Nivalis Unofficial Patch

I started Unofficial Patch after watching managers buy the wrong amounts of ingredients and running into NPC and performance problems in my own playthrough. I focused on faults I could trace in the game code and assets: purchasing, presentation cleanup and rendering work that could be reduced without replacing the simulation.

On my i9-14900KF and RTX 3080, two 60-second CapFrameX captures averaged 59.18 FPS without Unofficial Patch and 67.33 FPS with version 0.3.21: a 13.8% increase. Other supporting mods were part of the setup. This is one sample per configuration, not a guaranteed gain. The files did not record resolution, camera position or world state; results vary by scene, settings and system.

Version 0.3.21 — official Update #3, Steam build 25738165.

Install LUZ Civic Terminal (recommended). It can download and install the recommended BepInEx build, import mod ZIPs, manage profiles, check declared dependencies and apply your selected mods. Manual installation remains available.

Features

• Venue-specific purchasing policies, stock targets, cash reserves, spending limits and dish priorities.
• Complete-batch purchasing that shares available ingredients and money across the menu, with a last-restock report.
• Faster walking, turning and active work animations for employees currently working at player-owned venues.
• Supplier ranking that balances price, stock and district travel, with greater urgency around meal times and recent demand spikes.
• Batched shopping notifications across businesses; purchase failures and other warnings stay immediate.
• NPC command, hand-prop cleanup and navigation activation repairs.
• Lighting and volumetric command reuse, abandoned render-texture cleanup, verified character LOD corrections and cheaper distant open umbrellas.
• Animation LOD reduction set to 40% by default, adjustable live from 0% to 50%.
• Simpler Wet Surfaces and Reduced Rain Effects options.
• A shared Mods settings tab for Unofficial Patch, Better Time and Tracked Quests HUD when installed.
• Shopping price order in both directions and a Decorations filter.
• Optional Mute Ava's Voice setting for phone and in-person dialogue, off by default.
• Balanced Detail: earlier existing lower-detail meshes for selected props and middle-distance NPCs, plus native distance limits for selected hair and clothing.
• Per-feature compatibility choices for Nivalis Performance Fix 1.0.5, with saved preferences and visible restart/fault status.
• Decorative crowd levels and optional distant visual reductions, with their tradeoffs explained in the menu.
• Optional greenhouse delivery workers, hired at greenhouse terminals; existing saves start without hired workers.

Manager policies

Open a venue's Staff tab and choose Edit Manager Behavior. Select Balanced, Save money or Keep menu available. Expand Purchasing details to set stock coverage, supplier preferences, a cash reserve, a spending limit and emergency orders. Set dish priorities to Low, Normal or High. Money fields accept decimal points or commas. Apply affects the next restock; Cancel discards your edits.

The planner accounts for shared ingredients, current stock and incoming deliveries before funding complete recipe batches. A zero spending limit keeps the game's allowance. Emergency purchases may use a cheaper supplier, but never bypass the cash reserve, budget or available stock. Last restock explains the latest result and is cleared between sessions.

Save the game to keep applied policies. Back up BepInEx/config/NivalisUnofficialPatch/ManagerPolicies together with your saves. Use in-game saving to carry policies to a different slot; renaming a save externally does not rename its policy file.

Staff pace

Employees currently working at player-owned venues walk 14% faster, with matching walking playback. Turn animations play 20% faster and active work interactions play 10% faster. Customers and off-duty staff are unaffected. Production timers and work queues retain their native rules; faster animation does not guarantee extra output.

What was wrong and why I fixed it

• Managers could buy inconsistent quantities. Recipe checks and orders did not consistently use the same batch quantities. Restocking now accounts for each recipe input, the listed shortage, stored stock and deliveries already on the way. Purchases transfer real supplier items and share the available budget so one ingredient cannot spend the same allowance twice.
• Supplier choice needed more context. Price alone could favor a distant source during a rush. The optional ranking considers affordable stock and district connections, then increases the travel preference around meal times and recent demand spikes. This changes which supplier is chosen; it does not add a travel charge.
• Shopping notices became repetitive. Successful trips are grouped into summaries. A ten-minute real-time deadline prevents constant shopping from postponing a summary forever; paused gameplay holds the summary until it can be displayed.
• NPC presentation could lose commands or keep props attached. Commands wait until a character view is active. Reusable props return to their owning pool, while temporary cleaning tools keep their normal destruction path. These target missed animations and stuck hand objects.
• Navigation activation could use an unbound agent. Placement checks nearby walkable ground and occupied space, then synchronizes a bound agent. If there is no verified safe destination, the character stays at its original position and the warning remains in the log.
• Rendering repeated work and retained replaced textures. Eligible unchanged lighting and volumetric finalization work can be reused. Abandoned constructor-owned textures are destroyed when replaced. Changing weather, moving lights and required native updates continue.
• Some distant models became more expensive. Six inspected character LOD chains increased triangle count at a farther level. Those chains are corrected, and fully open distant umbrellas use existing cheaper meshes with less glass blur. The animation-distance option also reduces update frequency sooner, with more visible stepping as its quality tradeoff.
• Teardown callbacks could access retired objects. Targeted guards cover processor presentation, input sound, cursor and camera cleanup. They retain normal runtime diagnostics.
• Projector bounds checks were inverted. The patch corrects size and projection-mode comparisons so changed bounds update correctly.

