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Hello Eco Citizens! Update 14 is coming together nicely and it's time to show you a small preview for some of the new features and improvements of the Garbage and Recycling Update! We're really excited to share what we've been working on, so let's dive right in.
For the main theme of Update 14 we are introducing a number of byproducts to the crafting process, coming in a variety of new blocks that not only provide differentiated and significant impact on the environment through different pollution types, but also still contain valuable resources that you'll be able to extract with the new Recycling profession while attempting to migitate their effects. Of course we're also providing you with new means to store and also transport them - with reworked, modular vehicles. Look around the picture and see if you can spot everything new!
Pollution does not only come in solid form, so be prepared to filter the input fluids necessary for your operations (and also the outputted ones, if you want to keep your surroundings clean). And if you're not located around a river, also make sure to keep a desalinator handy so your machines can function.
With liquids becoming more important, we've reworked the piping system so you no longer need to put up with holes in your buildings - pipes can now be placed directly into constructed blocks and an x-ray overlay helps you find their location when you are holding a pipe:
We have implemented multiple dozen QoL improvements, most of them directly based on your feedback. For example, you can now select which items in a tag you want to be used for a crafting recipe:
You can now also easily sort your storages by name, hide any fuel storages from view, add only items from your inventory that are already stored in a storage object with a single key press or quickly purchase the maximum number of items in a store based on your available currency and storage. There is many more improvements like these and we're happy to hear what other improvements to your quality of life you would like to see in future Eco updates, so please let us know on our feedback tracker.
If you want to check out an in-development version of Update 14, you can already do so right now on the playtest branch. (Right clicking Eco in your library -> Properties -> Betas -> Select "playtest") If you plan to try it out, we recommend to do so on our official playtest server and joining our discord, where you can let us know any feedback and issues related to the new Update in the #playtest channel.
Playtest builds are not stable - encountering bugs, placeholders and technical issues is to be expected. While it is possible to load older worlds in Update 14, that is not supported and we recommend to create a new world. If we however cannot stop you, make sure to create a backup of your savegame (located in Steam/steamapps/common/Eco/Server/Storage) before loading it in Update 14. Due to the changes made in this Update, older worlds loaded in Update 14 require adjustments to be made by the player:
Pipes do no longer count as a building material, hence all rooms with pipes being part of the room structure won't work until the pipes are replaced.
Machines require fresh water, any machines taking water from an ocean will not work until the water is desalinated.
Modules will be removed from all tables, converted into their new equivalents and put into the void storage.
Depending on the results of the playtest, the release date of Update 14 will be announced shortly - so it won't be long anymore until you can get your hands on the new version even if you prefer to join in with a stable build.
We hope you're as excited as we are and thank you for your support! - Strange Loop Games
we have just released Maintenance Update 13.0.4 with the following changes:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
we have just released Maintenance Update 13.0.3 with the following changes:
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.
Fixed: The trigger "On tree felled" did not fire when the talent "Logger's Luck" triggered.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
we have just released Hotfix 13.0.1 with the following changes:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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:
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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
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:
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.
Thanks for your support! - Strange Loop Games
we have just released Maintenance Update 12.0.7 with the following changes:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
Contest runs from today to January 5, 2026.
Decorate, snap, and win 1,000 Eco Credits!
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: [email protected]
Design – Layout, composition, and overall aesthetic
Creativity – Unique ideas, clever use of props, and festive flair
That Perfect Shot – Lighting, angles, and presentation matter!
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.
we have just released Maintenance Update 12.0.5 with the following changes:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
we have just released Maintenance Update 12.0.4 with the following changes:
Changed: Predators hunting prey will now flee if their prey is still alive after a couple of successful attacks.
Fixed: Animals died instantly when touching water.
Fixed: Wolves were hard to hit reliably with arrows.
Fixed: Elks sometimes didn't drop a carcass when killed.
Fixed: Players couldn't pick up carcasses from animals that weren't killed by them.
Fixed: Animals could sometimes get stuck in the ground.
