Palworld went into full release in July after more than two years of early access, and it's going pretty well: A massive surge in concurrent players on Steam is slowly settling back down to Earth, but more than a month after that 1.0 launch it's still putting up numbers that haven't been seen since the early days of that early access rollout.

Work on the game continues and there's more to come, but Pocketpair's publishing and communications head John "Bucky" Buckley recently warned that players should maybe temper their expectations about what's next.

Buckley apparently set the bar higher than intended yesterday when he celebrated Palworld's "incredible" 1.0 launch by retweeting an image of a "Palworld v1.1 brainstorming session," adding, "time to get back to the grind!"

He also invited suggestions, and received more than 2,000 responses, some of them—like more storage slots—manageable, and others, like cross-server PvP or being able to play as pals, less so. Eventually, he was forced to pump the brakes on the whole thing.

"Shot myself in the foot here, 1.7k comments later, but things like 'add a new continent', 'add 20 more levels' and similarly massive undertakings are not really what we want to do with v1.1," Buckley wrote in a more recent message. "Open to ideas but, we’re not planning to spend a year making a massive update for 1.1."

Naturally, that didn't stop people from continuing to make unwieldy suggestions. Buckley made a trooper's effort to answer a lot of them: In response to a request for a "variant system" for pals, he said it wouldn't be difficult, "just exceptionally time consuming. A variant of 200+ pals would take a considerably long time to do. Realistically, a year or more unless we hyper focus it. Unless you don’t do it by hand and automate it somehow but…"

Replying to another user who asked why the process would be so time-consuming, Buckley wrote, "Because we would want to do it ourselves by hand rather than just automating it." (Pocketpair has been quite outspoken in its opposition to the use of generative AI in game development.)

Eventually, though—as it always does—it came to this:

Deeply relatable. There's no word on when Palworld 1.1 will be out at this point, or what will be in it, but Buckley also recently suggested that more collaborations are on the way, so at least you've got that to look forward to.

The crowning achievement of a game is no longer player count or Metacritic score, it's actually the number of collabs it can squeeze into its lifecycle—soon every game will collab with each other to make one giant game. I can see it coming.

Although that may not be the case for Palworld, even with its current collabs it won't just let any old IP work with the critters-with-guns survival game.

"If it really doesn’t make sense then obviously we would never go ahead with it," the head of publishing and communications, John 'Bucky' Buckley, recently revealed in a social media post (via GamesRadar). "You guys simply do not realize the sheer number of collabs we've rejected or scrapped for that reason."

All I can say to that is good—collabs for the sake of collabs suck. I'd much rather see games perfect and polish their own artistic vision than fill in the gaps with someone else's ideas. But even if there are going to be collabs the very least a game can do is take this same approach that Palworld seemingly stands by, with it being far more restrictive with what it lets in. Not everyone can be a Fortnite.

Some of the best collaborations Palworld has are those that slot into place almost seamlessly. Terraria is a good example of such with its creatures and items, like the legendary Meowmere, already looking like they could be found on the Palpagos Islands.

"I think the Terraria collab in Palworld was pretty great," Bucky adds. "Completely understand some people would prefer a more lore-first approach but we've been very open about our fun-first approach since day one!"

Even Palworld's UltraKill collab manages to make sense thanks to all the weapons which are already in the game. Armaments like the Marksman Revolver don't seem so unseemly when players have already had access to the makeshift shotgun or laser rifle in the game. So clearly whatever Pocketpair has on its checklist for collabs is working so far.

Terraria has a passionate and wide-spread modding community—and the jewel in its crown for many years was Calamity, a mod that was on a scope of an expansion pack, adding new bosses, weapons, and so on to the survival crafter. It's existed for 10 years, but it'll now be shutting down due to some heavy allegations levelled at the mod's currently absentee owner.

In an announcement currently posted to the mod's Discord server, the development team writes: "Hey, everybody. We've been having a lot of internal discussion, and after much debate, we've come to announce a very difficult decision: We will unfortunately be ceasing all development of Calamity."

The announcement goes on to state: "We’re sure most of you are aware of the troubled past of Calamity's development. At this point, many of us have felt personally betrayed time and time again after being promised something better that never ended up coming. We’re just tired at this point, and almost all passion we had for the mod has been soured, with many of us having chosen to leave as a consequence.

"Most of us want to simply move on and would be far happier working on our own projects that aren’t and won’t be tied to something with what we feel is an irrecoverably tainted reputation."

The tainted reputation in question includes allegations that Ozzatron, who was leading development over the mod, was heavily involved with—and permissive of—a NSFW server that knowingly included minors. Ozzatron took over the mod's development after Fabisol, its prior leader, was accused of similar grooming behaviour in 2022.

I won't go into every sordid detail (and this is certainly not the first controversy that has spawned from this development team), however, you can see a collection of evidence here, which lays out a grim pattern of misconduct—notably, when the server's existence leaked around 2020, those involved are accused of instating an 18+ rule without removing the underaged users who were already present within, even allegedly reinviting those minors who had left in a panic.

As a result, many who produced assets for the mod have requested their contributions be removed: "the lack of anybody to work on the mod, combined with the staggering amount of these we’ve received since, makes removing and replacing every single one functionally impossible. Ceasing development is frankly the closest thing we can do to fulfilling everybody’s requests."

Ozzatron themselves appears to be completely AWOL, as a follow-up message from yesterday reads: "Ozz has been totally uncommunicative for more than a day now about owed bounties for labor and what he intends to do with the several thousand in saved Patreon money.

"We have not been compensated for our labor, and due to this, we have strong reason to believe Ozzatron is currently combative with us and has no intention of compensating us for our work."

It's been close to three years since we saw the announcement teaser for Light No Fire, the next game from No Man's Sky developer Hello Games. Studio founder Sean Murray spoke to PC Gamer last week in conjunction with No Man's Sky's 10th anniversary, and I naturally had to ask if we might see more of Light No Fire before the end of the year.

Turns out, we almost got to see more of Light No Fire a couple of years ago at Summer Game Fest 2024, but the circumstances surrounding that first brief teaser changed Murray's mind.

"I did have a plan, and I thought, we'll tease it with 90 seconds, and then we'll show it again at [SGF], probably, and I had a much bigger thing that I wanted to show about the game to really explain what the game was," Murray said. "Because I don't think we necessarily have shown the vision or the ambition of the game, but I thought this will be a cool tease, and then we'll show some more."

The reason we didn't get more, somewhat ironically, is that everyone liked what they saw. Liked it a little too much, maybe.

"The reality is, it was incredibly popular," Murray said. "We just shot up like the Steam wish list charts. There's, like, 20 million views on that tease. We're the number two game on the [Steam] wishlist.

"All of that, and given our past, made us feel like, okay, we don't need to say anything more right now. And our attitude in general is to avoid saying anything to the press or outwardly unless we really, really need to, and sort of let the game do the talking."

While he won't show it to us yet, Murray told me he'd played Light No Fire earlier that day.

"What I'm looking at on screen is way, way beyond what any normal studio would have and not have shown more of it to the rest of the world," he said. "We're lucky from that point of view. We can kind of just keep [it] to ourselves, keep working on what we're enjoying, and not have to spend our time marketing and hyping and showing the game to people."

As for my original question, whether or not we might see some more of Light No Fire before the end of the year… well, the answer probably won't surprise you.

"I've learned the very, very hard way to not talk about anything ahead of time," Murray said. "And our attitude in general is to avoid saying anything to the press or outwardly unless we really, really need to."

It's hard to believe, travelers, but No Man's Sky has turned 10 years old. As part of the sprawling space sandbox's double-digit anniversary, Sean Murray took some time to talk to PC Gamer about No Man's Sky's decade of development, as well as the future of earth-sized multiplayer fantasy game Light No Fire. It was announced in December of 2023, but we haven't heard much about it since.

Looking back over the sheer number of free features that have been added to No Man's Sky over the years since it launched, I asked Murray if he anticipates that Light No Fire will be similar to No Man's Sky—in terms of how it was released as a sandbox with a core experience but had lots of major features added post-launch, many of them based on player requests.

"I think about this a lot," Murray said. "When we had been working on No Man's Sky and it had come out, and we were talking about what we were going to do next, one thing that rang true across the team was that they were saying 'What I really enjoy about No Man's Sky is that I can think of ideas, and they generally fit.' Especially if they are sci-fi related. So many sci-fi things can fit in the No Man's Sky universe, and it's this really broad canvas, and you can bring your imagination to it."

The team wanted the same sort of canvas, though based in fantasy instead of science-fiction, for their next game. "Something that is ambitious enough and broad enough that lots of ideas make sense there."

Murray mentioned a post-launch update, 2025's Voyagers, which added large multi-crew spaceships to No Man's Sky.

"That started as something on Light No Fire, where we were making ships that you could have as a crew and [use in] multiplayer, but they are their own physics world, and they can travel across oceans because we've got these huge oceans on Light No Fire," Murray said.

"And so we were like, 'Oh, well, that could work with No Man's Sky actually, and so we started working on the sort of spaceships that were buildable and that multiple crew could get inside of."

"So to answer your question, yeah absolutely," he said. "We feel that [Light No Fire is] a game that will fit with that way of making games, where you can think of a lot of ideas, and they would make sense, and we can feed off the community.

"Whether we'll be lucky enough to get to work on it for 10 years after launch, I don't know, but I'd like to," Murray said. "I've worked on it for seven years now, and I'm still really enjoying it."

Smartly Dressed Games, developer of the wildly popular free-to-play zombie survival sim Unturned, has released the game's source code for non-commercial use.

"Unturned's source code and project files are now freely available!" the developers wrote in a Steam post. "Whether you have a new feature or total conversion in mind, the sky's the limit."

The source code is available via GitHub. In an accompanying FAQ, Smartly Dressed Games explained that the reason behind the release is to further support the community's creative efforts.

"Unturned's greatest strength is our passionate community," the studio wrote. "Releasing the source files allows you and other players to further expand upon the game as you see fit, building a lasting legacy for the game regardless of the changes we make or how many years pass."

There are some conditions for players and modders who want to use the source code. In the FAQ, Smartly Dressed Games stressed that uses for the source code "must be strictly non-commercial" and that "players must be able to play and access all features and content of your mod for free." Some elements of code have also been removed from the game because Smartly Dressed Games doesn't have the rights to redistribute it, such as code relating to anti-cheat systems and third-party pathfinding programs.

