Torches. Bind resin-soaked linen round a stick (2 wood, 1 pine resin, by hand) and carry it in your hand: it lights
the dark around you for about nine minutes, and a blow with it sets creatures alight. A burned-out torch can be rekindled
at a workbench (repair) or simply made again. Nights are also a little less black than before.
Health bars over creatures. A small bar shows over every creature in a fight (with its level when it is above 1) and
stays a few seconds after you hit it; bosses and elites keep the big bar at the top. Settings > Gameplay > Creature health
bars turns them off.
Co-op chat, properly. Chat has its own corner over the bottom left: the last lines stay a while and fade, all of them
show while you type, and what a hero says also shows over their head. On a controller, hold D-Up for quick chat: pick
a line (“Over here!”, “Help!”, “Follow me.” …) and it is said. A tap of D-Up still drinks a draught.
Drag things onto the hotbar. In the satchel, drag a tool, weapon or consumable onto a hotbar slot with the mouse
(right-click a slot to empty it). X (or 1-5) still works, and now also for food, draughts, tonics, salves, whetstones
and arrows: a consumable on the hotbar is eaten, drunk or used when you press its key, and shows how many you carry.
Felling trees pays. Trees come down quicker, logs split quicker, and a felled tree gives about twice the wood: a
birch about 8, a pine about 12, an oak about 6 oak wood (picking up a branch still gives 1 or 2).
The satchel shows six things a row and says plainly that it has no limit (it never had one: it scrolls).
Building and the chests: building has always taken what it needs from the chests as well as your bag; the build bar
now says so and shows how much of each material you have in all.
The bow: a click looses a quick, weak shot as soon as the arrow is nocked (a short click used to be dropped, so the
left button seemed not to shoot), and the left button looses while you hold the draw with the right.
Creatures find their way round rocks. They keep to the side they chose while they edge round something in the way,
and one that is stuck takes a short detour instead of pressing on.
Release builds have no developer tools (no Developer page, no F3), and neither does a shared world.
Felling a tree hurt you about every other time when you stood close to the trunk: the falling tree now only crushes
what is under it, from a stride beyond the stump.
The rank came again at level 20. A skill’s rank (Apprentice, Journeyman …) is announced once, when you reach it;
the other tens just name the level.
Waking inside a wall. After sleeping (and after falling) you get up beside your bed where there is room to stand:
the foot of the bed, else either side, else the head end.
The day did not count up after a night’s sleep if you went to bed after midnight. The day now begins at dawn, the
way you count it: whenever you lie down, you wake on the next day.
Make a hero for a server. Without a hero, Join a world offers + New hero: choose the name and look and you
are back at the join screen, ready to go, instead of first waking in a Vale of your own. Played alone later, that hero
sets out into a new Vale with everything they brought back.
The address and password boxes on the join screen now show clearly which one you are typing in (and its heading lights
up).
Co-op traffic is lighter: messages waiting together go out in one packet, and the server answers as soon as a message
arrives instead of on its next tick.
Servers: the difficulty setting now rules existing worlds too (from the next start), saves no longer hold the world up
while they are written, and backups are kept every 30 minutes (a setting) instead of on every autosave, so they reach
back hours instead of minutes.
Co-op: play together in a shared world. A small dedicated server keeps the world; up to four friends join it with
Join a world on the title screen (address and password). Bring any of your heroes: they keep their bag, gear,
skills and perks, take home what they find, and the server remembers where they stood for the next visit.
What you share: everything built (beds, gardens and their crops, stations, doors), the household stash in every
chest, things put down and the satchels of the fallen, the bloomery and tanning rack, the time of day, the weather of
each land, and the story: the Guardian, the Beacon, puzzles, places found, the map and the chronicle.
Trees fall and rocks break for everyone, and a picked plant is gone for all. The wood, stone or loot goes to whoever
did the work.
Creatures are shared. Each one is run by the nearest player’s game; everyone sees the same creature, the same
attack warnings and the same damage numbers. Your rolls and counters are always decided on your own screen.
