This post will be rather short, since we had a very long one just last weekend and it's more of a follow-up update, so the focus will be on the new packing changes and the similarities with the previous version of it. We'll expand on other parts of the development later this week, as we promised, and answer the most pressing questions in a Q&A format in just a few days.


Packing is finally back in a new and slick packaging! We're happy to announce that you'll be able to freely move your base and walkers around your own tile and between them, something that truly has a nomadic spirit to it and allows to resettle on new territories or move into a better spot for convenience or just a picturesque view from your base.

Please take note that I emphasize the word move here because this is now the main focus of the packing feature in its current form, rather than storing bases or walkers for long periods of time, as it was before. Our goal with this update is to allow complete freedom of movement and settling on a different map. What isn't our goal is to make Hangars obsolete or make it an abusable mechanic for deploying forward operating bases or using it to store a small base at all times to quickly deploy to take advantage of an opportunistic situation with regard to PvE or harvesting as it was often used previously.

What it means in practice is that the packing will now have a timer until decay that will take 2 hours with the current balance, after which anything packed into that slot will start slowly taking decay damage, similarly to how it works without a Maintenance Chest. The full time to decay any packed base or a walker is 6 hours, on top of the first 2 that we call a Grace Period. We hope that this new mechanic will promote usage of the packing for moving and resettling, essentially, packing up your base and walkers, moving to another place, and unpacking as soon as possible not to take any decay damage.

In addition to this, another measure in vein will be the minimal time to pack and unpack structures and walkers, which is 2 minutes of packing and 20 minutes for unpacking. It means that before each piece of the packed base or a walker starts packing or unpacking, the Preparation Phase needs to finish before it actually starts. Another, maybe obvious, thing to point out is that our goal for the packing is to make it usable out of combat as much as possible, for that reason the Packing feature will work only when out of combat, but unlike before when it would instantly cancel packing as soon as someone is in a way or a rupu attacks and crosses the place of unpacking, the process will pause and give you 20 seconds to clear the area, at which point it will continue unpacking. If the area is not cleared in that time, the system will assume that it's a larger-scale attack and cancel the packing, both to prevent its use in combat as a FOB and to protect the base from attacks.

On that note, the Balang Walker is a real beats when it comes to Walker strength. It stayed Solid as it was previously, even thought it's not limited to a core as before and allows to pack regular bases. In addition to it, the Walker will have 50,000 HP to make sure your possessions are completely safe from the outside interference or an accidental Okkam attack. The only thing to worry about in that case will be the decay timer, but we hope that 8 total hours that a base or your walkers can be packed for will be enough to safely move and unpack in any conditions or even if you have to suddenly leave for some time and come back in a few hours. Your packed structure might endure some damage and will require repairs, but it will maintain structural integrity and you can be sure that no one will steal your things.

When it comes to how much you can pack, we decided to go a bit above our original estimation and allow 300 base pieces per Balang Walker. Keep in mind that it's the only limiting factor for packing, but also worth mentioning that Hangar pieces count as 4 walls and will take 4 seconds to unpack, as opposed to a single wall or other structure that will take a second and only actual base pieces like foundations, walls, roofs, and so on will count in this limit. In addition, the Balang Walker will allow to pack up to 3 Walkers of any size, except, of course, another Balang. That means that most players should be able to easily pack their entire base together with the garage and the Walkers inside, as we estimated that players who own more than 3 Walkers in addition to a Balang are likely player at least with a couple of friends, who each can drive their own Balang and pack as much into their mobile homes.

Those Values are in no way final and will definitely be tweaked and balanced as we keep observing the gameplay on servers and collecting your feedback, so please let us know what you think after you try it yourself. We specifically ask you to try it yourselves first before passing any judgement, as words often don't describe the actual experience well enough to imagine how it is to actually use. With that, hopefully, there shouldn't be any issues, as Balang Walker Schematics will drop from both the new Sleeping Giants and Canyons to allow its use from early gameplay soon after Cradle.

In other aspects, the Balang Walker stayed pretty much the same, as we felt that it was a fair balance compared to other walkers, with regard to its Armor type and Health. It means that the Walker will not have a usable deck that allows placing anything on it and neither does it have a storage or a gear container. What it will have is a Water container to allow respawning on it with the first tier unlocked by default to allow immedaite respawning on it as soon as you fill it with a bit of clean water, so that once you pack your base and Walkers to move away, you have a safe walker to respawn on from the get go, without the need to additionally unlock the water container. Of course, if you want to increase the capacity of the water container or unlock the ability to use Torque in case of the Wing failure or just to run away from danger when the most precious things are packed inside, you're free to do so by upgrading them manually.



As promised, in addition to Balang Walker with the ability to pack bases and other Walkers, we're also adding packing and moving functionality to Maintenance Chests of all tiers. As opposed to the Walker, packing in Maintenance Chests is limited to individual structures like crafting stations, chests, humidifiers, and so on.

Essentially, this is a way for you to move your structures within your base, on your walker, or even between the two. It should work seamlessly with the rig system and hardpoints, so you can easily move a structure from your base to any of the acceptable points on any of your walkers or vice versa. The distance at which you can pack and unpack is limited to 30 meters, which, similar to all other values mentioned, is a subject to change and we'll likely be tweaking it once we get the first feedback. As most Maintenance Chests are usually near the entrance to a base, it should be more than enough to move the structures between your base and your walkers or just neatly place down the chests that someone threw around the base like they're garbage bins. Basically, it's the dream of any home renovator.

