Steam News 14 February 20263mo ago

Patch v13.45

Major simulation change If an animal is in a location that contains food, it will no longer leave that location until all food is gone (except plankton, which requires swimming through). This makes it a lot easier to ke…

Update log

Full The Sapling update

The complete published notes, normalized for clean reading and source attribution.

Extracted changes

0 fixes6 additions0 changes4 removals

Performance
Gameplay
Events

removedMajor simulation changeIf an animal is in a location that contains food, it will no longer leave that location until all food is gone (except plankton, which requires swimming through). This makes it a lot easier to keep various animals alive, addressing a recurring complaint... but also leads to crowded environment (and, following that, possibly low FPS) more quickly.

addedVarious changes to make the simulation easier to understandSet the maximum mutation rate to 35%, as higher mutations only cause a lot of small new subspecies that never gain enough traction to become full species

addedVarious changes to make the simulation easier to understandThe time jump view now shows mutation events, so you know evolution is happening even when there are no new species

addedVarious changes to make the simulation easier to understandFood types icons now have a tooltip, explaining what they are and how they work

addedVarious changes to make the simulation easier to understandAdded various tooltips to the animal editor

removedVarious changes to make the simulation easier to understandSessile animals no longer show potential (but unused) movement statistics, which was confusing to players (thanks UltraNeonGodPet, Slurp!)

Major simulation change

If an animal is in a location that contains food, it will no longer leave that location until all food is gone (except plankton, which requires swimming through). This makes it a lot easier to keep various animals alive, addressing a recurring complaint... but also leads to crowded environment (and, following that, possibly low FPS) more quickly.

Thanks Luka159, Generaldisblief, Wind_kaffee!

Various changes to make the simulation easier to understand

When placing down organisms, a minimalist version of the requirements panel is shown floating near your cursor
Took the 'will survive here' text out of the requirements panel
Set the maximum mutation rate to 35%, as higher mutations only cause a lot of small new subspecies that never gain enough traction to become full species
The time jump view now shows mutation events, so you know evolution is happening even when there are no new species
Food types icons now have a tooltip, explaining what they are and how they work
Added various tooltips to the animal editor
Redesign the underwater speed stats in the animal editor to be easier to understand at a glance
Sessile animals no longer show potential (but unused) movement statistics, which was confusing to players (thanks UltraNeonGodPet, Slurp!)

Animation fixes

Only show the egg laying animation when the animal is actually laying the egg, not already when it wants to
To prevent aquatic animals floating perfectly frozen sometimes, immediately start showing the aquatic idle animation when it's not playing any other

Fixes for terrain textures

Season changes no longer cause terrain to becomes a single color (thanks Cody_beaver!)
The planet editor no longer forgets to highlight continents after doing it once
In the planet editor, when editing seasons and THEN drawing more land, this new land is no longer incorrectly made part of previous continent

Misc

Lowered fungus speciation threshold (thanks, Jotbe83!)
Newly added animal models now get a random rotation, so they're not all facing the same way

I often forget to read comments below release notes, so if you have questions, suggestions or bug reports, feel free to reach out via the Steam forums or thesaplinggame@gmail.com.

Source

Steam News / 14 February 2026

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