Fire Ant Update OUT NOW!!
It's finally here, and we can't be more grateful for your patience. We hope you enjoy it!

Here's a moment we've been waiting for as long as you have - we're burning with joy to be releasing the fire ant update to everyone! Let's keep this introduction short, because I'm certain you want to dive right into that lovely swamp as soon as you can. Here are the full patch notes for the update.

Patch Notes - The Fire Ant Update

The Fire Ants Invade!

Fire ants are nothing if not adaptable to new challenges. These swamplands that young queens, fresh from their nuptial flight, have landed in are not in their native range. The changing, often-flooded environment will test their flexibility to the limit.

- A whole new formicarium tier, featuring 2 new documentary scenarios:
* 4.1 Cold Blood: a newly-settled fire ant queen must deal with the threat of the amphibians & other denizens of the green swamp
* 4.2 A Bridge Too Far: use the fire ant’s abilities to traverse water and reach all the resources you can, whilst an ominous shadow looms overhead

- New focal ant species: fire ants (Solenopsis invicta) which come in two soldier variants:
* Pervasive fire ants will respawn for free after a while
* Vigorous fire ants will have a buff to their stats for a time after spawning
* The tiles of both variants can support 2 ants at a time at level 3

- Fire ants introduce several new ant skills:
* Bridge building: fire ants can build floating pontoons over water to reach resources previously unplundered, but beware of changing water levels!
* Aphid relocation: relocate yellow aphids from distant milkweed plants and bring them closer to home for a reliable source of honeydew, but other colonies may not like that!
* Titan climbing: very large new enemies can be climbed for extra damage!

- New auxiliary ant species:
* Big-headed ants (Pheidole morrisii) have an ancient genetic variant waiting to be awoken
* Little black ants (Monomorium minimum) use a chemical threat display called gaster flagging

- New swamp environment
- A menagerie of new swamp-dwelling critters with unique stats & abilities
- New voice acting from the narrator & scientists
- New music for our dynamic conductor system


Formicarium Challenge 4 Awaits!

Once you’ve completed the documentary scenarios and are back in the formicarium with your rewards, the fire ant soldiers will make a fine addition to your collection. Add them to your formicarium to help you with the challenges ahead! They have 4 formicarium upgrade options:

- Surefooted: gains extra attack damage when mounted on an enemy
- Evasive: gains a small chance to take no damage from a hit
- Last Stand: at zero health, will survive for a short time longer with reduced attack speed
- Last Laugh: upon death, the fire ant will deal high damage to its closest enemy if in range

After you’ve completed your upgrades and stocked up your resources, the scientist has an idea - and he’ll take the opportunity to put it into action. As always, Formicarium Challenge 4 will be a climactic test of your colony’s prowess and your own skills as a player, so be prepared.


Other Changes

- Buried creatures (! & ? icons underground) will now display on the minimap
- Additions to the minimap & more consistent minimap pings
- Woodworm & woodlice will now appear as food on the minimap
- Escape key will now close the in-game menu
- Made Formicarium Challenge 3 a little easier on Hard & Insane
- Holding Insert & PageUp keys now rotates the camera view 90° left & right respectively
- Added a quick build / upgrade tool which detects nearby tile type to use, thumb mouse button by default
- Delete tool can now be used on tiles where building has not yet started
- Added an entirely new set of icons for the Formica ereptor
- adaptations menu
- Added a check for progress file corruption on game startup. If detected progress file is wiped and a new one made
- Added victory & defeat images for Beetle Rise Up! & the Hungry Spider levels
- Power-scaled creatures will have a star next to their health overlay displaying their scale level (currently only used in freeplay and some extra levels)
- Creatures will now correctly display the status effect they are currently experiencing
- Renamed worker "evasive" ability to "nimble" to avoid confusion with fire ants
- Formicarium level setup rewards on gateway levels now appear as zero before difficulty select
- Clicking an active underground minimap tab will now take you there from the surface
- The Promised Land demo level reinstated
- Moving buried creatures will now throb on the minimap
- Dead harvestable creatures in the Battle Arena will now not sink for 2 seconds
- Credits updated


