Hi everyone, I've released a new patch in the publicbeta branch. The main addition in this one is that when you are recruiting people, they won't join you if they have a family member or a friend or lover in the community they would leave behind, and that other person doesn't want to join. This means you can sometimes recruit a little chain of people at once, as someone brings all their relatives with them. Or sometimes you can't recruit someone because their spouse doesn't want to. That's just how the cookie crumbles. (Speaking of cookies, I stopped them from being used for gifts for now as they could be mass produced and given to anyone and so felt a bit too overpowered.)



When people leave your community they'll also take their friends/lovers/family with them. But they'll only leave if they all want to (or you kick one of them out). So I guess it's a little less likely that people will leave you when things go wrong. When recruiting from a group of refugees, they will all join you at once (regardless of whether they are related etc), as I felt it didn't really make sense for only one to join, when they are all looking for a home. Lastly, none of this applies if you threaten people to recruit them.

There has been a mod out for some time called Relationships Matter which did something similar to the above, but I've implemented it differently. So this should supersede that mod, but thank you to the mod author for filling in the gaps there while I worked on other things, I think it was one of the most commonly used mods and I greatly appreciated its existence. (If you are using the mod, remember v171 is still just in publicbeta, so don't stop using it until it gets into the main branch).

Here's the full changelist:

• Relationships matter when asking people to join your community
  
• Increased probability of guns on some of the mid-game raiders
  
• Fix for followers not depositing wood and minerals that they mine while following someone
  
• Slowed down limping non-zombie characters a little
  
• Fix for fleeing NPCs sometimes stopping and turning round while you are right behind them
  
• NPCs rescuing their teammates give up a little more easily when you shoot them
  
• Fix for trees sometimes being deleted when multiple lumberjacks chop them
  
• Fix for organizers dropping off clothes and backpacks after you set them to wear them
  
• Past tense versions of some memory speeches, for eulogies
  
• Fix for occasional crash when placing crops in multiplayer
  
• Fix for arrows and bullets bouncing off invisible buildings that are under construction
  
• Some new hints and tooltips introducing skills, bandages, shovels, assassinations and white strain
  
• Fix for characters getting into an infinite loop auto-depositing sealed containers which they were try to use to get water
  
• Fix for one of a stackable item being seen as insanely valuable gift when you have multiple of them in your inventory
  
• Fix for war breaking out between your community and NPCs if someone got zombified and someone else accidentally hurt a human while trying to shoot the zombie
  
• Stopped cookies from being used as gifts for now, they were too overpowered
  
• Reduced range at which you can hear footsteps, and added sliders for footstep sound range and volume in the Sound Debug menu
  
• Added SetSkill and SetPersonality events to script editor
  
• Editor crash fix
  
• Allow you to continue Turf War, Rebellion and Intimidation quests if they wanted the body of the leader, but they were buried, by just returning any other body from the community
  
• Fix for NPCs taking unconscious people to their base if enemies are currently in the base
  
• Fix for a case where NPCs sometimes got stuck forever in combat or just died of their wounds
  
• Fix for zombies sometimes running when the targeting display shows them as crippled (after you hit them with a molotov)

I'm also moving v170, which I released to publicbeta a couple of weeks ago, to the main branch. Here's what's in that:

• Sounds for footsteps, bushes, wind in leaves
  
• Fix for fleeing algorithm that meant rabbits etc would often run towards you instead of actually fleeing
  
• Fix for everyone in your community hating you if you destroy a snowman with molotovs
  
• Fix for blood loss recovering when you have unbandaged wounds from a blunt object
  
• Lumberjacks won't chop down baby trees
  
• Fix for big performance drop when a character is set on fire
  
• A few fixes for speeches characters say when finding resources

v171 will be in the "publicbeta" branch for a while, before pushing it to the main game. If you want to try the latest features as they come out (and help test them!) it's a good idea to start using this branch. But keep in mind:

• Because it's the bleeding edge it could be less stable
  
• If you want to be able to play online co-op with someone you'll need to be on the same version as them
  
• If you go back from the "publicbeta" branch to the main branch you may not be able to load savegames created on "publicbeta".

To use publicbeta, just right-click on Survivalist: Invisible Strain in your Steam library and go to Properties, then Betas and in the drop-down select "publicbeta".

