Before You Follow an Early Access Guide
The short answer
Former villages became counties, city income puts more weight on continuing district work, and trading goods is distinct from operating a trading house. Check these changes before following an Early Access route; later fixes also affect old saves and income settings.
This page helps you decide what to recheck. It does not prescribe an optimal opening or replace a complete walkthrough for a particular character.
Start by identifying your situation
Use these four questions before changing your campaign:
- Which version was the advice written for?
- Did your save begin in Early Access or after the full release?
- Is the problem about your character, a city, a relationship, or a battle?
- Does the advice state the relevant difficulty and role?
If an answer is missing, do not fill it in by assuming the guide used your settings. Match the advice to your situation first.
Changes that matter when reading older advice
| Older assumption to question | What the developer has confirmed | How to use that information |
|---|---|---|
| An English translation patch is required | Official English arrived with the full release. | Check the current version before following an old translation guide. |
| A village reference describes the current location unchanged | Former villages were converted into counties. | Recheck location and management instructions rather than relying on the old label. |
| The old income method gives the same result today | The full release reworked domestic income; later updates also changed trade and difficulty options. | Separate a character-income question from a city-income question. Check version and difficulty before comparing results. |
| A family overview explains every marriage or child requirement | The release expanded NPC family systems. | Do not treat a feature overview as a verified list of marriage, recruitment or childbirth conditions. |
Official change records confirmed via the Developer update notes (external site) for the September 23 full release and September 24–27 patches.
New campaign: choose the question, not a universal checklist
An instruction about a city's economy is not automatically an instruction for every character. Before following an income plan, establish what you are trying to manage and whether the relevant action is available in your current role.
For trade, distinguish carrying goods yourself from setting up the game's trading-house system. A guide that describes one does not necessarily explain the other. For social progression, identify the exact result you want: a party companion, an officer, or a family relationship should not be treated as interchangeable outcomes.
Those distinctions define which instructions you need. They do not establish the full requirements for each action; this guide does not supply requirements that have not yet been checked.
Trade prerequisites to check
- Carry goods: buy cargo at the General Store's gallery and sell it in another city. Wagon mercenaries in your accompanying party increase carrying capacity.
- Operate a trading house: reach Commerce Tier 1, establish a house, appoint its leader and assign wagon convoys. These prerequisites do not establish a best-profit route.
Check which balance your role can affect
The pictured Funds panel belongs to Jianye. A city's treasury is not a promise of your character's personal earnings. If your role permits district management, inspect continuing Commerce or Agriculture assignments; Explore yields were reduced at full release. The pictured tax rate is not a recommendation.
Existing save: compare the symptom with the update
The follow-up update notes address old-save issues, including county loading and the availability of a merchant in older saves. Read the entry that matches your symptom before deciding that an entire save is unusable.
Record the version, where the problem occurs, and what you were doing. If it persists, use the developer's support route in the official update notes. Do not infer that a fix for one symptom guarantees compatibility for every save, or that deleting files is necessary.
| Symptom | Dated update | Next check |
|---|---|---|
| Peddler missing in an old save | v1.0.4, September 27 | Check your build, then the General Store. The developer reports the Peddler should now appear there. |
| A pre-September 24 county save cannot load | v1.0.3, September 24 | Use the save-file support route in the official notes for this specific bug; no deletion procedure is established here. |
| Private civilian-property income differs | v1.0.3, September 24 | Its calculation was corrected. An earlier figure is not a verified current target. |
These are developer-reported fixes, not recovery tests performed by this website.
Version labels are not enough
A guide labelled “1.0” may still predate a later hotfix. The September 27 update introduced custom difficulty and adjusted economic behaviour. A claimed profit or outcome without its conditions is therefore not enough to reproduce the result.
When advice depends on an exact value, menu option or sequence, look for evidence that shows the same version and conditions. When the evidence only confirms that a system exists, treat it as a system overview.
Where to check the income setting
The v1.0.4 notes give this path: System Menu → Difficulty → Custom Difficulty. Lowering Protagonist Finances difficulty makes merchant trading easier; the option is also available at new-game setup. This is an optional rules setting, not a save repair. No exact income multiplier is established here.
Where to go next
Return to the guide homepage or continue with the income diagnosis and old-save support checklist.
This is an independent guide. Corrections can be sent to qsyhxw@gmail.com.