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Hey Prisoners,Last week, we shared more on where SCUM is heading and introduced Into the Wild, our first focused run of updates.
Across May, June and July, Into the Wild is about improving hunting, fishing, cooking, farming, wilderness survival, and the systems connected to them. Some features will arrive sooner than others, because bigger systems take time to build, test and balance, but each monthly update is designed to make that side of SCUM better.
Today, the May Update is here.
No server wipe has taken place with this update.
This release gives every prisoner new ways to track wildlife, hunt with more control, make better use of the food they find, get more from their crops, and spend more time surviving in the wild.
Into the Wild Season Stat Bonus
To help every prisoner step into the wild, all existing and newly created characters will receive a temporary boost to their Archery and Awareness XP gain for the duration of Into the Wild.
Archery helps with bow reload speed and access to stronger bows. Awareness improves your ability to hear animals in Focus Mode and unlocks a compass at the top of your screen at higher levels.
Because Into the Wild is focused on hunting, tracking, and wilderness survival, we wanted everyone to feel a little more prepared for that side of SCUM while the season is live.
The bonus is active by default throughout the season.
Hunter's Grotto
A familiar place just got a lot more interesting. Tucked within the Island's existing outposts, the Hunter's Grotto is a dedicated corner for those who stalk the wilderness for sport, survival, and glory. A curated selection of hunting supplies is now right where you need it - no detour required.
It's a gathering point. A place to swap stories with fellow hunters, forge unlikely alliances with strangers, and pick up some of the most challenging quests the Island has to offer. Some hunts are too dangerous to tackle alone - and the Grotto is where you find the people crazy enough to join you.
Animal Trail Generation
The hunt is getting easier to read! Animals can now leave visible tracks after appearing during a hunt, giving you a trail to follow as you pursue them. For this update, tracks work within the existing hunting system: hunts still begin with hunting clues, then Focus Mode can help reveal an animal’s trail after it appears. Awareness affects how easy those tracks are to read.
This is an early step toward one of our bigger goals: bringing animals back across the Island in a future Into the Wild update, supported by a new system built for better performance.
Bait Feeder
Found in hunting towers, shops, and around farmland, or purchased outright, the Bait Feeder is a deployable container you can slot with a single food item to attract animals to a set location. Different bait draws different animals, so knowing what roams your local biome is half the battle.
Once placed and loaded, the game checks whether a compatible animal can actually spawn in the area, which means where you set it up matters just as much as what you put inside it. Rather than chasing prey across the map, you can use the Bait Feeder to establish a reliable hunting spot and let the wildlife come to you.
Kill Quality Influences Meat Quality
The quality of meat and materials you get from a kill now depends on how you take the animal down. In other words, where you hit it, and what you hit it with, now both play a big role. The aim of this system is to reward players who gear up properly and aim carefully.
If you want the best yield out of every animal, it pays to consider what you're hunting for and what kind of gear you use for hunting before you pull the trigger (or release your arrow).
Smoker
Have way too much leftover meat from your last hunt and worried that it'll go bad?
Fret not, we've got you covered! The Smoker is a new base building element designed to help you preserve food and stretch your supplies further. Once you fuel it with small wooden logs, sticks, or planks, and light it with a fire starter, you can load it with up to six items at a time and begin the smoking process. Smoked meats last significantly longer than their raw counterparts.
Beware, however, as quality matters here too and timing is everything! Leaving something in too long will start degrading it and making it less appetizing. A single base can hold up to five Smokers, and when running, they'll visually show smoke from the top and a faint fire from the stove with an audible crackling to match.
Farming Rebalance
Farming has had a big rework, making it feel less like a chore and more like a genuine survival strategy. Your Farming skill level is now locked in at the moment you plant a seed, meaning the yield you get is determined by how skilled you were when you put it in the ground and not when you come back to harvest.
Fruit and other produce are now guaranteed on each cycle rather than being left to chance, and you can see exactly when your plants will be ready by pointing at them in Focus Mode, which displays the remaining growth time.
On top of that, the sunlight requirement for optimal growth has been lowered, which means plants in tougher conditions - like cold regions or early morning hours - will now grow closer to their full potential than they used to. Overall, the farming loop has been tightened up to feel less like a waiting game and more like a system worth actually engaging with.
Food Loot Rebalance
Now that we have introduced (and will continue to introduce) more ways to obtain food through gameplay, we’ve rebalanced how food loot appears across the Island.
The goal is to make hunting, fishing, farming, and food preservation more meaningful, rather than letting every location solve your food needs through loot alone. Overall food distribution and spawn rarities have been adjusted across all locations, with many non-survival foods removed from various loot spawners.
