v1.21.0-rc.5/rc.6 - Story Chapter 2 Redux

Dear Extraordinary Survivalists
v1.21.0-rc.5, an unstable release, can now be downloaded through the account manager.

More bug Whack-a-mole. Thanks a lot for testing, everyone. We're getting there!

Known issue: windmills may not work in some parts of a world (related to very low wind).

As always with unstable releases, we recommend use these versions for testing and for mod development, but do not play your treasured older worlds in these versions.  If you have begun playing a world in a -rc version, be prepared to start a new world when 1.21.0-stable is released (which should be soon now!)

[Update 8/17/2025] Also released rc.6 to five more issues

• Fixed: Worldgen anomalies could occur at some chunk borders in -rc.5 
• Fixed: Snow accumulation and other weather systems not working in -rc.5
• Fixed: Some ruins in -rc.5 were broken due to the BlockRandomizer. Github #6642
• Fixed: Skeleton (Compact) in ruins should now be visible again. Github #6651
• Fixed: Resonance Archives most complex chunks sometimes invisible in -rc.1 to -rc.4

Screenshot by Tachyon, shared in #screenshots on Discord

Game updates

• Tweak: Performance: Improve FPS in large fields of grass, heather and similar plants. From 80 FPS to 100 FPS in one particular test case.  [Technical info: if grass/plants are short, draw them with shorter faces using drawnHeight]
• Tweak: Reduced reef fish flee radius so you can see them closer.  Drops reduced to 0, since they're much easier to kill.
• Tweak: Timeswitch skill now has a slot background to better communicate to the player that it's a slot they can switch to
• Fixed: Lazaret not spawning anymore (issue introduce in -rc.4)
• Fixed: Significant memory leak with ground storage piles
• Fixed: Ruined bookshelves with lore book, render the book properly at all rotations
• Fixed: Armor on armorstand not rendering
• Fixed: Spearhead in tongs transform was way off
• Fixed: Crucible z-fighting on bottom face
• Fixed: Raccoon held currants not neatly positioned in their mouths
• Fixed: Worldgen borders for mapregions on the west edge of map, if east edge of world map was visited first. Github #6613
• Fixed: Dynamic Color Grading no longer causes frequent writes to clientsettings.json. Github #6607
• Fixed: Mechanical parts spawned by schematics worldedit/worldgen did not automatically connect and rotate, fixed gears not respecting schematic rotation operations in worldedit/worldgen
• Fixed: Crash to desktop when breaking chiselled coral block
• Fixed: Crash loops when players hold certain invisible blocks or items. Github #4777
• Fixed: A rare exception on the server [Detail: BlockRandomizer placed from a schematic during worldgen should initialise its BlockEntities on the main thread. ref Github #5315]
• Fixed: Rare crash to desktop if the player, in a settings menu, uses keyboard controls to move sliders to their ends. Github #6608
• Fixed: "/whitelist off" and "/whitelist on" was not saved to config file
• API Tweak: if ToolDurabilityCost in recipe is equal to 0 item won't be destroyed even if it has no durability