CryoFall News

We are happy to announce that our first major update is going to be released on the 16th of May! As always, we will provide a proper announcement and detailed patch notes when the update actually happens, but for the time being we wanted to give you a short preview.

The update will introduce a new major game mode—“PvE” (player versus environment) allowing us—on official servers—and all community server owners to choose which game mode they prefer to run. This should finally offer clear distinction between competitive PvP servers and more creative and peaceful PvE servers.

Introduction of separate PvE servers makes it possible for us to finally improve the balance for PvP servers based on many requests from our players and make it more rewarding for defending and attacking players. Some major changes include increased bomb damage and unlocked chests (to prevent a complete base wipeout during a raid), but to counter balance it certain features are made much cheaper, such as land claim upgrades or repair of different structures. We are also introducing a so-called raiding window, which should mitigate offline raiding and ensure that most engagements happen when players are actually online. We are going to set the initial raiding hours to 7-10PM (local time) (edited, see the UPD info below) and introduce any further changes based on direct player feedback. With this raiding window in place, you won’t have to worry about your base being raided while you are at work or sleeping. Community server owners are also free to configure the raiding hours as they wish or even disable the feature altogether. Please note that the raiding window applies only to bases protection (making them invincible during non-raiding hours) and doesn't restrict PvP damage so you could still fight other players with weapons.

This is still partially experimental, so we will carefully listen to your feedback and make all the necessary balancing changes as needed. We have only one goal—to make CryoFall as fun as it can be!

There will obviously be a few content additions, but this update is quite light in terms of content as it is purely focuses on PvE servers, some new features and a multitude of QoL improvements and balancing changes needed for the future.

Anyway, just a few more days left! Stay tuned! When the update hits—we welcome you to join all the freshly started servers (server wipe) with a new economy for this A22 update!

UPD. Update on the raiding window feature. Given that this feature is highly experimental, we've deiced to not enable this feature initially. We are planning to run polls for each of the official servers first, where you—the players—will be able to decide whether you want to see it enabled and how. We don't want to force any such changes on you. If we see overwhelming support for this feature and there will be a reasonable consensus on the actual time for the raid window then we will enable it for a particular server. Community server owners are also free to configure the raiding hours as they wish or even disable the feature altogether.

As promised the patch is ready! And even more so, what was originally planned as a simple patch to address several rare issues and introduce some balancing changes have grown into a full blown update.

With A21 "Survivors Update" we are introducing several major improvements to the game, the biggest of which being the new "Newbie protection" mechanic as was requested by a lot of players. When you first start the game you are still learning the basics and it isn't exactly productive if you are being killed by more advanced players or players who have previous experience in the game. And this is exactly where this new protection comes into play. You will be completely safe from losing any of your items or learning points (LP) for the first four hours of the game! With that you can finish all basic quests without rushing and finish your first base to be completely secure.



Second biggest feature is the new damage tracking. The usual respawn menu has now been expanded to include a list of all recent damage sources — such as creatures, players, harmful items and status effect (including names of players who have damaged you, even if you were offline). Now now you can finally take revenge on that bad guy who killed you while you were offline :)

Next major change is the introduction of light and visibility system at night. Now all health bars and nicknames will be hidden by default if the player or a creature is in complete darkness. You will be able to see them either only when you approach or if you are holding a light source. In fact, whether or not you see something now entirely depends on the light radius of any light source, including the light from other characters and world objects!

Another improvement have been made to deposit claiming and contesting mechanic. Notification about the newly spawned Oil/Li deposit and its coordinates will be displayed to players who have Xenogeology tech unlocked. And now they cannot be claimed earlier than 30 minutes after spawning, so all of the interested players can now contest this resource.

Many improvements have been made to PvP balance. Biggest change being - any PvP damage have been reduced by half, which means that any fights between players will be twice as long now. It doesn't affect weapon or armor balance in any way, as this change is applied at the last moment after all other calculations. Oh, and also there is no friendly fire now, so you don't have to worry about damaging your friends in a heated fight.



And the last and our favorite change - character status effects (such as bleeding or radiation) now include a detailed tooltip with all of their properties and effects. Just hover your mouse over any of the effects and you will see all of their detailed stats.

On the modding side of things - server rates have now exposed in a separate config file with 16 rates available for customization. You can quickly change things like LP gain rate, increase item drops, reduce player to player damage to zero or even increase the damage from creatures and make it really tough for the players!

Obviously, this is just scratching the surface and the actual patch notes include almost a hundred other changes in total. As always, you can find a detailed list of changes on the forums: http://forums.atomictorch.com/index.php?topic=1273.0

Oh, and you've probably noticed in the title for this update - CryoFall now has Steam Trading Cards!

