Implemented new 1911 animations (will fix sideways lean bug)

Fixed an issue with mouse notification showing when inventory is closed

Implemented a new system to make the recoil of weapons feel much more natural

Added searchable military boxes to airport runway

Increased default backpack weight to 15kg
Increased all backpack weight limits

In this update we’ve included some new content as well as various bug fixes. The military base has been redesigned, we’ve implemented PVE only servers and added unique animations to 2 weapons as part of our animation pass that will be throughout Season 3. We’ve adjusted some of the level requirements for crafting recipes so that right up to level 19 you will be unlocking new items per level. We have also spent some time to update our French and Portuguese localizations - updates to other languages will come throughout the season.

Servers

Due to high demand we have implemented experimental PVE Only servers

Map

Nator Military base has been re-designed
Adjusted vehicle spawn locations, added 2 new spawn locations
Added military crates to Radome buildings
Added military crates to Air Control Tower building

Animations

Added new Deagle animations
Added G-17 animations
Fixed clipping on MP5 magazine
Fixed an issue with weapon pullback animation not playing when crouched
Fixed an issue with pistols not staying in fire pose
Fixed some issues with pullback animations not de-aiming

User Interfaces

Updated Level Up UI
Updated quantity transfer UI
Workbench will now only display items that can be dismantled or repaired at a workbench
Fixed an issue with deployed objects showing wrong weight on tooltip
Implemented new notification system for non-obstructive messages while in inventory
Fixed an issue with server restart notification overlapping hostile notice

Crafting

Reduced level required for EMP Grenade to 14
Increased level required for Sandbag Barrier to 17
Reduced level required for GP Grenade to 17
Reduced advanced Military Backpack to 18
Reduced level required for T3 Turret to 19
Adjusted experience given for all recipes

Translations

Updated Portuguese translations
Updated French translations

Parachuting

Fixed an issue causing parachute position to not be in the correct place when landing
Fixed an issue with the parachute not attaching correctly when in First Person mode

Items

Various melees will use less durability now (crafted melees will be more resistant)
Fixed an issue causing ammo to drop at 0 durability when inventory is full

Turrets

Turrets will now give back ammo that has been loaded into the turret upon pickup

Binoculars

Fixed an issue allowing FP/TP swap when using binoculars

Halloween Event

Removed Halloween cosmetics purchasing
Removed Bandit outfit
Removed player Halloween outfit
Removed pumpkin heads from robots
Removed Halloween item spawns
Removed Halloween decorations from environment
Removed safe zone NPCs Halloween outfits

It's a spooky time in Redwood Valley where the AI have been seen stealing the resident's Jack-O-Lanterns! Retake the valley by defeating and looting these robotic trouble makers to be rewarded during this special event with special event only cosmetic helmets! Trick or treating has also returned this year! Visit any of the residential areas to retrieve as many candies as you can throughout the event and redeem them for our special Halloween 2020 cosmetics at the settlement.

Added spooky outfits to bandits

Added additional skeleton outfit to character rotation - Outfits can be changed by using /outfit in the chat window. A random outfit will be selected.

Increased the amount of radiation that reactors emit, this should make it more balanced and Radiation pills more useful

Fixed an issue with robots being invisible after running them over

Added UMP animations
Realigned the weapons in crouch_idle to match the idle pose better
Improved L96 reload animations
Fixed an issue with reloading not working on pistols in third person
Fixed an issue with rifle fire animation playing incorrectly

Fixed some holster positions that were higher than they should have been
Fixed Santa Backpack holster positions

Server reboot notice will now display the time in the bottom left of the HUD, instead of chat
Added tooltip for radiation healing items
Removed condition tooltip on items that are not durable
Fixed an issue with skin crate count showing incorrect number of crates available
Adjusted scaling of various weapons to fit the preview capture
Fixed an issue with skins not showing equipped in the menu

Fixed some floating vehicles, boxes and other props

Added new Skull Mask item
Added new Sickle item
Added new Humanoid Mask item
Increased sell value of Cooked Small Fish
Increased sell value of Cooked Fish

Added Halloween 2020 skin crate with 22 new skins available only during this event. - Note: Leveling up your character still grants the normal Season 3 skin crate.
In-game skin crate shop updated to offer Halloween 2020 skin crates - Premium Season 3 skin crates no longer available until after the Halloween event ends.

