Update prerelease questions

[Anon_Omis]

I saw we just got a prerelease for 1.21 and I had a few questions about how updates usually go with this game:

1. how long between prerelease and stable update is it usually?
2. How stable is the current prerelease build?
3. Are we expecting much more content to be added before the update comes out of prerelease?

I'm really excited about this update and would like to play it, but I'm wondering if I should hold off until it's done or if I can jump in now without much fear of messing up a new world.

[LadyWYT]

Welcome to the forums!

5 minutes ago, Anon_Omis said:

how long between prerelease and stable update is it usually?

It depends on how much content is slated to be added, what kind of content it is, and how much trouble there is in implementing it. I would say that generally it's only a few weeks from a pre-release to a stable release, but the mileage varies depending on many issues the devs have to sort out.

6 minutes ago, Anon_Omis said:

How stable is the current prerelease build?

The current pre-release for 1.21 is still unstable, as far as I'm aware. It is playable, but updating old worlds or creating new permanent worlds isn't recommended, as it's very likely you will encounter major bugs and that some major changes may occur that may not translate well to a newer version.

8 minutes ago, Anon_Omis said:

Are we expecting much more content to be added before the update comes out of prerelease?

I would say no, what you see teased in the 1.21 pre-release news is the content that is slated for that update. Aside from bug fixes and particularly troublesome content being potentially pushed back to a later update, there shouldn't be any changes to what's planned for the release.

[Anon_Omis]

Thank you!

[Maelstrom]

On 6/27/2025 at 2:41 PM, Anon_Omis said:

Are we expecting much more content to be added before the update comes out of prerelease?

To springboard off of @LadyWYT comment.  Much of the 1.21 content was supposed to be in the 1.20 update, but had to be pushed to 1.21 because of an unexpectedly huge increase in sales (like 300% increase!) diverting development efforts to increasing performance for servers.  

[CastIronFabric]

The 'amount of content to be added' is a known factor.

I too would like to know roughly how long it might take given we know the amount of content.

Are we talking weeks or months?

Major mods like Expanded Foods, Tailoring Delight, Xskills appear to not be working. I would love to get an indicator as to if those mod creators are actively working on those mods or not at the moment.

[Thorfinn]

I'm surprised as many are updating as there are. I'd expect they are mostly all working on it, looking for issues, but I'm surprised more don't hold off on releases until stable drops. There are a whole lot that are already listed as compatible. Better Ruins and Tailor's Delight, to name two, have downloads specifically for 1.21.

It looks like 1.21 is deprecating quite a bit of stuff, so there was a scramble over the last couple weeks to get things switched over. At least that appears to be the reason so many mod authors released new versions over that time.

[CastIronFabric]

23 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

I'm surprised as many are updating as there are. I'd expect they are mostly all working on it, looking for issues, but I'm surprised more don't hold off on releases until stable drops. There are a whole lot that are already listed as compatible. Better Ruins and Tailor's Delight, to name two, have downloads specifically for 1.21.

It looks like 1.21 is deprecating quite a bit of stuff, so there was a scramble over the last couple weeks to get things switched over. At least that appears to be the reason so many mod authors released new versions over that time.

one thing they could do that would be super easy is to link the most active branch on GitHub and people could directly look at the date last modified for their code. (we are talking the modders here).

I did exactly that but I doubt I was on the most active branch because the dates I saw where from several years ago despite the mod page saying more like Feb this year.

 

Edited July 4, 2025 by CastIronFabric

[Thorfinn]

2 hours ago, CastIronFabric said:

I did exactly that but I doubt I was on the most active branch because the dates I saw where from several years ago despite the mod page saying more like Feb this year.

I have not actually looked to see what changed in the API. And I have not tried any mods yet. So it's possible that all you have to do to get 1.21 to not complain is tell modinfo.json that it's compatible with 1.21. Which may not be worth doing on git. 

[EDIT]

I actually did try one mod -- my own server mod, so I could get cracking on it if I needed to. That worked fine.

Edited July 4, 2025 by Thorfinn

[CastIronFabric]

23 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

I have not actually looked to see what changed in the API. And I have not tried any mods yet. So it's possible that all you have to do to get 1.21 to not complain is tell modinfo.json that it's compatible with 1.21. Which may not be worth doing on git. 

[EDIT]

I actually did try one mod -- my own server mod, so I could get cracking on it if I needed to. That worked fine.

I have 1.21 on a separate file set up with mods and the following major mods are not working

Expanded Foods (or its dependencies)

Tailor's Delight

Xskills

I have zero idea if any of those mods are currently being worked on for the update

Edited July 5, 2025 by CastIronFabric

[Thorfinn]

You should post a comment to the Tailor's Delight mod page. Tels has released a version for the prerelease and thinks it's working.

Wouldn't surprise me if the oven refactoring that is messing up vanilla pie making is causing problems with EF, but I really think that should be broken up into sub-modules. It's just too much code to try to maintain all in one chunk. One problem brings the whole thing down.

Edited July 5, 2025 by Thorfinn