The 2024 Saint Patricks Update for Primal Carnage: Extinction is now live on Steam!

Featuring not just new looks but a bunch of big gameplay changes, we're continuing to deploy what we can manage to the PC side while wrapping up the new PlayStation version. Much larger overhauls will be arriving with 3.0 later this year, but some will start trickling in over time as is the case with this update...


The first of two updates this March brings many large and small gameplay adjustments. Check the full changelog at the bottom or read on for the highlights...


On the human side, the flamesaw has seen the biggest changes (with more on the way)...

Balance-wise, flamethrower fuel consumption is lower and overpressure is now more damaging, but with bonus damage ending sooner. It's now less useful than ever to just go flailing around everywhere, but if a Pyro does go wild with the flamethrower it'll cover less of your screen...

All particle effects for the fire jet have been reworked to both be more optimized and have a tighter trail, their bold blue appearance at high pressure mimics the enhanced Survival flamesaw.

The chainsaw now has a refire delay to prevent spam-tapping. Previously, this was a method of killing dinos super quickly without worrying about the saw overheating. You can still get around overheat if you get a good rhythm going, but it's now much less exploitable.

Audio for the Flamesaw has been completely overhauled. It now uses the latest looping weapon system for optimization and less obvious repetition (other players can now also actually hear it properly). Firing the flamethrower at high or low pressure has different sounds, there is now a crackling effect when hitting an enemy with the fire jet, and its idle sound changes from a rattling chainsaw motor to the hiss of the flamethrower depending on which was last used.


Both spitters have received a boost to their ranged attacks, partially due to fixing a bug where they would spawn an invisible damage puddle in midair when direct hitting a target. We still want direct hits to be a rewarding thing for them, just not through bugged means.

Cryo acid is a bit more damaging when landing on a human, while Dilo's charged spit now deals worthwhile damage instead of just blinding. The Cryo's spit was never meant to properly blind, so the duration of that effect has been greatly reduced until a new screen overlay is made that's less obscuring.

With regular spit now being more dangerous, we decided to deliver on a community request to make it more visible. It now has brighter, more solid particles. Additionally, both regular and charged spit effects now use lengthy trails that linger after impact to show where the spit came from.


Previously a couple of factors led to situations where Tyrants could have a really bad time. Chief among these were dart weapons that could quickly drain them, and electrical stuns which cancelled any attacks.

With this update, stungun and zap traps no longer interrupt Tyrant animations that are in progress, meaning they can complete eating people, stomping, swiping etc. when hit. They cannot initiate a *new* attack when stunned, but they are not prevented from finishing one. Elsewhere, the stungun itself has a longer charge time to give Tyrants a chance to escape before getting hit again.

In a change that affects more than just Tyrants, dinosaur strongpoints now ignore darts completely. They deal no damage to armoured spots on a dino and no debuff is applied if shot in these spots. This means poison dart rifle and tranq pistol users will need to have better aim to gain an advantage, instead of just spam firing in a dino's general direction. This mostly helps the largest classes such as Tyrants, but is a net improvement for dinosaurs overall.

There's a number of other small gameplay tweaks in this update, including fan-requested changes like a max distance for assault rifle grenade bouncing (if they travel far enough, they'll just explode on impact). Check the full changelog further down to see more!


Super green! We've got an emerald shower of new items in celebration of Saint Patrick's Day...

In addition to our featured store rotation, Lucky Drops are back! With a fresh batch of new free items added to the drop pool, we're running a double drop event weighted in their favor for the next 2 weeks!

You can check out all of the NEW looks on our Special Event Trello Board[trello.com]. We've also got plenty of classic St Patricks event items from yesteryear returning with discounts today, from a bold top hat wearable by both humans and dinos, to Mister Green himself!


The lucky winners (and even some of the runners up!) in the emoji contest now have their creations officially added to the game! Select from six new avatars and sprays that are now dropping in-game, and pick up some of them as physical merch on the official web store[store.primalcarnage.com]!

We'll be back with more goodies at the end of the month when the Easter event arrives.
Til then, feast your eyes on the full list of changes from our latest update...


