[Game Update] - Rotwood Surprise Shadow Drop!

[JoeW]

Hello everybody!

Welcome to the release of Rotwood!

We’ve been quietly working on this massive release as part of a special unannounced shadow drop release on Steam and Nintendo Switch 2! 

We launched in Early Access with the plan to release the game at the end of 2025; however, we added some time at the beginning of Early Access to adjust to initial player feedback. We know today’s launch comes as a bit of a shock, and we’re sorry for the unusual secrecy lately, but we’re happy to announce that with this update, we’ve completed all of the planned launch content (and then some) for Rotwood! 

Update Highlights:

• Narrative conclusion and cinematics (Surprise!) 
• Final boss, including a new unique location
• Three new superfrenzy runs + Bosses (Frenzy Rook, Shelldrake, and Grimhollow)
• Weapon and equipment tuning adjustments
• Teffra Mirage system, allowing armor and weapon appearance swapping
• Mirage-specific visualizations for weapons and armor
• Progression adjustments and tuning 
• Overall power tuning and droprate adjustments. (Pushing more builds around fabled powers)
• Quality of Life changes around game systems like farming, cooking, and relationships
• More relationships in the diary and relationship rewards
• Rebalance / Rework existing armors
• Rebalance / Rework of existing powers
• Additional language support for French, Italian, German, Latin American Spanish, Japanese, and Brazilian Portuguese
• Steam Achievements
• Steam Trading cards
• Steam Points Shop Items

The actual changelist is absolutely massive. We have compiled a summarized list as best as we could, but there are probably some other changes that are not on this list as well. For those of you curious about the gory details, check out the spoiler below. 

Spoiler

ADDITIONS:

• Added new conversations, cinematics and character moments throughout the entire game, including a new final boss in its own unique hunt.
• Added a Super Frenzy difficulty to Bonechill Quarry, Splintershard Cavern, and Ruined Capital
• Added new Imbued Bosses Rook, Grimhollow and Shell Drake
• Added new weapons for Rook, Grimhollow and Shell Drake
• Added the Teffra Mirage Station, a new placable town building
• Added friendship tracks to every Villager
• New main menu!
• Added Steam Achievements, Trading Cards and Point Shop Items

CHANGES:
Bosses

• Reduced the amount of health that Super Frenzy bosses have across the board.
• Grimhollow: Reworked bombard attack patterns
• Grimhollow: Added short range drill attack
• Grimhollow: Adjusted firing patterns of turrets in fight
• Grimhollow: Now spawns Immorels instead of shielding self during special attacks
• Shelldrake: Adjust timings on bite attack
• Ruin Warden: Adjustments to attack priorities so it will better mix up its use of attacks in various situations
• Rook: Adjust number of icicles spawned via fissure attacks
• Reinforcement rots refill more consistently during 3 and 4 player boss fights

Creatures

• Bulbin Stack: Adjusted attack prioritization so they perform more stacked attacks before splitting apart
• Meowl: Adjusted attack prioritization so they perform other attacks more often before falling asleep
• General: Adjusted various monster projectile vfx to make them more readable
• Bullrog: Increased maximum health
• Floracrane: Increased maximum health
• Boarfrost: Reduced lifetime of ice spines on the ground

