Fresh wipe: new armor and clothing, Gravewick Manor and island skies

Wipe and new islands

This update reshapes every generated island, so it comes with a wipe. When the update reaches them, US West Main, US East Main, US West 2×, US East 2×, US Small and EU Small each start a fresh wipe on a new island. Bases, loot, inventories and research reset. Your account, skins, Sparks and purchases are kept. Weekly and biweekly wipes carry on as usual.

• The Playground still never wipes, but it moves once to a generated island, Flintreach Island, and starts over there. It has about a quarter desert, half jungle and a quarter snow.
• New solo worlds start on a random generated island too. Your existing solo worlds keep theirs.
• Hills are broader and smoother, with fewer small bumps. Mountain and arctic ridges are fewer and broader and stay towards the middle of the island. On average the ground is gentler, about 23° instead of 28°.
• The small islands no longer have spikes and pits in the water around them, specks of land in the channel or a trench cut round them. Trees no longer grow on icebergs.
• Arena, Bedwars and player-made worlds are not wiped.

All armor and clothing rebuilt

All 29 armor and clothing items have new models and textures, made to fit the survivor and match each other.

• Road sign armor is hammered-out road signs with chipped paint, and metal armor is riveted steel.
• Wood armor is rope-lashed planks, a kettle helmet with a nose guard and plates on the thighs. Bone armor is rows of bone plates on a leather jerkin, with a leather cap and bone cheek plates.
• Clothing comes in matching lines: burlap, hide, an everyday hoodie and cargo pants, arctic furs and the hazmat suit, which now has a smoked-glass visor.
• Helmets fit snugly on the head, with the brow just above the eyes.
• The night-vision goggles, miner's headlamp, both backpacks and the diving tank are rebuilt in the same style.
• Inventory icons and the items you drop on the ground are rebuilt to match.
• Skins paint the new models: First Forged, Gravewick (in the Store until November 9, UTC), Founder's Gilt and Supporter Ember. The Store's cards and previews show the new armor.

Your outfit also costs the game less to draw than before: one piece is one draw, and an item's textures load only once someone near you wears it.

Gravewick Manor and Base Lights

Two new extras in the Store, under For your base. Each one is yours for good once bought, on every server.

• Gravewick Manor ($5.99 or 600 Sparks) turns your base into a haunted manor: charred black boards with bone trim, crypt stone with candle wax and moss, pumpkin-enamel sheet metal, and black iron plates with purple neon seams. After dark the board gaps flicker with candlelight, the moss glows faint green and the neon lights up.
• It is a Halloween item, on sale only until November 9 (UTC). If you own it, you keep it after that.
• Pick it free on the hammer's Look page, for one piece or your whole base, or on the building plan's Look page. L switches your building look while you hold the plan or hammer. Pieces you place carry it, and twig stays plain until it is upgraded.
• It only changes the look: health, upkeep and raid costs are the same as stock.
• Base Lights ($3.99 or 400 Sparks) adds string lights, five neon signs (palm, wave, skull, flame and star) and a colour lamp. They run on real power, pass it on like lamps, and you pick their colour. Only owners can craft them, but anyone can loot, place and use them. A cupboard holds at most 60.

Building

• Step foundations up or down a slope just by looking: aim a little higher or lower beside a foundation and the new one sits level with it or one to four 0.75 m steps above or below, whichever fits the ground. The hint says LEVEL SNAP, STEP UP or STEP DOWN.
• Bushes, ferns, desert brush, leaf litter, small rocks, seaweed and coral no longer poke through your foundations and low floors. They come back if the piece is removed. Hemp and other plants you can pick still show.
• The build label is easier to read: the piece first, then why it can't go there (or its cost and stability), then the controls.

Sea and sky

The island has new weather and night-time sights. Everyone on a server sees the same ones at the same time.

• Before each hourly shower, a squall line rolls in over the sea with its own dark storm cloud, curtains of rain, lightning and thunder, and passes over you as the rain starts.
• On most mornings a flat ground mist fills the low ground, with the hills standing out of it. A low sun throws shafts of light, and a rainbow can appear as a shower clears.
• On dark nights the breaking surf, wakes and swimmers glow electric blue, and clusters of small mushrooms glow green on damp stumps.
• The night sky has the Milky Way, a moon that goes through its phases every eight days and the odd shooting star. Even a new moon keeps some light.
• The volcano has a standing plume of ash and steam that bends with the wind, with lava glow on it at night.

Trading skins with friends

• Signed-in players can now send trade offers to friends from Inventory › Trades: up to 8 items a side, or a gift or request with one side empty. Your friend can accept, decline or counter, and offers last 7 days.
• An offer can't be changed once sent, so nothing can be swapped at the last moment, and accepting shows a 3-second review first.
• Day Zero crate skins, unopened crates and Gravewick skins (7 days after you buy them) can be traded. Founder's Pack, Supporter, Starter, First Spark and Nightshift items stay on your account, and Sparks can't be traded.
• An item you receive can't be traded on for 7 days.
• In game, press T to open chat and click a signed-in player's name to see their profile card: add them as a friend, view their inventory, block or report. Your inventory is public unless you choose Friends only or Only me.

Settings and menus

• Settings › Gameplay has Camera, HUD and Crosshair sections. HUD scale goes from 75% to 150%, and the crosshair can be a dot, cross, cross and dot, or circle, in six colours, with its own size and opacity. The default is still the old dot.
• Interface scale (Settings › Graphics › Display) makes the menus and HUD fill larger screens, so the game no longer looks tiny on 1440p and 4K. Auto, or 100% to 200%.
• Settings › Audio has separate volumes for Effects, Weapons & explosions, Ambience & weather and Interface under Master, plus a switch to keep sound playing in the background.
• The server list splits survival into Official and Modded (2×) tabs. A Wiped column shows how long ago each server wiped, and a Weekly or Biweekly tag tells you when it wipes next if you hover it.
• News, Community, Feedback, Download app and Discord moved to the menu's bottom bar.
• The main menu and loading screen play new loops from our latest trailer.
• Contracts are job cards with their reward and a clear Accept job button at a trader.
• Store times show in your own time zone with a countdown.

Fewer crashes, smoother play

• Textures now reach your graphics card compressed. The game needs about 600 MB less graphics memory, which was the cause of most crashes on Macs. Your first load after the update downloads about 7 MB more.
• Very low draws about half as much of the world's geometry (Low about a third less), so older laptops run smoother. High and Ultra look exactly as before.
• The map opens straight away after you spawn instead of taking a few seconds the first time.
• No more hitch when you put on armor or clothing.
• We are ready for a rush: when an official server fills up, up to 32 servers of its kind can open (up from 8), and the server list loads with far less work.

Fixes

• Scientists move smoothly instead of jumping, and your shots land where you see them.
• Hazmat gloves no longer look like bare hands in first person.
• The metal chest plate now shows its forearm guards in first person too.
• Skins on the new armor look as they should: the Founder's gilt chest plate reads as a gold plate.