The developers also note that the source code release does not mean that Unturned itself is open source, as the non-commercial license does not meet the Open Source Initiative's definition of the term. It is something that Smartly Dressed Games would like to do in the future. "Once we finish another game and are hopefully able to re-acquire certain rights, we'd like to re-license the U3 SDK under the MIT License."

Unturned was one of the early products of the post-Minecraft/DayZ survival sim craze. Built by Nelson Sexton when he was still a teenager, it was released into Steam early access in 2014, hitting 1.0 three years later.

Nine years on, and although it's long past its peak, Unturned is still going strong, attracting thousands of players every day. In April, Smartly Dressed Games released a huge update that overhauled the game's California map. Developed over six years, the update increased the size of the map sixfold, added over 100 quests and significantly expanded Unturned's endgame.

It's been a big week for Project Zomboid, the wildly successful zombie survival sim that, like a doomsday prepper holed up in a fortified basement, simply refuses to leave Steam early access. Its first major build update since 2021 coincided with a slight price increase for The Indie Stone's undead phenomenon, but this didn't stop the game from setting a new record for concurrent players on Steam.

As detailed on the Project Zomboid blog, build 42.20 brings an extensive overhaul to the game's setting of Knox County. For starters, seven of its towns have been completely reworked with new art that gives each settlement its own distinct architectural style, completely unique buildings and houses, and improved landscaping between the buildings.

In addition, the surface area of the map has been doubled, bringing the total number of tiles to 35,000. This map expansion brings with it multiple new and overhauled locations to explore, including a boy scout camp, an "entirely new" prison, and everybody's favourite spooky locale, an abandoned orphanage.

My favourite stat of all is that the build adds "400 procedural basements". There's no specific reason for that—I just like the idea of needing to procedurally generate a basement. Not all of Project Zomboid's basements are subject to algorithmic whims, however. There are also 75 unique basements that you may stumble upon during your adventures.

Alongside the changes to the map, build 42 expands Project Zomboid at a mechanical level. It introduces new animals like cows and chickens, while also making changes to the hunting and trapping system, opening up new opportunities for farming and wilderness survival. The update also brings an improved stealth system, fishing refinements, and the ability to drag corpses.

It's a significant update, and The Indie Stone has increased the price of Project Zomboid to reflect that. Prior to Build 42, Project Zomboid cost $20 (£16.75), but that's now been raised to $25 (£22.50), which is a substantial hike. But that didn't stop the game from reaching a new all-time player concurrent on Steam, with nearly 79,552 players flocking to Steam to check out the update in the early hours of Friday.

With build 42 now out, The Indie Stone's attention will presumably turn to the next planned update, which will herald the long-anticipated return of NPC survivors to Knox County. Given the average length of time between more recent Project Zomboid builds, I wouldn't expect to see this surface for a few years yet.

As a child of the '90s-era pocket monster craze, I had what I suspect historians will call Monster-Taming Madness. A not-so-terrible, but sort of annoying affliction that meant I always had a Tamagotchi in my pocket, a handful of Pokémon cards, and the entire Spice Girls discography on standby for summoning creatures from discs in Monster Rancher.

To say I was obsessed is putting it mildly, but in all that time I spent collecting little guys and preparing them to duke it out, I never once considered the obvious: What if I gave one of these guys a gun?

When it launched in early access, that's what Palworld was known as: Pokémon with guns. It's not an entirely unfair description of the survival crafting, creature-collecting adventure, and two years ago, I would've agreed with it. It certainly looks like a case of copying someone's homework, though that's not a good distillation of the Palworld 1.0 we have today.

Palworld has come a long way since early access, with the bones of a satisfying, iterative creature collector all here. I just wish I jived with more of the survival bits, and that Palworld embraced the things that make it stand apart from Pokémon outside of hokey ultra-violence satire.

The Pokémon in the room

Let's go ahead and get it out of the way—yes, Palworld's trainers, pal spheres, and even some monster designs are all similar to Pokémon. And yes, that's part of the appeal. It's also one of the least interesting influences when you start digging into the meat of Palworld's systems.

Comparisons to Ark or Conan Exiles feel more apt with its minion-like system for catching pals and deploying them to do base-keeping chores back home. In Ark, dinosaurs toddle about your base completing grindy survival crafting tasks, while thralls in Conan Exiles serve a similar purpose.

Palworld's pals work like the dinosaurs and thralls, but the execution is leagues better. Organizing your workforce is immediately satisfying in a way the others aren't, because you don't have to fight with it. I catch a pal, check its skills, and drop it at a crafting station to get started. There's no overly obtuse taming mechanic, and no need to engage with messy stat calculus. Even when I didn't have a clear grasp of all the nuances, my army of cute critters got their chores done without much fuss.

Not every pal is willing to do every type of job, and I love how Palworld conveys their preferences through 'work suitability' levels—a clearly delineated set of specialty task icons highlighting a pal's capabilities. I was never left wondering why my new favorite early game pal, Pupperai, wasn't best in show for helping out around the base. It could only chop trees, pick berries, and move materials. Pupperai looks unemployable when the wild Tanzee nearby has those same skills, plus expertise in two additional task types.

My problem in Ark was always feeling so exhausted by the taming process that I would eventually just say 'fine, I'll do it myself,' before abandoning the idea. Pals will always try and help, at least a little, and the option for min-maxing is there through work suitability levels, partner skills, and passives.

Aesthetically displeasing

While I dig some of the new pal designs and scenery, Palworld's look and presentation occasionally sour me on the whole thing. There's just no way around how off-putting I find some of the game's tone and direction, which only grows worse as Palworld signals it's not very confident in its own artistic decisions. I get it, you aren't like the other games, you're different—the edgy older brother with a crude sense of humor.

I'm not just talking about Lovander giving me the bedroom eyes, either. Palworld has several little moments with weird tonal dissonance that feel inserted for virality or a need to prove it's different.

The first time I felt that way was right after crafting the Meat Cleaver, an early game tool you can use for butchering adorable critters like Lamball or Cattiva. So, being the monster that I am and unwilling to sacrifice Pupperai, I surveyed the starting area, judged all of its pals by their cuteness, and chose the one I liked the least as my first test subject. Sorry, Chikipi.

Violently butchering my pals didn't have much purpose, or at least not in the early game. In the time it took me to fetch a Chikipi from my Palbox and hack it apart, I could've already clobbered one in the wild without the weird blur effect making it into a goofy spectacle. There's no explicit gore to hide, it's just a bit for making the action cartoonishly violent. It was only in the very late game, when I unlocked the cleaver's automated mass-killing counterpart, that I saw any potential use for butchering pals at all.

Most of Palworld doesn't strain this hard to be shocking, but there's an air of the attitude sprinkled throughout. You'll find pals crying in cages, warnings that some little 'buddies' are working in various states of injury, and a handful of little guys wielding guns. Honestly, I'm glad there aren't more gun-wielding pals. That's more your avatar's thing. Tanzee, along with maybe four or five other pals are the only ones I can recall that stay strapped. You mostly just craft saddles to ride them like horses… or put them on the death machine.

Home groan

Legend has it that if you look into a mirror and whisper "survival crafting" three times, I'll come leaping out to ask what we're playing and when. I love'em, especially if they come with a good set of blocks because my friends always appoint me to the position of base architect, and I'm not stopping there. Our survival crafting house is getting the full service, appropriate holiday decor and all.

If you're also that person, bad news: Palworld makes for a pretty boring set of Legos.

If you're not that person, well, it's nice that the building is so bare-bones simple you can slap some crap on the ground and move on. But if I'm going to spend 100+ hours surviving and crafting, you're damn right I'm getting irritatingly picky about how my space looks.

Palworld's kit isn't all bad, but the underwhelming architecture and a few 1.0 tools are still worth mentioning:

• The building grid is massive and painfully strict. You have to stack three walls to accommodate bigger pals if you don't want to see them clipping through.
• Its building pieces, like walls and foundations, are of course oversized as a result. Palworld's map already suffers from a lot of empty space, and it's tough to let that go when my base looks the same way thanks to so much dead space.
• I love the new paint tool that changes the color of some building pieces. Light shades of wood are almost always a sin in my book, so I used it to customize wooden building pieces and turn them into darker grains.
• Paint works on storage furnishings too, and I love displays of color-coded chests. However, you can't paint some of the more basic furnishings like simple tables or chairs, though those futuristic production facilities need it the most.
• The alignment tool for snapping walls or furnishings neatly beside each other rules. We should make this mandatory in every base builder.

Creature crafter

Micromanaging pal work suitabilities was easily the best part of my Palworld base design experience, and getting into the nitty-gritty of breeding for other stats was a similar treat. It's another thing you don't have to fully engage with—I didn't even touch the system until approaching the final boss—but it's a delight for anyone also into Pokémon's stat-perfecting systems.

Pals have more situational builds, so I can spec them to help out with housekeeping, combat, or buffing duties. Do you want a Sekhmet for combat or crafting? Will Chillet keep your base cool, be your primary mount, or both? Their passives—a random selection of traits affecting everything from work speed to attack damage to their ability to work at night—are randomly assigned to pals caught in the wild, and help you breed for traits suiting their role.

I've got absolutely zero chill when it comes to in-game travel, so I didn't even fuss over breeding a more powerful sidekick for the final fight. I just wanted the fastest ride available, and that's led me down an Eidrolon Ignis breeding frenzy. Don't worry, Palworld doesn't make it weird. There's just a lot that goes into the process, which includes tasks like:

• Mass catching wild pals for the desired gender or passive. Sometimes you'll even stumble upon a Lucky pal, the game's version of shiny Pokémon.
• Adding pals with breeding-specific buffs to the team managing your base.
• Setting up facilities like the Breeding Farm and Egg Incubator; the Ranch for special food ingredients; or the Pal Condenser for merging weaker pals into your best one.
• Breeding for particular stats, passives, an entirely different pal, or even the chance at Mutated Eggs with special features.

I haven't seen many cool Mutated Eggs yet, and my main battle team remains mostly made up of pals caught in the wild, not bred for specialities. For most of my 100+ hours through the main story, I only tinkered with the Surgery Table to give pals special passive implants. It looks a bit grim when set up, but fortunately lacks the theatrical brutality of butchering. I rolled my eyes at the presentation, then tinkered with implant combinations for hours.

That's emblematic of my Palworld experience. Lots of little moments where I grimaced at edgy reminders it's a big kid's game before getting lost in the freedom of its systems. It was nice to skirt by in tough battles without going all-in on designer pals, but when the time came, I could indulge in the side of me that loves involving a spreadsheet.

