In order to make the map for Story Mode I felt it was necessary to do a bit of a visual pass on the towns and vehicles, so that's what I've been up to recently. I've improved the house models and added more variation to them, I've added much more variation to the stores, restaurants and gas stations, and I've added strip malls! There is now color variation on most of the cars and town buildings, so it doesn't feel so much like you keep encountering the same white house and red pickup over and over again. I've also added utility poles, lamp posts, mail boxes and traffic signs to the road sides, so it looks more like a real cohesive place.

















Almost looks like a new game! I should mention that the size footprint of some of the houses has changed slightly with the new models, so if you had a fence adjoining them you might need to add an extra post. As a side note, I've tried to make them so they line up better so if you put a fence next to them, in most cases it should join on visually, except on the more elaborate fronts with balconies etc. I do recommend starting a new game with this patch so you'll generate a new map with all the new types of buildings and props in it.

Gameplay-wise all this doesn't change much of course, but I've also added the ability to use those chunks of meat you can cut out of zombies to infect arrows and sharp melee weapons (dependent on medical skill). Which adds a whole new tactic to assassination missions. And there's few more tweaks and bug fixes, here's the full list:

• Visual pass on town buildings and vehicles, replaced house models with more detailed ones, added strip malls, randomly varying colors and signs, new gas station pumps and roofs, motel signs and ice boxes, utility poles, lamp posts and road signs
  
• You can infect sharp melee weapons and arrows with zombie meat. Dependant on medical skill.
  
• If someone set to be a chef is hungry, they will try to cook food rather than walking to other communities looking for it
  
• Increased time between extortion squads, and made mercs have less armor and weapons when your presence is low
  
• Fix for buildings in towns not being capturable if they are near another building that you already captured
  
• Fix for getting stuck in fisticuffs state if you get into a war with the community of the person you were fighting
  
• Fix for salad crafters who are set to auto deposit sealed containers getting stuck in a loop taking them in and out of chests
  
• Fix for slowdown in mod where you can destroy graves with pipe bombs
  
• Fix for memory leak that caused slowdowns, particularly after generating a new map
  
• Updated French, Hungarian, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Ukrainian, Brazilian Portuguese and Lithuanian translations

That's all in v183, which is in the publicbeta branch right now. The previous patch that was in publicbeta, v182, has now been moved to the main branch for everyone.

Lastly - I mentioned earlier I was planning to raise the price soon. I'm intending do that next week, probably Friday the 26th of May (unless something happens to delay it), so fair warning if you were thinking about buying and want to do so at the current price - you've got a week! The new price will be $9.99 USD (that's ¥42, or €9,75, £8.50, according to Steam's pricing tool). There will of course continue to be sales pretty regularly.

The reasons for this are: (1) people keep saying it's too cheap, (2) inflation, and (3) Sandbox mode has evolved enormously since launch and now feels like a full game in itself. But I will continue to make new additions and tweaks to Sandbox mode, as I work on Story mode, though. I'm also going to adjust the price of the original Survivalist game in some currencies (but not USD), as it hasn't changed since launch and some of the recommended prices have gone wildly askew since then.

v183 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, here's another patch that's mainly bug fixing but with a nice new feature: on the equipment policy settings box, you can tell people the number of something you want them to carry. For example, carry 40 iron arrows, or 2 bandages. You can tell everyone you want them to carry 1 axe, 1 hunting knife, and a plastic bottle (which helps when new people join your community in the later game and you tend to find you are always handing out the same stuff to people).



They'll get the items from your community buildings, and other members if they have an excess. If you set auto-deposit on, they'll deposit any more of those items that they get over that amount. If you set auto-collect from corpses on then they'll continue to do that even if it makes them exceed the limit, since they might auto-deposit them or give them to someone else later.

