Version 0.36.0: Events all year, farms, genetics and a guide

Version 0.36.0: events all year with a calendar, Alan Wahants' tutorial and Field tips, farms, a much bigger base with plots to clear, genetics, famous guests, famous ants who hand out Story Quests with errands, favours and fights, a Lore tab, and a big pass on population and the economy.

New

• An events calendar: events now come back on their own schedules, not just once a year. Big events still come every year (Garden Blitz now twice a year, in autumn and spring), and new mini-events fill the year in between.
• Mini-events: light events of a day or a long weekend, with one twist and a few small rewards paid the moment you reach each goal. Nothing to claim and nothing lost when one ends. Harvest Weekend (first weekend of the month: deliver Food to the granary), Codex Quiz Night (second Friday: five extra Codex questions), Critter Hunt Weekend (third weekend: critters twice as often and taps pay double), the Trader's Market (every second Wednesday: a free extra deal), Change of Season (the start of each Australian season: its weather turns up twice as often, and a season's ant colour to earn) and the Alliance Challenge (the last weekend of each season, for everyone, in an alliance or not).
• Holiday events on moving dates: Lantern Night at Lunar New Year and The Great Egg Hunt over Easter, both mini-events with their own critters to tap and a card frame to earn.
• The Christmas Beetle Parade: a new full event from 12 December every year. Catch Christmas beetles at the keeper's lamp for Beetle shine, enter its camp, and pick up the Beetle-shine Nest skin. Missed evenings wait for you.
• Activities › Events and the Events sheet now show what's on now, what's next up, and a calendar: a month grid with every event marked, and a list of every event with how often it comes back.
• Reminder dots: a small dot now shows on the main menu, the bottom tabs, sub-tabs and Activities cards wherever something free is waiting. Boss attacks, Nest Siege plays, digs, casts, trips and scouts not used yet, chests, the daily gift, trader deals, the Chapel's free blessing, goals, achievements and Codex sets to claim, today's Codex question, an idle research slot or a gate ready to open, Story Quests and reputation scenes to read, live event rewards, friends' gifts, alliance rewards, open polls, support replies, new news and new Wardrobe items. Dots add up as they go: a sub-tab's dot also shows on its tab and on the menu.
• Cards by age: the card collection now has a tab for each age you've reached (and All ages), remembered for next time. Tabs with cards ready to upgrade show how many, and Upgrade all still upgrades every card at once.
• Owned only: a new switch in the Wardrobe hides everything you don't own yet, on every tab (skins, ants, frames, decor, maps and base decorations). It's in Edit base's decoration tray too, and your phone or computer remembers your choice.
• Colony works: big projects for spare Food and Materials, on the Build tab from the Bronze Age. Each age has two of its own, and the Royal Banquet and Colony Monument never run out. A work takes a few hours to build (it keeps building while you are away) and gives a small bonus for the rest of the run, such as more Food, more room for ants or stronger soldiers. Works are paid only with Food and Materials.
• The May poll "Which languages next?" has an Other choice: pick another language from a searchable list (no typing, nothing personal kept), and the results show the five most asked.
• Farms, in Activities from the Bronze Age: a new screen for everything your colony grows and stores.
• The fungus garden: with a Fungus Garden built, now and then a pest mould shows up while you play. Weed it out for a short Food boost; leave it and the ants' helpful bacteria clear it, with nothing lost.
• Ant bread: a Seed Granary sets a little Food aside, and if Food ever runs out, the bread feeds the colony first.
• The Aphid Pasture opens in the garden after the Great Escape: foragers herd aphids and stroke them with their antennae for honeydew, which counts as Food. It grows with the ages, and a full herd on a fresh plant pays more than foraging.
• Plants wear out, so now and then move the herd to a fresh rose bush, lemon tree or wattle (switching to another kind of plant costs Food). In space the herd lives on hydroponic racks.
• Predators: a ladybird or a lacewing larva turns up now and then. Tap it to chase it off and calm the herd; ignore it, or be away, and the herd loses only a few aphids.
• Weather and seasons count in the garden. In winter the herd slows down and makes less honeydew unless you give it sugar water.
• Honeypot repletes: fill living honey pots with Food to raise your Food storage.
• Field notes on how real ants farm, with the sources we checked, plus new daily and weekly quests.
• Alan Wahants, the colony's philosopher ant, now walks new keepers through the basics: the colony, Food and Materials, tapping critters, building, ant jobs, staffing, research, your first new age and time away. It takes a few minutes and points at the real buttons on screen, with a thought or two along the way.
• Skip the tutorial at any step (it asks first), and replay it any time from Help and support or from Everything in the game in the menu. Replaying never changes your colony.
• Field tips: 86 short tips that turn up the first time you meet something new, from the questions under every card in the Codex to Satant's deals, time away, Story Quests and the Nuptial Flight. At most one every few minutes, never over another popup, and you can turn them off.
• The Tips journal in the menu keeps every tip you've found, by age, with how many are left to find. Tap Show me to see one again where it belongs.
• Thank-you gifts for finding tips: a free chest at 13, some Royal Jelly at 33, two chests at 53, and a pressed leaf card frame for finding them all. They never count in competitive play, and every tip stays findable.
• Sit with Alan: a quiet moment with a short reflection for each age, from the Tips journal or the Chapel, and a few words from Alan at every new age. No goals, no timers.
