Beta Test - Delicious Beta now available!

[jambell]

Hello hunters!

Today we are opening up the Delicious Beta!

We hope you are ready to farm, freeze, and fight! Three major additions arrive in this beta: Farming and Cooking, the new Frost Power Family, and Frenzied Swarm in The Molded Grave.

• Farming and Cooking
  • Plant crops to gather materials from any region
  • Start runs with powerful meals
  • Meet Kuma and Glorabelle, your new members of camp!
• Frost Power Family
  • 17 new powers focused on battlefield control
  • Freeze enemies, create ice explosions, and turn the tide of battle
• The Molded Grave
  • Face Frenzied Swarm in an all-new Super Frenzy run
  • New Swarm boss weapons coming soon!
  • Rebalanced Super Frenzy difficulty in all locations for better progression

More details

Spoiler

Farming

We want to offer players more ways to progress beyond just winning runs. Farming represents a way to progress multiple goals at once, as well as enables progression without strictly requiring victory. Need materials from Nocturne Grove while working on Blisterbane Bog? Plant some Grove Crops in town and collect materials between runs!

But it doesn't end there -- when a Crop is harvested, it also drops a special ingredient unique to that Crop: for example, Bog Beans from Blisterbane Bog, Forest Squash from Great Rotwood Forest, or Ruins Wheat from Ruined Capital. These ingredients can be combined in town with the camp's new cook, Glorabelle. 

Cooking

Food that has been cooked using ingredients sourced from the Teffra-poisoned world of Rotwood still retains the powerful effects of Teffra. After you've cooked the Crops listed above and you've got some Sautéed Squash, Re-fried Bog Beans, or Crusty Artisan Bread, packing your lunch will let you start a run with the Power held within.

When you head out on a Hunt, you will automatically pack a to-go Lunch Box with all of your meals. Once you hop off the Damselfly, you can crack open your Lunch Box and choose your meal. You will immediately gain the Power contained within that meal before setting out, giving yourself a serious advantage to take on any threat.

Meals can provide Powers anywhere from the bread-and-butter Running Shoes, to the build-defining Attack Dice, or even starting off with the power of electricity through Static Shock. If you maintain a healthy and varied farm, you will have plenty of options at your disposal!

All of these features, from your farm to your lunch box, are available no matter where you play. Whether you're playing solo or in public games, you'll have access to all of your own stuff.

Frost Power Family

We all know that satisfying moment when a Shield Power saves you from a fatal blow, or when an Electric Power turns you into an unstoppable force of nature building massive hit streaks. But there's something special about watching an enemy slowly crystallize as frost creeps across their body.

Frost Powers aren't just about raw damage - they're about controlling the flow of combat. Maybe you'll throw snowballs while dodging, or create an icy prison around anyone who dares to hit you. Or maybe, you're storing up dozens of icicles to unleash on one unsuspecting foe all at once. Every frozen enemy becomes an opportunity, whether you're storing their damage for a devastating heavy attack or using them as makeshift armor to boost your defenses.

Whether you're creating chain reactions of frozen explosions or turning the battlefield into your personal winter wonderland, Frost Powers open up whole new ways to control the fight.

Frenzied Swarm and The Molded Grave

Equip your best acid-resistant gear, slot in those acid-resistant Gems and venture into The Molded Grave to defeat this formidable foe. The enhanced fight for Swarm has arrived, and they are not happy that you've interrupted their performance -- again. This brings us to four total Super Frenzies!

We've also done a bit of rebalancing to Super Frenzies to allow more types of players to have success in them, particularly in the earlier levels of Super Frenzy. Notably, the "No Freebies" modifier has been moved to a later Super Frenzy, Frenzied Boss damage output and health has been reduced, and to help you get there in the first place, Imbued enemies can now be interrupted by Heavy Attacks just like any other Rot.

We've also adjusted Super Frenzy maps to focus purely on combat, removing material rewards and meta progression rooms. Combined with the powerful effects of Food, these changes should help more players succeed in Super Frenzies - whether they're hunting for Boss Weapons or Imbuing their existing arsenal.

As always, your honest and direct feedback about your experiences is extremely useful and we look forward to hearing from you, wherever you prefer to provide that feedback. As our beta players, knowing what parts of the update you like and dislike before it reaches the live game is very valuable to us.

