It’s been a busy couple of weeks! We’ve just returned from GDC in San Francisco, where we pitched Rockhounds to potential partners to help us scale toward release. We’re currently following up with everyone. You might even run into some of them in-game, as they’ll be reviewing the same build as you!
The biggest news, however, is that we’ve just released a "Monster" update to the Playtest. This is our largest and most fundamental update yet, implementing many of the suggestions you’ve shared. We really hope you love this new version.
To keep the momentum going, we’ll soon be moving the Playtest to "open" access to welcome more players. We’re also revamping our Steam page to better reflect the current state of the game and improve our conversion.
Base-Building Revamp: We’ve overhauled the experience with more intuitive controls, allowing for faster and more efficient construction and management of your structures.
Weapons & Armory: We've adjusted base loadouts, rebalanced weapons, and introduced specific damage types to expand your tactical options during combat.
Resistances & Vulnerabilities: Enemies now have specific strengths and weaknesses. You'll need to strategize your loadout and approach to effectively take down these creatures during missions.
Enhanced Enemy Behavior: We've upgraded AI behavior to ensure encounters are more engaging, challenging, and unpredictable.
Quality-of-Life: A host of smaller features and fixes designed to refine the overall experience and smooth out the gameplay loop.
Base building UX
Unlock blueprints through player reputation leveling (RP; Reputation Points)
Option to equip blueprints in class loadout
The radar, Respawn Portal and Class-Selector buildings are now blueprints that can be equipped
Updated building grids and base layouts to support new buildables
Building is now always an option, even if the mining rig is active. The building grid will appear in building mode when being in the mining rig build area.
Blueprints are automatically build after placing, no need to use multi-tool anymore. A timer shows the building times. The multi-tool can still be used for repairs, removal and for mining ore.
Introduced an ammo replenish blueprint to make ammo distribution part of the mission strategy
Weapons
Updated functionality of the loadout equipment to support damage types
Set new base loadouts for classes to stimulate different playstyles
Damage types are now communicated in the armory for weapons and items
Rebalanced ammo capacity of weapons. Not all weapons having endless ammo anymore
Overheating, low ammo and no ammo indication on mouse cursor
Enemies
Introduced a new enemy, the Tumble Shell
Introduced flesh, weak spots and armor types
Introduce resistances and vulnerabilities
Enemy resistances/vulnerabilities are now communicated on the contracts details screen so you can adjust your loadout accordingly
Updated Enemy spawning, introducing more difficult enemies on higher difficulties
That is a pretty long list already! To break up the bullet points, let's look at some of the other cool features we’ve been working on.
Some contracts will now require you to endure harsh weather effects, like the blizzard pictured above. You’ll need to carefully time your actions—and perhaps even adjust your loadout—to counter these brutal conditions and survive the mission.
Added support for non-Latin languages including (simplified & traditional) Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Russian (in-game text is still to be localized).
Fixed several issues for audio not playing when using items
Fixed an issue where the manual turret wouldn't assign kills to the player controlling the turret
Fixed an issue where the electric mine VFX would not display
Fixed the timing offset for mission extraction, so that the shuttle landing matches the timers
Fixed characters being partially dissolved when they boarded the extraction shuttle
Player status effects and cooldown now shown in the HUD
Fixed several bugs to the kills counter not properly working
Kills of an enemy type would always be awarded to the player who first killed an enemy of that type
Turrets wouldn't award kills to the player that built them
The deployable turret wouldn't award kills to the player that placed it
Mines wouldn't award kills to the player that placed it
Kills made by turrets would always count towards the host's kill count
Fixed a bug where the sell button wouldn't work for controllers in all the armory screens
Players are now required to hold a button in order to sell a weapon.
Skipping in results is now explicitly the "Back button" (ESC / B) instead of any button
Improved results wait time & skipping steps to feel nicer
Sprint no longer consumes stamina when not giving movement input (though it is still "active", it just consumes no stamina)
Supply packs can no longer be placed inside destructibles, blueprint holograms and other supply packs
Class select now displays which classes are being used by other players
Various fixes to incapacitated / spectating view, such as:
Player name & class not properly displaying
Local player UI at the bottom left now displays while incapacitated or extracted
Can now see extraction status while you're already extracted yourself
Fixed issues when players join or leave, which would cause player leave to not be handled correctly & break the game (only happens if players have a higher rarity medic ability equipped)
Fixed turret ammo indicator breaking
Fixed an issue where kill targets side objective wouldn't properly cleanup the direction indicator after going back to base
Fixed visual issues caused when playing on (ultra)widescreens.
Added setting to switch between compact or wide UI setup for (ultra)widescreens.
Overheated weapon state is now properly cleared when switching weapon, always going back to 0% overheating state - fixing issue where you could be indefinitely overheated or never overheat anymore
Fixed a broken state when player disconnects while you have the mission deploy view open
Fixed an issue where the kill target levels would generate a gap in the world
Fixed an issue where minimap icons for kill target enemies would disappear
Fixed issue with MercNet lobby not showing available lobbies
Fixed an issue where the vault wouldn't show the proper amount of earned credits