Patch 0.11.4: stability, invalid saves, and early NPC fixes

Direct answer

Fields of Mistria 0.11.4 was an early stability patch. It added small NPC and equipment updates, changed invalid-save startup behavior to show a warning instead of crashing, and fixed a broad set of movement, quest, weather, and crash problems.

What the official notes changed

The patch added extra gift dialogue, put worn tools in the General Store, added Balor dialogue at the Saturday Market, and added Basic Cape colors. It also changed how expectant animals can be sold, moved, or placed in daycare, and corrected several early NPC gift and quest-objective issues.

The invalid-save behavior is especially important for historical troubleshooting: the official notes say an invalid save should show an invalid-save popup instead of crashing at startup. That is not a promise that every later save problem is harmless or repairable.

Crash and compatibility boundary

The official crash list includes festival movement, mismatched NPC database positions, invalid localization keys, inventory cursor swaps, pickaxe use at 2 AM, fishing, and putting a small animal into a shipping bin. These are narrow fixes from the 0.11.4 build, not a current compatibility guarantee for 1.0.x.

The same post warns about an early Steam Cloud Save issue that could create invalid saves and recommends disabling Cloud Saves while recovering the save on the previous device. Use the current save-support page first for a modern report, and keep a local backup before testing an old workaround.

Next step

Record the installed version, platform, whether Steam Cloud was involved, and the exact error message. Then compare the report with the current 1.0.1 and 1.0.2 support notes instead of applying a historical 0.11.4 fix blindly.