Oh, and on that same dialog, there's also a new "Can Add to Campfire" option for charcoal and wood, so you can tell people not to waste charcoal on campfires. Here's the rest of the change list:

• Added field to equipment policy where you can specify how much of something you want people to try to carry, e.g. for ammo or bandages
  
• Added 'Can Add to Campfire' field to equipment policy for wood and charcoal
  
• You don't have to hold down the Brain Scan key if using a keyboard connected to a Steam Deck
  
• Made it possible to vault over a fence while carrying a chicken or human body
  
• Fix for overlapping text on inventory when scavenging a building with a long name
  
• Show icons for raiders who have surrendered as gray on the map
  
• Added a Can Repair Armor flag to workbenches in the prop editor so modders can make workbench types that don't repair armor
  
• Updated Brazilian Portuguese, French, Italian, Korean, Latin American Spanish, Lithuanian, Simplified Chinese and Ukrainian
  
• Fix for exploit where you can use a skill book to start crafting something, then give it to someone else and keep crafting even if you lack the skill
  
• Some fixes for overlapping text in different languages
  
• Fix for bug where switching between characters on the community screen doesn't change the one shown on the tab above
  
• Fix for gates not closing when someone is sitting near them
  
• Fix for scenario where a crafter with multiple roles would sit in front of a kiln for a while before moving to the next task
  
• Crash fixes
  
• Out of sync fixes

EDIT - Small follow-up patch, v182:

• Made selection highlights around sorting icons red to be more visible
  
• Fix for characters picking up items with their personal carry amount set to zero but the community carry amount set to non-zero
  
• Crash fixes

v182 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 mainly just a follow-up patch to fix some bugs reported in v178, but there's a new feature too - you can now specify, for a particular bottle or sealed container, what kind of liquid or substance you want people to put in it. So you can set one bucket to be your saltpeter bucket, one to be your gunpowder bucket, and so on. And you can set bottles to be for water only, so people don't go filling them up with pee from the outhouse.



The rest of the patch is fixes and tweaks from the previous patch - here's the full changelist:

• Option to designate what liquid you want a particular container to be storing
  
• Auto-collect will pick up arrows
  
• Increased tolerance for building on slopey ground
  
• Made chicken wire more common
  
• Fix for mouse not working to switch targets or target body parts on Steam Deck
  
• Fix for crash if a memory type is removed from a mod
  
• Fix for crash on loading some savegames
  
• Fix for occasional crash when confirming a trade in multiplayer

EDIT - Released a small follow up patch, v180 with some fixes for the above:

• Setting Roles and Equipment Policy will always be available immediately if you have hints turned off. Otherwise they appear once you have multiple community members.
  
• Fix for characters filling bottles designated for water with snow
  
• Fix for crash when auto collecting items

v179 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".

Hey everyone, I have a done a patch :) This one is such a mishmash but I guess the biggest new feature is there can be multiple ammo types for the same weapon. For bows you have flint arrows (which are easiest to make), iron arrows (which do more damage), and steel arrows (which do more damage and are better at piercing armor). For assault rifles and sniper rifles I've also added armor piercing ammo. You need both lead and steel to make them, so there's more incentive now to get one of each of the different types of mines.



There's a lot of quality of life stuff, like you can demolish picnic tables and barricades, you can press Tab to switch to the person you're talking to, you can see who is currently assigned to a crafting prop, you can assign one person to make charcoal in multiple kilns, you can stop the minimap from rotating. I gave the character boxes more space on the community screen so it's easier to see people's roles now:



Besides that there's a bunch of bug fixes, and just doing stuff that felt unfinished, like making snowballs and snowmen melt, allowing multiple characters to occupy fire lookout towers, fixing glitches in the way terrain is modified and resetting it if you demolish a trap.

Several translations have been updated. There has been a longstanding effort to translate the game into Russian, which is now finished, so I've added it. I'm going to be sending any income I get from Russian Federation to the National Bank of Ukraine though.

