Winter Comes to the Valley

Winter arrived this week, and it brought a new way to find seeds with it. The guildhall got its own art too, all nine tiers of it, so the guild page finally shows where all those Guildhall Materials have been going. The rest of the week went to the fiddly bits, like picking your own crafting ingredients where the game used to pick for you. Three updates went out, Monday August 3 through Sunday August 9.

Winter seeds

Winter crops are all special, so their seeds don't turn up at Maple's store. You go looking for them instead.

• Fishing, foraging, mining, and pet expeditions all have a chance of dropping winter seeds.
• They're added on top of your usual loot, so you're never giving anything up to find them.
• Consumables don't improve your odds, with one exception: step cost reducing buffs, since those simply let you do more runs.

Winter brought some visual cleanup with it too. Tree positions on the farm are corrected for the season, and the thin green lines a few of you were seeing across the farm (most noticeable against the snow) are gone.

Crafting, your way

Recipes that take "any" ingredient were quietly making the choice for you, so now you can step in.

• Recipes like Fermented Fish Fertilizer let you pick exactly which fish or stone goes in. Tap Choose on the recipe and select it, or leave it on Auto to use your cheapest ones as before.
• There's a new "Any" quality option in the picker, so mixed-quality stacks can be crafted together instead of needing three of the same tier.
• You can heart your favorite recipes and filter the Workshop down to just those, so the ones you make constantly are always a tap away.
• You can also use several of the same consumable at once. Pick how many with the new quantity stepper and their uses stack together, so no more tapping one at a time.

Big Day happens on its own

This one's a genuine relief. It's the same 30,000 extra steps a month as before, but you don't have to pick a day for them anymore.

• The steps sit in a reserve that quietly covers whatever you walk past your daily limit.
• That spreads across as many days as you like, rather than doubling one day you had to choose in advance.
• They still count on the days you never got around to opening the game.

Over at the guild

The guildhall now has its own art on the guild page. It grows grander with every tier and changes with the seasons. Art for the other guild buildings is what I'm working on next.

New bounty: Care Packages. Send gift baskets to your guildmates to fill the board together. There's a new "My guild" filter on the Neighbors list too, so you can find your guildmates and gift them all in one pass.

Honest gem math

Gem-boosting consumables were doing something subtly different from what they said on the tin.

• They now multiply your floor's base gem chance instead of adding flat percentage points, so an item reading "50% more gems" gives you exactly that on any floor. Every one of these items had its value raised to match the new math.
• The gem chance section in your bonuses breakdown was redesigned to match. Pick any mine floor to see your exact chance there and how each buff builds up to it.

More small touches

• Captain Reed is much easier to keep happy. He likes Kelp, Ridged Shell, and Banded Shell, plus a common fish for every season (Herring, Bluefish, Cod, and Snow Perch), so there's always something in your bag he'll take.
• You can list items on the marketplace straight from your bag, and the Consumables filter now sits right after Favorites.
• Added the missing special crops to buy orders.
• Added one more song to the game.

Bug fixes

• Fixed a freeze that could lock up the app when selling an animal in the coop or barn.
• Fixed stale item prices in your bag, and stale marketplace listings showing in the crafting tab.
• Fixed a display slip where, with "Sprinklers may use my watering snacks" switched off, planting on a sprinkler field looked like it used an extra consumable.
• Fixed a display issue when tapping "Use" very fast on a consumable in your bag.

Winter's first week

Winter settling in gave the valley a new look and gave every activity a reason to keep running past its usual loot. The rest came down to fiddling, or rather less of it: the crafting picker, the quantity stepper, and Big Day sorting itself out all take a bit of tapping out of the day. A good few of these came straight out of your messages, so keep sending them. Week eight starts today.