Abiotic Factor Drops Beefy New Update With Patch Notes

Last week, Abiotic Factor launched to rave reviews from its community. The survival crafting game gives players full control over character creation, meaning they can give their players positive and negative perks to build truly wacky characters for the multiplayer game. That said, the game did launch in early access, which gives the developers at Deep Field Games the ability to quickly react to issues the community finds while playing. To that end, the team released a new patch today, targeting many of the problems that were noticed over the weekend. While Abiotic Factor‘s early access run is still young, this is the largest patch the developers have released thus far, making it an important one to get right.

One of the major changes with this update is the fixes for the Server Browser. Now, it should be much easier to find games with friends, which is only going to make Abiotic Factor‘s playerbase grow. The team has also added the ability to use World Save backups, letting you recover progress if your main save is corrupted. Deep Field has also fixed things like pots disappearing from stoves, scientists losing their keypad hacker, and much more.

Below, you can find the full list of patch notes for Hotfix 0.8.0.9803. Abiotic Factor is available now on PC platforms via early access.

Abiotic Factor Hotfix 0.8.0.9803 Patch Notes

You’ll know you’re on the right version because the above version will match the one at the bottom of your screen while in the main menu and in-game.

Keypad Hacker Note:

• Some scientists are reporting that their Keypad Hacker has gone missing. Please make sure you check your Keypad Hacker slot in your equip slots (bottom left) if you shift click to move your Keypad Hacker from your inventory to your hot bar it may end up there instead, as intended. Your Keypad Hacker is not going missing it is actually going to the correct location.
  
• If your Keypad Hacker is in your Hacker slot you simply need to press interact on the keypad to get it to work.
  

Containment Bulletin:

• There have been increased reports of activity from IS-0091. Science help us all. As always, researchers; if you see it, report it!
  

Temporal Correction Warning:

• GATE scientists have detected a mistake in the temporal flow, a strange disruption in time and space allowing scientists to venture into hidden portal worlds and skip content unintentionally. This has been corrected in the following ways.
  
• Additional security measures have been added to the Laser Lab. However, something has grown over top of those security measures, and we don’t want to touch it, so we’ll leave it to you.
  
• If you have previously accessed the Laser Lab in an existing world save, or are currently in the Laser Lab after updating to this version, this new growth will likely not be an issue, but future world saves will encounter these hurdles.
  
• A properly locked door has been added to a very high up catwalk in Labs.
  

Server Browser Updates:

• The Server Browser has received several filter options and a search bar to help you find your friends (or enemies.)
  
• Server Browser names are now trimmed if too long, instead of spilling over into the rest of the UI like an uncontained growth.
  
• The server browser has been massively optimized. Thank you for playing and hosting so many servers that it became an actual problem to solve. Much love from everyone here at Deep Field.
  

World Save Backups:

• World Saves now create a backup when hosting from the main menu.
  
• This backup can be used to recover corrupt world progress. We are still investigating a rolling backup.
  
• If your world is corrupt, a button that says “RESTORE BACKUP” will appear. This can fail in very bad cases, but should help in some.
  
• We are aware that world corruption and item loss are rare but very major issues when they occur, and they remain our top priorities. Please keep submitting bugs (and your world save data) through the Issue Report Form.
  

Player Corpse Changes:

• We investigated a lot of reports about bodies becoming stuck in places that players can’t access. We’ve made the following changes to correct this.
  
• If the player corpse location has bad data, it would previously default to the death location, which is often unsafe or unreachable. If this happens now, the corpse will try to return with the player to their respawn location.
  
• If this fails, the corpse will move to the Cafeteria in the Office Sector.
  
• Upon rehosting a server, ALL corpses that are not looted will appear in the Office Cafeteria as well. If you can’t find your corpse, there’s a good chance it ended up there.
  

The Stove Stuff:

• We’ve noted some players have experienced pots and pans being lost from stoves. Let’s quickly talk about how this happened and what you need to be aware of.
  
• Stoves had bad data on them due to a bug with stove state saving that slipped under our radar. We’re a small team and we only found the issue once 7000 people started playing at once. When we fixed this issue in the latest hotfix, old stoves from older saves still had that corrupt data, but new stoves did not. This caused players’ items to go missing, or appear to go missing, when they interacted with the stove.
  
