For many months we have been working hard on improving movement in Empires of the Undergrowth, and this patch represents successes in this area but also a bunch of content and quality-of-life changes that we hope you will be pleased with.

Thanks so much for those of you who have helped out during the beta phase for this update; we’re very glad to be able to release it for everyone!





After replacing most of the movement code in the game and running extensive beta tests, this is now ready to go. This will lead to a noticeable performance boost for all which ultimately means more creatures and bigger maps!

This will also help fix bugs that have been persistent in movement for a long time. Bugs to do with ants freezing or getting stuck on ramps should, for the most part, be eliminated.

Freeplay has seen many changes and should feel very different now than it used to.

• Leaf cutters make their way to freeplay, along with climbable plants!
  
• New rainforest map Embankment
  
• Difficulty has been tuned and and extra difficulty option added that affects how quickly and how far the games difficulty will change
  
• Optional victory conditions have been added allowing you to set goals (these also affect the difficulty as you approach victory)
  
• Freeplay setups can be saved, and can also be shared via a string
  
• Ubers have been rebalanced bringing them to a fairer difficulty level. They have also been altered to be strong / weak against various enemy combinations
  
• As difficulty increases, creatures will now get stronger (rather than just more numerous) and will have much less food reduction

We will be bringing regular extra missions to the game apart from the main campaign. Here we have allowed ourselves more freedom to do things in a more game-like fashion rather than true to nature, like we strive to be in the story.The first 3 maps will be released a month apart!

• Aggrandise launches today! Command a Formica ereptor colony featuring the fierce trap jaw ants and carefully choose your targets as your colony grows large enough to take on a large foe!
  
• More are on the way - follow our social media for details!

Phorid flies are tiny, inconspicuous-looking insects that could easily be mistaken for fruit flies but are far deadlier. They lay their eggs between the armoured carapaces of insects, in particular your ants, leading to a time where they will be less effective followed by inevitable death as the larva eats away at the innards.

All ants have a chance of fighting off the flies when they are attacked, but level 3 mediae and majors have a 100% chance to fight them off.


We have also added a bunch of achievements for the first tier levels of the game. This includes New Home, Subjugation and the first formicarium challenge. Multiple achievements have been added for various difficulties and challenge modes. There are the generic achievements, such as finishing a level on a specific difficulty, but also tasks that have specific conditions to achieve. Check your achievements from the in-game menu.


On top of all these additions there has been a raft of optimisation changes made that should also improve performance. Some areas have also seen balance changes including area-of-effect (AOE) attacks, insane difficulty on 3.2 Front Line and many others. Many of these changes are listed below.

• Projectiles have been significantly optimised (very noticeable with rapid fire wood ants)
  
• Substantially reduced the cost of rendering the Isolepis Cernua (spiky plant)
  
• And many more! See previous patch notes from beta testing for extensive details

• Black ants now take 20% less damage from AOE attacks
  
• 3.2 Front Line on harder difficulties will spawn less environmental creatures and more higher level army ants
  
• Formicarium challenge 3 has been made much easier on harder difficulties:
  
• Reduced the number of resource refills the enemy colony receives across various difficulties (now 0/1/2/4 down from 0/1/5/10)
  
• Reduced reload quantity to 1800 (down from 2000)
  
• Resource reloads will now appear gradually (10 per second) rather than instantly
  
• Reduced size of cricket drops on harder difficulties
  
• Damage falloff implemented on wood ant mortar, uber basic attacks and some whip spider attacks. This deals less damage the further away from the epicentre of the attack the creature is (reaching zero at the very edge)

• Multiple frame rate limits added
  
• Added an option slider for a darkened square behind resource counters for visibility
  
• Markers should feel more responsive with faster movement between different markers, more ants at the end of the marker and far fewer ants waiting at home to head to the marker
  
• Camera zoom now interpolates very rapidly
  
• Visuals added for leafcutter major auras
  
• Difficulty levels have been added for Formicarium challenges 1 and 2
  
• Trail calculations have been updated. Should lead to more ants at the end of trails, more consistent flows and less ants waiting underground
  
• And many more! See previous patch notes from beta testing for extensive details

• Significantly less ants getting caught on corners
  
• Corrected an error that could cause creatures to get stuck at the entrance to ramps
  
• A previously dormant patrol route behind the player’s nest has been reactivated in 3.2
  
• Fixed an issue where workers could survive their tiles being deleted if they have the “evasive” skill
  