Using the same system as the packing on the Balang Walker, Maintenance Chests will have decay period assigned to them, which, in this case is much shorter and takes only minutes. The reason for this is, essentially, the same - we designed this feature to be used for moving and not storing. I can just say that from our tests, none of us needed more than was given by the chests to move some chests around or exchange a weapon on a Walker.



As we talked previously, we want to continue developing this feature moving forward. We've already established that we'll keep iterating over what's here now and will be tweaking the numbers and improving the mechanics using your feedback. What else is on the horizon for packing then?

Well, we already mentioned that we're considering a special walker that would do the opposite of Balang and could actually be a mobile fort used for combat. In that case, it will mot likely be similar to what Balang was originally. As in, having a special core part as its main foundation to create a sort of a mobile War Tower that you can deploy around your base for protection, next to a PvE camp to use as a respawn and gearing outpost when taking on an especially vicious camp or a monster, or even in PvP to get the benefits of a base on the go and attack others having a safe place to fall back to in the heat of combat. It could be especially useful once we start getting into more detail on the PvP Update and start testing out mechanics and ideas.

To be clear, this is just a rough idea at this moment and more of an example of what we could consider for the future of packing in general. Another, much more tangible thing, would be the second tier of a packing walker - the Silur. This one is most likely a done deal at this point, as it would be a direct improvement over Balang, same as it was previously, just with more packing pieces, more Walker packers, and maybe some more interesting deviations from the original design.

For now, we'll stop here with speculations about where the packing feature could go. Let us know what you think about those ideas and send us your own. We read Discord and other platforms on a daily basis and will surely read your discussions about anything related to packing, so even if you don't send an official feedback report, we'll take note and take it into account when making decisions on future planning.

That's it for today! Keep an eye out for the next big post later this week and we'll most likely do some kind of a smaller update too, but will mainly depend on how the current update will go and what we'll plan for the upcoming weeks.

You can find the changelog for the today's update below. Thanks for reading and supporting us through this (quiet turbulent) season.


Full Changelog:

• Added Balang Walker able to pack a large base and 3 Walkers.
  
• Added packing to all Maintenance Chests to move structures easily.
  
• Overhauled Packing System entirely. Packing now only possibly with special Packing Walkers, there is a decay timer that pushes you to use packing for moving instead of storing, completely remade the UI, made it more clear, overhauled packing restrictions to only count walls. Basically, read the post.
  
• Fixed dead mobs like Okkam dealing damage after being dead if you ram into them.
  
• Fixed Furnace not crafting quality items. All recipes should now craft quality.
  
• Fixed Sap and Sulfur Pebbles not being the same Rarity as the original foliage.
  
• Fixed Automatons not dropping their ammo inventory on destruction.
  
• Fixed Automatons sometimes getting destroyed when netted.
  
• Buffed Automatons from 500 to 900HP at default Rarity.
  
• Made Automatons use Soft Armor instead of none.
  
• Fixed Xbox/Controller navigation in some menus and containers.
  
• Fixed all placement issues on Buffalo Walker.
  
• Fixed some collisions on Trading Station. Made it easier to pass in some places, patched up holes where there was no collision.
  
• Fixed Purification Station evaporating Water (won't do it again).
  
• Made furniture light sources not craft items.
  
• Improved furniture light sources UI to be more clear, added names and tooltips.
  
• Added Wooden Slab as an optional source for fueling furniture light sources.
  
• Increased burning time of items in furniture light sources. Basically, improved light sources.
  
• Fixed Humidifier not having proper name and tooltip when opening the screen. Lots of UI improvements this patch.
  
• Made containers always show the correct name of the structure when renaming them.
  
• Disabled renaming containers inside them. Made it more consistent to rename through building menu.
  
• Removed Rarity from Flots. That was confusing.
  
• Removed Flots from some Rupu loot tables. They were giving way too much.
  
• Changed Buffalo and Falco T3 legs from Reinforced to Medium.
  
• Fixed Rupu Throne rotation, position, and available poses.
  
• Maybe fixed Rupu getting stuck in Ash Region Fortress camp on Sleeping Giants (please report if it happens again).
  
• Fixed Papak, Okkam, and Nurr sometimes respawning instantly after death.
  
• Fixed Contaminated and Toxic Water not evaporating when dropped like clean one.
  
• Made Insect Bomb damage not stack the timer, but work the same as grappling hook snapping by extending the timer.
  
• Lowered Insect Bomb damage from 0.9 to 0.5 per tick.
  
• Fixed Gunpod Stinger not having Bone and Chitin ammo allowed like normal Stinger.
  
• Fixed Gunpod and Gunpod Stinger sounds not playing when in use.
  
• Added new icons for Gunpod Stinger to make it different from regular Stinger.

First, we’ve got a few things this week that should improve balance and quality of life on Sleeping Giants. In general, we believe that the new map is about where we want it to be, but we’ll continue to monitor how you play and continue to address all issues if they arise. Specifically, we know there are quite a few rarity bugs that still persist and we’re working on cleaning all of them up as soon as possible.

Slightly bad news first - we decided to delay Balang Walker packing feature until Monday, just to ensure that it goes as well as possible. Packing is inherently a very dangerous feature, with huge potential for abuse, and even critical truly game-breaking bugs. Historically, pretty much every duping bug and most of the critical issues that forced us to revert came from packing, so we're extra cautious when bringing it back.