Fixes & Optimisations

- Colony rehousing will now give the correct jelly amount for level 3 tiles (previously it was counting level 3 tiles as level 2)
- Fixed an issue where wood ants could get stuck in a deployment animation when a line-of-sight check was failing
- Huge improvement to render times for all 2D overlays (upgrades, health, food, etc)
- Numerous optimisations to swarming, pathfinding & movement
- Numerous optimisations to rendering for many individual assets
- Fixed an issue in Battle Arena where some ant levels weren’t working
- Fix for a rare pheromone marker crash
- Fixed a rounding error causing incorrect number of creatures to spawn in battle arena
- Fixed an issue where creatures dying mid-air had their food collection point far from their corpse
- Fixed an issue causing underground tile highlighting to stick on some tiles
- Connecting bridge in the interlocking formicariums will now load correctly


Localisation

- Updated, fixed and changed many interface & game narration lines in existing localisations
- Various menus & UI elements adjusted to allow for translations that were the wrong size for them
- Font changes for CJK languages
- Added 7 new officially-supported localisations. These are:
* Czech / Čeština
* Spanish / Español
* French / Français
* Korean / 한국어
* Japanese / 日本語
* Dutch / Nederlands
* Polish / Polski

Known Issues
- Extra level Extremis is currently crashing on launch (caught this one too late to re-package the project in time; will be fixed for the next patch)

The Custom Game & Achievements Update is OUT NOW!
New custom game levels, new achievements reworked difficulty settings and more!

New custom game / freeplay maps! Achievements! New difficulty options! More generous mission rewards! This major update for Empires of the Undergrowth brings in a whole bunch of new stuff, and also puts us in good stead for the final chapter and full release coming in 2024. Thanks so much to everyone who’s been helping to test all the additions over the past few weeks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj0msTbh1JY

Headline Features

•New Custom Game Maps! The 2 winners of our summer map design contest have been completed & added to the game, as well as one more
o Imprisoned, based on a design by 鶴轟 - a swampy area that floods & drains, opening up easier access to other resources & colonies
o Strawclutch, based on a design by Noctazar - tightly-packed nests around central resources in the swamp ensures intense skirmishes with neighbours. Comes with a map option for wider-spaced nest locations
o Sand Spit - a sandy peninsula designed for a 3v1 setup, where the single colony has an uphill battle ahead of them

•Achievements! There are now over 100 achievements for all aspects of the existing story mode & seasonal levels
•Reworked Difficulty Settings! More resolution in lower difficulty settings with more linear gradation as they increase
o Easy, Medium, Hard, Extreme & Impossible are the new difficulties, with new Easy a little easier than the old, & Extreme being where old Hard was. Impossible is the new name for what used to be Insane


Other Additions & Changes

Mission Rewards
• Mission rewards increased significantly:
o Rewards for a repeated play of a mission increased
o Rewards for playing on higher difficulties increased
o Consolation rewards for a defeat increased
o Easy, Medium & Hard - although these difficulties are easier than before they provide the same rewards they used to
o Extreme - although as difficult as Hard used to be, it will provide the same rewards that Insane did
o Impossible - although as difficult as Insane used to be, it will provide more rewards than Insane did


Creature Changes
• Pine woods tree frog now climbable
• Uber hermit crab is now climbable
• Uber red velvet ant is now climbable
• Uber mole cricket is now climbable
• Young velvet worm is no longer climbable
• Improvements to climbing points on hermit crabs
• Small harvestmen now become food on death
• Jumping spiders now become food on death
• Ladybirds now become food on death
• Young praying mantis can now only be harvested by 1 ant
• New beach creatures now spawnable in Battle Arena
• Level 3 leafcutter mediae & majors can now remove a phorid fly ever 2 minutes (down from 3)

Custom Game Changes
• Leafcutter colonies in custom games now start with 19 queen tiles, meaning more workers / minims & increased fungus capacity
• Creature resource quantity slider added to freeplay options, allowing players to make creatures in their game drop more or less food if they like
• Restart button added to custom game defeat screen
• When spawning attack waves, freeplay director will now choose larger creatures to spawn if none can be found in the smaller creature options
• AI harvesting process now considers the average of total & ants alive when deciding where to harvest & not just enemy ants alive
• AI colonies on Towhead & Embankment will hide for a time after a flood
• More creatures should spawn at the start of a custom game when using singular spawning
• Environmental enemies ramp up faster in singular spawning (including skirmish)
• Adjustments to nocturnal / diurnal spawn timing in custom games
• Freeplay now starts with a default save name