• After purchasing a queen ability, all queen cool-downs need to recharge (prevents switching queen abilities during formicarium challenge exploit)
  
• Ladybirds now immune to many crowd control effects to prevent them being affected whilst eating an aphid
  
• “Attack when favourable” creatures (such as mantis and jumping spider) now take nearby allies into account when deciding to attack or not
  
• Improvements to ant crowd movement - particularly in combat
  
• Mole crickets now take room size into account when selecting a room to spawn in
  
• Improvements to collision detection with difficult shapes
  
• Battle arena now only removes creatures that are not in combat
  
• Ubers will no longer ignore the nest invasion setting in freeplay setup
  
• Moved all pebbles off walkable area in the original Hungry Spider level
  
• Fixed a visual error with the wood ant projectile splash
  
• And many more! See previous patch notes from beta testing for extensive details

Last bits of balance and fixes! Just a very short test to make sure nothing we’ve added or fixed causes any major issues - and then this should be the last one before we set it on the main branch. Hang tight just a little longer if you’ve been waiting for the beta to finish!

This beta now includes Mac, Linux and Win32 builds if anyone would like to test for them! For those familiar with how to activate a beta password the word is christmasants. For more detailed instructions see this post on the forum.

Thanks to ant27rex for the screenshot used in the header and cover of this post!

• Reduced number of funnel web spiders on hard and insane difficulties
  
• Provided slightly more time between computer actions on insane difficulty
  
• Dead creatures provide more food on hard and insane difficulties

• Just Isn’t Cricket achievement will now correctly complete instead of completing a different one
  
• Slave makers now correctly drop resources when they see an enemy
  
• Fixed an issue where an invisible enemy could be present in replays of formicarium challenge 3
  
• Fixed an issue where you would autocomplete Rapid Growth and NOPE after beating 1.2 insane
  
• Achievements will now only give their failed or succeeded announcement if you do not already have them
  
• Fixed an issue where tunnelling enemies (Extremis and Surrounded) could get stuck digging nothing or standing still if they tunnelled out and could not see an enemy

We're entering the final stages of beta testing for the 0.21 update now - and for the first time in the game this update introduces achievements! The first batch (formicarium tier 1) are present here - more will follow suit later down the line. We’ve also done some fairly extensive balancing.

This is an optional beta - if you’d like to join the beta whilst it’s still running, follow the instructions in the box near the top of this previous post. If you're already on the beta branch you won't need to do this; the game should update by itself. Thanks so much to everyone who has helped us test this large update; we’re nearly there now! NOTE: The beta will only run on Windows. Once we've finished the beta period Mac and Linux will get the full finished update!

Thanks to whoamijr for the screenshot used for the header and cover of this post!

• Achievements are now active on Steam for the first tier of the formicarium. Note you will currently only be able to get these in the beta
  
• Some level balance changes, more details below

• Raised the cost of trap jaw ant build to 90 (up from 60)
  
• Added black ants to the player’s build options to give a mid-way unit now trap jaw cost has been increased so much

• On higher difficulties less patrolling creatures appear
  
• On higher difficulties more level 2 and 3 army ants will appear

• Reduced the number of resource refills the enemy colony receives across various difficulties (now 0/1/2/4 down from 0/1/5/10)
  
• Reduced reload quantity to 1800 (down from 2000)
  
• Resource reloads will now appear gradually (10 per second) rather than instantly
  
• Reduced size of cricket drops on harder difficulties

• A couple of achievement times adjusted for balance reasons
  
• Creatures set to attack player when damaged now only attack the first player that attacked them and do not switch

• Food reservation now affects leaves and harvestable creatures, so you will not harvest from these unless there is space available for ants to reserve a slot to place them
  
• Minor change to a web on 1.2 allowing the spider to see other ants that are on top of its nest
  
• Fixed another resource pickup issue that could cause an ant to get stuck trying to pick up a resource
  
• Funnel web spider can no longer be introduced after its death has been announced in 1.2
  
• Fixed an issue where leaves could be dropped in a way that made them inaccessible around nest entrances
  
• Fixed an issue with recent changes to mole crickets that made them spawn on the same spot (and could crash)
  
• Fixed an issue that could occur with harvesters when harvesting was turned off (they could walk back and forth to the thing they were previously harvesting for a time)
  
• Fixed some bugs with achievements in 1.2
  
• Resources dropped from deleting tiles now correctly display food values and appear on the minimap
  
• Fixed an issue where ubers were still invading with invasions turned off (again!)
  
