Continue your expedition deeper into the heart of the jungle. Uncover some of the island's ancient past. Acquire the Hunting Rifle. Chase the Gas Masks. Welcome to Serpent's Crossing! So you'll be retracing the steps of Judith Abigail Susan James as she travelled through the jungle decades ago. Maybe you'll find out what happened to her? Did she ever find those eluding Gas Masks? You need to be careful though: the jungle can be a merciless place. Your journey starts where the previous update ended, near that ring of stone tablets.

Update Highlights

Hunting Rifle

You may remember this weapon from the trailer. Yup, the Hunting Rifle is finally here. (Sorry deer, we postponed it as long as we could.) We've been going back and forth with the control scheme for firearms like this. This isn't a twin-stick shooter like some of our previous games, so we can't use the same kind of systems. Most of the action is melee-based. We tried a few options, but in the end it didn't seem to make sense to have a completely different control scheme for the rifle, so we decided to use the same controls you're (probably) already familiar after using any of the throwing weapons. Quick press just picks up the gun and fires at the locked target, and long press starts free/manual aiming. Releasing the long press fires the rifle, and moving or dodging will cancel the shot.
We've also got a few other firearms like this planned, but more on those later.

Gas Masks and Toxic Gasses

You may also notice there are more toxic gasses blocking your way elsewhere on the island. And some more may be coming in the later updates to areas you may have already explored. So better gear up! They say masks are important, you know.

Optimizations and Visual Glitch Fixes

This new update should fix those half-baked decals you may have been seeing. You should also not see half-loaded map chunks when you rest at the campfire. You may still see occasional misplaced objects and decals on the island though. You can report those in the newly added Visual Glitch category and we'll fix them for the new versions. The game should also run smoother with less lagging while streaming the open world content -- especially when you've already destroyed a lot of the environment. We'll continue making these optimizations towards the release.

Change Log

ADDED

- Access to 'Serpent's Crossing'. - Level Cap is now 31. - New craftable: Hunting Rifle (level 31). - New monster type. - Audio logs can be relistened in Collection. - New Skill: Doctor (placeholder skill icon).

CHANGED

- Structures you've built yourself reward less XP when destroyed. - Killed monsters reward more experience. - Rebalanced monster loot to be more rewarding. - Object loot balancing with the aim of reducing some bottlenecks regarding rare materials. - Slowed down mutated hurler attack by 25%. - Acid pools have higher damage now making standing in them a bad option. - Tutorial tweaks. - Unified loading screen background art character to look more like the in-game model. - Collection UI tweaks. - Extensive changes to object damage masks to incorporate the rifle. - Upgrade Gear screen shows the stats at the maximum upgrade level.

FIXED

- Smoother font outlines. - Cold/hot resistance gear quests don't keep triggering protagonist remarks if quests are completed. - Pause menu memory usage optimizations. - Allowing installing other Link Tower transmitters even when max ascension level is reached. - Performance optimizations. - Upgrade gear screen material flow animation.

Up Next

We're working hard on the next area, which will be the central "city" location. Still not 100% sure if it'll be the very next update or the one after that, but you can expect a new update in 2-3 weeks as usual. You'll be likely unlocking the recipe for the Sledgehammer in that update. I'd say the island is about 62% complete now. This new area and the next one are a bit more complex, and have taken a bit longer to finish than expected, but luckily a few of the remaining areas contain a bit more more wilderness / desert, so they should be slightly faster to develop. All-in-all we're a bit behind on the schedule, but really have no other option than to just keep pushing through as fast as we reasonably can. Still working remotely, which is definitely taking its toll, but fortunately we're seeing the light at the end of this COVID-19 tunnel as more and more ppl are getting vaccinated here in Finland. None of us yet though. Hoping to return to the office maybe within four months. Anyway, I hope you like the update!

[ 2021-04-21 11:25:18 CET ] [ Original post ]