Core Keeper News

We’re delighted to announce that our first major update, The Sunken Sea Biome, has just launched! We hope you’ll join us in celebrating this exciting milestone following our Early Access launch in March. After defeating our first three bosses, you'll be able to lower the mysterious wall that separates you and The Sunken Sea Biome, and we can’t wait to watch you uncover all the secrets this ocean-based biome has hidden away.



[h2]What Can You Expect from the Sunken Sea Biome?[/h2]

You might recall we shared our Sunken Sea roadmap a little while ago, and you’ll be pleased to know that everything featured there and more is now available in game! We’ve had a lot of community excitement over the prospect of Teleporters and Sprinklers, and these were two features we’ve been looking forward to showing off for a while now. Players can also look forward to new plants, fish, ore, base-building items, and enemies; including a brand-new Titan boss to battle.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Of course, we’ve been teasing some of the Sunken Sea Biome’s enemies and items on our social media channels, and it didn’t take you very long to spot things like boats and Blue Slime hiding away in our screenshots. We can’t wait for you to stumble upon a powerful Core Sentry golem and run into this biome’s native Cavelings all while experiencing a brand new Sunken Sea soundtrack created by the talented Jonathan Geer.



There’s plenty for you to uncover, and we won’t reveal all the new content here so that you’ve got a chance to discover it for yourselves. If you would like a full breakdown of what we have been working on for the Sunken Sea Update, then check out the patch notes here!

As always, we love to hear your thoughts, feedback, and opinions on Core Keeper, and we welcome you to let us know what you think of the Sunken Sea Biome in the Steam Discussions, on Twitter, or in the Discord. Bearing in mind that Core Keeper is still in Early Access, we also encourage you to report any bugs you encounter here!

[h2]Main Features[/h2]

• New biome: Sunken Sea.
  
• New sub-biome in the Sunken Sea: Forlorn Metropolis.
  

[h2]New NPCs[/h2]

• Omoroth the Sea Titan (titan boss).
  
• Morpha the Aquatic Mass (side boss).
  
• 5 New enemies: Bubble Crab, Slippery Slime Blob, Tentacle, Caveling Scholar, Core Sentry.
  
• New Fishing Merchant found in Azeos' Wilderness.
  
• New mushroom-like enemy that spawns in the Dirt Biome and from Fungal Growth (Fungal Growth will only generate in worlds created after the update).
  

[h2]New Mechanics[/h2]

• Octarine workbench with new tools, crafting, and base building options.
  
• Boats.
  
• Portals that can be crafted and placed in the world to teleport between.
  
• New Jewelry workbench allowing players to craft new jewelry.
  
• A Table Saw can be crafted at the Electronics Table that allows players to cut wood into planks.
  
• Added a Fishing Merchant Idol to Azeos' loot drops that allows the Fishing Merchant to move into the player's base.
  
• Sprinklers that can be crafted at the Automation Table.
  
• Vanity slots. A Dresser can be crafted at the Carpenter Bench in which players can change what equipment is visually shown on their character.
  
• Bait Workbench for crafting baits.
  
• Map markers that can be placed on the map.
  
• Players can now eat food, drink potions, place objects, and fight while in a minecart or a boat.
  
• Added Fungal Growth that appears in the Dirt Biome. Fungal Growth allows Mushrooms to grow and Mushroom enemies to appear. Fungal Growth can also drop from Slime Blobs and the new Mushroom Enemy. Please note that Fungal Growth will be available as a drop from Slime Blobs in all worlds, however it will only spawn in the Dirt Biome and it will only allow Mushroom Enemies to appear in worlds generated after the Sunken Sea Update.
  
• Added different types of Caveling Moss that appear in the Stone, Nature, and Ancient City Ruins biomes (appears in newly explored areas). Similar to Ground Slime and Chrysalis, this new Caveling Moss will spawn different types of Cavelings. The moss can also drop from Cavelings.
  

[h2]New Items[/h2]

• Octarine Ore.
  
• 10 new weapons.
  
• 7 new offhands.
  
• 20 rings and necklaces.
  
• 24 new armour pieces.
  
• 20+ new decorative objects.
  
• 3 new plants.
  
• 2 new types of food.
  
• 5 new fishes.
  
• New valuables.
  
• New legendary ranged weapon.
  
• Baits that can be held in the off-hand slot while fishing for different bonuses.
  
• New fishing equipment set that can be gained from fishing in the different biomes.
  
• Added a Wood Bow that can drop in Dirt Biome, an Iron Bow that can be crafted at the Iron Anvil, and a new Octarine Bow.
  

[h2]Additional Content[/h2]

• New unique locations in the Sunken Sea Biome.
  
• A new Dash Feather has replaced the Hand Mortar in Azeos' loot table.
  
• The Iron Chunk Necklace sold by one of the Merchants has been replaced with a mysterious slate device that becomes available after activating The Core.
  

