You pause, set the speed and drag orders across the map for digging, felling, building and drawing water, and your settlers take the work, haul it to storage, eat, sleep and slowly get better at their jobs.
Colonies start with a surface, a cellar and deep rock with caves hidden in it. Farm wheat and cave truffles, milk goats and a cow, and age cheese on racks, where a wheel aged underground yields an extra one.
Seasons, weather, fire, flooding and roof collapse all happen to your colony. Settlers get hurt, make friends and rivals, and visitors ask to join, up to 32 living settlers. Salt caravans come to trade.
Raiders come too, and they fight exactly as they do in Adventure. Craft spears, slings, mail and shot, and each raid arrives as a letter with Locate and Defense buttons.
Send expeditions across the world chart, set up outposts, chase ambitions, and retire a colony when you're done with it.
A guided first day walks you through your people, a first tree order, beds, food and water. You can skip it or tuck it away.
Fortress has its own soundtrack, 17 tracks by alkakrab, and combat music fades in when raiders arrive.
Fortress plays on a controller as well as mouse and keyboard. The D-pad walks every button, View brings up a map cursor and A marks orders.
WASD and the arrow keys pan the camera, Space always pauses, and every colony key can be rebound.rubberychickentrespiratesque
Whole colonies were dying of thirst beside a well. Settlers drink water left on the ground, caregivers carry water to anyone who can't walk, and wells keep drawing.trespiratesque
Roofs with no finished support wait as an order until the support is built.trespiratesque

The affineur's bench10

Pressing a cheese in the full game opens the affineur's bench, where you design your own spell cheese. Bring curd and two heart herbs, pick a working to give the spell its shape, choose how long to age it, and press. The named recipes you already know sit behind Known cheeses.
There are eight attack workings and four friendly ones. The 25 heart herbs are plants you already gather, and which of them a press will take depends on the country it stands in.
Your wheel is named for its region, herb and age, something like Meadow Heather Wheel. It stays on your spell belt for good, and a cast costs Manna and a cooldown, never the cheese.
A panel shows what each ingredient brings before anything is spent. Use up three of one herb and you learn its rind working, an extra effect your wheels can carry.arkhaven
Put a crafted wheel on a cheese cave's ageing rack and it ages by the calendar, even while you're away. At seven days it gains a second rind working and its region's effect, at forty days a third, and a wheel left for a year or two picks up the long-lay effects.
Friendly wheels heal, give Rinded or clear poison, sickness, slowing and corrosion. They reach you, co-op partners, pets, hirelings and summons, and can never heal an enemy.
Emmental Mend is a new Swiss wheel that heals you and every wounded friend within two tiles.arkhaven
On a full belt the game asks which slot a new wheel should take, spells can be dragged between belt slots, and the pack's wheel belt lines up with the spell bar slot for slot.theartolaterbancheis
The Recipe Book says what each spell wheel does before you press it, ticks or crosses every ingredient, filters by element and tier, and has a search box.rubberychicken.knifee
Forgefloor Cheddar and the other forge cheeses give 25% burn resistance. Their fire resistance had never done anything.rubberychicken

Villages, towns and cities10

Villages, towns and cities in a new game are laid out the way real ones grow: a green or crossroads at the heart, houses facing their street with gardens behind, and fields and pasture beyond. Every household has a bed for each person in it, children included.
Each kind of village builds to suit its land. Fishing villages have a harbour and jetties, desert villages gather round an oasis with flat plaster roofs and sandstone walls, and a place that stands in a lake is built on an island.
Fences have gates where the paths meet them, so you never have to walk right round a village to leave it.
Pens and pastures have animals in them: goats and sheep on the terraces, cattle in the fold, yaks in the byres of cold-country halls, buffalo round the fens, hens about the yards and gulls on the jetties. They belong to the village, and killing one costs you standing there.
Market squares and harbours are busy by day, with stallholders at their stalls, goodwives running errands and fishers working the jetties. Towns are dressed with the clutter of their trades, and hovering a prop tells you what it is.
Roquelle's rock has three Upper Doors and gated cuts leading out through the massif, with the Archive in the great cave mouth and the Vault behind it racked with blue wheels.
Thymerock's citadel is built at last, with the Ringlord's seat, the Legion's barracks and the Stone-shrine round the drill yard.
Fennmarche's Physician-Council hall and great hospital stand on islands in the mere, and every family has a house along its shores.
Brinehold lives off the sea, with sharks hung on the jetty heads, boats on trestles, fish drying on the flakes and the Salt Council hall standing at last. Grasse-Verdenne's Council square sells cheese, bread and wine beside a bank of chalk cellar doors.
Arriving at a town or city used to cost most of a second. The game now plans it in the background as you walk toward it.

