Water Collection and Purification:
It is now possible to collect water from the various lakes on the map. Survivors now spawn with a metal canteen (apart from in hardcore mode where players must craft their own).
The canteen can be filled at any water source, and can then be used to boil on a campfire or woodburner to purify the water. Dirty water is still drinkable, but runs the risk of illness (and provides slightly less hydration).
Illness and Medicinal Treatment:
Eating under-cooked or rotten meat, or drinking unpurified water now runs the risk of contracting illness. It’s also possible to become ill through infection from wild animals attacks.
Illness will reduce the player’s max health and strength to 60% of full. However illness is not terminal, and it’s possible to live indefinitely while ill, just with impaired stats. An antidote can be crafted to cure illness (found in default crafting menu):
Switchable Ammo Types:
There are now mechanics for switching through different ammo types on weapons. The bow now has a new ‘Premium’ arrow which is craftable at the workbench.
These new arrows do more than double the damage of standard wooden arrows, and have a higher velocity with less projectile drop. They also have far less chance of breaking, and can even hit rock surfaces without breaking.
Ammo types can be switched while moving around the world (using L-Alt, which is rebindable), or by simply clicking on the ammo type displayed above the weapon while accessing your inventory.
The new arrows require premium features to be crafted, which can only be acquired through domesticating chickens. As chickens level up in the animal housing, they will yield more premium feathers. I’m hoping this will add more value to the mechanics of domesticating animals, and I plan to build upon this further in future updates.
Death Crate Beacon:
One of the most requested features since launch has been a way to find the player’s dropped kit after death. I’ve been reluctant to implement this as I didn’t want to undermine the achievement of successfully surviving. However I could see that the current system was unbalanced and a source of frustration, and that I should experiment with some ideas.
Now when the player dies, a beacon will show, indicating the location of the dropped gear. However a third of the contents of the kit will be destroyed. This does not include weapons, although will affect ammo loaded in the weapon. I’m hoping this change will maintain the satisfaction of evading death, while reducing the frustration from losing a full kit of upgraded gear. Note: In easy mode no items will be destroyed.
Reduced dependency on medical supply crates.
Now that players are able to gather and purify their own water, loot spawning in medical crates has been greatly reduced (typically the primary means of acquiring water). This means players will need a greater focus on actual survival tactics, rather than relying on random supply crates.
Note: The supply crates have always been placeholder, to allow for balancing of resources as gameplay mechanics are slowly introduced during the development process. As the game evolves, the reliance on supply crates will be continuously reduced, allowing for a more tactical survival experience.
Other misc fixes:
- Fixed placement-bug when moving a previously placed door.
- Increased shotgun shell stack count to 20.
- Animal corpses now disappear once looted.
- Fixed bug where crafting an item with a maxed out inventory wouldn’t drop the crafted item.
- Increased capacity of storage crate by 5 slots:
Thank you so much to everyone that’s been supporting the project. It really makes a huge difference to hear the thoughts and opinions from players playing the game. I know that lots of work is needed, but I’m truly excited for the future of the project.
Please do let me know if you experience any issues with the update, I’ll be on the forums. Have an awesome weekend!
PS: I'm afraid the update will reset controls to default, sorry for the inconvenience here. Also there are a few minor changes I'd like to make following the update, so you may see one or two quick updates following this one.
*Edit* Hotfix update (29th July):
- Items issued for free as starting kit no longer drop when the player dies. This should address exploits of using the death beacon to farm starter kits.
- Illness now persists after a death/respawn (unless the player is yet to build a base). This should remove the exploit of suiciding to cure illness.
- Fixed bug where canteen water would remain clean when refilling after using on the animal housing or plantbed.
- Fixed bug where sounds of picking kelp underwater would be silent.