Can I finally start playing now?
That's up to you
With 1.18.0-pre we had zero confidence that existing or new worlds will not break. With todays release candidate we have a medium level of confidence that your old and new worlds remain intact. If you want to be on the safe side, wait until stable, where we will have a high level of confidence that your worlds will be alright. With this release, old worlds should upgrade just fine due to the new chunk smoothing system, but the main story event will currently only generate in worlds created in 1.18. As far as the main story event is concerned - it is now pretty much complete albeit still has quite some bugs.
[Edit:] There is still some major issues with the main story event, recommend waiting for next rc.2 before exploring it
[Edit2:] Also releaced rc.2 to fix most issues with the main story event, transparent doors as well as issues joining our Vintagehosting servers!

Still unfinished
Some more gadgetry, gadgetry ruin loot, more work on surface and underground ruins is left to be done, which might or might not make it into 1.18.0 stable. The tutorial system needs finishing. There is still a significant amount of known non-critical bugs that have not been fixed yet. The resonance archive map does not show the exact location of the archive, its roughly 100 blocks further south.

Game update trailer

Game updates

• Everything listed in the pre.1 update + 72 tweaks and fixes to 1.18 content
• rc.2 changes
  • Fixed: "Missing mods" title when installing mods from the moddb
  • Fixed: Sieve breaking after one use in crafting
  • Fixed: 2x4 Gate crafting recipe overlapping with 2x2 gate
  • Fixed: Opened doors were transparent
  • Fixed: Multiple minor issues in the main story event
  • Api Tweak: BlockEntityTeleporterBase.GetTarget() is now public
  • Api Tweak: Server event CanPlaceOrBreak now comes with an additional claimant argument that must be null when the request is denied
  • Api Fixed: Block Durability property not synced to client. WTF?
• Feature: Chunk border smoothing system. Should greatly mitigate jarring world borders when opening a 1.17 world in 1.18 (and future versions where world generation changes)
• Feature: New music track for when you are travelling, titled "Radiance and Rust"
• Feature: Added tall display case. Can now center-place items in display cases. Placing direction now affects the placed item rotation
• Feature: Further worldgen fine tuning
  • Added more noise to geologic upheavel
  • Reduced overall upheavel default amount, more fine gain control in worldconfig
  • Added slight vertical variation to block layers y-values
  • Added gravel coverage & loose rock to mountain peaks to mitigate large empty areas with exposed rock.
  • Added smoother terrain noise generator by K.Jpg. Still in need of an optimization pass
• Feature: 2nd ocean system rewrite.
  • Added saltwater where oceans appear. Crops on farmland die when exposed to saltwater.
  • More configurability - more control over land/ocean ratios.
  • Fixes main story event spawning underwater
• Feature: Tree foliage fine tuning. Each individual tree is now slightly ahead or behind the season tinting, and chopping a tree is now more likely to only fell the targeted tree
• Feature: Player can no longer hold in active hand slot or craft with hot items above 300°C. Now requires wooden tongs in off-hand.
• Tweak: Clutter blocks can now drop at a 50% chance
• Tweak: Wonky hitbox on bells, bells no longer spawn surface drifters and try harder to spawn a mob nearby
• Tweak: Fine tune chunk loading system. It now prioritises chunks that are facing the player view direction. General optimization pass over existing chunk sending system.
• Tweak: The world config fertilityRecoverySpeed no longer affects fertility recovery from fertilizer
• Tweak: More strongly attenuate lightning and thunder sounds while underground
• Tweak: Updated community translations. Added Dutch translations.
• Tweak: Prevent generation of loose boulders and loose stone on snow and ice
• Tweak: Treasure maps now print the distance to the location when the world map is disallowed
• Tweak: Added 50+ more clutter shapes
• Tweak: Added crafting recipe for ink&quill
• Tweak: Worldgen: Replaced barren soil layer with low fertility soil layer
• Tweak: Added many more translator credits and organized them alphabetically. If your name is in the credits and you don't want it to be, please contact us through email, support ticket, or Discord.
• Tweak: Meals now get lost when a pot or bowl with a meal is dropped in water
• Tweak: Dialogue system tuning. Clear previous dialouge upon selecting an answer (this might change again still). Added text to border padding for better readability.
• Tweak: Updated /time to new command system and added translation entries for all responses
• Tweak: /gm sp now puts the player back in 1st person mode if they were in 3rd person mode
• Tweak: All stone-age knives now produce just 1 knife from the knapping recipe, and their durabilities have been doubled.
• Tweak: Improved documentation for tongs. Seraph dropping hot items now also displays a hud error "Requires tongs", has an item description and is mentioned in the handbook
• Tweak: Added display clutter items, added crown and mianguan
• Tweak: Better positioning of the hover item info box when it moves out of the window area
• Tweak: Disabled racking of tuning cylinders on vertical racks
• Tweak: Clean bandages can now be used to heal for +3 hp.
• Tweak: Prevent creatures from walking into fire or boiling water
• Tweak: Better crash reporting then tesselating a chunk crashes
• Fixed: Exception when SHIFT clicking item from crafting output into a full inventory
• Fixed: Polar bears spawning in mountains
• Fixed: Game crashing when failing to connect a server
• Fixed: Serious issue with cascaded ore bomb explosions somehow exploding multiple times causing extreme lag. Tweaked explosion smoked particles a bit.
• Fixed: 0.5 second interval lag spikes when playing on a server with many players
• Fixed: Auroras visible where they shouldn't be
• Fixed: Added missing server side smithing recipe validation
• Fixed: Creative inventory sometimes not reacting to mouse clicks to pick up an item/block
• Fixed: Might fix issues with game stuck in the world loading/connecting screen
• Fixed: Window border settings not remembered after game restart
• Fixed: Wrong block breaking decals on bookshelves and clutter blocks
• Fixed: Server side block related commands not behaving correctly with meta blocks around (render meta blocks mode was not synced to server)
• Fixed: Should avoid a crash related to fruit trees
• Fixed: 2 server side exceptions near the world border
• Fixed: Should fix able to interact with claimed firepits, querns and barrels
• Fixed: Players in spectator mode were emitting light from held torches / respawn glow
• Fixed: Should fix client desync with ground storage, creating ghost items in the players inventory

Api Changes

• Tweak: Added OnHeldInteractCancel to CollectibleBehavior
• Tweak: Fixed missing server side verification of auction price
• Tweak: Added OnBlockBrokenWith and OnBlockBreaking to CollectibleBehavior
• Tweak: All Wildcard matching util methods now accept * as Domain to ignore domain checking. Also works for the SearchItems and SearchBlocks methods. Also fixes spawner block dialog not showing modded creatures
• Tweak: Added LanguageCode field to TextCommandCallingArgs so its easier to respond with correctly translated strings server side via Lang.GetL()
• Tweak: BlockLayeredSlowDig class more moddable now
• Tweak: Server now keeps track of player placed or broken blocks for each chunk
• Tweak: Made some AStar stuff public/virtual
• Refactor: Clean up GuiDialogHandbook code in preparation for use in a new command handbook
• Refactor: Client side world loading code - now all in one file instead of 6 different ones
• Refactor: Rename block.LiquidBarrierHeightOnSide() to block.GetLiquidBarrierHeightOnSide()
• Refactor: Renamed the multiblock interfaces again and they no longer inherit from eachother, which made no sense. Renames:
  • IMultiBlockMonolithicBasic => IMultiBlockColSelBoxes
  • IMultiBlockNormal => IMultiBlockInteract
  • IMultiBlockExtensive => IMultiBlockBlockBreaking
  • New: IMultiBlockBlockProperties
• Refactor: For the server side event ChunkColumnGeneration. Changed delegate method arguments. Now passes on a single IChunkColumnGenerateRequest object containing the previous 4 arguments
• Fixed: Trader dialogue variable names not parsed correctly if they contained a 2nd dot.
• Fixed: Code domain issue in BlockGenericTypedContainer.GetDecal
• Fixed: Particly registry not available through IClassRegistryAPI
• Fixed: Cairo graphics system printing not-disposed errors for unowned surfaces
• Fixed: Finally fixed generic chest blocktype texture oddities
• Fixed: Entity idleSoundRange not synced to client
   

Changes since 1.18-pre.8, partially also listed above

• Tweak: Clean bandages can now be used to heal for +3 hp.
• Tweak: Prevent creatures from walking into fire or boiling water
• Tweak: Better crash reporting then tesselating a chunk crashes
• Fixed: Exception when SHIFT clicking item from crafting output into a full inventory
• Api Tweak: Server now keeps track of player placed or broken blocks for each chunk
• Api Tweak: Made some AStar stuff public/virtual
• 1.18 related changes
  • Tweak: Continued work on the resonance archives and technical gadgetry, purposely not further explained here
  • Tweak: Oars can now be placed on tool racks and ground storage.
  • Tweak: Reduced damage from holding a hot item in hands (1hp -> 0.25 hp)
  • Tweak: Beam recipe now yields 3 beams per log instead of 1
  • Tweak: Added placeholder cobbleskull textures for the other rocktypes because Saraty refuses to make those
  • Fixed: Removed Reed Butterfly from spawning
  • Fixed: Door issue with sync in multiplayer
  • Fixed: "/time add 24" no longer working
  • Fixed: Should fix terra preta no longer spawning
  • Fixed: Avoid client side crash with corrupt charcoal pits
  • Fixed: Gap in inner sod roof corner
  • Fixed: Stone knives only producing 1 blade since 2x durability also fixed durability for bone knives

Phew, what a journey that was to get here - particularly the last 2 weeks got quite hectic for the team, probably the single largest combined undertaking in the game's history. Our efforts were fruitful - our first main story event is here: The Resonance Archives. I believe we've managed to create a magnificent experience - I think most players will be dazzled by the experience

To discover the archives, a vast underground structure: create a new world and find a Treasure Hunter trader. He will request from you a bronze tool, and in return will give you a map of the approximate location (he's not necessarily fully reliable on this). Assuming you found it, before you venture in, make sure to be well prepared - with good armor and provisions.
Please note: In pre.1, some aspects are a work in progress. Some things will still get changed notably. Some things will receive more polishing. There is also still a low chance that random world generation elements will prevent you from completing the entire story event, such as stalagmites getting placed at just the wrong spot. In those cases, doing the event in another brand new world should let you finish it.

What do I do in the Resonance Archives?
For now, we will leave it up to you all to figure out all its inner workings . Feel free to ask for help in the community though, such as #gameplay-help on our discord server, but please use spoiler tags. The VS Team would love to see your first reactions on a Let's play or Stream! Also, we highly recommend you enable music and stay in survival mode (gear up from creative inventory if you must) while exploring the Resonance Archives, to get the full experience. Optionally with earphones/headset for an extra level of immersion.

Is that all?
Nope, there's also tons of other goodies in this update.

• World generation got some massive upgrades. I personally can't get enough of 1.18 world generation and feel myself compelled to do another play session with my family once 1.18 is stable.
• Rafts and Gliders add new dimensions of movement to the game.
• The writing system lets you create your own lore
• Over 1000 new blocks and items added (in Creative mode, 5470 available blocks and items -> 6509)

There's something for everyone! \o/

What about mods?
In this update I was a bit more liberal when it comes to API changes with the potential to break 1.17 (or older) mods. This is for the benefit of more functionality, and future-proofing with a cleaner API and assets structure. Some coded mods may work if simply recompiled against the 1.18 API. For others, we believe that simple multi-file search&replace edits should generally be enough to get your codebase working on 1.18 again (Notepad++ works well for that, btw). I have aimed to list all the API changes in the changelog, as always. Modders, please let me know in the #gamedev channel on Discord if there are significant difficulties in updating your mods to 1.18 - some breaking changes can be expected, it's a preview release, after all.

What about my old worlds?
The pre releases have a good chance of breaking existing worlds, so make sure to backup your savegame before trying a pre. Also there will be chunk borders and no main story event in existing worlds. The chunk borders part we might be able to mitigate between pre.1 and stable. Due to the significance of the main story event, generally we expect that people updating to 1.18 will want to start new worlds. As mentioned in Discord it should now be easier for players to preserve cherished parts of existing worlds.

(Specifically, the new /land claim download <index> command exports a copy of a player's claimed land to their own PC.  Note for now this is available only if server and client updated to 1.18-pre.1, we are looking at also in future making a new 1.17.12 game version with this command so that 1.17 servers can offer it to their players without a full update to 1.18.x.  Potentially there will be a /land claim backup/restore feature - WIP - so that players can preserve and restore their builds on a server which updates from 1.17 to 1.18 - the server would announce to players generally they should do this, individual players would back up their builds and the server store those backups in a specific folder, then the server starts a new 1.18 world, and players with permission can restore their backed up builds into the new world.)

Please note
1. This is an unfinished update, mostly intended for modders and very adventurous players. You will encounter major bugs, incomplete features, performance issues and crashes. In next 1.18 releases, worldgen might also significantly change and therefore produce chunk borders or unknown blocks until rc.1
2. Further preview releases will only be posted in discord #news and on info.vintagestory.at and not on the blog. A new v1.18 blog post will come when the first release candidate (rc.1) is ready
3. It is strongly advisable to start a new world, for testing 1.18-pre.1.  This will allow testing of the new features without risk.  In any case, most people will probably want to start a new 1.18 world anyhow, because existing 1.17 worlds will lack the main story event, and the terrain generation in 1.18 is very different in terms of large-scale features like mountains, plains, land, water, etc.
4.  Known issues already:

• firewood can't be made into charcoal
• occasional terrain color blending problem (different color tones of grass / trees / plants either side of a straight line through the map)
• Resonator model changes orientation if a tuning cylinder is inserted
• various issues with doors

Still planned for rc.1
A lot of final polishing of the main story event. Even more lore content: the ability to combine transcribed parchments back into a full book possibly more (wearable) gadgetry. Possibly a rewrite of the oceans world generation system resulting in massive terrain changes! Final polishing of all the other new mechanics.

.NET7
Concurrently to the work on 1.18 release, we are still refining our transition from .NET Framework 4.6 to .NET7. This will provide smoother performance, some future-proofing, and potentially broader stability on Linux and MacOS. At present, test builds of v.1.17 are available in a .NET7 version for Windows, Linux and MacOS. If all goes well, at some point we will also make a .NET7 build of v.1.18 available.  Though there is no certainty yet, the intention is for that then to become our standard release for 1.18 if it presents no major issues: only time will tell. We are currently interested in feedback from any Windows 7/8 users who have tried the .NET7 test build.

In other news
Today also marks 1 year since Russia launched an Invasion of Ukraine. One year ago, we launched a fundraiser and were able to donate 5600 eur towards humanitarian aid - we donated to a respectable charity project in our area. I will personally donate another 2800 eur in the coming days.

Screenshots & Gifs

Added first main story event: The Resonance Archives. A vast underground structure for you to explore, master its challenges and loot rare treasures.

Added NPC Dialogue. You can now have conversations with traders


Added Glider: Descend elegantly from tall mountains. Added rift wards to defuse treacherous rifts near your base.
 

Added rafts. Stay dry when traversing the seas.

Oceans: You can now create worlds with large bodies of water. (Currently) off by default, enable it in the Customize World screen


More diverse world generation, such as the new upheaval system, which creates large-scale mountainous areas


Geologic activity system. Some areas in the world now spawn hot springs, and possibly even lava rivers closer to the surface


Overhauled poles. Instead of massive mountains, there are now windswept glaciers and desolate valleys


Rocktyped ruins: Ruins now adapt to the local rock strata (the builders apparently liked to source their rock locally)

New landforms: You will fall in love with the new terraced mountains and super flat areas


Moss now grows on trees


Added veins of cracked rock



Added writing system and interactable bookshelves. 1.18 is also "your lore update" \o/


160+ new types of butterflies and a butterfly net to catch them. Caught butterflies can be placed in display cases.


Door overhaul: Added much larger doors/gates, as well as wood-typed doors, and door animations

 

Sign block overhaul: Can now change font size, improved writing experience and added metal plaques

Angled beams system: A wholly different placement system for wooden beams


Improved chiseling: Glass is now fully chiselable and seamless. There is now also a chiselable "creativegrass" block in creative mode.

Added treasure maps. The Treasure Hunter trader offers to help you find hidden treasure ... for a fee


Reworked most flower models


Improved reeds model


Visible fertilizer. You can now see how much fertilizer you applied to farmland


Reworked firewood and orientable firewood piles


Improved handbook: Now shows output quantities and other QOL changes
 

Overhauled the command system.  New Command Block functionality. Command blocks can open and close doors and operate certain other activatable blocks (for example a Mechanical Power clutch). There is also a new Conditional Block which detects nearby entities meeting specified conditions, and a Ticker Block to repeat actions automatically


Players in multiplayer can now download a copy of their own claimed land to their local computer. This should help players migrate to a new 1.18 world.


Added a tutorial mode (WIP)


Auto updater for Windows users


Added ability to swap textures, limited to clutter blocks only


Added wearable spectacles

Full visual rework of our music player - it is now called Resonator, and the media are called tuning cylinders



