Gates alpha patch notes: Safe Zone

Patch notes · 13 October 2026

The alpha is close. Since First Light the island has doubled in width, grown a town in the middle and learned to tell a story across a wipe. Wolves hunt in packs now, something patrols the sky, and you can pick a friend up off the floor. Here is what changed.

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A bigger, wilder island

The island is 4 km across now: twice as wide, four times the ground.

• Two mountain ranges cut by gullies, with forest up to a treeline at 68 m.
• A desert across the north: sand, palms, cactus and dry scrub.
• Calm lakes inland. Lake water is fresh, so drinking it costs no health.
• Trees three times taller (pines reach 42 m), and cliffs made of rock, with crags and ledges you can stand on.
• Landmarks worth the walk: radio masts, ruined keeps, watchtowers, standing stones, container yards, quarries and a relay, joined to the coast road by dirt trails.
• The coast road is 8 m and two lanes, under power lines, with junk piles of wrecked cars, oil barrels, road signs and food boxes along it.

THE GATE and the Black Ziggurat

THE GATE is a walled container town around a ruined black-stone gate near the middle of the island, and the one safe place on it.

• No weapons drawn and no looting other players' bags. Four sentry guns on the watchtowers shoot anyone who turns hostile, and hostile lasts five minutes, death included.
• A public workbench, a research table and three recyclers that return 67%.
• Six kiosks trade JUNK for rations, building supplies, tools, parts, salvage and arms.
• Once you have been there, you can respawn there every 30 minutes.
• Sleepers left in town for 20 minutes are killed, so log off at home.

Out on the island, the Black Ziggurat has three sealed rooms. Green keycards drop from caches and crates; the green room guarantees a blue card, the blue room a red, and the sanctum pays elite loot. Every swipe wears the card.

The wipe tells a story

Five works wake up over the course of a wipe. Each one opens for deposits at a set hour and the whole server feeds it together. Once lit, it changes the island for everyone, and if nobody manages it, it lights itself at a fallback hour. Keep its tank fuelled and it gives a bonus on top.

THE GATEKEEPER and THE TRADER talk, and what they say changes with the works. Glyph stones teach the ancients' script, and one of them holds the answer to THE RING LOCK, which pays a green keycard. The ISLAND screen tracks all of it, with WORK and JOURNAL tabs.

Standings rank every wipe four ways: THE WORKS (what you gave and did, which can't be raided), THE HOARD (what your base is worth at the wipe), THE FIGHT (kills) and THE ISLAND (all of it). A hall keeps the winners after the wipe ends, and /top shows the boards. On islands that pay, each board's top places are paid to the winner's wallet.

Wipes count down in chat, then the island starts over. Blueprints and the glyphs you've learned survive one wipe.

Animals hunt back, and something flies

• Wolves hunt in packs. Two bite while the rest circle, they howl for each other and keep off a lit torch, and twice as many come out at night.
• Animals hear you: a gunshot carries 100 m and a satchel 200 m. Prey runs and wolves come to look. Crouch behind an animal and it won't see you.
• The stag joins the pig and the wolf. It only runs.
• Fel beasts: on wipe day the animals are soft and wary (60% health, half the bite). They harden as the works wake, up to 150% health and 140% bite.
• Butcher a carcass with a blade for meat, fat, bone and leather. Hatchets and spears get more out of it.
• An attack helicopter flies in from the sea for a five-minute patrol every 30 minutes. It circles anyone it spots outside town and fires in bursts. Break line of sight, because it can't be shot down.

Bows, guns and raids

• Hold right mouse to draw the bow (one second) and left click to loose. A body hit does 50, ×1.5 to the head, and you can fire every 1.25 s. The crossbow hits for 60.
• Arrows stick where they land (trunks, walls, the ground, bodies), and E pulls them back out. One in ten breaks.
• New arrows: high velocity, bone and fire. R picks which one you nock. A fire arrow burns 2 hp a second for 20–40 s where it lands.
• Right mouse on a gun aims down the sights. Guns, bows, tools and armour wear out, and a broken gun won't fire. You can unload a gun into your pack, and it switches rounds when the loaded kind runs out.
• Auto turret (a Workbench-2 blueprint): it shoots strangers using its own box of pistol rounds and leaves your crew alone.
• One satchel in five is a dud. It drops at the wall, and you can pick it up and plant it again.
• Crouch with Ctrl or Z: slower, lower, quieter and harder to hit.

