Build Log #03
Before the Looting
The third biweekly report of the MLM beta
For two build logs the streets were the whole world. This period opened the first doors. Hotel room doors became openable, so owners can enter their rooms and store items inside, while the rest of the buildings stay closed. Separately, stashes were added to the game as hidden storage, ten of them placed, nine through a public auction and one through a stash hunt. A section of forest became playable, with its own resources and mechanics.
And the groundwork went in for partial looting, the feature the beta has been building toward since BL#01. Looting is not live yet. This period was the preparation for it.
01What changed on the server side
Grouped by subject.
Preparing for partial looting
- Looting is not live yet. Partial looting is the feature the beta is building toward, and this period was the preparation for it. As CfB put it, looting is not being enabled yet, and the rollout will start with partial looting. When it is enabled, killing a player will make their corpse lootable under standard looting rules. Being killed by a demental will not lead to loss of items, the same as now.
- What will stay with you. Items kept in hand or in a special slot stay with you. Content of pockets and bags drops on death, including the magazine in a gun.
- Test shots. Ahead of the rollout, the first test pistol was put into play, a Glock-17 with a magazine, and test shots were fired.
- A penalty for rummaging. CfB stated that rummaging through a dead player's belongings should impose a penalty, such as the need to hide a weapon first. Looting is meant to cost something, not to be a free action.
The hotel opens
- Doors became openable June 17. After months of being sealed, hotel room doors can now be unlocked and entered, and items can be safely stored inside. Master keys and the files for cutting copies, 82 in total, were handed to Wolf Pack clan representatives to distribute to the room owners.
- 26 rooms still available. Of the 82 hotel rooms, 26 are still available for purchase. The Wolf Pack clan is handling the sales.
- Enter carefully. Players need to enter their rooms with care, so nobody slips in behind them and takes their stuff.
- A military cache was placed in one randomly chosen hotel room months ago, as promised. With the doors open, whoever owns that room finds it inside. By the close of the period the holder had not come forward.
Stashes ship
- Stashes added to the game. A stash is hidden ground storage somewhere in the town center, holding a randomly assigned 250 to 750 litres each. A stash is invisible in the world. Even standing on one, a stranger cannot see it or open it.
- Nine stashes placed by auction. Nine stashes were sold through a public auction at a starting price of 500M QU each.
- A tenth from a stash hunt. Shinary won one more in a stash hunt event, where the stash map was hidden inside one of the dumpsters in the town center.
- Access runs through the map. Read the stash map and the stash becomes accessible to you and appears on your radar. Many people can read the same map, but only the last reader holds access. Die, and you must read it again.
- Guard the map. The map follows standard looting rules, so it can be taken off your body. Keep it safe, and do not store the map inside the stash it unlocks.
- Dead bodies excepted. Corpses are meant to drop into interactive objects, which briefly let a dead demental block a stash. Stashes were added to the exception list so they stay reachable.
The forest opens
- A section of forest opened around June 8. Before it, dementals were given the ability to teleport, which is why they began appearing at the hotel. The forest is reached through a teleport.
- A working biome, not scenery. The forest yields resin in quantity and high-quality trees, including a Q5 fir found in early testing, along with mushrooms and its own mechanics. A small shelter and some buildings were placed near the forest teleport as a relatively safe foothold.
- Tree hollows added June 15. Rare hollows sit high on broadleaf and taller trees, accessible only by climbing from the correct one of eight sides of the trunk and switching with Q/E. Most are empty. Some hold birds, squirrels, or bees, and a bee hollow produces honey. Reading the right pocketbook lets you spot inhabited hollows from the ground, so hide your goods in empty ones.
Mushrooms, sanity, and reading
- Mushrooms and mycelia added. Mushrooms grow around a mycelium and appear during rain. A given spot always produces the same type and quality, so a known patch is a renewable resource worth keeping secret. Posture affects your chance to spot one, unless you have read the book, which always gives max chance.
- Psy mushrooms cure insanity. Rare and valuable, psy shrooms restore sanity. They come with side effects, so the advice is to close your shelter door before crafting under their influence.
- Reading books. Books can now be read. Reading works like mining: it takes time, builds a reading skill, and can be stopped and resumed. Pocketbooks cover resources, mushrooms, insects, beasts, birds, and guns, each unlocking related knowledge such as identifying mushrooms or spotting inhabited tree hollows from the ground.
Keys, maps, and notes
- Keys in demental loot. Keys can now be found in the pockets and bags of some dementals. Hold a key in your left hand and click yourself: if you are lucky, the matching lock appears on your radar, unless the door is outside the map. Keys to unreachable buildings can be turned into key blanks.
