Hytale Update 7 Part 4 Pre-Release — Chapter 1 Wave Two, Runestone Overhaul, Combat Rework & A Massive Plugin API Deprecation Pass

The second wave of Chapter 1 content has arrived in Hytale's Update 7 Part 4 pre-release, and this one is enormous. Alongside new Chapter 1 content you can start exploring right now, it brings a Runestone overhaul, a broad combat and food rework, Void creature changes, the Revenant Guardian rename, a new French localization, and one of the largest plugin API deprecation passes the game has seen.

A huge thank you to community members NoctuaAstrum and tssan1ty for the fixes, features and polish they've brought to this update.

As with the previous waves, this content is still actively developed — expect more change between now and Chapter 1's release, and keep sending feedback and bug reports.

🏰 Chapter 1 Wave Two

You can begin engaging with the new Chapter 1 content immediately by visiting the Forgotten Temple — or wait a few days and see what happens.

Importantly: a lot of what you'll encounter in this second wave deliberately isn't mentioned in the patch notes. The developers want you to experience it yourself, so treat the notes as a functional list rather than a spoiler sheet. For this pre-release, the content is mostly reached through Creative Mode.

And a small in-world flavour note that doubles as a hint: whatever's happening at the Forgotten Temple has made it too difficult to sleep there, so the bed can no longer be interacted with.

🌍 Localization

• French has been added to the list of available languages.

🔮 Runestone Overhaul

The Rune system got a substantial pass — renaming, rarity, tooltips and six new runestones:

• Runestones have been renamed to include only the ability name, and their tooltips now show whether a runestone is an Ability Runestone or a Modifier Runestone.
• Ability Runestones are now Rare quality, and Modifier Runestones are now Uncommon.

New Ability Runestones:

• Chain Hook — throw out a hook that damages enemies and reels them toward you.
• Charged Shot — channel a bolt of frost that, when released, deals damage and slows the enemy based on how long it was charged.

New Modifier Runestones:

• Expansion — increases an Ability Runestone's area of effect by 100%.
• Extended Duration — increases an Ability Runestone's duration by 2%.
• Fork — splits fired projectiles into additional projectiles. Those extra projectiles cannot fork again.
• Ricochet — makes fired projectiles bounce off enemies.

Existing rune rebalancing:

• Ground Slam buffed: impact damage increased from 10 to 15, earthen spike damage from 20 to 35, spikes now launch enemies higher, the ability roots the player for roughly half the previous duration, weapon restrictions were relaxed, and the cooldown went from 14 to 18 seconds.
• Wind Strike rebalanced: damage reduced from 14 to 8, weapon restrictions relaxed, and cooldown cut from 15 to 10 seconds.
• Enrage received an updated animation.

⚔️ Combat, Food & Consumables Rework

This is the section most players will feel immediately — eating and attacking have both been reshaped:

• Taking damage no longer interrupts consuming food or potions. A significant quality-of-life change for combat healing.
• Movement speed while consuming is reduced by 25%, down from 60%.
• Food now takes 2.5 seconds to consume, standardised (previously 2–3 seconds depending on type).
• Bread, Popcorn and Cheese now restore 10% Health, down from 15%.
• Raw fruit, vegetables and crops now grant a minor Health regeneration buff for 1 minute. Raw meat, fish and eggs do not.
• Buffs from cooked food now last 6 minutes — covering Health regeneration, maximum Health, and maximum Stamina buffs.

Weapon movement penalties were flattened and made more predictable:

• Crossbow attacks now reduce movement speed by 50% (previously 0%).
• Sword, mace and battleaxe attacks now reduce movement speed by 25% (previously 0–40% depending on the attack).
• Dagger attacks now reduce movement speed by 15% (previously 0–50% depending on the attack).

Damage rebalancing and feel:

• Iron Crossbow combo shot damage reduced from 27 to 12.5.
• Ancient Steel Crossbow: standard shot 16 → 10.5, combo shot 42 → 13.125, Signature Attack 123 → 82.
• Arrows now set off Goblin Boom Barrels.
• Sword, dagger, mace and battleaxe attacks are now roughly 15% faster.
• Sword hits cause less vertical knockback, and swords and battleaxes received new casting animations.
• Swords now play an enchanting animation when casting Poison Imbue or Wind Strike.
• The animations used when carrying blocks have been updated.

