What is new in Duskora, newest first. The game shows you these after an update, too.
Duskora’s front page was bare. Now it shows what you do in the game: survive, build, farm, craft, trade and defend, each with a scene put together from the game’s own pictures.
You also see who and what you meet on Kestrel, how your first hour goes and what the game looks like on a phone. The guides and the other pages each have a picture of their own.
Before going live the whole game was gone over. Fixed, among others: goods that could double while being hauled, prizes and purchases that vanished when storage was full, crew on an expedition who held on to jobs at home, someone being buried after being brought back, and carried crew who could not be lifted again after a restart. Building, harvesting and crafting now really do carry on while you are away.
On phones: the settings and the help open properly on screen again, the world map fills the whole screen, notices that name a place can be tapped, the crew list is readable and the tutorial’s buttons stay within reach, also with the phone upright. Tapping to fast-forward the intro now really works. If the connection drops, the game notices sooner and reconnects as soon as you are back.
New on the site: how to put Duskora on your phone, tablet, Chromebook or computer as an app, and a page about playing on your phone.
The three crew members you landed with never die and no longer pass out (only that first time, in the tutorial). Badly hurt, they crawl: they cannot be attacked, can do nothing but crawl to where you send them, and can be picked up and carried to a medical bed. In the medical bed they gain 10 health at once when they are under 10, and get up again. At home they also get their strength back very slowly on the ground, so a crew is never stuck.
Visitors can now be seen: a caravan pitches its camp at the edge of your land, and the notice about it can be clicked, like most notices about a place — the map jumps there. Your own camp is always a tap away with the 🏠 button at the top or the H key.
The scout machine no longer stands rooted after a fight: after a minute it calms down and explores on. And nothing switches itself on any more: acid rain, the machine and the event calendar stay off until the admin enables them.
With several crew members selected, clicking an animal, a machine or another player's crew gives them all the order, and they attack together. Their work adds up: three people bring something down three times as fast.
Hunting used to need a knife or spear; not any more. Bare fists work at half the pace, a weapon in hand at full. And in the tutorial the arrow no longer rides along once you have your friend on your shoulders.
Your colony no longer runs on while you are away; that costs the server nothing for those who are not there. Instead, on your return, what happened in between is worked out in one go and applied before your camp appears: they ate and drank from the store and slept, paid building work went on, queued work was made, and ripe fields were harvested. All at half pace, since without a leader they wait more often.
What got finished, made and harvested is in your summary on return. The last of your crew never dies, and whoever did die comes back for thirty coins from the crew page. The top bar shows how long food and water will last. A dropped connection does not count as leaving: a quarter of an hour's grace.
Under the new Market tab you put something from your store up for sale: choose the item, the amount and a price in coins. What you list leaves your store at once. When somebody buys it you get the coins straight away and it lands at their camp. Change your mind and you take the lot back, and it comes home.
Coins are the same as in the shop, and now you also earn them by finishing campaigns. For the first time there is a real economy between players: whoever has rare minerals, duskorite or machine parts to spare can help others — for a price.
Wildlife comes from the world's seed and never needed saving. Machines and a campaign's enemies are different: an event puts them down. Until now they were gone the moment the server restarted, and a campaign stage began again with all its enemies — even if you had beaten four of five.
From now on they are saved, with where they stand, whether they are angry, how tough they are and how far worn down. After a restart they are back, and a campaign stage simply carries on: four of five stays four of five.
Until now a second or third attacker did nothing for the pace: the enemy only fell once one person had hacked at it long enough. Now everyone's work adds up. Three people bring a beast down three times as fast as one.
The first stage of a campaign is gentler, and campaigns begin at level 5, once your third crew member is there. Tap the chip in the top bar for the story, the stage, what every stage pays and the main prize. The website now has a guide on campaigns too.
Beside Players and Clans the ranking now has Trophies: who has finished the most campaigns, with the latest they completed. On a tie, whoever got there first counts.
When a campaign opens, everyone online gets an announcement. And when one closes with enemies still standing, they vanish: they do not keep roaming.
From October 1st a campaign begins every 25 days, open for five days to everyone from level 3. Each has five stages that grow harder: more enemies, tougher and harder-hitting. Every stage pays a reward; finish all five and the main prize is yours — rare materials and coins — plus a trophy at the edge of camp.
The year holds fourteen campaigns: a UFO invasion, waves of aliens, the great worm, a meteor storm to mine, the swarm, stone golems, the machine uprising, the night of lights, the falling sky, the twin worms, hive summer, the armada, the golem king and the last landing.
The top bar shows which stage you are in and how many are left. A short pause between stages lets you catch your breath.
The game already hid who stood in a closed room from other players. Now that holds for everything in it too: beds, cabinets, desks, a turret behind a window. From outside an attacker sees only the walls, doors and windows.
Once their crew step into a room, they see what and who is there from then on. Your own rooms you always see in full.
Under the question-mark button, beside the familiar tips, all lessons can now be read again whenever you like: rooms, research, windows, sewing, power and the machines.
The laser turret (level 24) is a turret with a lens: nine tiles of reach instead of six, and more than twice as hard. It takes a computer chip and a battery, and power. Walls and doors stop its shots too, so put it outside or behind a window.
