Changelog

Changelogs

Hotfix 98XXX (February 7, 2017)

Greetings Contestants!

We don’t like to loot our own horn, but we have some crate news. Along with a few critical bug fixes, this hotfix will finally resolve the issue of missing crates that many of you experienced after the Big House update, along with a handful of other loot-related hiccups.

We call this “The Frank Fix.”

Servers will be down on Wednesday February 8th at 8AM EST and maintenance will continue for up to four hours.

As this hotfix makes its debut, we will still be hard at work on making improvements to the matchmaking service, which will make it easier to play the modes you prefer.

We also have a super fantastic special wonderful announcement brewing that we’re excited to share with the Cullmunity in the near future.

Until then, See you on the island!

PS: Yes, we’re still working on filters.

The Frank Fix

• We have resolved an issue that allowed the Steam Item conversion process to run multiple times on some accounts, resulting in excess Cull Crates and Cull Credits
• We have resolved issues that resulted in some veterans not achieving their intended conversion tier (i.e. 1000+ hour veterans did not achieve “Alpha Master” status)
• The “Frank Fix” will occur during server downtime and do the following:
  • Clear your inventory items and Cull Crates (your XP, Level, and Stats are intact, don’t worry!)
  • Award you all the crates you are due based on your level (i.e. a level 26 player receives 25 crates)
  • Award you 5 bonus crates as Frank’s personal apology
  • The next time you log in after the fix, we will re-run the Steam item conversion process, which will re-grant you crates and items based on the characteristics of your steam inventory
    • Dev comments: This update will put everyone exactly where they should be in terms of Cull Crates, Cull Credits, and items from their Steam inventory. Some players may miss out on their favorite Culling Card or weapon skin that dropped after the update, and for that we apologize. We will do our best to avoid future resets.

Bug Fixes and Balance

• Mangler Perk now applies 40% of damage done to opponent’s stamina pool (previously 80%)
• Fixed a bug related to Man Tracker and player stamina
• Fixed a bug that caused a broken animation state when struck by a thrown spear
• Fixed a bug that caused some victory celebration animations to look incorrect
• Fixed a bug that prevented snares from applying expose wound when using Trapper perk
• Fixed a bug that caused intermittent server stability issues

Hotfix 98583 (February 2, 2017)

Greetings Contestants!

We’re seeing a lot of positive response to this week’s patch but word on the street is that Frank snuck a few little bugs into the mix to keep us on our toes. We’re back with a quick hotfix, which should help alleviate most of these issues.

Servers will be down on Friday February 3rd from 8 AM EST for up to four hours.

While we have your attention, we also want to reiterate that we’re aware many of you are highly anticipating the ability to select your method and format of play. While we cannot put an ETA on this immediately, know that Filtered Queues and Ranked play are both our highest priority.

In the meantime, we’ll be working on some behind the scenes magic to ensure that matchmaking in the current Quick Play platform is improved, giving a preference to Classic Solo play when queued alone.

Additionally, we hear that Frank is working on a very special crate fix that should bring balance to the .. inventory system.

But that’s for all for now. Until next time you crazy killers!

See you on the island!

Bug Fixes

• Resolved issues with Teams matches where one of the winning team members would not receive XP/Stats and would instead have an unresponsive menu as their reward.
• Fixed bug where Dig Deep perk would restore 35 HP instead of the intended 20.
• Fixed bug where weapon switching would not work properly when the player was weak/feeble.
• Removed non-functional Quick Play Filter UI, so as not to get your hopes up too soon. We are working to get this functionality to you as soon as we can.
• Fixed bug where Sixth Scents perk nearby player alert could be triggered by a teammate.
• Fixed text bug where Thick Skin perk description did not specify that it requires an equipped axe to be effective
• Fixed text bugs showing inaccurate damage numbers for Auto Bow and Rifle.
• Fixed an issue where players could still be knocked back (and potentially stun-locked) if struck while holding certain weapon types.
• Made a potential fix for some rendering crashes. These crashes are proving difficult to isolate but we are actively investigating.

Patch 98XXX (January 31, 2017)

Greetings Contestants!

We want to thank you once again for helping make the Big House update a big success. Just when you thought the exciting updates were over, we’re busting out a new round of changes that are sure to make you squeal in the way people do when they receive a Valentine’s card from their crush or have a stealthy blade slipped between their ribs.

Servers will be down on Wednesday February 1st from 8 AM EST for up to four hours.

First off, we have a fix for the Cull Crate reward bug many of you have been experiencing. This is great news for many and we’ve been working hard to make sure that things are in order. With that said, restoring missing crates is going to take more time and we will have a solution shortly. We will keep you posted.

Next, we’re debuting a big change that we’ve been hinting at for a long time: The Return of the Perks!

Many of your old favorites perks are back and we’ve thrown a couple of new ones into the mix for good measure. The caveat is that now you’re only allowed one perk per category, which should allow for better balancing overall.

But wait, there’s more!

We’re also debuting an important round of combat changes that address the key concerns we’ve heard from you about the latest iteration. More than any other update to the system, this has been a collaborative effort with you, the Cullmunity.

There are dozens of other important changes, but this wouldn’t be a brief intro if we covered them all. While some highly-anticipated features such as Ranked play and filtered matchmaking couldn’t make the cut this time around, know that they’re a priority moving forward and that the team is working tremendously hard to get them into a live state.

Also, please be aware that our patch schedule may slow down for a period of time as we make some important progress on the Xbox One Preview version of the game. This should be a temporary delay and will ensure that when we launch on Xbox One Game Preview Program The Culling is as polished as possible, across all platforms.

In the meantime, we’ll have some new and exciting news to share. But… we’ll save that for another post

Stay tuned and see you on the island!

Balance and Gameplay

• Perks
  • Updated perk list. Includes addition of 12 new and previously removed perks and some rebalancing. See perk list below for full details.
  • Players may now equip one perk per category (3 perks from 4 categories).
    • Dev comments: This gating system allows us to bring back several popular perks from the past. We are now able to balance perks within categories rather than against all the other perks in the list, which in turn prevents stacking of movement or defensive perks. We’ve also made some favorites weapon-specific, which we thinks promotes interesting weapon-specific builds.
  • Reduced number of Kill Perks (awarded automatically for killing players) from 5 to 3.
    • Dev comments: The Kill Perks experiment has proven successful in terms of incentivizing aggressive play, but we felt that trimming from 5 to 3 retains the incentive and frees Leg Day and Dig Deep to rejoin the regular perk list.
• Melee Combat Changes
  • Players are micro-staggered if they strike a blocking player (unless the blocking player has Weakness/Feeble). Lasts 0.65 seconds, knocks player backwards, limits player movement, does not prevent blocking/attacking.
    • Dev comments: The primary goal of this feature is to ensure that the successful blocker is able to capitalize on the Weeakness/Feeble wound. Previously the weakened player could easily escape without taking damage. This has the added benefit of allowing skilled players to crowd-control their opponents, giving them a better chance in 1v2 situations.
  • Added Feeble wound. Weakness progresses to Feeble if you strike a blocking player while Weakened. While Feeble, your attacks deal 10% damage and you are only capable of blocking 10% damage. Lasts for 2.5 seconds.
    • Dev comments: This addresses the problem where skill could not be used to overcome a significant hit point disadvantage. Previously, the player with the advantage could deal enough damage despite the weakness wound, meaning they could spam attacks indiscriminately and still win. This behavior now results in Feeble, which renders your offense and defense ineffective.
  • Weakness now lasts for 2.5 seconds (previously 3 seconds)
    • Dev comments: The goal with Weakness and Feeble is to create a specific opportunity for the successful blocker to punish the blocked player. The goal is to allow the player time to close distance and land a fully charged attack without being jabbed back instantly when the wound clears.
  • Holding a fully charged melee for more than 1 second attack drains stamina at a rate of 5 stamina points per second
    • Dev comments: Now that charged attacks cannot be interrupted, we are finding stalemate situations with one player charging an attack and the opponent blocking. The attacker is at an advantage because they can almost guarantee fully charged damage when the opponent drops their block. This change puts the player who charges an attack for too long at a stamina disadvantage.
• Airdrop Changes
  • Early Airdrops now cost 12 FUNC (previously free)
  • Early Airdrops no longer contain a stim
  • Late Airdrops now cost 200 FUNC (previously 250)
  • Utility Airdrops now cost 75 FUNC (previously 100)
  • Added Early bow Airdrop, random chance to contain Autobow or Recurve Bow
  • Added Mid Compound Bow Airdrop, contains a Compound Bow with full ammo
  • Added Late Gun Airdrop, contains a random gun with full ammo, Tactical Body Armor, and a random stim
  • Trapper Utility Airdrop contents updated: Backpack, Steel Snare, Steel Punji Sticks, Steel Caltrops, Explosive Mine
    • Dev comments: We have a few more changes planned that will impact Airdrops, but for now we want to make Late Airdrops more appealing and reintroduce some ranged options.
• Base crafting times reduced by 25%

Dev comments: Master Crafter was popular enough that we decided a global reduction in crafting times was warranted. The original goal was that crafting would make you vulnerable to attack, but we may have taken things a bit too far.

• All spawn points in classic mode prison map now have a nearby airdrop landing pad
• Teams now spawn at (relatively) equal distances in teams matches
• All bows now have max ammo of 18
• Chainsaw beast mode activated. Chainsaw now costs less stamina and imparts high-intensity versions of Cripple, Expose, Pierce, and Bleed wounds. Don’t get caught by the chainsaw.
• Rifle now deals 40 damage, has much slower rate of fire (from 25 damage)
• Poison Gas Grenade now expands instantly on impact
• Reduced number of hits required to mine rocks and sticks for most weapons, for a max of 4 hits and minimum of 2 hits
• Survival Axe now deals 9-23 damage with *** Expose wound
• Rebalanced XP awards
  • Dev comments: Our first stab at XP awards proved to be a little too generous, which is better than being too stingy, but worse than being just right. Hopefully this iteration will feel just right.

Bug Fixes and Polish

• Fixed some bugs that we believe were responsible for the bulk of the stability issues (read: crashes) users experienced with the Big House update
• Fixed bug that prevented some users from receiving Cull Crates when leveling up
• Players cannot exit the booth backdoor in Lightning Rounds (to prevent players missing their airdrop pad)
• Suicide button now works properly in custom matches
• Fixed bug that allowed .357 Magnum to have extremely high rate of fire
• All spawn points now have guaranteed rocks and sticks for crafting
• Fixed bug where XP would not appear correctly on match summary screen
• Cleaned up start of match sequence to hide UI and in-game elements until loading is complete
• Fixed several hit reaction animations that were still moving and potentially stun-locking players
• Reduced the amount of camera movement imparted by attack animations and hit reaction animations.
• Visual changes to make Lightning Rounds more distinct and to help players obtain their airdrops
• Fixed visual issue with wrist on female Formal Top clothing
• Fixed bug that made Stealthy Stim ineffective
• Added Red Crates to prison map
• Fixed text bug that described Crafted Spear pierce intensity of *** (it is actually *)
• Roll-up doors in prison now have SFX
• Dirt road texture no longer has a stone with a faint blue outline that tricked players into thinking they might be able to pick it up
• Prison architecture now properly blocks explosions and interactions
• Fixed issue where Loot Express arrived a minute early (now takes 2 minutes and matches announcement)
• Polish pass on in-game menus
• Polish pass on front-end menus
• Concrete surfaces can now be mined for rocks in prison map
• Fixed Belgian flag Culling Card. Sorry Belgium!
• Fixed several clothing clipping issues
• More Holo Spawners added to prison map
• Better visual and audio communication for Weakness/Feeble wounds
• Fixed bug where some weapons did not display crosshairs when equipped
• Fixed HUD description of damage values for Yari and Sabre
• Stun Gun and Pepper Spray now recycle for 10 FUNC regardless of ammo
• Weapon and item skins now appear in items spawned from lockers and green/red crates
• Fix for rocks and sticks spawning underneath roads
• Collision fixes in prison map
• Renamed Rekt-Em-Juice back to Orange Juice. Let us never speak of it again.

Perk List

• Combat: Basher: -15% melee charge time with all Bludgeons
• Combat: Brutus: +50% backstab damage with any Blade
• Combat: Golden Arm: +25% velocity, +100% damage for thrown spears (+50% for crafted) Maximum effect at 20 meters.
• Combat: Mangler: 80% of melee damage dealt with Axes is also applied to opponent's stamina
• Combat: Ranger: +10% damage with all ranged weapons
• Combat: Trapper: -75% time to place and disarm traps. Snares apply a 30% expose wound.
• Movement: Leg Day: +5% movement speed
• Movement: Recovery: +30% faster stamina regeneration
• Movement: Speedy Spear: +7% movement speed while holding any Spear
• Movement: Stealthy Blade: Your movement is nearly silent while holding any Blade
• Survival: Angry Octopus: When reduced below 20 Health automatically drop a Smoke Bomb (Once per match)
• Survival: Bomb Suit: Reduce all damage from firearms and explosives by 30% while holding any Bludgeon
• Survival: Blood Guzzler: If someone is bleeding within 15 meters of you, you gain 1 health per 3 seconds.
• Survival: Cannibal: Killing an opponent restores 15 health and full stamina
• Survival: Dig Deep: Recover 20 Health when you drop to 1 HP. Happens once per match.
• Survival: Immunity: Immune to bonus damage from backstabs and headshots
• Survival: Inhuman: You can not be tracked with Man Tracker and are immune to Alarm Gun
• Survival: Regenerator: Recover 1 health point every 4 seconds
• Survival: Sixth Scents: Become alerted when a player is within 20 meters. 30 second cooldown
• Survival: Thick Skin: Reduce all damage from bows, blowguns and thrown weapons by 30% while holding an axe
• Survival: Tough Mother: Reduce all incoming damage by 5%
• Utility: Bow Flexer: +25% arrow velocity with all Bows and -25% charge time
• Utility: Backpacker: Start the match with a Backpack in your inventory
• Utility: Chemist: Stim effects last 50% longer
• Utility: Load Dropper: Airdrops arrive much faster
• Utility: Man Tracker: Start the match with a Man Tracker in your inventory
• Utility: Master Crafter: -25% crafting time
• Utility: Moneybags: Gain +2 bonus FUNC each time FUNC is gathered
• Kill Perk: Big Boned: +10 health pool
• Kill Perk: Big Lungs: +20 stamina pool
• Kill Perk: Ol Painless: +10% general damage

Hotfix 98189 (January 20, 2017)

Greetings Contestants!

First off - thank you for your tremendous feedback. As we launched our biggest update yet, The Big House, you came to our side and offered your support. Boasting nearly double the content found in the game’s Alpha, The Big House was a yuge undertaking and we’re glad to hear that so many of you have enjoyed the fruits of these many months of loving labor.

With an update of this magnitude there were bound to be challenges, as we discovered when you descended upon our servers in droves. We’ve put together a hotfix that addresses some of the most pressing issues and we’re compiling a list of tweaks and fixes for our next patch. Thank you once again and see you on the island!

Balance and Gameplay

• Players can no longer stagger with shove while they are under the effects of weakness
  • Dev comments: Players discovered an exploit that allowed them to immediately execute a shove after being blocked, which allowed them to turn the tables on a player who had effectively blocked them.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed issues related to the UI becoming unresponsive after the match ended (usually after spectating)
• Fixed an issue with matchmaking that placed teams into solo matches.
• Matchmaking returned to default from Teams-only.
• Fixed an issue with matchmaking that resulted in longer than expected wait times even with sufficient players in queue
• Fixed an issue that prevented Linux/SteamOS client from publishing properly
• Fixed an issue where where match results screen would display negative XP
• Fixed an issue where your killer’s Culling Card would not display on the Hunted screen in Lightning Rounds
• Fixed an issue where the invert mouse axis setting was not working

The Big House Update (January 17, 2017)

Greetings Contestants!

It’s here! it’s finally here! The day we’ve all been waiting for has arrived and we’re happy to announce The Big House, The Culling’s biggest update yet.

Watch The Big House Trailer

We invite you to our brand new map: Cul County Correctional, where you can duke it out in on the yard or in the cells of our prison playground. But what’s a playground without a few new toys? We’ve included new weapons, game modes and match events to keep your blood lust satisfied and your cold murderous heart content.

Servers will be down on Wednesday January 18th from 8 AM EST for up to four hours. Note that while this is our estimate, an update of this size may require some extra love. We’ll be sure to update you of any potential delays in delivery.

Since The Culling made its debut onto Steam Early access, you, the cullmunity, have shown us plenty of love. This isn’t lost on us and The Big House is our way of showing it back. Consider it a love letter. A letter of love. Basically we’re flirting with you. No, we will not send nudes.

Ahem..

Although we’ve addressed many known issues, this build is not an exit from Early Access. Instead, it represents our transition from Alpha to Beta. This is an exciting milestone that ushers in a new era of The Culling. At the same time, it doesn’t mean we’re quite out of the woods, or the tropical island - see what we did there? - just yet. There’s still plenty of bug fixing, optimizing, and polishing to do. Still, we’re proud to bring you many of the features that you’ve been asking for, and we’re excited to bring even more in the future. Speaking of the future… we’re also happy to announce that we’ll be bringing The Culling to Xbox One Game Preview Program in the first half of 2017! We told you there was more! And we will have even MORE (ahhhhhh) to share in the near future, but until then, we’ll see you on the isl.. Wait that’s not right...

See you in the cell block.

New Features

Quick Play Feature

• Contestants all queue together and get a random chance at all modes and maps. Pre-made teams are guaranteed to be placed in teams matches.

Improved Matchmaking

Reworked Tutorials

New Map: Cul County Correctional

New Match Events:

• Shake & Bake: The sun is gonna get hot! Hide inside or you will take damage!
• Gold Rush: A free Golden Crowbar will spawn in a central holo-spawner. It opens a golden crate that spawns in the middle. The crate contains a Chainsaw which, has been retuned for maximum fear and loathing.
• Drop Your Bridges: Want to call in your airdrop for free? Head to the bridge pads before other players get there. But be careful, hitting the bridge voids their warranty!

New Modes: The Culling now features 8 ways to play:

• Classic Battle Royale (16-player free-for-all) on The Island
• Classic at Cul County Correctional
• Classic Teams on The Island
• Classic Teams at Cul County Correctional
• Lightning Round (8-player free-for-all) on The Island
• Lightning Round at Cul County Correctional
• Lightning Round Teams on The Island
• Lightning Round Teams at Cul County Correctional
• Private matches are available in Classic Battle Royale on The Island and at Cul County Correctional
• Lightning Rounds have been reworked with new airdrops and rules

New Economy

• Culling Crates: As you level-up you will earn crates. Open them for cool prizes!
• Currency System: Didn’t get something you want? Many items can be purchased directly by using currency earned through opening crates.

