Greetings Survivors and Happy Holidays!

In this update we commence our Winter 2020 event! We’ve also made some adjustments to how supply drops spawn, these will now be triggered by completing radio tower events. There have also been some changes to the civilian bunker. Unlocking them will now require a Civilian Bunker Keycard which will be crafted from bunker USB data and a blank keycard. There have also been some various network optimizations carried out to help with server performance. The death icon when a group member is eliminated has been reworked and should be less obstructive.

Patch Notes

Radio Towers

Completing radio tower events will now call a random supply drop
Reduced max radio tower events to 2 (was 4)
Increased start delay / cooldown to 25 minutes (was 15 minutes)

Supply Drops

Random supply drops will no longer automatically be called (Completing radio towers is now required to trigger supply drops)

Throwables

Fixed an issue with molotovs bouncing sometimes

Drone

Fixed an issue with drones not showing group player tags

Items

Added Blank Keycard item - Can be found in civilian areas, military areas, and Helicopter Crashes
Added Civilian Bunker Security Data item - This replaces the Civilian Bunker Key from helicopter crashes
Replaced Civilian Bunker Key with Civilian Bunker Keycard
Updated Remington 870 weight to 3.2KG (was 100g)
Updated 12-Gauge Shells weight to 20g per bullet
Updated Remington 870 description
Updated G-17 description
Updated 9mm Rounds description
Updated .50 Rounds description
Updated ZSh-1 description
Updated 12-Gauge Shells description
Added MP5 description
Renamed M16 to M16A4
Added M16A4 description
Added Reindeer Bomber Hat item
Added Christmas Earmuffs item
Added Santa Bomber Hat item
Updated Santa Backpack model and thumbnail
Updated all previous Christmas item thumbnails
Updated candy cane model
Renamed Santa Backpack to Santa Rucksack
Fixed Potassium Iodide vendor sell values

Crafting

Added Civilian Bunker Keycard to crafting recipes - Level 7

Weapons

Fixed an issue with G36 muzzle flash playing at the wrong location
Fixed an issue causing the G36 to sometimes show 2 ammo clips after jumping from a helicopter

UI

Changed group death indicator
When a supply drop is opened it will now turn red on the map
Updated death text when you are eliminated by radiation
Fixed an issue with group markers not updating when death screen is showing
Fixed an issue with transfer quantities in trades and global inventory when game language is not English
Fixed an issue with text not showing on items when game language is changed
Fixed an issue with Honey Badger skin preview zoom being incorrect
Fixed an issue with FN Scar skin preview zoom being incorrect
Fixed an issue where crouch settings would not save when game language is not English
Fixed an issue with cosmetics menu showing rarity incorrectly when game language is not English
Fixed an issue where currency in trades would show incorrectly when game language is not English

Humanoid

Fixed an issue with collision on robots not being disabled when dead on the server

Audio

Increased radius of helicopter transporter audio

Network Optimizations

Various network and server optimizations have been carried out to help with server loads

Greetings Survivors!

We want to thank everyone for the tremendous amount of support and feedback provided during the recent Steam sale! To all of the new players joining us, welcome and we can’t wait to meet each of you in game! Over the sale our servers were filled to capacity and what a wonderful thing it was to see everyone enjoying the game, learning the game for the first time, and giving our team many great suggestions along the way. With the influx of new players, our community has grown to over 73,000 players and it’s an exciting time for sure.

As we continue throughout early access, many people may not have seen the changes that have been made to the development roadmap and we would like to take some time in this development blog to highlight some of the progress that has been made since the last time we posted an update on things. If you haven’t taken time, feel free to visit https://trello.com/b/yGBsrAZF/xera-survival-public-roadmap where we have listed a lot of the plans over the next 6 months.

As a team we’ve been focusing heavily on the art side of the game, throughout season 3 we started the rollout of our weapon animation pass - which has been a big polish added to the game. We’re also working on a lot of assets that will be going into the next map.

As we have shown on our Discord’s #art channel, we are working on new humanoid designs - which will also come with a rework of the AI mechanics. For example the exploding robot will be upgraded to a flame throwing robot - with gas tanks (weak points) which will explode instead. We will also be implementing weak points into the other humanoid designs.

