AreaZ — patch notes and updates
Stored observation / content update:
Dated developer announcements recorded from Steam. Open the source for the complete update.
| Update | Date | Excerpt / source |
|---|---|---|
| Aim helpers, hit markers, throwable stones and fairer loot | 2026-10-30 | Most of this update comes straight from your feedback. Throwing was hard to read, and loot could be hard to find. Both should be better now. Aim and throw Aim prediction and trails for arrows, the spear, the trident and the boomerang. You see where a throw will go before you let go, and the path it took after. It helps most with the boomerang, which was hard to follow before. On Exploration and Eden only - on Hard and Hell, you aim on your own. Throw stones and obsidian. Hold the right mouse button to aim and click the left one to throw, the same as the other throwables. A stone can kill small prey. Do not expect it to do much to anything big |
| A map for Eden, and driftwood that stays | 2026-10-23 | Lost? Not anymore. On Exploration and Eden, the new map shows where to search for what your current mission needs. On Hard and Hell, you are still on your own. Map with mission search areas on Exploration and Eden. Press M, or open it from the Missions page. Driftwood stays on the beach after the tide goes out, so the shore is always worth a look. Why so fast? The map runs on functionality I had already prepared for the next update - other players' remains - and that part was already tested on the experimental branch. So the map could ship now instead of waiting. This one comes a day after the missions update, straight from watching new playe |
| Missions, XP and trait bonuses, plus a new save system | 2026-10-22 | Welcome AREAZ has grown a lot lately, and many of you are new here. Welcome. Before the new features, here is what AREAZ is, because it is probably not the survival game you are used to. You manage calories and water, and they decide everything. Every craft, every walk and every fight is paid for in calories, and thirst is right behind. Your inventory space is limited, and crafting a backpack is how you carry more. Nothing is handed to you, and you have to actually look after yourself. If that is not the game you want, that is completely fine. An angry review does not change the game - it only puts off the players it is made for. This update |
| Roadmap: what's done, what's next | 2026-10-06 | Roadmap AREAZ has a roadmap again, and after the Autumn Sale the price goes up. If you own the game, nothing changes for you. DoneDX12 + DLSS 4.5 - the game runs on Unreal Engine 5 with a modern renderer. Crafting Simplified - Autocraft builds straight from your backpack, and a right-click menu handles your items. Hints reworked, bigger stacks - out now. The game tells you more clearly what to do next, and most materials stack to 12. ComingNovember - missions, achievements and XP. December - remains of other survivors. You will find what other players left behind when they died. 2027 - Map 2, new animations and sounds. With Map 2, AREAZ enter |
| Hints and Stacking: up to 12 per stack, clearer hints | 2026-10-05 | Hints and Stacking Two things you asked for: carry more, and know what a key does before you press it. Both are in 0.59.300, and both came straight from player feedback. Bigger stacksThis one started on our Discord and in Steam reviews. Carrying capacity was the real limit, even with a backpack and storage boxes, so most materials now stack much higher. Up to 12: sticks, short bamboo, liana, rope, palm leaves, dried palm leaves, small bones, animal bones, small leather (raw and tanned), mint, empty coconuts, coconuts with coal or tinder, bone and wooden hooks, bone needles, bamboo spikes and arrows. Up to 6: wood, young bamboo rods, leather ( |
| Crafting reworked and simplified via Autocrafting | 2026-10-01 | Crafting in AREAZ was too hard, and you told me - in reviews, on Discord, in bug reports. This update makes crafting easier at last, and nearly everything in it is here because players took the time to write down what was in the way. Thank you, all of you who did. Crafting Autocrafting. It shows everything you can craft from what is in your inventory. Pick one, and it moves the ingredients into your hands and crafts it for you - stacking or splitting items when needed, as long as there is room in your inventory. Item quality is averaged. A crafted item's quality is now the average quality of what went into it. You still have to watch your cal |
| Full controller support, rebindable keys, DE, IT, PT-BR, CZ, SK | 2026-09-25 | You can now rebind every key, and you can play the whole game on a controller - the view, the menus, the inventory and the crafting screens. Controls settings The Controls page was reworked. You can customise key inputs for keyboard, mouse and controller in one place. Axis invert moved here, and new sensitivity settings were added. Full controller support The whole game is playable on a pad - POV view, menus, inventory and crafting screens. The stick behaves as a mouse, and you can click with it. No more holding A while dragging. On a controller, dragging just works. When a controller is in use, key mappings show controller inputs instead of |