Hello, it's finally time for that big main branch update - the last one was in May, so all the work that's been in beta testing since then is now live for everyone ːsteamhappyː That's a lot of changes, so I'll just summarize some of the bigger new features here:

• Save tokens are much more rare, instead the game saves automatically when you open the menu, overwriting your previous save so if something tragic happens you have to commit to it instead of reloading, and it becomes part of the story (but you can still turn this off, as is the case in the Slightly Easier difficulty mode)
  
  
• There's a Constitution skill which lets you fall unconscious instead of dying of blood loss, if it's greater than 0. Food choices matters more since better food improves your constitution.
  
  
• If you fall unconscious and have no community members to revive you, other communities will 'rescue' you - this reduces your constitution. NPCs will try to rescue each other if they fall unconscious.
  
  
  
  
• Looter communities will send squads out to extort gold and other things from you
  
  
• You can make alliances with other communities
  
  
  
  
• You can assign multiple roles to the same person
  
  
  
  
• You can queue up multiple types of building, and multiple people can work on the same building
  
  
  
  
• You can choose where you want different types of equipment to be stored, and there's an Organizer role and Auto Deposit policy to do it
  
  
  
  
• There are new quests for stealing chickens, and giving NPCs food for the winter
  
  
• You can try to surrender to enemy settlements if you started a war with them
  
  

I've also released a new patch in the publicbeta branch, v170. The biggest addition is your character makes footstep sounds when they walk, with different sounds for the terrain type and weather of course! There's also new sounds for wind in the grass and trees, when the wind is strong.

• Sounds for footsteps, bushes, wind in leaves
  
• Fix for fleeing algorithm that meant rabbits etc would often run towards you instead of actually fleeing
  
• Fix for everyone in your community hating you if you destroy a snowman with molotovs
  
• Fix for blood loss recovering when you have unbandaged wounds from a blunt object
  
• Lumberjacks won't chop down baby trees
  
• Fix for big performance drop when a character is set on fire
  
• A few fixes for speeches characters say when finding resources

v170 will be in the "publicbeta" branch for a while, before pushing it to the main game. If you want to try the latest features as they come out (and help test them!) it's a good idea to start using this branch. But keep in mind:

• Because it's the bleeding edge it could be less stable
  
• If you want to be able to play online co-op with someone you'll need to be on the same version as them
  
• If you go back from the "publicbeta" branch to the main branch you may not be able to load savegames created on "publicbeta".

To use publicbeta, just right-click on Survivalist: Invisible Strain in your Steam library and go to Properties, then Betas and in the drop-down select "publicbeta".

Another small patch as I try to get a solid build to take all the publicbeta work from the last few months into the main branch. This is mostly fixing bugs where NPCs were a bit too keen to blame you for something bad that happened nearby, and trying to stop AI settlements from being destroyed too easily by random events without your input. Plus a crash fix. Fingers crossed this is the one.

• Fix for FEMA helicopters setting area ownership so the player can't chop wood near where they landed
  
• Fix for two people with one water bottle getting into a loop of swapping it between them instead of filling it and drinking
  
• Fix for NPCs with invisible strain passing it on when there are onlookers around
  
• Fix for NPCs blaming you for killing someone who activates invisible strain
  
• Fix for NPCs blaming you for the death of someone who died after feuding with someone else
  
• Fix for NPCs sometimes not burying people from other communities who died near their base
  
• Some small tweaks to try and stop looter communities getting into a doom loop of depression
  
• Fix for rare crash when someone gives supplies to someone else in extortion or similar scenarios

EDIT - I added a few more fixes in v168, and updated translations:

• Fix for occasional crash when NPCs remove items from a corpse they are going to bury
  
• Fix for extortion squads starting a war with you if your conversation gets interrupted by a zombie or raider attack
  
• Some fixes for traders building fires
  
• Updated French, Lithuanian, Brazilian Portuguese and Latin American Spanish translations

EDIT - v169, crash fix

v169 will be in the "publicbeta" branch for a while, before pushing it to the main game. If you want to try the latest features as they come out (and help test them!) it's a good idea to start using this branch. But keep in mind:

• Because it's the bleeding edge it could be less stable
  
• If you want to be able to play online co-op with someone you'll need to be on the same version as them
  
• If you go back from the "publicbeta" branch to the main branch you may not be able to load savegames created on "publicbeta".

