12:52am

Lightyear Frontier - FBr_W

Howdy Exofarmers! Are you ready for our next big update? Read ahead for more details, roadmap changes, and full patch notes!

Country Roads Update Out Now!

Country Roads is all about evolving how you gather, transport, and process resources. It improves the hands-on, powerful feeling of the mech and creates new infrastructure projects to take on, where you can put in time and resources to make your farming and crafting life more convenient and productive.

This update is heavily focused on the mid- and late-game, but some changes and improvements will be noticeable at the start of the game.

💪🤖Mech Hauling

Your mech can now pick up, carry, and throw large objects like logs and rock chunks, greatly increasing your resource-gathering capacity. Haul them back home and process them in the new Sawmill and Mineral Crusher Constructs to get tons of additional resources compared to breaking them with your tools. Increase your Hauling Capacity with Mod Chips to carry bigger and bigger stacks!

🛣️Roads & Trailers

Pave the way to prosperity by laying down roads, building bridges and hooking up wagons to your mech. Roads will make you go faster while also spending less fuel, making them a great tool for long distance travel.

You can now craft Trailers - from large resources to small, these will greatly increase the amount of things you can transport. Trailers can be connected to your mech, and even daisy-chained for those real big hauls! Trailers will move more easily on roads, so we recommend building both to make those long mining trips a breeze.

⛏️ Mineral Yield Boosting

Tired of scrounging for Iron? Need just a bit more Aluminum for that next Mod Chip? Found that perfect gathering spot, but it’s just not re-growing fast enough? Sounds like it’s time to build a Mineral Extractor! This new Construct will extract additional minerals when placed next to a natural deposit, making mineral scarcity a thing of the past.

📦💫New Progression Content

We're extending the mid-to-late game with a new milestone! Push your homestead to new heights to continue supporting the frontier! This milestones includes new Mod Chips and Constructs, like the Oil Presser II, Grinder II, Furnace II, and Drone Station II (which waters 4 mounds at once!), that will help take your farming and crafting to the next level.

⛽Advanced Oils

Fuel innovation has reached the frontier! Craft high-density Advanced Oils using the new Oil Mixer Construct to keep your mech running longer for less.

Full Patch Notes

Highlights

Added Mech Hauling - the Mech can now pick up and throw Large Objects
Various rocks, minerals, and trees now drop chunks and logs to be used with Mech Hauling
Greatly increased the amount of large rocks in the world
New Construct: Roads - allows the construction of roads and bridges that grant a speed bonus to Mechs and Trailers, as well as reducing the fuel cost of movement
Added Trailers, mobile storage that can be pulled by the mech.
New Construct: Fabricator Platform, used to craft Trailers
New Construct: Mineral Extractor - Build near large mineral deposits to generate additional minerals each day
New Construct: Oil Mixer - Allows the creation of more potent fuels by mixing oils