Building and bases

• New shapes on the plan: floor frames (square and triangle), half and low walls, foundation steps, ramps, and L, U, spiral and triangle-spiral stairs. The hammer turns pieces.
• New inserts: glass windows, wood shutters, metal window bars and garage doors.
• Deployables go wherever you aim, and R turns them. Sleeping bags go on foundations and floors, and fire pits go on floors.
• A code lock goes on the hearth, and whoever enters the right code joins its crew. E at the hearth shows its stock, the daily cost and how long the base is protected. Keys 1–4 take stock back out.
• Upkeep scales: bigger bases and bigger crews pay more, doors and windows pay their share, and a base that stops paying rots from the roof down.
• The key lock (75 wood) and the wooden barricade (200 wood, 350 hp) need no bench.

Crafting, research and loot

• Put an item and some JUNK in the research table, and ten seconds later you get its Blueprint. Read it to learn the recipe, or trade it.
• Each workbench opens its own tier of the tech tree. A bench one level above a recipe crafts it in half the time, and two levels above in a quarter.
• Every container pays guaranteed JUNK (barrel 2, cache 5, crate 8), plus salvage (springs, pipes, gun bodies, tech trash and more) that recycles into more.
• The furnace, burlap, large box and code lock need no bench, and ore smelts inside a lit furnace. The camp fire has fuel, input and output slots and an on/off switch.
• Crafting and inventory have separate pages now, with colour icons, item descriptions and a live queue. Right-click a queued craft to make it next.
• Skins: pick a look on the craft page, from six launch skins. Ones you don't own show their price and open the store.

Staying alive

• The weather cycles through six presets every 45 minutes: clear, overcast, fog, rain, heavy rain and storm. Storms raise the sea.
• Rain soaks you unless something is overhead. Cold nights, wind and wet clothes chill you until it costs health. A fire, a torch and the right clothes keep you warm, and the new hide poncho is the warmest thing you can wear.
• Pick each other up: aim at a downed player and hold E for six seconds. A medkit on your belt saves a failed recovery roll, and the new medical syringe gets a downed player back up.
• Fall damage: four metres is free, eight costs about half your health and fourteen kills. Deep water breaks the fall.
• Grow corn and hemp in a planter box by daylight under open sky. Carry a drink in a waterskin, pick berries and mushrooms, and take a second wood harvest from a stump.
• F lights and snuffs a held torch. A lit torch lights up the night and keeps wolves off.
• On the death screen, Tab or the arrow keys pick which sleeping bag you wake on.

How it looks and sounds

• Meet Triple T. He's on the main menu, he's the figure on your inventory page wearing whatever you wear, and you wake holding his bat. It hits like the old rock and goes tung.
• The score is four tracks, with Safe Zone on the menu. Songs come with four to eight minutes between them and never start in the middle of a fight.
• Nearly every sound is a real recording now: footsteps, wolves, a red deer's bellow, axe chops, gunfire, supersonic flybys, crickets after dusk. You hear other players reload, eat, drink and punch in codes. Underwater, everything is muffled.
• A new sky and sea: weather clouds, stars, a sharp moon, and water that reflects the sky, turns red at dusk and breaks on the shore.
• Bodies move properly: gaits match speed, feet plant and heads turn. Other players are drawn in what they're wearing, and sleepers lie down.

The browser, sign-in and agents

• The browser page is the game's main menu: server list, item store, news, spectating and options. If you're signed in on elopros.com, you're signed in here too.
• Browsers with WebGPU now get the desktop's full-range shadows and live sky. Everything else falls back to WebGL2 by itself.
• Guests can play the public server with no wallet. A guest plays a fresh character each time, so sign in to keep your base.
• Gates plays inside an X post, and an invite link opens Gates straight onto your server.
• Your Elo Pros name and picture show in chat, in the kill feed and on nametags.
• AI agents play too. They show as (agent) and talk in local chat, and you can watch one live from the browser.