New Loot

• Weapon Skins: Customize the look of any airdrop/holo-spawner weapon you call in. Players will envy you as you stab them to death. If they kill you and steal your pretty weapon you have nobody to blame but yourself!
• Culling Cards: Unlockable banners to show your dead opponents your personal flair. Be warned: some include potty humor.
• Taunts: Get in your enemy’s head with the new taunts. Just don’t let them kill you while you show off your moves.
• Victory Celebrations: Won a match? All eyes are on you as you dance on the victory podium.
• Tons of new clothes, hair styles and hats
• Over 1,500 unlockable items in total!

Progression System

• Player XP: As you play matches you earn experience. The better you play the more you earn.
• Player Leveling: When you get enough experience you gain a new level. Every level earns a new crate for some phat lewt! There is no limit to how many levels you can earn. Try to reach infinity!
• Player stat tracking (Kills, Wins, Play Time, etc.)

New Weapons/Traps

• Pike
• Yari
• Pitchfork
• Camp Hatchet
• Survival Axe
• Steel Caltrops
• Steel Punji Sticks

Changes: Highlights

• Blocking a melee attack imparts a weakness wound on the attacker. The wound lasts for 3 seconds, reduces damage dealt by 50% and reduces block effectiveness by 50%. Players who have the weakness wound cannot apply it to others.
  • Dev comments: This solution finds a nice middle ground between pre-December 2016 combat and the “no-stagger” patch. We’ve retained the smooth, fast-paced feel of the December patch, but raised the skill ceiling to encourage competitive play amongst veteran players.
• Performance Optimizations: We have updated to a newer version of our game engine and optimized many aspects of the game. Our min-spec machines are able to run the game at higher graphics settings with improved frame rate and high-end machines are showing major improvements as well.
• Players are no longer able to disable shadows
  • Dev comments: Trapping is an important aspect of The Culling and the option to disable shadows gave an unfair gameplay advantage, not to mention making the game look unappealing. We have worked hard to ensure that our min spec machines can still offer solid playable performance with shadows enabled. We have also improved the look of the “low” shadows setting.
• Player movement speed reduced by 10% (back to pre-perk-removal settings)
  • Dev comments: Players have learned to utilize mobility in combat to maximize their chances. While mobility is important, we want melee combat to focus more on skillfully choosing when to attack, block, or shove.
• Reduced overall duration of blindness wound to 6 seconds (from 13 seconds)
  • Dev comments: A well-timed Angry Octopus proc or Smoke Bomb was more likely than not to turn the tide of a fight. We reduced the length of the blindness wound previously, but the wound remained extremely powerful, so we’re taking the gloves off.
• Players no longer stumble and briefly lose movement control when struck with melee attacks, this led to situations where a player could be effectively stun-locked
  • Dev comments: This long-standing issue became more prevalent with the last combat patch, especially in teams mode. Players can no longer interrupt the mobility of their opponents through melee attacks.
• Steel Pipe charged damage reduced from 24 to 22, Pipe Wrench charged damage reduced from 27 to 25
  • Dev comments: These bludgeons had their damage initially set based on the assumption that their one-star speed rating would limit their effectiveness. We’ve reduced the damage of these bludgeons to help them fit better within their assigned tier.
• Shuffled Tier assignments of several weapons to to have more equal variety across tiers
  • Dev comments: With the addition of several new weapons it was time to shuffle tiers. There are now two Tier 3 weapons of each type and Tiers 1 and 2 have more even distribution across weapon types.
• Increased ammo capacity for bows
  • Dev comments: Who doesn’t like carrying more arrows?
• Increased punji stick / caltrop immunity period from to 3 seconds (from 1.5 seconds)
  • Dev comments: With the introduction of Steel Punji Sticks we found that the time between damage application needed to be increased due to the amount of damage these traps are capable of inflicting.
• Crosshairs are visible whenever a weapon is being held
  • Dev comments: Combatants rejoice! Whether it be a melee strike or a throw, proper aiming is important and we determined that it was unfair that some players were resorting to 3rd-party methods to display crosshairs.
• Increased block angle by 18%
  • Dev comments: The previous block angle was somewhat unforgiving and led to situations where players’ block would not work but looked like it should have. This change should eliminate those cases.
• Basher reduces bludgeon charge time by 15% (previously 30%)
  • Dev comments: The recent combat changes coupled with the disproportionate damage the Steel Pipe and Pipe Wrench were capable of made Basher was an incredibly powerful perk. We’ve toned it down to be more reasonable.
• Damage dealt numbers appear in the HUD
  • Dev comments: In an effort to help players understand what’s happening during combat (including the effects of the weakness wound), we’re experimenting with displaying the damage you’ve dealt another player in your HUD. This is a prototype implementation and will receive a polish pass somewhere down the road.
• Stun Guns spawn in lockers
  • Dev comments: These were removed from Green Crates but were not added into other spawners, which effectively removed them from the game. They are back!

Patch 96869 (December 20, 2016)

Greetings Contestants!

The aroma of sour eggnog and dried blood hangs heavy in the brisk winter air as the team puts the finishing touches on the major update. But, what fun are the holidays without a little cheer? So, before that happens, we thought we’d let you open one last present before the New Year!

The new patch will be released on Tuesday, December 20th. Servers will be down starting at 8AM Eastern for *up to* 4 hours.

This patch revolves around some seemingly small changes to melee combat that we expect will have a big impact. In an effort to make combat more enjoyable and less punishing, we’ve removed the stagger that previously happened when you struck a blocking player, and we’ve made it impossible for another player to cancel your charged attacks.

We like the feel and pace this new aggressive twist brings to the combat system and we’re eager to hear your thoughts.

For more in-depth explanation, you can read our recent blog post.

See you on the island!

Balance and Gameplay

• Melee Combat Changes
  • Charged melee attacks are no longer canceled by taking melee damage
  • Blocking a melee attack no longer staggers the attacker
    • Dev comments: For a full description of our melee combat changes and the reasoning behind them, please check out this blog post.
• Late-Match Airdrops are available three minutes earlier. They can be called after 9 minutes have elapsed (16:00 remaining). Previously available at 12 minutes elapsed (13:00 remaining)
  • Dev comments: We’re working to find the right balance of cost and match time availability for Late-Match Airdrops. These contain the most powerful weapons in the game, so we want to hold them back long enough to give value to the lower tiers, but we also want them to be attainable enough to represent a viable strategy. Keep the feedback coming!
• Bow headshots now deal 1.5X bonus damage (previously 2X bonus damage)
  • Dev comments: We realized consistency for headshot damage is probably a good idea, so we’ve made the headshot bonus for bows match the bonus for firearms.
• Blocking now prevents wounds applied by thrown weapons
  • Dev comments: Throwing was not originally intended to be a guaranteed way to apply a wound, so we’ve closed this loophole. Note that hits which bypass the block from the sides or back will still apply the wound, even if the player is blocking.
• Chemist Perk now increases duration of stims by 50%
  • Dev comments: We like round numbers and Chemist was feeling a little tepid, so this is a golden opportunity for everybody to feel good about a change.
• Bait Crate is now treated as Early-Match Airdrop (instead of a Utility Airdrop), allowing it to be called once per match without FUNC cost
  • Dev comments: We like the Bait Crate, but with recent changes to the economy, the 100 FUNC price tag was steep. By making it free to call once, it becomes a guaranteed option to try to hoodwink an opponent and put them at a significant disadvantage.

Bug Fixes

• Fix for Brutus Perk applying more bonus damage than was intended
  • Dev comments: Brutus was applying a larger bonus than it should have, this has been fixed.

Patch 96202 (November 22, 2016)

Greetings Contestants!

There’s a cold wind blowing on the island, and the inhabitants are ready to get their kill-streaks on. There’s so much to be thankful for: Big bones, big lungs, ol’ painless, leg days, even deep digs.

What’s that? You didn’t hear that some old favorites are making a comeback with a twist? Well quit gobbling that buttery corn cob and read on!

The new patch will be released on Tuesday, November 22nd. Servers will be down starting at 10AM Eastern for up to 4 hours.

This time out we’re focusing on a couple of key aspects of the game: Aggressive vs. Passive play and melee combat mechanics.

Aggressive play (which is inherently risky) is not adequately incentivized and leaves the victor vulnerable to vulturing, while passive play (which is dull to spectate and can lead to crowded end-of-match scenarios) presents no major risks or downsides. While we do not intend to eliminate passive play, we do want it to be a risky choice, so we’ve implemented the following changes:

• Kill Perks. As you achieve kills in a match, you unlock a series of perks that improve your combat effectiveness for the rest of the match. While we expect combat skill will remain the primary determining factor in most fights, these Kill Perks will give the edge to an aggressive player.

• Economy Changes. FUNC rewards for kills have been increased and FUNC gained from recycling has been decreased. Late-Match Airdrop costs have increased. This means expensive equipment will be more difficult to obtain for passive players.

• Vulture Reduction. Default health-on-kill has been increased and the radius of combat audio has been decreased. This makes vulturing more difficult and mitigates one of the major risk factors in taking on a fight.

It is worth noting that the Kill Perks system is an experimental prototype and is likely to see changes in the future. If this system proves popular, it offers an avenue for more of the game’s classic perks to return in a controlled fashion.

On the Melee Combat front, while the last iteration of timing changes (read: slower shove) was successful in its goal of making shoving somewhat risky, it came at the expense of a sluggish feel and jab-back. We want the game’s controls to feel sharp and responsive, and we generally want combat decisions to straddle a fine line between predictive (I expect my opponent to attack, so I’m going to block) and reactive (I can see my opponent is shoving, so I’m going to attack).

In order to make combat actions feel quick and responsive, we’ve reduced the time required to shove significantly and made some tweaks to blocking and attacking. All three of these actions are now identical in terms of timing. We have offset the speed of shoving by giving it a period of vulnerability. If a shoving player takes damage, he will experience a “mini-stagger,” which leaves him vulnerable to an additional jab.

With these changes, we are one big step closer to putting the finishing touches on the game’s foundation in preparation for the major update. We hope to have news for you on that front soon!

EXTRA BONUS SECTION (COURTESY OF CULLMUNITY ORGANIZER ATRIUM_DEV)

The biggest tournament ever for The Culling happened this weekend with over 125 of the best Culling all-stars battling it out for over $5,500 in prizes. Backstabs, grenades and BM galore gave us two new champions to add to the Cullmination banners!

First off, congratulations to the TWO-TIME champion kvason95 with the patient decisive win over former two time champion PumpgunLouis and front-runner FaKe. kvason95 breathless and exhausted vowed to use the prize money to help out his mother and he’s not sure what to do with the rest quite yet. Watch the finals moments here.

Secondly, a HUUUUUUUUUUGEEE congratulations to TheOneXplicitz for his aggressive, bloodthirsty, and frankly terrifying win in the NA Finals. Xplicitz conquered some high level foes (with some added BM) and took out Bombie^ to be your NA Champion. The finish in the blood bowl Cullmunation can be watched here.

For all your Cullmunation discussion, highlights and results you can subscribe the survive the culling subreddit and read these threads.

And remember to join the Discord to hang out with the champions, Culling developers and other contestants!

We’ll see you on the island!

Features

• NEW: Kill Perks are now awarded to players when they achieve kills in a match:
  • 1st Kill: +10 health pool
  • 2nd Kill: +10 stamina pool
  • 3rd Kill: +10% damage
  • 4th Kill: +5% sprint speed
  • 5th Kill: Dig Deep (restores 15 health when taking fatal damage)

Balance and Gameplay

• Melee Combat Mechanics
  • If a player takes damage while shoving, he is subject to a “mini-stagger” which is shorter in duration than a full stagger, but still grants the opponent an opportunity to attack
  • Reduced Shove animation duration
  • Tweaked timings of Shove, Jab, and Block to be consistent with each other

Economy

• Increased FUNC Kill Reward to 60 (from 40)
• Base recycle value of 10 for all manufactured items
• Rocks and Sticks can no longer be recycled
• Late Game Airdrop cost to 250 FUNC (from 200 FUNC)

• Sledgehammer text and damage set to 10-30

Dev comments: Sledgehammer was previously dealing 9-27 damage, but the UI text was incorrect.

• Reduce combat value of fists, rocks, sticks: 5-10 damage (from 5-15)

Dev comments: This is intended to add combat value to Tier 1 and Crafted melee weapons.

• Duration of full blindness from blindness wound reduced to 2 seconds (from 3 seconds)

Dev comments: We’ve seen the effectiveness of a multi-smoke bomb strategy and want to take a bit of the sting out of being blind.

• Increased base health award on kill from 15 to 30. Note: There is a known issue where this does not work properly in offline matches.
• Reduced the distance from which combat actions can be heard

Bug Fixes and Polish

• Fixed missing fireworks for Grab My Package
• Reduced duration of Airdrop notification VO

Dev comments: A better long-term solution is in the works, but for now we’ve made these announcements less obtrusive.

• Trump and Hillary masks retired. See you in 2020!

Patch 95827 (November 4, 2016)

Greetings Contestants!

The U.S. presidential election is nearly upon us and just when you thought the last political shots had been fired, The Culling has a final trick up its sleeve that could decide the outcome of the race. That’s right: Trump and Hillary masks are making their way to the island (sorry, Gary Johnson).

In the final hours before Super Tuesday, Culling contestants will show their support by dressing up as their favorite candidates. Hop on a private server (hosted in Frank’s garage), build a wall around your Airdrop landing pad, and leak the blood of your enemies. Step aside, Washington Post, The Culling is ready to flex its influence and rock the vote!

The new patch will be released on Monday, November 7th. Servers will be down starting at 8AM Eastern for *up to* 4 hours.

In addition to goofy rubber masks, this patch has A LOT going for it. For months we’ve been systematically targeting various core game systems and overhauling them to be more balanced, more competitive, more fun and more... “more.”

This time we have Airdrops, Economy, and Match Events in our cross-hairs.

You can read the details below, but the short version is that we now have Early-, Mid-, and Late-Match Airdrops that only become available at specific time intervals (provided you have enough FUNC). Coupled with a stingier economy, we expect Airdrop choice to be more interesting strategically and more critical to the outcome of matches.

Perhaps the most exciting thing about this round of changes is that for us it represents a critical milestone on our Early Access road map. At this point we’ve addressed all of the game systems that required overhauls, which frees up more of the team to focus on the Major Update that’s still in the works. There will be more patches before that update, but they are likely to involve fine-tuning, rather than huge shifts. This is the stimulus package we’ve been looking for.

In a tip of Frank’s fedora to the Cullmunity, we’ve made a few timing tweaks to Blocking and Shove, we’ve added Cullmunity tournament-winner banners to the Cullmination, and we’ve made it easier to view the scoreboard when you’re spectating.

We’ll see you on the island!

1. Frank4Pres

EXTRA BONUS SECTION: Hot on the heels of their Culloween event, the Cullmunity is gearing up for their biggest tournament yet to close out the year.

The Cullclusion.

More guests, more prizes, and the biggest purse to-date; it doesn’t get much better than this.

Proceeds from entry fees for the tournament are being delivered to the Texas Homeless Network, helping those in need during this holiday season. That’s literally a win-win when you put your money where your mouth is!

You sign up and get more details on the Cullclusion here.

But what if you want to put your fist where your mouth is? Well you’re in luck friend, there’s an option for that.

Each weekend leading up to The Cullclusion on November 18-20th we will be running Pre-Qualifiers to help contestants book their very own free ticket to the tournament!

Windows will be open starting on 12pm EST and closes 6pm EST ( Nov 5/6, 12/13). During this time period, a contestant merely needs to meet the following minimum requirements to be entered in the running.

Minimum Requirements:

• Play at least 10 matches during the time period
• Win at least 1 game
• Get a minimum of 3 kills in a single game

If you haven’t registered for the free Pre-Qualifiers, what are you waiting for? Click here!

Cosmetics

• New Trump and Hillary masks are available to everyone for a limited time!
• Halloween masks have been retired