Equipment

• Bulbin Longcoat: Changed effect to “When you Perfect Dodge, your next Focus Hit has increased Critical Hit Chance. Extend your Perfect Dodge Window”
• Gourdo Elasti-Shorts: Increased the Heal on Enter amount from 20 to 50
• Mothball Ushanka: Changed effect to “On Kill, end your Hit Streak and deal Damage to all targets hit during the Hit Streak.”
• Mothball Fur Coat: Changed effect to “Reduce your Weapon Damage, but gain a chance to Multistrike”
• Mothball Fur Leggings: Changed effect to “Whenever a Hit Streak ends, Heal for each target hit during the Hit Streak.”
• Bulbug Eyes: Changed weight class from H to M
• Bulbug Exoskeleton: Changed weight class from H to M
• Bulbug Tarsi: Changed weight class from H to M
• Bulbug Tarsi: In addition to old effects, now also causes you to gain a Shield Segment on Kill.
• Snortoise Helmet: Now prevents acid damage when below 30/40/50% health, up from 10/20/30%.
• Wollusk Helmet: Changed effect to “Heal for a percent of Acid Damage dealt.”
• Wollusk Aketon: Changed effect to “Apply Slow to the target when you deal Acid Damage.”
• Gloop Laurels: Changed effect to “Gain temporary Runspeed Bonus after dealing Acid Damage.”
• Gloop Top Glaze: Changed effect to “On Kill, your attacks apply Acid for a period of time. You cannot gain Hit Streak.”
• Gloop Slimekilt: Changed effect to “Gain a temporary Dodge Speed Bonus after dealing Acid Damage.”
• Ballmerang: Adjusted Dribble skill hitboxes to better match visuals
• Boomball: Adjusted Lob skill so it has more assisted aim to the target
• The Jackalope: No longer mentions a “WIP Power”
• Striker: Increased flight speed of non focus striker projectile by 15%
• Striker: Reduced bounce height of standard rebounding strikers so they return quicker
• Bow: Added new vfx to a fully charged arrow

Powers

• Fermented Brew: Now always heals you/ increases your health by the maximum amount that the potion will heal for
• Coin Purse: Increase the base tier of the power to Gold
• Desolate Imprisonment: Reduce diameter of prison icicles
• Increased the cumulative chance for Gold tier powers to drop

General

• The player’s movement speed is now ‘soft capped’, preventing situations where multiple movement speed powers could combine together to make your character uncontrollable. Powers that scale with your movement speed still use the old, uncapped movement speed number.
• Farming tools are now auto equipped based on the state of the current plot.
• You can now dodge through objects in town if your weapon is sheathed.
• The Cooking Pot is now marked in town when a new recipe is available
• Changed how “Proto-Weapons” are unlocked to work with the new story flow.
• The “Power” weight class now increases your weapon damage by 20%.
• Added additional hair styles to Amphibee characters
• Reduced the “First Craft Bounty” to 1 corestone for all buildings
• Meeting a new villager on a hunt will now add that villager to your town, even if it happens in an online game.
• Villagers can appear in different locations around your camp

System

• Performance improvements
• Load time improvements
• Renderer optimizations
• Attack and collision detection performance improvements

Hunts

• All superfrenzy hunts now unlock at once upon completing the final hunt
• Fabled powers now spawn in the entrance room during hunts in a Boss Rot Lair
• Earning the maximum possible reward during an Anomaly hunt is now easier
• Increased chance of mystery rooms being something other than the wanderer

UI

• Equipment Menu: Moved upgrade menu to be a selection in upper level tabs instead of a sub menu of equipment details.
• Seed Grinder: Handles large amounts of seeds better.
• Character Customization Screen: Colours are now laid out in a consistent manner.
• Market equipment stalls display their price only if they are unowned
• New stat icons added to Hunters Path menu
• Commonized buttons and design across screens
• New location icons for super frenzy boss rot hunts

Sound

• Many new sounds added to interactables throughout the game
• Unique music tracks added for npcs in town
• Added a new volume setting for cinematics in options menu

FIXES:

• Fixed possible crashes in Rook fight on phase change
• Fixed issue where ingredient amounts would not update in Food Combine and Seed Grinding menus in town
• Fixed various issues where FX would not show up for some players in online games.
• Fixed some situations where selecting a larger text size would cause text to overflow in certain screens/ widgets.
• Fixed a screen pop in that occurred on clients when returning to town
• Fixed a network desync that could occur between host and clients after prolonged periods of play
• Fixed a large performance hitch when stalactites would spawn in Enigmox boss fight
• Fixed boss healthbar not always appearing when two separate bosses are active
• Fixed network issues with the freeze behavior
• Fixed some cases where the character selection screen could get stuck when using a controller
• Fixed issue with screen flash setting where it would not take effect until the game was restarted
• Fixed bugs with the ghost anomaly turning certain rots into ghosts
• Fixed weapon combo guides not updating when changing weapons in town
• Fixed npcs not updating their conversations upon returning to town in some cases
• Fixed a crash with the mastery board when displaying some rewards
• Fixed responsiveness of map screen when all hunts are unlocked
• Many other fixes
   

What’s next?
There’s still more to come! 