Graphical Changes
• Default FPS is now set to 60
• Updated beach loading screen to use new assets
• Arcade button graphics updated
• Improvements to the living sea urchin decorative asset
• Seaweed models updated in 2.1 & 2.2
• New hat for the sand bear wolf spider

Localisation
• Many updates & fixes for existing languages
• Support added for the following languages:
o Hungarian
o Italian
o Portuguese
o Turkish
o Traditional Chinese
o Ukrainian


Other Changes
• New early game objectives added to 3.1 The Harvest
• The idea here is that the early objectives act as a mini tutorial, so the player has a good-sized leaf & refuse chamber before encountering the enemy colony. Shouldn’t interrupt established gameplay otherwise
• New narrator dialogue added regarding leafcutter refuse storage
• Formicarium Challenges now have names instead of numbers
• Visual pulsing effect when the queen is at low health & has recently taken damage (can be disabled in Advanced Options)
• Minor Improvements can no longer be applied mid-mission
• If a creature cannot transfer to the surface it is now killed instead of just being left underground to try again (for example, when exiting an enemy nest after water has risen)
• Creatures no longer heal in the formicarium after purchasing an ability
• Formicarium Challenge 3 (now called Possibly the Final Experiment):
• Easy difficulty now slightly easier
• Enemy queen no longer has abilities on Normal as well as Easy
• Mole crickets & praying mantises no longer have food reduction on harder difficulties
• Adventure: leafcutter supermajor can no longer climb creatures or carry food
• Extremis: food from killed creatures increased
• Extremis now uses newer ability icons
• The Culling: tripled food from spawned creatures
• The Other Foot:
• More time given on Impossible (previously Insane) difficulty
• Food drops from spawning creatures build up & spawn with the next drop
• The Crucible demo level now has difficulty settings
• Spider levels:
o Added sound effects to spider abilities
o Increased healing from Devour by 17%
o Increased max health gained by Bite level
o Hungry Spider: reduced uber wolf spider’s attack damage (down from 410 to 150)
o Hungry Spider: added some queen corpses with 60 food each near the uber wolf spider
o Festive Spider: early game a bit less difficult with more food
o Festive Spider: waves rebalanced in several spots


Fixes
• Fixed environmental creatures with singular spawning not attacking each other
• Enemy colony health bars are now properly hidden in fog of war
• Adventure-specific UI elements no longer overlap the huge whip spider health bar
• UI elements no longer visible when photo mode is on during a victory animation
• Fixed depth of field for cinematic cameras in several places
• Minor improvements are now applied to fire ants at point of purchase
• Adaptations panel jelly value will now update on purchase of minor improvements
• Formicarium Challenge 4 (‘The Final Experiment’) victory camera positioning fixed
• Fixed some old beach style level tunnel exit to use the old one
• Fixed the wrong loading screen showing in some situations in a custom game
• Fixed some huge creatures & hybrids appearing to resurrect after a formicarium reload
• Fixed long creatures adorably chasing their own tails (sorry!)
• Fixed a crash when colony 2 was empty in a custom game
• Hermit crab shells & spider hats no longer receive decals
• Pressing Esc during difficulty selection will no longer lead to a UI overlap
• Fixed an issue with dragonflies that could cause a slowdown over time
• Fixed a problem in Festive Spider where an upgraded tower could be knocked back
• Fixed a crash when a creature firing a projectile was deleted before the projectile lands

We've released the first patch of fixes and changes for Empires of the Undergrowth, following its release into 1.0 last month. This deals with most of the more common issues that have been reported - more patches of this scale and type are likely to come in the near future.

Thanks to everyone who's been helping to test this patch in the optional beta over the past several days!