Changelog for today's patch:

- Increased durability for all ceramic tier equipment and later tools.
- Removed deviation from Ballista shooting.
- Excluded items from daily maintenance if their total is less than 10 a day.
- Decreased Ballista reload time from 7s to 4s.
- Implemented new Sulfur harvesting mechanic. Sulfur rocks in lakes can now be demolished with Scattershot, then turning into harvestable pebbles on the ground.
- Fixed Soil Excavator not being placeable on Event Tiles. It can now be placed to mine Clay or other resources.



This change to maintenance should improve the situation a little bit, but we don’t consider it the final answer with respect to Maintenance in the least. With the Packing Update on Monday, we’ll also be adding back the ability to pack and unpack items in the Maintenance Chest to move them around your base. We'll also continue to improve Maintenance as a feature using your feedback.

Overall, packing will work quite a bit differently than before. We’ve teased it a little bit, but in order to help you plan we thought we’d go into a bit more detail before patching it in. The Balang will not have a core as it did before, rather it will be able to pack any base on the ground, including hangar pieces and any other structures, and will be able to pack even quite large-sized bases. The piece limit will include only walls and other base pieces, rather than all of the stations and other structures in your base.

Packing will take a similar amount of time as previous iterations, but unpacking will incur a significant time cost on top in a form of a set minimal unpacking time. We want this mechanic to be used to move and resettle, not to have mobile FOBs, creating sky bases or performing other exploits, and the time to unpack is added to limit such abuse cases. In addition, we don’t intend for this feature to be used to keep a giant protected base packed into a walker hidden inside another base. For that reason, when something is packed, after a grace period that should be long enough to move and resettle, it will cause your entire base to begin taking decay damage. To increase the ease of moving all of your belongings at once, we’ll be including walker packers integrated into a Balang Walker as well, but they will also be subject to the decay penalty. Accidental canceling of packing has also been removed - it will simply pause during damage - which will limit the potential abuse of zeroing someone’s base because they can’t unpack it.

These are a lot of significant core changes so we’ll be monitoring how it works in real gameplay, and adjust and iterate whenever necessary.



For a while now, but definitely since the start of S5, we’ve seen the prevalence of the “Crack and Drop” meta.

See a community member’s video here to see what we mean:



Fire arrows originally were an attempt to address this, but we were never completely satisfied with this solution, which is why you’ve seen a lot of changes in the way walkers are employed, trying to promote and emphasize the gunboat gameplay.

With the upcoming PvP Update, we’ll have some more changes should significantly improve the way walker fights play out. As we said in a previous devblog, we want to encourage crew member gameplay. Having the driver more actively involved was something we wanted to achieve, but we also want there to be something to be gained by having some clan members on your walker in a fight, rather than having all walkers operated by a solo driver, while maintaining that option as well, just less effective. Our goal here is to encourage team play, while keeping the promise of the solo experience.

First, we’ll be removing the current combat timer and replacing it with a new system, which encourages continuing to defend your disabled (but not zeroed) walker and return it to service if your defense is successful in the end. Rather than the whole walker being held up by a combat time and kept there by continuous damage, individual parts that are broken will create a cooldown for that specific part, which can be replaced after the timer has passed. In addition, combat repairing will be possible, though less effective than repairing out of combat, while also not stacked based on the number of people repairing.

To address the “crack and drop” meta directly, damaging the walker in combat will no longer be the method for opening the walker storage. Rather than requiring fire arrows, you will have an equippable item that does hull damage while used on an enemy's walker deck, which can also be interrupted by getting damaged.

During the battle itself, we will be implementing some new mechanics that should make the fight a bit more dynamic and interesting. At certain hull HP thresholds, certain walker “subsystems” will become non-functional, requiring some coordination and teamplay by the captain and the crew members to restore the functionality. Some of the options for these components will be things like active Torque use, control of remote weapons and/or automatons, automatic reloading, water container leaking and used for respawning, and so on. Captains will be able to restore these systems themselves without letting off the steering levers, but a team will gain certain benefits from having a crew member assisting in the task of repairs.

There are a lot more details and pieces and parts, like adding more control groups to weapons that will change the way both PvP and PvE walker fighting works, and we’ll likely expand on this later, since we’re continuing to actively design new and improved mechanics for this update, but this devblog is probably already going to set the mark for most words yet, so that’s all we'll say for now. Let us know what you think and keep suggestions coming!



I think it’s very important to address upfront the constant debate among the community about the focus of the game. We know that some people will see the upcoming patch focusing on PvP as a pivot “back to PvP” or “giving up” on the PvE vision that was promised as the main focus of S5, but we assure you that it's not at all the case.

We’re still very much excited about and committed to the PvE components of the game. Our next map, which will be a completely overhauled Ancient City map, will be almost entirely PvE-focused experience. We aren’t ready to tease too much about it, but we hope that it will be a unique experience that hasn’t existed in Last Oasis so far in any form, and bring with it some new mechanics and features. In addition, we’re interested to know which other types of PvE gameplay loops you would be interested in seeing, so we plan to conduct a poll soon regarding these matters.