Greetings Survivors!

At long last the start of Season 3 is here! We are very excited to bring you a ton of content with new beginnings. As a reminder there was a wipe for the beginning of Season 3 so you will be off to a fresh start! We hope you enjoy this exciting content update and look forward to your feedback!

Patch Notes - XERA: Survival Patch #7

The following is a brief list of the changes with the launch of Season 3. With the amount of content that has been added and how many changes were made behind the scenes, we are only including the major parts impacting players in these patch notes to keep it as brief as possible. A few of the new features are experimental so we do expect some bugs to occur and as such, please feel free to report any issues you encounter to our staff at support@xeragame.com.

With the launch of Season 3, there has been a great deal added including the new Bandits, multiple new map assets, and increasing the total number of ai in the world. As such, we have not been able to gage server performance on a fully populated server in a while and our team will be monitoring any server performance issues throughout the upcoming days in case the servers become stressed once populated. We have also done a lot of work on the animation system which is still quite experimental - so expect some occasional issues with various animations.

Implemented a new breath holding system which allows the player to hold breath while ADSing to gain animation stability and an increased FOV for the period of the breath hold.



Implemented New Throwable Prediction line effect.
Improved physics calculation for throwables system.
Implemented Gravity Pulse Grenade - The Gravity Pulse grenade creates a gravitational anomaly that aggressively pulls in metal objects including humanoids, and deals a deadly explosive pulse.
Implemented EMP (Electro-Magnetic Pulse Grenade) -The EMP Grenade will disable robots within a radius, applying 15% damage to each affected robot and temporarily stunning them for 10 seconds.
Implemented Smoke Grenade - The smoke grenades provide temporary cover to get away from situations or to maneuver around locations with stealth.
Implemented Chemlights - Chemlights provide illumination in dark areas emitting a glowing light for 3 minutes. These come in multiple colors and can be used as a strategy when coordinating with teammates while lighting up dark areas.
Disabled activity key (Default: E) while cooking a grenade.
Fixed an issue allowing throwables to be thrown while in the helicopter.
Fixed an issue that prevented quantity to correctly show when equipping throwable items.
Implemented new animation for Molotovs.
Fixed an issue that allowed freelook to be enabled while cooking throwables



Changed default player inventory weight to 10KG (was 15kg).
New models implemented for all backpacks.
New Advanced Backpacks added - These provide more inventory weight than the regular version and can be crafted from the crafting menu.

Added and replaced various fence assets around the map to allow for better movement throughout towns and other POIs.
Added new assets to most points of interest around the map and expanded footprints of some of the smaller towns around the map.
Adjusted collisions on houses to allow grenades to pass through windows.
Fixed various spots in safe settlements where characters could get stuck.
Disabled shadows on some lighting in safe settlements to improve performance.
Relocated and added various events throughout the map including new reactors, compounds, bunkers, and radio towers.
Atv spawns have been moved around the map along with a couple of new spawn areas.
Added radiation mechanic and radioactive areas to map around the reactor event sites.


Lootable safes have been added to the Civilian Bunkers - These lootable safes require a lockpick to open and have guaranteed mid-high tier loot.
Added Radio Tower Events - These areas will be guarded by AI that have placed jammers on the radio tower communications boxes. Disable the jammers to restore communications and receive a reward.
Added Reactor Compound Events - Fight off the AI while repairing the damaged generators found throughout the compound surrounding the reactor and you’ll be rewarded! Remember, this is a radioactive zone so be sure to get in and get out as quickly as possible.


