For this update, we have plenty of new quests and a new cooperative weapon system which is in the early stages, so hit us up with feedback on Discord. We also added night mode to explore in the Stairway Region. This update is the first step forward for the expanded meta and for cooperative goal setting and gameplay! Hold onto the drops from those bosses, that shits gonna be useful later.

You can now earn the right to unlock Bunco as a quest giver if you get his attention. Once a Scav is on good terms with Bunco, he will provide quests to acquire components that allow for the manufacture of a 3-part placable Railgun weapon system. If you have acquired the Weapon-Parts crafting terminal in your innards, you can use these components to manufacture Railgun parts and bring them into the field. Manufacturing is accomplished in real-time (even if you shut down The Forever Winter) so plan accordingly.

Each individual Railgun part must be carried by an individual Scav. That means you need three Scavs to assemble the weapon. A single Scav won’t be able to do it solo. Once assembled, the Railgun cannot be disassembled, so make sure you are tactical about where to place it and what direction it's placed in. Once built, this heavy weapon system will be left in the raid. Scavs will need to re-craft the parts again to bring another Railgun into play. Recovery operations may be possible in the future.

Did we mention that this system is Scav manned? That's right: once the weapon system is assembled in the field a Scav needs to man the system and aim / fire its devastating attacks. It can take out a tank in a single hit and (if you concentrate your fire) it might just stun some of the heaviest, largest enemies and reveal a unique piece of loot to acquire. It might be worth bringing a drill or two into a region when you have a Railgun agenda…

This update also allows you to optionally support the team with these new, awesome skins for your Scav Girl, Shaman, and Bag Man characters. These skins represent veteran Scavs that have evolved on the battlefield in their own ways.They were out so long that they streamlined their kit, their bodies, and their personal protection: each one expressing their personal Scav preference!

Once owned the skins will be added to the current random-skin selection each time your Scav dies.

Or, if you prefer, you can use the new skin selection interface (located in the ready room) to manually select one of your purchased or earned skins.

Also, every time you enter the Innards after a death or with a new skin, you will see a brief cinematic showing off your new scav.

We hope you enjoy round 1 and if you guys dig these, we will continue to make more!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3651820/The_Forever_Winter__Nosebleed_Skin_Pack/ - we appreciate the support!

The Stairway region now has a night mode variant. Should you find yourself in this dark, wet, and horrific environment, be careful about how brazen you are as you and your allies climb the steps. Mother courage is waiting for you.

• New-skin cinema in the Innards
  
• Stairway Night Mode (selected when entering region in the same RNG system as other night mode region variants)
  
• Heavy weapons 1st (Beta) pass (Usable Railgun weapon system)
  
• Bunco as an unlockable quest giver (see if you can discover what he is looking for you to do!)
  
• Bunco quests to earn components to build Railgun parts (once he is unlocked as a quest giver)
  
• Weapon-part crafting terminal (in the Innards)
  
• 3-player cooperative Railgun weapon assembly
  
• Boss stunning / Boss Codex Loot
  
• Improved animations for Bagman and Maskman
  
• Map Collision Cleanup (fixing numerous issues where collision and / or geo can prevent smooth movement)
  
• Recruit AI improvements Mk. 1 (improved response to orders, mule recruit no longer obeys attack order as it cannot attack)
  
• Improved Mother Courage AI (better response to its target’s behavior)
  
• Fixes to Medium Mech patrol logic
  
• Improved 3rd person camera alignment
  
• Enhanced music system improvements (more awareness / stealth / tension layers)
  
• Specific kill-quest enemies improvements (better chance to survive against AI foes so players can find them)
  
• Drone and Chopper improvements (can spawn from below and rise into the combat space in height-based regions)
  
• Better logic for faction score increases when AI notice you damaging / killing their foes
  
• Loot containers now have a larger range of potential items (type and count) to drop
  
• Various hand-positioning and animation improvements to player character weapon poses
  
• Fixed sync-kill distance bug that would sometimes allow enemies such as the Grabber to sync kill foes from too far away

Hey Scavs! For this update, one of our biggest challenges was modifying the water system to address player feedback and keep the system integrated into the lore. We adamantly wanted to address this challenge while staying true to the grim reality of the world.

Therefore as of this update the player's water will no longer drain in real time. It is now used as a currency to enter regions. This change means there is no turning back. So, we made sure to get full buy-in from our design team and also consulted with key members of the community for their input. Our community is awesome, so the back and forth was a pleasure. This is one of the things we love about early access – the chance to build that dark future together!

Thank you for being here. Fun Dog out!

https://youtu.be/rX5r6lxkOTo?si=nHDV1KEF_jIVl5VU