Fixed: Dead animals sometimes appeared alive for other clients.
Fixed: Animal carcasses sometimes disappeared too fast.
Fixed: Jaguars could get stuck in an attack animation when the player walked away the moment the jaguar wanted to attack.
Fixed: Multiple instances of "glitchy" animal attack animations.
Improved: Multiple improvements were made to animal hitboxes, especially during animations.
Improved: Extended attack range of animals by 20% to prevent them circling around the player.
Improved: Animals will now switch from running to walking when reaching attack range to prevent weird strafes around the player.
Fixed: It was possible to delete articles of a constitution that is already in election for ratification, subsequently allowing a settlement to be founded that has no constitution and as such is not managable.
Fixed: Picking up a government office that had previously orphaned titles attached to it would cause those titles to be deleted instead of reorphaned. In draft settlements this could lead to the default mayor title being deleted and access to the foundation and its deed hence being lost, making it impossible to manage the settlement.
Fixed: Wages for elected titles that were configured to only be paid for online hours were also paid for offline hours.
Fixed: Blocks and objects could under specific circumstances become invisible until a server restart when placed.
Fixed: Items that aren't intended to be stackable could be stacked when the stacksize multiplier setting was set different from the default, leading to a multitude of issues.
Fixed: It was impossible to put claim papers and stakes back into the settlement foundation when the stacksize multiplier setting was set different from the default.
Fixed: Decorative objects that were placed between rooms in free placement mode could provide benefits to multiple rooms.
Fixed: Rubble would sometimes show a red outline and be inaccessible for a short moment before becoming accessible.
Fixed: The talent "Lavish Workspace" incorrectly also reduced the output of byproducts.
Improved: Players can now take part in an unlimited number of dinner parties per day, but only gain bonuses from the best one.
Added: "Grid placement by default" setting in General -> Game, allowing to invert the default placement mode to grid placement.
Changed: Elevators are now always placed in grid placement mode to ensure functional placement.
Changed: Ramps are now always placed in grid placement mode to ensure they snap correctly.
Fixed: Some ceiling objects like the electrical industrial steel ceiling lamp couldn't be placed in grid placement mode.
Fixed: Fishing in third person view didn't work correctly due to the lure being positioned wrongly.
Fixed: Using a pickaxe to mine blocks while being in an elevator that is currently descending would teleport the elevator back to its default location on top of the elevator shaft, leading to the avatar and everything else on the elevator to fall to the ground.
Fixed: An issue that led to tools clipping through the camera after logging into a server.
Fixed: When an object emitting light was moved, the light was still emitted at its prior location.
Fixed: Looms and Small Sinks that were placed in free placement mode hovered above the ground.
Fixed: Particles emitted by fresh and rotten food placed on surfaces would display too high depending on the distance to the food.
Fixed: The displayed remaining crafting time for a crafting order sometimes reached zero before the order was actually completed.
Fixed: The display of the produced amount of secondary products on their icons in crafting recipes didn't take into account reductions by modules.
Fixed: Cotton Lint and Flax Fiber crafting recipes didn't display the produced amount of the secondary product on its icon.
Fixed: The description text for law articles beyond the first one was formatted incorrectly.
Improved: Paintings in the economy viewer are now part of the new type "Pictures", making it easier to search for them.
Fixed: Barges could easily get stuck on shorelines.
Fixed: Excavators on barges got permanently stuck once locked in place by closing the ramp.
Fixed: Tractors with an attached plow were too heavy and could feel unresponsive when used.
Fixed: Tractors could drive faster than intended when holding ALT or after alt-tabbing out of and into the game again.
Fixed: Vehicles could appear to hover over ground when logging into a server or entering a new chunk.
Added: A work in progress admin menu accessible to server admins via the F4 key, allowing to filter, search for and spawn items and to execute some commonly used admin commands with UI assistance.
Added: Ability for modders to alter the name displayed above a player's avatar.
Changed: Importing the modkit into a new unity project will now delete the default tutorial assets included in Unity 6 that prevent mods from compiling.
