Experimental Patch Notes - Alpha 1.8.43

We've released 1.8.43 on our experimental branch via steam. This build will be moved to the stable branch as v1.9 if no major issues are found by players. Harvesting tweaks have been made along with other tweaks. Balancing will be made with community feedback. You can find our patch notes below. Please report bugs and issues in game using the F1 menu.

If you'd like to track the patch progress and follow more closely with development, check our changelog and feel free to join our Discord.

How to get into experimental branch:

Open Steam and go to your games library.
Right click on STN and select "Properties"
Navigate to the "Betas" tab and select "experimental" in the drop down menu.
Close the properties window.

[h3]Experimental Patch Notes - Alpha 1.8.43 (Alpha 1.9 Experimental Build)[/h3]

General QoL

Disabled water bottles drops to simplify the water systems overall.
Added AA batteries to barber and bar locations.
Set the empty water bottle to non spawnable.
Added more server regions for server list.
Fixed damage and death image effects not working
Damage effect now gets more intense when health is low
Placement mode now stays active to allow continued placement without having re-open the inventory.
Searching the server list now turns off 'show popular servers' so that results are more accurate.
Server config now accepts string quotes around starting items. It also still works without.
Removed double slash when cycling through previous chat inputs.
Overall health now has a low of -5 instead of 10.
Scrolling through weapons is now much faster.
Scrolling through weapons/tools now skips empty slots and scrolls directly through weapons in the same order they are sorted in.
Removed the use of expert spawners that are out in the wild.
Increased the threshold for the guide completion spawn point to get relevant players back to the spawn camps when they don't know how to play the game.
Shift pickup items now pickup on interact key down so that shift doesn’t need to be pressed when releasing the key
Added new dynamic stamina tweaks that mean the player never becomes fully exhausted from sprinting and performing average tasks.
Shadows from fires are now properly affected by the quality settings.
Campfire now places on inclines more easily.
Name tags now disable when a player dies.
Name tags now move down when the player is in a vehicle.
Players are now placed at the step out position when they die to prevent rag doll conflict with the vehicle.
Players backpacks now fall to the floor when the player is killed.
Can now use sharpening stones on the equipped item. The same as using a cleaning kit.
Shift pickup items now pickup on interact key down so that shift doesn’t need to be pressed when releasing the key
Increased the threshold for the guide completion spawn point to get relevant players back to the spawn camps when they don't know how to play the game.

Inventory management

Changed machine parts filter to -parts.
Machines now auto filter compatible parts when opening the inventory.
Changed the little search icon to a button when in the crafting tab.
Fixed issue where closing the inventory while items were filtered would freeze the player in position.
Clicking on the top category tabs now clears the search field.
Clicking the search field now pushes you to the all items tabs for clarity.
Weapons are now placed inside of backpacks when players are killed.
Can now use sharpening stones on the equipped item. The same as using a cleaning kit.
Increased the max stack size from 10 objects to 50.
Nail boxes now hold 500 instead of 75.
Screw boxes now hold 500 instead of 75.
Screws and nails are now taken from part boxes before using new boxes.
Ammo is now taken from part boxes first.
Resource based items like nails and screws are now combined on pickup to stop multiple part boxes.
Filtering items in the inventory now shows clearly when the filter returns nothing.
Button for cycling between ‘all' ‘favs’ and 'help’ have now been converted to toggles.
Using the search field no longer clears all the craftables but instead starts with a full list and narrows down.
Tools and recipe items can now be selected to navigate to that items recipe.
Improved layout of tools and recipe.
Greyed craftables now highlight to make it clear to the player that they can still be clicked to see the recipe.
Items on the right page now only have the 'search' icon when there are recipes that include the item.
Pinned craftables icons are now correct way around.
‘All' ‘Fav’ and 'Help’ tab are now saved between sessions.

Fortified Structures

Locks no longer need to be snapped closed for a structure to qualify as fortified.
Fully fortified flag to stop zombies spawning in structures is now more lenient.
Fully fortified structures no longer spawn loot.