Inns and taverns4

Inns and alehouses in a new game are places to spend an evening. Each has a fire with settles in front of it, a bar with casks, lanterns at the door and a sign with the house's name, and the keeper works in their own house.
You can rent a room. Guest rooms stay locked until you pay, at the door or with the keeper: 16 gold for a night, 40 for three or 80 for a week. The key lets your whole party in until ten in the morning on the day you check out, and at night you ring the bell to wake the keeper.
Bards play in the evenings. Each line of the song floats up off the bard, the room joins in the chorus, and every people sings its own songs. Stay for a whole song and you get Bard's Spirits.
Townsfolk head out for the evening to the nearest house with a free seat, then go home to bed.

Rivers, roads and the wider world9

Start a new game on the main continent and you'll find a real river network, from mountain streams to great rivers with estuaries, shoals and white-water rapids.
Boats follow the rivers. The width of the river decides how big a boat it will float, bridges let boats pass under, and a ship's helm follows the channel.
Roads join up into one network, keep off lake edges and cross water only by a bridge or causeway. Rest stops with a well and a trough, and wayside shrines, sit along the long stretches between towns.
Biome and territory borders bend in ragged curves, where they used to follow straight lines.thesquirrel_74982danekjovaxutc5
New Crossings get the same rivers and roads, every one has a desert, and the capital your first quest names can be walked to.trespiratesque
Angelica's Grace is now Amelia's Grace. Every glade is its own lush clearing, with a spring, fruit trees on grass, daisies, stepping stones and a standing stone that tells her story, and the glades that sat deep in lakes are on dry land.
Eclipses are now the Dimming. They come about once a fortnight and never in your first six days.danekjovaxutc5xxturiflower47xx
Hunting contracts can be filled, and a hunted-out valley fills up again.danekjovaxutc5
Critter Bait brings wildlife to you, three times the local spawn rate for 150 turns. Want turtle shells? Expect crabs.trespiratesque

Getting around7

Click a far campfire, chest, workbench, tree, bed or trader and you walk up to it and use it. If it's gone or a foe turns up, you stop.danekjovaxutc5urughak
Long trips remember the way they came, so the trip back follows the same road. When a trip stops, it tells you what stopped it..knifeetthfry
Shift+X after you stop a trip heads back toward where you last set off for.rubberychicken
The world map has a Waypoints list (K, or L3 on a pad), and each waypoint can have a colour, a tag and a note. Shift-click the minimap to walk to that tile.danekjovaxutc5
The world map marks each settlement's waystone, filled in once you've activated it, and places named on signposts show their names.danekjovaxutc5bossman62arkhavenhorth.panthur
Winged companions fly scouting runs and reveal the ground along the way. Alt+S (L2+Menu on a pad) sends one, and aiming past its range circle shows where it will actually fly.danekjovaxutc5
Arriving somewhere new shows a pixel title card with the place's name, and a new game opens on the land's name with its guild's shields.

Dungeons9

About a third of dungeon floors hide a secret room. Stand beside its door for a few turns and the wall gives way. What waits inside suits the dungeon, and the chest rolls Rare or better.Splattercat
A few plains and forest dungeon mouths are beset holdfasts, walled yards under siege. Five waves come over the wall, and the strongbox stays barred until the last one is down.
Every dungeon has a companion worth freeing somewhere in its cages. Three dungeons in four had nobody to rescue.danekjovaxutc5
Cages hold more than rats, and an empty-looking cage may hold one of the floor's own monsters, which comes out fighting.drachasortrespiratesquedatsheeptho
Arctic, taiga, snow peak, glade, savanna and coastal dungeons have their own layouts, monsters and bosses. More than half of dungeons used to end with the Archlich. The plains boss is now The Stilled Affineur.danekjovaxutc5arkhaven
Clear a dungeon and a tougher band may move in at a later season.
Enemies that lost you behind a door used to walk into the wall and vanish. They stay on the floor now.rubberychicken
Your Cave Bat's echolocation works and maps nearby rooms while it follows you.danekjovaxutc5
Boss fights play the ordinary fight music, and Mahargekdar's Plane plays the calm underground piece.urughakrubberychicken