Changed: RPC errors will no longer be displayed in the chat, except if QA mode is enabled.
Improved: Achievements already achieved on a server will now retroactively unlock on Steam when logging into the world they were achieved on.
Improved: Hand Plows and Tractor Plows will no longer trigger "Unable to plow a block here" messages when driving over already plowed land.
Improved: Consuming a meal at a dinner party will now only play the dinner party sound if it wasn't already played in the last minute.
Improved: Updated some outdated information in Ecopedia.
Fixed: Worlds with a world height above 160 but below 320 could crash or become corrupted.
Fixed: Servers could show up without a name in the server list when their server name contained specific special characters.
Fixed: The command "/elections fail" didn't veto the election to fail it, but instead ended it with a result according to the votes at the time of command execution.
Improved: Corrupted claim stakes are now removed on server start instead of crashing the server.
Improved: Invalid ecopedia files now print an error in the server log instead of crashing the server.
Added: "MaxDinnerPartiesPerDayCountedForBonus" config variable, determining from how many dinner parties a player can benefit per day - defaults to 1.
Added: "NutritionToCulturePointsMultiplier" config variable, determining the amount of culture points a served meal generates at a dinner party by multiplying its total nutrition value - defaults to 0,1.
Removed: "CulturePointsPerFoodItem" config variable, it is replaced by "NutritionToCulturePointsMultiplier".
Removed: "DinnerPartiesAllowedPerDay" config variable, it is replaced by "MaxDinnerPartiesPerDayCountedForBonus".
we have just released Hotfix 12.0.3 with the following changes:
Fixed: Animals could spawn in enclosed rooms.
Fixed: On larger servers, animals took notably too long to load in.
Fixed: Animals didn't reliably register hits during specific animations.
Improved: Non-Aquatic animals that get stuck in water will now drown if they can't get out.
Fixed: Mining sounds didn't play correctly in first person view.
Improved: Adjusted footstep sounds for Bighorn Sheep, Elk and Mountain Goat for easier differentiation from player footstep sounds.
Changed: "Tax from All Accounts" will now always first try to tax the Personal Account.
Fixed: The setting for "Tax from All Accounts" wasn't respected when set to "No".
Fixed: When a tax law used "Tax from All Accounts", it would fail once it unsuccessfully tried to tax an account instead of continuing to the next potential account to tax.
Fixed: When a vehicle was sold via the "For Sale" feature it retained the sale settings after being purchased, still being up for sale by the new owner.
Fixed: Cultural deeds beyond the foundation deed didn't provide influence.
Fixed: Settlement markers didn't show to other citizens of a settlement.
Fixed: Destroying a plant by placing an object on it was not caught by the "Harvest or Hunt" trigger.
Fixed: A comparison with "Greater than" would show as "Greater than or equal to" in tooltips.
Fixed: Chimney requirements for kitchen objects were ignored after a server restart, leading to them providing housing points despite the object not being valid due to not having a chimney.
Fixed: Dropping a carriable item onto a storage slot of an object that doesn't accept carriable items displayed a wrong error message about the storage being too full instead of it not accepting such items.
Fixed: Fixed an issue where spoilable fuel burned excessively fast in light sources.
Fixed: Rocker boxes couldn't be placed directly next to each other in grid placement mode.
Fixed: When moving a vehicle with the hammer failed, calories were consumed nontheless.
Fixed: An issue that could cause moving a vehicle with the hammer to fail without a reason.
Fixed: Eating while pulling a cart resulted in a broken animation.
Fixed: Hand feeding elk didn't work in third person view.
Improved: Wood pulp is no longer highlighted when targeted while holding a carriable block that can be placed. This behaviour could lead players that were also holding an axe and intending to chop the wood pulp to assume that they can chop it despite the chop interaction hint not being visible due to still being too far away to chop it.
Fixed: Some turkish users couldn't see the placement preview for many objects and hence not place them.
