- Updates 9-19-2026 - 20 September 2026
Corpses and dormant zombies that revive while under a vehicle will now try and crawl out to one side, unless there's a hole in the floor they can pop up through. They should otherwise never appear inside of a vehicle. If they can't find a space to crawl out to within several tiles, they will stay dead but not rotting until the vehicle moves.In the future it might be neat to try and make them break through the vehicle floor or turn into dormant zombies if they're trapped for too long. I'll have to revisit that when there's time.Corpses that are inside of a vehicle will still revive inside of the vehicle.Creatures that die inside a vehicle will try to place their corpse in the vehicle. If there's no room, it will fall on the ground as usual.Characters now drop their wielded item when they die, rather than putting it inside of their corpse. The game will try to place it inside a vehicle if…
- Updates 9-17-2026 - 18 September 2026
The sidebar now properly shows volume of sounds in or adjacent to the player's tile, as well as sounds made by a vehicle the player is operating. Previously it was failing to report a lot of sounds, despite that information being rather important.This volume is based on heard volume, but capped at normal hearing level. This means if your footsteps are 6 volume and you have good hearing, they will still only show 6 rather than over-reporting. However if you have bad hearing, they might underreport and show 3.Your footsteps now make their sound in the tile you're going to, not the tile you came from. This gives you more accurate reporting on the sound you're making and should prevent some weirdness where NPCs were sometimes frightened by their own footsteps.Animated weather (rain, snow, fallout) wasn't being drawn in places like craters and ravines. This was because weather animations wer…
- Updates 9-16-2026 - 17 September 2026
Substantially boosted the ecology experience gained from chopping down trees and fishing. Fishing trains every ten minutes and then additionally you get training whenever you successfully catch anything. This training is capped at 5 ranks for fishing and 4 ranks for tree-chopping. These are likely still not going to be the fastest ways to train the skill, but the hope is that you can get a fair amount of experience passively by going about your day and trying to survive, as with many other skills.Toe talons is no longer in the list of mutations in the experiment or any other scenario. This is a post-threshold mutation and was grayed out because you can't begin play as a post-threshold mutant, so it wasn't possible to select it anyway.Miss reason messaging now prints less often when you miss, so there's less spam in the message log.Torso encumbrance miss reasons ("your torso encumbrance…
- Updates 9-11-2026 - 11 September 2026
Any armor item can now be a replica, just like melee weapons. Replica armor is clearly named and labeled, and has 66% the protection values of regular armor.Replaced all of the budget steel/fake chain and plate armor found in mansions and museums with replica armor.Added code to ensure that replica items maintain their replica status even when transforming, as in the case of loosening a chainmail vest.Replica weapons and armor do not benefit from the STURDY or DURABLE_MELEE flags, even if they describe being sturdy/durable.Removed the "budget steel" material from the game.Tool batteries have been buffed from 97 charge to 110 to fix an issue with some vehicle part installations being inaccessible.Fixed some incorrect messaging on several sheaths and quivers. These items will no longer say that they are (poor fit) despite having no apparent penalty.Creatures will now react to reach attack…
- Updates 9-8-2026 - 8 September 2026
Weapon-only styles like Niten Ichi-Ryu were failing to use the basic unarmed techs (kick, punch, headbutt) when a character was unarmed, resulting in said character failing to learn unarmed or benefit from extra damage from worn items. This has been fixed.Several musical instruments were obnoxiously good armor when worn. This is no longer the case.The bone flute is less entertaining than all other instruments on account of it being a bone you drilled holes in.Fixed some messaging for NPCs playing music.UPS is gone as a concept. A few items still run on it, so the item hasn't been fully deleted, but it is now renamed to power bank and represents not some secret government super thing, but a power bank like you charge your phone off of when you're out camping.Power banks now charge by linking up to a power grid, not by eating tool batteries.Tool batteries held about double the charge that…
- Updates 9-2-2026 - 3 September 2026
Movement modes no longer work in deep water. You are swimming, there's not much to be said about your posture beyond that. In the future it might make sense to have fast swimming ("running") vs regular swimming ("walking"), but the movement modes as they currently exist are not able to properly model that as swimming uses totally different code.A broken leg will only cause you to fall over if half of your legs are broken. This means that e.g. a cephalopod can lose a few arms before having to worry.Cephalopods can now drive cars and operate bicycles.Quadrupeds with one broken leg can still crawl or run provided they have two working arms. Quadrupeds cannot operate a bicycle with their arms if one leg is broken.Swimming is now an extreme activity. This will not properly show up in the sidebar most of the time because of how activity levels are refreshed, but rest assured it is burning kca…
- Updates 8-29-2026 - 29 August 2026
