Oh! Yeah, I figured out the saturation mechanic for areas, it makes sense! There's only so many trees in a forest, and seeing it grow back slowly between lives really sells that. I hadn't noticed the mines not regenerating. That explains why eventually my progress stagnated. I thought the mines increased the max it could refresh to, allowing you to go and focus on another task rather than babysitting it to avoid wasting ore. Since I eventually only needed iron for the tower, I had stopped making mines since I thought I didn't need the cap anymore. Maybe I'm misremembering, but it might be worth specifying that the 'rare rates,' from each mine apply at the masonry step. I thought it was a chance to harvest extra ore per operation or getting a different resource entirely.

Given that I was kneecapping my mines, the iron cost for reinforcement might not be as bad as I thought. I would have to play back through to there to see how it changes, but a larger workforce is a larger workforce. That might be worth it then.

Most of my time playing had the same basic objective each life, stocking up the resources I needed for the tower. The smaller tasks can usually be done within a life or two, so there wasn't much switching around for them.  Preparing for the tower would get you enough resources to ensure 100% tool uptime, so the tool-giving hosts become a bit less important. I had just chucked a skeleton on each craft, with what seemed like reasonable crafting limits, one on berries, and then went with 3 mining, 1 chopping, and a hauler for each. Generally I would sit on the mines as well, again that was my only missing resource. The only lives that really impacted what I was doing were the beggars and foremen. Both have much shorter lifespans, so I would skip berries and go all in on something like processing any built up trees or ore. Generally I was preferring the traveler and geologist for their longer lifespans and the gathering bonus. Maybe I could have progressed a bit faster if I had engaged more with the skill distributions, but I figured I needed multiple different kinds of resources and it'd average out. 

I'm probably gonna give it another go now that I know why my mines stopped producing, so I'll update this if tower floor one changes anything ere.

Pretty neat! Needs some way to see how many resources a craft consumes though. Reinforcing skeletons doesn't seem worth the cost, maybe that changes at some point though, I haven't finished the tower's first layer yet. That might be related to what appears to be *passive* damage over time. I only found that when I tried stockpiling skeletons while I manually crafted items to get an eye for the costs.

On that note, UI there is a bit odd to learn.
Left textbox seems to be a passive "Craft to this many" whereas right is a "I want an additional this many queued." for active demands. Resources further down the tree are prioritized over higher ones, and those embedded deeper using - are crafted using the ones higher above. I'm not sure how the "keep stocked" one works with the high yield recipes, whether it says "I have more than X resources" or "X crafts of resources." Unfortunately, I am currently saving resources for the tower so I'm not testing that yet.

Tools seem to offer a 2x base boost, then further boosted by the "tools" skill?
It seems skeletons have a base efficiency of 0.5x, which gets offset by the command skill? 

What seems to be the recipes, for anyone else
Carpentry:
1 Tree -> 2 Beams 
1 Beam-> 4 planks
2 Planks -> 4 Rods
8 Rods -> 1 Wheel

Masonry:
1 Raw Earth -> Some combination of ore, stone, and clay. Inconsistent?
4 stone -> 4 brick?
2 Clay -> 1 Pottery (don't know what these are used for yet, though!)

Forge:
1 Ore -> 1 Iron. Real shocker.
4 Iron, 1 Rod -> 300 Axes
2 Iron, 1 Rod -> 300 Hammers
10 Planks, 4 Rods, 2 Wheels, 2 Iron -> 600? carts (went past 1k, might be imprecise).

Oh, I just got access to the attribute tab. That's intended? You have a minimum heat & population size self-constricts. 

Having some issues posting the export, itch is annoyed about the message length. It is persisting, though.

I'm not sure what's causing it, but I'm experiencing population loss at 0 heat. It's like heat isn't actually being updated when it should go down? Going to see if this persists on reload / import. If so, I'll add a comment here with the save.

Ooh, this seems interesting. I'm gonna add onto or edit this comment every once in a while as I go through this, if I have anything to mention. 
   To begin, unless I just missed it, there seems to be little to no indication that you can merge the rounders to enhance them. This resulted in me spending a while at the beginning of the game with only 5 reds, requiring more manual intervention & decreasing exp potential. 

   Addon 1: The Propulse action removes the wait & perceive actions. While this does imply that it is eventually able to be used as soon as you begin a run, the action does not list that variable unlock requirement (as opposed to meditate, showing both ways to have it appear).
   Additionally, I've had a 'spinforge' for a while. It does not explain what it can be used for. The same goes for formation shards and metals, though I think I just haven't gotten enough of them to unlock any related actions.
 - So, I just right clicked the spinforge. On accident. I've been brute forcing my way through to the third area. The spinforge allows you to spend time turning currency into things, most importantly  *automation*. As it turns out, you are not supposed to be doing all of this manually.