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Changelist

Added

• A 4 km island, twice as wide as before
• Two mountain ranges with gullies, and a treeline at 68 m
• A desert biome across the north, with palms, cactus and dry scrub
• Freshwater lakes inland
• Landmarks: radio masts, ruined keeps, watchtowers, standing stones, container yards, quarries and a relay
• Rock formations 6–26 m across, with tops you can walk on
• Dirt trails from landmarks to the coast road
• Power lines along the coast road
• Roadside junk piles: wrecked cars you can climb, tyre stacks, oil barrels (low grade fuel), road signs and food boxes
• Ground pickups: stone piles, wood piles, metal and sulfur ore, mushrooms
• Berry bushes, and hemp as a plant of its own
• Trees regrow from saplings, and picked plants grow back
• A felled tree's stump gives a second wood harvest
• THE GATE: a safe town with sentry guns, a public workbench, a research table and three recyclers at 67%
• Six JUNK kiosks at THE GATE: RATIONS, BUILDERS, TOOLS, PARTS, SALVAGE, ARMS
• Respawn at THE GATE once you've been there, every 30 minutes
• The Black Ziggurat, with green, blue and red keycard rooms
• Five works: THE CRUCIBLE, THE LAPIS WELLS, THE OBSERVATORY, THE GOLDEN SPINE and THE EXCHANGE
• THE GATEKEEPER and THE TRADER, who answer by topic
• Glyph stones, the ancients' script, and THE RING LOCK
• ISLAND, WORK and JOURNAL screens
• Standings on four boards, a hall that outlives the wipe, and /top
• Wipes with a countdown in chat; blueprints and learned glyphs survive one wipe
• The stag
• Fel beasts: three tiers of animals that harden over the wipe
• Twice as many wolves at night; the extras leave at daybreak
• Butchering with a blade; leather and bone fragments from animals
• The attack helicopter
• Bow draw: hold right mouse, left click to loose
• Arrows stick in what they hit and can be pulled back out with E
• High velocity, bone and fire arrows; R picks the arrow
• Aim down sights
• Wear on guns, bows, tools and armour
• Unload a gun into your pack; it switches rounds when the loaded kind runs out
• Auto turret
• Satchel duds, one in five
• Stone spear (25 damage), wooden barricade, key lock
• Crouch on Ctrl or Z
• Fall damage
• Building shapes: square and triangle floor frames, half walls, low walls, foundation steps, ramps, and L, U, spiral and triangle-spiral stairs
• Glass windows, wood shutters, metal window bars and garage doors
• Free placement for deployables, with R to turn
• A code lock for the hearth; the right code joins its crew
• Hearth panel: stock, daily cost and time protected; keys 1–4 take stock out
• The research table turns an item and JUNK into a Blueprint in ten seconds
• A tech tree for each bench
• Guaranteed JUNK in every container
• Twelve salvage parts to recycle: springs, pipes, sheet metal, road signs, gun bodies, tech trash, fuses, blades, propane tanks and sewing kits
• Camp fire with fuel, input and output slots and an on/off switch
• Weather: six presets, with rain, fog, thunder and storms that raise the sea
• Getting wet and cold; the cold costs health
• Hand revive: hold E on a downed player for six seconds
• A medkit on the belt saves a failed recovery roll
• Medical syringe
• Planter box, corn seed and hemp seed; rain waters a planter
• Waterskin
• Hide poncho and bone helmet
• Choose which sleeping bag you wake on
• Map marks: up to five, each with a colour, a picture and a label; the nearest shows on the compass
• Give the stack in your hand to the player you're aiming at (hold B)
• Drop a stack by dragging it out of the inventory; TAKE ALL on containers; Shift to loot on hover
• Right click puts clothing on and takes it off
• Skins: six looks, picked on the craft page; dropped and worn items keep their skin
• Names and pictures from your Elo Pros account
• A four-track score
• A main menu in the browser, with server list, item store, news, spectating and options
• A WebGPU renderer in the browser
• Guest play on the public server
• Gates inside an X post
• Invite links
• AI agents marked as (agent), talking in local chat and watchable live
• Render scale setting: draw the world below native resolution while the UI stays sharp
• Camera shake
• Ping and packet-loss warnings
• A description for every item, in the craft pane and tooltips
• The Gates icon on the window, the .exe and the browser tab

