Hytale Update 7 Part 1 Pre-Release: Rune Abilities, Goblin NPCs & First Chapter 1 Content

The first wave of Chapter 1 content has arrived in Hytale's Update 7 Part 1 pre-release! This is the first of several waves landing over the coming weeks, with content still being actively developed. For this pre-release, the Chapter 1 content is mostly reached through Creative Mode.

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

Below is a condensed overview of what's new. It covers the highlights — the full official changelog is worth reading for every detail, fix, and modder-facing change: Hytale Pre-Release Patch Notes — Update 7.

✨ Rune Ability System

The headline feature is a brand new Rune Ability system. Collect Runes and place them within a Runebinder's Effigy to augment your combat abilities. An initial five runes are included:

• Rune: Enrage — channel primal rage to increase damage both dealt and received.
• Rune: Fireball — launch a fireball that explodes on impact.
• Rune: Imbue Poison — imbue your weapon with poison causing a stacking poison debuff.
• Rune: Ground Slam — sunder the earth to erupt an earthen spike that launches foes upward.
• Rune: Wind Strike — imbue your weapon with elemental wind for three piercing arcs of wind on your next attacks.

Gliding Rework

Gliding has been completely reworked — it's now possible to dive and ascend by pressing/releasing the Sprint keybind, and the glider now keeps your velocity when you deploy it.

👹 Chapter 1 Goblin NPCs

Numerous Chapter 1-related NPCs have been reworked:

• Goblin Scrapper — a light melee combatant that likes to swarm its foes.
• Goblin Miner — a heavy melee combatant with a powerful leap attack.
• Goblin Guardian — a heavily armored Goblin that defends with a shield.
• Goblin Lobber — a bomb-loving ranged combatant with an explosive arsenal.
• Goblin Burner — a dangerous ranged combatant armed with a flamethrower.
• Goblin Feastmaster — a physically imposing gargantuan gobbler of grub.

Charging NPCs' acceleration and deceleration can now be tweaked in more detail.

🧱 World & Blocks

• Added Enkindled Copper, Enkindled Iron, and Goblin Iron block sets, plus a set of Goblin decorations.
• The Gold block set has been updated with new models and texture polish.
• Instance editing now lets you break, gather, and place blocks even when the instance itself doesn't normally allow it.
• Server rule changes now affect players immediately — health bars, combat text, armor hiding, and building rules all update without rejoining.
• Explosions no longer break blocks in worlds where block breaking is turned off.
• Reworked how the void event in Hedera's Lair builds up — it now escalates after fixed amounts of time.

🗡️ Items & Gadgets

The Goblins have brought gadgets for Chapter 1:

• Scrap Drill — a mining tool that breaks multiple blocks at once.
• Spyglass — zooms your view in on distant events.
• Scrap Glider — lets you take to the skies.
• Rocket Boots — stylish footwear providing double jumps.
• Hookshot (and Hook Anchors) — to traverse the world in style.

The offensive capabilities of the Watering Can have been removed.

🌀 Trigger Volumes & Creative

• Trigger volumes can now set your respawn point, move a world's spawn, or clear your respawn points.
• A Tag Condition can compare one tag against another tag instead of only a fixed value.
• The Show Event Title effect now has a Style option instead of the old "Is Major" toggle.
• Added an Activate Trigger Volumes toggle to creative quick settings, so you can walk through your own volumes without setting them off.

🖥️ UI & Quality of Life

• Redesigned the portal panel within portal worlds.
• Mods can now contain whole worlds that appear in your world list; worlds you make from one remain even if the mod is removed.
• Added one-time full-screen announcements after the splash screen for new content.
• Mod categories show readable names on cards, filters, and detail pages.
• The Online Play screen now clearly states whether friends can join and what to do if they can't, with a Copy Network Report button.
• Added a copy button next to bug report IDs.

🎵 Audio

• Using an ability that can't be activated now plays different sounds depending on the reason (insufficient charges, cooldown, wrong weapon type).

⚡ Performance

• Deduplicated block lookups behind entity collision.
• Reworked the world map to load in small pieces — far less memory and no more stuttering while open.
• Improved server-side block breaking that no longer stops to load chunks.
• Multiplayer sessions now prefer a direct route to reduce ping.

🎮 Player-Facing Bug Fixes (Highlights)

• Watering cans and battleaxes held correctly when swimming.
• Fixed blocks failing to update when adjacent blocks change; rotated multi-blocks update surroundings correctly when broken.
• Fixed teleporters very high up or very low down not functioning.
• Creatures in shallow water no longer auto-walk into deep water; NPCs no longer get stuck near liquids.
• Upgraded workbenches keep their new look and loop crafting animations correctly.
• NPCs cast shadows correctly again and oversized textures render as black instead of invisible.
• Ambient world sounds stop the moment you leave a world.

🛡️ Stability Fixes (Highlights)

• Fixed a crash when leaving a world or moving between servers.
• Fixed a crash from overly-deeply nested network data, and from several large custom skins loading at once.
• Fixed a crash on older NVIDIA graphics cards (GeForce 400–700 series).
• Fixed memory and graphics leaks when opening/closing menus and during play.
• Fixed a fault where one player's connection could break networking for everyone else.
• Servers and worlds no longer refuse to start if the saved view distance is too high — now capped at 32 chunks.

⚙️ Modder-Facing Changes (Highlights)

• Encounter weather control — SetEncounterWeather / ClearEncounterWeather force weather for everyone taking part.
• Charge rework — ChargeAccelerationDistance/DecelerationDistance, ChargeDistanceMode, shapeable curves, ProbeRelaxedConstraints, and a new ChargeState InStopRange.
• Rewards system — encounter templates can grant rewards via a new GrantReward action.
• Drop merging — MergeRadius key on ItemEntityConfig controls how far dropped items look to stack.
• Respawn triggers — SetRespawnPoint, SetWorldSpawn, and ClearRespawnPoints; respawn points can now set facing Yaw.
• Time & campaign conditions — TimeCondition waits on world clock; GameFlagLevelCondition gates on campaign progress.
• New music system — MusicTransition and Stinger asset types, MusicSync, music containers with markers and phases.
• New Beam asset type + wire protocol support, plus a /beam dev command.
• Server refuses to boot if content would land inside the launcher's install folder (with an --allow-install-dir escape hatch).
• Density node renames (SmallerThan→LessThan, Select→Selector, Equals→Equal, etc.); asset renames (Spiwer→Spider_Web, Void_Spectre, etc.).
• Major API changes: lighting per chunk section, DurabilityOperator→ComparisonOperator, WorldChunk.setBlock/breakBlock deprecated, WorldGameplayConfig packet added.

➕ Late Additions

• Ability keys moved to a modifier system — e.g. Ability 1 is now RB + Y, Ability 2 is RB + X, Ability 3 is RB + B, Ability 4 is RB + A.
• Prevented a crash during explosions if blocks and items aren't loaded fast enough.
• BlockyModels gained a Transparent flag for individual faces; blocks gained a Requires Alpha Blending flag.
• Fixed Anchor PropDistribution sharing a global context instance.

Conclusion

Update 7 Part 1 is a massive pre-release that finally begins the Chapter 1 rollout with the Rune Ability system and a wave of content — while laying substantial groundwork for both players and modders. Expect more waves and heavier developer iteration on the runes as Chapter 1 nears. If you're running or tuning a Hytale server, the view-distance cap at 32 chunks and the improved multiplayer routing are well worth noting.

This post only scratches the surface. For the complete list of player-facing fixes, modder-facing API changes, renames and deprecations, and networking/protocol updates, be sure to read the official Update 7 pre-release patch notes.