ILEX is not a wild goat. That's 'ibex'. Ilex is holly: a glossy, pretty plant that takes no nonsense from anyone, with glossy, pretty berries that occasionally murder people. And it means Christmas. I'm very fond of holly. I'm also very fond of JUNIPER, because it's what makes gin taste like gin.

Holly was sacred to thunder gods, and juniper to fertility goddesses. So the Thunderskin is the official sponsor of the ILEX patch, which we released today, and the Red Grail is the official sponsor of JUNIPER, which is now on the beta branch. Let's talk about what you can find in each one. Chelnoque wrote the patch notes, and [my comments are in italic brackets]

• Improved performance and display of card timers
  
• Aspects were counted twice for cards in the Verb output.
  
• Upgrading lore sometimes destroyed innocent bystander cards. [So sometimes you might lose a Health when you were trying to upgrade Heart lore. Thanks to Xardis for bringing this one up.]
  
• Incorrect chance of getting an Exultation when preaching with Passion is fixed. [Apparently this had been there since 2019. Now I think about it, I vaguely remember the bug report, and I vaguely remember fixing it, long ago. Maybe I forgot to commit ]
  
• Formula: Elixir Zeboim cannot be consumed in a rite. [Elixir Zeboim, as any ghoul kno, is something you consume that helps you get value out of consuming dead bodies. It's not real. Don't eat dead people. Anyway it was getting used up if you put it in the consumption slot of a rite.]
  
• MODDING: In-game debug panel now allows to manually xtrigger present cards. [When I saw Chelnoque had added this, I grunted appreciatively. If you use the dev console, you might grunt appreciatively too. If it means nothing, think of it as pleasant background noise, like the Shipping Forecast, or a bumblebee in a holly tree.]

• An inability to interact with certain UI elements that occurred in windowed mode at widescreen resolutions is fixed. [This one was actually a Unity bug, and it's fixed by 'updating to the latest version of Unity']
  
• In addition, due to a hiccup in update releases, several DLC-related fixes were declared, but weren't properly present. [And this is just a fancy way of saying 'we didn't run the right scripts'. There's an extra step to updating DLC on Steam that's easy to forget, and we forgot it :)]
  
• When devouring a reckoner, Ligeians no longer consume the content of the Reckoner verb slot. [e.g. if you had just fended off the Reckoner with your Edge lore, the Ligeian would eat the Edge lore too. Ligeians don't play fair, but this was _particularly_ unfair. ]
  
• The game will no longer suggest you relax or negotiate when you're trying to start an operation in Exile.
  
• Buying a profane weapon with another profane weapon does not result in mutual annihilation. [[i]This was an unbelievably obscure and complicated bug that only cropped up in a rare exploit where someone tried to buy a loaded gun with an unloaded gun. I would never have noticed it

[/i]]

MODDING: Mods now can self-define their tags through \"tags\" property in synopsis.json. Consult with MODDING_README.txt in StreamingAssets folder for the details. [This is also of most interest to modders... but it's important to everyone who uses mods too.]

[/list]

[You'll notice there aren't many tags populated here. That's because I didn't realise there's no way for modders to update their own tags via the Steam front end! Anyway, from JUNIPER onwards, they'll be able to set the tags themselves.]

Crikey, we're up to 130+ mods now. You're an inventive crowd.

Dream furiously, all

AK

PS ILEX is sponsored by the Thunderskin, JUNIPER by the Grail, but this post is sponsored by cats. This is the SIXTH BUG REPORT of cats corrupting saves that I've received this year.

