Happy New Year from All of Us Here at Core Keeper!
Welcome to 2023! We’re very excited to ring in the new year with such an amazing community, and we hope you’re all looking forward to what this year will bring for Core Keeper.
You can expect a new roadmap from us this year, with details on the Crystal Biome and beyond! You’ll also be pleased to know that our seasonal events will be recurring throughout 2023, and we miiiight just add some new content to these if the opportunity presents itself. Though we can’t say much at the moment, we can assure you that there’ll be plenty to look forward to over the coming months, so keep an eye out for news and updates in the Steam announcements – as well as over on our Twitter and Discord channels.
You can probably tell that we’re raring to go full steam ahead into the New Year, but we also think it’s important to take the time to look back and reflect on what a great year 2022 was for us. Here are our highlights!
Launching Core Keeper in Early Access in March:
This was an amazing moment for us, and it was made all the more special by the fact that we already had a dedicated community waiting for the game. From testing and open alphas, all the way to our very first public demo, we were so very grateful for your support as we brought the game into Early Access.
Our First Seasonal Event at Easter:
We had our very first seasonal event not long after our Early Access launch, and this was a fantastic learning opportunity for us. The Easter Seasonal Event lasted for just two weeks and, originally, we had planned for the eggs from our egg hunt to disappear from the world when the event ended.
Thanks to your feedback, we soon realised that it’d be much more fun if certain items from seasonal events remained in the game for you to enjoy year ‘round. We also realised that time-locking seasonal events wasn’t ideal for Explorers who were busy or unavailable during the event windows, and we set the plans in motion to change this for our next seasonal event.
Our First Major Update – The Sunken Sea:
After Easter (and a little work adding dedicated servers to the game), we were ready to bring you our first major update: The Sunken Sea! With a vast ocean and mystical sub-biome just waiting to be discovered, you set off in brand-new boats to battle the likes of Morpha the Aquatic Mass and Omoroth the Sea Titan. We added so much new content to the game for this update, including Portals, Sprinklers, the Dresser mechanic, map markers, new food, new enemies, new music, and more!
Cozy Caverns:
We knew there’d be a little time before our next seasonal event and a little more before our next major update, so we wanted to bring you some fun, decorative content in the interim! Our Cozy Caverns update included lots of new and paintable items, and we added mechanics that would allow you to paint existing items such as rugs, dressers, and pedestals.
We added new mechanics such as the ability for players to sit on objects like chairs, stools, thrones, and (of course) the Caveling Toilet. We also had lots of requests for an update that would allow players to place Torches on walls, and Cozy Caverns seemed like the perfect opportunity to introduce this. It was a joy to see all the ways you got creative with this update.
Terraria Crossover:
We’ve always admired the team over at Re-Logic, and our community had long been asking if there was ever going to be a Core Keeper and Terraria crossover. Well, in September 2022, we were beyond excited to bring King Slime to the world of Core Keeper and to see Caveling Pets as a feature in Terraria!
Our Halloween Seasonal Event:
Things got super spooky in the underground in October when we introduced our second seasonal event for Halloween. We added creepy variations to our enemies, introducing the Dracularva, Spookavelings, Frankenbrutes, and Pumpkings to the game – plus an extra-scary variation on The Hive Mother! We also introduced new equipment and cosmetics, such as the Pumpkin Lantern and Spooky Blanket Cape (because who doesn’t want to dress up as a ghost, right?). Our creepy enemies were dropping some interesting Halloween loot including delicious candy and Grumpkin seeds!
We also updated the way seasonal events worked so that, once a seasonal event has launched, players can activate it at any time by changing their PC’s time and date settings to the window within which the event was running.
Our Second Major Update – The Desert of Beginnings:
After adding so much new content to the game for The Sunken Sea, we were extra proud to be able to bring you even more for our second major update: The Desert of Beginnings. In this update, players were invited to comb the desert sands and battle their way through The Molten Quarry in search of new valuables that would help them in their battle against Ra-Akar the Sand Titan.
You upgraded your equipment with out-of-this-world Galaxite Ore, fought your way past six new enemies, stomped on new critters like beetles and worms, improved your circuitry skills, uncovered new fish, and crafted your very first Go-Karts! And that barely scratches the surface of all the wonderful ways we’ve seen Explorers enjoying The Desert of Beginnings.
