5 PvP Challenges You Can Play in Core Keeper Right Now
We added player vs player (PvP) combat to Core Keeper at 1.0, and it’s been an absolute blast hearing about all the fun and creative ways you’ve been using it to cause chaos in your games! Our community manager has also been spending a lot of time thinking about all the wonderful ways that PvP can be enjoyed in the game, and we’ve worked together to come up with a list of 5 PvP challenges that you can play in Core Keeper with your friends (or should we say ‘enemies’?) right now.
Last Explorer Standing
This challenge works best with a group of 4+ players – the more the merrier – and requires a little bit of setup from the host. You’ll need to create your very own battle arena where you’ll fight to the death using a selection of predetermined weapons and armour. Think 'The Hunger Games', but on a much smaller scale. The rules are simple: players cannot leave the arena unless they are killed (you may want to build a spectator’s area for people who have died but want to watch the rest of the battle). The last Explorer standing is the winner!
The base rules can then be expanded upon for extra fun. For example, you could all use fresh characters with the same backgrounds to ensure nobody starts with an advantage. You could bring pets into the mix. You could even hide extra weapons, armour, and healing items within the arena to give players an edge (so long as they don’t get killed while equipping anything). This is one to make your own, and we’d love to see what you come up with!
Labyrinth of DEATH
There are plenty of labyrinths that spawn naturally in Core Keeper that could be modified for this challenge. You could also build a labyrinth from scratch and add your very own traps, twists, and terrors! The premise is simple: each player starts completely unarmed at a different entry point to the labyrinth and, from here, it’s a rush to find a weapon, make it to the centre to collect a designated ‘trophy’ item (we recommend a figurine), and make it back out.
During the labyrinth’s construction, chests containing weapons, potions, and other equipment can be hidden throughout – alongside traps and enemies to make things more exciting. Players can choose to fight anybody they come across or make a dash for the centre. The player who makes it out of the labyrinth with the figurine is considered the winner. We recommend building the labyrinth’s walls using Obsidian blocks in creative mode or setting a no-block-breaking rule to keep things fair.
Battle on the High Seas
Avast ye, me hearties. Weigh anchor and hoist the mizzen! Sorry, we got excited thinking about ocean-based combat. This challenge is perfect for groups of all sizes, whether it’s 1v1, 4v4, or even 1v7 (if you’re feeling brave!). Players split into teams and take to the ocean in boats for a ranged battle where one team will reign victorious. We recommend team members dress in the same clothes/armour so they’re easily identifiable and that you agree upon a selection of ranged weapons to use before combat begins. You can open this battle up to the entire ocean, but you might want to section off an area so it’s easier to cross paths. How you decide the winner is up to you, though we think the last Explorer alive works for deciding the winning team.
Capture the ‘Flag’
This challenge works well across a larger portion of the map. You could even run it across an entire biome, though we do recommend marking the play zone with certain blocks so that nobody accidentally wanders off. Small bases are constructed at either end of the play zone (with beds) and these bases contain 2x pedestals. One pedestal should have an item such as a figurine to act as that base’s ‘flag’ and the other should be empty. The players then split into two teams, each travelling to opposing bases where they can set their spawn points and prepare for combat.
The goal is to capture the other team’s flag (i.e., the item atop their pedestal), bring it back to your base, and place it on the empty pedestal. Players that die can respawn as many times as they want – the game is only over when an enemy flag is captured and placed atop a pedestal. The first team to capture the other team’s flag wins! As always, starting equipment and any additional rules, parameters, and traps are up to you.
Hide and Slay
A fun challenge where one Explorer acts as a seeker and the rest hide. This is very much a one-player vs everyone else battle, but you could alter the rules so that anyone can attack anyone if you’re feeling chaotic. This challenge starts in a “safe zone” at the Core, and the hiders have a short amount of time (30s to 1 min) to travel on foot and hide somewhere across the map. It’s up to you whether you want to allow them to break/place blocks or if you’d prefer it if they hide in plain sight. Once an Explorer has hidden, they are not allowed to move from their hiding place until the seeker has found them.
