Update 5 is now on the Experimental Branch!

Hello everyone!

Today, we’re happy to unveil the next big thing coming to Timberborn. With Update 5, the gameplay gets deeper, post-apocalyptic Earth grows more hostile, and your beavers become even more eco-friendly. All thanks to the addition of the volatile pollution - badwater.

The full patch notes, also covering new attractions, decorations, QoL changes, and more, are at the bottom. But first, let’s don our hazmat suits and dive into the update’s main feature.

Beavers reap what hoomans sowed

In Timberborn’s world, humanity disappeared and left ruin behind. As of Update 5, that legacy also includes toxic pollution, colloquially known as badwater. Accumulated in the Earth’s crust in mankind’s final days, these deadly chemicals flow down the rivers and erupt from the ground, threatening all life and making restoration of the planet even more challenging.

Badwater is the first extra fluid we have on the maps. It uses Timberborn’s water physics system, so it behaves similarly to, um, the good water. It has a varied current’s strength, flows across the land, fills up basins, interacts with dams etc. But when it reaches a regular river, the two water types start to mix, with the good water becoming increasingly polluted. The two fluids are distinct visually, and you can easily see how the pollution spreads.

This will happen to you because we’re adding badtides - a new in-game season type on top of the existing temperate seasons and droughts. Every time you would expect a drought to begin, a badtide may trigger instead (so there always comes a normal temperate season after either a badtide or a drought). When that happens, badwater begins to flow from all water sources.

On top of that, we’re updating built-in maps to include Badwater Sources. These large cracks in the ground spew out the chemicals all the time, no matter the season. As you can probably imagine, that’s not good news for neighboring beaver colonies, at least not entirely.

There’s something in the water

First, badwater gradually reduces the irrigation range of polluted water bodies until they no longer irrigate. On top of that, at a certain threshold, it starts contaminating the nearby terrain. Any plant growing in the affected area - be it a regular crop, aquatic crop, or a tree - will quickly wither and die. Fortunately, the contamination disappears rather quickly after you get rid of badwater. We’ll get to that in a moment.

Badwater also affects the beavers and their operations. It reduces the efficiency of water pumps, turns off several extra buildings, and traversing through it is dangerous. Prolonged exposure, especially when in high concentrations, may contaminate your colonists. After a few days, the affected beaver becomes a zombeaver burden - it moves slowly, refuses to work, and continues consuming resources. This applies to kits too. Bots, to no surprise, are not affected - this allowed us to improve their functionality (and also unlock terraforming for beavers, yay!).

What to do about (and with) it?

Your best bet may be to prevent badwater from reaching the colony altogether. To do that, you will use levees, floodgates, and all your other hydroengineering tools. We’ve also added a new badwater-specific pump, as well as updated the water dump to be toggleable and work with either fluid. To accommodate badwater, we’re updating built-in maps - you’ll need some serious engineering skills to flush it away. That’s a cool thing about badwater as a constant threat - it’s a new tool for map creators who can use it to craft entirely different challenges.

And what to do when your beavers do get contaminated? We know what you’re thinking - yes, you could force-migrate sick beavers to a shadowy place, i.e. a very special and sad district. Ethics aside, you should probably fight for your valuable workers instead. You can cure the contaminated by placing them in Decontamination Pods. Oh, wait, what’s that green thing?

We didn’t want to introduce just a new threat you’d avoid, but rather something you would like to play with. Badwater can be gathered and then turned into extract - a new good that has several beneficial uses. It is now needed to produce two new, more explosive Dynamite variants, and in Dirt Excavators. And since we can go a little crazy with it, we also have a new Breeding Pod variant that, to Folktails’ justified disgust, churns out adult Iron Teeth. Finally, badwater powers up water wheels just the same, which some map makers are bound to make you exploit.

But why torment the beavers?

We believe adding badwater makes Timberborn’s gameplay deeper, and answers recurring requests for a new season type. With two different fluids appearing - or even competing - on the maps, the player must be far more conscious about the water physics and irrigation mechanics. You probably don’t want the “waters” to mix freely, as green farmlands now become even more precious, and some underwater paths are suddenly dangerous.

Timberborn’s signature dams and vertical architecture help big time here. You have the tools for the job, and with the removal of district limits, you can find a perfect solution for the particular map setup. Essentially, both map makers and players get more scenarios to play with.