• Moved some food in the old demo levels to be in caverns
  
• Fix added for water rising on low frame rates that could cause it to overshoot (sometimes enough to kill ants coming out of their nest)
  
• Fixed an issue where an ant could briefly be given a job as it was heading to the surface, causing its AI to break and not move when it reached the surface
  
• Potential fix for ants locking out harvesting of plant from a long distance away
  
• Minor adjustments in food size in critters to help flickering
  
• Fixed a bug with plant disembarking
  
• Leaf sizes are now more sensible in 3.1
  
• Fixed a rare crash that could occur in pathfinding
  
• Fixed an issue where an ant targeted by a funnel web that was killed could not be targeted by another until ants stopped entering the nest

Some help for leafcutters in freeplay with regenerating leaves now being a thing (in freeplay only - campaign level leaves do not grow back). This is an optional beta - if you’d like to join the beta whilst it’s still running, follow the instructions in the box near the top of this previous post. If you're already on the beta branch you won't need to do this; the game should update by itself. NOTE: The beta will only run on Windows. Once we've finished the beta period Mac and Linux will get the full finished update!

• Leaves will now regenerate in freeplay five minutes after some have been harvested (saplings regenerate 100, red rusty plant 200 and green plant 300)
  
• Food reduction in freeplay now kicks in at 200% difficulty (up from 50%) and drops to a minimum at 960% difficulty (up from 150%).
  
• Creatures in freeplay will more rapidly get to scale level 5 between difficulty values of 100 and 200% but will then only increase 1 level per 20% after that point (up from 10%)
  
• Physical creature size now increases slower and caps totally at triple size (in practice it should never reach this value)
  
• Chance of uber spawning now increases the longer one has not spawned. At max at 45 mins after last spawn. This will cause more ubers to spawn at lower difficulties or if one has not spawned in a while

• Minims should now appear on both sides of carried leaves by level 3 majors and mediae
  
• Creatures should no longer get stuck in pickup state (appearing static picking up food)
  
• Some tweaks to creature movement
  
• Possible fix for issues where creatures can end up inside ramps
  
• Corrected an error that could cause creatures to get stuck at the entrance to ramps
  
• Fixed an issue (again) with the scientists hand not squashing ants
  
• Can no longer see water in tunnels during cinematics in 2.1 and 2.2
  
• A patrol route behind the players nest has been reactivated in 3.2
  
• Tweaked some patrols in 3.2
  
• Phorid flies will now display little health bars to make them more visible
  
• Fixed an issue where a creature could get stuck trying to harvest a resource if combat started and ended briefly during it heading to the resource
  
• Fixed an issue where workers could survive their tiles being deleted if they have the “evasive” skill
  
• Fixed a crash caused by placing markers in banned areas using the minimap
  
• After purchasing a queen ability, all queen cool-downs need to recharge (prevents switching queen abilities during formicarium challenge exploit)
  
• An ant may only remove one phorid fly every three minutes to prevent clearing a patch by a single level 3 ant
  
• The huge whip spider will now walk normally again in 3.2
  
• Food visually can only be 40% its default size so small food items are more visible and scales slower at the upper end of values
  
• Fixed an issue where loaded eggs could be tiny if saved in their frozen state
  
• Update to how markers work fixing an exploit where you could use two markers to completely empty a trail
  
• Updates to markers to pull ants from more old marker locations and changed these locations priorities. It should feel smoother and is more forgiving to army repositioning
  
• Ladybirds now immune to many crowd control effects to prevent them being affected whilst eating an aphid
  
• Camera now correctly exits victory animation after continuing freeplay post victory
  
• Music restarts when continuing freeplay post victory
  
• Fixed a crash that could occur on maps that have tiles removed such as the second lab formicarium
  
• Got rid of some buried harvestable beetles in 3.1
  
• Fixed a crash with swarm point in underground only maps
  
• “Attack when favourable” creatures (such as mantis and jumping spider) now takes nearby allies into account when deciding to attack or not
  
• Optimisations added to path following
  
• Improvements to ant crowd movement - particularly in combat
  
• Fixed an issue where leafcutters were not making digging noises
  
• Fixed a rare crash in path finding
  
• Fixed an issue where building and upgrading was no longer making noise
  
• Mole crickets now take room size into account when selecting a room to spawn in
  
• Fixed issues with funnel web movement

A bug fixing update for the optional beta, dealing mainly with the fallout from reintroducing the story campaign back into it. We’re homing in on having this update ready for the main branch but if you’d like to join the beta whilst it’s still running, follow the instructions in the box near the top of this previous post. NOTE: The beta will only run on Windows. Once we've finished the beta period Mac and Linux will get the full finished update!