👹 NPCs & Entities

• Non-Elite enemies in Chapter 1-related areas now flinch when hurt, interrupting their attacks. If an enemy flinches too many times in a short window, it temporarily becomes immune to further flinching.
• Void-aligned creatures no longer appear within the Echo of Orbis at night, and Void-aligned creatures were rebalanced with new looks or attacks.
• Goblin animations were updated — they now walk, run and look around while prowling, and can sprint and run backwards.
• The Goblin Feastmaster's animations were updated.
• The Skeleton Elite is now the Revenant Guardian, and it has retrieved its own armour and weapons, with updated sprinting and running animations.
• Armour worn by various Skeletons was visually updated.
• Goblin Scrapper, Miner and Guardian melee hits cause less vertical knockback.

🌍 World & Blocks

• A 'World Events' option was added to the World Settings screen for Creative Worlds, so they can be toggled on and off — and Creative Worlds now have world events switched off by default.
• Hedera's Lair no longer ends in a void breach.
• Foliage — bushes, vines, leaves and seaweed — can no longer be broken with weapons.
• Breaking player-placed foliage now drops the same things it would in the wild (sticks, berries and so on) rather than the plant itself. Use shears — craftable at the Farmer's Workbench — if you want the plant back.
• Shears can now be used to gather fallen leaf piles.
• Coconuts have shrunk in size, baffling botanists.

🎒 Items, Interactions & Misc

• Ruined Giant longswords and shields are now accessible in the Creative Inventory.
• Added falling animations for the glider, played when Stamina runs out earlier than planned.
• The Asset Node Editor in Creative Tools now opens on Linux.
• World events can now be toggled with the /worldevent command.

🔊 Audio

A large music expansion:

• 5 new exploration tracks in Zone 2, 10 new exploration tracks in Zone 3, and 24 new exploration tracks in Zone 4.
• Zone 4 caves and sewers now have their own music.
• Added sounds to the Hookshot and the Scrap Glider.
• Ancient Platform Traps now play a sound as they break.

🎨 Graphics & Performance

• Sun shadows were softened very slightly, and the Spyglass overlay was replaced.
• Creatures far away from players scan their surroundings for opponents less often — a sensible background performance win on busy worlds.

🏷️ Naming & Categorization

• The Runebinder's Effigy is now the Runebinder's Lattice.
• Skeleton Elites are now Revenant Guardians.

🐞 Player-Facing Bug Fixes

Movement & Combat

• Mantling is now possible when stood atop a half-slab or horizontal beam.
• Projectile impacts no longer lose their visual and sound effect prematurely.
• Horizontal movement speed adjustments from entity effects now apply while airborne, swimming, climbing or rolling.

World & Blocks

• Non-opaque blocks placed above crops no longer prevent crops from growing in cubic worlds.
• When a world shuts down and the prior world is unloaded, that world now loads correctly instead of sending players to a fallback world.
• Travelling between worlds no longer bleeds terrain colours or lighting between them.
• Trigger blocks now fire every time a creature moves over them, instead of only once.

Items & Interactions

• Updated the animations when consuming various foods, from raw meats to cooked vegetables.
• Items can no longer be dropped while a block is being carried.
• Oak Log Stairs are now treated like wood rather than stone.
• Breaking blocks with a tool in the utility slot now correctly reduces that tool's durability, and tools using the per-block durability loss mode now lose durability per block.
• The Scrap Drill's animation was updated, and zooming with the Spyglass no longer prevents Stamina recovery.

NPCs & Entities

• Scaled entities now have their hitbox scale with them again.
• Goblins have gotten braver and no longer run from almost every creature they encounter.
• Goblin Turrets no longer fixate on threats they haven't seen or heard.
• Larger creatures now spawn more reliably with spawn markers.

UI, Graphics, Audio, Performance & Localization

• Portal World UI: the progress bar now disappears when time runs out, no countdown or timeout is shown in worlds with no time limit, and longer portal world names are no longer cut off in some languages.
• The Mod Browser skips oversized or broken images instead of trying to render them.
• Ability slots no longer indicate they're ready when no ability is assigned, and utility items no longer display ability slots at all.
• The Stamina bar was lowered, and its low-Stamina red outline now has the correct shape.
• Fixed beams referenced by interactions being marked as missing, and sunshafts no longer vanish when the time of day changes.
• Audio: music transitions no longer overrun when a fade has a delay, sounds attached to creatures or projectiles play smoothly when you move alongside them, and Zone 4 caves now play the intended cave music rather than overworld tracks.
• Performance: opening the world map no longer temporarily stalls the world, and teleports and respawns are no longer delayed while the server generates terrain elsewhere.
• Localization: placeholder tags were removed from a number of items and descriptions, and fishbones and salt have been correctly differentiated after "an awkward dinner party".
• Stability: fixed a crash when a chunk unloaded while its animated blocks were updating, and a crash when an item, block or ability was used and the client didn't recognise the interaction.