However, fundamentally, Last Oasis is a Sandbox PvPvE game. The conflict part is an incredibly important one and while we know some players don't want to engage in PvP at all, most of the community is interested in taking part in PvP at least some of the time. So creating a healthy PvP environment is also an important part of the future of Last Oasis. In the past, the sands were a bit too lawless, and we hope our planned changes will help create a healthier environment for competition.

Okay, let’s get into what we’re planning for this update.




With the PvP update, territory control will be receiving a major overhaul. Rather than proxies claiming entire maps and providing resources, they will claim only a portion of a map and provide a “Sphere of Influence” (SOI). This SOI grants all bases of the owning clan inside of it an ‘offline raid protection’ (similar to Trade Stations before) for the majority of the day, while everything outside of this SOI on that PvP map will be still unprotected.

The proxy itself will always be invulnerable, unless another clan decides to declare a war on it, which will provide some vulnerability time during which the proxy can be damaged and destroyed, which will, naturally, remove the offline raid protection for all contained structures in its zone.

Wars will be declared by blind bidding against a specific proxy at any Trade Station, operated by the Flotilla. The defenders will then have an opportunity to counter-bid to attempt to stop the attack.

There are a lot more details to it, of course, especially technical ones, which will likely evolve as we work through the development of this feature, but we’ll leave it more basic for now just to take feedback and hear your responses to this idea.



On PvP maps, we will be adding POIs that are King of the Hill PvP events. Every hour, these POIs will become contestable, and the winning clan will receive some sort of a bonus from a list of possible ones while on that map for the remainder of the hour.

Examples include things like increased harvesting rate, schematic drop rate, crafting speed, decreased water consumption rate, and so on.

In addition, some of the options will actually be debuffs for the other residents of the same map, so that enemy clans and other players are encouraged to go and attempt to counter-raid the POIs, rather than simply turtling on their own tile and collecting all of the bonuses.

Lastly, holding all of the POIs on a map will provide a set bonus, which right now we’re considering to be the previous Proxy Walker mechanic of having an automatic generation of a percentage of resources harvested on that map by all the players.

Let us know what types of bonuses you’d like to see as a player and what set bonuses would encourage you to engage in such a mechanic, and we’ll put them on the list for consideration.



We will be introducing another new mechanic, which will allow you to permanently learn the ability to craft schematics across the game, which will be different from the current Rupu Shrine feature.

On PvP maps, POIs will spawn that will be some kinds of walker wreckages or archaeological dig sites, containing bits of knowledge. These sites will allow you to input a piece of equipment, which harvests the knowledge over the course of several days, limited to 1 machine per clan at any given time, before they’re fully used and respawn somewhere else. These POIs will be designed for players to build bases around them and protect the POIs from other clans and players, which, of course, will be targets for counter-raids.

The bits of knowledge will be non-physical, similar to stat points, and will be generated over a long cycle, with most being produced at the end. So, how this is intended to play out, is that you can take the knowledge out of the machine frequently, to be very safe, but reset the recycle and therefore have slower progression, or you can take risk and let the cycle complete, leaving yourself vulnerable to enemy attacks, but gaining much more knowledge. By making them non-physical we hope to avoid any strong pressure to constantly depot them into PvE maps for safe-keeping and focus on learning and fighting aspect of the feature.

Once you have these knowledge shards (and a copy of the schematic), you will go to Event Maps, which will have POIs, similar to previous iterations, like the Ancient Crafting Site, the small fabricator, and such, which allow you to unlock the ability to permanently craft that schematic. Unlike previous iterations, when you unlock something, all members of the clan will learn how to craft that schematic to avoid having a single clan member who learns all the progression. In addition, due to their non-physical nature, you won’t lose them all if you take a risk, and we hope that will be a healthier state than in previous seasons.

Crafting schematics will only require a single input - a new resource called Drafting Paper, which will drop from all PvE encounters, and will be available from other sources as well.

Overall, we believe that this will go a long way towards resolving many of the issues with the schematics system, while still preserving the purpose of the feature. Again, there are a lot more details, but this will be a devblog by itself when we have all of them pinned down, so we’ll end it here for now. However, we are interested in your specific feedback, like whether you think all tech should be learnable or high-end things should be crafted using schematics only, or whether you think one clan should be able to learn everything or what is learned should be limited either by balance or hard-locking parts of the tech tree depending on the decisions, so you can branch and create a specific set of knowledge.




That was a pretty long post, so I’ll keep it short now. I want to reiterate that we are sharing all these details in advance so that we can receive your feedback and iterate on our designs before completing their implementation. Nothing we've described is set in stone, and we’re interested in hearing both from PvP and PvE players about these mechanics. There is a good chance we’ll find that one of the discussed features isn’t something that moves the needle for some of you, or that we find a way to introduce the same or a similar mechanic as discussed to suit the PvE-side of the game without disrupting its ability to be a fun mechanic for PvP players.

It’s likely that this devblog will create a million questions, so expect a follow-up next week with a Q&A that covers any and all major areas that you have questions about or just discuss on any of our platforms, and that adds more details that I didn’t have room for in this post.

We're continuing to iterate on the new Sleeping Giants map with your help. Please keep sending your feedback and bug reports, they're really helping us get the new content to the best shape possible. In addition to that, we're testing ourselves, focusing on specific features to get the feeling for what needs to be done to improve the new map and all the content that comes with it, as well as actively using statistics and looking at how you play the game in real time, as we noticed long ago that often real experience is different from the written feedback after the fact.



