Cannibal Crossing News

Version 0.9.7.8.12 is now up on the main branch. This adds many, many changes since last month's update, with a focus on fleshing out the Escape from Earlsboro gameplay mode. Read on for details on this update, the upcoming launch of the online mode, and more plans for Cannibal Crossing's updates in January!



A lot of our focus in the past month has been both fleshing out Escape from Earlsboro, and getting the Online Mode ready for public testing. Escape from Earlsboro (EfE for short) is now considered the main gameplay mode of Cannibal Crossing. This is a longer mode than Radio Silence, and introduces some new quest types, and a new way to get the mega loot.

Several Midbosses have been added to the game. They can be found in different locations of the map, and are powerful enemies. You need to defeat a certain amount of them to clear EfE, but you'll want to kill them anyway because they are an easy source of the new Red Stashes.

Red Stashes drop from both Midbosses and Bosses. They have the same amount of slots as a Safe, and similar loot. However, every single slot is always full in a Red Stash, there are no empty spaces. Also, the 6th and last slot of a Red Stash always has a pile of Scrap in it, usually around 5-6 scrap.

If you're lucky, you can get a Golden Stash instead. These are similar to Red Stashes, except the last slot can contain up to 10 scrap. In addition, a Golden Stash has 9 slots of loot instead of the 6 you get from a Red Stash.

This update brings back the old minor missions where you can help someone for a small reward. There is also a new quest type where you have to clear out an enemy stronghold. We are likely adding more enemy stronghold mission types later. Enemy Strongholds also contain a Stash for clearing them out.

Finally, you get a small chance (about 11%) of getting a Red Stash and a tiny chance of a Golden Stash when you defeat an enemy horde. This includes both the Negative Raids you get at night and the Hunting Party hordes. This makes stashes a renewable source of loot, if you're willing to piss off a lot of Cannibal Splitters. We may also later make this apply to killing off Cannibal Splitters.

We have done many tweaks and other changes, many of which are based on requests we've seen from players. This includes a lot of tweaks for lag, and an Effects setting in options to tone down lag you can get from fire, explosions, and bullets. Read the "Changes for This Update" section below for all the details on this.



I'm planning on doing more frequent updates in January. We were very active with responding to feedback and posting Testing Branch builds on Discord, but it lead to not a lot of activity here. Due to that, I am going to follow this schedule for January:

[h2]Hotfixes and Minor Update[/h2]

We will likely have to do some kind of hotfix for this update, given the size of it. I will be following comments on this post, and feedback from Twitter and the Official Discord for this.

Around the middle of January, we are also likely to do a minor update, so we're not getting stuck in testing branch updates and waiting a full month for main branch updates.

[h2]Online Mode Testing[/h2]

Around the middle of January, we're going to partially launch the Online Mode for the game. This will likely be a Testing Branch build at first, and the main launch of it will likely be rolled into the big update at the end of January. This will be the Horde Defense mode that supports up to 4 online players, though we may have to reduce this number if there are big problems with it.

[h2]Major Update[/h2]

Around the end of January, I would like to launch the online mode along with a big update that addresses some remaining issues, outside of adding new content. A quick list of things we have been watching:

1. Further work on lag and slowdowns for the game. This update address this partially, but there should be a lot more we can do here, especially for lighting optimization. Let me know if this update helped a lot on this or not, and remaining problems you have.

2. More work on controller support. We need details on this one. I have feedback on this from before, but I'm not sure what still applies at this point that we should look into.

3. AI tweaks for the survivor buddies and the enemies. Survivor buddy AI is particularly crappy right now. Worst case is that we make them more limited in general, like instead of following you around at all times, it's more of a "call for backup" power.

I will need feedback on all of this! Let me know if I missed anything, and let me know details of what we should focus on in regards to this list.



Thanks for all the feedback on the game so far! It's starting to shape up into what we want, and the support from everyone helps a lot with this.

As always, I'm particularly active for responding on the Discord and Twitter. I will be waiting for your responses to this update on there, and checking the Steam pages.

Now for the full list of changes this update!



