Every server has been wiped
All seven official servers, Playground included, were wiped with this update, so everyone starts fresh on the new ground. Bases, loot, inventories and research reset. Your account, skins, Sparks and purchases are untouched.
- The regular Thursday wipes carry on as before.
- Solo games keep your bases and items. Their trees, rocks and other resources grow back fresh.
New creatures, and better animals
- Monitor lizards lie low in the jungle undergrowth and lunge with a bleeding bite.
- Saltwater crocodiles wait at river mouths, swim, and burst out of the water.
- Reef sharks circle the dive sites and a tiger shark or two patrol deep water. They come for swimmers and bleeding divers, bump before they bite, and give up in the shallows.
- Cassowaries are shy but kick hard if you crowd them. Jungle fowl flocks and coconut crabs on warm beaches are easy early meat.
- Guard dogs now keep watch with the scientists at the Satellite Dish, Utility Tunnels, Frostline, Proving Ground and Permafrost Vault.
- The deer, boar, wolves and polar bears have new bodies with opening mouths and teeth.
- Every animal moves better: real gallops and bounds at full speed, feet that stay planted on the ground, and no more snapping limbs.
Gunship, eruptions and wrecks
- The Skua gunship: the scientists' helicopter patrols between monuments while two or more survivors are online. It turns towards gunfire and hunts people in the open with chin-gun bursts and rocket salvos you can dodge. It never targets anyone indoors, in a safe zone or freshly spawned. Shoot it down and its crates open once the fire dies.
- Ashfall: from time to time the volcano rumbles, then throws glowing bombs onto its slopes under an ash plume. Afterwards hot ejecta full of sulfur and metal ore lie on the slopes for 25 minutes.
- Storm wrecks: as a storm clears, a salvage barge may wash up on a beach with split containers and four crates. Half the time a scientist recovery crew is already working it.
- Scientists have new roles: marksmen on monument lookouts, with a scope glint before each shot, and close-quarters heavies with pump shotguns in red-card rooms.
A new sky and real thunderstorms
The sky has new lit clouds: white heaps with grey bases and silver rims, gold and red at sunset, faint high cloud in fair weather, a glow after sunset, a moon and stars that hide behind the clouds.
- Storms now bring forked lightning that lights the land and the clouds. Everyone sees the same bolt in the same place.
- Thunder arrives at the speed of sound: a crack close by, a clap further out and a long roll from far away.
- Storms turn the light cold and grey with a lower, faster cloud deck, driving rain and gusting wind.
- Settings has a “Reduce lightning flashes” option.
Roads that meet the monuments
Roads used to leave spiky walls and steps where they met a monument or another road. Every road now leaves its monument head-on and level with the pad, and joins other roads at their level.
- No more steps at monument entrances, and no roads riding above a forecourt on an embankment.
- Roads keep away from the edges of other monuments and the foot of cliffs, so their banks meet the ground in ordinary slopes.
- Two roads never run side by side at different heights, and little triangles of road at junctions are gone.
- Mountain ridges are rounded off instead of knife edges and needle peaks.
- On the random islands, gas stations and the other roadside monuments face open, level ground instead of the sea or a cliff, and every monument can be reached by road.
Power lines
Wooden power poles now run along the roads, joined up into one network that starts at the new geothermal plant. Each monument the lines pass is fed by its own cable from a transformer on the nearest pole down to a meter mast at the edge of its pad.
- Poles and masts are solid: they stop bullets, cars and building.
- Trees, rocks and resources keep clear of the poles and the wires.
New places
- Ashvent Geothermal stands on the lower slopes of the volcano on Standard islands: steaming wellheads, a turbine hall with a blue-card control room holding a red card, scientists, a recycler and the switchyard where the power lines begin.
- Windpump Wells is a quiet water stop in the desert: a turning windpump over a stone cistern, a stalled water tanker and a lean-to with a recycler and three crates. No cards and no scientists.
- Roadside shelters stand along the long stretches of road, each with a crate and a couple of barrels.
- On generated islands the Utility Tunnels now sit inside a grassy hill, with cuttings leading to their entrances.
Traps, a SAM site, teas and more
- Landmine: it clicks under a raider and goes off when they step off. Anyone else can hold E to disarm it.
- Bear trap: it snaps on the first survivor or animal to step in and holds them. Tin can alarm: walking through its cord rattles loudly and tells you where.
- Shotgun traps, floor spikes and flame turrets have new models. A fan on the floor shows what an aimed trap covers while you place it, and shotgun traps and flame turrets can sit on a table or shelf to fire over low walls.
- SAM site: it locks on to minicopters and drones that aren't authorized on its cupboard, warns the pilot with a lock tone, then fires guided rockets. You can still outrun it, turn away or dive behind a hill. It never fires at the Skua or over a safe zone.
- Mixing table and six teas: wood, ore, healing, warming, cooling and anti-rad.
- High velocity and fire arrows, and a high velocity rocket. B switches rounds.
- Arctic clothing: Fur Parka, Insulated Trousers, Trapper Hat, Fur-Lined Gloves and Fur Boots, warm enough for an arctic night.
- Farming: pumpkins and potatoes join corn and hemp, with fertilizer and a Composter that turns spare food into it.
- Eight more Outpost contracts, including hunting predators, fishing, the storm wreck and the Skua.
Map markers you can name
- Markers are coloured map pins with an icon and a name. Click one to change its name, colour and icon.
- Each player has five markers, and the team leader can place five team markers everyone on the team sees.
- The compass at the top now shows only markers, with each one's icon and the start of its name.
Snow, sand and the sea
- Monuments in the arctic get snow on roofs and banked against walls, and desert monuments get drifted sand.
- Snow is whiter and the desert sand golden.
- Snow no longer makes you wet; only rain and the sea do. Falling snow chills you, and warm clothing never overheats you by itself.
- The tall desert cacti can be harvested.
- Foundations can stand on the seabed in water up to 2.5 m deep, and swimmers climb out onto banks, rocks, foundations and docks.
- Underwater, colours fade with distance instead of everything turning teal.
- Felled trees no longer vanish for a moment as they start to fall. The X stays on the bark, every hit leaves a chop mark, and wood piles have bark.
Sleepers, combat and fair play
- Sleepers can be looted: look at one and press E to open their clothing, hotbar and inventory.
- Sleepers now curl up on their side.
- Death bags no longer bounce every time you take something.
- The death screen has a combat log of the last minute of hits you took and dealt.
- Walls, doors and monument walls can no longer be walked through with crafted movement.
- Wrong code-lock guesses now shock you, and repeated wrong guesses lock the lock for a while.
- What is inside a closed base is only sent to players who could actually see it.
Looks and performance
- New smoke, fire and explosions: quick fireballs, smoke that clears in seconds, sparks, scorch marks and bullet holes.
- Turning through forests is smoother: plants, rocks and props are culled on the graphics card.
- The ocean is skipped when you look down a hillside, which helps on the volcano.
- Animal models download about half the size.
- Your master volume is remembered.
- If your graphics card resets while the game loads, it reloads straight back into your server.