Balance and Gameplay

• Airdrops and Economy
  • New Suite of Airdrops
    • Early (Tier 2 Melee weapon + Crude Crafted Armor + Random Stim) (FREE)
      • Random Blade
      • Random Bludgeon
      • Random Axe
      • Random Spear
    • Mid (Tier 3 Melee Weapon + Reinforced Crafted Armor + Random Stim) (100 FUNC)
      • Bowie Knife
      • Kukri
      • Sabre
        • • • Tactical Machete
      • Pipe Wrench
      • Baseball Bat
      • Survival Spear
      • Tomahawk
    • Late (Tier 4 Melee Weapon + Tactical Body Armor + Random Stim) (200 FUNC)
      • Katana
      • Sledgehammer
      • Trident
      • Fireman’s Axe
    • Utility (can be called up to 3X, available at match start, 100 FUNC)
      • • Tracker
        • Backpack
        • Man Tracker
        • Alarm Gun
        • Silent But Deadly
      • Golden Arm
        • Backpack
        • 3 Javelins
      • Medic
        • Backpack
        • Med Kit
        • Iron-4-Skin
        • Muscle Man Milk
      • Trapper
        • Backpack
        • Steel Snare
        • Steel Snare
        • Explosive Mine
      • Bait Crate
        • Explodes and deals 50 damage when opened
  • Airdrops now have an elapsed match time requirement in addition to a FUNC requirement.
    • Early, Utility: Match Start
    • Mid: 6 minutes elapsed (19:00 remaining)
    • Late: 12 minutes elapsed (13:00 remaining)
  • With the exception of Utility Airdrops, Airdrops can be called once per match
  • Airdrops now spawn directly over the landing pad and take 45 seconds to arrive
  • Airdrop landing pads no longer spawn randomly, there are a fixed number of pads and locations
  • Default loadouts utilize Early Airdrops and Load Dropper
  • Improved item orientation in Airdrop crates
  • Load Dropper perk reduces Airdrop call-in time from 45 seconds to 15 seconds (previously provided instant delivery)
  • Recycle Value Updates
    • Hemo Blast Stim: 10 FUNC (previously 20)
    • Explosive Mine: 20 FUNC (previously 25)
    • Remote Explosive: 20 FUNC (previously 30)
    • Sabre: 25 FUNC (previously 30)
  • Removed several activity- and time-based FUNC Rewards
    • Time Alive (1, 2, and 3, these were providing a total of 100 FUNC)
    • Crouch through trap
    • Distance Traveled (1 and 2)
    • Stim Use
    • Opening various crates
  • Dev comments: This overhaul of Airdrops and Economy is intended to accomplish several goals:
    • Airdrop contents are balanced, allowing players to choose based on weapon preference. While the previous “themed” Airdrop approach was fun (and may see a return in some form), it meant that certain weapons were favored based on the quality of the companion items.
    • The introduction of a time-gate mechanism allows us to control the pace of weapon progression, which in turn increases the relative value of each tier of melee weapon. Tier 2 and Tier 3 melee weapons each enjoy a 6-minute window where they are (nearly) guaranteed to be the strongest weapons in play. When coupled with a more restrictive economy, we expect the choice of an Early-, Mid-, or Late-Game Airdrop will be much more interesting from a strategic risk/reward standpoint.
    • With Early-Match Airdrops available for free at the very start of the match, inexperienced players have a clear path to gearing up that doesn’t require intimate map knowledge (for effective scavenging) or understanding of the crafting system. We’ve all seen new players enter fights empty-handed, which isn’t particularly fun for anyone. We expect some aggressive veterans will also favor Early-Match Airdrops and rely on Holo Spawners and body-looting to provide Late-Match gear.
    • By removing the majority of activity-based FUNC bonuses, including the controversial “charity FUNC,” passive players will have a much more difficult time accessing Holo Spawners or Late-Match Airdrops, creating a strong incentive for aggressive play.
    • While still valuable, Load Dropper is no longer a must-have perk for a player who wants to guarantee an Airdrop. All Airdrops will alert other players to your location and can potentially be contested, but they can no longer be stolen in transit. While some of the gameplay associated with snagging an Airdrop as it traveled across the map was exciting, having all Airdrops spawn directly above their landing pad creates a host of new gameplay dynamics.
• Melee Combat
  • Blocking: Reduce minimum block duration by 0.1 second (from 0.5 seconds), making total minimum block time 0.7 seconds (matches jab time)
  • Shove: Extend shove time by 0.1 seconds, making total shove time 1.1 seconds
  • Shove Animation: Shove animations should better illustrate the timing of shove, with an explosive pop at 0.1s, and a long follow-through where the shoving player is visibly vulnerable.
  • Dev comments: The community has spoken! Several of you have voiced concerns about the slow feel and added vulnerability of blocking since our last changes, so we’ve reduced the minimum block time by 0.1 seconds. Coincidentally, this makes Jab and Block timing match exactly, which must be fate. We’ve made Shoving more of a risk by extending the duration by 0.1s and reworking the Shove animation to do a better job of visually communicating how vulnerable a player is after a miss.
• End of Match Map Changes
  • End of match gas iris behavior updated. With ~7 minutes remaining, the gas iris pauses for 5 minutes. With 2 minutes remaining “Standing Room Only” begins and stops with 0 minutes remaining.
  • With ~7 minutes remaining, “End of Match” Gas Pylons appear near in 4 key locations near the central arena. When triggered these pylons shut down large portions of the playable space, driving players toward the center.
  • Dev comments: We’ve been struggling to find a solution to the phenomenon we consistently see in high-stakes matches (i.e. tournaments): Lots of players alive at the Standing Room Only phase, resulting in a messy brawl with questionable “who can survive longest in the gas?” tactics.
  • When a tournament is on the line, it is difficult to incentivize aggressive play, but punitive action against passive players didn’t seem appropriate. Through changes to gas shutdown timing and placement of strategic gas pylons that only appear near the end of the match, we have created a scenario where we expect much higher attrition during the late game phase (from 7 minutes remaining until 2 minutes remaining), with only a few players remaining as the match winds down to Standing Room Only. Note that “End of Match” Gas Pylons behave identically to all other Gas Pylons in terms of radius, duration, and damage.
• Level Changes
  • Community Tournament Winner Banners Added
    • Dev comments: We are proud to display banners commemorating the winners of notable Cullmunity-organized tournaments.
  • Fireworks at Grab My Package destinations
    • Dev comments: This helps draw players to the location where Grab My Package will land, making it more contestable.
  • Match Events now occur in 3 phases
    • Early (@ 4:00 elapsed)
      • The Chokening
      • Loot Express (Can deliver Mid and Utility Airdrops)
    • Mid (@ 10:00 elapsed)
      • The Chokening
      • Grab My Package (Can deliver Mid, Late, and Utility Airdrops)
    • Late (@ 18:00 elapsed)
      • Loot Pinata (Can deliver Mid, Late, and Utility Airdrops)
      • Three-Crate Monte (Can deliver Mid, Late, and Utility Airdrops)
    • Note: Two events happen per match, always at different match phases
    • Dev comments: We have new events planned for the upcoming major update, but in the meantime we’re embracing the Early-Mid-Late scheme of Airdrops and reformatting our Match Events to create a more cohesively paced experience that still offers the prospect of early access to a higher-tier Airdrop.
• Spectator Mode Features
  • At match end, spectators automatically view the scoreboard
  • Holding Tab key allows spectators to view the scoreboard (mappable key)
• Advanced Tutorial Changes
  • Room 1 Mandroid has an on-screen damage display
  • Auto Bow and all stims are now included on pedestals
  • Recycler is available
  • Dev comments: These changes make our internal QA testing easier and will allow the community to test and confirm their own theories.
• Holo Spawners no longer contain Hemo Blast Stims, have a higher chance to contain ranged weapons
• .357 Magnum, SMG, and Rifle have had minor accuracy tweaks

Patch 95482 (October 25, 2016)

Greetings Contestants!

Ghouls are lurking, ghosts are twerking, it’s that spooky time of year we all love and have come to know as Culloween.

After a series of big changes that have set the stage for the future of The Culling, this patch should feel like a gentle tropical breeze by comparison. The highlight of this week’s update is a shift into how caltrops operate. Rather than sending players into a bloody rage, we’ve increased their cost and decreased their bleed so that contestants aren’t screaming bloody murder.

The new patch will be released on Wednesday, October 26th. Servers will be down starting at 8AM Eastern for *up to* 4 hours.

Over the past few weeks we’ve made significant advancements with how The Culling plays at all levels and we’re adding several new changes in this week’s patch that continue to enhance the island’s competitive nature. Among other things, we’ve set our sights on improving the balance on ranged weapons, we’ve made Red Crates... crate again, and we’ve tweaked the economy to make sure that the island isn’t being hotboxed by smoke bombs. It can’t be 420 all day every day!

These may seem like small adjustments, but they’re positioning The Culling for bigger and better changes in the near future. Oh, and if you’re a glutton for Early Access punishment, don’t worry, we have big plans in the works for changes to the economy and match progression that aren’t quite ready to roll out.

As always, we are marching tirelessly toward the major update and we’ll let you know as soon as we have more concrete news.

We’ll see you on the island!

EXTRA BONUS SECTION: The Culling is nothing without the Cullmmunity and we want to thank Amanduuuh38 and everyone who was involved with, and supported this past Sunday’s EU Culloween tournament. Seeing the incredible response to the tournament gets our adrenaline pumping almost as much watching some of The Culling’s top players go head-to-head.

If you missed the fun, you’re awful and you should be ashamed of yourself. BUT WAIT! You can redeem your transgressions November 18-20 when the Cullclusion tournament goes live.

You sign up and get more details on the Cullclusion here.

Balance and Gameplay

• Crafted Caltrops
  • Bleed applied by Caltrops is now * instead of **
  • Crafting cost is now 6 FUNC (from 4 FUNC)
  • Crafted Snare cost has been reduced by 2 FUNC to compensate, Blowgun cost remains the same, effectively increasing its total cost by 2 FUNC
  • Individual caltrops now have 5 hit points (previously 15 hit points)
  • Caltrops can now be destroyed by stepping on them, even if the player is in the brief immunity period after triggering one
  • Reduced individual caltrop count to 12 (from 15)
  • Dev comments: We love that players love using caltrops, but they are frustrating to deal with in certain situations. We’ve made several adjustments with the expectation that they will remain useful, but won’t pack quite as much punch and will be easier to clear from an area.
• Red Crates
  • Adjusted placement of some Red Crates and Explosive Barrels to prevent cases where they could spawn extremely close to each other
  • Red Crates now contain the following:
    • Tier 3 melee weapons
    • Guns (with half a magazine of ammunition)
    • Compound Bow (with no arrows)
    • Reinforced Crafted Armor
    • Hemo Blast stim
  • Dev comments: Although finding a Tier 4 melee weapon in a Red Crate was rare, it had the potential to dramatically change a match. We’ve guaranteed that the minimum time needed to open one will be a bit longer (requiring you to search farther for an Explosive Barrel). The contents will always be useful (especially if you open one early in a match), but the small chance of a Tier 4 melee weapon has been removed.
• Guns
  • Zoom of Rifle increased in aimed mode
  • Rifle hip fire accuracy increased slightly
  • .357 Magnum aimed accuracy decreased slightly
  • All guns have a base recycle value of 30 FUNC, but the value is increased if the gun contains ammunition when recycled
  • Dev comments: We’re pleased with the small bump in popularity guns have seen since the last patch (they are up to an average of 4% of damage dealt in a match, compared to 2% previously). These changes represent minor tweaks for consistency and aren’t meant to have a major influence on gun use.
• Bows
  • Crafted Bow Crafted Ammo costs 3 FUNC for 6 arrows (previously 5)
  • Compound Bow Crafted Ammo costs 10 FUNC for 6 arrows (previously 5)
  • Auto Bow recycle value reduced to 20 (previously 25)
  • Compound Bow recycle value reduced to 25 (previously 30)
  • Zoom of Compound Bow reduced in aimed mode
  • Dev comments: Bows have also enjoyed a small increase in use since the last patch. We’ve made a few economy changes related to bows so that recycle values are consistent across tiers of weapons and to reflect the relative firepower of a bow in its arrow crafting cost.
• Crafted Smoke Bombs cost 10 FUNC (previously 5)
  • Dev comments: Increased crafting cost will force players to think a bit harder about making one of these, and will substantially limit their ability to fill a backpack with them.
• Alarm Gun ammo can be crafted from rocks (previously explosive barrels)
  • We have bigger plans in the works for the Alarm Gun, this change is just the tip of the iceberg!
  • Edit: Alarm Gun damage reduced to 1 (from 10)
    • Dev comments: With the ammo crafting change, this puts the Alarm Gun squarely in the "Utility Item" category, so damage has been reduced.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug that prevented blocking from being effective against certain ranged weapons

Patch 95350 (October 18, 2016)

Greetings Contestants!

The new patch will be released on Wednesday, October 19th. Servers will be down starting at 8AM Eastern for *up to* 4 hours.

If you’ve been paying attention to The Culling lately, it has probably been clear that we are currently working on two parallel tracks. Internally, we’re adding major new systems, optimizing and polishing in anticipation of the biggest update we’ve ever released. We don’t have a date for you yet, but we’ve got Frank living on stale bread crusts and rusty tap water until he wraps it up. We promise!

As many of you may have suspected, over the past few weeks we’ve been making a series of important changes to the live build that are intended to put game into a clean and balanced state that will serve as a strong foundation for future features.

At its core, the essence of The Culling’s combat is melee, but ranged weapons, explosives, and traps allow well-rounded players to gain the upper hand before things get up-close and personal. We’re making adjustments to reinforce that as we lead into our major update.

A long-standing statistic we’ve observed is that melee combat is responsible for more than 80% of damage dealt in an average match. While that doesn’t constitute a crisis, it means that many contestants are completely ignoring some of the tools in their toolbox. To entice players into strapping a gun to their belt, clipping a grenade to their suspenders, or slinging a bow over their shoulder, we’ve revisited balance for bows, guns, and explosives. Additionally, we’ve made them easier and more predictable to obtain in a match.

Our hope is that players will see Airdrops as the primary path to their favorite melee weapon and Holo Spawners will be the preferred method to obtain a powerful ranged weapon or explosive to round out their inventory. Airdrops focused on ranged weapons have had their costs reduced significantly, but players who choose these drops will generally have a harder time obtaining a tier 3 or tier 4 melee weapon in the match.

It is also worth noting that while we’re making some necessary economy modifications with this patch, we still have a major economy shift coming in a future update in which we’ll address some common gripes about time-based FUNC rewards, easy access to high-end Airdrops, and general match progression. Hold tight and stay tuned!

As always, we appreciate your feedback and thank you for your patience as we move towards the major update.

We’ll see you on the island.

BONUS SECTION!!!!!! *Bwa-bwa-bwaaaa* *ding-ding-ding* *other alarmingly-exciting noises*

The first Cullmunity-run EU tournament is just around the corner and is set to scare up a storm just in time for Culloween! Read about it here.

EDIT: The following changes were made after the initial patch notes release:

.357 Magnum rate of fire reduced to 0.6 seconds between shots (from 0.2 seconds) Guns purchased from Holo Spawners now contain a full magazine of ammunition (previously contained half a magazine when not obtained from an Airdrop)

Balance and Gameplay

• Bows
  • Crafted Bow Damage: 6-12 (from 5-10)
  • Recurve Bow Damage: 8-16 (from 7-14)
  • Auto Bow Damage: 8 (from 5)
  • Compound Bow Damage: 10-20 (from 9-18)
    • Dev comments: Our last update appears to have succeeded in terms of increasing bow accuracy without significantly changing how much damage bows do per match, but we’ve heard plenty of feedback that bows feel a bit weak. In response, we’re bumping up damage slightly on all bows and we’re making them more obtainable by treating the Recurve Bow and Auto Bow as Tier 2 bows, and treating the Compound Bow as Tier 3.
• Guns
  • .357 Magnum Damage: 25 (from 28)
  • SMG Damage: 10 (from 13)
  • Rifle Damage: 25 (from 48)
  • Guns no longer apply bleed wound
  • Rifle zoom increased to allow longer-range accuracy
  • Blocking reduces damage from guns by 50%
  • Dev comments: Guns have always been very powerful, but they’ve occupied a small niche (on average, players do 3X more damage in a given match with their fists than they do with guns). The only reliable way to obtain a gun is through an Airdrop, but those have commanded a premium price and generally require players to forgo a high-end melee weapon. We’re making it easier to get your hands on guns, but we have also lowered their lethality. The rifle in particular is now more focused on being able to land shots from a significant distance, but no longer deals crushing damage. We’ve also made guns blockable, which gives skilled players an opportunity to mitigate gun damage if they can anticipate it in advance.
• Explosives
  • Crafted Explosive Damage: 30 (from 35)
  • Explosive Mine Damage: 40 (from 65)
  • Remote Explosive Damage: 60 (from 95)
  • Impact Grenade Damage: 40 (from 50)
  • Dynamite Damage: 60 (from 75)
  • Explosives no longer apply bleed wound
  • Normalized blast radius and damage fall-off for all explosive weapons and traps
  • Dev comments: In a similar vein as guns, explosives are generally difficult to obtain but highly lethal. We’re reducing the lethality somewhat in order to make these items easier to obtain. We’ve also made the behavior of all the explosives identical in terms of blast radius and damage fall-off in order to make them more predictable and allow for better feedback from users.
• Economy
  • Green Crates
    • 50% chance to receive a Tier 2 melee weapon
    • 25% chance to receive to receive a Tier 2 ranged weapon
      • Recurve Bow
      • Auto Bow
    • 25% chance to receive an explosive trap
      • Explosive Mine
      • Remote Explosive
    • Dev comments: Green Crates remain a reliable method for obtaining a Tier 2 melee weapon early in a match, but they also offer a good chance of grabbing a solid Tier 2 bow or explosive trap.
  • Holo Spawners
    • 50% chance to receive a Tier 3 ranged weapon
      • Compound Bow
      • .357 Magnum
      • SMG
      • Rifle
    • 25% chance to receive a thrown explosive
      • Dynamite
      • Impact Grenade
    • 25% chance to receive a utility item
      • Rekt-Em-Juice
      • Tactical Body Armor
      • Hemo Blast
    • Dev comments: Holo Spawners were previously focused on providing players with access to Tier 3 melee weapons, but we’ve found that most players would rather pursue an Airdrop that offers better value. We’ve decided to make Holo Spawners more focused on obtaining a powerful ranged weapon.
  • Airdrops
    • Demon Hunter costs 75 FUNC (previously 125)
    • Hawk’s Eye costs 125 FUNC (previously 175)
    • The Imp costs 175 FUNC (previously 225)
      • The Imp no longer includes Iron-4-Skin
    • Commando costs 250 FUNC (previously 300)
    • Hunter costs 225 FUNC (previously 300)
    • Five-Oh costs 225 FUNC (previously 300)
    • SWAT costs 225 FUNC (previously 300)
    • Bandito costs 225 FUNC (previously 325)
    • Pirate costs 250 FUNC (previously 325)
    • Sniper costs 225 FUNC (previously 325)
    • Dev comments: With the shift of Auto Bows to Tier 2 and Compound Bows and guns to Tier 3, we’ve re-priced the ranged weapon Airdrops accordingly. We expect players will continue to focus on Airdrops for high-end melee weapons and utitize Holo Spawners to purchase ranged weapons.

Misc. Changes

• Suicide button assignable (for Private Matches)
  • Dev comments: There is now an assignable control (unassigned by default) that will allow you to instantly commit suicide in a Private Match. This is a temporary tool to make it easier for the host of a tournament match to transition immediately into spectator mode without disrupting the match.
• Orange Juice has been renamed as Rekt-Em-Juice
  • Dev comments: By popular demand, we’ve changed Orange Juice to the name that we thought might be too juvenile and disgusting.
• Stealthy Shot has been renamed as Silent But Deadly
  • Dev comments: When we converted the Stealthy perk into a stim, we didn’t spend much time thinking up a clever name. Now we’ve spent 30 seconds on it so we can move on to more pressing matters :)

Patch 95183 (October 11, 2016)

Greetings Contestants!

The Major Update is Coming.

As our forefathers have ...fore..told, The Major Update is Coming. As we prepare for its impending arrival, we continue our crusade to address major aspects of the core game, setting the bloody stage for greater things to come.

Last week we overhauled our Perk list. This week we’re casting our gaze on a weapon that has been rumored to be found in different area codes. Bows. That’s right. We’ve got bows, in different area codes.

The new patch will be released on Wednesday, October 12th. Servers will be down starting at 8AM Eastern for *up to* 4 hours.

Over the months since launch, we’ve learned a lot about the role bows play on the island. Bows makes up a small but significant percentage of the damage done in The Culling. Just like traps, explosives, and guns, bows can help you gain an advantage before the axes start swinging and the fur starts flying.

A problem we’ve identified is the steep learning curve for bows that prevents many players from using them effectively, while making them an extremely powerful combat tool for those who are able to attain master status.

Our goal with this patch is to close the gap somewhat by making bows easier, more rewarding, and ultimately more fun to use, while preventing them from being the only weapon in a player’s arsenal and maintaining a skilled level of play for experienced players.

In addition to bow rework, we’ve made some tweaks to a few Perks based on the behavior we’ve observed and feedback we’ve received in the last week. We have a couple more big areas to address before we’re ready to devote all of our attention to the exciting new features we have planned for the major update.

Upon its arrival people will tell tales of cold water and chemical combustion. Until then: Stay tuned.

We’ll see you on the island!