Re-balanced drop rates of multiple loot tables.
Added Binoculars, Smoke Grenades, EMP Grenades, GP Grenades, Brass Knuckles, Mosin, SVD, Chemlights, Potassium Iodide, and Radiation Pills to multiple loot tables.

Containers will now grant XP upon being searched.
Container system has been added to additional areas and assets throughout the map.
Containers that have been searched will now show as being opened on the client.

Updated Sky System.
Fixed an issue that caused snow to spawn inside buildings.
Implemented new weather system and day night system that should resolve issues where people experienced lag or frame drops during the transition between day and night.
Adjusted brightness of nighttime.

General animation system rework to smooth transitions and blends.
Added new punch animations.
Added “shocked” animation to Humanoids while they are stunned.
Added multiple particle effects to various assets and items.
Implemented multiple new reload and weapons animations.

Humanoids will now give additional XP when searched.
Implemented a check to prevent AI from spawning on top of players.

Added bandits to the map. These function similar to a player and will engage in combat with both AI and other players. When killed, players will be able to loot the bandits for their gear.
Bandits can appear most places AI generally can spawn.


Death screen has been reworked.
Added more tips to map UI.
Added death location to the map UI.
Added icons indicating new events that were added for Season 3.
Added new overlay to indicate the type of damage you are taking (ex. Damage from low hydration shows blue, Taking on radiation shows green, high hungar shows yellow/orange)
Added UI indicators for key interactable assets in the settlements including global stash, repair bench, and vendor.
Leaderboards will now show the player’s country flag next to their name.

Reduced scale of medical kit item
Added Smoke Grenade item
Added EMP Grenade item
Added GP Grenade item
Added Mosin Rifle
Added SVD
Added Green Chemlight item
Added Blue Chemlight item
Added Red Chemlight item
Added Yellow Chemlight item
Added White Chemlight item
Added Purple Chemlight item
Added Brass Knuckles item
Added Binoculars item
Added Reactor Material item
Added Radiation Pills
Added Potassium Iodide
Weapons will no longer function when they are at 0% durability.

Added Lockpicks recipe (Level 1)
Added Satchel recipe (Level 2)
Added Radiation Pills recipe (Level 3)
Added Adv. Small Backpack recipe (Level 4)
Added Spiked Knuckles recipe (Level 6)
Added Spiked Knuckles recipe (Level 6)
Added Barbed Knuckles recipe (Level 9)
Added Barbed Knuckles recipe (Level 9)
Added Electric Knuckles recipe (Level 10)
Added Electric Knuckles recipe (Level 10)
Added Adv. Medium Backpack recipe (level 11)
Added Potassium Iodide recipe (Level 11)
Added Adv. Large Backpack recipe (Level 15)
Added Adv. Military Backpack recipe (Level 20)
Added EMP Grenade recipe (Level 21)
Added GP Grenade recipe (Level 23)

Rebalanced buyback and purchase prices for Season 3.
Added the ability to sell any item to the vendor - Note: Not all items can be purchased from the vendor and some items must be found by looting throughout the world.

Season 2 skins have been removed from the rotation.
Season 3 skin crates are now available and will contain 1 of 31 different skins available for Season 3.

Greetings survivors! We wanted to take some time to update you on what’s been happening behind the scenes at Spotted Kiwi Interactive! A lot has changed with our development roadmap over the past month and our team continues to grow. The purpose of this development blog is to help pass along some new information, as well as outline the plans we have going forward on what you can expect from our team and with XERA: Survival.

First, we would like to address the concerns revolving around the low player counts, and would like to reassure you that we are dedicated to getting XERA: Survival through early access and to full release (1.0). Despite the low concurrent players we are very committed to the game, and our whole team is working around the clock. We’ve recently hit a massive milestone of over 60,000 unique players, so there are a lot of players sitting on the sidelines for major features such as Base Building and the new survival map.


With much excitement we would like to welcome another new member to the Spotted Kiwi team! Connor - who will be based out of our Dunedin office working alongside Joshua and Erekose. With the recent additions to the Spotted Kiwi team - we are now able to produce all our content in-house. Connor will be filling the gap that we’ve had with Animations, Character Art and VFX - so you will see a lot of improvements coming in those specific areas.