| Update 58.200 - Menu Overhaul | 2026-09-18 | Menu Overhaul Most of the screens you open outside the game have been rebuilt, and there is a lot more you can change now. Survival tips with twelve videos built straight into the game, and a menu that behaves the same on the title screen and mid-run. One menu, everywhereRows are grouped, the page you are on stays lit, and Escape closes what is in front of you instead of everything at once. Pause in the middle of a run and you get the same menu you get on the title screen, not a different one with different options. Sound and game settings, rebuiltBoth pages existed before. Both were rebuilt, and the important part is that they now work prope |
| DirectX 11 launch option for older AMD graphics cards | 2026-09-17 | Older AMD card and AREAZ would not start? Try this first Since the DX12 update on August 28, some older AMD cards crash while compiling shaders and never reach the game. R9 300 series, RX 400 and 500, and integrated Radeon are the ones reported so far. Older NVIDIA cards are not affected, they drop to DirectX 11 on their own. Older AMD cards do not, so the game has to be told. There is now a second launch option. Press Play in Steam and you get a choice: Play AREAZ (DirectX 12, the default, nothing changed) DirectX 11 (older AMD graphics cards) Pick the second one if the game would not start for you. It runs the same content through DirectX 1 |
| Video settings rebuilt: DLSS, frame generation, resolution | 2026-09-13 | Video settings are rebuilt. You can now set resolution and display mode, pick your upscaler, switch on frame generation and tune the jungle separately - most of the controls that decide how the game performs were either missing, or in two cases quietly broken. Your video settings were reset once with this update. On first launch the game checks your hardware and picks settings to match it. If you had yours tuned the way you like, set them again - it only happens this time. NewResolution and display mode. There was no way to change either before. Upscaling. DLSS on GeForce RTX cards, TSR on everything else. DLSS quality modes, from DLAA down t |
| Update 0.58.1: what your GPU actually runs | 2026-09-04 | Update 0.58.1 - what the DX12 launch showed us, and what comes next The DX12 and DLSS 4.5 update did what it was meant to do. The jungle hitches are gone on every card we have seen, and the game now runs on machines it never ran on before, from a 2014 workstation card at 720p to a 5090 at 1440p. Update 0.58.1 is small on purpose. It is out today, mid fest, because the last week gave us more real performance data than the previous four years, and two moments were missing from it. What comes next: the graphics settings The settings screen was built before DLSS existed, and it shows. The next update reworks it: A resolution scale slider, so card |
| DX12 and DLSS 4.5 - Update 0.58 | 2026-08-28 | DX12 and DLSS 4.5 are live The renderer is rebuilt. AREAZ now runs on DirectX 12 with DLSS 4.5, and on modern hardware the difference is not subtle. What you can expect:RTX 30 series - DLSS upscaling, more stable frame times, noticeably smoother traversalRTX 40 and 50 series - substantial gains on top of that thanks to frame generationAll nextgen cards - the streaming hitches are gone. You may still see a spike the first time you enter an area, then it settlesOne thing to know: DLSS is active, but this update does not expose settings for it yet. I want real performance data from real machines before I start handing out switches that change it |
| 🛠️ Help Shape AREAZ – New Crafting UI Options (Your Feedback Needed) | 2025-12-06 | Hey survivors 👋I’ve been working on improving the Crafting / Inventory UI in AREAZ, with a big focus on helping new players better understand the two-hand crafting system from the start.Note: The crafting system itself isn’t changing — this is purely about clarity and usability.AREAZ crafting is based on what you hold in your hands, not just clicking a recipe — and I want to make that feeling clearer and more intuitive visually.Right now, I’m testing three different UI layouts:1️⃣ Original version – Crafting hands centered at the bottom – The system longtime players already know2️⃣ New – Centered & Framed – Hands stay in the center – Clear f |