Game updates

• Feature: The first main story event. A massive, highly detailed underground structure for you to adventure into, with many new features and blocks (not described nor pictured here, to avoid spoilers!)
• Feature: Improved world generation
  • Added Oceans system. Disabled by default but can be set up in the World Configuration screen.
  • Added vertical upheavel system. Very large scale mountainous regions, and flattened plains regions. Configurable.
  • Geologic activity system. Some areas now have underground lava rivers closer to the surface, as well as hot springs above underground lava pools. Configurable.
  • Overhauled polar regions. Instead of mountain ranges there now are glaciers devoid of structures. Added packed ice block.
  • Added 6 new landforms: Large islands, Realistic flatlands, Realistic mountains ledged, Realistic mountains quintuple-ledged, Stepped sinkholes and "Veryflat". Fine-tuned many of the existing landforms. Increase landform sizes by 20%
  • Feature: Cracked rock now spawns like quartz veins
  • Feature: Can now generate up to 8x8 million block worlds (Experimental. Previous max was 1x1mil) (Technical info: Fixed 2 issues with large worlds - entity movement jitter and chunks saved in the wrong locations)
  • Feature: Surface ruins are now rocktyped based on local rock strata.
  • Feature: Surface ruins and trees in wet&warm climates now have moss on their logs
  • Tweak: Improved support for large world heights
    • Reduce rivulet spam high in the mountains, most apparent on large world heights
    • Ore deposits now scale with world height (except surface copper)
    • Terrain detail now scales with world height setting. Previously terrain would become very low detail at large world heights.
  • Tweak: Increased ruined village size variability
  • Tweak: Reduced trees at the north/south pole
  • Tweak: Fewer floating islands (20 block size cull threshold -> 40 block size threshold)
  • Tweak: Added another soil layer
  • Tweak: Reduced spawn depth of treasure chests
  • Tweak: The grades of the deposits bismuthinite, galena, ilmenite, limonite, hematite, magnetite, malachite and sphalerite now increase, the deeper they spawn
  • Fixed: Water lily no longer generates in very deep water
  • Fixed: Loose patches of rusty gears not spawning underground
  • Fixed: Floating sand generating on water in cold areas
• Feature: Added Glider. Descend elegantly from tall mountains. Its crafting recipe is a potential reward from the main story event.
• Feature: Added Rafts. An innovative 1- or 2-seater watery transportation system. Requires crude oar in main hand.
• Feature: Added rift ward, reduces spawn of rifts by 95% in a 30 block radius around the ward. Consumes temporal gears.
• Feature: Added treasure maps. They add waypoints on your world map pointing towards treasures. Sold by traders.  Accuracy unknown(?)
• Feature: Writing system and Bookshelves
  • Can now write in books and parchments. Books can be signed to make then non-editable
  • Added ink and quill item, required for writing in books
  • Added fully interactable bookshelves, lets you store and remove up to 14 books in each one
• Feature: Added 160+ new types of butterflies. Butterflies can now be caught with a butterfly net & can be placed in display cases. Butterfly spawning behavior now depends on climate and elevation.
• Feature: Doors overhaul
  • Added 3m tall doors, as well as 2x2 gates and 2x4 gates, all of which can also be combined to double doors / double gates.
  • Doors crafted from boards are now wood-typed and no longer have a sleek look
  • The old sleek looking door can be purchased at the trader instead
  • The opening and closing sequence of doors is now animated
• Feature: Sign block overhaul
  • Signs and labeled chests text font size is now configurable and more easily moddable
  • Sign text editor text area more accurately represents how the actual text is displayed on the sign
  • Added writeable metal plaques that use a new medieval font
• Feature: Improved Handbook
  • Improved search result quality (prioritize full word over partial words, deprioritize ore blocks and items)
  • The handbook now displays output quantities for crafting and barrel recipes
  • Added growing properties of fruit trees to the handbook
  • New textures for diluted alum, cassiterite and chromite so one can tell apart the 3 liquids suitable to create mordanted cloth in the handbook
  • Lanterns are now grouped. Fixed Cider and Aqua vitae not listed. Fixed several links not working in the handbook
• Feature: Added angled beams system. Allows you to create long straight lines of wood in your constructions. Comes in wood variants and some aged metals. Note: beams are purely decorative
• Feature: Tutorial system. Can now start/stop a tutorial from the handbook. Multi-tutorial support. In pre.1, currently only has one starter guide tutorial.
• Feature: Visible fertilizer. Fertilizer applied to farmland is now visually shown on the farm land
• Feature: Added one new rotation option to the planks block, now acts like logs when placing (vertical, n-s and w-e)
• Feature: Can now download land claims using command /land claim download [index]
• Feature: The game now attempts to download unsatisfied mod dependencies from the Vintage Story ModDB
• Feature: Added auto-updater for the Windows client (not available on Linux/Mac)
• Feature: Added experimental playstyle called "Homo sapiens" that intends to remove all lore content from the game. WIP.
• Feature: Dialogs and main menu now have a textured background
• Feature: Added 50 wearable butterfly pins (creative mode only currently)
• Feature: Added glasses face accessory for seraph
• Feature: Added ruined weapons. Unique models with fairly high damage, but very low durability. You'll have to choose whether to use them in a pinch or keep them on display somewhere.
• Feature: Full remake of the "music box". New model and new concept. The music player is now called "Resonator" previously "Echo Chamber", and the mediums are now called "Tuning cylinder" instead of "Resonance Archive".
• Feature: New (survival mode) construction options
  • Feature: Parchment can now be crafted
  • Feature: Added sod roofs and debarked logs, survival craftable
• Feature: Improved chiseling!
  • Feature: Chiseled glass is now seamless. Improved FPS in heavily chiseled areas by about 4% (thanks, Xytabich)
  • Feature: Chiseled blocks can now support climate/season colored blocks. Added "creativegrass" to the creative inventory as an example
  • Tweak: Modified how chiseling partial blocks behaves. in 1.17 it constrained the players within the original bounding boxes. In 1.18 it constrains the player within the original volume of each material.
• Feature: Improved world maps!
  • Improved shading to better visualize the steepness of the terrain
  • Waypoints are now more visible against the map background
  • Tweak: The Add Waypoint dialog now auto suggests a name based on the chosen icon and color
  • By default, a waypoint is now created where you last died. Only the most recent death waypoint is kept. Can be disabled server wide via worldconfig allowDeathwaypointing or per player via /waypoint deathwp false
• Tweak: Gameplay balancing changes
  • Feature: Bows now have accuracy modifiers. High end bows are now more accurate
  • Feature: Hunters now have 20% increased bow drawing strength
  • Tweak: Increased min charge time for bows from 0.35s to 0.65s
  • Tweak: Animal harvesting no longer yields bones, but breaking the carcass does
  • Tweak: For the standard survival playstyle, a respawn location set by a temporal gear is now limited to 20 uses.
  • Tweak: Prospecting pick node search mode is now enabled by default in standard survival (radius 6)
  • Tweak: Foxes, Wolves and Bears will now de-spawn after 14 in-game days
  • Tweak: Standing in lit firepits or on hot ingot/tool molds now damages players and creatures alike (though players can still handle hot ingots and tools with impunity)
  • Tweak: Player can no longer place blocks directly in Lava
  • Tweak: Lore items no longer disappear when discovering, and can be right-clicked to read directly.
  • Tweak: The sling now requires a 0.75 seconds charge time instead of 0.35s
  • Tweak: Wood chests now require 1/4th of a metal ingot to craft in the form of a new "metal nails and strips" item which can be smithed
  • Tweak: Shield blocking mechanic tweak - attacks from a steep angle (above or below the player beyond 65°) now require the player to be looking up/down to block the attack
  • Tweak: Increased steel chisel durability (5000 -> 6000)
  • Tweak: Breaking tallgrass with a knife no longer removes it but trims it. Trimmed grass no longer drops dry grass.
  • Tweak: Cassiterite, chromite, and lead now use the same quantity averaging as ilmenite, when crushed
  • Tweak: Nuggets of ilmenite, galena, chromite, and cassiterite can now be crushed in the Pulverizer. In order to maintain parity with regular ore, the yield of nuggets is less than 1.  You will generally, on average, get one crushed unit for every 3 nuggets.
  • Tweak: Animal harvesting speed bonus for higher tier knives (proportional to the knife's plant harvesting speed)
  • Tweak: Reduced Drifter max light spawn threshold from 9 to 7, to more easily Drifter-proof areas
  • Tweak: In single player, the game now fully pauses during character creation
  • Tweak: Alum deposits can now also spawn surface ores
  • Tweak: Reduced chance of calm rift weather
  • Tweak: Bighorn sheep hitbox and wander speed fine tuning
  • Fixed: Bears drowning in water
  • Fixed: Hunger exploit when eating a meal while full
• Tweak: Visual fine tuning
  • Feature: New 3d model for reeds
  • Feature: Reworked firewood model! Also affects firewood piles, firepits and pit kilns as well
  • Feature: Added underwater Sediment disturbance particle effect
  • Feature: Particles from held torches are now also affected by wind. Tweaked fire effects of torches and firepits to be more fire-like.
  • Tweak: Increased overall scene brightness on sunny days
  • Tweak: Desert storm fog no longer appears when it recently rained
  • Tweak: Cloud visuals fine tuning. Now a bit more fluffy looking. Mitigate jarring cloud edges.
  • Tweak: More shader fine tuning (fixed horizon not same color as fog with godrays enabled, flat fog extending slightly further into the horizon, mitigate heavy smudge on the sun with godrays enabled,
  • Tweak: Snowfall is now more dense
  • Tweak: Harvesting berries now spawns some particles
  • Tweak: The "protect eyes" seraph pose during strong winds now no longer triggers if you are indoors or not looking into the wind direction
  • Tweak: Seraph now also adjusts its torso when looking around
  • Feature: Seraph now plays one of 4 random animations after being idle for 20 seconds, at a 1% chance per tick
  • Feature: Seraph can now wear spectacles
  • Tweak: Text on sign blocks is now a bit sharper
  • Tweak: Reduced see-through effect of water near the player
  • Tweak: Made rain drip particles wind affected
  • Tweak: Creature step pitching visual fine tuning
  • Tweak: Reduced shiny effect for blocks that are in shade
  • Tweak: Temporal stability twitching now disabled when not in survival mode
  • Tweak: Replaced weak block reflectivity mode with a pixelated version, the old smooth one was also broken on Nvidia cards
• Tweak: Performance optimizations
  • New "ChunkUploadRateLimiter" graphics settings that can help you reduce potential lag spikes during chunk loading (Detail: on PCs with fast CPUs and slow GPUs, new chunks may be rendered so quickly that a slow GPU chokes up, causing intermittent frame rate drops on affected systems, when moving into new map areas)
  • Supercharged chunk generation on CPUs that have at least 8 logical processors, e.g. 4 core, 8 thread CPUs. (Technical info: Chunk generation thread no longer goes to sleep while generating at 8+ logical processors)
  • Eliminated lag spikes in some areas of the game, most specifically when searching for buckets in the creative inventory (4s lag spike -> no lag spike)
  • Improve world startup speed by ~2.5 seconds. (Technical info: Make Lang system lock-free, creation of texture atlas mipmaps now done off-thread)
  • Further improved startup performance on worlds that are using many modded blocks (or were using many! even if a mod is removed, it can have some lasting effect on block data storage in a saved game)
  • Much improved overall FPS when dropping thousands of items. (Technical info: If there is over 1500 entities loaded, dropped items will enter a physics dormancy state after a couple of seconds if there is no player in a 7 block range, where they will tick their physics 20 times slower)
  • Slightly optimize dropped item despawn behavior as well
  • Slightly increased overall FPS (Technical info: Tighter frustum culling check + do not draw moss and lichen, or loose stones at LOD2, additional face culling on less-visible distant leaves at LOD2)
  • Slightly increased overall FPS #2 (Technical info: cave art and stone, gravel overlays not rendered at LOD2; partial blocks which are fully dark (0 sunlight, 0 blocklight) are rendered only at LOD0 distance, will only affect underground as world surface blocks have sunlight values)
  • Tweak: Improve FPS by up to 23% when at max view distance. (Technical info: Clamp lod bias beyond 640 view distance, resulted in 13 FPS => 16 FPS / 17mil tris => 12 mil tris at max view distance in a heavily forested area)
  • Fixed: Client side slow memory leak (Technical info: map regions were never unloaded on the client)
• Feature: Full rewrite of the command system to be more powerful, more flexible, self-documenting and more everything.
  • Disclaimer: WIP. Thousands of lines of code were rewritten, but not all current commands are updated to the new Command API syntax.
  • Many commands now allow for complex selectors and can operate on multiple targets at once. Full documentation will be made available by us by the time of a stable release.  For now, please use the in-game /help command, it should be able to provide full help for the commands which use the new Command API.  For example, /help tp
  • Improved /ban command. Now must supply a time span and reason before banning a user. For a reasonless permaban, added command /hardban. More informative banned screen for the banned player when attempting to join. More informative output on "/list banned" and no longer prints expired bans. Expired bans are now deleted on server startup. Bans/Unbans are now logged to server-audit.txt
  • /tp now uses the new entity and target location selector systems. Examples:
    • /tp 0 150 0           - Teleport yourself to 0 150 0
    • /tp s[] Saraty        - Teleport yourself to saraty
    • /tp Tyron Saraty   - Teleport tyron to saraty
    • /tp p[] Saraty        - Teleport all players to saraty
    • /tp p[range=12] ~ ~10 ~      - Teleport all players within a 12 block range 10 blocks in the air
    • /tp l[] Tyron           - Teleport the currently looked at entity/player to Tyron
    • /tp Tyron l[]           - Teleport Tyron to the currently looked at entity/player
  • When typing a wrong command, the command system now tries to find a similar one and suggests it as a clickable link
  • Feature: New command /setblock <code> <position>
  • Feature: New command /executeas <entityselector> <command>
  • Feature: New command /activate <position> [arguments]. For supported blocks, it should be similar to a player right-clicking or activating the block.  Currently supported: opening/closing doors, trapdoors and gates; executing a Command Block; operating a mechanical power Clutch
  • Feature: New command /entity setattr command to set attributes on an entity
  • Tweak: Removed /clearentities, replaced with /entity wipeall <entityselector>
  • Tweak: /entity count and /entity countg now accept an entity selector argument
  • Tweak: /entity remove now requires an entity selector, e.g. e[type=drifter*]
  • Tweak: Commands /cit and /chunkunload are now respectively /chunk cit and /chunk unload
  • Tweak: Command /debug cr is now /debug chunk relight
  • Tweak: Command /debug delplr is now /player [playername] wipedata
  • Tweak: Command /debug clrplrinv is now /player [playername] clearinv
  • Tweak: Command /debug setgen is now /entity setgen
  • Tweak: Command /debug setlact is now /entity setlact
  • Tweak: Changed syntax of /giveitem and /giveblock:
    • Before: /giveitem type quantity toplayername {attributes}
    • Now: /giveitem type{attributes} quantity entityselector
  • /weather command tweaks
  • Fixed /setblock not respecting block attributes argument
  • Tweak: /we mark now requires '=' prefix for absolute positions
  • Tweak: The /kill command now requires the "selfkill" privilege, granted by default, so that server admins can choose to remove it.
  • Tweak: Disable .debug commands for non-admins in multiplayer
• Feature: More creative mode content
  • Feature: Added Conditional Block and Ticker Block as first steps to better support adventure map making
  • Feature: More Clutter.  Clutter has its own Creative tab. Added aged and rotten ebony planks, improved clutter crates, ruined small crate, more ruined tables and bed variants, ruined scroll racks, empty ruined tool racks, ruined lanterns, heavy doors, banners, pipes. aged armor stands, dirty gravel, long tables, aged polish rock, carved acacia log, ruined trunks, ruined translocator etc..
  • Feature: Can now place omok pieces on a remodeled Omok table top. Pieces can be bought at the trader.
  • Feature: Added various new block decor overlays to creative mode, such as mold, rust, spotty moss, wet gravel
  • Feature: New Aged bricks block
  • Feature: Added a texture flipper tool. Allows you to change the wood type on a number of clutter blocks.
  • Feature: Added "measuring rope" creative mode block to help with relative coordinates needed by various commands
  • Feature: new Worldgen Hook block to support generation of additional worldgen structures when this block is placed by worldgen, (see technical info in API changelog below)
  • Tweak: Added veryaged and veryaged-rotten variants of debarked logs and support beams
  • Tweak: Added several more features to the Spawner meta block
  • Tweak: Can now find all decor blocks by searching for "layer" or "decor" in the creative inventory
• Tweak: WorldEdit changes
  • Feature: Worldedit: Added ability to gen trees with vines via "/wgen tvines 0..1"
  • Feature: Flood fill tool: Can now separately ignore water or plants
  • Feature: New chisel brush world edit tool paint in voxels
  • Feature: Added /we mpacifywater. Pacifies water in selected area - i.e. turns all flowing water into still water
  • Feature: Added /we mdeletewater. Deletes all water in selected area
  • Tweak: Added "ignore water and plants" switch for the flood fill tool
  • Tweak: Added chiselable collider meta block
  • Tweak: World edit selection tools now have a more intuitive selection behavior
  • Tweak: Air brush mode has a new "replace only selected block" mode
  • Tweak: Added /we cx, /we cy and /we cz to change the selection in x,y and z axis
  • Fixed: Imported and placed Schematics now place Decor blocks correctly
  • Fixed: Worldedit Undo/Redo not working with decor blocks
  • Fixed: Worldedit Undo/Redo borked with liquids
  • Fixed: /wgen regen sometimes not sending chunks properly
• Feature: Textareas now support word automatic wrapping
• Tweak: Game now starts at year 0
• Tweak: Can now use wrench to rotate clutter blocks (also hold sneak to turn turn a block around the looked at block face)
• Tweak: All wrench-rotatable blocks now show this in their block interaction help
• Tweak: Disabled ram optimization setting "Do not optimize". Tends to make things worse, performance wise
• Tweak: Reduced max resolution slider value to 100% (was 200%). Can be still increased with .clientconfig
• Tweak: Made butterflies not flee from you when you sneak
• Tweak: Flower visuals rework. Several flowers now use a richer model. Reworked woad texture, (still to add: reworked cow parsley, reworked california poppy)
• Tweak: New texture for golden poppy and woad flowers. Increased golden poppy spawn chance 5-fold
• Tweak: Firestarter can be used in claimed lands with the use permision (required build/break permission previously)
• Tweak: Ground stored items can now be placed/removed in claimed lands with the use permission (required build/break permission previously)
• Tweak: Fish AI fine tuning
• Tweak: Nails and strips can now also be used for block reinforcement
• Tweak: Echo chamber is now renamed to Resonator
• Tweak: Added our moderators to the credits screen
• Tweak: Better auto-guessing for the right window size and GUI scale on first startup
• Tweak: The game is now more robust against removing/re-adding mods or blocktypes (Technical info: Block entity data on missing blocks was lost upon save&reload, it's now preserved in case the block is later re-added)
• Tweak: Various dejanks / Quality-of-live changes
  • Tweak: Fine tuned camera position time step, might reduce frame jitter
  • Tweak: Vintagebeef now has a 3d model, tweaked pear on tree texture, fine tune roof corner 3d models
  • Tweak: Fixed minor UI issues in the settings dialog. Added "Framerate issues" link to the wiki
  • Tweak: 3rd person camera now looks through glass instead of zooming onto the seraph
  • Tweak: Vines no longer drop "end" sections
  • Tweak: Hide reticle in spectator mode
  • Tweak: Snappier plate armor step sound
  • Tweak/Fixed: The torchholder now also has a tight attachment area for chiseling
  • Tweak: Prevent creatures from stepping on stalagmites/ctites
  • Tweak: Breaking soil under ferns now removes the fern
  • Tweak: Lit torches now write when they burn out in held tooltip and burn out in 48 hours as its written on the extinct torch.
  • Tweak: The hotkeys to toggle the coordinate hud, block info hud and block interaction help (V, B, N) now require Ctrl to pressed by default (CTRL+V, CTRL+B, CTRL+N).  Our intention is to save new players from accidentally switching off this useful help
  • Tweak: Torches are no longer "Material: Other"
  • Tweak: Removed butter from creative menu & handbook. Removed unused "Crank" item from the game
  • Tweak: Parchment and books are now groundstorable
• Tweak: Renamed 'Cooper's Reed' to 'Cattails'. Reed baskets renamed to Reed chests, to avoid confusion with reed handbaskets
• Tweak: Added mod name to held item info if it's not a vanilla block
• Tweak: Removed "Stove" block from creative inventory (you can still get it via /giveblock stove-unlit-north)
• Tweak: The creative only rhodium items are now nickel
• Removed: Instanced grass/flower rendering. Fixes flower rendering bugs.
• Fixed: Changing sound output device broke many sounds
• Fixed: Game crashing on world load when the installation path contained curly braces
• Fixed: Game crashing with StackOverflowException when the VintageStoryLib.dll was not found. Now crashes with a more useful error.
• Fixed: Game crashing in multiple locations when the survival mod assets were not loaded
• Fixed: Sun rising in the evening when the survival mod was disabled
• Fixed: Using wrench in creative mode consumed durability
• Fixed: Tapestry in GUI mirrored, fixed wrong textures on the sides of tapestry
• Fixed: Link text alignment issues with centered fonts
• Fixed: Hacked locusts were despawning when out of player range
• Fixed: Lighting flashes in the cloud were not removed in some cases, causing permanent bright spots
• Fixed: Gui derp when right clicking a clay form twice
• Fixed: Potential crashes when knapping with stones that were also suitable for cave art
• Fixed: "Meta (Spawner)" gui creature selection derps
• Fixed: z-fighting on seraph hand when holding a forlon estoc
• Fixed: Group invite notification not received by players
• Fixed: A crash related to cloth sim
• Fixed: Wrong texture on part-baked and charred sunflower bread
• Fixed: No linebreak made by the text editor if there were no spaces to linebreak at
• Fixed: Wrong texture on the aged basket, added ruined basket as well
• Fixed: Able to overfill troughs using chutes
• Fixed: Should fix a server-side exception when a client crashes during connect
• Fixed: Game crashing when removing a cinematic camera point when there is no points, then re-adding a point
• Fixed: Incorrect particle collisions with clutter blocks
• Fixed: One occasional source of "Tried to get block outside generating chunks!" error in logs
• Fixed: Vintagehosting: Able to select a server version not compatible with vintagehosting
• Fixed: Issues with saving macros
• Fixed: Multiple issues with the move tool, amongst others clutter blocks not updating correctly as well as an issue when loading block entities client side
• Fixed: Chest animations borked
• Fixed: Animated blocks such as chests glowing if something else animated in camera view is glowing
• Fixed: Unknown decor blocks (e.g. from removed mods) were invisible. Now they display an unknown texture.
• Fixed: New world not starting if it can't find a suitable spawn location
• Fixed: Multiple issues when importing a schematic from a previously modded world
• Fixed: Prevent a very old bug where some chunks become completely black (=unlit) after reopening a savegame
• Fixed: Armorstands not having their items when placed from story schematics
• Fixed: Rare errors in logs reported by BETransient, on snow-covered Reeds blocks
• Fixed: Multiple usability issues with display cases.
  • Added a line on its purpose in the handbook
  • Fixed interaction help not displayed
  • Instead of executing the default interaction when right clicking with a unsuitable item/block it now displays an error to the player

API Changes

The most significant change is a full command system rewrite. The old way of registering commands still works but is now marked obsolete. The new command system allows you to define commands using the Fluent interface design pattern, as well as have prebuilt argument parsers for you to choose from. The new syntax also allows us to automatically generate command syntax documentation \o/
I've continued my efforts towards more behavior-based programming of blocks and items. There is a new BlockGeneric and StrongBlockBehavior base class which forward more method calls. Where possible, I tried to add or rewrite code to use block behaviors or block entity behaviors - such as the new door code. Support for multiblock structures is also improved, evident by the new large multiblock doors. The player mounting system should also be significantly more robust and flexible, see also raft code. Adding Worldmap waypoint icons is now dead simple - just drop in an svg file in the right folder.
When a game world has loaded up, it will now print an error summary, so you no longer need to go searching trough the log files for errors. It looks like this when there are no errors:

14.2.2023 12:22:23 [Client Notification] ===============================================================
14.2.2023 12:22:23 [Client Notification] (^_^) No issues captured during startup
14.2.2023 12:22:23 [Client Notification] ===============================================================

Beyond that, there is the usual myriad of minor changes. Have a look:

• Feature: New "StrongBlockBehavior" base class. Has a greater range of callbacks.
• Feature: Block/Item Texture overlays now allows you to define a blend mode in json. For an example see assets\survival\blocktypes\wood\woodtyped\door.json. Available Modes: Normal, Darken, Lighten, Multiply, Screen, ColorDodge, ColorBurn, Overlay
• Feature: All waypoint icons are now loaded from svg files
• Feature: Story structure generation system. Allows generation of a very large schematic, once per world
• Feature: New side-agnostic api subsystem: api.ChatCommands
• Feature: NPC dialogue system
  • Can now add dialogue to any NPC with pure JSON
  • Supports multiple response options, setting/reading of variables, giving and requesting items, playing sounds, and more
• Tweak: Conversable behavior should now allow for customized conversations based on character class and npc personality. If will now try to load the conversation file in the following order:
  • 1. convo-{charclass}-{personality}.json
  • 2. convo-{charclass}.json
  • 3. convo.json
• Feature: Added BlockEntity.OnExchanged() callback for block entities where blockAccessor.ExchangeBlock() was called on
• Feature: New Block.Activate() method. To be used for automation. Currently available for doors, trapdoors, fence gates and clutches, and Command blocks and Conditional blocks
• Feature: Added method ForceLandformAt() to GenMaps.cs. Allows one to override the landform in a given area.
• Feature: Added sapi.WorldManager.TestMapChunkExists and sapi.WorldManager.TestMapRegionExists
• Feature: Added new OnTestBlockAccess event to override land claiming behavior
• Feature: Added client side events MapRegionLoaded and MapRegionUnloaded
• Feature: BehaviorCanIgnite now will search for a IIgnitable interface in the block, block behavior, block entity and block entity behavior
• Feature: Added OnGetTemporalStability event to mod system "SystemTemporalStability"
• Feature: WorldgenHook block, triggers the specified worldgen hook (set by command /dev worldgenhook) when this block is placed by a schematic during worldgen
• Feature: Event.WorldgenHook and Event.TriggerWorldgenHook to run custom worldgen code at a particular position, triggered by something else for example placement of a specific block
• The default Worldgen hook is "genHookStructure <assetname>" which generates structure elements from schematics according to rules specified in the named file found in folder assets\survival\worldgen\hookgeneratedstructures
• Tweak: Added BlockEntity.OnPlacementBySchematic() method
• Tweak: Added IServerPlayer.InWorldAction event
• Tweak: The interfaces IMultiBlockMonolithicSmall, IMultiBlockMonolithic, IMultiBlockModular for multiblock behaviors can now also be implemented inside a BlockBehavior (previously only able to implement them in a Block class)
• Tweak: Added ability to supply a different crop model when grown on farmland, attribute onFarmlandShape (of type compositeshape)
• Tweak: Json patches now can be disabled via `enabled` property
• Tweak: Added helper method Block.GetBEBehavior()
• Tweak: Added helper method IBlockAccessor.GetInterface<T>()
• Tweak: Non-json files in blocktypes, entities and itemtypes are now ignored by the loader
• Refactor: "api.BlockTextureAtlas.AtlasTextureIds[0]" is now "api.BlockTextureAtlas.AtlasTexture[0].TextureId"
• Refactor: Moved away several methods from the Block class
  • Method Block.WildCardReplace now moved to extension method AssetLocation.WildCardReplace
  • Methods Block.OnTryIgniteBlock and Block.OnTryIgniteBlockOver now moved to IIgnitable interface (make your class inherit from this interface and remove the override keyword to make it compatible again)
  • Methods Block.SetWindFlag, Block.ClearWindFlags and Block.ToggleWindModeSetWindData are now extension methods of MeshData
• Refactor: Refactored meshing/transformation mechanism of BlockEntityDisplay class. Now caches content meshes amongst all blocks of the same class, instead of keeping a copy of every mesh for every block.
• Refactor: Added Tesselator.GetTextureSource() and marked GetTexSource() as obsolete
• Refactor: Gui Methods .AddButton() and .AddSmallButton() with orientation argument are now marked obsolete (simply remove the orientation arg from your code to fix)
• Refactor: Extracted AnimationUtil class out of BEBehaviorAnimatable to be used in more universal ways.
• Refactor: BEBehaviorAnimatable.InitializeAnimator() method reordered args
• Refactor: Clean up survival textures folder: moved several out of place textures into various folders
• Refactor: Removed last row in the elementTransforms uniform matrices for entity shape rendering, as its always 0 0 0 1, reduces upload overhead by 25%
• Refactor: BlockEntityShapeFromAttributes is now a block entity behavior. The block entities "Clutter" and "ClutterBookshelf" are thus no longer necessary and were removed
• Refactor: OnEntityDespawn event, renamed class of 2nd argument "EntityDespawnReason" to "EntityDespawnData" and uppercased its field
• Refactor: Breaking changes to IMountable interfaces. MountPosition property now needs to return a EntityPos instead of Vec3d, removed MountYaw property (set pos.Yaw instead). Added new property EnumMountAngleMode AngleMode. Added LocalEyePos property for a sitting entity you'd likely want to return something akin to "new Vec3f(0,1,0);"
• Refactor: Move snow cover related code from BEMicroBlock into BEBehaviorMicroblockSnowCover
• Refactor: Deleted SyncedEntityPos class. Moved the only useful field in there (LastReceivedClientPosition) to ServerPlayer.cs
• Refactor: GetClimateAt(), argument EnumGetClimateMode now defaults to NowValues instead of WorldGenValues
• Refactor: If you have meat-like items in your mod or use inFirePitProps, you'll have to readjust your transforms, as the firepit spit is now diagonally placed. Sorry.
• Refactor: ITreeGenerator interface: Moved most parameters into a new TreeGenParams class
• Refactor: Renamed IBlockEntityRotatable to IRotatable
• Tweak: New entity callback OnAsyncParticleTick(). Lets you spawn per-+entity particles in a separate thread.
• Tweak: IBlockAccessor.WalkBlocks() now calls the callback method twice for the same position if there is a liquid in the fluids layer
• Tweak: Player head control rework. Now simplified code.
• Tweak: BlockWater now has json configurable ice block code and freezing point
• Tweak: Firewood piles now also use the new ground storable system. Fixed ground storable issues with TransferQuantity > 1
• Tweak: The game now logs a warning/error summary after startup
• Tweak: Ground storage json property TessQuantityElements is now marked obsolete, use property ModelItemsToStackSizeRatio instead
• Tweak: IMountable interface now requires 2 more properties CanControl and MountedBy
• Tweak: IMountableSupplier interface now requires property MountPoints
• Tweak: Massive flower assets overhaul. Moved all flower shape files from block/basic to block/plant/flower and removed redundant shapes.
• Tweak: Sign block: Writable width, amount of lines, font size, font style and text positioning is now json configurable
• Tweak: Transform editor now allows X-axis flipping
• Tweak: Added ICustomHandbookPageContent interface for blocks and items if they want to modify handbook text in code
• Tweak: New properties maxQuantityByGroup and spawnCapPlayerScaling for entity runtime spawn conditions
• Tweak: Less hardcoded sleeping system. Can now remove the tiredness behavior from players to disable sleeping mechanic.
• Tweak: If a block defines block entity behaviors in json but did not define a entity class, then it will now default to "BlockEntityGeneric"
• Tweak: Prevent the game crashing from invalid blocks
• Tweak: api.Event.MapRegionGeneration event, added argument "ITreeAttribute chunkGenParams = null"
• Tweak: New argument for "/wgen regen" to generate only one type of landform, e.g. "/wgen regen 3 veryflat"
• Tweak: Added chattype:// link protocol to add text to the clients chatbox
• Tweak: Handbook pages on items/blocks now show their page code if extended debug info is enabled (.edi)
• Internal: The ServerRedirect packet should correctly redirect the client now, untested and not available through the API yet
• Fixed: Not able to make grid recipes with 2 liquids
• Fixed: "shelvable: false" showed up as shelvable in the handbook
• Fixed: Default value arg in player.GetModData() was ignored
• Fixed: MeshData.Clone() set incorrect values for VerticesMax and IndicesMax, potentially causing any future operations on the mesh to crash due to being out of bounds.
• Fixed: Entities imported from schematics sometimes had a wrong offset on them
• Fixed: Fixed StackOverflow in mapregion.SetModData<T>()
• Fixed: structures.json, Schematics property not respecting mod domains
• Fixed: ~150 XML Doc warnings. Moved method BehaviorArtPigment.BlockSelectionToSubPosition() to BlockSel.ToDecorSubPosition()
• Removed: "Modular" multiblock type. Was never implemented and not really useful either. Saves 150 block ids.

Screenshot by nebux#0287 as shared on discord

Game updates in 1.17.11

• Fixed: Rotating a chiseled block broke its side solid properties
• Fixed: Hacked locusts despawning in some cases
• Fixed: When attempting to join a modded server, mod load errors are no longer silently ignored and instead the game stops and displays an error
• Fixed: Game crashing when clicking buy/sell in the trader dialog then quickly switching tabs
• Fixed: Lightning rods not working on chunk reload
• Api Fixed: Compatibility lib no longer working for json patches
• Api Fixed: Exception thrown by the Compatibility lib on some patches
• Api Fixed: Barrel content names not respecting mod domain
• Api Fixed: Barrel recipe ingredients with a wildcard threw an exception if no wildcard name was defined
• Api Fixed: FakeDictionary.Clone() not working correctly

Version 1.18 will still require quite some more work before we can release it, let alone become stable. In the meantime a few notable bugfixes have been accumulated that make another 1.17.x release worthwhile.


Screenshot by nebux#0287 as shared on discord

Game updates

• Tweak: Updated community translations. New translation added: Korean! \o/
• Tweak: Added ability to fix the invisible creatures glitch on Intel HD 4000 cards by setting the "maxAnimatedElements" configuration in the clientsettings.json to 34
• Tweak: /debug ci now prints block and lights pallete size for debugging purposes
• Fixed: Auroras and rust world machines gears not visible on integrated graphics (and spamming errors in the logs)
• Fixed: Potential bug with shadows on grass/flowers with instanced plants enabled
• Fixed: Random ghost particles popping in and out of existence around other particles
• Fixed: Prevent invalid/corrupted fruit trees from crashing the game
• Fixed: Weather events (thunder&lightning as well as hail) never appearing in some worlds / areas
• Fixed: Repair mode not working on corrupt chunks during snow update
• Fixed: Server side Exception spam caused by ghost mycelium blocks in some rare cases
• Fixed: Server side Exception spam caused by the rope system in some cases
• Fixed: Liquid dupe issue with modded liquid containers
• Fixed: Broken textures when chiseling peat, cob or clay
• Api Fixed: CompatibilityLib system not working properly

Our goal for 1.18 is to significantly advance the game's lore, a goal that has been part of our mission since the inception of Vintage Story. The VS team is very excited to fully dedicate an update to this, as we have been holding it off for a very long time.

Ultimately we want to tell an extensive story, not only through text, but also through the game's atmosphere, fully within the spirit of a open world sandbox experience. It's up to the player if and when he wants to advance the story, or completely ignore it if he desires so. The story's end will also not obsolete your current savegame - much rather offer more interesting choices for you to make.

In more concrete terms, and what I already partially showed off in #devlog, this will include the following:

Disclaimer! In-Development content ahead! Things may get changed, improved or outright removed until release! Also this is a non-exhaustive list!

1. A NPC Dialogue system, this lets you talk to traders, and possibly other new NPCs, to ask them about various things. Likely will include an occasional fetch/reward quest. Some of the dialogue will likely also be personalized to your character class and the personality of the NPC.


2. Interactable books and bookshelves that you can scavenge for old stories, but also write your own lore!
  

3. Treasure maps. Traders will sell maps that add a waypoint to hidden treasures to your world map, or possibly locations of major dungeons?


4. More underground content. Most importantly one very large underground structure present in every world for you to explore, solve challenges in and uncover more about the world you inhabit. This is the one feature the team is currently spending most time on, and the one we are most excited about, I believe

5. Lore related gadgetry. New blocks and items that will unlock new abilities or assist you in your survival endeavours


6. Improved surface structures. Not sure how far we get, but the goal is to add a lot more atmosphere and symbolics to our overground ruins and trader structures.


7. Other stuff
Beyond that, and not really related to the lore update, there will be a ton of other goodies as well, such as many new types of blocks, over 150 new types of butterflies, the ability to catch them, a tutorial system, an auto-updater for Windows game clients, improved gui visuals, many improvements to world generation, angled wooden beams with a whole new placement system, completely overhauled doors and a completely overhauled chat commands system that will bring us much closer to adventure map making capabilities for players.

Release date
As for the release date, we hope to get all this new content in a "release candidate" state by Q1 2023. Release candidate means all new content is done and our focus will shift to bugfixing.

What about my old worlds?
You can still play on old worlds in 1.18, but this is the first time I would recommend starting a new world. The world generation changes might create jarring chunk borders when discovering new terrain in old worlds.

v1.19?
We are treading in lots of new territory with this update, so it took us a while to nail down the direction we want to take, but by now we have a pretty good plan on where we want to be. Now, as we have mostly fixated on a plan for 1.18, we started some initial discussions on what 1.19 will be and the consensus is that it will be another dejank update - "Dejank Redux" so to speak. We also plan to do some intensive playtesting with the VS team for 1.19. Personally I would also love to have a stronger focus on Players vs. Environment type survival. Quite possible that we also add one or two lore things that didn't make it into 1.18. Time will tell

Cheers, Tyron

Go grab seventeen'o'nine for a spooky main menu background picture! 8k Ultra HD preview picture:

Build by Arkan, tweaks by Elvas

Game updates

• Feature: Added halloween themed main menu background
• Tweak: Updated community translations
• Fixed: Burning coals not extinguished by adjacent water
• Fixed: Crock sealing not working, food expired as if not sealed
• Fixed: Texture issues on pumpkin
• Fixed: Snow layer issue on stacked vertical mud brick slabs
• Fixed: /stats command - Players last online value was incorrect
• Fixed: Incorrect firewood visuals in the clay oven

Unrack your chisels and dig into your food storage. It's pumpkin carving time!

[Edit:] Also released v1.17.8 to fix a texturing issue with pumpkins, fix a crash with chiseled blocks and to make the handbook pause toggle-able

Game updates

• Feature: Can now chisel pumpkins in (the real life months) October and November. Includes a glowy chisel material for extra spook.
• Tweak: The game now pauses in singleplayer when opening the handbook
• Tweak: Game now logs available system ram on startup
• Tweak: Reduced peridot deposits by 66%
• Tweak: Randomly rotate texture on sand
• Tweak: Added a link to clay on the pottery guide page
• Fixed: Fruit trees no longer updating correctly upon world/chunk reload
• Fixed: Multiple visual issues with fruit trees (thin branches not wood typed, thick branch ends looked cut off, thick branches had not frost overlay, floaty up facing thin branches)
• Fixed: Should mitigate a crash on corrupted chunks
• Fixed: Player getting kicked / server exception if right clicking a trader while the frame profiler is enabled
• Fixed: -i command line arg not working
• Fixed: Pulverizer dropping 0 sized stacks in some cases
• Fixed: Slabs turned to chiseled blocks can no longer be expanded in size
• Fixed: Underground lake schematics generating without water
• Fixed: Linux install.sh: Create .local/share/applications folder if it does not exist
• Fixed: Should fix a client crash related to fruit trees
• Fixed: Might fix teleporters not working on low server tick rate
• Fixed: Perishable information not displayed for perishable liquids, such as milk
• Api Fixed: ModMaker not correctly prefixing game: to vanilla file paths

• Tweak: Reduced server performance cost for stone-throwing enemies
• Tweak: Significantly reduced RAM usage caused by missing blocks, e.g. when mods were removed (20 gb -> 7 gb in one test case)
• Tweak: No longer drop crop harvest in multiple 1x items to prevent lag
• Fixed: Perishable info missing on placed crocks, bowls and pots
• Fixed: Blackguards breaking cracked tool vessels got no drops
• Fixed: Performance: Clay ovens filled with firewood unecessarily redrawing chunks twice a second
• Fixed: Missing translation entries for fruit tree fruits in meals
• Fixed: Fruit tree fruit jams hat incorrect satiety values
• Fixed: Condenser and fruitpress: Placing liquid containers other than buckets were invisible
• Fixed: Milking ewes consumed 1 litre at the end of the process
• Fixed: Sometimes able to find 0 copper stacks in ruins
• Fixed: Bears not able to step on blocks in some cases
• Fixed: Untranslatable text with placed food containers
• Fixed: Startup crash for some heavily modded worlds or similar cases
• Api Fixed: CollectibleObject.OnBeforeRender(), renderInfo.dt set to 0 for not currently held items
• Api Fixed: tree.MergeTree() was not properly fixed
• Api Fixed: Decor block sounds were ignored, now always used. Can use attribute block "ignoreSounds:true" to restore old behavior.
• Api Fixed: Stack overflow when using obsolete method Collectible.GetDurability
• Api Fixed: Crash on ground storage placement of blocks/items with overlay textures
• Api Fixed: Might fix "Sold by" handbook entry not working for modded items/blocks

Game updates

• Feature: Preparations for a 1-click mod install feature (added URI Handler and Protocol handler for vintagestorymodinstall://)
• Tweak: Added sleep and sit behavior to gazelles
• Tweak: Increased vernalization temperatures for pink apple, yellow apple, cherry and peach trees
• Tweak: Tool mold rack TLC
  • Tweak: Tool mold rack is now renamed to "Vertical rack"
  • Tweak: Can now also place resonance archives on vertical racks
  • Fixed: Shields placed on tool mold racks were visually broken
  • Api tweak: Added vertical rack transform tab to the transform editor. Made custom transforms less hardcoded.
  • Api fixed: Not able to properly create a transform for vertical racks
• Fixed: Client no longer crashing when using very large world edit brush shapes (shape preview now defaults to a generic cube)
• Fixed: Server exception when breaking a stacked berry bush thats below another berry bush
• Fixed: Able to interact with ground storage in claimed blocks
• Fixed: Rock strata thickness not scaling with world height, causing some ores not to spawn
• Fixed: Hotbar numkey slot flip with cooking pot slots did not respect slot max stack size
• Fixed: Crafting with a hotbar num key then clicking the output slot with mouse crashed the game
• Fixed: A singular failure to connect to the master server did not make the server attempt to re-register to it
• Fixed: Broken droplet noise on water when it rains in some cases
• Fixed: Mitigate issues with painting placed on ice
• Fixed: Might fix a rare issue where creating a new world with a different size than the previous one had an incorrect spawn point, or even crashed when trying to join
• Fixed: Rare connection issues on second game load, thanks to @Apache
• Fixed: Rare server side full deadlock / freeze
• Fixed: Saltpeter spawning underwater and on the surface in some cases
• Fixed: Sneaking did not hide player icons on the map
• Fixed: Mitigate issues with vertical trapdoors in rotated schematics
• Fixed: Worldgen pond generator not taking into account new submersible behavior
• Fixed: Server crash when using the fruit press in a certain way
• Fixed: Overlapping issues with wallpaper and other blocks, like paintings
• Fixed: Mitigate one crash with fruit trees
• Fixed: Rare worldgen exception near kimberlite spawns
• Api Fixed: Text overflow in the textarea of the block selection editor .bsedit
• Api Fixed: Multiplayer auto mod downloader searched for the mod references by the mod network version instead of the mod version
• Api Fixed: Using 35 joints in an animation crashed the game
• Api Fixed: tree.MergeTree() broken for nested trees
• Api Fixed: Avoid crash in the hotbar hud when a mod as removed that added tool modes to a collectible

Game updates

• Feature: Can now configure crop and berry bush grow rates via /worldconfigcreate float cropGrowthRateMul [0.1 ... 10]
• Tweak: Improve performance during temporal storms (technical info: don't compute new rust overlay for distant geometry)
• Tweak: Fine tune frost overlay on creatures
• Fixed: Able to use /waypoint on worlds with maps disabled
• Fixed: Filling quern with items reset the grind timer
• Fixed: Game crashing when placing vintage beef on shelves
• Fixed: Berry bush berry harvest yield not correctly increased
• Fixed: Berry yield from breaking berry bushes was not affected by the character forage stat
• Fixed: Fruit press sometimes not yielding 10L of juice
• Fixed: Not able to place 4 crocks in one block in some cases
• Fixed: Quern not stopping when opening handbook while grinding
• Fixed: Setting daysPerMonth config via serverconfig.json did not apply correctly
• Fixed: Weird clipping issue with rush matting
• Fixed: Fences and other blocks sometimes getting replaced by grass
• Fixed: Lung capacity world config not applying correctly
• Fixed: Endlessly falling snow layer blocks
• Fixed: Shields in the decorative blocks tab
• Fixed: Might finally fix a crash related to fruit trees
• Api tweak: Vanilla item/block codes in a exported schematic should now all be prefixed with game
• Api Fixed: Plant container fillHeight not respecting block type

A new release always brings a wave of new reports, must ninja fix, again!


Screenshot by Dude7ox#6606 on discord
 

Game updates

• Tweak: Increased default lung capacity from 20 seconds to 40. Lung capacity is now listed in the world configurations screen with new preset values for each playstyle
• Tweak: Creative mode flying player model no longer has hands in the air
• Tweak: Tailored gambeson armor can now only be repaired by tailors.
• Fixed: Should fix all creatures black for some players
• Fixed: Soaked hide barrel recipes now separated to be more clear that there is one for diluted borax and one for limewater
• Fixed: Falling blocks no longer spawn dropped items, but instead will try to keep falling further. Mitigates lag from large avalanches
• Fixed: Last slice of pie had a buggy serving value set
• Fixed: Tool mold shown "x units of copper ingot" "ingot" is now omitted
• Fixed: Game crashing when placing fruit tree cuttings
• Fixed: Game crashing when going to interface settings in a world with maps disabled
• Fixed: Missing recipes for peridotite and basalt coffins

A new release always brings a wave of new reports, must ninja fix!


Screenshot by Dude7ox#6606

Game updates

• Fixed: Clutter blocks not respecting schematic rotation
• Fixed: Z-fighting with snow on chiseled blocks in some cases
• Fixed: Ground storage held interaction help omitting CTRL key placement for some items
• Fixed: Firepit not warming the player in some cases
• Fixed: Players having freezing overlay despite not being cold in some cases
• Fixed: Mitigate a crash related to fruit trees
• Fixed: Moving mouse over a filled bowl in a recipe in the Handbook crashing the game
• Fixed: Invisible scrollbars in some cases
• Fixed: Derpy visuals on the disconnected screen
• Fixed: A startup crash related to sound loading happening for some users
• Fixed: Held interaction help and item name not displayed if switching from an empty slot to a filled slot
• Fixed: Crafting dupe glitch for recipes with output quantity > 1

Time for stable! As with the 1.16 release, there is still a number of known bugs for some players, but I estimate it is more stable than 1.16.5 by now. This major update contains over 350 features, tweaks and fixes. Getting this update out took us longer than we hoped for, as we also spent roughly 4 months creating a new trailer alongside and did some deep engine changes. As always, this update would not have been possible without the incredible amounts of feedback and bug reports by you, the community. We are very grateful for your support, thank you!