Changes
- 5.1's titans can now spawn in huge creature landmarks in freeplay
- Added a system to restore saves from backup in-game rather than manually (not yet localised)
- Added some extra protection when reloading or quitting the game when defeat rewards are being saved
- Increased save backup number to 5 (up from 3)
- Bullet ant tech tree video added
- Scroll added to behaviour toggles box (will only appear when needed)
- Added more recent localisation for Polish and Czech
- Updated lighting for custom game levels and extra levels, and changed some underground tile grids to the new ones
- Whip spider main menu icon is replaced if arachnophobia mode is active
- Added arachnophobia hats to hybrids
- Creature stat list can now show percentages to a single decimal point

Fixes
- Reduced chance of all backups corrupting
- Fixed some small reverb problems in Tier 5 lab music
- Food taken from dead critters should now look closer to what it comes from
- Wood ants now turn to their targets before each shot
- AoE resistance now displays as a percentage in the Inspect tool
- Creatures mounted on another are now killed when shaken off and landing off the tile grid
- Fixed low resolution shadows in Tug of War 3
- Large underground creatures in 5.1 and 5.3 can now only demolish a tile if at least one of its neighbours is demolished
- Quadrupled VRAM allocated to overground tile grid textures - should improve issues when rapidly moving camera around the map
- Inspect tool health-per-second now includes buffs (such as the Matabele medic aura)
- Fix for whip spiders rapidly pinging from their creature encounter narration in 3.2
- Bullet ant species hex now used in the improvements menu
- Allowed marker placement through some plants that were blocking it in 3.2
- Matabele colonies should now always drop termites when they sell a tile
- Creatures that reach zero health while mounted will always drop to the floor to actually die
- Water on the minimap removed on 5.3
- Termites will no longer take sun damage in the ending cinematic of 5.3
- End game messages now say the NG+ level that has been unlocked if this is not the first NG+ completion
- Corrected some issues in the credits
- Fixed a ping issue in Occupation 2
- Texture size optimisations (should help with some blurry issues)
- Skimmer in Battle Arena will now fly and land when there are enemies at the midpoint
- Fixed some overhanging moss in the final formicarium / terrarium
- Fixed an issue where loading a damaged creature with a star level would restore its health
- Prevented ants walking into a rock in 5.1
- Fixed an issue where several ants hatch costs were being affected by upkeep in custom games
- Fixed an issue where bullet ant lean pupation was not applying in custom games
- Fixed an issue where UI scaling 150% would cause formicarium rewards to be off the bottom of the screen and hence unselectable
- Fixed an issue where Matabele colonies would drop seeds instead of termites when an upgrade was cancelled
- Speed chambers now drop lignocellulose for termites and termites for Matabele when sold
- Fixed an issue where food refunded into storage chambers owned by Matabele ants was seeds (and hence was worth a lot less)
- Great blue skimmer displays health in battle arena again
- Fixed an issue where ants would leave via the top of a tunnel exit on Strawclutch
- Fixed an issue where poppy plants would appear on some custom game levels when loaded that were not meant to be there
- Earwig nymph can no longer spawn as part of a wave in freeplay
- Fixed an issue where huge creature landmarks if they could not find a slot could cause all other landmarks in the current queue to not spawn
- Fixed an issue where under some circumstances less lignocellulose would spawn than was supposed to in custom games
- Fixed some issues preventing AI controlled Matabele ant colonies from hunting termites
- Lignocellulose landmarks now can only spawn weaker termites early game, ramping up to larger ones later game

Just in time for the holidays! This major update introduces a brand new arcade mode - Remix. With it, you can play just about any level in the game with just about any combination of colony members (ants and termites)! Want to know how bullet ants fare at raking in The Harvest? Go for it! How about sending traitorous big-headed ants after their own kind in Cold Blood? The possibilities are practically endless.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tglFD103Ys

You can also build custom colonies in custom games, using the same system. Just choose ‘custom’ from the species selection as you go through your game setup.

Speaking of custom games - there are also 2 new custom game maps to play, set in the heat of the savannah. Grasslands is specifically designed for Matabele vs termite scuffles, but of course any colonies can be played. Drive Them Back (custom game version) takes the same layout as the campaign level - this has been long-requested, and if the reception is good we might do more custom game versions of campaign levels in the future.

We have made some balance changes to creatures that will only affect custom games, since these generally have slightly different balance requirements to the campaign. All detailed below.

The final headline feature of this update is the long-awaited tier 5 achievements pack! We’ve added a whole bunch of new achievements, some easier and some more devious, for tier 5 and for tier 4 challenge modes. Achievements can now be attained in New Game Plus mode as well as the base story.

Full (and extensive) patch notes are at the bottom of this news post.

We hope you enjoy! As always, your support means everything to us. Thank you so much for playing Empires of the Undergrowth in our release year - we’ll see you next year for even more!

