HOME IS WHAT YOU MAKE IT

The latest Stable Alpha update is called Home Is What You Make It.

The name describes the part of survival we have been trying to strengthen. Still Alive has always asked you to leave safety, take risks and bring something useful back. This update pays more attention to what happens after the front door closes behind you.

HOME USED TO BE SOMEWHERE YOU RETURNED TO

The original Base already contained useful systems. Storage held what you recovered. The Kitchen turned supplies into meals. The Workshop, Food Gardens, Infirmary, Utilities and Training all had practical jobs.

They worked, but they still felt too much like neighbouring menus. They did not always feel like parts of one refuge that your survivor was gradually improving.

The design goal for 0.5 is increasingly clear: your refuge should feel like somewhere a survivor is turning into a home. That does not mean freeform construction. It means useful survival infrastructure, visible progress and choices that connect back to the rest of the game.

A HOME THAT REMEMBERS WHAT YOU BUILT

Home Development brings that infrastructure together. Security, Workshop, Food, Kitchen, Medical, Utilities, Storage and Training can now be read as parts of the same refuge plan instead of isolated upgrades.

This had to work for existing survivors as well as new ones. Still Alive is already in Alpha, and real saves contain weeks of decisions, materials and completed projects. If a save can prove that a permanent piece of infrastructure was built, Development should recognise it. Players should not have to rebuild or repay simply because the presentation around Home became more coherent.

Some things visible in Development are still plans rather than executable projects. The interface is intended to show where a refuge can grow without pretending every part of that future is available today.

HOME SHOULD MAKE YOU BETTER AT SURVIVING

A refuge can hold more supplies and gain more facilities, but Home progression risks feeling detached if none of it changes the survivor who lives there.

Combat Training was one answer. The Training Area now develops from Makeshift to Equipped to Advanced, providing increasingly effective practice for weapon families in the relative safety of Home.

It gives players a deliberate way to develop the weapons they favour without repeatedly searching for dangerous encounters. The system still asks for a valid weapon, and the better facilities still have to be built. The difference is that practice now has a proper place inside the refuge.

BUT SURVIVAL IS MORE THAN WEAPONS

The apocalypse should reward a survivor for remaining physically capable, even when they are not holding a weapon. That is why Strength and Fitness now exist as optional Skills from Level 1 to 99.

You do not have to stop everything and train them. A survivor can continue exploring Ashwick without ever turning the refuge into a gym. Choosing to invest the time, however, creates grounded advantages.

Strength improves damage with Blunt, Bladed and Axe weapons, and expands ordinary Backpack capacity at key milestones. Fitness improves combat avoidance and Scavenging speed.

Those boundaries matter. Fitness does not make Cooking, Fishing, Crafting, Dismantling or every unrelated Skill arbitrarily faster. Physical conditioning should help where physical conditioning makes sense.

THE HOME GYM

The Home Gym is the physical counterpart to Combat Training. It also develops from Makeshift to Equipped to Advanced, beginning with a cleared space for basic bodyweight work and growing into a more capable exercise area.

Push-ups, Sit-ups, Squats and Burpees form the bodyweight side. Pull-ups, Dumbbell Press, Kettlebell Swings and Barbell Deadlifts extend the routine as the facility develops.

The equipment is physical. Dumbbells, a Kettlebell and a Barbell must be found and fitted at the refuge before their exercises become available. Carrying one in a Backpack is not the same as building it into a place where the survivor can train.

WHAT YOU FIND OUT THERE SHOULD MATTER AT HOME

Home Development should create reasons to care about what comes back from Ashwick. Construction materials, tools, Gym equipment and Kitchen equipment all connect exploration to the refuge.

Wooden Planks are a small but useful example. Salvaged Timber can now be processed with the correct sawing capability, giving an existing Scavenging resource another purpose in Home development. A find Out There becomes material at the Workshop, then becomes part of the refuge.

The Crafting workspace has also been reorganised around a compact catalogue and a clear selected-recipe inspector, making that chain of requirements and outcomes easier to read.

AND HOME SHOULD CHANGE WHY YOU GO BACK OUT

The relationship runs both ways. A developed Home creates new reasons to explore. The Home Gym creates a reason to look for Dumbbells, a Kettlebell and a Barbell. Construction creates demand for materials. New progression makes old and new Scavenging locations matter for different reasons.

Back Gardens extends Ashwick's residential Scavenging progression through domestic sheds, unfinished repairs and spaces that were ordinary before the world ended. The Barbell can be found there, along with an encounter known as the Handyman. We will leave the details of that meeting for the people who find it.

THE LOOP IS GETTING STRONGER

Leave Home. Take risks. Bring something useful back. Improve the refuge. Improve the survivor. Go out further.

That rhythm was already part of Still Alive. The established loop remains: leave Base, take risks, return Home, recover, improve the Base and repeat. This mid-0.5 update strengthens the Home half of it and makes the connections easier to see.

A better refuge is not the end of the journey. It changes what the survivor can do next.

A WORD ABOUT EXISTING SURVIVORS

Strength and Fitness begin at Level 1 with 0 XP where they were absent. We have not invented historical physical XP for time spent before these Skills existed.

The Strong trait now supports Strength XP instead of its old weapon-damage effect. Fit now supports Fitness XP instead of granting Maximum Health to new survivors. Some existing Fit survivors may retain Health already persisted in their save. The full Patch Notes contain the factual details.

WHAT COMES NEXT

0.5 Home is not complete. The next direction includes an Advanced Workshop and Welding, stronger Security, Base Power with a Generator and wiring, a Polytunnel and the final Home milestones, including Established and Well Rested.

There is also a Restored Electric Oven waiting for a refuge with the power to support it. These systems need to connect properly, so there are no promised dates attached to them.

Relocation and alternate-refuge identities now belong to 0.7 The World. That is an intentional scope decision. Last Orders and Ashwick Service Station deserve to become proper parts of world expansion rather than compressed additions to the Home milestone.