1.22.0-rc.8 - Fishing, Mechanisms, Metalworking and More!

[Tyron]

Dear Extraordinary Survivalists
v1.22.0-rc.8, an unstable release, can now be downloaded through the account manager.

The road to stable continues... full release soon™
 

Screenshot by Sirayne, shared in #screenshots on Discord

 

Game updates

• Feature: Added a backup partial command, /db backuppartial 16000 16000 16005 16005 to extract all game and player data but only some chunks. Usefull to extract a broken area for debugging.
• Tweak: The Theater and Deep Noble clothing set now has a rare chance to drop in ruins loot
• Tweak: Turned the worldmap waypoint backdrop from an outline into a shadow, which looks better on some icons
• Tweak: Rusted gates and doors now all drop metal scrap (some used to drop themselves).
• Tweak: Added a handbook guide for fishing, which more thoroughly describes how to find fish, and why you might not be catching fish. Also added links in worm handbook entries, to the worm grunting stick.
• Tweak: Raccoons can now fight back
• Tweak: Less janky wormgrunting. Fix durability desync, fix audio not stopping, grunting now ends after 5 seconds
• Tweak: Fine tuned grunting sound and animation. Can now also worm grunt on farmland (but the farmlands fertilty will not influence yield)
• Tweak: Foxes now move about 1/3 faster.
• Tweak: Pigs' movement speed and seeking ranges increased.
• Tweak: Performance: Items on the ground, not close to a player, enter a slow-updating state after 5 seconds
• Tweak: Performance: Further minor improvement for farmland ticking
• Tweak: Performance: Improve multiplayer server tick times around farmland and berry bushes
• Tweak: Generate gravel in some areas where it would generate no block layers and only have exposed rock (Worldgen change) 
• Tweak: More glow and particles on the forge when being bellowed
• Tweak: Added selected block class to hud debug screen
• Tweak: Berry bush handbook text updated to reflect recent changes regarding soil fertility mechanics.
• Tweak: Command /genbackup backup.vcdbs will now delete the prior backup file before a backup is started to ensure a proper backup is made
• Tweak: /wgen regen now also reloads blocklayers.json
• Tweak: Added contaminated coal item model and tweaked texture
• Tweak: SFX & GFX fine tuning
  • Tweak: Rainfall particles buff: +5% opacity, +20% rain particles, +300% raindrop splash particles, +30% rain particle size
  • Fixed: Dead shivers no longer keep mouth idle animation running
  • Tweak: Replaced placeholder fishing rod swish
  • Tweaked hats to show more hair.
  • Fixed small issues on Theater hats
  • Fixed: Some hoods were hiding hats
• Fixed: All pigs would only be protective around gray boar piglets, even if not that species. Pigs also would only attack if in aggressiveondamage emotion state, resulting in charging the player and then running away. They now will attack whenever in close range.
• Fixed: Replaced many big lanterns with the new small ones in generated structures
• Fixed: Replaced old berry bushes in story locations
• Fixed: Placing snow shovel on ground locks movement speed to 60%
• Fixed: Worldmap: Only the first 36 waypoint icons were displaying the correct icon
• Fixed: Spawning of animals during world generation would use the wrong temperature
• Fixed: Imposter bellows cacti. Caused cacti to generate on water and not stack
• Fixed: Texture overlays didn't work for attached items
• Fixed: Aged and very aged cabinets were not available in creative inventory
• Fixed: Sheep logging errors with regard to a 'look' animation they did not have
• Fixed: Rawhide mantle related errors in the loot randomizer
• Fixed: Fishing pole tool rack transform position was excessively high
• Fixed: Wanderer belt and sturdy backpack would cause texture problems when worn together
• Fixed: Small bellows leather textures had some mis-match near the nozzle.
• Fixed: Unable to catch juvenile fish due to fishing pole not recognizing bait
• Fixed: Berry bush cuttings would say "trait-" when they had no traits
• Fixed: Help command logged an error when asked about wgen structures spawn
• Fixed: Chiseled block combine in the crafting grid at the entire stack of chiseled blocks
• Fixed: Should fix rare lockup of chunkdbthread when attempting to suspend server for autosave [details: de-link thread paused state from worldgen threads paused state]
• Fixed: Prevent NRE in /debug chunk here command when chunk is not loaded
• Fixed: Farmland not updating moisture levels on the interim days while fast-forwarding when chunk-loading
• Fixed: Server crashing for unhandled exceptions
• Fixed: Should fix kicked from server when interacting with the fishinpole in some way
• Fixed: Should fix geting kicked when using /group kick command
• Fixed: Error log when many players connect and once and some get disconnected during that very early
• Fixed: Should fix getting kicked when interacting with liquids
• Fixed: Should fix server side error log with berry bush
• Fixed: Mitigate game calendar client<=>server desync issue by sending more calendar syncs to clients. Should reduce oddities with time sensitive actions, such as hot ingots on a forge
• Fixed: Should fix wildly jumping forge contents at random
• Fixed: Multiple issues with the fishing bobber and fishing line. Ghost bobbers should no longer be a thing. Ghost rope should no longer happen. The fishing line will now rip if too far away from the bobber.
• Fixed: Entity box searching with e[] selector not working since rc7
• Fixed: Should fix rare crash when loading in mehcanical power networks
• Fixed: Cloudberry hitbox too large
• Fixed: Fundamental breakage with the entity spawner
• Fixed: Properly remove players from the map tracking system even when their game crashes
• Fixed: Sheep would use the wrong name when being listed in troughs
• API Tweak: Prevent exceptions in Mod events in Server/ClientEventAPI Server/ClientEventManger canceling any further event processing
• API Tweak: The looked at block class is now displayed on the hud debug screen
• API Tweak: Can now run "/wgen region animal" to export animal spawn maps of the current region. Also prints out current animal=>map association to the log file.
• API Fixed: Some mechanical power blocks not having the right texture