Headline Features
- New game mode: Remix
* Can play almost any level with almost any combination of ants or termites
* Custom colonies will adopt the feeding habits of the selected queen
* Accessed from the Arcade area of the main menu
* Some combinations disallowed for technical reasons

- New custom game feature: Custom Colonies
* Allows colonies to contain virtually any ant or termite in the game
* Can be selected in colony setup
* Workers will match the queen

- New custom game maps - Grasslands & Drive Them Back (custom game version)
* If playing as termites, will spawn in mounds otherwise in regular nest entrances
* Non-colony fodder termites will otherwise spawn from unoccupied mounds if Matabele ants are in play

- Tier 5 & Tier 4 Challenge Mode Achievements
* 8 new achievement for tier 4 levels with challenge mode
* 45 new achievements for tier 5 levels
* Can now be achieved and earned in New Game Plus


Changes - Story & General
- 5.1 nighttime invasion changes:
* On easy and normal, the sun spider’s stun duration has been reduced to 2.5s (down from 5s) and damage reduced to 5 (down from 8)
* On easy and normal, the sun spider’s confuse duration has been reduced to 2s (down from 4s) and damage reduced to 4 (down from 7)
* On easy and normal, the giant African centipede’s venom pool damage per tick reduced to 4 (down from 8) and initial target damage reduced to 200 (down from 400)
* On easy and normal, the giant African centipede’s body slam area of effect reduced to 200 (down from 300), damage reduced to 30 (down from 40)
* On easy to extreme, the emperor scorpion’s attack damage reduced to 20 / 20 / 35 / 40 / 45 (down from 45 on all difficulties)
* On easy and normal, the emperor scorpion’s stun has been reduced to 1s (down from 2) and confuse reduced to 2.5s (down from 5)

- In 5.2, extra soldier tiles reduced on easier difficulties to 5 / 3 / 1 / 0 / 0 (down from 7 / 4 / 1 / 0 / 0)
- In 5.2, casualties required for victory increased on easier difficulties to 120 / 135 / 150 / 150 / 150 (up from 100 / 125 / 150 / 150 / 150)
- In 5.3 challenge mode:
* The challenge scorpion now maintains its health between days but heals 10% life each day
* The challenge scorpion no longer gets its abilities back when it respawns or moves underground (abilities that happen at 25%, 50% and 75% health)
* The challenge scorpion will no longer attempt to walk away when it performs a ground thump
* The challenge scorpion will only run away if engaged underground; if on the surface it will continue to fight so long as there are enemies to fight
* The challenge scorpion now only escapes when termite sun damage is in progress

- In 4.1 New Game Plus, enemy colonies now receive more food storage at the start of the game and more workers (based on how high NGP is set). The little black ant colony also gets more starting resources
- Matabele anaesthetist revival time reduced to 7s (down from 10s)
- Increased range of fire ant’s Last Laugh ability to 300 (up from 200)
- Mounted creatures are thrown off when a large creature starts to move through a nest exit
- Changed final objective in 1.2 Subjugation to say raid instead of wave
- Added an extra harvesting slot on woodlice for faster food collection
- Stink ants can no longer climb smaller climbable creatures


Changes - Custom Games ONLY
The following changes only apply to custom games. They are likely to be subject to further tweaking down the line, but the thought process here is that balance in custom games has different requirements to the campaign due to its increased variance.

