Hytale’s New Update Brings Everything We Wished For, Including Dinosaurs

What to know

• Combat is more reliable, with melee hit fixes, burn reworks, and exploit patches
• Crafting is smoother thanks to cheaper backpacks and expanded bench pull range
• Zone 4 gets major environmental, NPC, and dungeon improvements, plus dinosaurs
• Performance, audio, UI, and server stability see broad upgrades

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On 16th January 2026, the first major pre-release update for Hytale focuses on stability, balance, and polish rather than headline-grabbing systems. If you’ve been playing the pre-release or following development closely, this patch smooths out many long-standing friction points while quietly expanding late-game content, especially in Zone 4.

Combat feels cleaner and more predictable

Melee combat is now noticeably more responsive, with hit detection tuned to reduce whiffs at close range. Fire and burn mechanics received a major clarity pass: fire-based creatures are now immune to fire damage, and burns from lava or enemies can be instantly cured by entering water or using a water bucket. Several combat exploits and NPC behavior bugs were also resolved, making fights feel fairer and more consistent.

Crafting and item management waste less of your time

Backpacks are now easier and cheaper to craft, helping you expand inventory space earlier without heavy grinding. Crafting benches can pull items from chests at twice the previous distance, which makes organized bases far more efficient. The tanning rack processes hide into leather 10 seconds faster, and dropped-item physics have been cleaned up to avoid awkward bouncing or clipping. You can also place torches while dual-wielding tools, except when holding a sword, which still prioritizes blocking.

Audio, VFX, and presentation upgrades

Mining and ore interactions now use new or updated sounds, while particle effects for ore breaking, eating, memories, and potions have been improved. These changes don’t alter gameplay directly, but they make actions feel clearer and more satisfying, especially during long mining or crafting sessions.

Performance, UI, and quality-of-life improvements

High field-of-view settings are now safer and more stable, with fixes for visual distortion. Chunk loading is faster at high view distances, overall lag handling has improved, and the game now shows clearer pre-release and version warnings. Sleeping is available an hour and a half earlier, helping you skip nighttime darkness sooner.

Zone 4 finally feels alive

Zone 4 received one of the most substantial updates. Atmosphere and spawn logic in volcanic and sewer areas have been improved, and villages, outposts, and dungeons have been repaired for smoother navigation and looting. Environmental damage was reworked to be more readable and consistent.

Dinosaurs arrive underground

The previously sparse underground areas of Zone 4 now feature powerful dinosaurs such as velociraptors, pterodactyls, and triceratops. These enemies drop heavy hide and raw wild meat, creating new incentives for risky exploration and tougher combat encounters.

Customization, commands, and stability changes

New face and hair options are included but will unlock fully with the official release build. A small secret NPC has been added for creative players and modders. On the technical side, teleport, give, whitelist, and ban commands were improved, alongside networking, authentication, crash fixes, and general stability work.

Why this update matters for Hytale’s future

Rather than adding flashy systems, this first major update focuses on trust-building changes: combat reliability, crafting efficiency, and world consistency. If you’re already playing, you’ll feel the improvements immediately. If you’re waiting for the full release, this patch shows a clear commitment to polish and long-term stability.

Hytale 16 January 2026 Update notes

Source: Hytale News (@HytaleNewsYT)

Welcome to the first Hytale update! Today, we are releasing new content alongside a range of fixes and quality-of-life improvements. We are committed to maintaining a rapid patching cadence to address issues and improve the game as quickly as possible.

World & Environment

• Added dinosaurs and other NPCs to populate the underground jungles. They currently use placeholder behaviours and are a work in progress.

NOTE: These new NPCs required a change to the environment in the biome, so you will need to generate new unexplored areas to see them.

• Devastated Lands sewers now have proper atmospheric effects and creature spawns.
• Areas beneath volcanoes now use volcanic environmental effects.
• Fixed entity placements, textures, and interiors in Feran villages.
• Removed an invisible filler block behind the bench in the Forgotten Temple.

NPCs & Creatures

• Added knockback resistance to NPCs that previously did not have it.
• Fire-themed NPCs and creatures should now be immune to fire damage. However, they’ll still catch on fire for now.
• The Crystal Earth Golem’s combat behavior and spin attack have been improved.
• Skeletons should no longer take drowning damage.
• Kweebecs should now be immune to the environmental damage caused by cactus and brambles.
• Replaced Trork Shaman placeholder summon animation.
• Added proper loot tables to Kweebecs and Trorks in the Whisperfrost Frontiers.
• Livestock should no longer climb on top of the Chicken Coop.
• Cautious wildlife predators, such as the Fox, should no longer engage players unless attacked.