To use publicbeta, just right-click on Survivalist: Invisible Strain in your Steam library and go to Properties, then Betas and in the drop-down select "publicbeta".

This is another patch that's mostly bug fixes, mixed with a few gameplay tweaks. I'm hoping to be able to move all this publicbeta work to the main branch soon, maybe this will be the one :)

After the last patch I got a bit worried that the extortion squads wandering all over the map were dying too often and leaving too much free loot around, so I've tried to address that by making them extort from each other a bit less. I've also made NPCs who bury people take their equipment from their corpses first, so it's not so easy to get rich by just grave robbing after a battle.

I've been playing the game on Hard mode and enjoying it a lot! Hardly any save tokens, less loot and fewer deer makes it feel closest to the survival experience I was aiming for. I'd say it's the recommended way to play, at least once you understand the mechanics.

Here are the patch notes:

• Fix for NPCs sometimes being able to detect if you knock someone out when you are not visible to them
  
• Possible fix for molotovs not damaging people when they hit a hillside
  
• Fix for traveller groups being created to occupy bases that the player has started taking over already
  
• Fix for NPCs not eating or drinking if you go into a building and stay in stealth mode, and there is food in the building or on their person
  
• Fix being able to bandage yourself, eat food etc from your inventory when you are unconscious
  
• Fix for white strain towns being created even if you set them to 0%
  
• Fix for builder teleporting sometimes if you start walking when inside a frame
  
• Probable fix for traders stealing food and getting themselves killed
  
• When NPCs bury someone they will remove their possessions first, so they aren't leaving so much free loot around the map
  
• Looters will extort other AI settlements less, as they were getting themselves killed too often. Also, increased the rent.
  
• Some fixes for extorters
  
• Some combat AI fixes

v166 will be in the "publicbeta" branch for a while, before pushing it to the main game. If you want to try the latest features as they come out (and help test them!) it's a good idea to start using this branch. But keep in mind:

• Because it's the bleeding edge it could be less stable
  
• If you want to be able to play online co-op with someone you'll need to be on the same version as them
  
• If you go back from the "publicbeta" branch to the main branch you may not be able to load savegames created on "publicbeta".

To use publicbeta, just right-click on Survivalist: Invisible Strain in your Steam library and go to Properties, then Betas and in the drop-down select "publicbeta".

Another small patch in the publicbeta branch (v163), fixing a crash and some other bits and bobs:

• Fix for crafters making stew or curry not marking it to be stored in a building, and so getting their inventory filled up with it
  
• Fix for builders (and others) not getting resources that were kept in motel rooms
  
• Possible fix for unconscious or sleeping characters shouting Stop Thief! when you steal something
  
• Fixes for some graphical glitches on the character info screen and map screen when you switch between characters
  
• Fix for crash when one builder completed a building while another was working on it
  
• Fix for animal feeders collecting more and more water bottles over time
  
• Tried to make NPC communities a little less likely to all get killed fighting each other
  
• Fix for NPCs having a negative memory of themselves winning a feud

EDIT - I've released another patch in response to comments below, v164, with a couple more fixes:

• Fix for lots of NPCs in AI settlements being assigned the lumberjack role
  
• Fix for NPCs not starting conversations in some situations where they should
  
• If an NPC wins a feud with their own community leader in an AI settlement, they'll become the leader

EDIT - and another, v165, with a crash fix.

v164 will be in the "publicbeta" branch for a while, before pushing it to the main game. If you want to try the latest features as they come out (and help test them!) it's a good idea to start using this branch. But keep in mind:

• Because it's the bleeding edge it could be less stable
  
• If you want to be able to play online co-op with someone you'll need to be on the same version as them
  
• If you go back from the "publicbeta" branch to the main branch you may not be able to load savegames created on "publicbeta".

To use publicbeta, just right-click on Survivalist: Invisible Strain in your Steam library and go to Properties, then Betas and in the drop-down select "publicbeta".

This is a smaller patch with a bunch of miscellaneous fixes and some translation updates. I'm trying to work on small stuff at the moment so that I don't introduce new bugs, so I can get the latest publicbeta build into the main branch. Feels like it should be possible soon!

