Full Release 1.0 - LOOT & SHOOT!

Dear Survivors,

We have some great news! After one year in Early Access and six major updates, we’re releasing our biggest update yet today: Version 1.0.

We hope all new players have a great time, and we’d like to thank everyone who participated in and supported Early Access: Thank you! By the way, your existing savegames will also work in 1.0, there might be a flood of achievement unlocks on your first load though.

To kick things off before you hit the road, feel free to check out our 1.0 release trailer:

New Character: Vampire

As a vampire, you start without a weapon, but with a handful of bats. With each level-up, another one is added to the group. Not only do they deal damage (melee), but they also have a chance for life-steal. So equip your best items with melee effects alongside them and see what happens...

The vampire might be one of the deadliest survivors so far. Small hint: To unlock, a meeting with the shady merchant might be mandatory. Enjoy unleashing the bats!

New Base: Finally Coffee!

It's unclear how anyone managed to survive at the base camp without coffee until now. For all players who initially struggle to survive for several days on their road trips, there's now a simple solution: the coffee stand in the new, revamped base, where you can brew yourself a cup of coffee and start your next run with increased movement and loot speed. Additionally the days are a bit longer.

So from now on, if you had a rough run or two, grab a coffee in our rearranged and beautified base and start your next run with a coffee in your loadout.

New Boss:

Laz, son of a MKing franchise owner and former freelance IT technician, who build a robo army by stealing the restaurants cleaning robots, has now mutated into a serious security risk for our survivors. So you'd better not show up unprepared for the showdown with our new, fifth final boss.

New Weapons and Items

With this update we increased the number of weapons and items to a total of over 110. Here are some of them:

You want some details? 1.0 adds 10 new weapons (five of them can only be crafted). Shred the horde with the Grinder’s spiked wheel, or set the streets on fire with the Flamethrower. Increase your looting speed with the Crowbar or craft a Crossbow that gets under the zombies skin and sticks with them.

Check the list below, if you’re not afraid of spoilers!

New Weapons:

• Crowbar: melee, increases looting speed
• Machete: melee, small sweeping attack
• LMG: fast, but heavy
• Tommy Gun: fast, but inaccurate
• Brass Knuckles: Fast, short-range punches.
• Flamethrower (craftable): shoots a stream of flames and leaves fires that deal a share of that damage every second. Fires can apply Burn
• Desert Eagle (craftable): high damage, pierces one extra enemy
• Mega Shotgun (craftable): very high damage and lots of pellets
• Crossbow (craftable): Shoots bolts that stick in enemies. Those repeat on-hit effects when triggered.
• The Grinder (craftable): Destroys everything that gets in its way with a spiked spinning wheel.

But what would weapons be withoutitems to back them up? Not nearly deadly enough, so 16 new items are joining your backpacks!

The Hammer upgrades your marked items overnight. The Lottery Ticket might pay for your next reroll, or for your life. The Cogwheel sets off chain reactions between items, and the Teleporter beams you straight to loot you haven’t touched yet. For the brave, the Shady Merchant also stocked up on some new items.

New Items:

• Rubber Band: Increases range of marked throwables and reduces trigger intervals
• Shield Generator: Restores one armor every 10s, but taking damage resets the timer
• Hammer: At the end of the day, upgrades all marked items by one rarity,but not past the hammer's own rarity
• Lottery Ticket: Chance of a free reroll, a free repair, and of crafting not using an ingredient. On death the ticket is destroyed and can revive you.
• Hand Mirror: Effects that hit a marked item are copied onto the marked item opposite it
• Cogwheel: When one marked triggerable item triggers, the other marked triggerable items trigger too. Each item only once per chain
• Plasma Hand (craftable): Counts as unlimited extra hands for equipping weapons
• Ripped-Out Eye (Shady Merchant): Marked weapons get +100% crit chance and -75% range
• Teleporter: On use, teleports you to an unlooted loot spot and knocks back enemies there. At night, once all fuel is collected, it teleports you to the bus instead.
• Ghost Sheet: Increased invincibility after getting hit and while you are actually looting, you turn see-through and are hidden from zombies
• Throwing Knife: On a timer, and when triggered, throws a knife in a straight line at a nearby enemy
• Electrolyte Drink: Increases stamina recovery
• Secret Sauce: Lowers the fuel required each day and lets your bus start faster. Adds poison damage to marked weapons/items, but deactivates marked food items.
• Ice Cube (Shady Merchant): increases movement speed and dash distance, and you slide for a moment after you stop or after a dash
• Uranium (Shady Merchant). Hits with marked weapons and throwables can set off a small nuke. But be careful, it can also mutate the hit zombie into a titan
• Tesla Coil: Shoots a projectile every 3s, that can electrocute. Marked lightning items can receive additional bounces, but only if you have marked an even number of electric items .