(guest-starring Chelnoque again)

- Yet another round of card-handlery tweaks:
- Cards put more effort into finding a landing zone as close to the hover position as possible.
- Card ghosts sometimes ended up in a wrong position (and generally made no sense).
- Cards save their preferred tabletop location between sessions.
- Cards should no longer completely overlap each other - or, at least, should do this significantly less often.
- Cards correctly replace each other in slots.
- Dropzones are now more proficient (and elegant) in their craft.
- Verbs occupy a more modest space on the grid.
- Verbs go straight to the dropzone when spawned.
- Different kinds of camera movement should feel smoother, and are less interruptive towards each other.
- Dragged cards follow the camera movement.
- When a card is moving into a verb slot, it no longer slows down if said verb's windows opens or closes.
- Initial board setup respects the grid.
- Interactions with the Mansus are slightly oiled up.
And also:
- Shattered Risen could sometimes lack Follower aspect.
- Buying a profane weapon with another profane weapon does not result in mutual annihilation.
- Rare freeze on \"Collect All\" is fixed.
- MODDING: Deck effects now support aspect references, as in <i>\"deckeffects\": { \"deckeffects\": \"lantern\" }</i>.",

- New modding feature: configurable local achievements
- Verb windows display cards, aspects and deck draws more cleanly and more clearly.
- Influences are properly removed on a skill upgrade.
- Fixed dropzones sometimes blocking interactions with their contents.
- Cards more reliably seek the nearest verb on a double-click (and on a right-click).
- Purging cards in a completed verb now correctly updates the previewed amount.
- Aspect display in a verb window now updates properly on mutations.
- Various optimizations to make the game more stable in longer sessions.
- Korean text fixes.
- HOTFIX: EXILE borkage
- HOTFIX: it's again possible to create a seventh-level lore fragment through combination
- HOTFIX: a lamentable surplus space in the log was baking Chel's noodle
- HOTFIX: more optimisations when lots of cards are created at once
- HOTFIX: scrollbar adjustments
- HOTFIX: issue with card expulsion to new situations
- HOTFIX'S HOTFIX: an expulsion issue that was introduced in the previous hotfix is fixed
- HOTFIX'S HOTFIX'S HOTFIX: explulsions are truly really fixed this time
- MODDING: mod long description is no longer overwritten on mod re-upload
- MODDING: expulsion filters now can have negative requirements\

If you're wondering what an eryngo is, it's one of these. Handsome things. They have umbels, and they're cousins to the carrot.

I've seen a handful of reports about crashes that I'm trying to track down, but the game is thank Christ generally stable again, and FRAGRANTOLIVE, om beta, is more stable still.

You might have noticed that one of our long-time modders, Mr Chelnoque, now has [developer] flair on the forums. We'd tried him out on some contract work to add modding features, and we liked his work enough that he's working with us part-time: adding modding and other features, hunting bugs, and doing the QA work that I am so notoriously not great at. We're bloody pleased to have him.

In particular, the COLLECTION feature in FRAGRANTOLIVE was Chel's proposal. It tracks Achievements in the game UI, but it *also* allows modders to add achievements of their own (Not on Steam, because I don't think Cultist would benefit from the inevitable cascade of penis-related achievements, but modder achievements will nestle nicely in the UI alongside the official ones.

FRAGRANTOLIVE also has some more stability features and UI tweaks, and it's stable enough that you can hop over to the beta branch if you're feeling even slightly adventurous. It'll make its way to the main branch around about 9th August unless something goes awry, and you should see GALANTHUS on beta around about then.



BTW, if you're still on the classic_ui branch, then honestly I would suggest you join the rest of us in the future. Card snapping just works now, the newer version's save code is more robust, and you're missing out on a trickle of new QoL and modding things. But I know that everyone has their preference (vodka not gin in martinis??) and I've committed to leaving the classic_ui branch up permanently. This condemns me to a trickle of emails in about 2025 when Windows n+1 finally stops supporting Unity 2019, but I can live with that if you can.