• Hungarian, Brazilian Portuguese and Latin American Spanish updated
  
• Remove under construction buildings when a community is defeated
  
• Fix for infoscreen staying open if you quickload a game
  
• Fix for character sometimes not coming out of a building to reply to someone, if there's a zombie on the periphery
  
• Stop traders inventories from getting filled up with minerals
  
• You have to hold the Clear Crops button
  
• Allies bandage you for free
  
• Set default amount on equipment transfer dialog to 1 instead of the maximum, since we have the right-click shortcut to transfer all now
  
• Reinstated text that shows what someone said when you are choosing a reply, seems to have gotten broken a while back
  
• Fix for builders getting stuck if the next building in the queue can't be built due to lack of resources, but others after it would still be possible
  
• Fix for builders not working on a building if the builder who is set to do it is sleeping
  
• Fix for crafters sometimes not eating or sleeping
  
• Fix for people sleeping in buildings they just popped into temporarily to get some supplies
  
• Fix for lighting glitch in river water
  
• Crash fixes

EDIT - and I've released another one, v162, with a fix for the game fading to black and triggering the player rescue sequence if a player with no other community members falls unconscious from drinking too much alcohol.

v162 will be in the "publicbeta" branch for a while, before pushing it to the main game. If you want to try the latest features as they come out (and help test them!) it's a good idea to start using this branch. But keep in mind:

• Because it's the bleeding edge it could be less stable
  
• If you want to be able to play online co-op with someone you'll need to be on the same version as them
  
• If you go back from the "publicbeta" branch to the main branch you may not be able to load savegames created on "publicbeta".

To use publicbeta, just right-click on Survivalist: Invisible Strain in your Steam library and go to Properties, then Betas and in the drop-down select "publicbeta".

Hello, I have a done another patch in the publicbeta branch! The main thing in this one is that I overhauled the Builder role to make the queue "global" for all your builders, let you queue up to 100 buildings of any type, and to allow multiple builders to work on the same building at a time.



I also changed the Repair role so it will just keep repairing anything instead of having to be told what to repair. And I've added a gate for picket fences, and a "Block Animals" option, so you can make a nice enclosure for your chickens without them constantly escaping.



Then there's some more translation updates of the new text from v155, many thanks to all the translators again! That's the main stuff, the rest is just a lot of small tweaks and fixes that I got from people's bug reports and from starting another playthrough myself. Here's the full list:

• Updated Simplified Chinese, Korean, German, French, Hungarian and Latin American Spanish translations
  
• Multiple people can work on the same building, and you can queue up to 100 buildings of different types
  
• When you assign someone the Repair role they will stay in it and repair any building, not just the one you told them to
  
• Added picket fence gate
  
• Added Block Animals option to gates, so you can stop chickens escaping
  
• Added a world setting for whether traders often have save tokens, turned it off in Hard mode
  
• After going to a well or river for a drink, people will fill up their water bottle or watering can
  
• Made some speeches from other communities less likely to show in the PiP
  
• Show on action menu when mining or chopping wood near another community's base is classed as stealing. Stopped AI from automatically mining those areas.
  
• Reinstated old values for assassination and choke hold strength, they were right all along
  
• Made allies blue on minimap
  
• Fix for exploit in food for winter quest, where you can just keep buying the food back and selling it again for double the price
  
• Fix for infected tag not transferring when you transfer part of a stack of infected human meat
  
• Fix for equipment policy setting for Can Feed To Animals not being saved
  
• Fix for NPCs getting into a loop trying to bandage someone
  
• Fix for looter barricades glitching out and never disappearing when destroyed
  
• Fix for characters following the direct controlled player not being able to follow them through gates they opened, if the gates were set to Always Closed
  
• Fix for stealth XP being granted for killing chickens
  
• Fix for outhouses getting filled really quickly
  
• Fix for meat from animals that were bitten being infected (animals don't get infected, so nor does their meat)
  
• Fix for right-click to Buy button not working on traders
  
• Fix for being able to exploit following to get someone to stop feuding
  
• Fix for traders levelling up without trading with you
  
• Fix for flickering when game is paused in multiplayer
  
• Some fixes for character getting into loops with auto-deposit
  
• You can't restrain someone from another community if they are fighting someone from your community (it would be seen as hostile, you have to restrain your guy)
  
• Fix for crash in script editor when saving translated text if a translation sheet doesn't exist yet
  
• Fix for translations in script editor not being saved if they are on newly created speeches
  
• Reinstated mining of stone from mines if there are deposits there, and you can now see when stamping a mine which deposits are there
  
• Made animal feeders more likely to take more than one item at a time to the trough
  