Balance and Gameplay

• Bows Balance Changes:
  • Crosshairs turned on
    • Dev comments: Some players were already using external means to enable crosshairs, which gave them an advantage that we were unable to mitigate. Rather than leave the rest at a disadvantage, we’ve enabled crosshairs for everyone! Note that crosshairs no longer expand/contract based on movement. This was not an accurate depiction of accuracy.
  • Arrow velocity increased by 66%, with increased projectile drop from gravity
    • Dev comments: This change supports the general goal that short- and medium-range targets will be easier for most players to hit. Bow users will not have to lead moving targets as much, but will have to increase elevation compensation at greater range.
  • Removed bow accuracy penalties
    • Dev comments: To be Frank, our accuracy system for bows was somewhat disjointed. There was a baseline accuracy modifier, which was intensified by low Stamina and hip fire, making bows somewhat unpredictable. We didn’t have a good way to communicate any of this to players. Since bows rely on projectile physics, they already require more skill than a hitscan weapon does. As such, we have removed all of the artificial accuracy modifiers. Note that built-in animation sway has not been changed.
  • Blocking reduces damage from arrows by 50%
    • Dev comments: We’ve effectively made bows more accurate, but our goal is not to shift the focus of the game to ranged combat, so we’re giving players a skill-based method to counter bow users.
  • Ammo capacity reduced to 12 arrows (from 18 arrows)
    • Dev comments: To further limit the overall firepower of bows, we’re reducing the maximum arrow capacity to 12. Committed bow users may choose to carry an additional bow, but this requires the sacrifice of an inventory slot, which we think is a fair trade.
  • Bows no longer apply Bleed wound
    • Dev comments: The power of the Bleed wound meant that landing a single arrow against a melee opponent could give a bow user a distinct advantage in an ensuing melee fight. Removing bleed means bow users will need to land more hits to deal equivalent damage, which should be easier to accomplish with the accuracy measures we’ve taken.
  • Bow Damage Changes:
    • Crafted: 5-10 (from 4-12)
    • Recurve: 7-14 (from 5-16)
    • Autobow: 5 (from 6)
    • Compound: 9-18 (from 7-20)
    • Dev comments: Uncharged bow damage gets a slight boost and charged damage gets a moderate reduction. We’re now consistently scaling bow damage from from 1-2X based on level of charge, which supports our goal of spacing the tiers a little more clearly.
• Perks Changes:
  • Removed Stealthy Perk, replaced with Stealthy Shot stim. The stim behaves like the perk did, lasts 2 minutes, and spawns in lockers
    • Dev comments: with the changes in the last patch, Stealthy distinguished itself with the advantage it offers in terms of sneaking up on your enemy unawares and successfully escaping a fight that isn’t going your way. We like the gameplay Stealthy brings to the table and didn’t want to water down its effects, so we’re moving it to a stim. It requires the Stealthy player to acquire the stim and use it situationally, rather than having it permanently.
  • Angry Octopus Perk Changes
    • Smoke Bomb procs once per match (previously 60 sec cooldown)
    • Smoke Bomb procs below 20 HP (previously below 30 HP)
    • Dev comments: Angry Octopus also jumped to the top of the perk list along with Stealthy, meaning the island was often difficult to see because of the all the smoke. Based on how effective Angry Octopus is at turning the tide of a fight (offensively or defensively), some rebalancing was in order.
  • Removed Immunity Perk
    • Dev comments: By canceling bonus damage from backstabs and headshots, Immunity provided a hard counter for the Brutus perk. While backstabs and headshots are situational and generally require skill to achieve, we’ve decided to remove Immunity as our goal is to avoid perks that cancel one another.
  • Chemist extends stim duration by 35% (from 25%)
    • Dev comments: Chemist was hit pretty hard with the last patch, so we’re restoring some of its former glory. This means most stims will last for 2 minutes and 42 seconds when Chemist is active.
• Stealthy Stim available in the following Airdrops: Ninja (replaces one Crafted Smoke Bomb), Boar Hunter (replaces X-plosive Runs), Addict (replaces Muscleman Milk)
  • Dev comments: Having a fun new stim means we can add some variety to our Airdrops, so we’ve made a few choice replacements to make Stealthy Shot accessible.
• Increase stamina cost of jumping to 8 (from 4)
  • Dev comments: Now that combat actions don’t cost stamina, we’re free to up the cost of jumping. This may or may not be intended to have a small impact on bow-kiting tactics.
• Master Crafter replaces Stealthy in the Stalker preset

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug where stims and some items can falsely appear to remain in your inventory after use
  • Dev comments: This one has plagued us for a while and we’re happy to report that it’s been resolved. As always, please report annoying bugs at help.theculling.com.
• Fixed a bug where chainsaw continued to use stamina when used
• Removed some invalid game tips

Patch 95035 (October 4, 2016)

Greetings Contestants!

We’ve entered the month of October, which means running around in the woods wearing a mask is practically a normal thing to do. We know it’s a bit early, but we already have some tricks and treats up our sleeves and we can’t wait to share.

The new patch will be released on Wednesday, October 5th. Servers will be down starting at 8AM Eastern for *up to* 4 hours.

This is the biggest patch we’ve done in a while, so we’re offering a bit more explanation than usual. If you’re a fan of brevity, we’re even throwing in a TL;DR:

• More than half of the perks have been removed from the game, including anything that has a major impact on combat effectiveness or movement speed.
• Melee combat has received an important bug fix for blocking, along with minor timing tweaks to blocking and shoving.
• The bleed wound can once again apply to armored opponents. You didn’t like the change in the last patch, so we reversed it.
• We increased your movement speed by 10% across the board.
• The X-plosive Runs stim now grants you +25% sprint speed, but lasts for 30 seconds.
• Your combat actions no longer cost stamina and the Stamina Shot stim has been removed.
• All Airdrops are unlocked by default (for now).
• Several Airdrops have been removed, and several more have been adjusted, including Sapper.
• It’s a lot easier to see things that fall on the ground.

The most exciting change here is to the perk list. We’ve strategically removed 25 perks from the game, including nearly all of the most popular choices. Why? Frankly, because blanket offensive and defensive boosts are boring. Because a permanent 20% movement speed advantage is too strong to justify. And, because we want fights to be decided on the island, not in the Perk selection menu.

As the major update approaches (no, we don’t have a date to announce just yet) we want The Culling to be in lean, mean fighting shape. There are a few more areas we intend to revisit with upcoming patches, but in the meantime we’re eagerly awaiting the Cullmunity’s reaction.

We’ll see you on the island!

Halloween Hats!

• Jack-o-Lantern and Goalie Mask are available to all contestants for a limited time!

Balance and Gameplay

• Perks:
  • Removed the following Perks:
    • Armorer
    • Big Boned
    • Big Lungs
    • Bloodbath
    • Blowhard
    • Bomb Suit
    • Chopper
    • Dig Deep
    • Disability Insurance
    • Knuckle-dragger
    • Leather Hide
    • Leg Day
    • Longshot
    • Maniac
    • Ol' Painless
    • Recovery
    • Red Gunner
    • Runs with Knives
    • Sneaky Poker
    • Speedy Spear
    • Stunner
    • Submission
    • Thick Skin
    • Tough Mother
    • Wound Less
  • Chemist now extends the duration of stims by 25% (previously 100%)
  • Golden Arm only applies to Spears (previously applied to all weapon types)
  • Master Crafter no longer provides a damage bonus, but continues to reduce crafting time by 50%
  • Trapper no longer applies Expose wound, but continues to reduce trap arm and disarm times by 75%
    • Dev comments: What we’ve found with our old perk list is that if you don’t make the “right” choices (according to whatever the latest meta is) prior to the start of the match, you will be at a disadvantage. Once you’re in a match, it’s difficult to know what advantage your opponent has or how to respond. We’ve concluded that the best thing for The Culling is to move away from perks that simply improve your offense, defense, or movement speed in all situations. Along similar lines, we’ve removed perks that affect stamina and wounds.
  • The following perks remain:
    • Angry Octopus
    • Backpacker
    • Basher
    • Bow Flexer
    • Brutus
    • Cannibal
    • Chemist
    • Golden Arm
    • Immunity
    • Inhuman
    • Load Dropper
    • Man Tracker
    • Mangler
    • Master Crafter
    • Moneybags
    • Regenerator
    • Stealthy
    • Trapper
• Base player movement speed increased by 10% (affects all movement modes)
  • Dev comments: A large proportion of players were using at least one movement speed perk. With those perks out of the equation, the only available boost to movement speed comes from the X-plosive Runs stim. This left us free to increase the base movement speed to allow faster map traversal, which improves the feel of the game.
• Stamina:
  • Combat actions no longer cost stamina (but do pause stamina regeneration briefly)
  • Reduced intensity of low-stamina screen effect
    • Dev comments: We like what stamina brings to the table in terms of chase situations (especially with the removal of run speed perks), but many players found it frustrating to try to manage stamina during combat. Stamina management is still a factor, but combat actions will no longer drain your stamina.
• Stims:
  • X-plosive Runs grants +25% sprint speed for 30s (previously +15% for 2 minutes)
    • Dev comments: Enhanced movement speed is extremely valuable in The Culling. We would rather see players use bonus speed strategically in short bursts rather than for sustained periods, so the intensity of this stim has improved to allow for the same max movement speed we had previously, but the duration has been significantly reduced).
  • Stamina Shot has been removed
    • Dev comments: To better assess changes to perks, stamina, and X-plosive runs, we’ve removed the Stamina Shot. We never had a properly funny name for it anyway.
  • Orange Juice improves movement speed for 30 seconds (bonus damage and damage mitigation last for two minutes after OJ is applied), is no longer found in Airdrops.
    • Dev comments: Orange Juice still offers the benefit of all the other stims at once, but the movement speed element is limited to 30 seconds, just like the revised X-plosive Runs stim.
• All Airdrops are now available by default
  • Dev comments: Our upcoming major update will see changes to Airdrops and how we award them. In the meantime, we know some players are struggling with the current scheme, which can make it very difficult to unlock that one drop you’re looking for. In the interim, we’re allowing all players to access all Airdrops without unlocking.
• Airdrop Changes:
  • Juggler, Pothead, and Hoodlum have been removed
  • Medic now contains Iron-4-Skin instead of Orange Juice
  • Stamina Shot has been removed from Survivalist, Lumberjack, and Archer
  • Sapper now includes 1 Dynamite, 1 Explosive Mine, 1 X-plosive Runs stim (previously included 3 sticks of dynamite and Iron-4-Skin)
  • Bait Crate now costs 150 FUNC and deals 50 damage (previously 50 FUNC and 25 damage)
  • Archer now costs 75 FUNC and contains Crude Crafted Armor instead of stims (from 125 FUNC)
  • Hawk’s Eye now costs 225 FUNC (from 175 FUNC)
  • Demon Hunter now costs 125 FUNC (from 175 FUNC)
  • Slugger now contains Crude Crafted Armor instead of X-plosive Runs
    • Dev comments: Juggler and Hoodlum have been removed, as they were targeted at specific perks that have been cut or modified. Pothead was removed because we no longer offer Orange Juice in Airdrops. Sapper also lands a step down after inspiring rage with its previous dynamite-heavy loadout. We’ve heard several suggestions that we increase the damage done by Bait Crate, so we’re giving that a try as well. It's worth noting that we've decided to start treating the Recurve Bow as a Tier 2 weapon, Auto Bow as a Tier 3, and Compound Bow as Tier 4. This is reflected in where these items spawn and what their Airdrops cost.
• Armor no longer blocks application of bleed wound
  • Dev comments: Prior to the latest patch, blades were dealing far more damage per match than any other weapon type, so we looked at several options to bring them closer in line. We decided to allow armor to block the application of the bleed wound, knowing that bleed is a major factor contributing to the value of blades. While blades have settled comfortably into the #2 position (behind bludgeons) in terms of average damage per match, the community has not embraced the change, so we’re reversing it. We expect that the new changes to perks will have an influence on weapon selection, so we’re eager to see the outcome.
• Blocking: Minimum duration increased to 0.5 seconds (from 0.25 seconds)
  • Dev comments: When we removed the vulnerability to shove during the exit from your block animation in the last patch, it became much harder to shove a player who was repeatedly tapping the block key, which in turn made the “block baiting” tactic more effective. By extending the minimum block duration by a fraction of a second, it will now be possible to react to an opponent’s block with a shove, making block baiting more risky.
• Shove: “Time between shots” increased to 0.2 seconds (from 0.1 seconds)
  • Dev comments: This change effectively extends the overall time of a shove by 0.1 seconds. Shoving an opponent who is not blocking has never been terribly risky because there is very little time for your opponent to punish a missed shove with a jab. By extending the shove time slightly, we extend the window in which an opponent can recognize your failed shove and counter with an attack.
• Blowgun
  • Reduce blowgun damage to 1
  • Reduce max ammo to 3
    • Dev comments: We’ve seen some abuse of blowguns by skilled players, so the Blowhard perk has been removed (it allowed the blowgun to deal significant damage). We've also reduced base damage and ammo count.
• Increased visibility for all dropped items, including some items that were not receiving any highlight when dropped, such as the Crafted Bow and Crafted Bandage
  • Dev comments: By popular demand, we’re making it easier to find stuff that falls on the ground. The effect might be a little too intense, but we wanted to err on the side of visibility for this pass.
• Compound Bow no longer appears in Holospawners
• Default character presets have been updated to reflect changes to perks and Airdrops.

Bug Fixes

• Fix for Reinforced Crafted Armor not visibly disappearing after it is destroyed
• Fix for issue where First-person block animation can appear to drop before the block has completed in an online match if the block button is tapped briefly
  • Dev comments: After hearing strong community feedback from the last patch regarding the change we made to blocking, we investigated the mechanic more closely and found this bug. The net effect was that a player who quickly tapped the block key would see their block drop almost instantly, even though the other player would see their block come fully into position for 0.25s and then drop. This bug was leading to situations where players felt they were being staggered by a shove, despite their block not being up.
• Fixed cases of explosive barrels that were floating above the ground

Patch 94599 (September 20, 2016)

Greetings Contestants!

Change is in the air as the sun begins to set on summer and Speedo season comes to an unfortunate end. But on the island, it’s always Speedo season and the party never stops.

We here at Xaviant know how much the Cullmmunity love gruesome mur...The Culling, and since day one of Early Access we’ve leaned heavily on your feedback.

Like the most well-constructed of banana hammocks, your support goes a long way, that’s why we recently reached out to you to find out some of the key areas that needed addressing, putting together our “top 10 community fix requests” list. Rather than use our own string theories, we opened a direct dialog and hear exactly what you want.

Like Liam Neeson or Santa Claus, we love making lists, we make them all the time. Yet, this one, this list, this one was special because it came from you. And we love you for all of your gruesome gorgeousness.

The new patch will be released on Wednesday, September 21st. Servers will be down starting at 8AM Eastern for *up to* 4 hours.

Though we’ve only been able to floss out a few of those issues with this patch, rest assured we’ll be wedging in ever more fixes with future updates.

That covers what’s happening this week, but what about the future? Unlike Frank, when we make promises we keep’em. We’re committed to delivering new content and features throughout Early Access, and we’ve got some very special buns in the oven.

We can’t wait to show you what’s in our drawers.

Until next time!

See you on the island.

Balance and Gameplay

• Players are no longer vulnerable to a shove when transitioning out of their block state
  • Dev comments: Not long ago we removed the “mini-stagger” that would be applied to players if they were shoved as they transitioned into and out of their block state, instead dealing a full stagger. We’ve found that this feels punishing during the outro transition, so players will no longer be vulnerable to shove as they exit their block.
• Golden Arm’s bonus scales based on distance from target, with maximum damage applied at 20 meters
  • Dev comments: Although Golden Arm hasn’t exploded in popularity the way some predicted, it’s still capable of dealing massive damage. To increase the skill requirement, point-blank throws no longer benefit significantly from the bonus. Instead, the bonus damage scales to a maximum of 100% at 20 meters.
• Armor prevents bleed wounds from being applied
  • Dev comments: Blades have been comfortably on top of the heap in terms of melee weapon popularity for several patches. While there are many contributing factors here, one key element is that blades have been nearly as effective against armored opponents as spears as the bleed damage completely bypasses armor. With this change, we’re giving spears a clear advantage against armor. This will also have an impact on bows, but we are working on plans to give more love to bows in the future.
• Crafted Smoke Bomb and Angry Octopus no longer apply bleed wound
  • Dev comments: The blind wound is strong enough (perhaps too strong?) without the additional benefit of bleed.
• Blowhard now increases duration of sickness wound by +25% (previously +100%)
  • Dev comments: Blowhard is now just enough to counter the effects of the recently rebalanced Wound Less.
• Blind wound now lasts for 10 seconds (previously 15 seconds)
  • Dev comments: Crafted Smoke Bombs have seen a recent surge in popularity, likely because it cannot be countered as effectively by Wound Less. We’ve reduced the duration of the blind wound to compensate.
• Disability Insurance now grants affected items (Smoke Bomb, Gas Grenade, Pepper Spray, Stun Gun) * Cripple instead of **** Cripple
• Dev comments: The cripple wound applied by Disability Insurance was strong enough to guarantee that anyone affected by it was going to have a bad day. The lightest variety of cripple is more appropriate here.
• Players can only trigger Punji Sticks (Crafted and Steel - once released) once every three seconds
  • Dev comments: After fixing several flavors of the “punji stacking” exploit, we’ve decided to approach the issue from a fresh angle.
• Teams mode now triggers map shutdown when player count reaches 4 (previously set to 3)
  • Dev comments: We love teams mode! This community request was straight-forward to address and we are happy to do so. There are more teams mode tweaks in the works.

Bug Fixes

• Private lobbies no longer allow more than 16 players to join, players receive a message when lobby is full
• Fixed crafting recipe for Backpack + Rock, it now grants Reinforced Crafted Armor instead of Crude Crafted Armor
• Tactical Body Armor no longer spawns in lockers
• Fixed an audio bug after player dies in poison gas
• Fixed inaccurate description of Alarm Gun
• Fixed inaccurate description of Stamina Shot
• Fixed issues with consistent naming for Crude Crafted Armor, Reinforced Crafted Armor, and Tactical Body Armor
• Performance optimization for one of the Cullmination versions, may have triggered framerate slowdowns in some situations

Patch 94107 (September 7, 2016)

Greetings Contestants!

Labor Day weekend couldn’t keep us from laboring over another exciting patch for you, even if we’ve accidentally gotten it sticky with barbecue sauce in the process.

In the past we’ve focused mostly on better ways for you to hack, stab, punch, and shoot your way to victory over your fellow contestants, but this time we’re taking a different tack. We’re giving you new tools that will let you withstand more abuse, without making early-match encounters last too long. Want better armor? Craft some if you’ve got the FUNC. Want more hit points? Take this pen thingy and jam it in your arm for a few seconds, it’s as easy as that! Want an armored tank you can drive around the island while you sip refreshing iced tea? We think that would be cool too, but we ran out of time.

The new patch will be released on Wednesday, September 7th. Servers will be down starting at 8AM Eastern for *up to* 4 hours.

See you on the island.

