Update 0.9.3: Animal Feeding and Taming, better caves and much more!
major updateRising World · published · build 25041028
Hi folks!
A new big update is now available! It introduces animal feeding and taming, improved cave generation, actual ocean waves and a lot more!
Animal Feeding and Taming
This update greatly expands the "Animal Husbandry" aspect of the game: you're now able to feed and tame animals!
Animals become hungry over time. If they go without food for a long time, this becomes visually apparent as they appear severely emaciated. This can be counteracted by feeding the animals: animals can be fed directly from your hand, but they will also eat food off the ground.
Some animals also graze. Keep in mind that if an animal is kept in an enclosure, the meadow will eventually be grazed bare.
Also keep in mind that some foods can be toxic to certain animals. To get an overview of that, you can check out the new "Animal Husbandry" section in the journal (J).
Feeding an animal (preferably with its favorite food) helps to tame it. Once tamed, animals become trusting and lose their aggression towards the player. Currently you can tame all domestic animals (pigs, sheep, cows, goats, horses etc).
It's also possible to tame wolves, but that's a bit more difficult: if you're really careful and move slowly toward the wolf while holding some meat in your hands, he will not attack you. You can then feed him once you're close enough. This has to be repeated so that the wolf really becomes tame.
You can also pet animals: to do that, first put your equipped item away (default key: H), then look at the animal and hold down your right mouse button. Most animals enjoy that! ;)
If you hit a tamed animal, the animal will tolerate it to a certain extent (by not fighting back, for example), but eventually it will lose its trust in you. So don't you dare!
Ocean Waves
With this update, water gets actual 3D Gerstner waves! The wave intensity depends on the weather and wind. This isn't just a visual upgrade: boating is directly affected by this. It becomes particularly difficult during storms, and the risk of capsizing increases.
We've also updated the underwater effects and reworked the flowing behaviour for non-infinite water (the water surface now levels out much more reliably and flows more smoothly).
You can turn off the new ocean waves or water effects btw (to improve performance on older graphics cards).
There is also an option to turn on an "infinite ocean": this renders the ocean all the way to the horizon. It's not an accurate representation of the world, but makes for a nicer view - especially if you're forced to play with low view distances.
Better Caves
We've also revamped the cave generation: the old, boring tunnels have mostly been replaced by noise-based cave generation. This creates much more interesting and varied caves. Caves become larger the deeper you go; sometimes the game generates huge cave chambers. There is also a chance to find stalagmites and stalactites in some cave chambers.
The game still generates a few tunnels near the surface (serving as cave entrances), and usually they lead to an actual cave. But the game can also create crevices on the surface, usually surrounded by boulders to make them easier to spot. The deep underground caves (the ones which are filled with water) remain unchanged.
To make cave exploration a bit easier, we've reworked the climbing rope: it now adapts to the ground and you can also use it to lower yourself slowly into caves.
By the way, the new caves generate in existing worlds. To make this possible, a world conversion is necessary - it will be performed when loading a world for the first time after the update.
Use Items on Mounts
Many items can now be used while riding a mount or driving a boat. This works for weapons, navigation equipment (compass, map etc) and also food. This feature is still a work in progress, so if you run into any issues, please let us know!
Blueprint Resources in Survival
Blueprints now require resources in Survival mode. The blueprint list at the blueprint table contains an overview of all required resources, but you can also see them on the HUD when holding the blueprint in your hands.
Some blueprints require a ton of resources. If there is not enough room in your inventory for all the resources, you can also place chests near the target location - the game will automatically take all nearby chests into account.
Permission Editor
This update introduces a useful feature for server admins: a built-in permission editor. This enables you to create, modify or delete group and area permissions. In order to use the editor, make sure you have the "savepermissions" permission (under "commands"). To open the editor, press ESC and hit the small red edit button next to the "Permissions" button.
Other changes
There are also a ton of other changes and bugfixes. We've reworked how terrain smoothing works (e.g. for the rake, but also for the creative mode terrain tools). The rake and the terrain tools are now capable of making the terrain much smoother!
When looking at an item or collectible plant, the game now shows a clearly visible outline around them (but this can be turned off in the settings).
Icy surfaces on the terrain now have a transparency effect (and, by the way, ice is now slippery), and the game now supports "Tessellation" for terrain: this greatly increases the geometric terrain details around you (but it has an impact on performance). You can turn it on in the graphics settings.
If you're interested in various statistics (like travelled distance, felled trees, killed enemies etc), you can now view all stats for your current world. Just press ESC and hit the new "Statistics" button.
There is a new creative mode terrain tool (F5) to raise/lower terrain. Speaking of creative mode: since there have been repeated requests for this in the past, there is now a more comprehensive teleport feature: you can create several teleport points in a world, then teleport to them. The game stores a name and screenshot for each teleport point. To use this tool, just enter "tp" or "teleport" into the console (but we're also looking into a way to make this more easily accessible).
There are also several API changes and new features. The changelog for these can be found separately in our forum.
If you run into any issues or if you have any questions, please let us know! :)
Next Update
We've also been working on other features, like better npc pathfinding and food spoilage. These features didn't make it into this update, but we expect them to be ready soon.
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Changelog 0.9.3 (2026-08-31):
- Animals can now be fed and tamed
- Animals can be fed by hand, but they also eat food off the ground
- Every animal has different preferences when it comes to food
- Food satisfies animals' hunger and restores their health, but some food can also kill them
- If an animal is hungry and you hold suitable food in your hands, it will move towards you
- You can feed all domestic animals, deer, moose and wolves
- Hungry animals appear heavily emaciated
- Animals can starve to death (does not apply to wild animals)
- Some animals graze when they're hungry (this reduces the grass)
- Wolves won't attack you if you hold meat in your hands and slowly move towards them
- All non-aggressive animals can be petted
- Animals (including wolves) become tame through regular feeding and petting, so they no longer attack you or run away
- Animals only get pregnant if they are full and were fed recently