Eco RSS Feed

Maintenance Update 13.0.4 released!

SLG-Dennis — Thu, 21 May 2026 10:38:48 +0000

Hey Citizens,

we have just released Maintenance Update 13.0.4 with the following changes:

Localization:

We have given Eco's localization system some long needed updates. All language files were converted from CSV into XLIFF 1.2 format and the main game language file that contained translations into all available languages was split into separate files per language. The translation files were updated with all missing strings and obsolete strings have been removed from them. Translations can now be edited by the community again through our new localization portal[localization.play.eco].

Added: Updated translations for French, German, Japanese and Russian.
Fixed: Chat commands sometimes didn't work when the language wasn't set to english.
Improved: The language selector now displays a yellow respectively red warning when the translation status of a language is below 80 respectively 60 percent.

Gameplay:

Fixed: The fishing trawler was unable to catch fish in low-density water.
Fixed: Pump jacks could not produce oil related products quicker than every three minutes. The new minimum time is 18 seconds, compared to 30 seconds before the introduction of this bug.

UI:

Fixed: The crafting time displayed for oil related products in the pump jack was not accurate.
Fixed: Resource cost increases caused by talents were displayed in green text instead of red text.
Fixed: A number of issues where color codes didn't close correctly on their own, leading to colors bleeding into UI text that should not be affected by user-generated formatting.
Improved: The text in the confirmation popup that appears when abandoning a specialty now makes more clear that no experience is refunded when the respective server setting is configured accordingly.

Miscellaneous:

Fixed: The avatar creation and editing screen didn't show any assets for selection.
Fixed: An issue with the room cache that could lead to rooms not being recognized as valid after a server restart.
Fixed: An issue where rooms attached to other rooms with a shared wall could become wrongly recognized as outdoors after a server restart when the setting EmptyBlocksCountAsWindows is set to true.
Fixed: The server would crash when a rent with a calculation loop was setup.
Fixed: The camera calibration in the settings menu was missing the new "scan for cameras" button.

Maintenance Update 13.0.3 released!

SLG-Dennis — Thu, 07 May 2026 11:08:19 +0000

Hey Citizens,

we have just released Maintenance Update 13.0.3 with the following changes:

Balance:

Changed: Bannock output was increased to 2.
Changed: Ingredient cost for outdoor furniture was reduced from 20 to 12 plastic.
Fixed: Static recipes were erroneously affected by resource cost reductions from talents.
Fixed: Long Lumber Shelves incorrectly used the Composite Lumber tag.
Fixed: Composite shelves incorrectly used the Lumber tag for some combinations.
Fixed: Processed Fish Oil didn't get unlocked by the Omega 3 talent.

Civics:

Fixed: The trigger "On tree felled" did not fire when the talent "Logger's Luck" triggered.

Gameplay:

Fixed: When the "Lucky Logger" talent was chosen, trees could disappear while being cut with the scorpion.
Fixed: Trees that were cut by a vehicle could visually reappear after a server restart, but be uninteractable due not actually existing on the server.
Fixed: When abandoning a specialty, any talents chosen for it were not reset and prevented from being leveled up when relearning the specialty.

Interaction:

Fixed: Free placement didn't work on thin-bottom floors.
Fixed: Doors that were picked up could sometimes not be placed in the same location again or didn't count as doors anymore when doing so.
Fixed: In some edge cases the shadow preview in free placement mode showed a red outline despite the object could nontheless be placed at that location.
Improved: Cottom Streamers are now easier to place.

UI:

Added: Talents now show an overlay with their star cost in the talent selection menu.
Added: Talents now have colored borders signalling their effects. Talents only providing benefits are marked with a yellow border, talents providing benefits and drawbacks are marked with a orange border and talents that can be upgraded are marked with a brown-ish border.
Fixed: Work parties for recipes that require multiple different tags as ingredients visually merged all required tags into the first listed tag. For example, if a recipe required 30 Basic Research, 10 Advanced Research and 10 Modern Research a work party for it would display it requiring 50 Basic Research.
Fixed: Notifications for sold paintings showed the picture frame as icon instead of the picture.
Fixed: Formatting for rotten items in the room details tooltip was incorrect.
Fixed: The star amount display on the skill button and in the skill ui overflowed when too many stars were available.
Fixed: The description for the Robotic Assistance talent erroneously stated that the talent would be upgradable.
Fixed: Recipes that are unlocked by a talent erroneously displayed a second talent requirement in their tooltips.
Fixed: Unclosed formatting codes in store names no longer cause the formatting to bleed into text located after the store name in tooltips.
Improved: Hovering the "Talent Choice" icon for a specialty in the skill ui now displays all possible choices in the tooltip.
Improved: Talents that can be upgraded now show their level in the player tooltip.