• For the deployable stoves, repackaging them and redeploying them (if possible) would fix this issue. For the fixed stoves, this was not possible, so those stoves will still be exhibiting this problem.
  
• In this update, all stoves from existing saves will now dump out pots and pans. You may see a slight overabundance of these items in the form of some bags on stoves, so go scoop them up and enjoy this crockware compensation.
  
• We believe we have corrected the issues laid out here, but we are getting some reports here and there. We are unsure if those are people playing on old versions or not, so please report anything else that happens outside of what was explained here and please include your version number. Thank you, and happy cooking!
  

General Changes:

• Recipes on HUD have shrunk a bit. Remember, you can clear any auto-pinned recipes in your crafting screen if you want them out of the way!
  
• We hear a certain trader is now willing to give you Welding Masks, if you’ve got what he needs in return.
  
• Added some new paint to the Trader deposit box.
  
• Throwable Nets now salvage into paper scrap, if you really want to get rid of them.
  
• A few key enemies will now always drop their gib loot, instead of bio scrap.
  
• Added drop-shadow to text chat to improve readability.
  
• Grenade weights are now better balanced across all grenade types.
  
• All items now take only 1 of their Repair Item to repair, instead of several. We are working on more repair improvements but they will be bundled together in a general repair quality-of-life update.
  
• Empty liquid containers no longer show red in the item slot background, because this was misleading players into thinking the item was broken, instead of just empty.
  
• Sneaking XP is now a bit easier to gain, is gained at a faster rate and from further range.
  
• Lime Paint, Green Paint, and Carapace Arm armor recipes are now obtainable. You may find some new items associated with these recipes, but they’re probably nothing to pick up your quill and write home about.
  
• The initial welcome and analytics opt-in screen has now been localized for all available languages.
  

World Changes:

• The Security Office on Offices Level 2 has had a timer installed on the shutters, for safety reasons.
  
• IS-0018 should no longer have a chance to break when packaging it. We still don’t recommend packaging it.
  
• Some researchers have reported IS-0018 reappearing in its containment cell after it has been moved or destroyed. Someone should check that out.
  
• A certain door by the Synchrotron will now unlock after the [redacted] event, making it easier to access the room. Frake apologizes for making you walk all the way around. Who knew she had the keys the whole time!
  
• Some previously non-interactable water in the Labs is now interactable.
  
• A previously inaccessible vent near the Enders Containment Block is now accessible.
  
• Some GATE staff may have carelessly left a sledgehammer aboard IS-0138.
  
• A shipping container in the Induction Wing is reported to have contained some mining equipment, for those on the hunt for a new pickaxe.
  

Dedicated Server Changes:

• Plants and other items will no longer decay when no one is present on the server. Plants will still grow for a time, however, and may need water when scientists return to their crops.
  
• Reduced some logging spam and improved our ability going forward to provide good log data to server hosts.
  

Bug Fixes:

• Updated some voice lines on certain Order enemies, mostly around connecting them to the correct volume sliders.
  
• Filled a few holes in the Wildlife Pens.
  
• Metal Bucket now has proper metal bucket texture. Who would’ve thought?
  
• Fixed a logical issue that could cause sinks to not refill properly over time, as intended, under normal settings.
  
• Fixed the AA setting not actually setting AA unless visiting a terminal.
  
• Fixed an issue affecting the drop rate of Order weaponry.
  
• Wherever the Wristwatch’s watch-face was running off to, we think we’ve resolved that problem and it should remain happy and content where it belongs – on your wrist.
  
• Hovering over the little blue-purple (blurple?) icon on recipes now works again and will display a helpful tooltip.
  
• The Breachers will now cough up their shotguns, helmets and other belongings, if you force them to.
  
• Deployed signs can no longer be used as bridges. If you have any bridges made of signs, no you do not.
  

If you are interested in KNOWN ISSUES, click here.

Thank you all once again for enjoying your time in the GATE Cascade Research Facility!

The feedback you have all already provided has been immensely helpful, as have all the bug reports and suggestions, keep it up! Please also keep helping each other out in the community, it has been amazing to see how welcoming everyone is. 

Thank you from the bottom of our volumetric flasks.

Onward — to science.