Hello again Survivors!
We are incredibly excited to let you know that the Sow and Sell update is now available for Stranded: Alien Dawn! A new and exciting scenario await you in another Early Access update. To get access to all the new content and quality of life additions, make sure your game is fully updated. Then you'll be able to explore everything the update has to offer!
The Sow and Sell update adds an entirely new campaign scenario to Stranded: Alien Dawn, with a new narrative setting, new challenges to consider, and a new end goal. This update also introduces a brand new survivor, new plants and recipes, and several quality of life updates and bug fixes.
In the brand new Trading scenario, your survivors have come to an alien planet willingly, with the ultimate goal of building a trading outpost and purchasing the planet. Armed with various resources and gear, as well as some knowledge of farming and a selection of crops these intrepid settlers are ready to carve out a piece of the galaxy for themselves.
We're looking forward to seeing you enjoy this new scenario and how you adapt your playstyle to overcome the new challenges. As always, we want to give a huge shoutout to everyone who's been sharing their feedback and suggestions on our forums, on social media, or on our Discord server. We really couldn't do this without you!
Trading Pod
The new Trading Pod is a unique and central part of the Trading scenario that allows your survivors to contact and communicate with passing trading vessels. Your Trading Pod will also function as a transportation device whenever trades are being carried out. Different factions will offer different goods to sell, and will buy at different prices, so it's not a bad idea to put out the call for new trading opportunities as often as possible. You may even be able to purchase new technologies, including breakthroughs, to help cut down on time spent researching!
Your Trading Pod can also be used to post job offers to Automated Ansible Relay #499. Willing workers can then be hired for a certain period of time, after which they'll be transported to the outpost. Some workers might also offer to join you for free, if you meet certain criteria. Workers who join your settlement will need to have their contracts renegotiated at the end of their term, but if they fall in love and get married to a settler, they'll be considered a settler too. Worth keeping in mind, survivors!
New Survivor
Carrying out trades and renegotiating worker contracts will be made much easier with the addition of the brand new survivor, Vicente Santiago. This expert farmer and trader is a shrewd negotiator from growing up on his family ranch. After being cheated by disloyal partners and broken by greedy banks, he decided to travel to the farthest reaches of the galaxy to pull himself up by his bootstraps and establish a new ranch. His Haggler trait will let you earn more money when trading, but his Kitchen Hazard trait makes him incapable of cooking.
The Sow and Sell update also brings with it some new research options, buildable devices, recipes, and crops. Some are unique to the new Trading scenario, while others can be used in both Trading and Crash Landing. Check the patch notes below for the full rundown of what's been added and what can be used where. There are also quality of life updates, and bug fixes coming in this update.
Stranded: Alien Dawn Coming to Consoles
In case you missed the news: Stranded: Alien Dawn is leaving Early Access on 25 April, 2023, and is also coming to the Epic Games Store, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. If you pre-order now you will get some exclusive early adopter bonus content in the form of wooden plank building materials, and a new crash landing pod model. If you've already bought the game in Early Access on Steam you'll get these bonuses automatically on launch day. You can pre-order now via our website: strandedaliendawn.com/buy.
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 TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, or join the discussions on Steam and the Frontier Forums.
Now onto the changelog:
v0.80.230324 Release notes
Key new features/content
- New 'Trading outpost' scenario - Build a successful business and reach the ultimate goal: become the owner of the planet
- Hire workers - Hired help is the only way to expand your roster in the new scenario!
- Trading - Use the trading pod to buy and sell resources and more, from trading with ships passing by the planet's orbit during the new scenario
- Earn and spend your Galacticoins – The most complex yet stable currency in the known universe
- Discover new plants, recipes and technologies - These will provide even more ways to help your survivors survive and thrive!
- Meet a new survivor - Vicente Santiago, an avid farmer with unique Haggling skills
- 5 New Steam Achievements - Can you unlock them all?
