Foxy Voxel shipped the first big content update since Going Medieval's 1.0 release on Tuesday, October 13, 2026. The Diplomacy Update, version 1.2.10, is live on Steam, Epic Games Store and GOG, and it changes how your colony deals with everyone else on the regional map. You can now negotiate with neighboring settlements, trade favors for demands, hire workers and named mercenary companies, and you will find that flooding one town with the same cheap good no longer pays the way it used to.
Foxy Voxel's Steam announcement is timestamped 8:09 AM CT, and the SteamDB copy of the notes shows a later edit at 16:33 UTC (11:33 AM CT). The studio says the update is compatible with existing saves and that every fix and improvement from the recent experimental builds is now stable on the main branch.
This guide is built from Foxy Voxel's official Diplomacy Update announcement, the SteamDB patch notes mirror, the Mythwright press release on Games Press and the experimental branch notes. Where the notes leave out a number, such as hireling prices or inflation percentages, we say so rather than guess. Foxy Voxel also posted a dev playthrough video if you want to see the menus in motion.
What the Diplomacy Update adds at a glance
The update bundles four systems that were tested on the experimental branch over the past few weeks:
- Diplomacy: caravan-based negotiation with NPC factions, plus envoys that come to you.
- Hirelings and Mercenaries: Job Postings at settlements for paid workers and fighters.
- Region Market changes: a supply-and-demand inflation system plus faction-specific resource symbols.
- New events: refugees, wolf chases, gift caravans, ambush tips and wandering hirelings.
The 12 factions and who you can befriend
Foxy Voxel lists 12 NPC factions grouped into six faction types. Ten of them sit on a sliding scale: you can be friendly with them, attack them, or land somewhere in between, and the notes say "nothing is set in stone." With the right actions over time you can swing a faction from one side to the other.
The two factions under the Cannibal type are a different story. The studio describes them as "too bloodthirsty and aggressive to ever try to befriend."
Every faction also has pre-established relationships with the others. That matters, because your standing with one faction can change how others react to you. If you lean hard into one side, expect its rivals to notice. The notes do not publish a full relationship chart, so for now you will be learning those ties in play.
How Diplomacy deals work
Diplomacy runs through caravans. Send a caravan to an NPC settlement, and when it arrives you get a new Diplomacy option. The favors offered depend on your friendliness with that faction, the current state of your settlement, what the caravan is carrying, and other factors the notes do not spell out.
The eight favors
Aid in Attack and Suppress Bandit Camp look like the biggest help for a young colony. A struggling colony can clear a bandit camp without risking its own fighters, then send a caravan to collect the loot. Rare Object is worth a look too if you are stuck waiting on a grand objective item.
The seven demands
Favors are not free. In return, the faction asks for something:
Be careful with Ambush Enemy Faction. Foxy Voxel warns that the caravan you are told to hit "could be a faction that you are on good terms with," so accepting a deal from one friend can cost you standing with another.
One deal at a time
You can only have one active diplomatic deal. When it is completed or abandoned, you can start the next one. In the 1.2.11 experimental notes Foxy Voxel says it fixed a bug that let players start unlimited deals from a stale caravan selection panel while the game was paused, so do not count on that trick sticking around.
Peace Deals with hostile factions
Hostile factions can be approached too, but the only thing you can ask for is a Peace Deal that ends the hostility. The notes say that "will usually mean giving them a certain amount of resources or livestock." No exact cost is listed, and the studio leaves it to you whether peace is worth the price.
Rebalanced demand values
The experimental 1.2.10 notes from October 6 (3:35 AM CT) rebalanced deal sizes before launch, and Foxy Voxel says all experimental fixes and improvements are part of today's release. Two changes stand out:
- The base wealth multiplier for each demand and favor dropped from 50 to 30, so deals are easier to complete but reward less.
- Livestock demands for animals that are not very valuable need far fewer head. The example given: a demand that used to require 60 poultry now asks for 7.
Envoys, objectives and the Factions tab
You do not always have to travel. Non-hostile factions can send an envoy to your settlement with a request already decided. You cannot pick what they ask for, but you do choose what they get in return.
Two rules from the notes:
- Only factions with friendliness of -60 or higher (Neutral or Friendly) can send envoys.
- A faction will not send an envoy while you already have an active deal with it.
FACTIONS is now its own tab, moved out of Historical Records. It shows current faction relationships alongside the favors you owe and the demands you have made, which makes it far easier to track everything at once.
You can fail an objective by running out of time or by cancelling it, which counts as failing. The notes say "the faction always delivers their side," so your reward is not at risk because the faction backs out. They do not list the friendliness penalty for a failed objective.