"Gotta catch'em all," also takes on a whole new meaning when I can actually catch them all in a single game with no fuss. Pokémon's historically miserable system of transferring, trading, buying the same game in a different color, and limited events evolved into one of my biggest peeves with the series. Palworld doesn't have the same massive monster roster, or at least not yet.

Knowing I could complete the Palpedia was a delight that often kept my character and her team overleveled from pal-catching XP. I sped through most story bosses using the default world settings, and felt like I was missing out on seeing what my pals could do while I was busy blowing the place up. It wasn't until the late game that I was humbled by a monstrous boss pal. Several deaths later led me to give aerial combat an honest try, and well, I should've done that from the beginning.

A showdown with Panthalus—Palworld's mythical big whale beastie—forced me to respect the mechanics. It was either that, or risk drowning again. So, I relied on my flying pal, Jetragon, for safety.

My new strategy worked, and shooting missiles from above was more fun than running around with a gun. Both are effective, but from the sky I'm at least using my pal, and I like the control I have over both my character and her pal as a unit. Palworld let me experiment more than I realized, and I like that.

There's a push and pull between some of the things that matter most to me in survival crafting games, though I can't deny how good Palworld's creature collecting foundation is. I love micromanaging pals at my base, fighting alongside them, and perfecting pedigrees through implants and eggs. I'm disappointed by the base building, lackluster open world, and mundane exploration.

It also lacks personality, unless being bludgeoned to death with a bat labeled "violence" counts as one. We can argue it's parody or satire, sure, but it's not very good at that, either.

With all of its success, I hope Palworld uses future updates to establish a more confident identity that relies less on being the most audacious person in the room. It's full of enough thoughtful systems and entertaining loops worth embracing—no need to dress it down in callow internet humor.

While its 1.0 launch has delivered impressive and continued success to the tune of a few million additional players, Palworld is still a bit squirrelly—particularly when it comes to bosses, who have presented some frustrating bugginess for multiplayer users.

Thankfully, Pocketpair has been fairly quick in addressing bugs and persistent issues that have appeared post-launch. The developer has pushed out a fresh patch this week, version 1.0.2, to bring a few of those unruly encounters in line.

The patch features two main boss fight fixes: First, the tower boss Victor & Shadowbeak should now correctly reappear after using a teleportation attack. Previously, the pair had a habit of simply winking out existence permanently in multiplayer sessions—something that I imagine was as distressing for the boss as it was for the players.

Second, Panthalus—the big, beautiful whale—should no longer crash the game or boot players from the session when confronted on dedicated servers. God-whales should have awesome powers and everything, but switching off reality doesn't make for the best gameplay experience.

1.0.2 also addresses an issue where entering the World Tree when another player was already present in the area could make terrain display incorrectly, and it fixes lighting issues for downed players might have experienced if the final boss was defeated by a host while they were waiting to respawn.

In addition to a few other miscellaneous fixes for display issues, buggy achievements, and soft-locks during quest dialogue, the patch adds the ability to rebind the "Attack that enemy!" command, which should make ordering Pals in combat more pleasant.

If you're so inclined, you can check out all the details in the full 1.0.2 patch notes. Me, I'm just glad they didn't patch out the infinite monkey nuke method.

Subnautica 2 might be a chill survival game, but the journey to May's early access launch was filled with drama, legal battles and accusations of sabotage. Just recalling it all is giving me a massive headache, which I'm now going to give to you.

In 2025, Krafton ousted Unknown World's leadership and delayed Subnautica 2's early access launch. The publisher accused the studio heads of abandoning the game, who then fired back and accused Krafton of delaying Subnautica 2 so it wouldn't have to pay a promised $250 million earnout—a strategy Krafton's CEO came up with thanks to ChatGPT.

The result of the dispute was a judge forcing Krafton to reinstate Unknown Worlds CEO Ted Gill and extend the earnout period. But the drama wasn't over. Krafton then almost immediately announced an imminent early access release date, which Gill believed was its final attempt to sabotage the game and avoid paying what was promised.

It's genuinely a miracle that after all of this Subnautica 2 launched and it was really, really good. Earlier this month, it hit a new milestone: 5 million copies sold. Gill announced that he'd left around the same time—voluntarily this time—which isn't a surprise given his acrimonious relationship with Krafton. The game launched, it was a success, and Unknown Worlds staff will all receive bonuses from the earnout. His job was done.

Krafton, meanwhile, has been trying to draw a line under the whole mess by celebrating Subnautica 2's success. Today, it announced a record second quarter performance, with reported revenue of KRW 1.29 trillion and operating profit of KRW 410.9 billion, both the highest they've ever been for the second quarter.

"The success of Subnautica 2 and steady growth of the PUBG IP were the main drivers" of this, it said in a press release. PC revenue has exceeded KRW 500 billion for the first time, too, and is much higher than console and mobile revenue—though both have still risen year-over-year.

But Subnautica 2 has also cost the publisher a lot, thanks to the expensive acquisition and, more recently, the $250 million earnout. While the KRW 410.9 operating profit is a new record, the net profit actually shows a deficit of KRW 29.9 billion.

So Krafton might have made a lotta cash, but it's spent even more.

Not only is Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey blowing up the box office, but it's also blowing up the career of one of the lesser-known actors in the film… lemme quickly check IMDB for his name… ah, here it is: Matt Damon.

Just kidding, Matt Damon is in everything, everywhere, every movie, all the time. You know those little movies Facebook makes of your photographs without asking? I just watched mine and it starred Matt Damon. (Not his best work.)

But forget about Trojan Horses and giant cannibals for a minute: if you want to relive another of Matt Damon's movie roles where all he wants to do is get home, there's a new survival game out this week that looks like it follows the plot of 2015's The Martian to a tee.

It's called Sol One, and if you've seen the movie or read Andy Weir's novel, it all sounds a bit familiar:

"The mission is over. Your crew left you behind. You've got a pressure suit, whatever you can pull out of the ground, and a long way to go before you see Earth again," developer yeetgench says.

In the Sol One announcement trailer, your astronaut awakens much like Matt Damon did in the movie: all alone and surrounded by wreckage after a deadly Martian storm with his spacesuit blaring critical warnings. And, also like Matt Damon, you have to get to work surviving by using the red planet's resources, scavenging gear from prior Mars missions, and the most memorable part of The Martian: growing a shitload (literally) of potatoes.

(It's unclear if you use your crewmate's poops as fertilizer for those spuds in the game, but I wouldn't be surprised.)

Don't worry, it doesn't follow The Martian's blueprints exactly. For instance, Sol One's abandoned-naut isn't waiting around to be picked up by the asshole crewmates who ditched him: he's going to have to escape on his own.

"There's a rocket between you and home. You just have to build it first," yeetgench says. "Mine iron, copper, silica, ice, and uranium out of the red planet. Run the raw materials through smelters and fabricators and manufacture the parts you need to turn a cramped shelter into a thriving base."

You can also do a few things that dummy Matt Damon didn't think of trying, like automation. "Drive out across the surface to find what's worth finding, or send your autonomous rover ahead to scout and haul while you handle things back in your base," yeetgench says. "Mine enough, learn enough, and build enough to finish a rocket that flies, climb in, and return home.

Sol One is "made for people who like grounded, science-driven survival where the problem-solving is the point," says the developer. "The sky behaves like the real thing, from rusty daylight to a cold blue sunset to the gorgeous Milky Way after dark. Dust storms brew on the horizon and roll in over the ridge, and your solar panels drop off, visibility closes in, and the comfortable margins you were working with are suddenly gone until it passes."

Sol One arrives in early access this week, coming to Steam July 30.

We all have our favorites, but my strategy of 'use the cutest little guys' doesn't guarantee I've always got the best Palworld pals in 1.0. After my adventures in early access, I think I've learned my lesson, and finally have some actual recommendations for the best Palworld pals for suitabilities like Kindling, Handiwork, Medicine Production, and more.

Before you begin your hunt for the best pals

Handbooks make "best pal" lists far more subjective, so don't sweat it if you don't see your favorite companions here. This list mostly prioritizes base suitability levels first, but the occasional partner skill or pal availability may shake things up.

• You can use the Pal Condenser to improve a pal's rank, then use handbooks until they've reached level 10 in the selected work suitability.
• Check pal partner skills when searching for pals yourself. Some pals have base buffs that make them preferable over raw work suitability levels.
• Early Palworld players may recall pathing issues around their bases that prevented pals from working, but now they'll start working even if they can't reach an assigned station. That said, crowding furniture around the Palbox seems to cause occasional issues, so don't place it in tight spaces.
• It's not much of a problem after the pathing fixes, but I prefer smaller or medium-sized base pals if there's a negligible difference in their stats. They just get in my way sometimes, and I can't see what I'm doing with an Alpha Jourmuntide sitting on me.

Best pals for Flying Mounts 🪽

Jetragon (No. 202)

Jetragon is still king of the flying pal mounts, especially since you'll catch it earlier than our honorable mention. Even if you don't invest in the dragon, Jetragon is still a speed demon, and the flying mount I spent most of my time with before and after the Palworld 1.0 update.

Best pals for Cooling ❄️

Bastigor (No. 191)

Bastigor has the highest starting base suitability for Cooling in Palworld, and while I haven't tried popping this guy into the Pal Condenser just yet myself, I don't think I'll need to. My Bastigor stays assigned to Cooling tasks only, but it could be handy for Lumbering or Mining in a pinch.

Best pals for Gathering 🌿

Venusa (No. 178)

Jetdragon has the highest starting Gathering in Palworld, but Venusa is just such a strong jack-of-all-trades that it's my top recommendation. Gathering isn't a suitability I struggled to maintain, so I invested my time into Venusa's four suitabilities over Jetdragon's single talent.

Best pals for Generating Electricity ⚡

Oserk (No. 187)

I seemed miserably cursed when it came to Electricity Handbook drops, so stocking up on an army of Oserks made sustaining power at multiple bases a breeze. The only bummer is that you'll have to wait until you enter the World Tree to score one, but hey, at least it's not another boss pick.

Best pals for Handiwork 🤚

Solenne (No. 182)

Solene has the highest starting Handiwork suitability in Palworld, and boy did I need it when I finally stumbled upon one. The deeper into the late game I got, the more I dreaded most crafting tasks thanks to higher Handiwork demands. Solene is sequestered off in the World Tree, so you'll have to wait a while before capturing one, but I was more than happy to see it.