Addon 2: Meditate is not quite as infinite as stated...

Ah, lastly. It seems like some upgrades don't share the same color names as the main area? An early one is Violet being used to refer to the purple mixer, but later there's Chartreuse from the Burning Forge's upgrade tree. I think that one's for green?

Oops, forgot a bit. I really enjoy what bits of story I can see so far, it really reminds me of one of the SCP stories. I think it was related to pattern screamers? Something about the unmaking of anything that learns too much about the workings of the universe. I'll see if I can find the entry again.

I'm enjoying this so far! It reminds me of the First Alkahistorian series (the 3rd chapter or side stage), just in the node layout and function. If I have anything to mention, the lack of a decimal for resource use notifiers can make it difficult to properly balance the production / consumption. The immediately shown costs when you unlock light is intimidating, but it makes sense once you get the scaling light / convergence node at the end of the constellation. It feels like pip scaling is a bit high, since *just* the first upgrade near doubles your possible pips. Really makes the convergences faster, at least. I'm still working on the first ring (I guess?) of constellations, but getting ~80 light / convergence.

I think I got an integer overflow, the + / 100 followers w/ the 0.1 mult / 3k followers can scale a lot further than anticipated. Though, it seems Pescatarian with extra uses is a better early game

I don't think there's a Good ending, actually, it seems there's only one ending. Spent some time trying to balance everything out, and I got down to 0 Co2, decreasing PPM, but (somehow???) increasing temp. At that point I just gave up and went through to buy the eco dome, while the temp was increasing, and it gave the snowing ending. Interestingly, it seems the change in Co2 is *not* the Difference stat you're given, it's Difference - Absorbed, effectively doubling your absorption? This makes it a bit weird to balance, it was fun though!

Or not, less of an issue than I thought it would be. With a few node edge upgrades the problem was nearly entirely gone.

Efficiency does not apply to strategy gain? Oh boy, this'll be a while. Especially since there is no guarantee there even is a node path to the end.

That was amazing. I did not expect the second phase to change that drastically. 11/10

Have you figured it out for yourself by this point?
If not: It is made in the Essence Purifier, and is made of a material you've unlocked with the arc furnace.
I would've been more direct, but I couldn't figure out how to spoiler on this site...

Nice game, thank ya for not requiring good art skills / a stable hand lol

The villagers can be used to automate crafting? How?

Ok, I agree that you should look into it not unlocking as I've gone through this twice, the second time after your first reply. I've gotten both farms to be self sufficient, requiring all cores to have been processed, and it didn't unlock.
Of note, somehow I got a second "Process water slime core"  during that run.
also saving doesn't seem to work most of the time.

How do I get there? Nothing more is unlocking after I got through the Arcane slimes?

I actually like it, so if this is the current endgame I'll check on it again.

Are pieces of knowledge the current endgame? I tried reading through the changelog to see if it was but there was no mention of them.

It took a while to figure out what to do with the boxes. The problem in finding it out was that the boxes didn't stay solid if I held the click, I had to repeatedly click the box I was on if I wanted to not fall. I could not jump off of the boxes as they were not solid half the time, I feel as though the idea was to be able to drag your mouse over them seeing the level after the mechanic is introduced. The only current way to get through this currently is with an autoclicker.

Nice music, seems atmospheric.

As it is right now you can glitch into walls using ladders simply by walking towards the walls whilst climbing, also, it seems the platforms don't work the intended way, you cannot descend through them.  Also, the 5 stone to 2 ore craft is not useful, as ore does not seem to have a limit.

Was kinda hoping upgrade would do something to stairs

I think I bugged it, It doesn't stop you from making infinite planets by spamming reform planet and breaking them down into asteroids, however from then on the only way to make a planet is to go through ALL of your asteroids, I did not know this and stupidly thought that asteroids didn't count towards the planet count. I now have to go through 643~ of them to progress any further.

Liked how not all of the paths were "if it spawns go a different direction" but the one on the right of the elevator was about manipulating its spawn place to get past a funnel.

I need this knowledge, I kept thinking "oh it'll be here soon" then it wasn't... even by 2 million.

How many people are in these chests scattered throughout the mountain???

I like the detail of the background getting darker the farther down you are,  makes for a good transition. Also just out of spite im going to mine down to 500 or something as it keeps getting darker around me.

Also, after beating the game it still says "the darkness is in power"

It seems like there can only be one Le to L conversion per tick, which makes it annoying when your Light is not limited by your Light energy, but instead your L=Le conversion upgrade.

It didnt work.

I may have overdone it with 50 potions