Work continues on several upcoming features this week as the developers dig into livestock, character customization, new Power Grid functionality, and more. We’ve also got new sandbag barricades, underground tunnel work, optimizations, and a healthy batch of fixes.

Livestock takes shape

Work on livestock continues with more details on how players will get and care for animals. A vendor at the Ranch can now sell baby animals, with leads used to bring them home. A new Hitch & Trough provides food and water, including fluid IO and a storage adaptor for some potential automation.

Animals build trust with players over time, while mothers protect their calves and fully trusting bulls can even defend their owners. A first pass of genetics is also underway, with genes impacting how much cows sell for and traits being set up for sheep. This is all still on a separate development branch and isn't available on normal staging yet.

Animal fencing

Alongside livestock comes a new set of fences and gates for keeping your animals where they’re supposed to be. Work this week focused on snapping, placement, collisions, destruction effects, and crafting costs.

The fencing work has now been merged into the livestock branch, bringing the two systems together as development continues.

Character customization

Character customization continues to take shape following the player model overhaul earlier this year. Players can now select hair and skin colors, while the customization screen has received new icons, improved lighting, camera fixes, and general polish.

There’s also been some optimization work on the character preview and thumbnails. Like livestock, this is still being worked on separately from main.

Power Grid expands

The Player Maintained Monument system looks to be spreading to more monuments. A Power Grid-powered loot room is now functional at Ferry Terminal, with additional rooms being worked on at Airfield, and Harbors.

Exactly what you'll need to unlock these rooms isn't clear yet, but it looks like keeping the grid powered will eventually provide benefits at more locations around the map.

New sandbag barricades

Several new Sandbag Barricade variants are in development, including a larger Sandbag Pillbox. The new versions are being set up to unlock alongside the existing Sandbag Barricade blueprint.

Work this week focused on placement, damage, repair, collisions, destruction effects, and making the barricades easier to deploy.

Underground tunnel expansion

More variety is coming to the underground train network with several randomized rooms in development. Four small rooms have received wiring passes, with another new room also taking shape.

There’s additional work going into the small underground train station and boiler room as the developers continue expanding and polishing the tunnel network.

Weapon refreshes

Several weapons and attachments are getting visual touch-ups. Work continues on refreshed versions of the 8x Scope, Holosight, and Handmade Sight, along with world model work for the M92 and new Nailgun viewmodel animations.

Performance and optimizations

Several optimizations are in the works this week. A fix for an infinite navmesh raycast loop that could stall servers has merged, along with improvements to server occlusion processing and Mac graphics jobs.

There’s also work on LODs, deployable placement guides, rendering, and AI pathfinding. The livestock work in particular has prompted some sizable improvements to AI processing.

Other stuff

Honey Bandage added to the Primitive and Hardcore tech trees
Direction-based vehicle armor changes merged
Player boats can have their steering wheel code lock changed
Fixed bullets and arrows sometimes passing through Oil Rig scientists or registering headshots when hitting their legs
Heavy Plate Helmet and Diving Mask overlays no longer disappear when wounded or dead
Heavy Plate Helmet audio muffling fixed while wounded
Cooking Workbench refrigeration issue fixed
Smart Alarm placement improved
Locomotive bell can now be heard by other players
HQM collectable model size reduced
Bee Grenade viewmodel fixes
Floating bandages fixed
Third-person bow arrow fixes
Paintball Gun color fix
Item pickup notice fixes
Item description text alignment cleaned up
Monument Blocker AI fixes
Missing navmesh fixed in Underwater Labs and parts of the Underground Tunnels
Crate spawning inside the wall of the small easy cave fixed
Glass AR motion blur fix
Oil Rig lighting fixes
Campfire fast-cooking fix
Various deployment and animation fixes
Jungle FPS drop mitigation being tested
Lighthouse reverb fix
Holstered weapon positioning adjusted around chest armor
New October achievements in the works
Early work continues on the Scrap King building skin
Early development on a new Biofuel Generator