Fixed: Another issue that could lead to "SetPath" error messages being spammed.
Fixed: Some graphic options still didn't appear in specific circumstances.
Fixed: The brightness slider didn't work correctly.
Fixed: Korean and Russian symbols didn't display in chat.
Fixed: Non-latin symbols couldn't be used on signs.
Fixed: An issue that could cause achievements to trigger multiple times at the same time.
Fixed: An issue that could cause the laser activation to display once per laser.
Fixed: Implemented a potential workaround for Unity bug UUM-117450 that under specific conditions causes the wheels of vehicles to clip into the ground and skid steers to propell into the air.
Fixed: Vehicles wouldn't stay locked on barges when "Q" was used to lock the ramp while driving instead of interacting with it with "E".
Fixed: The stack size multiplier was applied twice to stockpiles. (This could lead to stacks that no longer fit into the stockpile to be moved to the void storage on migration - in that case, please have the owner of the stockpile check the swirly SLG icon in the bottom right, to the left of the minimap area to get the items back.)
we have just released Hotfix 12.0.2 with the following changes:
Added: "/teleport toplayer" (with alias /tpto) command was updated and added back.
Fixed: Mouse sensitivity got set to 0 when specific errors occured.
Fixed: Brightness could reach unintended values and not update correctly.
Fixed: Graphic settings could sometimes not load correctly, then not showing all options.
Fixed: The steam engine showed a bright box instead of effects when turned on.
Fixed: Custom recipe lists on work tables didn't get saved on the server.
Improved: Reduced strength and saturation of rimlights.
Improved: Made some adjustments to overall saturation based on player feedback.
Improved: Adjusted the night post processing volume curve to properly fade in and out at night time.
Improved: Made some tweaks to the directional light curve for more consistent brightness throughout daylight.
Improved: Braziers and the Carbide Head Lamp had their lighting strength increased. All other lights will get similar improvements in future updates as well.
Improved: Made further adjustments to plant harvest SFX.
Improved: Removed a branch crack layer in forest and tundra ambience sounds that was too similar to the broken tool sound.
Removed: The "Reflections" graphic setting.
Hello Eco Citizens, Update 12 just recently released and we hope you enjoyed your time with the new features so far!
We're celebrating this release with a brand new trailer - check it out:
You can join us in the celebrations of Eco 12 by hosting your own cultural dinner party in Eco!
Dinner parties are more than just a feast - they’re a way to bring citizens together, share stories, and shape the culture of your world!
Participating in dinner parties generates culture for the settlement they take place in and provide a notable bonus to the nutrition based experience gain of all participants. This feature is a valuable way to increase the cultural growth of your world by connecting citizens through shared meals.
To participate, simply follow these steps:
Gather a minimum of 2 participants.
Prepare and start a dinner party in your world.
Ensure that all participants are visible in your screenshot.
Make sure the dinner party icon is visible in your screenshot.
Send us your screenshots via e-mail to [email protected] or on the contest posts over on our Discord, Facebook and Reddit.
💬 Bonus: Share the story behind your dinner party - what inspired it, who joined, what location took it place at and what made it special?
The contest will run until November 9.
Our development team will judge your submissions based on:
✨ Elegance – How beautiful your dinner setting captures the moment.
📷 Composition – Creativity and attention to detail in your screenshot.
🍲 Epic Dinner Party! – The overall vibe, fun, and community spirit depicted!
💬 Story - Dinner between friends? Political meeting? Your story provides bonus points!
All winning screenshots will receive:
🪙 1 000 Eco Credits – Redeemable for exclusive marketplace items.
The screenshot we like best additionally receives:
🧢 An exclusive Eco Cap featuring your (group’s) logo!
(Logo must be provided by you and abide our content policy)
Gather your friends, set the table and let the feast of creativity begin!
Show us what culture means in your Eco World. 🌿
Hey Citizens,
we have just released Hotfix 12.0.1 with the following changes:
Added: The setting for animal aggressiveness is now available in the ingame settings screen.