• When you demolish a trap it will return the carrot or pipe bomb, unless the trap has been sprung
  
• Fix for occasional crash when character injects themselves with antigen, if you already did it from the UI

EDIT - released a quick follow-up patch, v160, to fix a bug I introduced where traders were getting stone in their inventories.

v159 will be in the "publicbeta" branch for a while, before pushing it to the main game. If you want to try the latest features as they come out (and help test them!) it's a good idea to start using this branch. But keep in mind:

• Because it's the bleeding edge it could be less stable
  
• If you want to be able to play online co-op with someone you'll need to be on the same version as them
  
• If you go back from the "publicbeta" branch to the main branch you may not be able to load savegames created on "publicbeta".

To use publicbeta, just right-click on Survivalist: Invisible Strain in your Steam library and go to Properties, then Betas and in the drop-down select "publicbeta".

It's patch time! As with the last couple, this one is mainly about dealing with issues with v155, but it's a bit bigger. There's also a bunch of general miscellaneous bug fixes.

Perhaps the main change is that extortion squads can stock up on food and water for their journey and light fires to keep themselves warm along the way, so they're less likely to get distracted and wander all over the map.

I decided, a bit arbitrarily, that you need pumpkins if you want to make veggie stew and curry (but not the meaty ones). I felt that pumpkins didn't really serve much purpose before - now ..almost.. every plantable crop has a unique gameplay purpose:

• cabbage is needed in stews and curries, which improve morale and constitution
  
• pumpkin is needed in veggie stews and curries
  
• carrots can be used in rabbit traps and are needed in stews and curries
  
• chili is needed for curries which, greatly improve the morale of people who like spicy food
  
• beet can be used to make sugar, which can be used to make cookies, which greatly improve morale, and vodka, which is needed for bandages and molotovs and also helps improve morale.
  
• corn can be boiled for a simple but tasty meal, and is also needed to to make vodka and cookies.
  
• sunflower seeds can make sunflower oil, which can be used in molotovs. (This one still seems a bit redundant tbh).
  
• cucumber is needed along with cabbage, beet, carrot and corn to make salads, which improve morale and constitution. (I'm also not too sure about the need for this one)

Here's the full change list:

• Updated Korean, Japanese and Brazilian Portuguese translations
  
• NPCs can light fires to keep warm
  
• NPC extortion squads will stock up with food and water for their journey
  
• Stop NPCs from trying to rescue their friends if someone gets hurt attempting it
  
• Made NPCs move unconscious friends to a nearby fire, if they are already inside their base but not near a fire, even if they are not cold, because it's more likely to get them out of vulnerable locations
  
• Made Veggie Stew and Curry require Pumpkins
  
• Made Organizer role able to take multiple items at once, if they are going from and to the same buildings
  
• Changed level up/down notification to a status bar message that doesn't pause gameplay
  
• In the winter food supplies quest, the recipient will deposit it after you give it to them, so their inventory doesn't stay filled
  
• Added some responses to What's Up for someone who has recent bad memories of you (i.e. raiders who surrendered after you killed others in their community)
  
• Some fixes to make it easier to evict raiders who hide in cars
  
• Some fixes for doing the fort building quest out of order
  
• Allow a player who hasn't recruited anyone yet to take over buildings that belonged to defeated communities
  
• If you refuse the quest to lower someone's morale, they won't keep giving it
  
• Stop Organizers from taking stuff from rabbit traps
  
• Fix for being able to sell rotting meat in food quest (and game crashing when you do)
  
• Fix for deer dying of thirst
  
• Fix for crash when extortion squad executes someone
  
• Fix for the word I being set to lowercase in some dialog
  
• Fix for stolen chickens keeping reverting back to their old community if they stay in the area even if all the humans are dead
  
• Fix for being able to eat a full container of stew when you're not hungry, by clicking Eat twice when the game is paused
  
• Fix for action menu showing options for Skin and Pick Up on someone in their grave while you perform a eulogy
  
• Fix for NPCs saying 'some people' killed their friend when it was a zombie that did it
  
• Fix for people getting into a loop auto-depositing ammo then restocking it again because they have a gun
  
• Fix for being able to set crop zone on an unsuitable tile
  
• Crash fix

v158 will be in the "publicbeta" branch for a while, before pushing it to the main game. If you want to try the latest features as they come out (and help test them!) it's a good idea to start using this branch. But keep in mind:

• Because it's the bleeding edge it could be less stable
  
• If you want to be able to play online co-op with someone you'll need to be on the same version as them
  
• If you go back from the "publicbeta" branch to the main branch you may not be able to load savegames created on "publicbeta".