 

View full record

[EnbyKaiju]

27 minutes ago, Tyron said:

Tweak: Raccoons can now fight back

This may be one of my favourite patch notes ever.

These all feel like little fixes that add up to a nearly-finished update, I'm very much believing the "soon™" in the update ETA.

Keep up the amazing work, devs! Y'all are amazing, and I hope you know how much we appreciate the attention to detail you're putting in.

[RobSolo]

Thank you - really enjoying 1.22 so far. Some great updates to this patch

[MKMoose]

2 hours ago, Tyron said:

• Tweak: Raccoons can now fight back
• Tweak: Foxes now move about 1/3 faster.
• Tweak: Pigs' movement speed and seeking ranges increased.

Them's got hands now, but for what? Except messing with a beginner who doesn't know that they can fight back, raccoons are equally as trivial to kill as they used to be, if not easier since they may come back right up to the player after the first hit instead of running away. Unlike foxes which have now been buffed considerably (though while seeking they are still slower than the player's sprint, just like black bears), raccoons aren't even a significant threat mainly because they are barely faster than the Seraph's walking speed (well, technically, they are about as fast as foxes used to be).

I would expect wildlife to be much more skittish and defensive, not more aggressive. Granted, at least the animals affected in this RC are now ever so slightly less anemic when fleeing as well, not just when seeking.

Edited Saturday at 11:02 AM by MKMoose

[Lielac]

2 hours ago, Tyron said:

Fixed: Dead shivers no longer keep mouth idle animation running

Man, I didn't even think this could be a bug, it was just like. Creepy-cool.

[Rattenkonig]

3 hours ago, MKMoose said:

Them's got hands now, but for what? Except messing with a beginner who doesn't know that they can fight back, raccoons are equally as trivial to kill as they used to be, if not easier since they may come back right up to the player after the first hit instead of running away. Unlike foxes which have now been buffed considerably (though while seeking they are still slower than the player's sprint, just like black bears), raccoons aren't even a significant threat mainly because they are barely faster than the Seraph's walking speed (well, technically, they are about as fast as foxes used to be).

I would expect wildlife to be much more skittish and defensive, not more aggressive. Granted, at least the animals affected in this RC are now ever so slightly less anemic when fleeing as well, not just when seeking.

