Swimming

You can now swim at the surface and dive underwater without learning a skill first. Orienteering makes you a better swimmer, but everyone can get into the water.

Use your movement controls to swim, Jump to rise, and your descend control to dive—Space and X with the default bindings. Sprint works in the water and spends stamina. With full Swimming training, your swimming sprint can match your flat-ground sprint speed.

You can swim at the surface with a tool drawn, but must stop and tread water to fire. Underwater, you can use your tools while swimming; aiming with a tool slows you down. A bubble helmet appears automatically when you submerge, as it does in space.

Swimming includes new animations, splashes, and underwater effects. Climbing out of the water and using the grapple around water have also been improved.

“Sprint” still works while swimming.

 

Combat: General

Hit detection has been significantly improved for all projectiles and the Healix heal beam. This should in particular help address the issue where you see your shot hit the target on the client but no damage registers.

Knockback movement and hit effects have also been corrected so that being pushed and steering afterward behave more consistently.

 

Combat: Sniper Rifle Additional Skills

The Sniper Rifle wasn’t quite hitting the mark with how much payoff there was for so much investment with the Overcharge requirements. It received some general buffs across the board with higher base damage and reduced base movement penalty, and received some new progression options with 2 new specials and several new passives. In combination with the hit detection fix, it should feel a lot more effective now.

The Sniper Rifle’s base shot damage has doubled, including its Heightened Focus variant. You can now move slowly while charging without an upgrade. New Quick Charge and Mobile Overcharge upgrades further reduce normal shot charge time and improve movement while charging.

• • Spotter: Deploy a stationary drone to watch your back for a duration. If it detects an enemy sneaking past it, it’ll detonate, slowing them down and giving you time to reposition.
    • Spotter Electrify replaces the Slow with an Electrify status.
    • Spotter Fortress allows the Spotter drone to additionally deploy a Fortress Shield if it detects a projectile coming past it. The drone can still trigger its enemy trap afterward.
  • Predation: Mark an enemy as your prey for a duration. Overcharged Sniper shots dealt during that time will add a stack per charge level. Once the stacks reach a threshold, the enemy will take a big bonus hit with significantly increased damage against low-health targets.
    • Upgrade its damage and reduce the Overcharge threshold.
    • Relentless Predation fully refunds the ability’s cooldown when the marked target is killed by your Sniper Rifle.

• Heightened Focus: Has a newly added screen effect to indicate its duration.

• Explosive Round: Has been removed for now and replaced with Spotter.

• Smokescreen: now clears your existing threat when used, helping you break away and reposition. Enemies can quickly target you again if nobody else is distracting them.

New visual effects make Predation’s mark and progress easier to follow. Heightened Focus also has a screen effect to show when it is active.

 

Combat: Grenade Launcher Additional Skills

The Grenade Launcher also received some baseline buffs, increasing its base explosion radius and projectile flight speeds, making it easier to land hits. Its skill tree has gained some new upgrades and 2 new advanced specials to further reinforce its crowd control and AoE specialist fantasy.

• Bombardment: Hold the ability key to preview the firing arc, then release to fire a salvo of five grenades. Upgrades increase the salvo to seven or nine grenades, improve Focus efficiency, and increase blast radius.
• Gravity Well: Launch a grenade that creates a temporary field, repeatedly pulling nearby enemies toward its center and damaging them. Upgrades increase its duration and radius and reduce its Focus cost.

Cluster grenades have also been corrected so their secondary projectiles do not start inside terrain. The Double Cluster upgrade fires two Cluster Bomb grenades side by side, and Cluster Damage upgrades improve the smaller explosions.

The Grenade Launcher skill tree has been streamlined. Repulsor area and Uplift height upgrades are consolidated, and several efficiency, flight-speed, and cooldown upgrade nodes have been removed.

Other upgrades increase Repulsor’s knockback, reduce Singularity’s cooldown and Focus cost, and extend Uplift’s duration through Uplift Suspension.

 

Combat: Assault Rifle Improvements

• • All of the Ammo buffs have new screen effects to indicate their duration.

• Homing Ammo: Significantly increased its homing strength.

• Speed Ammo: Fixed a bug that caused it to do much less damage than intended.