Miscellaneous:

Changed: In the avatar creation screen, cameras now need to be actively searched for to prevent crashes caused by incompatible third party software.
Fixed: Long Lumber Shelves and Shelf Cabinet were displayed in the wrong Ecopedia category.
Fixed: Marketplace purchases could trigger more than one notification.

Server & Configs:

Fixed: A number of potential causes for server crashes.
Fixed: During world generation it was possible that the deep ocean layer extended too far to the beach, preventing building on some beaches when the respective setting is enabled.
Improved: Added support for Debian 13 (thanks to @superbjorn09) and Ubuntu 26.04 to the linux installation script.

Features.eco.template

Added: "AllowMultipleTalentPicks" config variable determining if multiple different talents from the same level can be taken - defaults to "false".

Hotfix 13.0.2 released!

SLG-Dennis — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 19:57:13 +0000

Hey Citizens,

we have just released Hotfix 13.0.2 to address an issue with the construction of blocks, thanks for reporting!

Fixed: Building with blocks taken from a stockpile could sometimes fail with a "Block type mismatch" error.

Hotfix 13.0.1 released!

SLG-Dennis — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:15:04 +0000

Hey Citizens,

we have just released Hotfix 13.0.1 with the following changes:

Balance:

Changed: Transmission Pole recipe ingredients were reduced by 2 Iron Bars and 4 Copper Wiring and increased by 1 Basic Circuit.
Changed: Waste Filter recipe ingredients were reduced by 4 Steel Bars and increased by 4 Basic Circuits.
Changed: Oil Refinery recipe ingredients were reduced by 4 Iron Pipes and increased by 4 Basic Circuits.
Changed: Pump Jack recipe ingredients were reduced by 2 Pistons and increased by 2 Basic Circuits.
Changed: Electric Machinist Table recipe ingredients were reduced by 4 Steel Bars and increased by 4 Basic Circuits.
Changed: Electric Machinist Table, Oil Refinery and Pump Jack now require Basic Circuits as maintenance parts.
Changed: Wool Yarn recipe ingredients were reduced by 1 Shorn Wool.
Fixed: Crafting an Electronics Assembly required plastic as an ingredient.
Fixed: Fish Stew wasn't affected by the Stew Gourmand talent.

Civics:

Fixed: Deconstructing multiple blocks at once with the hammer did not fire the "Construct or Deconstruct" trigger.
Improved: Settlements now also have jurisdiction for the "Reputation Transfer" trigger when the target of the reputation is a deed or picture within the influence of the settlement. Priorly, settlements only had jurisdiction for reputation granted by their citizens.

Gameplay:

Fixed: The "Focused Workflow" talent was only visually reducing craft time.
Fixed: Talents that alter the power consumption of a work table could erroneously do so multiple times.
Fixed: The "Natural Fibers" and "Modern Materials" talents were erroneously providing resource cost reduction for all Tailoring recipes instead of the intended craft time reduction.
Fixed: The "Concrete Applications" and "Set in Stone" talents were accidentially switched in their progression position.
Fixed: The talent descriptions of "Logger's Luck" and "Bright Applications" were inaccurate.
Fixed: Passive outdoor decorations like fountains and statues failed to register as outdoor furniture, unless they were picked up and placed again after initial placement or an active decoration was placed nearby.
Fixed: Positions above the topmost solid block were not recognized as outdoor room, preventing open-air and rooftop decorations to count towards the outdoor room.
Fixed: Daisy, Lupine, Tulip and Rose were not affected by gathering level.
Improved: Flowers now have the "Petals" tag.

