Hytale Update 4 Patch Notes: Voice Chat, 500+ Blocks, Emotes, and More

Hytale's fourth early access update dropped today, March 26, 2026, and it's the biggest content release since launch. Ten weeks in, Update 4 delivers on the team's promise to ship content fast once the foundations are in place. Voice chat, 500 new blocks, a fresh emote system, and more make this a landmark update for anyone running or playing on Hytale servers. 500+ New Blocks: The Biggest Content Drop Yet This update adds over 500 blocks to the game, the largest single content addition since early access launched. About half are craftable in exploration mode, while the other half are available through the Creative Inventory for builders who want to experiment now. Over 500 new blocks are now available, with half craftable in exploration mode and the rest in the Creative Inventory. New block sets include complete Limestone, Slate, Chalk, and Cooled Magma collections, each with the full complement of stairs, slabs, and variations you would expect. Bronze, Copper, Zinc, and Iron decorative sets are live in Creative Mode, along with Dead Coral blocks and the much-requested Cybercity aesthetic pieces. Ferns and updated Grass sets round out the natural palette. New material sets including Limestone, Slate, Chalk, and Cooled Magma give builders a richer palette to work with. One of the most practical additions is T-junction and four-way junction support for fences and walls. Building enclosures and mazes just got a lot cleaner. The team also added stairs and half slabs to most naturally occurring rocks and soils, which addresses a long-standing gap in the structural vocabulary. Saplings Now Grow Into Trees Saplings can finally mature into full trees. All tree species now have seeds craftable at the Farming Bench, and they grow through stages until reaching adult form. Each sapling has its own texture. The Apple Tree is also new to the game: apples no longer grow on Oaks, so check your orchards and update your farms accordingly. Saplings now grow through stages into full mature trees, with each species having its own unique texture. What Comes Next for Blocks The expanded block palette opens up new possibilities for intricate structures and builds. The team plans connected block systems beyond fences, including pipe networks, improved roof placement behavior, and better contextual adaptation for signs, torches, and plants. A naming pass is also planned to clean up deprecated Block IDs in the Creative Inventory. Some Creative-only sets like Cybercity may stay exclusive or move to minigame modes rather than exploration. Proximity Voice Chat Proximity Voice Chat is live. You can now talk to other players in-game using spatial, distance-attenuated audio. The closer someone is, the louder they sound. Move apart and they fade out naturally. Proximity Voice Chat shows nearby speakers on your HUD and even syncs with your equipped emotes as you talk. Voice chat is disabled by default. Enable it from the Audio Settings menu. You can configure input device, noise suppression, input level, and choose between voice activation or push-to-talk. When someone nearby is speaking, their character portrait appears on your HUD alongside their current appearance. Characters even animate when you talk, reacting with the emotes you are cycling through. Individual players can be muted from the map screen's player list. For accounts with parental controls, voice chat is not available yet. The team says they want proper parental control tools in place before enabling it for those accounts. The roadmap from here includes echo cancellation, sound occlusion through blocks, a friends list, party systems, and easier ways to join worlds together. Emote Wheel Hold X to bring up the new Emote Wheel. Nine emotes ship with Update 4: Wave, Wave Double, Laugh, Tongue, Chicken, Kill, Punch, Dab (Left), and Dab (Right). Some emotes loop, and the wheel displays which ones do. The new Emote Wheel lets players express themselves with 9 emotes, accessible by holding X. Modders can add custom emotes. Place your animation file in Common/Characters/Animations/Emote/, your icon in Common/Icons/Emotes/, and a JSON config in Server/Emote/. The config supports looping. This makes the emote system a useful early look at how expressive, community-driven content can layer into Hytale servers. New Hairstyles and Avatar Updates Seven new hairstyles join the character creator: Afro, Big Afro, Frizzy Buns, Long Dreadlocks, Puffy Twin Dreads, Dreads Fade, and Star Puffs. Three existing styles got updates: Puffy Bubble Braids, Afro Puffs, and Puffy Bun received visual refreshes. Player avatars now also animate differently when falling from a great height. Seven new hairstyles are available in the character creator, including Afro, Big Afro, Frizzy Buns, and Long Dreadlocks. Three existing hairstyles also received visual refreshes: Puffy Bubble Braids, Afro Puffs, and Puffy Bun. New Creative Tool: Revolve The Revolve tool is a welcome addition to the Creative Mode toolkit. It lets you paste rotations of your current selection any number of times, or spread them fully around a center point. This is the kind of tool that makes radial structures, towers, and symmetrical builds dramatically faster to execute. The Revolve tool lets you paste rotations of your selection around a center point, making radial builds effortless. New Sickles and Farming Changes Copper and Iron Sickles are now craftable at the Farming Workbench. You can also hold down the swing input to repeatedly use sickles, which makes harvesting large crop areas much less tedious. Copper and Iron Sickles make large crop harvests much faster, with hold-to-swing support for continuous use. Watering Can behavior has also been reworked. Capacity increases from 20 to 50 charges. Charging up lets you water a 3x3 area. They can now be placed on the ground while crouching and use the Secondary interaction key consistently with how the Hoe works. Potion Rebalance Health and Stamina potions have been reworked across the board. Health Potions now restore a split of instant and delayed healing. Lesser Health Potions give 15% immediately and another 15% after 5 seconds, for 30% total. Greater Health Potions hit 75% total with a 25% immediate and 50% delayed split. Stamina Potions now consume faster to account for natural regeneration, with comparable split scaling across all sizes. Update 4 refines the look and feel of Hytale's environments alongside its balance and gameplay changes. What This Means for Hytale Servers Update 4 is a strong signal that the content cadence is picking up. The 500-block drop gives server builders and world designers a much richer palette to work with. Proximity Voice Chat changes the social dynamics on multiplayer servers significantly. No more tabbing out for a separate call when playing with friends. The emote system and new avatar options also give players more ways to express themselves on the servers they call home. If you are a server owner, now is a great time to explore what the new blocks and building tools make possible. If you are looking for a server to join, check out the Hytale server list to find communities already building with Update 4's new content. New junction types and block variations give server builders and world designers more creative flexibility. The Hytale New Worlds Modding Contest is also still running in collaboration with CurseForge, with a $100,000 USD prize pool across 65 winners. If you are interested in worldgen, NPCs, or custom experiences, this is worth a look. A Note on the Moose Moose have been slowed down by 20%. The team is monitoring the situation. Moose have been slowed down by 20%. The team says they are monitoring the situation following a recent incident that they are not prepared to discuss at this time. Full Update 4 Changelog Highlights 500+ new blocks added, including Limestone, Slate, Chalk, Cooled Magma, Bronze, Copper, Zinc, Iron sets, Dead Coral, and Cybercity blocks Fence and wall T-junctions and cross-junctions Saplings grow into mature trees, Apple Tree added, Oaks no longer drop apples Proximity Voice Chat with spatial audio, push-to-talk, and HUD player indicators Emote Wheel with 9 emotes and moddable custom emote support 7 new hairstyles and 3 updated hairstyles Revolve Creative Tool for radial and symmetrical builds Copper and Iron Sickles craftable at the Farming Workbench Watering Can rework: 50 charge capacity and 3x3 charged watering area Health and Stamina potion rebalance with instant plus delayed healing splits Pink Crystal Shards dropped from Pink Crystals Fishing traps can be placed in shallow water and closer to blocks Player avatar falling animation added Moose movement speed reduced by 20% Follow updates from the Hytale team on X/Twitter, Instagram, and Bluesky. To find servers running the latest version, head to the HytaleCharts server list.