Lead the Way — Update 8.8.0

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.