Hello again Survivors,
We are incredibly excited to announce that the first major Early Access update for Stranded: Alien Dawn, Dunes and Moons, is out now! Make sure your game is fully updated and you'll immediately have access to all the new content and quality of life additions.
As development on the game continues, the Dunes and Moons Update brings exciting new features to the game. We are continuing to take on board your feedback and suggestions, and there are more updates to come in the future. We are so excited about the rest of the Early Access period, and we are looking forward to reading all your feedback and comments as we add more to the game.
Let's take a look at what you can expect from this new update, after we've watched the new trailer of course:
The Dunes and Moons update adds the scorching hot Desertum region to the game, with new native wildlife, and scarce plant life and resources. Desertum's rocky landscape requires a different strategic approach to ensure your group's survival – utilise your resources well in order to make it through the wet and dry seasons.
You will also get to meet a brand new survivor, the desert-born Sora Satoh. Her experience with living in a harsh desert environment makes her a perfect fit for Desertum's unique challenges, and her enhanced combat skills will be an asset to any defensive or offensive manoeuvre.
New Ways to Play
At the beginning of a new game, you can select which moon your survivors gaze upon in the night sky. Which moon you choose will have a distinct impact on gameplay and how you approach different situations. The presence of Jason will offer your survivors more adversity and tougher wildlife attacks, but also ample time to prepare and recover; Nyx will cause animals to attack more frequently during the night, under the cover of darkness; while Chaos makes wildlife events unpredictable, but potentially more fun and interesting!
In addition, the Dunes and Moons update introduces two new difficulty levels to challenge you and your survivors. Very Hard and Insane difficulties will test your management skills to their very limit. Changing up the moons and the difficulty levels will keep each gameplay experience fresh and interesting, and we definitely recommend giving it a try on your next run through of Stranded: Alien Dawn!
Quality of Life Additions
Lastly, let's talk about some quality of life additions coming to the game in this update. We've adjusted key factors for the different difficulty levels based on your feedback. What this means is that the lower difficulty levels have now been made less challenging overall, and the range of difficulty is much broader than before. However, don't worry you will still be challenged, especially on the higher difficulty levels. For a more peaceful approach, the new "Peace First" rule will turn off all aggressive animal attacks, letting you build, craft, and survive in peace. Let's see how long you'll be able to keep your survivors alive on the alien world now!
There's also more granularity to the Activity menu, giving you more control over managing crafting and research priorities. Crafting has now been split into "Craft", "Tailor", and "Assemble", meaning you can assign different people to the different crafting disciplines. Research has been divided into "Observe", and "Research".
As always, we want to thank everyone in the Stranded: Alien Dawn community for all your support, feedback, suggestions, and bug reports. Don't forget to join the Stranded: Alien Dawn Discord and you'll never miss any news! You can also follow the game on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, or join the discussions on Steam and the Frontier Forums.
Now onto the patch notes:
Stranded: Alien Dawn - v0.20.221130
Key new features/content
- Desertum Region - New desert inspired biome giving players a brand new challenge to face
- A new survivor, Sora Satoh - No stranger to desert landscapes, get ready to meet Sora
- Three New Moons, Jason, Nyx, and Chaos
- Jason - The presence of Jason provides survivors with plenty of adversity, but offers ample time for them to prepare and recover from events
- Nyx - Nyx influences wildlife to attack more frequently during the hours of darkness
- Chaos - Chaos lives up to its namesake, with unpredictable events all-but-guaranteed
- Two new difficulty levels - Very hard and Insane
- Five Steam Achievements - discover these and unlock them now!
- Difficulty levels have been adjusted for balance, so lower levels of difficulty are now less challenging, delivering a much broader range for both new and experienced players alike
- Added new game rules 'Peace first' and 'Random survivors'
- Peace first - removes animal attacks
- Random Survivors - gives all survivors a perk, but randomly selects the group for you for an exciting challenge
- Adjusted some cases where the amount of animals during an attack were too numerous
- Flying insects/Hummingfly can no longer attack through roofs
- Improved range/visibility of flamethrower and missile launcher to match the indicated area of effect
- Traps and mines can now be placed in groups by holding left click and dragging
Survivors
- Some of the skills and/or traits have been adjusted for Anette Falcov, Carter Grodre, Daniel Shanks, Ken Laux & Naras Ledi
- The evolution of the deteriorating health condition that effects Connor Dryce has been sped up
- The happiness modifier that can be gained in the case a survivor is interested in combat, is now correctly applied when survivors are Drafted and engaged in combat
- The happiness modifier for Paulette Marota carrying out her favourite relaxation is now correctly applied
- Relaxation-related troubles now trigger at lower thresholds
- Pleasures and troubles related to food and relaxation variety now occur later in the game
- Survivors "Superficial bite" injuries no longer have a lingering negative effect after being treated
- Survivors are able to rescue other survivors in the case they faint while manning a tower
- Addressed cases where survivors were unable to bury fallen survivors
- The Direct order "Unequip" that can be applied to fallen survivors, is now applied to all equipped items including weapons
- When clothing slots are locked, Survivors will no longer automatically change clothing
Construction
- So long as the required resources have been acquired, it is now possible to construct; Large scrap metal drying rack, Metal oil press, Concrete fortifications and Concrete Towers
- General improvements for placement/construction of roofs, flooring and stockpiles
- It's now possible to place desks next to walls where a torch is already present
- It's now possible to place Shelters next to walls of rooms
- All chair types now have the same space restrictions
- Rooms can now be connected to multiple power grids
- Batteries will now supply (discharge) half of their stored energy in an hour of time
- Orbital equipment can now be powered from energy stored in batteries
- Wind effects have been revisited so wind powered turbines generate more power
Resources
- Added ability to tailor a new 'Straw hat'
- Removed Scrap cloth as a resource and changed all related crafting recipes to use only Cloth instead
- Cement is now baked in a furnace instead of being crafted at a workbench
- Winemaking technology can now be unlocked by discovering any fruit, and wine can now be fermented from any fruit
General Interface & QOL
- The interface for Activities is revised so it is now possible to set specific priorities for the following:
- Heal
- Handle
- Construct
- Hunt
- Harvest
- Cut
- Plant
- Scavenge
- Mine
- Cook
- Craft
- Tailor
- Assemble
- Observe
- Research
- Deliver
- Chopping wood to make sticks is now categorized as part of the “Cut” activity, instead of being categorized as a “Craft” activity
- It's now possible to issue a direct order to deconstruct empty stockpiles and storage devices
- After selecting any plant or animal to be observed, it is now possible to select another plant or animal of the same type to be observed, without cancelling the initial selection
- There are new icons for storage, Furniture and Building
- After pressing escape, the game scenario, region, moon, difficulty, seed and rules are now displayed while the game is paused
- Fixed tooltips and info text remaining on screen after the panel has been closed
- General improvement to logic and feedback, especially for events, expeditions, research requirements, observation, and notifications
- Small improvements to the tutorials and text
- The amount of electronics needed to repair malfunctioned devices has been reduced
- Animals are now slightly less attracted to crop fields
- The frequency of events that can lead to survivors being discovered and/or survivor's discovering a camp/base have been adjusted in conjunction with difficulty/moons
- Weddings now occur during the day, instead of at sunset, and a notification is displayed if a wedding is postponed
- Survivors no longer need to clear away animal corpses, in order to repair damaged/destroyed devices
- The heat tolerance of summer/light clothing items has been adjusted
- Minor adjustments to lighting, VFX, sound effects, animation and contact points
- Various stability and crash fixes