 

Cartography: Map Crafting

Craft a Blank Data Chip at a Field Fabricator I using 2 Very Common Metal. At a Cartography Console, use the chip to make a map from your own surveys of the current planet. You must have Cartography in active practice and at least one unexpired personal survey. Stay near the console until crafting finishes.

The Cartography Console can be made at a Machine Shop I using 12 Very Common Metal and 2 Crystal Blanks.

A finished map records the surveyed terrain and your active personal waypoints within that coverage. It is a snapshot: later surveys or waypoint edits do not change an existing map. Mission, corpse, and party markers are not copied. Maps made by other players cannot be used as your source survey data.

 

Using and checking maps

Carry a map for your current planet, open the map screen, and use the map selector to choose it alongside your personal surveys. Check the map’s creator, coverage, and remaining integrity before buying. Maps also appear in the Maps category when browsing goods.

The creator can right-click a carried map and choose Edit map notes to add instructions or other information, up to 280 characters. Other players can read those notes when inspecting it.

Your personal surveys still expire after seven real-world days, including time offline. Terrain and waypoint labels recorded on a crafted map remain fixed. Instead of expiring with its source surveys, a crafted map has ten hours of active display time:

• Displaying it on the full map or minimap uses durability.
• Showing the same map in both views at once counts only once.
• Closing both views stops the wear. Carrying, storing, trading, inspecting, or keeping it while offline does not use that time.
• Maps cannot be repaired and are used up when their durability reaches zero.

Using someone else’s map reveals its recorded terrain but does not complete your personal surveys or award survey XP.

Minimap

Equip a map in a utility slot and press that slot’s key to toggle its minimap. Press the key again to close it, or use another equipped map’s key to switch maps.

The minimap centers on you and rotates with your facing direction while keeping labels upright. It also includes a clock showing the local time of day. Free your cursor to drag the map or its corner handle—hold Left Alt with the default bindings. Its position is saved; use the lock button to prevent accidental dragging.

Change its size under Options → HUD → Minimap size (%). It also follows the relevant HUD appearance settings.

Player Town Territory System

 

Town Territory and Growing Governments

Town government now has a defined territory. A newly founded town can reserve land and set local rules immediately, but its authority begins within a limited area. As the GovBot levels up, that territory expands. Only a fully upgraded GovBot governs the entire planet.

Where Town Rules Apply

Starting territory is centered on the town’s original landing location and is normally 256 × 256 meters. It is clipped to the planet’s boundaries and reduced on smaller maps. Its original landing anchor remains fixed as the town grows.

Territory extends through the full vertical span of the map. Going underground or building overhead does not put you outside town jurisdiction.

The important change from the previous government system is that town rules apply inside town territory. Outside it, the planet’s default rules and existing property permissions apply. Special worlds retain their existing rules.

Permission checks use the area affected by an action, rather than where your character stands. If a mining, paving, or other operation crosses the border, it must satisfy the rules on both sides. This also applies to a homestead whose footprint straddles the border. Standing outside town does not let you reach into it to bypass a restriction.

Government regulations and licenses are available from founding, within the current territory.

Government permission labels now say Town Mining, Town Paving, and so on where these territorial rules apply.

Reserving Land from Founding

From founding, the mayor and citizens with Manage Zoning Lots permission can place zoning lots entirely within the current territory. A lot that extends outside the boundary is rejected without consuming the zoning item.

The starting GovBot shop offers the existing 9-meter and 21-meter cubic zoning lots, plus new rectangular road lots with these ground footprints:

• 7 × 21 meters
• 7 × 63 meters
• 13 × 63 meters

Each road footprint is available in both axis-aligned orientations, and road lots are 21 meters tall. Road kits cost 15,000 klaatus each. Normal purchase permissions and funding requirements apply. Larger existing zoning sizes still require later GovBot upgrades.

Existing lot sizes and prices remain unchanged. Each new road kit costs 15,000. Normal purchasing permissions and funding requirements still apply; founding does not provide free zoning items. Rectangular road kits are not offered in space-world shops.

Towns can therefore reserve streets, public spaces, and future building sites before construction begins. There is no additional founding-specific limit on the number of zoning lots, but every lot must meet the usual placement requirements and fit within current territory. Land shown in the next expansion cannot be reserved until that expansion occurs.