Here's the full list of updates in v178:

• Make it possible to demolish props like picnic tables or barricades using the toolbox
  
• If you take over a defeated community's gate, or build a new one connected to their fences, the fences will become yours too
  
• Some fixes to how buildings modify the terrain underneath them
  
• Reset terrain height when you demolish a pit trap, or a building that construction hasn't started on
  
• Looters can blow up uncovered traps, otherwise it's an exploit as you could surround your base with them and stop anyone from getting in
  
• Allow up to 4 characters to occupy the fire lookout tower and weather radar, facing in 4 directions
  
• Option to stop minimap from rotating
  
• Stop your character from walking off while you're scrolling the action menu
  
• Made the character icons on the community screen bigger with their roles always shown on a bottom row
  
• Put cooking and crafting options for campfires, workbenches, etc on a submenu
  
• On the action menu for a crafting prop, show all the workers currently assigned to it and allow you to select them
  
• Allow you to assign someone to craft the same recipe at different crafting stations - e.g. make charcoal using 2 different kilns
  
• Allow you to click Craft on crafting stations that someone is already using
  
• Gunpowder is now made at a workbench, not a campfire
  
• Disabled sunflowers and corrugated iron as they weren't serving much purpose
  
• If you are facing someone in your own community, pressing Tab (or right stick click) switches control to them. Moved Brain Scan/Notes to RT on gamepads.
  
• Support multiple ammo types for guns and bows, including armor piercing varieties
  
• Blunt melee weapons do some damage to armor, some to body. Sharp ones mostly get absorbed by armor but do some damage to body
  
• Different melee weapons have a different fatigue penalty when attacking, and bows cost some fatigue to aim
  
• Recipes only become visible once their ingredients have been discovered, and/or you have someone with high enough skill and the required crafting station. You get notifications when this happens.
  
• Made eating, drinking and opening gate sounds fall off more quickly with distance, so they're less obtrusive in large communities
  
• Added sounds for planting, watering and harvesting crops
  
• White markings on edges of roads
  
• If you leave your damp clothes in a building they will dry over time
  
• Snowmen, snowballs and snow in containers all melt
  
• Added Russian, updated French, Italian, Latin American Spanish, Lithuanian, Turkish and Ukrainian
  
• If you die and replace community leader with someone who is already married, sleeping with or friends with someone, you can trigger the satphone quest with them
  
• NPCs won't abandon their settlement while their leader is still conscious, as doing so breaks Rebellion/Turf War/Intimidation quests that require you to kill the leader
  
• Added a Spared Life memory type for when someone surrenders and you let them go without further consequences
  
• Added a Started Fight memory so people will remember a feud even if they get restrained from hurting anyone
  
• Added a Died memory type for when someone dies of zombie bites or natural causes like thirst etc
  
• If you give someone a gift and they like/don't like it, you learn that aspect of their personality
  
• Allow bunny feeding quest to be finished if either participant feeds the bunny
  
• Fix for clothes getting wetter than they should while walking across frozen rivers
  
• Fix for winter food stocks mission paying you too much for food
  
• Fix for NPCs thanking you for bringing unconscious strangers to their base
  
• Fix for controlled character often being slow to do things (like rip up clothes) when indoors
  
• Fix for camouflage icon taking ages to go green when you move away from an AI settlement
  
• Fix for your characters instantly joining an allied community if you declare war on them
  
• Fix for biggest looter community extortion squad sometimes getting stuck trying to force other communities to ally with it
  
• Fix for issue where people kept picking up and dropping bodies in older savegames with square bases, possible fix for bug where the bodies sometimes teleported to the edge of the map in multiplayer
  
• Fix for situation where someone exited a watchtower surrounded by zombie, also if someone surrenders to you when you are in a watchtower you can answer them without leaving it
  
• Fixes for opinion graph showing incorrectly on some speeches
  
• Prevent player from starting war by accidentally punching a chicken to death during fisticuffs
  
• Crash fixes

That will be in the publicbeta branch, meanwhile I've moved v177 to the main branch so everyone will have diagonal fences and polygonal AI settlements, the Log page and Steam Deck support, the Basket and Checkout on the trading screen, the Character Notes/Brain Scan screen and relationships matter when recruiting, etc.