Added the electric spanner. This is an autolearned recipe for a homemade mod which helps you cock your crossbow if you are not strong enough to use it, reducing the weapon's strength requirement by 4. The device uses lithium batteries and must be switched on (activate your crossbow) to work. It will not fit on the heavy, pistol, or latchet crossbow, as these all use nonstandard cocking methods. Due to it being a huge pain to code it the other way, at present charge is not reduced per load and instead just slowly drains over time, so remember to turn the thing off when you're done.The electric spanner requires 3 electronics, 2 archery, and 2 mechanics to craft.Added the insect flight mutation. This is a post-threshold Insect trait that can be activated to allow you to take a big leap like a grasshopper, crossing over gaps, traps, and even going up and down Z levels without harm. Unlike t…
- One more quick update 8-25-2026 - 25 August 2026
I was going to wait a few days like usual, but there was another old crafting group entry that was throwing the same bearing error message I already fixed 3 times today. So I may as well push this now so I can get that fixed.Fully rebalanced acid resistances and damage to items from different acid effects. This should now behave much closer to what was always intended with TLG's acid. Remember once again that this is the item's resistance to being damaged by acid, and does not determine whether it keeps you from getting splashed.Fixed that stupid bearing error message AGAIN aaaah@Federkiel submitted new tiles for the letter opener, Terraforming Neptune, brass catcher, dog whistle, wooden dog whistle, small oxygen delivery kit, drive belt, ammo box, heavy duty tow cable, electrophoresis tray, belt grinder, For Odin, evaporator coil, butt hook, necktie, game watch, curling iron, fancy wat…
- 8-25-2026 hotfix but actually this time - 25 August 2026
Due to my intelligence and skill, I accidentally didn't properly apply the fixes in the last hotfix. Now they're fixed but actually. These were:Fixed an error related to the removed bearing ball recipe.Fixed an error related to "junkfood_allergen". Both of these errors were harmless, but annoying.Removed the large adjustable wrench from the game. This wrench didn't really do anything special and wasn't a pipe wrench like apparently everyone thought, so it wasn't even a decent weapon, just an unnecessary variation on a common item.Additionally, in this update:Greatly boosted the acid resistance of vinyl, rubber, soft rubber, titanium alloy, biosilicified chitin, and synthetic fabric. Boosted the acid resistance of kevlar, nomex, copper, and treated leather a medium amount, and slightly boosted the acid resistance of steel, wool, and canvas. Remember that this is not a boost to how much t…
- Hotfix 8-25-2026 - 25 August 2026
Fixed an error related to the removed bearing ball recipe.Fixed an error related to "junkfood_allergen". Both of these errors were harmless, but annoying.Removed the large adjustable wrench from the game. This wrench didn't really do anything special and wasn't a pipe wrench like apparently everyone thought, so it wasn't even a decent weapon, just an unnecessary variation on a common item.
- Updates 8-24-2026 - 25 August 2026
NPCs now know if they are vitamin deficient, and they will take vitamins or eat foods that contain necessary vitamins to fix this if they have access to them. This system isn't perfect, and NPCs that are surrounded by tasty food that doesn't have vitamins might prioritize eating that over healthier options. This game takes place in America so that might not be a problem.NPCs will make an educated guess about whether a food will make them nauseated or not, and will reject such items. Currently this means they will never eat a food with less than -5 (or -6 if they're a gourmand) enjotability. In the future they might become less discerning as they get closer to starvation, but I'll need to write some code to make them pace themselves in those cases.NPCs now take more of their own traits into account when rating food and estimating its nutrition, so carnivores will rate meat more highly, a…
- Updates 8-22-2026 - 22 August 2026
Because guns are dangerous, monsters which can shoot them ought to behave in a predictable manner. Therefore, monster special attacks that use guns are now standardized as follows: Grabbing, being grabbed, being blinded, being disarmed, being downed, being webbed, or having the maimed arm effect will prevent all monsters from using guns or similar attacks like crossbows and thrown rocks. Not all monsters are subject to all of these conditions, but if you see one of them on a monster, you know it cannot shoot. This does NOT apply to things like the yugg dart, where it's merely spitting a thing at you, but it does apply to turrets, and of course to feral humans and other robots.Fixed up feral human names a bit more, just for better prose.Adjusted armor values for some feral humans and mi-go.Fixed the shipwreck orientation on the MSX overmap.Made visual improvements to pits. They now join…
- Updates 8-19-2026 - 20 August 2026
Climbing up trees is now a proper climb check, looking at your weight, your athletics skill, your limb scores, et cetera. You can fail, and it's not the easiest climb to make.Climbing up ladders, both deployable and fixed, is also a climb check. Ladders are very easy to climb, so you shouldn't have too many issues with those.You can no longer climb basically anything besides stairs with your hands full. Stairs work the same as ever.The changes to climbing made it more difficult than intended to get big items off of rooftops. To counter that, and just to improve things in general, you can now drop items while peeking, including when peeking down ledges. To do this, examine a ledge and select peek down, then press d. This will pull up the multidrop menu and return you to the top of the ledge. Items you drop from this menu will be placed on the tile you peeked to. In this manner, you can s…
- Updates 8-18-2026 - 18 August 2026