I think it's a perfectly fine change. And raccoons irl are def aggressive.

[SeaWarriorSon]

Issues getting dealt with quickly, appreciate you guys as ever

[LadyWYT]

5 hours ago, Tyron said:

Tweak: Raccoons can now fight back

YES! I dunno why, but this might be one of my favorite little changes. I was wondering the other day why they can't fight the player--they're rather vicious little beasts in real life.

 

5 hours ago, Tyron said:

Fixed: Should fix wildly jumping forge contents at random

As funny as it was to see forge contents blast off into space, I'm glad this has been fixed too. 

[LadyWYT]

4 hours ago, MKMoose said:

Them's got hands now, but for what? Except messing with a beginner who doesn't know that they can fight back, raccoons are equally as trivial to kill as they used to be, if not easier since they may come back right up to the player after the first hit instead of running away.

They might still be trivial to kill, sure, but in the case of new players it's probably better for them to learn via raccoon that wildlife fights back, than to learn from a boar or sheep. Plus raccoons might be small and not able to really case much damage from a balance standpoint, but even small creatures that are significantly outclassed will fight for their lives if they don't feel they can escape.

I also think this kind of scenario will be more dangerous with a status effect system. It's all fun and games until the raccoon gives you rabies or something.

[MKMoose]

31 minutes ago, Rattenkonig said:

And raccoons irl are def aggressive.

If you want to bring up realism, then I regret to inform you that raccoons are, in fact, not aggressive. Their typical response is a defensive threat display, with bluffing, hissing, fur standing up, and all that. Neglecting diseased or highly stressed individuals, any sort of aggression is generally limited to last-resort attacks when protecting young or cornered. When attacked, flight is generally the first response, then defensive combat if grabbed or cornered.

Compared to animals' real-life behavior, the thing that VS and many other games tend to default to of "pursue the attacker" is borderline absurd for almost all animals, but especially for small ones like raccoons, just because it would be a largely pathological survival strategy. It can make some sense for megafauna and large predators, but even in those cases defensive behaviors tend to be more common than aggression and pursuit.

 

3 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

[...] even small creatures that are significantly outclassed will fight for their lives if they don't feel they can escape.

In an open field or forest, they have all the escape routes in the world. They can run some 20 km/h over short distances and climb trees.

But even disregarding that, my point is about aggression and pursuing the player, which they simply should not do. Raccoons being capable of protecting themselves and being aggressive when attacked are two entirely different things.

[LadyWYT]

1 minute ago, MKMoose said:

In an open field or forest, they have all the escape routes in the world. They can run some 20 km/h over short distances and climb trees.

But even disregarding that, my point is about aggression and pursuing the player, which they simply should not do. Raccoons being capable of protecting themselves and being aggressive when attacked are two entirely different things.

This is true, and I do agree they shouldn't be the ones to start the fight or otherwise continue fighting if they have a chance to flee. They should fight defensively. However, in the case of the open field/obvious escape route, I do think it's fair to get a couple of hits in on a threat that is right there breathing down their necks. In that case, the idea is that the raccoon is attacking to get the predator to back off just enough so they can make a run for safety.

 

5 minutes ago, MKMoose said:

Compared to animals' real-life behavior, the thing that VS and many other games tend to default to of "pursue the attacker" is borderline absurd for almost all animals, but especially for small ones like raccoons, just because it would be a largely pathological survival strategy. It can make some sense for megafauna and large predators, but even in those cases defensive behaviors tend to be more common than aggression and pursuit.

In real life, most animals tend to use combat as a last resort, especially predator animals, since for them an injury can easily mean their death. Aggressive displays and bluffs tend to be more useful, since the animals can use those to get an idea of how much trouble a target is going to be and judge accordingly. That's a bit hard to translate to a videogame though, especially since the player certainly isn't going to be behaving in a realistic fashion in many cases, and the wildlife isn't going to be a threat if it always backs off when it has the chance.

At any rate, this kind of discussion is better suited for another thread.  The most I'll say is that I'd like to see some more realistic creature behavior, but I also don't expect 100% realism.