Trading outpost scenario
- The trading pod allows you to post job offers for new workers, contact trading ships, and transport goods or workers to/from the planet
- Central to the Trading Outpost scenario, Galacticoins are used to buy from traders, hire new workers and ultimately purchase the Planetary Ownership
- As aspirational farmers, the founders of the outpost possess some knowledge of farming, enabling some known crops to be planted right away
- Traders will contact your outpost periodically through notifications to sell their goods, technologies and crops, while also buying what they need themselves
- Research and crafting unique to this scenario:
- Trade Goods can be crafted from various materials at a Workbench, and while they ultimately can't be consumed by your survivors, they can be sold at a higher price when trading than raw resources
- Counterfeit money is a new breakthrough allowing you to print Galacticoins on 3D printers
- Research Safes to unlock a new storage device that stores only Galacticoins and protect them from attacks and theft
- New character traits: Farm owner, Hired worker
- Unique happiness pleasures and troubles specific to owners and workers
- Unique meltdown for workers: Stealing
- Unique events that can result in more people joining your group
New content in all scenarios
- Hydroponic racks are a new powered Farming device that can be placed indoors, and will provide artificial light to grow crops all year round
- Several new plants and resources can be discovered during expeditions and farmed:
- Energy Crystals can be grown and harvested for their crystals which are a key component in the crafting of Power Cells, but the process of farming them decreases the quality of the soil by changing it into sand
- Cureplants can be harvested for antibiotics, which always come in handy whenever someone is sick or injured, and can also fetch a pretty penny from the right buyers!
- Mulchtubes can be harvested for Sweet Syrup, an excellent raw ingredient and fallback food source, and the plants also turn soil into loam, which can help future crop growth
- Synthplants can be harvested for Synthetic Textiles, which can be used to craft clothing. Synthplants also change the quality of the soil by increasing the amount of silt and clay
- Buzzshrooms can be grown and used to produce both Stimulants and Stimulating Tea that provide survivors with a Manipulation, Movement, and Happiness bonus
Updates to all scenarios
Research & crafting
- Crafting Power Cells now requires Energy Crystals and Electronics, instead of Metal Alloys and CPU Cores. Energy Crystals can be discovered during expeditions, and are also unlocked by researching Power cell assembly
- Baking 10 concrete in a furnace now requires 5 stone instead of 10
- Fixed save compatibility issue preventing players from researching "Spaceship deconstruction" when all criteria were met
Animals and Taming
- Tamed animals can now be drafted after successfully Training them to level 5
- Stunned animals are now a valid target for healing
- Marking a tamed animal for slaughtering will now queue the order for butchering
Survivors
- It is now possible to use direct orders to haul resources out of barrels and to deconstruct Stockpiles
- Fixed pathfinding and animation loop issue caused by trying to rescue and heal a survivor at the same time
- Pacifist characters no longer have the option to "Fight back attackers"
- The Survivors inventory panel no longer displays stats for pacify and energy deflection
- Addressed edge cases to avoid rare issues regarding survivors' behaviour when carrying injured or dead survivors
Construction
- Reconstructing a device will return resources, the same as when a device is deconstructed
- Copying a synthetic bed now copies its colour
- The description for Power cell generator now accurately lists the necessary resources to build it
UI and Controls
- Crops are now organised into sub-categories within the Farming menu
- Improved visibility of existing fields when placing or expanding a field
- Copy/Paste option now copies the "Other restrictions" in the Restrictions section of the survivor's panel
- The button to copy a device when playing with a controller has been removed and replaced with an input on Y or triangle
- The stack size of Medicine, Beverages and Relaxation resources has been increased from 10 to 25
Mod Editor
- After starting the Mod Editor, the Mod Editor map now starts with 'Cheats' features available to assist with development and testing of Mods.
- ' [apostrophe/@] - Toggle cheats - note that additional cheats are selectable within the info panels for selected objects
- Enter - Toggle the 'console' On/Off
- F9 - Clear the text log displayed in the lower left area of the display
- Disabling mods no longer removes the built-in presets from the game permanently, requiring the game to be restarted after disabling mods
- Fixed an issue that prevented icons in shared/packed mods being displayed correctly
- Mods now always load correctly when initialised for the first time
- Fixed issues with mod dependencies and the applicable fields in the Mod Editor work so they now work as intended
- The Survivors/Character Mod Item now includes a checkbox named 'Selectable on new game' that should be checked if the character is intended to be available for selection in the pre-game flow
Miscellaneous
- Wild plants no longer wither prematurely within a few days
- The minimum farming skill to plant various crops have been revised:
- Glitter caps (from 0 to1)
- Heptagonia (from 0 to 2)
- Smokeleaf (from 3 to 2)
- Fixed a rare issue preventing the Campfire celebration occurring after the notification had been received
- Fixed a rare issue causing the achievement “Four walls, floor and a roof” to unlock prematurely
- Minor optimisation and general adjustments to rendering, several animations and lighting