The medical scanner (level 20) stands beside your medical beds. With power, anyone in a medical bed within six tiles heals sixty percent faster. It takes a circuit board and a battery.
The tutorial stopped at the campfire, though much comes after it. From now on a short lesson appears at the right moment: at level 2 about rooms with a purpose and the research room, at level 4 about windows and walls, at level 8 about sewing and power, and at level 10 about the machines.
Each lesson shows once. Show me takes you to the right tab; Got it puts it away — on your other devices too, since the game remembers what you have read.
The landing page and the guides have a new face: a scene from the game itself, an icon beside every part, and a header that fits on a phone.
There is a fifth guide: Rooms, research and power. It explains how to give rooms a purpose, how the research room works and what each tier asks, how to sew bedding, and how to run your camp on coal, the sun and an energy cell.
Windows now look like windows on the map, rather than plain wall.
With the parts of a broken machine you can build three new things. A solar panel (level 14) gives power from first light to dusk, burning nothing. An energy cell (level 18) fills while something is generating and then carries the camp through the night on its own. A radio mast (level 22) listens to the land.
The mast changes how you see an attack coming. Without one there is only dust on the horizon: something is moving towards your camp. With a mast on power you know who is coming, how many, and how many minutes you have.
Also new: the computer in the research room now needs a computer chip, a circuit board and a battery.
From level 4 you can build windows. A window closes a room like any wall, but a shot passes through it. An armed crew member indoors beside a window fires on attackers outside.
Walls and doors now stop shots, your turrets' included. So put a turret behind a window, or outside. Since only the defender shoots, that means what you would expect: out through a window yes, in through one never.
And whoever attacks another player no longer sees what goes on inside. Anyone standing in a closed room is invisible to strangers until those strangers are in that room themselves. Your own crew you always see.
The computer in the research room now needs parts from a broken machine: a computer chip, a circuit board and a battery.
A machine on legs can walk into your camp. It harms nobody and looks around for a day, then leaves of its own accord. What you do is up to you.
Strike it and it fights back: it closes in on your crew member and shocks them at arm's length. Break it and its parts fall where it stood: a rare mineral, a computer chip, a circuit board and a battery.
A quarter of an hour later the answer comes, and it is a coin toss. Either a tribe comes to thank you — they had their own trouble with that thing — and leaves a gift at the edge of camp. Or five machines come for the one you broke, and they are not here to look. Break those and each of them yields its parts again.
Yellow rain can now pass over your camp. Every plant, bush and tree within your land dies. Your fields and tree zones run dry and need watering again; what was sown stays sown.
Anyone outside at the time is burnt. Your captain is scorched but stays on her feet; the rest you had better get indoors.
Eight hours later the green returns: young plants and saplings, scattered at random over your land, never indoors and at least twenty tiles from anything you built. They have to grow before they can be harvested.
As an admin you can also plan acid rain in the schedule, with a warning beforehand for your players.
Without a weapon your crew swung a spear they did not have. Now they jab with their fists, with an animation of their own. With a weapon in hand they swing that, as before.
Every blow that lands shows: whoever is hit flinches aside and flashes red for a moment. That holds for your own crew, for raiders and for animals.
The admin panel has a new part: Schedule. Plan an event for a time, for one colony or for everyone online, and set how many minutes beforehand the players are warned.
Upgrading walls, doors and furniture is gone. If you want a stone wall where a wooden one stands, take it down and build again. Beds work as they should: you lay a mattress, blanket or pillow on them.
Buildings and recipes you cannot make yet are no longer listed. They appear once you have the level.
There are more looks to choose from, male and female apart. You choose them on the first day; after that they are settled. Renaming still works, with the pencil on a crew member's card.
The medical bed had a white rim behind it; that is gone. And the language buttons have left the top bar: your language lives in the settings.
Beside Chop and Mine there is now **Harvest**. Drag a box over berry bushes and anything else that needs no tool, and your crew will bring it in.
After the sewing machine study (from level 16, with a ruler and books) you can build a sewing table with a machine from level 16. It counts as a sewing table for everything you sew, and works nearly twice as fast.
Bedding counts for more: a mattress now gives +40% rest at night, a blanket +20% and a pillow +12%.
The ranking is drawn up from the saved world and could lag behind. Your own row now shows your level as the game knows it, the age of the list is written underneath, and you can refresh it yourself.
Your crew sleep on planks. Beds and medical beds are bare wood now, with no mattress or blanket.
Wool comes off the grazers. After the sewing study (from level 8, needing pen and paper) you can build a sewing table from level 10. There you make a mattress (6 wool), a blanket (2 wool) and a pillow (2 wool). Sewing needs pins in store; you make those from iron at the workshop and they are not used up.
The crafting page now lets you choose how many to make at once and shows what that costs. A locked recipe says why: no station, no study, or no tools.
Bedding is laid on a bed from that bed's card. You can see it lying there, and your crew rest better: a mattress +25%, a blanket +12% and a pillow +8%.
