Tantrums, Filth, and Prices That Bite

The shop has spent two weeks getting meaner. Customers can now wreck the place, dirt has become an asset rather than a chore, and the price you put on a shelf is finally a decision with teeth.

Here is everything that changed, system by system, and how each piece actually works.

Hazardous customers

A share of the people who walk through your door are hazardous. They browse like anyone else, right up until they do not.

• Tantrums are provoked. The usual triggers are a price the customer considers an insult, or an item they came for and could not find.
• There is also a small unprovoked chance. Admitting strangers to your shop is a risk no amount of preparation removes.
• Two kinds of trouble. Once it starts, they either throw your stock onto the floor or take a swing at your furniture, depending on what kind of hazardous customer they are.
• One tantrum at a time, shop-wide. Only a single tantrum can run anywhere in the shop, so this stays an event rather than background noise.

How a tantrum ends

There are three exits, and one of them pays:

• It burns itself out on its own.
• You hit them with the hammer.
• Your Guard steps in and calms them down.

Skeletons shatter into bone loot if you interrupt them, so violence has a payoff.

Lowering the odds

• Decorations with the right character calm the room.
• The Guard's Presence skill helps while a Guard is hired and fed.
• Neither touches the baseline risk. You can make your shop safer. You cannot make it safe.

Furniture damage and repair

• Shelves and racks take real damage. They degrade through visible states, tilt, and change appearance as they go, so you can read the state of your shop by looking at it.
• Repair is a hold interaction on the damaged piece.
• You can repair outside build mode, without stopping everything else.
• Decorations are not immune. A smasher working on your furniture will damage what is standing near it.

Filth as a resource

Your floors get dirty on their own, and customers walking the same routes wear dirt into the ground sector by sector.

Here is the part that catches people out: a filthy shop is good for business.

• Grime pays. The atmosphere draws a certain clientele, and you earn more reputation and more fame per sale while the place is grim.
• Scrub it spotless and customers get uneasy. They came for a dark curiosity shop, not a clean one.
• You can apply filth deliberately. Take a bucket from the compost barrel and pour it where you want it.
• Patches wear down as people walk over them, so keeping the mood right is ongoing work rather than a one-time decoration.

Filth is now something you manage, not something you clean.

Per-item pricing

This is the biggest change to the loop.

Before, a price was either acceptable or refused outright, and the correct play was always to charge the most you could get away with. Now every customer decides, for every single item, whether your price is worth it.

That decision weighs four things:

• The price band you have chosen for the item
• How rare the item is
• How much the village currently wants it
• The mood that particular customer happens to be in

Because the decision runs per item, a customer who wanted three of something might take two and stop. They are not storming out. They just decided the third one was not worth it, which is exactly what a real person does.

An outrageous price is still an outrageous price. Push far enough and they refuse on principle, and they will not be quiet about it.

Haggling at the counter

Selling is now a short conversation rather than a button.

• Some customers accept your price outright.
• Some offer goods instead of coin.
• Some push back and tell you flatly that they will not pay what you are asking.

When they push back you can cave, or you can hold firm. Holding firm sends it one of three ways:

1. They fold and pay your price.
2. They come back with a counter offer.
3. They walk out with nothing.

The two rules underneath it are simple. You can only accept when the outcome is certain, and you can only decline when something has actually been demanded of you.

Your zombie cashier always holds firm and always eats the risk of a walkout. Hiring one does not let you opt out of pricing. It just changes who is standing there when it goes wrong.

Price book recommendations

Since pricing became a real decision, you get a tool for it.

• The price book marks the best band per item, weighing how much you make per sale against how many you will actually sell.
• It flags anything currently priced outside its best band, so the list reads as a to-do rather than a wall of numbers.
• The recommendation moves as demand moves, because the village warms to an item or forgets it.

The Grimoire, rebuilt

The skill tree is no longer three columns.

• It is a web you drag around and zoom into, growing outward from a central hub along three branches.
• Fifty four separate skills, up from a handful of upgrades.
• One purchase, one effect per skill.
• Each skill hangs off a specific skill before it, so depth costs you the path that leads to it.
• Every branch entrance is itself a skill you have to buy, so committing to a direction is a real choice rather than a free label.

Interface rebuild

The entire interface has been rebuilt on new art:

• Ordering
• Storage
• Pricing
• Crafting
• Servants
• The skill web
• The village billboard
• Your journal
• The menus around all of it

The register also lost its mode toggle. Standing at the counter is now permission rather than a state you enter and exit. Walk up to a waiting customer, interact once, and you are serving them.

Fixes

• Customers no longer shove you around while you stock.
• Queues at shelves untangled themselves.
• A customer with several items on one shelf now takes them all in one visit instead of rejoining the back of the line each time.
• Thieves react properly when you catch them early.
• Dropped crates make a sound when they land.
• Contracts count what you actually have.
• Loading a save no longer replays your entire notification history at you.

Audio

A pass across repair, breaking furniture, and customers, including the sounds they make when things go badly.

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Grab the demo and see how long you last. If something breaks, or something feels wrong, come and tell me about it in the Dark Workshop Discord.