• Expandable plots: the wild ground around your colony is now patches of rubble, desk clutter, leaf litter, roots and moon rocks that you can clear for more room to build. Open Edit base, then Expand, and pick a plot beside your colony (or tap one on the map). Clearing costs Materials and a little time, one plot at a time, and carries on while you're away. Each plot costs a bit more than the last. It's earned only: plots are never sold and can't be sped up, and stopping gives every bit of the Materials back.
• Little finds: the first plot you clear, and every second one after, turns up something: a lost marble, an old key, a page of the Keeper's Field Notes for your Codex, or a base decoration you don't have yet.
• How many plots you can clear grows with the ages, like building levels: 4 in the Founding, 6 more with each age, and one more for every Colony work you finish.
• The Wardrobe says which base decorations can turn up while clearing plots.
• Cleared plots stay yours through every age, and each new age's ground grows over them. A new colony after a Nuptial Flight starts on wild ground again.
• Layout templates: save your base layout as one of up to 3 named templates in Edit base (Layouts), put one back any time, update it from your current layout, and choose which one each new colony starts with. When you take a Nuptial Flight you choose too: a template, your layout as it is now, or a fresh start. Buildings and decorations go to their template spots as soon as the new colony reaches that ground (even spots on cleared plots, once you clear them again). Anything still waiting is listed in Edit base, with a quick way to move it or forget its spot.
• Zoom and look around: pinch (or Ctrl + scroll) to zoom the colony in and out, and drag to look around once zoomed in. The new buttons on the colony do the same, and in Edit base the + and − keys zoom, 0 resets the view and the arrow keys look around.
• Brood tuning (Ants → Brood, from the Steam Age): food and scent decide what a larva grows into, so you choose the mix of workers, soldiers and royals. More of one caste means fewer of the others: workers bring more Food and Materials, soldiers hit harder, and royals mean more births. A new mix takes two hours to hatch in, and keeps hatching while you're away. The natural mix has no bonus and no cost.
• The colony genome (Ants → Genome, from the Atomic Age): after Fission the colony learns to edit itself. Spend gene sequences, earned by reaching new ages and clearing waves, on ten traits inspired by real ants, from the fire ant's social chromosome to the Saharan silver ant's heat-shock proteins. No run can take every trait, and each age one trait is a natural mutation that costs less, so every run plays a little differently.
• How far to go: at the top of the tree, choose the Great Ant's way (patient breeding) or Satant's way (forced mutation, with a real cost).
• Your first Great Ant or Satant edit in a run moves your Reputation toward that side. It happens once a run, so Resequencing and choosing again won't move it a second time.
• Traits inspired by a real ant whose card you own wear a pressed-specimen frame.
• Resequence gives back every trait bought this run, once per Nuptial Flight. It never costs anything.
• The germline: Hybrid workers and Clonal queens can be inherited. Hold one when you take a Nuptial Flight and it's written into your Lineage, working from the Founding of every later run.
• Codex → Genes: eight new field notes on how real ants shape their castes and genes. As always, tell us if you spot something wrong.
• Guests: not every famous figure is an ant. Find the Character card of Marie Curie-pillar, Grace Grasshopper, Julius Cicada, Archimidge, Yuri Gnatgarin, Charles Darwasp or Ada Lovelarva and they'll drop by your base now and then, one at a time, and wander about for a while. Tap them for a word from their Codex page and a small, free gift of Food or Materials, once a visit. Time away never stacks visits up: at most one guest is waiting when you come back. The new Guest book (Ants › Named ants) shows who you've met, how often they've visited and how to find the rest.
• Quest givers: now and then, one of the famous ants on your base shows a "!" over their head when they have a Story Quest for you. Tap them, or the card under the story card, to hear them out. Only one at a time, and not too often: the first after about 20 minutes of play, then every hour or so. Time away never piles them up. Story Quests still turn up in place of story events as before, so nobody misses out.
• Errands in Story Quests: some scenes ask you to bring a little of your own Food or Materials income to someone (honeydew for a lure, pebbles for a wall), or to find something on Excavation, Exploration, Fishing or Gathering. It fills up as you play normally, even while you're away, and nothing is held back while it does. When you hand it in, the amount is set aside, but never more than half of what's in store.
• Favours: sometimes a character needs your help before they can help you, like bull ants who won't talk to anyone until you've answered a Codex question and cleared their trail. Each part has its own Go button.
• Quest fights: at times the story switches to a live battle with your Wave Defence party, sized to the waves your colony has already beaten. Retreat works as usual. Lose, and the quest goes on: try again, or take another way round.
• A quest tracker under the story card shows your quest's next step, its progress and a Go button, and the famous ant with something for you wears a "!" on the base.
• Lore: a new tab in the Codex (and in the menu) that keeps every story moment you've seen, so you can read it again. Age-up scenes and the adviser who greets you, story events, every Story Quest scene and ending you've reached, the Great Ant and Satant's banter, Satant's offers with the answer you gave, your famous ants and guests, and Alan Wahants's walk through the basics and his Field tips. Sort by type and by age, or search for a word or a name. Anything you haven't found yet shows as a silhouette with a hint about where to find it. If you've been playing a while, what your colony has already been through is filled in for you, and your journal stays with you through every Nuptial Flight.
• A reminder dot marks new entries in Lore. It has its own switch in Settings → Display → Show reminder dots.

