Fields of Mistria Releases First Major Update

Key Takeaways

• Fields of Mistria’s version 0.12.0 update expanded romance options, introduced mounts, and raised the heart level cap for NPCs.
• The update also included new skills, events, and quality-of-life improvements, with ongoing support planned for the future.
• With positive reviews and a dedicated fan base, Fields of Mistria continues to grow, offering a cozy yet adventurous gameplay experience.

Over three months after entering early access, Fields of Mistria released its version 0.12.0 update, the first major content patch for the hit indie game. The new Fields of Mistria update brought some quality-of-life updates, raised the cap on heart levels for romanceable NPCs, and introduced new skills and the ability to ride mounts.

Taking inspiration from games like Stardew Valley and 90s anime like Sailor Moon, Fields of Mistria was developed by the Chicago-based NPC Studio. Between its art design, affordable $13.99 price tag, and compatibility with the Steam Deck, Fields of Mistria quickly became a hit with indie game fans. Even three months after hitting the market, Fields of Mistria retained an overwhelmingly positive rating of 98% on Steam at the time of writing. With more content patches planned that will increase heart levels and add more dungeon biomes into the mix, Fields of Mistria is showing no signs of slowing down.

As part of Fields of Mistria‘s early access roadmap, the first major content update has plenty of changes to unpack. According to the game’s Steam blog, Fields of Mistria version 0.12.0 has a download size of approximately 50 MB. With Patch 0.12.0, the heart level cap for characters who can be romanced has increased from four to six, and new heart events to match the new cap have been added along with more dialogue. New monsters and cosmetic drops have been added to the mines, and various cosmetic additions have been given to player avatars, animals, and furniture. A new event called the Shooting Star Festival can be experienced during the 28th day of the Summer, and new objectives called Crown Requests have been added for players at renown level 50 or higher.

Along with the increased heart level cap, renown levels can now go up to 70, and Fields of Mistria skills can reach level 45. Fields of Mistria players can now use Tier 4 skill perks, and can saddle up some farm animals to use as mounts. The mount riding skill is unlocked after repairing Hayden’s barn, and animals such as cows and horses can be used to quickly travel through Mistria on foot. Shortly after Fields of Mistria version 0.12.0 went live, a smaller 0.12.1 update was released to address a bug that caused some farm objects to disappear. Patch 0.12.1 also fixed a crash that was caused by the “Restocking Mistria’s Food Reserves” quest chain.

Between ongoing support and its reputation as a cozy game with plenty of romance options, Fields of Mistria has quickly become one of 2024’s top indie games. It remains to be seen what changes NPC Studio will make through early access.

Fields of Mistria Version 0.12.0 Notes (November 18, 2024)

Patch notes will feature a 🌼 emoji whenever the change is based on community feedback and bug reporting!

Highlights

• Romanceable’s Six Heart Events have been added.
• Rideable mounts and mount-specific Skill Perks have been added. Note: The “Upgrade Hayden’s Barn” quest must be finished in order to unlock the Mount Questline.
• The Shooting Star Festival on Summer 28 has been added. Note: To experience the date aspect of the festival, the “Beautification Project” quest must be completed. To invite a Romanceable NPC, their Heart Level must be 4+.
• Two new home upgrades are now available.
• 21 new Tier 4 Skill Perks have been added.
• A new special type of Request Board request called “Crown Requests” has been added.
• New museum sets and rewards have been added for the Insect, Archaeology, and Fish wings.
• Saturday Market vendors (Louis, Vera, and Merri) have new items in stock.
• Two new monsters can be found in the Mines – the Essence Bat and the Mimic.

New Features

Gameplay

• The Renown level cap has been raised from 50 to 70, with new rewards to obtain.
• All skills can now be leveled up to level 45, unlocking 21 new Tier 4 perks: 2 Archaeology, 3 Farming, 3 Fishing, 3 Ranching, 3 Cooking, 3 Woodcrafting, 1 Blacksmithing, 2 Combat, 1 Mining. Some notable highlights: – [Mining] Lost to History: Ritual Chamber rooms can now spawn in the Mines. These rooms contain new collectible items. – [Ranching] The Bell Tolls: Unlocks the Big Bell item, which calls in/out all animals on the farm when used. – [Farming] Sickle Sword: Unlock to use your sword to harvest crops quickly. – [Crafting] Deliberate Debris: Farm debris will spawn 50% less often.
• 🌼 One new Tier 3 Ranching Skill Perk has been added: – Wind Down: The Mill Time for all mill recipes will be reduced by 10 minutes.
• Crown Requests: After achieving Town Rank Sapphire (Lv 50), special Request Board quests called “Crown Requests” will begin appearing once a week. These requests reward more Renown than a regular request.
• 25 new requests have been added to the Request Board.
• Monsters in the Mines each have a rare chance of dropping a new cosmetic item.
• Large Barns and Large Coops will now become available to purchase at Ranching Lvl 40.

