Greetings, governors!

This last month-and-a-half has been wild! So much stuff happening after the Early Access release with tons of feedback, no less than 7 updates, steam deck updates and tons more. But nothing stops here - it's time we share a bit about what you can expect in the first milestone update!

As your settlement grow from humble huts to bustling small villages, managing your people should still feel like managing individuals - not just counting heads and stocking woodpiles. In the first milestone update, we'll be introducing a whole new layer of gameplay: education levels & job effectiveness!

Every person in your settlement will now have an education level - a personal stat that determines not only their skills but also their potential. The education level has three tiers:

• 🪓Uneducated - everyone starts here
  
• 📗Educated - a little learning goes a long way
  
• 💎Expert - masters of their craft, and worth every coin

How do you improve the education level of your people? Simple! Once you've built a school, you can send specific folks to upgrade their education. Schools don't passively train a population - instead, they act more like training centers, where you choose who to invest in.

School concept building

Want to make your blacksmith sharper than his tools? Send him back to class - for a price

Education upgrades aren't free. Each level will cost gold (or a future resource), making education a strategic investment. You can send people back to school from either their homes or workplaces to the nearest available school, and once upgraded, they return ready to contribute at a higher level.

This adds another reason to keep those trade routes flowing and quests completed - education costs!

Here's where it gets juicy: while any job can be filled by any villager, education levels affect how effective they are at different tasks.

For example:

• 🌲 Woodcutters? They swing axes just fine, regardless of smarts - 100% efficiency no matter their education level.
  
• 🪵 Sawmills? Now that's where knowledge pays off. "Educated" workers give a +25% productivity bonus.
  
• ⚒️ Tool smith and other high-tier buildings? You'll want "Experts" in there - with a potential +25% productivity bonus on top of the "Educated" bonus!

These are just examples, and you'll be able to see these bonuses in the building overview UI and tooltips when placing or selecting buildings. Every bit of knowledge now comes with a visible payoff.

With this system, we're giving you another tool to create not just a working town, but an efficient one. It's a fresh new challenge: do you invest in training now for future gains, or keep all hands on deck for survival today? The choice is yours.

Combined with the other part of the first milestone update - Research and upgrades - every new village will be an entirely new experience, and you get to shape the direction your village takes.

Both these updates will be available in the first milestone update later this month.

Until next time, keep those fires burning and those books open!