Changes

• Rarer events pay more: a mini-event that comes every year or every 3 months pays more than a monthly one, and the twice-a-year Garden Blitz pays a little less each time (more over the year). Mini-event cosmetics come back every year, and you'll find them in the Event Archive once you've reached a goal in that mini-event.
• Event leaderboards are kept for each time an event runs, so the autumn and spring Garden Blitz each have their own.
• Event camps now show what each upgrade makes a second, what its next level adds and how soon it pays for itself, with the best value marked and an Upgrade best button. Your total Supplies a second sits at the top, with the slower rate when the camp isn't at full pace.
• Dots only ever mark free things. Royal Jelly attacks, ads still to watch and anything you'd pay for never get one.
• The bottom tabs now count what's waiting on every tab, not just Cards and the Codex.
• Tap Ants, Food or Materials in the top bar to see what you have against the cap, how soon it fills, and how to raise it.
• Building cards now show their own workers: how many work there and how many more ants it needs for full output. Ants always fill the best-paying buildings first, so older buildings can sit empty.
• The Forager Trail and Twig Yard show how much storage they give, and buildings past their last doubling show what each level still adds.
• Cards: beside the age tabs, a second row filters the collection by type (species, creatures, characters, myths, objects, fossils and castes), each with how many cards it holds and how many can be upgraded. With a filter on, the upgrade button upgrades just the cards shown, and says so.
• A much bigger base: every age's buildable square is larger (13 tiles a side at the start, up to 22 in the Singularity), with the view pulled back a little more to fit, so there's always plenty of room for decorations after all your buildings.
• The map itself is bigger, and the ground you already had looks just the same.
• The Ants and Codex sub-tabs stay in one row on phones: swipe sideways to see them all, and the open one is always in view.
• All 20 Story Quests have been reworked with two to five errands, favours and fights each, woven into their stories, with new scenes along the way. Their endings and rewards haven't changed.
• A quest you were partway through keeps its place.
• Satant is now purple everywhere, matching his scenes and colours (he used to be red in some pictures).
• Famous ants and guests are easier to tap on a zoomed-out base: each has a bigger tap area, and buildings next to them still get their own taps.
• Royal Jelly packs are now A$4.99, A$7.99, A$14.99, A$29.99 and A$79.99 (the smallest and largest packs are gone), and each bigger pack gives a little more Royal Jelly per dollar.
• The roadmap on news.fractalax.games now shows a rough date for everything on it.