Harvesting

Reworked majority of harvest machines
Added standardized loot to all junk piles and harvest machines (Wood, Scrap Metal and Cloth)
Removed harvest settings with multiple pointless props like empty water bottles and tinder
Added small, medium and large variants to appropriate small, medium and large junk piles and props
Added harvesting to various new items
Added item hovers to various objects like sofas/bushes to make harvesting more clear
General Item hover positions improved on harvest machines
Optimized various trash pile models
Optimized cargo containers with trash piles
Beds no longer serve as log out machines but instead are used for harvesting rags

Updated the stat descriptions in the inventory.
Overall health is now displayed as a progress bar instead of just values.
Horde map icon is now clearer and shows direction of horde.
Death Icon on the map is now clearer so that it is not confused with horde icon.
Updated look of UI used for displaying weapon information and moved UI to bottom right corner.
Information in weapon UI now goes slightly red when ammo or condition is low and fully red when at zero.
Weapon UI now displays name of the equipped weapon.
Same UI is now used for both guns and melee weapons.
Added filter shortcut to allow players to quickly improve their most critical stat.
Player stats UI now shows when joining game
Time UI now displays current hour and is more compact
Horde progress UI reworked and moved in with the other stats UI
Updated hints to reflect change from ‘firewood' to just 'wood’
Removed old safe logoff tips from the loading screen.
Added new highlighting system for showing harvest machines.
Stamina now syncs more accurately.
Small notifications now more compact and updated to match new UI style.
Hint notification updated to match new UI style.
New UI added for player stats that’s more compact and lines up better with the inventory.
Player stats UI now updates in real time for more accurate information.
Most critical stat now stays up in the new stats UI to show what needs fixes
Reordered stats so they show in a more understandable order.
Added highlighting to the current most critical stats.
Added filtering of item of items based on the current most critical stat.
Overall health is now displayed as a sliding scale which makes it easier to read and understand.
Sickness and mental state are now displayed as a string like ‘Anxious' or 'Sick' instead of as a value
Updated the hydration icon.

Weapons

Guns now perform a melee attack when close to an enemy.
Fixed ARG15 scope glass flashing when shooting
Added new craftable metal pipe weapon
Tweaked settings of APUG sight
Tweaked settings of Compact sight
Reduced zoom in magnification materials to reduce pixelation in scopes
Reduces glass opacity in apug slightly
FPS models tweaked for APUG and Compact sight to reduce the black border introduced by the lack of zoom, interior faces are deleted and tweaked model to reduce black border as much as possible.

Locks

All locks on doors now unlock when interacting with a door handle (Subject to players access rights on locks)
All locks now unlock when opening a a storage container (Subject to access rights)
Added smart re-lock system which closes all locks on containers/doors when finishing interaction. (Only lock automatically when unlocked using new auto unlock functionality.)
Doors can now be slammed from the handle

Crafting

Simplified crafting by removing multiple methods of crafting the same items. Items are instead now crafted using more logical progression.
Simplified the naming on several craftable objects.
Removed recipes for putting dirty rags into canteens of water.
Rags can now be cleaned using just clean water via the crafting.
Disabled the sharpening stone recipe for now. You can't get stones so this is just a frustration. (Will be properly reintroduced)
Removed Timber drop in favor of common 'Wood' item for simplicity.
Renamed tinder to sticks to make it more general and provide more diverse uses.
Renamed Firewood to Wood to simplify recipes and make the raw materials in the game more useful.
Fully disabled the hatchet to remove the complexity around having multiple tools do the same job.
Disabled rag canteens for simplicity.
Disabled washing liquid.
Rebalance of crafting progression to simplify and improve usage flow.

Environment

Fixed clipping metal sheets on dumpster trash pile.
Fixed floating bottle under bedside cabinet.
Snow and rain no longer enter the police station.
Fixed shiny wood material in the comedy club.
Fixed various floating design around the world.
Fixed various terrains and grass clipping issues around the world.
Fixed various structure mesh and texture stretching issues.

Particles

Snow particles optimized
Fixed particles popping in instantly and improved bright snow particles.

Sounds

Added sound effect when health is low to inform of low health
Fixed very loud zombie screams in police stations
Lowered loud horde zombie ambient sounds
Cooking volume lowered to fix loud cooking noises when cooking many items.
Chicken volume rebalanced.
Armory and cell doors are now affected by the volume sliders.

Thanks for the continued support and continued issue and suggestion reporting :). Below are some helpful links to anyone new and interested in the game. If you'd like to follow a bit closer, please consider joining our Discord. We're here, we're listening!

[h3]Links[/h3]
Discord: https://discord.gg/survivethenights
Changelog: https://changelog.survivethenights.net
Twitter: https://twitter.com/STNgame
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/STNgame
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/a2zinteractive
Website: https://www.survivethenights.net
Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/a2zinteractive