Hirelings: paid workers from other settlements
Diplomacy is not the only way to get help. When a caravan reaches a settlement, you can now open its Job Postings and hire people such as miners, scholars and smiths. Better relations with that faction unlock more options.
What the notes confirm about hirelings:
- Each posting shows approximate skill level, how many are available, and the price.
- The price covers travel expenses plus a daily wage.
- Hirelings are paid every day at 9 AM.
- They take some time to travel to your settlement after you hire them.
- Worker hirelings cannot be drafted and only do the jobs they were hired for.
- You can adjust their schedule and manage their inventory.
- They join social interactions but never take things to extremes, such as starting a fight.
- They need food, a place to sleep and ways to meet leisure needs.
- They cannot become rebellious, but they leave if their mood reaches 0.
A handy detail: you do not need to send a caravan just to check what is on offer. Selecting a settlement on the regional map shows its available hirelings, mercenary groups and prices.
Mercenaries: the eight named companies
If you need fighters, Job Postings can also list mercenary groups. Their type, price and numbers vary based on your wealth and where the settlement is. These are non-partisan sellswords who follow the coin.
Foxy Voxel says these descriptions are "mostly flavor text for now," with plans to personalize the groups through their equipment later. So do not expect Gilded Marksmen to have unique stats yet based on this text alone.
Two ways to hire mercenaries
From neutral or friendly settlements. They travel to your settlement and, once there, you can:
- Draft them and use them in combat.
- Use them for hunting, fishing and hauling.
- Send them with caravans to fight bandit camps or attack enemy bases.
Hirelings versus settlers
Foxy Voxel frames the whole system as a gold sink with a purpose: more ways to spend coin on big projects, risky expeditions, or simply extra hands when your settlers are stretched thin.
Region Market changes and inflation
The studio admits the old trade system let you sell huge stacks of one easy resource over and over, which was "functional and fine, but also a bit boring and easy to exploit." The new rules are meant to push you toward a varied economy and toward paying attention to who wants what. Foxy Voxel says normal or occasional trading should be largely unaffected.
How inflation works
The new supply-and-demand layer works on top of the existing seasonal, biome, faction and trader price modifiers. The studio's own example uses Honey:
Each settlement keeps its own market state. If Settlement A is saturated on Honey, Settlement B is not, so you can haul it elsewhere or wait for A to recover.
Visiting merchants count as part of their home settlement's market. Selling Honey to a merchant from Settlement A affects future merchants from A and direct trade with A. That closes the old loop of selling everything to whoever walks in the gate.
The notes do not give penalty percentages, sale thresholds for each state, or exact recovery timers beyond "a couple of days to several days." Watch for the saturation messages, since they are your main signal.
Faction-specific resources
Each faction type now has its own economic identity, shown by symbols on resources during bartering. Hover over a symbol to see what it means:
There are also new symbols for seasonal scarcity or abundance, and hovering over a resource's value now lists every modifier affecting its price. In practice this is the tool that tells you where to sell rare goods, where exclusive goods can be bought, and which factions dislike certain items. Foxy Voxel did not publish a per-faction table of preferences, so you will be discovering these at the trade screen.
New events
Five new events tie into the faction systems:
- Faction Seeks Refuge for a Night: a faction group asks to stay for 24 hours or more and needs a room. Accept and honor the deal to gain friendliness.
- Faction Seeks Help, Chased by Wolves: accept, and the group appears on your map with wild animals arriving two hours later. Beat the animals or wait them out for friendliness points. Injured or dead faction members reduce the reward, and refusing can cost a little friendliness.
- Non-Partisan Hirelings: hirelings occasionally show up and offer to work for a limited time.
- Friendly Faction Brings Gifts: friendly factions may send an NPC caravan with gifts.
- Ambush Point of Interest: beggars may tip you off about trade routes, including where a faction caravan will be, what it may carry and how well it is guarded.
Quality of life changes and fixes
The main branch also picks up these improvements:
- Hauling optimized: settlers used to check every storage on the map before placing a pile, which left them standing around on big maps. Viable storages are now cached in advance, so the check is much faster.
- Mod sleep warning: a prompt now tells you which active mod is stopping settlers from sleeping.
- Weapon trading now works with neutral factions too.
- Guest beds: mark a bed as a guest bed so NPC chaplains, druids, merchants, bodyguards and similar visitors can sleep there. Hirelings, mercenaries and refugees use non-guest beds.
