We’re excited to bring you the Calmer Waters update, a highly requested relaxed game mode where you'll still encounter hazards, but they'll always appear at their lowest severity, and there will be a much longer gap between each one. It's designed for players who want a gentler, more laid back experience, while still keeping a little bit of challenge in the waters.
We've also been working on some optimisations, including improvements to the audio system, alongside a collection of highly requested quality of life features, like a filter for turning off the harvestable ring and more.
For more details check out the patch notes below. A lot of what’s in this update comes directly from community feedback, so thank you for taking the time to report issues and share suggestions!
We hope you enjoy a calmer experience and can just go with the flow while things are a little less… stormy out there.
Patch Notes
Features:
- Sea Urchin hazard now additionally require either a Barren or Volcanic zone to appear
- Notifications for narrative scenes now auto-open their textbox to better grab the attention of the player
- Added a "disabled" option to the Shadow Quality setting to turn off shadows completely
- Lost Spirits are now shown on the Minimap
- AutoSave limit can now be configured in the Settings Menu
- Crafting Menu now has a Craft All button, letting you craft all of that type that you can afford
- Rings around fully grown grass can now be toggled from the filter radial menu below the Minimap
- Coral Refinery & Coral Infuser can now be prioritized through their Info Panel or the Action bar
- Priority & Toggle from the Action bar now has shortcuts and can be rebound
- Migration panel now shows the amount of wildlife you have of each in the source zone (e.g. 23/150)
- Migration panel now has a swap button, allowing quick swapping between source zone and target zone
- Game now creates an autosave briefly after campaign creation
- Temperature & pH Levels now turn yellow in the top bar UI earlier than before
Performance:
Over 15 systems have been refactored to improve performance. Our testing shows promising results, but we will continue to look at how to improve it. If you are still experiencing performance issues after this update, please send us your save files and computer specs so we can use them to test with!
Fixes:
- SteamDeck now starts with recommended graphics settings.
- Hazards that require specific tiers & biomes to appear, now need at least 20% development in those zones too
- Modifier bindings can now be bound to nothing
- Physics Framerate now reduced from 60FPS to 20FPS
- Sprite & Lost Spirit movement is now interpolated to ensure the game still looks smooth
- Evolved structures can now be placed on top of corals that have almost full health or comfort
- Priority & Toggle actions default bindings have now been changed from M3 & M4 to Z & X
- Time between events has been tweaked
- Additionally, events on Relaxed mode now appear with longer intervals and events on hard mode now appear with shorter interval
- Chances in lure tooltips when accessed from the lure storage now update based on collected wildlife
- Lures in Quickwheel no longer has absurdly long tooltips
- Difficulty menu now has the difficulty options equally laid out between each other again
- Rebinding options now appears more than just the first time
- Smart corals description now says "Provides Up to" instead of "Provides"
- quest descriptions now displayed on lumpfish and coral husk quests
- Settings menu now has zoom speed setting, camera bounce setting, and ocean view respects camera settings
- Hazards in relaxed mode now always have the lowest severity
- Harvest resource pile quest step localization can now contain the name of the zone
- The Wildlife's Hero achievement now updates a stat to show total completed wildlife quests
- Diverse Reef achievement now compares against total biodiversity, not unspent
- Oiled structures with corrupt visual state are now reset back to the correct visual state
- Hovering outside the map with restore action no longer crashes the game
- Wildlife quest no longer gets forced from tutorial steps if another wildlife quest is active or if the quest is already completed
- Wildlife chances are now displayed on hover in the lure storage, negating the need to attempt to place it first
- Place lure Tooltip now has the “Rare” title become green with an up arrow when you are hovering the lure inside a zone that gives a lure bonus
- Achievements now save to disk less frequently
- Achievement for getting a visitor now works again
- Crafting menu now shows a visual to better communicate that common wildlife is less rare when crafting shiny lures
- European Plaice quest for migrating/luring crabs now works more consistently and saves properly
- harvest golden grass quest no longer goes negative when crafting a golden lure
- garbage ghost now shows area of effect
- Remapping menu no longer fails to shows newly bound key
- stopping a clean action on a oiled structure now makes the structure visually oiled again
- Evolved parameter corals now have consistent build times
- Lure button & categories now light up when you gain a new lure
- resource pile have a new info panel image
- disabled structure message localization no longer shows "missing entry"
- seahorses no longer teleport after being finished with a hauling task
- Temperature in the owned zone info panel no longer displays the incorrect temperature
- crab cleaning now stops if the trash gets moved
- loose resources colors no longer get affected by trash AOE
- Sea urchin can no longer spawn on top of chasms
- Missing resource warning no longer shows if you have enough resources and other construction sites have gotten their resource
- Shiny material selection no longer appears greyed out if previous recipe had shiny variant, while current does not, and the previous recipe's shiny grass amount was changed
- reclaim WSI no longer stays on screen when canceling the reclaim, while the game is paused
- moray eels now goes into the chasm when leaving after the hazard is finished
- Sprites now prefer storing resources over carrying them directly to tasks, if the task is more than 30m away.
- wolf fish now need "defense against see urchin" researched to eat sea urchins
- wildlife dash animation no longer starts in the middle of the animation
- loose resources spawning from canceled crafting are now the correct size
- Boulders can no longer get stuck in an immovable state
- lion fish and moray eel now dash away from octopuses
- octopuses takes less damage from lion fish and moray eel attacks
- wildlife now dash away from lion fish and moray eels
- Bounce from zooming far in or far out significantly reduced
- Crafting data state no longer out of date when all crafters are disabled
- Higher level hydrothermal vents in volcanic zones now highlighted when attempting to place vent corals
- updated materials for ghost of lures. There's now individual material for each type of ghost lure
- Settings, Dialogue, Wildlife Quests Info Panel no longer get into weird states when closed with x button
- “Move Lost Spirit”, “Move Trash”, “Move Boulder” no longer cause weird states when done from info-panel
- Being in the top bar with the gamepad them switching to keyboard&mouse, no longer cause weird states
- after harvesting multiple seagrass and being inside the harvest info panel the game no longer takes to to the pause menu
- Gamepad zoom is now less sensitive
- Some tutorial pop-ups no longer off-screen on higher Ui scales
- Sprites Overview panel no longer off-screen by default on higher ui scales
- all construction sites now gets instant reclaimed
- Reclaim action now highlight 2x2 and 3x3 construction sites
- construction sites are no longer affected by trash
- Barren terrain no longer uses coastal texture
- scatters are now more evenly spread around the structure
- Xbox input prompts no longer appear when using DualShock gamepads
- Move camera tutorial step no longer gets skipped.
- Priority/Toggle tooltip no longer missing localization
- when the temperature is too hot, the heat wave visuals will still not show before the hazards starts
- Toggle action now shows same tooltip as toggle button and follow same rules
- Wildlife quest achievement now locked to 26 quests
- Dolphin DLC now loads faster
- Sprite limit for reef heart now updates when the reef heart upgrades
- seaweed overgrowth no longer spawns at the reef heart for a split second
- the lost spirit in the first ruined zone no longer fails to be guided to the reef heart
- events in peaceful mode now happens at more even frequency
- Wolffish quest now appears when you have Wolffish
- Coral Grouper quest now additionally requires Flame Cardinalfish to appear
- wildlife visit events can now happen at any point when playing peaceful difficulty
- events in peaceful difficulty no longer spawn constantly
- Some random event hints in the guide book are now updated
- canceling crafting task no longer gives the player back pearls that hasn't been given to the crafter
- crafting buttons are no longer grayed out after filling up all the crafting slots and the loading a previous save where the slots are not filled up