Here’s a few words from Connor: -
“What’s up gamers. Thanks for the warm welcome into this little community! Super excited to be here to help make XERA: Survival into something even more awesome.

I’m a spotted kiwi myself, born and bred in the North Island playing video games like Turok and Goldeneye at the age of 5 with my older brother, then hosting LAN parties through high school playing Halo and Half-life: Deathmatch with my friends. Aside from travelling and climbing mountains, I tend to stay inside a lot to avoid getting more spotted, and balance a hobby of drawing and creating art along with gaming. I also like to dabble in sports but the last few weeks I’ve been recovering from a sprained ankle so hopefully I can return to the basketball court soon and get some revenge. At some point I realised I could combine two things I love as a job and I’ve been doing that for almost eight years now. I spent four of those eight working with Erekose and many other awesome game devs at Rocketwerkz on a ton of different projects including Out of Ammo and Out of Ammo: Death Drive before moving on to bigger projects with super talented people from AAA companies in the states, and created the environment for this Golem trailer and a bunch of other things that I am not allowed to share with you unfortunately!

At Spotted Kiwi I’ll be making you all look beautiful while you’re blowing up robots or betraying newly made friends out in the wilds.

Catch you out there.
-Connor”


With the addition of two new team members we’ve had to adjust our development timelines to support a larger team. With more internal capabilities in the studio we’re able to create higher quality content for the game. As a result, we have made some changes to our public roadmap by organizing the upcoming content into seasons, which should give a better idea of when new content is coming and which season to expect it in. Features in the Season section will be either implemented at release of the season or throughout the season.

https://trello.com/b/yGBsrAZF/xera-survival-public-roadmap


We’re constantly looking at ways to improve existing mechanics in the game, specifically the dynamic events. Erekose has worked on a brand new layout of the compounds which will integrate with the new reactor compounds. Compounds will now require 4 generators to be activated, each with a chance of failing and generating noise (which the robots will be attracted to). Completing the event will produce radioactive byproduct which can be extracted from the core and used to craft items as well as sell to the vendor. Radiation will still be emitted from the compounds after the reactor has been activated, so completing the event and leaving the area as quickly as possible is recommended.




This moves us into a brand new game mechanic that we will be introducing alongside the compound update, the “Radiation” character core stat. While near the compounds your character will slowly absorb radiation, and over time this builds up and can start to deal damage. This will also occur when players are in areas which contain radioactive materials. You can reduce your radiation exposure by wearing protective equipment or by taking specific medical supplies - some of this will be implemented in future patches. We also plan to extend radiation implementation into the new map by having some areas with higher tiered loot around radioactive areas.



The art team has been hard at work behind the scenes working on new assets for the new survival map and deathmatch maps. Connor has hit the ground running by completing a pass on our throwables particles which has allowed us to implement 4 new throwables.


Joshua and Connor have been working towards a full pass on the animation system that will allow us to create unique animations for each weapon. The new animations will be rolled out throughout Season 3. Check out the video below for a sneak peak at some of the new animations that have been finished!




Mikhail (Wargr) has done some great work designing some new throwables with Connor designing the detonation VFX. We are happy to share a preview of some of the recent work they completed on the new Smoke Grenade, EMP Grenade, and Gravity Pulse (GP) Grenade all of which will be coming at the beginning of Season 3! Connor has also implemented a new throwable prediction line VFX.









Karan has also been hard at work updating some of our older buildings as well as creating new ones that will be featured in the upcoming map! Including a whole new selection of road assets, which we will be swapping out in the current map as well. Here’s a preview of some of the new assets that will be coming in the near future! Erekose has also been working on the interiors of the new buildings to be detailed with multiple objects being searchable.














Erekose has been hard at work on blocking out our upcoming Deathmatch / Arms Race maps while he familiarises himself with internal workflows and assets. He is also experimenting with a new terrain generation tool (World Creator) which we are using for our new survival map. This tool allows us to create a large realistic terrain with various erosions and other filters to bring the map to life.