- Fix for some tutorial errors
- Piggy Bankers will now only drop their stash when all 3 are dead
- Slightly adjustment to where stashes are generated around player
- Fix for a compass error
- Fix for consuming too many items from crafting screen
- Fix for accidentally creating items from crafting screen



[h2]Major Changes[/h2]

- Escape from Earlsboro has been expanded. EfE is now the main gameplay mode, with new quest types
- Red and Gold Stashes from defeating Bosses and Midbosses, with a small chance of getting them from defeating enemy waves
- Minibosses added to EfE! They are found in different buildings around the map, and each one has a unique attack style

- When you open a container, you now are able to see and move your weapons and items between yourself and that container

- Player lighting is more powerful, and the nights are a bit less dark
- Achievements added! We will be doing more work on this later
- You can now once again cancel reloads by changing weapons

- Toggle in settings to adjust Effects complexity to reduce slowdowns
- Toggle in settings to set your max FPS to 60, 90, or 120

- Kitchen will no longer automatically close on cooking something, to allow cooking multiple meals easily

[h2]Tweaks and Changes[/h2]

- Splitters take longer to summon Hunting Parties, 4 seconds -> 7 seconds
- Grocery Stores have more food
- Lots of tweaks to things that caused slowdowns, such as the flamethrower weapons
- You can no longer craft weapons beyond tier 0 weapons (sticks, bows, metal pipes, so on)
- Added red arrows for showing wrong turns during lockpicking, but they only show up with less than 1/3 of your lockpick timer remaining
- Clicking on an item with a container open will now consistently move 1 of that item, whether to or from a container. This does not apply to stacks of ammo

- Medkits now take 2 bandages to make instead of 1
- IV Bag healing 80 -> 100
- Syringes now also give 15 seconds of +20% runspeed
- Pharmacy, Hospital, and Clinical Center now are full of healing loot

- Radio Silence is now unlocked by beating your first boss
- Survivor Sandbox is now unlocked by dying once

- Deleting one of your base buildings will recover half the materials
- Your materials tally is now displayed on the main inventory and container screens, instead of just the crafting and workbench screens
- Removed the wood requirement from base lighting

- Automatic healing perk nerf, heals about half the speed that it did before
- Arrow draws for the bow can now be cancelled by changing weapons
- Tier now displayed when hovering over a weapon on the ground

- Sin Special properly boosts your running speed now
- Sin Special will no longer heal
- Most food buffs nerfed to lasting 40 seconds from 60, with Cake lasting 20 seconds
- Alcohol bonuses now last 40 seconds instead of 30
- Reduced hunger rate from 0.036 per second to 0.034

- Human enemies will have a limit on amount of things they can steal at once
- Increased the time it takes for enemies to give up on you after they don't see you, from 3 seconds to 6
- Reduced the chance of a building having enemies in it, 20% to 15%
- Doubled the drop chance of Cooking Recipes when an "other" category loot drops

- Options screen now more centered
- For keyboard users, a tip on how to drag weapons to drop them will be displayed until completing first game
- Movement can now be rebinded in Options menu

- Crapyard cars are now lootable

- Shots now starts with 15 spare pistol ammo, instead of 0

- Settings option to disable autosaves
- Going to the exit screen will now save your game
- Various text changes

[h2]Bugfixes[/h2]

- Liam's final Talent should now work, resurrecting him once with 10% health left and stunning all nearby enemies. This should recharge every few days
- Fixed several turret issues that prevented them from firing
- Fixed a bug that prevented the Mortar from working properly
- Fixed an issue with Fatigue becoming negative
- Fixed more enemies that could move while you were paused
- Fixed floating orange eye enemy attacks
- Enemies that spawn in buildings will now only destroy furniture if they know you're around
- More restrictions for when enemies can spawn in buildings
- When you have an ammo increase perk, this should reflect properly in the inventory hover over values
- Carnage Asada Taco kills should properly give health instead of giving extra XP
- "Find Character" Radio missions will properly clear when you find the character
- You can no longer get all three escape missions at once, getting another one will replace the previous
- Fix for some rebind buttons that weren't working
- Fix for an inconsistency with rebinding previous/next item
- Turret bullets should now go through base lighting
- Fix for some buff timers getting stuck onscreen
- Fix for a character showing their mission status incorrectly
- No more food consumption during pause
- Removed an ability to sit down on chairs that somehow made its way back in
- Burger food buff should display properly
- Fixed a bug with infinite food if eating out of inventory with a container open
- Fixes for building structures by accident
- Tweaks to missions to fix some display errors