I leave you with something charming from Lottie. If you're wondering what Hush House looks like, or what Ambrose Westcott did in his spare hours, this will enlighten you slightly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVVJ-TjhrrM

Dream furiously

AK

Dahlias. The Aztecs ate them. Mexico selected it as the national flower. And PG Wodehouse named Bertie Wooster's favourite aunt after them. Here she is in full cry:

"To look at you, [Bertie], one would think you were just an ordinary sort of amiable idiot - certifiable, perhaps, but quite harmless. Yet, in reality, you are worse a scourge than the Black Death. I tell you, Bertie, when I contemplate you I seem to come up against all the underlying sorrow and horror of life with such a thud that I feel as if I had walked into a lamp post. I thought as much. Well, it needed but this. I don't see how things could possibly be worse than they are, but no doubt you will succeed in making them so. Your genius and insight will find the way. Carry on, Bertie. Yes, carry on. I am past caring now. I shall even find a faint interest in seeing into what darker and profounder abysses of hell you can plunge this home. Go to it, lad... I remember years ago, when you were in your cradle, being left alone with you one day and you nearly swallowed your rubber comforter and started turning purple. And I, ass that I was, took it out and saved your life. Let me tell you, young Bertie, it will go very hard with you if you ever swallow a rubber comforter again when only I am by to aid.”



Next time you're playing as the Bright Young Thing and worrying about juggling Dread, remember that at least you don't have a Wooster aunt to worry about. I should probably have put one in.

Dahlia is a stability patch, though for the first time in years, it does include a tiny extra bit of content. (I need to sort out localisations in four languages for that bit of content, which is why I don't often add content any more.)

===
- Hardened against some crashes from less well behaved mods
- Hardened against corrupted config.ini files
- If your save is corrupted and there are valid backups, you won't need to rename manually
- Prisoners can now be freed, murdered, or enlightened.
- Aspect sprites now appear again in Apostle runs and Dancer
- Tidied up options panel
===

You may have noticed the patches have slowed down lately. Those of you who follow the Weather Factory blog will have seen some recent drama. Lottie and I reckon 40% of our time in the last couple of months has been taken up with that drama, and I HOPE it's now resolved. This frees me up, but I also have BOOK OF HOURS to make. So we are going to bring in a little more part-time testing and dev resource (from a name some of you will know). This means more stability, fewer hotfixes. (I HOPE).

Bonus content.


https://github.com/weatherfactory/cultistsimulator-visible/issues

If you're not technically inclined or don't know what a GitHub is, please keep just mailing us at support@weatherfactory.biz. (Or post on the forums, and I'll probably swing by after a week and say 'yes it's fixed' or 'idk send me your logs'.)


Secondly, here's our modding guide, now expanded with a huge community guide, manual and tutorial, thanks to our stalward modders. The community guide is 100% unofficial and I haven't checked it's all accurate, but it looks really good.
https://weatherfactory.biz/modding




Thirdly, The Locksmith's Dream, our live event spin-off, is now live. The beta's long sold out but we still have space in a couple of events later this year.

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/31397842/2e18b0b45a7b63737de0a5df7586520389ee294a.png[/img]


And finally, I mentioned BOOK OF HOURS. Lottie and I have been digging deep into the library's long, long history. I'm tying it into mundane and secret histories; Lottie is putting together the look of the library, in its half-dozen different phases. The place is well over a thousand years old, and has grown like a coral reef.





Those of you who've read my book, 'Against Worldbuilding...', might unkindly remark that this looks a lot like worldbuilding. My response is firstly, in a John Oliver sort of voice, no, no it's not, it's setting design. But more seriously it would be that there's nothing wrong with historical timelines for invented worlds. The problem is inventing a world by starting with a timeline, when what you want is a place at the edge of the world and a dozen centuries of sanctuary, madness, healing, and death. And books.

- You can now set gridsnap to 'no gridsnap' again. Welcome, children of the Moth
- Magnet-grabbed cards now return to their original position afterwards (e.g. when the detective gets lost post-suspicion, he won't)
- Weird dropzone ricochet effect no longer occurs when you put a card into a slot where it doesn't fit
- Card stacks now place properly
- Card stacks no longer open information window when dropped on the desktop (don't even)
- Stack badge shader now uses backface cull so it doesn't appear on reversed cards
- KEEP SAVE button works again
- Perf improvements

Fixed a gridsnap bias that favoured left/top row. Damn that's better.
Fixed a blurry text issue on cards
Fixed frequency bug in card shuffle. Particular thanks to Chelnoque and Clocq (no relations) on this
Added workaround for crash bug in latest Unity version. This one was, for once, not my fault, folks

