It’s been a while since our last update but we are finally ready to present you A23, the “Electricity Update”!

This time, the list of changes is so massive that it would be very hard to present them here in a blogpost. But we will do our best to share the most important changes and new features!

The biggest change in this version is the introduction of the Electricity System! Establishing a power grid for your base is an important step toward increased efficiency, production, and security. Many new advanced structures (such as electric furnace, freezer or even psi field projector) require electricity to operate, which could be provided from various generators (such as steam, solar, fuel, and even bioreactors). We've ensured that this system is simple yet powerful, so we can use it as a foundation for a lot of new, reworked, and future content.



Many players asked us if we can implement an item repair mechanic. We've considered various options and implemented the tinker table—a new structure which allows you to combine two broken items into one repaired item and also restore some extra percent of durability based on the new Maintenance skill you can master.



We've added several new creatures, two new distinct biomes (swamps and volcanic area) and also expanded the map a bit. You can find the latest map here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1704305623


A few other important changes are new status effect icons above the affected characters and reworked hitboxes. This makes PvP fights much more interesting, especially during base raids or when fighting over oil or lithium deposits!

Starting with this version, you will be able to see when a particular server was wiped, making it easy to judge which server to join, but more importantly, the featured community servers will be displayed together with the official servers, giving them more exposure. If you've considered playing on CryoSmall (a community server with a limit on party size and strict moderation)—it's a good time to join and try it!



As always, there are dozens of new items (such as energy pills, items used in food canning, slime & insect meat which can be acquired from monsters, various canned food, duct tape, etc.), new structures (tinker table, electric furnace, psionic projector, several generators, freezer, water pump, energy storage, recharge station, etc.), new technology groups (electricity, cooking, canning, etc.), new and reworked quests, reworked character status effects (their effects are rebalanced and made much more clear now), and other new content.

Some of you might be excited to hear that the LP penalty has been removed. Now, even if your character dies you won’t lose accumulated LP. This should provide a smoother progression.

There are also dozens of small quality of life (QoL) improvements all throughout the game which should make your experience in the game much more enjoyable!



Overall, there are almost 200 major changes. You can find detailed patch notes on the Official Forums: http://forums.atomictorch.com/index.php?topic=1393.0

Finally, this version also includes three new languages: Polish, Turkish and Japanese. We’re looking forward to seeing even more people joining the game!

This update is very large and took a lot of time to finish—in fact, it's probably a bit too large, so in the future we would prefer to add smaller updates but deliver them more often (roughly every 1.5 months or so). Also, it's the first update which was tested in the experimental branch by our community—and it turned out to be a great success, as we were able to dramatically improve it thanks to everyone who has participated and provided their feedback!

Anyway, it is time to jump in and enjoy the game to the fullest! As always, official servers have been wiped for this update and are ready to offer you a new chance to compete in a fresh economy!

We are happy to announce that Electricity Update is going to be released on August 12! We will make a release announcement when the update happens, but for the time being, we wanted to give you a short preview.

This update is quite large and took much more time to finish—in fact, it's probably a bit too large so in the future we would prefer to make smaller updates but deliver them more often (roughly every 4-6 weeks). Also, it's the first update which was tested in Experimental branch by our community—and it was a great success as we were able to dramatically improve it thanks to everyone who has participated and provided their feedback!

So, what's new? We're introducing Electricity system! Establishing a power grid for your base is an important step toward increased efficiency, production, and security. Many new advanced structures (such as electric furnace and freezer) require electricity to operate, which could be provided from various generators (such as steam, solar, gasoline, and even a bioreactor!). We've ensured that this system is simple yet powerful so we can use it as a foundation for a lot of new, reworked, and future content.

Many players asked us if we can implement items repair mechanic. We've considered various options and implemented the Tinker table—a new structure which will allow you to combine two broken items into one repaired and also restore some extra percent of durability based on the new Maintenance skill you can master.

We've added several new creatures and two new biomes (swamps and volcanic) and expanded the map a bit. You can find the latest map here.

Recently, we've run a survey to determine the players' satisfaction with the game and gather feedback. Majority of players voted to make the game progression a bit faster and to get rid of LP loss on death. We've applied the required changes now! And we will listen to your feedback after the update is released to consider further changes.

Another important changes are status effect icons over the affected characters and reworked hitboxes. This makes PvP fights much more interesting, especially during base raids!