About six months ago I made myself a list of all the stuff I felt Sandbox mode really needed if it wasn't to feel "unfinished". It wasn't the most glamorous new features, more like a lot of stuff I'd just been putting off like the Log screen, a lot of Quality of Life stuff and so on. Well, with this update I'd say I've now - pretty much - got through that list!

What that means is it's time for a new phase of Survivalist: Invisible Strain development. I need to start focusing more on Story Mode. I always said there'd be a Story Mode and the game won't get out of Early Access without it. It will serve as an introduction to the game (which is still pretty challenging for newcomers) as well as being the best showcase for the role-playing elements and letting me build some more clearly defined environments and characters. Sandbox Mode kind of grew to accommodate its own loose story and I think some of the missions I added (such as relationship quests) will also be side quests in Story Mode. Over the course of making it, I became a lot more interested in procedural story generation. But the intention was always to use Sandbox Mode to get the game mechanics straight and then use that accumulated knowledge to make Story Mode.

Now I say I "pretty much" got through the list, because I've been doing some playthroughs and there are still things that bug me, like the way your crafters can still sometimes end up full of unwanted containers and you have to sort their inventory out for them. The morale system needs some more tweaking, and I feel that your community members ought to do more emergent stuff, like start relationships and friendships with each other as well as "you", the player. I'll be working on those as I go.

There will probably always be more stuff like that cropping up. I haven't got Story Mode all planned out and I think as I work on it, I'm likely to still be adding more features that will be part of Sandbox Mode too. So you'll keep getting updates but they might be a bit further apart.

I also think once this v178 update has bedded down I'm going to be raising the price to $9.99 USD (that's ¥42, or €9,75, £8.50, according to Steam's pricing tool). People keep telling me it's too cheap, and we're living in inflationary times. And as I alluded earlier, Sandbox Mode has come a long way since launch. I'll give some more warning before I do though, so there'll be plenty of chance to buy it before that happens, if you haven't already. And of course there will always be Steam Sales and Weeklong Deals.

v178 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 day! Say goodbye to those perfectly square AI settlements, because (if you start a new game in v176) the AI communities in the world will all be different randomized polygonal shapes. The game now supports diagonal fences as well - whereas previously if you put two fences on diagonally adjacent tiles they would technically block pathfinding, but would just be rendered as single fence posts and look a bit silly - now a fence will be drawn between them. I've also added some sloping fence pieces so they look a bit more natural on hillsides. And you can build fences (but not other buildings) over rivers, which is really useful.



Aside from the fence stuff I've also done some work on the combat AI, trying to make your followers stick with you better if you run away from a fight or into a building. I've made NPCs a bit less likely to all run away in situations where they outnumber you. And when they do abandon their bases, they'll be less likely to keep returning after a minute or so - instead, they can become vagrants who wander the map looking for a new base. Also I did a playthrough to test all these changes and basically ended up fixing a lot of other things along the way (as always happens).

Finally, there's now a Ukrainian translation by youtuber Survager! And Simplified Chinese has been updated with all the latest dialog.

Here's the full change list:

• Diagonal and sloping fences
  
• Give AI settlements varied shapes instead of all being square
  
• Player can build fences over rivers
  
• If everyone in an AI settlement under attack runs away from their base, they will form a new nomadic community and wander around, trying to occupy a new base if there is one, instead of continually running back home and getting killed
  
• If you run away from a fight, people following you should run to catch up with you instead of backing slowly away
  
• Made NPCs less likely to run away from a fight if they outnumber you
  
• Don't gossip with nearby characters if crouching
  
• Added a hint that you can surrender to people you started a war with
  
• Show morale on brain scan screen (if you have the brain scanner), some tweaks to how it is calculated
  
