Big new patch today:

• Roving refugees or raiders will take over abandoned settlements
  
• AI settlements will repair and rebuild damaged and destroyed buildings
  
• You can hide the action menu while browsing your inventory
  
• Traders will stock better items the more you trade with them
  
• If throwing a pipe bomb or molotov at a neutral character, damage others nearby
  
• Make Cooks respect crafting limits set via Community tab
  
• Added another combat music track
  
• Made music a bit quieter
  
• Made zombies slightly more likely to dodge leg attacks
  
• Made people use the toilet less often
  
• Made sprint togglable and work more consistently on AI states
  
• Show a message when a settlement (that you know the name of) has been wiped out
  
• Pit traps can be reset for free a few times before they need wood
  
• Fixes for pit trap rendering glitches
  
• Fix for crafters getting stuck depositing crafted items sometimes
  
• Fix for targeting reticule sometimes showing zombies as crippled when they aren't
  
• Fix for archers not restocking ammo from arrows stuck in corpses
  
• Fix for people forgetting what they are doing after chopping down a tree
  
• Fix for character sometimes getting stuck in Aim mode after assassinating someone
  
• Crash fix

I believe that repopulating dead communities was the last major thing I wanted to get in before early access launch, so it's getting pretty close! What follows now is a period of smaller tweaks and bug fixing.

Released a quick patch as I found one of my recent patches was causing out of sync errors for people in multiplayer. But also Alexandre the composer has added a couple of new music tracks for when you visit AI camps. Here's the changelist:

• Looter and Neutral Camp Music
  
• Fix for raiders getting stuck trying attack an inaccessible zombie
  
• Fix for combat AI sometimes getting stuck when inside a fence attacking a zombie outside it
  
• Fix for farmer AI getting stuck going into and out of a building repeatedly
  
• Fix for farmer AI not being getting water from bottles in nearby buildings
  
• Out of Sync fix

By popular request, you can now save and load character appearance settings on the character creator! Here's the full changelist:

• Added another music track for player camp, removed synth on one of the title tracks
  
• Added option to save characters in the character creator
  
• Added debug pages for music and bird song, and toned down the bird song a bit
  
• Crash fixes

EDIT - turns out I broke something that meant some savegames crashed on load, I've now released a fix (v61).

Just to say that over the weekend I released a patch that adds music to the game! Unlike in the original Survivalist, it'll play different types of music depending on what you're doing - whether you're in combat, or sneaking up on some zombies, or exploring, or managing your base, or whatever. It's a first pass, hopefully I'll expand the library over time to add some more variation.

That is all :)

Hello I've got a new patch, this one's all about mining:

• Added Iron Ore, Steel Ingots, and ability to forge a bunch of things with them including chicken wire
  
• Added Geological Map so you can see where the different minerals are most likely to be
  
• Can build Mines to get an infinite supply of minerals in case the rocks run out
  
• NPCs stay in range of base when responding to threats
  
• Play a sound when block/dodge prompt appears, also clamp it a bit more to the centre of the screen
  
• Fixed terrain saved in editor not working, disabled terrain editing options in play mode for now
  
• Fix for kiln not warming people next to it
  
• Crash fix

EDIT - had to issue another quick patch to fix mine building:

• Fix for mines not being built with toolbox
  
• Made birdsong location based and go quiet if there's combat

A few people have been reporting a crash with the rabbit traps, so here's a patch to address that (and other things I've been working on):

• Reduced number of seeds harvested from crops
  
• Press middle mouse button (or Share on PS4 controller) to toggle equipment select menu, also made it so you can change equipment in command mode
  
• Make it possible to plant crops on a tile an NPC is standing on
  
• Some fixes for trader loot spawning
  
• Don't show presence notifications when fires go out or get lit in your community if it isn't you that's doing it directly
  
• Flipped arrow direction showing doors when you are placing a building back to how they were - except for watchtowers and workstations
  
• Reduce rabbit inventory weight and made them not immune to nearby pipe bomb blasts and molotovs
  
• Close building inventory screen if your character leaves the building
  
• Fix for being able to steal food from pots by eating it directly from the pot
  
• Fix for out of sync error when opening map
  
• Crash fix

Got another new patch out, this one's mostly just a bunch of fixes for various issues people reported while I was working on traps. But I've also toned down the raiders a bit so hopefully they'll be less annoying, let me know if you think I went too far, or not far enough :) Here's the list of changes:

• Reduced amount of raiders/hordes (when community presence score is lower), and reduced probability of them having helmets and bullet-resistant vests
  
• Made burning campfires contribute to community presence score
  
• Force a 10 second delay between AI using molotovs to attack something
  
• Some fixes to raider AI
  
• Don't allow joining an online co-op game if their story folders have been edited to be different from yours
  
• Fix for prices being incorrectly rounded down when shown in speech text
  
• Fix for invisible strain map colors
  
• Fix for changing allow join mode having no effect in mid-game
  
• Fix for menu bug when you switch character while placing buildings
  
• Fix for being able to plant crops in rivers
  
• Fix for NPCs sometimes mining for stone
  
• Fix for character weapons and molotovs being visible in fog of war
  
• Fix for characters set to take over a building sometimes harvesting crops when they should
• chopping wood
  
• Fix for characters sometimes retrieving water from river when they should get a bottle and fill it from a nearby well
  
• Don't damage your own buildings when throwing molotovs or explosives
  
• Made map and sidebar colors of corpses retain a tint of their original color so you can still tell if they were hostile etc
  
• Made looted corpses lighter on map
  
• Some small tweaks to fatigue and zombie combat (zombat)
  
• Flipped arrow direction showing doors when you are placing a building - is it less or more confusing this way?
  
• Fixed some crashes

Got a bunch of new traps stuff today, plus some general fixes :)

• Rabbit Traps
  
• Trapper Role
  
• Tripwire I.E.D.s
  
• Warn other communities about your traps by talking to them or putting up signs. They will also detect them if they see someone killed by them.
  
• Made zombies attack you in preference to eating fresh meat, if you are pretty close to them and they are aware of you
  
• Changed zombie wander algorithm so they don't turn so sharply (so it's easier to sneak up on them)
  
• Reduced defaults for mouse sensitivity sliders
  
• Some tweaks to action menu to make it easier to plant crops in rows
  
• Button on map screen to find the player
  
• Fix for community members depositing stuff in graves
  
• Fix for characters in watchtowers teleporting to floor level when a trap is dug next to them
  
• Fix for bug that made it more likely you'd spawn in towns
  
• Fix for melee attacks that you appeared to have blocked sometimes still causing damage, and fix for block prompt sometimes not appearing
  
• Crash fix and suppressing some Unity errors

Hello, I've put out another new patch today. This one's a bit low key compared to the last one:

• Added Delete and Open Folder buttons on savegame menu
  
• Don't spawn so many workbenches in towns
  
• Added more equipment descriptions
  
• Make the leg damage 'crippled' threshold the same as the threshold beyond which we can't do further damage with leg attacks
  
• Fix for characters skin not returning to normal after infection is cured
  
• Fix for Rivalry quest not failing when quest giver dies
  
• Crash fixes and logging

Please note the executable has changed from Survivalist2.exe to Survivalist Invisible Strain.exe, and the folder that the mods go in has changed from Survivalist2_Data/StreamingAssets to Survivalist Invisible Strain_Data/StreamingAssets. You may need to restart Steam for it to recognize the new executable name. And if you made any mods you'll need to copy them to the new directory.

Now I'm going to go through my emails backlog and give out those beta key requests that have been piling up :)

I've released a patch with some cool new features:

• Pit Traps
  
• Pipe Bombs
  
• Workbenches in towns
  
• Made pipes craftable, gunpowder extractable from bullets, fixed various crafting AI issues (probably created a few more!)
  
• Reduced number of equipment points needed for axe, shovel and backpack at start, so you can play as a trapper more easily
  
• Made melee weapons stackable in inventory (so that pipes can be easily mass-manufactured for pipe bombs)
  
• Rejigged the amount of gunpowder produced and used by crafting so it's more realistic (but still not realistic)
  
• Chopping down trees and mining rocks can be heard by AI

EDIT - also released a hotfix v51 to fix a bug in savegames caused by the above patch

I think the pit traps might be a bit OP so I might have to make some changes later but see what you think. The idea is to give more options for creatively dealing with enemies particularly at the beginning, and for people specializing in construction.

P.S. I've got a backlog of emails from people asking for beta codes, I was intending to wait for this patch before giving more out so I could see how fresh players found it. I think I may have to wait a little longer before handing out those codes as I need this changelist to settle in, make sure there's no major issues etc first. So, apologies if you are waiting!