Combat and weapons8

F aims whatever you're holding. A sword strikes beside you, a spear reaches any tile two out, and a bow or javelin aims at range. Step toward an enemy two tiles away with a spear and you swing at it.rubberychickennalathnidragon
Javelins are a new one-handed weapon. They stack to five, you pick them back up after a throw, and a following dog fetches them.danekjovaxutc5
Cursed gear carries a bargain now: strong stats with a nasty catch, shown on its card. Unidentified gear waits in your pack until you know what it is, and sells for half price.danekjovaxutc5nalathnidragon
A new run rule lets your own blasts catch you. It's off unless you choose it.danekjovaxutc5
While hidden you can walk up to a sleeping creature and backstab it, and calm monsters leave you alone..knifeedanekjovaxutc5
Each banked level-up deals its own three cards. No more taking the same mythic twenty times.tobacoosdrachasor
Monsters walk onto your traps and landmines. A creature killed by the last tick of poison or burning, or caught in a catapult blast, pays out XP and loot.
Vampires reach for Fresh Blood when hungry, and a vampire the sun can't burn isn't told to seek shelter.rubberychickendanekjovaxutc5

Co-op13

Rejoin a world and you keep your name, guild, level, perks and pack. On Steam a friend is matched by their account.rubberychicken
Walking on a long-lived save used to lag the whole party, with ping climbing to a full second on every step. A quiet step sends a few bytes now.rubberychicken
Joiners see their own step the moment they press the key. The host still decides every move, but over a long-distance connection the wait before your character moved went from about a third of a second to almost nothing.
Hosts send about half as much data as before, which eases the lag a four-player party put on everyone, host included.
Kill XP is shared. Everyone who hurt a monster, or stood within eight tiles when it died, gets the full XP. Gold and loot stay with the player who landed the kill.
Kills by your pet, hired soldier, turret, trap or spell pay you, whoever's turn it was, and your pet's finds follow your own loot settings.bancheis
Each player has their own Arts and Spell Mastery, and a guest's spells cost what the guest's own belt shows.
Turn bubbles reach 12 tiles by default, and the host can set anything from 6 tiles to Everywhere. Hosts can press Alt+T to switch the turn mode, and everyone sees the new mode on screen.morighshexara
Your turn alert shows over open menus, plays a sound and blinks the window title.morighshexara
Guests can ride and stable their own horse or mule, take yogurt and honey, open a holdfast's strongbox and see a secret wall give way when they find it.
When a join fails, a screen tells you why, and Save party gives every player a copy they can play.
Two players using one chest, barrel or bench at the same moment can't duplicate or lose items, and Exchange listings and Post Office letters only ever pay out once.rubberychicken
A guest who drops out in a dungeon comes back beside the party, and the log names your partner when something bites them.

Steam Deck and controllers8

The game recognises a Steam Deck more reliably, and Gaming Mode always opens fullscreen and sharp.tthfry
Text fields typed every key twice in Gaming Mode. That's fixed, and on a pad every text field opens the game's own on-screen keyboard.tthfry
Putting the Deck to sleep saves your game, and the sound comes back when it wakes.
Joining a friend from the Steam friends list works when Roguefort was closed.peacook
Every action can be reached by pad, and prompts across the game show pad buttons. Javelins, bows, polearms and scouts all aim by pad.tthfry
Tap R1 for the Panels hub and hold it to swap weapons. The Post Office, the Exchange and trading all work by pad.
The right stick scrolls whichever window is on top, and Settings and the long lists mark the row the pad is on.
Small text on a Deck is a little larger, in every font.