QOL

• 🌼 Perks can now be enabled and disabled from the Dragon Shrine menu.
• New default hairstyles have been added.
• A big stone has been added to the river in the Narrows for easier traversal on mounts.

Art

• Hayden’s Farm now has animals roaming about.
• New animal cosmetics have been added to Hayden’s Shop and the Chicken Statue.
• The Cottage Garden Decor furniture set has been added to the game. These items/recipes can be obtained as Renown Rewards between Lv 51-60.
• The Noble Cosmetic set has been added to the game. These items can be obtained as Renown Rewards between Lv 61-70.

NPCs

• You can now level up all NPCs’ heart levels to 6 hearts.
• New dialogue has been added for all NPCs.

Sound

• An additional Rainy Day music track has been added

Updates

Gameplay

• Treasure Rooms in the Mines now spawn as intended.
• 🌼 Chestnuts now visually leave a shell behind when foraged, preventing the foraging spots from being mistaken for dig sites.
• 🌼 Fish now ignore collisions when they are attracted to a lure and will no longer be stopped by running into rocks or corner pieces of land.
• 🌼 Fishing experience gain has been increased.
• 🌼 Pond Skater’s description has been updated to reflect that it can be found in all seasons.
• 🌼The rate of forage and bugs appearing in the Mines has been increased.
• Controller Button Mapping: Clicking the Left Stick has been remapped to summon the mount. (prev. used to navigate to the previous toolbar tab).

QOL

• The amount of Renown earned per quest is now displayed in the popup upon quest completion and when accepting a quest.
• It is now easier to navigate the Skill Perks menu down to view locked perks.
• Furniture previews are no longer visible when swimming while holding furniture.
• There is now a pop up confirmation when the player upgrades their house.
• The game font now supports additional Latin characters.
• The Mushroom Cut is now in the Short Hair category instead of Medium Hair.

Art

• Small edits have been made to Juniper’s room, including making Dozy’s bed visible.
• Held items now appear above the player’s head gear accessories when the player is facing in any direction.
• 🌼 It is now possible to place objects on top of Coral Tables from the Tide furniture set.

NPCs

• Terithia now sells additional recipes and Seaweed at her shop.
• 🌼 The General Store now sells Soy Sauce.

Sound

• Lowered the wind ambiance volume on the Summit.

Bug FixesGameplay

• 🌼 Chickpeas now regrow as per their seed description.
• 🌼 Animals now produce products regularly without interruption (it was previously possible to interrupt the product schedule by manually saving and loading the game).
• 🌼 Crystal Caterpillar can now be found on both blizzard and snowy days.
• Animals no longer walk through fences, into barns, or onto water when exiting the coop.
• 🌼 Players can no longer obtain multiple Legendary Fish (extra Legendary Fish in a player’s possession will be removed).
• 🌼 Placing items in the Seal Tablet boxes without hitting the Offer button now pops items onto the ground instead of disappearing.
• 🌼 Players can no longer duplicate items that are by dragging them to a new toolbar slot while using them.
• Saving and then loading into the save file will no longer refresh daily requests.
• 🌼 Rapidly skipping the bathhouse cutscene no longer traps the player in the bathhouse.
• 🌼 The “A Day Well Spent” stamina bonus can no longer be undone by any form of stamina restoration.
• 🌼 Using the Summon Rain spell at 1:50am no longer causes the following day to have Clear weather.
• 🌼 Players can no longer get stuck inside collisions while swimming (e.g. after diving in a dive spot that is close to a rock).
• 🌼 Players can no longer get stuck between the rocks of the southwestern beach island.
• 🌼 When switching to the smallest resolution, the screen no longer goes black.
• 🌼 Animals can no longer walk on cliffs when dismounting toys.
• Collapsing on the farm while placing furniture or saplings no longer causes the previews to display during the End of Day cutscene.
• 🌼 Learning the recipe for the Mushroom Stool, Wall/Floor Braziers, Mossy Rugs, and Crystal Lamps of the Cavern Furniture Set will now teach you the recipes for all color variants. (Note: if a player has already learned a recipe for one variant in their game, they’ll need to find the recipe scroll once more to learn all the remaining variants).
• Fixed a bug with partially deleted preset outfits.
• “Living Off the Land” perk rate has been lowered to work as intended.
• New content added that should be available by default (ex. new default player hairstyles) will now be available when loading into older saves.
• Using a controller to play and then switching back to mouse no longer renders the scrollbar unscrollable.

