The Hearth & Anvil Update

Over the last few months, we've been hard at work building a massive batch of interconnected features, and they have finally come together. Community Update 12, Hearth & Anvil, is easily our biggest update yet: every crafting profession now levels from 1 to 300, every weapon and armor piece has been rebuilt, and Aetherion has its own social, mail and gear systems from top to bottom. Along the way we also packed in dozens of quality-of-life fixes and performance tweaks.

Here is what's arriving:

• The Great Forge: a brand new forge in the Central Nexus to upgrade your gear through five tiers, socket Ad'rath Shards and change its appearance.
• Professions: eight crafting professions and three gathering professions, all levelling 1-300 with WoW-style skill colours and recipe scrolls.
• Cooking & Brewing: nearly a hundred recipes, from a humble Mushroom Kebab to the Aetherion Banquet, plus beer, wine and spirits.
• Arms & Armor: every weapon and armor piece rebalanced with five Great Forge tiers, new armor sets, firearms, crossbows and spell tomes.
• Character window: our own inventory on Tab, with an amulet, two rings and pocket crafting.
• Social: parties, guilds and the Pigeon Post - our own mail system.
• Rewards: achievements, titles, a reworked quest Notice Board and leaderboards.

This article is part of the Community Update 12 series: Overview · Professions & Crafting · Cooking & Brewing · Gathering · Arms & Armor.

PROFESSIONS

Professions have been rebuilt from the ground up. Every profession now levels from 1 to 300. Recipes unlock as your skill rises, and rarer ones are learned from recipe scrolls. Each craft or gather can raise your skill, and the colour of a recipe (orange, yellow, green or grey) tells you how likely that is. The new Professions tab in your Player window shows your progress, every recipe you know and the ones still locked, and a Guide for every gathering profession.

Crafting: Alchemy, Arcanistry, Blacksmithing, Cooking, Engineering, Jewelcrafting, Leatherworking and Tailoring. Gathering: Mining, Woodcutting and Gathering.

Read the full breakdown in Professions & Crafting, Cooking & Brewing and Gathering.

ARMS AND ARMOR

Every weapon and armor piece in Aetherion has been re-engineered and balanced. Gear now has five Great Forge tiers, unlocks sockets for Ad'rath Shards as it is upgraded, and can be reskinned with any appearance you have collected. New this update: crafted armor sets for every armor type, firearms and crossbows from Engineering, nine schools of spell tomes, and rings and amulets from Jewelcrafting.

All the details are in Arms & Armor, and every item is listed in our Armor Compendium and Weapons Compendium.

THE CHARACTER WINDOW

Pressing Tab now opens Aetherion's own Character window instead of the vanilla inventory. It shows your level, vitals, attributes and active effects on the left, your equipment, bags and coins in the middle, and pocket crafting on the right. It also adds the slots Hytale doesn't have: an amulet and two rings (a relic slot is waiting for a future update). Your achievement title can be changed right above your coins, and the Memories tab shows your recorded memories, including the new World Boss category.

SOCIAL: PARTIES, GUILDS AND PIGEON POST

• Parties of up to six players, with party frames, WoW-style shared experience and shared quest kill credit for members nearby. Parties survive server restarts.
• Guilds with a 2-5 letter chat tag, five ranks, guild chat and an officer channel. Guilds are open to all factions for now.
• Pigeon Post, our own mail system: send letters, gold and items from any mailbox, with cash on delivery and return to sender. Quest, achievement and forge rewards are mailed to you when your bags are full. Mailboxes come in seven faction styles.
• A new Social button on the Player Menu (press O) brings it all together.

QUESTS, ACHIEVEMENTS AND TITLES

• A reworked quest Notice Board and Quest Journal, with rebalanced gold and experience and a new quest tracker.
• The Achievements system, with rewards on every tier and titles you can show in your Character, party and guild windows.
• PvP and PvE leaderboards in the Hall of Trials window, linked to achievement points.
• A new Currencies page in the Player window for Champion Marks, Elderstone Sigils and event tokens.