⚙️ Modder-Facing Changes

World Generation

• Added an Example_Vector_Offset_Constant biome demonstrating how to build a constant value random vector offset.

NPCs & Entities

• A single NPC can stay damageable in worlds that switch off NPC damage via the new IgnoreDisableNPCIncomingDamage flag on a role. Test_Dummy_Stationary has it enabled by default.
• NPCs can switch targets when line of sight to the previous one is lost. The new TargetRequireLoS parameter on Component_Instruction_Combat_Target_Swap (true by default) keeps the current target prioritised only while LoS holds, and the default TargetSwitchTimer range moved from [5, 5] to [4, 6] so switches no longer happen in lockstep.
• Prowling NPCs can glance around while searching. Component_Step_Generic_Detection gained an Observe flag (true by default), plus ObserveAngleRange, ObservePauseRange and ObserveRelativeTurnSpeed to shape the head motion.
• NPC roles can now react to being hit. Running Component_Instruction_Hit_Interrupt on a role gives it a 0.5 second flinch, a 0.7 second attack delay, and temporary protection after three reactions within four seconds.
• Models with a different flinch move can override FlinchAnimation on that component, which otherwise plays Hurt in the Action slot.
• Attack instructions and roots must check for the absence of Hit_Interrupt_Stunned so a queued attack start gets blocked, and offensive roots have to keep their Attack tag for the cancel to find them.
• Custom attacks can declare where their counterattack ends: Hit_Interrupt_Begin_Protected_Attack goes after the start gate and Hit_Interrupt_Finish_Protected_Attack after the final swing and recovery, otherwise protection times out after eight seconds.
• NPC roles can hide the healthbar or damage numbers above them with the new HiddenUIComponents key, which takes a list of EntityUIComponent ids such as ["Healthbar"].
• Spawn markers can hunt for a position that actually fits the NPC. SpawnPositionSearch takes Line to follow marker orientation or Range for a bounded 2D sweep, with MaxHorizontalSpawnOffset up to 16 blocks.
• Markers now check their own placement: ValidatePosition rejects a marker buried too deep in solid blocks, and ValidateBelowPosition rejects one over an empty column, looking up to 192 blocks down.
• Range searches can be pinned to the marker's height with RequireFitAtMarkerHeight.
• SpawnPositionSearchDebug reports failing searches with Summary or Map diagnostics, and range search failures log why each candidate was rejected.
• Spawn position limits are now bounded: MaxDropHeight tops out at 32 blocks, BlockOverlapHeightCompensation at 4, and non-finite or out-of-range values are rejected as the asset decodes.

Items & Interactions

• Every bed now shares one Block_Bed root interaction carrying the Type=Bed tag, so a bed no longer defines its own use interaction inline.
• The shared on-hit chain moved out of DamageEntityParent into a named DamageEntityParent_On_Hit. An asset overriding Next can point back at that chain to keep normal damage and the usual hit effects.
• A wielding interaction can let stat regeneration carry on while held. Setting IgnoreForFlaggedConditions to true on a Charging or Wielding interaction lets it be ignored by conditions with UseIgnoreFlag set.

Blocks, Prefabs & Asset Schemas

• UseDefaultDropWhenPlaced was removed from 45 foliage assets, so player-placed bushes, berry crops, grass, leaves, moss, vines, reeds and seaweed fall back to their normal drop lists. Prefabs built with that flag no longer hand out the plant itself.
• Plant_Leaves_Autumn_Floor, Plant_Leaves_Jungle_Floor and Plant_Leaves_Poisoned_Floor each gained a Shears entry in Gathering.Tools.
• Generated loot containers can be configured to stay open once emptied via the new StayOpenWhenEmpty flag on ItemContainerBlock.
• Music layers can now enter an audio state on their own schedule. A StateDelta takes an optional Fade block with Duration, Curve and Delay; omitted fields fall back to the axis.
• Fade.Duration and Fade.Delay are BarBeatDuration values, so a subscriber with no tempo keeps only the Ms component. The server now rejects bars or beats on an audio category, an ambient bed or a sound event, and also rejects negative fade values or a Fade with nothing set.
• Encounter manager example assets were grouped into folders by purpose (examples, music, elite NPCs, world events). Encounters still bind by bare file name, so nothing changes at runtime.