Existing Properties and Shields

Territory does not replace individual properties:

• Homesteads remain independent properties, including those outside town.
• Existing zoning lots outside the new boundary remain in place and retain their local permissions, shields, and release behavior.
• An outside zoning lot does not extend town jurisdiction around itself.
• This update does not introduce town-designated residential plots for players to claim.

Town territory is a boundary for government authority, not a territory-wide material shield. Physical shields remain attached to homesteads and zoning lots. Rectangular lot shields protect all six faces, including the top and bottom.

Permissions and Homestead Exceptions

Government regulations and licenses become available from founding, within the town’s territory. Local property restrictions and Servitor edicts still matter; entering town does not grant blanket permission to build, mine, or use someone else’s property.

The government’s homestead mining and paving exceptions also remain subject to local permission. To use an exception, the entire affected area must fit inside one private homestead. An exception does not authorize work across its boundary.

Seeing the Border

The public map shows the current territory, labeled with the town’s name.

The mayor and citizens with Manage Zoning Lots permission also see Next town expansion, immediately after the current town entry. Its boundary is a dotted light-blue line; current territory remains solid blue. Other players do not see the expansion preview.

An optional, subtle blue outline marks the current border in the world, including on eligible underground and elevated surfaces. Enable it under Options → Gameplay → Town Territory Border. It is off by default, and your preference is saved locally. It is independent of the homestead-boundary setting.

The next expansion appears only on the map.

Entering and Leaving Town

Crossing the border can display a small Welcome to <town name> or Leaving <town name> banner just below the alert area, using the existing welcome sound.

These banners dismiss automatically and do not block movement, controls, or other UI. Entry and exit banners share a 30-second cooldown, preventing repeated popups when moving back and forth across the border.

Information chat still updates on each crossing, providing a rereadable summary of town policies and homestead exceptions even when a banner is suppressed. That summary describes policy; individual property restrictions and edicts can still prevent an action.

On login or arrival, the planet welcome takes priority over the town banner. The two do not overlap, and a suppressed town banner is not replayed afterward.

Naming the Town

The current mayor can open GovBot → Town Name and enter a name directly. The dialog starts with the existing name and provides Save and Cancel. Enter saves; Escape or closing the dialog cancels.

Names can contain up to 48 characters and pass through the server’s text filter. Rejected edits remain available for correction. Town names are separate from planet and citizenship names, and appear on the GovBot, territory map labels, and crossing banners. Until named, a town appears as Unnamed Town.

UX and UI Improvements

Market Listing Improvements

Merchant quality-of-life improvements make it easier to find goods, compare offers, and manage your shop.

• Buy the amount you need: Purchase part of a stack instead of the entire listing.
• Bulk sales: Sellers can require buyers to purchase the entire stack, allowing them to offer bulk discounts.
• Better pricing for inexpensive goods: Sellers can offer bundles such as five items for one klaatu. Smaller purchases are supported, with the final cost rounded up once per purchase.
• Full item details: A dedicated pane shows the item’s stats, durability, status effects, and description alongside the offer.
• Broader search: Find goods by name or crafting category, including tools, weapons, wood, rocks, and ore.
• Clearer shop management: The Sell & History screen places inventory, listings, and offer details in three columns.
• Flexible listings: Change prices, retrieve unsold stock, review sales history, and collect proceeds while the remaining stock stays for sale.
• Limited-time listings: You can now choose from several listing durations with varying listing fees. Expired offers can be retrieved or relisted for a new listing fee.
• Stock counts, available earnings, and open shop views now update more reliably after transactions. Shop access still follows homestead permissions.

Shop access continues to use existing homestead permissions. Merchant skills and larger marketplace expansions are planned separately.

Audio Options

We’ve added audio sliders so you can independently adjust the following:

• Master
• SFX
• Combat and hazards
• Tools
• Creatures
• Foley
• Ambience
• CA simulation
• Objects
• Presentation SFX
• State effects
• UI
• Music
• Presentation music
• Background music
• Positional music

You can also select which audio device to use for output.

Profession icons and Battle Comms

XP alerts now show the icon for the profession that earned the XP. Those icons also appear beside professions in the Skills window.