Best pals for Kindling 🔥

Dupin (No. 174)

Dupin doesn't start with the highest Kindling level—that honor goes to Renjishi—but adding the joker pal to your roster may be a deal too good to pass up. They're abundant in the World Tree, but you can actually find Dupin lurking around one spawn point on every island in Palpagos. Plus Dupin has more Handiwork and Medicine Production. Those are two stats I'll never pass up.

Best pals for Lumbering 🪵

Celesdir Noct (No. 157b)

A good Knocklem Ignis could pull double-duty if you don't mind splitting its attention between Lumbering and Mining, though Celesdir Noct was a nice upgrade since I seem to be perpetually out of wood. It's an overworld boss in the World Tree, so I've delayed upgrading its base suitability, but that's absolutely my next project.

Best pals for Mining ⛏️

Knocklem Ignis (No. 159b)

Aegidron starts with level 8 mining suitability, but I can't justify picking it for a single speciality when Knocklem Ignis is good for three. Its affinities make the hulking suit of armor good for mining, transporting its haul, and cooking up a quick snack.

Best pals for Medicine Production 💊

Silvance (No. 193)

Silvance has the highest starting work suitability for Medicine Production in the game, but it's only available as a boss in the World Tree, so it's a very endgame pal. Higher level crafts lean heavily into Medicine Production, and since Silvance has four other specialties it can lend a hand with, it's absolutely worth the hassle. Weird moth guy is definitely one of my favorite new pals in Palworld 1.0.

Best pals for Planting 🌱

Dandilord (No. 194)

Like Silvance, Dandilord is another World Tree boss that's well worth the investment. Not only is it fantastic as a base pal for Planting (and several other tasks), but it's also a real lifesaver when exploring the World Tree thanks to its poison immunity passive. Anything with high Medicine Production and Handiwork is a win, having the best Planting stats is a bonus.

Best pals for Transporting 📦

Mimog (No. 144)

Mimog doesn't have the highest Transporting base suitability by far, but the little guy is so stinkin' fast that it more than makes up for it. If you've got a Wumpo managing your Cooling stations, it gives Mimog a little capacity boost, too. I let a few other suitability pals occasionally help out here, but pairing that with Mimog and a few handbooks was more than enough to keep things tidy.

Palworld, as our breeding guide shows, lets you accomplish some wild things by playing matchmaker for your creatures. You can gain early access to late-game Pals, spawn variant subspecies, and—as players have recently discovered—breed a genetic monstrosity that can repeatedly blow itself up in combat without taking any damage in the process.

This exciting advancement in living munitions development was uncovered by Japanese X user @gn02759909, who demonstrated that they "accidentally made a super crazy infinite bomb" by uploading a video of their Pal casually sprinting at an enemy boss, one-shotting it by self-detonating, and then emerging unscathed from the smoke plume.

It's not unusual to see Tocotoco, the colorful bird Pal used in @gn02759909, exploding itself: By default, any Tocotoco a player catches comes with the Implode skill—something most players will become intimately familiar with after their base suffers its first invasion of a Tocotoco Implode Unit—and will eventually learn an upgraded form, Megaton Implode. Using Implode, a Pal "risks its life to cause a violent explosion," dealing a heavy amount of damage in exchange for immediately incapacitating itself.

Or at least that's the expected outcome. Clearly @gn02759909's Tocotoco is built different, and that's thanks to its possession of the rare Heavily Armored passive skill, which grants the Pal immunity to explosion damage. Evidently, that immunity includes the damage normally incurred by using Implode, meaning @gn02759909's Tocotoco can explode itself to unleash huge damage without any of the bodily trauma that tends to accompany blowing yourself to smithereens.

But that's only the beginning, because another Palworld player has a scheme for making it even worse.

Building on @gn02759909's discovery, @AllbonesJones has proposed what he calls the "infinite monkey nuke." The scheme involves breeding both Tocotoco's Megaton Implode skill and the Heavily Armored passive onto the gorilla Pal, Gorirat. Like Tocotoco, Gorirat is a Neutral-type Pal, meaning that any Neutral-type skill it uses in combat, Megaton Implode included, will gain a damage bonus—one of the many inspirations Palworld has drawn from Pokemon.

What Gorirat adds to the mix, however, is its Partner Skill: When activated, its Full-Power Gorilla Mode temporarily increases its Attack stat by up to 200%. Paired with a Megaton Implode skill inherited through patient breeding, a Gorirat equipped with the Heavily Armored passive would be capable of detonating itself to cause thermonuclear-tier triple damage without suffering even a mild inconvenience.

I can't speak for what kind of karmic debt this might incur, but points for ingenuity nonetheless.

Palworld continues to prove that it's more than a flash-in-the-pan novelty. The survival-crafting romp with legally distinct pokémon just had its second weekend since it hit 1.0, following a couple of years in early access, and it's only getting more popular.

The second weekend saw concurrents approaching a million on Steam (961,867, to be exact), growing by more than 100,000 players since the previous weekend, which had already been extremely busy.

It's an impressive showing for the game's second weekend, though not necessarily all that surprising. After two years in early access, there were probably a lot of folk who'd relegated it to the depths of their Steam library and are only now digging it out again.

While it's enjoying a lot of attention right now, the peak of its popularity continues to be the early access launch, which saw more than 2 million players jump into the game.

I confess that I do not see the appeal—I saw all I needed to in the first days of early access, and unlike, say, Grounded and its sequel, it proved incapable of overcoming my survival-crafting malaise.

Some of my colleagues, however, have been having a grand old time, and as a result they've been able to put together a plethora of handy guides to make your new life with your weird lil' pals a bit more easy going. Take a look below for some expert assistance.

The Palworld 1.0 update adds 72 new pals—most of which you can catch, while the remainder at least adds an updated entry to your Palpedia. That's a big undertaking with the expanded Palpagos map and the new World Tree region to explore, and referencing the in-game map can be a real pain, but that's where I come in to hopefully make the process a bit easier.

How to catch every new pal in Palworld 1.0

This list was made to highlight where you're most likely to encounter the new 1.0 pals for the first time, but some spawn in more than one region. Pals that pop up in multiple locations will have a note indicating other places you can find them, but are only listed once to keep the process simple.

The level recommendations don't account for bosses in the region, so keep that in mind before you go barreling into their arena. Some zones are harder or easier to catch new pals in depending on terrain obstacles and gear, so take them as loose guidelines—not hard and fast rules.

A few tips to start collecting all 72 new pals

• Make sure to catch five of every pal for bonus XP and a Mimog Effigy.
• Use the Pal Tamer's Glasses, Ring of Mercy, or a pal with Mercy Hit so wild pals don't drop below 1 HP before you can catch them.
• Think you have enough Pal Spheres? Wrong. Catching multiple of each pal for bonuses or better passives meant I never had enough, so keep stocking up.

Windswept Hills and Moonless Shore

Catching new pals in the early game

Recommended for Levels 1-30

You'll start Palworld in the Plateau of Beginnings on Windswept Island—where gradually heading north nets you a few new 1.0 pals. You should encounter Pupperai and Clovee first, while Tanzee Ignis and Wispaw spawn closer to the Autumn Rocks.

My next catch was an Amione floating over the water, and finally one of the scads of Mufflies in the Moonless Shore.

New pals in the Windswept Hills and Moonless Shore

Bamboo Groves and Twilight Dunes

The Bamboo Groves are easy, but be careful in the Dunes

Recommended for Levels 20-35

I caught the angry little lightning pup Puffolt in the Bamboo Groves first, and Elgrove is in the same area, so their spawns overlap in the map above. Then I wandered into the Twilight Dunes, and found Skutlass along the beaches while searching for Hardwood.

Just be careful here, I was a bit under leveled to be picking fights with the level 30+ pals in the desert, and I paid for it more than once.

New pals in the Bamboo Groves and Twilight Dunes

Frostbound Mountains and Verdant Brook

Grab your cold-weather gear and travel further north

Recommended for Levels 25-35

Leafan wasn't hard to catch in the Verdant Brook, but you'll have to craft cold-weather gear before going for Snugloo in the Frostbound Mountains. I found that the older pals lurking around here posed more of a challenge than either of the newcomers.

New pals in the Verdant Brook and Frostbound Mountains

Mount Obsidian

Defrost with a pitstop to catch Moldron

Recommended for Levels 35 - 45

There's only one new pal to capture on Mount Obsidian, and even though it's on Bicornis later, I picked up Moldron early to be my Kindling pal until reaching endgame upgrades. You'll have to make a stop by Mountain Obsidian eventually, anyway, so no harm in netting the fiery lizard. Just make sure you've crafted a set of heat-resistant armor—it gets a bit warm here.

New pals in Mount Obsidian

Desiccated Dunes and islets

New pals spawn practically anywhere in Palworld's desert

Recommended for Levels 30-40

The Desiccated Dunes make for a fairly easy tour around the block for four new pals. Needoll, Gildra, Sekhmet, and Tetroise can all spawn in the same areas, so they overlap in the map above, but Sekhmet and Gildra seem a bit rarer. When you're done here, head to three of the neighboring islands for another four pals, but beware of the hostile drones patrolling the Wildlife Sanctuary. They hit hard.

New pals in the Desiccated Dunes

Flamepulse Islet

Wildlife Sanctuary No. 3 and Islet of Circular Ruins

Astral Mountains

Catch two new pals before summiting the Astral Mountains

Recommended for Levels 40-55

Suit up before this trip, as the Astral Mountains make for another frigid trial where the cold is just as dangerous as the local wildlife. Catching a Dualith at the foot of the mountain wasn't so bad, but Rayhound Crysts seem to prowl around the snowy summit in packs. It makes for an easy time catching the five you need for bonuses, but I agitated a few too many of them while underleveled (again) and didn't have the best outcomes.

New pals in the Astral Mountains

Sakurajima and Suncrest Islet

Visit the Dancing Sakura Shrine and nearby island

Recommended for Levels 45-60

Sakurajima is a treat for folks who love pup-themed pals, even if I'm playing it a little fast and loose with the definition. You can pick up the bulldog Bulldosu closer to the center of the island, then swing by the neighboring Suncrest for Woolipop Terra and Polapup Terra.

New pals in Sakurajima

Suncrest Islet

Feybreak islets

Visit an island from every biome around Feybreak

Recommended for Levels 60-70

Sandstone Gate, Glacial Memento, and Bicornis Islets

Sunreach

New pals in the Sunreach Sky Islands

Recommended for Levels 65-70

The World Tree new pals

The Verdant Rootpath and Alluvion Lakefront

Recommended for Levels 75+

Gilded City Ruins, Lacrymal Shoal, and Shinespore Root

Dusty Ravine and Rotmist Root areas

Boreal Summit

Misc new Pals in 1.0

Survival games are obsessed with the grind. Need a better axe? You've got to spend an hour collecting stone. Want to build a bigger base? Time to manually ferry hundreds of logs from one storage chest to another. Somewhere along the line, the genre started confusing friction with depth.