[h2]Under the Hood Changes[/h2]

- Lots of work on the Online Mode. You'll see this fairly soon!
- Testing out new ideas on Twitch Integration
- Some work on Midbosses that aren't in the game yet

We've been busy testing out and rebalancing the Horde Defense mode in our developer version. This mode will have online multiplayer enabled, for at least 2 players (currently working with 4), as you work together to build up and defend a base from hordes of enemies.

Here's a short video that I took with a friend. Cause of death: he ran out of shotgun shells.
[previewyoutube]Horde Defense First Look[/previewyoutube]

I'm excited to get this out to everyone. Currently I'm doing a lot of tweaks to the design and internal testing until the balance is right. When it looks to be in a good shape, we will get it on the testing branch, though it will most likely have to stay on the testing branch for awhile before we can get it on the main branch.

I have also just launched a small update for Cannibal Crossing that's been on the testing branch for awhile. The next update we're working on should also be mostly small feedback and request responses, and I expect it to arrive next week. After we do a bit more work on the online mode, I would like to get back to focusing on the open-world/singleplayer content for awhile, but it's hard to know what the right balance should be.

Should we work more on the Horde Defense online mode, or the main open-world modes for now? Let me know what you think on this.




- Made artificial lights much more bright at nite
- Medkits now take 2 bandages to make instead of 1
- Medkit healing amount changes from 60 -> 70
- IV Bag healing 80 -> 90
- Syringe healing 40 -> 50
- Syringes now also give 15 seconds of +20% runspeed
- Pharmacy, Hospital, and Clinical Center now are full of healing loot

- Testing: Changed how long it takes a splitter to summon enemies. From 4 seconds -> 7 ... maybe too long now
- Testing: More food in grocery stores .. too much?

[h2]Under the Hood[/h2]

- Online mode is stable in our developer version, and the bugs are disappearing as we get closer to putting this on the testing branch

As we work on the online Base Defense mode, here's an update to address a new big batch of player feedback. As part of a big revamp to cooking, we got rid of some ingredients and simplified some recipes, while making the kitchen menu easier to browse.

After a lot of difficulty tweaks, the difficulty now seems to be in a good spot for me. Let me know what you think! I will probably do further adjustments when we're ready to add Hard Mode and Nightmare Mode. The current difficulty will become "Normal", maybe with some further slight tweaks to make it a tiny bit easier once there's a Hard difficulty.

I would now like to start more work on getting Escape from Earlsboro fleshed out into its own distinct mode, which you will probably see a bit of in the next update. EfE is going to become the main mode, and will have expanded quests and minibosses, while letting you choose to try to save all 6 (eventually 9) survivors. As we work on this, we will also continue working on the online mode. In the near future I will start posting some video of what we have so far, likely along with the next update!



[h2]Major Changes[/h2]

- Big Cooking revamp! See more below, in the Kitchen Revamp section
- Hunger rate almost tripled. Previously 0.016 nutrition per second, now 0.04
- Extra Big UI option now also makes the Portrait and item bar bigger, and also slightly increases the size of the quest text
- Work in Progress (but not fully implemented yet): We're adding it so you can see and change your weapons and items whenever you open a container, for easier stashing and organizing of your stuff. Just a big gray box for now, though.
- More work on the gamepad rebinding menu
- New big button in the Options menu to open your save folder, mostly there for easier bug finding
- Option to uncap FPS past 60

[h2]Cooking Revamp[/h2]

- New, easier to browse screen for the Kitchen
- Got rid of bread, sugar, water, and chicken legs. Sin's Special now uses oil instead of water, and all bread or sugar recipes now just use Flour instead
- Ingredients drop chances now edited to better reflect ingredient frequency in recipes, except for pepper, potato, and oil being slightly more rare
- Pancakes now only require two ingredients
- Rib Roast recipe is now MEAT, MEAT, MEAT. To compensate the easy recipe, damage reduction is now 15% from eating it instead of 30%
- Freedom Fries now additionally buff your running speed by 20%
- Ingredients besides Meat and Fish now all stack to 20

