Here comes a bigger, quarterly post, aimed for those who only read the big posts every now and then :) Included is the combination of the new feature introduced in this update, recap of progress so far this year, and a progress update on V0.12!

You and other villagers now have a proficiency level in all activities, though this update specifically focuses on crafting and gathering expertise. Becoming better at an activity will increase your likelihood to either find or craft higher quality items. The latter has a woven nature such that many things are considered when determining your success. For example, when baking, are you using a strong peel, and, what is the quality of the ingredients you're cooking with? For villagers, their mood will also play a key role.

Now, when a villager places a little house sign, the aim is to show off their unique strength or their favourite competency. Villagers are aware of others' strengths and can comment or advise you who to seek out for what commodity, especially if someone in particular stands out as an innovator. Likewise, they can recommend your skills to others.

Rarer, better-made goods, are more valuable and fetch a higher price during trading. Tools start with lower durabilities, but become much more more resilient with better craftsmanship. Fine and fairly woven clothes can also turn eyes and present new gossip. As for merchants and new faces, the more prosperous your town, the more likely you will come to see the cream of the crop.

Related to this, the natural affinity of townsfolk for certain activities has been significantly revamped such they are now more likely to pursue their niche interests, as opposed to broadly liking a lot of things.

This feature has been on the radar for a long time and is pretty much a staple when it comes to the colony sim genre. Whilst deceptively simple, I believe it opens a lot of doors and depth as it makes individual villagers more unique and valuable to the town. Whereas before, many people could cobble together the same stone axe, now, if one villager takes up the mantle, his fame as an expert can make him become the go-to guy thanks to the superior quality of his work. Meanwhile, it will also raise the stakes for future mechanics such as stealing or village satisfaction, and prosperity in general.

A few weeks ago, how villagers choose to spend their time was mostly entirely overhauled. Beforehand, villagers would primarily pick activities based on their interests. Now, villagers are driven by an assortment of social needs, hunger, relief, cold, and motivation. I feel like towns now look a lot more lively and social, villagers feel more reactive and varied, and mood has a real impact. I've tweaked the nobs and balanced things again this patch, and I'm looking forward to playing with it the future to create even more interesting feedback loops with other actions.

Even earlier this year, villagers were granted the ability to actually hang around with you and with other villagers, especially if they got lonely during the day. Whilst they stick with someone, they observe their actions and occasionally make a remark. Overall, their experience and further expectation of this is tied to whether you do things that align with their interests. This has led to much more collective behaviour, with friends more often moving around and doing things together, whilst from time-to-time, also resulting in bigger groups socialising together. There's a lot to explore here in the future, especially in regards to villagers nearby giving you helpful advice as a form of a tutorial, and helping you with your goals as relationships improve.

As I've been releasing the regular updates, I've also been cooking Autonomy & Governance, the next major update. Since the last blog post, the placement flow of new buildings has been improved to properly mix the residential and industrial neighbourhoods. After fortifications are built, farming will move to the outskirts, beyond the walls.

I've also worked on autonomous decorating for villagers such that they enhance the general look of the town, rather than just their backyards. There will be new areas dedicated for gardens, monuments, and parks. Barns and fields will most likely switch from being circular structures, to custom plots of land, as indicated by the dashed lines in the above simulation.

The 'Autonomy' part is mostly finished, and in fact, I currently use it to help me develop and test new updates. With villagers automatically progressing the town, they're very useful for playing out all the game mechanics and emergence within the settlement. The major things left for this update are finishing the 'Governance' part, and the content (such as the new buildings and items). I've made progress on these too and will be sharing more information later, for now, watch this space! :)

• Added durability to mallets, peels, and musical instruments. On the latter, it's less about punishing playing music, but more about motivating an industry for instrument-making :)
  
• When trading, you can now see the quantity of each villager's item
  
• Changed trade window and market stall to consistently show items by their highest value first, with the highest quality items being placed first
  
• Fixed villagers no longer throwing things when angry
  
• Fixed saving taking longer and more space than necessary due to villagers trying to remember every single possible item they saw every trade. Particularly noticeable for big worlds with markets and lots of trading. For the save data to fully refresh, you'll need to sleep and then re-save the game in the new version. (seems about 40% better on my large save! the bigger the save, the bigger the gains)
  
• Gathering, mining, and chopping trees no longer has a natural incentive, leaving a bigger space for personality and preference
  
• Fixed too eagerly placing house signs, or, showing off too much
  
• Reduced villagers stuttering and not knowing what to say
  
• Fixed villagers not being able to offer more of the same item when trading with each other
  
• Fixed villagers trying to dig without a shovel
  
• Fixed grammar / typos in dialogue