Games
Overthrown Gets Big New Update
Summary
Table of Contents
- Overthrown’s Livestock Update introduces Woolies, new combat features, new structures, and worker types.
- The update offers the ability to shear Woolies, burn buildings during combat, and use new resources like soap and hot baths.
- Brimstone plans to add difficulty options, map icons, and more based on player feedback to prepare for the game’s full release.
Overthrown, a city-building game that recently rolled out in early access, has shipped its first big update titled The Livestock Update. Having kicked off early access on December 5, 2024, Overthrown is currently available on PC via Steam and on Xbox Series X/S via Xbox Game Preview.
Developed by Brimstone and published by Maximum Entertainment, Overthrown puts the player into the shoes of Runa, a monarch with magical powers. The gameplay revolves around gathering resources, setting up structures, fending off mutants, and more in order to safeguard the kingdom. Besides the option to play solo, it offers online co-op support to play with up to six different players. On Steam so far, Overthrown‘s reception has been quite promising, with “Mostly Positive” reviews at the time of writing. Nearly two months after it rolled out in early access, the devs have released a major update adding various types of new content to the game, ranging from new worker types to new buildings.
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Overthrown‘s new Livestock Update launched for PC players on January 30, 2025, whereas its Xbox arrival is scheduled for January 31. A key aspect of the update is the game’s first farmable livestock, Woolies. These sheep-like creatures come in three different versions—normal, fluffy, and a “gigantic evil mutated form.” Notably, the player can shear the excess wool from the Woolies by simply punching them. Another core aspect that receives an addition is Overthrown‘s combat, which now involves the usage of fire bombs, mortars, and power kegs. With this, the Xbox Game Pass title brings the ability to set buildings on fire during combat.
The latest content drop in the city-building game also introduces a total of nine new structures as well as an expanded research tree. The freshly added buildings include the Mortar Tower, Washhouse, Well, Woolie Barn, and more. Along with these, a batch of new worker types with special skills has been incorporated. These types are Cannoneer, Gong Farmer, Launderer, Soaper, and Weaver. In addition to all that, a rather fundamental UX feature, tool tips, has been rolled into this update to help the player get an idea about the various items found in the game.
As Overthrown players acclimatize themselves with the new changes, Brimstone has already shared what features it’s looking to bring with its future updates. Among these targeted features are difficulty options, map icons, happiness-based spawn rate of citizens, and dynamic outlaws settlements and raids. Making the most of its early positive momentum on Steam, the team behind Overthrown would hope to take in player feedback and implement it successfully ahead of the game’s eventual full release on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. Several different games in the past have shown how the early access period can be leveraged for a strong official launch.
Overthrown The Livestock Update Patch Notes
Features
New resource: Fiber
New creature: Woolie
- Can be periodically sheared by Farmers or players for Wool
- Will wander around their barn and sleep inside it
- Don’t forget to shear them!
- Woolie tag!
New resource: Monster Eggs
New building: Woolie Barn
- Spawns woolies periodically at the cost of Monster Eggs
Woolies require fodder during Winter to restore calories
Characters and objects can now burn, taking damage over time and spreading fire to others until healed or extinguished
- Burning items transform to a burnt version after a short duration
Characters and objects now become wet when touching or splashed with water
New building: Well
- Can be used by citizens and outlaws to extinguish themselves when burning
Soldiers and outlaws can now throw fire bombs at structures and unreachable characters, dealing burn damage
New constructible consumable: Powder Keg
- Can be armed and disarmed by players and cause massive explosions
- The outlaws brought their own!
New building: Mortar Tower
- Operated by players or Cannoneers, consuming Gunpowder to fire explosive shells at enemy structures spotted by players and citizens
New outlaw building: Field Mortar
- Fires explosive shells right back at you!
