Hey Bamboo Buddies! 🎍

It’s time for Title Update 1.0.5 (TU1.0.5)! As Neighborville gets ready to welcome the whole world, it’s important that (human only!) players who show up to our door feel welcome so we can build a thriving community. This time, we’re focusing on making adjustments to give new arrivals a smoother entry, and some general quality of life improvements.

What’s Sprouting in TU1.0.5?

Revamped New Player Experience! 🏘️

The game's tutorial has been reworked! The early levels have been slightly changed to better  help new residents of Neighborville settle in and teach them how to effectively vanquish zombies. Friendly in-combat pop-ups for new gardeners will help them get acquainted with the plants they’ll grow and the zombies they’ll inevitably bonk. We’ve also updated loading screens between early levels to help you prepare for the next encounter.

For those who hadn’t yet journeyed past Adventure Level 9, your progress will now be moved to Adventure Level 9. We’ll send an inbox message to all players that migrated to this level to let you know. 

New players will also now start the game with a formidable roster unlocked including: Sunflower, Peashooter, Cabbage-pult, Wall-nut, Solar Pea, Sling-pea, Pea-nut, Sunflower Seed, and Chuck-nut. 

Dave’s Daily Do-Its… 📋

Dave finally organized his checklist and said he spoke to some plants to improve his greeting for new neighborville residents with… a new list of things to do? While he’s busy rewarding himself for getting this done with more tacos, new residents will have 30 days to complete Dave’s Daily Do-Its. And the rewards have also been updated to bolster your garden’s defenses. Here’s what you now get on each day’s completion:

• Day 1: Golden Yukon
• Day 2: Pine Needler
• Day 3: Gatling Pea
• Day 4: Lychee
• Day 5: Prick-erel Weed
• Day 6: Speargrass
• Day 7: Sun-tower

If you were in the process of completing Dave’s Daily Do-Its when this update goes live, you will keep your old rewards and be moved to Day 1 of the new event so you have an opportunity to earn all the updated rewards.  

Quality of Life Updates 🗂️

Alongside the new player experience, we’ve made some other changes as well:

Some of our UI elements are shuffling around. We think this is way better than shambling, so we’ll allow it. We’ve added a sticker book icon to the bottom row to make it easier to find your collection, and we’ve also amped up the Events icon by moving it beside the Plant Pass icon.

We also swapped the 7 stickers in the Hedge Knight collection with new, snazzier versions. If you’ve already earned them, your collection will be updated to the new stickers. For their safety, the identities of these stickers have been heavily redacted in the screenshot above. 

The final update we’ve made is around balancing the shard and seed economy in the game. Now that we’ve added Dave’s Daily Do-Its and Achievements to the game, there are more fun and flexible ways to earn seeds and shards for unlocking and upgrading plants. Because we’ve revamped the system for earning rewards with these new mechanisms, and we want to keep the game’s progression and economy balanced, we’re removing shard and seed rewards for completing Adventure levels for the first time.

Bamboo Shoots is Taking Aim! 🎯

While reinforcing the entrance to Neighborville, we came across Bamboo Shoots hiding in the bushes. We’d been calling for him for quite a while, but after firing thousands of bamboo rounds over the years, his hearing isn’t exactly what it used to be.

We managed to coax him in with the promise of more fights, so he was happy to come to the backyard. Bamboo Shoots can be created by merging a Peashooter with a Potato Mine and will be unlocked for new players upon completing the tutorial. Existing players will already have him unlocked and ready to leap into the fight!

Unit Rebalances ⚖️

We’ve also had some minor rebalances to a couple of units: 

We hope our new neighbors can settle into Neighborville much easier with these changes, and we'll continue welcoming new regions to Early Access over the coming months. If you encounter any unexpected lawn-related incidents, check our Known Issues list first. If your particular bug hasn't made the list yet, let us know on the forums and we'll send the gardening crew after it. And stay tuned to our channels for more on upcoming content updates and gameplay updates.

See you on the lawn! 🌱