Core Keeper 1.3 Explained: Mounts, Hookshots and Scepters in Riders of the Underground

The headline change is simple to state: every species of cattle in the game can now be ridden. Craft a saddle, put it on an animal, and that animal becomes your mount. Take the saddle off and the animal goes back to being livestock. While you are mounted, opening your inventory brings up the mount interface, where you can rename the animal and set what it does after you dismount: stay where it is, roam freely, or follow you. A saddled mount can also be carried in your inventory, so your ride travels with you instead of waiting at the pen.

There are two saddles, both made at the Livestock Workbench:

The Racing Saddle is the late-game upgrade: it is the faster of the two, and its material list is priced accordingly, reaching all the way to the Shimmering Frontier tier. The standard Saddle sits at iron tier, which means riding opens up early, long before you finish the outer biomes. Neither saddle is species-specific, so one crafting bench serves your whole pen, from your first Moolin to the newest arrival below.

That newest arrival is the Orex, a seventh cattle species introduced by this update. The Orex lives in Moss, a new sub-biome found inside the Forgotten Ruins, and it eats critters, the small ambient creatures you catch around the underground (fireflies excepted). If you want the full set of rideable animals, a trip into the Ruins to find a Moss pocket is now part of the route, and the Orex you bring home can wear a saddle like everything else in the pen.

1.3 adds an entirely new off-hand category: hookshots. There are 2 of them, the Hookshot and the Gilded Hookshot, and they occupy the off-hand slot that previously belonged to shields and other defensive gear. That slot choice is the design statement. A hookshot is a mobility tool: it is about repositioning and covering ground, and equipping one means giving up whatever your off-hand was doing for your defense or your stats.

For exploration, that trade changes the rhythm of a run. Core Keeper's underground is full of chasms, lava gaps, water and long cleared corridors where travel time, not combat, is the real cost. A movement tool in the off-hand speaks directly to that cost, and it pairs naturally with the update's other travel change, mounts: ride between points of interest, then move on foot with a hookshot in hand once the digging starts. Treat the two hookshots as exploration gear first and judge them on how a route feels, the same way you would judge a saddle, rather than as a damage upgrade competing with your main weapon.

Warlocks get a weapon family of their own in 1.3: scepters. The update adds 7 scepters, including 1 legendary, which turns the warlock from a playstyle borrowing other classes' gear into a build with its own loot to chase. If you run summoned minions (Section 4), scepters are the weapon line designed to stand behind them.

Three more standalone weapons land alongside the family: the Corrosion Staff, the Blizzard Staff and the Sniper Rifle, covering corrosion, cold and long-range shooting respectively. The rest of the gear expansion is broad rather than deep: 10 new armor pieces, 15 new rings and 15 new necklaces round out the update's loot, so most builds, not only warlocks, will find something new in the chests they were already opening.

The two skill-tree reworks are the part of 1.3 that most changes existing characters, starting with Summoning. Summoned minions are now permanent: they stay with you until you dismiss them manually, instead of expiring on a timer. The Summoning tree also gains 2 new talents, you can now summon your full minion count in a single cast, and the summoning cast cooldown has been removed. Taken together, the tree stops being a cycle of refreshing timers and becomes a standing army you manage: raise the full squad before a fight, keep it between fights, and spend your attention on positioning rather than upkeep.

Magic gets a quieter change with an equally large effect. Mana regeneration now continues at 50% efficiency while you are casting, instead of being interrupted by your own spells, and the Magic tree's talents have been rearranged. Sustained casting no longer drains you into dead air: a mage who keeps firing still recovers mana at half rate, which smooths out every staff and scepter rotation in the game. If you played a caster before 1.3 and shelved it, both of these trees are worth a fresh look, and a respec is cheap enough that experimenting costs little.

Below the headline systems, the 1.3 notes carry a long tail of additions and fixes that reward a full read:

The update also adds 3 new pets, and each has a specific home. Hoppet hatches from the Hoppy Egg, a fishing loot item found in seawater, which also turns up in Seashell Chests in Sunken Sea scenes and can drop from the Searpent and the Large Beached Jelly; Hoppet is a ranged pet. Azeos Jr. hatches from the Glimmering Egg, which drops only from Azeos the Sky Titan, and is also ranged. The lazy pet the official notes teased for the Desert of Beginnings is Cattiva, hatched from the Lazy Egg, found in the desert's Oasis scenes, in Cultist Chests and Oasis Flower Vessel containers; Cattiva is a melee pet.

It helps to be precise about the update's edges. 1.3 adds no new main biome: Moss is a sub-biome inside the Forgotten Ruins, in the same structural slot as the Larva Hive inside the Clay Caves. The world map's nine main regions are the same ones you had before the patch; what changed is how you move through them and what you fight with.

The roadmap's remaining stops are also unchanged by this release. 1.4 Trials of the Depths is officially described only as an update about depth and mastery, "the game, harder than ever", aimed at veteran players looking for a challenge. 1.5 Beyond the Breach is officially the update that reveals the sealed land beyond Breaker's Reach, including a brand-new biome. Neither has a date, and nothing in 1.3 changes that. Both are still to come, and both will be free when they arrive.

Yes. 1.3 is a completely free update for everyone who owns the game, in line with every major Core Keeper update since the 1.0 launch.

Update 1.3, Riders of the Underground, launched on 21 September 2026, with smaller hotfix and stability patches following it.

Yes. Saddles are crafted at the Livestock Workbench and fitted to animals you already keep, so an existing world and an existing pen are all you need; nothing about mounts requires a fresh world.

Two: the Hookshot and the Gilded Hookshot. Together they form the game's new off-hand type introduced by this update.