Overall, there are almost 200 major changes. You can find detailed patch notes on Official Forums

Starting with A23 version, featured community servers will be displayed together with the official servers, making them much more popular. If you've considered to play on CryoSmall (community server with a limit on the party size and strict moderation)—it's a good time to prepare for the wipe and A23 launch!

Anyway, just a few more days left! Stay tuned! When the update hits—we welcome you to join all the freshly started servers (server wipe) with a new economy for this A23 update!

Greetings, survivors!

While we are working on the next major update we thought it would be a good time to gather your opinion for the current version of the game. To do that we've prepared a survey that anyone can take. It is fairly short, so it should only take about 5 minutes to complete. Please try to give us your honest opinion so we can better focus on features and changes that you think are important. To take the survey - please follow this link. (The survey has now been concluded and link removed. Thank you to everyone who participated!)

We've also updated our roadmap so you can see our future plans here.

Also, we want to use this opportunity to let you know about a new community server planned to launch this Saturday (June 8th). It will provide a properly moderated experience for players who want to play the PvP either solo or as a small team. We're wholeheartedly supporting the community initiative and looking forward to the results of this experiment. Here is an announcement by the server's owner, @Buddaz:

CryoSmall is a community server project looking for feedback from interested players about the following: maximum team size, gather rate, LP gain, wipe times, and wipe frequency.
With this feedback I hope to have a server up and running this upcoming Saturday (June 8th).
In order for this community project to work as intended I will need help from you, the players, to make this a well balanced server and keep it fresh and exciting for everyone involved.
The goal of this project is to keep team sizes low so that all players are on an even playing field and prevent anyone, including server owners/moderators, the ability to gain an uneven advantage.
A maximum team size and a rule of no alliances will be strictly enforced.
CryoSmall will be the first CryoFall server built strictly by player input!
CryoSmall is located in the UK. The reason behind this location is so locations in the US and EU will all have similar ping. It seems like UK would be the best place to host the server in order to have the most impact for the playerbase.
Please join our unofficial community Discord to give your input: https://discord.gg/vEwHrdz

It is finally time for the A22 “PvE Update” to go live!

This update introduces the last remaining basic feature that we wanted to see in the game before we can start working on content updates again: a separate PvE game mode!

With this update online, all servers are now separated into PvP and PvE, allowing everyone to choose the type of gameplay they want to see. Either classical high stakes competitive PvP, or this new relaxed and creative PvE. Community server operators can also make this choice and launch their servers in either mode.

Obviously, even in PvE (player versus environment) game mode you can still expect challenges, not from players in this case, but from many different creatures inhabiting the world of CryoFall.

But let’s take a look at what is actually new in this update.

Introduction of separate PvE servers makes it possible for us to finally improve the balance for PvP servers based on many requests from our community and make it more rewarding for both: defending and attacking players. Some major changes include significantly increased bomb damage and unlocked chests (to prevent a complete base wipeout during a raid), but to counterbalance it certain features are made much cheaper, such as land claim upgrades or repair of different structures. We are also considering to introduce a so called "raiding window", which could potentially help prevent offline raiding and ensure that most engagements happen when players are actually online. However, given that this feature is highly experimental we are planning to run polls for each of the official servers first, where you—the players—will be able to decide whether you want to see it enabled and how. We don't want to force any such changes on you. If we see overwhelming support for this feature and there will be a reasonable consensus on the actual time for the raid window then we will enable it for a particular server. Community server owners are also free to configure the raiding hours as they wish or even disable the feature altogether.

If you have any feedback regarding these recent changes or if you just want to get involved in the community directly - please don’t hesitate to join our Discord server.

Another big addition is the support for Chinese languages, with Traditional and Simplified both available. We will also have separate servers available for Chinese regions! This should help us expand the number of active players in the community. We welcome everyone to join!



There are also some content additions such as next tier of land claim building, armored walls, hunter’s tools, new helmet with a lamp available very early in the game, large cistern to store liquids, new quests, couple of new decorations and more. While the content wasn’t our focus for this update we were still able to include a few additions which should make it more interesting. But the real content update will come with next A23 version, when we introduce the Electricity System and dozens of new structures, items and mechanics into the game! So stay tuned!

This update also features dozens if not hundreds of small improvements and additions such as removing ALL empty technology nodes to help and speed up the progression in the game, improved server browser with detailed server tags and their descriptions (official, featured, PvP, PvE, modded, etc.), improved chat and social features, improved resource contesting mechanics with active timer, many balancing changes to items, weapons and ammo, new recipes such as pharmaceutical chemicals in T4 and much, much more.