Until now rain only came after a storm, which also did damage. From now on plain showers pass over your camp: no damage, and every sown field gets its water. Rain is a regular sight once you are past the tutorial.
If you play on more than one device, one could keep running an old version, so you saw something on one screen that was missing on the other. The game now checks whether you have the newest version and offers a reload button at the top when you do not. The build stamp sits in the top bar, so you can compare two devices.
Your crew's work counts towards your level. That gain was only passed on at one moment every five seconds, so it almost never reached your screen: the bar looked frozen.
Nothing was lost. Your experience grew on the server all along, and you now see the real figure. From now on every gain shows within a few seconds.
If you chose a look from number 16 up at the start, none of your crew choices were kept. That is fixed. The crew page now closes only once everything is saved, and says why when it is not.
You now also choose the name, sex and look of your third crew member, who reaches your camp, hurt, at level 5.
Were your choices not kept? Select a crew member: ◄ and ► beside the face change the look, and ✎ gives a new name.
Furniture goes the way walls do, but without stone: from wood to iron, silver, gold, titanium and duskorite. A piece stays the same piece — what is in it and whose it is stay — only its material gets finer, and you can see it by its colour.
Each step: a storage chest or cabinet holds 25% more, a bed gives 8% more rest, a desk 6% faster work, a desk chair 4% faster study for whoever sits on it, a dining table 2 more mood after a meal, and a floor 1 more mood for whoever stands on it.
Tap a piece of furniture to upgrade it. A whole room’s floor is upgraded from the room’s card.
Wood is the cheapest and the weakest. Then come stone (from level 3, 2½ times as strong), iron (level 8, 5×), silver (level 18, 8×), gold (level 26, 11×), titanium (level 36, 16×) and finally duskorite (level 50, 25×): Duskora’s own crystal metal, with a faint glow.
Tap or click one of your walls or doors to see what it is made of and how strong it is, and upgrade it to the next material. A room’s card upgrades all the walls and doors around it at once. You pay at once; the crew do the work, and the wall stands until the new one is done.
New materials: silver is separated from copper ore, titanium won from rare minerals and iron ore, and duskorite forged from rare minerals, gold ore and titanium — all at the workshop.
Research now has four tiers. First notes need only a research room. From level 8 you need a pen and paper, from level 16 a ruler and a library of at least three books, and from level 30 a computer in the research room, running on a generator’s power.
Paper and pens are made at the workshop, and so is a ruler. Books are written at a desk. The computer takes iron, copper, gold and rare minerals.
New to study: cartography (caravans 15% faster), crop rotation (25% more harvest), herbal medicine (the hurt heal 25% faster), automation (the workshop 20% faster) and electronics (a generator 30% thriftier).
Tap or click the floor of a room — a space closed in all round by walls and doors — and choose what it is for. In a bedroom your crew sleep better, in a canteen they eat at the table and are in a better mood for hours afterwards, in a prison you win prisoners over faster, and a desk in an office speeds up all crafting and research.
Important: new research now needs a research room, with a desk, a bookshelf and a chair right at the desk. Whoever researches sits there. Research already under way in your workshop finishes as before.
New to build: the chair, the bookshelf and the dining table.
Storage is new. The storage chest is small and cheap; the storage cabinet is two tiles wide, holds far more, and shows on its shelves what lies in it. Tap or click a chest or cabinet to see what is in it and to tick, kind by kind, what may go in. Haulers take things to the nearest chest or cabinet that takes them and has room. Old warehouses keep working.
The office is now a desk, two tiles wide. And beds have an owner: whoever slept in one last. To give someone another bed, select them and right-click (or tap) the bed.
On phones the menu at the bottom is fully on screen again: it used to spill over both edges.
There is a new tab: Ranking. It shows the fifty best players by level, with their colony and clan, and the strongest clans, measured by the sum of their members' levels. If you are not in the list yourself, your own place is shown below it.
Duskora now speaks German too, throughout the game and on the website. Choose the language on the front page or in the settings.
Duskora now works on phones and tablets. Tap your crew to choose them, and with someone chosen a tap gives the order. A long press looks at something; one finger moves the map and two fingers zoom.
In the settings you can install Duskora as an app: the game then opens full screen from its own icon. With the graphics setting Low, older phones run smoother and use less battery.
And a bug is fixed: felled trees came back after a few hours, sometimes right in front of a door. That no longer happens, and your crew now keeps doorways clear.
Duskora now has real sounds. While someone works you hear the axe in the tree, the pickaxe on the rock or the hammer on the frame, blow after blow. A tree creaks and thuds as it falls, a finished building rings out, and a raid sounds the bell.
Beneath it the world lives: wind, birds by day, crickets at night, rain when it rains and the crackle of a campfire nearby. In the settings you set the volume of each on its own.
Tribes remember how you treat them. Trade and help with their requests earn standing, and friends send gifts. Attacking a peaceful tribe costs a lot of standing, and a hostile tribe attacks your people near its camp.
Raider camps now and then send a war party to a colony nearby. You are warned in advance and see them coming on the world map. Players under beginner protection are left alone.
Moving is now a journey: your crew travel as a caravan with the stockpile to the new site, and when they arrive your buildings stand there, just as before.