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Seasons Arrive in Thornfeld

The valley now experiences four seasons that cycle through the year. Each season lasts 24 real hours and ticks over with the daily server save. Four seasons = one in-game year. The minimap clock label shows the current state: Mon 14:30 Spring, Y1.

The cycle is anchored to the save event, not the wall clock. A delayed save delays the season. A mid-day restart preserves the season. The world keeps its own time, day by day.

Spring

• Wildflower carpets bloom near every deciduous and fruit tree.
• Scattered wildflowers (45 varieties) dot the open grass across the valley.
• Crops grow 1.5x faster. A wheat stage that normally takes 60 minutes finishes in 40.
• Your character may sneeze in the pollen with a small puff effect.

Summer

• Dry grass tufts appear in open spaces, weighted to match the natural RME brush distribution.
• A subtle bloom haze covers the world during the day.
• Crop growth runs at the normal baseline.
• Your character may sigh in the heat.

Fall

• Green and yellow leaf carpets paint the ground near deciduous trees.
• Mature fruit trees revert to their no-fruit stage and drop their fruit on adjacent tiles.
• Pine cones scatter from conifers; mushrooms cluster near deciduous trees.
• A warm autumn tint and two-layer animated falling leaves cover the world.
• Your character may cough in the cool air.

Winter

• Snow blankets the valley. Grass tiles transform into snow variants, deciduous trees go dormant, and conifers become snow-covered.
• Plants enter stasis. They do not grow, but they also do not die of drought. You can still water, plant, and harvest mature crops; only the growth scheduler is frozen.
• A cold-blue tint and falling snow particles cover the world.
• Your character may shiver with a small icicle effect.

Crop Strategy

Water a near-mature crop right before Winter. When Spring arrives, the elapsed time accumulated during the cold applies in one shot, advancing the crop by a stage immediately. Plan your Fall plantings to leap forward through the winter freeze.

Talk to the Town

Every major NPC in Thornfeld comments on the current season. Say season (or weather, or today) after greeting any of the 25 covered NPCs and they share what the season means to them. Hank gripes about dirt blunting his tools. Marta gossips about the new lambs. Ivy raves about germination rates. Cedric complains about mud tracked into the post office. Each NPC has a unique voice per season - try them all.

Welcome Message

The first time you log in within a new season, you will see a Welcome message with the season name, the current year, and a one-line atmospheric description. One per player per season - relog all you want, you will not see it again until the next season turns.

Watch & Rain Polish

• The watch (item 2906) now shows the season and year alongside the weekday and time: Wednesday, 14:30 - Spring, Year 1.
• Rain now fills water troughs. +300 units per rain event, clamped to capacity. Normal troughs (max 100) top off; metal troughs (max 500) gain 300. Empty and feed troughs are left alone - rain respects your intent.

Bug Fixes

• Walking onto snow no longer crashes the player due to a legacy achievement lookup that no longer exists in Thornfeld.

Documentation

Full Seasons coverage in both places:

• In-game: Cyclopedia → Ranch → Seasons
• Online: Wiki → Seasons (cross-referenced from the Farming section)

One-Key Controls

Thornfeld now ships with a streamlined one-key-per-action control scheme. Defaults work in gameplay mode (chat unfocused) and never collide with typing. Every key is rebindable in Options → Controls → General Hotkeys.

• F — Interact with whatever is in front of you (NPC talk, container open, door use). Same effect as right-clicking the target.
• Space — Use the right ranch tool on the target in front. Goes through your Toolbox if you carry one, otherwise the matching loose tool in your backpack. Hoe on dirt, scythe on wheat, axe on tree, pick on rock, sickle on cane, hammer on construction, saw on log — all from one key.
• H — Halter (or unhalter) the animal in front of you.
• M — Mount the horse or donkey in front, or dismount if you are already riding.
• B — Toggle the Building Book.
• P — Toggle the Pet Book.

Walking into an impassable tile now turns your character to face it instead of doing nothing. Combined with F, a single walk-step + F is enough to start talking to an NPC or open a door — no Ctrl needed.

Toolbox Parking Slot

The empty slot in the bottom-left of the inventory (below the ring) is now your Toolbox slot. Drag your toolbox there and it becomes safe: items in this slot are never lost on death. The slot accepts only the toolbox — other items are rejected with a hint. You can still take the toolbox out whenever you want.

