Uploaded March 2023 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Our main focus right now is the new and improved animal AI system. After many months of work on it, Tommi merged that new codebase into the game project, and we've been busy debugging it. But while he works on that, we’ve also had time to dig into our backlog (a long list of minor improvements and enhancements) and get a few things done. Today's video shows eight of them that we think you will find enjoyable:
1) In the Find a Mate quest, once you finish the trial period, you'll have an option to stay in the fall season and hang out with your mate for awhile, before progressing onward to winter and establishing your territory.
2) More refinements to the high-elevation snow line. You might have noticed in the Lost River DLC map, there's still snow on the mountaintops in late spring, which really adds to the mountain feel. We've now set this up in Amethyst and Slough Creek, and Andrei expanded this functionality so I could also set it up in the fall season on all maps.
3 and 4) We've got an excellent new 3D artist, Damian Paterson, working on WolfQuest assets. Along with other things, he's created two new cottonwood tree models, which grow near the Lamar River in Amethyst. He also made a much better model of lupine flowers.
5) Susan has been having fun creating more than 80 new wolf dreams images, nearly doubling the number of main game dream images. What wolves make of these dreams is up to them -- and you.
6) Susan also scoured the National Park Service online photo galleries for more animal and Yellowstone images to use in the game's loading screens, and has been writing additional gameplay tips and Yellowstone factual tidbits to entertain and inform players while waiting for game scenes to load.
7) One thing that's been missing from Anniversary Edition is the observation airplane that occasionally flies overhead to check in on wolves with radio collars. Andrei is creating a new subsystem that brings that airplane back — and as with everything in AE, it's a big improvement on the old version. This airplane actually does track your wolf, honing in and circling around it, and even following your wolf if you're moving, for several minutes before moving on.
8) And, of course, the pronghorn, which we introduced in a recent devblog, have been on our list for a long time.
All these things will be in the next game update -- but that still won't be for awhile, as we have a fair amount of debugging still to do on the new AI, plus beta testing and tweaking all of these and other new features. We’ll share more about them in upcoming devblogs.
_________________________
The WolfQuest saga will continue! Stay tuned for more news in upcoming devblogs about it and other new features!
Once the game is completed on PC/Mac, we will turn our attention to other platforms.
We do not announce specific release dates. We will release them when they are ready.
Our main focus right now is the new and improved animal AI system. After many months of work on it, Tommi merged that new codebase into the game project, and we've been busy debugging it. But while he works on that, we’ve also had time to dig into our backlog (a long list of minor improvements and enhancements) and get a few things done. Today's video shows eight of them that we think you will find enjoyable:
1) In the Find a Mate quest, once you finish the trial period, you'll have an option to stay in the fall season and hang out with your mate for awhile, before progressing onward to winter and establishing your territory.
2) More refinements to the high-elevation snow line. You might have noticed in the Lost River DLC map, there's still snow on the mountaintops in late spring, which really adds to the mountain feel. We've now set this up in Amethyst and Slough Creek, and Andrei expanded this functionality so I could also set it up in the fall season on all maps.
3 and 4) We've got an excellent new 3D artist, Damian Paterson, working on WolfQuest assets. Along with other things, he's created two new cottonwood tree models, which grow near the Lamar River in Amethyst. He also made a much better model of lupine flowers.
5) Susan has been having fun creating more than 80 new wolf dreams images, nearly doubling the number of main game dream images. What wolves make of these dreams is up to them -- and you.
6) Susan also scoured the National Park Service online photo galleries for more animal and Yellowstone images to use in the game's loading screens, and has been writing additional gameplay tips and Yellowstone factual tidbits to entertain and inform players while waiting for game scenes to load.
7) One thing that's been missing from Anniversary Edition is the observation airplane that occasionally flies overhead to check in on wolves with radio collars. Andrei is creating a new subsystem that brings that airplane back — and as with everything in AE, it's a big improvement on the old version. This airplane actually does track your wolf, honing in and circling around it, and even following your wolf if you're moving, for several minutes before moving on.
8) And, of course, the pronghorn, which we introduced in a recent devblog, have been on our list for a long time.
All these things will be in the next game update -- but that still won't be for awhile, as we have a fair amount of debugging still to do on the new AI, plus beta testing and tweaking all of these and other new features. We’ll share more about them in upcoming devblogs.
_________________________
The WolfQuest saga will continue! Stay tuned for more news in upcoming devblogs about it and other new features!
Once the game is completed on PC/Mac, we will turn our attention to other platforms.
We do not announce specific release dates. We will release them when they are ready.




![WolfQuest Saga in Public Beta!
The WolfQuest Saga is now in public beta on Steam! See instructions at bottom of this post for instructions on how to switch to the public beta branch. If youd rather wait until the full release, thats fine, it wont be too long!