While we’re still some time off from having a completed new survival map - we want to design it with base building in mind so it will release around the same time as base building.



Most of the modular pieces which will be used in the base building system have been completed by Karan. We’re working through all the technical elements for the implementation of bases, which involves storing all the persistent data to be loaded and unloaded at run-time, and stored in our master servers. We are also finalizing the overall design of the base building system - this will be detailed out in future development blogs and with this in mind, we are designing the base building around the new map which will include different biomes that will grant advantages to bases.

Raiding of course will play a huge part in the base building design. Building defenses to protect your base from other players and potentially roaming Humanoids. Your base will be vulnerable at all times, normal defenses will protect against a Humanoid raid while you are offline, but when someone is active in the base, more challenging humanoids may turn up requiring reinforcements or manual defense. You may also encounter other players raiding your base which will most definitely require manual intervention, your base will be your livelihood (your source of currency). Once your base sustains enough damage, it will go into a “capture period” where you can defend your base and whoever wins the battle will be able to claim the base to be their own. Stock up, rebuild and take it back when you are able.

Bases could be built on multiple servers allowing you to create an empire of bases, but this would mean an increased upkeep to make sure your bases do not degrade or are raided by Humanoids or other players.








We’ve made some improvements to the current map, and most notable, we’ve moved some of the old compounds, and bunkers and have changed some old compounds into the new reactor event. We have also added some brand new event locations throughout the map. In addition to the changes with the event locations and addition of new events, we have also added some new apartments to Redsville, Riverton and Riversdale. These additions will bring a new element of pvp action to some of the less frequented points of interest on the map.

We’ve also gone ahead and swapped out the main road asset for our new ones that have been designed in-house and were prepared for the new map.





There have been some UI changes to help new players understand more about the different points of interest that can be found throughout the map. Also we have implemented indicators above the NPCs at the safe settlements as well so players can navigate to them easily.




As we mentioned earlier in the development blog, the new reactor event is ready to go! Fight off the AI while repairing the damaged generators found throughout the compound surrounding the reactor and you’ll be rewarded! Remember, this is a radioactive zone so be sure to get in and get out as quickly as possible.






One of the other new events that has been added for Season 3 are radio towers that are found throughout the map. Radio towers provide communication from the settlement and can be jammed by the AI that guard the area. Once an AI has jammed a radio tower, you will be tasked with bringing the radio tower back online by removing 4 jammers that are blocking communications. Disabling each jammer will grant the player an XP reward and once the last jammer has been removed, a bonus reward including XP and currency will be granted.




One of the common things we’ve received feedback on is that the civilian bunkers do not feel rewarding when completed due to the randomness of the loot that can be found in them. When we first concepted out the design for the civilian bunkers, it was the start of bringing together multiple aspects of progression by having players complete one event in order to unlock another one. The original concept was designed with the option of adding a lootable crate inside the bunker that would function similar to a supply drop, however it would guarantee weapons and gear that are sought after for their rarity. At the time of developing the original civilian bunker events, we did not have the tools and systems in place unfortunately to make this happen, thus civilian bunkers were instead filled with loot from one of the highest tier loot tables in the game.

We now have the systems in place with the recently added container system from Season 2 to be able to implement the civilian bunker rewards as they were originally intended. It is our goal to make these events feel more rewarding by having lock pickable safes inside the civilian bunker that will guarantee some of the more rare items within the game and in turn feel more satisfying as they will be an event that players will want to work towards being able to complete. In addition to adding the safes to the bunkers, we have also relocated and added additional Civilian Bunkers around the map as well as increased the spawn rate of the Civilian Bunker Key.




Mikhail has been working on various weapons for implementation, including the SVD, Mosin Nagant and all the Knuckles variations. He is also currently working on a Shotgun which will be released later in Season 3. All with brand new animations created by Connor, including some new punch animations to polish off the Knuckles.

