0.5.0.0-9b96

**0.5.0.0-9b96** is *Core Keeper's* second major content update of Early Access, introducing the Desert of Beginnings biome. For a full list of content, see Content Introduced in "The Desert of Beginnings" Update (0.5.0.0-9b96)

## Changelog

### New features

#### Main features

* New biome: Desert of Beginnings.
* New sub-biome in the Desert: Molten Quarry.

#### New NPCs

* Ra-Akar the Sand Titan (titan boss).
* Igneous the Molten Mass (side boss).
* 6 new enemies.
* New Caveling Spearman and Skirmisher that spawn in the Clay Caves along with new scenery objects related to these new enemies. They can also spawn from Clay Moss. Players who have already explored the whole of the Clay Caves biome may need to play in a new world to access all the new decorative objects related to these Cavelings.
* 12 new critters that will be unique to the different biomes.

#### New mechanics

* Go-Karts. Traverse the desert at high speed or race against each other! Some old race tracks built a long time ago can also be found in the world.
* It is now possible to fish from Boats and Minecarts.
* Added a Cross Circuit that separates horizontal and vertical wires. Useful to allow crossing wires without connecting the electricity.
* Levers now emit electricity when turned on without needing electricity from a Generator. The electricity from a Lever reaches half the distance of a Generator.

#### New items

* Galaxite ore.
* Galaxite Workbench with new tools, crafting, and base building options.
* 40+ new weapons and equipment.
* New decorative objects.
* 10 new fish, including a legendary one!
* New valuables.
* Legendary Mining Pick.
* A Bug Net can be crafted in the Tin Workbench that allows the player to catch small beetles, larvae, fireflies, and other critters. After a bug has been caught, it can be placed into the world and remain in the world indefinitely. The Bug Net has replaced the Tin Hoe in the Tin Workbench. The Tin Hoe now drops from crates, chests, and other sources in the Dirt and Clay biomes instead.
* Dynamite Pack: explodes when connected to electricity.
* Pressure Plate: emits electricity when stepped on by a player and reaches the same distance as Levers.
* Galaxite Trap: crafted in the Galaxite Workbench. It is similar to Spike Traps but shoots flames, burns the enemies, and deals more damage!
* Galaxite Turret: crafted in Galaxite Workbench. Shoots projectiles when there are enemies in front of it and it’s connected to electricity.

#### New music

* New music tracks for the Desert of Beginnings and Molten Quarry biomes.
* New unique music tracks for each boss. The slime bosses use the same boss music track as before.

#### Additional content

* Many new unique locations.
* Added Clay Moss that appears in the Clay Caves. Clay Moss can also drop from Big Larva.
* Locked chests will randomly be found in the world while digging walls. The chests can be unlocked with their corresponding key and will contain some rewards. The keys can be found in various chests and containers in the world or crafted at the Key Crafting Table made in the Scarlet Workbench.
* There are several different types of chests and keys including the Copper chest and key, found in the Dirt biome and Clay Caves; the Iron chest and key, found in the Forgotten Ruins; the Scarlet chest and key, found in Azeos’ Wilderness; the Octarine chest and key, found in the Sunken Sea; and the Galaxite chest and key, found in the Desert of Beginnings.

