Attention, all Caretakers! We have a surprise update for everyone, now live for all Early Access players. Update 3.5: Shadow Drop contains many fixes originally intended for Update 4. However, based on your community feedback, we at Channel37 decided not to wait. We’ve already implemented the fixes on our side, so why not just get them into your hands now? Shadow Drop is an unscheduled update that focuses on two things. First, we wish to make the game feel even better than before. Second, we added a bouquet of interesting additional content to make our world more worthy of return visits.
▶ Watch the Update 3.5: Shadow Drop trailer:
Major fixes + optimization to address broken persistence, unreliable cables, fabrication inconsistencies, progression blocks, and graphics lag in certain areas
New Photo Drone for taking photos/screenshots, scouting areas, and seeing a new perspective on the drowned world
PECO cartridges + playable minigames to challenge even the quickest robotic reflexes
More hidden rooms, caves, vents, and secrets throughout familiar locations
New expansions to the world such as a new storm region, support buoys, and higher-quality environmental details.
New customization paints for weapons
You might be wondering what exactly “feels better” now? Well, Shadow Drop is a direct result of our community feedback. So this update addresses issues that are hitting players every day.
Equipment, drones, cables, and world objects all behave more reliably now
Fabrication and placement work more consistently
Better graphics performance will be seen in asset intense environments
Many frustrating edge-case bugs that block progression are now eliminated
In other words, there’s less fighting the systems and more playing the game.
▶ Full patch notes: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1783560/discussions/0/804596796626077049/ Feedback
If you encounter an issue, the most useful and actionable reports include:
What you were doing
What you expected to happen
What actually happened
Steps to reproduce, if possible
Screenshot/video, if you have one
Join our community and give us all your thoughts, comments, and feedback here:
Discord:
One ask:
If you like the direction of the game, jump back in and play Shadow Drop. And if the game feels better to you now, that’s exactly why we shipped this update early.
As for Update 4, all the upcoming and exciting major content is still on schedule and still on track. We just didn’t want to sit on fixes for weeks that would improve your game right now.
Our small, hard-working team made a deep pass across persistence, cable simulation, fabrication, physics/buoyancy, AI navigation, vehicles, UI, and graphics performance. Their fixes stabilized world state reconstruction, attachment graphs, and post-load behavior.
We're only posting a quick summary of the key changes down below. However, the underlying work spans thousands of tracked changes across Perforce/Jira. We’ll spare you the full commit list.
New content & features
A new craftable Camera Drone was added, including the ability to scout and capture screenshots.
PECO terminals now supports cartridges and playable minigames.
Pots and pans were added as new world items.
New weapon paints were added for the bolt gun, including support for more weapon variants.
New rooms, caves, vents, secrets, and hidden areas were added across multiple locations, including Refuel Outpost Gamma, Refuel Outpost Theta, Sanctuary Dock 37, Nomad Tower, Prometheus, Platform Omega, Helios Gemini, Quarantine Stack Amen, Quarantine Stack Chorus, Habitat Node 05-14.5, and Node 04.
A new storm region was added to the northern sea.
New Human Pods were added to the Hall of Humanity and the rocket areas.
New hologram content was added to Lazarus, including a new human hologram model and related scene elements.
New support buoys and ocean loot were added, including an Electrical Supplies Buoy to help early-game progression.
Dead Swarms can now be found in fishing nets.
Bug fixes
Fixed a recycling issue where recycling a dead swarm item could incorrectly convert bio into food.
Fixed several Camera Drone issues, including buoyancy, audio, controls, staying upright, and entering or exiting vehicles.
Fixed multiple cable issues, including cables disconnecting, floating, sticking, failing to connect properly, colliding incorrectly, and behaving unreliably after loading or destroying connected modules.
Fixed several fabrication and placement issues, including blocked fabrication, incorrect placement direction, invalid colliders, and items not welding correctly when built.
Fixed multiple collisions and stuck spots across the world, including issues in Lazarus vents, Rollerboi Factory, Exodus Station, Sanctuary Dock 37, Refuel Outpost Gamma, Quarantine Stack Dawn, Quarantine Stack Amen, and other environment locations.
Fixed several quests and progression issues, including scan quests, alternative quest failure states, rocket launch progression, Friendly by Design scan tracking, and Rollerboi Factory progression.
Fixed multiple door, hatch, trigger, and interaction issues, including doors getting stuck, handles being hard to reach, triggers being misplaced, and certain doors blocking progression.
Fixed several hologram and pod issues in Lazarus, including feet placement, body proportions, animation updates, pod tracking, and save-related power problems.
Fixed wind turbines working indoors and improved indoor checks for related modules.
Fixed elevators sharing resources incorrectly.
Fixed single-use container issues, including socket interaction, velocity transfer, stacking, and item spawning behavior.
Fixed attachment and weapon persistence issues, including attachments disappearing and attachment positioning problems.
Fixed sharks spinning wildly.
Fixed eggs dealing damage through floors and eggs blocking or interfering with progression in certain locations.
Fixed farming issues, including floating plants, incorrect dirt level behavior, and bio waste being destroyed when already at the limit.
Fixed multiple UI and text issues, including slider behavior, profession capitalization, missing spaces, subtitle formatting, unreadable time formatting, localization errors, and incorrect interact text.
Fixed several visual issues, including mirrored stickers, incorrect paint textures, clipping meshes, scrolling surface details, shadow artifacts, and visible objects appearing when they should not.
Fixed rain not appearing in the open sea.
Fixed loot and item issues, including unlootable cash, incorrect trash data, incorrect item categories, missing icons, and some modules not updating visually.
Fixed boat-related issues, including anchors, lights, floodlights, blue buoy behavior, and cheats affecting multiple boats incorrectly.
Fixed consumable use and glowsticks not stacking correctly into holsters.
Other changes and improvements
Forklift audio was improved, including new sounds for the engine, horn, lift, and tilt.
Horn now has new properties to perform single-shot sounds with delay and duration.
Save and persistence handling was improved for equipment, drones, replaced actors, and other world objects.
Performance was improved in several areas, including module mesh updates, boat lights, water behavior, council screen updates, and major scene performance in Lazarus.
Resource and power sharing behavior was improved across connected modules and grid networks.
Cable visuals and behavior were improved, including better shaping, damping, collision, and appearance options.
Boat floodlights were adjusted to better keep leeches off the deck.
Boat anchor behavior was improved.
Wind turbine durability loss was reduced.
Repair electricity costs now scale better with the amount of damage.
The scan requirement for the Friendly by Design quest was reduced.
Several module descriptions, item descriptions, and icons were updated for better clarity.
Various world visuals and decorations were improved across locations such as Warehouse, Hangar, Sanctuary, Lyra, Theta, Rollerboi Factory, Beacon 49, and underwater areas.
Human-related tooltips and presentation were improved in places such as the food processor and hologram sequences.
Time-of-day behavior and weather presentation were improved.
Safe travels.
--Channel37