It's great to see everyone playing Heat this past week. We have been working on a new update that we are releasing to help with many issues that came up from your reports and feedback.

This update contains additional optimization improvements. Between our Steam launch (Alpha 1) and Alpha 10, we have now seen between 15%-50% performance improvement in on our in-house test machines depending on the settings, biome, and system specs.

At 1080p/Gamer + 4 core i7 cpu, we are now getting 60-90 FPS on a 980 GTX, 80-120 FPS on a 1080 GTX, 100-130 FPS with a 2080 TI depending on the biomes. The forests in the game are the heavier areas and the plains and deserts are the highest fps, this is due to the large fillrates of all the tree densities and the variety.

We are taking the servers down and rolling them back up in order to process the update. We are doing a partial wipe on our Official Servers with this update due to exploit fixes. The world data (everything placed and stored in the world, including player inventories) will be wiped, but it should not wipe the character level, xp, attributes, prestige, and blueprint unlocks. This is the first time testing this with our save system. This update should not require a wipe on community servers.

*Edit* - There was an issue with our partial wipe system. Player blueprint unlocks will remain, but player levels, xp, and attributes have been wiped. Were sorry for the inconvenience this caused, it was not our intention with the partial wipe system, but we found a flaw after this update.

If you experience a crash or freeze, please follow these steps, especially after an update as it seems Steam sometimes requires a file integrity check after an update to work properly - https://steamcommunity.com/app/656240/discussions/0/1777136225016630475/

Here are the changes for Alpha 10:

- Harvesting forest should no longer result in double-hit animations
- Fix for missing colliders in forest when placing foundations and stations nearby
- Can no longer farm or change splats underneath objects. This to prevent trees growing through bases.
- Forest rendering optimizations for CPU and GPU performance improvements
- Lowered initial loading time a small amount
- Revised icons for unarmed and orifice slot in hotbar
- IK system reworked to avoid touching transforms while making calculations.
- Compass layout adjusted so that compass icons do not overlap compass text
- Implemented GUI and HUD optimizations where UI elements are only updated periodically or when visible changes are expected.
- Compass uses a scrolling, looping texture instead of individual UI elements as labels for directions. This improves performance.

- Resource nodes will now respawn back in the biome they were removed from. They have also been fixed to properly respawn again.

- Mounts given by power positions now have a different loot table.
- Grass & hay have less of a change to drop a geode when harvested.
- Concrete slab stack size increased to 40.
- Stone slab stack size increased to 100.
- Farmed tobacco crops now drop tobacco leaves.
- All farmed crops now have a chance to drop a geode.
- Higher quality farm crops now have a better sell price
- Wood now burns as fuel for 10 seconds.
- Charcoal will only now burn for 20 seconds in fires.
- Charcoal now sells for 10 cents.
- Increased the sell price of higher quality crops.
- Scythe’s now affect the correct amount of grid areas.
- Brought grid back on sprinkler for only those who are placing them
- Hanging Kerosene Lamp now uses correct resources to craft.
- Steel knife is now craftable.
- Lemons have been added for purchase through shipping bin.
- Ranged weapons that are fired shortly before logging out will deal damage next time the player logs in.

- Added “Diatomaceous Earth” resource that can only be optioned by cracking and open a geode. Diatomaceous earth is now a required resource in crafting dynamite. This makes dynamite much more rare.
- Dynamite now does more damage and its radius has been tightened. All walls now take one dynamite to breach. Ramparts take between 3-5 dynamite each to breach depending on their tier.
- Increased HP of ramparts & rampart gates. This makes them a little better than the same amount of walls.
- Can now only deconstruct stick building pieces using a repair hammer. You can no longer deconstruct upgraded buildings using a repair hammer. You cannot downgrade a building beyond clay (cannot downgrade to sticks). Downgrades still cost resources as is normal. This is to prevent "base pocketing" after you conquer someones land and place your own land flag.
- Fixed fancy wooden cabinet collider
- Fix for the white house and plantation doors removing randomly. Server restart should fix this now.
- Security no longer resets for guild members when picked
- Payments will now properly draw money from all slots of a player's inventory, even the orifice.
- Events based on the in-game date like pregnancy and the 50/50 draw will continue to work into game year 2 and beyond. The in-game date will coincidentally reset from these changes, back to the first day.

- Add new security option to doors so you can prevent NPCs from using them
- Human NPCs now have a slot limit of 20, down from 300. Existing NPCs will not change, and Players keep their 300 slot limit.
- Doubled the stockpile limit for wood & sticks.
- NPCs will now drop any Heavy Goods they're carrying when going to sleep (they sleep when removed from party, or on player log out). NPC's were never meant to be static containers for heavy goods.

- Fall damage added. By default, falls under 20 m are survivable. On land you own, falls under 40 m are survivable. On land owned by another guild, falls under 12 m are survivable. NPCs only take fall damage on land that belongs to a rival guild.
- Melee damage against humans targets is 3x stronger, and 6x stronger if it is a headshot. This brings melee back into play, as it was very weak beforehand.

- Added a /wipe command for admins. It wipes the server except for levels, prestige, xp, blueprints, and attributes (health, hunger, thirst, and weight)

Thanks for everyone's continued feedback and support.

- Code}{atch

Heat Twitter - https://twitter.com/SurviveHeat