The developers of Under a Rock have revealed what they’ve been working on since their last combat update in 2025, as the team has been busy laying the groundwork for a larger game.

Procedural world generation has seen steady work and maps now feel more varied and better structured. The team added new epic encounters that lean into corruption themes, and starter crash sites have been fleshed out so early runs are more interesting. These changes aim to make traveling more rewarding and give players new kinds of landmarks to seek out.

Game designers added many new cave modules, new entrances and end pieces across types like soft metal, ant hive, bee hive, crystal and mushroom. Caves now tend to continue past a single room and can contain harvestable resources, not just loot. Ant hive creatures are already moving into these spaces and can fight and navigate inside them, which gives caves real tactical value.

Water systems received a similar overhaul, with oceans getting visual and mechanical improvements, new sea creatures, and enhanced pathfinding that makes underwater life move believably through procedural areas. Lakes are now fully swimmable on the surface and below, complete with matching effects. Swimming creatures use the same pathfinding improvements as land creatures, which helps the world feel consistent.

Base building has picked up a number of useful stations that include a research table for studying discoveries, a blueprint table for managing blueprints, a drying rack for turning materials into food, a stove for cooking, a smelter for refining metal, a trinket table for crafting small boosts and an archery target for practice. Players can also place more backpack items around their bases. Some existing stations were tweaked to smooth progression and make crafting flow better.

The blueprint system is now fully implemented and aims to make building and sharing bases easier. Blueprints can be captured, named, saved and synced through the Steam Cloud so they are available across characters on the same account. The system has its own interface for crafting and blueprints, supports external blueprint deployment without restarting, and lets players choose whether to include interactables and decorations when placing a blueprint. There is also color coding to help plan builds more clearly.

In terms of combat and animation work, visuals now make critical hits easier to spot and damage numbers fade with distance. Collision detection got attention and motion warping was polished so attacks look and feel more natural. Humanoid timings were adjusted and creature balance for T1, T2 and T3 encounters was tuned. Parrying is a bit more forgiving and enemies react when you land one. Initial underwater combat is in place and new weapons arrived, including cursed versions of axes, spears and pickaxes and new ogre clubs at uncommon, rare and epic levels. Item durability now changes by a variable amount and player side animations for blocking and parrying were improved. There are also new taunt animations for players.

Environmental hazards are beginning to affect gameplaym, as fire now has a warning phase where a burn bar shows when you stand too close to heat. The bar fills based on the environment and your fire resistance. If it fills you enter a damage phase where rolling, rain or water reduce the effect. Drowning has clearer feedback too with a new screen effect when you take drowning damage.

Beyond those headline systems, the update adds more loot drops, more harvestable and craftable items and a range of optimizations on both GPU and game side. The patch frames the game as a set of systems that will grow and interact more over time.

As revealed by the developers, work is already shifting toward taming and companions, and we can expect to learn more about creatures in the upcoming update. Hopefully, the game’s release isn’t far off!