Balance

• Building levels are capped by the age: 75 in the Stone Age, 100 in the Bronze Age, then 25 more with each age (275 in the Singularity, 300 at the Great Leap). Each building card shows its cap and, once you reach it, which age raises it. Every gate's level requirements fit well under its cap, and levels you already have above it are kept: they just wait for the cap to catch up.
• Fishing bait costs about half a minute of your Food income (it was over a minute) and never more than a quarter of what your Food storage holds, so a full store can always pay for a cast. Catches are smaller to match: a cast now pays about a minute or two of income. Fishing, digging and gathering are side activities and stay small next to your colony's own production.
• Gathering parties bring home about an eighth of what they did, and one-off finds a fifth: five parties out all day now add about an eighth of a day's production instead of more than doubling it.
• Trader deals, outposts and event deliveries never cost more than a quarter of what that resource's storage holds, and Colony works never more than 90%, so everything can be paid for. The top outpost levels used to cost more than storage could ever hold.
• Every level of the Brood Chamber and of every Food or Materials building now houses 5 ants, on top of the Founding Chamber. Before, only the Founding Chamber made room, so by the Information Age most buildings had no workers at all. Now two thirds or more of a colony's jobs are filled through the middle ages, and every level you buy brings ants to work it. Room bonuses (Orbital Hive, traits, castes) count the new housing too. Nobody loses anything: your cap only goes up.
• Cards hold fewer soldiers in later ages, matched to what the waves need. A card's capacity used to grow far faster than any colony (by the Information Age one Common card held about 90,000 soldiers for a colony of 20,000 ants); now a full party holds about twice the soldiers your colony can field. Soldiers above a card's new capacity go back to the Soldiers pool, none are lost.
• Auto-build buys one level at a time, always the cheapest for what you earn, across every building you switched on, instead of pouring everything into the first one. While the age gate needs nothing but Materials, it leaves the gate's Materials alone.
• More Food upgrades: the Seed Granary, Barracks, Lab Annex, Satellite Mound, Orbital Hive and Hive Mind now cost Food instead of Materials, so each age has about as many Food upgrades as Materials ones (Materials still pays for every age gate).
• Food keeps up with Materials late in the game: the Power Source (the Charger Boiler, the Battery Reactor and power bonuses from research and cards) now boosts Food too, by half as much as it boosts Materials. Late-game Food income used to be about 8 times lower than Materials; now it is within about 2 times.
• The ages take as long as before: the balance bot still reaches the Great Leap on day 14.
• Honeydew makes up about a fifth of a colony's Food in the later ages. Farming can't be bought: nothing in the shop touches the farms, and competitive modes don't have them.

Fixes

• Buying a set with decorations in it (like the Golden colony set) no longer puts a decoration out by itself. They wait in Edit base's tray for you to place. If a crown or other decoration was floating in the sky after buying a set, it's back in the tray when you next open the game.
• Room decorations you wear from the Wardrobe now stand on the floor beside your colony (the desk, carpet, grass or moon dust) instead of hanging in the sky.
• Event camps are easier to read: the small notes (time left, check-in tips, the rate per second and milestone numbers) are brighter on the dark camp panel, including in high contrast.
• Daily quests now count what you've done since the daily reset, so a quest you get by swapping after using up your digs, casts or other daily plays is already finished and ready to claim. Confuciosant also no longer hands out a daily you can't finish today, such as digging when you have no digs left.
• Famous ants and the colony's own ants walk smoothly around your base again. They no longer flick back a step at every tile or jump to a new spot when they set off, they ease in and out of their stops, and they stop turning left and right on zigzag paths. With Reduce motion on, they stand still on their idle pose.

Accessibility

• Each dot is said aloud with what it marks (for example "Activities, 3 things ready"). It always sits at the same corner with a light ring, so it doesn't rely on colour alone, and it stays clear in high contrast.
• Settings → Display → Show reminder dots turns them off, or you can turn off just some kinds (boss attacks, play, rewards, goals, research, story, events, friends, and news).
• Alan's speech bubbles are read out by screen readers, work with a keyboard, never trap focus, stay still with Reduce motion and fit at the largest text size.
• Every step has words as well as colour: progress bars carry their numbers in text, and an offer always has a card you can reach without tapping the map.

Fair play

• Genetics is earned in play and never sold: no trait, mix or Resequence costs Royal Jelly or money.
• Competitive modes are unchanged: Ranked Sieges and the Weekly Sprint don't use genetics.