Pet System, Giant Mutant Lizard, Map Loading Optimization
Beta 0.9.98.10 → Beta 0.9.99.1(2026.09.19 - 10.02) Two of the new features previewed in our roadmap arrive together in this update.
🐕 Pet System — rescue a dog from the dog cage at a Scavenger Camp. It follows you as you explore, protects you, mauls enemies and brings back little gifts. It can wear gear and learn skills, and it never dies.
🦎 Giant Mutant Lizard — a ten-meter mutant reptile that lurks at inland lakes and on island coasts, wrecking buildings and vehicles in its path. Defeat it to earn lizard gear and the Lizard Serum, which permanently grants an attribute point.
On top of that: a dedicated map loading optimization pass, a major upgrade to character art (better-looking bodies and clothing, hand details, recalibrated weapon-holding poses), 6 new backpacks, a new inventory button bar and many more improvements.
🐕 Pet System
Getting a Pet
Head to the Scavenger Camp at the Abandoned Station. Next to the tents there is a dog cage; walk up to it and hold the interact key to rescue the dog.
There are four breeds — Border Collie, Golden Retriever, German Shepherd and Poodle — and each cage holds a random one. The German Shepherd bites the hardest; the Poodle is small and bites the lightest.
Each player can have 1 pet at a time, and it does not take up a companion slot. Your pet appears in the companion bar at the top left, with a second bar showing its food level.
Existing saves: you have probably already visited most Scavenger Camps on older maps, so this update adds 1–3 Scavenger Camps depending on map size and marks them directly on the PDA map. Camps you have already visited also get a dog cage.
What It Does
Follows you around; when you drive, it rides along and catches up once you get out. Pets don't collide with you and won't block your way.
Protects you: when you are attacked, it charges in and bites; switch it to Aggressive mode and it will attack nearby enemies on its own.
Finds gifts: when you stay in one spot for a while, it sniffs around, digs, and brings back small gifts.
Eats food you drop: drop food on the ground and it will sit and stare at it for a moment before eating; when it is hungry, it comes over to beg.
Plays fetch: put a Tennis Ball in your throwable slot and throw it — your dog brings the ball back and puts it straight into your backpack.
Runs away on its own when it steps into fire or acid; if it catches fire, it shakes the flames off once it is away from the fire.
Plenty of everyday little behaviors: wagging its tail, napping, shaking itself off, scratching, chasing its tail, tilting its head at you when you open your backpack, and jumping up to greet you after a long time apart. When you sleep, it lies down beside the bed.
You can pet it to raise Affection. Higher Affection helps your pet earn experience faster.
Commands and the Pet Panel
Use the “Commands” interaction on your pet, or click the pet bar at the top left, to open the pet panel: check its health, food and Affection, learn skills, equip gear and rename it.
Basic commands: Follow / Stay; combat modes: Passive / Defensive / Aggressive.
Once it has learned the “Saddlebag” skill and wears a Dog Saddlebag, you can open the saddlebag on its back directly to store and take items.
Affection and Skills
Feeding, petting, protecting you and bringing back gifts all raise Affection. Affection goes up to level 8, and each level grants 1 skill point.
There are 8 skills in total, and every skill can be leveled up. Maxing out all of them takes 23 points, but you only ever get 8 skill points, so pick what fits your playstyle.
Keen Nose: finds gifts more often and is more likely to bring back meat and fish; from Lv.2 it also brings back treats.
Hunter: chases down nearby rats and crows and brings them back; increases bite damage.
Guardian: when its owner is attacked, it barks first to draw aggro; at Lv.2 the bark draws every enemy within 12 tiles.
Sentinel: barks a warning when enemies approach while its owner is asleep or at night; at Lv.3 it wakes its owner up.
Shred: bites have a chance to make enemies bleed.
Saddlebag: lets it wear a Dog Saddlebag, with up to 8×8 slots.
Iron Stomach: its food level drops more slowly.
Second Wind: stays unconscious for less time and wakes up with more health.
Pet Gear and Items
Collars: Leather Collar (+50 max health), Bell Collar (+20% Affection gain, but its jingling alerts nearby zombies as it walks), Tactical Collar (lights up at night so you can always spot your dog).
Vests: Cloth Dog Vest (-15% damage taken), Ballistic Dog Vest (-35% damage taken, -10% movement speed).
Dog Saddlebag: lets your dog carry things for you (requires the “Saddlebag” skill first).
Equipped gear shows up on the dog itself.
Canned Dog Food (never spoils) and Jerky Treat (extra Affection); bones make a good snack, and raw meat and fish work too.