Our plan right now is to continue improving the content that we released, while working on the new PvP Update that's aimed at players who prefer hardcore battles against other Nomads out there. The main idea is to make permanent PvP tiles an actualy important part of gameplay and the in-game World as a whole. Meaning that PvP tiles will be much more desirable for settling on them to gain special something that will be worth the risk of encountering other (often hostile) players. Our goal with this update is to finally make PvP and, especially, permanent PvP tiles a part of the main gameplay loop, which will significantly incentivize staying on them and actively engaging in PvP, while maintaining the ability to play as a PvE-only player through the use of economy and Trade Stations in particular (which we're looking into improving and revitalizing as a part of this update and Season 5 as a whole).

In other important news, the next map is on its way as planned. It will be developed at the same time as the PvP Update, since the majority of work on the map will require Game Design, while the PvP Update will be heavily dependent on new features and mechanics that require code once they're designed. Same as the previous map releases, the next map will be completely different in its purpose and gameplay than in the previous seasons, so expect big twists and entirely new experiences when it finally comes out!



Another small topic that was a point of discussion before Sleeping Giants released was if it should have PvE tiles at all. As we discussed already on Discord (btw, join it if you haven't, we often discuss the game and specific features there, and drop exclusive news and sneak peeks), we want to first see how the new map performs with both PvP and PvE and will make a decision whether to keep PvE tiles once Base and Walker Packing is out to allow anyone who settled on tiles that might be burnt to easily move their belongings to another tile. That doesn't mean that we made a decision yet, though. The process of observing the gameplay on both types of the tiles is still ongoing and we'll announce the final decision only after the Packing feature is out.

Update: Since there was a wave of confusion about removal of PvE tiles, I'll just say that it was a big discussion on Discord about not spawning PvE Sleeping Giants maps, so we had to address it and discuss internally. We still released those tiles to have a proper test and see the results first. So far, we don't see any reasons to remove PvE tiles, as they're populated and we see players on them enjoying themselves every day (including myself). We'll announce the final decision after a bit more observation, but as I said, we don't see any reason for removing any PvE tiles from the game, so it's extremely unlikely that we'll go that route, especially with a heavy focus on PvE this season.


Now, finally, to the changelog:

• Fixed Hoist not allowing liquid items to repair new Walkers.
  
• Fixed most cases of Falco Walker shaking and glitching.
  
• Added proper loot for Okkam. Had way too low rewards for such a beast.
  
• Fixed Ceramic Darts not being allowed in Ammo Box.
  
• Significantly lowered Lobber damage vs Hard armor.
  
• Slightly lowered Lobber damage vs Reinforced armor.
  
• Slightly increased War Okkam health.
  
• Increased Okkam collision damage vs Walkers.
  
• Improved War Okkam Rupu Platform (Howdah) visuals and gameplay.
  
• Slightly decreased War Okkam attack damage vs Walkers.
  
• Added new tier of Rupu Rok ammo with high damage. Don't get hit!
  
• Made Fortified Rupu Rokkers use new tier of Rupu Rok ammo.
  
• Fixed Rupu sometimes getting stuck inside meshes in camps.
  
• Reduced random deviation for Flint Orb ammo when shooting.
  
• Made fire range of Rupu Lobber the same as the camp aggro range.
  
• Fixed a bunch of outdated icons for new structures and items.
  
• Possibly fixed Ceramic Nails crafting (please test, as they do work for some, so we're at a loss wtf is happening).

A thing to try if Ceramic Nails still don't work for you is to try building a Lathe yourself, not use one built by someone else. Please let us know if that makes them work for you if the fix itself failed.

That's it for today! We'll continue iterating on the new content and keep an eye out for any changes needed for the old one. Your feedback and bug reports speed up this process by a lot, even if you just discuss them on Discord or Steam forums. We're always listening (that sounded creepy, but you get the point).

Keep those reports coming!

As we've discussed, we expect to spend the next days hotfixing Sleeping Giants, doing improvements and fixing up any bugs, as well as implementing packing via the Balang Walker and addressing issues with base maintenance.

Something that didn't make it into this hotfix which will also come soon is an improvement to Falco handling that should help against its jittering and many more balance changes that will be added in the next update.

- Changed Mollusk and Stiletto Wing Recipes to allow to be crafted on Canyons
- Fixed Swampwood Galoshes not working properly.
- Improved lava/insect throwing bombs.
- Buffed sawblade harvesting of wood and bone
- Increase sawblade torque container interaction distance.
- Decreased Lobber fire radius and added some deviation.
- Hopefully fixed ceramic nails. Probably.

As mentioned in the update post on Friday, we expect the next few patches to focus on improving the experience on Sleeping Giants. This first hotfix addresses some of the key issues that have been identified so far, but please keep sending your feedback so we can get the SG to the most stable state as soon as possible. The primary focus of this specific patch is fixing usability of some of the new features and also exposing the new content to private server owners.

This coming week we'll be patching in the Balang Walker with its new base and walker packing functionality. In addition, we hope to address a few other issues that were already reported for SG, like maintenance requirements becoming quite a bit more unwieldy.

- Fixed rarity Hangar pieces not working properly.
- Fixed wrong Curing Station name and description.
- Updated Rupu Plainstrider loot items.
- Rebalanced Forester and Brittle Bone Armor sets durability.
- Ceramic Dart removed from inventory crafting.
- Added Sap harvesting when using Sawblade.
- Set all SG content to allow spawning and freebuilding on private servers.
- Fixed various reported issues with Ceramic Nails
- Significantly buffed Chitin harvesting from Okkam.
- Rebalanced Gunpod building cost.
- Added Gunpod Stingers to loot tables.