But first, a couple things:
The Saga is in good shape, but theres a chance that it might break an existing save or family tree, so please make a backup of your User Files folder. Just copy and paste the whole folder onto your desktop or wherever you like.
* Windows: Documents/My Games/Wolf Quest Anniversary/User Files
* Mac: [YourUserDirectory]/Wolf Quest Anniversary/User Files
Now most important: Treat the Saga like its a new game! While much of the game is the same, the Saga brings many changer to existing gameplay and features, along with the new Saga quests and gameplay. Dont assume that everything works exactly how it did before. Please peruse the Game Help (now available in the main menu of the game), especially the new About the Saga section. Its pretty long, but if youre wondering if something youre seeing in the game is a bug or intentional, thats a good place to check. The Game Help is also much improved in general, with better entries about various gameplay features.
Similarly, even if you have logged hundreds of hours logged in the game, be sure to enable Tutorials and Common Notifications in Game Settings, as those will give you important information when you reach something thats new or different.
Now a few tips about Saga gameplay:
* You really want to prioritize your wolfs health. Without good health, everything else becomes much harder, including keeping your pups and packmates alive and healthy.
* Your yearlings and subordinates are not duplicates of your mate. They wont help much with marking territory (thats the job of the pack leaders). They will help hunt, but if they see enough other wolves taking on the risks, theyre happy to freeride and get an easy meal without taking damage.
* Your packmates will eat reguritant if theyre hungry, but theyll wait until the pups of the year have mostly filled up. Theyre pretty polite about that, but not totally polite.
* Sickness and low health is extra dangerous for pups now. Sick pups move slowly, as do pups with low health theyre not speedy if you woof them into the den during a pup raid, and can be picked off by predators more easily.
* Dont expect all of your pups to survive, even on Easy difficulty. Thats not the way of the wild.
* If you come across a bug, please do use the in-game Bug Reporter! And pleeease give us a lot of details, dont just say mate isnt working right tell us what you were doing, whats happening, and what you expected to happen.
* You can load a saved game in Loaf at Rendezvous Site or Endless Summer quests and carry on into the Saga quests but its not a bad idea to start a new game to try out the Saga, and we dont recommend playing on Accurate difficulty this first time either. (And if you do, expect that things can get hairy.)
So there it is! The Saga is in public beta, on Steam. If youre interested, check it out!
TO GET THE BETA BUILD
1) In the Steam app, go to your Library, then right-click on the WolfQuest: AE name in the left column and choose Properties.
2) Then go to the Betas tab and select the WQ current Beta option in the pulldown. No password is necessary. Steam should then start downloading it. Later you can switch back to the public version in that Betas tab, by selecting NONE in that pulldown. WolfQuest Saga in Public Beta!](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/MABHHkezMdk/mqdefault.jpg)

![Three New Things in Public Beta 1.1.1g
Weve got a new public beta out on Steam and, along with the usual variety of bugfixes and minor improvements, it has three notable new things:
1) In multiplayer games, you can now move between Yellowstone maps (currently Amethyst Mountain and Slough Creek) whenever you dont have pups, same as in single-player. Run to a section of border with the To [Map Name] label and youll be asked if you want to move (using the procedures of either Host Decides or Majority Rules).
2) The devblog a few weeks ago talked about how, among real wolves, males are more likely to disperse to find a mate, while females are more likely to stay in their natal (family) pack. We have added this behavior to the game. So now, when looking for a mate, youll find more males in the dispersal groups, and more females interested in courtship in rival packs. To make it easier to find a prospective mate, weve also added some visual clues: a red heart icon indicates courtable wolves on the compass (when they howl back) and on the Scent View panel.
3) For several years now, NPCs in the game (rival wolves, dispersal wolves, and grown-up pups) have sometimes had an NPC Coat a coat that is not available to players in Wolf Customization, so its restricted to those NPCs. Weve decided to open these up by making them unlockable. So now, if you raise a pup who has one of these coats, when you make them a playable adult wolf (in the Family Tree), the coat is unlocked so you can select it for your own wolves. This is not retroactive, so it will only occur in new games (in this beta and then the v1.1.1g patch release) that you start fresh. (Note that we have some cheat prevention code in there so you cant trade wolves with the coat. You must start a new game (or jump ahead to next year) and raise the pup on the same computer. After the Family Tree snapshot is generated and the coat is unlocked, its then registered to your WolfQuest account – so itll remain unlocked if you get a new computer. If you dont have a game account, itll remain unlocked on that computer.)
See what else is new and improved in the beta notes on Steam.
This public beta is available on Steam now for Mac and Windows.
The WolfQuest saga will continue! Stay tuned for more news in upcoming devblogs about it and other new features!
Once the game is completed on PC/Mac, we will consider porting the game to other platforms.
We do not announce specific release dates. We will release them when they are ready. Three New Things in Public Beta 1.1.1g](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/MNyv0XCNS6s/mqdefault.jpg)