The seeker then sets off to find as many of the other Explorers as they can within a certain time frame (we recommend 5 minutes for your first time playing). Once a hider is found, the seeker must attempt to slay them and the hider can attempt to run back to the “safe zone” at the Core! If the seeker manages to find and slay everybody, they win, but if there are any hiders left hidden or in the “safe zone” when the clock runs out, they are considered the winners. Play around with the time limits on this one or add hiding parameters (“must not cross water/caverns”, for example) to mix things up and find a version that works for you!
All of these PvP challenges can be augmented to suit your needs, so don’t be afraid to edit rules, add traps, and set parameters to make things more exciting. Your imagination is the limit here, but we hope these will get you started on a fun, multiplayer activity you can enjoy when you’re not exploring the underground or battling bosses!
Oh, and did we mention that we now support map uploads to our official mod hosting platform? So, if you build anything you’re particularly proud of, you can share it with your fellow Explorers! Finally, if you’re looking for players to team up with, don’t forget that we have an LFG-matchmaking channel over on our official community Discord.
Hotfix 1.0.0.8
Roots no longer continue spawning in explored areas in the crystal biome.
Environmental objects will no longer continue to spawn right next to the world edge.
Fixed an issue where objects would not be rendered after the player was killed by a hydra boss.
Community Wrap Up: 12th September 2024
Another beautiful week has gone by and things have been as busy as ever with the Core Keeper community! We hope our friends in the Northern Hemisphere are all keeping warm as autumn sets in and that the shorter days just mean longer nights cozied up playing video games 😉 Also, not to be those guys but...we've just realised that it's Friday the 13th! 😱
Seasonal Events Re-Cap!
With all these new Explorers navigating the underground, we wanted to give you a little re-cap on seasonal events in Core Keeper. Seasonal events are themed events that activate in-game at certain times of year! We've currently got 7 seasonal events in the game. These are Lunar New Year, Valentine's, Core Keeper's Anniversary, Cherry Blossom Season, Easter, Halloween, and Christmas.
During seasonal events, you might notice subtle changes to the way the underground looks. From variations on enemies and bosses, all the way to new loot, drops, craftables, and Merchants! For example, you'll be able to find Love Letters on the ground during Valentine's. Missed a seasonal event? Don't worry! You don't have to wait all year for it to come around again. You can activate any seasonal event at any time of year by toggling them in the Gameplay Settings menu. You can switch them off entirely too, if they're not your thing.
Fullmetal Alchemist
Fullmetal Alchemist
Clay Caves Fact File
Following on from our info on the Dirt Biome, we shared a fact file on the Clay Caves this week, which you can check out on X. This living biome is full of bugs, Slimes, and primitive Cavelings, but you'll almost certainly need to travel here if you want to stock up on Tin Ore...
Autumn Vibes
Are you feeling those cozy autumn vibes yet?
Aminala's Scenes
Twitch streamer, Aminala, has been having a fun time stumbling upon Core Keeper's secrets and scenes! How many of you have come across one of these bad boys yet?
🐺♪ Ⓣⓤⓡⓑⓞ ♪🐺's Map Art
We love the adorable character art on this map!
Sylveo 🦋's Flower Base
Introducing "The Florarium", a rainbow flower inspired base by Sylveo!
"Hey, you wanna help out a bit?"
"Nah, I'm good- thanks for asking though", FusPanDah's artwork goes out to all the base mums/dads of the group!
Hi there, Explorers! We hope you’re all having a great time in Core Keeper and that you’re enjoying all the new content, features, and secrets in the underground. We’ve been very grateful for all your feedback as we settle into 1.0 and address some of the bugs and stability issues you’ve been reporting. If you’ve got anything to report to us, you can do so via our bug report from here.