### Gameplay changes

#### Improvements to cooking and ingredients

* Added ingredient category filters in the cookbook UI. The available filters are plant, fish, and meat, and selecting any of these will filter out the ingredients list to only contain ingredients of that category.
* Recipes can be clicked to automatically add the ingredients to the Cooking Pot from the player's inventory or from adjacent chests. If the player or adjacent chests do not have the ingredients to cook a recipe, then the recipe is grayed out.
* Food cooked with golden plants always becomes rare (or epic with the Master Chef talent). Previously, this was only the case for ~50% of the combinations at random when combining a golden plant with a regular ingredient, which caused confusion. Any current food that has already been cooked will keep its rarity even if it is not obtainable anymore.
* Golden plants and cooked food made of golden plants now show up in the cookbook.
* Cooked food made of only golden plants becomes slightly stronger than when combining a golden plant with a non-golden plant ingredient.
* The ingredients filter in the cookbook UI uses the small version of the item icons instead to fit in more icons that are visible in the scroll window.
* Added unique nouns and adjectives to cooked food made from golden plants and their icons have some golden colors to make them more distinguishable from the cooked food made from the regular version of the same plant.
* Golden Larva Meat has been renamed to Shiny Larva Meat to differentiate it from the golden plants that work a bit differently when cooked.
* A number after the recipe's title in the cookbook UI indicates the current amount of recipes known.

#### Balancing improvements

* Made it much less grindy to gain skills at high skill levels for all skills. This change is applied retroactively, so players may notice that their skills have been increased when starting the game after this update, especially any high-level skills.
* Boss health no longer scales linearly with the number of players but, instead, increases by an amount that becomes smaller for every player joining. This means that boss health will remain the same in single player, but it will scale just slightly lower for 2 players (and much lower for 8 players) than it did previously. This change is intended to incentivize bringing your friends with you even if they don’t bring as much to the table when it comes to defeating bosses -- if you just find a boss very difficult yourself, then bringing more friends will help!
* More trees will spawn throughout Azeos’ Wilderness and in Mold Dungeons.
* Increased damage of all explosives like Bombs and Hand Mortars.
* Increased drop chance of the Morpha Figurine and the Caveling Gardener Figurine.
* Adjusted how monster health scales with their level so higher-level monsters have a bit more health.
* Changed sell value of Rails, Electrical Wires, and Conveyor Belts to be 1 Ancient Coin.
* Slightly increased the amount of Sea Shells required for the Omoroth Scanner.
* Slightly reduced drop chance of most items from the Caveling Gardener and the Caveling Hunter.
* Slightly reduced drop chance of Caveling set pieces from the Caveling Miner and the Caveling Shaman.
* Made Shiny Larva Meat rare instead of epic and increased its drop rate from Big Larva. The buffs it gives are still the same.
* Reduced spawn chance of some unique locations found in the Sunken Sea.
* Slightly increased the cost of crafting Levers.
* Increased drop chance of Haunted Hive Mother Summoning Idol from Samhain Goodie Bags.

#### Text and localisation

* Added another number to the build version format, which means that the version now is A.B.C.D-XXXX where A will be 0 until we are out of Early Access, B is incremented for major updates, C is incremented for minor updates, and D is incremented for unplanned patches and hotfixes. XXXX is an internal build identifier.
* Can add and change localization for Latin languages. The game folder contains a folder named “localization” with further instructions.
* Descriptions of Spike Traps and Drills now say “damage” instead of “melee damage”.
* Updated credits.

#### Controls

* Players' keybindings have, unfortunately, been reset due to fixing an issue in the keybindings system that caused any new keybindings to not work. We are sorry about the inconvenience this may cause for players who have to set up their own keybindings again.

#### Art and animation

* Character facing-direction no longer flickers as much while moving and having the mouse positioned diagonally from the character.
* A weak glow has been added to Furnaces that contain finished bars but are not currently smelting any ores to indicate that there are finished bars in it available to take out.
* The visuals of different types of Bridges no longer adapt to each other when adjacent to one another.
* Enemies flash green when they heal.
* The Pumpkin Helmet's eyes and mouth now glow. This is a new feature that will be found on some of the new equipment as well where parts of equipment will glow in the dark.
* Some Octarine equipment now glows in the dark.
* Rune Song now glows in the dark.
* Phantom Spark now glows in the dark.

#### UI and Menus

* An icon appears above the character's head when something bites the hook while fishing.
* The souls UI visuals have been improved and prepared for future content.
* Added current world name to pause menu.
* Network-related options will no longer display in the pause menu when running in offline mode.
* Added “key item” text and an icon to items that are used as keys to unlock other objects.
* The currently grabbed item is no longer shown while in menus.
* Portal icons will now display on top of other icons.