Please let us know what you think about this update and give the game another try if you haven't played recently! Oh, and no wipe this time! We were able to make all of these changes compatible with the existing saves :)

The next big update together with the wipe is still planned for May and it will finally introduce PvE game mode on separate servers and many other changes and new content! Stay tuned! There's a lot to come in the following months. We are here for the long haul to make CryoFall the best game it can be! :)

First of all, we want to thank everyone who purchased the game and we are very happy with how well the game was received. Most reviews are incredibly positive!

We're also aware that for some players the initial experience in the game can be a bit frustrating with unrestricted PvP. There are very generous people who share their items and experience with new players, but there are also some bad apples, who want nothing else, but to grief other people. This is certainly something that we want to address as soon as we can. So we're currently working on a patch to provide some protection for the new players who just joined the server. At least to provide enough time for new players to finish the first quests, learn the basics of the game and build a small house. Though this protection will be optional so you will be able to turn it off if you’d rather jump straight into action.

In addition to this simple newbie protection, we are also working on a much bigger update that will introduce completely separate PvE servers. PvE servers will allow peaceful cohabitation on the same server without worrying about being killed or raided. This game mode will be intended for people who just want to enjoy the game, learn technology and explore the world of CryoFall. Naturally, you will still be able to fight hostile creatures, but you won’t have to worry about other players attacking you (without your explicit consent, at least). We are also very excited to see what other types of player interaction it could bring. We are envisioning large cities with trading hubs and many other types of creative interactions! :)

Naturally, we're also working on PvP rebalancing—for release we had to nerf the bombs quite a bit to allow a bit more peaceful gameplay, but when we will have separate PvE server we will be able to revert this change. Though, unrestricted raiding has its own drawbacks, so we are considering many other balancing changes and especially some new ideas to address offline raiding as we are very much unhappy with the idea in its entirety. PvP should be more brutal, but also much more fair—giving an opportunity for you to defend yourself and a fair challenge and great reward for an attacker.

We also need to communicate one important aspect of the Early Access—the concept of server wipes as it was a surprise to a number of people. So, here is the explanation that we owe you.
The practice of regular server wipes is pretty normal for multiplayer survival games in early access and wipes happen regularly in those games to give players a new challenge, level the playing field as well as test new features that are introduced in each update. And we are also following the same practice with our wipes. Naturally, we don’t want to randomly wipe the servers without prior notice and a reason. In fact, we only wipe servers when we release a new major update. This is also required due to compatibility reasons. The game is still in a very active stage of development, so many changes that we introduce break compatibility across version, leaving us no choice but to wipe the servers. But then again, based on our experience during our year of public alpha testing most people actually look forward to those wipes as it gives them an opportunity to start anew, in a fresh economy and with new features after each update! So, we will keep this practice for the time being, at least for the next several months.

Naturally, if you are running a private or community server—it is up to you whether you want to wipe and when. We have no say in this :)
So, if you’d like to play without ever restarting—you can either run your custom server or join one of the available community servers that are dedicated towards long term play.
Also, you will always be able to run older versions of the game and keep playing on any version you’d like.

And that’s it for the time being! As stated above—we are incredibly happy with the response we received from your guys, honestly, we cannot overstate how well the game was received and we can only say that we will do our absolute best to give you the best experience we can! We will keep working hard to make CryoFall even better game! :)

We're super excited to announce our launch into Steam Early Access!



We'll be happy to hear your feedback in our Steam Forum or on our Discord Server.
Not sure if CryoFall is something for you? Check out our Feature Overview Guide.

Watch our Release Trailer here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoSan80L_Zo

https://store.steampowered.com/app/829590/CryoFall/

We're very happy to announce the cooperation between the German development and publishing studio Daedalic Entertainment and AtomicTorch Studio, the developer of CryoFall! Daedalic Entertainment will be the Publisher for CryoFall.

To quote Jonas Hüsges, Producer from Daedalic Entertainment:

Originally posted by Hüsges

We’ve been impressed by CryoFall ever since we came across it. Players having the option of working with their fellow survivors or stealing what they have – all while exploring a mysterious world that slowly unveils its secrets – creates a really unique gameplay proposition which we think players are going to love.

Together, we are excited to announce the Early Access release date:



Watch the brand new Teaser Trailer now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATAY0CLZ7tk
All the best,
AtomicTorch Studio and Daedalic Entertainment

https://store.steampowered.com/app/829590/CryoFall/