It’s already been over two weeks since we launched into Early Access! Time flies when you’re building villages, farming wheat, and wrangling your folks. We've been hard at work both on and behind the scenes, focusing on QoL patches based on all the lovely feedback you've shared with us. The result so far is 7 minor update versions since the EA release, with more updates in the works.

Today, though, we want to share more about our plans for the bigger updates ahead - and we would love your feedback on the planned features!

Folklands is already starting to feel like the nostalgic, warm cup of tea we dreamed of making, but as many of you have mentioned - it feels like that start of something rather than a finished experience. No surprises there, the EA release is our showcase for the foundation of what we want to build - a skeleton of the game if you will - but in this devlog we'll share more about the first two milestones up ahead.

First up, we’re cracking open the books. The first major update will introduce an education system for your folks (they're smarter than they look, promise), and a new research system that accompanies it. These two game mechanics will help you improve production, specialize your settlement and village and may even unlock some fancy upgradable buildings.

The education system will bring specialized occupations for your folks as well as education bonuses, and of course introduces a range of new buildings like the School and Library.

Together with the education and research content, this first update will also see more varied industries and products for your folks to make. In that vein we’re also working on better overviews for your production chains, as well as clearer ways to track what your folks need versus what you’re making. No more scratching your head over missing fish and lost tools.

The folks themselves will be getting a bit of a makeover as well: more visual variety to help distinguish your fisherfolk from your foresters or bakers. There will also be many more decorations and visual upgrades available, letting you personalize your settlement even more exactly like you want it.

The first milestone marks the first big step towards the vision we have for Folklands: a game and world where each playthrough can take on a life of its own depending on your style: want to focus on a specific industry? Go for it. Prefer the cozy life and it's perks? That’s possible too.

Obviously, these changes will take a little while to add and implement, but we'll still be releasing regular updates while we work on this first big milestone.

Is there a doctor in the village? There will be soon!
The second major update will focus on two new ways to keep your folks safe and secure. Gather herbs, craft medicine, treat your folks when they fall ill and prevent the spread of diseases. Because let’s face it: close quarters and rainy days are a recipe for sniffles.

In this update, Doctors will play a key role in your growing settlement, with the introduction of as health, sickness and diseases. Keeping your population in good health will be more and more important as your settlement grows into a large village where everyone's mingling together. Ignore sickness and it will spread fast!

The second part of this update will focus on villager security - because not every visitor comes bearing bread and good intentions! The security system will let you set up patrols and guard towers, protecting your precious storage from both raiders and thieves (yes, the "sneaky and grumpy" kind).

Raiders may come storming in from the wilds, but with walls and well-placed guards you’ll be ready to fend them off. And thieves - they’re disgruntled folks who’ve decided to redistribute wealth... from your richest homes to their pockets. A few patrols might keep them in check, but don’t get too heavy-handed. Constant surveillance has a way of turning smiles into frowns. And guards don’t work for free, so it's best keep those trade routes going.

These two first updates are only the beginning! We’re really excited about these upcoming additions, especially for those of you who enjoy a bit more challenge in your Folklands experience.

As always, we’ll be opening up beta tests for these milestones as they get closer to completion and we’re counting on your feedback to help shape them into something truly wonderful ❤️

Next time, we’ll share more screenshots and dive deeper into the first milestone.

Stay cozy, stay curious, and give your folks a wave from us!

It's time for another update - and this is a good one!

This time we've adjusted and improved a lot of things based on player feedback - both in the Steam forums and on Discord - as well as adding some things that just didn't get ready in time for the Early Access release.

So, without further ado, here is the full changelog for this release!

• NEW: Folks overview from the Settlement overview window which lets you sort by happiness and work/home distance
  
• NEW: The happiness overview will now list reasons why folks are unhappy
  
• NEW: Folks will now give you more information about their happiness from the new "Happiness" tab in the villager info window
  
• CHANGED: All transporters are now handling all resource transportation around your settlement. Buildings that have a pickup area, as well as markets, trading posts and storage buildings can be staffed with workers to help stocking up those buildings - in addition to the global transporters - but they are no longer necessary for the buildings to be stocked up.
  
• CHANGED: you can now keep playing the tutorial settlement with regular progression even after the tutorial ends.
  
• Most in-game popup windows will now remember their position when you close them and re-open them
  
• Improved the way building warnings pop up
  
• Improved status colorization of fire and maintenance statistics overlays
  
• Residents list now shows the occupation of the residents so you can more easily identify residents and their jobs
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the statistics overlays to sometimes flash white
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented the happiness from being calculated properly
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed villagers to retrieve goods from markets even if the house was not in the market coverage area
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause the builders and fire guards to go without work until they ran out of energy and returned home
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause production workers to sleep for a very long time while pretending to work
  
• Fixed a bug where workers in production buildings would not pick up resources from their pickup area
  
• Fixed two cases that could cause seemingly endless production in a building
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause endless population increase with a certain combination of residents in different levels
  
• Fixed a bug that sometimes prevented houses from picking up goods from nearby markets
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the traders to always take your stone as payment for quests
  
• Fixed several cases that caused inconsistencies in how buildings were being stocked up
  
• Fixed a bug that sometimes prevented the traders from finding an optimal route to and from the trading post
  
• Fixed a bug that caused resource deposits to not appear until your reloaded the save game
  
• Adjusted the importance weight for transporters when deciding which building to prioritize
  
• Reduced bread production requirement for villager houses by 50%
  
• Slightly adjusted the thresholds for warning about fire hazard and re-visiting buildings
  
• Slightly reduced the npc quest rate
  
• Once again increase fish spawn rate
  
• Reverted a change that was introduced in 0.6.7.3 that in several cases prevented buildings from properly stocking up
  
• Improved usability in the storage selector popup to prevent confusion about whether a resource is selected or not
  
• Improved the density of wheat fields and made unharvested wheat disappear after a while
  
• Updated translations and temporarily disabled the Polish translation based on feedback
  
• Added a community contributed German translation

As always - don't hesitate to give us feedback in the steam forums and on the Discord server.

Thanks for playing!