Vintage Story 1.22 Update Guide: Everything New in the April 2026 Release
Vintage Story 1.22, officially titled "Fishing, Mechanisms, Metalworking and More," is the largest single update of the year so far. It bundles over 700 individual features, tweaks and fixes into a release that overhauls combat metallurgy, gives the post-1.21 water system its first real player activity (fishing), introduces dynamic dungeons to world generation, and modernises storage with the new cabinet voxel-placement system. Version 1.22.0 shipped on 21 April 2026, with 1.22.1 following on 29 April 2026 as the current stable line. This guide covers every major change, what migrates cleanly into existing saves, what breaks for mod authors, and how to update a dedicated server without losing your world.
What's new in 1.22 (TL;DR)
If you only have one paragraph: 1.22 adds a full fishing system with 20+ freshwater species, bait, and bobber mechanics; a quenching + tempering metallurgy loop that lets you trade tool durability for damage; new grindstones for blade sharpening; cabinets that accept items at voxel precision instead of fixed slots; a comprehensively reworked berry-bush life cycle (knife cuttings, 4 to 8 month maturation, mandatory fertilization, 8 trait variants); the first iteration of dynamic dungeons spawning roughly every 1,500 blocks; large windmills and rebuilt waterwheels; iron and steel spears alongside doubled spear windup; mannequins for clothing display; new crops (fennel, licorice), flowers, and mushrooms; warthog and red river hog variants; and a forced upgrade to the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime, replacing the .NET 8 requirement from the 1.21 line.
Fishing
Fishing finally arrives as a real mechanic with depth. The system uses bobber mechanics: craft a fishing pole from sticks or bamboo, attach bait, cast, and time the reel. Over 20 freshwater fish species inhabit the world with location-specific distribution by biome and water depth. Bait is its own subsystem: earthworms are gathered via "Worm Grunters" (a new tool that lures worms to the surface), and stinkbaits are crafted from rotten material. Bait quality matters; the same pole catches different fish with different bait.
Behaviour is a step up too. Fish flee very quickly when melee-attacked, which kills the old "just stab them in the shallows" strategy. Several large species (arapaimas, pike, piranhas, sheatfish) now attack players if cornered, and red-bellied piranhas are coded with additional aggression toward injured players. Fish populations deplete in overfished areas, so a single pond will not sustain a base; rotation matters. Caught fish can be preserved via the new taxidermy system using zinc sulfate, producing wall-mountable display variants. Anchovies were removed from spawning entirely (too small to flay), and remaining small fish are quad-placeable on tiles, four to a block, for processing and display.
Metalworking: quenching, tempering, and the forge rework
The forge model is updated and now optionally requires a bellows for higher temperatures, with fuel quality determining the maximum heat reachable. Metal tongs were added, with 10 to 100 times the durability of the older wooden variants, so smithing campaigns no longer eat through tongs at the same rate as tools.
The headline metallurgy addition is the quenching and tempering loop. Only iron, meteoric iron, and steel tool heads can be quenched. The mechanic works in two stages. Quenching rapidly cools a heated tool below 100°C by Shift-interacting with a block of water or a barrel of quenchant liquid. If you wrap the item in a layer of fire clay before quenching, the tool gains durability. Without clay, it gains power (damage). Each quench carries an additive 5% chance to shatter the tool head on cooling. Tempering is the slower, gentler counterpart: reheat the tool to a lower temperature and let it cool in air. Tempering reduces shatter risk on future quenches and reduces the power bonus a quenched tool carries, but durability gains are preserved. The result is a real metallurgy minigame where you can spec a tool toward either durability or damage, accepting some risk of breakage along the way.
The new grindstone block adds a sharpening workflow that runs parallel to quenching. A grinding wheel is crafted with a saw plus a hammer as the grid recipe input, then used to sharpen knives, swords, and spears. A sharpened blade gains a critical-hit chance with +100% damage on the crit, which stacks meaningfully with quench-power bonuses. The quern (already in the game) now displays its grinding outputs directly in the in-game handbook.
Iron and steel spears are new in 1.22 (older bone and copper spears remain). Spear windup duration is doubled across the board, which shifts the optimal opening-attack timing: spear users now either commit earlier or switch to a faster blade for opportunistic strikes. Shield wall mounting was added, letting players plant a shield mid-stance to block ranged attacks, primarily useful in PvP and against drifter projectiles.
