Smalland 0.2.5 Patch Breakdown: Server Modifiers, Solo Pause, and a Bark Bonus

Smalland: Survive the Wilds left the gate on March 29, 2023, and its first meaningful update arrived barely a week later. Build 0.2.5, released April 6, leans into player feedback with fresh server modifiers, a more cooperative co-op, a long-overdue pause button for solo players, and a generous bump to Bark drops. Several smaller annoyances also got patched out along the way.

Here is the full breakdown.

Server Modifiers Get Real Knobs

Anyone who has loaded into Smalland knows the world setup screen. After the patch, hosts and admins find new sliders for tuning gameplay before stepping into the map:

• Day cycle length
• Season cycle length
• Maximum creature health
• Nourishment loss frequency
• Fall damage scaling

This makes the experience configurable for groups that want a relaxed evening or a brutal weekend with predators on growth hormones. If you run your own world, these settings are now the first thing worth tweaking before inviting friends.

Co-op Becomes Less Annoying

Multiplayer received a handful of welcome additions:

• Built structures attached to a tree base no longer take damage from friendly fire.
• Hosts can restrict lobbies to friends only.
• The join screen now supports network filters.

Merge Games also rolled out under-the-hood network improvements in the official patch notes, though the studio kept the specifics vague. Translation: expect things to feel a bit smoother without much fanfare about it.

Solo Play Finally Pauses

If your early days in Smalland involved stepping away from the keyboard and returning to a dead Vanguard, you are not alone. Before 0.2.5, hitting Escape opened the menu but left the world running, so your character could starve through what should have been a coffee break.

After the patch, Escape actually freezes the game. The pause menu also gained a manual save button for players who would rather not trust autosaves with several hours of progress.

Bark Drops Get a Healthy Buff

Bark is one of the foundational materials in Smalland, especially for anyone serious about base construction. Before this patch, resource nodes ran dry well before your inventory looked respectable. Build 0.2.5 increases the amount of Bark dropped per harvest, which should significantly cut down the time spent foraging just to lay down a few walls.

Smaller Fixes and Tweaks

The rest of the changelog covers small but welcome corrections:

• Gravestones no longer float when you die on an elevator.
• Dismantling a structure now properly refunds the materials it should.
• A potential fix for chest items vanishing into the void.
• Mirmek received a visual refresh.
• The default framerate is now capped at 60 FPS.
• Curved wooden railing was added to the build menu.

Installing the 0.2.5 Update

There is no manual procedure required for the Smalland Build 0.2.5 update. Steam will fetch it automatically the next time you launch the game. To confirm you are running the latest version, glance at the upper right corner of the main menu screen. If the build number matches, you are good to go.