#### AI and behaviours

* Character will now complain of hunger less often.
* Enemies taking damage from sources like Spike Traps will now be considered “in combat” and won’t heal for a short duration.
* Projectiles can no longer damage doors.
* Applied a fix where the Red Slime Figurine only drops from Red Slimes.
* Merchants can restock their items even while the player is standing nearby them or interacting with them.
* Stone Moss will now spawn in any Caveling settlement ruins in the Forgotten Ruins. This only applies to new settlements.
* The rotation of Boats not occupied by any player will remain the same after restarting the game.

#### Collision

* Ground insects can no longer traverse through fences.
* The Lever no longer blocks the player and can be walked through.

#### Accessibility

* Added an outline to the text of things that the character says to make it more readable.

#### Audio

* Adjustment to footstep sounds.
* Adjustment to sound effects for Malugaz the Corrupted Shaman.
* Adjustment to sound effects for Azeos the Sky Titan.
* Adjustment to sound effects for The Hive Mother.
* Added a more noticeable sound effect when something is on the fishing line.

#### Other

* Groups of Larva will sometimes appear out of clay walls to ambush Explorers in the Clay Biome.
* Tentacles of Omoroth will sometimes appear out of the water while traversing the Sunken Sea.
* The Oracle Cards can be combined into an Oracle Deck offhand for players who successfully find all of them along with the Binding String. The Oracle Cards are no longer tagged as valuables and have different rarities.
* 3 new Oracle Cards.
* Several larger objects in the world that were previously static can now be destroyed, picked up, and placed out elsewhere if the player has enough mining damage. This includes the Grave Tree, the Mold Tree, and the Kelp Tree as well as the large Ancient Ruin pieces found in the Dirt Biome, the Giant Cicadas (big dead insects), and the Ancient Gates found in the Ancient Cities in the Sunken Sea.

#### Optimisation

* Some performance improvements for low-end devices.

### Bug fixes

* Enemies no longer interrupt their ranged attack with a melee attack if they can perform both.
* Acid Larva no longer explode when running into Torches or similar objects.
* Players will no longer be able to leave the Boat while connecting to the world.
* Fixed a bug where enemy projectiles would sometimes spawn with an offset from the enemy not matching the current facing direction of the enemy.
* Fixed a bug where the talent “On your Toes” would always activate on taking damage and not just when dodging.
* Fixed a bug causing critters to no longer flee from nearby players.
* Added missing description for the burn damage in player stat window and corrected the burn damage text to read “every other second” instead of “every third”.
* Fixed it so the burning-over-time effect deals damage four times during a full duration as intended.
* Fixed a bug where the Drill would still play its looping sound after being destroyed.
* Corrected the internal level of Acid Larva, Ancient Golem, and Caveling Scholar to be correct – this was previously lower than intended, meaning they dealt lower damage and had lower health than we initially planned.
* Corrected the internal level of Scholar’s Hood, Scholar’s Cloak, and Scholar’s Staff, which was previously too low, meaning they now have slightly stronger stats.
* Projectiles no longer go through doors.
* Fixed an issue where too few particles were emitted from The Core when activated.
* Fixed an issue where map markers could be toggled off while still being possible to place.
* Fixed an issue where the outline would not appear on Big Larva when interacting with them while wearing the Larva Suit.
* Fixed it so the Logic Circuit, Delay Circuit, and Levers can be placed where the player is standing.
* Fixed a bug where enemies could stop following the player for no good reason.
* Fixed an issue where glowing items put on Pedestals or Tables would no longer glow after moving back and forth from the item.
* Fixed projectiles being destroyed when falsely hitting other players.
* Fixed environment not being loaded when spectating other players after dying as a hardcore character.

## References

1. ↑ Welcome to The Desert of Beginnings!