New Skill Tree, Reworked Visuals & Sight, Corpse Burning, Ammo Disassembly, Difficulty & Loot Balance
The highlights of this update are the launch of the brand-new skill tree, more power facilities and better visuals and sight effects, along with a round of difficulty and loot balancing.
🌳 New Skill Tree — the skill tree has been completely reworked, with 30+ new melee, ranged, physical and technology skills. Heavy Strike can now be learned, and the technology branch adds Solar Power, Appliances and the Electric Fence. All skills learned in existing saves are kept.
🎨 Visuals & Sight — a cleaner, clearer picture; buildings cast shadows that follow the sun; and the edges of your field of view are softer and no longer flicker.
🔥 Corpse Burning & Shattering — corpses can catch fire and burn away, and corpses too close to an explosion get blown apart.
⚖️ Difficulty & Loot Balance — the infected and mutants are tougher, random loot and guns are scarcer, and injured limbs recover faster.
Also in this update: ammo disassembly, melee weapon disassembly, regular merchant restocks, improved companion behavior, and lots of fixes.
🌳 New Skill Tree
The skill tree has been completely reworked and its nodes rearranged. All skills and levels learned in existing saves are kept; only their positions have changed.
Auto turret skills are shown as “Coming Soon” and will be unlocked in a future update.
Melee
Heavy Strike (now learnable): hold the attack button to charge, then release to land a heavy blow; a full second-stage charge breaks zombies' bones.
Deadly Strike: melee attacks have a chance to land critical hits.
Ground Slam: melee attacks knock enemies back farther.
Polearm Mastery / Blade Mastery: spears reach farther, and slashing weapons swing faster.
Stagger: melee critical hits stagger monsters, and staggered monsters with low health can be executed.
Executioner: monsters with more health left can be executed, and executions cost less stamina.
Combo Strike: the third swing in a combo becomes a finishing blow that deals more damage.
Roll Counter: attack right after a roll and your first hit is a guaranteed critical that costs no stamina.
Ambush: sneak attacks on monsters that haven't spotted you deal much more damage and don't alert anything nearby.
Second Wind: melee kills restore stamina.
Bloodlust / Bloodthirst: melee kills send you into Bloodlust, boosting your damage and movement speed; with Bloodthirst, kills during Bloodlust also restore health.
Ranged
Bow Expert / Crossbow Expert: increased bow and crossbow damage.
Arrow Penetration / Bolt Penetration: arrows and bolts can pierce through multiple targets.
Steady Arm / Full Draw: drawing a bow costs less stamina, and once fully drawn you can hold your aim without using stamina.
Crossbow Fast Reload: crossbows reload faster.
Barrel Cooling: guns cool down faster and are less likely to overheat and jam.
Ranged Weapon Maintenance: ranged weapons are more durable.
Physical
Carry Capacity / Max Health: carry more and raise your maximum health.
Wound Care / Limb Recovery: you're less likely to bleed when hurt, your limbs take less damage, and injuries heal faster.
Tough Body: negative status effects affect you less.
Light Step: your footsteps don't carry as far, making you harder to detect.
Wilderness Metabolism: you get hungry and thirsty more slowly.
Cold Resistance: you lose body heat more slowly in the cold.
Technology
Solar Power: build solar panels and energy storage modules. Panels generate power during the day, surplus power is stored in the modules, and the modules discharge automatically when power runs short.
Appliances: build electric heaters and electric stoves.
Electric Fence: build high-voltage fences that shock anyone who touches them while powered.
Stirling generators can now be powered on and off.
🎨 Visuals & Sight
Overall visual improvements: retuned lighting, colors and rain fog for a cleaner, more realistic picture.
Buildings now cast shadows that change direction with the sun.
Reworked sight effect: the edges of your field of view are now soft instead of blocky tiles, and no longer flicker when you move fast.
Blood stains, vines and other things on the ground outside your field of view are now correctly darkened.
New game settings: “Sight Renderer” (switch back to the old effect at any time) and “Ground Vines” (hide the vines on the ground).
Ground vines can now be burned away by fire.
Redesigned the New Game screens and the save loading screen.
Holding a gun close to walls, trees or vehicles now lowers the muzzle so it no longer clips through them; the laser sight's beam no longer passes through walls either.
Your character no longer gets stuck in a walking pose when you open your backpack or search a container.
Using a Bandage or First Aid Kit now plays a bandaging animation and sound.