[h2]Additional Localisation[/h2]

• New supported languages: Japanese, German, and Korean.
  

[h2]Menu and Settings[/h2]

• Added a particles quality setting.
  
• The “low” light quality setting also disables shadows on several objects to slightly improve performance.
  
• The language of the game will default to the language set in Steam instead of the device language. This will cause the current selected language to change for any players that have a different language set in Steam on first start up of the game with this patch.
  
• When the game loads, select the third option down. On this new screen, the top option cycles through languages.
  

[h2]Balancing Improvements[/h2]

• Bosses are now guaranteed to always drop at least one piece of equipment or weapon.
  
• The Cartography Table and Distillery Table costs planks instead of wood.
  
• Increased chance for chests to appear in Mold sub-biome and increased the rewards from those chests. This only applies to newly generated sub-biomes.
  
• Damage caused by players' titan soul powers such as the thunder beams now scales with player damage.
  
• Doubled the amount of ores in Ore Boulders making them last for twice as long.
  
• Increased chance for higher rarity fishes to bite.
  
• Increased damage of all range weapons a bit.
  
• Slight increase of Slingshot attack speed and Slingshot now has uncommon rarity.
  
• Increased the burning damage from Fireball Staff.
  
• Burning effects tick a bit more frequently but last for a slightly shorter duration.
  
• Soul Orbs' despawn time has been halved, allowing titans to respawn quicker.
  
• Halved the attack speed gained from Fast and Furious talent.
  
• Increased range damage gained from the Well-trained Aim talent.
  
• Increased the health ratio at which Ghorm enrages and starts attacking the player.
  
• The Boss Idol Merchant now has 3 of each Boss Summoning Idols in stock. This amount will update the next time the Merchants restock their items after starting the game with this patch.
  
• Respawn immunity starts fading out when any action is attempted.
  
• Merchants no longer drop all their inventory on death.
  
• Roots grow one piece at a time, but more often.
  
• The Big Larvas from the Hive Mother eggs can now destroy hive walls when chasing the player.
  

[h2]Quality-of-Life[/h2]

• Increased the hit radius of projectiles shot by the player, making it a bit easier to hit enemies with ranged weapons.
  
• Merchants will follow the player when the player holds the item they like such as Slime Oil and Mysterious Idol.
  
• Increased the range of electricity from generators.
  
• Increased inventory size of Large Chests to have twice the amount of Small Chests' size.
  
• Improved logic that moves the player out of blocking objects and walls so the player can no longer push themselves through to the other side of a wall by using a door for example.
  
• Fixed so titans can respawn while players are at their spawn location.
  
• Soul Orbs no longer require the player to be nearby to disappear, this allows titans to respawn when the player is far away from the spawn location.
  
• Increased max zoom out of map.
  
• Quick swapping a ring (shift click) will prioritize swapping with a ring that isn't the same ring.
  
• Added a border to the chat input field.
  
• Increased density of unique locations and areas of interest that spawn in the Dirt Biome. This only applies to newly generated areas.
  
• Adjusted amount of wood gained from the roots in Azeos' Wilderness to match regular roots.
  
• Gravestones can be placed in water.
  

[h2]Art and Animation[/h2]

• Reduced animation overhead of objects that are not actively animated to slightly improve performance.
  
• Adjusted position of the stun effect for several enemies.
  
• Healing effect no longer shows on the player if already at full health.
  

[h2]Audio[/h2]

• New music for the Sunken Sea biome and new music for all existing biomes.
  
• The Core continues the speech a bit quicker after scanning the world.
  
• Changed music to play more continuously.
  

[h2]Accessibility[/h2]

• Improved readability of the amount of materials required when crafting.
  

[h2]Dedicated Servers[/h2]

• Log common client commands on Dedicated Servers.
  
• Forward arguments to Dedicated Server launch scripts.
  

[h2]NPCs[/h2]

• Infected Cavelings no longer play regular Caveling animation when knocked back.
  
• Fixed Merchant inventory not refreshing if the player is far away.
  

[h2]Mechanics[/h2]

• Fixed an issue where crafting an item could be done without consuming materials from a nearby chest if the materials were taken out by a robot arm at the same time.
  
• Fixed an issue where hitting an object larger than 1 tile would sometimes instead hit any object beneath it such as rugs or bridges.
  

[h2]Items[/h2]

• Ore Boulders no longer give less total amount of ores before depleting when drilling with more than one drill.
  
• Fixed a bug where the duration would sometimes show the wrong amount of minutes on food when having some points in the Long Lasting Food talent.
  
• Players no longer lose durability on equipment when dodging attacks.
  
• Fixed an issue where plants would sometimes not be visible when having a very large farm of plants.
  
• Fixed an issue where negative stats on equipment would not get the correct reinforced value addition such as the movement speed affection from the Slime Sword and Larva Equipment.
  
