v1.21.0-rc.7 - Story Chapter 2 Redux

[Tyron]

Dear Extraordinary Survivalists
v1.21.0-rc.7, an unstable release, can now be downloaded through the account manager.

The 7th time's definitely the charm!

Screenshot by Superfreak, shared on #screenshots on Discord
 

Game updates

• Tweak: Underwater life tweaks
  • Sea plants now emit air bubble particles
  • The fish particles swim with a little wiggle now, and their colors are tweaked
  • Reduced underwater murkiness and darkness levels. Reefs should be more visible now
  • Fixed coral and reef block break speeds were too fast. Coral structures and ledges did not have a mining tier. Reef decor would drop when host block was broken (not intended)
  • Fixed all types of reef spawned everywhere (intended to be limited to certain temperatures)
  • Fixed distance fade out terrain that's behind water not correctly blending
• Tweak: Add ability to disable desert storm effects per world via /worldconfigcreate bool suppressDesertStorm true
• Fixed: Wearing some accessories could affect the textures of others
• Fixed: Occasional unknown blocks in ruins, where a meteor impacted nearby
• Fixed: Ladder could be left floating mid-air in some circumstances
• Fixed: Eye and neck clipping in elk model
• Fixed: Elk jumping animation sometimes looping endlessly
• Fixed: Pie left in water would periodically create particles
• Fixed: Traders now say their name as intended during an introduction dialogue segment
• Fixed: Wall carvings could sometimes load rotten
• Fixed: Able to mount elevator and other entities through walls, in other dimensions
• Fixed: Wrong damage timing when villagers are fighting drifters and other hostiles
• Fixed: When picking up empty anvil mold it would give you an incorrect error message
• Fixed: Traps with an animal caught inside would drop the components when broken along with the trap holding the animal
• Fixed: When opening the world map tabs, would appear active and the prospecting dropdown would show "Everything" even if these had been previously turned off
• Fixed: Camera inside player head when in 3rd-person mode and against walls
• Fixed: Player model showed mirror image in character GUI
• Fixed: Incorrect GUI transform for Grub creature item
• Fixed: Ground stored items could sometimes load their storage properties in a way that would make certain items invisible or cause other strange issues
• Fixed: Rare crash with insect particles and rooms check
• Fixed: Prevent rare crash from out of sync ground storage when spawning particles
• Fixed: In Multiplayer server GUI, accept as valid the IPv6 version of the localhost URI. Github #6670
• Fixed: Timeswitch client channel startup error logged in Creative flat world or other lore-free worlds
• Fixed: The chat link not opening the WorldEdit folder on Unix systems
• API Tweak: Wooden path recipe now uses explicit allowedvariants, for easier modding.
• API Tweak: Added GetTags() methods to Block and Item classes
• API Tweak: Made all internal Camera fields public
• API Fixed: Recipes with multiple `{variant}` constructions in ingredients not working
• 1.21 related changes
  • Tweak: Base cooking pot texture no longer uses overlay shading
  • Tweak: With Dynamic Color Grading enabled, contrast and sepia levels in settings change dynamically
  • Fixed: Windmills not working in -rc.5 and -rc.6
  • Fixed: New wavy ocean sand was not pannable
  • Fixed: Water in buckets and barrels had waves
  • Fixed: Adult hares could reproduce without females
  • Fixed: Saddle attachment point slot is consistent for semi-tamed and tamed elk. Github #6599
  • Fixed: Residue-covered pot still used placeholder overlay texture
  • Fixed: Bad UV on elk-attached cooking pot
  • Fixed: Timeswitch icon background now adjusts to GUI scale
  • Fixed: Rare crash related to an empty meal container in the player inventory
  • Fixed: Pig models did not have 'eat' animation
  • Fixed: 'In Memoriam' short story discovery now properly localized.

 

View full record

[Ginnunga]

23 minutes ago, Tyron said:

Fixed: Water in buckets and barrels had waves

Here I was hoping to capture the ocean, sad times

[Dorf]

Last bank holiday weekend until Christmas and still no stable  (I trust the process)

Edited August 21, 2025 by Dorf

[Guimoute]

Can I get please a confirmation on whether the changes to world gen settings will affect existing worlds (in new areas) or only the default values?

 

23 minutes ago, Dorf said:

Last bank holiday weekend until Christmas

In which country?

[StCatharines]

57 minutes ago, Tyron said:

• • Fixed distance fade out terrain that's behind water not correctly blending

That's huge!