QOL

• 🌼 Controls can no longer be rebound in such a way that it causes the player to lose the ability to Reset Controls, hit Enter to Confirm in naming menus, or permanently lose the ability to pick up and place items in storage.
• Throwing items now depth sorts correctly.

Art & Visuals

• 🌼 Holding a small animal while entering cutscenes or crafting sequences no longer causes the animal to reappear in the player’s hands after every subsequent cutscene.
• 🌼 The Lovely Cottage Table can now be rotated (both variants).
• 🌼 It is now possible to place objects on top of the Lovely Cottage Table (Oak variant.)
• Furniture now depth sorts correctly when placed on top of other furniture.
• Going to sleep while picking up an item no longer offsets the player’s arms.
• Animal icons in the UI now display correctly (The Sheep and Alpaca Fall Variant icons).
• 🌼 The Weather Crystal Ball now displays the correct icon for snowy and blizzard days.
• The Large Animal Ball Court Toy no longer renders underneath rugs.
• Snowy footprints no longer appear when walking in the bathhouse or the Mines Entry room.
• The Wishing Well and Chicken Statue now display the correct Winter sprite.
• The Hawthorn sapling now appears in the appropriate seasonal color.
• The log pile by the Carpenter’s Shop’s shadow now displays correctly.

UI

• Legendary Fish now have the museum donation icon in their New Item popup.
• Distinct icons for manual saves and autosaves in the Load Game menu have been restored.
• 🌼 The Giant Koi fish now displays the correct icon.
• 🌼 The color of the Gold Stud Earrings now displays correctly in the menu.
• 🌼 The glyph on controller/SteamDeck for Plant Grass Starter is now correct
• Improved tool-charged tile indicator fade.
• Item names no longer spill over in the Quest UI turn in popup.
• Seal Offering UI text no longer spills over.
• The Fishing Tutorial popup no longer interferes with the Blacksmithing menu if a player acquires their first rod by blacksmithing.
• The “learned recipe” popup no longer appears when a recipe scroll bundle item is acquired.
• 🌼 When purchasing animals from Hayden’s Shop the proper amount of tesserae now visual subtracts.
• Rapidly clicking in and out of the Skill Perks menu no longer distorts the menu.
• The UI elements behind the animal adoption popup no longer go blank.

NPCs & Quests

• Market vendors inventory rotation is now working as intended.
• 🌼 The player now receives the correct letter from Adeline after her Four Heart event.
• 🌼 Initiating certain cutscenes (ex. Ryis’ 2 Heart event) at the Inn after 8pm no longer causes the player to get stuck.
• Balor’s Two Heart quest now rewards 200t as intended.
• 🌼 Merri can no longer sell two Bakery Dessert Case recipes at once.
• Balor can no longer sell two Lemons at once.
• Vendors no longer say regular daytime dialogue when packing up.
• Updated speaker info to correct NPC for specific dialogues.

Sound

• All doors now make the correct closing sound.

Crash Fixes

• 🌼 Initiating a conversation with an NPC while transitioning into a cutscene no longer causes a crash.
• 🌼 Placing down two adjacent fences on top of a hay bale no longer crashes the game.
• 🌼 Placing furniture in specific spots that interferes with The Unusual Tree cutscene on Spring 2 no longer crashes the game. Any furniture interfering with the cutscene will now be returned to item form and can be picked up after the cutscene ends.
• We have released a patch to fix a bug in the v0.12.0 release that caused some players’ objects to disappear from their farms. We also fixed a crash associated with the “Restocking Mistria’s Food Reserves” questline.