GRAVHOUNDS Update: November 6 Patch Notes

The first GRAVHOUNDS Early Access patch arrived on November 6, 2026. It is a stability and balance pass, not a content drop: save overwrites, load crashes, GPU crashes and a Windows audio-device frame-rate bug were fixed, wave pacing was loosened, and several of the strongest mods were brought down.

The official post is short on exact numbers and long on fixes. This page separates what changed from what it means for your next run, and flags the parts the developers did not quantify.

Official source: GRAVHOUNDS Early Access Update — Fixes & Improvements ↗, the GRAVHOUNDS store page ↗ and the Early Access launch announcement ↗.

The short version

Stability fixes first

The most important changes are not balance changes. The patch fixes save overwriting, a load crash, a GPU crash, and a frame-rate drop tied to Windows audio devices. If you bounced off the game because a run disappeared or the client crashed on load, this is the patch to retest.

The VFX pass and material flicker fix are smaller, but they affect readability. A swarm fight is already busy; flickering materials and heavy effects make it harder to see the enemy that is about to hit you.

Kefir-adjacent teams often ship stability patches without a changelog this specific. Here the official post names the causes, which makes it easier to tell whether your particular crash is covered or still open.

Wave pacing and the first wave

The patch increased the gap between waves and standardized the preparation time before the first wave. That is a direct quality-of-life change for solo players and for squads that spend the opening minute mining instead of building.

The practical effect is that you have more time to repair, rearm and reposition between fights. It does not make the waves weaker. A longer gap can even make a run harder in a different way: players who use the time to over-extend for resources can meet the next wave out of position.

Use the gap to do three things, in this order: repair the objective, refill turrets, and check the next attack lane. Do not treat it as a free mining window unless your defenses are already stable.

The nerfs

Five mods were adjusted:

• Live Wire and Chain Lightning — damage, chain length, radius and chain falloff were reduced. Chain builds were the obvious answer to dense swarms; the patch makes them less efficient at clearing a whole wave from one target.
• Rising Pressure — damage was moved toward the end of the magazine. The mod still rewards emptying a mag, but the early shots are less valuable, so the effective damage window is narrower.
• Kill Chain — per-kill damage and the stack cap were reduced. It remains a snowball mod, just a slower one.
• Trigger Happy — the top-tier damage cap was lowered. The lower tiers are less affected.
• Rocket Barrage — explosion radius at the higher tiers was reduced. It is still a Showstopper, but it no longer clears as much space per volley.

None of these mods were removed. If you built around one of them, the build still works; it just has a lower ceiling. The GRAVHOUNDS build guide covers replacements and the mods page lists the named mods and what each does.

Friendly fire and turrets

Player friendly fire dropped from 10% to 5%. Friendly turrets now deal 80% less damage to players. That is a large quality-of-life change for co-op, where a turret placed in the wrong spot could kill a teammate faster than the swarm.

It also changes base layout. You can put turrets closer to the paths your squad uses without turning every rotation into a health tax. It does not make turrets safe to stand in front of; 80% less is not zero.

Bug fixes in the patch

The official list includes:

• Cluster Grenades and Controlled Burn not counting toward reward progress
• the holotable emote
• a turret race condition
• laser fences detonating nitrate
• nest pathfinding
• a plushie getting stuck in a pipe
• a solo unlock issue
• the F-key rebind
• inconsistent mod names
• controller navigation

There are also collision, translation and visual clean-up changes, and the Dynamic Vibrance option was removed. If you relied on that option, the game now uses its standard color pipeline.

What the patch does not include

No new planets, hounds, weapons or mods. No new boss. No date for the next patch. The official post is a fix list, not a roadmap.

That is normal for the first week of Early Access. The launch build is the content baseline; the first patch is about making that baseline stable enough to measure. Expect balance to keep moving, especially around the mods that were just nerfed.

Should you change your build?

If you were running a chain-lightning or Rocket Barrage build, yes. Those builds lost efficiency, not viability. If you were running a turret-heavy base, the friendly-fire change makes close placement safer, which is a buff to aggressive layouts.

If you were waiting for the save bugs to be fixed before starting, the patch is aimed at you. The official notes specifically mention save overwriting and load crashes, which were the two failures that could erase a run.

FAQ

When was the first GRAVHOUNDS patch released?

November 6, 2026, four days after the November 2 Early Access launch.

Did the patch add new content?

No. It is a stability, pacing and balance patch. There are no new planets, hounds, weapons, mods or bosses in the notes.

Did GRAVHOUNDS get easier?

Partly. Longer wave gaps and lower friendly fire make the moment-to-moment experience less punishing. The strongest chain and damage mods were nerfed at the same time, so the top-end build power went down.

Is the save bug fixed?

The official notes say save overwriting and load crashes were fixed. That is the developers' statement, not an independent test. Back up a run you care about until you have played a few sessions without an issue.