Update 3.5 is Live: Shadow Drop

Attention, all Caretakers! We have a surprise update for everyone, now live for all Early Access players. Update 3.5: Shadow Drop contains many fixes originally intended for Update 4. However, based on your community feedback, we at Channel37 decided not to wait. We’ve already implemented the fixes on our side, so why not just get them into your hands now? Shadow Drop is an unscheduled update that focuses on two things. First, we wish to make the game feel even better than before. Second, we added a bouquet of interesting additional content to make our world more worthy of return visits.

▶ Watch the Update 3.5: Shadow Drop trailer:

Update 3.5 Shadow Drop Highlights

• Major fixes + optimization to address broken persistence, unreliable cables, fabrication inconsistencies, progression blocks, and graphics lag in certain areas

• New Photo Drone for taking photos/screenshots, scouting areas, and seeing a new perspective on the drowned world

• PECO cartridges + playable minigames to challenge even the quickest robotic reflexes

• More hidden rooms, caves, vents, and secrets throughout familiar locations

• New expansions to the world such as a new storm region, support buoys, and higher-quality environmental details.

• New customization paints for weapons

You might be wondering what exactly “feels better” now? Well, Shadow Drop is a direct result of our community feedback. So this update addresses issues that are hitting players every day.

• Equipment, drones, cables, and world objects all behave more reliably now

• Fabrication and placement work more consistently

• Better graphics performance will be seen in asset intense environments

• Many frustrating edge-case bugs that block progression are now eliminated

In other words, there’s less fighting the systems and more playing the game.

▶ Full patch notes: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1783560/discussions/0/804596796626077049/ Feedback If you encounter an issue, the most useful and actionable reports include:

• What you were doing

• What you expected to happen

• What actually happened

• Steps to reproduce, if possible

• Screenshot/video, if you have one

Join our community and give us all your thoughts, comments, and feedback here: Discord:

https://discord.gg/channel37

One ask:

If you like the direction of the game, jump back in and play Shadow Drop. And if the game feels better to you now, that’s exactly why we shipped this update early.

As for Update 4, all the upcoming and exciting major content is still on schedule and still on track. We just didn’t want to sit on fixes for weeks that would improve your game right now.

Our small, hard-working team made a deep pass across persistence, cable simulation, fabrication, physics/buoyancy, AI navigation, vehicles, UI, and graphics performance. Their fixes stabilized world state reconstruction, attachment graphs, and post-load behavior.

We're only posting a quick summary of the key changes down below. However, the underlying work spans thousands of tracked changes across Perforce/Jira. We’ll spare you the full commit list.

New content & features

• A new craftable Camera Drone was added, including the ability to scout and capture screenshots.

• PECO terminals now supports cartridges and playable minigames.

• Pots and pans were added as new world items.

• New weapon paints were added for the bolt gun, including support for more weapon variants.

• New rooms, caves, vents, secrets, and hidden areas were added across multiple locations, including Refuel Outpost Gamma, Refuel Outpost Theta, Sanctuary Dock 37, Nomad Tower, Prometheus, Platform Omega, Helios Gemini, Quarantine Stack Amen, Quarantine Stack Chorus, Habitat Node 05-14.5, and Node 04.

• A new storm region was added to the northern sea.

• New Human Pods were added to the Hall of Humanity and the rocket