While we cannot personally respond to each individual report, we do read every single one and we are spending a lot of time investigating issues and working on patches to address these. With that in mind, we wanted to take this opportunity to give you an idea of some of the key issues we’re aiming to address in the immediate future.
Please note that this is not a comprehensive list of everything we’re working on, it’s just a quick snapshot of some of the more pressing issues we’re looking into. We take all of your bug reports seriously and are working hard to address them. Any information you can provide on these issues is extremely valuable to us and will help us in our investigations. The details you provide along with the save files and logs you submit are very useful when it comes to helping us replicate these bugs, so please feel free to make your own bug report if you are experiencing any of the issues outlined below (or any issues in general, actually!).
Snapshot of What We’re Working On
The Maps Ain’t Mapping: There seems to still be an issue with maps becoming intertwined after deleting and recreating worlds in the same slot. This was partially addressed in the 1.0.0.6 stability patch, but we’ll be investigating this further to ensure your maps are mapping.
Cartography Table Crashes: The Cartography table is causing game crashes, which is not conducive to exploration.
Cutscene Crashes: We’ve had some reports of the game crashing right after the intro cutscene, preventing Explorers from starting new adventures.
Invisible Items: Some placeable items are becoming invisible after the player dies/respawns. We’d all love to be able to turn invisible, but no item should have that much power!
Surprise Spawns: Some items are respawning when the player quits/enters the same world after being previously broken, like natural wood roots, grass, and similar items. It goes without saying that these aren’t surprise gifts from a secret admirer and this shouldn’t be happening.
Enemy Spawns: Enemies are unintentionally spawning outside of enclosed rooms when their spawners are inside. This is enough to give anybody agoraphobia and it's not intended at all!
Smithing Skill Issue: The Blacksmith skill is currently not working properly. The skill is supposed to decrease the amount of ingredients required to repair items and craft items in the anvil, but it currently only decreases the amount that's visible in the crafting recipe, while still using the original (non-discounted) amount of said recipe.
Dodo Starvation: Dodos aren't eating bugs/critters from the ground. These guys are really determined to go extinct again, huh?
The Power of Music: Music Doors (and other doors) sometimes don’t work after being opened. We’ll be fine-tuning (get it?) these ASAP.
The issues outlined here are some of the more impactful bugs we’ve had reported, and we feel it’s important that you know we’re working on these. This does not mean that we are not working through other issues that you have submitted to us via the bug report form.
If you’ve reported an issue that isn’t listed above, fear not! We are working through each and every bug report that we receive, and we’ll be addressing these in due course. It might just be that your issue requires a little more investigation so that we can ensure we’re working on an appropriate fix. That’s why we’re so grateful for your bug reports, especially when they contain save files that we can use to investigate bugs further, so please keep sending us these (even for known issues like the ones listed above).
Thank you for your support, we’re putting a lot of work into addressing these issues and developing the game beyond 1.0, and we can’t wait to share more info on what we’ve got planned for future content updates soon!
Hotfix 1.0.0.7
Fix multiplayer not being available if Google DNS is not reachable by ping.
Mana regeneration is updated more frequently and with the correct amount.
Deep pool talent should now correctly affect mana regeneration delay.
Patch notes 1.0.0.6
Game balance:
Doubled the lifespan of minions.
Reduced the mana cost of minions.
Reduced the time it takes to combine Crystal Skull Shards.
Reduced the cost of the Giant Slime, Ghorm and Hive Mother summoning idols.
Reduced the effect of slippery movement.
Improved boat and vehicle handling.
Performance:
Detecting which circuit elements need to update each tick is now much more efficient and runs on multiple threads if available. This can give a significant performance boost in worlds with very large circuitry setups.
Fixed a bug that caused the entire game world to get loaded when entering a world, instead of only loading parts that are nearby to an active player. For large worlds, this fix both improves performance in the moments after the world is loaded, and reduces the memory requirements while the world is open.