Party leaders can use Battle Comms buttons directly beside members in the party roster to mark Needs heal, Needs revive, Needs support, or Gather at. Setting or changing a signal requires Battle Comms training and costs 10 Focus. Click the selected signal again to clear it for free. The party sees the signal, with changes also announced in Party chat. A readied Leader Staff is not required.

Homestead sizes and expansion

The Homesteader Shop now offers 29-, 37-, and 45-meter cubic Homesteaders alongside the standard 21-meter kit.

To line up neighboring homesteads, open your homestead console and choose Expand. Select a kit from your inventory and the side to attach it to, including above or below. You need an available homestead slot, and normal placement permissions and limits still apply. Zoning lots can also be attached through their consoles, subject to town territory and zoning permissions.

The map now reports your offworld homestead count to help you keep track of homes elsewhere.

Homestead Packup

Use the homestead console’s packup option to gather placed building items and constructed blocks into a Packed Homestead item while preserving their layout. Zoning lots can be packed too.

To restore the contents, stand inside an empty homestead or zoning lot and use the pack’s Unpack interaction. The destination must be large enough, have enough building capacity, and allow you to build. Packs containing entitlement items also require the appropriate owner entitlement.

Packed contents return to their saved positions relative to the destination lot. Packs cannot be discarded or put into storage; packs containing entitlement or government items also cannot be traded. Restored objects now retain their hover prompts and visibility correctly.

Character and Graphics Options

Character creation has a wider selection of skin colors, along with fixes to avatar and hair appearance.

New Terrain Textures

Terrain has new textures with improved detail and a more consistent appearance across surfaces.

Options → Graphics now includes Solid Terrain Flow. This toggles the animated surface movement and accompanying dust that make changing solid terrain look as though it is flowing or settling. It changes the visual effect, not how terrain behaves.

Bug Fixes and Other Improvements

• Fixed inventory details stopping their updates after selecting a toolbelt item.
• Fixed Harvestwake mission progression becoming blocked after abandoning the missions.
• Survey mission objectives now require a Pathfinder and basic Cartography rather than advanced Cartography training. Missing requirements display Tool Needed. Mission survey signals and find objectives have also been corrected so town territory changes do not make them inaccessible.
• Survey guidance now follows the nearest eligible signal instead of favoring a farther-away jammer. Buried scanner outlines are also easier to see through terrain.
• Spoiled food no longer blocks stomach capacity. This also clears the problem for characters already affected.
• Restored terrain shadows and placed-lamp lighting, and corrected fog and precipitation rendering.
• Distant flora and building pieces now use distance-based network visibility in dense areas. This reduces the amount of object data sent to players, though some distant objects may pop into view as you approach.
• Fixed flight effects disappearing when your character model changes, and corrected camera attachment issues.
• Corrected space-flight jitter and momentum handling.
• Improved updates to the building palette when duplicating items.
• Improved recovery for bank accounts affected by the earlier conversion problem.

Greetings, Wayfarers!

Our biggest update yet is coming soon, bringing Leadership, Stealth, and Cartography, giving you new ways to support your fellow Wayfarers and explore together. Rangers gain new camping rewards and Trailblazer abilities, while Medics and Pistoleers get substantial upgrades.

Planetary governments gain tools for running their communities, and new creature tactics give you more to consider in combat alongside expanded weapon and healing skills. Building also gets a new interface to make placing and adjusting pieces easier.

New Professions and Expedition Tools

Leadership: Keep Your Expedition Moving

Learn novice Leadership for free, then buy a Leader Staff from the Basic Tool Shop or ask an Engineer with Support Gadgets to craft one.

• Inspiration: Keep your staff readied to reduce nearby players’ Focus expenditure by 15% within 15 metres. A green circle shows your reach. Inspiration effects from multiple leaders do not stack.
• Encouragement: Restore up to 20% of nearby allies’ usable maximum Focus, limited to the amount they’re missing. Encouragement has a 30-second cooldown and restores other players’ Focus, not your own.
• Leadership XP: Earn XP by restoring Focus to other players and completing revives. Keeping the passive aura active alone does not earn XP.
• Group signals: Right-click a group member’s name in the sidebar to flag them with messages such as “needs a heal” or “gather at this person.”
• Rally points: Right-click the map to place a rally point visible to your group. You can also reach this option through the group menu on the chat box.
• Emergency Evac: The party leader starts an eight-second countdown at a marked gathering area. Group members inside the area when the countdown ends, including downed members, travel to the leader’s saved ReLife Station or the World ReLife Station.

