Plains of Pain's next major update is in active development and currently planned for around the end of August, the team announced in a dev blog posted August 1. No patch is releasing today, but a new Gameplay Battlemix Trailer is out now, mixing firefights with bandits, heavy battles against giant drone machines, rocket barrages, and the kind of wasteland chaos that can turn one normal trip into a story.

The studio says quality and stability come first and promises a bigger dev blog next week with more details.

The post offers a short preview of the direction in progress:

• Reworked production building layer
• More control over farming and related systems
• New resource gathering additions
• New trading related content
• Stronger foundations for future Settlements 2.0 systems
• More development teasers

The team framed the blog as "the first signal from the road ahead" rather than a full reveal. It also thanked the community and suggested Steam reviews as one of the best ways to help more survivors discover Plains of Pain.

The wasteland just got a fresh patch. Update v0.8.13 for Plains of Pain is live now, focusing on quality-of-life improvements, new difficulty levers, and long-requested features like a color picker. The update also bumps truck speeds and includes performance work.

The community has been asking for a color picker, and v0.8.13 finally delivers. Instead of manually typing hex codes, you can now choose from a basic color palette when customizing map icons. Small change, big impact.

Map readability also gets a boost: newly revealed locations now appear with a gray icon, turning white only after you visit them. No more squinting to figure out which discovered traders you’ve actually explored.

The patch lays groundwork for a true Hardcore mode by adding two new experimental options:

• Production Buildings Speed – adjust how fast production buildings generate resources in settlements and player bases.
• Lower Loot Chance and Loot Amount – values can now be set as low as 0.01 for extremely harsh survival worlds.

These are experimental; feedback will shape future tuning.

Both the Bandit Truck and Dustborns Truck get a speed increase from 30 mph to 45 mph. The Bandit Truck also has improved landing and stopping behavior to reduce self-damage.

CPU and RAM performance tied to NPC AI has been optimized, leading to smoother FPS in busy areas. Other fixes include:

• Improved loot chance algorithm
• NPCs now escape correctly from unknown attackers
• Fixed world objects not aligning with terrain normal
• Gaps in buildable concrete walls closed
• Players can no longer escape the taken down screen via ESC
• Fixed missing second texture on OGD Distance Eater AI driver
• TOS Combatant Breacher no longer shoots too fast

The dev team says this update is part of an ongoing content wave, with more features, balancing, and polishing to come based on community feedback.

A unique server with custom difficulty settings for Plains of Pain.

For the first few hours, you’ll struggle like Riddick on Crematoria; expect to die every 6–8 minutes. You must find world mattresses to update your respawn point, then slowly progress within a 6-minute radius of your base.

After two hours, I finally crafted basic gear and prepared for some risky travel, it was awesome. I started finding water barrels and hunting animals for food. Pro tip: finding cactus and aloe vera in the wasteland is essential.

Once you find decent armor and weapons, your next priority is crafting liquid containers. Gathering water wherever you find it is the only way to increase your survival range.

This is an epic journey with a totally different hardcore feel. If you love true survival, this is it.