We’ve learned through Early Access that Rotwood is best served by less frequent, more substantial updates. Outside of any needed hotfixes, content we release in the future will mostly be comprehensive and expansive updates to the base game or possibly DLC if enough players are interested.

But we’re not going anywhere just yet. We’re going to stick around and monitor the launch for a bit, fix up any emerging issues, and make necessary adjustments. We expect that this will last a few weeks while we gather feedback and release hotfixes to Steam and Nintendo Switch 2. We’ll then move on to upcoming additions to the game. 

Throughout Early Access, we’ve come up with a bunch of things we’d like to explore with the game, and we’re excited to move on to the next stage of our adventure with Rotwood!

Since we have been focused on the launch, we haven’t quite started production on future content just yet. So we’ll be watching your feedback, and we’ll release more details about our plans in the coming weeks. 

We want to thank all the players who have been with us during Early Access. We’ve tried to make something a bit different with Rotwood, and thanks to all of your help, we think we’ve really come up with something fun and exciting, and we can’t wait for you all to give the launch version a try. Thank you, we couldn’t have done it without you.

 

View full update

 

[HeatAndRun]

I didn't expect today is the update day, WOW!!
All aboard the HYPE TRAIN!!!

[StarvingAngler]

Not what I expected to wake up to, but definately a pleasure to see.

[GodIess]

Oh, and they still haven't added font support for translations?

[Szczuku]

Now we need a Klei forums like variations alongside dst, oni, hot lava and griftlands ones

[Evelo]

Congratz guys! What a surprise! My hype went from 0 to 100! Booting it up as soon as I am able.

[Kacpert25]

So, version 1.0.
I honestly thought there would be one more update before the full release.
In any case, it was a fantastic experience to follow Rotwood's development from the very first playtests.
I'm glad I was able to provide feedback during early access. And each update and beta brought me the same excitement as the DST updates.

Thanks for creating a great game.
And I hope the support for Rotwood doesn't end too soon.

1 hour ago, Szczuku said:

Now we need a Klei forums like variations alongside dst, oni, hot lava and griftlands ones

That definitely should be Bulbin doing his "Ooh, Ooh".

[BezKa]

WOOHOOO! Fantastic news!!!

I couldn't wait to play the full game with friends, now they have no choice!!!

[DemonNamahage]

Do you ever plan to translate the game into Russian?

[MURINE]

about time , i couldnt help but notice that you guys added what looks to be wormwood as a boss lmao

 

[Frosty_Mentos]

To be fair, expected. It probably didn't land as well as some other Klei games. But you did your best and the art direction of it is amazing with generally decent gameplay.

[Anxiattack]

Let's gooooo. This feels so unreal, and yet I'm soo ready! Been waiting so long for this.

[AleksyPL]

Cooking and food is great mechanic but i would love to feed other friends in run if it was possible ;>

[VaskalRascal]

Swaggy.

[15716691386]

好玩就完了

[SteamMonkey]

dont think it needed to be this in the shadows.\

 

[Instant-Noodles]

GIFs of the new rot variants and new bosses from the shadow drop / launch update:

Rots (Antleer-1000, Beets-1000, Cottonhail-1000, Mothball-1000)

Spoiler

  

Boss Rot (Primeval Teffra Mech 1000, Fracking Fist, Crater Maker, Mulligan Husk)

Spoiler

   

Imbued Boss Rots (Imbued Rook, Imbued Shell Drake, Imbued Grimhollow)

Spoiler

  

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EDIT: More Rotwood GIFs can be found in my older posts from: Aug 2025 (Hunter's Path Beta), Feb 2025 (Delicious Beta), Jan 2025 (Archived Link) / #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).

Edited March 16 by Instant-Noodles