Wind and Water

The world now has weather that changes as you play, a sky with real depth, and water you'll want to stand and look at.

• Living weather. Skies drift from clear to hazy, overcast, drizzle, rain and storms, then clear again over the course of an hour or so. Every region keeps its own rhythm: the coast leans drizzly, the woods get the most storms, deserts never rain but whip up the odd dust storm, the Frostmarch snows and sometimes disappears in a blizzard, and Cinderhold lives under falling ash. About one hour in twelve brings something wild: severe storms that turn the day nearly black with driving rain and lightning, blizzards in the north and dust storms in the south.
• Everyone shares the same sky. Players in the same place see the same weather and the same lightning strikes.
• Mist mornings. Some days start with low mist over the water and meadows that burns off as the sun climbs.
• Lanterns earn their keep. When a storm, blizzard or dust storm darkens the day, your lantern, the street lamps and lit windows come on.
• A deeper sky. Clouds now sit high above the world, shrinking and softening toward a bright, hazy horizon, lit pink and gold at sunset and dark against the stars at night.
• New water. Piers, boats, houses and cliffs reflect in the water, shallows are clear enough to see the sand, and the open sea rolls with slow, heavy swells. Wading leaves a soft wake.
• Rain and snow to match. Rain, snow, sand and ash now fall as soft painted streaks that take on the light and fade into the haze.
• Outlines fade out sooner in fog and mist, and arriving by lamp-stone, ferry or home recall shows the new place's weather straight away.
• Settings > Graphics has new Dynamic weather, Water reflections and Painted cloud layer options if you'd like a simpler look.

Interface fixes

Thank you to everyone who reported these after the new interface went out.

• Chat stays with you at crafting stations. Cooking, smelting, smithing, the bank, the Exchange and trades no longer hide the chat.
• New messages wake the chat. When chat is set to Fade, any new message, from players or the game, brings the whole chat back for a few seconds. Hovering it with the cursor free (Alt) no longer makes it fade away.
• The hotbar wakes up when you fight. If your action bar is set to Fade, it now shows in combat, when you press a slot or cast, and while your cooldowns finish.
• Move the progress bar. The bar for casting, gathering and crafting is now its own element in Edit HUD: move it, resize it or switch it off. It also stays up while a crafting window is open.
• Edit HUD makes saving obvious. While you have unsaved changes the editor says so and the Save button glows, and Escape asks before throwing them away. The update notice also waits until you close the editor.
• Clearer names. Names, levels and tags over players and creatures have a stronger outline, so they read on snow and bright sky. The Dev and Mod tags are crisp again in chat, on nameplates and in Inspect (party frames now show just the name), and the channel chip in the chat box takes its channel's colour.