invites players to protect and guide a small band of settlers to forge a town at the edge of the known world.

From harvesting raw materials to hunting, fishing and farming to survive, building a thriving homestead will be fraught with challenge. Players will need to produce crafted items to trade, consume, equip and fight as you battle for survival against the elements and outside threats.

With a vast array of materials and crops to harvest, dozens of unique buildings to expand your town with and a deep farming system - right down to soil fertility and seasonal rotations - the depth of Farthest Frontier is vast. Whether you choose to play on pacifist and avoid combat altogether or engage with varying levels of raider difficulty to raise the stakes for your town’s survival, enemies you'll face aren't always from raiders and foreign armies seeking plunder.

Ensuring your villagers have clean water to stop outbreaks of dysentery and cholera while making sure they are properly clothed to reduce chances of contracting tetanus, rabies or frostbite is key to survival. Failure to manage their needs and secure food properly will see disease creep into your settlement.

Offering beautiful fully customizable maps with randomized terrain generation and resource distribution, players are free to control the amount of water or mountains they desire for extreme maps, leading to unique challenges.

Crate Entertainment’s Farthest Frontier has officially sold more than 250,000 copies after just 7 days in Early Access, and is on track to reach half a million copies sold by the end of August.

"The reception to Farthest Frontier so far has been fantastic and we’re glad to see so many of you enjoying the game, providing feedback and reporting issues. The game will become the best version of itself thanks in part to your support and contributions. It’s the very reason we wanted to do early access again for our second title; the community is showing us that it was the right decision." - Arthur Bruno, Owner and Lead Designer

Farthest Frontier is available now Steam Early Access for $29.99, and will remain so for 8-12 months, depending on how much we feel the need to alter gameplay systems or add to the scope of the game before we're ready to call it finished.

We’ve been busily reviewing your feedback, getting bug reports to TOP MEN, and we’re now ready to talk about some of the changes and improvements you can look forward to in the near future, and throughout early access. You can expect this to be the first of many updates we post during early access to keep you in the loop of how things are going and where we are headed.

This is in no way a comprehensive list of what will happen in early access, but we’d like to address some of your top concerns.

So let’s dive in!

V0.7.5 Update

First up, we’ve nearly wrapped up work on v0.7.5, which is packed with balance changes, bug fixes, and even some new features. You can look forward to this update in the coming days!

Performance and Optimization

We’re sure the question about performance is on top of many lists. Optimization is an ongoing effort that will progress through all of early access. The plan is to introduce improvements as they’re ready, so you can expect to see better performance as we release updates. We’ll be sure to call it out whenever we expect to see major gains.

Some of the current performance issues that you’ve reported and are on our radar:

• Hitching when opening UI windows
• Hitching when the desirability overlay is displayed
• Hitching when buildings are finished
• Hitching when cows are fenced in
• Performance degradation at high population
• Excessively long loading times
• Memory use accumulates when rerolling/restarting maps frequently

One issue we have already resolved that should get much better in the upcoming v0.7.5 update is a memory leak that occurs when reloading repeatedly. This was a nasty one that could quickly eat up your ram, slow down load times and potentially cause the game not to load at all.

We will continue to monitor for issues with loading and work on fixes to get you all in the game and playing.

Trading Post

We have a number of things lined up for the Trading Post.

First up, the current notification for a trader arriving is very minimal (just an icon over the building). We prioritized improving this. In v0.7.5, you can look forward to notifications and a sound that let you know a trader has arrived, and which trader it is.

A circular icon will appear in the top left of the screen whenever a trader is in town and ready to trade. This should make it much more obvious whenever traders are available.

In addition, the trade union has paid its dues to the fire brigade. Fires that erupt at the Trading Post will now get properly put out in v0.7.5.

We are working on addressing issues with traders not arriving, traders leaving immediately, and upgrading the Trading Post. We hope to have fixes out to you ASAP in a future update.

Another thing we absolutely want to add during early access is the option to request a resource from the next trader, for a premium price. This way you can always get a critical item for your town without having to wait for the right trader to arrive. This is coming in a future update.

