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Season 6 is here! We hope you’ve settled into your seats and are ready to jam out with Pete and the Swampcats, because we’re
bogged down with all the info to share!
Highlights
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- The Slow Jam Pass celebrates music, swamp life, and all you animals who like to take things slow and steady.
- Super Crocodiles take a bite out of the competition.
- Sneaky new throwables arrive from Thomas Sleddison’s workshop: Lucky Cat Mines!
- Pete’s Shack and the Crocodile Club add some vibrance to Pete’s (newly-expanded) Swamp.
- CRISPRmas 2022 is here, with 8 festive new items and even more returning legacy cosmetics to get you in the holiday mood.
- Celebrate SAR’s 4th Anniversary with the “BIRTHDAY” coupon code.
- The game’s netcode has officially been overhauled (thanks to all of you who participated in the PTR).
- Plenty more new game features, balancing and bug fixes to read through below!
Season 6 Hits the Stage with the Slow Jam Pass!
The Slow Jam Pass brings you the swamp rock aesthetic of the bayou’s biggest sloth-fronted band,
Pete and the Swampcats. Named after their hit pre-incident album,
Slow Jam celebrates the creatures, music, fashion, and languid pace of Super Animal World’s southern marsh. Drift leisurely down this stream of down-home items en route to the premium Mini Sloth and guitar emote.
- During Season 6, the Slow Jam Pass will be available for a discounted price of 550 S.A.W. Tickets.
- As always, you can continue working on passes you own from previous seasons on your second track for as long as you need, and you can purchase them from The Archive for 750 S.A.W. Tickets.
As of this season, rewards from Animal Passes need to be claimed manually with the new “claim all” button in the Animal Pass screen. This lets you choose when and on which platform to claim your rewards. As always, cosmetic items sync between all platforms, but manually claiming makes sure that you can claim your S.A.W. Ticket rewards on whichever platform you want to spend them on!
[h2]Season 6 Starter Pack DLC[/h2]
Along with the debut of a new season comes the
Season 6 Starter Pack! You’ll receive the following comfy and chic items upon purchasing the pack:
- Super Topiary Bear
- Cottagecore Dress
- Hedge Clippers melee weapon
- 600 S.A.W. Tickets
Croc and Roll: Super Crocodiles Join the Fight
Super Crocodiles are here and ready to take a bite out of the competition. They’ll be fighting tooth and…well…tooth to reclaim their coveted spot on the food chain.
Super Crocodiles can be unlocked in the Research Lab once you reach level 50. Play matches to earn their DNA, and unlock all six of their breeds:
- Super Crocodile
- Super Dark Green Crocodile
- Super Orange Crocodile
- Super Yellow Crocodile
- Super Alligator
- Super Albino Alligator
Lucky Cat Mine: the Purrfect Trap
The Lucky Cat Mine
first teased in Super Animal Royale Tonight Season 1 can now be used to meow down unlucky opponents.
This new throwable item is a proximity explosive that detonates one second after an enemy moves within range. If you hear that trademark “meow,” you’d better hope you’ve got reflexes like a Super Cat.
- Keep an eye out for red pulsing glows (visible even outside of line of sight) to spot active Lucky Cat Mines.
- Teammate mines have a green glow, and while teammates can still detonate friendly mines if they walk over them, they won’t take damage from friendly mines.
- You can place as many mines as you can carry, which is 4 (3 in the Bwoking Dead game mode). If you place an additional mine beyond your carrying capacity, your oldest active mine will be deactivated.
- The Bandolier powerup increases capacity for both held and placed mines while equipped.
- A new stat has been added to track for Lucky Cat Mine kills, and at 10 kills you can get a Lucky Collar as a Super Milestone reward (requires Super Edition DLC to claim)!
- Mines can only damage a player once every 0.06s, so if multiple mines go off at a single location they will not deal more damage.
Swamp and Circumstance: Pete’s Swamp Expansion
One of Super Animal World’s first biomes gets a makeover. Pete’s eponymous swamp has increased in size and picked up two new points of interest:
Pete’s Shack and the
Crocodile Club!
Kick back at the reclusive Super Sloth crooner’s shack, listening to his still spinning gramophone, or visit the Crocodile Club, where Pete and the Swampcats performed when the park first opened to the public. The swamp’s water has also been upgraded with subtle new animations to bring it more to life!
Get into the CRISPRmas Spirit!
As winter arrives, Super Animal World is ready to celebrate everything
CRISPRmas means to its Super inhabitants: friendship, generosity, peace (for now), and most importantly, the miracle of genetic modification!
Candy canes have been scattered around the island to be redeemed for
8 festive new items and
17 returning legacy cosmetics! Plus, a CRISPRmas miracle has brought three new holiday Super Animal breeds to the Research Lab to be unlocked:
- Super Snowman Blue Jay, a breed of the Super Blue Jay
- Super Stoat and Super Winter Stoat, breeds of the Super Ferret
[h2]Snowman Bundle in the S.A.W. Shop[/h2]
Additionally, the Snowman Bundle has arrived in the S.A.W. Shop! Get in touch with your happy, jolly soul and grab the bundle for these frosty cosmetics:
- Snowman Beanie
- Snowman Costume
- Snowboard melee weapon
- Frozen Umbrella
SAR’s 4th Anniversary!
