The animals in Wurm Online aren’t just there to be captured and/or killed by players. They’re meant to act in a plausible manner, avoiding players and looking for food, until players hunt and/or capture them. But as the latest development dispatch explains, some of that code is causing problem by giving animals small points of heavy clustering while restricting movement in other ways.

Essentially, as animals avoid settlements, it was possible for large groups of animals to wind up concentrated in very small spaces away from where players would encounter them. The game’s approach to pathing could also lead to certain animals being unable to move outside of a small corner of a pen, which is also undesirable. New systems will be rolling out to ensure that animals are more willing to spread out and able to path more naturally when confined; you can read about all of the technical details in the full entry.

Crowfall is about to take its next step into a larger world. The PvP MMO announced that it’s preparing to layer a live environment on top of test and internal servers as part of its move toward an eventual release. The live environment will feature a more refined and persistent build than what players are used to seeing on the more experimental test server. It will strive to stay up 24/7 as much as possible, be available to a wider pool of backers, be more stable, and be wiped only when absolutely necessary.

The team indicated that this server is a big deal for the development and testing, representing another major step forward: “The live environment will eventually become the live game. We will only wipe it when absolutely necessary and it will be up all the time (outside of normal maintenance). This deployment is one of many necessary transitions that will get us to launch.”

Meanwhile, the studio is also rearranging some Kickstarter backer rewards that are no longer relevant.

“One of the rewards that no longer makes sense, given our current design, is the ‘Reserve Unique Character Name’ that was available to Bronze pledge package (or higher) Kickstarter backers,” ArtCraft explains. “Our system has changed in such a way that character names are no longer unique; account usernames are used as the unique Crow identifier in the game universe. (Note that we have also separated this from web log in, which now uses your email address to alleviate security concerns, and soon this will change for the game log in, too.) Since account names are already unique, this reward is obsolete, and we’ve decided to replace this former reward with the Arkon Greatsword Relic.”

That tall wall or cliff face that in other video games would represent an impassable barrier is nothing more than an adult-sized playground in Conan Exiles.

On Friday, the Conan Exiles dev team showed the first iteration of the game’s climbing system. As it exists in the most recent build, climbing allows characters to jump up and latch on to a vertical surface while doing a Spider-Man all of the way up. Of course, if you don’t watch your stamina, you could find yourself enjoying the existing gravity system with a vengeance. The team said that climbing uses the grit skill as well as a factor in how fast you use your stamina.

The team also posted a written Q&A yesterday on recipe filters, the July rebalancing patch, new effect types, the admin panel, elevators, and splash damage.

You can get a preview of the new climbing system after the break (the Tarzan antics begin around the 35-minute mark).