Interaction:

Fixed: An exploit allowing to multi-place a structure with the hammer despite not having sufficient materials to do so.
Fixed: An issue that could cause the hammer to lose the ability to multi-deconstruct blocks.
Fixed: When attempting to fell a tree that cannot be felled due to a law with a wood cutting machine no error message was displayed and the wood cutting machine could get stuck in its animation.
Fixed: When using the claim tool instead of the map edit mode, a deed created by a claim stake from a parent settlement but located in a child settlement could not be expanded with claim papers of the parent settlement.
Improved: Pipes now support multi-placement with the hammer.
Improved: The form selection when holding a hammer no longer automatically adjusts based on the amount of blocks currently held but instead remembers the last selection of the player.

UI:

Added: Hovering the star cost of a specialty now shows a tooltip providing an explanatory breakdown of the cost.
Fixed: Specialties that weren't yet unlocked by reading their skill scroll displayed a wrong star cost when the config variable "CostPerAdditionalSpecialty" was set.
Fixed: After sorting an inventory or moving items from or to it with hotkeys it was possible for an inventory slot in that inventory to display a wrong item that cannot be interacted with.
Fixed: When opening more than one container in the void storage without closing the void storage window in between, all containers opened after the first would display white tiles instead of the contained items.
Fixed: When moving a broken item, its red highlight could disappear.
Fixed: When moving an item with a durability bar, the bar could blink.
Improved: While deconstructing multiple blocks with the hammer, error messages (like the amount of blocks to be removed exceeding the space in the carry slot) are now displayed dynamically on screen, removing the necessity to attempt the deconstruction to be made aware of a problem.
Improved: The form selection menu for the hammer no longer displays the block form indicator when holding no block or a block that doesn't have block forms.

Miscellaneous:

Fixed: The wood cutting attachment for the Steam tractor could produce logs that cannot be picked up due to being too large.
Fixed: Steam tractors could "wobble" when cutting trees with the wood cutting attachment.
Improved: Non-refundable specialties added by mods no longer increase the additional cost per specialty when the config variable "CostPerAdditionalSpecialty" is set.

Server & Configs:

Fixed: World migrations triggered by a change in mods could lead to corruption of the savegame, preventing the server to boot after its next restart. Servers affected by this issue unfortunately need to restore a backup from before the world migration, as the save corruption is irrecoverable.
Improved: Servers using a localization other than english will no longer fail to boot with an error when a custom ecopedia file is present, but no translation file for it. (Thanks to @bushusuperstar)

Balance.eco.template

Changed: "RetroactiveExperienceRate" config variable now defaults to 12, providing a player that joins after the start of the server an amount of experience equivalent to the experience they would have gained if they had joined at server start and not had either food or housing bonus since then.

Update 13 released! Logging Machines, Progression Rework, Store Tags and more!

SLG-Dennis — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 12:27:08 +0000

Hello Eco Citizens,

we're happy to announce the release of Update 13! Let's dive right in and take a look on what changed:

Revised Progression

The largest changes have been made to the progression system, which has been completely revised to lay the groundwork for stars to become a "currency" that can be spent on a variety of benefits, ensuring that there is always a reason for good food and housing. Hence, starting with this update, players earn significantly more stars over the course of a game than before, but also need to spend more stars.

Specialties now no longer all cost a single star, instead their star cost is based on their individual tier. For example Logging costs 1 star, Farming 2 stars, Baking 3 stars, Oil Drilling 4 stars and Composites costs 5 stars - additionally, by default (except on No and Low Collaboration) for every specialty you have already learned your next specialty will cost an additional star on top of its base cost. Similarly, talents are no longer free - choosing one does cost a star as well and many of the new talents can even be chosen multiple times to improve their benefits at further star costs.

This new progression system introduces a larger array of options for players to create their builds and specialize, which will further increase with upcoming Updates adding more ways to spend stars. We understand that this makes for a significant change in gameplay and hence will closely monitor the effects outside of playtests and make adjustments in hotfixes and maintenance updates as necessary.

New Talents

To accompany the revised progression, we have replaced nearly all talents in the game with new talents that have a diverse array of different, typically more specialized effects. Check out some of them:

Talents have been designed with expandability in mind: Not only do we plan to add more talents over time - modders can now also easily adjust existing talents, remove them or add their own ones at any level. That even includes the ability to create talents that do not cost stars, but grant some in exchange for negative effects.

Wood Cutting Attachment & Scorpion

Loggers can finally rejoice with this Update: Next to them having gotten all their talents implemented, we have added two new advanced means for them to process trees more quickly.