Eerily repetitive to my previous stable post, the theme of this update also majorly morphed during development. While the main focus was meant to be de-jank, we also added visual spectacle for use in the new trailer, new creatures, some significant performance improvements, massively reworked the water physics system and added some features long requested by the community, such as armor repair, fish and an oxygen meter.

For 1.18 we hope to primarily focus on story-telling and game lore with lots of new dynamic structures added to our world generator. Stay tuned!
 

Screenshots / Gifs

Added Lightning strikes and lightning rods to protect against lightning strike damage

The player model now reacts to being cold and when exposed to strong winds. Added sand storm fog effect in sandy areas.


Added player lookat mode


Can now sit down on block edges and pet animals

Huge water phyics update: Water is now stored in an independent "layer" - blocks can be submerged, and water can flow through blocks


Added oxygen meter


Added Salmon fish, non-interactable for now (WIP)


Added 200+ clutter blocks in preparation for the Lore Update    

Added gazelles


Added brown bears, black bears, pandas and sun bears

Improved termite mound models with much larger variants, termite mound color matches the local type of sand


Enhanced temporal storm and low stability visuals


Armor repair and visible armor damage



Many more varieties of shield

Added a new grass type and a new cactus type.  Improved berry bushes, water lilies and breadfruit appearance


Reducing resolution in the graphics settings (for higher FPS) no longer makes the game blurry

Improved sunset ambient visuals


More bling: improved reflective effects for metals and crystals

New Lava visuals to look more like real lava


Ground storage improvements - items can now be placed with any orientation (respects placement orientation)

 

Ground storage improvements - can now place a selection of tools on the ground

New wrench tool to modify the orientation of a selection of block types


Armor stand pose can now be changed, using the wrench tool



Prettier main menu screens - dialogs such as Settings are now drawn over the background, and the background is smoother


Berry bushes are now fluffy (but can be pruned).  Fences now attach to more solid block faces


 

All game updates since 1.16.5

• Feature: Lightning strikes!
  • Damage creatures in a 8 block radius
    • Lightning rods can redirect lightning, be sure to place them in an elevated spot
• Feature: 200+ new blocks: lore rich "clutter" blocks and bookshelves with rich visuals. Currently these are only in the Creative inventory. These will be added to Survival worldgen (in ruins, tombs, etc....) in the future 1.18 Lore Update
• Feature: Huge water physics update
  • All non-solid blocks can now be submerged, water can flow through them and they can become embedded in ice if it freezes
  • Stones, boulders, seashells and ruins are now also generated underwater during world generation
  • Directional water physics. Doors, slabs, chiseled blocks, etc. now provide directional blocking of water flow for greater realism
  • Panning from sand and gravel blocks which are in or next to water, the reduced layers block can also become submerged
• Feature: Added oxygen meter. Players can now only hold breath for 20 seconds underwater, as opposed to infinite air
• Feature: More visual spectacle during temporal storms and low stability
  • Added large turning gears in the sky
  • Additional "flowing rust" shader effects on blocks
    • More wicked glitches and particles
• Feature: Improved Player armor
  • Armor no longer disappears when its durability reaches 0, but it will lose all its protection.  Protection degrades as the armor durability reduces
  • Armor can now be repaired using its base material. Repairing armor has half the material cost.
  • Lowered the cost of crafting lamellar armor to be more accessible. Rebalanced blackguard and forlorn armor crafting costs to match repair costs for other chain/plate armors. Forlorn now requires some luxury materials to suit its fanciness.
  • Damaged armor will look visibly damaged
• Feature: 300 types of shields
  • There are now nearly 300 types of shields in the game. Materials can be mixed and matched. More shield models to be added in the future
  • Shield durability is now dynamically determined based on the materials used: hardwoods and stronger metals add durability to the base durability value
  • Added metal hoops and bosses. Made by smithing. Shields are now crafted with hoops and bosses instead of metal plates
  • Rebalanced shield durability. Blackguard shield no longer top durability, but cheaper to make than full metal shields
• Feature: More and prettier flora
  • Added red top grass
  • Added flowering water lily
  • Added silver torch cactus to desert mountains. Painful on touch!
  • Berry bushes are now fluffy (can be pruned with shears)
  • Improved seasonal colors for ferns
  • Improved lichen model
  • Made breadfruit texture more spiky looking. Ripe breadfruits are now larger
  • Creative-only dandelion and acanthus flowers
• Feature: New and improved fauna
  • New creature: Gazelle. Male, female and calf.  Found in warm/dry climates (savannah)
  • New creatures: Brown bear, black bears, sun bears and pandas now spawn in the world
  • The first fish: Salmon. No fishing or boats just yet, the salmon is only decorative right now
  • Fox pups now spawn as well
  • Can now pet tameable animals when they are generation 1 or higher (right-click a creature to pet it). Petting causes creatures to stand peacefully
  • Termite mound remake. Added much larger versions. All termite mounds are now rock typed. Added rare large patches to Savannahs
• Feature: Improved Creature AI
  • Attacked creatures should now react more quickly
  • Improved creature AI tactics - when an attacking creature cannot reach its target and gets hurt, it will make a tactical retreat. Every time it gets hurt again, it will retreat further. Should mitigate the pillaring + ranged attack weakness of most creatures.
  • Fixed animals sprinting around a target because they overshoot the destination. Now they slow down near the target
  • Bears and other large creatures in general should no longer become stuck when wandering
  • Creatures walking into solid walls will attempt slight strafing movements to get around the wall
• Feature: Extensive visual tuning
  • Much improved graphics quality when using resolutions below 100% - as it is no longer blurry (therefore, lower resolutions can be used to improve FPS without much loss of fidelity, especially on 4k monitors)
  • Improved sun ambient color and water reflections to reflect the sky colors
  • Prettier main menu - all main menu screens are now dialog based over the background image
  • Much improved reflective shader effect and more configuration options for modders for reflective stuff
  • Improved lava visuals and effects
  • Added more metal pouring vfx, added bouncy particles when smithing
  • Fences now attach to chiselled blocks
  • Tweak: Visual improvements on the death screen (permanent damage overlay + sepia effect)
  • Tweak: More sparkly crystals
  • Tweak: Larger bells and locusts
  • Tweak: Added blur effect to dialog title bars, various other minor visual tweaks
  • Tweak: Boosted SSAO intensity by 40%
  • Tweak: Third person camera zoom with +/- keys is now smooth instead of instant
  • Tweak: Added some glowy flicker to burning forgesTweak: Placed curd bundles now rotateable
  • Tweak: More particles for burning coal in forges
  • Tweak: Some extra seraph head bobbing while drunk
  • Tweak: Beeswax and Honeycomb now displayed inside crates
  • Tweak: Bees no longer clip through walls
  • Tweak: Made filled crates and barrels fuller
  • Tweak: Block broken particle spawns are now multiplayer synced
  • Tweak: Added seraph chiselling animation
  • Tweak: A bit of rotation randomization on items placed in a display case
  • Tweak: Chickens now peck on the ground for longer, but now also peck for random durations
  • Tweak: Gravel texture now randomly rotated, which greatly mitigates any repetitivenessTweak: Fine tune amaranth crop texture, more fluff to some of the seraph hairstyles, fine tune layer of sticks model and texture, thicker stem for the bamboo sapling, added a bit of thickness to the condenser model
  • Fixed: Visual glitch glowy geometry during fog
  • Fixed: Weird AO on shelves against the wall
  • Fixed: Sun specular reflections on water no longer working since 1.16
  • Fixed: Distant tall grass noticeably disappearing (not being drawn at all)
  • Fixed: Minor visual glitches when distant tall grass seen against sky or water
  • Fixed: Terrain below flowing water had inconsistent shading at the end of the water flow
  • Fixed: Some inconsistencies in block sunlight levels below placed/flowing water blocks
  • Fixed: white or wrong particle colors when breaking leaves, fruit-tree leaves, berrybushes and waterlilies
• Feature: Massive performance tuning
  • Faster chunk loading: We have changed our internal compression algorithm from deflate to ZStd, which is several times faster for both the server and clients and single-player (details: on Windows platform a native library libzstd is used, on Linux and OSX platforms, currently, a .NET version of the Zstd library is used)
  • Even faster chunk loading and reduced memory usage: We have changed our internal chunk data storage method to palletised chunk storage, which needs two to four times less memory on average while the game is running, and made other improvements in memory efficiency, so the game uses less RAM while running, leading to smoother overall performance
  • Faster worldgen: The worldgen can now usually "keep up" with player motion as the player moves into new areas of the map
  • ~40% faster game starts: Lots of fine tuning and multithreading during the startup process should greatly reduce the game startup time. (Single player Creative world load time was 17 seconds in 1.16, now 10 seconds in 1.17, YMMV)
  • Improved overall FPS: Grass and flowers are now (optionally) drawn using instanced rendering which improves FPS and allows more fine grained control over grass for future projects - this is an optional setting, enable it in Graphics settings, as it seems to cause some issues on some models of graphics card
  • Improved server TPS: AI pathfinding is now multi-threaded; many other entity ticking performance improvements; mitigated slow ticks caused by drifter and butterfly spawning; mitigated slow ticks caused by farmland and berrybush; for significantly fewer slow ticks / lag spikes overall
  • Greatly improved GUI dialog creation performance (the dialog edge blur algorithm now skips over the center part of the dialog)
  • Reduced SSAO quality on the "Medium SSAO" setting for more FPS
  • Improve FPS when rendering very large inventories, like the creative inventory (50 FPS -> 100 FPS)
  • Tweak: Increased server MagicNumbers values to reflect faster chunk loading speeds and faster worldgen - servers are encouraged to experiment with the servermagicnumbers - especially ChunksColumnsToRequestPerTick, ChunksToSendPerTick and ChunkColumnsToGeneratePerThreadTick to find their own optimal values
  • Temporal storm particles are now async for greater performance
• Feature: Added a wrench tool. Can be used to re-orient chutes, stairs, slabs, logs, pillars and plaster. Can now change armor stand arm pose with a wrench.
• Feature: Added Lookat camera mode. Makes it so that in the overhead camera mode the seraph looks into the camera. Enable via .clientconfigcreate overheadLookAt bool true
• Feature: Added Desert storms. Block colored fog effect in dry areas with lots of sand, when there are strong winds
• Feature: Reworked waypoint dialog. Icon and color are now a grid of clickable icons.
• Feature: Added craftable top hat, bamboo hat and straw hat
• Feature: Major player improvements
  • Tweak: Seraph voices reworked. The previously experimental seraph voices system is now the new default.
  • Tweak: Improved immersive first person mode. Death animation no longer glitching into blocks and knapping should be easier (work in progress)
  • Feature: Sitting down on a block edge now uses a custom seraph pose (still quite buggy in multiplayer)
  • Feature: Added "protect eyes" pose to seraph during strong winds
  • Feature: Additional visual effects when cold
  • Animals and players that are low body temperature now have a frost overlay on them (when the outside temperature is below -5 °C)
  • Seraphs will have a freezing / shivering animation when cold
• Feature: Ground storage upgrades
  • All tools can now be placed on the ground
  • The rotation of the placed item now depends on the player's placing direction (used to be fixed)
  • Flatter selection boxes for better visuals and more accurate sub-block placement
  • Fixed wrong particle collision box with ground storage blocks
• Feature: Added "arctic supplies" stashes to arctic climates, comes in 40 variants
• Feature: New rain drip behavior for leaves and stick layers. Added Accumulating droplets. Keeps on dripping for a while after the rain stopped
• Feature: Handbook improvements
  • The handbook now also shows how a block/item can be stored
  • Added guides in the handbook on Dye Making and Ground Storage
  • Added text about swapping glass panes to the lantern entry
  • Added description of how to make ferrous (iron) anvils
  • Chairs are now grouped in the handbook
  • Improved handbook hotkey (<hk>) visuals. They now look like the hotkeys shown in the in-game block interaction help
• Feature: Added 6 new crock labels, dynamically chosen based on contents, including for when its contents are rotten
• Feature: Held candles now also emit light
• Feature: Added ability to place sideways hay bales
• Feature: New 3D models for tailor shoes, merchant shoes, great steppe boots, and reindeer herder shoes
• Feature: The longblade is no more. Long live the falx!
• Feature: Support for 2x1 paintings. Added "sodhouse" and "lastday" paintings
• Feature: Worldgen tuning
  • Now less trees in hot and dry areas
  • Reduced spawn of water in dry places by making lakes/seas more shallow. In existing 1.16 worlds this can cause lines of water at chunk borders with newly generated map regions, but only below sea level in dry areas.
  • Loose stones and boulders now also spawn in caves
• Tweak: Game controls fine tuning
  • In the Settings menu, the Mouse settings and Keyboard controls are now split across two tabs
  • New controls option: Ctrl-click and Shift-click mouse modifiers can now be separate from the Sprint and Sneak keys (so you can re-assign Sprint to something other than the Ctrl key, but still use a Ctrl-click mouse action)
  • Keyboard controls are now more logically grouped in the Settings menu
  • When the Handbook refers to keyboard controls, it shows the current assigned key
  • Block interaction help now shows mouse modifiers (by default, Ctrl- and Shift-) before the mouse button
  • Translation: added missing lang strings for some controls e.g. Show Handbook, Show/Hide Minimap
  • Bulk add material to the Bloomery is now Ctrl + right-click, for consistency with other bulk adds
• Tweak: Gameplay balance tuning
  • Major berry bush and crop growth times and yield rebalance, with the ultimate goal being crops becoming in sync with the seasons. We carefully looked at growth times versus satiety to redo most of the numbers we used to have on our crops. This is a work in progress, feel free to provide feedback.
  • Added a small respawn timer: the death dialog now appears with a 1.5 seconds delay
  • Double the drop rate of crystallized ores. They were waaaay too rare IMO
  • Hares can no longer jump over fences in snowy conditions; reduced hare spawn max light level from 8 to 6 to further mitigate them spawning in farmlands
  • Boosted breadfruit satiety 120 -> 200
  • Empty firepits now have a 4x burn time bonus instead of 3x
  • Chiselling now requires a hammer in the off-hand in Survival mode, but does not consume durability on the hammer
  • Aged wooden crates can no longer be made from aged wooden boards. To compensate, traders will now buy aged wooden crates for more than they used to
  • Can now craft the stone coffin from basalt and peridotite stone
  • Tree felling time is now more based on log count, less based on leaves count
  • Tree felling time also based on wood type; hardwoods take 30% longer; tropical hardwoods longer still
  • Higher tier metal axes fell trees slightly faster than previously
  • Purpleheart requires at least a copper/scrap axe to fell; ebony requires at least a bronze axe
  • Crop growth times are now calculated in months instead of days, so setting shorter months means quicker growth times. The default growth times remain unchanged
  • Reduced respawn speed of wolves, slightly reduced spawn rate of butterflies
  • Hares now eat sunflower and cassava crops in their early stages
  • Forest floor blocks when broken now drop low fertility soil instead of medium fertility
• Tweak: Minor dejanking
  • Tweak: Added barrel open/close sound. Can now right click barrel again to close gui
  • Tweak: Tree seeds can now be placed in display cases
  • Tweak: Changed behavior of how items flow in chutes to be more intuitive
  • Tweak: Wolf howl animation now more synchronized to the howl sound
  • Fixed: Pounders pounding in the wrong direction (visual bug)
  • Fixed: Texture overlapping issue on the 3-flower lupin
  • Fixed: Helve hammer obstructed by a block where it doesn't feel like it should get obstructed
  • Fixed: Multiple visual issues with potted bamboo and lily of the valley
  • Fixed: Wrong texture resolution on seaweed
• Tweak: Allowed glass to be chiselled. WIP: still didn't fix the wrong faces issue with them though or the wrong texture
• Tweak: Worldedit updates
  • Feature: Can now use worldedit to place fruit trees
  • Fixed: Worldedit, using "Redo" after a move tool operation not working
  • Fixed: 3 bugs related to importing entities stored in block schematics
  • Tweak: Worldedit control panel now allows setting of fractional movespeeds
  • Tweak: Changing the current selection is now also stored in the undo/redo history state
  • Tweak: The Magic select mode will now ignore tallgrass by default
  • Tweak: Added a flood fill mode more suitable for placing lakes
  • Tweak: The flood fill tool now will replace all blocks of blockmaterial Plant
  • Tweak: Left clicking with the flood fill tool now performs the opposite effect, a "flood erase"
  • Tweak: Worldedit: Added server overload protection toggle to the options dialog
  • Fixed: Multiple fixes with "/we mr" no longer creates 2 history states, also updates the current selection and does not move the whole selection up by several blocks
• Tweak: Worldedit GUI upgrades:
  • Fixed: Drop down scrollbar was not visible
  • Select tool now has 2 new buttons: Rotate CW and Rotate CCW
  • Increased flat fog slider range 4-fold
• Tweak: Various tweaks to chat commands
  • /time command now disallows setting of negative values because it has undefined behavior
  • Added "/player [plrname] entity intox" subcommand to set intoxication value
  • Added "/debug delplr name" to delete playerdata in a savegame
  • Added "/player playername movespeed" subcommand
  • The output of "/debug logticks" is now hierarchical and more informative
  • Fixed /weather setev not working
• Tweak: Gold and silver falx are now steel blades with gold/silver flair. As such, their recipes and stats have changed to be similar to steel falx
• Tweak: Forlorn Estoc now uses a thrust animation in 3rd person to better suit the weapon
• Tweak: Added a description to wolf pup item to indicate that it's hostile and some traders highly value it
• Tweak: Can now place side-growing mushrooms in creative mode
• Tweak: Chat dialog less obtrusive (more transparent) when not focused (experimental)
• Tweak: Trimmed the hunter class flavor text
• Tweak: Changed name of hacking spear to tuning spear to better fit the setting. Also gave it a description so players know what it does
• Tweak: Hacking spear can be made with tin bronze and bismuth bronze spears now
• Tweak: Increased third-person in-hand model size for full blocks
• Tweak: Added the 'Tinkerer' trait to the Clockmaker class: functions like the other unique crafting traits
• Tweak: Savegames should now be more robust against ungraceful exits in regards of entity spawning
• Tweak: Various improvements to creature bots (we used these for making the 2022 trailer)
  • Added bear and hacked locust bot
  • More configurable playerbots
  • Can wear backpacks, quivers and shields.
  • Can apply a custom skin via /npc copyskin to apply a player skin
  • Can now have a nametag, set via /npc setname
  • Fixed /npc enq/exec playanim not working for some animations
  • Added "/npcs loopall" subcommand
• Tweak: Added ability to disable crop/berry bush and fruittree growth (/worldconfigcreate bool processCrops false)
• Tweak: Added player entity repair capability when loading a savegame in repair mode
• Tweak: The paper, scroll and book lore items now have 3d models
• Tweak: Disabled span ruins, they need better spawning behaviors
• Tweak: Torches and other blocks which attach to the side of other blocks, now cannot be attached to lake ice (even if they could before)
• Tweak: For Linux users, starting the game using Mono versions prior to Mono 5 should now fail (Mono 4.x and below is not supported)
• Tweak: Server: Handle invalid SaveFileLocation more gracefully and log to server-main.txt
• Tweak: Can now interact with firepits while having a torch or pot in hands
• Tweak: Firepit now reduces the font size for the cooking recipe text if necessary
• Tweak: On world creation, the game now tries to avoid spawning players above 75% of world height
• Tweak: Snappier, crunchier gravel step sound
• Tweak: Server repair mode will now regenerate corrupted chunks, should they ever appear
• Tweak: Added apple pie to the creative inventory
• Tweak: Initial world spawn location is now seed deterministic
• Tweak: The crash reporter will now show if a crash was caused by a mod and also list any related harmony patches
• Tweak: Bears no longer spawn (runtime and during worldgen) in the first 4 ingame days and also don't spawn wolves in the first 4 ingame hours
• Tweak: Most land creatures now flee from bears
• Tweak: Mitigate sizzle sound spam + OOM by reducing its sound range from 32 to 16 blocks
• Tweak: Added tool mode icons for the scythe
• Tweak: Added subcommand /player [playername] entity maxoxygen [int] to edit oxygen capacity on existing players
• Tweak: Reverted spear thrust sound to old voiced sound. Made them respect the selected voice pitch therefore.
• Tweak: Removed 'new seraph voices' setting, they are now always on as I believe most are at a bearable quality now.
• Tweak: Various minor tweaks (addded sub-1 movespeeds to worldedit dialog, fixed a typo, improved ifp clayforming, slower vertical texture animation of water)
• Tweak: Players should no longer spawn underwater in new worlds. Search range for solid land broadened, if it still fails to find land, it will spawn a block of planks for the player to rest on instead, i.e. a mini-raft
• Tweak: Dye System fine tune
  • Dyes are now made with water instead of diluted alum/cassiterite/chromite. Need to be sealed for a while before they're ready.
  • Dye-making now requires a barrel for mordants and a barrel for dyes instead of combining both of them
  • Reduced and standardized the amount of alum/cassiterite/chromite needed to make a mordant
  • Added a mordanted cloth variant, which is now used for dyeing
  • Reduced the amount of dye liquid needed to dye cloth
  • Woad blue now has its own dye barrel since it doesn't require a mordant
  • Black dye now made by adding pigment to gray dye, similar to orange dye
  • Removed Brown dye until we add more pigment options for it. For now, cloth can be added to strong tannin to make brown cloth without needing a mordant
• Tweak: Leather can now be dyed pink
• Tweak: Ales now give Grain nutrition
• Tweak: Wrench can now also be used to rotate chiseled blocks
• Tweak: Added more descriptions for the smithing GUI
• Tweak: Replaced the 360° character autoturn in the character dialog into a light left-right swivel
• Tweak: Hares now also eat peanut plants, and early stages of rice and amaranth
• Tweak: Added more credits to the credits screen.
• Tweak: Tannin can now be made out of acacia logs as well as oak.
• Tweak: Adjusted the crafting cost of hide and pelt-based clothing. Costs less in general now, and crafting costs scale based on hide size instead of all having the same cost, e.g. 8 small hides are worth the same as 1 huge hide.
• Tweak: Adjusted lamellar armor crafting to follow the same principle of scaling hide sizes as above ^. Wood lamellar can now be repaired, only requiring firewood.
• Tweak: Oiled/curing hides now also scale according to hide size. For example, 1 piece of fat can make 4 small oiled hides, 2 medium hides, or 1 large hide. Huge hide now requires 2 fat.
• Tweak: Can now do "/worldconfigcreate int lungCapacity [milliseconds]" to define for how long a player has air (default: 20000)
• Tweak: Can now do "/worldconfigcreate int fertilityRecoverySpeed [speed]" to define farmland recovery speed (1.16 default: 0.33)
• Tweak: Added missing mushroom ingredient names
• Tweak: Disabled all custom cursors on MacOS, mouse controls may now be less glitchy on MacOS Catalina and above
• Tweak: Added helpful descriptions for items that can be used as a mordant
• Tweak: Prospecting pick probe results are now translated into the players language on servers
• Tweak: Adjusted a couple animations to work better in Immersive First Person mode
• Tweak: Fish now die when exposed to air for 30 seconds. Fixed upright dead fish model
• Tweak: Increased the size of a number of items when dropped
• Tweak: Server admin: Handle invalid SaveFileLocation more gracefully and log to server-main.txt
• Tweak: Mitigate lag spikes caused by ground storage
• Tweak: Some texts were not translatable, updated community translations
• Fixed: Multiple issues with snow coverage on chiseled blocks
• Fixed: Dark shadows caused from SSAO, might break other things
• Fixed: Pristine forlorn body armor can now be properly crafted.
• Fixed: Wooden path block texture issues
• Fixed: Cinematic camera crash when adding 2 points at the same coords
• Fixed: Multiple issues with the immersive first person mode (clip into blocks upon death, not adjusted for running sideways swivel, etc.)
• Fixed: Heavy z-fighting on distant ice
• Fixed: Falling containers now drop their contents if they cannot be placed on impact
• Fixed: handbook entry for labeled chests, and links to it in chalk and charcoal descriptions
• Fixed: (long-standing!) leaves blocks incorrectly had a 0 degrees rotated alternate as well as 10 degrees
• Fixed: (since 1.16) blocks with general wind motion flag were incorrectly given a glow value (e.g. glow == 3)
• Fixed: (since 1.14) leaves ground-offset windshear being disabled for leaves against solid blocks was not working correctly on north side
• Fixed: Unknown texture when putting solder ingots on forges
• Fixed: Wrong glow vfx for items held in third person mode
• Fixed: In single-player, occasional flash of X-ray vision when breaking blocks underground at any chunk edge
• Fixed: Should fix stability issues when using the game updater, due to leftover files that should no longer be there
• Fixed: TempstormDurationMul world config not working
• Fixed: Some roofing faces too dark; trough fluffy hay faces too dark.
• Fixed: Particle collision box issues with the boiler
• Fixed: Water in condenser hardly visible
• Fixed: Placing fruit trees with worldedit did not respect the size values
• Fixed: Tool molds rotations during clayforming not matching finished product in some cases
• Fixed: Sealed barrels displayed block interaction help
• Fixed: Drifter killing drifter showed "eaten by" in the info text
• Fixed: Wrong SSAO on knapping surface
• Fixed: Pullets changing plumage when they mature to adults
• Fixed: Wrong texture resolution on some bamboo leaves
• Fixed: .clientconfigcreate not printing error on invalid datatype
• Fixed: Some lighting chunk border issues when rooms are closed or opened to sunlight
• Fixed: Various minor sunlighting bugs (eg. wrong values below water which spreads)
• Fixed: Able to chute-push random items into ground storage areas
• Fixed: Tiny memory leak in the main menu
• Fixed: Crafting dupe bug with some recipes
• Fixed: Falling sand block oddities in certain cases
• Fixed: Hopper item collecting oddities
• Fixed: Avoid a crash in the fruit tree block entity (report an error instead)
• Fixed: Selecting a very large view distance in single player then reloading the world made it revert back to a shorter view distance
• Fixed: Missing tool mode info on prospecting picks
• Fixed: Game crashing on ".debug perceptioneffects"
• Fixed: Mitigate occasional z-fighting on overlapping leaf blocks with wind motion
• Fixed: Infinite crafting dupe glitch when the inventory is full
• Fixed: Some mushroom stews were invisible
• Fixed: Better localization for a few mushrooms.
• Fixed: Missing block broken particles on ores
• Fixed: Liquid dupe bug with barrels
• Fixed: Barrel closing sound not playing in some cases
• Fixed: Game freezing on the singleplayer screen if a savegame is write locked
• Fixed: Pink bonnet and funeral bell mushroom not poisonous
• Fixed: Mitigate derpy turning behavior in 3rd person while swimming
• Fixed: Game crashing when looking at a chiseled block with a soldering iron in hands
• Fixed: Too high speed on a shader effect on lava
• Fixed: Able to move a dialog outside the screen and no way to recover it. Reopening the dialog will now move a corner back into the window so it can be dragged back
• Fixed: Solved an issue that caused the game to crash when the `handle` texture for shields was not found.
• Fixed: Center aligned richtext did not properly align in some cases
• Fixed: Fruit tree error log spam
• Fixed: Various texture errors logged to client-main.txt on startup
• Fixed: Worldmap: The trader icon disappeared
• Fixed: Drifters not fleeing during daylight
• Fixed: Unusually dark clouds in some cases
• Fixed: Ground storage guide twice in handbook. Fixed a render issue with one of the hotkeys on the same guide
• Fixed: Incorrect linebreaks on japanese translations
• Fixed: Might fix UI rendering issues on MacOS M1 chips
• Fixed: Cascade bomb explosion did not destroy the bomb but dropped an item
• Fixed: Itemstack tooltip flicker every second in the handbook
• Fixed: Hitting 'H' while hovering water bowl opened the page on the honey bowl
• Fixed: Visible seams between some blocks
• Fixed: Weird interactions with rush matting
• Fixed: Own step sound not playing at the player but at the step location
• Fixed: Macro editor did not prevent duplicate macro names, causing undefined behavior
• Fixed: Arrows flying through entities on the client side
• Fixed: Major item shift-clicking bug related to barrels and firepits. Items would get teleported to barrels and firepits instead of the desired container
• Fixed: Not able to pick up placed pie
• Fixed: Might fix GUIs disappearing in some cases when on Mac M1 Chips.
• Fixed: Should fix game crashing with extended debug info enabled and pausing the game (related to fruit trees)
• Fixed: Incorrect font paths on linux in the install.sh (https://www.vintagestory.at/forums/topic/9353-font-issues-with-linux-script/)
• Fixed: Should fix wrong sign orientation for other players
• Fixed: Potential issues when removing all voxels of a workitem on the anvil
• Fixed: Potential crash with signs
• Fixed: Might mitigate cases where rifts spawn near light sources
• Fixed: Able to harvest fruit from fruit tree stems
• Fixed: Drunken effect jitter when pausing+unpausing the game
• Fixed: Incorrect temperatures in nonstandard world height worlds (due to incorrect sealevel value)
• Fixed: Memory not freed upon world exit
• Fixed: /lntest available to unprivileged players
• Fixed: Cutting a quarter sliced pie restored its serving size
• Fixed: Disabling snow accumulation caused world autosave to break
• Fixed: Game crashing when clicking 'Customize' on the create world screen with now playstyles loaded