To use publicbeta, just right-click on Survivalist: Invisible Strain in your Steam library and go to Properties, then Betas and in the drop-down select "publicbeta".

I've just put out a mini update with a few bug fixes for the recent big patch in publicbeta. Here's the change list:

• Fix for Dark Past quests failing immediately
  
• Fix for physics slowdown when mods include colliders on weapons
  
• Fix for being able to right click to transfer gifts
  
• Fix for crash that sometimes happened when zombies eat a corpse
  
• Fix for Out Of Sync error
  
• In script editor, when language is set to something other than English, show the translation in that language as well

EDIT - as mentioned in the comments, this introduced some new bugs, which are now fixed in v157. Here's the change list for that:

• Fix for funeral squads getting stuck in the AttackThreat state
  
• Fix for crash when zombies eat a thrown item
  
• Fix for thrown objects not bouncing properly

v157 will be in the "publicbeta" branch for a while, before pushing it to the main game. If you want to try the latest features as they come out (and help test them!) it's a good idea to start using this branch. But keep in mind:

• Because it's the bleeding edge it could be less stable
  
• If you want to be able to play online co-op with someone you'll need to be on the same version as them
  
• If you go back from the "publicbeta" branch to the main branch you may not be able to load savegames created on "publicbeta".

To use publicbeta, just right-click on Survivalist: Invisible Strain in your Steam library and go to Properties, then Betas and in the drop-down select "publicbeta".

So, here's what I've been up to for the last few months! This patch is about a few different things.


You can now negotiate an alliance with other settlements, either by getting them to like you, or fear you, or (in some cases) just giving them a lot of gold. If you have an alliance you can tell them to "Follow Me" and get them to help fight on your behalf, and they won't shake you down anymore if they are looters. You'll inherit their enemies and they'll inherit yours. You can use their mine if they have one - this replaces the dialog that let you negotiate mining rights, as it was very overlapping functionality. You can go inside their buildings and take their stuff, but they won't be happy about it and might end the alliance if you do it too much. Or you can give them stuff of course. Making alliances counts towards the progression bar if you are trying to complete the game by taking over the whole area, so you don't have to destroy everyone else.




Looters will now send out enforcers from time to time to shake down you and the other settlements. The largest looter community on the map will also get suspicious of you as you grow your community and make alliances. They may demand you hand your guns over to them, or they may execute someone as a warning. Communities that are short of food may come asking you for some - you can give them it for free as a goodwill gesture, ask for the normal price, or gouge them for double the price. So with this and alliances my hope is you'll feel a bit more engaged with the communities around you, and they'll feel a bit more active.

You can also now surrender to people you accidentally started a war with. Target an enemy as if to attack them and press H (for Hands Up). They'll take your gold and supplies though.



It's also easier to identify looter communities as you approach them, because they'll have piles of skulls and gibbets outside.



One common slightly cheesy gameplay pattern is that people dump most of their gold in a nearby car before entering a looter base so they don't have it all taken off them. You now have a dialog option to pretend you only have 5 gold on you. (I realized recently that surrendering to people has the same issue though, I will sort that out in a later patch).

Lastly, you can "restrain" community members who are feuding with each other! It works similar to Choke Hold etc - you have to be strong enough. Oh, and you can knock on unknown communities gates to try and get someone to notice you.


Long-requested, now implemented, you can assign multiple roles to the same person. When you do a Set Role action it adds it to a list of roles instead of replacing what was there. The roles are performed in priority order from the top of the list. So for example you can set someone to be a Chef with top priority and a Lumberjack below that. As the Chef, if there's food to cook they'll cook it and leave it on the fire until someone eats it. While there's no food or no one has eaten it, they'll chop wood. You can manage the roles' priority order on the character info screen:



As another example, you could also set someone to be a Lumberjack with top priority and a Flint Miner second, and set the Wood limit for your community to be 50. They'll chop wood while the community has less than 50, and then they'll mine for Flint. In other words, they'll do the top priority thing until they can't, then they'll do the next priority thing, and so on. (What they won't do is schedule their time equally between roles or anything like that - just something to be aware of.)

