Thanks so much, Briarios, I really appreciate that. We're only at the very early stages of this game - I have huge plans for it and yeah I'm aiming for it to evolve on Steam so I can make sure it's sustainable. To be honest, what spurs me on is just making a world and sharing it with random people who come along and take an interest. But yeah, I want to really make this into one of the most complex, deep, mind bogglingly epic open world RPG roguelike simulation type games out there. And I couldn't do it without all the bug reports and feedback I've been getting (and yeah the praise is always nice but not why I do it!) so I'm hugely thankful for that!
Re: your question, here's the deal with homesteads. A homestead is a 32 x 32 plot of land that you personally claim in the overworld. It's your pastoral base for raising livestock, milking animals, and making cheese. To get one, you need to buy a Homestead Deed from a general store vendor:
- 200g at Tier 2 general stores
- 150g at Tier 3+ general stores
Once you have the deed, use it from your inventory while standing in the overworld. You'll get a placement cursor to choose where to put the homestead plot. After that, the H key build menu will work for it but only when you're standing inside your homestead bounds. That's why you're getting the "requires a homestead" message. The structures (troughs, milking stools, cheese vats, cheese presses, cheese caves, fences, gates) are all homestead-only buildings.
I do worry it's too arcane or specific as a feature - that's almost certainly the case actually. So I will need to at least make it more accessible but happy to take suggestions. I might just ditch the homestead plot... I dunno yet.