[Danial Jones]

6 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

In real life, most animals tend to use combat as a last resort, especially predator animals, since for them an injury can easily mean their death. Aggressive displays and bluffs tend to be more useful, since the animals can use those to get an idea of how much trouble a target is going to be and judge accordingly. That's a bit hard to translate to a videogame though, especially since the player certainly isn't going to be behaving in a realistic fashion in many cases, and the wildlife isn't going to be a threat if it always backs off when it has the chance.

At any rate, this kind of discussion is better suited for another thread.  The most I'll say is that I'd like to see some more realistic creature behavior, but I also don't expect 100% realism.

I would absolutely LOVE realistic to be one of the options for animal behavior. I dislike aggressive because it is SO out of character for the wildlife but the passive takes it a bit too far in that direction. It's better, but, I noticed the bees don't attack if you break the skeps in passive. And the wildlife allow you to get way too close to them, even with youngling. But, that's getting nitpicky and I know it. I greatly appreciate the Dev team and all your hard work. You guys and gals are amazing.

[Figatoni]

7 hours ago, Tyron said:

Fixed: Fundamental breakage with the entity spawner (needs full spawn rebalancing now :/)

Oh? Would love to know what this was affecting in particular. 

[KahvozeinsFang]

3 hours ago, Rattenkonig said:

I think it's a perfectly fine change. And raccoons irl are def aggressive.

Typically they are shy and avoid people. But if they are attacked or cornered, they can and will become aggressive. 

 

Unprovoked attacks on people are extremely rare and usually only happens if they have been infected with rabies. So as long as we don't get attacked just walking by, then yes it's a perfectly good change. 

 

But making deer attack the player just for walking by is a crazy change. Its already happened to me in game. 

 

In real life, when I was about 13 years old, I accidentally walked up on an actual full grown Buck with massive antlers. It scared the crap out of me, but he didn't attack me. It stood there for like three seconds looking at me and then ran off. He was about 10 feet away from me for those few seconds.

 

I literally live in the Sequoia National Forest in California. We have mountain lions and bears running around. And I think I've heard of one attack in 25 years. Most wildlife would prefer to avoid rather than attack.

Edited Saturday at 04:36 PM by KahvozeinsFang

[Emma Malha]

7 hours ago, Tyron said:

Tweak: Added a handbook guide for fishing, which more thoroughly describes how to find fish, and why you might not be catching fish. Also added links in worm handbook entries, to the worm grunting stick.

 

Does not seem to be ingame - Can't find via search in the handbook, and the link on the fishing rod page links to the rock strata guide page.

[iriscal]

9 hours ago, Tyron said:

• Tweak: Raccoons can now fight back

 

Edited Saturday at 05:44 PM by iriscal

[MKMoose]

22 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

However, in the case of the open field/obvious escape route, I do think it's fair to get a couple of hits in on a threat that is right there breathing down their necks. In that case, the idea is that the raccoon is attacking to get the predator to back off just enough so they can make a run for safety.

The problem is that if the player backs off, the raccoon will keep chasing them. That is the single part which I took issue with, even if I didn't initially word it particularly well.

 

22 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

At any rate, this kind of discussion is better suited for another thread.  The most I'll say is that I'd like to see some more realistic creature behavior, but I also don't expect 100% realism.

There you go. Behavioral responses for animals, inspired by real wildlife. Nothing like getting hit by a bit of inspiration on a weekend. 

Edited yesterday at 12:34 PM by MKMoose

[Nick Salt]

3 hours ago, Emma Malha said:

Does not seem to be ingame - Can't find via search in the handbook, and the link on the fishing rod page links to the rock strata guide page.

Yeah I couldnt find the fishing section in the handbook either?

