WARNING: A WIPE WAS REQUIRED FOR THIS UPDATE THERE MAY BE LOSS TO YOUR CHARACTER PROGRESSION AND BUILT STRUCTURES

Good day everyone and welcome to another massive update to The Black Death. This update brings huge quality of life improvements to all areas of the game, including much needed fixes to disappearing walls and also the return of fan favorites, the Beggar and the Knight. These new professions come alongside an improved profession system which include exclusive passives, a stunning new character selection screen and profession unlocking/progression much like the old days of The Black Death.

Here are the patch notes in full:

New:

• The Beggar profession - Start as a down on your luck poor person with restrictive but unique player visuals. Beg for survival and learn skills to unlock the profession of your choice
• The Knight profession - Unlocked by gaining level 5 in all skills. Knights have a passive ability that provides you with bounty payments when you kill infected A.I, the bigger the better
• Profession passives - Gather double resources as a Peasant, sell items through your own shop as an Artisan, be rewarded with double loot from animals as a Hunter, craft double food items as a Cook, repair weapons as a
• Blacksmith, befriend bandits but have guards as an enemy as an Outlaw and build faster as a Mason
• Profession unlocking - Each profession requires a certain skill level in order to be played, such as level 5 in farming to unlock the Peasant
• Events - Use your map and compass to locate procedural events around the map and take part in fights with unique deadly NPCs, loot valuable items and claim relics before other players do. The current active event appears in the top left corner of your HUD
• Animal husbandry - Owning animals makes a return with a new more intuitive system. Buy animals from a farmer shop and place them on your land, use animal feed on them to gain items such as milk and eggs
• Localisation - Partially complete, an early version of French and Russian translations (if you spot mistakes, let us know!)
• New starting animation on spawning in to the world
• Partial controller support - Most of the game is now working with a gamepad, some menus such as guild and settings, are still being worked on Coal resource

Choose your newly unlocked professions in the new character creation screen

Updated:

• New Game Launcher - Improved visuals and functionality, including a news feed, patch notes display and server settings
• Updated main menu cinematics
• Overall style/mood of menus and UI have been improved and are more consistent
• Profession/character creation screen - Now displays professions with a unique scene, animation and uniform. The character creation process has also been adjusted
• Only doctors can perform dissections and only beggars can beg for gold
• Tutorial Quest - The old quest has been removed and replaced with an extendable tooltip quest on the top right of your HUD. This is more helpful for learning core gameplay without being intrusive and should help new players greatly. Currently can take up to 3 hours to complete and will be expanded further in the coming months
• Atmosphere - further improvements have been made to the graphics of the game to improve mood and provide a unique experience
• Resources now have improved effects and provide more gameplay feedback New enemy types
• The map screen has more information on it. Your own location, points of interest as well as event locations can now be seen. You can now also show/hide elements as well as being able to zoom in and out for a better view
• Building system - now provides more freedom with better control for snaps and rotations. The building effect has also been improved. A new camera position is now active when building to make it easier to see placement of structures
• Hitting wooden structures should now provide accurate feedback
• Combat - Hit registering has improved including a subtle short slow motion effect when a hit has been successful to provide more gameplay feedback
• Shops - Far more items available from a larger range of shops
• Skills have been renamed to prevent confusion with professions. Such as
• Medical skill instead of Doctor, Survival skill instead of Hunter and Cooking skill instead of Cook
• Your screen now desaturates more the lower your health gets
• New craftable quality types for stick helm, stick greaves, stick chest armour, stick gauntlets and cooked meat. Example is burnt meat and sturdy stick helm. These have varied durability amounts
• A.I. Spawn balancing, rats and other infected A.I. shouldn't spawn close to player spawns
• More echo volumes have been placed around the world, for example can be heard when you are in churches
• Different rain sounds will be different when you are under cover on out in the open
• Infected A.I. now have a red X icon above their heads
• Shop A.I. now have trading icons above their heads
• Heavy Gambeson armour can now be crafted through the banditry skill
• Fog will now move around the world
• World - Large amount of new raidable areas have been introduced. Also new larger stable ground plots
• Updated version number
• Barricades now have destroying effects
• Loading screen art has been updated and improved
• Adjusted the way animations play (emotes, sickness, weapon holding) so they can only play on specific parts of the body helping to keep things more fluid
• Adjusted location of crafting progress tab within the inventory screen to make it easier to read
• Removed UI cooldowns for attacks
• Blocking - You can now block with your fists, however only prevents a small amount of damage, not effective against weapons. Blocking NPCs causes a full body reaction. Blocking is now a toggle and can be held rather than a short parry
• Relics - Multiple relics can now be acquired
• Punching now spawns trail effects
• Enemy NPCs now have accurate names for clarity e.g. Club Bandit
• Weight amount in hud and in inventory is now displayed in decimals to give a more accurate reading
• You can now move items in and out of storage even if it puts you over weight
• Player spawn/start locations are now scattered along beaches and no longer concentrated in Freeman’s port
• Claim zone now controls more area above and below to help with elevated placement
• Interaction outline - objects you can interact with are now displayed with an outline, this should help the player see content easier such as a stick resource in a forest
• You can now attack with tools
• Camera animation upon death
• Ranged weapons used by the player can now aim your throw more effectively