[h2]Difficulty Changes[/h2]

- Boss health reduced across the board, about 80% of what it used to be
- Enemies should now stick together more when spawning in. This makes them easier to avoid, but also easier to get mobbed. Overall hoping that this makes difficulty more consistent, before enemy amounts were very RNG based
- Tweaks to how sounds can summon new enemies. Now walking and running has a smaller chance to attract enemies, door opening attracts more, and louder weapons have increasingly higher chances to summon new enemies
- Quiet weapons now will no longer summon any enemies
- The limit for how many enemies can be active per day has been lowered initially, and now takes until day 20 (day 13 on Radio Silence) to build up to full instead of day 10 (day 10 is now about 64% of what it used to be)
- Max limit for enemies on day 20 is now a few enemies lower than previous max, which is the same as previous day 9 (day 6 on Radio Silence)

[h2]Tweaks and Fixes[/h2]

- Arrows are now cheaper to make. Just 1 wood and 1 metal to make 15 arrows
- Reduced amount of light when enemies are on fire, which should reduce lag
- Tweaks to the helicopter to hopefully make it harder to get stuck interacting with the wrong thing
- Visual indicator of where an enemy is going to shoot a grenade
- The bug where you could summon multiple Nail Biters that would never stop chasing you is now fixed, it was related to being Liam in Radio Silence
- Negatives now have legs again
- Fixed a bug where you could get double items from containers by destroying it at the right time
- Hitting attack on the game over screen will now make the gems tally faster
- The container loot menu will now get closed if the container is destroyed
- Controllers screen should be fully selectable using gamepad
- Updated gamepad customization menu
- Turret fixes to update energy status properly, and should search and attack enemies a bit better
- Better parrying for gamepad users

[h2]Under the Hood[/h2]

- Lots of work on the online Base Defense mode
- Working on added minibosses back into the game

This is a really big update we've been working on. Read below for a list of all the changes. There's a lot, with the most important ones in the top Major Changes section.

Thanks to all the people that have been providing a lot of feedback, especially those that have been helping testing out testbranch! Fan feedback in general has already been helping the game out immensely!

We're going to shift focus for a week to working more on the online mode, so expect smaller updates for that period. After that, we'll hopefully be able to show some of our online co-op work in video form! Once we get at least a small preview of that done, we're also going to start focusing more on adding more things to the Escape from Earlsboro game mode. That mode will be getting its own special things, and will eventually become the main game mode rather than Radio Silence.

As always, let us know what you think! Discord's probably the best way, followed by Twitter. I check the Steam Discussions every so often, but not as much as the other two.


[h2]Major Changes[/h2]

- Breaking or smelting a weapon will now automatically take its ammo
- Melt/Break button now moved to Reload instead of Use Item
- Lots of difficulty tweaks
- Shotgun buff! Shotgun, Boomstick, SPAS, Sawedoff, and Quad Barrel shotguns now do 10% more damage. Street sweeper damage nerfed about 10%
- Pistol rework. Flipped it so pistols reload faster than revolver-type guns now. This means the revolver types get about 40-50% better damage efficiency per bullet, but pistols get about double the damage inflicted per reload time
- Fix for throwing weapons, they should stack properly now when you pick up new throwing weapons
- Major changes to the Kraklin's battle area and attacks
- Horde and Cannibal Waves can now support more enemy types
- You will no longer change inventory or building menu tabs just on mouseover
- Radio Silence mode difficulty now increases 1.5x faster than other modes
- Fast Travel panel update, home beacon available, and you have to hit the menu interaction button to use it
- Cannibal Splitters should now properly have an 12 minute "no more Splitter spawn" period if you kill one, 20 minutes of "no more Splitters" if they summon a horde wave
- Enemies should no longer spawn in buildings if that building is near your turrets
- Revamp to TV's, Arcades, Cars, Cash Registers, and Washing Machines to have more guaranteed loot generation of resources
- Day length changed from 15 minutes to 12 minutes, with further adjustments to the different day/dusk/night/morning lengths
- Bosses should no longer drop duplicate escape parts, instead they'll drop an extra weapon after trying to drop a part you haven't seen yet
- Slot changes to the base buildings that generate resources
- New Keyboard keys rebinding menu
- Gamepads now rebindable, with PS4 button support
- You will no longer lose the extended tutorial missions if you die before completing them
- Adjustments on when you get the different extended tutorial missions so that you get them earlier, before the Prologue ends
- Shadow added to mission text for now to make it a bit more readable
- Bed corpses should now be lootable
- On gamepad, SUPER changed to USE/PICKUP + RELOAD
- For hard lockpicking such as opening safes, you will now get an extra second of time
- When hit, the player now gets 0.2 seconds of invulnerability (no longer needing the perk to get any invuln time at all)
- You can now change the UI scale for menus such as the inventory, to make them bigger
- Fast Travel using cars should now work properly. There was a weird bug involving localization that was preventing this before
- Materials panel now included for the Improve and Repair workshop menus
- Radio Silence should no longer affect chance for Negative Waves per night, only the amount of enemies

