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Authorized Community Expansion (ACE)

The ACE Team proudly and happily presents Pre-Release 0.9.6 - "The Mercantile Update"!

We would like to welcome everyone in our Discord Server[discord.gg]! That is the best place for getting information, reporting bugs or just hanging out with the lovely community :)
The official release thread with feedback, known issues and more information can be found here![discourse.stonehearth.net]
The thread is very useful for tips and reporting issues and also for checking out patch notes for new hotfixes!

Irrigation!
Farmlands can now benefit from the presence of nearby water! Most crops are able to grow without any irrigation, but if you take the time and effort to provide them water for their optimal growth rates, you'll have bountiful harvests!

Fluid Control!
Happy that you can irrigate your crops but unsure on how to do so? No worries! ACE adds a new set of tools to play around with water! Water gates and pumps will allow you to control exactly where and when you want your water running and even allow you to take water up or make fountains.

New Resources!
ACE introduces a fair amount of new resources that have come to change your game - literally. Bones, different types of clay and stone, or thatching are just a couple of examples. All the new resources are nicely integrated into the game - killing animals or digging will get you bones, certain types of clay will occur only in certain places (like ball clay on the bottom of lakes) and cutting grass or shrubs will yield thatch, useful for making that not-so-fancy bed that is at least better than the even worse bed we added!

Water Life!
You’ll notice that bodies of water will now be much more “living” with the addition of water objects (rocks, algae…) and animals like fish! There are still things to come but you can already explore and discover all the new things of this cold and blue world…

The Highlands!
The home of the Dwarves is already in even though our chubby little friends are not in yet… Feel free to explore and colonize it with our known hearthling factions - and uncover the secrets of its unique features like Birch, Yew and Highland Pine trees, Marblesprouts and Moonbells - among other things…

Variety, lots of Variety!
ACE also adds a lot of variety to the game by creating unique visuals and models for all the crafters from the Rayya’s Children and Northern Alliance, not to mention unique workshops and weapons and armor, and also several animals and things from each biome. Each faction now plays with their own visual style, bringing more life to the world (and making multiplayer games extra fun!). Yes, your dream of having Northern Alliance footmen with round shields and hand axes has finally been fulfilled! :D

Blacksmith Overhaul
The Blacksmith has been completely reworked and revisited following ideas and plans that Team Radiant had but also adding our own twists, of course! It is now a much deeper and complex industry - although not harder, just longer, making games more meaningful!

Fuel Matters!
Fuel is now a big thing in Stonehearth! More than just randomly burning some logs every now and then, you have dozens of choices of fuel. They’re basically divided in three grades: lower, good and high, used for different activities!

Military Gear Progression Overhaul
There is now a lot of new items and equipment for your military hearthlings - and they’re also better distributed among the 6 levels and more streamlined into a logical order. Basically, each class has a 3-tier progression that extends over levels 1-2, 3-4 and 5-6.

Military Unit Control Improvements
You can now toggle equipment preferences for your soldiers: Shield and one handed, two handed weapons… Bow or crossbow, etc. And you can also order patrols and create patrol routes with the new patrolling banners!

There are other features and more details - however Steam has a limited space for writing Workshop descriptions - so make sure to check our official Discourse threads for more information and details!

ACE was born out of the desire of creating an even better and richer Stonehearth 1.0 experience. It is a community-driven project that aims to polish and improve on the base game by adding depth and content to areas that feel lackluster, diversifying and adding variability to the existing content and finishing off many unfinished or never started ideas and projects that Team Radiant originally had for the game or promised (in the Kickstarter or else) but was unfortunately unable to get there.

ACE stands for "Authorized Community Expansion" but it can also be understood as the three main pillars of our development and design goals:

Refers to the entirely new things that we are bringing to the game in an attempt to improve the overall depth and content, making the experience more rich, longer and enjoyable. In many ways the key aspect of our design is to look at things that seem to be "under utilized", like water - and what could be done to improve these - like irrigation or the usage of water by the Hearthlings.

As a reference to all the bits of ideas and notes of never-developed original ideas from Radiant or plans and ideas mentioned or promised (like on Kickstarter!) before that we are trying to bring to life in a way that fits and feels as Stonehearth as possible. Examples could be the Dwarves as a playable kingdom, the Magmasmith class, the Order of Applied Equivocation, etc.

And finally there is also a lot of things that are already in the game but were either initial (older) implementations that needed some renewed love - to bring them to the current standards of the game - or things that were never touched so much and could use some very useful improvements. Examples are the re-organization and overhaul of the blacksmith profession and gear progression, patrolling and combat unit control or better animal/pet behavior.

This project is entirely conducted by volunteers that kindly offer their time and talent, with no personal gains or official connections to Radiant Entertainment or Riot Games whatsoever, although it does count with official support and endorsement from the amazing team of developers <3
ACE is a tribute to Team Radiant's amazing story, journey and work over the course of the years of development and also a community work FOR the community. For that it is under a MIT License to be freely explored and tinkered with by others!

For more informations about ACE, the Team, the journey, known issues, suggestions, features or pretty much anything else, feel free to comment or head to our Official Thread on Discourse![discourse.stonehearth.net]

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