But there are only so many trees I'm prepared to punch, so when Palworld originally came to Steam's early access platform, I dismissed it as "Pokémon with guns", a novelty that happened to explode, but would undoubtedly fade into obscurity as people looked for the next survival game to dig into.

With the massively successful 1.0 release, it seemed like it was finally time to give it a proper go. After spending some hours with Palworld, I've discovered the thing that makes it special has almost nothing to do with the Pokémon bits, but everything to do with the way its "Pals" hack away at the busywork that's become synonymous with the survival genre.

Sure, you're catching creatures that look like copyright-infringement claims waiting to happen, in the shape of cats, llamas, and manta rays, and while it is satisfying to pick up a fox and use it like a flamethrower, the best use for these pets is getting them to do all of the hard work for you.

It doesn't happen immediately. You'll still spend your first few hours punching trees, mining rocks, and cobbling together a shelter that looks like it'll collapse if someone sneezes too hard. But before long, something changes. You catch a handful of Pals with useful work skills and your little campsite starts looking less like a collection of crafting benches and more like a functioning ecosystem.

One Pal is chopping wood. Another is watering crops. Someone's hauling resources into storage while another plants and harvests. You stop thinking about your base as somewhere you have to constantly maintain, and instead start treating it like a place that works without you.

When I began to run out of resources building my new beachfront property, I found I could nip back to my first base where my little Pals had been diligently harvesting stone, wood, and berries, and hoover up their hard work, even if it was going towards building a base that would eventually supplant them.

It's easy to get started, too, you just have to make sure your Pals have a good mix of skills and they'll largely get on with it. This feels like a magic trick, because in most survival games leaving your base is irresponsible at best. If you want to go out and find adventure, your progress back home grinds to a halt as crops don't grow and supplies dwindle.

Here, though, that equation gets flipped upside down, and you have a team of mostly happy helpers to keep things organised without you.

The best part is that this changes how you spend your time. Instead of standing around waiting for ore to turn into ingots, you're climbing mountains looking for Alpha Pals. Instead of spending half an hour harvesting, you're trying to sneak into an oil rig that's almost certainly above your level because you spotted it on the horizon.

The world keeps moving while you're out experiencing it, and this means you're spending a lot less time playing with your phone out, holding down the button to mine. It does happen, but automation isn't there so you can do nothing—it's there so you can spend more time doing fun stuff, whatever fun stuff means for you.

It's also one of the smartest uses of creature collecting I've seen. Most monster-catching games ask whether a creature is good in combat, but Palworld also asks you what they're good at around the home. It's about whether they're better at logging than your current workforce, whether they'll keep your production chain ticking over, or whether they're exactly what's missing from the increasingly elaborate Pal pyramid scheme that runs your base while you doss about looking for treasure chests.

Of course, Palworld hasn't removed survival mechanics altogether, nor should it. You're still unlocking technologies, expanding your base, and making decisions about how to optimise production. There's still resource gathering, crafting, and all the systems you'd expect from the genre. The difference is that once you've proven you understand those systems, the game doesn't make you perform every repetitive task by hand.

That feels surprisingly rare in modern survival games. Too many titles seem terrified that players will run out of things to do if they aren't constantly feeding another crafting queue or collecting another stack of wood.

Palworld recognises that the reason most people pick up an open-world survival game isn't because they dream of optimising a production chain. Well, unless you're playing Satisfactory. No, it's that the most exciting part has never been the chores—it's everything waiting just beyond the edge of your base.

Remember Hytale? The sandbox RPG blew up big when it launched into early access back in January, making so much in preorders that it secured funding for two more years of development. It was a real triumph because the game had been canceled by Riot after nearly 10 years in development, but was saved from the jaws of death by its creator, Simon Collins-Laflamme, who bought the rights to the game and continued to work on it.

Yet after such a strong launch, I pretty quickly drifted from Hytale because it's still in very early development and is far from feature complete. Even Collins-Laflamme said the adventure sandbox 'isn't good yet' in November of 2025, warning players not to buy it if they were expecting anything resembling a complete game.

Well, my interest in Hytale has quickly been rekindled because the team at Hypixel Studios just dropped a massive blog to show off some of its plans for Hytale's future. How massive? The new devblog contains about 4,000 words and features 22 new videos, with a few dozen new screenshots to boot. Wow.

But before you launch the game wide-eyed and breathless, a reality check:

"To be transparent, there aren't many reasons to come back and play Hytale right now," Collins-Laflamme said in the devblog. "We have a lot of work to do to realize the game's potential, and this is just the start of that journey."

The journey looks like a big one, though. The devblog gives players a look at all the new stuff coming in Chapter 1, like a new handcrafted dungeon, a bossfight with a goblin chieftain, new varieties for the goblin faction, and a world event called a Goblin Breach where players can enter a portal into a new realm to battle monsters and collect loot.

There's also tease for other upcoming world events: "We're starting with a small set: predators you can track and trap, Void assassins that hunt you down, treasure chests that spawn enemy waves when you go for the loot, puzzles that lock off places you can't just dig into, and more," Collins-Laflamme said. "We'll grow that list over time, keep iterating each chapter, and start tying these systems together!"

A overhauled UI is also planned, along with a new mod browser, spectator and hardcore modes, and a rework of the crafting system. Additional cosmetics will be added, and an improved player model is in the works as well. Minigames and party games are also being developed for Hytale, over a dozen at the moment, that you'll be able to jump into with your pals anytime you want.

Look, folks, there's tons more in the blog and me giving a brief mention to a mere few of the dozens and dozens of additions coming to Hytale probably isn't serving much of a purpose. You can read (or skim) the devlog yourself, and there's a somewhat vague release timeline for all of Hytale's new features below:

• Chapter 1: within the next 2-3 months
• Spectator and Hardcore: 2-3 weeks (Update 6)
• Mod Browser: 2-3 weeks (Update 6)
• Moving platforms: 2-3 weeks (Update 6)
• Real transparency: scheduled for Chapter 1 but might land the tech and content before
• Minigames: within the next 2-3 months
• New server-side Custom UI based on NoesisGUI: within the next 1-2 months
• Carryable objects: within the next 2-3 months but tech might get shipped before
• Cubic chunks: the tech is getting implemented on a weekly basis (already in pre-release schedule for Update 6), but actual content using it from us will take a bit more time
• Machinima: within the next 2-3 months, maybe sooner because we will use it to record a teaser/trailer for Chapter 1
• Crafting Rework: Chapter 2
• Volumetric clouds: TBD
• Runeforging: TBD
• Hytale Asset Editor rework: TBD

I was hoping to find a vendor selling Nightstar Sand after starting a new save for the Palworld 1.0 release, but it seems the mid-game crafting ingredient is still only available through good ol' fashioned gathering. You'll have to pick it all up by hand to craft several items from tech tree recipes starting around level 56.

Fortunately, I was farming this stuff in early access, so I know a thing or two about digging in the dirt for the glowy bits. Here's how to get Nightstar Sand in Palworld, along with a few recommendations on how to approach farming a haul respectful of your time.

Palworld Nightstar Sand location

Pals that drop Nightstar Sand

Starryon Primo

Starryon Primo, the white and gold horse trotting about the World Tree region, drops Nightstar Sand. You can find them hanging around in the middle of the map, just after entering the zone.

Nightstar Sand crafting recipes

The glowing sand is mostly used to make weapons, tools, and accessories, so you won't need a hefty supply for things like ammo or potions. Here are a few crafting recipes for reference:

• Advanced Bow: (20) Nightstar Sand, (25) Carbon Fiber, (40) Plasteel
• Beam Sword: (20) Nightstar Sand, (30) Plasteel, (100) Palladium, (1) Computer
• Metal Detector: (20) Nightstar Sand, (30) Plasteel, (100) Palladium, (15) Computer
• Double Air Dash Boots: (30) Nightstar Sand, (30) Plasteel, (100) Palladium, (30) Dark Fragments

Between playing with friends and maintaining my own save file, I've spent far too much time scouting the best base locations in Palworld 1.0. I'm practically a Palpagos real estate agent now, and like any good agent, I've prepared a few listings for your own base tours—though my editor says I'm not allowed to charge the typical fees associated with such a service. Bummer.

Best starting base locations in Palworld 1.0

Best Palworld 1.0 base locations for raids

Best Palworld 1.0 base locations for resources

Best Palworld 1.0 base locations for a view

Finding Ancient Bone in Palworld is rather tricky if you haven't clocked that each of the three ancient materials come from the wildlife sanctuaries dotted around the islands. These areas are easy to recognise because of the big shield domes protecting them, but that does mean you have to sneak about and avoid their protectors while doing your illicit mining.

Only one of these sanctuaries contains Ancient Bone, though, so you'll have to head there if you want to craft the fancy accessories that require it.

Palworld Ancient Bone location

You can find Ancient Bone in the No.3 Wildlife Sanctuary northeast of the Dessicated Desert, which is itself in the northeast of the game's starting islands. It's easy to spot, since, like other wildlife sanctuaries, it has a big blue dome shield you can spy at a distance. You'll want to head to the Deep Sand Dunes fast travel in the north of the desert (bring heat resistance for day and cold resistance for night) then use a flying or aquatic pal to ride across to it.

If you haven't been in a wildlife sanctuary before, be aware that you need to avoid the patrol craft flying around by staying out of their red spotlights when you're inside the dome. The resource node you're looking for is a skeleton, specifically a ribcage, which you can mine to get Ancient Bone.

You can use any mining tool, including pickaxes, though I'd suggest something faster if possible as you'll have a limited mining window while trying to avoid the patrolling ships and the hostile pals who live on the island.

Acquiring Cryogenic Coolant in Palworld lets you craft a bunch of different items, from a saddle for Jormuntide, to more advanced coolers, to the refined cold resistant metal armour. Chances are at some stage you'll need to use this material, so here's how to get it.

As with some other materials, players are reporting that the Cryogenic Coolant technology is missing for them, but it looks like this is primarily down to having mods installed when updating to 1.0, so make sure to get rid of them first.

