Primal Dread DLC: contents, price and patches

Primal Dread is Brotato’s second paid DLC, released on PC on 2 November 2026 for $3.99 (€3.99, £3.39). It adds a new zone, the Jungle, with 20 waves of dinosaur enemies, ten characters, 17 weapons, about 40 items, three pets and a new primary stat, Evolution. Console and mobile versions are scheduled for early 2027.

What the DLC adds

Content	Amount	Where to look
Zone	The Jungle, 20 waves with its own elites and bosses	Jungle hazards
Characters	10 (five available at once, five locked)	Unlock conditions
Weapons	17, including Awl, Boomerang, Machine Gun, Shovel and Whip	Weapons table
Items	39 in the launch files, plus Chimera Cells added on 12 November	Items table
Pets	Mosquitor, Hungry Hungry Dinosaur and Dino Egg	Pets
Stat	Evolution, pushed toward Mecha or Mutant	Evolution
Achievements	21 challenges, in a separate Steam achievement set	Primal Dread achievements

The DLC’s Steam achievements are listed separately from the base game’s, so the base game’s achievement percentage does not change when you buy it.

Characters at a glance

Available immediately: Veteran, Archaeologist, Droid, Time Shifter and Variant.

Locked: Caveman (equip 5 fossils in one run), Arsonist (12 fire puddles at once), Poacher (kill 20 different enemy types in the Jungle), Survivor (pick up 10 crates in one run) and Mad Scientist (win with Variant and with Droid).

Droid evolves only toward Mecha and Variant only toward Mutant. Mad Scientist counts every Evolution change as positive for both sides.

Free content released alongside it

Update 1.2 is free for every owner of the base game:

• Item Set toggle. Switch whole DLCs and free updates on or off from the character selection screen. See Item Sets.
• Nightmare nerfs. Fewer projectiles from Horned Fly, Bloated Pufferfish and Horned Spitter, less health on Brainy Squid, Cool Walrus and Horned Bruiser, and smoother Crash Zone wave spikes.
• Character buffs for Diver, Druid, Dwarf, Hiker, Farmer, Fisherman, Beast Master and One-Armed. The numbers are in update 1.2 changes.

Changes since launch

Patch 1.2.0.1 (3 November) raised the mutagen drop chance from 2% to 3%, stopped mutations from copying Survivor’s “no weapon in the shop” effect, and capped Baby T-Rex speed.

The 12 November balancing patch is the larger change. It made Mecha weaker and Mutant stronger:

Area	Before 12 November	After
Mechanize damage	+5% per mecha power point	+3% per point; a weapon mechanized 8 times deals 208% of base damage
Mechanize extras	Extra piercing and bounces	None
Mecha Parts drop chance	2%	1.5%
Mutation copy strength	~67% at 40 Evolution, full at 150	70% at 40 Evolution, full at 100
Mutation Fruit drop chance	3%	4%, minus 1% every 10 waves from wave 30 (minimum 1%)
Variant	50% chance a mutating item becomes a better-tier mutated item	25% chance to mutate an item when you equip it
Ban tokens	8 per run	1 more token every 4 waves, up to wave 20

It also rebalanced the Jungle: more basic enemies in waves 2 to 5, Jeholopterus removed, fewer and smaller hole clusters, and acid puddles that hurt only while you stand in them.

Owning the DLC without playing it

Buying Primal Dread does not force its content into every run. The Item Set menu can disable the whole DLC, which removes its characters, weapons and items from your runs. You cannot keep the DLC while removing only the Evolution stat; the developers treat a stat and the content that depends on it as one set.