Mortar shell and Powder Keg explosions damage terrain
Mortar Towers operated by Cannoneers, as well as Field Mortars, will target enemy structures, but not wildlife
Explosive damage inflicts burning immediately
New resource: Soap
New building: Soaper’s Workshop
- Employs a Soaper, turning Carcasses into Soap to be used by the Washhouse
New resource: Hot Baths
New building: Washhouse
- Employs a Launderer, consuming Soap and Fuel to supply citizens with Hot Baths (see Changes section below)
New building: Weaving mill
New Resource: Fashion
- Employs a Weaver, consuming Fiber to supply citizens with Fashion (see Changes section below)
Natural world entities (e.g. trees, plants, boulders) now spawn in groups that refill daily, with new groups spawning on season change
Uprooting an entity and rooting them away from their original group will cause them to join the nearest available group, or start a new group
Map mode now allows natural entities to be selected and the whole group will be highlighted
Friendly buildings now show an icon in map mode. This icon will change to reflect issues affecting it (e.g. damaged, missing worker)
Decorations do not show an icon by default, but will when damaged
Low priority map mode icons (e.g. buildings with no issues) will fade out when zoomed out to a far distance
Added difficulty settings
- Added difficulty preset option when starting a new world
- Added individually adjustable settings in the Manage Players screen, accessible through the pause menu: Difficulty preset, World hostility
- Aggressive: outlaws will launch raids against players
- Defensive: outlaws will not launch raids
- Passive: enemies will never attack players, the players’ kingdom or each other
- Toggle whether or not the crown be stolen by enemies
- Enemy spawn rate multiplier
- Enemy health multiplier
- Enemy damage multiplier
- Player health multiplier
- Player stamina recharge rate multiplier
New decoration: Hay Feeder
New decoration: Flower Bucket
- Has five selectable variants
New map: Canyon
NPCs can now wander around when idling outdoors
Added a console command to drop the crown
Changes
New main menu background!
Berry bushes and apple trees now produce fruit every day in Summer
Spring, Summer and Fall are now each 5 days long. Winter is 5 days long.
Removed buildings: Soup Kitchen, Pie Shop, Windmill, Smithy and Dredger
Removed resources: Landfill, Clay, Bricks, Ingots and Flour
Knowledge has been removed; research costs have been replaced with other resources
Removed building: Storehouse
- Storage limit is now set to 50,000 for all resources
The research tree has been updated
Terraforming with the shovel now refunds players 1 Ore per tile lowered and cost 2 Ore per tile raised
Structures are now immune to Cutting and Piercing damage (now that NPCs can use fire bombs)
Taxes and salaries have been removed
The Civil Service research allows employed civilians to generate Coin passively
Soldiers now require a one-time upfront Coin cost upon hiring. This cost is refunded when the soldier changes jobs (but not when defecting or dying)
The Coin cost to respawn is now fixed, rather than scaling with the current amount of Coin in storage
Player reserve crown charge (stamina) is no longer tied to the crown, and no longer generates based on proximity to living characters and creatures
All players can generate reserve charge passively as long as any player is crowned
When an NPC dies, players within range will absorb bonus reserve charge
While the crown is dropped or stolen, reserve charge cannot be gained and will deplete over time
Crown charge is only accessible once the crown has been picked up by any player for the first time during a playthrough
The citizen capacity is now determined by the amount of housing available rather than vacant jobs
Bladder as a need has been removed
Buildings no longer provide amenities to citizens within a limited range
Citizens now consume food resources globally to restore their calories need
Outhouses will now only increase the capacity of how many citizens are producing fertilizer
Luxury goods (Drinks, Hot Baths and Fashion) resources are consumed globally to provide happiness bonuses for citizens
In addition to the new Washhouse and Weaving Mill producing Hot Baths and Fashion, respectively, the following buildings produce resources consumed globally by citizens:
- Bakeries produce Bread
- Butcheries produce Meat
- Alehouses produce Drinks
Adjusted objectives to reflect the above changes to citizen needs
Various resource net change numbers now show the amount gained/lost per day instead of per minute
Updated job slots on Halberdier and Musketeer Barracks to have rotating schedules (early, mid and late shift)
- All other jobs use the early shift
Info feed message are now shown when a shift changes if there are citizens on that shift schedule
Berry bushes are now destroyed when harvested (but are more plentiful and fruitful due to plant growth changes)
Hunting Towers can now aim while reloading when operated by a Hunter. The new Mortar Towers match this functionality as well when operated by a Cannoneer
Hunting Towers can now be self-operated on a timer upon player interaction, like production buildings. The new Mortar Towers match this functionality as well
Removed the player-controlled stop/resume thresholds for resource production in the Resources window
Added a recruitment slider to the Population window to manually limit citizen spawning from the Town Hall
Added citizen housing, resource consumption and production information to the Population window