| Update 0.57 Storage Boxes | 2025-11-15 | New Update 0.57 is here! This one moves the game over to Unreal Engine 5.6. It’s a pretty important step for future development, because the next stop is the freshly released Unreal Engine 5.7. That version finally gives us access to the new Nanite Foliage and improved procedural tools — and we really hope these will boost performance in our foliage-heavy open world.Gameplay ImprovementsI’ve also been working on the core mechanics. To pave the way for possible (not confirmed!) gamepad support, I’m adding proper item dragging between your character inventory and external containers — something along the lines of SoT.This also let me introduce |
| Update 0.56 Bottleneck Fix | 2025-03-15 | Hi, updated the game to new Unreal Engine 5.5 version. That allowed me to fix bottle neck when moving the whole physics volume for ocean to simulate tide. This was causing GPU to wait for CPU, and so GPU not being fully utilized and resulting in low FPS even on better rigs. Currently I am able to run 2k resolution on my: - RTX 3060 on 80-100FPS when testing, with occasional drops to 60FPS (when loot economy is being calculated) - RTX 4070 on my laptop even reached 100-120FPS. This is considerable improvement to previous 50-30FPS on UE 5.4 Hopefully you will experience similar results. Other fixes are include mainly, but not only: - animals re |
| Update 0.55 SFX | 2024-11-16 | Hi, based on your reports I have made audit on sound settings. Its turned out that sound classes got overwritten when adjusting the individual sound class in Sound Settings. This was not easy to found as the code to adjust, save and load sound settings looked properly and simple testing by manipulation of sliders didn't manifest this issue. Additionally some sounds that were not assigned to proper sound class were identified and properly set. When testing the sound settings additional problem popped out - miss-click with mouse in Menu or Inventory wasn't consumed and caused character not be able to perform melee or shot action. This should be |
| Update 54.400 | 2024-09-22 | Hi, just fix on UI - character statuses and crafting menu. Should be now more responsive and work properly on higher resolution. At least what I have managed to test. For lower resolutions there might be still problem as especially crafting menu requires a lot of width. Will try to address this as well when UI art will be reworked as well. Thank you for your understanding. Duro Game Creator |
| Update 0.54.3 New UE version | 2024-08-04 | Hi, small update - updated to newest version of Unreal Engine 5.4.2 As game seems to run smoother and also render looks smoother I decided to push it into live branch for you as well. Additionally these finally seems to be a good stable candidate for next Inland map, so started officially new map production today. Enjoy Juraj Bachar Game Creator |
| Update 0.54.2 Weather | 2024-07-07 | Hi, implemented UDS Weather to game. Can be used for various weather effect, replacing those from UE4 version. Currently rain and storm are implemented. Added and slightly increased chance for rain and storm even for Eden game mode, and they can occur during the first day already now. Remainder on their effect on character and items: Negative: Rain will make character and items wet unless covered in shelter. Rain does not impact items in inventory. Wet wood or other fuel will prevent fire to start up. You can not start the fire during the rain, but rain will not extinguish already lit fire. Storm will extinguish even burning fire unless its s |
| Update 0.54.1 Level Redesign | 2024-06-30 | Hi, Bringing you the game update on newest UE 5.4.2 version. This fixed several issues we had due the previous UE version and were not caused by game logic itself. To improve performance in UE5 we have moved as much foliage as we could from instanced foliage to terrain automaterial. In jungle grass was removed completely and replaced with small plants that match jungle ground floor. Some terrain textures were replaced as well. Liana now spawn at new tries covered with them. Bamboo forest was reworked. Small plants nearby water stream were moved to automaterial as well. this includes the nettle. In swamp small plants and nettle were moved to a |
| Update 0.54 | 2024-05-26 | Hi, it has been a long time. Finally I have managed to get a stable game build on Unreal Engine 5.3. This works quite nice and will provide sound platform for future development, while providing us new long awaited tools for game development and especially level design. Additionally I have a new member in the team who will be focusing mainly on level design. Prior this update the development was done on introductory UE 5.0 version. Newer UE versions 5.1 and 5.2 did brake a lot of stuff and were not of much use. This is why development was mostly blocked for long period of time. Lot of testing was done on enabling DX12, but there is some bottl |