• Reduced likelihood of earlier game raiders having guns, which I accidentally increased in v171
  
• Made toolboxes more common in vehicles and axes more common in stores
  
• If a builder doesn't have the right tool (e.g. shovel or toolbox) for some buildings in the queue, work first on buildings they do have the tool for
  
• Ukrainian translation added, and Simplified Chinese updated
  
• Fix for rifle animation not holding the gun in their left hand properly
  
• Fix for Dark Past quest not progressing sometimes when the ex dies
  
• Fix for guard duty taking priority over organizer for NPC that you gave winter food stocks to, so they don't put the food away
  
• Fix for repairers trying to repair damaged crops
  
• Fix for characters sitting round an unlit fire with half-cooked food on it, waiting for it to be finished, with no one attempting to light it
  
• Fix for NPCs sometimes not blaming anyone if a friend was recently murdered
  
• Fix for cursor jumping around when adding/removing things to basket on trade screen when using a gamepad
  
• Fix for mercenaries showing on the map sidebar if they've been deactivated and killed, but bodies not yet deleted
  
• Fix for crafter giving up because they couldn't fit a cooking pot in their inventory, when they should have been able to dump some food to make space
  
• Fix for gunpowder crafter filling up their inventory with un-needed containers
  
• Several fixes for extorters speech sometimes not triggering correctly
  
• Some fixes for relationships being set up incorrectly
  
• Optimization for slowdown when you have lots of guns in your inventory
  
• Crash fixes

EDIT - I released a quick follow-up patch to fix a crash, v177:

• Show options on the action menu (when not aiming) for both assassinate and choke hold if you have a knife in your inventory, but not equipped
  
• You have to hold the button to assassinate or bludgeon an unconscious person
  
• Latin American Spanish, Italian, Lithuanian, Korean and Hungarian updated
  
• Fix for people sometimes not following you when they first join you
  
• Fix for chickens sometimes not keeping warm in a nearby chicken coop
  
• Fix for occasional crash when miners don't have enough space in their backpack

v177 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".

Hey everyone, happy 2023! Here's what I've been up to for the latest patch:

• Steam Deck - support for 1280x800 resolution without black bars (except in menus), better support for controllers navigating menus, and suchlike
  
• Added options to show metric weights and fahrenheit
  
• Added Power Nap button on character inventory page in multiplayer, which you can use once per day to fast forward a character's sleep. Because using the actual fast-forward button for that can be a bit awkward for co-op players.
  
  
  
  
• Added caffeine drinks (old cans of soda) that reduce your sleep deprivation
  
• Added sleeping snoring sound
  
• Increased insulation on puffy jackets and beanies, and reduced on camo jackets, to try and make it more of a trade-off and encourage more clothing variation
  
• Added policy to clothing dialog to not strip particular items of clothing (e.g. when trying to find warmer ones). You may need to set this now if you want to stop them changing their helmets for beanies when it's cold.
  
  
  
  
• Added separate option for vsync count in Graphics Settings, and made graphics quality settings save to registry rather than settings file so they can be different on different machines
  
• Implemented Log Page
  
  
  
  
• Changed the way morale is calculated so the effect on morale of a particular memory fades more quickly over time (trying to stop people from moping around forever just because something bad happened 3 weeks ago)
  
• Less figdetty idle holding rifle animation
  
• Tweaked some of the clothing models
  
• Italian and Latin American Spanish updated, fixes for some wine criticism translation bugs
  
• You can build on top of bushes and tree stumps, which automatically clears them. You can also build on top of fences to upgrade them to different types of fences.
  