Full details (mechanics, stats, numbers) on the items and weapons can be found in the game once you've unlocked them. Have fun unlocking them and subsequently using them against the endless hordes of zombies. Our promise: They won't have any fun in the process.

New Co-Op Mechanics

The most wanted feature during Early Access was a co-op mode. That's why it's getting a major update. We know that traveling solo can be fun, but the fun can definitely be doubled when you're with someone else. Grab your controllers and get comfortable on the couch, or invite a friend to play with you via Steam Remote Play. Best part: They don't even need to own the game.

• Cross-backpack synergies are on. Selectors can mark items in the other backpack.
• Each backpack gets one extra unlockable column, the grids can touch, and each bag has a player outline. There is a warning when the coop backpack cannot grow any wider.
• Round-end stats are split per player. The lower value is dimmed. If a stat cannot be attributed, the team total is shown. Stats stay separated between saves

Other Changes

Added

• 30+ new achievements to discover
• Completely new intro video (background story). Showing on first play (also existing savegames):
• New memos to find, picking up a memo shows a loot notification.
• New Maps: Explore new areas and enjoy your time in new locations, such as the ski resort in the Snowy Peaks or the new golf course in the suburbs.
• New and reworked tutorial steps
• Extra music on day 1, 2, 4 and 6. Ballerina has new boss music, and HQ Research has its own music.

Improvements

• The HQ ending sequence can be skipped now
• Auto Equip places an item in the best open spot, including for synergies.
• Map Size on mission cards reflect the real map sizes now
• Bags can be placed closer to the backpack border
• One-time unlock screen reworked into a vertical list with previews
• Unseen memos show an attention bubble on the investigation board
• Reviving items show their icon above the character when they trigger the revive
• Weapon tooltips show crit chance and crit damage
• The run rating list cycles through when playing with a controller
• The banana tutorial sits better on screen
• Sound tweaks
• More inventory sounds (e.g. sell all,...)
• Updated + fixed many texts + fonts in all languages
• The workbench recipe list sorts by what you can craft, and shows how many ingredients you have and their rarity
• Game over shows who killed you and your best item
• Endless dashes in the base
• Base POIs sometimes were not clickable properly (blocked by trees or players world space UI)
• The stash scrolls with the mouse wheel, and at the edges while you drag an item
• Round-end and one-time unlock scrollbars match the inventory scrollbar styles.
• Achievement popup redesign
• You can now click on leaderboard entries, and the profile will open in the Steam overlay.

Balancing

• MKing Response Level drops by 1 if a run is lost or abandoned before its first boss win
• Enemy Rebalancing:
• Fewer Chargers
• Special Zombies appearing later but becoming more common
• Threat level impact on amount of special zombies starts slower now but picks up later faster
• More biome-specific enemies
• Slower growth of enemy attack distance late in runs/Endless.

Crit chances above 100% can reach higher crit tiers. Each full extra 100% adds the crit-damage bonus again, and the leftover chance can roll one more tier. Luck only affects that leftover. A normal crit stays red. The next tier is orange, and tier 3 and above are yellow.

Some achievements pay apples or duct tape in the base, with a pickup effect

Harder achievements multiply the run rating, and the rating rows show icons of achievements

Item packs have names and unlock requirements + costs slightly changed

Shady Merchant has a 50% chance to wait behind the wagon at merchant stops. From day 4, a one-day route is guaranteed to include him once per run. Random appearances still happen on top of that.

Character stickers from the same source combine when an item is upgraded, up to the sticker's max rank

Katana damage +25% across its rarities

Super Knife damage 280 → 224, a 20% reduction.

Round end shows an apple bonus of +5% per response level

Bosses drop +1 duct tape from MKing response level 3 and +2 from level 5.

The HQ end boss base drop is lowered from 5 to 3

Weekly challenge always plays at response level 5

Starting threat is +1 at MKing response level 3, +2 at level 4, +3 at level 5.

The route threat cap reaches 3 at MKing response level 2 and 4 at level 6.

Mission select offers the same map type two days in a row less often

Reaper drops 1 duct tape

Merged projectiles deal their full damage.

