Tidewrack Update, September 11, 2026

11 Sep 2026Developer post

This update expands island building and improves dedicated servers, multiplayer groups, inventories, PvP, and persistent world storage.

Dedicated Servers and Multiplayer

Every player receives their own persistent raft on dedicated servers.
New player rafts spawn at a safe distance without overlapping players or other rafts.
Players reliably appear on the correct raft when joining.
Other players remain visible with the correct position, movement, pose, and raft assignment.
Late joins correctly rebuild the existing world state, rafts, and player assignments.
Rejoining restores the player's own raft and saved position.
Sails, rudders, and anchors affect only the owner's raft.
The visible sail state is displayed separately for every raft.
Build group members can continue building together but cannot steer another player's raft.
A logged out player's raft remains as part of their save.
Unoccupied rafts owned by logged out players are no longer treated as targets for active dangers.
The world continues running for remaining players after the first connected player leaves.
Player profiles, raft assignments, inventories, buildings, chests, and permissions persist across reconnects and server restarts.

Every player can reliably collect available debris.
The message that another player was faster appears only when the same object was actually collected first by someone else.
Hook catches are validated along the real flight path and remain valid during network delays.
Pickups remain isolated between players and their inventory revisions.
Debris is spawned and distributed for multiple active rafts.
Sharks spawn separately for active player rafts and remain consistent across clients.
Sharks, debris, and other server controlled dangers remain active when players join or leave.
Raiders no longer keep pursuing an unoccupied raft while its player is ashore or logged out.

Build invitations work on rafts and island bases.
Invitations display the Steam name instead of a numeric identifier.
Build groups persist when moving between a raft and an island.
Group permissions apply consistently to shared building, doors, and permitted storage.
Members can be removed from a build group.
Players can leave a build group themselves.
Reciprocal invitations and groups with more than two members are processed without duplicate or lost memberships.
Group permissions persist across death, reconnects, and server restarts.
Removed members lose access immediately without damaging unrelated group connections.
A new transparent build group chat is available on dedicated servers.
Group chat reaches only current group members and does not write messages into save files.
The server name and build group display are positioned more compactly to keep the play area clear.

The complete building catalog can be used on islands.
Building previews, movement, rotation, and placement work on island terrain.
Foundations snap cleanly along edges, corners, and slopes.
Fully overlapping foundations are rejected.
Floating or unsupported floors and upper decks are rejected.
Walls, doors, stairs, roofs, and other pieces can be placed correctly on upper levels.
Stations, furniture, and other placeable objects display their correct model.
Supports and foundations adapt reliably to island terrain.
Upper floors, thatched roofs, and shingle roofs now protect island bases from rain.
Raft building continues to work normally after returning from an island.

Chests display their contents and the player's backpack in one clear view.
Items can be moved in both directions with buttons or drag and drop.
Partial amounts and multiple stacks transfer without loss or duplication.
When the backpack is full, remaining items stay visible in the chest.
Take All is handled as a safe atomic transaction.
Accessible chests owned by other players remain usable according to their access rules.
Chest contents and partial stacks persist across saving, reconnects, and restarts.
Hotbar selection, quantities, and tool condition are synchronized correctly with the server.
Inventory items placed as a chest stay on island structures and no longer fall through foundations.
Chests placed on water continue to float normally.

Fatal player damage displays the correct PvP death reason.
Players respawn with 100 health on their own raft.
The complete carried inventory appears in a loot chest at the place of death.
Death loot can be taken but cannot be used as additional storage.
A full backpack leaves remaining death loot visible and does not create duplicates.
Death does not change raft storage, research, island bases, normal chests, or building permissions.
The old player character disappears on death and the respawn is shown correctly to other players.
PvP remains limited to players and does not damage protected structures.

Normal swimming no longer consumes stamina.
Illness is evaluated per player and no longer affects every player at the same moment automatically.
The grounding warning ends when the player leaves the affected raft or the cause no longer exists.
Sleeping, crafting, eating, drinking, tools, and item pickup now work together throughout longer multiplayer sessions.
Machine and interaction states remain separated between multiple rafts.

Existing single player, cooperative, and dedicated server saves remain compatible.
Save operations write world data and player profiles together as one atomic transaction.
Interrupted writes never replace a valid save.
Server restarts preserve rafts, positions, inventories, buildings, chests, and permissions.
Existing island positions and world states are not regenerated by this update.
Multiplayer protocol mismatches are rejected cleanly without creating a partial profile.
Several causes of freezes and inconsistent state during longer sessions have been fixed.