Ground of your own

You get your own ground now. It's where you build, where you wake up, and where anyone who visits sees what you've made. It's also the second thing in Argos, after your backpack, that survives you closing the game.

Your ground

• There are eight on the map, one per player, so nobody wakes up where anybody else does.
• It saves when you place something, when you walk off it, and when you quit.
• Only what's inside something saves. The first furniture that holds things is here: a shelf, a shelf rack, a tool chest and a weapon rack. What sits in their slots saves with your ground; an axe left on the grass doesn't.
• Visitors can walk on and climb what you built, but can't place or take anything.
• A hide board shows your ground's name, which you write, and who holds it. It's where you invite somebody in or put them out.

You can let somebody build on your ground with you, across sessions and across rooms. One person holds it and can remove the other at any time. Accepting a share replaces the ground you had, so both sides get an ARE YOU SURE first.

Building

A half-built wall used to be a hologram and a number until the last log, when the whole thing appeared at once. Now every log you hand over turns one more course of the blueprint into real timber, from the ground up.

• The logs themselves are new: whole logs, long halves, short halves, quarters and blocks, and a log is a full meter long.
• You can build properly tall. Stacking straight up costs no support now; only reaching sideways does. A pillar down to the earth carries full support, and one standing on a deck carries what the deck had.
• A finished build stays quiet until you take the builder's mallet off the board, then shows its support and materials.
• With the mallet out, you can move and turn things you've already built instead of knocking them down. That includes campfires and craft tables.
• The craft table has a new model and now takes 8 side logs, 3 half logs, 8 sticks and 3 fiber.

Hunger speaks up

Hunger used to kill quietly: you started losing health with no warning, and nobody looks at their arm while they're fishing.

Now, about a third full, there's a low growl only you can hear and a small yellow GETTING HUNGRY. Nearly empty, the growl gets louder and it says YOU NEED TO EAT, every minute until you do. At zero it says STARVING, so the health you lose isn't a mystery.

It's also much slower: about twenty-one minutes from full to starving, where it used to be eleven. Food is worth what it was; it just carries you twice as far.

Smaller changes

• Leaves are just a picture now: players, spiders, arrows and rocks pass through a canopy, and only the trunk can be chopped.
• Quick-slot items ride at full size on the outside of your pack.
• Logs in your backpack were sometimes not saving. They save now.
• Shoot or spear another player and the arrow sticks where it hit and rides along until they pull it out. It does no damage.
• Turning your palm over no longer crumples the skin at your wrist.
• The screen stays black until you're actually standing on your own ground, headset settled.

Go and stake it out.