Fixed: Industrial elevators couldn't move when a cart was placed on them.
Fixed: Moving objects with the hammer ignored the placement restrictions.
Fixed: Some additional edge cases where placement restrictions were ignored.
Fixed: Shadow placement did not always show the correct color outline when a placement is blocked.
Fixed: The interaction tooltip when in shadow placement mode didn't show the reason why a placement is blocked.
Fixed: An issue that led to players being spammed with SetPath error messages.
Fixed: Multiple causes for errors found in player logfiles.
Fixed: Achievements that weren't yet achieved didn't display their tooltip on hovering.
Fixed: An issue with migration of worlds to Update 12 that could lead to delayed corruption of objects with persistent storage. Objects already affected by this issue unfortunately cannot be restored and will need to be manually reset.
Improved: Players that already own a marketplace item can now continue to view its details in the marketplace and purchase it even if they do not fulfill the achievement requirements. (Players were at no time restricted from using their owned items)
Improved: Missing blocks at and directly below roofs can count as windows again and do no longer break the roof, which invalidates a room.
Improved: Calorie damage and knockback strength from animal attacks significantly decreased.
Improved: Adjusted plant harvesting sounds and removed "squishy / wet" SFX.
Making the animal settings available in the ingame settings menu required us to move them to a different configuration file - make sure to update your configs if you have already made changes to these settings or simply use the ingame settings menu to set them again.
Difficulty.template.eco
Added: "AnimalAttackPattern" config variable, determining how animals attacks work - defaults to "AttackNormally". Also takes "DefensiveOnly" to replace aggressive behaviour of predators with the defensive behaviour of other animals and "None" to disable animals attacking.
Added: "AnimalUnprovokedAttackFrequencyMultiplier" config variable, determining how likely it is that predators will attack players unprovoked - defaults to 1.0. Lower values will reduce the individual attack chance per animal, while higher values will quickly make it go to its maximum.
Features.template.eco
Removed: "AnimalAttackPattern" and "AnimalUnprovokedAttackFrequencyMultiplier" config variables, as they were moved to Difficulty.eco.template.
If you are facing an issue where after entering a world for the first time in Update 12 you can't move your camera, please either change your mouse sensivity in the settings, reset your control settings or simply restart the game once to fix it permanently while we're looking into why that happens to some players and make sure to prevent it happening for the future.
If you are facing extreme brightness or saturation, please disable and re-enable the "Reflections" setting (or enable it, if currently disabled) in the graphics settings while we're looking into why those settings did not correctly apply to some players and work on fixing the graphics when reflections are turned off. We are also aware about feedback from some players that consider colours to be unpleasant with correctly working reflections and have created a feedback channel on our discord for affected players to post screenshots to help us with making adjustments to this.
Hello Eco Citizens,
after multiple playtests with the Eco community, we're happy to announce the release of Update 12! Let's dive right in and take a look at what's new:
Nearly all objects in Eco can now be placed independent of the world grid and freely rotated, allowing for completely new designs in player homes. Of course you can also still place them aligned to the grid by holding shift, if you so wish.
This also includes the ability to place a variety of decorations and food on different surfaces - and you can even place furniture on rugs now!
For you to be able to make the best use of the new free placement ability, we have added a variety of new decorations that you can use to beautify your world, check them out:
The ability to place things on surfaces also allows you to sell items directly from them, instead of having to put them into a store. Simply place what you want to sell on a table and set a price on the table UI - a price sign will appear next to the placed object and other players will be able to directly buy it from the table.
With this update comes a new cultural feature - Dinner Parties! They can be started after preparing a variety of fresh out of the oven food and placing it on tables. After starting a dinner party, players have 30 minutes to participate and eat up to three courses on the deed it is hosted on.
The success of a dinner party is determined by the amount of players taking part and the individual taste of all meals consumed - you will want to prepare either a wide variety of food for your guests to choose from or be prepared and know exactly what the favourite foods of your guests are.