| Update 0.53 Improved Reptiles | 2023-11-12 | Hi it has been an very difficult time for me both professionally and personally. Anyway things are getting slowly better, so I would like to restart the development. Its quite metaphoric - with reptiles update - as development was on turtle speed... On the other side, it hard shell helped to survive this difficult time. I am blocked by current stage UE 5 - where each new engine version 5.1 -> 5.2 -> 5.3 causes lower performance. Still trying to identify he cause for it. Unfortunately until this is solved, the production of new maps is totally blocked and had to be postponed towards 2024. The debugging is painful and slow process as I have to |
| Update 0.52.001 Fix | 2022-11-26 | Hi, fixed following issues in game - items in back will not duplicate on ground after loading the savegame (players reported) - when died with open inventory/menu - this will be closed (players reported) - cut harvested palm leafs will be scattered on ground, to prevent highlight flashing Thank you for all reports, they are really important finds and are addressed. Juraj |
| Update 0.52 Killer Insects | 2022-11-19 | Hi all, this update brings 3 types of new insects or their behavior into the game. First is the ants swarm roaming through the jungle and beach. It will destroy any food it will find - fruits, vegetables, coconuts, meat and even animal corpses (inclusive those in traps), leaving just bones behind them. Ants swarm can cause small damage to player by biting. The only protection against it is to set up fire that the ants will try to avoid and hope for the best. Wild bees hives are getting swarms as well. If player comes to close, they will release a wild bees swarm that will attack and follow player for a while. So going few meter away from hive |
| Update 0.51.004 HUD | 2022-10-08 | Hi, done some changes players requested lately: 1) Energy Circle now shows - calories available light green - calories to digest dark green 2) Added Shield Icon to represent Repellent: Visible only if repellent is active. Effect does loose in time. Will be used against Mosquitos to prevent Malaria in incoming "Killer Insects" Update 3) Inventory can be closed by Esc key (key assigned for Menu) New Unreal Engine version 5.1 was announced. Will continue to work on fixes. Also working on first map adjustments. Thank you for you support and please join our discord for direct communication. https://discord.io/areaz Juraj Bachar Game creator |
| Update 0.51.003 Fix | 2022-10-02 | Hi all, thank you for your patience, now I am finally starting to address underwater process, that was heavily mentioned in feedback and reviews. With transition to Unreal Engine 5 and to Lumen Global illumination direct lightning, the old postprocess was completely broken and other approach was needed. So I had to rework how the whole lightning and postprocess was used in game. Ocean underwater New lightning and postprocess is now prepared. Still needs some work - the distance visibility is to high. Added shadows back for corals and seaweed. Made some new features - low breath will result to low colors, and blur. So you are warned to surface |
| Update 0.51.002 Fix | 2022-09-17 | Hi, just fixed issue with straw bed crafting. Thank you for report. Juraj |
| Update 0.51.001 Fixes | 2022-09-11 | Hi, just update to adjust and fix some issues connected to transfer to UE5 and some player feedback - removed food and stomach icons from HUD as they were confusing players, considering character to be hungry. Reordered the rest of icons - Changes to Lightning. Done some changes to new UE5 Lumen setup. There should be more indirect light. Hardware raytracing should is now more supported. Ocean tide was causing a huge drop in performance, so I had to lower its reach. - Photomode Postprocess was transferred to UE5, so you can use it again and I have allowed Advanced mode in Photomode again. Tried to fix bug, when item on ground - such as skinne |
| 0.51 Naked & Scared Update | 2022-08-06 | Hi all, its hot summer here and Steam Survival Event running, so an Ideal time to get naked. So current update officially enables full nudity in game. It can be set in Game settings. I will let you explore it yourself and mention other important changes in game. With recent change to Unreal Engine 5 as one of the first game available to players on this engine, I needed to change old obsolete UE4 VFX to new Niagara system. So VFX for footsteps, based on different terrain or water splashes when swimming were replaced. Same goes for firearms shot impacts, depending on material they hit. Blood effect was added as well, will be adjusted to the siz |
| Fix 0.50.003 | 2022-07-13 | Hi, pushed fix 0.50.003 last weekend. Unfortunately had to remove Nanite as it does not support materials used with foliage and water which game map consists mostly off. Fixed motion of several animals - turtles, rabbits, frogs. Working on replacement and new VFX based on Niagara System for Unreal Engine 5.0, as game uses previous soon to be deprecated VFX system Cascade. Also planning to replace some fishes - manta, stingray with new with better animations. Thank you for your understanding. Have fun Juraj |