DevlogNew bodies for everyone, rain that stops at the roof, and water with waves

The biggest day yet for how the world looks and feels: new bodies for all, weather and water that behave, and a long list of stutters gone.

Everyone has the new bodies now. The first look of the new player bodies is what every game draws, with no command needed. All fourteen races have them, men and women, with armour fitted in nine styles, including the new scale mail, studded leather and wizard's robe, plus hair and beards. /newbodies with a number still previews another look, and /newbodies default goes back. /tryon shows the new armour, the bronze, iron and steel weapons and shields, and the hair and beards without owning any of them. It only changes what you see.

Hair, capes and tails move. Hair, beards, the wizard's cape, robe skirts, cloaks and Iksar tails swing gently at rest and more as you run. Options > Display > Cloth & hair motion sets it to off, low or high.

Rain stops at the roof. Rain and snow no longer fall through roofs, awnings or doorways. Streets darken when wet, puddles form and ripple, and snow settles and thaws, all easing in and out. Cold places get snow instead of rain. Every outdoor zone has drifting clouds that follow the weather, and the brown daytime sky is gone. Options > Display > Weather offers Full or Low.

Water with waves. Water has waves, shore foam, whitecaps, colour that deepens with depth and rings when it rains. Boats and swimmers ride the swell, though only in how they look. Under the surface the light ripples, shafts come down from above and sound is muffled. Options > Display > Water has High and Low.

Streets full of lamps, and spells that throw sparks. A town can hold hundreds of torches and lanterns: the nearest 128 are lit for real (Options > Display > Lamps lit, 24 to 256) and the rest still glow. Your own torch is never put out. Fire, shock and frost spells throw sparks and shards that bounce off the ground, and casting effects trail from both hands. No spell's numbers changed.

No freeze at a zone line, no stutter on a first cast. Crossing between Fairhaven and Dreadhaven froze the game for about a second. The next zone is now built in the background as you near the line, and the longest pause is under a tenth of a second. A first spell or first rain could hang the picture for up to a second and a half; all of it is now prepared behind the loading screen. Distant crowds are drawn by the graphics card, so 200 armoured bodies take about a third of the time, and far buildings are drawn as simpler copies.

Chat that keeps up, and settings that fit your computer. A chat window keeps 5,000 lines, no longer slows the game in raid spam, and gains Find and Copy everything. Text is sharp at every interface size. Options > Display > Quality sets everything at once, Low to Ultra, and the first run picks one for your graphics card. Shadows, corner shading, edge smoothing and 3D resolution are now yours to set. An optional Retro look draws the world at low resolution with fewer colours.

Lighter on the network, and smaller fixes. Each player now receives under a third of the traffic they did; an older copy of the game is told to update. A built game no longer warns that your models differ from the server's in every zone, and the download is about 240 MB smaller. Discord can show your zone, level, race and class, and your name only if you choose. After a crash the game asks once whether to send a report.

In the workshop. A Vah Shir body with a proper cat's face, whiskers and a jointed tail is built and staged, not in the game yet. Quicker handling of idle creatures in busy zones was built and measured but is not in the game yet either.