First, we have added the wood cutting attachment for the steam tractor: Just like the more advanced Scorpion it allows to grab a tree and fell it. It however can not store logs internally, so it instead cuts the trunk into logs of a size that can be either picked up manually or with the scoop attachment:

The second addition is the Scorpion that has the ability to store logs internally and hence fully automates the process - also saving time, as it does not need to cut logs into pieces that can be directly picked up from the ground:

Store Tags

Based on one of the top suggestions on our feedback tracker, we have added the ability to list tags as buy and sell offers in stores:

This feature is fully integrated with the economy viewer and tooltips, for example the economy viewer will show stores buying tags that contain the item the player is filtering for and item tooltips will list stores that buy the item through a tag.

Quality of Life Improvements

Another thing we did for this Update was putting some focus on Quality of Life improvements the community wished for. The probably most notable of them being the ability to remove blocks with the hammer tools:

The farmers among you will probably like the new overlay when applying fertilizer, which will also display the change in nutrients as a little floating text whenever fertilizer is used:

[carousel][/carousel]

We also made quite some more minor improvements, for example these:

Applying fertilizer and planting seed interactions are now using the left mouse button.
Vehicles do no longer collide with tree saplings.
The repair UI was reworked to provide better understandability.
Remaining fuel in world objects is now preserved when picked up.
Powered vehicles now open on the Storage tab instead of the power tab.
Modules and tractor attachments can now quickly be replaced by holding one and right clicking.

We don't plan to stop there, but want to add some Quality of Life improvements to every future Update.

Release Notes

Balance Changes:

General:

Changed: Benefits from modules have been significantly reduced, providing a 5% resource cost reduction per level up to a maximum of 25% compared to the prior maximum of 50%.
Changed: Pollution at the location of a room now negatively affects its housing score by default.
Changed: Rooms now require doors and window blocks by default, holes are no longer valid.
Changed: Trees now have 50% more hitpoints and yield 50% more logs.
Changed: Labour costs for crafting of tools was increased.

Food:

Changed: Corn now has the Grain tag.
Changed: Elk Wellington is now produced at the Stove.
Changed: Macarons are now crafted at the Stove.
Changed: Stuffed Turkey is now crafted at the Stove.
Changed: Oil craft time was reduced from 60s to 38 to 38s.
Changed: Flaxseed Oil craft time was reduced from 60s to 38s.
Changed: Processed Flaxseed Oil craft time was reduced from 60s to 19s.
Changed: Processed Cottonseed Oil craft time was reduced from 30s to 19s.
Changed: Processed Fish Oil craft time was reduced from 30s to 19s.
Changed: Fried vegetables calories were increased from 700 to 750.
Changed: Fried vegetables output was increased to 2.
Changed: Fried vegetables craft time was increased to reflect changes from 30s to 60s.
Changed: Meat Stock output was increased to 4 and recipe adjusted with costs and craft time.
Changed: Vegetable Medley output was increased to 4 and recipe adjusted with costs and craft time.
Changed: Prime cut ingredient cost was reduced from 16 to 10 raw meat.
Changed: Sunflower Oil ingredient cost was reduced from 16 to 12 seeds.
Changed: Processed Sunflower Oil ingredient cost was reduced from 12 to 10 seeds.

Housing:

Changed: Shelves are now categorized as "Decoration".
Fixed: Plastic Outdoor Table is now categorized as Outdoor.
Fixed: Ceramic Tea Set is now categorized as Living Room.
Fixed: Long Hardwood Veneer Shelf now provides 3 housing value, as all other veneer shelves.

Items:

Changed: Arrows labor cost was increased from 30 to 80
Changed: Charcoal recipes and its variants are now available from Level 3 to 5.
Changed: Fiberglass is now crafted at the Spin Melter.
Changed: Glassworking Modern Upgrade is now crafted at the Spin Melter.
Changed: Hemp Mooring Rope is now crafted by Shipwright at the Small Shipyard.
Changed: Hemp Mooring Rope labor cost increased from 120 to 180.
Changed: Basic Circuit recipe now uses Wood boards instead of Substrate.
Changed: Nitric Acid recipe now uses Compost Fertilizer instead of Compost.