How to get Cryogenic Coolant in Palworld

To craft Cryogenic Coolant, you'll first need to unlock a few upgrades in the Technology menu as you level up, namely:

1. Reach Level 26 and unlock the Power Generator (second from the left)
2. Reach Level 29 and unlock the Production Assembly Line (fourth from the left)
3. Reach Level 31 and unlock it in the Technology menu (third from the left)

This is because you'll need to build a Production Assembly Line in order to craft Cryogenic Coolant, and a Power Generator to make it run. All in, both will cost you:

• 150x ingots
• 5x wooden boards
• 20x nails
• 10x cement
• 20x Electric Organs

You'll undoubtedly have both nails and wooden boards unlocked (at Level 10 and Level 15 respectively), but you might not have cement, which is available at Level 19 in the Technology menu. Remember, you can get Electric Organs by capturing, killing, butchering, or breeding electric pals.

Once you've built all the prerequisites, Cryogenic Coolant will cost:

• 1x Aquatic Pal Fluids
• 1x Ice Organ

Aquatic Pal Fluids come from capturing, killing, butchering, or breeding water pals, and the same goes for Ice Organs with ice pals. With all that, you've got what you need to craft Cryogenic Coolant.

If Palworld's 1.0 launch has brought you back for a fresh round of legally distinct Pokemon—as it's done for millions of other players—you're going to be crafting a lot of items. Thousands and thousands of items.

Luckily, while the game would normally expect you to hold the F key for the duration of every building and crafting interaction, there's a way to spare your finger the combined ache of every straw Pal bed and roasted berry. And no, you don't have to buy a 100g weight to hold down F for you like this hapless soul on Reddit did. You just need to switch two settings.

How to stop holding F to build in Palworld

To liberate your digits from prolonged F presses, hit Esc to open the menu, then select Options > Game Settings. Move over to the Keyboard tab (or Controller tab, if that's your style) and turn both "Single button for hold interactions" and "Change build mode from Hold to Toggle" to ON.

Make sure you've enabled both options; the former only affects interactions in the world, but you'll be left having to manually hold F for crafting and building back at base if you don't turn the latter on as well.

Hit Esc once more, and select YES to apply and save your selections. And there you go! No more overtaxing your index finger whenever there's something you can't leave for your Pals to finish.

I've seen some reports from players who say those settings won't stick after closing the game, but I haven't run into that issue on my end. Might be worth a double check at the start of your next few sessions once you've made the switch, just to be sure.

Otherwise, go—live deliciously. Bask in your regained seconds of manual freedom. Think of all the bad posts you'll be able to scroll on your phone while slapping together your next batch of Pal Spheres. Has there ever been a truer form of luxury?

Palworld recently celebrated its launch into 1.0 and out of early access with 27-pages of patch notes and no price hike, and the devs were rewarded with the best turnout they've seen since the game first released into early access way back in January 2024.

A peak of 855,525 concurrent players turned up for the 1.0 release on Steam alone yesterday placing Palworld back up near the top of the Steam charts. It's a massive achievement and one that was properly celebrated, not least by Pocketpair's head of publishing and communications, John "Bucky" Buckley.

"I promise I'll try not to just be posting Steam numbers every day but really, thank you so much, gamers," Buckley said in a social media post. "Obviously, we had high expectations for 1.0 internally, but this is staggering. We really hope you are enjoying your time in Palworld again."

Palworld's all-time peak still sits at 2.1 million, a ridiculous achievement that places it above the likes of Counter Strike 2, Dota 2, and Monster Hunter Wilds. In fact, the only two games that have managed to beat Palworld's all-time player count on Steam are Black Myth: Wukong and PUBG, of course.

Players seem to be enjoying the full release so much that they're asking for even more content, in usual fashion. Ideas like randomised maps, switched-out resource nodes, and even a sequel have been thrown around. Players really can't get enough of Pals and guns.

There are some players, however, who aren't asking for even more content days after a major update. Instead, they're asking for fixes. "I just want them to finally fix and polish the many systems involved in bases and pal behavior," one player says. "Building/stability, missing pieces, pathfinding and interactions, clipping, proper work priorities and so on. It's a huge part of the game and I was honestly disappointed with 1.0 in that regard. The state this is in is fine for EA but hard to accept for a full release."

After a successful launch weekend, Palworld's biggest challenge, as it is with all games, will be retaining players. That's not to say it needs to be reaching the heights of last weekend from here on out—hell, even if it pulled in an eighth of what it did yesterday that would still be impressive—but with so much competition it'll have to keep players hooked one way or another.

Catching Panthalus isn't something you'll be able to do early on in Palworld. As with most other legendary pals, this newly-added giant whale is a tricky fight, and what's more, you'll have to complete a quest before you can even face it.

Despite the fact you get the Panthalus quest after the new tower boss added in 1.0, you can actually do it yourself at any time provided you visit the Ancient Civilization Researcher at the Deserted Islet. This means that if you're strong, but haven't progressed the towers much, you can still fight Panthalus and catch it.

How to get Panthalus in Palworld

To catch Panthalus, you first have to unlock its boss fight on the Deserted Islet, a fair way to the north of the Windswept Hills, just north of the Twilight Dunes. It's quite easy to spot, since it's right in the middle of the channel between Ice Wind Island on the left, and the ruins at the southern tip of the Astral Mountains on the right.

Here you'll find an Ancient Civilization Researcher, who will ask you to collect four bones from around the map, beginning the Panthalus quest. Besides being able to reach the researcher, there isn't an unlock requirement for this quest, though Panthalus is a very tough fight.

You also don't need to unlock this quest to find the bones—you can gather all four and then speak to the Ancient Civilization Researcher for the first time after, so it's entirely up to you which order you do things in.

Marine Echobone location (124, -524)

The first bone is on the skull of the giant whale skeleton to the west of where you start in the Windswept Hills. It's really easy to spot at a distance, since it emits a glowing light, so simply fly over and continue west up the skeleton to the skull where you can grab it.

Silent Echobone location (356, -111)

The second bone is a reasonable distance to the northeast of the Windswept Hills, east of the Verdant Brook, and northwest of Eastern Wild Island, right by where the Level 55 Jormuntide hangs out. As with the others, you're looking for a giant whale skeleton.

Head to the Altar of the Windcaller fast travel point, then go south across the water, over the protruding ribcage (and Jormuntide), to spot the glowing item on a low down bit of bone at the back.

Seafoam Echobone location (-515, -545)

This third bone is located far to the west of the Windswept Hills towards the center of Mount Obsidian. You'll want Level 2 Heat Resistance for this, so wear the Tropical Outfit or Heat Resistant Pelt Armour and keep your fire pals stowed.

Travel to the Eternal Pyre Tower Entrance fast travel, then head due east over the cliff edge to spot the giant skeleton on the right side of the lava pools area below. The item is just inside the skull, which is on the side of the skeleton closest to you.

Tidewind Echobone location (-265, 483)

The final bone is in the north of the Astral Mountains, which are themselves to the far north of the Windswept Hills. If you've already unlocked the Deserted Islet where the Ancient Civilization Researcher is, you could also head there and continue north. You should also bring at least Level 2 Cold Resistance for this icy biome.

From the Land of Absolute Zero fast travel, head west over the cliff and down into the frozen lake where you'll spot the head of the giant skeleton and the item glowing on top of it.

How to craft the Echoing Flute

Now you need to head to the Ancient Civilization Researcher on the Deserted Islet. If it's your first time speaking to them, you'll have to accept the quest first, and then speak to them again. This will get you the Faded Schematic, which you can use to craft the Echoing Flute at any workbench using the four bones you found.

After that, head back to the researcher, speak to them, and interact with the glowing symbols on the stone nearby to unlock the Panthalus boss.

How to beat Panthalus

As with any other legendary pal, Panthalus is really hard. The other way you get this quest is after the newest tower boss, so it's not something you're expected to do early. You also only have ten minutes to defeat them. You'll want to bring strong gear like a Plasma Cannon or Multi Guided Missile Launcher, but most importantly, bring a high level, fast-flying pal you can ride during the fight.

Panthalus's entire arena is water apart from one small island, so land-based pals will get decimated. Being able to fly fast will help you avoid most of the attacks. Once you reduce Panthalus's health fully, it'll collapse and you'll get an opportunity to catch it with a sphere—this is 100% guaranteed, so you can focus on the fight knowing you'll for sure catch the legendary pal at the end.

The Palworld 1.0 update sure is a big one, and with all of the new pals, weapons, and zones to track it's easy to miss the little things—like new resources for crafting. As I climbed the revamped tech tree again, I breezed through most recipes until I ran into Hardwood. It's a new tier of the basic building block you'll see pop up in later level recipes (around 40 to 50), after planks.

After deforesting a few islands, I finally realized I'd missed some spots to farm hardwood that were right in front of me. To save you the same headache, here's how to get Hardwood in Palworld.

Palworld Hardwood location

Make sure you gather a hefty stack and unlock a few of the surrounding fast travel statues, or just make a nearby base for easy access. You'll need 10 Hardwood per High Quality Wooden Board when you unlock the craft at level 43 in the tech tree.

Today, Palworld left early access with a massive 1.0 patch that brought an avalanche of changes and has drawn hundreds of thousands of new and returning players with the seductive allure of making creatures work in conditions that OSHA would object to if they were people.

Unmentioned in its massive 1.0 changelog, however, are a series of visual reworks the patch made to a handful of Pals that previously bore the most blatant resemblance to preexisting Pokémon designs.

At launch, Palworld attracted derision with its inclusion of Pals that tested the definition of creative inspiration. These weren't just conceptual similarities: These were Pals constructed in Frankenstein fashion from recognizable Pokémon silhouettes, limbs, details, and design elements—often without even changing the color palette.

Now, even Pocketpair seems to agree that some of those Pals were in particularly poor taste. Players have identified a number of Pals who've been reimagined to add some plausible deniability when they're compared with their Pokémon counterparts.

Verdash, one of the Pals more commonly cited as proof of Palworld's creative indecency for being a Cinderace lookalike, has been given less-humanoid proportions and is no longer aping the legwear of its inspiration. Robinquill and Fenglope are no longer using the color palettes of Decidueye and Cobalion, respectively, and both Pals have received a detail rework to further distinguish them from their doppelgangers.

Don't worry, though. Cremis is still Cremis—and definitely nothing else.

To be absolutely clear: Palworld's character designs were never the basis of Nintendo's still-ongoing lawsuit with Pocketpair, which is instead centered around a series of patents that Nintendo holds on specific creature-capturing and riding mechanics. We could speculate that the 1.0 patch's redesigns might have been part of an as-yet undisclosed settlement agreement—but there's no immediate reason to do so. Especially considering the amount of doubt that has been cast on the validity of the Nintendo patents in question since the lawsuit was initiated.

