v1.21.0-rc.4 - Story Chapter 2 Redux

[Tyron]

Dear Extraordinary Survivalists
v1.21.0-rc.4, a unstable release, can now be downloaded through the account manager.

Where did all these little bugs come from?

+ from this version onwards, when installing on Windows, our installation files should not be triggering Windows Defender / SmartScreen warnings


Screenshot by John Winter, shared in #screenshots on discord

Game updates

• Tweak: Improved mounted position of player riding elk, in 3rd-person view
• Tweak: Standard hairstyles are always available when purchasing a haircut
• Tweak: Slightly higher vertical down search range of flowers on beehives so players don't have to build a platform below beehives
• Tweak: Remove incorrect "must be nearby" statement in the Prospecting guide
• Tweak: When creating a new world, 'allow fires spread' and 'allow falling blocks' would show incorrectly in the hover info
• Tweak: Make a few additional weather commands available also in release mode
• Fixed: (1.21.0-rc.3 issue) Player clothing invisible
• Fixed: (1.21.0-rc.3 issue) Reef fish could teleport to 0,0,0 - potentially causing game crash [detail: also fixed rare ServerMapChunk deserialization error at map-edge position (0,0). Github #6512 and #6422]
• Fixed: The treasure hunter could spawn partially underground in worlds with higher world heights. Also fixed an issue where the floor was incorrectly replaced with grass
• Fixed: Chiseled grass block on story Treasure Hunter trader
• Fixed: Terrain height discontinuities (visible chunk borders) at the edges of mapregions, if loading existing 1.20 (or earlier) worlds in 1.21
• Fixed: Rare chunk border worldgen anomalies when loading worlds generated in 1.20, with multi-threaded worldgen enabled
• Fixed: Papyrus chest holding animal in inventory had wrong texture
• Fixed: Crash when editing sign text
• Fixed: Glass panes turned sideways would still count as walls for a room
• Fixed: Able to pick up or place down animals in claimed areas using basket
• Fixed: Misaligned cementation furnace damage box
• Fixed: Unable to store bow on elk while holding arrows
• Fixed: Slight (~100ms) delay before elk walks, after Forwards key pressed
• Fixed: After pit kiln is extinguished, no flames upon re-lighting
• Fixed: Standing on farmland counted the same as being in a room
• Fixed: Arrow keys would improperly move text cursor when text selected
• Fixed: Rare potential for infinite loop and server crash in fruit tree code
• Fixed: Crash or freeze when breaking Pulverizer top block, and related crashes
• Fixed: when working on an iron bloom it would freeze every other player in view distance
• Fixed: Changing Audio device or toggling the directional audio option would cause the reverb to no longer work until a game restart
• Fixed: Crocks and pots would not show the proper "Rotten Food" string when storing rotted meals
• Fixed: Sealed crock recipe shows up twice in handbook
• Fixed: Missing "of" in name of crocks with meals inside
• Fixed: Meals in village were not properly displaying the meal name
• Fixed: Ingot molds in the village would load incorrectly
• Fixed: Modded tool molds would sometimes reuse the same mesh or not allow pouring
• Fixed: Incorrect information information in description about what trough can hold
• Fixed: Trough would sometimes show incorrect language string for animal names
• Fixed: Empty berry bushes could be used as bait in traps
• Fixed: Barracuda fins going wild during flopping animation
• Fixed: Cooking pot had differing textures on some sides.  All hollow ceramic models revised to present 'full' sides, to avoid this.
• Fixed: Albino elk did not have proper eyes
• Fixed: Pit kiln did not accept aged firewood
• Fixed: Lore books had wrong bookshelf transform
• Fixed: Handbook would not properly group fish in animal names
• Fixed: Updated handbook guide for animal husbandry to have better, more accurate information
• Fixed: Some broken links in handbook
• Fixed: Crash when opening a handbook without pressing a key
• Fixed: Missing localization for boat construction
• API Tweak: Residue-covered pot now references same shapes are regular pot

View full record

[LadyWYT]

18 minutes ago, Tyron said:

Fixed: Able to pick up or place down animals in claimed areas using basket

Oh good, the Nadiyans won't be wondering where all their chickens went anymore! 

[Gryffinuss]

Thanks for the bug fixes! Hopefully we will get a stable release soon! 

