This build is all about the excavator. If you only have ten minutes, spend them digging.

Excavator digging

• Dig deeper. The main yard is now diggable roughly 11 m down instead of about half a bucket. Go find the bottom.
• The bite starts on contact. The cut and the dig sound trigger the moment the teeth touch the ground, not after the bucket is buried. The dig sound plays once per contact instead of repeating as you move.
• The whole bucket carves. The back wall and the top rim now remove terrain too, so dragging a buried bucket around no longer leaves ground poking through the shell. The cut also keeps up with fast pushes and quick swings.
• Dirt chunks come from the dig. Chunks now appear with the cut, and how many you get depends on how much ground you actually removed: a light scrape gives almost nothing, a full bite gives several. They spread across the bucket width and roll out one at a time instead of popping in as a stack.
• No free dirt. Leaving the bucket parked in the ground no longer produces chunks. Pushing the bucket straight through terrain without curling carves but does not spawn chunks either; a proper scoop does.
• Chunks appear in the bucket mouth rather than high above the teeth.

Excavator handling and exit

• Rotating the cab no longer spins the tracks underneath you, and the machine is much less rocky when you lift a full bucket. The outside camera stays put while the cab turns; the cab camera still follows.
• Getting out is clean. The arms and cab no longer snap to a different position when you exit, and the whole machine no longer twitches a second later. Your load should stay in the bucket.
• Excavator engine, arm and dig sounds are at half their previous volume for the headphone crowd.

Performance

• Digging with the excavator is much lighter on frame rate, especially around piles of chunks. If you still see stutter while digging, tell us what you were doing.

Please try

1. Dig a full scoop from a standstill using only the bucket controls, then dump it into the dump truck.
2. Push the bucket through a bank at speed. Watch for any ground showing inside the bucket before it disappears.
3. Get out of the excavator with a loaded bucket, wait five seconds, and see whether anything moves.
4. Have a second player watch you dig and get out. Tell us if what they see differs from what you see.
5. Dig straight down in one spot until you hit the bottom.

Known

• Chunks still give a small kick when they appear; that is expected for now.
• There is a cap on how many chunks exist at once, so the oldest ones vanish during long digging sessions.