Balance and Gameplay

• Armor Changes
  • Crafted Body Armor now costs 15 total FUNC, provides 20 HP of protection
  • New: Hardened Crafted Armor costs 45 total FUNC (recipe is Crafted Body Armor + Rock), provides 40 HP of protection. Edit: There is a known issue where crafting a Backpack with a Rock will yield Crafted Body Armor instead of Hardened Crafted Armor, despite costing 30 FUNC to do so. Please avoid this crafting recipe for the time-being.
  • Body Armor now provides 60 HP of protection, found only in Holo Spawners, Air Drops, and Red Crates. Edit: There is a known issue where Body Armor is still spawning in lockers
  • All armor now absorbs 50% of incoming damage
  • Dev Comments: We have a clear offensive progression in place, where players work to find stronger weapons throughout a match, but until now, defensive options have been limited. Basic crafted body armor is now a bit cheaper, but also less effective. A new tier of Reinforced Crafted Armor has been added, and Body Armor has been improved, but no longer appears in lockers or Green Crates. We hope this will also improve the popularity of Spears, which have stayed below Blades and Bludgeons for some time.
• New Hemo Blast stim: Increases health pool by 10 HP and heals for 10 HP when applied. Found in Holo Spawners, Red Crates, and medicine cabinets. Edit: Also spawns in Green Crates
  • Dev comments: Along the same vein as the armor changes, the Hemo Blast gives players another avenue to improve their defense over the course of a match. These are effectively Big Boned in stim form, and they can be stacked. They are fairly rare and it's unlikely you’ll find more than one in a match, if that.
• Expose wound for Axes now applies +10%, +20%, or +30% for *, **, and *** (previously +10%, +15%, and +20%)
  • Dev comments: Axes have spent a couple of cycles at the bottom of the popularity scale in terms of melee weapons, but this change will ensure that they are capable of landing devastating hits, even against these newly armored targets.
• Queued Player Count UI. When queued for a match, you now see how many other players are currently queued in the same region / game mode
  • Dev comments: During off-peak hours this feature should help players determine whether a match is imminent when they queue.
• Pressing Space Bar in Spectate mode selects the nearest player (in solo and private matches)
  • Dev comments: This is intended to make it easier to spectate a fight by switching between the two players involved, rather than cycling through all the living players in the match.
• Wound Less perk now reduces duration of all wounds by -25% (previously -50%)
  • Dev comments: Wounds play a big part in the game and Wound Less is guaranteed to be useful in any match. So useful, in fact, that it’s the most popular perk among winning players! We think it will still be useful at half strength.
• Gas Changes
  • The gas iris no longer closes in after reaching the “Standing Room Only” phase
  • The gas iris becomes progressively more deadly the longer you stay in it
  • Dev comments: In competitive play situations, a popular strategy was to focus on living in the gas longer than other remaining players. These changes make this strategy less viable. Fight!
• Dynamite no longer spawns in the central Holo Spawners

Bug Fixes Fixed a bug that allowed players to avoid falling damage under certain conditions

Patch 93811 (August 24, 2016)

Greetings Contestants!

Summer may be slowly coming to a close, but there’s no time for rest and relaxation on the island. We’re sweating our… coding fingers.. off, as we’re putting together a whole slew of shiny new additions and features that will make The Culling more thrilling, more adrenaline-filled, and more buzzwords that basically mean even more fun!

While those tasty treats are baking in Frank’s (non trademark infringing but easy to use) oven, we’re also watching you play and listening to the incredible #Cullmmunity feedback. It’s not creepy, we swear. We do it for the better of the game. But make no mistake, we’re always watching.

Our latest update will arrive on Wednesday, August 24th. Servers will be down starting at 8AM Eastern for *up to* 4 hours.

Contestants can expect to see significant tweaks and improvements to the core gameplay. Axes have a new lease on life, explosions are no longer insta-wins, and guns take longer to pull out - requiring players to use safer combatraseptives.

We hope that these changes will bring some more action to the island and we’re excited to see you duke it out. Remember, we’re watching. Always.

See you on the island!

Balance and Gameplay

• Base damage of Axes increased by a small amount; duration of Expose wound decreased to 6 seconds (from 20 seconds)
  • Dev comments: Axes now offer a slight advantage in terms of maximum damage potential (when exploiting their Expose wound) compared to the other weapon types, but the duration of the Expose wound has been reduced significantly, meaning that the benefits of Expose will no longer be guaranteed in a given melee exchange. We expect this will increase the viability of axes somewhat as well as making the Expose wound more interesting to use (and counter). Will axes fully return to their former glory? Time will tell.
  • Crafted Hatchet: 6-17 (10% Expose)
  • Ice Axe: 7-23 (10% Expose)
  • Cleaver: 8-22 (15% Expose)
  • Tomahawk: 7-25 (15% Expose)
  • Fireman’s Axe: 9-29 (20% Expose)
• All weapon- and trap-applied Cripple wounds now last 5 seconds (previously Cripple * and Cripple ** lasted 10 seconds and 7 seconds, respectively); Explosives now apply Cripple * instead of Cripple ***
  • Dev comments: In a previous effort to make Bludgeons more appealing, we buffed multiple aspects of the Cripple wounds. This was effective at making Bludgeons (and the Stunner Perk) more popular, but long-duration impairing effects are frustrating for players and make the Wound Less Perk feel like a necessity for many. Explosives are powerful enough without the added benefit of a strong Cripple wound, so they now apply the weakest Cripple.
• Dig Deep now restores 15 HP when taking fatal damage (from 20HP)
  • Dev comments: Dig Deep went from being one of the most popular perks (when it restored 25HP) to one of the least popular (when we reduced it to 15) and then shot back to the top when we found the middle-ground at 20HP. We give up! We’re not going to set it to 17.5HP (we discussed it, it would be silly), so we’re putting it back to 15 HP.
• Equip time for guns has been extended
  • Dev comments: Some intrepid players have become adept at utilizing melee combat stagger window as an ideal time to equip guns and score easy hits. We’ve extended the equip time for guns to make this more difficult.
• Dynamite maximum damage reduced from 80 to 75
  • Dev comments: Dynamite has always been very strong. It is now slightly less strong.
• Remote Explosives maximum damage reduced from 95 to 75
  • Dev comments: We’ve repeatedly found that one-shot-kill weapons generate more frustration on the part of the victim than they provide satisfaction to the killer. Especially given that these can be found in green crates, we’ve decided to reduce their damage.
• Maximum throw damage for Javelin and Tomahawk has been increased (to 21 and 24)
  • Dev comments: We have a soft spot for Golden Arm, despite the perk being tricky to balance. Our last set of changes saw Golden Arm fall out of favor. We’re hoping that boosted throw damage for these weapons will see it make a small comeback.
• Slightly reduced melee action queuing windows
  • We made another small tweak to the melee action queuing windows to avoid cases where a player inadvertently executes one action when they intend another.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a case where a player would not be fully staggered when shoved from the front while blocking
  • Dev comments: The “mini-stagger” is a stop-gap solution we implemented for cases where a player is shoved while blocking but the default stagger backwards animation would not be appropriate (i.e. the player is shoved from the side or back). We recently discovered that mini-staggers could be triggered from the front. With this change, whenever a player is shoved from the front while in their block state, they will now be subject to a full stagger. As always, we appreciate the community sharing captured footage to bring issues like this to our attention!

• Chopper and Basher Perk description text now properly reflects that they reduce throw charge time in addition to melee charge time
• Golden Crowbar prototype is gone. We mean it this time!

Patch 93315 (August 10, 2016)

Greetings Contestants!

If you’ve read our previous Big Picture blog post - and if not, go do that now- you know that we have some MAJOR features in the works that we won’t be ready to release just yet, but are excited for nonetheless.

Yet, we couldn’t live with ourselves if we didn’t continue to update. To beat the summer heat, we’ve been devoting a lot of attention to bugs and game balance, and we are already finishing up a new patch. Highlighted by a complete rebalancing of The Culling’s arsenal, the new patch will have a significant impact to the current state of the game. 

So let’s get this out here right away:

This update will arrive on Wednesday, August 10. Servers will be down starting at 8AM Eastern for up to 4 hours.

Our goal is to become even more transparent with our updates and their schedules. We want to continue to do Early Access right, and that means shining some light into the present and the future of The Culling.

While our Big Picture post was a good start, it doesn’t necessarily reflect everything in the pipeline and you can expect to hear more news, regularly, here on The Culling.com very soon!

See you on the island!

---

Balance and Gameplay

• Lightning Rounds are being retired temporarily
  • Dev comments: Lightning Rounds proved to be immensely popular. We’re taking them offline for maintenance, but we expect they will be back eventually with some new twists.
• Longshot Perk now grants bonus damage to targets beyond 35 meters (previously set to 30 meters, despite UI text stating 40 meters)
  • Dev comments: Longshot has been set to 30 meters since prior to Early Access launch, but we failed to realize that until it was pointed out by the community after the last patch. This would ordinarily call for a simple fix to the text, but Longshot has gained enough popularity since the last patch that we chose to extend its range to 35 meters (and update the text to reflect that).
• Mangler and Submission reduced to 80% bonus Stamina damage (from 100%)
  • Dev comments: Mangler and Submission skyrocketed in popularity after the last update, so a small adjustment is in order.
• Crafted Hatchet Expose and Crafted Cudgel Cripple wound intensity reduced by one
  • Dev comments: A previous effort to improve the popularity of Axes and Bludgeons included a step up to tier 2 wound intensity for the crafted versions. Cripple and Expose are now powerful enough that the base level wounds are appropriate for the crafted weapons.
• Regenerator Perk increased to 1 hit point per 4 seconds (from 1 per 5 seconds)
  • Dev comments: Regenerator is one of our least-utilized Perks. We are hesitant to give it a major boost, but we hope a moderate buff will make it appealing, at least to certain play styles.
• Bow ammo capacity is now 18 arrows (from 24 arrows)
  • Dev comments: We’ve heard several calls from the community that arrows are in too much supply, especially at the end of matches, so we’ve reduced max ammo that can be carried - which should allow for more wrinkles in ranged play.
• Dig Deep now restores 20 health when taking fatal damage (from 25)
  • Dev comments: The buff Dig Deep received with the last patch skyrocketed it in popularity to the top of the Perk list, so we’re bringing it down...a notch.
• Mantracker can be used while moving without requiring the Mantracker Perk
  • Dev comments: Feedback from users is that the Mantracker is unintuitive to use when it requires the user to be stationary, so we’ve removed that requirement.

• Weapon Damage Rebalance Pass
  • Dev comments: We have long wrestled with the challenge of how to provide significant variety across melee weapon types (and individual weapons) and still achieve a state of overall balance. What we’ve learned through multiple iterations and experiments is that pure DPS is king when it comes to players’ weapon choice. Even the mighty cripple wound on a Bludgeon cannot compete with the raw damage dealt by its Axe counterpart. As such, we’ve adjusted damage and wound intensity for a large number of melee weapons in order to achieve nearly equal DPS (our calculations take bonus damage from bleed and expose into account) output. We believe that this will free players to choose the weapon they feel offers the best synergy between play style, Perks, and Airdrop, or go for a generalist build that allows them to play effectively with whatever they happen to come across in a match. The list below includes all the parameters that were changed. You may notice that in order to achieve the desired balance, we’ve broken the long-standing rule that fully charged attacks deal exactly 3X jab damage. We don’t expect this pass to be the final word in balance, but we do hope that it will provide a solid baseline that we can use to make smaller corrective changes and quickly arrive in a happy place. Changes (only values that have changed are represented here):
    • Crafted Hatchet: 6-16 Damage, Expose Tier 1
    • Crafted Cudgel: Cripple Tier 1
    • Crafted Knife: 6-17 Damage
    • Crafted Spear: 6-18 Damage
    • Ice Axe: 7-20 Damage, Expose Tier 1
    • Cleaver: 7-19 Damage, Expose Tier 2
    • Machete: 7-22 Damage, Bleed Tier 2
    • Tanto Knife: 6-19 Damage, Bleed Tier 2
    • Javelin: 7-22 Damage
    • Tomahawk: 7-21 Damage, Expose Tier 2
    • Bowie Knife: 7-23 Damage
    • Kukri: 8-24 Damage
    • Sabre: 7-23 Damage
    • Tactical Machete: 8-24 Damage
    • Survival Spear: 9-27 Damage
    • Fireman’s Axe: 9-25 Damage
    • Katana: 9-26 Damage
    • Trident: 10-30 Damage

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug where .357 Magnum and SMG would play their SFX/VFX twice with each shot
• Fixed a text bug where Basher Perk erroneously stated it reduced melee charge time by -20% (actual reduction is -30%)
• Fixed a text bug where Disability insurance said it applies to Gas Grenades (it doesn’t apply to Gas Grenades)
• Fixed a bug where Trapper Perk wasn’t properly reducing trap placement times
• Removed Golden Crowbar from the map (this was an unintentional preview of a prototype match event)
• Removed Taunt prototype (whoops, you weren’t supposed to see that yet!)

Patch 92896 (July 27, 2016)

Greetings Contestants!

We’re dropping a big update today. In additional to the usual boatload of balance changes, we’re adding an all new game mode. Lightning Rounds pit 8 contestants against one another. Everyone has the same perks and Airdrop, and that airdrop is available from the start of the match (there is a landing pad at each start location). This is the most fast-paced, aggressive version of The Culling you’ve ever seen! Lightning Rounds are also a great way to unlock Airdrops you may not have already, including the new Hawks Eye, which provides a faster way to guarantee yourself a Compound Bow.

Servers will be down starting at 10AM Eastern for up to 4 hours.

New Features

• Lightning Round game mode
  • 8 players
  • Played on a subset of the normal map
  • Shorter match length
  • Fast, free Airdrop at start of match (all contestants receive the same randomized Airdrop)
    • Known Issue: Game menu does not properly reflect the designated Airdrop
  • Preset perks (Cannibal, Mantracker, Backpacker)
• Hawk’s Eye Airdrop
  • Compound Bow
  • Smoke Grenade
  • Gas Grenade
  • Cost: 175 FUNC

Balance and Gameplay

• Stun Gun has been refactored
  • Holds 1 charge
  • Must be charged up briefly before it can discharge
  • Will not discharge unless it hits a contestant
  • Disarmable
  • Range reduced
• Firearms
  • Headshot bonus set to 50% (from 100%)
  • Increased cost of all Airdrops with guns by +75 FUNC
  • Max ammunition limited to one full magazine (previously 2 magazines)
• Alarm Gun
  • Deals 10 Damage
  • Max ammo of 1
  • Reload cost increased to 10
  • Barrels required for reload
  • Reduced alarm wound duration to 60 seconds (from 120 seconds)
  • Reduced drop rate in buildings
• Cripple Wound
  • Damage no longer removes cripple wound
  • Cripple * = 95% of max movement speed for 10 seconds
  • Cripple ** = 90% of max movement speed for 7.5 seconds
  • Cripple *** = 80% of max movement speed for 5 seconds
  • Cripple **** (falling and explosives) = Max 70% movement speed for 5 seconds
  • Note: All cripple wounds clear movement speed buffs
• Cudgel and Hatchet can now be crafted into bows
• Blades: Minor reduction in base damage of all blades to better account for benefits of bleed wound
• Chopper and Basher Perks now have -30% reduced charge time (previously -20%)
• Pierce characteristic of Spears no longer bypasses armor, but instead provides significant bonus damage against armor
• Angry Octopus cooldown reduced to 60 seconds (from 120 seconds)
• Blowgun deals 6 damage (from 5)
• Blowhard perk now adds +100% damage
• When killing another contestant, players now receive +15 HP and +50 Stamina by default without requiring the Cannibal perk
• Cannibal perk now provides an additional +15 HP and +50 Stamina
• Submission and Mangler Perks now deal 100% of damage to Stamina (from +50%)
• Longshot perk bonus now deals +60% bonus damage at long range (from +40%)
• Bomb Suit perk now reduces damage from Firearms and Explosives by -30% (from -50%)
• Master Crafter damage now offers +10% damage bonus (from +20%)
• Added Holo Spawner to Sat Com building
• Added a recycler to lower level of Sat Com building
• Impact Grenade now deals 50 damage (from 65)
• All crafted traps are now destructible (via melee or explosives)
• All steel traps are now destructible (via explosives)
• The Chokening match event now triggers with less warning to other players
• Cameras no longer track players using Inhuman perk
• Grab My Package match event is back by popular demand!

Bugs and Polish

Swamp building full art pass

• Level lighting polish passes
• Fix for exploit allowing stagger to be canceled
• Fix for exploit allowing Punji Sticks to be stacked
• Fix for some collision issues in Sat Com building
• Fix for a hitch in disarm animation
• Fixed some bugs with Holo Spawner behavior
• Fixed some issues with rifle aiming animations
• Fixed collision issue with front window of Culpepper Outfitters
• Fixed a bug where moving door physics could result in unusable items
• AI behavior improvements for tutorials
• Art pass on air conditioners
• Fixed exploit that allowed players to avoid falling damage under certain conditions
• Removed Independence Day cosmetic items, they were ridiculous while they lasted
• Art pass on console to initiate The Chokening match event
• Updated explosion VFX
• Bot optimizations
• Fix for bug with thrown weapon physics
• Fix for bug that allowed physics objects to fall through the world in some cases
• Made it slightly easier to quickly pick up items
• Polished spear attack animations
• Several bug fixes for tutorials

We'll see you on the island!

Hotfix 92449 (June 30, 2016)

Greetings Contestants!

We’re rolling out a new hotfix that addresses a handful of issues. Servers will be down for up to 4 hours as we roll out the update.

Hotfix Changes

• Fixed bug that prevented players from using the in-game text chat feature
• Fixed an exploit related to Stun Gun ammo
• Fixed issues related to the mouse cursor losing focus under certain conditions
• Modified action queuing behavior to be less intrusive
• Implemented a “convenience tax” on Holo Spawners. Items in Holo Spawners now cost 150 FUNC (instead of 100). This is intended to delay the appearance of higher tier weapons in the match

We’ll see you on the island!

Hotfix 92358 (June 27, 2016)

Hotfix Changes

• Rebalanced spears to have lower base damage, axes to have higher base damage
• Fix for issue where shove/block would behave unreliably under certain circumstances
• Fix for issue where mouse would lose focus, forcing user to exit application
• Provide error message when unable to connect Steam during game startup
• Fix for issue where Stun Gun sometimes spent both charges at once
• Fix for inaccurate bow bleed wound intensity HUD tooltip text
• Fix for Stun gun interaction with Woundless perk
• Fix for some cases where Stamina would fail to regenerate
• Fix for undroppable disposables (Snares, Stun Gun)
• Fix for collision issue in center arenas

Patch 92253 (June 22, 2016)

Greetings Contestants!

Just in time for Summer we have a refreshing new patch that new and old players are sure to love. Major optimizations, new features, balancing, seasonal hats, and bug fixes make this the best patch yet. So shake the salt off, grab your swim trunks, and come meet us on the island!

Servers will be down at 8AM (EDT) for up to four hours.