A New Starting Experience and Game Difficulty

We hear your feedback about the game being challenging to get into. Some of this is by design, but challenge does not automatically mean frustration. We are working on adding many more tutorials in future updates to help ease you into Farthest Frontier’s many mechanics.

We also understand that many of you wish to have a more relaxed way to play Farthest Frontier that isn’t as pressed for resources.

We’ve created a new map type: Idyllic Valley. This map is teeming with resources of every variety. If you’ve been looking for a place to settle in the frontier where everything is provided for (well except Heavy Tools, those do not grow on bushes), this should be your go to selection. This is now the default map type when you select New Settlement.

In addition, we’ve updated the map descriptions and added difficulty indicators to make it more clear what kind of a challenge you’re setting yourself up for.

In a future update, we plan to incorporate difficulty scaling for Food Spoilage and Crop Diseases, so those playing on Pioneer will have an easier time maintaining their food stores.

Moar Resources

We’ve heard your feedback regarding the sustainability of towns in the endgame, so we are taking some measures for v0.7.5. For starters, we are significantly increasing the resources within mineral deposits.

Trees will regrow faster and produce more wood. This should make Work Camps with 2 workers able to chop trees without any additional micromanagement for a long time, if not indefinitely. Full Work Camps focused on trees will still likely make quick work of a forest, but the assumption there is that you need lots of wood and fast.

For those hungry for stone, we are adding the mother of all rocks to the game. Behold! The megarock! This behemoth should sate hungry cities for generations. It is however just a (massive) stepping stone to a long-term solution…

We have also addressed an issue where some resources, such as herbs and willow, were generating outside of the pathable area. No more confusion about what resources are accessible to your villagers.

Quarries, Deep Mines and Forestry
For endgame resource generation, we would like to add several new types of buildings: Quarries and Deep Mines. These new endgame structures will serve the purpose of generating an endless supply of resources for your town so that you can work on perfecting your creations for as long as you see fit.

For wood availability, we noticed some of you have resorted to using décor trees to sustain your towns. While this is a fine workaround, it’s not exactly an enjoyable one. We are discussing solutions for sustainable forests. Ultimately, we want there to be a way to maintain forests on the map without requiring so much player micromanagement. Stay tuned for a future update!

Spiritual Buildings

A popular request is churches. You may have already read some of our thoughts (and prayers) on this one, but ultimately the initial implementation of spiritual buildings has come down to development time. If we do spiritual buildings, we think they should come with some sort of mechanic, and not just be a barebones entertainment or desirability option.

There is also a question of what form these buildings should take. For some, the answer is obviously a church. Maybe some sort of quaint, wooden church as seen in most of the small New England towns. But wait, is the game set in the Colonial period, should it be a big medieval cathedral instead? What about a Norse temple? Maybe it’s not set in a real time period at all?

Where the game is set is something we’ve largely left for the player to decide. Players should have the freedom, while crafting their own charming town out of the wilderness and watching their people get mauled by bears, to imagine the details of the setting as they see fit.

So when it comes to religion, we’re not sure that a church is necessarily the obvious answer. It could be interesting and allow for more creative player agency, to explore a system where you get to choose deities who could confer different favors upon your town. Or who knows, maybe when the friendly traveling merchant, Scorv Egdenor the Butcher was in town, he’s secretly whispered to those willing to listen about the glorious return of RAVAGER!

Whatever we do for this category of buildings though, we’ll want to make sure it’s another fun and engaging mechanic that adds a meaningful layer to the gameplay, rather than rushing something in just to say we have it in the game.

Production and Storage Management

There are currently some limitations for resource management that we’d like to address in future updates:

• There is no method to transfer resources between storage.

  This is an issue we are working on. The worst example of this issue is how the Trading Post appears to gobble up your resource transfers, when in fact it is keeping all your items in a secret limbo storage. Your items are still there, but they don’t show up in any town storage building. That is something addressing this problem will also resolve.

• There is no way to set quotas.

  We would like there to be a way to set a storage to always keep at least X of a resource. That way you can have a main drop-off storage say for logs, but another one further away will always try to keep at least 100 logs in stock for nearby production buildings.