The evacuation area stays where it was activated, so gather inside the marker before departure. Downed players remain downed after transport. At least one other party member must be present; Emergency Evac cannot be used as a solo recall.

More advanced Leader commands are on the way, including called shots and additional ways to earn Leader XP.

Stealth: Choose Your Opening

Rangers can now specialize in Stealth to avoid creature attention and prepare powerful opening attacks.

 

Getting Started

Novice Stealth includes Mask Scent I and the Scent-Masking Salve recipe. Craft a salve from any meat at a tier 1 Field Fabricator, available through Camp Size 1, then apply it from your inventory.

Hide requires a Nano Camo Net, while Sneak requires an Aural Silencer. Equip these devices in utility slots and activate them with the corresponding slot key. Engineers with Support Gadgets can craft both devices at a tier 5 Circuit Bench.

You can switch to a weapon while concealment remains active.

 

Stealth Techniques

• Mask Scent: Reduce creatures’ ability to detect you by scent, with greater effectiveness at higher ranks. Creatures can still see you, and applying it does not clear existing aggression, so approach from behind.
• Hide: Conceal yourself while stationary. Hide remains active while you’re concealed and have Focus, draining a base 5 Focus per second. Higher ranks strengthen concealment. You can turn, stand, and switch weapons, but movement, detection, damage, or attacking reveals you. If creatures are pursuing you, stay out of their sight for two seconds before hiding.
• Sneak: Move while concealed, draining a base 10 Focus per second. Higher ranks extend its duration and let you progress from crouching to walking and running. Movement is automatically limited to your learned rank. Sprinting always breaks concealment.
• Hidden Attack and Sneak Attack: Increase the damage of your opening attack from concealment. Attacking reveals you even if you miss, so choose your moment carefully.
• Surprise Attack: A successful opening ambush can briefly frighten nearby hostile creatures. Higher ranks increase its reach and fear duration.
• Area Awareness: Receive directional HUD and sound warnings when hostile creatures approach, including from behind. Higher ranks extend the warning range.
• Detect Hidden: Attempt to reveal nearby concealed creatures, with greater strength and range at higher ranks. Creatures do not use hiding yet, so there is currently nothing for this skill to reveal. You may want to wait before learning it.

Earn Stealth XP by crafting salves, successfully evading creatures, and landing opening ambushes.

Concealment affects creature detection. It does not hide you from other players.

 

Cartography: Chart the Planet and Share the Route

Learn and activate Cartography to survey with your Pathfinder. Surveying now earns Cartography XP, with harder challenges farther from the landing square.

• Unexplored map squares shade from gray toward magenta as survey difficulty increases.
• Harder signals can move, fade, hide behind jammers, or require triangulation.
• Stabilize Signal slows signal movement and fading.
• Reveal Jammers briefly exposes nearby interference.
• Nearby group members share survey credit, so you can explore and advance together.
• Surveyed squares expire after seven real-world days, including time spent offline, and must be surveyed again.

Create and Share Persistent Waypoints

Novice Rangers can create persistent waypoints at their current location. Use the Pathfinder, confirm the waypoint, then find it under Data Storage → Waypoints. Activate it to display navigation guidance.

• Customize each waypoint’s name, icon, and color. Each waypoint records its creator, planet, and coordinates.
• Start with room for 20 waypoints. Cartography upgrades can expand your library to 50.
• Learn to place waypoints at range, beginning at 50 metres and increasing to 200 metres through upgrades.
• Trade or sell waypoint items to share useful locations.
• Cartographers can duplicate waypoints, dividing the remaining integrity between the copies with some loss.
• Navigation consumes integrity over time, and higher-quality waypoints last longer. Deactivating and reactivating a waypoint within an already-paid activation period does not consume another use.
• Activate or deactivate individual waypoints from the map. These navigation controls are separate from the controls for hiding ordinary map markers.

Creating local waypoints earns Ranger XP. Surveying earns Cartography XP.

Complete tradeable maps and a HUD minimap are still in development.