How the world looks12

Walls, floors and ground are redrawn everywhere, in every dungeon biome, town, interior and ship. Ancient Ruins, the Underground Grove, the Sunken Library and the Old Mouth have been dressed by hand.
Grass is a calmer, darker olive so bushes and green items stand out on it, roads have their dithered edges back, and the desert shows its dunes again.samv123danekjovaxutc5
You can build 63 new pieces of furniture, from tables, beds and bookcases to banners and a scarecrow. Chests store things, beds let you rest and the lamp gives light.
Shadows follow the sun, the moon and the weather in all three views, and Settings has a Shadows checkbox.
Water in 2D is alive, with sun glints, surf running up the beach, rolling swell and rings where you wade and where rain lands. In 2.5D and first person the sea surfs, lakes lap, rivers run and marshes bubble.
Clouds cast their own shadows, and storms are dark and heavy with lightning that lights up the scene. You can still read the ground under a thunderstorm, and Settings has a Weather darkness slider.samv123
Days have a golden hour, a blue hour after sunset and a rose dawn, and at night campfires, torches and lamps throw warm pools of light.
Fireflies come out on warm nights in 2.5D and first person, smoke rises from lived-in houses, and mist lies on the water on clear mornings.
Levelling up is a moment now. A rune seal stamps out under your feet, a column of light goes up and a shield with your new level rises.
First person was rebuilt with a pixel sky, mouse look, your own arms in your gear, roofs on houses, and hills and villages on the horizon. Tab (Y on a pad) opens its Actions menu.
Menus and windows have a new look, with navy panels, teal buttons and one pixel frame round every window.
Fixed toads raining onto the winter snow.danekjovaxutc5

People, family and quests11

A killing costs you standing only with the people who saw it, the way theft always has. Catch a villager in a blast aimed at something else and the watch arrests you, where the whole town used to turn on you.arkhaven
Cities have a fence in the tenements who buys goods stolen in town and sells lockpicks. Every general store sells lockpicks too.samv123
Your family can move in with you. Ask from the Family panel and they move to a bed near your home campfire and eat from your larder. Right-click a bed to choose who sleeps in it, or send them back to their old home.danekjovaxutc5elfietheesp55
Townsfolk show their pronouns from the first meeting, and their titles and family words match. No more Gentle Thugs either.danekjovaxutc5
Beside a person, the interact key talks to them, and villagers with quests stand at their door during working hours.samv123
Quest objectives now match what actually completes them, so nothing sends you hunting for a shed that isn't there.
The arrow to a quest giver follows them through their day, and gather and supply contracts can be handed in at the settlement's board when the giver is away.danekjovaxutc5samv123
Village work pays faction standing, the main story pays its full standing, and it stays reachable in a town that has turned on you.jungcodextheartolater
For a new character's first three days, contracts offer short, nearby work only, and a new run starts outdoors on ground you can reach.samv123
Keeper Sennet's Blue Guild stage can be accepted. It had been offered forever and refused every time.danekjovaxutc5
All 306 books sit on a shelf somewhere in every world, saves included, so the Loremaster achievement can be finished.elfietheesp55

Homestead, farming and food11

Walk across your own farm. Planting and harvesting are their own actions, and you choose which crop goes in.xxturiflower47xx
Plant Field in the Homestead build menu marks out a field with a drag and sows a seed in each empty plot. Plant Tree does the same for an orchard, and Alt+P sows every empty plot around you.urughakdanekjovaxutc5
One swing of the scythe cuts every patch in reach, and the scythe, whistle and bucket ride free in the tool roll.danekjovaxutc5
Move furniture and chests, contents and all, and set a bigger chest on a smaller one to upgrade it. You can also furnish the hold of a bigger ship.danekjovaxutc5samv123
Homestead workers eat three meals a day from chests near their cottage. They used to be starving by the end of their first day.drachasorbancheisarkhavenurughak
Hired soldiers level up from kills made near them, up to your own level, and use a weapon and armour you give them.bancheis
Village herders sell milk by the pail, so cheesemaking doesn't have to start with owning a farm. Milk keeps for a day and a half.rubberychickenxxturiflower47xx
Wheat grinds into flour and bakes into bread, root vegetables roast, and there are new soups, porridge and the Drover's Bun. Fruit, soup and stew quench thirst as they feed.danekjovaxutc5
Build a Yogurt Barrel beside the bee box. Each scoop throws a free Cinder Bolt.
Cooking and the cheese vat take ingredients from chests within 20 tiles..knifee
Wild hives refill after you rob them, and a bee box you build fills a comb every 400 turns.horth.panthur