The Sleeping Giants map is finally here!

This post will be mainly focusing on the Sleeping Giants itself, keeping the details of our plans for the future for later. Our main priority right now is to give as much attention to SG as possible first, since we’ll want to heavily focus on its iteration using your feedback and from playing on it ourselves.

An important question many will ask right away, since it came up multiple times already when the map was discussed is will it have both PvP and PvE versions on release. The answer is - for now, yes and then we’ll see. Instead of theorycrafting and imagining how the game will be played by doing polls and thinking about all the possible things it will lead to by having the map as either PvP-only or PvP and PvE, we decided to just try it first and see in practice how it plays out.

We’ll be monitoring the gameplay on both server types after release and gauge the sentiment towards the map on the different versions. Most likely, we'll still be making a poll afterwards to get an even clearer picture of the gameplay on both versions, but based on the real gameplay first, instead of pure imagination of how it will be played without trying it first at all. Considering that we’re also adding base packing back, it should be very easy to remove any tiles that we need with an easy way to move your belongings if it won’t be working out as well as we expect, but the main point of this experiment is to give both versions of the map a try and then see how they perform.




Now, when it comes to the main event of this update - Sleeping Giants map, we don’t want to spoil too much in the post and let you experience it on your own. Keeping that in mind, we won’t give out too many details, but will mention the biggest changes that are different from the previous version of the map that you know from older seasons.

Keeping with the idea of the season heavily promoting PvE content in the game that was lacking in the past, you can assume that everything in that regard changed on the map. Regular Okkams got an upgrade in terms of their behavior and how to fight them tactically and will roam the deserts, greeting newcomers into the unforgiving lands of the Sleeping Giants. On the other hand, War Okkam - a heavily fortified Rupu town on top of its back full of guns, will be roaming the center of the map in the ash wastes. While both of them might seem similar at a glance, each requires quite different approaches when it comes to defeating them. What those are is up to you to figure out.

All the camps are brand new, heavily featuring architecture of ancient civilizations as the base for their fortifications. Each will require a unique way of fighting it, some having more focus on using specific guns or ammo, some being more opened to melee combat, some forcing you to be quick by having Nurr Raiders circle you with explosive javelins, and some making you to take it slow not to get accidentally caught on fire by a supporting Rupu type.

Overall, each camp is a very unique experience that is designed to create a ton of fun by figuring out the approach for each of them and, also, creating a level of unpredictability that sometimes puts you in a random situation that requires quick thinking and experience.

The technology found on the map unlocks a whole new world of possibilities from a Curing Station to a Lathe, allowing you to craft completely new items and unlocking a whole new tier of equipment - Clay Tier. To name a few new things that will be found on the map - there are Medium Wooden Walls as well as Clay Walls, dozens of new weapons and armor pieces, new siege weapons and ammo types for them, which all have their own uses and designed ideal targets, new walker types, of course, as well as new rigs and walker parts for old walkers to upgrade them, new tiers of existing technology that has a brand new way of interacting with it like a new Windmill that generates torque passively without a Sandstorm like before, but also becomes an insanely fast generator when in an active Sandstorm, and tons of other new things that would take hours to mention them all in a post.

As already mentioned, we’ll be closely monitoring both your direct feedback and how you play on the map in the first place, and continue iterating on Sleeping Giants as we did with the previous maps. Once Balang Walker becomes available next week, we’ll also be able to burn some of the permanent maps, so if we do decide to stick to PvP-only Sleeping Giants, as suggested by some of you, that will absolutely be a possibility at that point if we see that it would make the gameplay much better. When it comes to Rarity Even Maps, Sleeping Giants will be added to the pool of available maps to be spawned, but we won’t be spawning more Event Maps at the same time just yet, not to divide the community between too many maps. That said, adding more than one Event Map at a time is a matter of a few minutes, so that’s certainly on the table as we keep monitoring the gameplay.

Now a bit about base packing, since it was brought up.



Balang and Silur Walkers will be the only walkers that can pack regular bases from now on. The biggest difference from the previous version, however, is that they will not be packed and unpacked into a special Base Foundation to build your base on afterwards, but instead, will allow to just pack any base into them, similar to how it worked with regular walkers before, with restrictions only by the size of the base, not anything inside or its artificial weight.

What it means is that when you finally get yourself a Balang Walker on SG, you’ll be able to just pack your base on Canyons and move it anywhere you want, as long as it’s not incredibly large, which would require to either make it smaller or cut it into pieces and use multiple walkers or multiple trips. From other details, the packing and unpacking will be taking quite a lot of time and, one of the main differences, it will not allow storing the base in the walker for long periods of time, as it will start decaying the packed base after a grace period, making it very important to unpack as soon as you can.

Another thing with the packing that’s new to the system is that, in addition to packing bases, you’ll be able to pack other Walkers into the same Balang Walker. That means that with a single Balang Walker, you’ll be able to move all your belongings to a new place and settle down for good. A small catch, however, is that the decaying mechanic applied to the packed bases, will be used for walkers as well, so our goal with the packing walkers is to provide an ability to move your bases and walkers to a new place you can call home, and not a way to store them in a safe walker hidden deep in your garage.