Game updates since v1.17.0-rc.8 (also listed above)

• Tweak: Major berry bush and crop growth times and yield rebalance, with the ultimate goal being crops becoming in sync with the seasons. We carefully looked at growth times versus satiety to redo most of the numbers we used to have on our crops. This is a work in progress, feel free to provide feedback.
• Tweak: Prospecting pick probe results are now translated into the players language on servers
• Tweak: Crash reports now no longer contain /user/Tyron file path!
• Tweak: Doubled berry bush growth times and yield. Reduced ripe berry bushes on spawn
• Tweak: Creatures under roofs no longer get frosted
• Tweak: Usability tweaks for the customize world screen (using scroll wheel closes drop downs, smaller hover info activation area)
• Tweak: Exploit fix: Any newly placed pineapple or pumpkin will now spoil. Can therefore right click pickup and place 2x2 pineapples in one block
• Fixed: Exceptions logged to the server logs when using hoppers in some cases
• Fixed: Able to burn down trader huts
• Fixed: Food in creative inventory spoiling
• Fixed: Z-fighting with snow layers and planted saplings
• Fixed: Scrollbar invisible on some dropdowns
• Fixed: Translation entries for modded content not falling back to english
• Fixed: Disabling snow accumulation caused world autosave to break
• Fixed: "Host rock" info missing from the handbook
• Fixed: Game crashing when clicking 'Customize' on the create world screen with now playstyles loaded
• Fixed: Remapper dialog no longer showing up, preventing the fix on unknown blocks from 1.16->1.17 upgrades
• Api Tweak: New startup virtual method - ModSystem.AssetsFinalize(), which is called after AssetsLoaded(). The server event "AssetFinalizers" is now obsolete.

Everyone on the VS team is eager to get started on the next major update - lets get this to stable!


Screenshot by Romec#0367 on discord
 

Game updates

• Tweak: Prospecting pick probe results are now translated into the players language on servers
• Fixed: Incorrect temperatures in nonstandard world height worlds (due to incorrect sealevel value)
• Fixed: Memory not freed upon world exit
• Fixed: Snow layers forming on submerged blocks in 1.17
• Fixed: Unable to collect water with a bucket if a submerged block is also present
• Fixed: Rare client crash on world load
• Fixed: Multiple issues with armor repair, tweaked all repair recipes
• Fixed: /lntest available to unprivileged players
• Fixed: Cutting a quarter sliced pie restored its serving size
• Fixed: Disabling snow accumulation caused world autosave to break
• Fixed: "Host rock" info missing from the handbook
• Fixed: Game crashing when clicking 'Customize' on the create world screen with now playstyles loaded
• Api Tweak: New startup virtual method: ModSystem.AssetsFinalize() which is called after AssetsLoaded(). Server event AssetFinalizers is now marked obsolete.
• Api Fixed: No longer able to give positive stats to armor
• Api Refactor: SetSealevel() now must be set during runphase ModsAndConfigReady. See also GenTerra.cs

My apologies for the long wait, I was on vacation/family visit and also had to tend after my garden, as there is lots to harvest now - potatoes needing to be dug up, tomatoes needing to be turned into tomato sauce, cucumbers in need of pickling and so on

[Edit:] Released rc.7 as well. rc6 deleted the players waypoints.


Screenshot by Dude7ox#6606

Game updates

• Tweak: Simplified briganding/leather armor repair recipe. More to come.
• Tweak: Initial world spawn location is now seed deterministic
• Tweak: The crash reporter will now show if a crash was caused by a mod and also list any related harmony patches
• Fixed: Multiple issues with armor repair
• Fixed: Frost effect bugged out on old servers
• Fixed: A crash in the world map system
• Fixed: Reeds "popping off" if in ice
• Fixed: Firepit GUIs not updating when its contents change
• Fixed: Might fix GUIs disappearing in some cases when on Mac M1 Chips.
• Fixed: Some missing lang entries
• Fixed: Held candle emitting different light color than placed candles
• Fixed: Oxygen not back to 100% after re spawning in some cases
• Fixed: Should fix game crashing with extended debug info enabled and pausing the game (related to fruit trees)
• Fixed: White pixels in world map in new worlds in some cases
• Fixed: Schematic placed at sealevel sometimes floating 1 block in the air
• Fixed: Game crashing when looking up pie in the handbook
• Fixed: Sandstorms in caves
• Fixed: Water can no longer flow into full-height path blocks
• Tweak: Reeds in water have less wind motion, reeds in ice have none at all
• Fixed: Branchy leaves no longer displace water
• Fixed: Incorrect font paths on linux in the install.sh (https://www.vintagestory.at/forums/topic/9353-font-issues-with-linux-script/)
• Fixed: Rare server freeze caused by a full deadlock
• Fixed: Snow accum completely broken since 1.17
• Fixed: Should fix wrong sign orientation for other players
• Fixed: Potential issues when removing all voxels of a workitem on the anvil
• Fixed: Potential crash with signs
• Fixed: Might mitigate cases where rifts spawn near light sources
• Fixed: Able to harvest fruit from fruit tree stems
• Fixed: Drunken effect jitter when pausing+unpausing the game
• Fixed: Invisible chunks in 32x32 worlds
• Api Refactor: Cleaned up PerceptionEffects code
• Api Refactor: Drunk and low temp stab chat altering no longer hardcoded into the engine. Chat key down events are now pushed onto the event bus (chatkeydownpost and chatkeydownpre).
• Api Refactor: Axle and Toggle block stand shape files can now be defined in json
• Api Tweak: Added Guids to Waypoints
• Api Tweak: Watering can property "capacitySeconds" can now be defined in json
• Api Fixed: CraftingRecipeIngredient.RecipeAttributes not sent to client
• Api Fixed: Crash on sendplayer.SendIngameError("errorcode")

Several major issues fixed in this release, let's hope that's the last of them.
 

Atmospheric screenshot by Aatu#8731
 

Game updates

• Tweak: Boosted lightning rod range, but capped max range to 40 blocks
• Tweak: Disable instanced grass again, still too buggy for mainstream use
• Tweak: The armor repair recipes shown in the handbook now display a broken armor piece for clarity
• Tweak: Added apple pie to the creative inventory
• Fixed: Server side Hard freeze / Performance leak in the pathfinding system
• Fixed: Chunks only containing water were not drawn
• Fixed: Chiseling a block made it disappear (bug introduced in rc3)
• Fixed: Arrows flying through entities on the client side
• Fixed: Game crashing when trying to join a server opened via "Open to LAN"
• Fixed: Major item shift-clicking bug related to barrels and firepits. Items would get teleported to barrels and firepits instead of the desired container
• Fixed: Not able to pick up placed pie
• Fixed: Multiple issue related to crafting hats
• Api Tweak: Broken armor no longer yields any positive effects
• Api Tweak: Avoid mod breakage for 1.16 mods related to shape tesselation
• Api Refactor: Added z coordinate argument to Collectible.OnHandbookRecipeRender()
• Api Fixed: Several issues with the .gencraftjson command
• Api Fixed: Exception thrown during worldgen if a schematic contained entities

The stabilization of 1.17 continues. This time with mostly non-critical, but important fixes. Looks like we are getting close to stable!


Casting table, shared by metal#3033 on discord


Game updates

• Feature: Added 6 new crock labels, dynamically chosen based on contents, including for when its contents are rotten
• Tweak: Fine tuned reflective shader. Fixed reflective tiling issues.
• Tweak: Can now interact with firepits while having a torch or pot in hands
• Tweak: Firepit now reduces the font size for the cooking recipe text if necessary
• Tweak: On world creation, the game now tries to avoid spawning players above 75% of world height
• Tweak: Snappier, crunchier gravel step sound
• Tweak: Server repair mode will now regenerate corrupted chunks, should they ever appear
• Fixed: Might fix UI rendering issues on MacOS M1 chips
• Fixed: Lowest liquid level no longer flowing downwards
• Fixed: Cascade bomb explosion did not destroy the bomb but dropped an item
• Fixed: Itemstack tooltip flicker every second in the handbook
• Fixed: Missing hotkey symbol in the flint tooltip
• Fixed: Game crashing on invalid hotkeys (e.g. when using russian translations)
• Fixed: Loose stones poke holes in lava lakes during worldgen
• Fixed: Hitting 'H' while hovering water bowl opened the page on the honey bowl
• Fixed: Fish trying to jump back into water throwing an exception on the server
• Fixed: Visible seams between some blocks
• Fixed: Weird interactions with rush matting
• Fixed: Own step sound not playing at the player but at the step location
• Fixed: Seraph voices missing in some cases
• Fixed: Might fix missing libsztd dll error in some instances
• Fixed: Buggy lamellar armor repair
• Fixed: Macro editor did not prevent duplicate macro names, causing undefined behavior
• Fixed: Bamboo hat recipes no longer conflict with bamboo roof ridge recipe.
• Fixed: Game crash when trying to repair gamboised helmets
• Fixed: Waterlogging issues with ruins generated underwater
• Api Refactor: Renamed IWorldChunk.Blocks to IWorldChunk.Data. IWorldChunk.Blocks still exists but is obsolete now.
• Api Tweak: Added new "Quantity" field to crushing properties to allow for fractional values.
• Api fixed: TreeAttribute.Clone() caused ItemstackAttribute values to loose its resolved Block/Item
• Api Refactor: Large refactor of the API methods for setting liquids. The default GetBlock() is no longer obsolete. Sorry modders this liquid layer stuff is all new tech so please bear with us while we work out kinks in the api, even though we are in a release candidate already. On the bright side, the block layer related API methods should be much more intuitive now.
• Api Refactor: ChunkDataLayer code (See also pinned discord post in #mods)

This release fixes a rather critical issue when upgrading old savegames (1.16.x savegames loaded in 1.17.0-rc.2) - some bodies of water became non-interactable, and reeds appeared to lose their enclosing water.  This release fixes that issue and auto-restores the parts of those worlds which may have been broken in rc.2.  If you notice any remaining water issues in your games please report them.   Also ...  hats are now craftable!

Game updates

• Tweak: Added recipes for straw, bamboo, and top hats. Also improved their transform values.
• Tweak: Added subcommand /player [playername] entity maxoxygen [int] to edit oxygen capacity on existing players
• Tweak: Reverted spear thrust sound to old voiced sound. Made them respect the selected voice pitch therefore.
• Tweak: Removed 'new seraph voices' setting, they are now always on as I believe most are at a bearable quality now.
• Tweak: Various minor tweaks (addded sub-1 movespeeds to worldedit dialog, fixed a typo, improved ifp clayforming, slower vertical texture animation of water)
• Tweak: Dyes now need to be sealed for a while before they're ready.
• Tweak: Water visuals fine tuning
• Fixed: Worldmap: The trader icon disappeared
• Fixed: Multiple issues with the worldedit eraser and paintbrush when placing/deleting water
• Fixed: Drifters not fleeing during daylight
• Fixed: Unusually dark clouds in some cases
• Fixed: Plank block spawning under players feet on first spawn when it shouldn't
• Fixed: Crash when repairing copper head lamellar
• Fixed: Ground storage guide twice in handbook. Fixed a render issue with one of the hotkeys on the same guide
• Fixed: Attempt to fix startup issues on some systems related to libzstd
• Fixed: Attempt to fix rare deep water chunks not being drawn properly
• Fixed: Water and reeds in worlds created prior to game version 1.17 not updating correctly in 1.17.0-rc.2
• API refactor: WaypointMapLayer icons and colors are no longer static and renamed to WaypointIcons/WaypointColors

[Please use this to replace rc.1 if you already downloaded it, as it now turns out that rc.1 had a little bug introduced at the last minute...]

We are inching ever closer to 1.17 stable
This release should be crash free for most players and safe to use for creating new 1.17 worlds.  If upgrading your 1.16 worlds to 1.17, there is an issue with the water and reeds in this release rc.2 (that issue will be fixed and existing water anomalies healed in our next release), so you may want to hold off playing existing worlds until the next release.  We do recommend making backups of worlds that you value. We'd also like to use this moment to send out a heartfelt thank you to everyone that has tested the pre-releases - your testing, bug reporting and general feedback are immensely helpful to us. Thank you so much for the support!

As usual for rc (release candidate) releases, we will here only list everything we have newly added since pre.1. Please also look at the pre.1 update for a list of the features added since 1.16. When the first stable 1.17 release comes out, we will then present you with a complete feature list.

