Nivalis Unofficial Patch

Unofficial Patch keeps Nivalis' vanilla systems in charge while repairing bugs and adding general quality-of-life controls. Greenhouse gameplay is now handled by the optional Nivalis Greenhouse mod.

Version 0.4.1 — official Update #4, Steam build 25828494.

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

• Quick Save on F5 and Quick Load on F9, both rebindable in Settings > Controls.
• Three rotating quicksave slots, numbered in the Save and Load menus. Quickload chooses the newest completed, matching quicksave.
• Advanced Manager with per-restaurant reserves, restock limits, funding and dish priorities, supplier preferences and emergency purchasing choices.
• An optional shared restaurant ingredient budget and wallet reserve, with today's spending and a last-restock report.
• Purchasing that respects native supply targets, daily venue budgets, available storage, existing ingredients and incoming deliveries.
• Faster walking, turning and work animations for employees on duty at player-owned venues.
• Correct complaint-review outcomes after managers finish handling a customer complaint.
• Price sorting in both directions and a Decorations filter in shops.
• Grouped successful-shopping messages that respect each venue's notification switch.
• Optional business-reminder hiding, now included here following the retirement of Tracked Quests HUD.
• NPC command, navigation, chair-exit and hand-prop cleanup repairs.
• Reduced repeated lighting and fog setup, cleanup of replaced render textures and corrected projected-light updates.
• Adjustable character animation detail and distant animation scheduling.
• Corrections for character models that became more detailed farther away; simpler distant umbrellas, props, glasses and selected animated signs.
• Authored distance limits restored for selected breast, hair and clothing simulations, while retaining nearby physics.
• Simpler puddles and less rain blur, with their visible tradeoffs described in Settings > Mods.
• Per-feature compatibility choices for Nivalis Performance Fix when its required configuration switches are available.
• Collapsible settings for Unofficial Patch, Better Time and City Life when installed.
• Optional Mute Ava's Voice, off by default, preserving subtitles and dialogue timing.
• Explicit recovery of matching retired-worker and table records into a separate save slot; recovered goods remain available for collection.

Experimental feature removal

The experimental greenhouse system formerly included in Unofficial Patch has been retired. Nivalis Greenhouse is a separate, optional mod. Existing companion files are kept on disk. Ordinary installation does not change your saves.

Version 0.4.1 adds an explicit recovery workflow for matching saves affected by retired workers and known retired tables. With the game closed, prepare the recovery in LUZ 0.4.8, then start the game yourself and select the prepared recovery action. Recovery writes to a separately named slot, keeps the original generation, retires the old workers and preserves recoverable goods for the Recovered goods action. Missing required companions, unsupported records or uncertain writes stop recovery. Native recovery and goods collection remain pending in-game acceptance.

Quicksave and quickload

Press F5 during normal gameplay to save into Quick Save 1, 2 and 3 in rotation. Press F9 to load the newest completed quicksave. Quickload replaces unsaved progress. Change either shortcut under Settings > Controls; Quick Save and Quick Load appear as separate actions.

The rotation advances only after a successful save. Quickload skips a missing or changed slot and tries the next completed slot. The Save and Load menus show each quicksave's number before its day information. Ordinary named saves and the game's seven autosaves remain separate.

Return to normal gameplay before using either shortcut. They are unavailable during loading, conversations, paused menus and other states where the game prevents saving or menu shortcuts. If a manually created save already uses an unregistered Quick Save 1, 2 or 3 name, rename that save before starting the rotation. Keep a separate manual save and back up the mod's configuration with your saves.

Advanced Manager

Open a player-owned venue's Staff tab and choose Advanced Manager. Choose Balanced, Save money or Keep menu available, then adjust supplier preference, cash reserve, limit per restock, emergency purchases and dish priorities. The last-restock report explains the latest purchasing and funding decisions.

Enable Shared budgeting to set a daily ingredient limit and reserve across your restaurants. Funding priorities give High, Normal and Low venues weighted shares of 4, 2 and 1. Dish priorities decide which dishes receive complete batches first when ingredients or funds are limited. The shared ingredient limit covers manager purchases, not your other expenses, and its gameplay day resets at 08:00.

A per-restock limit of 0 keeps the game's allowance. A shared daily ingredient limit of 0 means unlimited. Neither setting raises a native venue's own daily budget. Managers respect the higher of the restaurant reserve and shared reserve. Changing limits or restoring defaults does not erase today's spending.

Apply changes in the editor, then save the game to keep policies and accounting. Save As carries them to the new save. Back up the matching manager companions with each save; paid manager purchases stop if required accounting is missing or mismatched.

Management after Update #4

The game's saved supply targets, venue daily budgets and notification switches control those settings. Update #4 can display an incorrect management label after loading; the patch uses the saved setting. Advanced presets leave native supply targets alone. The old Lean, Normal and Extra formulas are retired, so choose your desired targets in the game's management controls.

Purchasing accounts for shared ingredients across dishes and stock already in storage or on its way. Purchases transfer real supplier items into the appropriate normal or cold storage. Paid and partial purchases count toward native and shared spending once. A purchase with an uncertain outcome stops paid purchasing until its accounting can be recovered.