- Black ant soldier hatch cost reduced to 3 (down from 5)
- Black ant soldiers take no more than 40 damage from a single attack
- Black ants now have armour (0/1/2, up from 0/0/0)
- Big-headed ant major soldiers have a new ability - adrenaline. This reduces damage taken by 60%, 20% increased movement speed and 80% increased attack speed for 20s (10m cooldown)
- Big-headed ant major cost increased to 35 (up from 25) and egg hatch cost increased to 4 (up from 2)
- Leafcutter media harvest quantities increased to 20 / 24 / 30 (up from 17 / 19 / 22)
- Leafcutter media health reduced to 80 / 95 / 110 (down from 100 / 115 / 130)
- Leafcutter media damage reduced to 4 / 5 / 6 (down from 4.5 / 6 / 7)
- Leafcutter media build cost reduced to 65 (down from 80)
- Leafcutter colonies will start with 200 fungus (up from 100)
- Termite’s lignocellulose landmarks will now spawn 3 new nodes every 3m and will not despawn when empty
- Limited lignocellulose nodes per landmark to 15
- Increased time between termite spawns on the lignocellulose landmark (now every 6-30s, up from 4-20s)
- If a lignocellulose landmark has no mulch, termites spawned to harvest from it will despawn
- Fire ant Vigorous ability damage reduction buff is now 15% (down from 25%) in custom games
- Large giant African mantis and large hermit crab will no longer invade nests
- Earwig nymph should no longer invade nests
- Earwig juvenile, earwig and alligatorback scorpion juvenile added as possible cavern creatures in custom games
- AI colony queen workers are only sent out for the first 10m and return faster for smaller amounts of food. If harvesters are dead queen workers can go out again
- Timid AI colonies are less likely to invade and will harass less frequently
- Reduced AI colony food dropoff build priority (except for leafcutters and termites)
- Increased chance that Matabele soldiers will be built in AI colonies
- AI wood ant colonies make more melee tiles
- AI ereptor colonies likely to make more balanced build choices, not always favouring larger ants
- AI colonies receive damage reduction to patrols (differs based on cheat settings). This tapers off over time
- AI little black ant, black ant and fire ant colonies will make more soldiers than they used to (unless they are docile)
- Dead fish landmark replaced with map-appropriate large food sources
- Large food source landmark will spawn opposing ants that are map-appropriate
- Added Aloe Version of aphid plants for savannah custom games


Other Changes
- Achievements can now be completed on New Game Plus!
- Hovering over achievement in the achievements menu will show the highest difficulty it was achieved on
- The Nian Beast and Festive Spider levels can now be accessed at the appropriate times of year
- Festive Spider now uses the same music as Hibernation
- Festive Spider now uses the updated rotten log textures
- It will now snow in the Festive Spider level!
- Extra levels The Culling, The Culling 2, Tug Of War (1, 2 and 3) and Cramped will now use custom game stats rather than story stats
- Environmental textures will now be more detailed due to an extra ambient occlusion pass allowing for deeper apparent recessing
- Tile hover window now displays a message when tiles have been locked out
- Graphical updates to Tug of War 3
- Game engine updated to Unreal Engine 4.27 - please keep an eye out for any weirdness here
- DLC menu added to the main menu in preparation for future content such as the Kickstarter reward (Myrmecia ereptor worker skin)
- Updated the Slug Disco logo on the main menu
- Many, many localisation updates


Fixes & Optimisations
- Fixed a bug where AI was sometimes unaware of underground invaders in freeplay
- Bullet ant attack damage increases from minor improvements should now work against targets that are not executed by their attack
- Fixed an issue that could cause Matabele ant medics to get stuck at the queen
- Fixed an issue in The Culling 2 where floating seeds were not falling in a small section of the map
- Fixed an issue that could cause resources to not count towards score in some levels
- Fixed an issue with Imprisoned where termites sometimes could not path to where the water would be
- Narrator in custom games should talk about termites more when they are fighting, rather than calling them ants
- Fixed an issue where termite kings would be removed in custom games if landmarks are set to random
- Fixed green lynx spiders being culled if they start climbing whilst in combat
- Fixed a missing subtitle related to earwigs
- Moved some unharvestable leaves in 3.2 to be reachable
- The Other Foot progress bar will now only display its tooltip when visible
- If the 5.3 challenge scorpion is killed on the surface its dialogue no longer plays on defeat (as it mentions being killed underground)
- Can no longer click to enter an enemy nest if it is unopened
- Down arrow will no longer show on enemy nests on hover if it is unopened
- Assassin bugs will now despawn after 10s like other creatures in 5.1 and 5.2
- Final objective in 1.2 Subjugation now marks as finished on victory
- Wave spawn should now continue after play more is pressed in custom games
- Prevented multiple versions of the hybrid fight sequence occurring
- Fixed a crash related to creature climbing
- Ants fighting titans when the titan dies are less likely to be automatically killed
- Pheromone markers in enemy nests now respond to the smoke visual option
- Prevented destructible barriers from being inspectable with the Inspect tool
- Fixed an issue where two voice lines were showing as the wrong scientist
- Fixes for UI scaling
- Minor optimisations to large creatures and queens
- Memory use reduction (more things should only load into memory as needed)
- Loading screen corrected for several extra levels