Name plates over the other heroes (with their health when hurt, “down” when downed), the party in the top left
corner with how far away everyone is, and chat (Enter to talk). Downed friends can be helped up; music from a lute
rests everyone who hears it.
Sleeping in co-op: lie down and wait; the night passes once everyone is in bed (move to get up again).
Update in place. When a new version is out, the title screen offers “update now”: it downloads, checks and installs
the new version and restarts the game. Your heroes and worlds are kept.
In a shared world nothing pauses (the menu says MENU, not PAUSED), perfect dodges do not slow time, the difficulty is
the server’s (Hardcore plays as Hard: one life is a single-player rule), and new sagas begin in a hero’s own Vale.
Garden beds show their water: the earth is pale and dusty while a planting waits for a drink, and turns dark and
glistening once it is watered.
Difficulty, chosen when you make a hero: Builder (always noon, always clear, nothing hunts you), Easy (the
old rules: what you carried waits in a satchel), Normal (gear included in the satchel, creatures a little tougher),
Hard (all you carry is lost but your weapon and chest armour, and your skills slip back a little) and
Hardcore (one life). You can make it harder later from the pause menu, never easier. Heroes from earlier versions
play on Easy.
A new saga. Once the Beacon burns you can keep exploring, or begin again in a fresh Vale: at the same difficulty
with a perk, or one step harder with a greater perk. Perks add up from saga to saga (more health, a second wind,
quicker crafting, faster feet …). The Beacon offers the choice whenever you visit it.
The lute. Make one at a workbench with a shaving horse. Take it in hand and a small note panel opens: play real
notes (three octaves), record a phrase and it loops, then layer more over it. Play standing and you sway with the
tune; play sitting on a bench or a log and you stay seated. Music by the fire leaves everyone who hears it rested.
The outer lands bite. Mire spiders’ bites carry venom and the webs hold you fast; a Bogwalker’s Balm
keeps both off. Out on the Highlands it is cold (and freezing at night, in a storm or soaked): wear a fur
mantle, drink a Warming Draught, or keep to a fire. A cap or a bowl of bone broth helps.
Station extensions bring new work: the shaving horse opens the horn bow, the antler pickaxe and the lute; the
grindstone fire arrows and cheap whetstones; the smith’s rack the iron mace and the lamellar; the quench trough the echo
attunement.
The frontier remembers its war: charred palisades, spears in the turf, burnt carts, bones in the grass, and here and
there a heap of timber still smouldering.
Charms are worn: amulets hang on a cord round your neck, totems are tied to your belt.
Finer gear glows softly in its quality colour in your bag and on the hotbar, and fine and masterwork weapons shed
the odd mote of light.
Sort the bag and the stash (Z / L3): by kind, A-Z, amount or quality.
Camera zoom: the mouse wheel (Ctrl + wheel while building), or hold the right stick in and push it up or down.
A loading screen with painted art, the game’s own logo on the title and as the app icon, and no Unity splash.
Developer tools: “Noon and clear” holds the sun at midday and keeps the sky clear.
Balance: upgrades give +10% each (was +15%), fine and masterwork a little less, weapon skill +40% at 100 (was +50%);
the iron blades and their whirlwind hit less hard; the Guardian has more health and hits harder; creatures are tougher
on Normal and Hard.
Finer gear costs more to improve: good ×1.25, fine ×1.5, masterwork ×2 the materials.
The forest is denser, with thickets and more rock; the Highlands carry far more snow, and up there the rain falls
as snow.
Benches have their backrest at the back and seat two. Wells are open, with water deep inside, and the roof sits
on its posts.
Snapping beams: rotating turns the piece through all four directions, and it snaps to the point under your cursor.
Esc leaves build mode (a second Esc opens the pause menu).
Mira walks round stations, chests and walls (and through doors) instead of through them.
The map marker for you has a dark disc and a pulsing ring, so it stands out on top of home.
Stillwater Tarn, a clear pond about a hundred paces west of the homestead, fed by a brook from the hills. A trodden
path leads there from the fire. Wade in to fill a bucket.
Water looks like water. Ripples, the sky and the sun reflected in it, depth you can see into, foam along the shore
and a running current on the brook. The bog’s water is dark and peaty, with drifting duckweed.
