Ertugrul of Ulukayin: Happy Republic Day! A first look at the full version

Taken from the developer's own announcement, quoted rather than summarised. The full post is linked at the foot of this page.

Hello Alps! We're still hard at work on the full version of Ertuğrul of Ulukayın. Thank you to everyone who has been waiting patiently and supporting us along the way.

Since February we've made more than 850 changes, big and small. Below, we first go into the highlights in a bit more detail, then share the full list of changes. None of this is in the current Early Access build yet; it will all arrive with the full version. The full version will launch on the same day as the console versions, so we'll announce the release date once the console date is set.

Highlights

Upgrades and new gear

Ertuğrul, Meryem and Turgut now each have their own gear. You can equip, swap and upgrade their weapons and armour, and some pieces come with special effects and abilities. There are also plenty of weapons and armour for each character waiting to be found in the world.

You can also upgrade the Kilimhane (weaving house), the Talimhane (training ground) and Horasan's Tent, the healing tent. Each upgrade takes your weapons, armour and buffs a step further.

Crafting and trading

Tarkan the blacksmith's crafting and trading options are now gathered in a single menu. You can craft weapons and armour, buy and sell, and turn raw resources into the materials the forge needs. Everything you craft is kept in one list. The shop's stock refills over time, and you can see how long until the next refill.

Ahlat comes alive

To make Ahlat feel like a place that's truly lived in, we added 14 kinds of wildlife: butterflies, dragonflies, flies, fireflies, cockroaches, pond fish, frogs, squirrels, rats, small birds, doves, seagulls, eagles and geese.

Most of them notice you:

• Birds and doves take off as you approach and settle again once you've passed.
• Squirrels bolt for the nearest tree, and rats vanish into holes in the walls.
• Frogs leap away from the bank, and fish dart and dive.
• Gulls veer away, eagles climb higher, and geese fly across the sky in formation.

Insects, as insects do, mostly ignore you :)

NPCs have been improved too. Townsfolk talk to you and to each other, carry water and go about their daily work, and dialogue now has more variety in male and female voices. Together with new trees, reworked terrain, roads and towns, and new water for every lake, river and waterfall, Ahlat now feels much more alive.

A land to take back

Complete world events and clear Mongol camps to liberate regions across Ahlat, Malazgirt, Taht-ı Süleyman and the Kayı camp. Along the way you'll find legendary chests, a Balbal puzzle, and hidden chests behind vines you can burn away with fire arrows. The Ahlat map has also been rebuilt, with zoom, your own markers and fast travel.

Enemy combat

Enemy combat got a big update. We've improved the token system that decides which enemy attacks you and when, enemies now react faster to your moves, and the AI makes smarter decisions. Blood effects are more realistic too.

New light in the cave

We've given the cave a new mood. We reworked the lighting and atmosphere from the ground up, and the waterfalls inside look much better now. The difference is easiest to see side by side, so here's a before and after.

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

Full list of changes

Everything we changed between 19 February and 29 October 2026, grouped by team.

Art

Heroes, Weapons & Armour

• Added a new shield model for Ertuğrul.
• Added new Anatolian, Mongol and Kayı weapons for Ertuğrul, Meryem and Turgut, with finished meshes, textures and icons.
• Added a legendary Kayı axe for Turgut, its level 3 version and a second Mongol axe.
• Added two new quivers for Turgut.
• Added legendary Resurrection outfits and weapons, with icons.
• Added new colour options: Meryem's Anatolian outfit, and four Mongol outfit colours for Ertuğrul and Turgut.
• Added hair simulation for Meryem.
• Reworked the cloth simulation for Meryem's cape and skirt, with less clipping.
• Improved cloth shading for Ertuğrul and Turgut.
• Fixed Ertuğrul's armour material.
• Fixed the heads of Faruk and young Ertuğrul.
• Added a young version of Süleyman Şah and fixed young Süleyman's beard.