Fixes & Optimisations

• Fixed issues caused by creatures jumping up ledges
  
• Fixed creatures stuck near ramp tops
  
• Fixed an issue that could cause infinite spawning of wood ants from fish landmark (and other issues in infestation landmark)
  
• Fixed a crash related to creatures disappearing whilst climbing
  
• Hidden some development boxes from ramps in 3.2
  
• Minims will now appear on leaves carried by level 3 majors and mediae to represent their 100% chance of defending from phorid flies
  
• Fixed underground marker path arrows being wrong way round when placing marker on surface
  
• Improvements to collision detection with difficult shapes
  
• Adjusted ramp collisions
  
• Adjusted some plants and collision settings in 3.1 to help with creatures getting stuck
  
• Difficulty applied due to getting close to completing an objective in freeplay is now removed once the objective is complete
  
• Improved leafcutter repel phorid fly animation
  
• Fixed some issues where loaded ants from old games could be moved to the top of a tunnel and get stuck
  
• Food stuck under lab formicarium is now correctly on the surface
  
• Fixed an issue where beach tiger beetle larvae would not attack in 2.x challenge modes
  
• Fixed an issue where mole crickets were spawning in 1.2 far too quickly with the challenge on
  
• Added some fixes for creatures dropping food, will now do a check to see if the dropped tile is accessible and can successfully drop off cliff without becoming inaccessible
  
• Some fixes added to phorid fly spawners making spawn failures less likely
  
• Removed excessive resource scans for creatures
  
• Fixed an issue where creatures could get stuck trying to pick up a food item
  
• Fixed an issue on 3.2 where army ants would ignore other enemies until attacked
  
• Fixed an issue where Formicarium Challenge 2 could be won with spiders still alive in rare circumstances
  
• Creatures should no longer get stuck on one another if they reload at same location or jump to same location

As mentioned, we're not far from fixing the issues and bringing this update to the main branch. We likely have a round of balance changes to go before we reach that point, so we'll be taking into account all of your feedback before we set about doing this.

Thanks to everyone who has been particularly helpful during this beta period (you know who you are!) and thank you to everyone who's given us clues about where glitches might be hiding - you've made the process much smoother.

Welcome to 2020! We've been running an optional beta on Steam since late December which mainly introduces a reworked freeplay mode, and more recently adds the challenge mode for the third tier formicarium levels. Since that time we've been working through the veritable mountain of issues and other feedback with it, and we're now in the home stretch for bringing this out of beta and to the main branch for everyone to play. There's still time to join the beta if you haven't already - see the instructions near the top of this link if you'd like to join in. NOTE: The beta will only run on Windows. Once we've finished the beta period Mac and Linux will get the full finished update.


Leafcutters on the march from Limey21

We'll start this newsletter by talking about the changes to freeplay mode, then have a look at the mechanics of phorid flies in the campaign challenge mode. We'll also talk about the first of the new extra missions to come along with the update - Aggrandise. Lastly, we'll go over what has taken us many months to get to this point - the laborious changes to the movement and path finding code.

Freeplay Mode Changes

Leafcutters in Freeplay

The update to freeplay will include leafcutters as their own independent colony type. When you play as leafcutters many of the landmarks that appear on the surface will be patches of leaves, since the sole source of food for them is their fungus gardens fuelled by leaf cuttings. This puts them at somewhat of a disadvantage at the start of a freeplay run, since they cannot attain food from underground and must quickly venture to the surface to collect foliage. To help with this, we have extended the exclusion zone around active nest entrances which should help leafcutter colonies get a foothold. Later in the run, the majors should more than make up for the humble beginnings!


Leafcutters doing their thing in Towhead

New Freeplay Map - Embankment

To thematically celebrate bringing leafcutters to freeplay, we are also introducing a new rainforest-themed map! Embankment is set in the Ecuadorian jungle, like the third tier story missions, along the banks of a trickling forest stream which splits the map in two lengthways. You can of course play with any of the other species on this level, but I personally find it particularly satisfying to make a freeplay setup that only spawns wood and rainforest creatures, disable everything but the rainforest enemies, and immerse myself in jungle ambience.


