12:00am EST - The Naval Update launched last week and we’re seeing a ton of hotfixes along with a fresh hackweek and more!

Hotfixes

The Naval Update launched last week, and since then the team has been rapidly deploying hotfixes across both client and server to stabilize performance, address exploits, and clean up edge-case bugs. Early fixes focused on boat building issues, skin viewer problems, map marker RPC errors, streamer mode visibility, explosive bullet interactions with boats, parenting and mounting errors, collider issues, ghost ship interactions, and several exploit patches. Additional updates resolved torch holder issues on boats, UI and NRE errors, furnace output inconsistencies, and shader and texture memory optimizations aimed at improving overall stability.

Subsequent hotfixes significantly reduced crashes when connecting to servers by improving shader memory handling, VRAM usage, and texture streaming. Further patches addressed deep sea water and shore vector optimizations, dive site spawning conflicts, AI navigation and visibility issues on oil rigs and ghost ships, PT boat turret balance and tooltip improvements, scientist aggro behavior, mannequin paintball cosmetic bugs, deployable placement issues on boats, and a range of potential NRE and error spam scenarios. Exploits continue to be patched as they’re discovered.

The team’s immediate focus remains on stability, exploit mitigation, and keeping performance within acceptable limits, with broader balance and polish updates planned in the coming days.

Hack Week Underway

Hackweek is in full swing with a wide mix of experimental features and prototypes in development.

The standout project is a new tech tree upgrade that allows players to unlock entire branches at once, with customizable unlock speed — fast, smooth, and extremely satisfying. Logistics work is progressing with a new network tab that shows all items stored across connected boxes (read-only) when using storage monitors and data chips. The data computer graph now supports execution logic, saving/loading, and entities like auto turrets exposing live values such as health, power state, ammo, and targets.

Several new prototypes have also appeared. A towable trailer is being tested as its own entity, including a shipping-container-sized trailer concept. A capturable flag system is in the works, allowing players to pick up, move, and drop a flag that broadcasts its position on the map. There’s also early cinema screen UI work, golf mechanic expansions, and smaller decorative plant and pot variants being iterated on as additional set-dressing content.Elsewhere, Hackweek branches include a prototype Cinema screen UI with placeholder models, expanding Golf mechanics (clubs, putter, shot power, walkaround mode, trajectory previews), random inventory fill tools with category filters, and a wide range of UI fixes and compile cleanups. As always, some of this may never ship — but it’s clear the team is experimenting in big ways.

Lunar New Year 2026

Work continues on Lunar New Year 2026, and this time it’s all about the Year of the Horse. A brand-new horse armour set is well underway, complete with updated materials, optimized textures, proper world models, and multiple polish passes to get cloth physics, tassels, LODs, and ragdoll support behaving nicely without tanking performance.

There’s also an ornate (and slightly silly) themed horse mask in the mix, featuring custom materials, transparency fixes, physics tweaks, and even a tailored neck model to support the design. Store integration and icon work are progressing as well, so this cosmetic bundle is looking close to ready as the LNY26 branch heads toward release.

Other Stuff

Other stuff you can add (not covered in your article, and leaving out general fixes/hotfix noise):

Boxes DLC is moving along with multiple themed storage boxes getting full item/prefab work (including gibs/corpses, icons, localization/manifest work, collision tweaks, and general setup passes). Looks like it’s more than just models now and is getting close to being “real” content.
Apartment Complex monument continues to get layout and set-dressing work, including street/sidewalk refinements, front yard passes, sign greyboxes, subway entrance/town square bits, and early rentable kiosk blockouts.
Local Tutorial work is ramping up: a playable tutorial island scene, local-server boot flow, server shutdown rules, asset/vehicle stripping for performance, bundle build process, and a lot of guardrails to keep it self-contained and stable while it’s being developed.
UI/dev tooling: a “new console UI” / tools tab effort is underway with performance/refactors, plus WIP work for item UIs that need dual panels (example: showing protection properties and vessel UI together).
PlayerRigUpdate2 keeps expanding with animation/rig pipeline tooling (batch update tooling, mask/hierarchy updates, anim set re-imports), plus some instrument pose/IK adjustments (drums/guitar) and outbreak scientist skinning work.
World/render tech: terrain renderer “nested grid” changes (instance data scale, packing rotation, faster LOD coord logic), and a jungle-specific optimization pass simplifying kapok tree branch colliders to cut down collider counts.
Weapons/content prep bits: early blockout rigs landed for an M16A2 and a mortar, and there’s a “Molotov refresh” branch that looks like a broader revisit rather than a simple tweak.
Cosmetics/marketing pipeline: Twitch drop rendering updates (SKS + fixes), and the Artist Pack store page video was updated.
Small QoL-ish gameplay/visual behavior change: the building planner viewmodel is now controllable per-entity via a new construction script flag (started with ladders/ladder hatches).