Combat has been improved again, you can now block with your hands

Balancing:

• Decay system - the decay system is now half the damage and ticks every
• 3 days rather than every 3 hours, repair less often for less cost
• Claim zone size has increased by 200%
• Durability on all tools has been increased
• Durability on all iron and silver weapons has been increased
• A.I. gold drop amount has increased
• Crate spawn rate for items has increased
• Boars now have increased chance of dropping bones
• Wood Axe recipe has been re-balanced
• Lower tier enemies such as bandit beggars have had been re-balanced to be less difficult
• Thread and String are available sooner through the artisans profession instead
• Stone arrows are now lighter weight
• Mason profession now has an additional starting bonus of 1 for the merchantry attribute
• German Battle Axe has now the correct damage amount
• Chamomile resource now provides more items per node
• All types of bandages including the cotton swab have had their recipe requirements re-balanced
• All Ingots now require coal to craft

Take part in procedural events that can spawn around the world

Fixes:

• Built structures should no longer disappear
• Mesh skinning improved to prevent clipping on clothing and bodies
• Items in player storage should no longer duplicate when removed after a server restart
• The player being infected should now spread to another player when they cough, sneeze or throw up near them
• Player storage that has been destroyed should no longer respawn after a server restart
• Map locations and points of interest should be more accurate
• A.I. should no longer spam ranged weapons and throwing rocks at players behind cover/walls. They should either retreat or find a better position.
• Player Head LODS have been fixed which should prevent harsh LODs at a short distance for the entire body.
• A.I. now ragdoll more realistically rather than drop in an idle pose.
• Blunt weapons/fists should no longer cause gibs and beheadings
• Bandit arrows should no longer fall to the ground immediately after being fired
• Fix to stop crosshair info staying up when looking at the ground after having looked at an object
• Removed old stamina out of breath audio which could play when you were attacking sometimes
• Fixed a bug with wet clothing which would make it flicker to full wetness for a second
• Destroying a standard table now has a destroying effect
• Animals now drop animal fat again
• Secret “Bookcase Door” now shows a name again when you are looking at it
• One handed swords should no longer have a two handed animation set
• Culling - various objects around the world should no longer cull at short distances
• Distance colours/textures for the landscape should no longer be bright
• Misc spelling mistakes fixed in the UI

Optimisations:

• Optimised and deleted UI textures

Known issues

• Destroying/Killing farm animals that are placed by the player will drop debris loot

Thanks everyone for playing and we hope you enjoy this update as much as we have!

See you in Mercia

The S.I.G. Team