While You Were Away

There's a Keg Tender in the cellar now. Load it with steps and it collects your finished batches and pours the next ones while you're away, which means milk and eggs can go from the barn all the way to aged products without you lifting a finger. Come back after a few hours and the game shows you what happened on the farm while you were gone. Selling no longer needs you to count either, since one tap picks the quantity that still goes at full price.

The Keg Tender

A new piece of farm technology, this one for the cellar. Install it under Technology, load it with steps, and it works its way through your kegs while you're off doing something else.

• It fills your best kegs first and keeps matching products together, the same as doing it by hand.
• Choose whether it pours for the best value or the fastest turnaround, and whether it waits for a batch to finish aging or collects everything that's ready.
• Three levels, each one reaching more of your kegs.
• Every pour costs the same steps as pouring it yourself. Collecting is free.

It pairs with the Collection Posts in your coop and barn. They gather the milk and eggs, the Keg Tender pours and collects them, and the whole chain runs on its own from animal to aged product.

Coming back to the farm

Come back after a few hours and you get a small recap of what the farm got up to without you.

• What the sprinklers, the Collection Post and the Keg Tender managed between them.
• Kegs that finished aging, crops that came ready, and a pet home from an expedition.
• Mail that arrived and market sales that went through.

It puts a rough gold value on what you picked up and counts the steps you banked since you left. A finished background session shows an estimate of its haul too.

Selling, without the counting

Prices decay as you sell into the market, and working out where that line falls used to be on you. One tap now sets the quantity that still sells at full price, whether you're selling a single item or a bulk lot.

That pairs with the new multi-select in your bag. Press and hold an item to pick several stacks at once, then sell the lot to the store in one go, with the exact total shown before you confirm.

More small touches

• When several neighbors open your gifts, those notices collapse into a single letter in the mailbox that you can expand or clear in one tap.
• Guild member cards show a "Last active" note now, and the portraits in that tab are properly centered.
• The Bag and Craft screens open faster, and the game no longer slows down slightly after a trip to the Market, the Mailbox or a festival.
• The cellar got performance and visual work as well, which you'll feel most if you keep a lot of kegs down there.

Bug fixes

• Fixed the home screen showing yesterday's state after midnight, so Up Next no longer asks you to water crops your sprinklers already handled.
• Fixed an occasional black screen when leaving the coop or barn.
• Fixed the Villager Requests thank-you screen occasionally naming the wrong villager. Your reward was always the right one.
• Fixed pig rare finds and duck feathers hiding behind soil and eggs when you collected them. They fly to your bag as themselves now.
• The Potted Purple Flower stands in front of what's behind it and keeps out of your way, like every other potted plant.

Twelve weeks in

That's week twelve. The Keg Tender is the one I'd set up first, especially if you already have Collection Posts in the coop or barn. Thanks for the reports and ideas, as always. On to week thirteen.