Connor:
Hey Gamers,

I’ve spent the past few months reworking and creating custom weapon animations such as idle, firing, reloads and melee attacks for each weapon we have. We think they add such a massive improvement to the overall feel of the game and I hope you all have been enjoying them. In the future I’d love to do another pass on the animations and bring up the quality to a higher level, but as a character artist primarily I’m pretty proud of the work we have done on them so far! For now, I am working hard to bring a character customization system to you all so you can create your own survivor with a variety of options including changing your clothes and hairstyles, skin color, gender and more to be announced later!

Here’s a little behind the scenes look at my rigging and animation setup in maya:


Here’s some very early WIP character assets that show a tiny preview of what you will be able to customize your character with, and there is a lot more to come!


Work in progress xGen hair and bodies in maya:

Note: Base models will be wearing underwear, no full nudity is planned.

Mikhail:
Hello everyone, in the last few months I have been working on the new weapons that were recently added to Season 3, cosmetics for the recent and upcoming events as well as the newly designed humanoids.


Karan:
Hey everyone, this past month I've continued working on the new road system, this time on new street models, different junction types as well as on a big highway system. Also to complement this new road network, I've created new bridges. I've also been working on new base building props, which are mainly going to be part of the resource gathering/processing system.







Hello everyone! I hope you’ve been enjoying Season 3 and the changes we’ve been making to the current map. I’ve been working hard on researching and developing the brand new map for Season 4. This has been a long and challenging path for me and the team as we figure out our design pipeline and how this new map fits into the direction the game is heading, so we appreciate everyone's patience (It’ll all be worth it, trust me!)

The new map was designed outside of Unreal Engine in a program called World Creator. This allows us to make a larger, more realistic map with multiple biomes. This new map is 8km x 8km (64km squared) and features many interesting areas, from rocky mountains and alpine forests, to deep woods and a mysterious crater. I cannot wait for everyone to explore it! We’re also adding new foliage types to accompany the terrain.




We are very excited to begin working on our implementation of Base Building. We’ve always been driven by bringing new ideas to the survival genre, and we believe that our implementation of base building will be refreshing. A combination of modular and prefabricated designs will allow us to keep creative control and balancing aspects over the bases, while giving you the ability to focus on the gameplay elements bases will enable - such as resource generation and manufacturing. We also have considered how safe settlements will play a role alongside bases and the combination of both will be great for a sense of progression.

As mentioned in previous dev blogs, we plan to implement a “capture” period - which means you can essentially raid someone's base and keep the majority of the structure. Doing this will reduce the amount of work required to build a new base from scratch, and allow you to retake your old base once you gather enough fighting power. This will also enable more diverse raids and fights where multiple teams can be attempting to capture a base, and will need to defend it as more teams attempt to take it as well. Winner takes all!

We will have more information to share in future dev blogs in the new year - exciting times ahead!

The mission system which is planned for Season 3 will provide players with additional goals while adventuring the world. These will have various rewards, including currency, loot, skin crates and experience. We plan to have a set of seasonal missions which will take a bit longer to complete, and daily missions which will be quicker to complete.

The big bunker event will require a combination of gameplay elements to open and get through. We’re working on a Keycard system which will play a big part in the big bunker event. Opening the bunker will require all radio towers to be active and 2 players will be required to swipe a keycard at the same time in order to open the bunker. So there will be some degree of collaboration required to access the bunker.

The skin trade-up system has been something that has been suggested many times. There are a lot of common and rare skins that players have gathered throughout the seasons and some weren’t able to get an Epic or Legendary, so this will help clean up your skin inventory and grant access to some of those skins which were no longer accessible due to seasonal rotations of skins. More information will be available when we get closer to releasing this feature.

It’s that time of year again! Our Winter 2020 event is just around the corner, dates are still being assessed - and will be announced closer to the time. Similar to the previous Winter events there will be Christmas trees placed around the map which will spawn presents. Presents will have a random chance of giving a holiday gear, skin crate, normal loot, military loot and high-tiered loot. There’s also a chance of a grenade spawning - so watch out! Will you be naughty or nice?

