v1.4.1 & v1.4.2 — the Sverm, the War Vulture, and a race station for everyone

Two versions at once, because only one of them actually shipped as its own number. v1.4.1 never got a manifest.json bump of its own — its commits rode inside the v1.4.2 release, so this post covers both under v1.4.2's real date. Where the two overlap below, that is why.

The tenth race, a flying mount, and every existing race gets something to build.

This is a recap, not a full write-up

Both versions were built on a branch merged in after the fact, so this post summarizes the changelog rather than describing behavior verified line by line the way a normal release post does. The Sverm gets a full dedicated race page written straight from the current source, which is the more reliable read if the two ever disagree.

The Sverm — the tenth race

An armoured insect. Chest, legs and helmet are carapace instead of armour — permanently on, worth the next biome's full set, weightless — and the hands are claws that never come off either. Immune to poison, weak to blunt and fire until the very last tier flips the fire term into a resistance instead. Every invertebrate in the game leaves it alone from the moment it is chosen.

Past The Elder it stops being a race played solo and becomes the Colony: a Brood Mound you feed from your own pack, a digestion bank that turns that food into spendable biomass over time, brood eggs on a clock, a roster of tamed insect troops, a Hive Market to buy them from, and vanilla beehives that get taken over the moment they stand near the nest — twice the speed, three times the honey, and royal jelly once Yagluth is down.

See the Sverm race page for the full breakdown — base kit, the tier table, and the colony's numbers.

The War Vulture — a flying mount for anyone allowed to ride

A vulture trophy kept on a stick. Raise it and the bird answers: it puts you on a real, network-visible flying mount rather than a personal effect only you can see. Cruise is free and unlimited; holding the run key spends a limited sprint reserve that refills again in the air, on its own bar under your stamina.

There is no recipe yet in this release — the only way to get one is the console — because the flight itself was still being proven. Furling and Dvergar can ride it by default, and which races are allowed is a config entry rather than a hard-coded pair.

No recipe until v1.4.3

This release ships the bird with no way to craft it. See the v1.4.3 post for the Forge recipe that followed five days later.

A race station for everyone

v1.4.1's own header change was that every race got a build/economy loop tied to its identity, gated behind a reagent sold by its faction's own merchant. v1.4.2 added the first concrete stations to stand in that gap:

• Dvergar Contract Bank — the old hire bench becomes a real contract bank: five crew slots, 400 to 2000 coin apiece, paid at the Dvergar's own trader discount. The Queen's drop opens two further rosters, the Runic Crew and the Ash Guard. A hired crew inherits its employer's truce with the mountain's dvergr, seekers included, carries no loot, heals itself, and a dead crew is money spent rather than a resource to farm. Race locked, one per square kilometre, and the only chain in the release that needs no crafted reagent at all — the Dvergar simply pay 100 coin instead.
• Dvergar Rune Barrel — twenty doses of any vanilla brew, poured over everything you have raised within 30 metres. It refuses nothing and promises nothing in return: a healing mead heals a dvergr, a stamina mead does nothing at all, because nothing you raise has a stamina bar to spend.
• Fenrir Pack Trough — built on Ulvsblod bought from the Fenring (500 coin), plus silver and Moder's own drop, then fed any flesh into a 400-deep tank. Ten Pack Wolves fill first, one every two minutes, then six Ulv at one every three. A Greater Ulvsblod and whatever Yagluth left behind push the roster to 15 wolves, 10 ulv and 5 Fenrir. The pack is tame, leashed, breeds not at all, drops nothing, heals itself, and withers five minutes after the trough itself falls. Pickaxe-immune, and one per square mile.

Claws for the Aswid and the Fenrir

Both races grow a permanent pair, on the same terms the Sverm always had — measured against one shared yardstick rather than the models each race happens to wear, so the same tier is worth the same damage whichever race you are, and no pair counts while wearing another body entirely.

Superseded in v1.4.5

This was reworked into a timed skill four releases later. See the v1.4.5 post and the current Aswid and Fenrir pages for what is actually true today — this section is history.

Visuals, fixes and the rest

• Aswid — Eyes: rebuilt out of the real thing, the eye lights a vanilla skeleton wears, smoke included, instead of two painted spheres. Spectral green for the whole climb, with red held back for the final stage.
• Skeleton — Lit Sockets: the skull now carries the eye lights of whichever creature its current tier is built from. The Mandible was also sitting wrong on every tier — corrected.
• Skadi: the Hidden Hollow is gone (it caused multiplayer issues). In its place, the Crystal Golem — a stonecutter-bound guardian on a leash — and Skadi and Trol can now build inside any troll cave.
• Skeleton: Bound Bone Pile slots are paid for once and refill forever; the Bound Sentry regenerates and hands its parts back when it falls.
• Draugh: the Cursed Body Pile can be built by anyone standing nearby, but only a Draugh can actually command the draugr it raises.
• Trol: the War Totem is now race locked.
• Building: stations of the same kind can no longer be stacked on top of each other.
• Factions: the merchant catalogue now carries the reagents that gate every station chain above, and the hostility rules behind them were reworked.
• (v1.4.1) Aswid: Vampiric Aura became a toggle and Devour moved off the I key — later reunited onto the same key in v1.4.5, see that post.
• (v1.4.1) Factions: same-faction mobs no longer smash player structures; Fuling/Goblin food and prefab-id lookups fixed.
• (v1.4.1) Skadi: dragon breath and its effect now point the same direction.
• (v1.4.1) Trol: fixed the log weapon's hidden inventory slot crashing InventoryGrid.
• (v1.4.1) Fenrir: the taunt howl is now sourced from the real creature's own alert bark.
• (v1.4.1) Visuals: fixed glow eyes occasionally rendering behind the skull, Aswid and Dvergar both.
• (v1.4.1) Input: abilities no longer die while a movement key is held.
• (v1.4.1) Compendium: every race entry rewritten against live game code for accuracy.
• (v1.4.1) General: deduped ObjectDB.m_items by name hash, fixing a duplicate-item crash on joining a server.