Successful dinner parties provide culture to the settlement they took place in as well as a multiplicative nutrition bonus for all participants, increasing the skill gain through nutrition notably. These bonuses decay after some time, so make sure to make your dinner parties a regularly occurring event!
For this update we have completely reworked the behaviour of animals in Eco. Most notably, the majority of calculations has been moved to the client, making them more reliable and hunting a better experience. They also got a variety of new animations for smoother movement, try to avoid high player activity areas and can become sick from pollution and hence unsuitable for processing.
Many animals will now appear in herds and exhibit individual behaviours instead of roaming around alone. Predators have a tendency for aggressive behaviour, seeking out prey and occasionally attacking the player. Other animals exhibit solely defensive behaviour where getting too near to or hunting them will make them defend themselves.
Players can scare aggressive animals away by holding a torch and in case of necessity defend themselves with tools as well. The aggressiveness of animals towards players can be limited to defensive behaviour or disabled completely per server if you prefer your game to be completely peaceful. And if you like peaceful things, you might also enjoy a first taste of Animal Husbandry - try to feed an elk:
We also have completely replaced the systems for Lighting, Time of Day and Weather and unified them into a single system, allowing for a much improved atmosphere. Check out the different weathers:
While doing so, we have also adjusted Eco's lighting - take a look at the vibrant daylight and how it lets your builds come to life:
Of course we also adjusted the nights and made them a bit darker, incentivizing the use of artificial lighting by players:
On top of that, we have added and reworked a large amount of ambient sounds to make the world feel even more lively.
With Update 12 we have added a total of 45 new achievements with varying difficulties, coming in different levels for you to chase. Try to get them all!
Added: Daisy, Tulip and Rose flowers.
Changed: Shelf life for all seeds increased significantly.
Changed: Shelf life for Flour, Rice Flour, Sugar, Tallow and Wheat increased.
Changed: Hanging signs now require to be mounted on a wall.
Changed: Windmills now require to be mounted on ground (e.g. on a block below them).
Changed: Minimum nutrition amount requirement for a food item to be potentially selected as "worst" taste decreased to 45.
Improved: Seats on all government tables can now be mounted.
Improved: Painted blocks now provide a bonus to housing experience, up to 20% when all blocks of a room are painted.
Fixed: A number of issues that caused barges to sink.
Fixed: A number of issues that caused fishing with the fishing rod to be unreliable.
Fixed: An issue where loading of world objects took a very long time or stopped completely.
Fixed: An issue that prevented the maximum possible amount of items to be moved to an inventory when trying to move more items than possible, leading to no items being moved at all.
Fixed: Easel filters didn't apply correctly when creating a painting with it.
Fixed: Equipping a painting tool and sprinting could lead to inability to scroll through the hotbar.
Fixed: Store icons on the map didn't show their tooltip at the correct position.
Fixed: An issue that lead to an incorrect display of the time until meteor impact.
Added: Validation for world dimension settings, the minimum selectable length and width are now 40, the maximum selectable length and width are now 400. The server will automatically use the maximum possible value and notify about that when values higher than the maximum were configured.
Added: Validation for maximum build height depending on world dimension settings. The server will automatically use the maximum possible value and notify about that when an impossible one was configured.
Improved: It is now possible to use a maximum build height of up to 320, depending on the world dimension settings. Worlds with dimensions of up to about 250x250 support a maximum build height of 320, beyond that the possible maximum build height decreases.
Features.template.eco
Added: "AnimalAttackPattern" config variable, determining how animals attacks work - defaults to "AttackNormally". Also takes "DefensiveOnly" to replace aggressive behaviour of predators with the defensive behaviour of other animals and "None" to disable animals attacking.
Added: "AnimalUnprovokedAttackFrequencyMultiplier" config variable, determining how likely it is that predators will attack players unprovoked - defaults to 1.0. Lower values will reduce the individual attack chance per animal, while higher values will quickly make it go to its maximum.
Rooms.template.eco
Changed: "RoomCategoryDiminishingReturnRate" config variable now defaults to 0.1, decreasing housing experience from additional rooms notably.