You will still be able to find ingredients and other food items, but not as many as before.
We are also starting to introduce a system that changes the trader economy and makes it depend more on what prisoners are buying and selling. In other words, item availability will be directly tied to the trader’s stock, meaning some items will only be available to purchase if players have previously sold them to that trader.
We’ll begin this change with food items, tying it directly to the wider farming, fishing, hunting, and food loot changes. The system will eventually expand to other items, but we’ll talk more about that in later updates.
Dynamic Fish Activity
Fishing has received a significant overhaul, introducing special activity spots scattered across the island's rivers, lakes, and coastal waters that signal their presence through audio and visual cues and offer better odds of landing bigger, species-specific catches. With 98 of these spots spread across the island, there's plenty of ground to cover - but finding an active one will make stumbling upon it worth it! Only 10 of them will be active at any given time. They will not appear on your map, so you'll need to physically explore to find them. If you hear the sound of splashing water or see fish breaking the surface, you will know that you have found one such spot!
Every 5 hours, when the server restarts, the active spots rotate to a new set, keeping the best locations fresh and preventing the same spots from being farmed repeatedly. There are a handful of permanently active spots as well, found where rivers meet the sea - but we'll leave it to you to track those down. Note that you will still be able to catch fish at any random location, but your chances to catch something are now reduced.
Fish size and weight now directly impact how much inventory space they occupy and how many fillets you can get from them, so a bigger catch has a tangible payoff.
Inventory Auto-sort Functionality
One of the most requested additions for the inventory rework has finally arrived! From now on, item manipulation has been greatly improved as we have added the option to sort items by type, amount and durability, both from your character's inventory and from other inventories such as chests.
Alongside the free May Update, two optional DLC packs are now available, inspired by Into the Wild.
Woodland Hunter Pack
Outfit yourself for the hunt with a new collection of hunting-inspired items, including cosmetics, gear, weapon skins, emotes, poses, trophies, and more.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4529160/SCUM_Woodland_Hunter_Pack/?beta=0
Woodland Furniture Pack
Turn your hideout into something closer to a lodge. Decorate your base with a new collection of furniture and decoration items for prisoners who want their shelter to feel a little more like home.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4635190/SCUM_Woodland_Furniture_Pack/?beta=0
These packs are optional and separate from the free update content listed above.
Now, onto server settings, bug fixes, balance changes, and quality-of-life improvements coming to SCUM with this update:
SERVER SETTINGS
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Campaign Skill Boosts
\[Features] -> FEATURES - SKILLS
scum.EnableSelectedSkillsPromotion=TrueEnables or disables experience gain boosts for skills related to the current campaign.
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Smoker Limits Per Flag Area
\[Features] -> FEATURES - BASE BUILDING
scum.SmokerMaxAmountPerFlagArea=-1Determines the maximum number of Smokers allowed per flag area.
Default: 5
Minimum: 0
Maximum: 10 -
Smoker Increased Decay Threshold
\[Features] -> FEATURES - BASE BUILDING
scum.SmokerStartDecayingIfFlagAreaHasMoreThan=-1Determines how many Smokers can be placed in a flag area before they start decaying at an increased pace.
Default: 5
Minimum: 0
Maximum: 10 -
Fishing High Activity Zone Rotation
\[World] -> WORLD - HUNTING
scum.FishingHighActivityZoneRotationTime=-1.000000Determines the time, in hours, before a new set of fishing high activity zones can be activated. Activation happens on server restart.
Default: 5
Minimum: 0
Maximum: 8760
EXPLOITS
Block Explosive Damage to Vehicles setting wasn’t working for certain explosive traps, such as Claymore, Improvised Claymore, Pressure Cooker Bomb, and some Mines, resulting in vehicles taking damage inside the safe zone with the explosive damage setting blocked. Now the setting blocks all explosive damage to vehicles.
There was a way to fast plant explosives (Frag grenades, TNT) on the Base Building element by canceling the action bar during planting. Instead of canceling the action, the explosive would get instantly planted, which we find highly disruptive, as it was possible to instantly plant huge numbers of explosives.
Similarly, there was an issue where Cargo drop explosions would still damage and destroy nearby vehicles, even when explosion damage was disabled in server settings. It does not happen anymore. Additionally, we've added a custom zone setting where you can specifically enable/disable cargo drop damage to vehicles.
You could pick up items from the vicinity while driving inside a vehicle, which gave an unfair advantage over players who are on foot. You could gather fast loot and dropped loot during a fight. Also, you could gather other stuff, including chests and dropping chests, without ever leaving the vehicle. And with the new pickup system that we introduced in the latest update, all functions of this particular action became even more powerful. Now, the items in the vicinity will be greyed out and actions will be disabled while inside of a vehicle, but you can interact and drop items/chests from your or the vehicle's inventory while driving.