A special thank you for your work adding bugs to the bug tracker -- it is seen and appreciated. We have been heads down working on this update, but rest assured that the reports are seen and will be reached when time allows.

How to play

1. Close Rotwood if it is running.
2. In Steam, click on Library > Games.
3. Scroll down to Rotwood.
4. Right click, select Properties.
5. Go to the Betas tab.
6. In the dropdown, select the 'publicbeta' branch. (You may need to restart Steam to see this branch)
7. In that same properties window, go to the Installed Files tab.
8. Click Verify integrity of game files.
9. Your game will now be updated to the beta branch.

Save files
The beta branch uses a completely separate save file, due to its experimental nature.

The beta branch is to gather feedback and ensure stability before release to the live game. If you were to copy over your existing savefile, it would work, but it is strongly recommended to store a backup of your save file if you did so. We are not treating this branch as a live branch, so we will not be taking extra precautions to support moving your save file back to the live branch.

[Kacpert25]

My first fight with Imbued Swarm is over and I must say that this boss is pure fire! The design and sound are epic!

[Zima Blue]

oh my god, Rotwood beta and Don't Starve update on the same day!!! truly the best thursday ever 

[BezKa]

Oooh I can't wait to go home and start playing!!! I bet Swarm's super Frenzy music is incredible!!

[Zima Blue]

THE FRENZIED SWARM IS SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO COOL!!!!! 

[Chaos-]

First impressions, pretty neat update.

Imbued Swarm fight is nice, I like the added touches like the crowd of slime rots and the snail chasing you.

Frost powers seemed okay, but pretty rare. We went almost an entire hunt without seeing a single new power. I guess most of them are gold quality by default so they just don't show up often. The only issue is they're not very useful against bosses. Maybe bosses need to get icy, but not fully frozen, and still count towards powers for dealing with frozen things?

I'm not a huge fan of farming, it just takes a lot of time and I've played the game way too much, so I have little left to grind for to give the plants time to grow. It's definitely something I'd enjoy more if I was playing the game for the first time, out of early access, because it would be better integrated into the game flow, so I don't HATE the concept really. The only thing I'd say right now is, I wish we could (eventually maybe, not right away) craft a sprinkler that'll auto-water the crops after a while. It's not like it's a super engaging mechanic to water them after every hunt, so automating a little bit of it could help reduce the tedium of it after a while.

Cooking, I didn't get to play long enough to cook anything, but it seems alright. I kinda wish it was unique buffs you couldn't get anywhere else rather than just starting with an extra power, but I know that would be a lot more work and be harder to balance. I do like that the buffs aren't just applied on your next hunt and you can save them for when you want to use them, so it does make it a lot easier to enable certain builds and playstyles. I'm not sure how to feel about the rotating stock of specials though. I'd rather it be that you can upgrade the chef/their tools over time to expand her offerings. It's not like she has a limited stock of ingredients, we're the ones supplying her stuff to cook with, so it doesn't make too much sense to have what she can cook rotate imo. But I get it from the gameplay perspective.

I'm not sure how to feel about super frenzies being easier, since the game was already feeling easy with the right setups. I hope super frenzy has harder levels in the future, maybe with more changes, like rots invading from other zones.

As for bugs:

The blue cursor thing while selecting weapons is awkward. It moves with WASD and doesn't follow your mouse. If you're moving with WASD and move your mouse at the same time, it resets position to the first selection on the menu. It seems like a controller option that shouldn't be there if you're not on a controller, so maybe it's just bugged and shouldn't be showing up.

With the change to super frenzies, level 5 now has the text cut off by "Heartstone Available!"

The snail in the imbued swarm fight gets stuck on summoned rots from the 'revive the first rot you kill' power.

The snail, if revived, bugs the Swarm fight. He won't progress to the next phase because -A- snail is still alive. If the person the snail is chasing dies, the snail can then go after the boss (the snail icon will appear on the boss). This is just a softlock and you need to die to poison to get out, or leave the hunt.

The cook repeats her dialogue in the room before the boss, as if you haven't talked to her yet. She still shows up in camp (playing as not the host)

All the stuff doesn't transfer to your world. Gem table, I'd have to unlock the farmer and the chef all over again if I did it once in co-op. I still had my plants growing through. Not sure if this is because I copied my save over or if it's bugged in general.