Crafting, Items & Farming

• The Backpack and its upgrades are now easier to obtain:Base backpack now requires a Tier 1 Workbench (down from Tier 2).
• Base backpack cost reduced to 8 Medium Leather (down from 16).
• Upgrading the backpack for the first time now requires a Tier 2 Workbench (down from Tier 3).
• Light, Medium, and Heavy Hide now take 10 less seconds to process into Leather.
• Crafting benches can now pull materials from chests within 14 blocks horizontally (up from 7) and 6 blocks vertically (up from 4).
• Processing benches now display item tooltips in the upgrade requirements panel.
• All raw fruits and vegetables should now only grant Health Regen I. Cooking them grants additional benefits.
• Dropped items should no longer get stuck on the side of blocks.
• Torches and other handheld light sources can now be placed on the ground when equipped in the Utility Slot while wielding a pickaxe or a hatchet.
• Pickaxes and hatchets are now only swung when using the primary action.
• Corn now gives 1 Essence Of Life instead of 4 when exchanged in the Farming Bench as it was previously misconfigured making it better than higher tier crops.
• Fully grown Cauliflower and Pumpkin no longer drop regular seeds when broken by hand or with any tool
• Fully grown Eternal Crops no longer drop eternal seeds when broken by hand or with any tool
• Wood Logs now display their respective “wood type”
• Example: Oak Log will display “Hardwood” in It’s Tooltip.
• When a crafting recipe previously required a type of “Trunk” this is now displayed correctly as “Log” instead.
• Example: “Hardwood Trunk” is displayed as “Hardwood Log” in the recipe requirements.
• When a crafting recipe requires a specific Log Type (Such as Hardwood) the tooltip now displays which Trees can drop that type of Log
• Example: “Softwood Log” will display “Banyan, Beech and Aspen” in It’s tooltip. 
• Woodcutter’s Block no longer displays as “Dev” item quality, and no longer has it’s un-used processing bench interaction it is now a decorative furniture block that can also be crafted in the Furniture Bench.

Audio & Visual Effects

• New hit and break sounds for stone.
• New hit and break sounds for ores with additional layered effects.
• Horses now properly play running sounds while mounted.
• Torch burn loop replaced with a softer ambient sound.
• Adjusted volumes for cocoon breaking, pig, piglet, and warthog sounds.
• Reduced pitch variation on sword swings.
• Added new ore breaking particles.
• Added fruit eating particles. More to come later for other food types.
• A new particle effect now appears above an NPC’s head when absorbing their memory.
• Updated health potion visual effects with new glitter, glow, and spiral particles.
• Fixed rope offset when held in hand.
• Fixed hand positioning for various plants, flowers, and foliage.

UI, Performance & Quality of Life

• You can now sleep starting at 7:30 PM.
• Added an information panel explaining the Memories system when interacting with The Heart of Orbis for the first time. Can be viewed again by clicking on the ‘?’ in the top-left corner of the Memories UI.
• Toggle Fullscreen, Switch HUD, and Take Screenshot can no longer be bound to mouse buttons.
• The game now warns when launching pre-release versions or opening worlds from different versions.
• Field of view while sprinting is now limited to 160° to prevent hyper-drive effect.
• Cancelling LAN server discovery now works correctly.
• The interaction system now handles server lag spikes better.

Character Customization

• New eye types: Cat Eye, Demonic Eyes, Goat Eye, Reptile Eye.
• New mouth options: Large Mouth, Tiny Lips.
• New hair color: Lavender.
• Reworked Bangs hairstyle and brightened Dark Brown color.
• Featherbound Hood is now correctly showing for the Supporter edition.

Combat & Balance

• Weapon attacks should now check for line of sight.
• The regular Burn effect now generally deals less damage. Burn applied by lava remains unchanged.
• Cactus and brambles now deal the Environmental damage type.

Commands & Server

• Fixed argument order for teleport commands. /tp <player> <targetPlayer>
• Give command now supports specifying item durability.
• Whitelist and ban commands now support both online usernames and offline UUIDs.
• The server now uses “Bottleneck Bandwidth and Round-trip propagation time” (BBR) congestion control for QUIC.
• Improved authentication and session token error handling.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Fixed a misconfiguration that allowed weapon Charged Attacks to not consume Stamina correctly when swapping to another hotbar slot at the right time.
• Fixed signature ready sound playing incorrectly in adventure mode.
• Fixed regular expression parsing in /replace command.
• Fixed an issue where signature attacks could be used without signature energy.
• Fixed some items allowing longer interaction ranges than intended.
• Fixed fluid flow behavior when stacking water sources.
• Fixed crash when using non-English folder names for screenshots.
• Fixed crash when selecting certain hairstyles with variants.
• Fixed crash caused by corrupt cached avatar previews.
• Fixed crash when the memories plugin fails to load.
• Fixed an issue where rewards from restoring memories were granted too early and did not match the correct number of memories required.
• Fixed “waiting for chunks” taking too long at <128 view distance.
• Fixed crash when updating player model.
• Fixed localization loop affecting Norwegian language users.
• Fixed race condition in instance teleport that caused entity removal and re-add issues.
• Fixed session refresh for singleplayer servers.
• Fixed various issues with crop growth where certain crops like Tomatoes would not grow correctly, chunks are now saved when a farming block updates.