[Foe Hammer]

1 hour ago, Tyron said:

Fixed: (1.21.0-rc.3 issue) Reef fish could teleport to 0,0,0...

 

This is probably my favorite patch note, they took away teleport powers from the fish lol.

/Fish role subplayer

[hstone32]

Fingers crossed for stable soon. I want to update to 1.21 before finishing chapter 1 on my play through. Should probably see about helping with bugs, but I've always had a hard time with C#/.net. 

[Krougal]

Sure, sure, release another RC just to ruin my prediction!

All joking aside, great stuff. Release as many RC as you need to.

So,

"Fixed: Glass panes turned sideways would still count as walls for a room stuff"

Does that include ceilings as well or strictly walls?

Speaking of pit kilns, I am still seeing 20 hours for peat, although it has been intermittent. Also Dana updated extra info for RC last night, so I doubt it is his mod.

42 minutes ago, hstone32 said:

Fingers crossed for stable soon. I want to update to 1.21 before finishing chapter 1 on my play through. Should probably see about helping with bugs, but I've always had a hard time with C#/.net. 

RC3 has been pretty stable. This one is probably pretty safe to play, unless it introduces a bunch of new bugs.

99 little bugs in the code, 99 little bugs.

Take one down, patch it around.

100 little bugs in the code...

[DEV24]

do fish still run away from the player even when not in the water? its a little weird walking up to the water and seeing every fish swim away from you. 

[Chrondeath]

11 hours ago, Tyron said:

• Fixed: Rare potential for infinite loop and server crash in fruit tree code

Oh, that sounds like an entertaining kind of bug, code-wise.

[Maelstrom]

7 hours ago, Chrondeath said:

Oh, that sounds like an entertaining kind of bug, code-wise.

logic errors are the worst!

[Dorf]

I'm gonna crash out.

[TrainDoc]

Excited to see that chunk border issues are being resolved. As my experience is only with Minecraft I was worried I was going to need to world edit my home and farm into a new world generated on 1.21. Glad to hear that will not need to be the case.

[turret001]

after all these years, I can't believe I'm once again using forums and following a game's update notes. kudos

[Voldemort]

On 8/11/2025 at 8:53 PM, Foe Hammer said:

This is probably my favorite patch note, they took away teleport powers from the fish lol.

/Fish role subplayer

And we sacrificed content updates for these bug fixes

[hstone32]

3 hours ago, turret001 said:

after all these years, I can't believe I'm once again using forums and following a game's update notes. kudos

Whaaaaaat? You don't like condecending, overproduced tik toks as a medium for community engagement?

[Voldemort]

3 hours ago, turret001 said:

after all these years, I can't believe I'm once again using forums and following a game's update notes. kudos

I'm giving it 4 more months, and then I'll make a YouTube video about bugs that have been reported multiple times and never fixed for years.

Like fire that leaves levitating leaves in the air, which makes fire useless in the future, unless you enjoy levitating blocks stretching hundreds of blocks across the map.
Or Immersive First Person Mode gives you X-ray vision when you chisel a small space and sit in it

[alberto_ascani]

Folks, not to be repetitive but I have generated about 100 worlds in this version and to me the world generation seems quite worse, much less natural and with biomes and materials distributed much worse. Yours feedback???

[Facethief]

7 hours ago, alberto_ascani said:

Folks, not to be repetitive but I have generated about 100 worlds in this version and to me the world generation seems quite worse, much less natural and with biomes and materials distributed much worse. Yours feedback???

Give the devs some time. It takes a lot of tweaking to get worldgen to look right, and that takes a while.

[Krougal]

18 minutes ago, Facethief said:

Give the devs some time. It takes a lot of tweaking to get worldgen to look right, and that takes a while.

This.

7 hours ago, alberto_ascani said:

Folks, not to be repetitive but I have generated about 100 worlds in this version and to me the world generation seems quite worse, much less natural and with biomes and materials distributed much worse. Yours feedback???

If you kept any kind of notes, maybe time to start a thread and/or send the feedback to the devs.

Being there are so many combinations of settings and seeds, this is really time-consuming work that requires a small tweak and then another large round of testing. It's also still very subjective what makes a good world or not, so we really need to give the devs more sets of eyes to get better results.