[BezKa]

No one tell Klei but Surgical is busted and works on the Hot Topic mannequins.

[jambell]

Hello folks,
Some day-one stability fixes. Thanks for your testing!

Patch #1: 657452
Changes:

• The lunchbox now spawns if the player has any food in their inventory, regardless of whether the cook is unlocked or not

Fixes:

• Fixed some visual bugs with watered crops in networked games
• Fixed unintentionally changed Inventory Chest, Player Home, and assorted town prop locations
• Fixed various day-one crashes

[MrMyther]

All is good in the world again.

[Anxiattack]

I just gotta say, after some play time with the new update, the frost powers are soooo fun to play around with!!!!! I love the chain reaction affect I can get the freezing of enemies, and in some cases, the frost builds I get seem really op!! The idea of element powers is also super fun, so I'd love to see fire powers and maybe wind powers introduced in the future, as they could both have lots of potential individually while also having some cool synergy together.

Of course the other elements of this update are amazing!!! As always, you guys deliver such amazing content to this ever expanding masterpiece of game, which in my opinion is wayyyyy to underrated.

Thanks Klei!!

[Kacpert25]

I noticed that when I pick power, sometimes it suddenly upgrade. Is this a new luck effect or maybe a bug?

[MrMyther]

2 hours ago, Kacpert25 said:

I noticed that when I pick power, sometimes it suddenly upgrade. Is this a new luck effect or maybe a bug?

It's a new luck effect - that's why it has a popup saying 'LUCKY' when it does that.
It does get mostly covered by the power popup atm tho.

[jambell]

Some more stability fixes. Have a great weekend!

Patch #2: 657700
Changes:

• Enigmox's Parry: Skill no longer applies hitstop to bosses

Fixes:

• Fixed audio blast at start of character selection / loading into town
• Fixed issue where Gemcutter's Table was sometimes inaccessible
• Imbued Swarm's Wollusk is no longer charmable
• Fixed Aboreels spawned via the Arboreel teffra anomaly preventing exits from opening in non-combat rooms.
• Fixed all known crashes

[Instant-Noodles]

Here is a GIF of the new SF boss:

Boss Rot (Imbued Swarm)

Spoiler

More Rotwood GIFs can be found in my older posts from: Jan 2025 / #2 (Ruins Beta), Oct 2024 (Splintershard Beta), Jun 2024 (Bonechill Beta), May 2024 (Early Access Launch), Feb 2024 / #2 (Next Fest Demo), Dec 2023 (Playtest 3), Sep 2023 (Multiplayer Stress Test), & Jun 2023 (Combat Focus Test).

[jambell]

Patch #3: 657804

Fixes:

• Fixed another case where the Gemcutter's Table became inaccessible
• Fixed issue where Teffressence Container Gems dropped by plants would not properly be added to the inventory.
• Fixed Diamond Dust power crashing when being used against destructible props.

[jambell]

Patch #4: 657843
Fixes:

• Possible fix for crash when starting a run.

[Zeafkel]

The Buffs given by boxed meals are disposable, which is a bit too few, and random boxed meals are given a limited number of times. Even full level Buffs can only be used once, which is too few.
Also, may I ask if I can directly copy the saved files from the beta version and play them in the official version after it is updated?
As a player who has already upgraded most of their equipment, I don't have the energy to obtain crops and play so many games to make them grow. I hope this can be improved.
I personally feel that the buff of the new freezing system is of little use because it requires strict requirements to freeze monsters to provide damage or resistance, which is difficult to achieve. In existing weapons, it takes a long time to completely freeze monsters, and bosses cannot be frozen yet, so this set is difficult to provide effective gains in boss battles (although even in non boss battles, the buff provided is not very good, and the damage bonus is much less than other bd)

Edited March 1, 2025 by Zeafkel

[SamLogan]

Hello Dev Team,

First of all, thank you for your work on Rotwood! The game is incredibly fun and has a lot of potential. However, I’d like to suggest an improvement regarding skills and how they are acquired during a run.

Currently, I find it frustrating that spells are obtained purely at random. Unlike weapons, which we can choose at the start of a run, there’s no way to ensure we get a specific playstyle with spells. This makes it difficult to practice certain combinations and develop a preferred strategy.

