Rifters, today is the first patch in 2026 for Lost Rift! This update focuses on polishing the experience for our players and balancing. A lot of these changes have come directly from monitoring your experience and feedback. We are committed to making Lost Rift the innovative new Extraction Survival game that our team envisioned when we started this project.
We’re adding a new batch of side quests tied to the latest Expedition, giving players more reasons to return to Locker Island and uncover its dark past.
To reduce the frustration of failed runs, we’re introducing a Safe Pocket feature. Items stored in the Safe Pocket won’t be lost if an expedition fails. That means you can secure critical quest items or especially valuable loot before things go sideways - as long as they’re small enough to fit.
Patch Notes
Features
Safe pockets. A small space to keep items safe from loss in an expedition.
Content Updates
New side quests for Wade, Jo, Sophie, Dorothie, Vlad, and Fynn. Explore the dark past of Locker Island and the mysteries of Victoria.
New notes reveal the troubling circumstances of an ill-fated expedition.
Balance Changes
Increased health of bosses in Expeditions.
Changed the efficiency of fuel in the fire pit and furnace:
Coal now burns for 60 seconds in the furnace.
Coal now burns for 180 seconds in the fire pit.
Wood now burns for 60 seconds in the fire pit.
Sticks now burn for 30 seconds in the fire pit.
Matchmaking Updates
Expedition matchmaking will more aggressively favour the lowest average latency when selecting a region for any player or team.
Note, though, if your teammates are located on different continents, ping rates are typically higher as the match will be placed in the best overall zone.
Systems Updates
UI
Access to dismantle is now easier to access when holding the construction hammer.
AI
AI will be able to hear their target more easily when actively in combat with them.
Added engagement range to AI depending on their current weapon.
Berserkers will now engage the player more in melee.
Bruisers will now engage at close to medium range with their weapon.
Marksman will now highly prefer to stay at range.
Made AI more responsive to the player's actions in general.
Improved existing vantage points so AI marksmen use them more effectively.
Improved hiding Behavior.
AI will now hide from the player when getting shot outside their effective combat range if they can’t reach the player.
Improved AI ability to move across multifloor terrain (IE: Galleon).
Improved AI Search behavior.
Hydration increases stamina regeneration instead of increasing max stamina.
Sleeping in a cozy bed heals the player.
Loot balance updates (both PvE and PvP expeditions):
Increased loot on Locker Island.
Greatly increased yields from mining coal, lead, iron, and sulfur.
Decreased drops of mineable resources outside of mineable rocks.
Increased drops of spices, tea, coffee, brown sugar, and glass bottles on Locker Island.
Decreased drops of the screwdriver on Locker Island.
Increased drop chance for Captain's Hat.
Increased drop of rubber hoses on Western Island.
Increased drop chance of sterilization tablets and water filters on Locker Island.
Decreased drop for rifle ammo.
Increased drops of metal hooks on both islands.
Added some crafting benches to both expeditions so you can quickly repair or craft on the spot. They do not contain all the recipes you have unlocked.
Bug Fixes
Resolved an exploit that could cause players to be assigned to the wrong team on expedition, enabling them to damage players in PvE and see players on the map in PvP.
Fixes to quests to build crafting stations, such as Textiles for Life, that couldn’t be completed. Just head back to the quest giver to finish now.
Fixes to spawns in PvE expedition - some spawns were spawning higher value items than they were supposed to.
Fixed recipes in Jo and in the weapon crafting table.
Fixed a crash when using FSR 4 common on GTX GPUs.
Fixed crash in EOS SDK, where unreliable network conditions would trigger a reconnect to the game services, then an hour later, EOS SDK would likely crash (This one was really “fun” to track down).
Fixed the issue where some players would disconnect while loading into their camps as players built their camps larger.
Making connections to the game services more resilient, they will now retry if interrupted in the background.
Networking changes to prevent packet loss during initial map load. This should make loading a bit faster for many players as well.
Fixed ordering issues in the options menu.
Various other bug and crash fixes.
Fixed the issue where AI would spawn without ammo loaded in their gun. Making them reload their gun when starting combat.
Other Improvements
DLSS updated to 4.5, OTA updates are now enabled.
FSR 4 update to 4.0.3.
Lighting updates:
New fixtures, improved materials, improved soft shadows.
Improved fire look.
Improved exposure behavior (faster response).
Various other performance improvements:
Optimized light complexity and improved the positioning of several fixtures.
Rework of the options menu for organization.
We cannot understate how pivotal player feedback has been in shaping our long-term plans, and it will continue to guide our work as we expand Lost Rift with our community’s support. Stay tuned for future information on our next patch, content update, and beyond. Be sure to join us on Discord, TikTok, and X to connect with other players. And as always, if you are liking the content that was just delivered, then please consider dropping us a review (it helps us a lot)!