In a press release, Daybreak Games has announced that H1Z1 will now be known simply as “Just Survive” to further separate itself from the H1Z1 universe. This rebranding is said to represent the studio’s “evolved vision” for the game, and lay out the foundation for future updates to come.

Speaking of updates, Daybreak Games has rolled out a big H1Z1 Just Survive update that introduces new features like Strongholds, and more. The full patch notes can be seen below and as one can expect, it’s full of gameplay tweaks and more.

Patch Notes: 

• Added the first region of Badwater Canyon, Pine Mill Reservoir.
• Players now spawn in the military base, a safe environment protected by snipers.
• Players can now sell items for Golden Eagle Coins to Corporal Moran in the military base.
• Players can now purchase basic items and tools for Golden Eagle Coins in the military base near Corporal Moran.
• Added Strongholds to the game.
• Stronghold plots can be purchased with Golden Eagle Coins at their location. Modular base components can be crafted and built on a purchased Stronghold plot.
• Strongholds can be raided by other players, triggering a Stronghold raid. At the end of the raid, the defending base will rebuild and be shielded for 1 hour, protecting it from further raids as well as NPCs.
• Loot has been completely re-itemized, with dozens of new items and a tiered, color coded rarity system to easily identify valuable items.
• Crafting has been overhauled with many new recipes and crafting ingredients.
• The Discovery tab has been removed, as players no longer need to discover recipes.
• Combat has been completely re-balanced, with multiple tiers of each weapon classification with different stats.
• Healing items, medicine, and consumables have been re-balanced.
• Body sim updated to provide a more consistent experience.
• Barricades can now be placed on cabin doors and windows to fortify locations for players.
• Added new fortifications and traps that players can use to fortify Strongholds and barricaded POIs.
• Improved car and tree harvesting, and added rock harvesting with the new pickaxe tool.
• Revamped the Player stash – the player stash is an embedded lockbox that is invisible to all players beyond a few meters. It will be marked on your map when placed.
• Added several decoration recipes for players to use to decorate their Stronghold, including a functional bed.
• Stronghold utilities (storage, barbecues, workbenches, etc) and traps can be picked up by pressing and holding E.
• Traps now ignore friendly targets – if on a Stronghold, they don’t trigger for anyone with permissions.  In world, they don’t trigger for their owner.
• Stronghold utilities and other free-place items can now be destroyed on PVE when placed outside a Stronghold to prevent griefing.
• Wrenches no longer spawn in PVE servers to prevent vehicle hoarding.
• Increased repair amount for wrenches in PVP.
• Campfires now drop their contents after being destroyed.
• Zombies no longer pick up the contents of a dead player’s loot bag.
• Reduced zombie clumping for the net result of fewer zombies spawning immediately near a player.
• Reduced zombie damage to player owned vehicles.
• Fixed an issue where player corpses attracted a very large number of zombie spawns.
• Updated the airdrop ticket ruleset.
• Updated numerous text prompts throughout the game for clarity and accuracy.
• Server population now displays numerically.
• Added a multi-sell/multi-salvage option for stacks of items.
• Inventory is now sortable by Name, Bulk, Category, Rarity, and Sell Price.
• Removed Proximity Container Crafting and Proximity Container Searching.
• Weapons and tools at 20% durability turn red in the equipped hotbar.
• Added a search bar to the crafting tab.
• Updated UI to make the inventory slightly larger visually.
• Updated UI to make crafting screen larger so fewer names get cut off.
• Group members now render in matching colors for HUD indicator chevrons, nameplates, and outlines.
• Being added to permissions now has a confirmation for the permission receiver. If someone adds you to their permissions, a confirmation will pop up on your screen.
• Removed radio tab from the UI – radios will return in a future update.
• Placing objects no longer causes the object to pulse during placement, which could cause placement errors.
• Vehicle health bar shows during vehicle repair.
• Fixed an issue where you couldn’t swap an equipped weapon for one in your inventory of the same type.
• Fixed an issue where the red killer outline would persist on the killer after the victim respawned.
• Unlocked and Locked crates now show in the top of the player inventory.
• Updated loading screen tips.
• Added keybind under the settings menu for first person / third person toggle (default T).
• Fixed an issue with the UI toggle function not working. Now you can press Ctrl-F10 to toggle the UI.
• Fixed an issue where quick attack was hardcoded to a key despite no longer being an intended feature / available to keybind.
• Fixed “snaking” exploit.
• Fixed some animation conflicts that could cause issues similar to “snaking”.
• Fixed “drone” exploit.
• Fixed a long-standing issue where players, zombies and other NPCs could be rendered invisible to certain players.
• Fixed an exploit where players could punch trees to harvest them.
• Fixed an additional navigation exploit involving “sit” functionality.
• Fixed an exploit where certain emotes could be used to clip the camera through a wall.
• Fixed an exploit where emotes could be spammed to fast harvest items.
• Cars are no longer infinitely harvestable.
• Fixed an issue where vehicles could be boosted while their engine was off, draining their gas.
• Fixed an issue where players could be erroneously kicked out of an empty vehicle after entering it.
• Fixed an issue where players jumping on bases would sometimes be killed by bad collision intersections with the roof.
• Fixed an issue where using a weapon didn’t break auto-run.
• New and improved time of day lighting.
• Weather updates.
• Fixed the long-distance player LOD from not blending with distance fog correctly (ie, far away people are no longer dark black silohouettes against the grey fog).
• Added player on fire animation.
• Fixed an issue where certain items/weapons (mostly melee weapons) would not render in first person.
• Fixed an issue where vehicles would fall through Stronghold components.
• Fixed an issue where recursively destroyed storage would have its loot float in the air, it now drops as expected.
• Fixed an issue where there would be a delay before you could fire after swapping weapons.
• Fixed an issue where mashing the zoom on hunting rifles could cause the camera to get stuck behind the scope.
• Fixed numerous client Crash to Desktop scenarios.
• Fixed numerous server crash and disconnect scenarios.
• Significant performance optimizations for both client and server.
• Significant overhaul and upgrade to client side anticheat protection.
• Significant overhaul and upgrade to server side anticheat protection.
• Significant overhaul and upgrade to detection and banning heuristics.
• New Just Survive specific cheating report e-mail: JustSurviveCheater@Daybreakgames.com.
• Increased Customer Service staffing with improved response times.
• Players are now limited to 4 Characters per Account.

Just Survive is currently available on Steam Early Access. 

Do you like the new direction for H1Z1 or should Daybreak focus all its energy into one project at a time?