SCUM's August Update, build 1.3.3.0.144566, went live on Tuesday, August 25 after a one day delay, and it is the first Into the Wild patch that hands server owners real knobs to turn. Underneath the TEC1 Research Facility and the mutant bears sits something quieter and more useful: four brand new server settings, a new Custom Zone value, and three server-side fixes that have been generating support tickets for months. If you run a private SCUM server, this one is worth reading twice.
Inside the TEC1 Research Facility
Three converted underground bunker entrances across the Island now lead into TEC1 Research Facilities. All three share the same layout and the same challenge, so there is no "best" one to camp. Getting in needs a Research Facility Keycard, earned from certain Master Hunter quests or found as rare loot elsewhere. A keycard works at any of the three locations, expires after a limited time, and is consumed when used. One is enough for a whole group: once the door opens everyone walks in together, and the entrance then locks until the Facility resets.
Starting a run kicks off a ten minute purge and opens the first containment door for thirty seconds. Anyone still fumbling with their inventory when it shuts is locked out. From there you fight through the containment habitats and find an exit before the countdown ends, because anyone still inside at zero is terminated. You can leave early by activating an exit, but it only stays open briefly.
The detail that matters for server balance is the loot. Facility loot spawns when the purge sequence begins and refreshes for every run, so a group carrying several keycards can chain runs back to back and pull a fresh set of rare medical and scientific loot each time. That is exactly why the keycard caps further down exist.
Mutant Bears and the New Master Hunter Hunts
Mutant bears are not confined to the Facility. They now appear at specific locations across the Island, and the map at the Hunters Grotto has been updated with known sightings. Inside the Facility they behave very differently to normal wildlife: they do not flee, they work to flank you, careless gunfire pulls them in, and their positions change between runs.
The Master Hunter questline picks up several new Tier 3 hunts built around mutant wildlife. Clear the required quests and you earn a Research Facility Keycard plus access to Apex Hunt, a Tier 4 quest that sends you into the Facility to eliminate every mutant bear inside. Rewards include a weapon charm, a mounted skull trophy and the Master Hunter headgear, which traders now group into a dedicated Master Hunter Gear category under Clothes > Civilian.
Cloning Sickness: On by Default, Yours to Switch Off
This is the change your players will notice first and complain about loudest. Cloning Sickness now applies every time you respawn after dying, whatever killed you. It starts at C1 and only escalates if you die again before you have recovered.
At C1 your health, energy, water and vitamin levels, along with Fame Point gains, drop by 10%. Each further severity adds another 10%, up to 40% at C4, and the higher tiers pile on headaches plus further effects on performance, exertion and immunity.
| Severity | Penalty | Recovery begins after | Recovery duration |
|---|---|---|---|
| C1 | 10% | 10 minutes | 5 minutes |
| C2 | 20% | 15 minutes | 7.5 minutes |
| C3 | 30% | 20 minutes | 10 minutes |
| C4 | 40% | 30 minutes | 15 minutes |
Phoenix Tears push it straight into recovery, or halve the remaining recovery time if recovery has already begun. It cannot start recovering at all while Acute Radiation Sickness, Infection or Sepsis is active, so those have to be treated first.
Cloning Sickness is active on Official Servers and enabled by default on private ones, but server owners can turn it off. That is a real design decision, not a formality. It kills suicide respawning as a shortcut for clearing exhaustion, deficiencies and illness, which is exactly what a hardcore PvE server wants. On a busy PvP server where dying five times during a raid is a normal Tuesday, stacking penalties can feel like the server is punishing people for showing up.
The Four New Server Settings (and One Custom Zone Change)
Here is the whole set, with the section each one lives under:
# RESPAWN
scum.CloningSicknessEnabled=True
# BUNKERS
scum.MaxAllowedApexFacilityKeycards=4
scum.MaxAllowedApexFacilityKeycards_PoliceStation=3
scum.MaxAllowedApexFacilityKeycards_RadiationZone=1
MaxAllowedApexFacilityKeycards is the total number of Research Facility Keycards that can be found across Police Stations and Radiation Zones. The other two split that budget between the two location types, defaulting to 3 and 1.
Treat those caps as your loot economy dial. Because Facility loot refreshes on every run, raising the keycard count does not just add keycards, it multiplies the rare medical and scientific loot circulating on your server. Drop the total to 2 on a survival focused server and the Facility becomes an event people plan around. Raise it on a high loot PvP server and it becomes a contested farm, which may be exactly what you want.
Custom Zones also gain a new VEHICLE value, "Damage dealt to vehicles by explosion of no-owner items", controlling how much damage ownerless explosive items do to vehicles inside the zone. It ships set to Allow globally and Block in Outposts. Paired with the fix that closed the flamethrower and gas tank trick for destroying vehicles in Safe Zones, that is a genuine anti griefing pass rather than a cosmetic one.
Cooking, Food Effects, and the Fixes Worth Restarting For
Fifteen new Heatless Cooking recipes, ten salads and five sandwiches, let players assemble a proper meal through the new Hands option with no equipment at all, and they still count as cooked food for digestion. Cooking times fell by roughly 25% to 69% across every recipe except the four smoked ones, and timers now display real world time.
The Food Effects overhaul gives diet actual weight. Digesting food temporarily raises Energy Burn Rate by an amount that depends on what went in, from 5% for cooked food up to 18% for canned and processed. Nutrient levels drive four paired buffs and debuffs: Vigor and Lethargy for exhaustion and stamina, Mending and Erosion for healing and bleeding, Resilience and Run Down for sickness resistance, Stability and Instability for movement while limping.
Three server side fixes are the reason to apply the build the day your host has it:
- Players with a large number of active quests across multiple characters could not connect at all. That one has been quietly eating support tickets.
- The server would falsely detect a hang and write a crash folder even after recovering and completing startup successfully.
- Small garage doors stayed lockable even with the Garage Door Lockability setting disabled.
The patch also closes three exploits: vehicle assisted blueprint filling for rapid skill progression, chests getting stuck in a player's hands so several could be carried at once, and the Safe Zone vehicle destruction trick above.
Should You Update Today?
Yes. The patch notes carry no wipe requirement, so characters, bases and progression carry over. Take a world backup anyway, apply the build, then make your call on Cloning Sickness before your regulars log in rather than after the first round of complaints. Into the Wild continues in September, so pencil in another maintenance window roughly a month out.
Host Your SCUM Server with DoomHosting
Facility runs are bursty by nature. Loot respawns on every purge, mutant bear AI is doing real pathfinding work while it flanks, and a group chaining keycard runs puts all of that load on one part of the map at once. Our SCUM servers run on dedicated Ryzen 9 hardware with full FTP access for editing your server settings file, instant setup, DDoS protection and 24/7 support, so you can roll the update the day it lands and spend your evening in the Facility instead of the config.
See you on the Island, prisoners.
