Updates 7-18-2026

In addition to today's updates I wanted to post a quick message to players using translations: I know a lot of the game's text has been changing recently on the English side, which is probably making more and more English pop up in your game. I made some changes to how the scripts for extracting the game text work in order to fix some annoying errors, but now those scripts aren't compatible with the existing translations, so it'll take be a little bit longer to get them ready for the translators. Thanks for your patience!

On to the updates:

• Fixed a bug that was causing dormant zombies to freeze in the cold and not wake up. Eventually in winter a lot of zombies will become dormant and get buried under the snow. It'll be nice, until something grabs your ankle and suddenly it isn't.

• Updated the aim sidebar UI to more clearly explain that the bars or percentages when you aim a ranged weapon do not represent an accurate prediction of the future, they are your character's best guess about how on-target your shot is. This figure is arrived at by taking the maximum and minimum dispersion that the shot may wind up with and averaging them. Depending on your precision and vision/manipulation levels, that may be more or less trustworthy, as these control the amount and favorability of the RNG applied when you take the shot.

• Cutting trees takes up to 2 hours longer (base time) but this new penalty is reduced for every point of ecology you have. I based this one on personal experience from the time I tried to cut down a tree. It's hard as hell! If you're finding it too onerous, come back when you have a couple points of ecology or look for a chainsaw.

• Successfully cutting a tree down teaches a bit of ecology, up to rank 3. This is not a good way to learn ecology at all, go forage or something if you need to do that.

• Shoveling rubble now takes 12 minutes, or 6 if you have a level 3 shovel or one of the burrowing mutations. Previously it took like 1 or 2 minutes and considering this is enough rubble to pin a human being to the ground I think that was a bit silly.

• Added a lot of new items to dumpsites. This was mostly to thin out the preponderance of hugely useful items it was common to find in good condition there. those things are still there, they're just a bit less common.

• There's more trash along roads now, and a much greater variety of it.

• Long sticks now infrequently appear in several more places, including sometimes just lying around in fields or forests. This should help the people who aren't aware you need to smash young trees, and they may come in handy if you're early game and need to make a quick spear or something.

• Added some conditions under which it is not possible to use a vibrator and some amusing messages regarding these.

  • It is impossible if the item is filthy, unless you have the verminous trait.

  • It is impossible if your morale is at or below -25, or if you have the numb trait, at or below 0.

  • It is impossible if you are on fire, unless you have the pyromaniac trait.

• Fields are much less empty. The chance for a map extra to appear in a field tile is now 25%, and the distribution of these specials has been adjusted such that you should start seeing some things that have been a bit too rare for the last few months.

• Added an easter egg to the lone grave map extra. If you're unaware, these Easter egg graves only appear <1% of the time, and you'll know them if you recognize a movie or game quote on the sign. This new one is a nod to Courier 6 from New Vegas. In the hole you'll find a TLG approximation of the starting loot from that game, though not all the stupid DLC items.

• Added a new map extra to fields which places a small amount of clutter, including boulders, stumps, mudpuddles, trees, and some other things. This map extra can infrequently have a little ditch or depression in it which adds some Z level variety to the world. Some of the sides are sloped so you can get in and out of there.

• Zombie technicians no longer carry full toolboxes of stuff, as zombies don't hold things in their hands. Instead they usually have a tool or two on their person.

• Magnetic/ferrous zombies will sometimes have a tool or two stuck to or through their person.

• Added the goedendag. This is a medieval weapon statistically similar to the war hammer but heavier and not quite as good at bashing. The main point in its favor is that it can be assembled from a spike, a pipe fitting, and a long wooden post without the aid of any forging tools. You can use a lathe, but regular woodcarving tools work too. A long wooden post can be crafted from a wooden beam which is crafted from a log. The recipe for the goedendag is in the regular medieval weapon book and you need 3 fabrication to learn it.

• Fixed a minor mapgen issue with one of the little depressions that can show up in fields now.

• Fixed the kcal values for scraps of meat. There's an annoying code issue to blame for this, and for once it is not my fault.

• @Caba da Muleste da Paçoca fixed battery costs for the inflatable dragon decoration, so now it's usable again.

• @aattss submitted a fix to weariness and activity that was at least partly caused by me overlooking an important variable when adding the explosive activity level. This was what was causing some of you to sometimes see messages about weariness increasing or decreasing despite the level staying the same.

• @Penwise submitted a code fix for fire tiles rotating in NeoDays and in the process fixed an issue I had been tearing my hair out over with the other tilesets. looks_like now functions for fields so you won't be seeing that weird pink @ representing a tileset error for those, and fields in general will stop improperly rotating.