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This was a sneaky one. Checking the wind direction while holding a backpack in hands would store it inside the magic pocket, which would free the character’s hands, while also removing the weight penalty. This is no longer the case as the backpack now drops to the ground while checking wind direction.
AUDIO
We fixed an issue where there would be no sound while repairing items with the sewing kit. Now the sound has been added to the repairing animation.
Miss the crackling sound of fire? Don’t worry. There was a bug where the fire SFX was missing from Fire Ring, Bonfire, and Improvised Fireplace. It has been fixed, and you can enjoy the fireplace again.
There was an issue where chests full of items would sometimes play a very loud item SFX after opening. It was pretty annoying as it wouldn’t happen every time, so we fixed those inconsistencies.
When fighting a puppet, its growling and screaming sounds could overlap with the hit sound effects, causing both audio cues to play at the same time and sound duplicated. This has now been fixed.
UI
There was an issue when the chat console was opened, and if you clicked anywhere except the input box, then closed it, it would not be focused when reopened. This has been fixed, and now the chat console input box is always focused when reopened.
After buying the Underpants_01 and F_Undershirt_Bra_01 at the General Goods trader, their icon would be displayed incorrectly in the purchased item section. It has been fixed now, and the icons are shown correctly. The same thing happened with Short Pants icons, so we fixed that too.
You may have noticed that discounted items are not shown at the trader after you completed the Tier 3 Quest "The Big Bang". This issue has been resolved, and now the discount section appears normally.
There was an annoying issue where pressing anywhere in the inventory UI while holding a fully equipped fishing rod would incorrectly cast the rod instead of ignoring fishing inputs. Now, fishing inputs will only work when you click on an empty part of the screen.
When placing ingredients for the Grilled Veggie recipe, the interface would always show Bell Pepper regardless of which vegetable type was actually used. This has now been fixed, and the correct ingredient is displayed in the interface.
The icon for the tequila drink item was displayed differently in the inventory and the vicinity. Now, it shows the same icon everywhere.
If you have the map opened, pressing ESC will close the map immediately.
WEAPONS
High-caliber rifles were dealing too much damage to base building elements, creating an imbalance compared to other weapon types. This was especially noticeable with rapid or repeated fire from weapons such as the M1 Garand and SVD Dragunov. The affected weapons include Mosin Nagant, M1 Garand, SVD Dragunov, AWM, and 98k Karabiner. Damage against BB elements has now been reduced and rebalanced.
We noticed that the SKS Clip would lose ammunition after a server restart so we fixed that and now it does not happen anymore.
We’ve also found that when you shoot the target at 100m with a caliber sniper, bullets get affected by low wind speed and that changes bullet direction. Since it shouldn’t be that way, we have fixed this and the sniper bullets are no longer affected by low wind at such small distances.
We found that there was an aim offset when you applied a weapon sight on the improvised handgun. It is now aligned properly. A similar issue occurred with the scope. The scope was incorrectly positioned and oriented in the player’s hands when used unmounted, and could clip through the character’s head while aiming down sights. This has now been fixed.
The player’s hand was clipping back through the Trench Gun when using the P17 Bayonet. This issue has now been fixed.
Strange light reflections would appear while looking through a scope lens at elevated locations at 8 PM in-game time. The reflection should appear as a bright spot, and it should not cover almost the entire scope lens, which was the case here. Now it’s been fixed.
The Vampyr scope had an issue where a black border appeared around the inner optical lens while ADS. This has now been fixed, and the inner lens is now clean without any border.
We fixed an issue where aiming with a bow while crouching would dislocate the character's hand.
There was an issue with turning on or off the weapon flashlight with the keybind while in first person. Sometimes it would work if the flashlight was operated manually first. But nonetheless, it’s fixed now.
While in the main menu, the pistol stored in the pistol holder would not be visible. It has been fixed, and the pistol is now showing in the holster while in the main menu.
We've found that 7.62x39 crap ammo does not do enough damage to the dropship. For instance it took 31 regular bullets of that caliber to down the dropship, while more than 100 crap bullets were not enough. It has been rebalanced now and it takes fewer bullets to down it. While we're on the topic of the dropship, there were some base building elements that were immune to its damage. No more!
OTHER
We have removed the interdependencies among quest givers, meaning that all traders now have T1 quests unlocked right from the start.
We've fixed an issue where the max ping limitation was not working. Now that it's up and running, we've set the default max ping value to 400, but you can modify that value to a lower or higher one if you want to.
