Hey, engineers! I’m happy to announce the release of the update dedicated to farming and cooking. But I must mention that behind these two themes lies a multitude of new mechanics, both big and small improvements. Well, let’s begin describing all the details of the update.
At this stage, the game introduces the ability to grow 12 different plants, including vegetables, grains, lettuce, and mushrooms. All plants are grown by planting seeds. Seeds can only be found on shelves in local stores.
A new elongated planter box for growing plants has been introduced into the game. The box names have been changed according to their dimensions. Information about the number of planting spots is added for better clarity before crafting a box.
Now, to plant crops, you need to care for the soil in the farming boxes. Before the first planting, watering and fertilizing the soil with a certain amount of dirty water and fertilizer is required. The amount of water and fertilizer increases depending on the size of the farming boxes. Soil is fertilized once before planting, but plants need to be watered regularly. This creates the need for a lot of water, so the ability to not only drain dirty water from rainwater tanks but also pour it back in for accumulation has been implemented.
A new resource, rot, has been added to the game to create fertilizer. Rot can be found in large quantities in many places such as store shelves, trash bags and bins, car trunks, abandoned luggage, and bags dropped by zombies. Fertilizer is created in compost boxes by mixing soil and rot.
Boiled potatoes have been replaced by a large variety of dishes made using cultivated plants as well as meat. The dishes come in 3 levels, from very simple ones that slightly increase the player’s basic stats, to high-class dishes that boost many stats and provide useful buffs. A chopping table for salads and semi-finished products has been added to prepare dishes, since some dishes require intermediate products (this workstation is available in two variants).
Since wheat has appeared in the game, a mill has been added to the list of workstations to process wheat into flour, which is then used to make dough for baking various kinds of bread, pies, or adding as vermicelli to soups.
Besides dishes, players can now brew teas from 5 varieties of flowers found in fields. Like the highest-level dishes, these teas provide buffs. After gathering flowers, they must be dried on an herb-drying workstation.
For a long time, the game had a primitive buff and debuff system. Now, after the introduction of high-level dishes and teas, it was decided to refine the buff system. Each gained buff is displayed as an icon below the main player status indicators in the top left corner. To the right of the icon, the buff duration is shown. To explore detailed characteristics of each buff, the equipment menu was improved. Now, when opening the equipment menu, the player can switch to the statistics menu, where they can see active buffs or debuffs affecting the player. Also, the player’s level information is now displayed in the statistics menu. An additional info panel was added to the equipment menu showing total armor, speed, bleeding resistance, and gas poisoning resistance statistics. Every change in the player's condition, even basic ones like hunger, thirst, and lack of sleep, is now displayed as a debuff.
Players have long requested the ability to continue the game from the start menu without having to search for the last save. This is now implemented—the activation button appears after the first save is created in the folder. Manual saves take priority when loading; if no manual saves exist, the latest autosave will be loaded.
The game difficulty selection menu has been improved. Players can now flexibly adjust loot abundance across several basic categories.
A basic survival feature was implemented to display resources collected by the player. When gathering, the item name, amount collected, total amount in inventory, and item icon appear in the lower-left corner.
The player status window was completely redesigned. Previously hidden indicators for hunger, thirst, and the need to sleep have been restored on the screen.
CHANGELOG
Improvements
- Advanced farming system implemented.
- Buildable walls and other interior elements now have sunlight blocking levels that affect plant growth.
- Added a new larger farming box.
- Rainwater collection tank added; can be filled with dirty water from plastic bottles to accumulate resources for watering.
- Water tank no longer fills under building roofs or in tunnels.
- Rainwater capacity of tanks increased by 100%.
- Farming boxes renamed for better clarity.
- Added compost box as part of advanced farming.
- Added 12 types of cultivable plants for cooking.
- Added new seed resource, obtained from the pharmacist’s table by processing grown vegetables.
- Added new flour resource, produced from millet, used for making all kinds of baked goods.
- Added over 30 new dishes for cooking, including baked goods.
- Added new rot resource needed for fertilizer production.
- Now planting requires fertilizing beds and regularly watering plants.
- Added mill and kitchen tables for chopping vegetables, part of advanced cooking.
- All dishes now can heal the player.
- High-level dishes provide buffs.
- Added ability to collect 5 types of field flowers for drying and brewing.
- Added field flower dryer.
- Teas brewed from flowers provide unique buffs.
- System of gradually decreasing available provisions with each location implemented.
- Start screen layout refined.
- Updated design for in-game tooltips.
- Information text added when collecting any item on the right side of the screen.
- Improved some stat icons.
- Improved display of active buffs and debuffs.
- Halloween pumpkin recipe changed.
- Recipe window is now adaptive, as some dishes have long ingredient lists.
- Zombies attacking in melee can now inflict bleeding wounds.
- Bleeding chance is individual for each zombie and displayed in the Zombipedia info window.
- Body armor now reduces bleeding chance, information is shown in description.
- Production now takes longer, especially for complex items.
- Simplified sleepiness effect; screen no longer fully darkens.
- Stamina consumption while running reduced by 50%.
- For item collection quests, the required quantity is now displayed in the journal.
- Storage capacity of all train cabinets doubled.
- Chance to find brass in kitchen cabinets doubled.
- More stats now displayed for weapons.
- Stat improvements from modifiers are now shown as well.
- Storage weight displayed for all train cabinets in the workstation info window.
- Storage weight displayed for robot bags in the workstation info window.
- Plant boxes show info on number of planting spots.
- Menu settings range increased from 10%, step size reduced to 1.
- Pause added for all game sound effects except buttons.
- On controller, bed activation button moved to alternative interaction.
- Sleep time selection range increased from 12 to 24 hours.
- Sleep selection and similar settings can now be changed by holding mouse button or controller.
- Revolver no longer drops unspent bullets.
- Improved important tooltip display and localized.
- More provisions placed in barracks at start location for comfortable start.
- Improved fonts on tablet.
- Loot wealth categories increased in difficulty selection menu.
- Notes now simply open by hovering cursor over them.
Changes
- Medkit healing reduced from 100 to 50 HP.
- Bandages no longer heal but stop bleeding.
- Chance to find medicine reduced by 50%.
- Weight of tire armor reduced from 6 to 4 kg.
- Weight of military armor reduced from 6 to 5 kg, reinforced military armor from 12 to 8 kg.
- Notes now open simply by hovering the cursor over the icon.
- Radial menu no longer activates with the keyboard.
- Fixed refueling at gas stations.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed incorrect display of key prompt for collecting water with plastic bottles.
- Fixed bug causing random key prompt interface to appear after talking to NPC.
- Added ability to dig soil in the first location.
- Holding the robot no longer allows fist attacks.
- Fixed zombie description block offset in "Zombipedia" when switching between zombies.
- Fixed bug where mouse cursor disappeared after death with open inventories, preventing exiting the game.
- Fixed bug where only the external inventory opened during quick switching between inventories.
Future Update Plans
- In update 22, animals will be introduced with the ability to hunt them. Meat and pelts can be obtained for tanning.