Flamesaw Balance Changes:

• increased overpressure damage
  
• overpressure bonus damage ends quicker now
  
• reduced flamethrower fuel consumption rate
  
• shorter timeout period before overpressure starts recharging
  
• added a refire delay to prevent spamming the chainsaw

Flamesaw Visual Changes:

• added hot barrel glow to the flamethrower
  
• barrel glow is blue when using upgraded flamesaw in Survival mode
  
• on fire effect for dinos hit by upgraded flamesaw is also blue
  
• updated flamethrower particle effect to be tighter and more optimized
  
• flamethrower particles are now more intense at high pressure

Flamesaw Audio Overhaul:

• upgraded flamesaw sounds across the board
  
• converted flamesaw to use the new weapon audio system
  
• flamethrower start sound is now different for low vs high pressure
  
• added new flamethrower sounds for hitting flesh and water
  
• fixed hearing a chainsaw revv when swapping to secondary weapon
  
• fixed other players not hearing flamesaw sound effects properly
  
• idle sound now changes based on whether chainsaw or flamethrower was used

Spit Modifications:

• added more noticeable spit projectile trails to show trajectory of where they came from
  
  
• direct spit hits no longer spawn a floating damage pool
  (known issue: a puddle particle effect still appears for direct hits, but this is a purely visual bug)
  
  
• increased crit damage multiplier for spit attacks
  (crit spit Dilo = 30% bonus, crit spit Cryo = 25% bonus)
  
  
• increased minimum Cryo acid direct hit damage from 60 to 64
  
• increased Dilo charged spit max explosion damage from 25 to 35
  
• increased Dilo charged spit explosion blind time from 5 to 6 secs
  
• increased Cryo charged spit explosion splash damage to 55
  
• reduced charged Cryo acid explosion blind time
  
• greatly reduced uncharged non-explosive Cryo spit blind time
  
• fixed weapon spit overlay not fading out if swapping weapons during the fade period
  
• possible fix for rare cases where spit would perma-blind you until respawning

General Gameplay Changes:

• Tranq and poison darts are now blocked by dinosaur strong points
  
• If assault rifle grenades travel far enough, they will no longer bounce
  
• Increased charge-up time for stungun from 0.75 secs to 1.6 secs
  
• Flyers can now extinguish themselves by diving down if they are on fire
  
• Tyrants no longer have attacks cancelled if they were mid-attack when hit by electricity
  
• Fixed pyro explosion effects from dying to fall damage not showing
  
• Added new custom "pyro bomb" explosion particles and sounds
  
• Fixed projectile trails vanishing at the moment of impact in multiplayer
  
• Increased timing window for Dirt Nap achievement to be a little more generous

Cosmetic Changes:

• added new St Patricks Event content
  
• added support for spit overlay to melee weapons
  
• fixed certain weapon skins losing details when spat on
  
• game-wide consistency pass across all weapon skins
  
• fixed a couple of missing inventory icons
  
• fixed Blazing Royal Acro having incorrect default colour tint
  
• fixed specular intensity between head and body of Bluff Creek Rex
  
• fixed Cyborg Pyro's wandering eyeball
  
• Cyborg Scientist can now wear a cat on her head

The Steam Spring Sale is LIVE - enjoy great deals on PCE and its DLC until March 21st! Both the ultimate and deluxe collections are discounted in addition to the game itself, why not take a gander?

Our next major update will be towards the end of March, featuing more gameplay changes and quality of life fixes in addition to eggcellent new looks!

For all things Primal Carnage, get involved on the Official Discord...[discord.gg]

[discord.com]-The Primal Carnage Team

We've offered the official soundtrack DLC on Steam for a long time now, and with additional music currently being created we decided to make some improvements to the existing OST collection...


You can now download optional high res versions of the entire Primal Carnage Soundtrack Collection!

Simply opt into High Quality Audio Files inside the Music section of Steam's settings to receive versions of the OST in both uncompressed .WAV and .FLAC formats.

Each set of tracks is in a separate folder within the main install when you choose the high quality option, the default install location is: Steam / steamapps / music / Primal Carnage Soundtrack Collection


Special care has been taken to ensure everything has detailed and correct metadata with the latest update to the soundtrack DLC (in all formats - WAV, FLAC, MP3). On top of that, the tracklist is more appropriately sorted.

As a whole, the OST is split up into three "discs" now, that divide the collection's music based on which game it was recorded for (Primal Carnage / Extinction), with one side devoted to Bonus tracks.


We're currently in the final couple months of finishing the new PlayStation version of PCE, which features (among many other things) brand new musical themes for a few dinosaur subclasses.

These fresh tracks will be brought to PCE on PC with the 3.0 update later this year, and you can look forward to them being included within the official OST collection as well!


Here is a small taste of the new music currently being worked on, the eerie and dangerous "light" track for Pachycephalosaurus...

New to the franchise is composer Lyndon Kwan, who has been doing amazing work expanding on the foundation of the original soundtrack.

For the Pachy, new elements were introduced to Primal's musical palette, while retaining the mix of traditional and modern instruments that the classic tracks had. Both of the bruiser subclasses give the feeling of coiled rage, with danger lurking under the surface, ready to burst forth at a moment's notice.

We'll be sharing more previews of the expanded OST soon, so stay tuned...


-The Primal Carnage Team