Mechanical power: large mills, in-wall axles, and the overload-ignite rule
1.22 substantially expands the mechanical power system added in earlier versions. Large windmills with higher altitudes deliver more consistent torque. Waterwheels are rebuilt and modular: blade configuration optimises for the local river current speed. In-wall axles and spur gears let you route mechanical power through walls without exposed shafts, which dramatically improves what can be built into a closed workshop. Helve hammer power cost was rebalanced.
One critical new rule for server operators and base builders: starting in 1.22.0 stable, mechanical power blocks ignite if driven too fast. Overloading a transmission line is no longer a free choice; if you push more torque through it than the components can handle, the line catches fire. Sizing your power network correctly is now a real engineering decision, not a tip.
Storage: cabinets, mannequins, and improved ground storage
Cabinets are the flagship storage addition. They accept mixed contents at voxel precision rather than fixed slots, so a book on the top shelf, a stack of clothing in the middle, and chiseled figurines at the front are finally possible. Every 1.21 storable item carries over, plus new categories: bound books, full clothing pieces, decorative figurines. Cabinet variants ship with customisable metal components and upgradeable doors, so storage finish can match the rest of the base.
Mannequins were added in four types: full-body, leg, head, and torso. Clothing display becomes a deliberate base-decoration system rather than chests full of unused gear. Ground storage was also extended to accept new item types including lanterns and linings, and gains a quad-placement option for small items.
Berry bushes (fully reworked)
Berry bushes are arguably the most disruptive 1.22 change for existing worlds. The old propagation system is replaced. Bushes can only be propagated by taking a cutting with a knife, which then takes 4 to 8 months of in-game time to mature into a new fruiting bush. Propagated bushes that reach maturity require fertilization or they stop bearing fruit entirely; nutrient draw tapers by 15% per year, so an aging bush at year 20 uses roughly 5% of its original fertilizer demand, but the slope is steep early on.
A new trait system applies to propagated cuttings: 8 traits in total, 4 positive and 4 negative. Selective breeding is a real loop now. World generation randomises the fruiting stage of naturally-spawned bushes, so wild bushes you discover are at various points in their cycle. Bushes already in your save keep their pre-1.22 behaviour until next interaction, at which point they transition to the new system.
World generation: dynamic dungeons, traders, and rapids
The first iteration of dynamic dungeons arrived in 1.22. These spawn roughly every 1,500 blocks and provide a new mid-game exploration target between surface ruins and the abyssal Deep Caves biomes from 1.20. Story locations (notably the lazaret) received generation fixes that resolve old holes-in-walls bugs. Trader outposts are fully rebuilt with climate-specific clothing: a desert trader wears appropriate sun protection, a cold-biome trader is dressed for cold, and so on. Rivers gained a new "rapids" water feature type with faster flow and visual whitewater. Water flow behaviour near broken blocks was improved so removing a single block from a dam no longer triggers cascade-recalculation lag spikes.
These world-gen changes apply only to chunks not yet generated in your save. Existing explored chunks retain pre-1.22 traders and lazaret bugs unless they regenerate.
Flora and fauna additions
New farmable crops: fennel and licorice (licorice is the fishing-bait crop). Four new flowers: bluebell, mugwort, ghost pipe, daffodils. Eight new mushroom species, several with visual side effects when consumed, which adds a real risk layer to wild-mushroom foraging. Creatures: the boar model is overhauled with huge boar variants, warthogs, and red river hogs as biome-specific subspecies; mouflon sheep are added; wolves and bears gained proper footstep sounds; fish behaviour was reworked across the board with improved AI. Six new hair colours were added to character creation. Travertine is a new stone block type. Survival-mode craftable clay tiles, a snow shovel, and a crowbar (for beam removal) round out the toolkit additions.
Mod compatibility: what breaks in 1.22, what works
The biggest break is the .NET runtime. 1.22 requires the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime, up from .NET 8 in the 1.21 line. Any mod that ships pre-compiled binaries targeting .NET 8 must be rebuilt against .NET 10 before working on 1.22. Source-mode mods compiled by the loader at runtime should adapt automatically unless they depended on .NET-8-specific APIs.