Click the thumbnails to see the full Embankment screenshots

Scaled Enemies

A big change to the way freeplay works is that now as difficulty increases, you will get enemies that are scaled up in both size and strength, rather than just more enemies inhabiting the world. In this way we can increase the challenge without having a lot of creatures running around reducing performance. By mousing over the "menu" icon in the top right of the screen, you can see the current difficulty setting and will notice enemies getting quite significantly larger as it goes up.


Some big boys here from Ainz Ooal Gown - note he was playing a Creative game here (another new freeplay option), so their size is unlikely to be reached in a normal game!

Rebalanced Uber Creatures

Up until this point uber creatures have always simultaneously been the most interesting and frustrating thing about a freeplay run. They represent an immediate existential threat to your colony and only the foolhardy would underestimate their presence after it is announced. However, even for well-run colonies, an uber creature currently spells almost certain death unless you are very advanced into the game. Furthermore some colonies like Formica fusca can do very little against them. Whilst we certainly want players to feel that squirm of panic when ubers are around, we don't want them to spell a definite end to proceedings.

In the current way of doing things, ubers spawn and immediately go about deciding if they're going to attack the player or just mill around for a while. With the new update, there will be a grace period of eight minutes during which the uber will definitely not attack the nest - this gives players ample time to get home if they feel they need to or start to swarm the uber before it becomes invasive. Furthermore, they will no longer ignore the "Nest invasions" setting in freeplay so if you've turned invasions off, they will never threaten your queen.


Pro tip - holding down an appropriate creature's spawn button for 10 seconds in the Battle Arena will spawn its uber version!

On top of this, each uber in the game has been tweaked and changed to give it specific strengths and weaknesses. They've all had health and strength reduced somewhat - they are all still very strong creatures that need measured resistance, but they should feel much fairer now. This isn't a blanket change to all ubers and each one has been tweaked individually, in both stats and abilities - we will detail these in the patch notes when the time comes. A lot of uber effects are based on AOE (area of effect) and a game-wide change to the way AOE works will affect just about every uber creature (there is now pronounced falloff of AOE damage from the epicentre of an attack to its edge - this incidentally also affects wood ant mortars).

Victory Conditions

When you set up your freeplay game, in the advanced options there will be a section that allows you to choose from several different ways to officially "win" your freeplay game, and to set a threshold for that goal. There are several of these, detailed below:

• Biomass - raise your colony to reach a specific size, with more expensive tiles contributing more points
  
• Domination - defeat enemies to earn points towards your goal
  
• Survival - survive for an amount of time
  
• Score - reach a set score by defeating enemies, building tiles and harvesting resources
  
• Hunter - kill a set number of uber creatures
  
• Besieged - survive a set number of attack waves

Advanced freeplay settings, showing optional victory conditions

As you approach your goal you will notice difficulty increasing sharply, so be prepared for the onslaught! After you attain your goal you will be given your score - you can then either quit to the menu or continue playing, having achieved what was set. Well done you.

Exporting / Importing Freeplay Setup

You will be able to alter freeplay settings to your heart's content, save them as a preset, and easily export them to share with other players. Exporting works by creating a string you can copy to your clipboard, and importing works by reading such a string. Share on your medium of choice - in fact we'll be making a dedicated forum thread for your favourite setups when the update is released.


Sharing a string for a freeplay setup called Island Nation

3.x Challenge Mode - Phorid Flies

Along with the freeplay update, we will be completing the third tier formicarium levels by introducing the challenge mode to them. Phorid flies are tiny, inconspicuous-looking insects that could easily be mistaken for fruit flies but are far deadlier. They lay their eggs between the armoured carapaces of insects, in particular your ants, leading to a time where they will be less effective followed by inevitable death.


A tiny phorid fly, very close to the camera, prepares to lay eggs on leafcutter ants

All ants have a chance of fighting off the flies when they are attacked, but level 3 mediae and majors have a 100% chance to fight them off (there's an incentive to get upgrading!). A successful defence will cause the fly to leave. They appear on the minimap as a distinctive fly icon - so try to keep clear of these areas unless you have no other choice.

Extra Level - Aggrandise

We've long spoken about including extra levels apart from the main campaign, and with the coming update we're introducing the first of these - Aggrandise. It has a simple aim - kill the giant whip spider.


Your objective: kill that guy

There are no tricks here, no enemies hidden in caverns or surprise nest invasions. Simply start in the middle of the map, expand cautiously and use your knowledge of the game to decide which enemies to take down next for food. Once you have the forces, it's time to take on the big guy.