Would it be possible to introduce an option to choose a basic spell set before starting a run, similar to weapon selection? For example:

• Lightning Specialization (fast electric-based attacks and chaining effects)
• Explosion Specialization (high AoE damage and crowd control)
• Support Specialization (shields, buffs, healing, etc.)

This would allow players to have more control over their build without removing the roguelike aspect, as the evolution of spells would still depend on in-run drops. If not as a core mechanic, this could also be introduced as a special game mode where players pre-select a basic spell loadout before starting.

This change would prevent the frustration of relying solely on RNG to get preferred spells and encourage players to practice and refine specific strategies. After all, weapon selection isn’t random—so why not offer something similar for spells?

Thank you for considering this suggestion, and I appreciate all the work you’re putting into Rotwood! Keep up the great work!

[jambell]

Delicious Beta Patch #5: 658455
Additions:

• Added toggleable Frame Rate Limiter in Graphics Options to improve frame pacing consistency.  Options are 60 fps (default), 30 fps, Refresh Rate, Half Refresh Rate.
• Added Seed Transmutation screen for converting Seeds into other Seeds, and converting Materials into Seeds

Changes:

• Cold: Bosses and Minibosses can now get Cold (but still not Freeze).
• Cold: Anything that tries to apply Freeze to something that isn't Freezable, instead applies Cold.
• Fabled Powers:
  • Frost Powers: Added icons for Frost Powers
  • Frost Powers: Snowball Fight projectiles have larger hitbox radius
  • Frost Powers: Snowball Fight projectiles use non-threatening landing indicator
  • Reduced drop rate of Fabled Power modifiers in non-Fabled Room
  • Audio: Iteration on Freezing audio and various Frost powers
• Farming / Cooking
  • Added more Food Icons
  • Added art for Gem Crop
  • Crops now play their 'planted' anims for the first 1/3 of their growth cycle
  • Crops now fade into their desaturated colour when they need to be watered instead of being set that way immediately
  • Iteration on farming conversations
  • Iteration on farming animations
  • Iteration on farming and cooking sounds
• Player
  • Hammer: Increased normal and focus damage on all three neutral Light Attacks
  • Hammer: Increased hitstun on all three neutral Light Attacks
  • Hammer: Decreased pushback on all three neutral Light Attacks
  • Hammer: Increased range and verticality on all three neutral Light Attacks
  • Hammer: Player hurtbox is smaller during startup of all three neutral Light Attacks
  • Hammer: Dodge -> Light attack can now interrupt enemy attacks, like a Heavy
  • Hammer: Light Attack 3 can now interrupt enemy attacks, like a Heavy
  • Iteration on rimlights for player readability
• Rots
  • Greater Mothballs: Adjust projectile hitbox sizes to make it easier to break with all weapons
  • Imbued Thatcher: Woworm is no longer Freezable
  • Yammo: Increased Yammo hitbox size in knockdown state
  • Iteration on rimlights for bosses
• Ruined Capital
  • Grimhollow: Increased HP
  • Grimhollow: Applies shield to itself during its spawn root fist, sapling special attacks.
  • Reduced basic monster attack hold times
  • Increased Red Toady walk speed and attack damage
• Disabled speech text sound temporarily while we track down some issues with them

Fixes:

• Fixed an issue where Rook would prematurely get killed during its invincible state when a crystal was destroyed & does damage to it.
• Fixed audio issues with various Anomalies
• Fixed players able to join lobbies that are full due to local players
• Fixed encounter challenge power shrine object not appearing for remote players in a network game
• Fixed unusual audio states resulting from farming and identifying gems
• Fixed Surgical accruing hitstreak in non-combat rooms
• Fixed laser trap weather possibly spawning traps at room entrances/exits, blocking players
• Fixed lunchboxes spawning near power drops which make them uninteractable

View full update

[Kacpert25]

35 minutes ago, jambell said:

Added Seed Transmutation screen for converting Seeds into other Seeds, and converting Materials into Seeds

Oh, I'll finally be able to spend my 2000+ Great Rotwood Forest Leaf xD.
By the way, could you add an option to give items for transmutation faster? Because constantly clicking when you want to use, for example, 100 pieces of a resource is pretty clunky.