Still, the Pal reworks are a quiet acknowledgment from Pocketpair that its creature designs weren't a sterling example of creative integrity. Now that it's made its millions, however, that's evidently a fixable problem.

But hey: At least it wasn't as blatant as Pickmos, the game formerly known as Pickmon.

PalworldAfter two-and-a-half years of early access, Palworld is launching into full release tomorrow, July 10. It's a moment that brings both good news and some potential bad news: The price isn't going up, which is very nice, but if you have any old mods left installed, you may run into trouble.

Pocketpair said in today's caution that it supports modding, writing, "we look forward to seeing all the amazing mods that will be made after 1.0." The potential for trouble, particularly for people who are coming back to the game for the 1.0 release after a long time away, is found in old and "potentially harmful" mod data that may still be lying around.

"The upcoming 1.0 update for Palworld makes significant changes to the game’s systems," Pocketpair explained. "If you still have mods installed from the past, especially mods that have been left installed since around 2024, you may encounter problems such as crashes when launching or playing the game, corrupted save data or save data failing to load, [or] quests or events becoming impossible to progress."

Simply disabling mods isn't sufficient, because data and mod loaders may still be loaded when the game starts, even if the mods themselves are switched off. The only way to be sure is to nuke it all from orbit—which is to say, manually delete all the relevant data.

Detailed instructions for doing so are included in Pocketpair's mod usage guidelines, but it's not an especially complicated procedure: Back up your save data (always back up your save data before you start horsing around with this kind of thing), delete Pal\Binaries\Win64 and Pal\Content\Paks, verify your game files on Steam, then verify the game launches properly before applying the 1.0 update. If you're subscribed to any Steam Workshop mods, you'll have to unsubscribe from those as well, and be sure to manually delete that data too.

Pocketpair also recommended not reinstalling any mods until their makers have confirmed they've been updated for the 1.0 version, and doing them one at a time to ensure everything works nice and smooth—because, as the studio said, "Please note that issues that occur while using MODs, or modified game data, are not covered by support."

It's been just shy of two months since Subnautica 2 splashed into early access, and developer Unknown Worlds is celebrating its success on X by sharing some official statistics on what players have achieved during their over 58,000,000 hours of combined playtime.

According to the studio's data, those achievements include a spectacular number of drownings. I'm talking about truly impressive metrics regarding millions of people forgetting they need to breathe.

Tallying the top causes of reprint (read: death), Unknown Worlds says running out of oxygen is by far the most common source of Subnautica 2 mortality: Players have drowned a total of 15,636,881 times, accounting for 42.6% of all player deaths. By my calculations, that means that—between Subnautica 2's early access launch at 11 am EDT on May 14, 2026 and the time these statistics were shared at 11 am EDT on July 9, 2026—an average of 192 players have drowned every minute since launch.

For context, the CDC says there was an average of 4,083 yearly unintentional drowning deaths in the US from 2012 to 2021, meaning that in just under two months Subnautica 2 players suffered a number of drownings more than 3,829 times higher than what Americans suffer in an entire year.

Allow me to remind you that these are players who are often equipped with oxygen tanks and who are navigating oceans populated by alien flora that release bubbles of breathable oxygen at regular intervals. It's a stunning accomplishment in mortal incompetence.

But not all of Unknown Worlds' statistics are so grim: The studio also shared that players have collectively traveled 545,615,747 kilometers through the ocean depths of Proteus, which—I'm told—is about 86.8% of the distance between here and Jupiter. And yet the few meters separating players and breathable air still seems so insurmountable. Funny how that works.

Along the way, we've managed to collect over 331 million water slugs, either for avoiding dehydration or just to pile them in a room so we can admire them later. And while it's interesting to know we've built a total of 5,887,642 Tadpole submersibles, the studio included the curious statistic that, somewhere in the world, there's a player who built 195 in a single game.

I can only begin to guess why; there are, as ever, countless mysteries in the deep. And with Subnautica 2's first update arriving this week, there are likely plenty more in store.

We're just a day away from Palworld's much anticipated 1.0 release, and to celebrate Pocketpair both released all 27 pages of patch notes and confirmed that there'll be no price hike when the survival and crafting game exits from early access. Oh yeah, it's all coming together.

"After much thought, we have decided not to raise the price of Palworld following the 1.0 release and will keep it at $29.99," Palworld announced on social media. "We are incredibly proud of how far Palworld has come. Thanks to the amazing support of our players, it has become a success beyond our wildest dreams."

Keeping the price fixed at its early access rate is just "a small way of saying thank you" from the team for all the "continued support" the game has been shown by its very dedicated playerbase.

It's typical for games to raise prices when leaving early access: Valheim, for example, announced it will jump from $20 to $30 when it graduates to 1.0 in September. his isn't outlandish, the whole point of early access is it's an unpolished and unfinished snippet of a game, and therefore its full release should be worth more if you consider the better state it'll release in and all of the additional content it'll contain. If the 27 pages of patch notes are anything to go by, Palworld fits the bill as well, which makes it all the nicer that Pocketpair has chosen to keep the price steady.

All in all, $30 for everything that Palworld offers seems like a proper steal. You get all the much-loved existing features, new additions like the wing pack, plus all the new items and Pals. Oh, and that big old World Tree. It's certainly a great way to kick off and celebrate the launch of 1.0—all that's left is to wait and see what it's like once we actually get our hands on it.

It comes as a surprise to absolutely no one that Subnautica 2 has finally surpassed 5 million copies sold. It did sell two million copies in just 12 hours after all. Then, not that long ago, it broke 4 million copies sold, which was excellent for everyone involved except for Krafton. And now its 5 million copies sold coincides with its first major update in early access, 1.1.

The biggest addition from the latest update was the introduction of just a little violence, after masses of players complained about the game's forced pacifism. You still can't kill sea creatures though, only bonk them on the head or zap them when they get uncomfortably close.

I played a great deal of the first Subnautica and Below Zero, despite my thalassophobia, and so far Subnautica 2 has lived up to any expectation I had. The only practical issues I had with the early access game so far seem to have been addressed in its 1.1 update.

After exploring all that was available to see, I took to settling in for some good old-fashioned base building, something that has always been a favourite pastime in Subnautica games. After gathering material and saving up silver I managed to make a pretty impressive build, the only thing left to do was make a moon door and a tadpole dock big enough for my two, yes two, tadpoles.

This proved to be difficult. Actually it was more than difficult, it was pretty infuriating. No matter what I did, I just couldn't seem to get the build size right, and I had a great deal of trouble fitting it into my pre-existing build layout. But hopefully this will be easier in the future as Unknown Worlds has improved the "placement for the Tadpole Dock" to make it easier to slot into small spaces.

Other base-building updates (which is all I'm really bothered about right now) include better placement for the fabricator, a new dedicated storage structure, as well as additional improvements to "rendering, creature behaviour, and the user interface." I'm here for all of that.

"With this update, we focused on refining the early-game experience and core systems," Fernando Melo, executive producer at Unknown Worlds explains in a press release. "We’ll continue shaping the world of Subnautica 2 together with our players throughout Early Access." I can't wait to see what Unknown Worlds does next.

Everyone likes Subnautica 2. We sure do: after all that drama, it turns out the early access survival sequel is quite good, actually. Players also dig it: it's got smashing reviews on Steam and it sold a million copies in its first hour on its way to more than four million in its first week.

One little point of contention: Subnautica 2 is home to a collection of large, angry alien fish that love to bite you and endlessly headbutt your submarines—and unlike the first Subnautica, players didn't have a knife to fight back with.

And so the controversy arose. Players (some of them, anyway) want to be able to kill these angry, annoying, dangerous fish, but the developers have remained steadfast in their no-killing policy. Modders came up with their own solution, a Subnautica 2 mod where you can kill all the fish you want, but today the game's creative director Anthony Gallegos revealed a new solution: a stun system.

You can already discourage fish from biting by using the sonic resonator, but in tomorrow's 1.1 update, you'll really be able to knock them for a loop.

"We've done some work on the sonic resonator, where a bunch of the creatures now have stun states, so when you hit them with the sonic resonator, you'll see them clearly communicate that they've become stunned," Gallegos said in a Subnautica 2 update vlog.

It's demonstrated in the video, showing a marrowbreach taking a sonic blast to the face and, instead of just turning and swimming away, it goes limp and slowly sinks to the bottom of the sea. Hell yeah. It might not be as satisfying as gutting one with a knife, but it'll still be plenty cathartic to scramble its brains for a bit—though there's no word on how long the stun state lasts.

You can also see more clearly the results of bonking fish with your cute little hammer. "We've done some work around creature flinches, so most of the creatures in the game now have good flinches," Gallegos said. "So, if you smack them with the survival multi-tool, you'll get that reaction out of them before they flee, to really let you see and understand the impact you're having on them."

Another enemy, the blight creatures (which you can kill with the resonator) have been modified a bit, too.

"We're trying to make it that when you encounter the blight creatures around the angel combs, there's a better transition from when they go from a passive to aggressive, and so that you can really feel that and not be as surprised of where creature attacks are coming from, which was a problem we had definitely heard in feedback," Gallegos said.

"That's all in an effort to make you feel like you're having the mitigation of creatures that we want you to feel, which has also been a major part of your feedback," he said.

You can watch the full vlog below, in which Gallegos mentions that new multiplayer features, like proximity chat and a player revive system, won't be in tomorrow's 1.1 update but will come "some weeks after that." Later this year, the "big content drop" will add a new region, vehicles, and story.

A couple weeks after its early access launch, things are going mostly pretty well for the steampunk-mechs-in-the-desert game Sand: Raiders of Sophie. An update that rolled out on July 2 caused some surprise headaches and had to be rolled back, which isn't great, but on the brighter side the game looks to be a legitimate hit, too.

"300K copies for Sand sold," Alex Nichiporchik, CEO of publisher TinyBuild, wrote today on X. "We getting [a] half hour of air conditioning tonight!"

The second update for Sand: Raiders of Sophie went live on June 2, but caused connection problems that forced the developers to pull the plug. The plan was to figure out what was happening and redeploy the update later in the week, but fortunately developers were able to get it squared away fairly quickly.

