Lethal Company’s first update in months makes it harder to be a shovel-armed killing machine or speedrunner

Co-op smash-hit Lethal Company has received its first update in a couple of months, and it’s a biggie! Version 50 brings a new map and some new creatures to contend with, alongside some changes that make being a shovel-wielding monster-slayer or speedrunning the game a bit less easy.

Version 50 is the first big update since Version 47 back in January (which was followed by two smaller hotfixes for 48 and 49). Headlining 'The Hopping Update' is the addition of new forest moon Adamance, along with two monsters you’ll run into outdoors and one gribbly to scare the bejeezus out of you while you’re inside. There’s a new indoors trap too, so watch out for that one.

In keeping with the game’s playfully seasonal additions, which included terrifying trigger-happy nutcrackers for Christmas, the latest patch adds Easter eggs - that is, literal ones - that you can throw around. There are a couple of new suits and a disco ball in the shop, too.

Behind the scenes there are a number of changes, including making the bell chime and alert enemies when it’s dropped, spawning baboon hawks in pairs but giving them less HP and dropping their attack damage to balance things out, and letting you bounce off walls if you hit them at a steep angle.

The shovel also weighs more now, which developer Zeekerss said was an effort “to make each player less of a self-sufficient killing machine” when armed with the trusty garden implement.

While players will now run down hills faster than before, an exploit that allowed players to sprint silently by spamming the crouch button while sprinting has been fixed, along with no longer teleporting players that fall out of bounds to the entrance of the facility.

“I know this kind of change might seem antagonistic to speed-runners, etc. But these made it possible to bypass Lethal Company's design and mechanics without requiring any more skill or strategy; I guess it would also make speed runs of Lethal Company less accessible to people who don't want to (or can't) spam a button very fast on the regular,” Zeekerss wrote in their latest blog post.

A similar nerf to the jetpack’s “crazy efficiency” - which gives players a way to safely bypass parts of the game - was apparently considered but remained unchanged due to its “irreplaceable purpose as the most wacky gimmick item, so I will respect that”.

Zeekerss said that Lethal Company’s next update would aim to add even more monsters both inside and outside, as they shift away from focusing on endgame content “for a while” to increase the variety of interior environments.