Astronaut "+Crit per Armor" is 3% per armor per rank. Ranks 2 and 3 did nothing before, and rank 1 was 10%

Coffee, Special Banana, Fresh Pumpkin, and The Carver's Grin count as Food

Apple Press prices follow a rounded Fibonacci series instead of doubling

Banish capacity is 3, then 6, then 12 (was 2, then 5, then 10)

The crafted Uzi is Rare instead of Uncommon

The Bush needs less time standing still to trigger its seed ability

Pressure cooker cools down faster

Nerfed void item (less damage for empty hands and empty backpack slots)

Nerfed Treasure chest crit multiplier and interest

Performance

• Ranged weapons fire at the stated rate at any frame rate. A 50/s weapon was only firing about 30/s at 60 fps
• The run rating sequence could be laggy with many apples spawned
• Reduced reconstruction rate of tooltips when showing the upgrade tooltip
• Less copying during map generation, enemy spawn filtering, XP math, save-slot labels, and recipe checks
• Intact destructible props draw as one mesh until they break.
• Fixed issue of several grows growing (and scanning) over the whole day
• Several small optimizations

Bugfixes

Weapons & Combat

• Fast melee keeps dealing damage when an attack is cut short by a high attack speed
• Recoil no longer freezes on a later weapon because an earlier one was not recoiling
• The revolver mesh no longer blocks projectiles
• Merged impacts keep the item they came from
• Range bonuses made Slash swings narrower. They widen them again
• The Chainsaw could miss an enemy standing right next to you
• Melee weapons flicked to the cursor and back after a kill
• Weapons jumped sideways when auto-aim lost its targets
• Pizza, Health Kit and other item abilities could stay off after a level-up powerup
• Razorblade and Chain Lightning lost procs on merged hits, and Razorblade ignored luck
• With powerup items, one item could take up two slots
• Santa's airstrike marker did not match the explosion. Radial blasts were also applying a size bonus twice, so the damage radius was too big

Characters & Items

• Sheriff Star no longer spends ammo on its reload bonus shots
• Item effects that need a marked-item count wait until that count is met
• Item triggers only count events from the matching character
• Roller Skates upgrade text shows the buffed value
• Two copies of the same powerup no longer unequip the wrong one
• Dying with two revive items armed used up both
• Empty blood bag did not count kills immediately after revival
• Empty Blood Bag didn't track its killed stats correctly anymore after transitioning to next day
• Pumpkin turret and bush trap lifetime stickers showed seconds instead of % values

Enemies & Bosses

• Blobball body parts can no longer be wiped out by a huge hit while the main body lives
• Dumpling no longer dies immediately when only one subdivision is left
• The end boss stomp telegraph can no longer get stuck
• Standard enemy eyes blink again
• Tackle enemies got stuck on curbs or in their charge animation

UI & Controls

• Pausing during a controller drag no longer hides the held item
• Holding LT to hide the item tooltip did not work when navigating to another item
• Repairing with the mouse still left the broken state and the repair prompt on the tooltip
• Picking up a hovered item that has a selector, or is buffed, did not show the upgrade glow on the same item type already in the backpack
• Animated item pictures reset their direction when the inventory was reopened
• Proc icons jumped when they started floating up
• Controller input stopped working after pausing while an airdrop was still opening
• Pressing Y / Triangle in the inventory or an airdrop could open the bug reporter. The controller shortcut now only works in the pause menu.
• It was possible to dash in the background of some base screens.
• Sometimes pages could get stuck in bus screen (when switching between mission selection and inventory)
• Some stash items refused a merge from a matching item you were dragging,
• A broken item pushed aside by a swap could get stuck half picked up
• Dropping into a scrolled stash could land a slot off, or merge with an item that was scrolled out of view
• After an upgrade drop, the tooltip of the item that was merged away could open again

Audio & Visuals

• Molotov impact sound is positional now
• Music can transition on the paused day-over screen
• The display setting couldn’t move the game to another monitor
• Impact sounds could play at a recycled projectile's old position.

Saves & Achievements

• The first save slot deletes correctly when an old SaveSlot_0 is still there
• Weekly challenges did progress achievements in rare cases

Coop

• Void damage preview was always based on player 1
• Bag placements were sometimes rejected near the division border of both players' backpacks
• Powerups could be activated by a downed player
• Character stickers no longer disappear when an item moves to the other player or through the stash

• Titans didn't appear at day 5 anymore (only when reaching threat 50)
• Changing hand stats after visiting merchant or copy shop could crash
• HQ production ambient sound could leak into other scenes
• The bus revive skipped players who went down late, and could heal past Medicine Shortage
• Enemies despawned while one player walked toward them
• Turrets and chickens counted toward the wrong player’s item
• Some equip effects were missing on the bus if a player went down during takeoff

Other

• Airdrops could land in enterable buildings (e.g. copy shop)
• Some throwables could loose buffs
• The Void description “total damage” only shows during a run now
• HQ Conveyor effects no longer keep running after they are torn down

Well, that's it for now.

Start the game, maybe invite a friend and see for yourself... There's plenty to discover:

Last, but not least: Check out the supporter pack:

Thanks for your support, feedback and patience during Early Access.

We're excited to see what you'll do with all the new additions in the 1.0 version.

<3 Your Team Pixelsplit