Voxel Structure Building, Bicycles, Companion Gear & Affinity, Improved Controller Support
The highlights of this update are the launch of voxel structure building and bicycles, customizable companion gear, and much better controller support. It also rolls up everything from the patches released since October 11.
🧱 Voxel Structure Building — the construction panel has a new “Structure” tab where you can freely build walls, floors, steps and roofs from wood, stone, metal, glass and hay blocks to create multi-story bases; furniture, workbenches and items can be placed on upper floors too.
🚲 Bicycles — bicycles can be found in front of houses and shops and along roadsides, with a basket for carrying items; riding trains Strength, and pressing Space locks the rear wheel so you can drift through sharp turns.
🤝 Companion Gear & Affinity — you can now choose the gear your companions use; the new companion Affinity lets you take a companion's own items once it is high enough.
🎮 Improved Controller Support — all in-game menus and panels can now be operated with a controller, and you can type text with the Steam virtual keyboard.
🖥️ New Main Menu & Interface — the main menu now shows a brand-new street scene with new music; there is a new “HUD Size” setting; and the crafting panel has recipe search.
Also in this update: the Electric Furnace, better melee feel, a higher pet level cap, new game settings, and lots of fixes and performance improvements.
🧱 Voxel Structure Building
New “Structure” tab in the construction panel: freely build walls, floors, steps and roofs from wood, stone, metal, glass and hay blocks to create multi-story bases.
Furniture, workbenches, deployables and items can be placed on upper floors; if you remove the floor under them, they drop to the level below.
When you walk into a house you built yourself, the roof overhead is hidden automatically, just like with the buildings on the map.
Removing blocks and undoing (Ctrl+Z) refund all materials, so you can adjust your build freely.
🚲 Bicycles
Added bicycles: they can be found in front of houses and shops and along roadsides, in existing saves too.
Bicycles have a basket, so you can carry items with you.
Riding trains Strength; press Space to lock the rear wheel and drift through sharp turns.
Crashing into an obstacle at high speed knocks you off; a fallen bicycle can be set upright and ridden again.
🤝 Companions & Pets
Customizable companion gear: open a companion's inventory and equip them with the weapons and clothes you choose. Companions keep using the gear you assign, or you can switch them back to automatic selection.
Gear you hand to a companion can be taken back at any time.
Added companion Affinity: it increases with time spent in your team, being revived and receiving items; once Affinity is high enough, you can spend it to take a companion's own items.
NPCs now show a faction marker above their heads: green for companions, white for neutral, red for hostile; names and status are only shown when you hover the mouse over them.
The teammate bar has a new square-cornered design and can be collapsed into a portrait bar; companions on a different level from you (surface/underground) show which level they are on, with a dimmed portrait.
Raised the pet affection level cap from 8 to 23, enough to learn every skill.
Following pets now stay behind the player instead of sticking to them; companions and pets steer around fire, acid and toxic fog.
Companions ordered to “Stay Here” and pets ordered to “Stay” now hold their position and only attack enemies that come close, without leaving or giving chase; staying pets are no longer taken along when the player enters or leaves a basement.
NPCs no longer search containers near your base or pick up items from the ground near it; fixed companions duplicating items when searching storage boxes.
If the hospital bed at a trader camp has been removed, the doctor now sets up a new one when treating you; fixed the doctor moving elsewhere after loading a save if you built near them.
🎮 Controller & Interface
Improved controller support: all in-game menus and panels can now be operated with a controller; you can type text with the Steam virtual keyboard.
The main menu now shows a brand-new street scene, with new main menu music.
The new game screens have a new look.
Added “HUD Size” to the game settings, with three options: Default, Compact and Large; the status bar at the bottom left now uses a card-style layout, and hotbar slots show their number keys.
Added recipe search to the crafting panel: it matches item names in your game language as well as in English.
Clicking an empty weapon slot or equipment slot now lets you pick an item to equip.
After placing an item with “Deploy” from the inventory, you automatically keep placing items of the same kind.
“Disassemble” now sits at the very bottom of the item menu and is shown in red to prevent misclicks; buttons in pop-up menus are taller.
Combination lock codes can be typed directly with the number keys or numpad; adjusted how “Auto-Sort” arranges items.
Using a Red, Green or Blue Dose now opens the skill tree, so you no longer drink it by mistake.
Fixed special affixes not being fully displayed in long weapon descriptions, the pet panel overlapping the companion command menu, and material highlight outlines lingering after closing the workbench.