Balanced supplier choices consider price, affordable stock and district connections, with more weight on travel around meal times and recent demand spikes. Cheapest and Nearby preferences remain available. Nearby is a ranking preference, not a delivery-time guarantee, and it adds no travel fee.

Successful shopping trips can be grouped into summaries every three game hours or ten real minutes. A summary waits while gameplay is paused. Disabled venue notifications stay disabled; warnings and failed purchases remain immediate.

Staff, customers and shopping

Employees currently working at player-owned venues walk 14% faster, turn 20% faster and play active work animations 10% faster. Customers and off-duty employees keep their normal pace. Production timers and work queues retain the game's rules, so faster animations do not guarantee more output.

Completed manager complaint conversations use the game's success or failure outcome when the customer writes a review. This does not award free skill experience, money or a guaranteed positive review. The Boat and Business skill benefits remain unchanged.

Shops gain ascending and descending price order and a Decorations filter. Optional Hide business reminders removes automatic venue setup and restocking reminders from the HUD. Use the native Quest Marker Filtering setting for quest panels, compass, map and world markers.

NPC repairs

Character commands wait for an active view instead of being lost during presentation setup. Reusable hand props are protected during cleanup, and targeted checks cover scene transitions and shutdown.

Navigation recovery checks nearby walkable ground and clearance before moving a character. Chair-exit checks account for standing space. If a safe position cannot be found, the character stays at its original position and the warning remains in the log. These repairs do not solve every obstructed seat or authored route.

Performance and graphics

Lighting and fog options reuse unchanged work while allowing required updates and transitions. Other repairs clean up replaced render textures, correct projected-light bounds and fix selected character detail chains that became more expensive at a farther level.

Animation detail reduction defaults to 40%; 0 restores the game's original distance thresholds and 50% reduces detail sooner. Distant walking work can be spread across frames. Stronger animation reductions make distant movement less smooth. Nearby interactions and working staff retain their required updates.

Simpler distant objects and clothing switches selected props and middle-distance characters to existing simpler models sooner. Its strength runs from 0 for original model distances, through 1 for normal patch strength, to 2 for a stronger reduction. Close-up character models and final draw distances remain intact. The same option enables missing authored distance limits for selected breast, hair and clothing simulations; it keeps their nearby motion and fading distances.

Other switches simplify fully open distant umbrellas, hide tiny glasses on selected farthest character models, and hide selected small animated signs beyond 40 metres. Those signs return as you approach. Simpler puddles reduces flowing-water and puddle detail; Less rain blur removes an extra blur pass while retaining rain distortion. Each option describes its visible cost in the menu.

Crowd Density, Lighting Detail, Level of Detail, Pooling and Hybrid CPU Optimization belong to the game's Graphics menu. Use those native controls. The patch's crowd-arrival scheduling controls when people appear; it does not replace the native density slider. FPS and frame pacing depend on your save, scene, settings, hardware and other mods; no fixed improvement is promised.

Ava's voice

Enable Mute Ava's voice under Unofficial Patch / Sound to silence her phone and in-person dialogue. Subtitles, choices, clip timing and other speakers remain. Turn it off to restore her voice.

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.

Windows and Wine startup compatibility

The skill-check optimization handles executable copy-on-write protection when game code becomes writable and when the first instruction write creates a private page. It restores and verifies the original protection. Unexpected code, mapping or later protection changes remain errors.

Native memory tests cover installation, rollback and restoration on private and image-backed pages. The previous 0.4.0 build activated successfully during the latest Windows playthrough. The 0.4.1 candidate and real Wine gameplay still require their own acceptance.

Temporary workaround: with the game closed, set NativeEnumFlagsOwner = Off under [Compatibility] in BepInEx/config/hvizeu.nivalis.unofficialpatch.cfg. Start a fresh session yourself. This keeps the original skill check in use.

Recommended Mods

These are optional additions I recommend alongside Unofficial Patch:

• Nivalis Better Time: adjust the day speed and wait for an exact duration while the city continues its routines.
• Nivalis Performance Fix: additional performance fixes and configurable optimizations. The 1.0.5 build used in the latest test throws a removed ItemListUI setter error on Update #4. Newer releases need their own compatibility check; this recommendation is not a claim that every version works.
• Nivalis Greenhouse: greenhouse automation and staff. Better Time currently verifies the inspected 1.0.11 integration; the newer 1.0.12 build has not been verified with this candidate. An unsupported provider prevents accelerated Wait before its clock and input changes.

Each mod keeps its own configuration. Unofficial Patch offers per-feature ownership choices where Performance Fix exposes the required switches. Keep logs when reporting a conflict.

More recommended mods

I will add more recommendations here as the list grows.

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.

Quick Save: F5. Quick Load: F9. Rebind both under Settings > Controls. Open Settings > Mods for patch settings and optional supported mod settings; Staff > Advanced Manager contains restaurant policies.

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.

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.

Candidate: managed checks and compilation passed; native gameplay acceptance is pending.