Hello, everyone!
For some reason, you were not that thrilled about the next-gen update we teased yesterday, but in the actual patch we’ve got for you today, there is some quality stuff! Your beavers have finally learned how to dig tunnels and to overhang terrain! On top of that, we’ve got plenty of quality-of-life tweaks, balance changes, bug fixes, and more.
As a fair warning, today’s additions to 3D terrain required overhauling many of the game’s core systems, so we now ask you for your feedback! If you encounter any bugs or weird behaviors, please let us know here on Steam or on our Discord channel. Thanks!
Patch notes 2025-04-02 (Experimental)
Tunnels
Your beavers now finally know how to dig into walls. You can create tunnels of any width and, when combined with regular digging, depth. Need to transport something but there’s a huge landmass in the way? Just cut through. Want a cave? Find a mountain and dig a hole!
- New building: Tunnel (2000 SP; 1x Dynamite, 1x Extract, 6x Plank). With the power of dynamite, beavers remove a terrain block from the side and install a Platform to support the ceiling. Use the layer tool to easily plan out larger digging areas inside landmasses.
Overhanging terrain and 3D terrain physics
We’ve added the ability to overhang terrain. The overhanging terrain needs to be attached to something and you cannot have more than three unsupported terrain blocks protruding sideways. This is how much the now-obsolete Natural Overhangs allowed. The cool thing about the overhanging terrain is that it is, well, terrain. It can be watered, contaminated, and grown on.
- Your beavers can now build overhanging terrain, up to three blocks to the side. This matches the size of the old Natural Overhangs.
- As soon as you remove supporting terrain further than the allowed limit of three overhanging blocks, everything beyond that limit is destroyed. This also applies to buildings. Please be careful.
- Added the ability to sculpt overhanging terrain - still within that three-block limit - to the map editor.
- Replaced Natural Overhangs in the game and in the map editor with regular terrain blocks.
Layer tool
We’re expanding the usability of the layer tool since now you can turn your beavers into moles build tunnels.
- Added the ability to select a particular layer by clicking any tile on that layer with a new keybinding (by default: Alt+middle mouse button). Click that layer with the keybinding again, and the layer visibility resets.
- When trying to delete buildings in a way that causes objects on layers hidden by the Layer tool to also be deleted, the terrain is temporarily uncovered so that you don’t accidentally delete too much of your beavers’ livelihood.
Maps
With the addition of 3D terrain, Ziplines, and Tubeways, we’re reviewing the built-in maps to make them facilitate the new features better.
- Revised Lakes, Craters, and Mountain Range.
- Replaced all Natural Overhangs on all built-in maps with terrain. Custom maps undergo similar changes automatically - nothing should break here.
Balance
The addition of the Tunnels - as well as your feedback after our recent changes - warranted some extra number tweaking.
- The regular Scrap Metal recipe in Mine and Efficient Mine now requires input of Treated Plank 1x.
- The efficient Scrap Metal recipe in Efficient Mine now requires input of 1x Treated Plank, 2x Extract.
- Lowered Underground Pile’s capacity from 1800 to 1000. It was a little OP, admit that.
- Updated Platform’s cost from 2x Log, 4x Plank to 6x Plank.
- Updated Double Platform’s cost from 4x Log, 4x Plank to 8x Plank.
- Updated Triple Platform’s cost from 6x Log, 4x Plank to 10x Plank.
- Increased all attractions’ need gains to 0.6 per hour.
- Tweaked how much the needs satisfied by decorations and attractions deplete each day.
- Beavers now accelerate as soon as they enter Tubeway Stations, and not just when inside Tubeways. Every millisecond counts when trying to hit the quota!
Visuals and audio
Everyone likes pretty shadows!
- On the Ultra preset, in-game shadows now use 8K resolution.
- As the above affects the game’s performance, the default graphics quality is now set to High rather than Ultra. If you made any changes to the default settings before, this shouldn’t change your currently saved settings. If you have never changed anything and are on Ultra by default, the game will switch to High.
- Changed the maximum number of objects affected by light sources to 6 on Ultra and to 4 on High.
- Updated the collider system for units to make the colliders more accurate and units easier to select.
- Cleaned up some unit animations.
- Terrain now casts a shadow even when it’s hidden by the layer tool.
- Buildings’ ambient sounds now fade out at larger distances.
- Added missing Update 7 sounds.
Quality-of-life
Two numbers and an “X” equals happiness.
- When using any area selection tools - to plant trees, build multiple platforms, plan out a tunnel etc. - the size of the selected area is now displayed in the middle of the screen (for example "5x5").
- Replaced the highlight shown when adding new Zipline connections with a directional marker that points you to the nearest connectable buildings. The marker is shown only when placing new Zipline buildings.
- Plants’ drought resistance is now displayed in their description.
Performance
- Cleaned up save files to remove unneeded information and reduce saving times by about 10%.
- Made minor tweaks to increase the performance related to large Tubeway networks.
Misc.
- Added missing Update 7 flavor texts.
- Replaced "Water-dependent" with "Badwater-dependent" in badwater buildings' descriptions.
- Underground Pile now informs about its underground depth (2).
- Updated the description of the Terrain Block to cover how arrows work.
- Keybindings used to control in-game speed are now correctly distinguishable on the Key bindings screen.
- Renamed the "Pause/unpause selected building" to simpler "Pause selected building".
- Updated the description for Solid Tubeway.
Bug fixes
- Fixed the lag occurring when drawing paths, connecting new buildings to existing paths, and selecting such buildings.
- Fixed beavers’ models stuttering when moving along paths.
- Beavers under platforms should no longer block their construction.
- Contaminated beavers are now correctly cleared from the Bee sting condition, and the poor victim’s model reflects that.
- Fixed a bug with water not irrigating the terrain above if it was more than 1 tile deep.
- Fixed a bug with Water Wheels’ direction not affecting how connected Power Shafts rotated.
- Bot builders no longer wield their hammers in a really weird way.
- Fixed beavers breaking their elbows when idling.
- Ruin models no longer stick outside of their tiles.
- Fixed the levitating beavers being able to build stuff from unfinished stairs.
- Fixed a bug with crops being dry or contaminated when they shouldn't be, after loading the save.
- It's now possible to build Teeth Grindstones under overhangs.
- Stumps no longer trigger the Entrance blocked warning. A simple stump is not a match for a determined beaver, is it?
- Moving the cursor over a higher layer of terrain now correctly blocks area selection tools.
- The district-wide beaver/bot setting is now correctly applied to workplaces that were not connected to a built path (but were connected via stairs in construction, for example).
- Buildings can no longer be selected through a layer of terrain.
- In the map editor, the construction grid toggle now works as intended.
- Fixed a tiny typo in the Maple Pastry good’s need.
- Fixed the game hanging around in Processes when closed with Alt+F4.
- Limited the number of used threads to 8 to prevent crashes and stuttering. We keep working on this.
- On Apple Silicon, the game no longer uses halved amount of threads for physics simulation.
- Fixed a crash caused by Badwater Sources vanishing due to compatibility reasons.
- Fixed a crash occurring when you removed mechanical buildings from really big networks. Like really, really, really big networks.