Game updates

• Everything listed in the pre.1 blogpost
• Feature: Added an oxygen meter. Can now only breathe for 20 seconds underwater, as opposed to infinite air
• Feature: Added "arctic supplies" stashes to arctic climates, comes in 40 variants
• Feature: New rain drip behavior for leaves and stick layers. Added Accumulating droplets. Keeps on dripping for a while after the rain stopped
• Feature: Directional water physics. Doors, slabs, chiseled blocks, etc. now provide directional blocking of water flow for greater realism
• Feature: Handbook improvements
  • The handbook now also shows how a block/item can be stored
  • Added guides in the handbook on Dye Making and Ground Storage
  • Added text about swapping glass panes to the lantern entry
  • Added description of how to make ferrous (iron) anvils
  • Chairs are now grouped in the handbook
  • Improved handbook hotkey (<hk>) visuals. They now look like the hotkeys shown in the in-game block interaction help
• Feature: Continued work on shields
  • All shields now craftable. Most of them have a new recipe. Ornate shields can only be made by a tailor
  • Added metal hoops and bosses. Made by smithing. Shields are now crafted with hoops and bosses instead of metal plates
  • Shield now properly scale for ground storage. They don't fit as nicely if you try to place two shields next to each other now, but it looks better overall. Deemed a worthy trade-off
  • Added appropriate stats to all shields
  • Rebalanced shield durability. Blackguard shield no longer top durability, but cheaper to make than full metal shields
  • Adjusted transforms for shields, blades, and shovel
  • Fixed wrong naming on metal shields
• Tweak: Reworked waypoint dialog. Icon and color are now a grid of clickable icons.
• Tweak: All tools can now be placed on the ground
• Tweak: Bears no longer spawn (runtime and during worldgen) in the first 4 in-game days and wolves don't spawn in the first 4 in-game hours. This should help with getting killed right at the start of a new (single player) world.  This change will not affect multi-player servers which have already been running for more than 4 in-game days.
• Tweak: Most land creatures now flee from bears
• Tweak: Players should no longer spawn underwater in new worlds. Search range for solid land broadened, if it still fails to find land, it will spawn a block of planks for the player to rest on instead, i.e. a mini-raft
• Tweak: Dye System fine tune
  • Dyes are now made with water instead of diluted alum/cassiterite/chromite
  • Dye-making now requires a barrel for mordants and a barrel for dyes instead of combining both of them
  • Reduced and standardized the amount of alum/cassiterite/chromite needed to make a mordant
  • Added a mordanted cloth variant, which is now used for dyeing
  • Reduced the amount of dye liquid needed to dye cloth
  • Woad blue now has its own dye barrel since it doesn't require a mordant
  • Black dye now made by adding pigment to gray dye, similar to orange dye
  • Removed Brown dye until we add more pigment options for it. For now, cloth can be added to strong tannin to make brown cloth without needing a mordant
• Tweak: Added tool mode icons for the scythe
• Tweak: Leather can now be dyed pink
• Tweak: Ales now give Grain nutrition
• Tweak: Wrench can now also be used to rotate chiseled blocks
• Tweak: Added more descriptions for the smithing GUI
• Tweak: Replaced the 360° character autoturn in the character dialog into a light left-right swivel
• Tweak: Hares now also eat peanut plants, and early stages of rice and amaranth
• Tweak: Added more credits to the credits screen.
• Tweak: Tannin can now be made out of acacia logs as well as oak.
• Tweak: Adjusted the crafting cost of hide and pelt-based clothing. Costs less in general now, and crafting costs scale based on hide size instead of all having the same cost, e.g. 8 small hides are worth the same as 1 huge hide.
• Tweak: Adjusted lamellar armor crafting to follow the same principle of scaling hide sizes as above ^. Wood lamellar can now be repaired, only requiring firewood.
• Tweak: Oiled/curing hides now also scale according to hide size. For example, 1 piece of fat can make 4 small oiled hides, 2 medium hides, or 1 large hide. Huge hide now requires 2 fat.
• Tweak: Can now do "/worldconfigcreate int lungCapacity [milliseconds]" to define for how long a player has air (default: 20000)
• Tweak: Can now do "/worldconfigcreate int fertilityRecoverySpeed [speed]" to define farmland recovery speed (1.16 default: 0.33)
• Tweak: Added missing mushroom ingredient names
• Tweak: Disabled all custom cursors on MacOS, mouse controls may now be less glitchy on MacOS Catalina and above
• Tweak: Added helpful descriptions for items that can be used as a mordant
• Tweak: Held items can now also emit light (i.e. the candle)
• Tweak: Adjusted a couple animations to work better in Immersive First Person mode
• Tweak: Fish now die when exposed to air for 30 seconds. Fixed upright dead fish model
• Tweak: Increased the size of a number of items when dropped
• Tweak: Server admin: Handle invalid SaveFileLocation more gracefully and log to server-main.txt
• Tweak: Mitigate lag spikes caused by ground storage
• Tweak: Some texts were not translatable, updated community translations
• Tweak: Mitigate sizzle sound spam + OOM by reducing its sound range from 32 to 16 blocks
• Fixed: Able to chute-push random items into ground storage areas
• Fixed: Tiny memory leak in the main menu
• Fixed: Crafting dupe bug with some recipes
• Fixed: Falling sand block oddities in certain cases
• Fixed: Hopper item collecting oddities
• Fixed: Avoid a crash in the fruit tree block entity (report an error instead)
• Fixed: Selecting a very large view distance in single player then reloading the world made it revert back to a shorter view distance
• Fixed: Missing tool mode info on prospecting picks
• Fixed: Game crashing on ".debug perceptioneffects"
• Fixed: Mitigate occasional z-fighting on overlapping leaf blocks with wind motion
• Fixed: Infinite crafting dupe glitch when the inventory is full
• Fixed: Exception thrown on invalid book shelves
• Fixed: Some mushroom stews were invisible
• Fixed: Better localization for a few mushrooms.
• Fixed: Missing block broken particles on ores
• Fixed: Liquid dupe bug with barrels
• Fixed: Barrel closing sound not playing in some cases
• Fixed: Game freezing on the singleplayer screen if a savegame is write locked
• Fixed: Repairing armor consumed all materials. Now only consumes as much as needed.
• Fixed: Pink bonnet and funeral bell mushroom not poisonous
• Fixed: Mitigate derpy turning behavior in 3rd person while swimming
• Fixed: Game crashing when looking at a chiseled block with a soldering iron in hands
• Fixed: Too high speed on a shader effect on lava
• Fixed: Able to move a dialog outside the screen and no way to recover it. Reopening the dialog will now move a corner back into the window so it can be dragged back
• Fixed: Solved an issue that caused the game to crash when the `handle` texture for shields was not found.
• Fixed: Center aligned richtext did not properly align in some cases
• Fixed: Fruit tree error log spam
• Fixed: Various texture errors logged to client-main.txt on startup
• v1.17 related changes
  • Tweak: Performance: Use native ZStd library on Windows platforms for more efficient memory management
  • Fixed: Rapid breaking of adjacent reeds (and other blocks more generally)
  • Fixed: Water buckets placement issue (fixes a more general issue where ExchangeBlock calls were not respecting the liquids layer; also now allows water buckets to place water down onto any non-solid block)
  • Fixed: Should fix oddities when placing water from a bucket in existing water
  • Fixed: All clutter blocks generated underground were invisible
  • Fixed: Falling snow block behavior not working
  • Fixed: Panning bony soil not working correctly
  • Fixed: Wrench not properly attached to tool racks
  • Fixed: Arrows getting lost on impact
  • Fixed: Running out of air on the client on old worlds
  • Fixed: Shields now appear in the proper location when placed in a mold rack.
  • Fixed: Newly introduced crash in barrels
  • Fixed: Able to place water lilies underwater
  • Fixed: New reflective shader effect not respecting fog levels
  • Fixed: Incorrect linebreaks on Japanese translations
  • Fixed: Avoid a crash on invalid book shelves
  • Fixed: Unknown texture on mantle blocks
  • Fixed: Crafting improvised armor did not consume ingredients
  • Fixed: Game crashing when changing Ctrl/Shift mouse modifiers
  • Fixed: Render issue on the clay handbook page
  • Fixed: Some blocks (e.g. querns, tools on toolracks, ground storage blocks) waving in the wind weirdly
  • Fixed: Wrong shaggy hair on some bears (Panda, Polar, Sunbear)
  • Fixed: Frost overlay on chests
  • Fixed: Game crashing when right clicking a full ingot pile
  • Fixed: Shields on tool rack not using correct textures. Fixed z-fighting on adjacent racked shields
  • Fixed: Fish running away from players... while on land
  • Fixed: Wrong selection box on ingot piles (and likely other piles)
  • Fixed: Low fps during low quality shadows
  • Fixed: Blackguard and Forlorn blade had 1 durability
  • Fixed: Placement issues with ground leaning tools
  • Fixed: Tool Durability multiplier and some other world config values were not taking effect in 1.17
  • Fixed: Large lakes pure water chunks sometimes did not render
  • Fixed: More issues with wall leaned tools
  • Fixed: Dropped candle not emitting light on ground
  • Fixed: Client side taking damage after getting out of water with no oxygen left
  • Fixed: Seraph protecting eyes from strong wind while swimming
  • Fixed: Shields no longer missing icons in smithing menu or handbook.
  • Fixed: Fixed a texture path issue with the gazelle shape.
  • Fixed: Misaligned buttons in the main menu due to new dialog based menus
  • Fixed: Prospecting pick no longer working
  • Fixed: Water overwriting lava, also caused significant lag. Fixed sizzle sound no longer working
  • Fixed: Wrench transform on tool racks, fixed wrench model z-fighting
  • Fixed: Chest lids no longer animated
  • Fixed: Game crashing when looking up boards in the handbook
  • Fixed: Accordion seraph voice same as altoflute
  • Fixed: Hot items dropped in water not cooling down
  • Fixed: Missing error texts when trying to place tools on the ground
  • Fixed: Unable to plant reeds/papyrus in flowing water
  • Fixed: Unable to do edge sitting on a block if there is grass in front. Generally made the edge sitting triggers more tolerant.
  • Fixed: "worldgen" issue and rare crashes in 1.16.5 worlds loaded in 1.17-pre.1
  • Fixed: Wrong drops for hay block (thanks Stroam)
  • Fixed: Game crash when holding a plumb and square in hands
  • Fixed: Minor issue when setting keyboard controls for Sprint key
  • Api Fixed: Modmaker patches not prefixing "game:" domain for vanilla patches
• API Changes
  • Feature: liquidBarrierOnSides attribute allows blocks (e.g. slabs) to prevent liquid flow below a certain height
  • Feature: Added IGameCalendar.ElapsedSeconds/Hours/Days property to read how much in-game time has passed since world creation. Might be inaccurate on old worlds.
  • Refactor: The server event OnTrySpawnEntity now has an additional IBlockAcccessor argument, as it might be a worldgen block accessor now.
  • Refactor: Renamed BlockBehavior.ShouldReceiveClientGameTicks to ShouldReceiveClientParticleTicks. Added BlockBehavior.OnAsyncClientParticleTick
  • Tweak: Refactor from -pre.1-4, the liquids layer is now called "fluids layer" and consequential changes
  • Tweak: IBlockAccessor.GetBlock() now takes an optional BlockLayersAccess parameter (which is an integer constant, see BlockLayersAccess class for the options)
  • Tweak: IBlockAccessor.GetBlock() method signatures from 1.16.5 and pre.1-3 preserved but deprecated
  • Tweak: Add convenience methods IBlockAccessor.GetSolidBlock() and GetFluidBlock()
  • Tweak: Liquids can now also glow
  • Tweak: SimpleParticleProperties can now also be async
  • Tweak: Networking / startup: Server Identification packet sent before mods PreStart phase, even in singleplayer (restores the order of events in 1.16.x: mods PreStart and Start phases can read WorldConfig values and other Server Identification packet info).  Note: 1.17-rc1 and pre.5 game clients are not compatible with 1.17-pre.1, pre.2, pre.3, pre.4 servers, please update your servers.
  • Tweak: Vintage Story now ships with debug symbols (=pdb files), so that crashes will print line numbers \o/
  • Tweak: Can now define "asphyxiating: false" attribute to blocks to prevent players from asphyxiating inside them
  • Tweak: Update Harmony to 2.2.2.0
  • Tweak: Added Melchior's new metal properties for modders
  • Tweak: updated XML text for IBlockAccessor.MarkBlockDirty: it does NOT trigger a neighbour block update, if one is needed please also call IBlockAccessor.TriggerNeighbourBlockUpdate() on the server side
  • Fixed: TriggerNeighbourBlockUpdate() vulnerable to blockpos edit after getting called
  • Fixed: Crash when removing the health behavior from an entity
  • Fixed: Wildcard matching not working across game domains
  • Fixed: In BlockFruitTreeFoliage fix resolving foliageProperties producing invalid texture paths with different domains

Only the changes since pre.5 (note these changes are also listed above)

• Tweak: Shield now properly scale for ground storage. They don't fit as nicely if you try to place two shields next to each other now, but it looks better overall. Deemed a worthy trade off.
• Tweak: Add handbook section on ground storage
• Tweak: Server: Handle invalid SaveFileLocation more gracefully and log to server-main.txt
• Tweak: Reworked waypoint dialog. Icon and color are now a grid of clickable icons.
• Tweak: Bears no longer spawn (runtime and during worldgen) in the first 4 ingame days and also don't spawn wolves in the first 4 ingame hours
• Tweak: Performance: Use native ZStd library on Windows platforms for more efficient memory management
• Tweak: Most land creatures now flee from bears
• Tweak: Mitigate sizzle sound spam + OOM by reducing its sound range from 32 to 16 blocks
• Tweak: Added tool mode icons for the scythe
• Fixed: Running out of air on the client on old worlds
• Fixed: Shields now appear in the proper location when placed in a mold rack.
• Fixed: Newly introduced crash in barrels
• Fixed: Falling sand block oddities in certain cases
• Fixed: Hopper item collecting oddities
• Fixed: Able to place water lilies underwater
• Fixed: Wrong naming on metal shields
• Fixed: New reflective shader effect not respecting fog levels
• Fixed: Incorrect linebreaks on japanese translations
• Fixed: Avoid a crash in the fruit tree block entity (report an error instead)
• Fixed: Avoid a crash on invalid book shelves
• Fixed: Selecting a very large view distance in single player then reloading the world made it revert back to a shorter view distance
• Fixed: Unknown texture on bedrock
• Fixed: Chiseled blocks now react more correctly to water flow
• Fixed: Rapid breaking of adjacent reeds (and other blocks more generally)
• Fixed: Game crash when holding a plumb and square in hands
• Api Feature: Added IGameCalendar.ElapsedSeconds/Hours/Days property to read how much ingame time has passed since world creation. Might be inaccurate on old worlds.
• Api Refactor: The server event OnTrySpawnEntity now has an additional IBlockAcccessor argument, as it might be a worldgen block accessor now.
• Api Tweak: Update Harmony to 2.2.2.0
• Api Tweak: Added melchiors new metal properties for modders
• Api Fixed: Crash when removing the health behavior from an entity
• Api Fixed: Modmaker patches not prefixing "game:" domain for vanilla patches

New Website theme

As you might have noticed, our website also got some new looks! We hope you like it... For anyone feeling nostalgic, the old theme is still around - simply scroll to the bottom and click on the Theme link to select the classic theme.

New Major update

The main topic of this update was "Dejank", though it has kinda morphed into a "mostly game juice, and a bit of dejank" update   We also added a lot of new graphical pretties to the game - for that extra oomph.  And a few new creatures!

In the process, we have added a slew of ground-breaking tech:

• Palette based chunk data storage: The game engine now stores chunk information much more efficiently in memory, greatly reducing RAM usage for chunks; this helps smooth gameplay and may in future allow for even higher rendering distances
• Modern compression algorithm: The engine internally uses a much faster compression algorithm, improving chunk loading performance and world saving times
• Improved startup sequence: Starting up a game world should now be nearly twice as fast, taking full advantage of modern multi-core CPUs
• New water and ice system: There can now be water and a block at the same coordinates in the world.  This means that any (non solid) block can now be submerged in water, water can flow through most blocks that are not solid, and blocks can be embedded in ice
• Instanced rendering: Some common blocks are drawn in a more efficient way, which should slightly improve FPS (frames per second)
• Improved creature AI: Attacked creatures react more intelligently, and large creatures are better supported

Thanks to the new tech, performance is improved throughout the game, even at the same time as adding plenty of new 1.17 content: over 200 new blocks, over 300 new items, new creatures, new visual effects and new animations and behaviors for the player!

Mods made for version 1.16.5 should remain compatible for the most part, even with these tech changes: code mods will probably need to be recompiled for 1.17, but mods which make tweaks and additions through JSON files should mostly still work without any changes.

Please notice
1. This is an unfinished update, mostly intended for modders and very adventurous players. You will encounter major bugs, incomplete features, performance issues and crashes. Worldgen might also significantly change and produce unknown blocks until rc.1
2. New "pre" updates will only be posted in discord #news and not on the blog. A new v1.17 blog post will come when the first release candidate is ready.


Screenshots / Gifs

Added Lightning strikes and lightning rods to protect against lightning strike damage

The player model now reacts to being cold and when exposed to strong winds. Added sand storm fog effect in sandy areas.


Can now sit down on block edges (WIP) and pet animals

Water is now stored in an independent "layer" - meaning blocks can be submerged, and water can flow through blocks

Added 200+ clutter blocks in preparation for the Lore Update    

Added gazelles


Added brown bears, black bears, pandas and sun bears

Added Salmon fish, non-interactable for now (WIP)


Improved termite mound models with much larger variants, termite mound color matches the local type of sand


Enhanced temporal storm and low stability visuals


Armor repair and visible armor damage



Many more varieties of shield

Added a new grass type, a new cactus and cracked stone blocks.  Improved berry bushes, water lilies and breadfruit appearance


Reducing resolution in the graphics settings (for higher FPS) no longer makes the game blurry

Improved sunset ambient visuals


More bling: improved reflective effects for metals and crystals

New Lava visuals to look more like real lava


Ground storage improvements - items can now be placed with any orientation (respects placement orientation)

 

Ground storage improvements - can now place a selection of tools on the ground

New wrench tool to modify the orientation of a selection of block types


Armor stand pose can now be changed, using the wrench tool



Prettier main menu screens - dialogs such as Settings are now drawn over the background, and the background is smoother


Berry bushes are now fluffy (but can be pruned).  Fences now attach to more solid block faces


 