The overview

In this level you command a Formica ereptor colony with access to wood ant mortars and, for the first time, trap jaw ants! These ants have a powerful bite and can use their fast-moving jaws to propel themselves out of combat, healing in the process. This makes them deadly close range units with impressive survivability for their size.


Control trap jaw ants in Aggrandise!

The primary focus of the coming update may be a rework of freeplay, but it is not the most fundamental change that will come along with it. For the past several months a majority of the work we've been doing has been completely gutting and re-writing the movement and path finding system that creatures use to navigate the map. Although this results in very few visible changes, it has been a monumental undertaking when considering the size of our small team - we've been replacing built-in Unreal Engine 4 functions with bespoke ones which are more fit for our purposes. We had used the default functions all over the project, and such a basal change to things is obviously going to have lots of issues. We're nearly there in working through these now.

The primary motivation for all this work is optimisation - removing unnecessary calculations which reduce the frame rate and restrict the number of creatures that can exist in the world. We've previously announced that the focal species of the next formicarium tier will be fire ants, and we want there to be a lot of them - swarming over enemies and overwhelming them. As well as making current content smoother for everyone, the groundwork put into this now will improve everything for the future.


We've been delighted to see EotU get some great coverage recently, and lots of people have been getting lots out of the beta despite the issues it has had! Scottish streamer CnRNaggarock is a long-time player of Empires of the Undergrowth, and as far as I'm aware is the only person with a documented win of the Hungry Spider Halloween / full moon level with video evidence. We always get a kick out of watching his streams. Give him a follow on Twitter, subscribe to him on Twitch, and support his content!

Twitch - https://www.twitch.tv/cnrnaggarock
Twitter - https://twitter.com/CNaggarock


So after writing a particularly long newsletter, I finally come to my favourite part - looking through a few of the fantastic screenshots you lovely people take of our game on a regular basis, making it look much better than it has any right to be. If you'd like to contribute simply upload your screenshots to Steam - F12 by default takes a snap. To get some interesting angles press F9 in-game to get to photo mode. If you hold down shift whilst you do this, the camera will be freed up for some really nice photographic potential. You can also email your snaps to me at mike@slugdisco.com.


At first glance this shot from ant27rex looks like a crab nestling down in hay for the night, until you realise it’s a whole bunch of whip spiders


A cheeky jumping spider waits for leaf cutters to emerge in another shot from Limey21


A pleasingly purple Formica ereptor queen from whoamijr

We're not far from concluding the beta testing for this upcoming large update - with this patch we are re-activating the campaign mode with the entirely new movement code. If any of you in the optional beta feel like starting a new campaign run, now is the time, and report back any issues to us!

It's not too late to join in the optional beta if you would like.
NOTE: The beta will only run on Windows. Once we've finished the beta period Mac and Linux will get the full finished update.

To access the beta, follow the below steps:

1. Find Empires of the Undergrowth in your Steam library, right-click on it and choose "Properties"
   
2. Choose the "Betas" tab
   
3. In the box titled "Enter beta access code to unlock private betas", enter christmasants
   
4. After the "Access code correct" information appears, make sure you've chosen "openbeta" from the "Select the beta you would like to opt into" drop-down menu
   
5. Press close - the game will now update to the beta branch.

By doing so, you are acknowledging that this is a beta and things are not in their finished state.

We have renamed “Formicarium” to “Story” as we feel it points better to where a player should start. Some content and settings have been added to the story. Additionally, there are a load of fixes added, some projectile optimisations and some substantial balance changes to ubers and AOE attacks.

New Content

• Challenge mode added for levels 3.1 and 3.2 - Phorid Flies!
  
  • Avoid leaf patches infested with these critters; they will inject their eggs into the heads of your ants causing 2 minutes of reduced stats followed by inevitable death
    
  • All ants have a chance of fighting off the flies when they are attacked, but level 3 mediae and majors have a 100% chance to fight them off. A successful defence will cause the fly to leave
• Difficulty settings added for formicarium challenge levels 1 and 2. You can now take these on in easier difficulties… or harder if you feel you were not punished enough!