Here’s a preview of 2 of the skins made by Mikhail that will be available in the Winter 2020 Skin Crate!



We hope that you have enjoyed reading about all of the exciting things that are coming soon 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!

Based on recent demand, we have launched 2 new Thai servers that are live now: Asia 1 and Asia 2 (PVE Only).

We will continue to monitor demand and deploy additional servers based on the utilization of the 2 servers launched tonight.

We are also aware that the country flag for these servers is displaying with the Korean flag and this will be changed with the next update.

Greetings Survivors!

There will be a brief downtime tonight at 11:20PM CST in order to deploy Hotfix 7.2.3.1. At this time the downtime should be minimal and will last for about 10 minutes at the most. This patch should fix the group system and player lists that were affected by the patch from earlier tonight.

Thank you for your understanding and for the latest information, feel free to connect with our team via discord at https://discord.gg/xera

In this update we have worked a lot on server-side optimization, we have implemented an experimental networking system that should help a lot with performance. We are still testing it, so there may be some hotfixes to fix any issues. We’ve also disabled player collision in safe settlements to prevent players blocking each other. There has also been some changes to the damage that radiation causes as well.

Edit: Player List/Grouping

We are aware there is an issue with the player list displaying different names from time to time. Our team is working on a solution and we should have the player list reflecting accurately with the next hotfix
Grouping at this time may only work when you are near the person
Update: We have pushed a potential fix for the player list and group system. Please continue to send us any reports of issues at support@xeragame.com

Character

Character collision will now be disabled in safe settlements to prevent players blocking others

Server

Fixed an issue with movement speed causing players to get kicked from the servers
Fixed an issue preventing disconnect from server from executing correctly
Optimized radiation emitters
Optimized player data collection
Implemented new network replication system to help improve server performance

Vehicles

Added limit to amount of vehicles that can be spawned in the world to 4

Radiation

Increased frequency of damage when above 200, 15s - 5s depending on amount of radiation absorbed
Increased amount of damage range from 3 - 10hp depending on amount of radiation absorbed

In this update our most notable feature is the addition of the Remington 870 - our first shotgun! We’ve also done some quality of life/bug fixes for the PVE servers. Our first pass of animations is now complete on all weapons and every gun now has its own set of reload & fire animations. We have improved the hit markers in first person - they will now show in a better position on the screen. We’ve also done some balancing changes to the reactor compounds, alongside some cooldown fixes so that events don’t start straight after another one has been completed. In this patch lens flares have been disabled as well, which should remove unnecessary screen clutter. Ammo pricing and minimum buy/sell quantities have been adjusted to be more in line with clip sizes of the respective weapons utilizing each type of ammo.


Implemented Remington 870 Shotgun
Moved hit markers to a new system in first person to show more accurate hit markers

Fixed an issue that reduced durability on armours on PVE mode
Fixed an issue preventing fall damage, hunger, thirst and radiation damage on PVE servers
Fixed an issue with /respawn command not working on PVE servers
Disabled player damaging vehicles on PVE servers
Fixed an issue allowing explosive damage to damage vehicles

Fixed typo on Canned Beets
Added 12-Gauge Shells

Added AK47 animations
Added SCAR-L/H animations
Added Honey Badger animations
Added G36 animations
Fixed floating magazines

Character will now un-aim when falling in first person

Disabled lens flares

Increased radiation output on inactive and active reactor events
Fixed an issue preventing global cooldown on events

Adjusted minimum buy and sell quantity for .45 acp and .50 ammo
Adjusted prices on .45 acp ammo and .50 ammo to be in line with their new quantity minimums/maximums
Added Remington 870 Shotgun to vendor
Added 12-Gauge Shells to vendor

Supply Drops now have a shotgun package that can spawn

Safes in Civilian Bunkers can now spawn a shotgun package

Added Shotguns and 12-Gauge ammo to Helicopter Crash Sites and Civilian Bunker Spawn Points

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.