New Features

• Significantly optimized netcode
• Improved framerate performance for many users
• Matchmaking system that pits players of similar skill level against one another
• New Auto Bow weapon. Quickly fire a magazine of three bolts before a lengthy reload. Bolts deal less damage than arrows
• New craftable Gas Grenade weapon. On impact creates a large cloud of poisonous gas. Crafted using a Smoke Bomb + Poison Gas Vent
• 2 new layouts added to the Culmination. A layout is chosen randomly by the server at match start to add variety to the central arena
• New Airdrop: Demon Hunter: Auto Bow, Smoke Bomb, Crafted Caltrops, Crafted Caltrops Cost: 175 FUNC
• New Airdrop: The Imp: Auto Bow, Crafted Armor, Tomahawk Cost: 225 FUNC
• New Airdrop: Viking: Tomahawk, Crafted Armor, Muscle Man Milk Cost: 125 FUNC
• New FUNC Survival Bonus. The player is now awarded 25 FUNC after 3 minutes alive, 25 FUNC after seven minutes alive, and 50 FUNC after eleven minutes alive. The current Airdrop economy is doing its intended job of relegating high-tier weapons to the later stages of the match, but many players find the costs to be intimidating. This change will put high-value Airdrops within reach, but prevent them from appearing too early
• Blue Crates have been retired and replaced with Holo Spawners. Holo Spawners contain the same loot list as the Blue Crates (Tier 3 Melee Weapons, Orange Juice,Dynamite, Impact Grenade, Compound Bow, Auto Bow), but provide a preview of the item you will receive
• Suiciding into the poison gas will now award the kill credit and FUNC to the person that most recently dealt damage to you in the vicinity of your death, with some restrictions
• Added limited-time 4 July (American Independence Day) hats! These are available to all players for a limited time

Balance Changes

• Increased FUNC cost for Carjacker, Guerilla, Pothead, and Trapper airdrops
• Reduced Bleed wound applied by Bows (including the new Auto Bow) to Tier 1 (6 damage over 10 seconds)
• Reduced crafting time of Hatchet, Spear, and Cudgel
• Showdown behavior modified to account for end-of-match scenarios
• Rebalanced roughly half of the melee weapons to more accurately account for tier, speed, and wound. Weapons should now match well against their tier-mates and we should no longer see weapons from a lower tier that are effectively stronger than those in a tier above. This was generally accomplished through bumping the base damage values up or down by a single point
• Backstab damage has been reduced to 50% for all weapons. Sneaky Poker and Brutus have been increased to 50%. A backstab will still set the tone for a fight, but will no longer be as lethal, especially with lower-tier weapons
• Throw Damage values have been adjusted slightly. Throw damage was reaching above where we intended, even without Golden Arm
• Golden Arm changed to +25% velocity, +100% damage for thrown weapons (+50% for crafted). Golden Arm will still be a valid build, but you will no longer be able to deal devastating damage with crafted weapons
• Jab-Back (the phenomenon where after staggering and attacking your opponent, they were consistently able to land an invisible jab against you as they exited the stagger state) has been mitigated through a few changes. We fixed the bug that would prevent you from seeing a jab-back attack animation under some conditions. We have reduced the charge time required for a charged attack and increased the duration of the stagger. This gives ample time to land an attack against a staggered opponent and subsequently defend yourself. If your timing is too slow, you may still experience a retaliatory attack, which is by design

Bug Fixes

• Fix for bug where Shove would sometimes fail from certain angles
• Fix for right click interrupting Stun Gun / Pepper Spray attack
• Fix for bug that allowed players to break out of stuns
• Fix for bug where stamina would fail to regenerate if a player dropped a weapon while blocking
• Fix for bug where some items’ physics behaved badly when dropped
• Fix for late item spawn bug (related to netcode optimization)
• Fix for bug that allowed faster reloads when switching weapons
• Fix for picking up materials instead of crafting with a resource that was just spawned and while equipping a weapon
• Aiming sensitivity with ranged weapons is now adjusted properly when zooming

Other Changes

• Users selecting North America West as their preferred server region are being redirected to the North America East servers for the time being to improve queue times
• Weather and Observation building has had a full art pass
• Improved start of match spawn box behavior
• Tutorial polish pass

Hotfix 91794 (June 3, 2016)

Greetings Contestants!

After digesting the feedback you delivered during the final Test Server and into the early hours of our latest update, we’ll be bringing down the servers shortly for a brief downtime (roughly two hours) in order to hotfix a few issues with the latest patch.

Hotfix Changes

• Trapper perk now applies Expose wound only to Crafted Snares and Steel Snares, not Caltrops or Punji Sticks
• Fixed a bug that allowed players to equip legacy perks and use them in online matches
• Trapper preset now includes Brutus instead of Faster Trapper
• Fixed a server crash bug
• Fixed several (but not all) game text issues with perk and weapon descriptions not matching functionality
• Fixed a bug where players could get stuck in a blocking animation
• Fixed a bug where charging a bow shot would affect mouse sensitivity
• Fixed a bug where users in North America could not connect to the server if their region was set to auto detect
• Fixed an exploit that allowed players to stack multiple Punji Sticks on top of one another

Patch 91706 (June 2, 2016)

Greetings Contestants!

It’s time for a fresh new update, and this is another big one! The brand-new Showdown feature is a fun and exciting way to keep teaming issues in check - forcing players players who work together in Free For All to duke it out for the right to remain on the island. We’ve also done a major balance pass on perks that might make you think twice before equipping Big Boned or Dig Deep. Additionally, melee combat has received some fine tuning to improve the overall experience. Plus there’s the usual grab bag of polish, bug fixes, and even a few new buildings in the map for you to explore. Though, we apologize in advance that Frank isn’t around to give you a tour - he’s a little… tied up at the moment.

Our servers will be down tomorrow (Thursday, June 2) for up to four hours starting at 8AM EDT as we roll out the patch.

In the meantime, we’ve put this build up on the Test Servers for you to preview. The Test Servers will be live from now until Midnight EDT.

We’ll see you on the island!

If you joined us on the test servers last Friday, you’ll see that we’ve made a handful of changes to that build:

Changes since the May 27th Test Server Build

• Added a brief visual intro and outro to the block animation that indicate your client is responding to input before the server has acknowledged you’ve entered or exited your block state. This does not affect block timing or gameplay functionality but should make the controls feel more responsive
• Removed test server experimental feature that allowed players to be staggered if they were struck while shoving. We feel that the stamina cost is enough to curtail excessive shoving
• Reduced stamina cost of shove from 10 to 8
• Taking damage no longer breaks a player out of a stagger. This was allowing the staggered player to reliably counter-attack after the stagger was broken
• Taking melee damage while charging a melee attack no longer causes a stagger, but instead cancels the charged attack and plays a hit reaction. Charging attacks risked being punished with two attacks, which overly discouraged players from attempting charged attacks during combat except against a staggered opponent
• Expose wound applied by traps when using Trapper perk set to 30% bonus damage instead of 50%
• Players now receive an error message when a friend invite fails (i.e. the friend is connected in a different region)
• Revised Tutorial lighting and visuals
• Fixed an issue where some weapons had inconsistent attack and shove ranges
• Fixed a bug where player would not spawn with Alarm Gun when using the Red Gunner perk
• Fixed a bug where Master Crafter was not reducing crafting times for some items
• Fixed a bug where Armorer perk was not applying the Crafted Armor automatically
• Fixed a bug where Trapper perk arming and disarming times were not reduced consistently
• Fixed a bug where Trapper perk did not consistently apply Expose wound to trap victims
• Reduced 1st-person volume for Alarm Gun audio (3rd-person volume not changed)
• Fixed a bug where AI bots were not behaving properly in the tutorial, which prevented sometutorial lessons from being finished
• Fixed an issue where Mandroid bots in the tutorial were wearing clothing
• Fixed several text issues with perk descriptions

For those of you who missed the last Test Server build, here’s a breakdown of the rest of the changes we’ve made since our last update to the live game:

Showdown! Allegiances on the Island are about to get more interesting, and bloody.

• Teamwork is good, except when it’s bad. The top cause of angst in the community lately has been the rising prevalence of teaming (both ad hoc and premeditated) in Solo and Trials matches. After much deliberation between Chas and Frank, we’ve decided to add a new match event to Solo and Trials matches: Showdown.
• Rather than trying to prevent teaming completely, we’ve decided to try a method that keeps it from being a winning strategy. When you’ve been flagged as colluding with a teammate, attacking another player will spawn a Showdown arena. If you are tagged in a Showdown, you must quickly enter the arena (if you’re not there already) and fight your former ally until one of you is left alive. If either player attempts to escape the arena, they will be executed. When one of you dies, the Showdown ends and the remaining player is free to proceed in the match. If neither player dies before the timer runs out, both of you will be killed.
• While we’re not going to delve into the specifics about how the system works, we have taken pains to ensure that non-teaming behavior will not be misconstrued as teaming (i.e. chases, stalking, temporary truces). If you do find cases where the system fails to catch teamers or misidentifies teaming activity, please let us know!

Combat and Netcode

• Our approach to combat netcode relies heavily on client prediction to allow for the smoothest, most responsive experience possible. When you press a button, your client expects those things to happen when those inputs reach the server, and will start playing animations in anticipation. The reason actions have some windup time (in addition to looking better) is to allow some wiggle room to allow for players of differing pings to both participate in the “shared illusion of playing a fun game together.” Most of the time this works flawlessly and neither player knows the difference. Unfortunately, this prediction can break down in some situations, such as when both players are simultaneously sending block and attack commands which are going to pass each other in flight to the opposing player. Those situations end up with results that can feel arbitrary at best, or infuriatingly buggy at worst (“HOW DID HE PUNCH ME THROUGH MY BLOCK?! *ragequit*”). It isn’t an easy problem. For those of you who are so inclined, here are a couple of overviews that begin to scratch the surface of the forces at work and the wide variety of issues that present themselves in the process of solving these issues:[1] [2]
• The underlying netcode has been modified to favor accuracy over input responsiveness (subject to further iteration, of course). Most players should hopefully not notice a huge impact on their play, but blocking may end up feeling more sluggish for players with higher pings. We await your feedback before we invest more time in polishing the presentation of this approach.
• When equipping a bow, you now need to nock an arrow before firing.
• Reduced stamina cost of shove from 10 to 8
• Taking damage no longer breaks a player out of a stagger. This was allowing the staggered player to reliably counter-attack after the stagger was broken
• Taking melee damage while charging a melee attack no longer causes a stagger, but instead cancels the charged attack and plays a hit reaction. Charging attacks risked being punished with two attacks, which overly discouraged players from attempting charged attacks during combat except against a staggered opponent

Perk Changes

• Defensive perks are firmly in our crosshairs and all of them have been rebalanced. Because they were so powerful, the majority of players have been taking at least one of them. As a result, they extend the length of most fights, which upsets the general balance of the game. Our approach to the rebalancing is that perks that are completely passive (require no player skill) and are useful in all situations have been set to a new baseline value. The bonuses applied by the perks improve as they become more situational or skill-based. While many perks have been hit hard, we believe that they are all still viable.
• Big Boned now expands your health pool by 10 hit points (previously 25)
• Tough Mother damage mitigation reduced to 10% (previously 15%)
• Thick Skin damage mitigation reduced to 30% (previously 50%)
• Thick Skin no longer defends against firearms damage
• Bomb Suit now defends against firearms damage in addition to explosives damage (remains at 50%)
• Trapper no longer increases damage of traps, but instead applies a 30% Expose wound to a target that has triggered your traps.
• Faster Trapper has been removed and Trapper now also includes faster trap placement and disarming

• Cannibal now restores 25 hit points and completely fills your stamina (previously 35 hit points and 35 stamina)
• Maniac has been removed
• Leather Hide has been removed
• Blowhard redesigned to increase the sickness applied by the blowgun to allow for two vomits
• Man Tracker perk now allows you to move while man tracking in addition to spawning with a Man Tracker
• Dig Deep now restores 15 hit points (previously 30 hit points)
• Dig Deep now triggers when the player reaches 1 hit point and clears bleed wounds when it triggers
• Angry Octopus cooldown increased to 120 seconds (previously 30 seconds)
• Renamed Thicker Clotting perk to Wound Less to better reflect its general nature
• Armorer now spawns you with Crafted Armor instead of Body armor
• Red Gunner now adds *Bleed, *Expose, and *Cripple to your shots
• Alarm Gun ammo can now be crafted using rocks instead of explosive barrels
• Stealthy now allows players to craft quietly
• Master Crafter now allows you to craft 50% faster in addition to dealing bonus damage with crafted weapons, traps, and explosives
• Faster Crafter has been removed
• Longshot now makes a distinct sound when you hit a target at greater than 40 meters, so you know it’s working and when

Other Changes

• Culpepper Outfitters has had a full art pass
• Fix for point of aim not matching point of impact with bows
• Replaced Gold Crates with Holo-Spawners. These appear as the match nears completion and preview the item you can purchase for 100 FUNC
• Overhauled drainage tunnel under the mountain to include more gameplay elements
• Reduced interaction time with FUNC barrels and FUNC piles
• Increased Medkit application time to 4 seconds from 2.5
• Fix for bug where control sensitivity did not reset when being disarmed while aiming a ranged weapon
• Improved visuals for being struck while initiating a block to communicate better
• Increased Stun Gun recycle value to 20
• Reduced Recurve Bow recycle value to 20
• Fix for axe weapons applying the wrong wounds when thrown
• Fix for the crafted knife and crafted snare so they can now be picked up with the number keys
• Fix for disarmed snares leaving a trigger volume behind in some situations
• Lowered audio volume in lobby
• Lowered volume of first-person movement sounds while Stealthy (does not affect how audible you are to other players)
• New locations in Southeast and Southwest corners of the map
• Removed “Grab My Package” match event for now (very similar to “Loot Express” but was failing to drive players to contest the Airdrop)
• Ware are updating our teaming policy to reflect design changes. You can expect the new policy to be rolled out with the patch tomorrow

Patch 91351 (May 19, 2016)

Greetings Contestants!

We know It’s been a while since our last update and that’s because we’ve been trying out LOTS of changes on our Test Servers. The Test Server program has allowed us to experiment with new features and changes to the game, but most of all it allows us to pull in incredible amounts of feedback from within the community before bringing updates live.

The dust has finally settled and we’re ready to roll out the changes. If you joined us on the Test Servers last night, you’ll recognize this update, but with a couple of tweaks:

Changes since the 5/18 Test Server Build

• West Coast North America servers are live!
• Shove stamina cost set to 10
• Blocking no longer drains stamina (but you don’t regenerate while blocking)
• FUNC reward for killing another player increased to 40 (the +15 bounty per kill remains)
• Fixed a bug where controls could become unresponsive when player was in low-stamina state

For the rest of you, here’s a breakdown of all the changes you’ll see since our last hotfix to the live game:

Melee Combat Mechanics

• All weapon attack animations and timings normalized to match the *** speed weapons. Weapon speed rating applies only to charge time. The goal with weapon speeds is to provide consistent attack control feel for all melee weapons (equivalent to the Early Access launch build) while requiring greater skill to maximize charged attack damage against a staggered opponent using slower weapons
• Shoving now costs 10 stamina (instead of 3). This is intended to make players more judicious with the shove, as it is the only combat action that doesn’t have a staggering counter-action
• Shoving an opponent who is not blocking will no longer visually appear to damage the receiving player (we think this was confusing some shoved players into believing they had been attacked, which naturally led to blocking, which encouraged spamming of shove)
• Fixed an issue where charging an attack did not yield a consistent, linear increase in damage. Damage scaling now matches the charge level shown on the HUD charge indicator
• Correctly matched some weapon-specific animation timings for combat interrupts that showed you returning to idle before your stagger was complete, giving the false impression that you could take action while you were still stunned
• Reduced the window where players were vulnerable to shove after dropping their block
• Damage will now interrupt the stagger state, preventing players from landing multiple consecutive jabs on a staggered opponent (you must now charge your follow-up attack to maximize damage)
• Slightly increased the period of time after launching an attack where the game checks to see if the attack is striking a target, making it easier to land attacks in some situations
• Reduced and standardized the time after completing a combat action (attack, shove, or jab) before another action could be taken
• Removed the ability to instantly transition to a shove when cancelling a charged attack via blocking. Shove cancelling is still possible, but there is a brief transition
• Added a brief minimum block time when executing a block to increase the risk of tapping and releasing block to bait a shove from the other player

FUNConomics

• We want to slow down the weapon progression in matches. The current 50 FUNC cost to open a Blue Crate is trivial and has a decent chance of equipping you with a Tier 4 weapon within the first few minutes of the match. Our goal is for each tier of weapon to have its place within the match progression, with Tier 4 melee weapons and guns appearing closer to the finale. We’ve made several changes to nudge things in that direction. Tier 1 and 2 weapons are obtainable early and should be valuable during the first half of the match. Tier 3 weapons are harder to reach because the FUNC cost of Blue Crates has increased. Tier 4 melee weapons and guns are only available through Airdrops and Match Events, and the costs of those Airdrops are significantly higher
• FUNC Bounty on death. The base reward for killing another player is now 40 FUNC, but a player’s value increases by 15 FUNC for each kill they’ve gotten during a match (i.e. a player with 2 kills is worth 70 FUNC). Keep an eye on the scoreboard to see who the juiciest targets are
• We’ve done a full pass on the Air Drop values, with Tier 3 weapons generally requiring 100 FUNC and Tier 4 weapons generally requiring 200 FUNC.
• Blue Crates now cost 100 FUNC to open (previously 50)
• Blue Crates no longer have a small chance to spawn a Tier 4 melee weapon or a gun
• Gold Crates have replaced the blue crates near the central arena. They cost 200 FUNC and contain items that might give you an edge if you have FUNC to spare going into the final stages of the match: Body Armor, Orange Juice, Dynamite, Med Kit, X-plosive Runs, Stamina Boost, MuscleMan Milk, Iron-4-Skin (all with an equal chance to drop)
• Ammo reload for guns now costs 100 FUNC (previously 75)
• Increased cost of crafted knife to 7 FUNC, reduced crafting cost of spear, hatchet, and cudgel to 0 FUNC
• FUNC recycle value for all crafted melee weapons has been normalized to 4
• Destroying a red barrel awards 5 FUNC
• Crafted Explosives now require 30 FUNC to craft. Damage has been increased to 35 (from 20) and radius has been increased to 6 meters (from 4 meters) - This increases the time required to open a Red Crate at the start of the match
• “Loot Pinata” event now spawns one crate instead of two
• Stun Guns now spawn in Green Crates and no longer spawn in Blue or Red Crates

Balance

• Reduced Crafted Blowgun max ammo to 6 (from 9)
• Reduced Crafted Blowgun sickness duration to 10 seconds (from 15 seconds) and allow a single vomit per sickness (instead of 2)
• Increased Chainsaw damage
• Reduced duration of Stamina Stim to 30 seconds (from 2 minutes)
• Stamina regenerates faster in most situations
• Golden Arm bonus damage now scales with charge percentage (no bonus damage is applied if the throw is not charged at all), Golden Arm previously applied its full bonus regardless of charge level
• Cyclops Air Drop now includes Steel Snare instead of Orange Juice
• Trident damage reduced to 9-27 (previously 10-30)
• Axes felt weak compared to spears, so the Expose was wound increased to 10%, 15%, 20% (previously 5%, 10%, 15%)
• Blades felt weak compared to spears, so Bleed wound damage was increased to 6, 10, 14 over 10 seconds (previously 4, 8, 12 over 12 seconds)
• Damage to Stamina caused by Mangler and Submission perks reduced to 50% of weapon damage (previously 135%)
• Removed the interrupt stagger when being struck while holding a ranged weapon (you will still be disarmed)

Other Changes

• Max FPS is unlocked by default
• Shadow Quality at Low now has even greater performance optimizations by reducing shadow resolution and accuracy. Shadow Quality at High now includes greater accuracy in shadows and will incur additional performance cost
• New announcer VO for Med Stations
• Removed Cheapskate perk
• Revised scoreboard visuals
• Improved shove animations
• Bridges now have Airdrop landing pads with shorter flight paths (but more exposed to other players)
• Fix for a bug where invisible player collision would remain after death
• Polished spear attack animations
• Fix for bug that allowed players to interact with Airdrop landing pads through barriers
• Fix for bug where starting with Mantracker or Alarm Gun in practice mode positioned the item incorrectly in the player’s hand
• Fix for a bug where you could stack Punji Sticks in certain situations
• Fixed a bug where perks and customizations would not always load in offline mode
• Removed the player highlight that was indicating a player had Dig Deep perk equipped (looked too much like Iron-4-Skin highlight, we’ll implement something custom later if the UI icon is insufficient)
• Med Kit now fully heals players with Big Boned perk
• Fix for floating lily pads and detritus allowing traps to be placed on top of them
• Fix for bug where disarming a player who was charging a throw was not always working properly
• Changed default video settings, added option to auto-detect video settings (from front end menu)
• Improved several hit reaction animations and reduced the distance players move when taking the hit

Once again we appreciate your patience and support as we continue our mission to do Early Access right.