Balance Changes

• Damage falloff implemented for some area of effect abilities doing less damage the further away from the epicentre of the attack the creature is (reaching zero at the very edge)
  
  • Implemented on level 3 wood ant mortar attacks
    
  • Implemented on all uber basic attacks
    
  • Implemented on some whip spider attacks
• All Uber creatures have been rebalanced and should now be possible to take on with any colony
  
• All have had their damage, health and resistances reduced
  
  • Hermit crab, beach tiger beetle and devil's coach horse ubers scaled down to be defeatable by a very large black ant army
    
  • Beach wolf spider uber rebalanced to be strong against leafcutter majors but weak to larger armies of lower powered units (no AOE damage on main attack, very strong single target damage) also given high venom resist
    
  • Jumping spider uber is now very dangerous to wood ants (very high venom resistance, ability that deals enough damage in an area to one-hit kill them)
    
  • Spiny devil uber is now strong against black ants and other low health melee
    
  • Whip spider uber is now strong against wood ants (high venom resist, strong, midrange attacked tuned to do well against them)
    
  • Praying mantis uber is now strong against majors, weak to black ants and medium to wood ants
• Black ants now have all AOE damage dealt to them that they are not at the epicentre of reduced by 20% (new stat AOE damage resistance)

Optimisations

• Projectiles have seen significant optimisations and are now handled differently (this should be most noticeable with rapid fire wood ants)
  
• Projectiles visuals tweaked

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where the player's ants could appear red on the surface minimap with fog of war turned on
  
• Fixed some visual issues in Crucible
  
• Alleviated some flickering shading issues
  
• Eaten creatures not part of a colony will now correctly disappear the moment they are eaten
  
• Battle arena now only removes creatures that are not in combat
  
• Uber whip spider now moves properly
  
• Fixed an issue with projectiles that could cause the explosion to veer to the bottom right
  
• Woodlouse is no longer in the floor
  
• Removed an unneeded sound from various rove beetle sprays
  
• Moved a food item out of the wall in Embankment
  
• ixed an issue where items dropped inside another undug tile were removed (they are now repositioned onto a dug out tile)
  
• Fixed an issue where a jumping spider that is killed mid jump would continue to be attacked even after its death
  
• Trap jaw walking animation should now better follow its movement
  
• Fixed an issue where rove beetle type B and its larvae would be switched around in tick boxes in freeplay advanced creature settings
  
• Fixed an issue where marker paths could go past the marker and loop back
  
• Fixed an issue where marker path arrows were pointing the wrong direction
  
• Fixed an issue where dead minims refuse model was blocking mouse tile interactions
  
• Photo mode is forced off when the menu opens to prevent confusion with it unpausing the game
  
• Seeds will no longer land part way up the stem on poppy plants
  
• Ubers will no longer ignore the nest invasion setting in freeplay setup
  
• Woodworm will no longer float

Some freeplay balance, some monthly level fixes and improvements, some optimisations, some other fixes… a bit of everything!

If you're not participating in the optional beta and would like to, follow the instructions in the original beta post for details of how to participate. You'll need to be running the game on Windows and through Steam.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/463530/announcements/detail/1705107447279697254

• Fixed an issue where a picked up creature would kill the creature picking it up and would cause it yo be locked in an attack animation permanently
  
• Fixed issues where ants in another colonies nest could could freeze when the marker was removed and other situations
  
• Fixed an issue that could cause flickering with moving static meshes
  
• Fixed some aesthetic issues on the crucible
  
• Substantially reduced the cost of rendering the Isolepis Cernua (spiky plant)
  
• Movement changes preventing creatures rubber banding off one another (the vibrating woodlouse for example)
  
• Added in a minimap ping and alert message on babysitting when the enemy colony is attacked, when they head out to attack some enemies and when they head out to defend the player
  
• Increased the amount of time the allied colony has to gather the starting resources
  
• Fixed a crash that could occur when viewing climbable plants resource quantities and it is deleted
  
• Fixed an issue where vines could show as harvestable above tiles that were not accessible
  
• Victory condition now works in Extremis (wave 30) and will provide a reward
  
• Small optimisations with auras
  
• Wood ants will no longer target allied colonies
  
• Fixed a crash that could happen with loaded freeplay games (and harvestman legs)
  
• Fixed an issue that could cause abilities not to trigger
  
• Fixed an issue that reduced wood ant range dramatically and cased them to freeze

• Nativised some costly classes
  
• Some additional optimisations in creature scanning
  
• Creatures scanning for other creatures has seen several optimisations (this should lead to better performance when lots of creatures are in close proximity). Please note there may be bugs with this change, if you notice any strange behaviour please let us know

• Small creatures now cannot invade for half the amount of time large creatures cannot invade for
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the large creature invasion block to not change with difficulty setting
  