Our Christmas Seasonal Event:
As the year drew to a close, we knew we wanted to bring something special to wrap things up (pun intended). Our Christmas Seasonal Event began on the 13th of December, turning the underground into a winter wonderland. A blanket of snow covered certain biomes and enemies got new, festive variations – some of which were almost too adorable to kill. We added a new Seasonal Merchant, as well as lots of new cosmetic and decorative items to the game. Oh, and we added fireworks too!
This felt like the perfect note to end the year on, and we’re looking forward to recurring seasonal events, the Crystal Biome, and more in 2023!
Merry Christmas from Pugstorm and Fireshine Games
Merry Christmas from the Pugstorm and Fireshine Games teams! We hope you’re all having a lovely time, Explorers – whether you celebrate Christmas or are just enjoying a little break from school/work/responsibilities while everything relaxes over the holiday season.
We can’t believe how quickly 2022 has gone by. It feels like only yesterday that we launched Core Keeper in Early Access, and here we are with two major updates and a handful of smaller/seasonal ones under our belts. We couldn’t have done it without your amazing feedback, and we are truly grateful for such a wonderful community.
We sure hope you’re enjoying the festive version of the underground in our Christmas Seasonal Event, which will be running all the way until the 5th of January. We know how busy things get over Christmas, which is why we want to remind you that you can experience our seasonal events at any time after they’ve launched by either…
Changing the time and date of your PC to the window within which the event was running.
Opening your Steam library, right-clicking Core Keeper, clicking on Properties…, then entering “-season Christmas” in the LAUNCH OPTIONS field at the bottom of the General tab of the menu.
We’re off to eat lots of delicious food, play games, spend time with friends and family, and be merry, and we hope you’ll be doing the same today. Once again, Merry Christmas, and we’ll see you in the New Year!
We’re Getting Ready for Christmas
Merry Christmas, Explorers! We hope you’ve all had an amazing year – we know we have. It’s getting to the time where we start winding down for some well-earned rest as we approach the end of 2022, and the Pugstorm team is looking forward to lots of festive fun over the Christmas period.
CEO and Creative Director, Fredrik, will be heading up to Northern Sweden to celebrate Christmas with his parents and to go skiing!
COO and Development Director, Sven, will be having a magical time meeting up with relatives in a cottage in the woods! Each member of his family will be going out and getting their own Christmas tree, and, of course, there’s also Swedish fika and grilling sausages.
Lead Artist and Art Director, Julian, is also going to meet relatives this year, but he’s looking forward to shutting himself in and getting cosy with some video games and books.
And Max, our Lead Programmer and Technical Director, hasn’t quite finalised his plans yet, but spending time with family and friends (and enjoying lots of good food!) is definitely on the cards.
Pugstorm has also been expanding a little in 2022, with new programmers and artists joining the team, and we even managed to take a team photo at our julbord (a traditional, Scandinavian Christmas feast!).
We hope you’re enjoying the Core Keeper Christmas Seasonal event and that you all have a lovely holiday season. You should definitely keep an eye on our Twitter channel for lots of exciting Christmas activity throughout December.
Hotfix 0.5.1.2
Bug Fixes:
- A fix has been implemented for the problem of plants appearing broken during growth.
Hotfix Patch - 0.5.1.1
Hotfix Patch - 0.5.1.1
- Fix character and world metadata files being reset when updating to 0.5.1 with incoming Steam Cloud changes.
Hi Explorers, we understand that some of you have been having issues with characters disappearing after updating the game for the Christmas Seasonal Event. We wanted to let you know that we’ve just rolled out a hotfix that should prevent this from happening from now on.
If You've Been Affected By This Issue, Read Below...
You may be able to recover your characters by following the suggestions below:
Please note you will need your Steam ID for this, which can be found by opening the Steam client, clicking your profile picture in the upper-right, and clicking “Account Details”. Your Steam ID should be listed at the top of the page, beneath the title.
1. Ensure the game is closed. Then, backup your game saves by navigating to the below location and creating a copy of the folder there (we recommend saving this folder elsewhere on your machine such as your desktop or documents folder for now).