The Map was also slightly changed for this update, expanding the western tropical region a bit and adding a few small points of interest in the south. We decided not to go too far this time and instead focus on the map when new biomes (e.g. swamp, winter forest, and pragmium wasteland) will be ready in one of the following updates.

As always you can read our detailed list of changes for this version on the forums.

If you'd like to learn about differences between PvP and PvE game modes we have prepared this handy guide here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1741743411
Anyway, what are you waiting for—join the game now and enjoy a new start in a fresh economy! As always all official servers are restarted (wiped) for this update to make it possible for everyone to compete under the same rules and challenge each other!

We are happy to announce that our first major update is going to be released on the 16th of May! As always, we will provide a proper announcement and detailed patch notes when the update actually happens, but for the time being we wanted to give you a short preview.

The update will introduce a new major game mode—“PvE” (player versus environment) allowing us—on official servers—and all community server owners to choose which game mode they prefer to run. This should finally offer clear distinction between competitive PvP servers and more creative and peaceful PvE servers.

Introduction of separate PvE servers makes it possible for us to finally improve the balance for PvP servers based on many requests from our players and make it more rewarding for defending and attacking players. Some major changes include increased bomb damage and unlocked chests (to prevent a complete base wipeout during a raid), but to counter balance it certain features are made much cheaper, such as land claim upgrades or repair of different structures. We are also introducing a so-called raiding window, which should mitigate offline raiding and ensure that most engagements happen when players are actually online. We are going to set the initial raiding hours to 7-10PM (local time) (edited, see the UPD info below) and introduce any further changes based on direct player feedback. With this raiding window in place, you won’t have to worry about your base being raided while you are at work or sleeping. Community server owners are also free to configure the raiding hours as they wish or even disable the feature altogether. Please note that the raiding window applies only to bases protection (making them invincible during non-raiding hours) and doesn't restrict PvP damage so you could still fight other players with weapons.

This is still partially experimental, so we will carefully listen to your feedback and make all the necessary balancing changes as needed. We have only one goal—to make CryoFall as fun as it can be!

There will obviously be a few content additions, but this update is quite light in terms of content as it is purely focuses on PvE servers, some new features and a multitude of QoL improvements and balancing changes needed for the future.

Anyway, just a few more days left! Stay tuned! When the update hits—we welcome you to join all the freshly started servers (server wipe) with a new economy for this A22 update!

UPD. Update on the raiding window feature. Given that this feature is highly experimental, we've deiced to not enable this feature initially. We are planning to run polls for each of the official servers first, where you—the players—will be able to decide whether you want to see it enabled and how. We don't want to force any such changes on you. If we see overwhelming support for this feature and there will be a reasonable consensus on the actual time for the raid window then we will enable it for a particular server. Community server owners are also free to configure the raiding hours as they wish or even disable the feature altogether.

As promised the patch is ready! And even more so, what was originally planned as a simple patch to address several rare issues and introduce some balancing changes have grown into a full blown update.

With A21 "Survivors Update" we are introducing several major improvements to the game, the biggest of which being the new "Newbie protection" mechanic as was requested by a lot of players. When you first start the game you are still learning the basics and it isn't exactly productive if you are being killed by more advanced players or players who have previous experience in the game. And this is exactly where this new protection comes into play. You will be completely safe from losing any of your items or learning points (LP) for the first four hours of the game! With that you can finish all basic quests without rushing and finish your first base to be completely secure.



Second biggest feature is the new damage tracking. The usual respawn menu has now been expanded to include a list of all recent damage sources — such as creatures, players, harmful items and status effect (including names of players who have damaged you, even if you were offline). Now now you can finally take revenge on that bad guy who killed you while you were offline :)

Next major change is the introduction of light and visibility system at night. Now all health bars and nicknames will be hidden by default if the player or a creature is in complete darkness. You will be able to see them either only when you approach or if you are holding a light source. In fact, whether or not you see something now entirely depends on the light radius of any light source, including the light from other characters and world objects!

Another improvement have been made to deposit claiming and contesting mechanic. Notification about the newly spawned Oil/Li deposit and its coordinates will be displayed to players who have Xenogeology tech unlocked. And now they cannot be claimed earlier than 30 minutes after spawning, so all of the interested players can now contest this resource.