We're running a Midweek Madness sale throughout this week, where you can get everything Cultist Sim-y for basically dust and a broken ha'penny (50-66% off everything, to be exact). So that's

• Cultist Simulator (66% off)
  
• The Dancer, Priest, Ghoul and Exile DLC (50% off)
  
• Cultist Simulator's OST (50% off)
  
• The Anthology Edition bundle, which includes all of the above @ 65% off-ish (bundle maths is hard)
  
• The Lady Afterwards digital TRPG (50% off)

Enjoy!

The indomitable Canadian sensation that is Systemchalk - probably a Long by now, at least - is broadcasting Cultist on the store page, for anyone who'd like to see the game being wrestled to its knees while a soothing voiceover describes the inevitable descent into penury, madness and occult calamity.

We also have some Cultist x BOOK OF HOURS lore, game updates and new Secret Histories merch and events to share. Yee, as they say, haw.

☽ ★ 🕯 ★ ☾ ★ 🕯 ★ ☽ ★ 🕯 ★ ☾ ★ 🕯 ★ ☽ ★ 🕯 ★ ☾ ★ 🕯 ★ ☽ ★ 🕯 ★ ☾ ★ 🕯 ★ ☽ ★ 🕯 ★ ☾ ★ 🕯 ★ ☽ ★ 🕯 ★ ☾ ★ 🕯 ★ ☾ ★


We're not ready to share a vertical slice of the game yet, but here're some updates.

We've finalised the design of the Wisdom Page, the occult sort-of skill tree where you can choose which forbidden knowledge to specialise in, and which affects what you can do elsewhere in the game based on your choices. We've hidden the full size of the chart, but you can see the first four levels here:



(Click for a larger image.)

Players choose cards or objects to commit to each slot up the chain, pledging allegiance - for example - to Birdsong by committing a skill card for Ramsund, the language of secrets. This will enhance the player's Birdsong affinity and ability, opening up new opportunities elsewhere and unlocking the next tier of the branch.

We hope it's also a nice roleplaying opportunity, as you can see that each of the nine Wisdoms is variously associated with several Principles from Cultist Simulator. People have strong feelings about whether they're a Winter-y sort who wants a beautiful end or a Lantern-type who's brilliant but a bit caustic or a Forge-person who really loves hitting things with hammers. The Wisdoms are deliberately broader, drawing from multiple Principles at once, so they should open up new avenues of characterisation. Which is useful in, er, an RPG!

Speaking of the Wisdoms, we've uncovered a new letter from a mysterious 'Arthur' to his nephew, discussing the Illumination-affiliated events that took place in a Pyrhhic battle against the Khusgai of Persia, and the bravery - and unmasking of Lieutenant Malcolmson. Most importantly, though, weep for Menander, the bravest steed that ever was!

"Nephew, make a fist of your hand. Muscles move beneath the skin. So powers move beneath the skin of the world, at impulses equally invisible, but greater."



Click here for full images + alternative read-friendly text.

And finally, we also have a mock-up of Hush House's layout to share. Please note that this is not what the game will actually look like (though mmmm isn't it all nice and neat in a grid), but it is likely to represent the layout of rooms in the final game. We've censored some of the more deep-lore rooms, and you can't see all of it - but here's a first glimpse at the library at the centre of it all!



(Click for a larger image, again.)

If you like what you see, please wishlist BOOK OF HOURS to keep updated with our progress! More on that in the next few months.



☽ ★ 🕯 ★ ☾ ★ 🕯 ★ ☽ ★ 🕯 ★ ☾ ★ 🕯 ★ ☽ ★ 🕯 ★ ☾ ★ 🕯 ★ ☽ ★ 🕯 ★ ☾ ★ 🕯 ★ ☽ ★ 🕯 ★ ☾ ★ 🕯 ★ ☽ ★ 🕯 ★ ☾ ★ 🕯 ★ ☾ ★


"You’ve been summoned to Alexandria, a city of coloured lights and curious histories. An old friend needs you to track down a woman. She’s probably in trouble. Probably trouble herself. Plus ça change."

