Downed & Revive, Giving Items to Companions, Multiple Pets, Giant Lizard Bait & Scalehide, Vehicle Handbrake
This update focuses on the companion system, while further expanding what you can do with pets and the Giant Mutant Lizard.
🩹 Downed & Revive — human characters no longer die on the spot when their HP hits zero. Instead, they go down and wait to be rescued. You can revive downed companions and neutral NPCs, and if you go down while you have companions with you, they will rush over to revive you.
🎁 Give Items — hand weapons, ammo, medicine and clothing to your companions, and they will switch to better gear on their own.
🐕 Pets — you can now keep up to 3 pets at once, and pet health, bite damage and several pet skills have been buffed.
🦎 Lizard Nests, Bait & Scalehide — Giant Mutant Lizards now return to their nest at night to sleep. Use Giant Lizard Bait to lure in another one, then turn its hide and scales into Giant Lizard Scalehide gear with HP regeneration.
Also in this update: handbrake drifting, running over zombies, reworked roads, the new ranged weapon affix “Penetration”, loot balance changes, interaction card settings, plus lots of fixes and performance optimizations.
🤝 Companion System
Downed & Revive
Human characters now go down when their HP reaches zero and have 30 seconds to be rescued; they only die if time runs out. Companions, neutral NPCs and bandits can all be downed.
Downed NPCs crawl toward their allies for help, and their allies will break off from combat to come and revive them.
Hold the interact key (F) for 3 seconds on a downed companion or neutral NPC to revive them; they get back up with a little health. Downed bandits can also be revived by their fellow bandits.
When you have companions, you also go down first when your HP reaches zero, and your companions will come to revive you.
Give Items
Talk to a companion and choose “I have something for you”, or pick “Give Items” from the hover menu in the companion bar at the top left.
Bandaging
Using “Heal” on an NPC now offers Bandage: use bandages and similar items to dress the wounds of injured companions and neutral NPCs and stop the bleeding.
Other
Fixed the DOS terminal “Upload My Character” page being blank, which prevented character uploads.
Fixed the “Talk To” button not appearing for companion NPCs.
Fixed categories in the companion “Collect Specified Items” menu showing raw internal names.
Hostile bandits and their corpses are now labeled “Looter” instead of “Survivor”.
Fixed hostile bandits punching the air.
🐕 Pets
You can now keep up to 3 pets at the same time.
Pet health and bite damage greatly increased, and both now grow with affection level.
Enemies bitten by your pet focus on attacking it for a few seconds. Each pet can hold off up to 2 enemies at once.
Pets now also earn experience toward leveling up in combat.
The “Sentinel” skill is now “Toughness”: damage taken reduced by 10% / 20% / 30%. Learned levels are kept.
“Hunter” skill: +25% bite damage per level.
“Shred” skill: bleed chance increased to 25% / 50% / 75%.
“Guardian” skill: pets now also bark to draw aggro when an enemy is chasing their owner.
Your character now bends down when petting; petting is now bound to the Z key (RB on controllers). Added a feeding animation.
When you get into a vehicle, your pets now get in with you.
If you destroy a dog cage outright, the dog inside becomes a stray.
Fixed pet items dropping too often; fixed Canned Dog Food always being labeled “expired”.
Fixed pet interactions triggering at the same time as other interactions such as opening doors.
Fixed Army Zombies, Flamethrower Zombies and other enemies getting stuck when attacking a pet.
🦎 Giant Mutant Lizard: Nests, Bait & Scalehide
Lizard Nests
New Giant Mutant Lizard nests: Giant Mutant Lizards and Mutant Lizards return to their nest at night to sleep.
Nests can only be destroyed with explosives or incendiaries.
Giant Lizard Bait
The recipe unlocks the first time you defeat a Giant Mutant Lizard; craft it at a workbench.
About 1 minute after you place it, it lures a Giant Mutant Lizard and a few Mutant Lizards in from afar to feed.
Lizard Gear
New Giant Lizard Scalehide: the recipes unlock the first time you defeat a Giant Mutant Lizard or a Mutant Lizard. The top, pants, shoes and other pieces are crafted separately.
Scalehide can be repaired; each repair uses 1 Giant Lizard Hide and 2 Lizard Scales.
New Lizard Head Trophy: craft-only; reduces damage to the head and provides stamina regeneration.
Other New Items
Lizard Fang Arrow: 1 Lizard Fang makes 1 arrow, which can pierce 1 target.
Scale Hardening Salve: crafted at the Medicine Bench. Using it gives +40 armor on every body part for 10 minutes.
Lizard Musk: crafted at the Medicine Bench. Using it halves the distance at which enemies spot you for 5 minutes.
🔫 Weapons & Combat
Ranged weapons have a new special affix, “Penetration”: shots can pierce 1–3 extra targets.
Ranged weapon descriptions now show “Penetration”.
After a bullet or arrow pierces a target, it deals 70% damage to the next one.
When holding a grenade or other throwable, right-click to throw it directly (same as the G key).
Fixed piercing bullets often missing a second enemy behind the first; fixed shots missing enemies at point-blank range.
Fixed companions and aim assist always shooting too high at short enemies.
Fixed crossbow bolts missing the target and gunshots rising in pitch with each shot when firing with CAS.
🚗 Vehicles & Roads
New handbrake: while driving, hold the handbrake key (Space by default, RB on controllers) to lock the rear wheels and drift.
Vehicles now knock down regular zombies more easily, and downed zombies no longer block vehicles.
Vehicles can now run over downed zombies; zombies can't get up while a vehicle is parked on top of them.
Roads in unexplored areas are now wider; roads now have lane markings and fewer weeds.
Road guardrails now support more directions, so guardrails along diagonal roads are much smoother.
Added roadside fuel stops and rest areas along roads.
🌍 World & Loot
Loot balance: about half of all supermarket shelves, gun shop shelves and gun racks are now empty.
Gun shop shelves are less likely to have guns; Infected drop guns less often.
Bears are now more common in the wild.
Corpse piles can now be dismantled with a long press, yielding materials.
Rotten Meat now stacks in your backpack like other food.
Fixed the Breaker carrying the Access Card (used to open the electronic-lock container) not spawning at the Cargo Transit Station.
Fixed Spider Robots not spawning at the Weapons Testing Ground; fixed mechs and Spider Robots growing in number each time you left and came back after killing them.
Fixed corpses inside hospitals and other buildings reappearing after loading a save, even after being butchered or cleared.
⚙️ Settings & UI
Added a “Restore Default Settings” button to the game settings (it does not reset language or key bindings).
New game settings: “Interaction Card Style” (Full / Compact) and “Interaction Card Size” (Auto / 100% / 85% / 70%).
Fixed the window size being reset after a save finished loading.
Fixed the outlines shown by holding Alt turning monochrome while using night vision or thermal imaging.
🎨 Visuals & Audio
Fixed issues with hand poses.
Fixed forearms showing as a solid block of color when wearing short sleeves.
Your own footsteps are quieter, and even quieter when walking or sneaking.
Fixed some locations having no area background music after loading a save.
⚡ Performance
Terrain rendering is now batched, improving frame rates in towns and bases.
Reduced stutter during mass kills and when corpses pile up.
Optimized scheduled autosaves and Steam Cloud uploads.
Various optimizations to NPC spawning, line-of-sight calculation, chunk unloading and more.
🔧 Other Fixes
Fixed random items appearing out of nowhere on the ground when disassembling a freshly crafted backpack or one you had just taken off.
Fixed the Advanced Workbench and other furniture showing garbled textures when rotated in place or moved after being built.
Fixed being able to interact with underground generators and furnaces from the surface.
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
