v1.0.0-alpha.15 is a systems release. The big one is a top-to-bottom pass on armor and damage — a real progression system now sits where a flat number used to — and right behind it, the crafting menu got the overhaul it badly needed. There’s also a batch of survival fixes (drowning finally works), named crafting tiers, and the usual round of config cleanup for modders.

Existing worlds and saves carry over as-is. There are breaking changes to a number of config keys this release (all detailed in the changelog), but since the game is still pre-mods there’s no known impact.

Armor and damage grow up

Combat used to be a single number in and a single number out. Now it’s a system with real depth:

• Armor has diminishing returns. Stacking armor no longer climbs toward total immunity — reduction follows a curve that always helps but can never reach 100%. And every landed hit now deals at least a small minimum, so heavy armor leaves a chip of damage rather than shrugging small hits off to nothing. (Peaceful difficulty is unaffected.)
• Damage has types now. A hit carries a type — physical, fire, or blast — and a source. Fall damage and drowning bypass armor entirely, the way you’d expect, and a boss shockwave can deal blast damage that a plate chestpiece doesn’t fully absorb.
• Gear can resist specific damage. An armor piece can carry resistances to particular types, so a fire-resistant set takes far less fire damage on top of its general protection. It shows on the item’s tooltip, and as a per-type readout on the armor HUD while you’re wearing it.
• Sets reward completion. Wearing multiple pieces of a matching armor set unlocks extra stats, and the bonuses stack as you complete it — a two-piece bonus keeps applying at four pieces, on top of the four-piece bonus. The wooden set shows it off.
• Gear can grant abilities. An armor piece — or a full-set bonus — can grant one of the same persistent abilities that unlock the sealed, gated areas from last release. Put the gear on and the ability is yours; take it off and it’s withdrawn (without touching abilities a boss or quest granted for good), and a qualifying piece opens nearby gated walls the moment you equip it.

Two survival gaps closed alongside all this: drowning actually damages you now (the server simply wasn’t noticing you were underwater), and getting buried suffocates you — an entity crushed inside solid blocks, say under falling sand, takes ongoing damage that armor can’t stop.

A crafting menu you can actually use

The crafting menu got a real overhaul:

• It scrolls. The recipe list no longer runs off the bottom of the screen — it’s a scrollable band with a “Recipes X–Y of N” indicator, worked with the mouse wheel.
• It teaches. A new Craftable / All toggle switches between just what you can make right now and everything the station offers. In “All” mode, recipes you can’t afford yet show greyed out with a have / need count for each ingredient (shortfalls in red), so the list doubles as a goal list. Recipes that need a better station show what they’re waiting on — “Needs: bench” — instead of simply hiding.
• It stops misfiring. Rapidly clicking Craft can no longer land on the wrong recipe. And item tooltips gained a “Used in:” line listing the recipes an ingredient goes into, so you can work backwards from a material to what it makes.

Named crafting tiers

Crafting stations no longer rank by an opaque power: N number. A crafting type now declares an ordered list of named tiers, and recipes and stations refer to a tier by name — so the menu can tell you a recipe “Needs: bench” in plain language instead of comparing hidden numbers. For modders this is a config break (detailed in the changelog): station power levels become named tiers.

Smaller touches and modder config

• Mounts board from further away. A large mount can now set its own interact range, so you’re not walking up to hug a big vehicle before you can climb on — a rideable creature’s reach was previously capped when mounting. Mounts also gained a shader override, matching mobs and interactables.
• Tags go plural. Every material and ammo tag key in the config schema is now plural and accepts a list, so a crafting ingredient can accept any of several materials ([PLANKS, LOG]) and one ammo item can feed several launcher families — neither of which was expressible before.
• Stricter, clearer configs. A misspelled key in a crafting ingredient or result now fails at load instead of silently treating the quantity as one, a block’s layer list catches duplicate or mistyped layers instead of leaving a silent hole, and a mount’s max-velocity now nests under movement: like mobs and the player. The world registry — new last release — is now documented.

What’s next

alpha.15 turns gear and combat from placeholders into a system you can build around — armor that scales sensibly, damage that means something, sets and gear that shape how you play — and makes the crafting menu a tool instead of an obstacle. With progression-granting gear now wired into the gated areas from last release, the pieces for real character progression are coming together. Thanks as always to everyone playtesting with us; keep the reports coming.