In this update, we're making the game look much clearer thanks to player feedback!
Clear Visuals and Farther Render Distance
We've had a major breakthrough significantly improving the performance of terrain and locations at a distance!
This allows us to dramatically increase the draw distance to make the game feel even more crisp.
Seeing other areas from far away was part of our original intent when designing the map, so we are incredibly excited about this development.
We've updated the lighting across the game and added the actual fog that surrounds the Island now that you're able to see much farther!
You'll also be able to see all the new stars clearly at night!
Teleporting now also shows you where you're headed, making the transition much clearer.
With the render distance maxed out, you can even see Snowville all the way from the starting area!
Pushing your render distance all the way out may still have a small cost depending on your hardware.
If you just want the added performance boosts, or you still prefer the old look, you can set your render distance back down to 300 manually in the visuals settings.
Clean Grass Visuals
We’ve reworked our ambient occlusion effects to improve crispness while maintaining visual fidelity.
Most notably, grass will no longer get blurry when many blades overlap!
Mannequin Loadout Swapping
Tired of donning and doffing your hazmat suit or armor?
The new Swap Equipment button on a mannequin allows you to exchange currently equipped clothing and armor with what's on the mannequin.
This should make it easy to set up different loadouts for different activities and swap them out depending on what your next adventure calls for.
The items will swap into your equipment or your cosmetic slots, depending on which you have toggled in the UI when you swap.
Mannequins will be even more useful with the new armor and clothing attributes coming in future updates!
Cheaper Sprints & Dashes
We’ve made stamina more forgiving overall! Whether you're exploring the world or dodging in combat, getting around should feel a lot smoother.
The initial dash that kicks off your sprint now costs significantly less stamina, and sprinting itself is cheaper too.
Dashes also cost less to use initially, with the cost ramping up if you chain them together.
NPC Shop UI Improvements
NPC shops selling higher-rarity items now show a preview of their attributes, helping you make better-informed decisions about what to buy.
If You Missed Them: Multiplayer fixes
We recently released v0.21.0.5 with much more extensive fixes, especially in multiplayer. So if you haven't read those patch notes yet, you can check them out here.
What's Next?
We're planning this rudimentary roadmap:
🐟 Fishing Update
⚡ Game Engine Upgrade and Optimization Update
📖 Story Missions (we're already working on this step now)
We have some exciting fishing improvements that just missed the cutoff for the Immersive Update, which we can't wait to share with you soon!
Follow-Up Patch For Known Issues:
We are working on a fix for the sharpness attribute you can purchase in Kazai Village. It will be ready shortly!
This follow-up patch is available now! You can read the patch notes here.
Detailed Patch Notes
✅ Changes
Increased ambient lighting across the day
Added deinterlacing to ambient occlusion effect to prevent blurriness on grass
Slightly reduced shininess of grass terrain material
Reduced ambient occlusion effect
Reduced the stamina cost of dashes
Greatly reduced the stamina cost of the first dash that initiates a sprint when you are not already sprinting and haven't dashed recently
Increased the damage bonus given from rarities on items where the stat requirement is not met. This should make using higher rarity items more forgiving, even when you don't have the stats to reach their full potential
NPC shops now show a preview of the item attributes that will be on higher rarity items you purchase
Increased the fire rate from the quickfire attribute
Increased default render distance greatly and raised the maximum cap
Improved some far distance rendering
Improved visual clarity when looking at the sun and sky
Dealing damage to a defeated NPC no longer produces hitmarkers
Improved tree impostor rendering
(Story) Added the actual fog that surrounds the island
You can now swap equipment with a mannequin for easy loadout changes
🔧 Fixes
[High Impact] Fixed some bad GPU instanced meshes rendering on top of the camera on MacOS
Fixed many issues where the wrong damage could display for weapons on save and load or as a client joining another lobby
Fixed spellbook damage not working properly in some cases
Fixed the way ranged damage was being calculated, which was previously causing it to have less damage than before
Fixed a visual bug causing melee weapons and some single shot ranged weapons to show more damage than they would actually deal
Fixed an edge case with evidence box saving when making back up causing player inventory to be lost
Fixed item sample display not allowing stacks of items
Fixed stocking stackable item onto display shelves sometimes lose that stack and cause infinite movement momentum
Fixed client unable to talk to spell NPC shopkeeper
Removed some bad lights in the canyon area
Fixed the copper bar LOD distance
Improved crab render distance
Fixed an issue where Jones Fishingman's house would fade out at too close a distance
Fixed some rolling issues with the quickfire attribute
Tightened up attribute UI on items
[Optimization] An item physics optimization when idling to improve frame rate on large shops
Fixed an issue causing ranged weapons not to receive the full rarity bonus they should
Fixed some bad formatting in NPC shop sell menu
Fixed dismantling the dark wooden fence piece
Fixed castle floor invisible
Optimized and updated Leyasoon's arena
Heavy physics optimization, especially in shops or areas with a lot of items
Fixed scrap metal storage becoming invisible when put into shelves
Fixed a case causing customers to get stuck on their way using needs item
Fixed the undo sale button on NPC shops
NPC shopkeepers should no longer fall asleep at night if their shop is open
NPC shopkeepers should no longer play voice barks while their shop is open
Fixed extended magazine attribute not properly scaling based on starting magazine size, so automatic weapons gain additional magazine size over single-fire weapons
Optimized many heavy but unnoticeable render features away from the game for smoother performance and overall reduced tri count. Despite rendering thousands more units of distance this update, we actually have a smaller load on the GPU
Optimized and simplified map edges around the canyon and desert, which were out of bounds but are now in bounds. Their simplification should make it clear that they lack gameplay and are less of POIs
Rebaked the map with the changes to the edges around the canyon and desert in place
Various disconnection fixes
You can view the patch notes on saleblazers.com as well!