Hytale WorldGen V1 Stays Moddable: Slikey Says Mods Can Add Biomes, Caves and Entirely New Zones to V1, and the $Versions System Is Being Dropped

WorldGen V1 worlds are not frozen. Mods will be able to add biomes, caves, prefabs and entirely new zones to them, according to Hytale Tech Director Slikey, who said so on Saturday 26 September 2026 while answering modders on X. In the same short thread he confirmed that the $Versions folder system found in the source code is being dropped, and restated that the plan to abandon V1 eventually has not changed. None of this is documentation. Every quote below is a reply on X. Nothing here appears in the official patch notes, on a documentation page or in a blog post. No dates, no version numbers, and nobody at HytaleCharts has tested a line of it. It is the Tech Director answering questions in public, which is useful precisely because the written record says nothing on the subject. What Changed on 26 September 2026 Two things that were not previously public: Hytale WorldGen V1 mods are planned. Slikey said a mod will be able to add biome, caves, prefabs or even entirely new zones to a V1 world. The $Versions system is being dropped. It was found in the source code by a modder, it was meant to keep multiple world versions so V1 could be updated without updating a world, and the operational dev overhead was judged not worth it. And one thing that was already known and has been restated: V1 is still planned for eventual abandonment. Slikey used the word "eventually" and attached nothing else to it. The Hytale $Versions System Is Being Dropped The thread started with a modder who had gone looking in the source code. @HatsuyaDev, on 26 September 2026 at 00:39:57 UTC: Does this have to do with that "$Versions" folder system? I saw something about it in the source code and even tried using it, but it didn't seem to work, so I thought it was something in development for now Slikey replied nearly eighteen hours later, on 26 September 2026 at 18:31:35 UTC: We are ditching this system as it wasn't needed in the end. It was supposed to keep multiple versions so that we have the ability to update V1 without updating a world but then decided the operational dev overhead wasn't worth it. That sentence is the entire public record of what $Versions was for, and this article will not go past it. The modder's own account fits it: he tried the system and it did not seem to work. The practical upshot for modders is small but real. If you found $Versions in the source and have been waiting to work out how to use it, stop waiting. It is not coming. Hytale WorldGen V1 Mods: Biomes, Caves, Prefabs and Entirely New Zones The more consequential answer landed two minutes after that one, replying to a different question in the same thread. @Frostgleno0d, on 26 September 2026 at 01:49:20 UTC: this means people will be able to add mods that change the world on worldgen v1 instead of using portals? im slow pls Slikey, on 26 September 2026 at 18:33:17 UTC: Yes. You will be able to add a mod that adds biome, caves, prefabs or even entirely new zones. Three minutes after that, at 18:36:18 UTC, he added the qualifier himself: BTW this doesn't change our plan to abandon V1 eventually but it should help with the wait for V2. Read those two together and the position is clear. V1 is not the long-term world generator and Hytale is not pretending it is. What has changed is that the wait is no longer meant to be a period in which nothing can be added to a V1 world. What this is not: it is not an announcement that a mod API for adding biomes, caves, prefabs or zones exists today. No source documents such an API, its shape, or its entry points. Slikey said it will be possible, and that is the whole claim. For the documented modding surface as it stands, our guide to installing and managing Hytale server mods covers what is real now, and our June write-up on procedural world generation mods covers what had been said about the V2 side then. Why This Matters If You Are Sitting on a WorldGen V1 World The question underneath all of this, asked in some form every week, is a version of will Hytale wipe my world. The answer before this weekend was about the destination. This one is about the journey. If you run a persistent server on V1, the assumption up to now was reasonable: the world you have is the world you keep until V2 arrives, and anything new happens elsewhere. Slikey's reply undercuts that. A V1 world can receive new biomes, caves, prefabs and zones by way of a mod, so it is not necessarily a static exhibit for however long the wait turns out to be. What it does not do is change the ending. V1 is still headed for abandonment on an unstated timeline, so anything built on modded V1 generation sits on a platform with a stated expiry and no stated date. That is fine for a community server that lives on events and seasons. It is worse for a world you have told players will last forever. Our older WorldGen V1 vs V2 comparison for existing worlds lays out the trade as it stood in August, and this news moves one side of it without moving the other. Hytale WorldGen V1 vs V2: How This Differs From the Portal Story On 22 September we covered Slikey confirming that worlds on the old world generation get a portal into a V2 world rather than a wipe. That is a migration answer. It is about what happens to your existing world at the moment V2 arrives: it is not deleted, and a portal connects it to a V2 world so players can move between the two. The full reply chain and its caveats are in