Game updates

• Feature: Lightning strikes!
  • Damage creatures in a 8 block radius
  • Lightning rods can redirect lightning, be sure to place them in an elevated spot
• Feature: 200+ new blocks: lore rich "clutter" blocks and bookshelves with rich visuals. Currently these are only in the Creative inventory. These will be added to Survival worldgen (in ruins, tombs, etc....) in the future 1.18 Lore Update
• Feature: major Water physics update
  • any (non-solid) block can be submerged
  • water will flow through non-solid blocks
  • non-solid blocks can become embedded in lake ice if water freezes
  • stones, boulders, seashells and ruins etc. can be generated underwater in worldgen
  • panning from sand and gravel blocks which are in or next to water, the reduced layers block can become submerged
• Feature: More visual spectacle during temporal storms and low stability
  • Added large turning gears in the sky
  • Additional "flowing rust" shader effects on blocks
  • More wicked glitches and particles
• Feature: Improved Armor
  • Armor no longer disappears when its durability reaches 0, but it will lose all its protection.  Protection degrades as the armor durability reduces
  • Armor can now be repaired using its base material. Repairing armor has half the material cost.
  • Lowered the cost of crafting lamellar armor to be more accessible. Rebalanced blackguard and forlorn armor crafting costs to match repair costs for other chain/plate armors. Forlorn now requires some luxury materials to suit its fanciness.
  • Visuals: damaged armor will look visibly damaged
• Feature: 30-fold increase in shield variety
  • There are now nearly 300 types of shields in the game.  Materials can be mixed and matched.  Currently limited to just a few shield models but we will add more soon.
  • Shield durability is now dynamically determined based on the materials used: hardwoods and stronger metals add durability to the base durability value
• Feature: More and prettier flora
  • Added red top grass
  • Added flowering water lily
  • Added silver torch cactus to desert mountains. Painful on touch!
  • Berry bushes are now fluffy (can be pruned with shears)
  • Improved seasonal colors for ferns
  • Improved lichen model
  • Made breadfruit texture more spiky looking. Ripe breadfruits are now larger
  • Creative-only dandelion and acanthus flowers
• Feature: New and improved fauna
  • New creature: Gazelle.  Male, female and calf.  Found in warm/dry climates (savannah)
  • New creatures: Brown bear, black bears, sun bears and pandas now spawn in the world
  • The first fish: Salmon.  No fishing or boats just yet, the salmon is only decorative right now
  • Fox pups now spawn as well
  • Can now pet tameable animals when they are generation 1 or higher (right-click a creature to pet it). Petting causes creatures to stand peacefully
  • Termite mound remake. Added much larger versions. All termite mounds are now rock typed. Added rare large patches to Savannahs
  • Improved Creature AI
    • Attacked creatures should now react more quickly
    • Improved creature AI tactics - when a attacking creature cannot reach its target and gets hurt, it will make a tactical retreat. Every time it gets hurt again, it will retreat further. Should mitigate the pillaring + ranged attack weakness of most creatures.
    • Fixed animals sprinting around a target because they overshoot the destination. Now they slow down near the target
    • Bears and other large creatures in general should no longer become stuck when wandering
    • Creatures walking into solid walls will attempt slight strafing movements to get around the wall
• Feature: Extensive visual tuning
  • Much improved graphics quality when using resolutions below 100% - as it is no longer blurry (therefore, lower resolutions can be used to improve FPS without much loss of fidelity, especially on 4k monitors)
  • Improved sun ambient color and water reflections to reflect the sky colors
  • Prettier main menu - all main menu screens are now dialog based over the background image
  • Much improved reflective shader effect and more configuration options for modders for reflective stuff
  • Improved lava visuals and effects
  • Added more metal pouring vfx, added bouncy particles when smithing
  • Fences now attach to chiselled blocks
  • Random cracked texture overlay on rock
  • Tweak: Visual improvements on the death screen (permanent damage overlay + sepia effect)
  • Tweak: More sparkly crystals
  • Tweak: Larger bells and locusts
  • Tweak: Added blur effect to dialog title bars, various other minor visual tweaks
  • Tweak: Boosted SSAO intensity by 40%
  • Tweak: Third person camera zoom with +/- keys is now smooth instead of instant
  • Tweak: Added some glowy flicker to burning forges
  • Tweak: Placed curd bundles now rotateable
  • Tweak: More particles for burning coal in forges
  • Tweak: Some extra seraph head bobbing while drunk
  • Tweak: Beeswax and Honeycomb now displayed inside crates
  • Tweak: Bees no longer clip through walls
  • Tweak: Made filled crates and barrels fuller
  • Tweak: Block broken particle spawns are now multiplayer synced
  • Tweak: Added seraph chiselling animation
  • Tweak: A bit of rotation randomization on items placed in a display case
  • Tweak: Chickens now peck on the ground for longer, but now also peck for random durations
  • Tweak: Gravel texture now randomly rotated, which greatly mitigates any repetitiveness
  • Tweak: Fine tune amaranth crop texture, more fluff to some of the seraph hairstyles, fine tune layer of sticks model and texture, thicker stem for the bamboo sapling, added a bit of thickness to the condenser model
  • Fixed: Visual glitch glowy geometry during fog
  • Fixed: Weird AO on shelves against the wall
  • Fixed: Sun specular reflections on water no longer working since 1.16
  • Fixed: Distant tall grass noticeably disappearing (not being drawn at all)
  • Fixed: Minor visual glitches when distant tall grass seen against sky or water
  • Fixed: Terrain below flowing water had inconsistent shading at the end of the water flow
  • Fixed: Some inconsistencies in block sunlight levels below placed/flowing water blocks
  • Fixed: white or wrong particle colors when breaking leaves, fruit-tree leaves, berrybushes and waterlilies
• Feature: Massive performance tuning
  • Faster chunk loading: We have changed our internal compression algorithm from deflate to ZStd, which is several times faster for both the server and clients and single-player
  • Even faster chunk loading and reduced memory usage: We have changed our internal chunk data storage method to palletised chunk storage, which needs two to four times less memory on average while the game is running, and made other improvements in memory efficiency, so the game uses less RAM while running, leading to smoother overall performance
  • Faster worldgen: The worldgen can now usually "keep up" with player motion as the player moves into new areas of the map
  • ~40% faster game starts: Lots of fine tuning and multithreading during the startup process should greatly reduce the game startup time. (Single player Creative world load time was 17 seconds in 1.16, now 10 seconds in 1.17, YMMV)
  • Improved overall FPS: Grass and flowers are now drawn using instanced rendering which improves FPS and allows more fine grained control over grass for future projects
  • Improved server TPS: AI pathfinding is now multi-threaded; many other entity ticking performance improvements; mitigated slow ticks caused by drifter and butterfly spawning; mitigated slow ticks caused by farmland and berrybush; for significantly fewer slow ticks / lag spikes overall
  • Greatly improved GUI dialog creation performance (the dialog edge blur algorithm now skips over the center part of the dialog)
  • Reduced SSAO quality on the "Medium SSAO" setting for more FPS
  • Improve FPS when rendering very large inventories, like the creative inventory (50 FPS -> 100 FPS)
  • Tweak: Increased server MagicNumbers values to reflect faster chunk loading speeds and faster worldgen - servers are encouraged to experiment with the servermagicnumbers - especially ChunksColumnsToRequestPerTick, ChunksToSendPerTick and ChunkColumnsToGeneratePerThreadTick to find their own optimal values
  • Temporal storm particles are now async for more performance
• Feature: Added a wrench tool. Can be used to re-orient chutes, stairs, slabs, logs, pillars and plaster. Can now change armor stand arm pose with a wrench.
• Feature: Added Lookat camera mode. Makes it so that in the overhead camera mode the seraph looks into the camera. Enable via .clientconfigcreate overheadLookAt bool true
• Feature: Desert storms. Block colored fog effect in dry areas with lots of sand, when there are strong winds
• Feature: Added bamboo and straw hats
• Feature: Support for 2x1 paintings. Added "sodhouse" and "lastday" paintings
• Feature: Worldgen tuning
  • Now less trees in hot and dry areas
  • Reduced spawn of water in dry places by making lakes/seas more shallow. In existing 1.16 worlds this can cause lines of water at chunk borders with newly generated map regions, but only below sea level in dry areas.
  • Loose stones and boulders now also spawn in caves
• Feature: Seraph fine tuning
  • Tweak: Experimental Seraph voice sound rework. Added ".debug talk" command for testing voices. Community: Let me know if this sounds any better?
  • Tweak: Improved immersive first person mode. Death animation no longer glitching into blocks and knapping should be easier (work in progress)
  • Feature: Sitting down on a block edge now uses a custom seraph pose (still quite buggy in multiplayer)
  • Feature: Added "protect eyes" pose to seraph during strong winds
  • Feature: Additional visual effects when cold
    • Animals and players that are low body temperature now have a frost overlay on them (when the outside temperature is below -5 °C)
    • Seraphs will have a freezing / shivering animation when cold
• Feature: Added ability to place sideways hay bales
• Feature: New 3D models for tailor shoes, merchant shoes, great steppe boots, and reindeer herder shoes
• Feature: The longblade is no more. Long live the falx!
• Feature: Added more dyed leather options to make the new shields out of
• Tweak: Game controls fine tuning
  • In the Settings menu, the Mouse settings and Keyboard controls are now split across two tabs
  • New controls option: Ctrl-click and Shift-click mouse modifiers can now be separate from the Sprint and Sneak keys (so you can re-assign Sprint to something other than the Ctrl key, but still use a Ctrl-click mouse action)
  • Keyboard controls are now more logically grouped in the Settings menu
  • When the Handbook refers to keyboard controls, it shows the current assigned key
  • Block interaction help now shows mouse modifiers (by default, Ctrl- and Shift-) before the mouse button
  • Translation: added missing lang strings for some controls e.g. Show Handbook, Show/Hide Minimap
  • Bulk add material to the Bloomery is now Ctrl + right-click, for consistency with other bulk adds
• Tweak: Gameplay balance tuning
  • Added a small respawn timer: the death dialog now appears with a 1.5 seconds delay
  • Double the drop rate of crystallized ores. They were waaaay too rare IMO
  • Hares can no longer jump over fences in snowy conditions; reduced hare spawn max light level from 8 to 6 to further mitigate them spawning in farmlands
  • Boosted breadfruit satiety 120 -> 200
  • Empty firepits now have a 4x burn time bonus instead of 3x
  • Chiselling now requires a hammer in the off-hand in Survival mode, but does not consume durability on the hammer
  • Aged wooden crates can no longer be made from aged wooden boards. To compensate, traders will now buy aged wooden crates for more than they used to
  • Can now craft the stone coffin from basalt and peridotite stone
  • Tree felling time is now more based on log count, less based on leaves count
  • Tree felling time also based on wood type; hardwoods take 30% longer; tropical hardwoods longer still
  • Higher tier metal axes fell trees slightly faster than previously
  • Purpleheart requires at least a copper/scrap axe to fell; ebony requires at least a bronze axe
  • Crop growth times are now calculated in months instead of days, so setting shorter months means quicker growth times. The default growth times remain unchanged
  • Reduced respawn speed of wolves, slightly reduced spawn rate of butterflies
  • Hares now eat sunflower and cassava crops in their early stages
  • Forest floor blocks when broken now drop low fertility soil instead of medium fertility
• Minor dejanking
  • Tweak: Added barrel open/close sound. Can now right click barrel again to close gui
  • Tweak: Tree seeds can now be placed in display cases
  • Tweak: Changed behavior of how items flow in chutes to be more intuitive
  • Tweak: Wolf howl animation now more synchronized to the howl sound
  • Fixed: Pounders pounding in the wrong direction (visual bug)
  • Fixed: Texture overlapping issue on the 3-flower lupin
  • Fixed: Helve hammer obstructed by a block where it doesn't feel like it should get obstructed
  • Fixed: Multiple visual issues with potted bamboo and lily of the valley
  • Fixed: Wrong texture resolution on seaweed
• Tweak: Ground storage tweaks
  • Can now place spears, shovels and hoes against walls
  • The rotation of the placed item now depends on the player's placing direction (used to be fixed)
  • The Ground Storage selection box now stays at ground level for better visuals and more accurate sub-block placement
  • Fixed wrong particle collision box with ground storage blocks
• Tweak: Allowed glass to be chiselled.  WIP: still didn't fix the wrong faces issue with them though or the wrong texture
• Tweak: Increased third-person in-hand model size for full blocks
• Worldedit updates
  • Feature: Can now use worldedit to place fruit trees
  • Fixed: Worldedit, using "Redo" after a move tool operation not working
  • Fixed: 3 bugs related to importing entities stored in block schematics
  • Tweak: Worldedit control panel now allows setting of fractional movespeeds
  • Tweak: Changing the current selection is now also stored in the undo/redo history state
  • Tweak: The Magic select mode will now ignore tallgrass by default
  • Tweak: Added a flood fill mode more suitable for placing lakes
  • Tweak: The flood fill tool now will replace all blocks of blockmaterial Plant
  • Tweak: Left clicking with the flood fill tool now performs the opposite effect, a "flood erase"
  • Tweak: Worldedit: Added server overload protection toggle to the options dialog
  • Fixed: Multiple fixes with "/we mr" no longer creates 2 history states, also updates the current selection and does not move the whole selection up by several blocks
  • Tweak: Worldedit GUI upgrades:
    • Fixed: Drop down scrollbar was not visible
    • Select tool now has 2 new buttons: Rotate CW and Rotate CCW
    • Increased flat fog slider range 4-fold
• Various command tweaks
  • Tweak: /time command now disallows setting of negative values because it has undefined behavior
  • Tweak: Added "/player [plrname] entity intox" subcommand to set intoxication value
  • Tweak: Added "/debug delplr name" to delete playerdata in a savegame
  • Tweak: Added "/player playername movespeed" subcommand
  • Fixed: /weather setev not working
  • Tweak: /debug logticks command output now more informative and new layout
• Tweak: Tallgrass shadows only drawn near to the player
• Tweak: Gold and silver falx are now steel blades with gold/silver flair. As such, their recipes and stats have changed to be similar to steel falx
• Tweak: Forlorn Estoc now uses a thrust animation in 3rd person to better suit the weapon
• Tweak: Added a description to wolf pup item to indicate that it's hostile and some traders highly value it
• Tweak: Can now place side-growing mushrooms in creative mode
• Tweak: Chat dialog less obtrusive (more transparent) when not focused (experimental)
• Tweak: Trimmed the hunter class flavor text
• Tweak: Changed name of hacking spear to tuning spear to better fit the setting. Also gave it a description so players know what it does
• Tweak: Hacking spear can be made with tin bronze and bismuth bronze spears now
• Tweak: Added the 'Tinkerer' trait to the Clockmaker class: functions like the other unique crafting traits
• Tweak: Savegames should now be more robust against ungraceful exits in regards of entity spawning
• Tweak: Various improvements to creature bots (we used these for making the 2022 trailer!)
  • Added bear and hacked locust bot
  • More configurable playerbots
    • Can wear backpacks, quivers and shields.
    • Can apply a custom skin via /npc copyskin to apply a player skin
    • Can now have a nametag, set via /npc setname
  • Fixed /npc enq/exec playanim not working for some animations
  • Added "/npcs loopall" subcommand
• Tweak: Added ability to disable crop/berry bush and fruittree growth (/worldconfigcreate bool processCrops false)
• Tweak: Added player entity repair capability when loading a savegame in repair mode
• Tweak: The paper, scroll and book lore items now have 3d models
• Tweak: Disabled span ruins, they need better spawning behaviors
• Tweak: Torches and other blocks which attach to the side of other blocks, now cannot be attached to lake ice (even if they could before)
• Fixed: Multiple issues with snow coverage on chiseled blocks
• Fixed: Dark shadows caused from SSAO, might break other things
• Fixed: Pristine forlorn body armor can now be properly crafted.
• Fixed: Wooden path block texture issues
• Fixed: Cinematic camera crash when adding 2 points at the same coords
• Fixed: Multiple issues with the immersive first person mode (clip into blocks upon death, not adjusted for running sideways swivel, etc.)
• Fixed: Heavy z-fighting on distant ice
• Fixed: Falling containers now drop their contents if they cannot be placed on impact
• Fixed: handbook entry for labeled chests, and links to it in chalk and charcoal descriptions
• Fixed: (long-standing!) leaves blocks incorrectly had a 0 degrees rotated alternate as well as 10 degrees
• Fixed: (since 1.16) blocks with general wind motion flag were incorrectly given a glow value (e.g. glow == 3)
• Fixed: (since 1.14) leaves ground-offset windshear being disabled for leaves against solid blocks was not working correctly on north side
• Fixed: Unknown texture when putting solder ingots on forges
• Fixed: Wrong glow vfx for items held in third person mode
• Fixed: In single-player, occasional flash of X-ray vision when breaking blocks underground at any chunk edge
• Fixed: Should fix stability issues when using the game updater, due to leftover files that should no longer be there
• Fixed: TempstormDurationMul world config not working
• Fixed: Some roofing faces too dark; trough fluffy hay faces too dark.
• Fixed: Particle collision box issues with the boiler
• Fixed: Water in condenser hardly visible
• Fixed: Placing fruit trees with worldedit did not respect the size values
• Fixed: Tool molds rotations during clayforming not matching finished product in some cases
• Fixed: Sealed barrels displayed block interaction help
• Fixed: Drifter killing drifter showed "eaten by" in the info text
• Fixed: Wrong SSAO on knapping surface
• Fixed: Pullets changing plumage when they mature to adults
• Fixed: Wrong texture resolution on some bamboo leaves
• Fixed: .clientconfigcreate not printing error on invalid datatype
• Fixed: Some lighting chunk border issues when rooms are closed or opened to sunlight
• Fixed: Various minor sunlighting bugs (eg. wrong values below water which spreads)
• Tweak: for Linux users, starting the game using Mono versions prior to Mono 5 should now fail (Mono 4.x and below is not supported)
• Translation:
  • Fixed: lang strings for some item info such as clothing and armor properties
  • Added lang strings for some colors

API Changes

• Tweak: All code obfuscation now been completely dropped from the game engine
• Feature: Greatly improved frame profiler and slow tick logging.
  • Instead of a flat list, frame costs are now displayed hierarchically and also show the call count. Allows for a much more fine grained analysis of costly operations / laggy sections of code.
  • Added new FrameProfiler.Enter() and .Leave() methods for hierarchical tick logging
• Feature: New "OnAnimationEnd" Mode EaseOut. Greatly helps with jerky animation endings
• Feature: Shape.TryGet(api, fileLocation) method simplifies code for loading shapes and adds consistent error checking
• Feature: still and flowing water blocks, and lake ice blocks, are now accessed separately from regular blocks, as there can be both water and a regular (non-solid) block in the same BlockPos position
  • Use IBlockAccessor.GetLiquidBlock(), IBlockAccessor.SetLiquidBlock(), IBlockAccessor.SearchLiquidBlocks() for reading and writing water and lake ice
  • There are also IWorldChunk.GetLiquid() and .SetLiquid() methods, but mods should generally use the IBlockAccessor methods
  • IBlockAccessor.GetSolidBlock() will return the regular block at the position UNLESS there is lake ice present in which case it will return the lake ice (used e.g. for motion physics and collision detection)
  • IBlockAccessor.IsSideSolid() behaves similarly: tests the regular block at the position for solidity, or will return true if lake ice is present
  • to generalise, mods can add their own blocks (liquids, gasses or perhaps ice) to the new system allowing regular blocks to be submerged/enclosed/embedded in such blocks: this is done simply by overriding property Block.ForLiquidsLayer in the code for the liquid/gas/ice block
  • For existing 1.16 blocks which are found in water or in ice (e.g. in vanilla, Coopers Reeds or Papyrus, which have -water- and -ice- variants, or Seaweed) you can update to the new system as follows: (a) remove the rendering of water and ice and any special water and ice properties from your block, the in-water variant should now be the same as the on-land variant; (b) for the in-water or in-ice variants only, for successful updating from 1.16 to 1.17, override property Block.RemapToLiquidsLayer to provide the water/ice code matching your block, e.g. Reeds in water set that property to "water-still-7"
  • BlockUpdate and Schematic now have water data in them in addition to block data
  • Mods needing to test for the presence of water or lake ice should change their code to use the IBlockAccessor.GetLiquidBlock() call
  • Mods needing to test whether a neighbour side is solid should use IBlockAccessor.IsSideSolid() to detect all cases accurately, including e.g. stones embedded in lake ice
  • To minimise the breaking of existing 1.16 mods, IBlockAccessor.GetBlock() will still return the water/lakeice block at a position if there is no block submerged/embedded in it - but if there is a block submerged in water (or embedded in lakeice) then .GetBlock() will return the submerged block, so that mods which do not update their code to use a .GetLiquidBlock() call will not see that there is water in the position, if a block happens to be submerged there
  • To minimise the breaking of existing 1.16 mods, IBlockAccessor.SetBlock() used with a water/lakeice block (or any block for which Block.ForLiquidsLayer is true) will automatically write that block to the liquids layer, and will delete any existing regular block at the position (i.e. the same behavior as in 1.16 code).  To add water/lakeice to a block position without deleting the regular block (i.e. allowing the existing block at the position to become submerged in water or embedded in ice) use IBlockAccessor.SetLiquidBlock()
  • Placing a fully solid block in any position will remove the water/lakeice at that position
• Feature: Missing lang file keys are logged in client-debug.txt (and sometimes in server-debug.txt but that is rare)
• Feature: Added <hk> or <hotkey> VTML tag. In handbook entries, can use e.g. <hk>sprint</hk> to display the actual current mapping of the sprint key
• Feature: for any keyboard controls (hotkeys) your mod adds, use new EnumHotkeyTypes: HelpAndOverlays, MouseModifiers, MovementControls and InventoryHotkeys for better grouping in the keyboard controls settings dialog
• Feature: Configurable inventory slot count for entity harvesting
• Feature: IServerWorldAccessor.IsFullyLoadedChunk(), true if all neighbor chunks are also loaded.  BlockEntities or entities can use this during tick updates for better performance, e.g. to make sure that searching neighbor chunks for blocks will not cause lag-spikes due to loading unloaded chunks.  See BEBerryBush and BEFarmland for example
• Feature: Added api.XXXAtlas.GetOrInsertTexture() to replace InsertTextureCached() which is now obsolete, as it is very inefficient
• Refactor: Collectible.GetDurability() is now renamed to Collectible.GetMaxDurability(). Added Collectible.GetRemainingDurability()
• Refactor: QueueOfInt and FastSetOfLongs moved to Vintagestory.API.Datastructures 
• Tweak: ModMaker should place patches into a separate mod domain (will now also prompt for the mod domain)
• Tweak: PlayerControl.CtrlKey and PlayerControl.ShiftKey, use these for block and entity interactions which depend on Ctrl+mouseclick or Shift+mouseclick, in place of checking for Sprint and Sneak keys  (though by default Sprint is bound to Ctrl, and Sneak is bound to Shift, a player might change that)
• Tweak: Significantly re-order and properly ensure order of asset registration etc during server startup, for details of correct use, see updated descriptions in the XML help for ModSystem methods .ExecuteOrder(), .StartPre(), .Start(), .AssetsLoaded(), .StartClientSide() and .StartServerSide()
  •  ModSystem .Start() method may be called at a different time from previously, specifically it will now be called even before assets (including blocktypes, lang file, etc.) have been loaded; any of your code in Start() which requires assets to be loaded may need to be moved to the AssetsLoaded() method
  • Additional optional initialisation call ModSystem.AssetsLoaded() called after the Start() method and after assets are loaded, but before StartClientSide/StartServerSide.  This is called on both server and client, see VSSurvivalMod Core.cs for an example.  Typically used to initialise block or item fields
  • New server event AssetsFinalizers, can be used in code to modify/finalize behaviors or properties for any block or item in the game (your mod's assets or another mod's assets) after all loading from JSONs is complete. Use this in 1.17+ instead of making changes to assets in a mod's StartServerSide() method - doing it in the StartServerSide() method will likely be too late.  E.g. in vanilla, the BlockReinforcement system adds a Reinforcement behavior to every appropriate block in this event
• Tweak: Added callback method Collectible.ConsumeCraftingIngredients()
• Tweak: Added ability to disable entity behaviors and AI tasks by adding a `enabled: false` line (can also do this byType)
• Tweak: Added "ShowInCreatedBy" property for recipes to hide them from the handbook (such as repair recipes)
• Tweak: IBlockAccessor.WalkBlocks() Action now offers int x,y,z coordinates instead of a BlockPos
• Tweak: Cuboidd new method SetAndTranslate() allows both operations to be combined in a single method call
• Tweak: Vec3d can now be Set() to an EntityPos
• Tweak: BlockPos new method SetAndEquals() returns a boolean indicating whether the BlockPos already held the values set
• Tweak: Can now define separate player animations to be run in immersive first person mode (by prefixing them with "ifp-").
• Tweak: Chisel tool modes are now a bit more moddable
• Tweak: Block.SideSolid is now a custom class, SmallBoolArray
• Tweak: ShapeElement.Faces is now deprecated: use .FacesResolved instead if you need to access a ShapeElementFace
• Tweak: Block.Textures and .TexturesInventory are now IDictionary<> not Dictionary<>  (but in most cases existing code should not need to be changed)
• Tweak: EntityClientProperties.Textures is now IDictionary<> not Dictionary<>  (but in most cases existing code should not need to be changed)
• Tweak: Block.SideSolid is now a SmallBoolArray struct, not a bool[]  (but in most cases existing code should not need to be changed, e.g. Block.SideSolid[0] will still test the North face)
• Tweak: Can now define particle Bounciness as a float value (before it was a boolean)
• Tweak: "Weak shiny" mode. If the shiny bit is set and any wind data is set, the shinyness effect is reduced
• Tweak: New basic flower shapes flower-48x48 and flower-32x64, drawn with correct pixel density, see the creative-only Dandelion and Acanthus flowers as examples  (modders can test new flower textures in-game by replacing the dandelion and acanthus textures)
• Tweak: two new DrawTypes which appropriate blocks can use for instanced rendering, for higher FPS: InstancedCross (used by tallgrass, flower-horsetail, and flower-edelweiss) and InstancedFlower (used by catmint, cow parsley, poppy, redtop grass, wild daisy and woad).   Where InstancedFlower is used, petal and stem textures should be combined into one double-width .png file, see the texture files for those flowers for examples
• Tweak: The Modmaker will now work on pre-releases of the game
• Tweak: Rewrite head yaw/pitch handling, now part of EntityPos and synced.
• Fixed: Cuboidf.RotatedCopy() not rotating hitboxes correctly
• Fixed: Positioning issues in VTML/richtext
• Fixed: Compatibility util did not work on first world load

As mentioned, here the stable version of 1.16.5. Only bugfixes in this release.