SVD

The SVD is a long range sniper rifle utilizing .308 rounds and doing a medium-high amount of damage.

Mosin

The Mosin is a short range rifle utilizing .762 rounds and does a medium amount of damage.

Knuckle Melees




Utilized in hand to hand combat, these different knuckles output straight damage to your enemy! Each knuckle has a different amount of damage output and the damage is applied as straight damage no matter where you punch the enemy.

Binoculars

Binoculars will give you an advantage scoping out the terrain ahead. Use them to gain an advantage over your opponents before engaging in combat!


As we prepare for the start of Season 3, we are excited for the next rotation of skins. Mikhail has grown over the past year with his skills and has been focused on designing several highly detailed skins for the next skin box. As well as many other skins for the season - there are many awesome looking skins to collect. We are excited to preview 2 out of the 31 new skins that will be released in the Season 3 skin crate.




We are excited to announce that the end of season leaderboard skin has been selected! Those who place in the top 25 on any of the 3 leaderboards will be granted the special edition Imperial Drone skin!



We hope that you have enjoyed reading about all of the exciting things that are coming over the next few months and look forward to reading your feedback. Remember, as a community driven game, we count on everyone for your feedback and suggestions as we expand the content available to all of our players. Feel free to connect with us via our discord at https://discord.gg/xera and let us know your thoughts!

Cheers,
Spotted Kiwi Interactive

Greetings Survivors!

We are pleased to announce that Season 2 will come to a close next Wednesday, the 21st and Season 3 is planned to begin on Thursday, October 22nd! As a reminder at the start of every new season comes new beginnings for everyone with a full wipe of all in game items and stats. Any skins and skin crates that you have earned by playing WILL NOT be wiped as those are yours to keep. With the end of Season 2 approaching, this will be your final chance to secure your placement on the leader boards. All players placing in the top 25 for Skill Rating, Experience, or Kills will be rewarded with the Imperial Drone Skin. This skin will be granted to those who qualified shortly after the conclusion of Season 2.



We are excited for the start of Season 3 and be on the lookout for our October Development Blog which will detail out all of the great things to come!

Greetings Survivors,

The server maintenance is now complete and Hotfix 6.6.2 is now live.

We want to thank everyone that participated during the Independence Event and hope you enjoyed it!

Independence Event Removal
Removed Statue Of Liberty from settlements
Removed Liberty drops from robots

Humanoids
Reduced Stalker damage to 14% (was 20%)
Fixed an issue with stalker body part damage multiplier not working (Will make them easier to kill now)

Loot
Increased the time it takes for loot to despawn from 10 minutes to 15 minutes - Items will stay on the ground longer after being dropped or spawning.

It's the final call for the Independence Event! As a reminder the event ends in less than 24 hours! Be sure to redeem your Liberty Souvenir items for the special event rewards before the event ends as you will not be able to redeem them once the event has ended!

We hope you enjoyed the event and be sure to keep an eye out for the next in game event!

Greetings Survivors!

Due to popular demand, the Independence Event has been extended until July 10th! We hope you enjoy the additional time for the event and look forward to seeing everyone show off your new skins!

Greetings Survivors!

Today's hotfix consists of 2 small changes to the Independence Day Event. Upon review of the data from the first 2 days of the event, the Liberty Souvenir item has not been spawning as often as was intended for the event leading to players being unable to earn enough of the item to be redeemed for the event rewards. We have changed the drop rate from a 5% chance to the following: Regular AI - 10% chance, Exploder AI(orange ai) - 15% chance, Stalker AI (blue ai) - 30% chance, Super AI (Green AI) - 100% chance. The other change that was made is to the despawn timer for AI that have been killed. Previously the timer was set to 90 seconds. We have increased the time to loot AI to 120 seconds to help players have enough time to loot groups of ai after killing them.

We hope these changes will make the event more enjoyable and look forward to your feedback.

For the latest information and to connect with our team, join our discord at https://discord.gg/xera.