• Massively reduced the chance a passive swarm will invade the player nest
  
• Slightly reduced the chance an aggressive swarm will invade the players nest
  
• Reduced chance aggressive swarms will spawn early on
  
• Moderately reduced the chance defensive and neutral swarms will invade the players nest
  
• Creature swarms are now removed when all creatures belonging to the swarm are killed
  
• More than doubled the range at which enemies cannot loiter around the players nest entrance

Thanks to plenty of reports from everyone kind enough to help us test, we've identified a very common crash in the most recent beta test (V0.2112). It was to do with creatures spawning underground and therefore affected just about every level, eventually. Due to lots of people very kindly taking the time to send in their crash reports to us it took us practically no time to identify the issue - this is a hotfix for the currently running beta to fix this issue only.

Patch Notes

• Fixed a crash caused by any creatures not belonging to the player colony spawning underground or entering the nest

If you're currently participating in the beta your game should update automatically to fix this issue. Again, thank you to everyone who helped us - you made finding this issue super easy.

This beta patch includes several fixes, some new freeplay features and optimisations! This is an update for the currently running optional beta.

If you're not participating in the optional beta and would like to, follow the instructions in the original beta post for details of how to participate. You'll need to be running the game on Windows and through Steam.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/463530/announcements/detail/1705107447279697254

Full patch notes for beta update 0.2112 are detailed below:

• Some funnel web tile surfers on Baby Sitting will now correctly spawn when your ally tunnels them out.
  
• Moved all pebbles of walkable area in the original spider level
  
• Fixed more pathing issues to do with ramps (some issue that arose on Baby Sitting and other areas)
  
• Fixed an issue where if an enemy died on top of a tile that used to be a cavern it would be un-harvestable
  
• Minor optimisation in ant eggs
  
• Ice plants in Baby Sitting no longer block clicks
  
• Prevented creatures from hanging out within the ant nest tunnel where they cannot be attacked or attack (both on surface and underground)
  
• Shortened text on score screen of a bonus multiplier that was overlapping the score
  
• Fixed an issue where if graphics setting were changed during some particle effects, then they would exist forever
  
• Fixed an aesthetic issue with leafcutter minor’s attack animation loop
  
• Several optimisations for pathing and location functions
  
• Overground minimap will now stop flashing if tabbing to the overground
  
• When trying to place a marker in an un-pathable underground zone it will try and snap to a neighbouring pathable tile, if this fails and error sound plays
  
• Fixed a visual error with the wood ant projectile splash
  
• Players can now place markers on ramps via the minimap
  
• Minor optimisations to do with marker placement
  
• Optimisation added to repathing due to tunnelled out tiles
  
• Optimisation added in various areas that required a calculated path length

• Fixed an issue where loaded minims would immediately drop their leaves
  
• Saved plant climbers will now correctly harvest when they reach there harvest points
  
• Fixed an issue where climbers could load stuck climbing a plant and in the wrong place (and unstuck and saved stuck ones)
  
• Fixed an issue where creatures could exit the maps from the position they were standing (and hence could just ping out of existence)
  
• Fixed an issue where sometimes right clicking the minimap would not draw the path of a marker on the surface
  
• Infestation landmark now obeys disabled creature fighting
  
• Fixed victory / defeat animations in Embankment
  
• Moved a log outside of play area on Embankment
  
• Harvestman severed legs will now save and load with a visual mesh and will no longer walk around on their own when loaded
  
• Minor leaf cosmetic changes in Embankment
  
• Rounded victory condition goals to nearest whole number
  
• Deletion jobs for full refuse tiles are now correctly saved and loaded
  
• Default difficulty is now 20%
  
• The time period where the player does not get invaded in freeplay now slowly allows invasions based on a weighted dice roll (first 10 minutes no large creature invasions, next 10 minutes moving from very few, to normal amount by the end)
  
• Added a “Play Difficulty” that affects multiple things including:
  
  • Constant difficulty max and ramp rates in difficulty
    
  • Extends grace periods before ubers can spawn and enemy creatures can attack
    
  • Wave sizes
    
  • Difficulty increase due to victory condition getting close
    
  • Score multipliers added for the above
• Swarms of creatures should no longer hang around nest entrances of active players
  
• 25% increased spawn rate of landmarks when playing as leafcutters (slightly more leaves)
  
• Ubers will not invade a player nest until they have existed on the map for eight minutes, then it is up to them!