Bug fixes:
Enemies and objects are now correctly marked as destroyed if they reach zero health just as they are about to get unloaded because they are too far from any active player. This would previously cause several issues, including invulnerable enemies and ore boulders flashing on/off after having their resources exhausted.
Fixed an issue where worm-like enemies couldn’t be hit while their head was inside a wall.
Starting a session with crossplay enabled should no longer decrease the audio quality when a bluetooth headset is in use.
Scrolling through the hotbar is now disabled while quick-swapping to a torch, to avoid unintentionally rearranging items on the hotbar.
The Glurch waypoint no longer spawns within view of The Core.
The client now correctly predicts health after damaging walls, which previously could cause a visual glitch where the player was inside the wall for a few frames.
Fixed an issue where pets would not gain experience from range player attacks.
Fixed an issue where pets would not gain experience from minion attacks.
Amoeba bombs no longer cause double explosion effects.
Hatching an egg no longer shows the wrong inventory sprite for one frame.
Leashes no longer go crazy when the player teleports using the rift offhand item or enters a minecart.
Dynamite explosions now chain correctly.
Dynamite Packs no longer drop several times after being destroyed by Ghorm.
Fixed mannequin position glitch.
Stone Turrets no longer spawn facing the wall in desert mazes.
Entering the game while guest mode is active no longer makes the player immune to damage.
Players added as admins no longer have inventory restrictions when guest mode is active.
Dropped items are no longer attracted to guests while guest mode is active.
Connecting with a new character to a server with guest mode enabled no longer breaks the intro sequence.
Trying to recreate the game ID before the backend Playfab login was successful no longer causes an error.
Fixed an error when a client got disconnected while the player stats window was open.
Added missing UI when receiving certain network errors.
Fixed a bug where the connection error popup sometimes would not be displayed.
Fixed a crash when trying to place some invalid objects.
The Great Wall no longer reappears in some very old classic worlds.
The Tome of the Dead item description no longer incorrectly claims that minions are targetable.
Doors now correctly revert to their open/closed state if it is mispredicted by the client.
Switching from mouse to gamepad while in a menu no longer leaves the menu with no selected option.
Cattle are no longer visually behind the Feeding Tray when eating.
Sledge hammers are now affected by the self-mending alloy skill.
Fix some mods making the game unable to start.
Steady Feet talent now correctly reduces slippery movement.
Pets and minions now correctly attack vulnerable hydra bosses
Removed loot drop delay from destroying single hit objects and enemies.
Other:
The game audio now keeps playing if the game window loses focus, except when using the non-borderless fullscreen display option.
Fixed several text and translation issues.
Dedicated servers now accept general text as world seeds. They are treated identically to the seed you specify when creating a world in the normal game client.
Updated dedicated server README with instructions for creating a world with custom world generation parameters.
Community Wrap-Up: 6th September 2024
Howdy there, Explorers! How are you all finding 1.0? We've loved hearing your feedback across X and Discord and you might have noticed a couple of patches from us recently to address some pesky bugs. Remember, you can always submit any game issues you're having to us here and we'll look into addressing them ASAP. Now, let's see what our community has been up to this week.
Core Keeper: Volume 2 Out Now on Spotify!
Volume 2 of our awesome soundtrack, composed by the talented Jonathan Geer, is available to listen to on Spotify here! We're so happy to have our music featured on this platform and, if you haven't listened to volume 1 yet, you can check it out here.
Not the Boreworms!
Can you tell that our community manager has been spending too much time on TikTok?
Dirt Biome Fact File
We shared a fact file on the Dirt Biome for all you new Explorers just starting your adventures in the underground! It's the first biome you'll encounter and, arguably, the safest. You can read the full fact file on X here.
Fishing Fans, We Hear You!
We know fans of the old fishing minigame were a little let down to see this removed at 1.0. We've listened to your feedback and we're pleased to announce that we'll be adding this back in as an optional feature in a future patch as an interim solution while we look into ways to improve upon fishing for everyone!
