The theme is the people in the world. Your crew can farm, and rival survivors finally arm themselves instead of standing around holding a rock. There are also two bugs in here that could end a run outright.
New: your crew can farm
A fifth recruit order alongside Follow Me, Guard Here, Harvest and Cook. Put down farm plots, keep seed in a storage box, and a recruit on Farm plants them, harvests the corn into the pantry, and replants off the seed the harvest returns. Once started it keeps itself going. Like the other jobs, it tells you when it can't work rather than standing there silently.
Rival survivors actually arm themselves now
The numbers are stark. Twenty-one rivals, ten minutes, measured: every one still holding a rock. Not one bow between them — while all twenty-one carried a hatchet and a pickaxe.
Two compounding causes. A Hunting Bow costs 20 cloth, and the most any rival ever held was 3 — their gathering was steered by what their camp was building and what their clan asked for, never by what the next weapon cost. And a rival with no armour shopped for armour first, cheapest-first, so anyone with a little cloth bought a bandana instead of a weapon.
They now price up the next thing they want and go and get what it's short of, and anyone still holding a rock arms themselves before dressing up. Same ten minutes after: 15 of 22 carrying a bow, 51 pieces of armour worn against 9.
Two bugs that could end a run
Respawning into the wave that killed you — SWAT and the Guard were hostile regardless of your wanted level, permanently. Dying clears your stars, so you'd stand up in a street still held by a squad still hunting you. They answer to the heat now.
Compound walls vanishing on relog — a fence stands on its own ground, but the support check only asked foundations for that, so the audit after every load demolished the whole perimeter.
The Food Box had two pantries
That crate was registered twice — once as a food container, which every cooking path reads, and once by the recruit system with its own private store, which the RECRUIT FOOD BOX panel wrote to. Raw fish you put in by hand was invisible to your crew; cooked food they brought back was invisible to you. It's one store now, and existing boxes keep everything. A cook will also fuel a grill themselves, coal first.
You can see your hands again
Held items were floating in front of the camera with nobody holding them. There's a forearm and a fist now, on everything.
Building
The Build Kit opens on a Foundation (it was opening on a compound wall, which the Kit can't even place), the hint says hold RMB, and your belt stays where you left it — a tool breaking used to slide you onto the next weapon mid-click and fire it into your own wall.
Upkeep is billed in what your base is made of
Timber base pays wood; upgrade to stone and the bill moves to stone; metal pays metal. Same size of bill, right currency.
Smaller things
Lanterns glow and flicker · the slot counter tells the truth (it was over-counting and blocking pickups on a half-empty bag) · turrets sound like guns, each with its own round · a grill is called a grill · the police tell you when they've seized everything so you're not hunting a body that was never dropped · satchels no longer ask for ammunition · cooked food has its own icon · double-click takes items off the belt · cruisers stop parking in the road · no sliding on snow indoors.