Concept art created for Update 5

With badtides and badwater sources in place, we expect players’ playthroughs to become more varied. When there is no fully predictable pattern and the game world doesn’t just swing back and forth between wet and dry seasons, you shouldn’t be able to “solve” the map a few cycles in. And because badwater’s effects don’t follow the basic pattern of “irrigated or non-irrigated”, your efforts may also have a different effect on the colony’s survival.

The new feature we’re introducing today is the biggest change we’ve ever had, making it a perfect Experimental Branch material. We treat badwater as work-in-progress content and expect to iterate on it, both while it’s still in the experimental stage for Update 5, and in the future. We look forward to hearing what you think about it (and the rest of Update 5, of course). Please let us know what works and what doesn’t - either here on Steam or on our Discord.

Patch notes 2023-09-28: Update 5

Please note: Update 5 should be compatible with Update 4 saves and maps. However, the existing maps were not created with badwater in mind. There are no Badwater Sources there, obviously, and even though badtides do come, their effects can be unpredictable on an unmodified map. Please start the new game on one of the updated built-in maps.

Badwater - general notes

Toxic waste of hooman origin now flows across the maps. It taints water, contaminates beavers, disables irrigation, and kills plant life. Its addition is the biggest change to the game since launch so we’re asking you for your feedback - we’re ready to make changes if necessary. Once you have played in with badwater for a while, let us know what you think!

• New feature: badwater. This noxious liquid spills using the in-game water physics, and will mix with regular water. Like its not-deadly counterpart, badwater powers up Water Wheels, disables buildings with flooded entrances etc.
• New season: badtides - on top of droughts and temperate seasons, you may now encounter badtides. During these seasons, badwater flows from water sources. By default, badtides randomly replace droughts after the three cycles. On custom difficulty, you can adjust that number as well as badtides’ duration and chance of occurring.
• New object: Badwater Source - these new 3x3 structures added to (most) built-in maps and available in the map editor pump out badwater constantly, regardless of season.
• Beavers walking or swimming in badwater may become contaminated. After three days, the contaminated beaver will receive a severe Well-being penalty and refuse to work while continuing to eat, drink, and occupy a household. If it’s a Folktail, it will not reproduce, and if it’s Iron Teeth, it will not care about the colony’s breeding pods. The higher the concentration of badwater, the higher the risk of contamination on contact.
• Bots are unaffected by exposure to badwater. Go, bots!
• Badwater gradually decreases the irrigation range of regular water. At 100% concentration, water no longer irrigates nearby areas.
• Badwater gradually contaminates the area, quickly killing all plant life. The size of the affected area depends on badwater concentration, and the continamination persists for some time after the pollution level drops.
• Added new categories for contaminated adult beavers and kits to the Settlement Panel.

Badwater - buildings and usage

Badwater is harmful so we’re giving your beavers tools to handle the new threat. At the same time, we’re also exploring ways of turning it into something useful. (That’s what producing adult Iron Teeth beavers is, right?) Since this is the first time we have two types of free-flowing liquid on the maps, we’ve also made some changes to existing buildings.

• New building: Badwater Pump (250 SP; 20 logs, 10 gears, 5 metal blocks; 1 worker; Folktails-only) - this building only pumps badwater. At lower badwater concentrations, it works less efficiently.
• New building: Deep Badwater Pump (250 SP; 20 logs, 10 gears, 5 metal blocks; 1 worker; Iron Teeth-only). You know the drill - this one reaches six tiles deep.
• Updated buildings: Water Pump and Deep Water Pump. Their effectiveness now drops as the badwater concentration increases.
• New building: Centrifuge (600 SP; 60 planks, 40 gears, 30 metal blocks; 2 workers; 200 HP to operate). This mechanized building turns badwater into a new good - extract.
• New good: extract. This beautifully green liquid is stored in tanks. Right now, it has several uses such as the new pods described below.
• New building: Advanced Breeding Pod (1000 SP; 5 treated planks, 2 metal blocks; Iron Teeth only). That’s right - if you invest a bit more in your breeding efforts, you can use extract to produce new beavers that are “born” adult. Slightly sad and very efficient!
• New building: Decontamination Pod (400 SP; 20 planks, 5 metal blocks, 20 extract; requires 100 HP to operate). Badwater contamination is far too severe to be treated in a regular bed - you need this special, powered-up variant to ensure your beavers survive.
• Updated building: Water Dump. This building was renamed to Fluid Dump and can now, uh, dump both water and badwater. Use the new toggle to pick what you want dumped.
• Renamed (Deep) Mechanical Water Pumps to (Deep) Mechanical Fluid Pumps as they now transfer both water and badwater. Use the toggle to choose what should be pumped.
• Updated building: Stream Gauge. It now also displays the current pollution level.
• Several buildings relying on access to pure water (Lidos, Showers, Fountain ) are disabled as soon as the Beaver Environmental Agency detects any signs of pollution.

