Welcome to another weekly patch notes! This week I bring you the second phase in the improvement of mechanics of the shop mechanics, I hope you like it!

Features

Shop Keeping mechanics, second stage

Last week I published in patch 2.1.8 an improvement in the sales mechanics for the player's store, and I said that for the next week I would bring you the next stage, so here it is. From now on it is the player who decides what price he puts on the items!

This is intended to add a little more depth in the mechanics, the intention of the weekly updates is nothing more than improving the game step by step, adding and rectifying features to create the most satisfactory experience possible, in addition to solving the bugs that you are reporting on the discord channel.

But let's go back to the main topic. As I said, now it is the player who decides what price their products are, and it will be the villagers who will decide to buy or not the products that you will sell in your shop. If the price is too expensive, the villagers may not want to buy your item.

The trade is based on supply and demand, so if a product is in high demand, its price will increase and in the same way, if the demand is very low, nobody will want the product and merchants must reduce the price in order to Keep selling their products.

I wanted to simulate something similar within the game, therefore there is a demand system that will vary over time. Therefore, when there is a high demand for a particular item, it is a good idea to experiment with higher prices, as villagers will be willing to pay more money for that product.

Each time we place an item on the shop table, a window will open where we will obtain information that will help us sell our item at the best price. This information is the demand, the minimum price, the maximum and average price.

But, if we want to sell an item that we have never sold, we will only have the demand information available, since we have never sold the item we do not know what its minimum price, its maximum price or the average is.

Once we have sold the item, the price will be registered, so that the next time we want to sell that item, we will have the previous price as a reference.

Remember that the price for which you can sell the product will depend on the current demand, which can sometimes be a better strategy to wait to sell the item when there is a high demand for that product, especially with rare materials and exotic potions. You can earn a lot of money selling with high demand!

Hotfixes

• The shop table is no longer placed in the center of the map when used outside the shop.
• Items are no longer transformed into others when they are moved or placed in the mortar.

Balancing and Improvements

• All prices have been balanced; This will happen regularly because I want the game to be rewarding, but it is difficult to find the point where less demanding players do not feel stuck and that more experienced players find an interesting challenge. With time and thanks to your constant feedback we will get that exact point!
• The merchant now sells rare and exotic plant seeds.
• The quality of life has been improved in terms of collecting items, now they automatically approach the player.
• The number of plant spawns has been increased.
• The harvest of plants has been balanced to offer more flowers than seeds.

And this is all for this week! Next week I will be working on improving planting mechanics and will try to bring new objects to your garden. Although my time is limited since in the morning I am working on a large patch that will come in winter, so the weekly updates I have to develop in the afternoon.

I want to thank you for showing so much enthusiasm with the project, it fills me with happiness! And remember, if you want to support the project, you can purchase Alchemy Garden through itch.io and participate in our Discord community!
See you!
Rubén