We’ll see you on the island!

Hotfix 90926 (May 6, 2016)

Greetings Contestants!

We’ve released a hotfix today that makes the following changes:

• Framerate improvements
• Reduced load times
• Fix for issue where some users could not progress past a black screen when launching the game or loading into a match
• Fix for issue where some users were missing perks and/or clothing upon loading into a match

Hotfixes represent a platform for us to deliver small changes ahead of our update schedule. If you continue to have issues, please report them at help.theculling.com. You can read all about the Trials of the Isle update here.

Though combat and balance changes are not being introduced in this hotfix, we have listened to your feedback and more changes are on their way! Our process for combat iteration moving forward looks like this:

• Work with the community to compile a definitive list of issues (i.e. bugs, design/balance, network performance)
• Assemble a plan of attack (and tell you about it)
• Roll out a preview build on a test server (that all players can access should they choose)
• Iterate as necessary
• Release a comprehensive combat update to the live game

We have completed step 1 and we’re nearly finished with step 2. Our current goal is to announce our planned changes and launch the test server next week in lieu of the regularly scheduled patch.

Additionally, we here at Xaviant want to thank you for your overwhelming support and patience as we continue to evolve The Culling. Your feedback is not only welcome, but necessary as we continue our mission to do Early Access right.

We’ll see you on the island!

Hotfix 90682 (April 29, 2016)

Greetings Contestants!

Thank you all once again for sticking with us as we continue working to do Early Access right. Your support has been incredible and we would also like to thank you for your feedback and patience as we continue to evolve The Culling. With your help, we’ve tracked down two major elusive bugs in the melee combat system.

We’ve made several fixes today to address issues in the recent update. You can read all about the Trials of the Isle update here.

We are still investigating several known issues, including one that sees some hardware configurations (typically closer to min-spec) experiencing prolonged black screens on start-up and long load times into levels.

Fixes

• Fix for bug where being shoved could break control input when blocking (this was creating stun-lock scenarios)
• Fix for bug where shoving while charging an attack could break weapon input
• Fix for players crashing when joining a match late (related to long load times on some hardware configurations)
• Cleaver now benefits from axe perks (instead of blade perks)

Hotfix 90745 (April 28, 2016) === Greetings Contestants!

We’ve made several fixes today to address issues in the recent update. You can read all about the Trials of the Isle update here.

Fixes

• Made changes to address issues some users (typically with min-spec or below hardware) are having with long startup times and map load times. This fix should help many users, but we are continuing to investigate reports. Please submit a ticket at help.theculling.com if you are experiencing issues.
• Added an “off” setting for shadows, which should improve performance for some players

Fixed a bug where Steam Items for Pixie hair and Bun hair items were not referencing the appropriate in-game item (the Steam Item now appropriately determines which in-game item you own)

• Crafted Cudgel now benefits from Master Crafter Perk and Bludgeon Perks
• Air Drops once again sort by FUNC cost
• Cleaver is now referred to as an axe in the main menu
• UI descriptions for Crafted Armor and Body Armor reflect correct armor values
• Fixed Alarm Gun terminology related to Inhuman Perk in UI
• Crafted Cudgel and Crafted Hatchet now display proper names when they are lying on the ground
• Weakness replaced with Expose in UI elements for Axes
• Fix for players not being allowed to issue invites to friends whose Steam profiles were set to “private”
• Increased cost of Cyclops Air Drop to 135 from 110 FUNC
• Fixed issue where HUD was reporting Trident’s melee damage value as being higher than it actually is
• Fixed issue where spears were applying a bleed wound on throw
• Fixed bug where Bait Crate detonation effects play each time you select a customization item while Bait Crate is equipped
• Missed in original update notes: Poison gas map shutdown is now triggered when the match reaches 3 players (previously 5 players)

Patch 90634 (April 27, 2016)

Greetings contestants!

The team here at Xaviant... and Frank... have been hard at work on our biggest, bloodiest update yet, “Trials of the Isle.” We hope you come out and join us when it launches tomorrow (Wednesday, April 27). Servers will be down from 8 AM until Noon (Eastern) while we roll out the patch.

Bring a friend, or a mortal enemy, because The Culling will be available at a -10% discount on Steam until Monday.

We’ll see you on the island!

Highlights

• New Features
• Private lobbies. Up to 16 friends can compete in free-for-all mode and decide who truly is the master of the island.
• SteamOS support. Spread mayhem at your desk and in your living room.
• Female playable characters. Play as a female contestant with an extensive suite of customization options.
• Trials Matches. Trials Tokens are awarded for winning free-for-all matches. Spend tokens to compete in weekly free-for-all Trials Matches (at designated times) against other winners for a chance to score exclusive, limited-edition loot.
• New customization items. Spice up your gear with new shirt designs by Filthy Casual and Design By Humans as well as limited-edition hats!
• New weapons. Spill even more blood on the island with the Crafted Cudgel (Tier 1 Bludgeon, Crafted Hatchet + Rock, 2 FUNC) and the mighty Trident (Tier 4 Spear)
• New Air Drops
  • Polecat: Trident, Survival Spear, Javelin (105 FUNC)
  • Cyclops: Trident, Orange Juice, Body Armor (110 FUNC)
  • Bait Crate: Decoy Air Drop that will explode upon opening to deal 20 hit points of damage. Available by default (50 FUNC)
• New weapon wounds. Each weapon type now has a unique wound.
  • Expose: Axes. Intensity 1,2,3 increases damage of next attack made against the expose target by 5%, 10%, 15% respectively.
  • Pierce: Spears. Piercing trait on Spears allows all damage from the spear to bypass the opponent’s armor. Intensity of the pierce represents how much of the armor is also removed on each hit. Tier 1:12.5%, Tier 2: 16.7%, Tier 3: 25%.
  • Bleed: Blades. No changes to wound functionality.
  • Cripple: Bludgeons. No changes to wound functionality.
• Throw Damage is now an independent weapon stat (no longer directly tied to melee damage) in order to further differentiate individual weapons
• Some weapons now excel at throwing and others are less effective. There are now fewer weapons that can achieve extremely high throw damage values when combined with Golden Arm.
• New Perks
  • Dig Deep: Gain 30 Health when damage would kill you. (Once per match, visible to your opponents via HUD)
  • Angry Octopus: When reduced below 30 Health automatically drop a Smoke Bomb (30-second cool-down, does not require Smoke Bomb in your inventory)
  • Inhuman: You can not be tracked with Man Tracker and are immune to Alarm Gun
  • Thicker Clotting: Reduce duration of all wounds by 50%(Clotting Agent and Hearty Constitution removed and replaced with Thicker Clotting)
• Armor Changes
  • Crafted Armor now reduces incoming damage by 30% for 30 hit points (previously 30% for 20 hit points)
  • Body Armor now reduces incoming damage by 50% for 50 hit points (previously 50% for 30 hit points)
• New baked lighting scheme improves graphical fidelity and improves rendering performance
• Shove Changes
  • Increased launch delay of shove to closely match that of block and attack. Shove was previously faster which gave it an advantage.
  • Shove no longer causes a stagger interrupt against a player who is charging a power attack. Players will continue to charge their attacks even if they are shoved.
  • Shove now does negligible damage (previously 2 hit points per shove)
  • Increased time between shoves to reduce effectiveness of spamming shove key
• Cosmetic Loot Rarity
  • We have added two new levels of ultra-rare loot and adjusted our rarity color scheme to suit. Rarity progression is now: White,Green, Blue, Yellow, Purple, Orange, Red.
  • Limited-Edition Items. Some items will drop only in Trials of the Isle matches and for a limited time.
• Crate Drop Distribution
• Spears, Blades, Bludgeons, and Axes now have an equal chance of dropping from all crates.
• Tier 4 melee weapons now all have a small chance to drop from Blue Crates

Changes Graphics Settings

• Graphics settings will have a greater impact on your system’s performance
• Render Quality. This setting previously affected resolution only. It now also affects characteristics of the game’s new lighting scheme. The Extreme setting may represent a performance decrease for some users (but a significant fidelity increase over the previous version of the game) as a result.
• Texture Quality. The streaming pool size has been raised for users on the High and Medium settings and lowered on the Low setting to better handle different video card memory limitations. The Low setting should resolve hitching issues on low-end cards.

Gameplay

• Fixed a bug in Baseball Bat shove behavior
• Fixed a bug in Crafted Knife shove behavior
• Weapon balance adjusted for addition of Expose and Pierce, not as sweeping as previous balance passes. We like the jobs that each weapon is doing, but several needed their damage, speed or wound adjusted for Expose and Pierce.
• Perk: Poking deeply removed as it no longer fits with spear wounds.
• Bridge art and audio improved.
• Explosive Barrels and FUNC Barrels damage now properly falls off over its explosive range rather than ramping up.
• Fix for Bloodbath not applying its effect on throws. Changing the way we decide if an incoming bleed wound should replace an existing bleed wound. Before the one that had the longest remaining duration would apply, now it's the one with the highest remaining damage.
• Fix for Bomb Suit perk sometimes causing all players in theexplosion radius to get its benefits and not just the player with the perk.
• Fix for players being able to block while puking.
• Perks Code Red and Alarm Gunner combined to create Red Gunner
• Perk Blowsafe removed
• Perk Blowzoom removed
• Perk Master Crafted damage bonus increased to 20%
• Perk Tough Mother mitigation bonus increased to 15%
• Perk Big Boned health bonus increased to 25 hit points
• Charged attacks no longer break out of the charge anim when hit by a ranged shot
• Cleaver is now considered an Axe type weapon (apparently this is true in real life, because chopping?). We don’t have perfect balance of types yet (X # of Axes vs. X # of Bludgeons etc…), that is something we’re working on for the future, but we’re taking small steps like this where we can to prepare for those changes.
• Fix for Stun Gun using both ammo shots on a successful hit.
• Steel Snares were bugged and doing 15 damage instead of 25, this is now corrected.
• Recycle Costs and Airdrop Value bug fixes, some old values were still set in recycle values giving bad value to airdrops.
• Scoreboard no longer displays list of player names in a match until the first contestant is killed

Audio

• Alarm Gun SFX added when target is shot while Inhuman Perk is equipped
• Added new announcer death notifications for Spear kills.
• Added new announcer death notifications for Axe kills.
• Added new announcer death notifications for Fist kills.
• Added new announcer death notifications for Bow kills.
• Added new Health Machine phrases and random barks.

Level

• Map texture and material improvements.
• New south water treatment building WIP cleaned up meshes and landscape around area
• Fixed some door locks on the Southern water works
• Added new water works entrance piece
• Extensive support and level art changes to support new optimized lighting solution
• Adjusted container and recycler and health station locations to work better with the new lights and to avoid access through windows
• Toned down the bloom and contrast on the spawn box so the players screen doesn't white out on release

Character/Animation

• Animation speed improvements to better match current movement speeds (crouch, walk, sprint).
• General animation improvements to the attack animations to reduce popping and erratic behavior.
• Weapon animation fixes for hand IK
• Did some sword animation cleanup; added two missing 3P Sword Attacks to match the 1P versions; 1P camera animations are less erratic
• Leg IK cleanup
• Feet should only rotate to match normal of contact surface when IK is actually active (fix broken ankles when jumping / falling)
• Changed the anim length of crafting poison darts to match the craft time
• Animation polish for weapons while sprinting
• Added hip leaning / spine twisting when characters are turning
• Various female character supporting changes
• Created Bat heavy attack version for 1P and 3P which is two handed.
• Did some upper-body bow run polish.
• Added blinks and lessened the degree of head turn to the front end female idle.
• Separated hits reacts into new groups for better blending between hits and attacks
• Created recycle anims for the brass knuckles.
• Fixed skin weighting on balaclavas that was much more apparent with graphic versions

UI

• Added Icons for new Perks, Updated some others.
• Outline added to FUNC symbol in hud
• Crafting Guide Updated with Cudgel
• Loot rarity color is visible in front end for cosmetic items

Other

• Fix for Baseball Bat not showing charge meter for throwing
• Potential fix for input becoming stuck after item use is interrupted by puking. Now the item use will be canceled.
• Fix for players sometimes being able to spectate someone other than their teammate in a teams match
• Added protections against movement speed perks being permanently removed by cripple or low stamina state or edge-case scenarios.
• Fixed hover tooltips in front end menus to match perk descriptions
• There is a bug that is still allowing the Man Tracker to track female targets, Frank is apparently unable to resolve it this time around, maybe next patch.

Patch 89935 (April 13, 2016)

Greetings Contestants!

It’s time for another patch. Our servers will be down tomorrow (Wednesday, April 13) from 8AM until Noon Eastern. We hope you enjoy the changes, as well as the new format for the patch notes.

As always, our help center offers tools to submit bugs, suggest changes, and report cheaters should you come across any. Please keep the helpful feedback coming our way.

We’ll see you on the island!

Highlights

• Weapon speeds have been rebalanced, weapons are now faster across the board
• Thick Skin now protects against thrown weapons, making this perk a viable counter to Golden Arm
• Changed item lists for green, blue, and red crates, primary goal is to reduce the frequency of impact grenades and dynamite in the early game
• Fists, rocks, and branches are less effective in combat, making unarmed play riskier
• It now takes fewer strikes to harvest rocks and branches
• Replaced Weakness wound with Cripple wound for axes and bludgeons, Cripple wound is intended to be a viable counter to movement speed perks
• Addressed some balance and communication issues with shove mechanic
• Reworked Stealthy perk and crouching audio implementation to be more polished, crouching and Stealthy are no longer effective at silencing movement in water
• Movement speed perks now affect only sprint speed in an effort to reduce lateral movement speed in combat situations
• Gas iris can now start early if the match is down to five contestants and has an additional 1-minute small-radius stage at the end of the match to prevent players from hiding in the gas and healing to win

Changes Gameplay

• Thick Skin perk now protects against all ranged weapons (including thrown weapons)
• Fall damage now interrupts med kit and bandage use
• Tutorial now features a checkpoint save system
• Fixed bug with attack animation duration for Fireman’s Axe and Sledgehammer
• Fix for Cannibal perk not replenishing stamina properly
• Fix for remote mine placement not being interruptible
• Green top crates no longer spawn Impact Grenades or Dynamite and have a reduced chance to spawn Explosive Mine and Remote Explosives
• Blue Top Crates now have a small chance to spawn Impact Grenades and Dynamite
• Red Top Crates now have a chance to spawn Impact Grenades and Dynamite
• Fix for a bug allowing stacking of punjis for a brief window after having switched weapons and back to the punjis.
• Branches, Rocks and Fists can no longer backstab
• Branches, Rocks and Fists no longer apply bludgeon related wounds
• Branches, Rocks and Fists now all deal 5-15 damage
• Hits required to harvest Branches and Rocks reduced by 35%
• Cripple has been broken into 3 intensities that set a crippled target’s speed to a specified movement speed regardless of buffs or perks currently applied.
• Tendon Cutter and Crippler (Chance to cripple with spears and blades) removed from perk list for now
• The bow perk Stunner now has 100% chance to apply Cripple at * wound intensity
• Bludgeons and Axes now deal Cripple wounds of varying intensities
• Weakness has been removed to be reworked (replaced with Cripple for now)
• Shove will now interrupt during the transitions in and out of block to help meet expectations
• Stealthy perk tweaks:
  • No longer provides quieter crafting - moved to Faster Crafting
  • Footsteps are no longer barely audible, but will instead be audible to both yourself, and very near observers.
• Running through water is loud, regardless of how sneaky you are.
• Faster Crafting perk now includes Craft quieter in addition to faster.
• All weapon speeds increased.
• All weapons rebalanced to account for a greater differences in damage on faster and slower weapons.
• All weapons wound and damage values adjusted to account for Bludgeons and Axes now applying Cripple wounds.
• Bludgeon and Axes now have a few weapons balanced at the fastest speed, as do Blades and *Spears have some slower options.
• Fixed issue where shove was instantly effective unlike other actions that have a brief delay to account for animation timing
• Fixed a bug where Golden Arm perk velocity increase was not working, set velocity increase to 25%

Audio

• High Pass Filter for gas now includes the new audio busses for Announcer and Health Machine
• Low Pass Filter for shellshock now includes the new audio busses for Announcer and Health Machine
• Removed Cone Attenuation from the Special Death SFX (scream in distance). This was causing the sound to be dimmed if the death wasn't "aimed" at you
• Lowered the volume for headshot received -4db. This was literally skull-crushing!
• Corrected the stereo spread in the Equipment_Near attenuation set (stamina breath, interactions, etc.) to reduce positional sway while moving
• Replaced the single airdrop pad sfx sequence with multiple versions (and hold music!)
• Replaced the temporary rifle shot sfx with something in the same family as the revolver
• Created bathroom stall door open sfx
• Eliminated an annoying part of the temporary gas choke vocal sfx
• Lowered the volume of the distant animals and cameras -4 dB
• Large throw loop was glitching at the end; it has been corrected
• Created new sfx for opening a medicine cabinet on the wall. Previously, it was using a larger locker sfx
• Created impact sfx for the airdrop crates when they fall from the drones
• Created proper door open/close sfx
• Created sfx for deploying and picking up C4 (+ new attenuation set for proper volume falloff)
• Revised the impact sfx blend for the revolver when thrown
• Created impact sfx blend for the Man Alarm Gun when thrown
• Created SFX for the mech bridge release and reset sequences. Will have to hook it up to test
• Added a Bridge attenuation set to give this a custom volume falloff and frequency decay
• Created SFX and blends for thrown Chainsaw impacts vs materials
• Created SFX for opening refrigerator door
• Created new chainsaw motor and attack SFX with new sequence blends & setup
• Added metal footsteps for Land, Sprint, Walk, and Stealth
• Attached new rifle sfx to rifle and hunting rifle
• Created anim synced sfx sequences for reload on revolver and rifle
• Created sfx for picking up ammo for guns (handful of bullets)
• Added event to cancel the health station barks
• Removed the baked in AKEvent from the reload animation (was playing old sfx on top of new)
• Hooked up new C4 deploy sfx
• New refrigerator door opening sfx
• New medical cabinet door opening sfx
• Hooked up new Man Alarm Gun impacts (when thrown)
• Hooked up new Chainsaw impacts (when thrown)
• Added keypad seq sfx to the controls that raise the bridge
• Swapped in better concrete stealth footsteps
• Added stealth landing sounds for all materials
• Added new switchgroup to handle stealth perk on and off