It’s hard to believe it's been 4 years since Super Animal Royale was released in Early Access! Four years is enough time for college students to form lifelong friendships, and we've formed a similar bond with many of you in our amazing community over this time. Thank you Super Animals new and old for enjoying the game and supporting it over these years; it’s been an amazing journey to take with you and we can’t wait to reveal what we have planned next for 2023.
To celebrate, input the coupon code “
BIRTHDAY” in the coupon code field accessible from the game’s main menu to redeem four unique cosmetics:
- 4th Anniversary Cake Gravestone
- Pixile Party Hat
- Pixile Umbrella
- Pixile Firework Melee
Super Challenge & Milestone System Updates
The Super Challenge and Milestone systems have been updated and integrated to improve the experience of earning them.
- Players will now receive 5 daily and 5 weekly challenges up from 2 and 3 respectively.
- Many new challenge types have been added, and some existing ones have been reworked. For example, the “Eat Mushrooms” challenge has changed to include all edibles. Overall, challenges should provide more variety and be more enjoyable to complete.
- The Milestones screen now displays both Super Challenges and Milestones. As such we’ve renamed the screen “Challenges” to encapsulate both types.
- Milestones now display as a single vertical scroll with inline headers and a shorter design to fit more in the vertical space.
- A Claim All option has been added to instantly claim all completed milestone items.
- Reduced experience per minute survived in all game modes by about 25%, since challenges now gain players more experience overall.
The goals of the new design are to:
- Put more emphasis on dailies and weeklies so that players earn more from playing less per day/week over the long term.
- To make challenges more rewarding and fun by increasing their variety and range from easy to hard.
We hope you’ll enjoy the new system and UI design and, as always, provide us feedback so we can keep improving it!
New Netcode
SAR’s netcode has been revamped to provide a smoother, more polished experience.
For the most part, the game should feel the same as before, but under the hood, it’s now using a fixed timestep, client side prediction plus interpolation, and rollback. The end result is that lag related issues such as players jittering or sliding through walls are resolved.
Since the PTR took place, additional improvements have been made, including:
- Clientside prediction for looting weapons, armor, and powerups.
- Improved ping-related delay for meleeing breakable creates as well as seeing them break visually.
- Fixes for bugs related to ejecting and parachuting, hamster ball desyncs, healing applied to self with a dart gun, banana slip sound effects, and more.
Thank you to all of you who participated in the PTR, and we hope that this netcode revamp will provide better experiences for all of you!
Note: now that the PTR is over, the tick lead information in the top right is disabled by default, but you can type /net in chat to display it again.
New Artwork in SMOMA
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SMOMA’s art gallery has been updated to reflect the top 21 pieces of the most recent Fanart Contest! Congratulations to all the finalists, and a huge thank you to everyone who participated. The submissions this round were amazing so we highly recommend that everyone check out the amazing artwork on the contest website as well: https://artcontest.animalroyale.com
Gameplay Changes
This update’s
jam-packed with gameplay updates, so let’s get right into them!
- 2 new variants of mushroom have been added: the Speed Mushroom which grants players and emus that eat it a 15% boost to their movement speed for 8 seconds, and the Skunk Mushroom. Eating the latter is not advised, as they apply a 20 poison damage effect over 2.4 seconds… however, they also can be attacked with a melee weapon or projectile to cause them to explode into a mini cloud of skunk gas!
- Trees will now shake when hit by melee, bullets, explosions, emu pecks, hamster balls, and throwables. Note that you don't need line of sight to see trees shaking, so they can provide intel about nearby fights.
- The Quick Chat wheel has been increased to 8 options and has different options depending on whether it’s activated in the lobby or in game. New quick chat options include: “Thanks! On my way! Hi! Good game. GLHF.”
- Game mode selection will now automatically change as necessary when additional players join a party (ex. if Solos is selected and a second player joins the party, it will automatically switch to Duos).
- S.A.W. Impossible Tape now has a secondary effect of increasing taping speed by 15%.
- Dogna’s Dartfly Gun now has 10% zoom when crouching, similar to the Sniper.
- Grenades, Lucky Cat Mines, BCG eggs, and explosive barrels will now destroy nearby grass.
- Redesigned the emote equip UI on the Customize screen to use a wheel so it more closely resembles how it will appear in-game.
- Long challenge and milestone names now scroll, instead of being downsized to fit the UI.
- The main menu and paws menu will preview up to 5 of your challenges at once.
- Zombie Joes now get the same speed bonus while ice skating that survivors do.
- A new animation has been added for Zombie Joe death explosions.
- Bots will no longer roll while reloading to decrease the chances of frequent reload canceling.
- Improved the consistency of scrolling for controllers on the Customize screen when reaching the bottom of a list (it will now always let you scroll to the very bottom of the list even if your currently selected column lacks an item below it).
- Added an AFK option for player reports.