Server & Permissions

• A sample EditorPropertyGallery asset ships with the Asset Editor plugin, showing every property control in one file. It stays unregistered until you create mods/Hytale_AssetEditor/config.json with EnablePropertyGallery set to true and restart the server.
• World events can be switched per world with /worldevent enable, which takes true or false and toggles when the argument is left off. The WorldEvents plugin stores an EnableWorldEvents flag in a new WorldEventsWorldConfig, and new Creative worlds default to false.
• Portal instances accessed via TeleportInstanceInteraction can now persist between sessions when their asset asks for it. Worlds spawned from the portal device summon page still set setDeleteOnRemove and setDeleteOnUniverseStart themselves, so those stay temporary.
• A world can switch off specific interactions with the new BlockedRootInteractionTags list in GameplayConfig.WorldConfig — anything matching is blocked server-side and hidden from the HUD.
• New marker debug commands: /spawning markers debuginvalidmarkers highlights invalid placements and revalidates markers when moved or rotated, and /spawning markers autoremoveinvalidmarkers toggles automatic removal of failing markers.

Renames, Deprecations & Protocol

• Renamed the Bear_Voidtaken_Tentacle_Model and Bear_Voidtaken_Tentacle_Marker_Model server models to Bear_Voidtaken_Tentacle and Bear_Voidtaken_Tentacle_Marker, with dependent roles updated.
• Removed the Carryable_Block item animation asset. The throw now lives in Block.json, and Throw_Carryable_Block points at the new Heavy_Throw animations.
• Protocol: a server must now declare the true asset size in AssetInitialize. The client disconnects a server that sends more bytes than it declared, and a single asset is capped at 256 MiB. Client and server must be on matching builds.

🔌 For Plugin Developers — The Chunk Accessor Deprecation Pass

The largest developer-facing change in this update. The old chunk/column accessors are being closed off in favour of section refs from ChunkStore.getChunkSectionReferenceAtBlock, whose components answer at any height rather than inside the legacy 0-to-320 band.

• Nine legacy column accessors on WorldChunk and BlockChunk are now @RestrictedApi: getBlockChunk, getFiller, getRotationIndex, getHeightmapColumn, getFluidLevel, getSupportValue, setState and setEnvironmentRange. A plugin that still calls them fails the Error Prone build; the replacement is the BlockSection component of the section ref.
• Removed the unused WorldChunk.setBlock overloads taking a String, a BlockType, or a BlockType and rotation, along with BlockChunk.setEnvironment.
• Removed WorldChunk.breakBlock, IChunkAccessorSync.breakBlock and BlockChunk.getEnvironment(Vector3i). Resolve the section ref and use BlockOperations.setBlock or the EnvironmentSection component.
• WorldChunk.getBlock, BlockChunk.getBlock, World.getBlock and World.getBlockType are now @RestrictedApi — read BlockSection.get on the section component instead.
• WorldChunk.getBlockComponentHolder is now allowlisted for BuilderTools and BlockSelection only, since block entity reads go through the section's BlockComponentSection.
• Removed IChunkAccessorSync.setBlockInteractionState and both WorldChunk.setBlockInteractionState overloads. Interaction state now writes through the section ref's BlockSection, skipping the blocking chunk load and the old height cap.
• Removed the last WorldChunk.setBlock overloads taking a block id or block key, plus IChunkAccessorSync.setBlock(String, SetBlockSettings). Block writes go through BlockOperations on the section ref.
• Chunk storage providers now take a readOnly flag on initialize and must answer hasStoredChunks, and a cubic IChunkLoader must implement forEachSection. A provider that can't open read-only should reject the flag rather than open writable.
• Instance validation no longer builds a whole world to read its stored chunks. World.validate and WorldValidationUtil are gone in favour of ChunkStorageValidator, and ValidateBlockEvent moved from PrefabBufferValidator to BlockValidator — now firing for chunk validation too, concurrently and off the world thread, so a handler must not keep state between events.
• The deprecated chunk lookups are closed to new callers. getChunk, getNonTickingChunk, getChunkIfInMemory, loadChunkIfInMemory, getChunkIfLoaded, getChunkIfNonTicking, World.getBlockBulkRelative and every way to build a LocalCachedChunkAccessor now carry @RestrictedApi. Resolve the column with ChunkStore.getChunkReference and read components on that ref.
• ChunkAccessor.getFluidId moved up into IChunkAccessorSync, next to the other block reads; ChunkAccessor is now an empty extension of it.
• Removed BlockChunk.getEnvironment(Vector3d) and restricted the (x, y, z) overload to BuilderTools. Environment reads go through the EnvironmentSection component, which answers at any Y.
• Removed IWorldChunksAsync.getChunkAsync(int, int), and the remaining getChunkAsync(long) / getNonTickingChunkAsync(long) are now @RestrictedApi for IWorldChunks. Column loads go through ChunkStore.getChunkReferenceAsync, and /chunk load and /chunk marksave now answer that the chunk isn't loaded rather than throwing.
• Audio binding validation now needs to know whether a subscriber has a tempo, so AudioStateResolver.validateBindings takes a SubscriberTempo parameter. MAY_HAVE matches the old behaviour.