  
  
  
• If someone falls unconscious from body temperature falling below 28°, they will need to get above 30° to recover (fix for bug where they get into a loop of recovering, walking away to get clothes, and immediately falling over)
  
• If you set raider percentage above 25%, this reduces the cooldown time between raiders of that type
  
• Added Load Favourite button in debug menu character editor
  
• Fix for NPCs telling you someone dead or unconscious is looking for a fisticuffs challenger
  
• Fix for bug introduced last patch where equipment amounts on character creation screen are all red zeros
  
• Fix for bug where allying with a community that was previously at war with another community, that was defeated, causes the defeated community to send mercenaries against you
  
• Fix for builder getting stuck in a loop going in and out of a building just outside their zone
  
• Fix for other communities sometimes buying seeds from your characters even if you have ticked Don't Share
  
• Fix for being able to view NPCs inventory by pressing F1 on the Notes/Brain Scan page
  
• Fix for extorters waiting at your gates sometimes not talking to you when you come out to them
  
• Crash fixes

EDIT - I've added a mini-patch (v175) to fix a few crashes, here's the change list for that:

• Some more menu navigation fixes
  
• Italian translation updated and typo fixes
  
• Crash fixes

v175 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 finally got round to adding a basket and checkout system on the trading screen! If you've played a Bethesda Fallout game or similar RPG you know how this works - you can add multiple items from your inventory and the trader's inventory to a basket, then click Confirm to make the trade. This means you can barter for items even if neither of you have a large enough amount of gold to cover their total cost. It's been on my todo list for a while.



A few months ago I introduced a shortcut when trading and transferring items where right-clicking on them would transfer the whole stack instead of showing you the dialog where you set the amount to transfer. If you left clicked it showed the dialog, which I made it default to 1 item. So if you wanted to transfer 1 item you would left click then mash OK, if you wanted to transfer all you would right click.

But I think I got it the wrong way round. I've changed it so right-click transfers 1 item immediately, and left click shows the dialog (still), but defaulting to All. So if you want to transfer 1 item you right click, if you want to transfer All you left click and mash OK. The advantage of this is if you want to transfer, say, 2 or 3 items you can just repeatedly mash right-click without having to operate the dialog box. So I think it's better, but it does take a bit of getting used to if you just got used to the other shortcut - sorry about that.

Other cool stuff: I added distinct map icons for traders and leaders in AI settlements, and for unconscious people. And I made the speeches people use when you ask how they're feeling, or their opinion of you, a bit more varied and more appropriate, so if you want a better idea of why they're feeling the way they are you can try asking them again.

Here's the full list:

• Basket & Checkout system on trading screen
  
• When transferring or trading equipment, right-click transfers 1 item instead of all the items. Left click shows the dialog to set the amount, which defaults to All.
  
• Hint about using Notes screen
  
• Allow Notes screen to be accessed from hovering over characters on map screen
  
• Fix for traders sometimes creating fires in the player's base
  
• When characters tell you their opinion of you, or their morale etc, there will be some variation in the memories they pick each time, and they will try to pick some that fit the way they are feeling, rather than just the strongest 3 each time
  
• Added distinct map icons for unconscious people, and for leaders and traders in AI settlements, also made the map icons higher resolution
  
• Fixed a few bugs with people joining your community
  
• Fix for one character picking up all the ammo
  
• Fix for chef getting who was set to auto-deposit wood getting stuck in a loop picking up wood for a fire, then depositing it again
  
• If extortion squads demand to be let into your gates while you are in combat with someone else, they won't escalate so quickly
  
• Made NPCs less likely to attack you if you pick up an unconscious community member of theirs who isn't close to a fire, and try to bring them to one
  
• Added theoretical support for Dutch and made languages page scrollable
  
• Fixed message when you try to give a book to someone twice saying you (the giver) has already read that
  
• Crash fixes
  
• Updated Korean, Lithuanian and Latin American Spanish translations

v173 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! There's a lot of new dialog in this patch. It's a lot of little things, but probably the biggest addition is that when you ask people "What's up?" they will gossip about the skills of their other community members, telling you how bad someone is at archery or how great they are at construction, for example.