Besides being convenient, this means you can get by with smaller communities than before.


I've added a dialog called Set Storage Policy that allows you to select what a equipment you prefer to store in a particular building. I've noticed a lot of people try to organize things manually, hopefully this comes as a relief to them.



This replaces the option you had on roles such as Lumberjack, Miner, etc where you could select "Store Supplies Here" to store the output of that role in a particular building. Now they will store it according to what you set in this dialog. But I've also added an Organizer role which will automatically look for stuff that's in the wrong building and take it to the right one. So you can just dump stuff in any building and someone will sort it out. (This is a good use for the multiple roles thing mentioned earlier).

I've also added an Auto Deposit function on the Equipment Policy dialog. It complements the Auto Collect setting I added previously, so for example you can now set people it automatically pick up gold and automatically deposit it in the "Gold" chest next time they are near it.




When I started the beta for this game I introduced save tokens, but it never really worked out the way I wanted it to. It's supposed to make the game feel more like a story where mistakes, twists and tragedy are part of the plot, and you don't just reload a recent savegame if something tragic happens or you select a dialog choice with unexpected consequences. Instead it mostly just meant that the crucifix save tokens are another resource you have to farm by killing a few zombies from time to time. I didn't feel that it really stopped me from save scumming, most of the time.

In this patch I've changed it so, if you are using save tokens, the game saves automatically to a special "current" save slot (without using up a save token) whenever you open the menu. So whenever you exit the game, it will be saved - but it's always saved, you can't choose not to. Save tokens still exist and allow you to make occasional checkpoints you can go back to, but they are much more rare than they used to be. (I think this system is like the one in Kingdom Come: Deliverance which was a bit controversial. But as before, you can choose not to use it at all when you start your game, or from the F8 debug menu).

One issue with this is that the game is quite unforgiving - characters can die very easily due to small mistakes or accidents. To mitigate this, I've added a new skill called Constitution. A character's constitution skill gives them little extra chunks on their Blood Loss bar. If Constitution is higher than 0, when their blood loss hits the limit, instead of dying, they will fall unconscious and keep bleeding out until they fill those extra chunks. This gives you time to rescue them, more time if their constitution is higher. Constitution also controls their susceptibility to damage (previously Fitness did that) and it slows down the speed with which infection takes hold.

There is one caveat - White Strain and Invisible Strain still have no cure. I am not sure if that's too unforgiving, or if it's good that there's still something that dangerous out there to gives the game more tension.

So you want to make sure your community members have high Constitution. How do you do that? By giving them good food. Better food will increase their Constitution skill more, while rotten or gross food will reduce it. It will also reduce a little by itself over time. So you now have more of a reason to ensure your community members are well fed, e.g. by raising chickens. There will also be a little trade-off between morale and constitution as some foods like cookies are great for morale, while others are better for constitution. (I think this isn't quite all there yet but that's the idea). I always felt food and farming wasn't relevant enough to the gameplay, so this should help with that.

Another thing I've done to make the game more forgiving is, if you fall unconscious from blood loss and you have no community to rescue you, the screen will fade to black and you will be "rescued" by a nearby settlement. You'll wake up in their base, and if they're looters they will have stolen something, and you'll have lost 1 star of the Constitution skill. You start with 2 stars by default, so it sort of functions like a "lives" system - if you run out then you're really dead.



Lastly, if "you", the main character and community leader, dies, the game doesn't end anymore! Your community can continue without you and there are dialog options to vote for a new leader, who will then become the new "you" ;) So that's a bit more like State of Decay or a Roguelike I suppose.

So those are the main changes, sorry about the wall of text there. To test it I did a full playthrough, which always takes me a really long time as I tend to find bugs or just something I don't like every five minutes. I do think there will probably be a lot of bugs in this because I was still finding them and fixing them up till the end, and every time I fix something there's a danger it will affect something else that I wouldn't immediately notice. But it's time to get it out there as people have been wondering where I've been ;) It's only in publicbeta for now of course, so be aware that it might be more "beta"-y than normal for a while. I do strongly recommend starting a new playthrough for it.