• There is no way to set production limits

  This one is a must so you have better control of how buildings are outputting materials for your town. Mainly, there needs to be a way to set a way to halt production if your town has at least X of the product, and a way to halt production if your town has less than X of a material. These controls should offer much more powerful options for managing your town’s resources.

• Finally, we are planning on adding a way to check/uncheck entire categories of resources in your storage buildings. Just a small quality of life change, but a valuable one nonetheless.

Graveyard Repositioning

Mistakes were made and you buried grandma right outside the compost yard (or maybe this was your evil plan all along?!). You feel guilt swelling up inside you and you want to relocate that graveyard.
We hear you on this one.

Some method of moving the graveyards would be nice. We’d like to come up with some kind of cost to doing so however as that should be a choice not made lightly. Perhaps a gold fee may suffice to pay off the local necromancers not to raid their supply.

Expect more on this in the future.

Barns and Cows

There are a number of issues with Barns and Cows that we are working through. Slaughtering cows stops working, milk production stops working, cows stop generating new cows, upgrading to a tier 2 barn or relocating/rebuilding your barn can cause cows to vanish into the void.

We’ve addressed a number of these issues already for v0.7.5 and whatever we do not get to will be promptly addressed for a future update.

New Decorations

Making a beautiful town is one of the highlights of town builders. We’re working on giving you MOAR options so you can have even more variety in your builds.

Key Features

• Harvest, Grow, Craft - Harvest 14 different raw materials from wood, stone and clay, to metal ores, wild herbs, and honey. Grow 17 types of food, including forage items, fish and game, plus 10 food crops, each with different characteristics. Produce 32 crafted items and materials in a multi—tiered economy.
• Build and Advance - Construct 50 different types of buildings as you grow your town from a fledgling settlement to a bustling city. Your town center and housing will advance through multiple building tiers as the prosperity and desirability of your town increases. Upgrade production buildings to increase efficiency and enable production of more advanced items.
• Most Detailed Farming System Ever - Strategically select from 10 crops with unique growing characteristics and configure crop rotations to maintain soil fertility, avoid heat and frost damage, and prevent the accumulation of diseases. Cultivate your fields over time, removing weeds and rocks, raising fertility and adjusting soil mixture to achieve maximum crop production to keep your growing population fed.
• Advanced Town Simulation - Villagers actively live their lives and perform their jobs in real time. Watch as villagers carry goods across town from remote work-sites to be processed into materials and crafted into items. See foods and goods delivered to homes, the trade post or stored for later use. Develop roads, transport wagons and improve storage methods to facilitate the efficient movement of goods through your town and prevent spoilage.
• Randomly Generated Maps - Farthest Frontier is highly replayable and no game is ever quite the same with beautiful, completely randomized terrain generation and resource distribution. Controls allow players to specify the amount of water or mountains they desire, with extreme maps leading to unique challenges.
• Idyllic to Brutal - Customizable difficulty options allow players to turn off features like invaders and disease, for a more tranquil experience or max out difficulty to truly test their town-builder prowess.
• Environmental Interaction - Develop your economy based on which resources are locally abundant and produce items for trade to acquire that which you lack. Erect fencing to keep deer away from crop fields and stop bears from raiding food storage. Manage tree cover to prevent underground water supplies from drying up. Balance the need to clear land for agriculture around vital natural resources like wild growing medicinal plants and forage items.
• All Them Old-Timey Diseases! - Ensure your villagers have clean water to stop outbreaks of dysentery and cholera. Collect berries and plant greens to avoid scurvy and ensure a healthy diet. Make sure villagers are properly shoed and clothed to reduce chances of contracting tetanus, rabies or frostbite. Build a healer’s house to quarantine the infected and provide herbs and medicine for treatment. Manage rodent populations by collecting waste, securely storing food and employing rat catchers to ward off the feared bubonic plague.
• Fend Off Would-Be Invaders - Choose to play on pacifist and avoid combat altogether or engage with varying levels of raider difficulty to raise the stakes for your town’s survival. Progress from wood palisades to stone walls, build towers and barracks, recruit and equip soldiers in the defense of your town as rising prosperity attracts the attention of raiders and foreign armies seeking plunder.

Farthest Frontier is in development for PC (Steam), scheduled for 2023.