Added tooltips to column header icons in the Population window, and to equipment icons in Character window
Removed citizen skill bars from Population window and skill names from job slots on building interior menus, as skills currently don’t affect anything
Adjusted housing and soldier cost issue tracker messages for better clarity
Adjusted objectives for clarity and disabled some prompts and hotkeys until they’re introduced in the relevant objective
Updated deposit tiles to a 3D mesh instead of using a flat texture
Updated the crown (spawn) tile to be terraformable
Added contextual prompts for Shoot and Exit when in Hunting (or the new Mortar Tower)
Added additional controls (E on keyboard and north face button on gamepad by default) to exit Hunting Towers (and the new Mortar Towers)
The “ongoing season change” issue tracker message has been changed to “world generation in progress” for clarity, and will also display during daily plant growth
When resources are absorbed by the player, the resource list will only highlight the relevant resource counter instead of its entire category
Sunflowers will now randomly use one of 3 models that all have a more organic feel than the old one
Removed the “missing Gunpowder” icon from the Hunting Tower’s inspection UI and player operation UI, instead highlighting the resource counter in the resource list with the relevant reload cost. The new Mortar Tower’s UI matches this as well
Citizens (and the new Woolies) seeking shelter will now stop and check if the coast is clear if they haven’t been in combat for a few seconds
Citizens thrown into buildings will exit them to wander outside if they shouldn’t be in there (e.g. if the citizen wasn’t able to take a job in that building)
Gong Farmers (employed by the Composter) now have their own models, rather than reusing the Farmer models
Musket shots baited by players dashing now have a small randomized delay to feel more natural
Balancing
Mountain, Highland, and Cold regions now start at slightly higher altitude thresholds
Trampling requires much fewer steps to turn grass into dirt
Organic items take a full day to spoil instead of 5 minutes
NPCs have a wider vertical field of view
Tuskar nests and outlaw camps in the wild can now be destroyed with normal attacks
Some outlaw camp objects have received a health increase
Soldiers no longer have the Armored physical type (with resistance to Cutting damage, etc.), and instead count as Normal type
Outlaw settlements start out with a larger initial presence, and reach their maximum settlement cap much sooner
All outlaws drop Coin when defeated, instead of Poachers dropping Gunpowder
Player respawn cost has been increased
All research costs, loot drops, production and consumption rates have been adjusted with recent changes in mind (e.g. global resource consumption)
Player health and armor has been lowered while soldiers, outlaws, and Tuskar health and armor as been increased (on Challenging difficulty)
Ore deposits spawn individually rather than in groups (to encourage players to spread out mines and to settle and defend multiple areas)
Crown, spawn location, and zones updated on all maps
Lowered one of the coastal hills on the Seaside Cliffs map
Fixes
Fixed potential crash when NPCs search for nearby resources to pick up
Fixed issue tracker messages regarding housing and jobs often being wrong and misleading
Fixed NPC camps being able to spawn inside or above terrain when spawning on terrain that has already been terraformed
Fixed growing trees losing a percentage of their health
Fixed compass markers for enemies not displaying as red for non-host players
Fixed players being visible to NPCs while indoors
Fixed musket shots triggered against players due to dodging still being able to hit them sometimes
Musket shots dodged by players while dashing will now pass through them instead of being stopped by them
Fixed some portions of NPC animations playing incorrectly
Fixed characters being able to entirely skip attack phases if they’re shorter than a frame, potentially skipping logic that needs to run during those phases
Fixed NPCs not canceling attacks immediately when switching targets
Fixed NPCs not looking at an unreachable target when attempting to path to it and reaching the nearest reachable position
Fixed NPC attacks playing a few very stiff animation frames when ending
Fixed some Tuskar ledge climbing jank (also affecting the new Woolies)
Fixed newly constructed mirrored buildings replacing terrain tile biomes using their unmirrored footprint
Fixed ground stomp (crown-charged aerial unarmed attack) earth particles appearing completely white
Fixed hunting tower shots not having a smoke trail unless they hit nothing
Fixed happiness bonus and penalty entries for citizens in the Population window not refreshing when the display language is changed
Fixed some buildings having inconsistent wood textures
Fixed auto-saves sometimes failing
Fixed some saves not loading at all
Performance
Added the following graphics options:
- Texture quality
- Shadow quality
- Shadow distance
- Post-processing quality
- [Screen-space reflection quality
- Grass render distance
Added automatic recommended graphics settings
Optimized object instantiation, reducing loading times and improving day/season change performance and duration
Optimized terrain data loading, reducing loading times
Occluded plants now skip the growth animation, changing into their grown version instantly instead
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