Improved

• The coast road is 8 m wide, two lanes, smoothed, and on ground you can stand on all the way round
• Side roads curve instead of running straight across the island
• Trees: three times taller, with photo needles and leaves and birch bark
• Cliffs: faceted rock faces with solid crags and ledges, and no green zigzags at the edges
• Ore nodes crumble in stages as you mine them, and the last hit breaks them apart
• Monuments are dressed in detail and weathered, and their lamps light at night
• The sea: depth colour, sky reflections, sun glint, shore breakers and foam; dusk water turns red with the sky
• Clouds, stars and a sharp moon, in the browser too
• TAA anti-aliasing on desktop High and Medium
• Building pieces are drawn per tier: frames, planks, ashlar and steel panels
• Animal AI: packs, hearing, pathing around walls and cliffs, sleep, and healing when left alone
• Wolves are 50% more common; waystations no longer keep guard wolves
• Animation: gaits match speed, feet plant, legs follow travel, heads turn
• First person: a bigger hand, a fist that closes on what it holds, a swing for each item, and a bow drawn by the left hand
• Torch: the flame sits on its head, lights the night and stays in frame through a swing
• Other players are drawn in what they're wearing; sleepers lie down
• Recorded sounds for nearly every cue; you hear other players reload, eat, drink and punch in codes
• The gunship's rotor and gun carry with distance, with Doppler
• Underwater, sound is muffled and the view fogs
• Upkeep: a rent ladder for bigger bases, a tax for bigger crews, decay from the roof down, and doors and windows pay upkeep
• A destroyed, stocked hearth keeps paying its base's upkeep for up to 24 hours
• A higher workbench crafts faster
• The furnace, burlap, large box and code lock need no bench; ore smelts in a lit furnace
• Crafting and inventory on separate pages, with colour icons, a live queue and crafts grouped by class
• Left click eats, places or reads what's in your hand
• Loot tables carry salvage parts alongside their old rows
• Emptied crates disappear until they refill
• Hit markers spread further on a headshot or a kill
• Refusals say why: an empty bow, a locked box, ground you can't build on
• Downed players get a working UI
• A balance change no longer wipes inventories and bases
• The browser page opens on the public server list, waits for you to ask before downloading on a phone, and gives clearer connect and version messages

Fixed

• A client could move at double speed by sending frames too fast
• Stacked heals healed several times too fast
• Arrows and bullets now hurt animals, and so do satchels
• Arrows that ran out of flight vanished; they now land and can be picked up
• Falling into the ziggurat, or into a base off a ledge
• Walking downhill caught on an invisible rim above rocks
• Far tree cards drew over nearby and felled trees
• Terrain seams and overlapping ground between chunks
• Placed models stood half their height off the floor
• An unlocked tech-tree node stayed locked on screen until you respawned
• Your magazine was lost when you logged off
• A downed player's torch kept wolves away and warmed them, and the Esc menu put your torch out for everyone else
• Sleepers drew as black cut-outs
• THE GATE's vendors closed a moment after opening
• A hit on a wall showed a hit marker on every player's screen
• Wood walls threw sparks
• Stacked rocks were open underneath
• Map names printed over each other
• The browser build crashed when a power pole came into view
• Safari couldn't send game traffic
• The browser build's sound didn't start
• Clouds drew too blue in some browsers
• A crash loading models on busy machines

Removed

• The rock: you wake with Triple T's bat instead, with the same numbers
• The synthesized music
• Researching straight from your hand: research happens at the table
• Rope and tarp from crates
• The brick ledges on cliffs
• Bloom in the WebGL2 browser build

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