An additional idea we also have for a new walker, which we’ll discuss in more detail a bit later, is a walker that’s specifically designed to be packing war structures like forward operating bases. In those cases, we’ll actually allow you to store your FOBs in the walker for some time and make it possible to deploy them to use in combat as a designed mechanic, instead of an abused regular packing mechanic that’s not designed for it in the first place.

When it comes to Packing Walkers, however, they will start being available in the update after the one we're having today, aiming at the next week. Since it’s a quite large change in the mechanic to begin with, and packing bases is an extremely delicate matter, where we don’t want to leave any room for errors not to lose any of the player bases to bugs, we decided not to rush it and give it at least a few more day in the oven until it’s out. Once it’s available, you’ll be able to find Balang Walker on SG as a regular loot drop, while the other new walker we talked about is still in a design phase and will take some time to arrive, possibly together with the next map.



When it comes to our future updates, our first priority is, obviously, to make sure that Sleeping Giants is as stable as can be. We’ll be releasing updates iterating on the map and the game in general to make sure that it’s in the best shape possible. Releasing the Balang Walker and some other additions and mechanics next week is another thing we already mentioned we’ll be doing, so that's also one of our priorities for the moment.

After that, as we said a few times, we’ll be looking into releasing a special PvP Update, similar to how we did the Rarity Update - a separate patch, unrelated to any map or progression step in the game, but heavily overhauling existing mechanics and features. In that case, our main goal will be to make PvP maps an important part of the game, especially by rewarding staying on permanent PvP maps and engaging in PvP combat. We’re still in the design phase of that update, since we’ve been focusing on Sleeping Giants for quite some time, making it as fun as possible, but we’re getting close to overhauling that aspect of the game as well.

Other than that, we’ll be starting to design the next map in the progression, similarly to Sleeping Giants in terms of how different we want to make it compared to the previous experience. Our goal is not to just slightly tweak the parts of the game that are not yet out, but to reimagine the whole thing and create a fun and engaging experience on every map available through interesting mechanics, new systems, and many other improvements and complete overhauls.

That said, we’ll keep you informed on everything we’re working on as we continue to do so, so make sure to keep an eye out for next posts, detailing our future plans.

For now, check out some of the Relics infused with Nibiran Ore we're designing as a part of a new mechanic of gathering Ancient Relics and selling them to collectors, pushing the economy forward through exploration and travel.



The changelog might not seem that big, since the literal thousands of changes we did for the Sleeping Giants are put into a single line, but we’ve mentioned quite a lot of changes in the post already and we’d like for you to find all the new mechanics and features on your own. In addition to that, we’ve added some improvements and fixes for the existing mechanics since the last update, which you can read below.

• Added Sleeping Giants as a permanent map and a Rarity Event Map
  
• Added thousands of changes that come with adding a new map that would be impossible to write in a single post, so just play it yourself.

• Overhauled UI of Schematics learning in Shrines, added lock/unlock icons for learned tech in all the menus, added visible elements showing which tech can be learned.
  
• Added damage on walker hit for large animals like nurr, papak, and okkam, based on their size and speed.
  
• Made scattershot rotate before you can man it.
  
• Made Ballista a sniper-like weapon. Long reload time, but high damage.
  
• Fixed wrong materials for brittle bone pieces, fixing dyeing them.
  
• Set disassembling return rate to 100% for Soil Excavator to allow to reuse it for Clay.
  
• Slightly increased Mollusk reverse speed.
  
• Disabled foliage, POI, and Camp respawning on Event Tiles.
  
• A whole ton of other things we missed when reading through thousands of changes.

We hope you’ll have fun discovering the new map! Sands can be harsh there, so take care, Nomad!

With the previous update, the Winged Helmet shown in the last post got accidentally left out as available for crafting from our dev testing, which we, unfortunately, missed by testing with dev tools. Since it wasn't finished and had quite big issues due to that fact, we had to remove the item temporarily from the game in any capacity. Meaning, that any crafted item of this unfinished dev item was removed, especially because of how easy it was to obtain and even if we kept it and fixed the issues and crafting, the balance would've been completely ruined, as it's supposed to be an extremely rare special item that's dropping from bosses and the hardest camps. It will be back later this week together with Sleeping Giants with proper balance, wearing position, and drops.

To make this hotfix a little sweeter, we also increased HP of almost all siege weapons. Poor Scattershot that got nerfed last time got a buff from 700HP to 1050HP, Lobber from 750HP to just 850HP, as it's the new meta weapon, Ballista from 700HP to 1000HP, and so on. Similar to player weapons, though, rupu had their weapons buffed in terms of HP as well to make it a little more challenging, considering how powerful the new Lobber is.

• Fixed new Winged Helmet being craftable before finished and dropping from bosses on SG.
  
• Removed Winged Helmet as an item, since it had multiple bugs related to it due to not being finished yet.
  
• Increased HP of most of the siege weapons, both player and rupu-owned

Small hotfix to the update we did earlier this week, solving issues with the Scattershot firing, some tweaks to the delivery quest item, improved remote gun reloading, and so on. We'll continue making sure all the critical bugs are solved on time by releasing hotfixes, but also expect another large update (with SG!) to come sometime next week, as we announced.