[LadyWYT]

16 minutes ago, Krougal said:

It's also still very subjective what makes a good world or not

I think even with "perfect" world gen...what makes a world good or bad is still going to be subjective. Players who want ocean worlds aren't going to like land-based worlds, and player who prefer land-based worlds aren't going to enjoy encountering more water than land. It's a good idea to play around with the world gen settings and figure out the configuration that best fits your preferred playstyle, as the default settings may or may not be exactly what you're looking for.

To me, the new default world gen seems pretty solid, from what I've seen of it so far. The terrain is overall smoother and easier to traverse, with more grassland and fewer puddles littering the landscape. 

[Krougal]

3 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

To me, the new default world gen seems pretty solid, from what I've seen of it so far. The terrain is overall smoother and easier to traverse, with more grassland and fewer puddles littering the landscape. 

Yeah, that was my observation as well.

I feel like I truly hit the lottery this time though, so consequently I haven't generated a lot of worlds.

1.20 I went through so many worldgens I was unhappy with, it really soured me on the game for a while.

[alberto_ascani]

46 minutes ago, Krougal said:

Questo.

Se hai preso appunti, forse è il momento di aprire una discussione e/o inviare il feedback agli sviluppatori.

Considerando le così tante combinazioni di impostazioni e seed, si tratta di un lavoro che richiede molto tempo, piccole modifiche e un altro ampio ciclo di test. Inoltre, stabilire cosa rende un mondo bello o brutto è ancora molto soggettivo, quindi abbiamo davvero bisogno di più occhi da parte degli sviluppatori per ottenere risultati migliori.

Maybe you're right, I didn't take notes, but perhaps I should, but I'd also like to know exactly what data is needed. Also, mind you, I'm not talking about "subjective" taste, or rather, it always is. I'm talking about how biomes are generated and how they integrate with each other, how waterways develop, and how mountain tops are generated. Furthermore, I've also done dozens of tests by changing the world generation parameters, but obviously this can cause problems, and I'm aware of that. Generally speaking, I've noticed that worlds with the default settings are much less pleasant and natural than those tested in previous versions.
I repeat, I am available to collect data or information but I would need to know what needs to be collected!

[alberto_ascani]

1 hour ago, Facethief said:

Give the devs some time. It takes a lot of tweaking to get worldgen to look right, and that takes a while.

Of course, the game is always delightful and I would be sorry if it were penalised by a bad generation of the world

[Krougal]

12 minutes ago, alberto_ascani said:

Maybe you're right, I didn't take notes, but perhaps I should, but I'd also like to know exactly what data is needed. Also, mind you, I'm not talking about "subjective" taste, or rather, it always is. I'm talking about how biomes are generated and how they integrate with each other, how waterways develop, and how mountain tops are generated. Furthermore, I've also done dozens of tests by changing the world generation parameters, but obviously this can cause problems, and I'm aware of that. Generally speaking, I've noticed that worlds with the default settings are much less pleasant and natural than those tested in previous versions.
I repeat, I am available to collect data or information but I would need to know what needs to be collected!

Well, even things like unnatural floating islands. Some people love them. I think anyone looking for a realistic looking world hates them. So there isn't an absolute better.

I don't know what would help the devs, but noticing patterns maybe. It depends what/how you are doing it I guess.

So like you've generated a lot of worlds, are they all with the same settings or not? What is different between them and what is consistent.

Generating with the same seed and different settings repeatedly is going to give different data than a random seed with the same settings.

A lot of it is still going to be just anecdotal.

Anyway, just spit-balling ideas here.

 

[alberto_ascani]

Yes, I agree, but you need to adopt parameters to define it. I think it basically depends on what players are looking for and, above all, how the game is structured. Flying islands are a problem, and that doesn't mean they can't be fun, but they should be a setting that can be activated, like "do you want more forests." It's important for me that this difference is clear, also to gather feedback. In any case, I've generated about 60 new worlds with the same settings and different seeds, and 40 with the same seed and different settings.
In any case, I'll look into what data is useful for defining generation and perhaps provide it in a post.
Yhx for your time

[Akari_Enderwolf]

On 8/11/2025 at 2:58 PM, hstone32 said:

Fingers crossed for stable soon. I want to update to 1.21 before finishing chapter 1 on my play through. Should probably see about helping with bugs, but I've always had a hard time with C#/.net. 

Chapter 1 is probably the shortest one to my knowledge, longest part of it is just finding a Treasure Hunter since CH1 is just one dungeon.