New pet toy, the Tennis Ball: equip it in the throwable slot; it deals a little damage to enemies it hits (scales with Strength).
Taking Care of It
Pets never die: when its health reaches zero it falls unconscious and wakes up on its own after a while. You can also use a Bandage or First Aid Kit to bring it round sooner.
When its food level is too low it moves slower and bites weaker, but it will never starve to death. Heavy hits leave it injured.
You can release your pet from the pet panel; its gear and everything in its saddlebag are returned to you. A released dog wanders around where you left it, and as long as you have no other pet with you, you can walk up to it and adopt it again.
🦎 Giant Mutant Lizard
A ten-meter mutant reptile that leaves wrecked buildings and vehicles in its wake.
Where to Find It
A Giant Mutant Lizard lurks at every inland lake, plus one more on the island coast. Once defeated, a lizard does not respawn.
New monster, the Mutant Lizard: about half the size of the giant, with blue-gray skin and orange eyes. Every Giant Mutant Lizard is escorted by 2–4 of them, and they all pounce together when the giant is attacked.
You may also run into a few stray Mutant Lizards near the coast.
Combat
The giant lizard bites, slams with its front claws and sweeps with its tail — standing behind it is not safe either.
It rampages around, smashing fences, trees and vehicles and breaking holes in house walls.
When its health drops to 60% and 30% it roars and goes berserk: it moves faster and attacks more often, and the roar draws nearby zombies.
A BOSS health bar appears at the top of the screen during the fight.
If it is lured too far away, it returns to the area around its nest.
Damage dealt to the giant lizard persists when you reload a save, so you can wear it down over several attempts.
Once defeated, its corpse stays where it fell and can be looted and butchered.
Loot and New Items
New materials: Giant Lizard Hide, Lizard Scale, Mutant Gland, Lizard Fang.
Lizard Hide Backpack: more capacity than the External-frame Expedition Backpack at only half the weight.
Lizard Hide Cloak: waterproof and warm, and its scaled back can even block attacks.
Lizard Fang Blade: fast, frighteningly sharp, and very slow to dull.
Lizard Fang Dagger: can butcher corpses and can be equipped as an execution tool; it wears down far more slowly than the Copper Dagger.
All four pieces of gear above can be crafted from lizard materials.
Lizard Serum (guaranteed drop from the Giant Mutant Lizard): instantly heals all injuries and stops bleeding, permanently grants 1 attribute point (up to 10 times per character, shared with the Serum's limit), and briefly boosts Strength and movement speed.
Lizard Regenerative Tonic: an enhanced version crafted from Lizard Serum and herbs. It keeps all of the serum's effects with stronger healing, keeps regenerating health afterwards, and lasts much longer before it expires. The giant lizard can also drop it directly.
Cloak armor, warmth and weight now count toward character stats.
More Lizard Items and Gear Coming Soon
Lizard armor set: a set crafted from Giant Lizard Hide, with built-in health regeneration and faster recovery from limb injuries.
Lizard bait: craftable bait for the giant lizard. Giant lizards don't respawn by default, but if you place the bait and wait a while, a giant lizard will show up.
🎨 Character Art and Animation
Human characters' bodies and clothing have been visually upgraded.
New hand details: different actions now use matching hand gestures.
Weapon-holding poses for all ranged weapons have been recalibrated, so hands grip in the right places; when holding a gun with your back to the camera, the left forearm no longer covers the front of the gun.
Characters stand with straighter legs, and their arms hang naturally.
Shading has been added between body parts, and calves are better defined.
Human characters hidden behind objects now show a see-through silhouette; rim lighting on characters and objects no longer shows through foreground objects.
Bandit NPCs now wear their own outfits; NPCs and companions holster their weapons when it is safe.
⚡ Performance: Map Loading Optimization
Faster map loading with less stutter.
Nearby chunks are pre-read in the background, reducing stutter while moving and driving.
Chunk saves read and write faster; underground areas only save the parts you have dug, making saves smaller.
Objects spawn in batches when entering towns, greatly reducing stutter.
Fixed stutter caused by surrounding chunks being reloaded over and over while walking around the same area.
Less stutter from NPC pathfinding; string lights at night are cheaper to run.
Blood stains and gore chunks are now capped; fixed off-screen gore chunks never being cleaned up.
🤝 Hiring and NPCs
The hire list now has search, sorting and page numbers.
When hiring a player character, excess consumables such as upgrade potions are removed automatically; when a character is uploaded, its power rating is calculated from its gear without those items.