 

Ranger: Camps and Trailblazer Tools

Camps offer more ways to earn Ranger XP. You earn XP for placing camps, for living players spending time in your active camp, and for successful returns through its ReLife Station. Occupancy and ReLife rewards require the camp owner to be online with their active camp.

Your Trailblazer loadout also gains new abilities:

• Wall of Fire: Lay down flames that heat the ground and ignite creatures crossing them. Fire barriers follow the terrain. 
• Ring of Fire: Surround yourself with flames that can frighten susceptible hostile creatures.

• Cold Snap: Chill the surrounding area and freeze nearby water. Higher ranks also briefly freeze creatures.

• Frost Grenades: Throw a burst of cold farther afield. Hold the throw to increase its range and use the aiming arc to place it.

• Wall of Ice: Hold the ability to create a temporary barrier that freezes creatures on contact. Release it to recall the wall and recover most of the water used. You need water in your inventory, held in a single stack, to use this ability.

• Light Sticks: Drop a light nearby or launch one ahead to illuminate caves and dark terrain. Higher ranks improve duration and the number of lights you can keep active. Placing another at your limit replaces the oldest.

Pistoleer: New Control and Upgrade Choices

Stunning Ricochet sends a stunning shot bouncing between enemies. Its upgrades reduce cooldown and add bounces. It shares a cooldown with Ricochet, so choose the shot that suits the moment.

Pistol Whip gains upgrades for longer stuns, increased damage vulnerability, and a Sticky Bomb. Its final vulnerability upgrade provides a stronger opening at the cost of a longer cooldown.

Ordinary stuns can end when the target takes damage. Use that time to reposition or coordinate your next attack.

 

Medical Profession Revamp

The Medical tree expands with new progression paths:

• Mass Heal: Improve healing, cooldown, and reach.

• Surge: Improve cooldown, Focus efficiency, and reach.
• Siphon: Improve returned healing, damage, and Focus efficiency.

The new Sanctuary ability lets you hold a channel to regenerate yourself and nearby allies at a continuous Focus cost. The healing area follows you.

Early ranks require you to stand still. Upgrade branches improve Sanctuary’s radius, healing, Focus efficiency, and movement while channeling. Progress through the Mass Heal and Surge upgrade lines to unlock it.

 

Combat: Read the Threat

Creatures Fight as a Team

Creature groups now have distinct combat roles. A healer may keep your target alive, or a guardian may move to protect its allies. Ranged attackers can pressure you while other creatures close in.

• Caregivers heal, regenerate, strengthen, and cleanse nearby allies.
• Guardians shield their allies and move to protect them.
• Artillery attacks from range.
• Strikers rush past you, while Skirmishers flank and sidestep.
• Disruptors inflict debilitating effects.
• Brutes have tougher defenses and heavier attacks.
• Low-danger Baby variants are smaller and weaker, and retreat from danger. Eventually, these will be the creatures you can try to tame.

Role names appear in creature names to help you identify threats and choose targets. Available roles depend on species and danger level; not every creature has every tactic.

Interrupt Dangerous Attacks

Watch creature warnings and attack meters. Dealing enough damage during a powerful attack, brace, or call for help can interrupt it, stun the creature, and create a window in which it takes increased damage. Coordinate your attacks to create that opening, then follow up while the creature is vulnerable.

Bracing sharply reduces incoming damage, so time your strongest attacks carefully. Creatures also become briefly vulnerable after completing major attacks. Avoid the attack, then strike during the vulnerability window.

Some indirect attacks scatter across several landing points, each marked on the ground. Creatures can also call for help or summon minions, so watch the whole encounter as you fight.

Freeze, electrify, and stun now share a brief protection window after control ends, limiting repeated chains of those effects.

Learn What Your Enemy Resists

Creatures gain damage resistances and corresponding vulnerabilities based on their species and world. The same species can have different traits on another planet, so experiment with damage types and bring tools suited to the wildlife you encounter.

Damage numbers have clearer styling by damage type, making attacks easier to distinguish during a busy fight.

Combat Fixes

• Makers can perform their attacks correctly again.
• Shield-anchor placement has been improved to avoid embedding anchors in terrain.

 

Government: Run Your Planetary Community

Request Permissions While the Mayor Is Away

Submit permission petitions through a GovBot. Mayors can approve or deny them later, without both players needing to be online together.