Talent Restrictions:

The following recipes require a talent to be crafted:

Campfire Roast. (Campfire Cooking)
Render Fat (Campfire Cooking)
Beet Sugar / Processed Beet Sugar (Milling)
Fish oil / Processed Fish Oil (Milling)
Refine Tallow (Advanced Cooking)
Fiber Reinforced Concrete (Mason)
Charcoal Steel (Advanced Smelting)
Ceramic Fuse (Electronics)
Etched Basic Circuit / Etched Advanced circuit (Electronics)
Asphalt (Basic Engineering)

World Objects:

Changed: Blast Furnace is now crafted with Mechanics Level 3.
Changed: Electronics Assembly is now crafted at the Assembly Line.
Changed: Electronics Assembly no longer accepts Glassworking Modern Upgrade.
Changed: Spin Melter now accepts Glassworking Upgrade Module.
Changed: Stove now accepts Advanced Baking Upgrade Module.
Changed: Advanced Carpentry Table now requires Fuse, Advanced Circuits and Lubricant.
Changed: Advanced Masonry Table now requires Fuse, Advanced Circuits and Lubricant.
Changed: Advanced Tailoring Table now requires Fuse and Basic Circuits.
Changed: Automatic Loom recipe now requires Fuse and Basic Circuits.
Changed: Jaw Crusher recipe now requires Fuse and Lubricant.
Changed: Nylon Futon Bed recipe ingredient Cotton Fabric has been removed.
Changed: Nylon Futon Bed recipe now requires Steel Springs.
Changed: Nylon Futon Couch recipe ingredient Cotton Fabric has been removed.
Changed: Nylon Futon Couch recipe now requires Steel Springs.
Changed: Computer Lab, Froth Floatation Cell, Industrial Generator, Industrial Refrigerator, Injection Mold Machine, Laser, Powered Storage Silo, Robotic Assembly Line, Solar Generator, Spin Melter, Washing Machine and Wind Turbine recipes now require Fuse.
Changed: Some objects that had Fuse added as recipe ingredient also require it as a Maintenance Part.
Changed: Robotic Assembly Line now requires Servo, Electric Motor and Fuse as Maintenance Parts.

Server & Configs:

MIGRATION NOTICE: Migration between major versions is generally not supported.The game will however load worlds from Update 12 fine and remove all chosen talents from players, granting them a star for each removed talent to be able to select a new one right away. Due to the changes to the progression system such worlds will however quickly see a large excess of stars being available. We hence recommend strongly to start a new world if any possible.
MOD COMPATIBILITY NOTICE: Modifications and Overrides need to be adjusted or removed.The new progression system comes with changes to most game files, hence most if not at all overrides will need small adjustments to account for these changes. Servers will fail to boot until these adjustments have been made, unless respective overrides are removed. Compiled mods that do not add recipes or have features related to the skill or talent system will likely allow the server to boot, but may cause failures in usage when not having been recompiled against the new Update.

Balance.template.eco

Added: "ExperienceGrowthPercentage" config variable, determining the percentage the base experience cost to level up increases by per level - defaults to 1.05, equalling 5%.
Added: "ExperienceIncreaseAdditive" config variable, determining the flat value added to the base experience cost to level up at each stage reached - defaults to 5.
Added: "StarsRequiredPerStage" config variable, determining the interval in stars at which an increase in stage occurs - defaults to 8. The current stage is calculated by Total Earned Stars / StarsRequiredPerStage.

Disasters.template.eco

Removed: This config file was removed, as the "HasMeteor" config variable in Difficulty.eco.template now controls if a meteor spawns or not.

Difficulty.template.eco

Added: "CostPerAdditionalSpecialty" config variable, determining by how many stars the cost of a specialty increases per specialty the player has already taken - defaults to 1 for all collaboration presets except for "No Collaboration" and "Low Collaboration".

Rooms.template.eco

Changed: "EmptyBlocksCountAsWindows" config variable now defaults to "false", requiring players to use doors and windows to complete a room.
Changed: "Enable" config variable in "PollutionPenalty" section now defaults to "true", enabling the pollution penalty.