Several fungal zombies had incorrectly set up special attacks, not for their fungal moves but for basic things like biting and scratching and grabbing. This has been fixed.Fungal spiders can inject you with a fungal infection.Learning the swimming proficiency is now ten times faster.Bears and zombears of all kinds now have a knockdown attack.Skeletal zombears are now quite a bit slower. They were really fast before for some reason.Added the poignard, a fencing weapon smaller than all the others. I threw this together because there weren't enough fencing options for smaller characters, and poignards are cool. The poignard can be crafted from the same book as the rapier, requiring one less skill rank.The estoc can now be used for fencing.Rapiers, foils, epees, and the fencing sabre have lost rapid and precise strike. These weapons are meant to be kind of bad unless you have the fencing ma…
- Updates 8-15-2026 - 16 August 2026
Adjusted the chance for projectiles to hit items in a tile. Previously, this was purely based on the items' volume. Now, dispersion comes into play, and more accurate shots will be more likely to hit items. The main result of this is that if you want to waste a lot of grenades or ammo, you can use them to pulp corpses, provided they do enough damage, but also random items may get damaged more often.Smashing terrain and furniture, either with a melee attack or by shooting it, can now make quite a bit more noise depending on how hard you hit it. This may prompt enemies to realize they are being shot at with a silenced weapon, though they still have very little AI set up for dealing with this circumstance.Fixed shadows for the nursebot and giant moth.Photographing a live monster for the first time now teaches a small amount of ecology skill. This teaching is uncapped and works at any skill…
- Updates 8-12-2026 - 12 August 2026
Updated and fixed the ledge view math, it now behaves much more consistently on all Z levels.Monsters can now see down over ledges. Players still cannot see up onto ledges from below, this is coming.Treetops you aren't standing on once again block your view of areas beyond them, meaning that climbing a tree in the forest may afford you a better vantage point but it does not make you into some kind of an all-seeing tree god.Fixed a longstanding bug which was blocking hypovolemia from recovering until you lost blood again.Blood loss now actually affects NPCs who are not in your faction.Renamed most feral humans. People were treating "feral" like it was any kind of a consistent status, which is not the case. The new and more varied names hopefully better convey the fact that everybody just kind of went apeshit."Oversized crow" and "bloated corvid" are now renamed to "carrion bird" and "glu…
- Updates 8-9-2026 - 9 August 2026
Added two new hairstyles: twintails (long miku tails) and shag, which is like a choppy 80s style cut.Redrew the mullet and side shave (formerly "long punk") hairstyles in all 10 colors to better conform to visual standards.All 27 hairstyles are now visually represented in-game for male and female characters, and correctly come in all 10 available colors.Renamed several hairstyles to make them match what the image in the tile depicts. This should make things a lot clearer.Cleaned up and standardized the descriptions for all hairstyles.Fixed the weighting so you're far less likely to see random people with purple hair, though they still exist.Women should no longer grow beards if they have the Natural Hair Growth trait.Added the Bearded Lady trait. A woman with this trait will grow a beard if she has the Natural Hair Growth trait.Removed Natural Hair Growth from the list of traits that NP…
- Updates 8-7-2026 - 7 August 2026
Hordes now properly display on the overmap. You can disable this while looking at the map by pressing H. Remember that a horde does not mean "there are zombies here", it means "there is a group of zombies here and they are moving around." So like they're actually out on "patrol" instead of just milling around waiting for something to happen. Hordes can form and disperse for a variety of reasons.Earth ramps (not paved ones, yet) now visually line up (mostly) properly and behave much more like you'd expect: You can't cross to a low ramp tile except from a high one, and said tiles now actually look like ramps instead of weird gradients with an arrow floating on them.Added hills. These are similar to ravines where they're just a blob of terrain without anything too special up top for now. Expect improvements as I figure out how mutable maps work.The abandoned farm and triffid groves now (mo…
- Updates 8-3-2026 - 3 August 2026
Faction camps have been deprecated since the game forked, and while it was technically possible to begin some of the constructions, many would dead-end halfway through for no apparent reason. Almost all faction camp functionality now exists in zones or craft orders, so now it's time to delete the ~32,000 lines of unused code and json making up this very old system. The only part of it which remains, for now, is the barebones settlement, which will be left in until such time as hunting can be designated in some other way. If you have an existing built-up camp in your world this may cause error messages on load, or your overmap might look a little weird around where your camp is. You can safely ignore these.The phase immersion suit was inside-out, making it less acid-resistant than intended, this has been fixed.Improved material portion data for a few items.Most eggs are less likely to ha…
- Hotfix 8-1-2026 - 1 August 2026
Opening and closing gates with a mechanical winch is now allowed in NPC settlements.The intercom will no longer make Hub 01 angry if you interact with it.The Tacoma guys are always there and do not magically appear when you take the job from Smokes to go find them. If you don't see them, try pulling the winch. They're in the garage!Horses kick significantly harder.Reduced day vision radius for horses, moose, bats, and deer, to bring them in line with how mesopic works for the player. This should make them easier to hunt, but your mileage may vary.Gave deer and horses the GOODHEARING flag.Fewer healthy horses at horse farms.Grits no longer triple the nutritional value of cornmeal.A bunch of stuff that isn't made of wheat is no longer made of wheat.Feral humans now have manually applied difficulty to represent how dangerous their attacks are. This should make it easier to realize that a f…
