Patch notes · 2026-10-17

17 changes · City, Cold, Loot, Map

  1. No more freeze when the city is rebuilt

    After an update, or when research opens a new building, the server used to stand still for several seconds and pull everyone back. Now the city takes itself down and builds itself back up over a few seconds while you keep playing; its people come back once it stands. You can't build inside the wall during those seconds.

  2. Homes are let by the landlady

    Landlady Brita Holm lets every home in the city from her table on the plaza, with a HOMES TO LET sign and a pin on the map. Talk to her and pick a row: the log cabins on the inner ring, nearest the Furnace (60 scrap a day), the brick houses across it (50) or the stone houses by the wall (35). You pay her the first day and get the nearest free home of that row. A home's door no longer rents it.

  3. A Rent Box inside every home

    Put scrap in the small box by the door and it pays the rent an hour at a time, up to a week ahead, like a tool cupboard's upkeep. Your team can pay into it too, and opening it shows how long the rent is paid for.

  4. Rent in Heat Credits

    The rent can also be paid in Heat Credits, half the scrap price (30, 25 or 18 credits a day): when you rent, and a day at a time at the Rent Box or at the landlady's table.

  5. Behind on the rent

    When the Rent Box runs dry you are told, and the door still opens for a day. After that the landlady puts you out and keeps what was in your boxes, and hands them back once you pay the rent you owed. If you rented before this update, what you paid still counts.

  6. Walls keep you warm

    A roof alone warms you less than before (+10 °C); walls all round add up to +10 °C more, and better walls more: a sealed stone base is twice as warm as a bare roof. Walls also keep the wind off your heaters, so they heat more and an Iron Stove burns less fuel.

  7. Why am I cold?

    When the cold gets you, the chat tells you why: no roof, open walls, thin clothes, wet clothes, no heater near, the storm or the night. The SHELTER page (/exposure) now shows what your clothes, roof and walls give you.

  8. Offline bases are harder to raid

    When everyone on a base's cupboard has been offline for 15 minutes, raids do 70% less damage to it.

  9. No events on your doorstep

    World events and a settlement's raiders no longer appear within 60 m of a player's base. A base next to a settlement no longer keeps its raids away.

  10. Nobody builds in the Hearth or on the roads to its gates

    Rent a home in the city, or build your base past the safe circle on your map. Anything already standing on the roads to the gates can now be raided like any base in the Frostlands.

  11. /faq base

    A new question: how to keep a base warm and safe. Several answers that were wrong are fixed.

  12. The further from the Furnace, the richer the crates

    Past The Outer Frost (about three map squares out) every crate holds a little more: scrap, gears, pipes, springs, rope, sewing kits, warm clothes, tea, food. In The Deep Frost (about six squares out) it holds more again, and now and then tech trash or an arctic suit. Barrels sometimes have one small extra. Near the wall the loot is as before. Your HUD and a banner tell you when you cross into a band.

  13. Events worth more to those who live outside

    A stranded sledge now carries the Hearth's warm clothes too. A supply drop can hold an arctic suit, warming tea and sewing kits, and a wreck springs and sewing kits.

  14. New jobs for what you find out there

    The doctor wants sewing kits, and the scavenging master wants springs and tech trash. Each pays Heat Credits.

  15. People walk on their feet

    The city's people, a place's crew after a fight and the caravans no longer go crouched along the ground; a citizen cold at a fire still huddles down to it, and stands up to walk on.

  16. People talk about more than the cold

    They ask whether you're freezing only when you are (frostbite or hypothermia), and otherwise talk about their day, the Furnace, the Council and the news.

  17. A new temperature gauge

    The dial at the top right is now a round glass whose liquid rises and falls with the cold and changes colour, from violet in the deep frost to amber and red by the fire. Ice floats on it when it's freezing, it bubbles in the warmth, and frost creeps over its rim as it gets colder.