Attractions and decorations

Our efforts towards making factions more unique continue! After the all-new monuments in Update 4, today’s update brings much more variety to the attractions and decorations.

• New building: Lantern (100 SP; 2 logs, 4 planks) finally, you can light up the colony’s dark alleys at night. Each faction’s model is slightly different.
• New building: Hammock (120 SP; 2 logs, 2 planks; Folktails-only). Now, that’s how you rest.
• New building: Bulletin Pole (600 SP; 20 planks, 2 metal blocks; Folktails-only). Here’s where Folktails post their nekker bounties friendly messages and announcements.
• New building: Beaver Bust (200 SP; 3 metal blocks; Iron Teeth-only). Ol’ Kazko has finally gained some solid recognition.
• New building: Clock (600 SP; 10 planks, 8 gears, 2 metal blocks; Iron Teeth-only). Time is money, friend. Yeah, okay, this is a money-free world but you get the idea.
• New building: Brazier (150 SP; 12 planks, 2 metal blocks; Iron Teeth-only). Because nights can be cold out there in the desert.
• New building: Scratcher (5 logs, 5 planks; Iron Teeth-only). This one truly scratches that itch.
• New building: Swimming Pool (250 SP; 40 logs, 30 planks; Iron Teeth-only). Replacing Lido for the Iron Teeth, this is a more competitive variant of the submerged attraction.
• New building: Exercise Plaza (400 SP; 150 logs, 60 planks; Iron Teeth only). Continuing the fitness theme, your Iron Teeth workers will now work out after work. We highly recommend joining them during extended Timberborn sessions.
• New building: Wind Tunnel (700 SP; 50 planks, 50 gears, 40 metal blocks; requires 400 HP to operate; Iron Teeth-only). You wanted to be able to send your beavers flying, so we’ve listened… kind of.
• Updated building: Carousel. It received a new, more compact model and is now exclusive to Folktails.
• Updated the Beaver Statue (Iron Teeth) to stand out more after adding the new Beaver Bust.
• Updated building: Lido. It is now exclusive to Folktails.
• Shrine and Temple are now exclusive to Folktails.
• Lowered Shrine’s building cost to 10 logs.
• Paper Mill and Printing Press (and by consequence paper and books) are now exclusive to Folktails.

Medicine, Healer, Dandelions

…are gone. While the Medical Beds remain in the game to treat injured beavers, medicine is no longer needed. Just like many players, we didn’t like how this extra production chain worked and rarely used either Dandelions or Healers, so we’ve removed them.

• Removed Dandelion and Medicine from the game.
• Removed Healer from the game.
• Rebalanced the natural healing time and the injury chances to account for the above.

Terraforming

With bots granted a new trait in the form of badwater immunity, we can finally allow beavers to work in the terraforming business. Speaking of which, cool beavers don’t look at explosions but with the new, badwater-powered dynamite in place, they may reconsider.

• Terraforming Station and Dirt Excavator are no longer bot-exclusive.
• Updated building: Dirt Excavators now consume extract.
• Updated recipe: Explosive is now made out of 5x badwater.
• New “building”: Double Dynamite (1x explosive, 1x extract). This 1x1 dynamite blows two tiles deep rather than just one.
• New “building”: Triple Dynamite (1x explosive, 2x extract). You guessed it - this one removes three tiles.
• Updated Dynamite’s model.

Savegame preview

Gone are the days of guessing what that particular “asdasdad” save contains. Now, whenever you save the game, a screenshot is taken to be displayed on the load game screen. The load game screen has also been overhauled to improve its usability.

• Added screenshots to save files. This change is not retroactive - only saves made after this change will contain screenshots. Older settlement files will show a beautiful placeholder image until you save the game on the new update.
• Updated the load game screen to display screenshots, saves’ timestamps and the cycle-day data.
• The default save names are now more hooman-friendly.

Map preview

Whenever you start a new game and pick the map, you will see a thumbnail and the map description set up by the map’s creator within the map editor.

