Hey all, Instead of our normal process of beginning work on the next major update, along with the last update (beta 2.7.3), and the upcoming beta 2.7.4, we wanted to try to push out more substantial changes, much quicker than normal. So, along with the last "minor" update, this one will also be quite large for a "minor" release, if you can even call it that. The following is a preview of what to expect so far. You can try all of these changes for yourself by using the development branch. More on how to do that here:https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=721479594 As always, please let us know if you have any suggestions or issues with the upcoming changes. If you want to suggest future additions and improvements, please check out our beta 2.8 wishlist here:https://steamcommunity.com/app/379210/discussions/0/3300476731146746052/ Beta 2.7.4 should be releasing sometime in the next couple weeks!

Added Crafting Depth

• Higher tiered tools and items now produce better quality results when crafting (for example, an iron hammer versus a stone hammer).
• The quality of required doodads (furnaces, kilns, etc.) will now provide bonuses to crafted item quality.
• Slightly reduced the benefit of using increased quality items affecting crafted item quality (due to other changes that benefit crafts).

Improved Creature AI

• Improved scared creature AI so they will attempt to move away from attacking players on occasion and pathfind more intelligently.

Improved Stamina Feedback

• Player movement and actions will begin to slow as stamina decreases past 15 stamina for visual feedback before exhaustion damage occurs.

Export/Import Custom Game Options

• You can now import and export "Custom Mode" game options.

Improved Pause Screen

• Added difficulty, mods, PVP, and friends icons to the pause menu.

Aberrant Balancing

• Reduced base aberrant defense and increased effectiveness of individual resistances and vulnerabilities.
• As aberrant creatures scale with players, the quality of their loot and carved resources are now increased as well.

Creature Modification

• Added custom game modifiers for individually disabling certain creatures and/or aberrant spawns.

Improved Item Pick-ups

• Item pick-ups no longer delay movement based on the amount of items picked up. Item notifications are now sped up to match the amount.

New

• Games won or lost after this update will be replayable (same seed, same options) via their highscores.
• You can now configure your starting skills and skill gain multipliers globally in the custom game options.
• Fire elementals now spawn when causing fire to overflow through stoking or other means at lower reputation levels.

Improvements

• Adjacent items will now fully unlock crafting recipes instead of just allowing them to be crafted.
• Certain skills will now provide consumable bonuses for edible items such as the cooking skill for cooked foods much like the previous bonuses for botany for fruit/vegetables.
• Pressing the "enter" bind in dropdown components will now select the first entry in the list.
• Slimes can now on occasion combine into a jelly cube.
• You can now set the seed for challenge games (not daily).
• Milestones will now only unlock within hardcore and challenge modes.
• You can now stoke fire elementals to heal them.
• You will now be able to catch fish adjacent to tiles from where your line was cast to.
• Increased difference in color between miss messages/notifiers versus exceptional items and stat message/notifiers versus legendary items.
• You can now blacklist types of messages in a message filter.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed swapping equipment in hands not working properly. (Thanks rifticles!)
• Fixed the "enter" bind unfocusing the selected button.
• Fixed notifier sometimes not fading out items and numbers properly.
• Fixed tentacles not being considered raw meat and worm meat not being considered meat.
• Fixed keyboard support not working on dropdown components in menus.
• Fixed container dialog titles not being updated when removing a rename.
• Fixed an error when loading a game that had a disabled mod's quest requirement pinned.
• Fixed a bug where players would gain extra stat values when equipped with legendary stat-increasing equipment. (Thanks sechsauge!)
• Fixed log files getting very large when joining multiplayer servers.
• Fixed black screen and out of memory issues when joining large servers.
• Fixed an issue that caused the global save data to import incorrectly. (Thanks Amax!)
• Fixed an issue that could cause the game to only partially load due to corrupt global save data. (Thanks Nandalee!)
• Fixed blurring the chat input sometimes sending the message.
• Fixed previously tamed creatures not attacking the player while being hitched if they previously were attempting to attack another creature. (Thanks sechsauge!)
• Fixed language setting being reset when closing from in-game.
• Fixed a issue that did not update the name of a container when transmogrifying it. (Thanks sechsauge!)
• Fixed modded images not displaying on UI elements on macOS.
• Fixed item notifiers not fading out properly or showing all items that were picked up.
• NPCs will no longer hurt themselves by walking into dangerous things.
• Prevented hangs due to Steam Workshop issues when starting the game. (Thanks Matthew Cline!)

Balance

• Missing in combat will now have less of a chance to gain skill.
• Some creatures are now harder to hit based on what tile they are on including fish in water.
• Decreased the effectiveness of stoking fire and reduced fire starting fuel levels slightly.
• Decreased the weight of coal and increased its fuel potential and trading worth.
• Trampling plants now has a rare chance to spawn claw worms (this includes both players and other creatures).
• You will no longer take double damage and "work yourself into exhausting" when taking damage from starving/dehydration at low stamina values.
• Increased the damage produced by stepping in lava.
• Decreased the amount of ash dropped from lit torches.
• Pineapples will no longer provide any health benefits when consuming them.
• Slightly decreased effectiveness of botany/mycology skills affecting consumable items.

Modding

• Added the hook ShouldCraft for cancelling crafts.
• Added the hook OnInspectionSection for tweaking tile inspections in tooltips.
• Allowed providesLight to function without providesFire.

Mods

Debug Tools

• Fixed desyncs when using the kill action on players.

Technical

• Performance improvements when loading games.