Changes

Added new Constructs
- Roads - Allows the construction of roads and bridges that grant a speed bonus to Mechs and Trailers, as well as reducing the fuel cost of movement
- Mineral Extractor- Build near large mineral deposits to generate additional minerals each day
- Oil Mixer - Allows the creation of more potent fuels by mixing oils
- Mineral Crusher - Breaks rocks and mineral chunks into resources
- Sawmill - Breaks logs into resources
- Drone Station II - Drones from this station will water 4 plots at the same time instead of 1
- Oil presser II - Takes 5x input to produce 5x output
- Grinder II - Takes 5x input to produce 5x output
- Furnace II - Takes 5x input to produce 5x output
- Fabricator Platform - Used to craft Trailers
Added Milestone 11, which awards higher level Mod Chips and Mech Tools, and increases the Farm Center build limit by 1
Added Trailers, mobile storage that can be pulled by the mech.
Pathmaker and Lawnmower merged into new Landscaper Transform Mode
Paths made with Landscaper Mode (formerly Pathmaker) no longer increase the Mech's maximum speed
- Dev comment: “This role is now filled by Roads”
When the mech does a heavy landing, it will now knock nearby Exofarmers and creatures into the air
Greatly increased the accompanying metal item cost for all Mutated deliveries
- Dev comment: “Mutated crops allow savvy players to gain additional Mech Power, but it was a bit too easy to get very far ahead of the power curve.”
Slightly reduced the size of the Exofarmer's Watering Can
Increased base cooldown on Irrigation Hose Hydro Splash (0.6s -> 0.9s)
- Dev comment: “The previous value meant Tool Speed mods were not a very attractive option.”
Increased gravity on Mech Transform Modes for a weightier feel and helping the Mech stay grounded
Slightly increased health on some trees
Floaters now stop a bit further from the mech when chasing
Floaters now get pushed away more when hit by physics objects
Using drag and drop in the Silo menu with a non-matching item will perform a swap
Added multiple small Tin and Iron Deposits around the map to make the introduction of Bronze and Iron tech smoother and guide the player towards additional resources
Added more wild Chromaize on the top of hills in the Outset Grasslands.
All damage and effects caused by collisions now scale much more intuitively with impact strength
Trees you'd cut down will no longer pop back in when viewing the area from a distance
Rockfall events will now happen more rarely and boulders left by them will disappear from the world much quicker
Mounds can now be created on surfaces marked as gravel
Reduced extent to which Exofarmer can bend their ankles to align with the ground
Players can now simultaneously interact with the same storage construct in Multiplayer
Increased fuel cost per mech power by 30%
New item: Concrete, crafted in the Assembler. Updated crafting costs of various constructs from Stone to Concrete
Rebalanced milestones to require slightly more deliveries overall
Adjusted milestone rewards, some rewards now unlock earlier
Higher level mod chips and mech parts have had their power cost greatly increased to keep up with additional sources of mech power
- Dev comment: “If this change causes your mech to go over its power limit, it will automatically revert to a basic loadout to avoid a softlock."
Added additional deliveries. Resources with 10 deliveries now scale up to 12 and resources with 5 deliveries now scale up to 6
Increased the cost of various mech parts and mod chips to better reflect the resource availability at different stages of the game
Increased all coal drop rates and crafting costs by 3x
Increased the weight of various metals
Grinder moved to Milestone 3 (from 2)
Added new decorations to the merchant and some milestones
Changed third-person camera perspective as the Exofarmer
Increased strength of gravity slightly (Mech and Exofarmer movement largely unaffected)
Improved versions of constructs are now considered variants in the build menu (to free up some space)
Inventory Capacity mod chips' effect reduced by 50%
Small Tin and Iron deposits now have a 50% chance to drop an additional ore
Spike Saw damage mod chips' effect reduced by 50%
Greatly increased the accompanying metal item cost for all Mutated deliveries
- Dev comment: “Mutated crops allow savvy players to gain additional Mech Power, but it was a bit too easy to get very far ahead of the power curve."
Slightly reduced the size of the Exofarmer's Watering Can
Slightly increased health on some trees
Floaters now stop a bit further from the mech when chasing
Floaters now get pushed away more when hit by physics objects
Various optimizations to physics objects
Massively improved performance when lots of breakables are destroyed at once, i.e. when a Floater explodes in a forest
Improved lighting and perspective on Planet Representative portraits
Boulders now destroy crops they roll over
The sound effect for triggering coziness buffs can now only play one instance at a time
Reduced the maximum amount of Floaters spawned in many parts of the world
Lessened performance impact of animal animations

