After months of smaller patches, Hytale’s early access phase is getting its inaugural Chapter update, confirmed release date and all. Chapter 1 is out on October 12th, and it’s a bundle of (mostly goblin-related) firsts: chiefly the game’s first “handcrafted” dungeon, a gruesome underground lair, and Hytale’s first bonefide boss fight, against a flamethrowing gob-king.

Here be the trailer:

As previously detailed in a blog post, the Chapter 1 update also expands the breadth of goblin foes – though the faction will include some friendly, if not terribly handsome faces – and will add a new world event, the Goblin Breach. This is as messy as it sounds, a tear in spacetime ripping open to spew out gangs of greenskins and, seemingly just to be annoying, piles of their previously hoarded junk. Some of their shittily kitbashed tech can be claimed for yourself, mind, including a hookshot launcher and some jump-boosting rocket boots.

Still, it’s the prebuilt dungeon that I’m most interested in. Its vast caves and sickly green air give it a compelling contrast between grandiose and revolting, and its bespoke build represents an important milestone in taking Hytale away from “Minecraft with nicer graphics” territory and towards the more structured RPG it’s always wanted to be.

The same goes for that boss, the Gobliterator. A heavily armoured, multi-phase brute with enough AoE flame attacks to burn down all four of Talking Heads’ houses, he’s designed in the classic raid boss fashion. Hypixel founder Simon Collins-Laflamme is even offering $15,000 to the first person to stream themselves taking him down without teammate help. In hardcore mode. While naked. What’s Let Me Solo Her up to these days?

All this reminds me that I really should dip back into Hytale myself. The earliest early access version was reasonably good for proc-gen survival exploring, though it was always odd how it drew attention to its own missing parts. The game still has a long way to go, given the progress lost when it narrowly avoided cancellation, but it looks like those pieces are gradually being hammered into place.