Since launching Cultist Sim in 2018, we made a TRPG based in its occult, Lovecraftian world called The Lady Afterwards. You can buy the digital edition here on Steam (50% off in the Midweek Madness sale!), and we've just re-released our luxury boxed edition in our merch shop too. We're releasing another 100 boxes at noon today, and the boxes will restock every Tuesday.



☽ ★ 🕯 ★ ☾ ★ 🕯 ★ ☽ ★ 🕯 ★ ☾ ★ 🕯 ★ ☽ ★ 🕯 ★ ☾ ★ 🕯 ★ ☽ ★ 🕯 ★ ☾ ★ 🕯 ★ ☽ ★ 🕯 ★ ☾ ★ 🕯 ★ ☽ ★ 🕯 ★ ☾ ★ 🕯 ★ ☾ ★


"Secret gods live beneath the skin of the world. Five of them meet every year to exchange secrets and agree particular notes of history. Their conversations aren’t for our ears, but even after they’ve gone, their gossip still troubles the earth; the air still prickles with doors..."



Cultist Sim also inspired our latest venture, going live today: a series of live, overnight events set in a crumbling aristocratic mansion in Monmouthshire, UK. Each year the Avian Hours - that's the Beach-Crow, the Witch-and-Sister, the Elegiast, the Vagabond and the little-known Name of the Moth, Ferezeref - meet to discuss the topics of the gods.

Afterwards, mortals attend the Roostinghall to pick through abandoned tidbits of secret knowledge. This is what we're calling the Locksmith's Dream, and invite you to pick through the snippets of the gods this October and December with us.

Full details of the event, and of course tickets for sale, over on the official site.

☽ ★ 🕯 ★ ☾ ★ 🕯 ★ ☽ ★ 🕯 ★ ☾ ★ 🕯 ★ ☽ ★ 🕯 ★ ☾ ★ 🕯 ★ ☽ ★ 🕯 ★ ☾ ★ 🕯 ★ ☽ ★ 🕯 ★ ☾ ★ 🕯 ★ ☽ ★ 🕯 ★ ☾ ★ 🕯 ★ ☾ ★

Happy birthday to Iris, the Mansus, all the Histories and most importantly to Cultist Sim, the little game that could. Celebrate in your favourite way for us, Believers! We couldn't have done it without you. <3

I've put a patch on beta that fixes the two really annoying leftover placement issues.

One was the INSISTENT DROPZONE, where if you dropped the dropzone on top of existing cards, it would want to be picked up before it let you pick them up.

One was the GUTTER ENFORCED, where 1:1 gridsnap meant 1:1 horizontally, but left a vertical gap between rows. I liked the effect. A lot of folk didn't and let me know it, so I've changed it BUT only in new games. (Otherwise it'll screw up everyone's existing layout.)

To repeat this is on only on the beta channel for now - gateofhorn - and it'll stay there until at least next week. The latest Unity update keeps doing this to me in the editor:



and while it doesn't happen in the built version, it's giving me the spiderchills so I'm going to wait for a response to my ticket. Yes devs submit tickets too. Unity presumably submit tickets to OS vendors. I don't know who OS vendors submit tickets to. Maybe they submit petitions to a higher power instead. In Vak probably

Anyway tickets to *me* go to support@weatherfactory.biz. Please let me know about any spiders in the beta.

Alternatively, if you're technically enthusiastic, you can submit it as a Github issue. (In this case you might also be interested to know I make the source code available for the convenience of modders and the curious.)

The full bug list:

• More tweakss to card placement: moved card closer to desk, tidied dropzone grid placement
  
• Narrowed gridsnap so you can put cards immediately below each other at gridsnap 1. THIS ONLY HAPPENS IN NEW GAMES, so people's card arrangements aren't messed up\n
  
• Dropzone now reliably stays out of the way behind cards\n
  
• Stack badge and verb timer also now render behind\n
  
• Close button on deck details window now works.\n
  
• Some poor soul kept trying to use Rite Intercalate to baptise a Chosen Compass. People shouldn't do that, but let's not let them try.
  