⚔️ Combat
Greatly reduced camera shake from melee attacks and from getting hit.
Melee hits on objects now play different sounds depending on the material; chopping trees, hitting walls and digging no longer make a metal clanging sound.
Bullet trails are brighter and clearer, and differ by caliber.
Improved zombie sounds: they no longer keep cutting off during repeated attacks or when taking hits.
Fixed melee attack speed dropping so low when surrounded by several enemies that you could barely strike.
Fixed misaligned hand poses and magazine positions on held guns.
The “Bolt Penetration” and “Arrow Penetration” skills can now be disabled.
Fixed stutter when nocking an arrow, a possible crash with modded arrows, arrows hanging in mid-air when the bow was released right after nocking, and bolts changing course mid-flight when firing a multi-bolt crossbow in quick succession.
Fixed revolvers firing only one shot when using the “CAS System”.
Fixed unkillable zombies occasionally appearing in basements, and flares not attracting any infected when fired in towns crowded with infected.
⚡ Power & Crafting
Added the “Electric Furnace”, which smelts 3x faster than the stone furnace.
The “Energy Storage Module” now has double the capacity and charges and discharges faster; idle electrical devices draw only a small amount of standby power.
Gas masks can now be repaired with charcoal.
After repairing the boat, the airdrop now includes the “Mysterious Dagger - Early Access Pass”, and new games started afterwards also give you this dagger.
Closing the spray paint panel without confirming now saves your progress; if one spray can runs short, other cans you carry are used automatically; when painting a gun, the preview now shows the barrel, slide and magazine.
Fixed tool durability not being refunded when cancelling a craft that uses the Leatherman.
⚖️ Supplies & Balance
Greatly reduced the weight of shell casings; a “Shell Collector” mounted on a gun stops collecting once it is full, and casings drop to the ground instead.
Water bottles, canteens and other ordinary liquid containers no longer lose durability when you drink from them.
Clothing now loses half as much durability when attacked.
Greatly increased the durability of Wood Spike Traps and Metal Spike Traps.
When “Gun Reserves” is set to “Shotgun-Only” or “Total Ban”, gun attachments are reduced accordingly.
Fixed incorrect ammo amounts in loot after a mod raised the ammo stack limit.
🎨 Visuals
Redrew some clothing textures for a cleaner look.
Slightly adjusted the proportions of character torsos and heads, and improved rim lighting on characters.
Updated the burning effect on the ground.
Weeds on roads now grow mainly along the roadsides, with fewer patches across the road.
Fixed a white overlay appearing on characters standing in front of trees and other objects.
Fixed “Heat Haze” turning back on after restarting the game even though it had been switched off.
⚙️ Settings & Performance
Added “Destructible Buildings” to the game settings: when it is off, the outer walls of buildings on the map can no longer be destroyed; interior walls, doors, windows and player-built structures are not affected.
Added an “Online Wanderers” option to the game settings so you can turn it off.
Corpses now merge into static corpses sooner after falling, so large piles of corpses run more smoothly.
Reduced stutter when opening the inventory, handling items in multi-layer nested backpacks, and butchering giant lizards, bears and other large creatures.
Improved frame rate in areas with many street lights; fixed a brief stutter when Online Wanderers load in.
Other performance and frame rate improvements.
🔧 Other Fixes
If you open the map, inventory or pause menu while driving, the vehicle now keeps its previous speed after you close it.
Fixed shopping carts, trash cans, traffic cones and similar objects passing through walls when pushed.
Fixed a car alarm continuing to sound after the vehicle was destroyed, and alarm sounds stacking up when forcing a door set off an alarm; spore nests no longer play an alarm sound when they summon zombies.
Fixed trash cans, IV stands and other objects piling up near the map origin.
Fixed the corpses of Giant Mutant Crabs, Giant Mutant Lizards and some other creatures being impossible to pick up, and a corpse picked up inside a closed shipping container being impossible to put down, with the door unable to open.
Fixed healing a companion while carrying furniture leaving the furniture impossible to place or cancel.
Fixed items in clothing pockets disappearing when quick-transferred.
Fixed the “Mining Laser Gun” digging more slowly when facing left.
Fixed the death menu not appearing when your character was killed by an explosion, and the game freezing when pressing ESC while choosing a starting weapon in a new game.
Fixed issues related to road generation.
Fixed errors after a character holding a fishing rod died, after entering or leaving a basement while holding an electrified weapon, and when a following pet entered or left a building or when returning to the main menu or loading a save.
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