Several API changes are net additive (existing mods continue working). A new tag condition matching system supports complex disjunctive and conjunctive logic, and the tag system now applies to all crafting recipes. The transform editor dialog includes firepit support. Spawner blocks can define rain and temperature conditions. A new MouseWheelMove input event is exposed. A texture bleeding system enables seamless block transitions. The "paradigm shift" change is that animation sound timing now lives on animation frames rather than separate timer configs, which means custom animations need their sound triggers reauthored if they rely on the old timer flow.
Breaking changes for mod authors: Entity.ServerPos is deprecated and redirects to Entity.Pos; update references during your 1.22 port. The IRecipeIngredient interface was refactored, affecting any mod that implements (not just consumes) it. Several CollectibleObject fields were converted to moddable methods, which is additive for most mods but breaking for any code that read those fields directly via reflection. World generation code was moved to the essentials mod to enable total-conversion support, so any worldgen mod hooking into the old core path needs a port.
How to update your Vintage Story server to 1.22
If you run a Vintage Story server on Supercraft, the update is one click. The Supercraft panel auto-detects the new stable line, offers an in-place update that preserves your world, your installed mods, and your save data, and handles the .NET 10 runtime swap on the backend.
For self-hosted servers: take a manual backup of your save folder before updating; install the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime on the host machine; download the 1.22.1 server tarball from your official Vintage Story account page; stop the current server cleanly; replace server files; start the new server and watch the console on first boot. Mods that fail to load against .NET 10 will be logged clearly and skipped without blocking startup. Update those mods from their authors or remove them temporarily. The wiki page at Vintage Story Server Setup covers self-host setup details. Existing worlds upgrade cleanly: berry bushes keep pre-1.22 behaviour until interacted with, new chunks use 1.22 worldgen, and cabinets and grindstones can be crafted in any existing world immediately.
Known issues and the dev team's fix timeline
The 1.22.1 patch shipped on 29 April 2026, eight days after 1.22.0, and addressed the first wave of post-release bugs. The dev pattern is rapid point releases (1.22.2, 1.22.3, and so on) over the following weeks, then a slowdown as the engine settles. Notable post-release issues being tracked include quenching/tempering values misapplied for durability-only-gain and mixed-gain tools (logged on the official issue tracker), some cabinet item placement collision edge cases, grindstone recipe handbook display errors, and a handful of fishing bobber visual glitches addressed in 1.22.1. Players on point-release versions should update to the latest 1.22.x within a few days of each release for stability.
1.21 to 1.22 changelog summary
For context, 1.21 focused on water and sailboat mechanics, building on a system previewed in earlier dev builds. Headline 1.21 additions: bear hide armor, expanded ground storage, updated cloud shader. 1.22 gives that water system its first real activity (fishing), tightens the day-to-day storage and crafting loops, and adds genuine depth to metallurgy. The 700+ individual changes include performance work invisible in patch notes but important for server operators: recipe matching is faster with reduced memory use, packet unpacking and creation costs less CPU (improving multiplayer latency at scale), and handbook-open lag spikes are smoothed. For a 10-player Vintage Story server, expect a few percent reduction in tick load under normal play, which leaves more headroom for mods and larger build sites.
What's coming next: 1.23 preview
The dev team has signaled 1.23 as the "Large Lore Update," focused on the game's narrative content layer rather than mechanical depth. Specific feature lists for 1.23 have not been published yet beyond that framing. Based on the 1.21 to 1.22 cadence, expect 1.23 to enter beta several months after 1.22 settles, with stable release timing dependent on test-branch reception.
For now, 1.22.1 is the version to run. New players starting today should start on 1.22 directly, since fishing, cabinets, grindstones, and quenching substantially change the early-to-mid-game experience and you do not want to migrate later. Existing players on 1.21 should update at their own pace; the migration is clean, no save is at risk, and the new content is worth the runtime upgrade.
Related Vintage Story wiki pages
- Vintage Story Server Setup
- Vintage Story Admin Commands Reference
- Vintage Story Agriculture and Farming Guide
- Vintage Story Food Preservation Guide
- Vintage Story Mechanical Power Guide
- Vintage Story Metallurgy Guide
- Vintage Story Server Port Configuration
- Vintage Story Survival Strategies
- Vintage Story Temporal Stability