[h2]Difficulty Adjustments[/h2]

- Reduced minimum and maximum enemies for Negative Waves to 66% ( Divided previous values by 1.5 ). Later on when we add hard mode, I will restore something close to the previous values
- Cannibal Wave enemy amounts busted down to 66% of previous, matching the Negative Waves nerf
- More gradual increase of minimum and maximum enemies for Negative Waves in days 1 through 5
- Adjusted Negative Wave enemies so one new one is introduced per day, in general
- Added Negative Heavy Shooter to Negative Waves
- Some early adjustments for non-wave Negatives so that new types are introduced more gradually
- Cannibal spawning changes to shuffle the days around for different enemies, so generally one new enemy gets introduced per day
- Cannibal Hunting Parties can now include special cannibals beyond the basic wizards and biters. They're roughly 10% chance compared to the two basic types, though this fluctuates depending on the day
- Scientists remain pretty rare until day 15, though start becoming slightly less rare on day 8
- Commandos can appear day 6 at earliest
- Soldiers can appear day 12 at earliest
- Weapon table changes for commandos and soldiers. Commandos have a 25-45% chance depending on day for tier 2 weapons. Soldiers have a 45/45 chance for tier 1 vs tier 2 weapons, and a 10% chance for a selection of tier 3 weapons or explosives.
- Weapon table changes for scientists to make them scientific
- Negative Waves now always happen on day 2, and then every 3 days after (5, 8, 11, etc) until it becomes 100% on day 20 and beyond
- Between the guaranteed days, there's a chance for negative wave that increases over time. Examples: Day 1 is a 45% chance, day 3 and 4 are 50% chances, day 18 and 19 are 75% cahnces...
- Slight nerf to the Waves endgame. Day 20 is now a little less numerous than the previous day 19
- The more rare cannibal enemies are now less rare as the days go on compared to before, with the stock melee cannibals becoming less frequent
- Difficulty now goes up much slower over time. Day 18 or so is like the previous day 10, with increases to then being a lot more gradual.
- Final days difficulty increased slightly past the previous maximum
- Much tighter variance in Cannibal Waves for enemy amounts per wave, from 0.5 to 0.84 or so
- Time between both cannibal waves and negative waves are longer than they were before
- Your character now starves faster

[h2]Tweaks and Fixes[/h2]

