Chapter I Out of the Breach Is Out for Hytale

Hytale Team shipped the first Early Access chapter on 12 October: Chapter I: Out of the Breach. This is not a minor patch. It brings a new biome, Hytale's first handcrafted dungeon, a multi-phase boss fight, a rune-based ability system, minigames, and a long list of server side fixes and performance work.

The build is already live on XLGAMES.GG. Update from the panel and existing worlds pick up the chapter content without a reset.

It starts at the Forgotten Temple

Whether you are on an existing Exploration Mode save or starting fresh, something is stirring at the Forgotten Temple. Head there, explore the new Goblin Lab, and the chapter opens up. A dedicated chapter screen lays out your objectives and what each one unlocks.

The Goblin Breach and a new biome

• A temporary portal appears in the world, leading to an unstable fragment of Orbis the goblins have claimed, with the Void pressing in at the edges. The space regenerates every time you enter and the Void eventually pushes you out
• You can earn more time inside by fighting back the Void and upgrading the Goblin Breach Console in the Goblin Lab
• The new Guttering Hollows biome holds predators you can track and trap, Void assassins, chests that spring enemy waves, and puzzles
• The goblin faction has been completely revamped, with over 20 new and reimagined NPCs. Not every goblin wants a fight either, they will run from Void creatures unless they have enough friends nearby
• Hunts on the far side of a breach need a Voidheart, and hunt sites now have their own icon on the world map

Scrappy goblin gadgets

• The Scrap Drill chews through a 2x2 patch of blocks at once and can break and loot metal blocks
• The Scrap Glider lets you dive and climb while keeping your momentum. Mind your Stamina or the landing gets interesting
• Rocket Boots give you a double jump
• The Hookshot and its Hook Anchors let you zip across the world
• The Spyglass zooms in on whatever is happening in the distance
• The Bangstick is a stick that goes bang
• The Goblin Repair Kit repairs items without lowering maximum durability

Runestones and abilities

• Craft Runestones from shards, then slot them into a Runebinder's Lattice. There is one in the Forgotten Temple
• Avatars equip up to two Ability Runestones and attach Modifier Runestones to change how they behave
• Seven abilities at launch: Fireball, Ground Slam, Wind Strike, Enrage, Imbue Poison, Chain Hook and Charged Shot
• Eight modifiers: Colossal, Enduring, Quickening, Rebound, Rend, Splinter, Thrift and Wither. They split projectiles, bounce them between enemies, add bleeding or withering, or trade damage for a shorter cooldown
• Abilities cost Mana, which regenerates on its own. Landing your weapon's signature ability on an enemy restores Mana, with diminishing returns when you hit several at once
• The Mana bar now sits where the Stamina bar used to be

Enter the Deepworks

• All chapter progression leads into the Deepworks, Hytale's first handcrafted dungeon
• Expect hordes of goblins, obstacle rooms with flames and falling debris, puzzles, and checkpoints along the way
• The Elite Goblin Feastmaster blocks your path, and he is far more nimble than he looks
• At the end waits the Gobliterator, the game's first major multi-phase boss
• There is an ominous button to the left of the boss chamber entrance for anyone who wants it harder. You have been warned

$15,000 for the first Gobliterator kill

Back on 24 September, Hytale founder Simon (@Simon_Hypixel) promised $15,000 to the first streamer to take down the Gobliterator solo, on hard difficulty, in hardcore mode, with no armor, no potions and no glitches. Iron weapons from Exploration Mode are allowed. The whole run has to be streamed so the VOD can be reviewed afterwards, and you cannot creative-mode your way into the dungeon. Restarts are fine as long as the rules are followed from the start. Now that the chapter is out, the challenge is officially on.

Minigames

• Select Minigames on the Main Menu to queue solo or with a party, matchmaking handles the rest
• Prop Hunt: disguise yourself as beds, tankards and barrels in a crowded tavern, or hunt down the props. Every prop you catch joins the hunt
• Shuffle Jam: a shuffled playlist of 12 microgames, from TNT Run to Memory Floor, with stars awarded each round
• Minigames go live shortly after the chapter itself
• A Minigames tab in the Mod Browser and a creator framework are both on the roadmap

Combat and balance

• Sword, dagger, mace and battleaxe attacks are roughly 15% faster, but attacks now slow you down: 50% on crossbows, 25% on swords, maces and battleaxes, 15% on daggers
• Crossbows took a real damage cut, the Iron and Ancient Steel ones in particular
• Weapon and tool durability is up across every tier, Adamantite and Ancient Steel going from 180 to 500
• Health potions share a 15 second cooldown and Stamina potions a 30 second one. Taking damage no longer interrupts eating or drinking
• Non-Elite enemies in chapter areas now flinch when hurt, though they become briefly immune if flinched too often in a row
• Daggers no longer damage enemies through walls, and shields can no longer cut your own attack animation short after damage has landed

What matters if you run a server

• Saved worlds take up less disk space now. Existing worlds upgrade themselves the first time they load, so back up before you update
• World data compression on save has been improved, which lowers memory use on busy servers
• Entity collision block lookups and server side block breaking have both been optimized, so busy areas cost less work per tick
• Blocks, fluids and creatures far above or below players now pause until someone approaches, and distant creatures scan for opponents less often
• Teleports and respawns are no longer delayed while the server generates terrain elsewhere
• Fixed a freeze when someone joins a brand new world, and a long stall when joining a world
• Fixed a fault where a single player's connection could break networking for everyone else on the server
• Servers now close connections cleanly on shutdown instead of leaving clients waiting on a timeout
• Servers no longer refuse to start when the saved view distance is too high, the value is capped at 32 chunks
• Server rule changes apply immediately, so health bars, combat text, armor hiding and build permissions update without a rejoin
• Fixed crashes from broken or malicious network data with deeply nested messages, and from joining a world running several large custom skins
• Mods can now contain whole worlds, which appear in your world list once installed. A world made from a mod stays even if the mod is removed
• /fragment is now /portal, /leave is now /portal leave, and /worldevent toggles world events

Odds and ends

• Over 100 new cosmetic options, with the Scrap Arcanist and Junk Pilot sets unlocked through chapter progress
• 42 new exploration tracks across Zones 2, 3 and 4, and Zone 4 caves and sewers now have music of their own
• French and Spanish have been added
• The world map now loads in small pieces instead of one huge image, using a fraction of the memory and no longer stuttering
• Cursebreaker Edition owners get one extra Standard Edition copy for every chapter released

Play it on a fresh build

Chapter I is live on XLGAMES.GG right now. Existing servers update from the panel, and a new Hytale server is online in a couple of minutes: Hytale hosting.