59 minutes ago, Tyron said:

• Fixed: Windmills not working in -rc.5 and -rc.6

Oh, good. That was... bothersome. 

 

59 minutes ago, Tyron said:

• Fixed: New wavy ocean sand was not pannable

It was supposed to be?! Interesting. Are seashells perhaps in the drops, rarely?

[vkmyers]

I desperately want to know why the pie is in the water in the first place!

[EnbyKaiju]

While the suspense is unbearable, I deeply appreciate the work the VS team is putting in to make sure the next stable release is just that, stable. The level of transparency & communication with the players is fantastic and I love that, especially given how many other projects tend to leave players in the dark for weeks/months at a time.

I've been playing around in the unstable to get a feel for things and I have to say, this is going to be an incredible update. When this releases it might finally be time to start that forever world.

[TrainDoc]

2 hours ago, shin monk said:

Unhandled exception crash when trying to ride an elk on a multiplayer server.

I think a bug report with logs may be a better way to get this issue resolved.

[Voldemort]

Tyron have new competition 

 

[Bumber]

12 hours ago, Tyron said:

Fixed: Adult hares could reproduce without females

I've heard of breeding like rabbits, but this is ridiculous!

Edited August 22, 2025 by Bumber

[Narcosis]

12 hours ago, Guimoute said:

Can I get please a confirmation on whether the changes to world gen settings will affect existing worlds (in new areas) or only the default values?

Good question. Last RC update broke the worldgen, causing glitched terrain on the borders with previously generated chunks. It should be fixed by now, but there's no telling whether it truly works as intended or not; one of the reasons these versions shouldn't be used as a base to move from towards release with your generated worlds, as they often carry over all the bugs. Albeit there is an ability to re-generate terrain afterwards with the new worldgen commands, it often comes at a cost of losing your creations... or just does not work at all. Hence, it's best to wait for the release, RC's are only meant for testing and to showcase new features.

Edited August 22, 2025 by Narcosis

[KranKyKroK]

I love the fact that so much content is being added to the game that you can't even find a wiki page for "elevators". Or whatever the mountable entities besides elk are. I didn't even know there were villages.

[Vratislav]

Well, I just had a short panic attack, when after going from rc.6 to rc.7 in my 1.21 experimental world, some blocks went unmapped. Particularly all my storage vessels with freshly harvested crops for the first winter . 

Fortunately, reloading the game solved the problem. Also, god bless for windmill rotating again. Still, I cannot wait for the stable release to transfer my main world into 1.21!

 

[Maelstrom]

18 hours ago, Tyron said:

Fixed: Adult hares could reproduce without females

Welp.  The secrets of cloning are lost.

[LadyWYT]

4 hours ago, KranKyKroK said:

I love the fact that so much content is being added to the game that you can't even find a wiki page for "elevators". Or whatever the mountable entities besides elk are. I didn't even know there were villages.

Welcome to the forums! As far as I know, the wiki is managed by volunteers, and I'm not sure how much time they actually have to curate the content there. As for mountable entities besides elk, there are currently none in the base game; you would need to add them with mods.

There is a village as part of the chapter two storyline, and there are wiki pages on various parts of the lore and story, complete with basic walkthroughs(although these are likely outdated by now due to recent changes). Those pages are, however, a bit difficult to get to, but you can get there by following links to lore/story content. I will note there is also quite a lot locked behind spoiler text, which may be why the pages are also somewhat difficult to find.

Edit: In regards to elevators, there is only that currently exists in the game. You cannot build your own without mods.

Edited August 22, 2025 by LadyWYT

[LadyWYT]

8 hours ago, Adnyeus said:

Tyron have new competition 

Okay, but...where's the game? A trailer doesn't make a game.  If it actually releases, then it might be competition, but it's not like players have to only play one game either.

[Maelstrom]

That trailer looks like Hytale has competition.  If Simon manages to re-own the IP that is.

[Thorfinn]

1 minute ago, LadyWYT said:

Okay, but...where's the game? A trailer doesn't make a game.  If it actually releases, then it might be competition, but it's not like players have to only play one game either.

If only we knew of some instance of a game in development which did not release...

And, thank goodness. I was pretty sure I was going to be getting my VS card revoked, because I've spent a crapton of hours lately in No Man's Sky getting caught up on its updates. And I've got minor updates in Manor Lords and Ostriv to catch up on, plus a major on Going Medieval. And Lord knows how many others. I have a couple thousand games in my GOG library alone, and, way too many of them have not even had a single minute of playtime. I tried Rebel Galaxy the other day; I need to get a little better at it to even form an opinion, but so far it's kind of a naval broadside take on space games.