Art

• Change made to metal vents on lockers, made metal less contrasty
• Fixed collision on Crafted Smoke grenade, impact grenade, punji sticks and Tonfa to prevent strange bouncing and rolling behavior

Animation

• There is now a unique “shoved” hit reaction animation that looks significantly different from the “shoved while blocking” stagger animation, should make the block-baiting tactic a little less effective
• Fixed various run bugs happening like the pistol run cycle not playing properly in 1P, added slight shoulder animation in 3P and less movement on the knife and club arm in 3P.
• Fixed the pops that were happening between the start loop and end animations noticeable in 3P jump animations
• Got rid of the popping and erratic movement in some first-person attack animations
• Fixed bug where 1st-person and 3rd-person Fireman’s Axe attack animation timings did not match
• Added exhausted state attack for Fireman’s axe
• Fixed some visual issues with some throw animations
• Throwing stims and bandages no longer includes “pull the grenade pin” element of the animation
• Added custom animations for using func recycler
• Added proper animations when walking / running with the mantracker, alarm gun, and the blowgun
• Polished several hit reaction animations

Level

• Fixed granting func for entering basketball court bath house
• Bridge placement collision fix
• Additional cover rocks in the southern part of the map
• Gas iris changes
  • Iris now start 11 minutes from match end instead of 10
  • Iris closes to a 6 meter radius in the last minute of the match
  • Med stations are all toggled off when the second phase of the iris begins
  • Iris can now be triggered once the map is down to 5 players
• Some buildings now feature lootable toilets!
• Updated some art assets in the tutorial level
• Fix for dummies in explosives tutorial registering double hits
• Fix for stuck spot involving a floating bush
• Touched up landscape paint: Blended more dirt in and added some natural paths with dirt, and filled in some large areas of rock by blending grass and dirt as well
• Some building art overhauled

UI

• Fixed issue where switching presets in the character customization menu could cause the character to use the wrong body mesh

Other

• Fix for infrequent start of match client crash

Hotfix 89742 (April 5, 2016)

Greetings contestants!

We have just released a hotfix with a few changes to improve your experience:

• Fixed a bug where thrown weapons would sometimes hang in the air briefly before traveling to their destination
• Made throw charge times consistent across all weapons, rather than scaling based on weapon speed rating (this was an unintended side effect from the weapon speed changes introduced in the March 30th patch)
• Reduced the FUNC cost of Health Stations from 1 FUNC for 2 hit points to 1 FUNC for 3 hit points. The goal is to find a good balance of value between Bandages, Med Kits, and Health Stations

As always, your feedback is appreciated.

We’ll see you on the island!

Hotfix 89623 (April 1, 2016)

Greetings contestants!

Frank typed up a completely hilarious list of lies and jokes to use as a fake April Fools patch preview, but like most of the things Frank makes, we unceremoniously deleted it.

Instead, we’ve decided to offer up a tasty hotfix. Our goal with Early Access is to continuously evolve and grow the game with your help and support. Sometimes that means making big changes to find the limits of what’s fun and then dialing them back to find optimal numbers. This is one of those times!

The new hotfix contains the following changes:

• The slowest weapons are now 20% faster, which means there are now equal steps from slow to medium and medium to fast (the slowest weapons were previously ~40% slower than the medium weapons)
• Player capsule friction has been re-enabled, but with a lower friction setting. This will reduce sliding in melee fights, making it easier to track your opponent and land hits, while still allowing the opportunity for players to disengage from melee combat should they choose to

We’re always listening to your feedback and our goal is to use Early Access to make The Culling the best battle royale game in the genre. Thank you for your support and for being awesome members of the Cullmmunity.

We’ll see you on the island!

Patch 89529 (March 30, 2016)

Greetings contestants!

Our servers will be down tomorrow (Wednesday, March 30) from 8AM until Noon Eastern so that we can roll out a new patch. We are settling into our cadence of updates every two weeks, which we will stick to as closely as we can for the duration of Early Access.

As always, our help center offers tools to submit bugs, suggest changes, and report cheaters should you come across any. Please keep the helpful feedback coming our way.

We’ll see you on the island!

Major Changes

• Initial optimization of network code to reduce latency (optimization is ongoing)
• All melee weapons rebalanced in terms of jab and charged attack speeds
• Several fixes to issues that were allowing Crafted Punji Sticks to be abused
  • Crafted Punji Sticks can no longer be placed on top of each other
  • Crafted Punji Sticks can no longer be placed on walls, doors, or pylons
  • Crafted Punji Sticks can now be destroyed by taking damage
• Rebalanced movement speed perks
  • Leg Day perk movement speed reduced from 10% to 7%
  • Speedy Spear and Runs With Knives perk movement speeds increased to 13% from 10%
  • Movement speed perks now cost additional stamina when sprinting
• Reduced firearms damage by 2 hit points per bullet
• Fix for bug where some players could not see their unlocked items in the front end menus

Minor Changes

• Fixes for several spots on map where players could get stuck
• Replaced lots of placeholder map art assets
• Fix for intermittent issue where gas iris would not appear at end of match
• Fix for players being able to stand on another player’s head
• “Surprise Me!” Airdrop will no longer call itself
• Fix for crash when anything other than a player is caught in a non-explosive trap
• Fix for being able to avoid another player’s block by aiming at their feet or above their head
• Fix for backstabs not registering if they were aimed too high or too low
• Fix for bug where hitting an already stunned player with a Stun Gun would partially free them from the stun effects
• Fix for destroyed explosive barrels remaining interactive
• Fix for being able to escape a snare by placing an object or using a stim
• Fix for generating a duplicate stim if it was thrown while being used (the duplicate could not be used but it could be recycled)
• Turned off shadow-casting on water plane
• Fix for Explosive Mine detonating when an Airdrop container landed on it and causing additional bugs
• Fix to prevent melee and thrown weapon damage from being applied by dead players
• Small leaves and branches will no longer collide with projectiles
• Fixed issues with larger trees whose bases didn’t fully intersect with the ground and had collisions issues
• Disabled feature that created friction when players collided
• Fix for bug where throws would offset the thrown weapon depending on cardinal direction facing of the player
• Art passes on several buildings
• Crafted Smoke Bomb description no longer makes false claims about not affecting teammates
• Fixes for several animation-related bugs
• Fix for White Culco Graphic T-Shirt and Grey Culco Graphic T-Shirt having the same name
• Differentiated DBH Logo 1 t-shirt (which only dropped as an item during Closed Alpha) from the default DBH Logo shirt (now DBH Logo 4)
• New art for toilets and refrigerators
• Fix for 2nd place player not seeing “Hunted” screen on death
• Fix for bug where gas hazard sometimes wasn’t visible
• Fix for rare bug where blindness wound effects did not go away when the wound expired
• Reduced range of Pepper Spray from 7.5 to 6 meters
• Chemist perk rebalanced to offer 2X Stim effect duration instead of 3X
• Submission and Mangler perks now deal 135% melee damage dealt to opponent stamina instead of 200%
• Bows now use sights for aiming when zoomed instead of crosshairs
• Polish pass on player hit reaction animations
• Rebalanced loot rewards to prevent players with poor scores from having a chance at higher-rarity items. Top-scoring players can no longer receive lowest-rarity items.
• Cannibal perk now heals for 35 instead of 25 hit points
• Players are forced out of crouch stance when shoved or receiving a melee combat interrupt
• Fix for issue where Mantracker was placed incorrectly in Airdrop containers
• Orange Juice buffs reduced from 20% to 15%
• Projectile weapons now line up with crosshairs better
• Chopper and Basher perks charge time reduction now applies to throw charge time as well as melee charge time
• Fix for bug with shove distances when holding some non-weapon items
• Increased placement time of Explosive Mine and Remote Explosive from 0.5 seconds to 2.0 seconds
• Fix for bug where center kill switch would not activate pylons that had already been used
• Improved UI message for player who have been banned for cheating
• Fix for server crash related to thrown weapons
• Bleed wounds rebalanced to deal 4, 8, or 12 damage depending on wound intensity (down from 6, 12, 18)
• Increased duration of weakness wound to 12 seconds from 5 seconds
• Health Station FUNC cost doubled to 1 FUNC for every 2 hit points from 1 FUNC for every 4 hit points
• Three Crate Monte now uses a new explosion type to prevent players from opening the crates without receiving damage
• Fix for weapon attack speed ratings not affecting weapon combat performance as expected
• Added spear attack animation variety
• Fix for bug that allowed a spectator to win a match under certain conditions
• Texture size optimization for several character assets
• Bows now use varying bleed wound intensities:
  • Crafted bow = *
  • Recurve Bow = **
  • Compound Bow = ***
  • This is now reflected in HUD.
• Medkit now heals to full when players have Big Boned perk (previously restored a max of 100 hit points)
• Fix for camera speed not being reset if a player was disarmed while zoomed

Patch 89106 (March 15, 2016)

Greetings contestants!

Our servers will be down tomorrow (Wednesday, March 16) from 7AM until 10AM Eastern so that we can roll out a meaty new patch.

Today we moved our European servers to a more central location and we’re excited to introduce regional servers for Oceania with the new patch. Please keep in mind that we have some general network optimization work still ahead of us.

Starting with this patch, we are entering a more predictable Early Access update cadence, which means patches and major updates will be announced ahead of release.

Our help center offers tools to submit bugs, suggest changes, and report cheaters should you come across any. Please keep the helpful feedback coming our way.

We’ll see you on the island!

Major Changes

• Added Oceania regional servers
• Rebalanced Stun Gun (Ammo reduced from 3 to 2, Stun wound duration reduced from 3 seconds to 2 seconds, Self Defense Airdrop cost increased to 90 FUNC, Stalker Airdrop cost increased to 100 FUNC)
• Med Station healing is now interrupted when healing player performs combat actions
• Players who disconnect now have a timeout before exiting (no more rage-quitting mid-fight to deny your opponent a kill)

Minor Changes

• Addict Airdrop cost reduced to 75 FUNC
• Fix for text chat input disrupting camera control
• Fix for several text-related bugs
• Bows found in Airdrops now include 24 arrows and text descriptions reflect that
• Fix for a bug that allowed a bow to be duplicated
• Fix for a bug where changing server region reset graphics settings
• Fix for several stuck spots in the map
• Airdrops are now sorted by FUNC cost
• Pressing Left Mouse Button during trap placement or stim usage will no longer cancel usage. Right Mouse Button now cancels
• Players with Blindness wound can no longer see opponents’ HUD Health/Stamina/Wound display
• Using the Center Kill Switch to activate gas pylons will now give the button-pressing player credit for resulting kills
• Rocks and Branches now deal reduced throw damage (which does not scale when charged)
• Removed backstab bonus for thrown weapons
• Crafting and item interaction are now interrupted when player performs combat actions
• Rebalanced Faster Trapper perk. Now affects trap disarm time in addition to trap deployment. Deploy and Disarm times are reduced by 75%
• Fix for some Med Kits allowing three uses
• Fix for inventory items temporarily disappearing for some players

Hotfix 89102 (March 11, 2016)

Today we've released a hotfix for a few issues discovered after the "King of the Kappa" patch. Fixes in revision #89012:

• Fixed issue with ping displaying incorrectly
• Fixed bug where remote explosive could not be activated with remote detonator
• Fixed intermittent server crash at match start

We'll see you on the island!

Hotfix 88985 (March 9, 2016)

The Culling team is proud to announce our first patch, which we're naming "King of the Kappa" to commemorate our surprise Early Release Island Showdown Tournament! This patch delivers European server support, as well as several bug fixes and gameplay balances. At Xaviant, it's our goal to deliver consistent updates throughout Early Access to provide the best player experience possible.

We'll see you on the Island!

Revision #88985 (Changes since Revision #88858)

Major Changes

• Added European regional servers
• Health Station now requires players to face the front of the station while healing (Note: *We are investigating additional changes)

Minor Changes

• Added LIRIK Early Release Island Showdown Tournament Winner banner to central arena
• Added an exclusive t-shirt for Early Release Island Showdown Tournament participants to be awarded soon!
• Fixed several spots in the map where players could get stuck
• ESC key at Hunted screen now takes player to spectate mode
• Fix for player being able to partially cancel bandages and med kits and still receive the heal while moving
• Updated artwork for under-mountain tunnel
• Improved animations while holding various weapons and interacting with objects
• Hunted/Victory screens now display player’s match performance ranking
• Hunted/Victory screens now display loot rarity via colored icon border (work in progress)
• Fix for t-shirts clipping through character when wearing athletic shorts
• Fix for several text typos (thanks eagle-eyed community!)
• Fix for bug where "Grey" The Culling Logo Graphic T-Shirt was mislabeled as "White," which also caused the Grey version to always show as newly unlocked
• Fix for bug where sounds could get stuck with Punji Stick deployment
• Fix for bug where sounds could get stuck with Recycler and Open Crate sequences
• Improved accuracy for Recurve Bow and Compound Bow
• Fixed bug with animation where player disarms a trap they are caught in
• Reduced throw damage for all non-weapon items
• Rebalanced match rewards distribution
• Crafted Smoke Bombs and Crafted Caltrops no longer activate when dropped
• Potential fix for bug where player could be unable to move after canceling a Med Kit use
• Improved physical placement of items within Airdrop containers
• Updated game credits to include a shout-out to our phenomenal PR team at Evolve PR
• Crafting Guide now accurately displays FUNC cost of Crafted Snare
• Fixed bug that allowed SMG to be reloaded for 50 FUNC (now costs 75)
• Increased FUNC cost of Lumberjack Airdrop to 115 from 85
• Steel Snare in Thief Airdrop now includes 4 charges instead of 3
• Fixed bug where low-stamina player breathing sounds were not playing
• Fix for mouse sensitivity resetting when changing a keybinding
• Added animations for bush interaction while holding various weapons
• Added animations for FUNC-related interactions while holding various weapons
• Three Crate Monte match event no longer unlocks Airdrops when opening “trick” crates
• Fix for arrow not appearing on bow after crafting new arrows from zero ammo
• Fix for being unable to reapply stims while using Chemist perk
• Fix for Alarm Gun having physics issues preventing it from being easily retrieved from lockers
• Fix for intermittent bug where all HUD elements were stuck on in the UI
• Fix for poison gas visuals sometimes displaying in safe areas

Hotfix 88858 (March 4, 2016)

Hi All,

We decided to release The Culling a few days early because we love you so much!

Here's what's changed:

Revision #88858 (Changes since Closed Alpha Revision #88624)

Major Changes

• Rebalanced FUNC economy to reduce early-match access to firearms and limit ammunition
  • Crafting costs
  • Airdrop costs
  • Recycle values
• Rebalanced Crafted Blowgun
  • Reduced max ammo from 12 to 9
  • Reduced magazine size from 6 to 3
  • Requires ammo to be crafted at Poison Gas Vents (cannot use rocks)
  • Damage now scales based on level of charge
• Sickness wound default duration reduced, reduced intensity of screen effect
• Fix for player stun-lock condition that could occur with ranged projectiles (especially from SMG) and chainsaw
• Fix for occasional crash on player death
• Fix for occasional server crash that appeared to cause players to spawn in water
• Backpacks and Body Armor are now applied automatically if players use Backpacker and Armorer perks
• Added “Surprise Me” Airdrop, which provides the player with a completely random Airdrop from the list, making it easier to unlock new Airdrops
• Bleed wounds deal more damage
• Player can be disarmed while charging a throw
• Fix for Stealthy Perk not properly reducing the volume of sounds made by the player
• Improved throw damage bonus provided by Golden Arm perk from 25% to 100%
• Increased time required to fully charge a throw

Less major, but significant when taken as a whole, changes:

• Refactored collision in center arena to resolve bugs related to traps and items falling through world
• Airdrops now travel in a fashion that makes them hover over the landing zone longer to encourage other players to attempt to intercept them
• Refactored crafting recipe help screen
• Fix for bug that prevented players from re-applying buff stims (still not working properly with Chemist perk)
• Fixed exploit that allow player to apply a crafted satchel without consuming it
• Reduced cost of snare by 2 to compensate for increased caltrops cost
• Fix for bug where doors would prevent a snare from activating
• Added small delay after dropping or throwing an item before it can be picked up again
• Fixed several spots on the map where players could get stuck
• Added Tactical Machete (Tier 3 Blade) to blue and red crates
• Fix for blue crates sometimes failing to activate
• HUD updates while using Med Station no longer lag behind
• Caltrops no longer deal damage when triggered (still apply bleed and cripple wounds)
• Fix for being able to place snares in mid-air
• Single snare pegs no longer snare players
• Snare disarm progress is saved
• Fix for Airdrops being unopenable when failing to right themselves after being shot down
• Fix for vertical camera flipping bug that usually happened on spawn
• Player outline in teams mode now includes head and hair
• Fix for bugs where ammo counts for weapons were inaccurate until they were fired after being retrieved
• Fix for multiple items unintentionally spawning from the same locker
• Body armor can no longer be applied unless it improves the player’s armor stat
• Added collision to blocks surrounding the comms tower
• New reload animation for .357 Magnum
• Updated several placeholder art assets throughout the map (ongoing)
• Fix for Airdrop HUD element failing to refill after calling it once
• Players start without clothes in the UI to make first-time navigation easier
• Fix for bug with SMG death announcements
• Adjusted SMG recoil properties
• Improved mouse sensitivity slider range
• Fix for menu appearing if player hit ESC in Hunted/Victory screens
• Disabled numpad VO to resolve several bugs
• Announcer VO weighting to reduce instances of multiple voices overlapping
• Fix for last contestant killed not receiving Hunted screen (or seeing loot reward)
• Removed debug functionality previously mapped to F6/F7
• Disabled announcer voice in main menu from Med Station
• Changed placement of Med Stations and Recycling Stations so they are - further apart to resolve issue where Med Stations would sometimes fail to activate
• Fix for some announcement audio not matching the proper location name
• Fix for cases where gas iris would not trigger and end the match
• Fix for water blocking attacks and projectiles, especially in the Advanced Tutorial
• Polish pass on several combat and crafting animations
• Improved messages and handling of network connection status and issues
• Reset local player save file settings from closed alpha