that article. Today's story is a different question with a different answer. It is not about the moment V2 arrives. It is about the months before it, and it says V1 itself remains a surface that mods can extend. The two are additive rather than competing: The portal answer tells you your V1 world survives the arrival of V2 and gets connected to it. The moddability answer tells you your V1 world can keep gaining content in the meantime. Both sit under the same unchanged plan to abandon V1 eventually, with no date given for it. Notice what Frostgleno0d's question assumed: that changing the world on V1 would otherwise have to happen through portals. Slikey's "Yes" answers that framing directly, which is why the two stories keep bumping into each other. They are adjacent questions from the same person in the same week, not the same answer. For the V2 authoring side by contrast, our guide to the V2 graph system and its nodes is the closest thing to a technical picture that exists publicly. The Hytale Goblin World Timer, and Two Simon Posts the Same Day Founder Simon Collins-Laflamme was answering a related set of questions on 26 September 2026, and his two posts need to be read with their timestamps attached, because they do not resolve neatly. First, @CatOFriar at 03:06:26 UTC: I just don’t understand why exploring the goblin world has to have a time limit and then it forces you out ? it’s an open world game ? Simon replied at 03:12:39 UTC: You visit a fragment of Orbis (the 1.0 world, aka world gen v2) and for lore reasons you get removed from it after the void takes over. As you will progress though the early access, the closer you get to play the “open world” version of Orbis. That is quoted exactly as posted, including the wording in the second line. The claim is that the timer players see now is a lore device attached to visiting a fragment of Orbis, and that early access progresses toward the open world version. Then, eight and a half hours later, a different question. @TheUniqueRaptor at 11:44:31 UTC: See that's what I really want to know too. How is all of this content going to be integrated into Orbis 2.0. If it stays access via portals it'll be disappointing imo. Simon at 11:50:10 UTC: The goblin world will be part of the open world generation, no timers Those two posts are not obviously consistent, and this article is not going to pretend they are. One explains why players currently get removed from a world by a timer. The other, the same day, says the goblin world will be part of open world generation with no timers. The most that can honestly be said is that the later post is about the goblin world specifically and the earlier one is about the Chapter 1 fragment visit. Whether that is a distinction Hytale intends, a change of plan, or two answers to two different questions, nobody outside the studio can say from these posts. For what has actually been shown of the goblin content, see our Chapter 1 first look. What None of This Tells Us No date for V1 abandonment. Slikey said "eventually". There is no quarter, no update number and no build. No date for the mod capability. Nothing says which update carries the ability to add biomes, caves, prefabs or zones to V1, or whether it lands before or after Chapter 1. No shape for the mod API. No interfaces, no asset formats, no examples, no documentation page. Only that it will be possible. Nothing more about $Versions. One sentence describes what it was meant to do. That sentence is the whole record. No configuration detail. Nothing about whether a server owner can control any of this, or what it costs in performance on a large existing world. No testing. Nobody here has run any of it, because there is nothing yet to run. These are replies on X. They can be superseded by documentation, patch notes, or another reply, and the studio owes nobody a correction notice when that happens. What a Server Owner Should Actually Do Before October 12 With Hytale Chapter 1 due on October 12, 2026, the useful response to this news is small and unglamorous. Do not change your plan on the strength of a reply. Keeping your V1 world and starting fresh at Chapter 1 are both still defensible. Nothing here is a commitment with a date on it. Stop treating V1 as sealed, but do not build on unreleased tooling. The capability is stated, not shipped. Plan for it the way you plan for anything without a release date, which is to say loosely. Tell your players both halves. V1 can get new content via mods at some point, and V1 is still going away at some point. Say only the first and you will be explaining the second later. Get the fundamentals done anyway. Backups, version pinning and a tested rollback matter more this fortnight than any of this does. Our Chapter 1 server preparation checklist is the boring work that actually protects a world. Drop $Versions from any plan it was in. It is being removed. The Bottom Line The headline is good news for anyone sitting on a WorldGen V1 world feeling like the caretaker of something nobody will ever add to again. Mods will be able to add biomes, caves, prefabs and entirely new zones to V1, and the Tech Director framed that as helping with the wait for V2 rather than as a reprieve for V1. The plan to abandon V1 has not changed, and no date exists for that either. The honest summary is that more of the Hytale world generation story is on the public record than a week ago, and almost all of it arrived as short replies posted on a Saturday. That is better than silence. It is not a specification and it is not a schedule.