Farthest Frontier Update 1.2 Plans Automated Trading and Dedicated Work Crews

Under the current trading process, goods and gold must be at the Trading Post before a deal can be made, and moving goods there takes time. Update 1.2 is planned to split Buying, Selling and Inventory Management into separate tabs. Inventory filters should make relevant goods easier to find, while items the settlement cannot stock will leave the list. More consequentially, new minimum stock settings will account for both Trading Post inventory and goods kept for the settlement. That should let players prepare exports without pulling all of a needed resource, such as glass, out of local use.

Automatic orders will be configurable for each resource using quantity and price conditions. A resource can be set to automatic buying or selling, but not both at once, so the proposed system is not a self-running buy-low, sell-high loop. An infinite quantity setting still depends on the chosen conditions and available gold. The practical gain is fewer routine trade commands; deciding what to reserve and which prices to accept remains part of managing the town.

Crate also plans supply and demand factors that respond to a settlement’s trading habits and outside influences. Repeatedly selling surplus stone, for example, can affect what future merchants will pay. Those influences expire over time. Diversifying exports may therefore help steady prices. This matters beyond the new interface: a familiar surplus will no longer necessarily fetch the same value on every visit.

Research Costs Will Reflect Technology Tiers

The technology tree is due for a different progression model. Crate says that earning a single Knowledge point can take years in the late game, even though an early basic technology and an advanced one each cost one point under the current design. Version 1.2 would instead add Knowledge every month and price technologies according to their tier and difficulty. That should make an earlier technology left unresearched less costly to pick up later. Crate expects completing the tree to take substantially less time overall.

Tomes of Knowledge are also planned to unlock a particular technology rather than award a generic point. If the settlement already knows that technology, the tome will add a modest amount of stored Knowledge based on its contents. A tome might therefore bring forward a useful discovery, but it will not function as a choice of any technology the player wants.

Construction and Labor Offices Have Different Jobs

The proposed Construction Office assigns a permanent group of builders who stay on construction and maintenance instead of returning to the general labor pool. Once those jobs are done, they reinforce buildings, raising Structural Integrity to reduce how often maintenance is needed later. The Labor Office keeps a dedicated group for another sequence of tasks: gathering resources, moving goods between storages when quotas are set, and then delivering materials to production buildings. That last step is intended to leave craftspeople more time to make goods rather than fetch inputs.

The distinction gives players a way to assess which proposed change addresses their own bottleneck. A backlog of building and repairs points toward the Construction Office; slow transfers and poorly supplied workshops make the Labor Office more relevant. In replies to Crate’s preview, forum user medea_fleecestealer welcomed separating builders from laborers, while ladyselua described moving goods around a settlement as a recurring difficulty. Those are individual reactions, rather than evidence of a measured improvement from the unfinished update.

Saved Crop Rotations and Avoidance Zones

A Crop Rotation Almanac will let players save a rotation and reuse it on other fields or in other settlements, as well as share it with other players. Crate says it will be accessible from a field or the Crop Summary window. The studio credits SageDragoon’s Essential Provisions mod as inspiration; the almanac itself is planned for the update. For towns with many similarly managed fields, saving a rotation could remove repeated setup work.

Dangerous Area Banners are intended to steer villagers away from wildlife or raid camps. Their zones can be set to three sizes, moved and turned off. They are not solid barriers: if an otherwise necessary route is blocked, villagers may cross the marked area. A banner can help guide movement, but the available routes will still determine whether a trip is safe. Smaller changes in the preview include more detailed map resource tooltips during town creation and production quota indicators in the resource window.

Release Timing Remains Conditional

Crate hopes to begin a playtest this fall and aims to release version 1.2 by the end of 2026 if development goes smoothly. It says it will continue iterating if the features need more work, and the previewed mechanics may change. After 1.2, the studio expects smaller tuning updates before its next major free update, 1.3; revisiting terraforming is only a possibility at this stage. Crate is separately working on a larger expansion involving new map types, professions and industries, with no release date announced.