All updates since 1.16.4

• Fixed: Should fix some fruit trees never fruiting
• Fixed: Fruit trees harvestable multiple times
• Fixed: Worldedit import tool "Replace all" mode did not replace air
• Fixed: Game crashing when it cannot log to file
• Fixed: Dressing/Undressing backpacks sometimes not showing the backpack visually on the player
• Fixed: White storm dust particles that are not supposed to be there
• Fixed: Oversized poults
• Fixed: Breaking Ladder did not cascade break the entire stack
• Fixed: Infinite liquid drinking dupe bug
• Fixed: Able to add crust on baked pies
• Fixed: Not able to place filled jugs and bowls
• Fixed: Itemstack tooltip box some title text got linebreaked unecessarily
• Fixed: Should fix a rare crash with beds. Might break other things.
• Fixed: Should fix half generated trader carts
• Fixed: Breaking damaged refractory brick dropped 3 to 5 bricks, the same amount required to replace them, on average
• Fixed: Harvesting pomegranate trees dropped breadfruit
• Fixed: Clicking on the crate in the handbook did not direct to the crate page
• Api Fixed: Two bugs in OnBlockExploded()
• Changes since 1.16.5-rc.1
  • Tweak: Added ".clientconfig selectedBlockOutline" to disable the selected block outline renderer, for Mac OS users on M1 chips, so they can verify if that is the cause of the disappearing GUI issue
  • Tweak: Block reinforcement loading errors are now logged into server-debug.txt instead of server-main.txt
  • Fixed: "/group info" not working
  • Fixed: Tiny memory leak with scythes
  • Fixed: Server mod downloader did not distinguish servers by port
  • Fixed: Deleting the serverconfig.json could cause instances where creating a new player group would cause some players to be already in that group
  • Api Tweak: Fix a crash with modded crates
  • Api Fixed: Incorrect lang entries in block info hud for decor blocks
  • Api Fixed: Crash when trying to craft on certain recipes

Ukraine Charity
From the 27th until the 6th of March we have donated 100% of our revenue to humanitarian aid for Ukraine, amounting to over 5000 Eur. We have seen increased sales during that time period  - thank you everyone for participating!

Vintagehosting update
As of yesterday, our Vintagehosting servers now allow a maximum player count of 8 players at no additional cost (previously 5 was the limit). Existing server owners may need to restart their game server for changes to take effect.

2022 Feature Trailer Additions
Currently we are focused on creating a new, 3 minute long main game trailer. In the process we add new visual effects and small details to help visualize the games mechanics and in-game experience. Most of them will become a permanent part of the game in the next main update. I've posted several of this changes on our Discord. Here's a few of them

Player and Creature frost overlay. Freezing players will look frosted and have a freezing animation.


You'll be able to sit down on a block edge

Improved Lava visuals

Layered gravel (from panning), Sea shells and loose stones will be submersible. Added flowering lily variant


Upcoming Updates
Beyond the aforementioned visual updates, the topic of 1.17 is "De-Jank". This means we'd like to improve some of the existing game mechanics and finish some of the currently incomplete ones. I don't want to go into specifics but I do can reveal some broad de-janks topics which we plan to work on, which are: Armor system, Immersive First Person Mode, Seraph Voices, Mouse/Keyboard controls, Prospecting, Meal cooking.

Once the game trailer and 1.17 is complete, we'd like to finally make major advances around the games lore in 1.18. This will include lots of new ruins and ruin contents.

We've also been working on a long term plan for a full story arch with different endings, all of them majorly affecting game play in a certain way, which is something I'm personally very excited about. I do hope we can add it all this decade still

Till next time!

1.16.5-rc.1 Game updates

• Fixed: Should fix some fruit trees never fruiting
• Fixed: Fruit trees harvestable multiple times
• Fixed: Worldedit import tool "Replace all" mode did not replace air
• Fixed: Game crashing when it cannot log to file
• Fixed: Dressing/Undressing backpacks sometimes not showing the backpack visually on the player
• Fixed: White storm dust particles that are not supposed to be there
• Fixed: Oversized poults
• Fixed: Breaking Ladder did not cascade break the entire stack
• Fixed: Infinite liquid drinking dupe bug
• Fixed: Able to add crust on baked pies
• Fixed: Not able to place filled jugs and bowls
• Fixed: Itemstack tooltip box some title text got linebreaked unecessarily
• Fixed: Should fix a rare crash with beds. Might break other things.
• Fixed: Should fix half generated trader carts
• Fixed: Breaking damaged refractory brick dropped 3 to 5 bricks, the same amount required to replace them, on average
• Fixed: Harvesting pomegranate trees dropped breadfruit
• Fixed: Clicking on the crate in the handbook did not direct to the crate page
• Api Fixed: Two bugs in OnBlockExploded()

All game updates since 1.16.3

• Feature: Vintagehosting: Added ability to kill an unresponsive server
• Tweak: Rifts sounds volume is now reduced by 85% when the player is not in direct line-of-sight of them
• Tweak: Distant rifts are now less visible
• Tweak: Can now do increment time via command in months and years /time add 2 years or /time add 2 months
• Tweak: Reduced creature aggro sound rate if they cannot find a path. Should mitigate endless drifter growling around your base.
• Tweak: Gameplay balancing
  • Halved produce drop rate on wild crops (they were doubled in 1.16, unintentionally)
  • Acacia trees now also spawn resin
  • Reduced mushroom spawning during worldgen by 20% and they stay harvestable less longer (30 days -> 20 days)
  • The Bell alarm mob spawning rate now scales with the amount of nearby players
  • The hacking spear can now also be made from bisbronze and tinbronze
  • Increased fruit tree cutting growth chance (25% -> 40%)
  • Increase resin spawn chance 2.5-fold
  • Increased rusty gear drop rate for drifters (normal: 0% -> 1%, deep: 2% -> 3%, tainted 5%->7%, corrupt 7%->10%, nightmare 10%->20%)
  • Beds now stack (1 -> 2)
• Tweak/Fixed: Avoid game crashing on corrupted chiseled blocks
• Tweak: More informative fruitpress block info hud text
• Tweak: Further optimized entity physics simulation for overall improved game performance when lots of entities are loaded (Technical info: Skip loading all nearby block collision boxes if entity didn't move a full block since last tick)
• Tweak: Scythe rework
  • New (default) tool mode: Trim grass. Will leave behind short grass that regrows. The 2nd tool mode restores old behavior.
  • Fixed desync issues with long duration tool interactions causing scything to sometimes have no effect
  • 3rd person scythe animation a bit more in sync with the fp animation
  • Fine tune timings a bit
  • The action no longer cancel when player looks at another grass block mid-swing. Added icons.
• Tweak: Can now dry items on tool racks and chests. Can now place bow staves on tool racks. Bow staves show drying rate in the item tooltip.
• Tweak: Added "Tree state" info to fruit tree blocks to help debug non-fruiting trees. A correctly behaving tree should loop through these states throughout a year: Young, Flowering, Fruiting, Ripe, Empty, EnterDormancy, Dormant, DormantVernalized. Please help me figure out where it gets stuck.
• Tweak: Increased growth speed of fruit trees by about 37%
• Tweak: Free-floating vines now slowly disappear over time
• Tweak: Crocks now use vegetable labels for meals that have 3 or 4 of the same ingredient
• Tweak: Mitigate clayforming lagspikes. Disabling the block interaction help while clay forming might reduce the lag even more now.
• Tweak: Small server performance optimization related to entity spawning
• Tweak: Rough hewn fence recipe a bit less generous (12 -> 8 fences)
• Tweak: Added a new "arctic supplies" cracked vessel (not yet in worldgen).
• Tweak: Right-click placing fuel into a firepit now plays a sound
• Tweak: Arrows now show break chance on impact in their tooltip
• Tweak: Increased fleeing distance on most creatures
• Tweak: Improved teleporting behavior of hacked locusts
• Tweak: Mitigate locust wall climbing derps
• Tweak: Mitigate creatures forever stuck running into a wall
• Tweak: Disabled unused bellows block
• Fixed: Animal weight system not working at all since 1.16
• Fixed: Able to circumvent block reinforcements with ore bombs
• Fixed: Might fix some trader carts cut in half on world generation
• Fixed: Should fix game no longer launching on MacOS
• Fixed: Able to add chiseled blocks as material on chiseled blocks, producing unknown textures
• Fixed: All spaces gone in english texts if the language was set to Japanese
• Fixed: Mitigate issues with copying text to clipboards from various in-game buttons
• Fixed: Retrieving buckets of juice or dairy from the creative inventory gave you buckets of rot instead in some cases
• Fixed: Various oddities when sleeping in a bed and logging out / shutting down the server
• Fixed: Dairy liquids yielding huge amounts of rot
• Fixed: Block reinforcement system: Non reinforcable blocks could still be reinforced but had no effect
• Fixed: Putting fruits 1-by-1 into the fruit press allowed you to get way more juice
• Fixed: Able to relight burned out torches
• Fixed: Able to mix items in the crate using a chute
• Fixed: Harvesting lychee trees yielded breadfruit
• Fixed: Cider and Juice not spoiling
• Fixed: Placing firewood in claimed areas placed a firewood pile on the client side
• Fixed: Wrong Playstyle selector hover texts on the create world screen
• Fixed: Coke oven doors and chute sections floating on water
• Fixed: Crushed olivine and quartz not smeltable into glass
• IMPORTANT NOTICE FOR MODDERS: If you override Block.OnBlockExploded() and don't call the base method you now must manually delete the block with "world.BulkBlockAccessor.SetBlock(0, pos);" or your block will become a source of infinite drops
• Fixed: Hitting creatures with a torch did not ignite them on occasion
• Fixed: Should fix multiplayer animation derp when a player has a torch in hands and similar
• Fixed: Itemstack tooltips sizing derps on sub-8 gui scales
• Fixed: Consuming liquids played the eat sound instead of the drink sound in some cases
• Fixed: Server disk space checks after the server has been started were failing silently, potentially causing loss of many hours of progress
• Fixed: Dropped Shields sinking into the ground
• Fixed: Player floating in air when breaking the block below and not moving (1.16.4-rc.1 bug)
• Fixed: Small memory leak in crates
• Fixed: Some derp with fruit tree branches not regrowing after being cut
• Fixed: Pathfinding issues:
  • Entities that have fall damage would be willing to fall from greater heights instead of the opposite effect (but did add a reckless attribute so drifters still fall from large heights)
  • Creatures believed they could walk through diagonal openings. Should mitigate cases where drifters bunch up in corners
  • Potentially fixes hares "leaping" fences in winter when they should not [Detail: fixes a pathfinding issue where creatures believed they could step high off a low block such as snow layer]
  • Chickens looking for a Henbox to lay in are now less likely to give up when half-way there
• Fixed: Rifts not affected by fog
• Fixed: Dense fog causing fog even at very near distances. Should mitigate heavy fog inside homes a bit
• Fixed: Should greatly mitigate melee attacks not registered when attacking a fleeing creature
• Fixed: Teleport-on-lag is now off when AntiAbuse mode is off. Multiplayer players rejoice!
• Fixed: Strange behavior when sleeping in a bed and right clicking on another bed
• Fixed: Vintagehosting a failed request was displayed as sucessful in some cases
• Fixed: Rare server freeze when running /stop in the same moment as a player joins
• Fixed: Sawblade locust emitting light
• Fixed: Particles glitching through blocks, such as snow particles
• Fixed: Worldedit bug doing Undo and Redo on a placed schematic deleted all block entity data
• Fixed: Some Z-fighting issues with chiseled block materials
• Fixed: Player entered sneak mode when walking through doors and fence gates
• Fixed: Player knockback not synced to other players on death
• Fixed: Somewhat awkward first person animation when attacking with a spear while looking downwards
• Fixed: Down faces of all roof blocks are now considered solid sides
• Fixed: Snow breaking sound not attenuated over distance
• Fixed: Rare client side crash related to particles
• Fixed: Should fix .tfedit not using correct decimal seperator for numbers
• Fixed: Current tool mode hud icon not scaling with the gui scale
• Fixed: Rare rendering issue with X-ray vision on snow layer sides after snow melted nearby
• Fixed: Rendering issues below snow-covered fences (etc.) with certain blocks
• Fixed: Forest floor blocks now also have snowy grass sides if snow-covered
• Fixed: Might fix a rare crash when connecting to a server
• Fixed: A crash on heavily modded games when looking at soil/rock in the handbook
• Fixed: Might fix rare glowing fruit mash glitch
• Fixed: Should fix yet another liquid dupe glitch
• Fixed: Mushrooms not spawning in the wilderness survival mode
• Fixed: Unknown texture when putting solder ingots on forges
• Fixed: Should fix the server mod downloader deleting manually installed mods that are outdated

Changed since v1.16.4-rc.3 (also listed above)

• Tweak: Even smoother scything action. The action no longer cancel when player looks at another grass block mid-swing. Added icons.
• Tweak: Can now dry items on tool racks and chests. Can now place bow staves on tool racks. Bow staves show drying rate in the item tooltip.
• Tweak: Added "Tree state" info to fruit tree blocks to help debug non-fruiting trees. A correctly behaving tree should loop through these states throughout a year: Young, Flowering, Fruiting, Ripe, Empty, EnterDormancy, Dormant, DormantVernalized. Please help me figure out where it gets stuck.
• Tweak: Increased growth speed of fruit trees by about 37%
• Fixed: Forest floor blocks now also have snowy grass sides if snow-covered
• Fixed: Current tool mode hud icon not scaling with the gui scale
• Fixed: Rare rendering issue with X-ray vision on snow layer sides after snow melted nearby
• Fixed: Rendering issues below snow-covered fences (etc.) with certain blocks
• Fixed: Might fix a rare crash when connecting to a server
• Fixed: A crash on heavily modded games when looking at soil/rock in the handbook
• Fixed: Clay forming grid not visible in some cases (1.16.4-rc.3 bug)
• Fixed: Might fix rare glowing fruit mash glitch
• Fixed: Should fix yet another liquid dupe glitch
• Fixed: Mushrooms not spawning in the wilderness survival mode
• Fixed: Unknown texture when putting solder ingots on forges

I should probably stop playing VS myself, because I keep finding imbalances and issues instead of working on the new trailer and the next major update
Played with my family for quite some hours, but still only in the bronze age


 

Game updates

• Tweak: Scythe rework
  • New (default) tool mode: Trim grass. Will leave behind short grass that regrows. The 2nd tool mode restores old behavior.
  • Fixed desync issues with long duration tool interactions causing scything to sometimes have no effect
  • 3rd person scythe animation a bit more in sync with the fp animation
  • Fine tune timings a bit
• Tweak: Free-floating vines now slowly disappear over time
• Tweak: Crocks now use vegetable labels for meals that have 3 or 4 of the same ingredient
• Tweak: Mitigate clayforming lagspikes. Disabling the block interaction help while clay forming might reduce the lag even more now.
• Tweak: Small server performance optimization related to entity spawning
• Tweak: Rough hewn fence recipe a bit less generous (12 -> 8 fences)
• Tweak: Added a new "arctic supplies" cracked vessel (not yet in worldgen).
• Tweak: Right-click placing fuel into a firepit now plays a sound
• Tweak: Arrows now show break chance on impact in their tooltip
• Tweak: Increased fleeing distance on most creatures
• Tweak: Improved teleporting behavior of hacked locusts
• Tweak: Mitigate locust wall climbing derps
• Tweak: Mitigate creatures forever stuck running into a wall
• Tweak: Disabled unused bellows block
• Fixed: Should greatly mitigate melee attacks not registered when attacking a fleeing creature
• Fixed: Teleport-on-lag is now off when AntiAbuse mode is off. Multiplayer players rejoice!
• Fixed: Strange behavior when sleeping in a bed and right clicking on another bed
• Fixed: Vintagehosting a failed request was displayed as sucessful in some cases
• Fixed: Rare server freeze when running /stop in the same moment as a player joins
• Fixed: Sawblade locust emitting light
• Fixed: Particles glitching through blocks, such as snow particles
• Fixed: Worldedit bug doing Undo and Redo on a placed schematic deleted all block entity data
• Fixed: Some Z-fighting issues with chiseled block materials
• Fixed: Player entered sneak mode when walking through doors and fence gates
• Fixed: Player knockback not synced to other players on death
• Fixed: Somewhat awkward first person animation when attacking with a spear while looking downwards
• Fixed: Down faces of all roof blocks are now considered solid sides
• Fixed: Snow breaking sound not attenuated over distance
• Fixed: Rare client side crash related to particles
• Fixed: Should fix .tfedit not using correct decimal seperator for numbers
• Fixed: Should fix the server mod downloader deleting manually installed mods that are outdated
• Fixed: Unecessary line break in itemstack tooltips in some cases (bug in 1.16.4-rc.2)

We did some thorough playtesting and found several spots where the game felt unbalanced. So this minor update will grow into a somewhat larger balancing patch. I'm sure many of you will be happy with those changes

For our Vintagehosting customers: This update also adds the ability to force stop a unresponsive server. If you do have an unresponsive server on occasion, please make sure to update to version 1.16.3 or newer.
 

Game updates

• Feature: Vintagehosting Added ability to kill an unresponsive server
• Tweak: Gameplay balancing
  • Halved produce drop rate on wild crops (they were doubled in 1.16, unintentionally)
  • Acacia trees now also spawn resin
  • Reduced mushroom spawning during worldgen by 20% and they stay harvestable less longer (30 days -> 20 days)
  • The Bell alarm mob spawning rate now scales with the amount of nearby players
  • The hacking spear can now also be made from bisbronze and tinbronze
  • Increased fruit tree cutting growth chance (25% -> 40%)
  • Increase resin spawn chance 2.5-fold
  • Increased rusty gear drop rate for drifters (normal: 0% -> 1%, deep: 2% -> 3%, tainted 5%->7%, corrupt 7%->10%, nightmare 10%->20%)
  • Beds now stack (1 -> 2)
• Tweak: Rifts sounds volume is now reduced by 85% when the player is not in direct line-of-sight of them
• Tweak: Distant rifts are now less visible
• Tweak: Can now do increment time via command in months and years /time add 2 years or /time add 2 months
• Tweak: Reduced creature aggro sound rate if they cannot find a path. Should mitigate endless drifter growling around your base.
• Fixed: Hitting creatures with a torch did not ignite them on occasion
• Fixed: Should fix multiplayer animation derp when a player has a torch in hands and similar
• Fixed: Itemstack tooltips sizing derps on sub-8 gui scales
• Fixed: Consuming liquids played the eat sound instead of the drink sound in some cases
• Fixed: Server disk space checks after the server has been started were failing silently, potentially causing loss of many hours of progress
• Fixed: Dropped Shields sinking into the ground
• Fixed: Player floating in air when breaking the block below and not moving (1.16.4-rc.1 bug)
• Fixed: Small memory leak in crates
• Fixed: Some derp with fruit tree branches not regrowing after being cut
• Fixed: Pathfinding issues:
  • Entities that have fall damage would be willing to fall from greater heights instead of the opposite effect (but did add a reckless attribute so drifters still fall from large heights)
  • Creatures believed they could walk through diagonal openings. Should mitigate cases where drifters bunch up in corners
  • Potentially fixes hares "leaping" fences in winter when they should not [Detail: fixes a pathfinding issue where creatures believed they could step high off a low block such as snow layer]
  • Chickens looking for a Henbox to lay in are now less likely to give up when half-way there
• Fixed: Rifts not affected by fog
• Fixed: Dense fog causing fog even at very near distances. Should mitigate heavy fog inside homes a bit