Wicked Island — First Major Steam Update: The Builder

🩸 Wicked Island — First Major Update: The Builder

This marks the first major update since Wicked Island launched, and it’s a massive one.
The entire building system has been rebuilt from the ground up, introducing brand-new wood and stone build sets, improved snapping, reduced grind, and dozens of new decorative pieces to truly make your shelter your own.

You’ll also find sharper visuals, heavier and more responsive combat, and rebalanced enemy scaling across the island.
Performance scaling has been improved, a new enemy type has been added, and the world feels more alive than ever.

⚠️ Important: This update fundamentally replaces the old building system. All old builds and save structures are incompatible and will not survive this update.
⚠️THIS INCLUDES CHESTS STORING ITEMS, they will be destroyed coming from an old save!⚠️
The character and inventory will survive, but not build structures such as crafting stations or chests are guaranteed to work across saves.

🧱 Highlights

• Massive Building Overhaul: Complete replacement of all old build pieces with new wood and stone sets.

• Dozens of New Decorations: Statues, clutter, paintings, wall decor, and improved furniture.

• Combat Improvements: More weight to attacks, faster dodges, and enemies that don’t track mid-swing.

• New Enemy & Resource: The Weavemother lurks in caves, weaving silk — a new crafting material (preparing for future armor updates).

• Sharper Visuals: Improved lighting, shaders, and more detailed backlighting for characters.

• Quality of Life: Camera shake toggle, message history log, smoother NPC navigation, and smarter autosaves.

🪓 Full Changelog

Added

• A few new lootable locations in the open world

• New mesh for firepit and both stone/wood indoor versions

• New enemy type Weavemother (found in caves)

• New resource type Silk (found in caves)

• A new collectible card

• Glowing eyes added to several enemies

• Free build option in cheat menu

• Completely new wood and stone build sets, with tons of new pieces replacing the old ones

• Neck and arm cuffs for slaves

• Tons of new decorative items for build mode (statues, clutter, paintings, wall décor, etc.)

• Lots of new interior furniture (also replaced older models)

• Message history box to track events (toggle in settings, scroll with PgUp/PgDn)

• Toggle to disable camera shake in settings

• Autosaves now keep 5 rolling saves (oldest removed automatically)

• High-level enemies now have prefixes (e.g. Alpha Werewolf)

• More unique assets and light environmental storytelling on Oak Island

• New loading screen tips

Changed

• It should no longer snow or rain inside most NPC houses

• Tweaked player combat animation speed for heavier feel

• Adjusted enemy attack distances

• Increased trace distance for Allure Staff

• Godmode now applies a persistent invulnerability status across saves

• Enemy level scaling now depends on both area and player level

• Removed Deep Iron from caves — now exclusive to dungeons

• Added Deep Iron ore nodes and loot drops in dungeons

• Rebalanced early dungeons (Hollow Tunnels moved for difficulty balance)

• Tweaked dodge iframes to start earlier

• Improved navmesh generation to reduce NPCs getting stuck

• Smoothed cave floors to help servants follow better

• Enemies no longer rotate toward the player mid-attack (dodging now easier)

• Made blood effects more gory and detailed

• Doors now open on interact (no physics simulation)

• Reduced build costs for all building pieces to lower grind

• Tweaked snapping distance for more precise placement

• Increased map zoom-out range

• Increased visibility distance of enemy health widgets

• Reduced fall damage

• Adjusted Stranger’s size

• Renamed “Slaves” → “Freed Slaves” for lore consistency

• Increased weather variety

• Improved female skin shader for better backlight visuals

• Updated NPC name tag widget appearance

• Crafting stations with fire now cast shadows (on High settings or above)

• Rescaled castle build pieces to match new system — all old builds and saved bases are now incompatible

Fixed

• Allure Staff now only works on sexable NPCs

• Fixed key in Labyrinth not being interactable

• Game now defaults to desktop resolution on first launch

• Fixed wall torches not attaching properly

• Feline mask now pickable

• Fixed trees, ores, and collectibles spawning inside buildings

• Fixed multiple build pieces breaking at once

• Fixed potential crash when destroying build pieces

• Fixed blood pools not appearing on slopes

• Fixed enemies spawning underground, especially in dungeons

• Fixed softlock when exiting pause menu during a save

• Iron Creed now correctly displayed on compass

• Possible fix for invisible body issue during scenes or armor changes

• Increased Steam Cloud max size and file count to ensure all saves sync

• Fixed weather toggle in cheat menu disabling random weather permanently

• Main menu character now has a default body preset

Performance

• Optimized blood effects

• Tweaked engine settings for sharper visuals and better performance

• Added hardware benchmark at first startup for automatic settings optimization

• Improved texture streaming to reduce CPU/GPU overhead

• Updated compression to lower VRAM usage

• Optimized texture sizes

• Optimized navmesh generation for lower CPU cost

• Enabled actor code LODs for reduced CPU usage