- Fix for eye enemies being able to move during pausing such as the inventory screen
- "How to sneak" blue tip will now appear during the blocking mission, instead of after the first enemy killed
- Autohealing no longer works when paused
- Adjusted some items so they no longer fly through walls
- Automatically obtain escape parts if you walk too far away from one after a boss kill
- Tweaks to the Kraklin, for minion spawning and attack warning duration/position
- Better checks for not dropping duplicate end game drops
- More informative description for garbage disposal
- Change for HOME SWEET HOME quest text now that the build menu is no longer hold + release
- Fix for teleporter not displaying properly on craft screen
- Fix for cars not marking construction areas as occupied
- Small Generator's interaction button changed to E
- When invulnerable, you will now flash white
- Splitter red area should now get removed correctly
- Missing materials in building mode will now display with red text
- Fix for the Clinical Center walls
- Fast Travel panel now has an out of gas visual indicator
- Fix for energy requirements for certain traps
- Player can no longer change weapons while reloading
- Fix for food bonus timers no longer incrementing when paused
- Cannibal Spider should no longer stun you while you're rolling
- Breaking wooden objects no longer requires a Smelter
- Can now rebind the gamepad right stick
- Hitbox for the buildable tent is increased
- Cursor check on title screen, so it hopefully doesn't disappear
- UI should now change when changing gamepad bindings
- Obstacle sign removed from Pharmacy
- Bow is now considered a junk tier 0 weapon, and ballistic bow and crossbow are now considered tier 1 weapons. Harpoon Gun is now considered tier 2. This means ballistic bows, crossbows, and harpoon guns will be more common, and that we'll probably add new tier 3 arrow using weapons at some point.
- Grasper no longer can hurt you by running into you when it's faded
- Hardware store has more weapon types, but they're less common compared to its metal pipes, clubs, and sticks
- Adjustment of boss bullet layer position Z order
- Fix for the power station energy container
- Nerf to Tactical Rifle firing rate so it's between Assault Rifle and SWATTER
- Made Minishark more common, Minigun very rare
- Auto Gun now reloads faster
- Slower nail gun reload time, faster Uzi reload time
- Updated list of items that can be melted/broken
- Bow, crossbow, ballistic bow drop rates increased slightly
- Increased area around base where cars will not spawn
- Ball Launcher, Shotgun Turret, and Auto Crossbow Turrets are all faster
- Garbage Disposer now costs 1 metal and 1 scrap
- HOME SWEET HOME quest text change
- Changes to keybinding text to rename "Menu Action A" and "Menu Action B"
- Drops updated for Pear and Plug N Play stores, reduced amount of scrap considerably but also added chance for metal and batteries
- Fix for floating eyes being able to move while you were in the inventory menu
- Helicopter can no longer land in the water
- Preventions for crossing walls by using special attacks
- Your base buildings should now stop making things when paused

[h2]Under the Hood Changes[/h2]

- Some further work on the Base Defense Mode


There's maybe some changes I missed, as this is a compilation of all the testing branch update notes from the Discord #cannibal-updates channel. Let me know if I missed a major change, or just how you generally feel about the game now!

Currently we're trying to wrap up early major feedback, then getting back to fleshing out Escape from Earlsboro mode and ramping up to start showing off the online Base Defense mode.

Also, Testing Branch is now available for Cannibal Crossing. This lets you help test updates before they come out for everyone else. As of right now, there's a test up for being able to remap the controls on a gamepad. To access this, right click on the game in your Steam Library, go to Properties, and then go to the BETAS tab. You can change "NONE" for the beta opt-in, to "testbranch".

I won't be posting much news about the testing branch in Steam announcements, but I'll be posting when new ones are up on the Official Discord.

[h2]Major Changes[/h2]

- You can now receive the location of the next survivor in Radio Silence mode at certain times. This includes when you defeat a boss, finish a character prologue, or start a new game as a character you've already finished their prologue with

- Gamepad players can now unload the ammo from weapons

- Nail Biter no longer receives a massive amount of damage reduction, that was a bug from a previous design where you could only damage him after his stomp attack
- Nail Biter should now vary his attacks better

- You can now break wooden items for wood, much like you can smelt them for metal. Currently requires a Smelter, though this requirement will be removed

- The Garbage Disposal should now properly give you wood and metal for dumping items in there. We're going to signpost this better in the next update, as this should be a good way to bridge the gap between the early game and getting a Smelter up and running

- You should now correctly get different endings in Escape from Earlsboro depending on how many people you save

[h2]Tweaks and Fixes[/h2]

- Fixed a bug where you could get overlapping quest text for the "escape town" quests
- Some small enemy AI updates
- Display update to the ending pieces
- Splitters should now properly display their spider legs when decapitated
- Fix for a weird roof bug with buildings
- Fix for an issue about containers stealing your ammo

[h2]Under the Hood Changes[/h2]

- Added more definitions for days, so that enemies can ramp up more gradually in the future
- Further work on the online Base Defense mode