Settings

Open Settings > Mods. Each installed mod has its own collapsible entry. Apply saves staged choices; Cancel Changes discards them. Compatibility provider changes take effect after restart. Graphics controls describe visible changes and can be restored.

Animation detail reduction defaults to 40%; set it to 0 for native distances. Distant object reduction strength ranges from 0 (original distances) through 1 (normal patch strength) to 2 (stronger reduction). Decorative crowds has Off, Low, Medium and High (normal) choices. It changes only supported decorative crowd groups; customers, workers and quest characters retain their simulation.

Known limitations

Some obstructed chair exits and NPC placement failures remain. Caught UI animation errors and pooled-mop cleanup errors have also appeared during play. Their causes are still under investigation; this release does not claim to eliminate them. Normal warnings and errors remain available for bug reports.

The manager editor has been used in-game during development. The final compact layout, physical controller input, policy save/reload, delivery accounting and latest staff animation tuning still need a complete in-game acceptance pass. Try the new policies on a separate save first.

Official update and compatibility

Targets Steam build 25738165. Open Compatibility to choose Off, Unofficial Patch or Nivalis Performance Fix for each shared optimization. Coordination supports the reviewed Performance Fix 1.0.5 configuration; unknown versions or failed coordination leave the overlapping UP feature inactive and report the reason. Provider changes require restarting. Neither mod is selected automatically from advertised FPS.

Idle-schedule and sky-camera reductions remain experimental and opt-in. Lighting, volumetrics, manager purchasing and NPC correctness fixes are separate settings. Avoid a second manager-purchasing replacement unless you disable UP manager purchasing.

Ava voice option

Open Settings > Mods > Unofficial Patch / Audio, enable Mute Ava's Voice and choose Apply. It is off by default. The option targets Ava's phone and in-person dialogue voice while preserving subtitles, choices, clip timing and other speakers. Turning it off restores her voice. Native audio and menu behavior still needs in-game verification.

Balanced Detail

Selected props and middle-distance characters use their existing simpler models sooner. Close character models and final draw distances stay intact. Selected hair and clothing use authored simulation limits. Stronger settings can make detail changes more noticeable. Disable the option or reduce its strength to restore detail. The overall capture result does not establish a separate gain from this feature.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Gutwormy, author of Nivalis Nights Trainer, for reporting and sharing his investigation into manager complaint reviews and the Boat and Business skill benefits.

Verification

Built for Steam build 25738165. Build, native-binding, regression and package checks accompany this release. The latest accessors and full gameplay/controller/save lifecycle still require the release checklist; a performance capture alone does not verify every feature.

Updating

Keep one copy of the plugin and preserve existing configuration and save companions. Back up your saves before updating.

Installation

Requires Windows x64 and BepInEx 6 IL2CPP.

With LUZ: close the game, select your profile and use Maintenance > Install recommended BepInEx if needed. After first-time loader setup, start the game yourself once, let it initialize, then close it. Use Registry > Import ZIP / DLL to import this mod, then Apply profile. If you already have mods in the game, use Maintenance > Import existing installation before your first Apply. Keep the full plugin folder, including manifest.json and icon.png.

Installing through a Thunderstore-compatible mod manager also installs the declared dependency, BepInEx-BepInExPack_IL2CPP-6.0.755. Launch through that manager when using its profile.

The tested loader is build 788. Compatibility with the dependency's build 755 has not been verified in-game.

For manual installation, install the loader separately and follow these steps:

1. Save and close the game. Back up your saves in %USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\Ion Lands\Nivalis Nights.
2. In Steam, select Manage > Browse local files.
3. If BepInEx is not installed, extract the loader beside Nivalis Nights.exe. Start the game once to initialize it, then close it.
4. Extract this mod's ZIP into the game folder, merging the BepInEx folders.
5. Keep one copy of NivalisUnofficialPatch.dll under BepInEx/plugins/NivalisUnofficialPatch/. Replace the old DLL when updating and keep your configuration.

Open Settings > Mods and expand Unofficial Patch. Apply saves changes; Cancel Changes discards them. Compatibility provider changes require a game restart; other settings show whether they apply immediately. Preserve the configuration when updating.

To uninstall, close the game and remove this mod's DLL. Keep BepInEx if your other mods need it. Removing a mod does not undo saved progress.

Feedback and support

If this helps your playthrough, an endorsement or rating is appreciated. For bug reports, include the mod version, game version, other mods, steps to reproduce, and BepInEx/LogOutput.log. For performance reports, include hardware, graphics settings and a comparison on the same save.

Support my work on Ko-fi. Made by Hvizeu. Uses BepInEx, HarmonyX and Il2CppInterop, supplied separately with the loader. This is an independent, unofficial mod.