Bug fixes

Fixed issue where Feeding Throughs would look empty after loading the game, even if it had food
Fixed issue on Xbox where player names would not include the number suffix
Fixed issue where you could copy neighbour-specific constructs
Fixed issue where "Create a mission at the delivery cannon" quest would require you to also pin the mission
Fixed issue where Floodlight construct would sometimes show a gray cone for clients
Fixed issue where toggling off sprint didn't work mid-air
Fixed issue where Ranch Animals would sometimes get locked doing nothing
Fixed issue where recycling a Plantable Pot would cause nearby Plantable Pots to lose their mounds
Fixed certain Exofarmer tools playing their reload animation when removing any item from inventory
Fixed issue where drifting in Trailblazer mode with a controller and transforming back would cause controller to vibrate forever
Fixed issue where holograms could sometimes end up at world origin and cause severly reduced performance
Fixed issue where manually trying to feed an animal would play the SFX even when you had no food to give
Fixed leaves not being visible on distant Caroots, making them hard to spot out in the wild
Boulders now destroy crops they roll over
Fixed issue where swinging the Spike Saw while colliding into a tree would lock the tool in an unusable state
Fixed issue where Crop removal VFX would play at the wrong location
Fixed issue where Trailblazer mode would frequently desync in multiplayer
Large Plants (Glo Tree, Colorflower) now spawn drops randomly in their bounds, similar to other breakables
Fixed Mech Engines sometimes being culled too aggressively, causing them to flicker
The small garden windmill is now rotated properly
Lumblooms now have the correct harvest particles
Fixed issue where boulders could sometimes desync in multiplayer
Fixed issue where Farm Center sizes weren't accurate in the menu (no actual size changes, just the text)
Fixed issues with Mech Mod effects sometimes not applying for clients
Fixed various crashes
Fixed playtime displayed on save files appearing to loop back to zero hours every 24 hours
Various fixes and optimizations to Floaters
Fixed crops not having collision if located in a specific chunk of the world
Fixed issue where Feeding Throughs would look empty after loading the game, even if it had food
Fixed issue on Xbox where player names would not include the number suffix
Fixed issue where you could copy neighbour-specific constructs
Fixed issue where "Create a mission at the Delivery Cannon" quest would require you to also pin the mission
Fixed issue where Floodlight construct would sometimes show a gray cone for clients
Fixed issue where toggling off sprint didn't work mid-air
Fixed issue where Ranch Animals would sometimes get locked doing nothing
Fixed issue where recycling a Plantable Pot would cause nearby Plantable Pots to lose their mounds
Fixed certain Exofarmer tools playing their reload animation when removing any item from inventory
Fixed issue where drifting in Trailblazer mode with a controller and transforming back would cause controller to vibrate forever
Fixed issue where holograms could sometimes end up at the world origin and cause severly reduced performance
Fixed issue where manually trying to feed an animal would play the SFX even when you had no food to give
Fixed leaves not being visible on distant Caroots, making them hard to spot out in the wild
Fixed issue where swinging the Spike Saw while colliding into a tree would lock the tool in an unusable state
Fixed issue where Crop removal VFX would play at the wrong location
Fixed issue where Trailblazer mode would frequently desync in multiplayer
Large Plants (Glo Tree, Colorflower) now spawn drops randomly in their bounds, similar to other breakables
Fixed Mech Engines sometimes being culled too aggressively, causing them to flicker
The Small Garden Windmill construct is now rotated properly
Lumblooms now have the correct harvest particles
Fixed issue where boulders could sometimes desync in multiplayer
Fixed issue where Farm Center sizes weren't accurate in the menu (no actual size changes, just the text)
Fixed issues with Mech Mod effects sometimes not applying for clients
Fixed various crashes
Fixed playtime displayed on save files appearing to loop back to zero hours every 24 hours
Various fixes and optimizations to Floaters
Fixed crops sometimes not having collision if located in a specific chunk of the world
Shortened overly long animation transition between Mech thrusting and landing
Fixed the Trailblazer mode not deforming grass around its wheels properly
Fixed movement controls sometimes behaving incorrectly when cleared or rebound
Fixed several instances of unlocalized text
Fixed the Irrigation Hose Hydro Blast stopping short when fired too rapidly
Fixed intro cutscene video ignoring audio settings; now controlled by "Master" and "SFX" volume
Probably fixed crafting constructs rarely not being recyclable or movable despite appearing empty
Fixed various crashes

The Future of the Beta branch

Before Country Roads came out we created a beta branch on Steam to let y’all try out the update early and share your thoughts. Your feedback was incredibly helpful for fine-tuning the experience, so a big thank you to everyone who participated!

Now that the update is out and we’re in the early stages of designing the next one, we won’t be needing the beta branch for a while. This means that the beta branch will be disabled in the coming days.

Your beta save files will be transferred to the main branch so you’ll be able to keep playing like normal.

Because the beta will no longer be available, we will also be locking the beta forums on both Steam and Discord.

We’re planning on bringing the beta branch back in the future when we have things ready for testing, so keep an eye out!

Roadmap Update and What’s Next

Country Roads is the last big update of 2025, and we’re now looking ahead to next year. Our goal is to reach 1.0 during 2026, so we’re exploring what would be the best additions and improvements we can make to the current experience. We’re gonna do this together with all of you, our community, so keep an eye out for opportunities to give feedback and try out new features!

Lightyear Frontier Is Going On Sale!

From 17 November - 1 December, you can save 40% on Lightyear Frontier and all DLC!

Launch day Livestream!

As part of the launch for Country Roads, we're gonna be broadcasting all the new stuff from the update! Join us on Monday 17 november at 15:00 CET/10:00 EST/06:00 PST to see new stuff, ask questions, and generally hang out! The stream will be available on Steam, Twitch, and Youtube.

Wrap-up

From Shifting Gears to Greater Cause and now Country Roads, 2025 has been an especially big year for Lightyear Frontier.

Thank you all for sticking with us on this long journey, and we hope you’re as excited as we are for Lightyear Frontier to reach its epic finale in 2026!