Decisions reach online players immediately. Offline players receive them on their next home arrival.

Petitions for mining, chronophasing, paving, xyloslicing, farming, and homestead ownership become available at government level 10.

 

Make Room for Private Homestead Projects

At government level 10, mayors can allow exceptions inside private homesteads even when planet-wide rules restrict mining or paving.

Mining settings offer these choices:

• No exception.
• Excavation without resources or mining rewards.
• Full mining with resources.

Paving has a separate exception setting. Homestead access permissions still apply, and the entire affected area must fit inside the homestead.

 

Keep Citizens Informed

Mayors can publish or replace the current government announcement with /govannouncement <message> while on the governed planet.

Announcements can contain up to 500 characters. Citizens receive unread announcements in General chat, with a HUD alert, on their next home-planet arrival. They can reread the current announcement at a GovBot. Announcements and read status survive restarts.

Citizen chat connects citizens of the same planet across worlds. Close its tab to mute it locally, and use /citizenchat to reopen it.

 

Elections Every 14 Days

The candidate with the most valid votes wins. There is no majority or minimum-turnout requirement.

For Voters

• You need seven days of continuous citizenship before voting.
• Each account gets one ballot per government. Voting with another character replaces your account’s previous choice.
• Votes carry forward between elections until changed, cleared, or invalidated by the candidate’s withdrawal or departure.
• Any citizen character on your account visiting the planet within 14 days keeps your ballot active. If inactivity clears it, vote again when you return.
• Voting is a citizenship right. Government officers cannot remove it while you remain a citizen.
• Becoming a candidate or mayor does not automatically cast a vote for you.

For Candidates

• Register yourself to stand. Registration carries forward while you remain eligible, until you withdraw, resign as mayor, or leave citizenship.
• You need 30 days of continuous citizenship, except when the government is founded.
• Visit the planet at least once every 28 days to retain your candidacy. If it expires through inactivity, you must register again. Returning does not restore your candidacy or old votes.
• Withdrawing clears votes for you. A sitting mayor who only withdraws candidacy remains in office until resignation, departure, or the next election result.

Ties, Vacancies, and Succession

• Ties favor an incumbent who is still a candidate. Otherwise, the winner is randomly selected from the tied candidates.
• No candidates or no valid votes leaves the office vacant.
• Interim appointments draw from registered candidates, using existing votes to determine the result. If all willing candidates have zero votes, selection is random. An interim appointment does not change the election schedule.
• Resigning requires confirmation. You retain citizenship and contribution balances, withdraw your candidacy, and clear votes for you. The government then attempts to appoint an interim successor.
• At founding, the highest-contributing willing candidate becomes mayor, with ties decided randomly. Without a willing contributor, the office starts vacant.
• An account’s ballot survives one character leaving citizenship if another character on that account remains a citizen. Votes for a departing candidate are still cleared.

Important: Existing Governments

This update performs a one-time reset of votes and candidacies, retains the current mayor, and begins a fresh 14-day election period. Register your candidacy and vote again after the update.

Existing citizens receive residency credit and an initial activity grace period during the transition.

 

Homesteads, Building, and Crafting

Homesteads Belong to Your Account

All characters on an account can access its homesteads, with six base homestead slots per account. Existing homesteads above the limit are retained.

Homestead consoles update when characters are renamed or deleted. Deleted characters’ permissions are removed, and their homesteads are renamed “Estate of …” while remaining account-owned.

 

More Room for Supplies

• Small crates and stasis crates: 25 items.
• Large crates and refrigerators: 50 items.
• Homestead crate limit: Increased from three to ten.

Crafting stations and storage crates also support paint and finish customization.

 

More Precise Building

Select a piece, then choose Move, Lift, Spin, Tilt, or Roll from the toolbar. Click a mode to keep it active, or hold modifier keys for temporary changes. Hover over buttons to see their shortcuts.

• Hold Space before dragging to move a piece. Combine this with Shift for vertical movement.
• Use the arrow keys for precise adjustments.
• Use Tab and Shift+Tab to cycle modes.
• Level removes tilt and roll.
• Movement snapping decreases from 0.5 metres to 0.25 metres.
• Burial protection rejects placements that would leave most of a piece underground.