• One more round of jp_loc fixes
  
• Non-Latin messages no longer display as tofu when returning from the Mansus

(the quote is William Carlos Williams in "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower". Patches are flowers from here on in. This is relevant if you're interested in BOOK OF HOURS, or if you're an Enigmatic.

YERMA is an opera based on a really savage play by Federico Garcia Lorca, about childlessness and murder. Lorca was one of the best-known sons of Granada, the very beautiful, very steeply sloping Spanish city where I lived two decades ago. He was murdered under murky circumstances, because a brilliant, gay, left-wing, avant-garde playwright is a bad thing to be under fascism. In another History, he almost certainly visited the Mansus on the night of his death.



Lorca RIP, thanks for ending our run of opera-based patch names. I was going to do one more (ZAUBERFLOTE) but YERMA is the PATCH WHERE CARD PLACEMENT IS FIXED, so I want to end it on a high.

NB that is FIXED, not PERFECT. There's room for further improvement, and I have a list of other QoL issues (yes detective homing) to work through. But card placement has gone from being FSCKED to being SHONKY to being MUCH IMPROVED to being FINE. Thank you all for your patience, bug reports, and feedback.

A quick roundup of the last set of changes:

Fixed a bug where dropping the card while the ghost was moving could leave the card stranded between the grid. - a real head-slap moment, this. A number of people pointed out that sometimes cards ended up off the grid, but it took some debugging time to work out why.
Added some camera angle correction. The game already compensated for the card being above or below the camera when calculating where it drops. (This was the biggest single fix previously.) It also now compensates for the table tilt.

Q. AK, why you tilt table? tilt table look confusing. There even mod to untilt.
A. Dear player, once long ago I agree, but a contract UI designer back in 2018 convince me not so. just make environment look more lively. Four years on I still think he's right. That said:

Turned off lively but confusing card wiggle when dragging cards - there's long been a pseudo-random wiggle on the cards when you move 'em. I did like this but it is needlessly confusing when you're deciding where to put the cards. So I finally turned it off, and I like the cleaner effect.

If I get twenty emails saying the wiggle's disappearance makes the game LITERALLY UNPLAYABLE, I'll put it back in, if I get just one, I'll write a sorrowful reply saying sorry, wiggle dead.

made the grid a bit more insistent - honestly this is too boring to explain
default gridsnap is now 1/2, give it a try - IMO 1/2 gridsnap is the sweet spot. (I haven't forgotten I promised a NO GRIDSNAP option too - still coming.)

Anyway this patch went live on beta yesterday and then again this morning. Then I noticed I'd included the stupidest bug of my entire career. From your side, this was 'GAME CRASHES WHEN I MOVE CARD DROPZONE', which is not a good back of the box feature. From my side this was



which for those of you who don't code means 'not only immediately crash Unity with an infinite loop when this method runs, but do so in a jaw-droppingly obvious way'. My testing is always a little shaky (we're a two-person team and Lottie is busy drawing skill icons) but I don't see how I missed this one. I'm hoping it's some weird build process/source control hiccup and not actual senility. ANYWAY IT'S FIXED NOW SORRY.

Talking of (a) testing (b) Lottie



the Book of Hours Secret Historian's packs are looking good. and Lottie was delighted that she'd found a wide selection of actual 1920s cigarette cards to add to them. but almost too late she realised that not everything that appears on a 1920s cigarette card is appropriate in 2020, and has had to go through them all carefully to make sure we didn't send anyone anything INCREDIBLY RACIST by mistake.

An extra thank you to everyone who suggested naming conventions for subsequent patches. I was tempted by cheese names. I was more tempted by Zulu names. But because of some relevant lorey backgroundy contexty business, I'm going with flowers, and the next patch will be ASPHODEL.

As Dagmar von Nagelburg would say, pip pip, pots of love.

AK