NPCs

• Added new men and women townsfolk with optimised faces.
• Added new eyes, skin and hair shared by all NPCs, and fixed the "alien eyes" look.
• Added varied headdresses, hair and clothes, including Armenian and Kayı headdresses and Alp outfit variants.
• Reworked beards and moustaches, and fixed Faruk's shiny beard.
• Fixed hair and beards looking too shiny in sunlight.
• Improved NPC skin: faces and bodies now share the same skin shading.
• Made a single shared material for all hair, beards, eyebrows and eyelashes.
• Made faces and models for Faruk, young Ertuğrul, Horasan and Göksel.

Animals

• Added new animals: boar (with run and attack animations), saddled donkey, rabbit (with a run animation) and goose (with a swim animation).
• Improved golden eagle feathers to look more realistic.
• Improved the horse's tail physics, mane and tail textures, and main material.

Ahlat

• Added new biomes of trees and shrubs across Ahlat, making the forests and steppe more lively and realistic.
• Added natural shrub clusters, tree groups and birch groves.
• Added dead tree and dead plant variants.
• Reworked the terrain, mountains and roads, and cleared trees off the roads.
• Made the towns prettier, added new ruins and a market in the Armenian town, and polished the Balbal temple.
• Designed areas around the legendary and rare chests, including a legendary cave and a bridge.
• Added resource baskets, ore deposits (copper, iron, coal, gold), silk, pearls and animal traps across the map.
• Added fast travel points and map viewpoints across Ahlat.
• Reworked candles, polished the lighting and fixed hanging bodies.
• Added colourful inventory item icons and new map icons.

Water & Effects

• Added new water for lakes, rivers, streams, waterfalls and wells.
• Added ripples in the water around the player.
• Added ambient life: butterflies, dragonflies, flies, fireflies, pond fish, small birds, doves, seagulls, eagles, geese, frogs, squirrels, rats, crows and bats.
• Added ambient effects: falling leaves, dust motes, wind-blown dust, ash, sparks, ground fog, dripping water and rain falling into puddles.
• Added falling leaves in forest areas near the player.
• Added realistic blood effects: blood drops, blood splatter, blood pools after death and blood on characters.
• Added new fire effects.

Dream Level & Cave

• Rebuilt the Dream Level, with reworked lighting and environment.
• Added a new look for the nightmares and a new ghost enemy.
• Added snow you can leave tracks in.
• Gave the cave new lighting and a new atmosphere.
• Improved the cave waterfalls.
• Reworked cinematics: the wolf guiding you to the tree hollow, young Ertuğrul getting up, and Halime's facial animation.

Animation

• Added a new motion matching locomotion system for the player's horse and AI horses (work in progress).
• Added rider look animations (left/right and up/down) and leaning into turns.
• Fixed hand placement when carrying crates and throwing barrels.
• Added opening kilim doors while carrying a crate.
• Added new light and heavy attack animations for all three heroes.
• Added run and strafe animations for the Mongol swordmaster.
• Added new companion revive animations.
• Fixed the frame rate of many animations.
• Fixed the end of the horse neigh animations.

Dev

Gear & Equipment

• Added a new equipment system: every hero can equip, swap and upgrade weapons and armour.
• Added weapon and armour recipes you unlock and collect.
• Adjusted the starting gear for Ertuğrul, Meryem and Turgut.
• Added light, heavy and stamina damage to weapons.
• Added defence values to armour; equipping items now requires a minimum attribute level.
• Added special effects and abilities to weapons and armour.
• Made arrows visible in your quiver.
• Improved character gear loading speed.

Blacksmith, Merchant & Crafting

• Added the blacksmith: give him your recipes and he'll craft weapons and armour for you.
• Added the merchant: buy and sell items; stock refills over time.
• Added an option to sell all your trinkets at once.
• Added material crafting at the merchant.
• Added new item types: ores, valuable resources and trinkets. Chests and merchants also have new trinkets.
• Rebalanced prices, item weights, stack sizes, building upgrade costs and crafting costs (for example, arrows and knives now require feathers).
• Added regional loot: chests in each of the four regions have their own contents.
• Reworked building upgrades.