Hartcore
Did you know that 'Hartcore' was one of the names we considered for Core Keeper? Here's a piece of concept art that our lead artist, Julian, created with this name in mind!
Fan art by Knomz095
Returning Core Keeper player, Knomz095, shared this awesome fan art with us on X. We love seeing our pixel-art game re-created in, well, even more pixel-art glory!
Best Backgrounds?
What do you think of this article on the best Core Keeper backgrounds? Is your favourite listed? Let us know if you agree/disagree in the comments!
Be Still Our Hearts!
Our hearts nearly skipped a beat when we saw this awesome in-game artwork, created by 에카들!
Marzipan's Favourite Outfit
Discord user, Marzipan, shared this wicked cool artwork they created of their favourite pre-1.0 outfit in Core Keeper! Is it just us or does this Explorer look like a superhero?!
The host is no longer disconnected from their locally hosted single player world if they lose their internet connection.
Record-Breaking Community Wrap-Up: 30th August 2024
Hey there, Explorers, and welcome to our first-ever post-launch community wrap-up! It's hard to believe that Core Keeper released in 1.0 just three days ago, and we're feeling overjoyed with all the amazing love and support we've gotten from our fantastic community. This is a very special community-wrap up post for several reasons, including...
We Broke Our All-Time Concurrent Player Record!
Two years ago, during the first few days of our Early Access launch, Core Keeper hit its highest-ever player count and we've been itching to break that record ever since. Well, we're thrilled to announce that we absolutely smashed that record yesterday with a whopping 35,234 concurrent players in the game on Steam! We're so happy to see so many people playing Core Keeper at the same time, and we wonder if we'll see it grow any higher over the weekend?
The Reviews Are In
Things are off to a fantastic start for 1.0 with review scores like these! We want to say a big thank you to all the outlets that took the time to play and review Core Keeper and a huge thank you to our community. Core Keeper wouldn't be what it is today without your feedback, bug reports, and insights!
Party at Fireshine
The fine folks over at Fireshine Games (our publisher) celebrated the Core Keeper launch the right way...with plenty of cake! We have to admit, watching them cut into the Ghorm cake is a bit like watching someone decapitate your son, but we think it's awesome all the same. Here's to the future of Core Keeper!
Lotta PC and Xbox Players at Launch!
We asked you what platform you were playing Core Keeper on at launch. 77.4% of the people who responded on X were playing on PC, with 10% on Xbox, 5.5% on PlayStation 5, and 7% waiting for Core Keeper to launch on their platform. This feels like a good time to remind everybody that Core Keeper is coming to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in September!
Owlunae's Discord Emojis!
Our amazing community member, Owlunae, created over 50 emojis for us to use on Discord! They hosted a daily emote countdown to 1.0, giving the community the opportunity to vote on their favourites, but you loved all of them so much that we ended up uploading every single one! Here's two of our favourites, but you'll have to join our Discord to see the full set.
Beginner's Guide to Core Keeper
If you're brand-new to the underground at 1.0, then you might be wondering how best to get started. Well, our awesome Ambassador, Dakon, has got your back! Check out this ultimate beginner's guide to Core Keeper at 1.0!
Best Pets - Ultimate Guide
There are guides popping up all over the place now that we're in 1.0, and JadePG has released this fun guide to the best Pets in Core Keeper. We won't spoil the video, but let us know if you agree with their thoughts and what your favourite Pet is in the comments!
Delirya's Base
X user, Delirya, was kind enough to share this awesome base they created with us! It's hard to pick a favourite feature, but we know they really liked the little steam room they created in the top right!
The area-of-effect attack by the ??? boss now correctly deals damage instead of healing the player.
Fixed a bug where dedicated servers running classic worlds would generate obsidian instead of some tile types. Already affected terrain will repair itself after installing this update.