Here's the full changelist:

• Alliances
  
• Ability to assign multiple roles to the same person
  
• Added a dialog to choose which buildings people prefer to store different types of equipment. Added an Organizer role which will just go around putting stuff in the right place. (Removed the old way of setting which building to put harvested resources in)
  
• Added auto deposit if nearby base option to equipment policy
  
• Looter communities will send enforcers to harass other communities
  
• Communities low on food can give you quests to find more for them
  
• Surrender to AI enemies that you provoked a war with, by targeting one and pressing H
  
• Ability to restrain people who are feuding
  
• If you carry an unconscious human body to a community they ask you to drop it, but will consider you to have rescued it. But if you pick up a body in their own base they'll consider it stealing.
  
• Looters have piles of skulls and gibbets outside their bases so you'll have some forewarning that they're going to shake you down if you go there.
  
• Looters are less likely try to shake you down if they're outnumbered
  
• Non-looter communities are less likely to have asshole personality flags
  
• You can knock on unknown communities gates to try and get someone to notice you
  
• Changed the quest where you have to burn someone's living quarters so you only have to destroy one building instead of all of them, also increased the gold payments for all of those quests
  
• Added Constitution skill, which lets you fall unconscious instead of dying of blood loss, if it's greater than 0
  
• If you fall unconscious and have no community members to revive you, other communities will 'rescue' you - this reduces your constitution
  
• Constitution reduces over time but is increased by eating healthy foods, so there's more incentive to get good foods like meat and eggs
  
• Can use kiln to bake corn cookies which reduce fitness, and don't help constitution, but greatly improve morale (so there's a trade-off between health and morale)
  
• Show more info about nutrition and tastiness on food action menu
  
• Added German and French translations, and updated Chinese
  
• Split Spanish translation into separate European and Latin American sheets
  
• Added theoretical support for Ukrainian language, in case anyone is able to work on a translation, and Danish
  
• Fix for AI getting stuck between retreating to base and attacking if leader of a funeral squad is attacked and starts fleeing
  
• Fix for Lost Item quest giver continually saying it should be here, if you keep it for yourself
  
• Fix for action menu going off the bottom of the screen
  
• Fix for chickens triggering pit traps when you are carrying them
  
• Fix for miners of poor deposits not eating anything once they start mining
  
• Fix for NPCs walking a long distance from their base to skin a dead dear
  
• Fix for ex not being visible in Dark Past quest
  
• Fix for NPCs getting stuck on traps unable to pathfind over them even if they are aware of them and wouldn't be killed
  
• Fix for chickens getting stuck continually drinking from bowls until they are empty
  
• Fix for speech animation repeating
  
• Fix for raiders sitting in cars or buildings for ages trying to get warm
  
• Made it possible to clear dead crops
  
• Made it cheaper to pay for bandaging
  
• Added memory for feeding human meat to chickens, so people disapprove of the person who did it, not the chickens themselves
  
• Added dialog to give or sell people water if they are thirsty
  
• Don't automatically recruit looters who surrender, and enable the options to take their stuff and/or make them run away
  
• Adjusted skill progression for building things
  
• When saying something's too heavy to carry, say the name of the thing
  
• You can now only place mines on rich mineral deposits. (Look out for rocks and boulders with the desired mineral type)
  
• Make sure chefs in AI settlements have axes, so they don't go wandering into towns to find wood
  
• Reduce immoral characters preference for human meat
  
• Allow characters to move while narrating about stuff like a deer they just found
  
• Can right click on equipment in inventory as shortcut to transfer whole stack without showing the dialog box
  
• Make cooking pot and watering can at forge
  
• Fix for not being able to set names of crafting props such as kilns etc
  
• Show some text when placing a gate to tell you which is Inside and which is Outside
  
• If an equipment prototype is deleted from a mod, allow savegames to load, just delete any instances of that equipment
  
• Fix for crash while carrying something in multiplayer
  
• Fix for crash when deleting a feeding trough
  
• Fix for crash when savegame is missing thumbnail

v155 will be in the "publicbeta" branch for a while, before pushing it to the main game. If you want to try the latest features as they come out (and help test them!) it's a good idea to start using this branch. But keep in mind:

• Because it's the bleeding edge it could be less stable
  
• If you want to be able to play online co-op with someone you'll need to be on the same version as them
  
• If you go back from the "publicbeta" branch to the main branch you may not be able to load savegames created on "publicbeta".

To use publicbeta, just right-click on Survivalist: Invisible Strain in your Steam library and go to Properties, then Betas and in the drop-down select "publicbeta".