- Fixed Scattershot firing on its own when manning/unmannning the walker.
- Fixed Delivery Package description saying it's required at a specific tile. You can deliver it to any Delivery Merchant.
- Fixed Steering Levers collision to allow walking between them again.
- Fixed Rupu Throwable Insect Bomb being visible in player crafting. Player insect bomb will be available with SG.
- Increased weapon idle timer while still showing aiming lines from 10 to 15 seconds of inactivity.
- Made reloading guns keep guns active, so you don't need to keep clicking LMB to keep the UI up.
- Increased Rangefinder health from 350 to 800.

First, we want to announce that Sleeping Giants will be releasing next week! We aren’t yet ready to confirm the specific date, but you’ll hear it as soon as we have it locked in. Sleeping Giants will be released in PvP and PvE variants, and SG rarity tiles will be added to the pool right away. We’re excited for everyone to experience the new and improved map and the brand new challenges that await you as well as all the new rewards like an improved version of a Maintenance Chest, new tier of a Windmill that allows passive generation as before in addition to a massive increase to active generation in sandstorms, or even just new special boots you can check out below. Today, the patch focuses mostly on balance and bug fixing.

Here is a pair of boots. What are they for? Fishing in toxic water.





We made several big changes to siege weapons in the last patch. Mostly, it was done through adding specific uses to each weapon and ammo type to, primarily, improve PvE, but, at the same time, also hoping to improve PvP. Unfortunately, we left scattershot a little bit too powerful, so that is receiving a nerf, reduced from 85% -> 12% against Medium Armor, and 30% -> 10% against Hard Armor. We’ve also tweaked a few more damage numbers and armor percentages here and there, which will be in the full patch notes. In addition, we have fixed all of the reported bugs associated with reloading and firing. This is a system we want to continue to improve - stuff like additional or expandable control groups in particular.

Overall, with respect to walker fighting, we’re not really happy with the “Crack and Drop” meta. The nerf to scattershot should increase walker fight times, which is one step in the direction that we’d like to see in PvP, but, ultimately, the current design encourages you to, primarily, target the hull and then take all the armor and water from an enemy’s walker, instantly ending the fight. This isn’t really a desirable outcome nor is it consistent with a lot of the other design principles that we have for S5. We're planning to address this issue even more in the near future. Also, we don’t want everyone to be forced to be a solo gunship to be competitive, so we’ll continue to look for ways to enhance “Crewmember” gameplay.



Rarity also received quite a few fixes since the last update, primarily to the bugs you reported. Rupu vines should be fixed to be always the rarity as the camp and the exploit allowing you to exceed the clan cap should also be fixed. The trade station quest that was giving 0 flot has been replaced with a new quest. The previous quest was built when all maps had trade stations so it didn’t work right out of the box. Instead, it’s been reworked into a new quest, which gives you a package to deliver to a traveling merchant, who will then give you a token to exchange for Flots at any Trade Station.

Overall, we’ll keep it short this week, but after Sleeping Giants is released we’ll have quite a few large devblogs, which will focus on our plans for improving gameplay, specifically schematics and PvP, going over the full survey with our take on solving the issues, and, likely, even more surveys, allowing you all to weigh in as we continue development of Season 5.

Here is also a new headgear that will start dropping with SG from bosses and other tough enemies as a special item. It will start our journey to implement a headgear for every equipment set in the game.




Full Changelog:

• Fixed mobs staying aggroed for too long if they received damage.
  
• Made mobs deaggro low priority targets (like unmanned walkers) much more quickly.
  
• Rebalanced repair hammers costs and added new icons and meshes to them.
  
• Rebalanced bolt and dart costs.
  
• Updated scroll rack mesh and icon.
  
• Stopped remote weapons shooting when the player manning them is downed.
  
• Fixed reloading continuing on unmanning.
  
• Fixed reloading issues with ammo conversion and ordering.
  
• Nerfed Scattershot as described in the post.
  
• Reduced Lobber damage to Hard from 75% to 60%.
  
• Increase Spinner Direction Deviation from 2->3.
  
• Increased Throwstone stack size in Thumper from 10->50.
  
• Increased Dart stack size in inventory to 100.
  
• Fixed rupu vine and fruit pulp not using camp quality.
  
• Increase ammo chest stack size 50->100.
  
• Fixed clan cap penalty sometimes not working correctly.
  
• Set correct icons for chitin and bone darts.
  
• Set correct icons for simple tools.
  
• Added proper ranged rupu friendly fire avoidance.
  
• Improved performance for gas and smoke clouds.
  
• Decreased flint orb weight from 5 to 1.5.
  
• Fixed a bunch more icon issues.
  
• Replaced delivery quest with delivering packages to merchants.
  
• Adjusted the strongbox merchant campfire visibility.
  
• Reduced rupu siege weapon durability from 5->3.
  
• Increased Flint Orb damage from 57->80.

A small hotfix for the big rarity patch that came earlier this week. Fixing an issue with rarity siege weapons not rotating properly up and down, and also a crash fix for an issue that sometimes would happen when new quests got generated after their timer.

As we mentioned when changing it in the first place, it was also our intention to bring the disassembling return of resources back to half the cost of a structure. That change was missed from the previous patch, as pointed out by some of you, so we're making it now. You'll be getting the original half the cost back as well as the schematic of a disassembled structure to be able to rebuild it quickly when needed.

- Fixed rarity siege weapons not rotating properly up and down.
- Fixed a crash related to quest regeneration at the Trade Station.
- Changed back the disassembling return to half the cost.