To help you keep track of all this I've introduced the Character Notes/Brain Scan screen. This was a feature in the original Survivalist - if you had a brain scanner, you could see a screen showing people's personality and opinions. I've reintroduced it, but you don't need a brain scanner. Their personality, relationships and skills are revealed as you discover them by talking to people. (If you have a brain scanner, everything is revealed automatically.) It's easiest to explain with a picture:



You can show that screen by highlighting a character and pressing B. I've also tried to make less likely that people will keep repeating the same lines in response to "What's up?", e.g. if you already know someone likes chili, they won't keep telling you that.

Another big dialog change is I rewrote the questions you ask to determine if someone has invisible strain. I wasn't very happy with the writing before. There are more of them now, and they're less waffly, and the responses are more varied so they help you discover people's personalities as well as if they have Invisible Strain. Speaking of Invisible Strain, infected characters can sometimes just silently kill people in your community now instead of biting them and spreading the infection.


I've tried to increase the difficulty of fighting NPC communities by making looter settlements hire mercenaries from outside the map to come and attack you, if you are at war with them.

You can make people run when doing tasks for you, by ticking an Urgent checkbox on the Role display on the Inventory screen. They'll also take less time to craft and build stuff. There's a trade-off - they'll get unhappy that you're overworking them. But they will also respect you a little bit. You can also toggle this Urgent setting on and off by pressing the Sprint button as they are going about their task.



Here's the full list:

• Added Notes/Brain Scan screen showing the personality, skills, relationships and memories of the person you are talking to, if they are known
  
• Added dialog in reply to What's Up where people tell you about the skills of others in their community
  
• Rewrote the Invisible Strain interrogation dialog, and added the option to accuse someone of having Invisible Strain (available once that interrogation dialog is discovered)
  
• Characters with Invisible Strain can sometimes just silently kill people instead of infecting them
  
• When you are at war with a looter settlement, they will hire mercenaries to attack you
  
• When recruiting people from AI settlements, if more than one would be joining you they will ask if that's okay first
  
• Added surrender dialog for if you carry an unconscious enemy back to your base and bandage them and look after them until they revive
  
• Dialog for if you try to make an alliance with a community whose leader is dead
  
• Ask someone who's drunk what's up, they might say something drunk. Ask someone who's bleeding/infected how they're feeling, they should say 'I need bandages/antigen!'
  
• Added some other bits of gossip dialog, and tweaked some of the existing lines
  
  
  
  
• Added personality type for liking snacks/sweet food, which you can gift cookies to
  
• Extortion squads will demand to be let into your gates instead of just overriding the permission state
  
• Made it possible to open gates of an enemy community if they are all unconscious
  
• Some tweaks to LeadershipDefeated memory to give morale boosts when you defeat raiders
  
• Some tweaks to how roles are displayed on the Community screen
  
• Added Urgent checkbox to roles, which makes them run when they go about the task. Using this makes them dislike you but slightly respect you a bit over time.
  
• People chopping wood etc to take over a building can take more than one piece at a time
  
• Fix for refugees having a negative 'LeftCommunity' memory of others from the group after they all join you
  
• Fix for bandaging sound not playing in multiplayer
  
• Fix for it being possible to throw things outside the terrain boundaries, which could then cause a crash
  
• Allow depressed characters to be controlled if there is no leader, so you can choose a new one
  
• Fix for characters being able to repair or capture buildings outside of their zone
  
• Fix for glitch when you go unconscious in a building and NPCs rescue you, where you teleport back to the building
  
• Fix for NPCs declaring war on you when you throw a single snowball at them
  
• Fix for Stop Role: Supplies command not working
  
• Fix for an odd bug where you sometimes can't speak to people after an Invisible Strain character is deleted somewhere
  
• Fix for some Cyrillic characters not displaying correctly
  
• Fix for same turf war/rebellion/intimidation quest being given twice after change of leader
  
• Possible fix for multithreading crash
  
• Made game less likely to crash if a quest in a mod is deleted

v172 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".

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".