WINDOWS: C:\Users\\AppData\LocalLow\Pugstorm\Core Keeper\Steam\ Or %appdata%\..\LocalLow\Pugstorm\Core Keeper\Steam\
2. Launch the game and delete any reset characters by clicking on “Settings” > “Delete Progress Options” > “Delete Characters Menu”.
3. Close and then restart the game.
Core Keeper is still in the Early Access stages of development and, unfortunately, issues with save data like this can sometimes occur. We’d like to thank you for your patience and understanding while we work on this.
We Want Your Feedback on Some Potential Changes to Ancient Coins in Core Keeper
Hi Explorers, we're always keen to hear your feedback when we're thinking about making changes to the way certain mechanics work in Core Keeper. Recently, we've been considering a small adjustment to the way Ancient Coins work in-game, and we wanted to know your thoughts.
At the moment, you can sell several different items to the Merchants in Core Keeper in exchange for Ancient Coins. We are proposing an adjustment to this mechanic so that the only items you can sell to Merchants in exchange for Ancient Coins would be Valuables going forward.
We believe this change would help to balance the in-game economy when it comes to Ancient Coins and that it would make the items marked as "Valuables" more impactful. We would like to know if this is something the community feels favourable toward or opposed to, and we'd also like to hear any feedback you might have on this proposal.
You can let us know what you think by filling out this short, anonymous survey here.
Please note that this survey is the only medium we will be using to collate data on community sentiment regarding this proposal, so if you want to share an opinion, please make sure to submit it using the form we linked to above.
Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with us, and we look forward to hearing what you think!
Core Keeper – Christmas Seasonal Event – 0.5.1.0
New Content
New Features
The Winter Holiday is here! Certain objects and biomes have now become covered in snow, including The Core and boss statues. This snow is temporary and will melt away after the seasonal event.
Seasonal Merchant. Put a Calendar in a comfortable room and he will come and visit you. The Calendar can be crafted in the Carpenter’s Table.
Little Helperlings. Feed them cooked food and they will craft you presents! Acquired from the Seasonal Merchant by trading Cookies & Milk.
Christmas variants for enemies:
- Slime Blobs have become Snowhead Slimes.
- Red Slime Blobs have become Carrot Slimes.
- Shroomans have become Santa Shroomans.
- Caveling Miners have become Gingerbreadlings.
- Caveling Shamans have become Starwand Shamans.
- Caveling Brutes have become Bakery Brutes.
New items
Christmas Workbench, craft decorations and furniture to bring Christmas into your home. Acquired from the Seasonal Merchant by trading Cookies & Milk. 17 new decorations and furniture.
17 new decorations and furniture.
New consumables:
- Hot Chocolate.
- Hot Punch.
- Winter Cookies.
- Fruit Bread
- Winter Dinner.
New equipment and weapons:
- Snowball.
- Snowman Hat
- Festive Hat.
- Gingerbreadman Head.
- Gingerbread Hood.
- Gingerbread Top.
- Gingerbread Pants.
New figurines (the following figurines have a chance to drop in addition to the normal figurines from the enemies, meaning that the normal versions are not replaced during the Christmas event. The new figurines can also drop from Luxury Winter Presents):
- Snowhead Slime Figurine.
- Carrot Slime Figurine.
- Santa Shrooman Figurine.
- Gingerbreadling Figurine.
- Starwand Shaman Figurine.
- Bakery Brute Figurine.
5 new valuables.
Fireworks to celebrate New Year's Eve (or any other occasion) Comes in several colors and there’s a big one too! Can be crafted at the Christmas Workbench or acquired from Luxury Winter Presents.
GAMEPLAY CHANGES
Quality-of-Life
Merchants can now teleport into a room even when any player is nearby or in that room. Note that a Merchant won’t teleport while someone is currently very close to or interacting with the Merchant at its current location.
The light on electricity wires now visually reaches one tile less while still powering electricity buildings at the same distance. This makes it clearer since everything connected to a lit wire will be powered.
Art and animation:
Increased the visibility of particles from healing, poisoned or other similar effects
Added particle effects when walking on Slippery Ground Slime.
Players now snore when sleeping.
Audio:
Added honking sound effects for each type of Go-Kart.