🐞 Modder-Facing Bug Fixes

• UIComponentList was ignoring its Components key, which gave every entity every component. An entity that sets the key now receives only those components, and the list is resent when it changes.
• Marker validation and range searches now work in loaded cubic sections below Y 0 and above Y 319, with cache and span math that's overflow safe across the full block range.
• NPC target swapping now uses the right sense ranges — every template referencing Component_Instruction_Combat_Target_Swap sets NextTargetRangeView and NextTargetRangeHearing from its own ViewRange and HearingRange.
• The flying NPC template now exposes KnockbackScale as a parameter.
• Fixed the ChangeState interaction failing when the target state had no interaction sound event id.
• Cylinder area selectors now respect their size attribute — AOECylinderSelector multiplies range and height by sizeAttribute, so a scaling ability finally grows the cylinder with it.
• WaterGrowthModifierAsset now decides rain exposure from the heightmap, taking the highest opaque block at or below the crop, so a non-opaque block above a crop no longer keeps the rain off it.
• Portal instance configs now carry a DisplayName, and a world's display name reaches join and leave messages as a Message, so it localizes instead of printing the raw key.
• Embedding a Trail asset no longer disconnects the client — a trail with no texture falls back to Trails/Basic.png instead of failing validation.
• The block spawner and prefab spawner commands no longer stall the world thread waiting on a chunk. They reply that the chunk isn't loaded, work at any height, and targeting a prefab spawner in an unloaded chunk no longer errors out.
• Entity hitboxes now follow EntityScaleComponent — BoundingBox keeps the entity scale across recomputes, applies it to detail boxes, and a new EntityScaleBoundingBoxSystem keeps the box in step.
• A plugin can load a target world while players are being drained out of a shutting-down world — DrainPlayerFromWorldEvent is an IAsyncEvent, so the drain waits for listeners and you can call setWorld once the world is ready.

🖥️ What This Means For Your Server

• Update server and client together. The protocol change to AssetInitialize means a server that over-declares asset size gets disconnected by the client, and mismatched builds will misbehave. Update everything in one pass.
• Expect plugin and mod breakage, then plan for it. The chunk-accessor deprecation wave is the biggest API change in this update. If your server runs plugins built against older builds, test before you deploy to a populated world — @RestrictedApi removals are compile-time failures, not runtime warnings.
• Teleport and respawn delays are fixed. "Teleports and respawns no longer delayed while the server is generating terrain elsewhere" is a direct, tangible server improvement — no more waiting on a player teleport because someone else is exploring new chunks.
• The world map no longer stalls the world. Opening the map causing a temporary stall was the kind of server hitch that shows up as rubber-banding for everyone.
• Two new world-admin tools. /worldevent enable toggles world events per world with the EnableWorldEvents world config flag, and BlockedRootInteractionTags lets a world disable specific root interactions server-side (hidden from the HUD too) — useful for instanced events and puzzle worlds.
• Portal instances can now persist. Instances reached via TeleportInstanceInteraction can survive between sessions when authored to, while summon-page worlds stay temporary.
• Stability and world-transition fixes matter on busy servers: the prior world now loads correctly after a shutdown instead of dropping players into a fallback world, terrain colours and lighting no longer bleed between worlds, and two crashes (chunk unload during animated block updates, unrecognised client interactions) are fixed.
• Distant-creature scan throttling is a quiet performance win on large populated worlds — and creates more headroom for the new audio and Chapter 1 content.

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Conclusion

Update 7 Part 4 is the biggest pre-release drop in the Update 7 series so far. Chapter 1's second wave is live at the Forgotten Temple, with much of it deliberately left undocumented. The Runestone system got renamed, re-rarified and expanded with six new runes (Chain Hook, Charged Shot, Expansion, Extended Duration, Fork, Ricochet) plus Ground Slam buffs and a Wind Strike rebalance. Combat and food were reshaped — eating is no longer interrupted by damage, movement penalties while attacking are now predictable, crossbow damage was cut hard, and melee got ~15% faster. Add Revenant Guardians, flinching Chapter 1 enemies, Void creature changes, the foliage and shears rework, 39 new exploration tracks, and a very large chunk-accessor deprecation pass for plugin developers.

This post covers the highlights across every section. For the complete list of player-facing fixes, modder-facing schema changes, renames and protocol updates, read Hypixel Studios' full official Update 7 Part 4 pre-release patch notes.