[LadyWYT]

Just now, Maelstrom said:

That trailer looks like Hytale has competition.  If Simon manages to re-own the IP that is.

Yeah that was pretty much my thoughts when I watched it. A mix of Hytale and Trailmakers(I think it was?). But it's still got to launch a playable product though, otherwise it's just a pretty trailer and nothing more.

[ThatMaxGuy]

18 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

Yeah that was pretty much my thoughts when I watched it. A mix of Hytale and Trailmakers(I think it was?). But it's still got to launch a playable product though, otherwise it's just a pretty trailer and nothing more.

It has my attention, let's see if it can get my interest too. They seem to have a devlog, so I'll give that a watch when I have time. 

[Echo Weaver]

9 hours ago, Adnyeus said:

Tyron have new competition 

27 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

Okay, but...where's the game? A trailer doesn't make a game.  If it actually releases, then it might be competition, but it's not like players have to only play one game either.

OK, yeah, that's a classy trailer. I'm going to go look up what there is to learn about Everwind. Interesting that it's popping up now.

Hytale had a classy trailer too. Vintage Story has a jump start with mature game engine that can be built upon toward fantasy adventure features, but I'd be shocked if they've dropped a line of code toward it yet. The original Hytale might come back from the dead.

It could be a bunch of projects stepping on each other's markets. It could be a golden age for voxel games. Sometimes having multiple games in a genre at the same time feeds all of them. It could also be a nothingburger where none of these games materialize. Considering how many fantasy adventure games exist in other formats, I'm not terribly worried that they'd all end up the same if they all make it to market.

[LadyWYT]

8 minutes ago, Echo Weaver said:

It could be a bunch of projects stepping on each other's markets. It could be a golden age for voxel games. Sometimes having multiple games in a genre at the same time feeds all of them. It could also be a nothingburger where none of these games materialize. Considering how many fantasy adventure games exist in other formats, I'm not terribly worried that they'd all end up the same if they all make it to market.

Pretty much, plus when they make it to market they need to be something more than mediocre in order to attract and maintain a decent playerbase. There are plenty of games out on the market(just in general, not strictly voxel-based), that are also rather mediocre. That doesn't make them bad games, but it usually means they don't really have enough meat to them to retain players for an extended time.

In regards to Everwind...it's hard to tell how good the game will actually be based on the trailer alone. It looks interesting, and based purely on what's shown there's some real potential there if they can get a working concept launched for people to play with. But there have also been many games that started off strong with a trailer, only to fizzle out in development--playable product or not. And I'm not referring to just Hytale in that regard. It's a tough business, but for every game that fails there's also one that succeeds.

[Maelstrom]

45 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

If only we knew of some instance of a game in development which did not release...

And, thank goodness. I was pretty sure I was going to be getting my VS card revoked, because I've spent a crapton of hours lately in No Man's Sky getting caught up on its updates. And I've got minor updates in Manor Lords and Ostriv to catch up on, plus a major on Going Medieval. And Lord knows how many others. I have a couple thousand games in my GOG library alone, and, way too many of them have not even had a single minute of playtime. I tried Rebel Galaxy the other day; I need to get a little better at it to even form an opinion, but so far it's kind of a naval broadside take on space games.

Then I'm definitely getting my VS card revoked.  Recently sank too much bedtime time into The Crust.   And only The Crust. 

Hopefully the itch to go back to VS will save me.

Edited August 22, 2025 by Maelstrom

[Moltrey]

20 hours ago, Dorf said:

Last bank holiday weekend until Christmas and still no stable  (I trust the process)

"Everybody knows the moon is made of cheese..." 

First one to get the reference earns a 

Edited August 22, 2025 by Moltrey

[Thorfinn]

I'm sure I'll head back when VS stable releases. Nothing significant that I could see changed in the early gameplay from early pre-releases, and I've seen the coral reef and most other new stuff. Bug fixes and cosmetic tweaks aside, I likely won't see much difference. And since I always start a new world with each pre-release, I have not had time to see chapter 2 stuff.

Re: Everwind, I'm not holding my breath. I'm not buying on Steam because of their strongarm policies, and Bohemia has a spotty track record of releasing on, well, anything other than Steam. They've promised cross-platform support, sure, but they promised that for things like "Take on Mars", too, then only released it for play on Steam. Only things like the original Arma ended up even remotely close to being offered cross-platform.

Edited August 22, 2025 by Thorfinn