Each NPC now has a different pitch for their hurt sounds, so they no longer all sound the same.
Fixed white squares appearing on some zombies and characters, and trees showing only their shadows after returning from a basement.
🔥 Corpse Burning & Shattering
Corpse burning: Molotov cocktails, torches and flamethrowers set nearby corpses on fire; characters who burn to death leave a corpse that keeps burning.
Once a corpse burns out, only charcoal, bones and other things that can't burn are left; flammable items it carried turn into charcoal, while other items remain.
Rain or standing water puts out burning corpses.
Corpse shattering: corpses too close to grenade blasts and other explosions get blown apart, dropping butchering products and the items they carried.
The corpse you're currently interacting with is now outlined: green = not yet searched, yellow = items left, red = looted.
Fixed corpses looking wrong after loading a save.
⚖️ Difficulty & Loot Balance
Enemies
Increased the base health of the infected (humans, robots, giant lizards and wild animals are unchanged).
Army Zombies have slightly less health and now drop military supplies: ammo, grenades, Molotov cocktails, gunpowder bags, bandages, first aid kits and canned food, and occasionally gas masks and Kevlar suits.
Bandits can't see as far at night, but when attacked, nearby bandits become alert and temporarily regain their daytime sight range.
Bandits are less likely to carry guns, and bandits with a rifle no longer switch to bows or crossbows.
Loot
Randomly generated loot reduced by about a third, with guns cut in half; gun shop shelves and basement gun racks are unaffected.
Loot in vehicles, backpacks and clothing is now also affected by the “Loot Abundance” setting.
Shotguns, ammo and police uniforms are now easier to find in police cars.
Enhancement Serums are now rarer in supermarkets and similar places.
Starting supplies adjusted: the bodies by the helicopter no longer carry a revolver or an air rifle, and the starting weapon you pick comes with less ammo.
Progression & Survival
Injured limbs recover faster, and even faster while you sleep or when bandaged; Constitution and health-regeneration traits and skills also speed up limb recovery.
Strength, Agility and Constitution now gain attribute experience at half the rate.
The “Hunger & Thirst Rate” game setting now works correctly.
Food recovery effects now keep working while the game is paused by the backpack or other screens.
🔧 Disassembly & Crafting
Ammo can be disassembled into shells and gunpowder: it's broken down in whole batches, and any leftover rounds are kept.
Craftable melee weapons and tools can now be disassembled; the lower their durability, the fewer materials you get back.
Crafted guns now always come without attachments or affixes and with an empty magazine (fixes crafted guns sometimes coming with random attachments).
Fixed regular backpacks being mounted on guns as a Shell Collector.
🤝 Companions & NPCs
Companions fight more actively: instead of running around without firing, they stay near you and fight.
Companions who are shooting no longer stop firing and run away when attacked; when enemies close in, companions stop loading magazines and deal with the threat first.
Companions now deal with cold and fever: when cold, they put on warm clothing and warm up by campfires and other heat sources; when feverish, they take off warm clothing and drink water to cool down. The warming effect of campfires and electric heaters now applies to companions too.
Companions now take warmth into account when choosing clothes and no longer throw away warm clothing; they also use medicine from the shared backpack.
Fixed companion pathfinding issues and companions freezing in place at the edge of the screen.
Fixed hired companions arriving without full health; in existing saves, their health is topped up once when you load.
🧟 Combat
Improved zombie pathfinding: zombies no longer get stuck next to shelves, unable to reach you.
Fixed bullets and melee attacks not hitting zombies while they climbed through windows.
Fixed being able to raise a melee weapon without enough stamina but then not being able to attack.
Fixed the weapon info panel in the bottom-right corner often not showing up.
“Kill Cam” is now off by default, and doesn't trigger as often when turned on.
🏕️ Merchants & Facilities
Merchants now swap out their entire stock every 3 days (fixes merchants' goods not restocking); items you sold to them are also replaced when they restock.
The Portable Charger now charges batteries as soon as you put them in; you no longer need to “Turn On” it first.
Built Simple Street Lights are now brighter.
“Clear all items and corpses” in the pause menu no longer removes high-value items such as the Solar Charger.
“Auto-Sort” now arranges items more neatly.
☁️ Other
Automatic Steam Cloud syncs now happen at most once every 30 minutes; you can still sync manually at any time from the pause menu.
Fixed the game stuttering briefly when a Steam Cloud upload starts.
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.
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Thank you for the feedback and support.ːcozybethesdaː