Animals and companions4

Dismiss is now called Stable, and mounts can be stabled from their own tile..knifeearkhavendrachasor
Livestock heal when fed, led animals follow you through a teleport, and breeding has an off switch.bancheisdrachasor
Right-click a knocked-out pet, or press interact beside it, to use a Revive Tonic.danekjovaxutc5
Auto-travel keeps going with a pet knocked out, told to stay back or still growing up.theartolaterurughakbossman62drachasor

Your pack, gear and the shops8

The starting backpack holds 24, up from 16, and every bigger bag holds eight more. Bigger bags now need progress as well as gold, and bags you own are kept.trespiratesquesamv123
Tabs filter your pack and storage by category, and chests sort six ways.samv123danekjovaxutc5
Hold an item card still with the apostrophe key (R3 on a pad) and point at any line to see what that stat or effect means. Evasion and Resist open a breakdown of where each point comes from.danekjovaxutc5nalathnidragon.knifee
Pointing at a spell belt or quick slot shows a short card with what the slot does. Hold Shift for the full card, and Ctrl+I turns item tooltips on and off.
The Exchange has a Wanted board. Post what you're after with a gold reward paid up front, and anyone holding the goods can fill it and get paid by mail.arkhaven
The forge's Reroll and Upgrade tabs list gear in your pack as well as what you're wearing.danekjovaxutc5
Shops show the full item card, say when they restock and shelve stock by kind.danekjovaxutc5samv123trespiratesque
Shift, Ctrl and Alt move or drop one, five or a chosen number, and the mouse wheel steps any number box.danekjovaxutc5

Interface and settings6

Health reads as a bar by default, with Manna beside it. Hearts are still an option.rubberychickendanekjovaxutc5samv123
A colour-blind friendly setting moves good-or-bad readouts off red and green.danekjovaxutc5rubberychicken.knifee
First-time hints and large message banners can be switched off.
AZERTY players have a French keyboard preset, and key hints show the keys you actually have bound.
Keys go to the window on top, and Settings no longer goes dead after a couple of minutes.samv123trespiratesque
On macOS, moving the window to another display no longer throws off where you click.grumpykolmogrov

Performance and saves8

Memory filled up over a long session until the game ran out and threw you back to the title, about ten hours in on a Deck. That's fixed.tthfry
Walking in 2.5D runs at about twice the frame rate on a slow machine, and the regular hitch from far mountains is gone.tthfry
On Windows, walking zoomed out, in a storm, through the Old Mouth or with Shadows on is much faster.danekjovaxutc5samv123
A long-played save stuttered for seconds after loading. Now it's a blink..knifee
Long-lived worlds save at most once a minute, where they had been saving every fifteen seconds.theartolater
A chest built where a big tree once stood could crash the game on loading. Those saves open again.thesquirrel_74982
A crash while saving can't leave you with half a save file.
New games load faster, and the Old Mouth runs smoothly again.rubberychicken

Known issues4

Only the Monadic Descent is open. The Dyadic Vault, the Triadic Gate and the Tetradic Keep are still sealed.
Fortress only draws in 2D.
On a Deck, use the Linux build: the Windows build run through Proton doesn't see a controller.
Crafted spell cheese balance isn't settled, and How to Play doesn't cover the affineur's bench yet.

Credits3

Reports, saves, suggestions and playtest feedback: .knifee, _garmr, arkhaven, bancheis, bossman62, danekjovaxutc5, datsheeptho, drachasor, elfietheesp55, grumpykolmogrov, horth.panthur, hugomad, iso5455, jungcodex, morigh, nagayun, nalathnidragon, peacook, rubberychicken, samv123, shexara, Splattercat, theartolater, thesquirrel_74982, tobacoos, trespiratesque, tthfry, urughak and xxturiflower47xx.
Community pixel art: ArkHaven, DatSheepDoe, Elfie the Explorer, sometimesihavequestions / Merlin and Briarios.
Fortress soundtrack: alkakrab.