Outlook

Our next Update will focus around garbage, recycling and pollution and is also planned to contain some significant changes to modules. Work on it has already begun and our team will fully shift focus to it after the expected release maintenance. It's still too early to go into details and we will get those to you via our usual channels and developer streams once they are available - but, given we have shown a new vehicle in the Update 12 release notes, why not do that again? Here you go:

Of course we also haven't forgotten about Animal Husbandry - it will still be part of the 1.0 Update with which Eco leaves the Early access, currently planned to happen by the end of this year. Until then we however still have some smaller Updates in store, stay tuned!

Thanks for reading and your continued support, we hope you will enjoy this new update! - Strange Loop Games

Update 13 is launching on April 8th!

SLG-Dennis — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 20:28:55 +0000

Hey Eco Citizens,
we're happy to announce that Update 13 is going to launch on April 8th!
Below you can find a little teaser for some of the upcoming features:

Scorpion & Tractor Tree Cutter Module

New & Upgradable Talents

Tags in Stores

Full release notes will be available on release day. In the meanwhile you can already try out the new update in playtest on Steam (Branch: playtest) and provide your feedback on our discord[discord.gg].

Thanks for your support!
- Strange Loop Games

Maintenance Update 12.0.7 released!

SLG-Dennis — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 13:53:47 +0000

Hey Citizens,

we have just released Maintenance Update 12.0.7 with the following changes:

Civics:

Fixed: Elections that failed due to not having enough voters still displayed the player with most votes as winner.
Fixed: An issue that could lead to lower-level settlements influencing a deed despite the option to block such influence being set.
Fixed: The trigger "Drop Or Pickup Garbage" already triggered when opening a garbage bag, instead of only when something was added to or taken from it.

Gameplay:

Added: A mechanic that reduces the housing score of rooms affected by ground pollution.
Fixed: Ornate Iron Frame Wide was not affected by diminished returns.
Fixed: The "Lavish Workspace: Oil Drilling" talent didn't apply to Polishing Paste.
Fixed: The "Lavish Workspace" talents didn't apply to vehicles.
Fixed: The "Power Shot: Hunting" talent didn't work.

Interaction:

Fixed: An issue that led to manually unlinked storage objects and vehicles automatically getting linked to stores again.
Fixed: Outpost netting could not be placed on ceilings.
Fixed: Ceiling objects showed a red highlight in free placement mode despite the placement being valid.
Fixed: An issue with boat placement that could lead to them being placed too high or too low depending on if free or grid placement is used.
Fixed: Food animations could break when eating while sitting in a boat.
Fixed: A ghost block could persist after reconnecting while shadow placement was active.
Fixed: When exiting a seat on a boat and then mounting a different seat, the avatar would be teleported back into the seat they originally sat on.
Fixed: Explosions could cause blocks to enter the space occupied by world objects.
Improved: The Ecko statue can be mounted again.
Improved: Vehicles authorized to "Everyone" do no longer automatically link to stores.
Improved: Storage objects outside of deeds do no longer automatically link to stores.

UI:

Fixed: For recipes with a large amount of ingredients, module reduction notices could overflow into the recipe list.
Fixed: In some cases the text on the credit and status tabs could overflow the boundaries of the UI.
Fixed: Players talking in voice chat were displayed with their Steam ID instead of their username.
Fixed: In some cases the economy viewer and tooltips showed a wrong distance to a store.
Fixed: Trying to pick up an animal carcass while the inventory was full didn't display an error, despite failing.
Fixed: Trying to leave a work party when already having contributed didn't display an error, despite failing.
Fixed: The lumber stockpiles didn't show their occupancy in their tooltips.
Improved: Clarified the exhaustion tooltip in regard to saving playtime for later use.
Improved: Reworked all mentions of tool integrity to better describe how it works.

Miscellaneous:

Added: A new tutorial explaining dinner parties, appearing after the "Furnish House" tutorial.
Added: An "Other Volume" audio slider to control the volume of unity sounds, for example from mods.
Fixed: An issue that could lead to a player being disconnected from the server when an animal died.
Fixed: An issue that could lead to some objects no longer being rendered until reconnecting to the server.
Fixed: An issue that could lead to blocks rendering wrongly, being displayed as a pink block.
Fixed: An issue that in rare cases could lead to UPnP failure.
Fixed: Lumber ladders didn't visually change when painted.
Fixed: Low maintenance smoke effects weren't visible on trucks that have items stored inside them.
Fixed: An issue that prevented modders from hiding biome layers in the map.
Improved: When players are invited to residency multiple times due to them for example being part of multiple invited titles, they will now only receive a single invite notification.
Improved: Implemented stability improvements for the Avatar customization flow.