[Bryce]

52 minutes ago, Kacpert25 said:

Oh, I'll finally be able to spend my 2000+ Great Rotwood Forest Leaf xD.
By the way, could you add an option to give items for transmutation faster? Because constantly clicking when you want to use, for example, 100 pieces of a resource is pretty clunky.

If you hold ctrl (or one of the gamepad triggers) as you add materials, it will add enough of that material to make 1 seed.

[jambell]

Patch #6: 660122
Additions:

• Added "Player Acid", used by any equipment that spawns Acid
  • Deals damage from the creating player to the affected target
  • Damage bonuses, critical hit chances etc apply
  • Hit streak is developed and maintained
  • Players no longer take acid damage from allied acid pools
    • This feature may be brought back in some form to re-enable self-damage builds
    • "Standing in Acid" equipment being affected by Player Acid is still in development
• Added "Voice of the Myriad" skill to Swarm weapons (polish still ongoing here, as well)

Changes:

• Anomalies
  • Increased spawn delay of snowballs in snowball anomaly
• Cooking
  • "Specials" now always give 3 food items, but can only be bought once
  • Reduced the per-item cost of all food recipes, with specials getting a larger reduction
  • Players now have the same invincibility protections when selecting food as they do when in a conversation with an npc
  • When players eat food, play the eating animation and display what power they gained over their head.
• Equipment:
  • Wollusk Hauberk: increase duration of acid pool length
  • Wollusk Hauberk: drops multiple acid pools
• Farming
  • Further iteration on final food icons
  • Added icons to help players translate item -> location for different types of currencies
  • Changed recipe to unlock material grinding from 50 of each normal material to 30 of each imbued material
  • "Produce" no longer shows up in the "drops" tab of the inventory screen, shows up with seeds instead
  • Reduced the cost of unlocking the seed exchange from 10 ingredients to 6.
  • Added a Food tab to the Inventory Chest
  • You can now transmute a maximum of 100 materials at a time.
• Gems
  • Loot-related gems now specify that they only operate during hunts
• Rots
  • Imbued Swarm
    • Increased the frequency of the multiplayer-only targeted geyser attack.
  • Disable hitstop applied to bosses and minibosses globally
• UI
  • Items in the inventory chest are now sorted by location, rarity & name

Fixes:

• Fixed destructible props retaining status effects after they are destroyed
• Fixed some cases where Swarm boss fight music could be have oddly in networked games
• Fixed issue where funguile hats were entering knockdown state upon breaking out of freeze, they now stay in the hat state until they grow normally
• Fixed bug where Lucky Upgrade would roll even if the power was baseline legendary
• Fixed bug where Shellshot Blunderbuss's Big Blast would refill ammo even if it didn't hit.
• Fix bug where post-teleport damage bonus didn't apply to Windbreaker's Fan of Gnarlics projectiles anymore
• Fix various anomaly sound effects not getting stopped
• Fixed Groak releasing swallowed players early if hit with "no hit reaction" attacks (e.g. damage aura power)
• Fixed mothball spawners that were spawning mothballs during groak miniboss intro cinematic
• Fixed many cases where Power Attacks erroneously dealt hitstop to the player, which sometimes presented as jitter or performance issues.
• Fixed many cases of new NPCs not having lines to say
• Fixed Grimhollow saplings not getting killed when Grimhollow dies
• Fixed many powers / equipment that dealt damage in range not dealing damage to destructible props
• Fixed bug where Hammer's second light attack would hit multiple times on a single target
• Fixed bug where Enigmox's transformation states could sometimes become unkillable

 

View full update

 

[MrMyther]

1 hour ago, jambell said:

Added "Voice of the Myriad" skill to Swarm weapons (polish still ongoing here, as well)

Still not got the gem slots yet, mayb these will be the first boss set to have blues....

[jambell]

34 minutes ago, MrMyther said:

Still not got the gem slots yet

Yep! As mentioned in the piece you've quoted, work is still ongoing.

[HeatAndRun]

10 hours ago, jambell said:

Patch #6: 660122
Additions:

• Added "Player Acid", used by any equipment that spawns Acid
  • Deals damage from the creating player to the affected target

Yikes, player acid!