Settlements.template.eco
Added: "DinnerPartyConfig" section, which all config variables below are part of.
Added: "FreshnessTimeMinutesPreparedFood" config variable, determining how long a food item is considered fresh for dinner parties after crafting - defaults to 60 minutes.
Added: "FreshnessTimeMinutesRawFood" config variable, determining how long a raw food item is considered fresh for dinner parties after harvesting - defaults to 720 minutes.
Added: "CulturePointsPerFoodItem" config variable, determining how many culture points each eaten meal in dinner parties provide - defaults to 1.
Added: "MultiplierForTastiness" config variable, determining the bonus multiplier for each taste level.
Added: "SettlementCountMultiplier" config variable, determining the bonus multiplier per amount of different settlements being represented by citizens participating in the dinner party.
Added: "DinnerPartyMaxDays" config variable, determining over which time the bonuses from a dinner party decay - defaults to 7 days.
Added: "DinnerPartyMinutesDuration" config variable, determining how long a dinner party can run - defaults to 30 minutes.
Added: "MaxCoursesPerPlayer" config variable, determining how many meals a player can eat per dinner party - defaults to 3.
Added: "DinnerPartiesAllowedPerDay" config variable, determining how many dinner parties a player can participate in per day - defaults to 1.
Added: "DinnerPartyCultureToFoodValue" config variable, determining how achieved culture points in dinner parties translate to the nutrition bonus granted.
Weather.template.eco
Removed: "ChancePerMinute", "MaximumWeatherSystemsWeightedByWorldSize", "MinWeatherSystemSize" and "MaxWeatherSystemSize" config variables.
Added: "MinClearWeatherDuration" config variable, determining how long the weather must be clear between weather events at minimum - defaults to 10 minutes.
Added: "MaxClearWeatherDuration" config variable, determining how long the weather can be clear between weather events at maximum - defaults to 30 minutes.
Added: "WeatherWeights" config section, determining the weight of each weather to be selected.
Our focus will now shift back towards some important changes to Eco's core systems, most notably a simplification of modules and an extensive rework for talents in conjunction with a system that will provide a continuous need for new stars that players can invest into different improvements. While we're not ready yet to go into detail for that, the next Update will provide some improvements to the loggers among you that we can already share:
This is the model of our upcoming log harvester that will allow you to chop, cut and store trees away all in one go. Together with this vehicle we will implement some changes to the acquisition of resources, most notably an increase to resource density by changing trees to provide a larger amount of wood - but also being harder to fell. This will make the harvester especially efficient in its job, without increasing the difficulty for logging in the early game.
Thank you for reading and your support, we hope you will enjoy this new update! - Strange Loop Games
Hey Citizens,
we have just released Maintenance Update 11.1.13 with the following changes:
Added: The new game value "House Value at Deed" intended for usage in rent calculations, allowing to select either the deed the recurring rent transfer is related to or a manually selected deed.
Fixed: The option to round values in laws didn't work correctly.
Fixed: An issue that allowed to bypass the maximum carry weight for the inventory.
Fixed: Expired loan contracts didn't complete when they were paid off if the server was restarted between expiration and paying off.
Fixed: The displayed influence range of draft settlements in shadow placement mode didn't equal the actual influence range in which placement is possible.
Fixed: The displayed time until meteor impact could differ between the display below the meteor and the /met command showing the remaining time.
Fixed: A room system related crash that could appear when using specific mods.
Civics.template.eco
Added: "AllowLawsToPreventReputationTransfer" config variable, determining if laws can block the transfer of reputation - defaults to false.
About
This page aggregates Steam news feeds, patch notes, and developer announcements for Eco, sourced from official Steam community posts.
Major updates, balance changes, and seasonal events often correlate with player-count spikes — cross-reference announcements here with the live charts on the main Eco statistics page.
Articles link back to Steam for full changelogs. SteamScope refreshes news entries as new posts are published to the game's Steam hub.