Server & Configs:

Fixed: An issue that could lead to ClimateState data becoming corrupted and reset on world generation.
Fixed: Servers that have invalid formatting (e.g. spaces) in the setting for the config variable "Playtime" would display an empty server description UI with a greyed out join button.
Fixed: The Craft Resource Multiplier for the High Collaboration preset was incorrectly set to "0.7" instead of "1.0".
Fixed: The position of invisible players wasn't hidden in tooltips.
Improved: The profanity filter no longer applies to admin and developer commands.
Improved: Several stability improvements for the LiteDB implementation.

Balance.eco.template

Removed: "SkillGainMultiplier" config variable due to not providing sufficient capability for balancing, please switch to and use "SkillCostMultiplier" in Difficulty.eco instead.

InitialSpawn.eco.template

Changed: Configuration file and template renamed from "Initial Spawn" to "InitialSpawn" - please make sure to rename your local configuration file.
Added: "AdditionalSpawnPoints" config variable, allowing to setup custom spawn points as an array with the properties "Enabled", "Position", "Name", "Description", "Color" and "Priority".
Added: "DisplayOnlyAdditionalSpawnPoints" config variable, determining if only the configured additional spawn points should be displayed and selectable - defaults to "false".

Rooms.eco.template

Added: "PaintedBlockTierBonus" config variable, determining by how much the tier of a room increases when every block belonging to it is painted - defaults to "0". The increase of tier happens in a curve - the more blocks are painted, the more the tier increases towards the maximum value configured here.
Added: "PaintedBlockHousingBonus" config variable, determining by how much percent the housing score of a room increases when every block belonging to it is painted - defaults to "0.2", equalling 20%. The increase of housing score happens in a curve - the more blocks are painted, the more the housing score increases towards the maximum value configured here.
Added: A new category "PollutionPenalty" that contains the settings following below, allowing to reduce the housing score of rooms that are affected by ground pollution.
Added: "Enable" config variable, determining if the housing score of rooms affected by ground pollution should be reduced by a housing score reduction curve - defaults to "false", but is planned to be enabled by default in a future update.
Added: "PollutionValueWherePenaltyStarts" config variable, determining the average ground pollution value of a room at which its housing score starts to get reduced - defaults to "0.2".
Added: "PollutionValueWherePenaltyStopsIncreasing" config variable, determining the average ground pollution value of a room at which the reduction of its housing score reaches the maximum - defaults to "2.0".
Added: "MinPenaltyPercent" config variable, determining the minimum reduction of housing score in percent - defaults to "0.0", equalling 0%. This is the start value of the housing score reduction curve.
Added: "MaxPenaltyPercent" config variable, determining the maximum reduction of housing score in percent - defaults to "0.25", equalling 25%. This is the end value of the housing score reduction curve.
Added: "PenaltyScalingMode" config variable, determining by what method the housing score reduction curve is calculated in relation to the ground pollution value - accepts "Linear" (Constant increase), "Exponential" (Slow increase at the start, fast increase towards the end), "Logarithmic" (Fast increase at the start, slow increase towards the end) and "DoubleSigmoid" (Fast increase at the start and towards the end, but smooth in the middle) and defaults to "Linear".

Users.eco.template

Added: "HidePlayerPositionInTooltip" config variable, determining if positions of players should be hidden in tooltips - defaults to "false".
Added: "HidePlayerPositionInMinimap" config variable, determining if player markers should be hidden in the minimap - defaults to "false".

🎄 Eco Holiday Home Decoration Screenshot Contest 🏡✨

D-Nial — Sat, 27 Dec 2025 15:44:36 +0000

Happy Holidays Citizens!

The holidays are here, and it’s time to turn your Eco home into a festive masterpiece!

With Free Placement unlocked, the only limit is your imagination. Whether you’re all about cozy interiors, stunning exteriors, or a perfect combo of both—this is your moment to show off your design skills.

🏆 Prize

1,000 Eco Credits to the winners!

📅 Contest Duration

Contest runs from today to January 5, 2026.

Decorate, snap, and win 1,000 Eco Credits!