- Pest control pets keep hunting vermin inside the home area until none are left, so your cats will actually deal with a rat infestation.
- Aggressive wildlife will eventually pick an idling point inside your home area. Walled-off settlements are safe from this.
A note for modders
If your settlers suddenly refuse to sleep, check your mods first. Foxy Voxel changed ScheduleModelRepository.json internally. The old "SleepGoal" no longer exists and is replaced by "SleepGoalWorker" for settlers, prisoners and captive labourers, "SleepGoalNpc" for NPCs, and "SleepGoalAnimal" for animals. They behave the same as before, but mods that fully replace that file or its entries now leave settlers unable to sleep until they are updated.
Experimental patch 1.2.11 is not on the main branch
A few hours after the main release, Foxy Voxel pushed patch 1.2.11 to the experimental branch at 12:11 PM CT. It is not part of the 1.2.10 main build. Highlights:
- Animal retaliation during taming now stops after 4 in-game hours or after 3 consecutive strikes or misses, unless the settler fights back.
- Hired mercenaries, refugees and hirelings can trade with merchants.
- Fixes for settlers not fleeing a retaliating animal, inflation messages appearing at the wrong time, visitors skipping events, the "Hirelings arrived" event showing a placeholder picture, and the unlimited diplomacy deal exploit.
Early tips for your first Diplomacy run
These come from how the systems are described, not from long-term testing, so treat them as starting points:
- Pick your friends early. Because factions have existing relationships, decide which neighbors matter most for your region before you start accepting Ambush Enemy Faction demands.
- Keep the Factions tab open. With only one active deal allowed, a good deal from a friendly faction is worth more than a quick one.
- Spread your exports. Sell a moderate amount of your top product to several settlements rather than one. Watch for the Low Saturation message and move on.
- Read the symbols. Premium and Rare items are where the money is. Exclusive items tell you who to visit when you need something specific.
- Budget for 9 AM. Hireling wages come out every morning, so a hireling crew needs steady income, plus food, beds and leisure to stop them walking out.
- Use hostile-map mercenaries for one-off raids. They do not follow you home, which makes them a clean way to add muscle to a single attack.
- Build a guest room. Guest beds and the refuge event both reward having spare space ready.
Frequently Asked Questions
When did the Going Medieval Diplomacy Update come out?
It released on Tuesday, October 13, 2026. Foxy Voxel's Steam announcement is timestamped 8:09 AM CT, and the update is live on Steam, Epic Games Store and GOG.
What version is the Going Medieval Diplomacy Update?
The Diplomacy Update is version 1.2.10 on the main branch. A separate patch 1.2.11 went to the experimental branch later the same day and is not part of the main release.
Does the Diplomacy Update break old saves?
No. Foxy Voxel says the update is compatible with previous saves. The studio does warn against loading saves from the experimental branch on the main branch, since the two builds are currently different.
How many factions are in Going Medieval now?
There are 12 NPC factions across six faction types: Faithful, Pagan, Knowledge, Monarchy, Anarchy and Cannibal. Ten can be befriended or fought, while the two Cannibal factions, Progeny of the Plague and Ravagers, can never be befriended.
Can you make peace with hostile factions in Going Medieval?
Yes, through a Peace Deal. It is the only thing you can ask a hostile faction for, and it usually costs a certain amount of resources or livestock. The notes do not list exact prices.
How do envoys work in the Diplomacy Update?
Non-hostile factions with friendliness of -60 or higher can send an envoy to your settlement with a request already chosen. You decide what they get in return. A faction will not send an envoy while you have an active deal with it.
How much do hirelings cost in Going Medieval?
Foxy Voxel does not publish fixed prices. Each Job Posting shows the price, which covers travel expenses and a daily wage paid at 9 AM. Mercenary prices vary with your wealth and the settlement's location.
Can hirelings be drafted?
Worker hirelings such as miners, scholars and smiths cannot be drafted. Mercenary groups hired from neutral or friendly settlements can be drafted and used in combat, hunting, fishing, hauling and caravans.
How does inflation work in Going Medieval?
Selling a lot of the same resource to one settlement pushes that good through Low Saturation, Saturated and Overstocked states, each with a price penalty. Each settlement tracks its own market, and recovery takes a couple of days to several days. Moderate trading should barely be affected.
Why won't my settlers sleep after the Diplomacy Update?
It is most likely an outdated mod. The update replaced "SleepGoal" in ScheduleModelRepository.json with separate worker, NPC and animal sleep goals, and mods that replace that file now stop settlers sleeping. A new prompt tells you which mod is responsible.