Clearer tooltips and selection highlighting make the controls easier to use, alongside improvements to Undo/Redo, shared Design previews, and visible homestead limits.

Homestead information moves into the building controls. The controls can be collapsed and automatically fold away while you manipulate pieces.

Many larger primitive building pieces cost substantially less metal to craft. For example, a batch of twenty Cube (0.5m / 4×4) pieces now costs 35 metal instead of 160.

 

Crafting and Storage Fixes

• Crafting and processing stations lose durability through use rather than time. Existing stations have their durability reset during conversion. Durability costs apply when crafting begins, and bulk crafting receives a durability discount.
• The shale/sedimentary rock-to-oil recipe is available as a loot drop again.
• Lighting components, canisters, computer consoles and banks, holo-pedestals, speakers, monitors, desktops, ovens, and countertop stoves now grant Engineering XP rather than Construction XP.
• Luminweave Cloth, Alien Bast Cord, and Rare Fiber Spindle recipes now require plant fiber.
• Take All correctly withdraws items from bank and homestead storage.
• Quick-move transfers correctly update the source stack.
• Stored items display their decayed state correctly, including applicable preservation effects.
• Equipment can be removed through the inventory’s drag and double-click interactions.

Finding Your Way and Keeping in Touch

Skills

Search the Skills screen for a skill, granted ability, or recipe and jump to the relevant skill.

Skill descriptions and tool requirements are clearer, along with recipe details, hover summaries, shortcuts, learned-state updates, and icons.

The practice cap is now 25% of available, learnable skills, excluding work-in-progress skills. The new skills increase the cap; this value remains subject to review.

 

Maps and Missions

• Collapse the Mission, Homestead, and Zoning lists on the map and toggle individual markers.
• See your active mission highlighted and change it directly from the map.
• Other homesteads and zoning lots appear as their map areas are surveyed. Homestead colors are also clearer.
• The Galactic map shows only active sectors.
• The space-map background is now a starfield.
• Mission viewing and turn-in behavior work together.
• Assigned spawned harvesting targets can be harvested regardless of planetary permissions.
• Find Missions place targets on the surface when mining is unavailable.
• Haven’s cooking mission now directs you to an accessible Field Fabricator, with objective waypoints refreshed as the mission progresses.

 

Chat and Controls

• Use /zone or /planet for planet-wide chat.
• Chat tabs show how many tabs are scrolled out of view and preserve more of longer names.
• The group sidebar has refreshed styling.
• Keybinding prompts better support remapped keys and non-English keyboard layouts.
• Loadout Kiosk prompts respect your bindings.

 

Appearance and Technical Improvements

• More species support skin-tone customization.
• Character creation has improved eye and hair color choices, along with improved lighting for previews.
• Inventory character previews, clothing changes, and creature status effects receive visual fixes.
• Holding fire after a battery runs out no longer causes the previous prediction mismatch.
• Scanner improvements address performance and the rendering of object edges obscured by terrain.
• F9’s performance monitor gains frame-time and garbage-collection graphs. Tap F9 repeatedly to cycle through views.
• Work on the engine, avatar loading, memory management, and storage addresses startup, loading, and reliability.

Greetings, Wayfarers!

Crafted in Color Update 8.7.0 has been on the servers throughout the weekend and we are bringing in a few quick upgrades. 

 

Fixes and Changes

• Performance Optimizations
  • Server optimizations for bulk crafting so it no longer lags the zone.
  • Server optimizations when granting large numbers of recipes via skill unlocks.
  • Server optimizations for the Harvester and Bioscanner scanning.
• Adjusted the costs of Finish Recipes
  • Each step in crafting a finish now requires the amount produced by the previous step. For example, crafting with 100 stone gives you 90 rough stone, and the next recipe now uses those 90 rather than asking for 100. This removes the need to craft extra materials just to continue to the next step.
• Homestead and Zoning Lot Shields
  • Terrain shields are now active by default on all homestead and zoning lots, blocking terrain from flowing into them. If you previously turned your shield off, you may need to turn it off again to keep it disabled.
  • We also added an additional terrain shield around the starter portals on planets.
• Better configured the max size at which creatures can spawn, in order to prevent some performance issues when they are especially large.