- Added /dmg # command for private matches to modify all damage from players. Range is from 0.0 to 10.0.
- Added /noroll command for private matches to disable super jump rolls.
[h3]Game Balancing[/h3]
- Increased Chonk Emu's move speed to match the common emu, and increased Speedy Emu's health to match the common emu. We made the decision that since they are rarer, they should only be stronger or the same as the common emu across the board to make them extra exciting to find and use.
- Bullet range for Shotgun and JAG-7 have been decreased, while damage at max range has been increased (numbers for each below). These changes are to further differentiate shotguns from other weapons and avoid cases where a hit would still register (and potentially take off a tick of armor) despite doing barely any damage.
- Shotgun range lowered from 51/53/55 to 41/43/45 respectively for each rarity tier. Damage at this new range has been increased from 10/11/12 to 15/17/19 for each tier.
- JAG-7 range lowered from 54/58 to 43/47 respectively for each tier. Damage at this new range has been increased from 7/8 up to 14/15.
- The BCG’s damage radius has increased to 17, up from 15, and has improved explosion visuals and sounds to make it more impactful. Additionally, regular movement speed with the BCG equipped is now 90%, up from 89%, and movement speed while charging is now 68%, up from 55%.
- Loot spawns in Bamboo Resort, Research Labs, Pete’s Swamp houses, Superite Mountain, Thomas’s Tundra houses, and Saharahland shanty houses have been increased so they can better compete on loot density with the newer points of interest.
- Increased the chance of getting a Grenade, Skunk Bomb, or Lucky Cat Mine from destructible crates, since the loot pool in this category is more diluted now.
[h3]Additional Map Changes[/h3]
- Added an opening in the Beaver Construction HQ conveyor belt so the barrier isn’t as long (this is particularly nice for rebels in S.A.W. vs Rebellion).
- Widened the opening on the left side of Superite Mountain, next to the bridge.
- Added more trees on the left side of Goldwood Woods so there’s more cover and paths.
- Improved visibility on the right side of the Research Labs office entrance by making the end of the wall have a gray pillar.
- Updated lobby Shooting Gallery weapon positions to improve the weapon groupings.
[h3]S.A.W. vs Rebellion Game Mode Changes[/h3]
- The Giant Star-nosed Mole’s HP now scales from 5,500 to 14,000 depending on player count (linear between 15 and 48 real players). Previously, it was scaling between 6,900 to 10,000 health, which was a bit high for less populated matches, and a bit low for full matches.
- Since the Giant Mole has more health in most cases, it will start arriving at 450 Reinforcement Points rather than 400.
- Ammo drops from killed players now give 3x as much, to help alleviate some of the ammo issues that players faced.
- Assault gets a rare pistol now.
- Sniper II has been changed from having 1 Skunk Bomb to 2 Lucky Cat Mines.
- Heavy II now gets the SAW Impossible Tape powerup.
- Marking or pinging the map on a flag will now ping as Defend or Capture based on context rather than the standard paw marker.
- Lowered respawn time for Giant Emus and Hamster Balls in SvR from 30s to 20s.
- Removed a rock above Beaver HQ that made the Giant Mole boss area imbalanced.
[h3]Bug Fixes[/h3]
- Fixed bots occasionally meleeing through walls.
- Fixed a bug where rebel caches that were opened previously would appear to animate open when coming into vision range.
- Fixed a bug where changing presets while on the emote customize tab would show the previous preset's melee weapon after emoting finished.
- Fixed a bug where bundles with an emote in the shop would play the emote sound but not animate.
- Fixed a bug where equipping an emote from the shop tab would equip it twice if it had already been equipped.
- Fixed a bug where closing the equip confirmation popup while in the shop would leave emote music playing.
- Fixed a bug where spamming through milestones rapidly would cause the player’s arms to get stuck in a broken position.
- Testing a fix for a rare bug where edge of screen spawned loot can be invisible.
- Fixed the previous weapon hotkey (T) not working with respawn in SvR mode.
- Fixed flickering with overlapping players in parachute.
- Moved some loot spawns a bit further away from Dr. Dogna in the pyramid to reduce looting issues around her.
- Fixed a fridge at the Slow Food restaurant not fading.
- Bwoking Dead now forces UI to show at match start and can't be hidden again until the opening sequence is finished (no more peeking!).
- Fixed selection getting stuck from time to time when closing the Guidelines page with a controller.
- Fixed a bug where you could pet mini animals while emoting.
- Fixed a bug where opening the map and emote wheel at the same time would have the map stuck on screen.
- Fixed a bug where opening the emote wheel and pressing escape would leave the emote wheel stuck until pressing emote again.
- Fixed a bug where pressing (B) on controller during an item reward popup would not highlight it in Customize with the exclamation mark.
- Fixed non-looping emotes getting stuck on the main menu for other players in parties.
To keep up with all the latest updates on Super Animal Royale and community events, join us on
Twitter,
Facebook,
Instagram,
Reddit and
Discord. We hope you all have ton of fun with the new season and update, a wonderful holiday season with loved ones, and a merry CRISPRmas! We’ll see you on the island, Super Animals.