The re-rollout of the new update, and no doubt the coming of the weekend—a long one for gamers in the US—has helped push Sand to its highest concurrent player count yet on Steam at just over 40,000. That's good enough to put it in the middle of Steam's 100 most played games chart, between Farming Simulator 25 and Helldivers 2 (PC gaming is so wonderfully diverse) and while it's nowhere near the six-figure counts of the real big boys, bear in mind that Sand is not free to play—at $20 a pop with its launch discount, that adds up to not a bad little chunk of change.

The full patch notes for Sand: Raiders of Sophie update 2 are below.

• Update #2 changelist:
  • Fixed an issue that caused servers to become unavailable, and players were stuck on the "Connecting" screen
    • Because of thіs issue, we reverted yesterday's update
  • Improved BattlEye behavior to decrease false-positive bans
  • Occlusion changes that will have a minor positive effect on game performance
  • Additional improvements to the character movement
  • Improvements to the trampler collisions
  • Decreased the number of shakes and glitches during the collision between tramplers
  • Possibly fixes issue when character would fly in the air after the collision between tramplers
  • Possibly fixed the issue that trampler parts would be invisible but you would still be able to interact with them
    • Let us know if you will still encounter this issue after the patch
  • Fixed oversaturated boxes and props in the lobby
  • Fixed that trampler stability didn't affect speed
  • Fixed energy rod selling price on the contract platforms from 450 to 50Fixed the issue where a character's body may remain in the air after death
  • Fixed the issue that you could make additional shots from autocannon by pressing the right mouse button
  • Another round of improvements to the character controller. Including but not limited to:
    • Fixed issue with getting stuck on difficult terrain
    • Fixed several issues with parkour
    • Fixed different issues with movement
    • Fixed issue with flickering names on the landing cutscene
    • Improvements to the hit registration
  • Improved occlusion for the compartments on the trampler
    • There are still some cases where compartments might occlude, and we'll fix them in the upcoming updates
  • Grenade pin no longer gets pulled automatically in Outlaw controls
  • Improved upiors' behavior
    • Now has collision with player
    • Their movement is now less twitchy
    • The overall behavior is more responsive and more natural
    • Upiors can now use cannons (except shotguns)
    • They will leave the cannon when the player gets close to them
  • Added a gas giant next to the Sophie
  • Improved design for some of the pop-ups
  • Fixed issue for some of the crew compartments where character would respawn outside of the compartment
  • Fixed exploits where items could be duplicated
  • Fixed the issue when some doors may be restored improperly after fixing the Compartment with a Repair kit
  • Fixed the issue where, visually, the door is displayed as broken after being fixed with a repair kit
  • Fixed the issue where the expedition will end for the player even though their teammates are still alive. This would also cause issues with receiving the loot after the expedition
  • Fixed the issue where players could get into the compartments by sliding on the entrance group ladder
  • Fixed the issues where Toggle and Combine Sprint settings didn't work as intended
  • Fixed the issue where matchmaking preferences were not saved between Expeditions
  • Fixed the issue where incorrect crew sizes were shown during loading
• Balance changes:
  • Increased Recoil for 80mm Cannons
  • Increased T3 80mm cannon reload time from 2.5 to 3 sec
  • Base and low recoil 40mm ammo now have slightly better range (150m/s -> 200m/s and 100m/s -> 150m/s)
  • Added 20% more projectiles for regular 70mm Ammo (42 -> 52)
  • Decreased siege damage of regular 70mm Ammo by 20% (30 per pellet -> 25 per pellet)
  • Added 5 more meters before the damage starts decaying for regular 70mm Ammo (35m -> 40m)
  • Decreased fire rate of Triple Barrel shotgun by 30%
  • Projectile amplifier radius decreased from 15m to 5m
  • Manually loading turret from the container now transfers shells from the container into the turret's inventory instead of actually loading it (thank you for the tip Peanut)
    • This is now called "Transfer Content" instead of "Load Turret" to avoid confusion
  • Loot containers will spawn slightly less pneumatic parts
  • Increased Canned Sea Deer XL sell price from 100 to 500
  • Decreased MedKit sell price from 50 to 20
  • Increased Sell price of Small Valuables and Valuables by 1 crown (3 -> 4, 6 -> 7)
  • Ironclad Crate slot changes (12M -> 1L and 11M)
  • High-tier resources orbital stack size increase (50 -> 75)
• Known issues:
  • Character can get stuck at the top of the ladder
  • Character may become transparent in Spectator mode in some cases
  • Character cannot crouch while carrying the Repair Kit
  • The Character cannot enter the Expedition if the Invite has been accepted at the Tutorial pop-up background
  • Character may become invulnerable to melee damage while interacting with turrets or the steering wheel

It's been a while since I played Rust but I always look forward to its monthly updates because—what even is Rust these days? The latest feature sounds like the least likely thing you'd find in a hardcore PvP sandbox: apartments for rent.

"The apartment complex is a new monument that allows players getting started with a wipe to find a place to call home," says Facepunch Studios. "Simply talk to the receptionist in the lobby to get started and rent a room. There are options for every budget, from the basement to the penthouse. Different room types come with different perks, like more storage, furnaces and more."

OK, you can rent apartments in Rust now. That might as well be a thing. At any rate, the cutthroat traditions of Rust still endure even in the temporary housing market:

"Once you've rented a room you'll need to insert scrap into the slot next to your door, otherwise you'll be evicted and all of your possessions will be seized," Facepunch says. "There is a master key available somewhere on the island - find it and you can unlock access to any occupied room in the apartments for 5 minutes. Need a hint as to what room to burgle? There might be a guard in the basement who has more information."

Ah, that's more like it. If you're a second late with your rent you'll lose everything, plus someone might find a key and ransack your flat based on information spilled by a slimy basement stoolie.

Apartments aren't the only things you can occupy in the new update: there are commercial opportunities as well as residential ones:

"The new apartment complex monument features a small marketplace of shops. Each shop can be purchased and run by players, allowing you to sell your wares to the residents of the apartment building," says Facepunch.

Sounds sweet except for all the peril: someone may buy your shop right out from under you simply by paying more for it in scrap. And that master key that lets you pilfer from apartments? It also works on stores, so you're probably gonna get robbed by some jerk player, too. Hey, it's not personal. It's only business.

The update also brings changes to Rust's "softcore" mode, like 2x multipliers to resource gathering and raid windows that only allow base raids to occur between the hours of 6:00 and 9:00 pm local server time. There's also a new clan system, improved animations, Twitch drops, and more. Check out all the details of the new update here.

As a survival game, Windrose is an extremely forgiving one. Your weapons and gear never degrade. If your pirate ship sinks you can rebuild it with a mere 20 pieces of wood. You can't die of hunger or thirst, and your NPC pirate crew, well… they can't die at all.

It's such a streamlined survival experience that when you're sailing your ship across the sea, you can go in any direction you want at top speed at all times. That's because despite the title of the game, there is no actual wind in Windrose.

That might change in the future, says Kraken Express. In a devlog posted today, the studio outlined the first major update to the early access pirate survival game that includes a new biome, new pirate ship classes, more of the main story and sidequests, and yep, wind. Maybe.

First, the studio gave players a look at the next biome, the Ashlands, a region that "suffered from volcanic eruptions long ago, leaving its mark on the settlers who lived here, and on those who came after." There, players can expect "a variety of new islands with new enemies, items, resources, recipes, points of interest, and, of course, a new challenging boss."

Also on the roster for the update are new building pieces and decorations, plus new ship classes and variants. There are also plans for NPC ships to behave more "naturally," meaning they'll actually sail in formations instead of simply steering back and forth in circles as they do now.

And also: wind, perhaps.

"We are also aware of the popular request to add wind influence on sailing to the game," Kraken Express said on Steam. "We’ll definitely be exploring this idea as well, and we originally intended to."

I expect a bit of resistance from some players at the idea of a wind system. One of the selling points of Windrose is that you can just jump in your ship and speed off to combat and adventure without a bunch of speedbumps (or whatever the equivalent of a speedbump is in the ocean) getting in the way. Sailing isn't meant to be challenging, it's meant to be fun, and it is.

One of the games Windrose is heavily inspired by, Valheim, has a wind system that means sailing directly into the wind can only be done at very slow speeds with the sails unfurled. I personally think that helps Valheim feel more like a real adventure where the ocean is a treacherous place, but at the same time, sometimes you just want to get from Point A to Point B without a bunch of drama. Valheim's wind system can sometimes turn a quick ocean voyage into a real slog.

Kraken Express is keeping that in mind as it experiments with its own wind system.

"But let us be crystal clear: we want it to be fun and simple," the studio said. "Windrose aims to be an adventure, without some of the more hardcore simulation aspects."

There's still no word when this first major update will arrive: "As always, we'll be sharing more details, including an estimated release window, as development progresses."

Ever play a game set in a world so intriguing and enjoyable you wish there were other games, even of a different genre, that took place in the same setting?

Eremite Games, the studio that created roguelike city builder Against the Storm, has announced just that. "There’s something we’ve been dying to tell you," the studio said on Steam: it's been working on a new game that is "slowly taking shape as a survival game set in the Against the Storm universe."

Even better, it looks like it might be co-op. As part of a dev diary, the studio released a short in-engine clip of the new game, though asked that fans "please keep your expectations very modest. The project is still in its earliest phase, full of placeholders, and nearly everything you see is subject (and likely) to change."

There's not a lot to see in the clip: a robed figure carrying a rifle strides through a gloomy, rainy night, and stops outside a small dwelling that looks for all the world like a building you'd see in Against the Storm. A moment later, a second figure steps into frame, which could suggest a co-op experience. See for yourself:

That's it. There's nothing else to see at the moment, and no further details about the new game including when it might come out or even what it's called.

"There’s a chance we’re showing this way too early," the studio said. "We hope you won’t hold it against us if the project evolves into something very different. But keeping this under wraps has been torture. We’re still just a small, 6-person indie team, and this kind of openness feels more natural to us."

Against the Storm was an unusual, contrarian sort of city builder: instead of building a city that lasts the whole game, the city you build gets wiped out every year thanks to a cataclysmic cycle of destructive magic—the storm of the title. But each time you begin again, you bring with you the experience and upgrades of your previous runs. It was our favorite city builder of 2023, and our reviewer Leana Hafer called it "one of the most clever, engaging, and endearing strategy games I've played in years."

Speaking of which, Eremite Games also addressed a topic I'm sure it gets asked about a lot: Against the Storm 2?

"The idea of a sequel is something we think about often," the studio said. "But this time, we wanted to experiment with the survival genre and explore new facets of the Against the Storm universe."