[cjameshuff]

A few ergonomic issues with the cooking pots:

• I constantly find myself trying to add ingredients when the pot is in the output, leading to me unintentionally merging pre-prepared stacks or just uselessly moving them between the inventory and the hotbar. It'd be really nice if the pot automatically moved to the input side when emptied. If you're going to use the pot again, you're just going to do that anyway, and if you're going to remove it, that's just as easy to do from either location.
• I've repeatedly found myself burning candles and rendered fat as fuel when trying to shift-click them back into my inventory, as the fuel slot takes precedence. I can't think of any time when you'd actually want to move a finished product you just finished cooking to the fuel input. It'd be nice if shift-clicking moved things to my inventory instead.

[Tyron]

16 hours ago, Figatoni said:

Oh? Would love to know what this was affecting in particular. 

ops. That extra note there is no longer relevant. But in essence it seems to have prevented runtime respawns of animals in higher elevations

[Compressed12Times]

>make raccoons fight back
>someone gets angry 
lmfao

[Sinda]

Suddenly all animals in game got hard case of rabies

[LadyWYT]

20 hours ago, MKMoose said:

The problem is that if the player backs off, the raccoon will keep chasing them. That is the single part which I took issue with, even if I didn't initially word it particularly well.

I do want to note that in my experience so far, they try to avoid the player by default and don't seem to attack even if you're practically stepping on their tails. That being said, if you slap one and the hit isn't enough to kill it instantly, the raccoon absolutely will turn around and throw hands. It's a tossup on whether the raccoon decides to run away after that, or chase the player. To be fair, I've only slapped two raccoons so far, and it was 50/50 on whether or not they'd chase or run after the initial attack.

[MKMoose]

4 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

I do want to note that in my experience so far, they try to avoid the player by default and don't seem to attack even if you're practically stepping on their tails.

I'm aware, I read through most of the gameplay changes in JSON and code. They have a 70% chance to become aggressive after taking damage from the player. The possible causes for them to cease aggression and go back to fleeing are as follows:

• the player getting out of their seeking range (equal to bears' seeking range),
• finding the target (i.e. touching the player, I think, but it doesn't seem to normally get triggered if the player is moving away from the raccoon),
• getting stopped by an obstacle,
• the maximum follow time of 60 s being exceeded (I'd need to verify this, actually, cause it's a really long time to be chased by an animal).

Heatseeking missiles are one of the most comedically dumb mechanics in the game, and it seems to me that they are not really brought up too often just because they're sometimes just amusing and annoying more than they are harmful. They're simply caused by aggressive animals lacking proper limits to how long they can chase the target.

What I honestly don't get is that, if the cheer is simply about raccoons not being defenseless anymore, then how do we feel about them being randomly borderline suicidal now? I don't think that's much of an improvement. What I personally am quite happy about, which was not mentioned in the changelog, is that the distance at which raccoons flee players, wolves and bears is now 33% higher. This still isn't always enough to avoid bears (and I think it's bears that should be slightly adjusted now to be more similar to wolves), but it's an improvement.

And here's the fun part: the devs have quite literally solved the "capable of protecting themselves" problem with the bowtorn already, which will flee, but retaliate if the player gets too close. It shouldn't be difficult to do the same for raccoons, and several other animals as well. An even simpler solution, though possibly a bit less practical, probably lies in just reducing the maximum follow time (which for some reason isn't adjusted from the default 60 s on any animals except foxes chasing chickens and hares).

 

On 4/11/2026 at 10:38 AM, Tyron said:

• Tweak: Foxes now move about 1/3 faster.
• Tweak: Pigs' movement speed and seeking ranges increased.

The changes to foxes and pigs, as a side note, are arguably actually really quite good, now that I've looked at them in more detail. The seeking range for pigs actually got reduced, and what was increased is just the range at which they flee the player after being hit, if I'm reading it correctly. Both now also flee quite a lot faster, not just chase the player faster, which might actually cause some difficulties when hunting.

[coolAlias]

My biggest hunting annoyance is all the brush etc. making it very difficult to keep track of a fleeing animal. It's also really hard to see animals that are laying down.

A simple fix for the first would be to reduce the movement speed of injured animals. A status effect system would be great but isn't necessary for my proposal at all - the code could be as simple as "movementSpeed = movementSpeed  * (currentHealth / maxHealth)", probably with some lower threshold so they can always move at at least e.g. 50% speed.