• Updated the map selection screen for the New game / Edit map to include map thumbnails and descriptions.
• Maps’ names and descriptions are now localized.
• Added icons for beginner-friendly and custom maps to the map selection screen.

Map editor

With this update’s additions, the editor also needed some love.

• Added Badwater Sources to the toolbar.
• Added “Map thumbnail” button to the Map editor’s toolbar. It allows you to set a camera position - whenever you save the map, the screenshot will be taken to act as its thumbnail.
• Added “Map description” button to the Map editor’s toolbar. It opens a simple box where you can enter a map description.
• Added new water (and badwater) simulation speeds.
• Added a warning to inform you that the map you loaded is incompatible with the current game version.
• Added the Settings Panel, similar to the one available in the regular game mode. so you can, for example, edit game settings inside map editor now

Built-in maps

We have updated most built-in maps to accommodate the presence of badwater. Changes range from minor to dramatic so make sure you let us know how they play for you. We’ve even created dedicated threads on Discord to discuss the updated maps.

• Updated nine out of twelve built-in maps to account for badwater’s presence and add Badwater Sources. The three missing maps - Mountain Range, Helix Mountain, and Thousand Islands - require significant reworks and remain unchanged for now.
• Updated resources on all maps to make up for Dandelion’s removal. Good riddance, we know.
• Patched up weird 1x1 holes that were hiding on Lakes, Waterfalls and Canyon.

Key bindings

YES, it only took us two years since launch to add customizable key bindings to the game.

• Replaced the old key bindings list with a customizable key bindings window, accessed through the game menu, map editor menu, and settings.
• Added primary and secondary key bindings. It is possible to use key combinations such as Ctrl+Shift+K.
• Added multiple new bindings for settlement panel sections, priorities, and even dynamite detonation. We’ve got quite a few of those.
• Added extra info to buttons that work differently when clicked with a pressed key (the “Eye” tracking button in the building/unit panel and +/- buttons in the migration tab).

Misc.

• Folktails now need at least two adult beavers with no critical needs (such as Thirst) in a single dwelling to reproduce.
• Increased effectiveness of all water wheels by 50%.
• Smoke and other similar particles now react to the wind. :O
• Needs will now deplete at a slower rate on Easy difficulty.
• To teach kits how aging works, becoming a responsible adult no longer erases a kit’s consequences of reckless behaviour status effects.
• Withering plants now have a slightly depressing progress bar. There’s also a status that displays the withering’s cause so that you act fast and save the innocent flora’s life.
• Lodges, Barracks and Rowhouses now display the number of occupied and available slots.
• Water Pump pipe dynamically adjusts its length to surrounding terrain and buildings, so it’s now possible to build water pumps with a levee at the bottom of the pipe.
• Added the missing Water Source and Barrier flavor texts.
• Removed the default 0,0 saved camera position as that usually caused you to gaze into the void.
• Added the new Eager Beavers, Masterful Architects, and the new trailer creators to the in-game credits.
• Removed “Unique to this faction” notes from buildings. At this point, more buildings should have it than not.
• Sitting and standing animations for beavers and bots are now consistent.
• Builders will no longer abandon a construction site in the middle of their task, as long as they have materials to build.

Bug fixes

• Fixed a bug with workers not heading to their idling spots after finishing work.
• Fixed the erratic behavior of the lights in Temple, Shrine, and Rooftop Terrace.
• It’s no longer possible to grow crops directly under Water Fluid Dump’s pipe.
• Fixed bugged water wheels’ animations.
• Fixed a crash occurring when saving the game.
• Fixed 1x1 Roofs and Power Wheels that could clip with other objects.
• It is again possible to select Gravity Batteries by clicking their weight.
• Fixed a bug with the path preview being drawn incorrectly while rotating stairs in the construction preview.
• Fixed some clipping in the Grindstone.
• Fixed the clipping paws of sleeping haulers.
• Fixed beavers that would fly between bridges. They now have a Wind Tunnel for that.
• Units no longer perform kickflips when stepping onto stairs after leaving a building.
• Fixed Floodgates placed on the edge of the map’s lowest level that would stick out.
• Fixed a bug with long, weird names such as Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar clipping with the avatar.
• Fixed a bug with negative well-being values displayed on green.
• Units are no longer stuck sitting in attractions when stranded. No more free rides.
• Fixed skips in builders animation.
• Injured beavers will go eat or drink before their need is in critical state.