Hello villagers!

Today marks the release of the first major update to Village Monsters. You'll notice the version number is now set to 0.5 - is this officially the halfway mark?!

This update was guided by players like you! Last week I asked what I should work on next and you weren't shy in giving me an answer: bug fixes, quality of life improvements, and improvements to Odd Jobs.

Part of these changes were already released last week, so this week's patch is meant to cap that one off!

The next planned major update is for Friday, December 6th. I've yet to send out a poll on what that should include, but I should have that out later this week.

Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow US villagers!

NEW

• Something is causing villagers to suddenly misplace items. If you find a lost item you should return it to its owner for a nice relationship boost.
• A large number of new villager conversations have been added to the game
• Fish and Critter ratings now alter their price - the higher the rating, the higher the sell price
• Tutorial Odd Jobs have been added to the game.
• A new option has been added to make dialogue text instant

IMPROVED

• Made the first attempt at re-balancing the economy. In general: individual items are worth a great deal more money, but you'll see fewer of them per day. For example, critters spawn less, it's harder to fish, and so on.
• System Options (Music levels, sprint toggle preference, etc.) are now properly saved
• Caught critters are now given a rating like fish
• Doubled the rate in which you gain relationship points with villagers
• The day and season of your save is now displayed under the Continue option
• The dialogue box now fades away a bit slower when you walk away from the speaker, and fades up a bit faster when you walk back toward them
• Notifications now trigger for additional actions (like giving away an item from your inventory) to make it clear something triggered
• Stamina only decreases during the Attack phase of fishing. Bad attacks expend more stamina, while critical attacks are free
• It now requires more stamina to clear weeds from overgrown garden plots
• All available Odd Jobs are now listed at the Job Board. You can still only take one one job a day (for now)
• Odd Jobs that have a timer will now give out partial rewards when the timer runs out
• Certain Odd Jobs will stick around for a bit instead of changing out each day to give you a chance to take them

FIXED

• Fixed issue where music levels would reset themselves when changing areas
• Fixed crash related to checking Critter / Fish traps after loading your save
• Fixed crash when placing a Critter trap
• Fixed crash with the Weeding job
• Fixed issue where mushroom plots would appear to "switch" on area transition
• Fixed issue with trap visibility
• Fixed issue with music sometimes changing to the wrong track on area transition
• Fixed potential performance issue in Town Hall
• Prevented occasional issue where you can act (and cause errors) as an Odd Job finished
• Adjusted controller deadzone to prevent certain movement errors
• Fixed notifications from spawning in strange spots
• Stopped casting your fishing rod when fishing traps are equipped
• Stopped controller rumble while fishing when a keyboard is being used
• Fixed issue preventing a few fish types from spawning
• Tweaked collision of a number of items to make them easier to pick up
• Fixed a few issues related to foraged items spawning incorrectly
• Cleaned up collision on Three Wall Island
• Cleaned up collision on a number of external objects
• Stopped fish from incorrectly stating you could eat them for stamina
• Stopped Seaweed from appearing in freshwater
• Fixed Komatoa collision in Overflow
• Fixed collision issue in Baba's Bakery
• Fixed issue with Odd Jobs not sending you back to the right place
• Fixed flavor text issue for tamed critters
• Fixed issue with "flavor critters" spawning in incorrect locations
• Fixed occasional issue with teleporting home at end of day
• Stopped critters from spawning when time is paused
• Improved Odd Jobs in general to be less error prone
• Usual misc. fixes, performance and stability improvements
• Usual misc. typo corrections