Chat & Window Polish

• Enter — Focus the chat input. A second Enter sends; an empty Enter closes the input. If the chat panel is hidden, Enter brings it back AND focuses the input in a single press.
• Esc — Two-stage: first press defocuses the input, second press hides the entire chat panel. Esc also closes any open window (Building Book, Pet Book, Order Board, Toolbox, Pet Info, Livestock Yard, Cave Elevator, Oven, Tutorial, Cockfight) from anywhere on the screen — no need to click into the window first.

Bug Fixes

• Building Book: pressing Esc while placing now only cancels placement and brings the book back, instead of looping the book open and closed.
• The chat-mode radio at the top of the keybinds panel has been hidden. Every rebind now lands on the gameplay slot by default, removing the confusing dual-slot UI.
• Mount and Halter hotkeys debounce at 500ms so key-spam cannot flood the server.

Full breakdown in the Wiki → Controls & Hotkeys section.

One Click Is Enough

Gathering, smelting, and now every workshop machine stops asking for a click per swing. Hold the line, your character keeps working until the job is done, and walking away cancels with no loss of what you already produced.

• Chopping trees - one click and your axe keeps swinging until the tree falls. If you walk off mid-fell, the tree remembers how many hits are left.
• Mining rocks and clay rocks - same deal. The pick keeps swinging until the rock breaks.
• Digging the basement - pick on earth keeps digging tile by tile until the floor is dug.
• Forge smelting - drop a stack on the forge and it processes everything in 3-second iterations. Ten iron ore = five bars over fifteen seconds.
• Millstone, Distilling Machine, Weaving Loom - the rest of the workshop joins the party. Drop a stack of wheat, flour, sugar, or wool on the machine and it grinds/distills/weaves the whole pile, 3 seconds per output.

Position yourself, click once, walk away when you have enough.

Saw Machine

A new buildable machinery item in the Building Book under Machinery. Drop a log on top of the saw and one second later, 1 to 5 planks pop out on the adjacent tile.

• Three times faster than the hand saw (1s vs 3s). Pays itself off quickly if you process a lot of wood.
• Output direction depends on rotation: south-facing drops planks south, east-facing drops them east. Rotate to point the output where you want.
• One log at a time per machine. Build a row of saws if you want to parallelize.
• Build cost: 6 planks, 8 nails, 2 iron bars.

Building Book - Ghost Preview

When you click Place on Map or Roof Mode, a semi-transparent preview of the actual item snaps to whatever tile the cursor is over - RME-style. Multi-tile structures like the Millstone (2x2) or the Well (1+1) show all their companion pieces at the right offsets, so you can see the full footprint before committing. No more guessing where the corner piece lands.

Demolish Roofs (Hammer button)

The Roofs tab in the Building Book now has a Hammer button next to Roof Mode. Click it to enter demolish mode (you need a hammer in your inventory or installed in your toolbox).

Same upper-floor view as Roof Mode - the player's own floor dims so the roof tile you're hammering stands out. Click any roof, it pops with a small effect, and you get half the build materials back. Keep clicking to demolish more; right-click or ESC exits.

New Roof Style: Farm Roof

A third roof family added to the Roofs category: 16 variants built from planks + nails + clay (mix of full-cost and reduced-cost pieces for trim work). Sits next to the existing Tiled Roof and Thatched Roof tabs.

Cheaper Roof Tiles

Tiled and Thatched roof costs were rebalanced down. Both styles now cost 1-3 units per tile depending on visual mass, instead of a flat 6. Smaller trim pieces are nearly free; chunkier centerpiece tiles cost the most. Total cost of a typical roof: roughly half what it used to be.

New Weaving Loom Sprite

The Building Book points at a fresh loom sprite. Same recipe (2 wool to 1 cloth, batched now), just a new look. Old looms placed before today keep working - no need to rebuild.

Rope at Hank

Hank now stocks a basic Rope for 50 gp. Climb out of a hole, haul something up a floor - standard rope behavior.

Notes

• The hand Saw still roots you for 3 seconds per log - it's intentionally hands-on. Build the Saw Machine if you want hands-free, faster log processing.
• Cyclopedia and Wiki updated with the new behaviors, demolish button, ghost preview, Farm Roof, and the rebalanced roof costs.