🖼️ How to Enter

The Eco Holiday Decoration Contest is live starting today until January 5, so deck those halls and show us what you’ve got!

To enter:

Decorate your home interior and exterior with a holiday theme.
Use Free Placement to get creative with layout, details, and atmosphere.
Submit the following screenshots showcasing:
- Your Interior
- Your Exterior
Send us your screenshots via e-mail to: https://contest@strangeloopgames.com

🧠 Judging Criteria

Entries will be judged based on:

Design – Layout, composition, and overall aesthetic
Creativity – Unique ideas, clever use of props, and festive flair
That Perfect Shot – Lighting, angles, and presentation matter!

Fire up Eco, start decorating, capture that perfect holiday vibe, and send in your submission. Let’s see those homes shine! ✨🎄

Good luck, and happy designing!

Note: All screenshot submissions must be taken by the player who created the build. Entries will be screened and verified before judging.

Hotfix 12.0.6 released!

SLG-Dennis — Sat, 27 Dec 2025 08:42:26 +0000

Hey Citizens,

we have just released Hotfix 12.0.6 with the following changes:

Changed: Items no longer as a preventive measure get automatically reset to 100% durability on server restarts when their durability is higher due to some mods making purposeful use of items with higher durability than 100%.
Fixed: Objects placed against walls in grid placement mode were frequently not recognized as valid.
Fixed: An unfinished rebalance of culture calculation was accidentially already enabled, leading to cultural deeds with low-rated pictures and high-rated architecture to not yield relevant culture anymore, while deeds without pictures were not affected.

Maintenance Update 12.0.5 released!

SLG-Dennis — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 02:21:25 +0000

Hey Citizens,

we have just released Maintenance Update 12.0.5 with the following changes:

Animals:

Fixed: Elks frequently attacked the player after being fed.
Fixed: Animals could fall through the world when killed, not providing a carcass.
Improved: Animations and movement of fish has been improved.

Civics:

Fixed: It was possible to leave a work party despite already having contributed to it.
Fixed: Holders of an elected title were not reliably removed from the title when they were no longer eligible to hold it due to losing membership in a required demographic.
Improved: Settlements that increase their influence to cover a deed bound to a claim stake of a higher-level settlement they are member of will now gain jurisdiction over it and lose it again when the influence no longer covers the deed.

Gameplay:

Changed: Slightly increased yield of the fishing trawler.
Fixed: The "Lavish Workspace: Tailoring" talent didn't apply to clothes.
Fixed: Painting blocks didn't reliably update the tier value of the room.
Fixed: Bathrooms wrongly considered the Outdoor room as a main room when it comes to their 33% limitation for purposes of the calculation of cultural property value.
Fixed: An issue that led to disabled objects in a room to nontheless provide housing points.

Interaction:

Changed: Players that are authorized on an object can now place objects on its surface and also interact with any objects placed on it.
Fixed: Eating while sitting in a vehicle could lead to the avatars' hands getting stuck holding nothing.
Fixed: Maintenance items could be stacked by consolidating in a storage, potentially resulting in them having more than 100% durability and hence being impossible to sell.

UI:

Fixed: When using specific resolutions it wasn't possible to scroll to the end of some Ecopedia pages.
Fixed: Control hints for shadow placement present in the background of an UI affected the cursor within that UI.
Fixed: The player direction arrow on the map now correctly displays the direction the player moves in, even when the player is sitting in a sideway seat of a boat.

Vehicles:

Fixed: The elevation of the barges was too high.
Fixed: Canoes could become lopsided when driving.
Fixed: The industrial barge could be turned by running into its railings.
Fixed: Barges could sink or get stuck in air when its ramps were open while a chunk reload occured.
Fixed: Truck wheels could visually sink into the ground after dismounting the vehicle.

Miscellaneous:

Fixed: An issue that could potentially lead to players being unable to interact with the world after retrieving an item from the void storage.
Fixed: Elks didn't display their christmas decoration despite the holiday being active.

Server:

Fixed: An issue that could lead to the server getting stuck on "Loading ClimateState" when booting.
Fixed: It was possible to place objects above the configured maximum placement height.
Fixed: It was possible to reduce the configured maximum placement height below a priorly configured value, despite that is not supported and causes a multitude of issues.

Thank you for your support! We wish you happy holidays and great start into 2026!