Fixed an ICMP issue that was causing a lot of connectivity problems with the server.
Some of the white clothing material used to reflect light, causing it to "glow" under direct light. This issue affects clothing items that are white or contain white-colored sections. This has been fixed, and now your whites are just white, no glow. Similarly, while other bra items match their colors with underpants, F_Undershirt_Bra_01 appears grey instead of black, so we fixed it to match.
The prisoner’s clothes no longer get dirty while driving in a vehicle.
There was an issue where either allowing or blocking the "Vehicle parking" custom zone setting would affect the "Flag overtake" setting instead. It is fixed now.
No more free base repairs! We fixed a bug where repairing all base elements by the flag repair would use only 1 Toolbox use, instead of 1 Toolbox use per 1 base element.
There was an issue where the Kroks level-of-detail textures would aggressively degrade when moving slightly away from them. That is also fixed and it is no longer as egregious as it used to be.
There was an issue where treating an infected wound with alcohol would consume the entire bottle instead of just a single use. Using alcohol to treat infected injuries should now only consume one use (or 50g of liquid).
Cooked food items that were prepared before the latest update did not display nutrient values when hovered over with the cursor. This issue has now been fixed, and all cooked food items correctly show their nutrient values again.
Also, there was an issue where using lower-quality ingredients in cooking does not have an effect on the nutritional values of the final meal. This would result in meals with perfect nutritional values despite using lower-quality ingredients. This is now fixed and now the quality of ingredients affect the quality of the final meal!
The Armorer had multiple Ghillie suit items sharing the same display name, including Ghillie_Suit_Pants_01, Ghillie_Suit_Pants_02, and Ghillie_Suit_Pants_04, as well as Ghillie_Suit_Jacket_01, Ghillie_Suit_Jacket_02, and Ghillie_Suit_Jacket_04. This has now been fixed, and each item is correctly named.
Memory modules could be found in the vicinity, but would not drop when examining boxes where they were intended to spawn, even with adjusted loot settings. This issue only occurred in multiplayer and has now been resolved.
The male organ has now received pubic hair in Character creation.
Holding a flare in hand would cause the character’s hand to become visually disfigured in third-person view. This issue has now been fixed.
Players who were a little too quick on the “F” key could accidentally restart the “Remove Weed” immediately after finishing them, even when there was nothing left to do. This would trigger an extra action that didn’t actually do anything. The issue has now been resolved.
There was a bug that made Improvised Water Container come out of crafting already full, as if someone had kindly pre-filled them. This has now been corrected, so you’ll need to find your water the proper way.
Fixed an issue where the liquid quantity bar incorrectly appeared empty on full bottles after relogging.
There was an issue where the different lamps, when turned on, would have their light dimmed and barely visible. Now they shine bright!
We noticed that crafting a Practice Bomb would consume an entire Car Battery instead of only using the required amount of charge. This has now been fixed, and the recipe correctly uses five charges from the battery rather than the whole item.
When an NPC was killed, their bodies weren’t despawning properly. If you moved out of range, they would disappear visually, but were still tracked by the #ShowArmedNPCsLocation command. Over time, this also led to server errors. It’s been resolved now.
There was an issue where the Gas Lamp and a Wall-Mounted Gas Lamp would display dislocated flame after applying Eastern skin to them and vice versa. It has been fixed, and the flames are now placed at their designated spots. Let there be light! We fixed an issue where lamps would appear turned off after applying a skin, even though they were actually turned on.
Gear colors in Brawl and MMA events were showing up incorrectly as orange instead of the usual black or white. This has now been fixed, and the gear colors display properly again.
Apparently, lighting a cigarette using the oven would cause the oven to be destroyed. This weird issue is now fixed.
The Bass fish animation would break after catching the fish while the keep or release minigame was still active, causing the fish to clip through the player’s hand. This has now been resolved.
All bayonets currently have the description “short bayonet for xy”. Since this is inaccurate, as some bayonets are not short by definition and can be almost half a meter in length, we have decided to remove the word ‘’short’’ from the bayonet descriptions.
Multiple level design fixes in the form of fences clipping through walls and misplaced spawners in Z2 sector.
We fixed an issue where animal head on a spike items (e.g. boar head on a spike, donkey head on a spike, and other animal variants) could not be placed when used on base building foundations.
There was an issue where characters could perform chopping actions while holding a two-handed axe and lying down. No more!
That’s it for the May Update!
Into the Wild starts here, but it doesn’t end here. The June and July updates will keep pushing further into the survival systems at the heart of this season.
As always, thank you for playing, reporting issues, breaking things in ways we didn’t expect, and sticking with us as SCUM keeps moving.
See you on the Island!