The map shows water in blue, so you can find somewhere to fill a bucket.
The Mire is dangerous now.Mire Spiders and Bog Weavers nest among the webs: they keep their distance, spit
webs that slow you, then dart in to bite. The bog is full of fallen trunks, webs that catch you as you walk into them,
egg sacs and glowing mushrooms. A low mist drifts over the water, bubbles rise out of the peat, and at night pale
lights hang just out of reach. The bog dead walk in the fog by day too, and the Mire counts among the worst lands.
Talk to Mira at the homestead: ask her for advice, what she can do for you, about the Vale, where to find water,
and hear her story a chapter at a time as you see more of the world.
Send Mira to a station. At the homestead, pick a recipe in the crafting book and choose Send Mira: she walks
to the herbalist’s table, the workbench or the fire and makes it, and it goes into the stash. (Not from out in the
wild.)
Beds are claimed. Each hero claims one bed (claiming another frees the old one) and wakes there.
Mira needs a bed of her own. Once her wound is treated she joins only when there is a free bed under a roof at the
homestead.
Exploration music for the meadows, the forest, Elderwood, the Highlands and the Mire, with quiet stretches
between tracks.
What’s new on the title screen (this list), shown once after each update.
Controller build mode works like the inventory: LB / RB switch tabs, d-pad left/right picks a piece (hold it to keep
moving), d-pad up/down changes row. Hold D-Down to open or close build mode; LT rotates, RT places, Y takes down.
Display settings wait for Apply. Pick a display mode and resolution, press Apply, then keep it (it switches back by
itself after 12 seconds if you don’t).
Fullscreen is borderless by default. Exclusive fullscreen is still there, marked as such.
Healing draughts have a 30 second cooldown (it was one second).
Comparing gear: equipping or crafting shows each stat against what you wear now, green when better, red when worse.
Crafting shows how many you can make with what you carry and have in the stash.
Upgrades no longer show the ×1 / ×5 / ×10 / ALL amounts (an upgrade is always one).
Freeze after alt-tab in fullscreen. In exclusive fullscreen the game could keep piling up frames while it was in the
background until the whole PC ran out of memory. It now draws almost nothing while in the background.
Dark grass patches that followed the camera when you stood below grass on a slope.
Dead creatures no longer stand in the way of the fight.
Inside a crypt you no longer see prompts for trees on the surface (the “Chop” oak), creatures on the barrow above no
longer hunt you from up there, and you no longer hear them.
The crypt entrance is an open, dark doorway again (the mound’s turf filled it).
Camps on slopes: the bones, crates and tents no longer float above the ground.
New music files play (they were in the wrong folder and format).
The Barrow Hollow: the barrow dead rise at night. They raise a shield against blows from the front, chop twice and
leap at heroes who keep their distance, and their blades carry grave rot (no healing until a wound salve draws it
out). The crypt Warden is now a huge Hollow lord.
The Greyhorn: herds of great grey elk that bolt together; a wounded bull turns and charges.
Archery: hold to draw, release to loose. Hunting Bow and Horn Bow, Flint, Bone, Iron and Fire arrows.
The Stonecutter and a stone building kit: walls, arches, floors, stairs, pillars and low walls.
Palisade and gate, trophy mounts, hide rug, stool and weapon rack.
16 new items and 22 recipes: bone, grave iron, antler, venison, new meals, a grave ward tonic, charms, a whetstone and
bone meal for the garden.
Music for the title, hero creation and the homestead by day and by night.
Batch crafting (×1, ×5, ×10, ALL); Mira can finish work at the herb table, workbench and fire when you walk away.
Watering: buckets, rain on open beds and a well. Wet from rain and wading.
More building: quarter floors and walls, gable walls, flat roofs, beams, posts, hanging lanterns, a chandelier, fire
baskets, rune stones, a well; painted cloth banners.
A world four times larger with four outer lands (Birchwood, the Mire, the Stoneteeth Highlands, Elderwood), generated
per hero; points of interest, weather and a map that fills in as you explore.