New unique damage & destroy sound effects for grass, clay, stone, hive and turf walls.
The slime footstep sound effect now plays when walking on all types of Ground Slime.
Balancing:
Increased the drop chance of Oracle Card "Brilliance" from Ancient Crates and it can now also drop from the Large Ancient Crates.
Increased the duration of immunity buffs from cooked Blister Head, Yellow Blister Head and Rot Fish to be five minutes.
Increased the duration of the movement speed increase from cooked Spirit Veil to be two minutes.
Reduced amount of Fireflies that spawn in the Desert of Beginnings biome.
Other:
Pressure Plates are now placed on the same height as Circuits, meaning that they will appear beneath flooring and rugs.
Fixed typos in some item & condition descriptions.
Polished colors that some golden crops give when cooked as food.
Healing from sleeping in bed heals a percentage of player hp every second instead of a set amount.
Removed map colors for hoed & watered Dirt Ground.
Added a buff icon for immune to burning.
Remove encryption from character save files.
Can start the game with a specific seasonal event enabled by running the game with the -season argument.
Bug Fixes:
Fixed a bug where Ore Boulders could spawn inside Obsidian Walls in the Desert Biome.
Fixed a bug where the players own map marker would just be white instead of their corresponding color.
Bomb Scarabs and Lava Butterflies no longer fly through walls placed on bridges.
Players can no longer sometimes traverse through bridges with fences while riding a boat.
Fixed a bug where items in max stack sizes could not be picked up in the inventory UI while holding the same item in the mouse.
Fixed a bug where players could get cooking skill and additional food from the Cooking Pot without actually taking out the food from the Cooking Pot while holding the same food in the mouse. This would only occur if the total amount of the held food or the food in the Cooking Pot would be at max stack size.
Fixed a bug where the output of buildings like Cooking Pots and Furnaces could be hot swapped with ingredients or ores causing unintended behavior.
Fixed a bug where roots could grow on Sand Ground but not on Grass Ground.
Fixed floating wall/floor cracks in suboptimal network conditions.
Fixed incorrect button prompt for reflections setting in Video Settings.
Fixed large scenes like the racing track spawning incorrectly in some cases.
Fixed Electricity Sticks being able to power buildings. It should only affect Logic Circuits.
Fixed some cases of path finding acting up when seeing the player through gaps in smaller colliders like roots and fences.
Fixed a bug where hitting larger objects such as tables would sometimes instead damage the floor, Rugs, or other similar objects beneath it instead.
Fixed a bug where Root Plants would stop growing after being completely blocked and unblocked again.
Fixed electricity wires lighting up when placed on top of Ancient Electricity tiles.
It’s Time for the Core Keeper Christmas Seasonal Event
As we get further and further into winter time, the days are getting colder and the nights are getting longer. Honestly, it just looks like an excuse to wrap up warm, grab yourself a mug of hot chocolate, and indulge in a marathon session of Core Keeper. We hope you’ll be rejoicing with us today as we launch our Christmas Seasonal Event!
What is the Core Keeper Christmas Seasonal Event?
Alongside our content updates, we’ve also been bringing the Core Keeper community seasonal events since our Early Access launch. Our first-ever seasonal event was for Easter, which was followed by Halloween, and now we’re pleased to be bringing you something Christmas-themed!
We’ve added a whole host of Christmas content for you to enjoy, and you can expect parts of the underground to be covered in a layer of snow this year as things cool down, as well as lots of seasonal variants of some of your favourite enemies. From snowmen Slimes to Shroomen with Santa hats, the Christmas versions of these enemies might just be too adorable to battle!
It wouldn’t be Christmas without Christmas trees, and you’ll be able to craft these and lots more festive furniture at the new Christmas workbench. If that doesn’t leave you feeling like Father Christmas, then maybe the addition of Caveling Elves called “Little Helperlings” might. These friendly Cavelings have been infused with the spirit of Christmas, and they love nothing more than crafting presents.
You’ll also be able to enjoy new food, game mechanics, and cosmetic items throughout the event – because who doesn’t want to take part in a snowball fight while dressed as a gingerbread man, are we right? Oh, and we’ve even added fireworks to the game so that you can celebrate the New Year with a bang! There’s plenty for you to uncover, and we encourage you to jump right into the game and check all the new content out for yourselves.
