Plague Update

Greetings, survivors!This major update introduces a thrilling new endgame loop: The Plague Nexus and Survivor Hamlets! Face off against the relentless Plague Champion, cleanse the corruption, and help survivors rebuild their homes to earn daily tributes. We’ve also brought many additional fixes, polishing and other improvements in the Plague Update.

New Feature: The Plague Nexus

• To destroy a Nexus, you must first locate and destroy its four connected "Shells" using an Axe or Pickaxe. Once the shells are broken, the Nexus itself must be burned away using Fire Arrows;
• The Nexus is heavily guarded by Infected Savages and the imposing Plague Champion.

The Champion is relentless. If defeated while the Nexus is still active, they will kneel and begin regenerating their health. They will stay actively engaged during this process.The Plague Champion can only be permanently killed by completely destroying the Nexus.

• Conquering a Nexus grants access to a chest containing extremely rare loot. We've also introduced new items:
  • Plague Mask: A new piece of gear, which will play a major role in your adventures;
  • Potion of Plague Resistance: A new consumable to help you survive the corruption;
  • Plague Ash: A brand new resource. It will be up to you to discover its usage.

New Feature: Survivor Hamlets

• Immediately after destroying a Plague Nexus, the area will transform into a Survivor Hamlet, and villagers will return to the settlement;
• Players can visit the Hamlet's chest every day to collect a tribute of resources from the grateful survivors;
• You can invest resources to upgrade the Hamlet! Upgrading changes the visual appearance of the settlement and permanently increases the amount of daily tribute you receive.

Combat Tuning

• Sped up sword attack animations for a more fluid combat feel;
• Widened the attack input buffer to cover the entire cooldown window, making combo chaining feel much more responsive and forgiving;
• Iterated and adjusted the attack ranges for dagger and knife-wielding enemies;
• Adjusted weapon damage values so Village Guards prioritize using melee weapons over ranged when appropriate.

Quality of Life & NPCs

• Completely reworked Balder's dialog flow. We hope you are excited to see how much he grew since his first days in the plaguelands;
• Added a subtle interactable highlight to killed animals to make them easier to spot and harvest;
• Players using a gamepad/controller can now correctly see construction unlock requirements in the UI menus.

Player Respawn System

• Players will now always correctly respawn in the village;
• Re-armed area detectors upon respawn to ensure events trigger correctly;
• The plague infection gauge will now properly reset on respawn;
• Stopped plague whispers from continuing to play after a player has respawned;
• Stopped the sprint state from surviving when entering combat mode.

Bug Fixes

• General Fixes:
  • Fixed respawning issues for clients with existing saves.
  • Fixed hamlet chests not receiving items.
  • Fixed tutorial popup controller focusing on the wrong UI element.
  • Fixed raids spawning with only bandit archers.
  • Fixed an issue where the red bow reticle would open on common plague foci.

• Environment & Spawns:
  • Fixed an invisible collider near the village center.
  • Hid leftover placeholder markers for the Village Wall rings.
  • Fixed the cinematic plague call trigger in the beginning area.
  • Fixed NPC positioning issues at the newly formed Hamlets.
  • Nexus camp spawn/despawn rings now correctly derive from the Nexus area itself.

• Audio & Text:
  • Removed an erroneous voice line from the Nexus boss and cleaned up stray bandit voice lines playing on the Plague Champion.
  • Fixed player dialogue lines triggering incorrectly near Plague Sites.
  • Fixed an issue where NPC name suffixes were incorrectly accumulating on phraser keys.

• Survival:
  • Fixed a bug where players were still receiving the "Cold" status effect despite wearing the full Winter armor set.

We hope you enjoy the Plague Update! There are many exciting new systems that will make your experience much more diverse and long-running, as we work on the last Island and the ending of the story. We are always excited to see your feedback and reviews — we read every review and every topic on Steam and other platforms — leave us yours!

Enjoy the update and stay safe!