Enshrouded 1-0 Is Out

Keen Games released Enshrouded 1.0 on 15 October. After two and a half years in Early Access the game has gone live on PC and PlayStation 5, and this is far more than a version number: the whole map of Embervale is open, the final biome has arrived, the story reaches its conclusion, the level caps have moved up and the engine got a new renderer.

The 1.0 build is already live on XLGAMES.GG and servers update straight from the panel. If this is your first Enshrouded server, our setup guide walks through it and shows what the control panel and the world settings look like.

Cinder's Cradle and the complete map

• The gates north of the Veilwater Basin are open and lead into the new biome, Cinder's Cradle. It has two halves: below, lava runs through a barren wasteland littered with ruins, and above, the Ancients lifted the earth into a realm of floating islands with its own fauna, architecture and distinctly unwelcoming guardians
• The two halves are linked by tendrils of the Shroud reaching ever higher to snuff out a sacred light
• The biome sits between Blackmire and Veilwater Basin in size and brings 12 new Shroud Roots
• Two more Hollow Halls have opened, one in the Albaneve Summits and one in the Veilwater Basin. Bring your snorkel for the second one
• Springlands, Blackmire and Kindlewastes gained new areas towards the edge of the world with 6 further Shroud Roots, new quests and new points of interest. Density is lower than on the critical path, but there is plenty for explorers
• The main quest finally takes you inside structures in the older biomes that players have been hunting for hidden entrances to for years
• Most former no-build zones are now open for player bases

A new tier of power

• Max character level is now 50 and gear upgrades to level 55
• Before entering Cinder's Cradle a new Flame Level unlocks, raising the Flame Altar cap to 15. Beating the biggest threat to Embervale unlocks one more level, taking the cap to 16 and letting altars push the Shroud back
• A new survivor joins the base, specialising in Ancient knowledge and recipes
• A new crafting tier brings equipment, tools, food, consumables, arrows and spells, plus new furniture, props, building blocks and plants

Everything talks now

• Every lore note, letter and book in the world is fully voiced in English, German and Mandarin Chinese. You can keep exploring while listening, and queue notes up as a playlist
• The main crafting survivors and major quest givers are voiced in those three languages too
• The German narration is read by Dietmar Wunder, the German voice of Daniel Craig

Sparkworks

• A new logic system lets you wire interactive elements in your base together and attach behaviour rules to them
• A 2D graph editor handles the complex setups, laying out inputs, outputs and connections visually
• Anything from a light switch to dungeons with traps and puzzles, battle arenas, parkour courses or escape rooms

Visuals and performance

• The new brick renderer massively raises the level of detail on terrain and voxel buildings at a distance. That castle you built no longer collapses into a pile of abstract blocks when you walk away from it
• Each biome now has its own lighting, air moisture and sky atmosphere, plus height fog for a better sense of depth
• Dynamic global illumination was reworked: more vibrant colours in the Shroud, better light under big trees, in dense forest and indoors
• Point light shadows were rebuilt and their performance cost dropped sharply, which shows most on large bases full of lamps
• HDR is supported, with its own calibration screen
• Shader compilation after a game or driver update is much faster, memory use is down, and there is dedicated optimisation for low-end GPUs and the Steam Deck

Combat, magic and enemies

• The new faction in Cinder's Cradle adds 14 enemy types, and with variants across the older factions that is 37 new faces looking for a fight
• Enemies got smarter: better pathfinding, more consistent line of sight checks, actually searching for you when they hear something instead of reading the game's memory, and joining nearby fights properly
• Mages are the headline: 9 brand new spell types covering crowd control, area damage, summons and utility, plus many new tiers of existing spells
• Every spell now has an eternal version, and eternal spells and arrows can be upgraded like any other gear
• You can actively summon skeletons. They work for free, never complain and only occasionally get in the way
• Wands gained a heavy attack, unlockable aerial and evasive attacks, and a free aim mode
• The Albaneve Summits boss was reworked: substantially less health, a new exhausted phase where melee players can get stuck in, a wider arena and grapple anchors to get back after being knocked off
• Damage susceptibilities, aiming, target selection and controller aim assist were all reworked

Early game and quality of life

• More chests in Springlands and Revelwood, plus reworked roads and enemy camps so new players get lost less and stumble into the wrong camp less often
• Early crafting recipes were reworked to cut the grind and get players to the good stuff faster
• A new skill, Airborne Architect, lets you build in a free-flying mode
• Scattered loot is picked up in a much wider radius, by holding a button or automatically if you set it that way
• Storage chests can be upgraded and converted to magic chests in place, without emptying them first
• Custom map markers and chests can be named freely
• Fishing was overhauled: every fish can be caught in any body of water, it is a matter of the right bait tier and a rod that can handle it
• You can pick classic or the new, more realistic character proportions, either at creation or later at the Barber

What this means if you run a server

• The skill tree resets. The first time an existing save loads in 1.0.0.0, skill points are refunded and must be spent again. Warn your players before they log in
• New save format. Saves from 0.8 or earlier are backed up first and then migrated automatically. Files are smaller and the folder structure is simpler. Take your own backup before updating anyway
• Permissions changed. Hosts now set the default permission level for joining players with a single password, then promote or demote each player individually, and that level is remembered when they rejoin. On dedicated servers the user groups and their passwords work as before, and promoting or demoting mid-session is not possible
• Key bindings reset. New features made it necessary to reset custom bindings to default, so check your controls before heading out
• Server settings gained an Automatic option for enemy counts, scaling encounters to the size of the party actually present in the area
• There is now a cap on factories per world. It is generous and you get a warning before hitting it
• Server to client traffic was reduced, CPU load is lower, and the low performance warnings were reworked so they stop firing too early
• Pushing the Shroud back with Flame Altars requires Flame Level 11, though the required level can be lowered in the world settings

Get a server running

The 1.0 build is live on XLGAMES.GG right now. Existing servers update from the panel and a new Enshrouded server is online in a couple of minutes: Enshrouded hosting. First time setting one up? Start with the guide.