WORLD

• World bosses no longer spawn through normal world spawns, and they have proper names: Aurelion Stag, Elyrion Grazer, Hollow Screecher, Skarnjaw the Ancient, the Caerbannog Horror and the Rustbreaker Colossus.
• A shared season calendar now drives seasonal events and seasonal recipes: the Etheric Convergence, the Twin Suns, the Hollowing and the Veil of Shadows.
• /rtp now sends you to a zone that suits your level.
• A new border limit system: players can no longer walk outside the edges of a map without taking damage.
• A new reworked Shattered Vein world. It now automatically resets on Wednesday morning, warning any adventurers, that a reset is coming up. If you are still in the world, you will be automatically teleported to the Nexus without losing anything.
• Fixed the World Boss memories Window.

BUG FIXES AND UPDATES

• Fixed an issue with instances not loading properly and occasionally showing technical blocks that should not be visible.
• Updated the Hall of Trials window and HUD.
• Created a new Welcome Screen, and made the Adventurer's Guide Home match it. Both now give a summary of your current activity.
• Updated the Adventurer's Guide with the latest changes.
• The Guttering Hollow is now instanced correctly and mobs match your level.
• Updated and fixed level-up notifications, and added profession level-up notifications.
• Added mana regen to the Abilities section of the Player window.
• Moved slimes to the Critter memory category.
• Fixed wardrobes and dressers not being interactable.
• Gave the Guide more prominence in the Player Menu and added links to Achievements.
• Moved Totems to the Alchemy Bench.
• Moved recipes from the Runecrafter's Table to the Arcanist's Workbench. The Runecrafter's Table is being retired.
• Fixed the sound volume of slimes. They were quite loud before.
• Fixed pets and mounts not despawning on logout or server restart.
• Mermaid Armor pieces and the Holloway Armor set are now purely cosmetic.
• Began adding Spanish support across Aetherion.
• Implemented a number of quality-of-life changes to help with performance.
• Added a number of new crossbows and blunderbuss weapons. They have been moved to the engineering profession.
• Added a number of new food items to the cooking profession.
• Added a new bench - The Meat Grinder. This will grinder meat and fish for new recipes in the cooking profession.
• Added a new auto reset facility for the Shattered Vein with notifications.
• Added the new jewel crafting profession, with  2 new benches. One to craft jewelry, and one to extract and attune shards.
• Added the new Great Forge system, allowing playing to upgrade their gear and weapons. The great forge also allowed players to socket their gear/weapons and also change the appearance of their gear/weapons.
• Added the new dialog system, which should make the whole concept of speaking to NPCs more realistic.
• Updated the Collections UI
• Added the new weapons and armor cosmetics to the Collections UI.

Economy

• New Bank window with sidebar tabs and currency cards.
• New Auction House window, reorganised, with a new way of storing items and no global listing limit.
• New Merchant and Player Stall windows. Prices show in red when you can't afford them, and merchants can now take tokens or items instead of gold.
• Fixed collecting the wrong item from the Auction House (taking an item could hand out another player's item).
• Fixed gold staying held forever when an auction you bid on was bought out or cancelled.
• Fixed bids being checked against the buyout price instead of the bid.
• Fixed listings that could be sold or ended twice.
• Upgraded weapons and gear, including socketed shards, now keep their upgrades when sold.

3RD PARTY PLUGINS

• Major Dungeons
• Below Every Heaven
• Perfect Dodges and Perfect Parry
• SimpleClaims
• AFK Plugin and Torches update by Starky. The AFK Plugin is mesmerising.

HYTALE SERVER BROWSER AND FINAL NOTE

When browsing the server list, we kindly ask for your support by leaving a like on our server. Your feedback helps our visibility and rating, so we can keep growing and improving the experience for everyone.

Please keep in mind that all of these systems are still being refined. As Hytale continues to evolve, we will update our plugins, logic and frameworks to stay aligned with the game. Gear stats, item information, recipes and crafting may still change over time. The current version is stable, but nothing is fully final, and your feedback will shape the polished versions.

As always, share your suggestions, ideas and comments with us on our official Discord server.

Happy exploring! 🌿✨