Many improvements have been made to PvP balance. Biggest change being - any PvP damage have been reduced by half, which means that any fights between players will be twice as long now. It doesn't affect weapon or armor balance in any way, as this change is applied at the last moment after all other calculations. Oh, and also there is no friendly fire now, so you don't have to worry about damaging your friends in a heated fight.



And the last and our favorite change - character status effects (such as bleeding or radiation) now include a detailed tooltip with all of their properties and effects. Just hover your mouse over any of the effects and you will see all of their detailed stats.

On the modding side of things - server rates have now exposed in a separate config file with 16 rates available for customization. You can quickly change things like LP gain rate, increase item drops, reduce player to player damage to zero or even increase the damage from creatures and make it really tough for the players!

Obviously, this is just scratching the surface and the actual patch notes include almost a hundred other changes in total. As always, you can find a detailed list of changes on the forums: http://forums.atomictorch.com/index.php?topic=1273.0

Oh, and you've probably noticed in the title for this update - CryoFall now has Steam Trading Cards!

Please let us know what you think about this update and give the game another try if you haven't played recently! Oh, and no wipe this time! We were able to make all of these changes compatible with the existing saves :)

The next big update together with the wipe is still planned for May and it will finally introduce PvE game mode on separate servers and many other changes and new content! Stay tuned! There's a lot to come in the following months. We are here for the long haul to make CryoFall the best game it can be! :)

First of all, we want to thank everyone who purchased the game and we are very happy with how well the game was received. Most reviews are incredibly positive!

We're also aware that for some players the initial experience in the game can be a bit frustrating with unrestricted PvP. There are very generous people who share their items and experience with new players, but there are also some bad apples, who want nothing else, but to grief other people. This is certainly something that we want to address as soon as we can. So we're currently working on a patch to provide some protection for the new players who just joined the server. At least to provide enough time for new players to finish the first quests, learn the basics of the game and build a small house. Though this protection will be optional so you will be able to turn it off if you’d rather jump straight into action.

In addition to this simple newbie protection, we are also working on a much bigger update that will introduce completely separate PvE servers. PvE servers will allow peaceful cohabitation on the same server without worrying about being killed or raided. This game mode will be intended for people who just want to enjoy the game, learn technology and explore the world of CryoFall. Naturally, you will still be able to fight hostile creatures, but you won’t have to worry about other players attacking you (without your explicit consent, at least). We are also very excited to see what other types of player interaction it could bring. We are envisioning large cities with trading hubs and many other types of creative interactions! :)

Naturally, we're also working on PvP rebalancing—for release we had to nerf the bombs quite a bit to allow a bit more peaceful gameplay, but when we will have separate PvE server we will be able to revert this change. Though, unrestricted raiding has its own drawbacks, so we are considering many other balancing changes and especially some new ideas to address offline raiding as we are very much unhappy with the idea in its entirety. PvP should be more brutal, but also much more fair—giving an opportunity for you to defend yourself and a fair challenge and great reward for an attacker.

We also need to communicate one important aspect of the Early Access—the concept of server wipes as it was a surprise to a number of people. So, here is the explanation that we owe you.
The practice of regular server wipes is pretty normal for multiplayer survival games in early access and wipes happen regularly in those games to give players a new challenge, level the playing field as well as test new features that are introduced in each update. And we are also following the same practice with our wipes. Naturally, we don’t want to randomly wipe the servers without prior notice and a reason. In fact, we only wipe servers when we release a new major update. This is also required due to compatibility reasons. The game is still in a very active stage of development, so many changes that we introduce break compatibility across version, leaving us no choice but to wipe the servers. But then again, based on our experience during our year of public alpha testing most people actually look forward to those wipes as it gives them an opportunity to start anew, in a fresh economy and with new features after each update! So, we will keep this practice for the time being, at least for the next several months.

Naturally, if you are running a private or community server—it is up to you whether you want to wipe and when. We have no say in this :)
So, if you’d like to play without ever restarting—you can either run your custom server or join one of the available community servers that are dedicated towards long term play.
Also, you will always be able to run older versions of the game and keep playing on any version you’d like.

And that’s it for the time being! As stated above—we are incredibly happy with the response we received from your guys, honestly, we cannot overstate how well the game was received and we can only say that we will do our absolute best to give you the best experience we can! We will keep working hard to make CryoFall even better game! :)