How Long will the Core Keeper Christmas Seasonal Event Run for?
The Core Keeper Christmas Seasonal Event will run from December 13th 2022 all the way to January 5th 2023!
That being said, all of our seasonal events run based on the time and date of the PC you’re playing on. This means that, from the day that they are launched, players have the option to access seasonal events at any time by changing the time/date settings on their computers. After listening to your community feedback, we decided to implement this mechanic so that, if you have to miss a seasonal event for any reason (or if you want to go back and relive the magic) you’ll still be able to access that content at any point.
Let us know what you think of our new seasonal event over on the Core Keeper Discord, which now has spaces for our Chinese, Japanese, and Korean-speaking Explorers! You can also follow us on Twitter here for lots of Christmas activity across December.
Announcing the Core Keeper Christmas Seasonal Event Date
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, and you know what that means – it’s nearly time for another Core Keeper seasonal event. The Pugstorm and Fireshine teams are feeling extra jolly right now, so it feels like the perfect time to announce the date for our Christmas plans…
The Core Keeper Christmas seasonal event will go live on Tuesday the 13th of December 2022 and run up until January 5th 2023.
That’s just over three weeks of festive fun coming your way. While we think it’s super fun to experience seasonal events in real-time, you might be pleased to know that we recently changed the way seasonal events work to account for busy Explorers. From the moment they launch, seasonal events will run based on the time and date of your PC. This means that if you can’t play Core Keeper during the time period that an event is running, you can always change the date/time on your PC and access the in-game content that way. Huzzah!
What to Expect in the Core Keeper Christmas Seasonal Event
You can expect things to get very merry in the underground. With seasonal variations on enemies, new cosmetic and decorative items, seasonal snacks, environmental changes, some new mechanics (we cant wait for you to meet the Little Helperlings!), and more, we’re sure you’ll feel like Christmas has come early come launch day.
If you just can’t wait until the day of the event, then check out the screenshot below for a little preview of what’s coming:
We’ve got lots of Christmas activity coming your way on the Core Keeper Twitter channel too, so make sure you’re following and keep an eye out for even more sneak peeks at our Christmas seasonal event. Don’t forget to join our Discord too if you’d like to meet your fellow Explorers, team up for online multiplayer, and discuss the lore of the underground.
Nominate Core Keeper for the "Better with Friends" Steam Award!
Nominations have just opened for The Steam Awards 2022, and we’d love your support! We’re exceptionally proud of Core Keeper’s multiplayer functionality and we hope we can count on your vote for the “Better with Friends” category this year.
Nominate Core Keeper for the “Better with Friends” award using the button above or at the link here.
We announced Core Keeper way back in 2021, sharing our vision for the game and welcoming a community of prospective Explorers to our Steam Discussions, Discord, and Twitter. From that moment, we were committed to involving the community in the development of the game as much as possible to ensure it was something you’d be excited to play when we launched in Early Access in March 2022.
We knew we wanted Core Keeper to support multiplayer since day one, and our dream was to give you the opportunity to explore a vast underground world with a whole team of friends, working together to mine, build, craft, fight, farm, fish, and uncover the secrets of The Core. To that end, we developed the game to be able to support up to 8 people in online multiplayer.
We went on to add our backgrounds feature, allowing players to specialise in certain skills so that players could all contribute to the team in different ways during multiplayer. Of course, that didn’t stop some of you setting out with a team of 8 chefs (which is equally as cool when you think about it!).
Throughout the game’s early development, the community asked time and time again if Core Keeper would ever support dedicated servers. Truth be told, this was something we had on our radar for a long time, but your feedback motivated us to ensure this was something we’d bring to the game as soon as possible. Not long after our Early Access launch, we invited you to help us test a dedicated-server solution, and shortly after that we officially launched dedicated-server functionality for Core Keeper.
We love hearing stories about players uncovering the secrets of our ancient underground world together, taking on our Titan bosses in teams, and working together to build elaborate bases. Whether you’re playing online (player-hosted) multiplayer or combing the underground on your very own dedicated server, exploration with friends has always been at the heart of Core Keeper, and that’s why we hope you’ll nominate us for the “Better with Friends” award this year.