Improved NPC pathfinding and getting unstuck; companion NPCs now watch their gun's heat during sustained fire.
On gamepad, talking to NPCs is now mapped to LB.
Fixed NPC actions such as fleeing, taking cover, reloading and throwing grenades not working.
Fixed companions that fell far behind giving up on following the player.
Fixed NPCs possibly spawning with safes, fridges and similar items treated as backpacks.
Fixed a single door triggering dozens of alarm waves when NPCs break it down.
Fixed the page refreshing back to the list while viewing a hired character's details.
🎒 Backpacks and Items
6 new backpacks in different sizes and looks.
New button bar on the backpack panel: Lock, Take Same, Stack Same, Deposit All. Locked inventories are skipped by “Stack Nearby” and similar actions.
Items of the same kind in the Nearby Items panel are now shown stacked.
After you pick up or move an item, the slot where it lands is highlighted.
“Stack Same” and “Stack Nearby” now also sort the items in your clothing pockets.
Clothing stats rebalanced and high-tier armor made rarer; looted clothing, backpacks, masks and cloaks are no longer always brand new and come with random durability.
3 new dishes: Fried Eggs, Corn and Egg Drop Soup, Salt-Roasted Chicken.
Eating can be canceled midway: press the interact key while the progress bar is running to stop, and the food will not be consumed.
Food being chilled in fridges and portable fridges is marked with a blue-white dot.
Shell Collectors attached to guns can now stack shells; gun part names now match their guns.
⛏️ Gathering and Interaction
Gathering with the matching melee tool is now much more efficient (axes for trees, pickaxes for ore, etc.).
Hovering over an object now suggests the recommended tool; melee weapon descriptions now list a “Tool Type” and damage multiplier.
When hovering over an object, its name and interaction options are merged into a single card.
Hold Left Alt to show the outlines of corpses and containers.
After placing furniture, press R to rotate it in place.
Power cables between electrical devices are drawn more cleanly; power connections are unchanged.
Wrecks of mechs and spider robots can now be dismantled by holding the interact key.
When fishing, bait only attracts fish shadows you can actually catch; fixed reeling in a small fish from a big fish shadow.
🔫 Weapons and Combat
Pressurized Gas Tanks and Electric Air Pumps can now be fitted to airbows; fixed the airbow reload panel not opening.
When refilling liquid weapons such as the water gun, liquid containers inside pouches can now be used.
Wearing a working mask now stops you from coughing in spore fog.
Gunshot echoes indoors and underground have been adjusted; fixed echoes playing several seconds late.
Fixed guns being held too low after a sight is attached.
Fixed pressing fire during a +1 chamber reload swallowing the round.
Fixed weapons such as the flamethrower firing on their own when you sprint while reloading.
Fixed Molotov Cocktails not working underground.
The MOD editor has a new “Left Hand Height Offset” parameter; fixed the wrong size and magazine display when holstering MOD guns.
🔧 Other Fixes
Fixed autosaves not saving the underground area while you are underground.
Fixed items in some areas being reverted after loading an old save and saving it to a different slot.
Fixed all the grass on the map disappearing after loading an autosave.
Fixed airdrop crate contents being reset when a save was loaded before the crate was opened.
Fixed actions such as loading magazines or eating getting stuck while the crafting bench or trading screen is open.
Fixed alarms and other sounds playing nonstop while the backpack or other screens are open.
Fixed nearby vehicles possibly becoming permanently invisible after a vehicle collision.
Fixed the door panels of double doors turning invisible once opened.
Fixed some buildings turning invisible but still blocking movement after switching between the surface and underground; fixed surface fires appearing underground while the player is underground.
Fixed crafting in a basement not being able to use materials from nearby storage boxes.
Fixed wrong tiles left on the ground after fast movement; fixed misplaced shadows on walls and similar objects.
Fixed an error after equipping the “External-frame Expedition Backpack”; fixed white edges on some backpack icons.
Fixed some data not being cleaned up after a street lamp is destroyed.
Fixed the “Install Battery” menu not listing vehicle batteries with 0 durability.
Fixed long item descriptions being cut off in English and other languages; fixed the first words of item descriptions being removed by mistake in some languages.
Feedback
If you encounter any issues during gameplay, you can report them through the built-in feedback center, Discord or by email.
For localization or translation-related issues, please use the in-game feedback center or contact the developer directly by email. Or perhaps you would like to contribute to language localization.
Please feel free to provide feedback via our Discord or email.
Developer Email:
Thank you for the feedback and support.ːcozybethesdaː