Why this matters

The Greta onboarding quest (Earning Your Keep) was originally built around a single quest player at a time on shared world tiles. With several settlers arriving at once, players were getting stuck: queues to halter the same chicken, dirt tiles in the wrong state from someone else, troughs deadlocking, broken fences sitting empty after a previous quester logged out.

This patch makes the entire tutorial multi-player safe. Infinite settlers can now run all five missions in parallel without bricking each other.

M1 - The Loose Chicken

Each settler now gets their own Henrietta spawned in the woods when they accept the quest. No more queues, no more "she's already with someone" while you wait ten minutes for the previous claimer to give up. Logout despawns your bird; login respawns it.

M2 - Breaking Ground

The field now has several dirt patches instead of one. Pick any patch nobody else is working on, hoe it, plant your seed, water it, scythe it. Each player is locked to their own patch through the full cycle so a single griefer can't hoe everything and ruin the field for newcomers.

M3 - Feed the Animals

The shared troughs no longer deadlock. If another settler filled the side you needed, just top it up for your turn - your quest still advances. The troughs auto-cycle so they're never stuck full forever.

M4 - Mending Fences

Greta now has several rotten fences along the west side of the farm instead of one. Pick any nobody else is working, smash it, gather your materials, rebuild it where you broke it. Other players cannot apply their planks and nails to your construction site, and nobody can place a rival fence on the spot you're working.

M5 - The Bailiff's Errand

If you log out mid-mission, Brick and Bramble despawn cleanly. They respawn for you on your next login. No more ghost pets piling up around the farm.

If you've already finished the tutorial

You won't see any of this - it's all in the past for you. But your new neighbors will have a much smoother first hour. Welcome them.

The Pit Opens

Captain Harmon runs an open secret behind Grubb's pigsty. Bring a rooster on your halter, place a bet, and let the spurs decide. The Cockmaster will see you when you ask.

How a Fight Works

• Two modes — Death kills the losing rooster for real and pays the winner +1 fight DNA on his bird. Survival stops the fight when one bird drops to 20% HP, no deaths, no DNA, only the bet flows.
• PvE — sign up alone; the Cockmaster fields a matched-DNA opponent. House pays 1.8× your bet on a win, keeps it on a loss.
• PvP — open a lobby entry, get challenged (or browse open entries and challenge someone). Pot is double the bet minus a 10% house rake.
• Best of 3 rounds — first bird to win two rounds takes the match. Real birds are kept safe across rounds; only the MATCH ending counts.

Fight DNA

• Every rooster carries a fight gene from 1 to 10. Higher DNA means more HP, sharper attacks, and tougher defense in the pit. Stat curve: HP 25–115, attack 7–25, defense 1–10.
• Wick sells fresh roosters at DNA 1. Breeding can match or lower the father's DNA — never raise it.
• The only way to climb DNA is to win a Death match. PvE wins count but cap at DNA 8. DNA 9 and 10 are PvP-only.
• The Climb Rule — winning a Death match against a LOWER-DNA opponent pays the bet but grants NO DNA bump. The pit rewards climbing against equals or betters, not slaughtering weaker birds.

Bet Caps

The LOWER DNA of the two birds sets the cap, so a DNA 10 champion cannot drag a fresh DNA 1 bird into a big-money match.

• DNA 1 — 50 gp
• DNA 2–3 — 150 gp
• DNA 4–5 — 500 gp
• DNA 6–7 — 2,000 gp
• DNA 8–9 — 8,000 gp
• DNA 10 — 25,000 gp

Logging Out Mid-Match

• Death — your bird dies anyway and the bet goes to your opponent.
• Survival — only the bet is lost. The bird walks out unharmed.

Achievements

• First Blood — win your first cockfight.
• Cock of the Walk — 10 cockfight wins.
• Pit Champion — 50 cockfight wins.
• Bantamweight — own a rooster at DNA 10 (by training or by lucky breed).

Lore

The pit is the captain's side hustle. Wick hates the arrangement — the captain buys his best birds at fair price and they never come back. Beric is the lookout, and gets a share. Oswin suspects but cannot prove. Grubb is paid five gold a week to stay quiet about the trapdoor.

The real Captain Harmon at the castle gate keeps his normal duties. The man in the pit is the same captain, off duty and out of uniform.

Full rules, DNA chart, and bet table on the Wiki, under Cockfights.