- Door tags. With a key in the left hand and a marker in the right, you can rewrite the text shown when a door is clicked. Lockless doors need no key to write on.
- Plastic card keys. Some restricted areas use card keys, copied with a plastic card and an awl.
- Hand-drawn maps. With a ruler in the right hand and a paper sheet in the left, click yourself to add a mark where you stand. A hand-drawn map holds up to 10 marks and only reveals them within 50 metres, making it a tool for marking buried goods with real secrecy. Notes are made the same way with a marker or pencil.
Crutches, gear, and combat tuning
- The makeshift crutch. Crafted from a softwood branch, it became one of the most-carried items in the game. It lets you walk with a broken leg instead of crawling, guards against a twisted foot, extends your climb limit from 1 metre to 1.5 metres so you can mount a van or bus stop with help of a dumpster, and at the bottom of it all, it burns as campfire fuel.
- Hypnotizing umbrella crafting was added June 12 and activated the same day. Target a demental with the umbrella in your right hand and, hypnotized, it eventually stops chasing you, signalled by an "O-o-o-o" before it turns away. Crafting one takes about 10 minutes, so make it in advance.
- Sand in the eyes. Throwing sand blinds a target, 50 percent per eye. One eye cuts visibility from 50 metres to 25, both eyes down to 1 metre. Any eye protection blocks it.
- Resin repair. Wooden items, spears, warforks, and crutches can now be repaired with resin, about 20 percent on average at full resin condition. Repairing with lower-quality material can drop quality with a 50 percent chance.
- Ladders and trees were made an exception to lightning shock. Vehicles and dumpsters also appear to shield against strikes.
World & infrastructure
- A sewerage system is being added. Work started this period, with two large entrances already placed, which changed parts of the map. A passage to the sewers was later added from the pool basement. The system is in progress, not finished.
- Ziplines and roof ladders were placed around the town.
- More than 500 dumpsters are now in the world. Pushed into a zigzag line, they deflect dementals through narrow passages.
- Save frequency increased after a crash during the stash event, to protect against lost progress.
02What changed on the client side
Releases
Multiple builds shipped across the period, several flagged as required to see new world changes: forest geometry, hollows, hotel doors, stash radar marks, hand-drawn maps, and gun stats in the UI. Each major world change came paired with a client update and the usual "you'll need a new client" notice.
The v11 forest feature
The standout client change was the new forest rendering in version 11. Trees no longer block the camera. As you approach, they turn semi-transparent so you can see and move through the woods. Because real transparency is expensive, the effect is faked with random noise and temporal anti-aliasing, delivering see-through trees at no measurable performance cost. New items and small map changes shipped alongside it.
03Community contributions
If your name isn't here and you contributed, post in the forum and we'll catch you in Build Log #04.
04Events
Dementals teleported to the hotel, June 8. Teleporting was switched on, sending dementals to the hotel as a stress test before the forest opened. Many were found stuck near one building.
Forest opened, June 8. A section of forest entered the playable area through a teleport, with a shelter and small buildings placed nearby.
Mass loot event, June 9. Existing dementals were teleported into a single building, almost 10,000 matches in one place, and players were teleported into the middle by mob index for a looting run capped by a summoned thunderstorm.
Tree hollows added, June 15. Rare climb-access storage with live inhabitants entered the world.
Hotel doors openable, June 17. Keys and copy files handed to Wolf Pack representatives for distribution, room doors openable, the military cache sitting in a random room. By that day 6 of 82 keys were claimed.
Looting test shots, June 19. Ahead of the partial looting rollout, the first test pistol was put into play and test shots were fired. Looting itself was not enabled.
Stash auction, June 18 to 20. Nine stashes sold by auction at a starting price of 500M QU each, with each winner also receiving a duffel bag. Shinary won a tenth stash in a separate stash hunt, with the map hidden in a town-center dumpster.
05On the bench
Named but not yet shipped:
- Partial looting. Not enabled yet. The groundwork went in this period. A secure pocket for keys and the rules for what drops are still being worked out.
- Player transport. Vehicle keys can already point to a car on the map; drivable transport comes later.
- Windows as entry points. A fence currently blocks window entry to the hotel until windows are properly supported.
- Radiation. The teleport to the radioactive area exists, but radiation is not yet enabled.
- Food spoilage. No spoilage yet; drying and preserving come later.
- More dementals and continued combat tuning as new defensive tools land.
06By the numbers
A quick snapshot of the period:
07Closing
Build Log #04 will cover June 21 through July 4.
The first doors are open, stashes are in the ground, and the forest is part of the map. Partial looting is the next step, and the groundwork for it is now in place.