• Fixed a bug where the Breaking Barriers talent would give too much armor. Also increased the amount of armor the talent gives to be more balanced after the bug fix.
  
• Fixed a bug where Sushi would not have the correct colors when dropped or placed on a pedestal.
  
• Invalid items can no longer be placed in Furnaces and Smelter Kilns.
  
• Electrical Wire is no longer placeable on other electrical components.
  
• Fixed a bug where ground objects like floors, rugs, rails, etc. would not drop when destroyed with Bombs.
  

[h2]User Interface & Controls[/h2]

• Fixed an issue where chat text would sometimes overlap crafting UI in a weird looking way.
  
• Fixed an issue where players could still interact with menus behind pop ups.
  
• Fixed an issue where binding movement keys on keyboard to other keys would still allow movement with wasd-keys.
  
• Fixed an issue where the hover window of Cookbook ingredients and food would not be positioned at the bottom right corner of the screen.
  
• Fixed common Linux issue where scroll wheels with low sensitivity were not working properly.
  

[h2]Networking / Dedicated Servers[/h2]

• Fixed previous server join time not showing local time.
  
• Fixed Windows Dedicated Server launch script not exiting gracefully, leading to up to 30 seconds of progress being lost.
  
• Fixed parse error in previous server list for some regions.
  
• Fixed Cartography Table being able to block normal game traffic, increasing ping.
  

[h2]Others[/h2]

• Fixed visual artefact causing walls to light up a bit sometimes when being mined.
  
• Fixed a bug where players would not get the effect from a set bonus when wearing more than the amount of pieces needed for the set bonus.
  
• Fix some large destructibles in the Dirt Biome to show correct sprites.
  
• Fixed a bug where Electrical Wires would not be destroyed by Bombs.
  
• Fixed an issue where the acid from Hive Mother's projectile would not spawn on torches and other similar objects.
  
• Generated Thorn Roots correctly drops regular Wood instead of Thorn Wood when being destroyed by world generation.
  
• Fixed an issue where Thorn Wood would not drop the correct amount of Wood.
  
• Fixed Cartography Table not reading saved map data properly.
  
• Fixed an issue with Copper Ore Boulders sometimes spawning inside areas like labyrinths in the Forgotten Ruins. Already spawned Copper Ore Boulders will still remain.
  
• Fixed an issue with Mold Tentacles playing the slime slow-down particle effect when they shouldn’t.
  
• Automation structures (Conveyor Belt, Robot Arm, etc.) now work as expected at an infinite range.
  
• Electricity now works as expected at an infinite range.
  
• A difficulty option for worlds has been added with the options "normal" and "hard". This option can be selected when creating a new world. The hard option makes monsters and bosses deal more damage, have more health, and bosses will also drop more items.
  

If you've got a preference for building stuff with friends while running from hungry and horrifying cave creatures, you may have spied Core Keeper when it launched in early access back in March. The crafty co-op game for 8 players blew past half a million downloads on Steam in just a couple of weeks, its combo of Stardew Valley-esque homesteading and cavern-survival creating a surprisingly effective balance between cosy and creepy. Now, developer Pugstorm is working on Core Keeper's first major update...
Read more.

From launching dedicated servers all the way to sharing our Sunken Sea update roadmap, May was an exciting month for Core Keeper. Well, hold on to your helms, Explorers, because June is gearing up to be just as exciting. You’ll be pleased to know that Core Keeper is featuring in 2x gaming showcases this month, and they’re not far off!

[h2]IGN’s Summer of Gaming[/h2]

The first showcase we’re taking part in is IGN’s Summer of Gaming. This multi-day event boasts “…trailers, gameplay, news, and reveals for some of the biggest upcoming games, and exclusive content”, and you can expect a little something from Core Keeper on the 10th of June!

A fully digital event, IGN’s Summer of Gaming will be covered directly on the IGN website, as well as across your favourite streaming platforms like YouTube and Twitch. We’re thrilled to be a part of the excitement this summer, and we’re also looking forward to seeing what our industry peers have been up to!

[h2]PC Gamer’s PC Gaming Show[/h2]

The next showcase you can expect to see Core Keeper in this month is the PC Gaming Show. We’re honoured to be featured amongst a wonderful roster of PC games, and we can’t wait to see what’s featured in this year’s spotlight. In true showcase fashion, the PC Gaming Show will feature news, announcements, trailers, and more.

While we’ve shared a few teasers over on Twitter, we are keeping most of the details of the Sunken Sea update under our hats for the time being. That’s why you won’t want to miss the reveal during the PC Gaming Show on the 12th of June!

Catch the show and find out just what’s waiting for you in this ocean-based biome on the PC Gamer YouTube channel.

We’re really looking forward to hearing your thoughts following the Core Keeper features at both showcases. Make sure you’re a part of our Discord community to chat all things Core Keeper!