Seasons, a second village and the road between, a cart, a stable, and softer slopes.
Wave 5 put seasons on the clock: 72-hour seasons where wheat stops in winter, autumn canopies turn gold, orange or russet, and snow lies above a snow line. Brickmoor, a second village with brick walls and a tanner, sits up a 270 m gravel road with plank bridges and lanterns every 32 m, and its prices differ. A craftable cart rolls on spoked wheels with nine slots; a stable stands on the second plot; a newcomer moves into the cottage.
Spring brings shed antlers and hides, and the tanner turns hides into leather. Rain no longer falls under roofs, and fawns grow up. Slope tops and sides now share their corner normals, tested with no mismatches in 1,654 corners, earth slope sides sit under a grass fringe, and there is one tuft card per diagonal. Worlds saved in versions 1 to 3 still load exactly. The story test, a journey between the two villages and a full season, passed 17 of 17 and was re-run twice by the lead with the same result, and the older waves' 52 steps passed on a version 3 world. The 60-minute soak ran at 239.7 frames a second with no frame over 33 ms, 0 faults, 106 saves with none failed and world memory at most 22.91 MB.
Meshing the slowest chunk took 5.1 to 5.6 ms on a quiet machine, over the 3 ms target, so that work was carried into the follow-up.
This work is in every build since, including the one live on our demo host today (live rebuild 26, 17 October 2026).
Every wave closes with a play test on the build machine in the browser, at a 12-chunk view: frame rate, faults, world memory, and a scripted story test that plays the new loop end to end and reloads the world to check it came back exactly. What did not pass is written down and carried into the next wave.