Open World

• Added regions you can liberate by completing world events and clearing Mongol camps.
• Added Mongols retaking liberated camps while you're away, which you can then clear again (work in progress, not yet stable).
• Placed world events and Mongol camps in Ahlat, Malazgirt, Taht-ı Süleyman and the Kayı camp.
• Added random wild animals and enemy patrols to fight while exploring the open world.
• Added region progress tracking and a message when you complete a world event.
• Added switching between active quests.
• Added legendary chests and puzzles.
• Added hidden chests behind vines you can burn away with fire arrows.
• Added materials such as kenger, water and pearl dust to the world.
• Added switching between characters in Ahlat.
• Added companions falling when their health runs out and regaining health when you revive them.
• Added autosave (work in progress, not yet stable).

NPCs & Dialogue

• Added a new NPC identity system that defines each NPC's look and personality.
• Added NPCs talking to you and to each other.
• Added NPCs carrying interactive objects and playing their own animations around town.
• Added a talk menu for key characters such as Tarkan, Hayme and Horasan.

Combat & Movement

• Reworked the stamina system: when you run out of stamina, you can still perform attacks that need it, just slowly. In return, you can't dodge until your stamina is completely full.
• Made sprinting stop when you release the movement keys.
• Blocked dodging while climbing.
• Made attacks weaker when you don't have enough stamina.
• Rebuilt finishing moves with the new blood effects.
• Made enemies attack you in turns.
• Improved enemy movement speed and AI behaviour.
• Added street lamps that swing and react when hit by an arrow.
• Added static explosive barrels in the world that explode when hit by a fire arrow.
• Added a new player camera system.
• Fixed a crash when hitting an enemy that was being destroyed.
• Fixed the crouch input on gamepad.

Achievements

• Added new achievements for crafting, buildings, Codex pages, regions, Mongol camps and skills.
• Added a new cross-platform achievement system.

UI

Menus

• Added a new Gear menu with Change Equipment and Recipe pages.
• Added a live 3D preview of your character in their current gear to the in-game menu.
• Added detailed tooltips for weapons and armour showing stats, effects, next-level stats and upgrade costs.
• Added upgrade notifications on gear slots and menu tabs.
• Added new Blacksmith and Merchant menus.
• Added required material tooltips to the building, blacksmith and merchant menus.
• Added a new interaction menu for key characters.
• Added character level and an XP bar to the in-game menu.
• Added stamina bar animations for when you use stamina, run out and refill.
• Added level-up and world event completed messages.

World Map

• Rebuilt the world map with zoom.
• Added unexplored areas that are revealed when you reach viewpoints.
• Added a region info panel and marker descriptions.
• Added placing and removing your own markers.
• Added quest, horse, enemy, chest and Codex markers.
• Added fast travel from the map.
• Added gamepad support for the map with an on-screen cursor.
• Improved the map fog: it's now faster and clearer.
• Rebuilt the radar and on-screen markers to match the map.

Keyboard & Gamepad

• Added full keyboard and gamepad support in every menu: main menu, options, gear, recipes, attributes, Codex, credits, building, merchant, crafting, loot and interaction menu.
• Replaced the bottom bar buttons with key prompts showing mouse/keyboard or gamepad buttons.
• Added gear controls: A / Enter to swap and equip, X / Space to upgrade.
• Added changing option values with the arrow keys or d-pad, so the controller cursor is no longer needed.
• Fixed the gamepad Confirm button not working in menus.
• Fixed Escape on the credits screen and focus being lost in the options menu.

Audio

• Added new main menu music.
• Added new music for the Dream Level.
• Added voiced NPC dialogue: five male and five female voices with matching facial animation.
• Added a new combat blood sound pack.
• Added ambient sounds to the intro.
• Added warning sounds in menus when you can't buy or equip something.
• Added a new gathering sound for silk.

Performance & Engine

• Fixed several crashes in packaged builds on Unreal Engine 5.8.
• Improved Ahlat's long-distance view.
• Added lighter volumetric clouds and cloud shadows.
• Optimised materials, textures and meshes across Ahlat, NPCs, objects and foliage.
• Optimised trees and plants far from the player.
• Optimised lights, small objects and the UI.
• Improved lighting performance on low graphics settings.

Localisation

• Ran quality checks for Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Arabic, French, German, Portuguese (Brazil) and Spanish (Latin America).
• Fixed the Japanese font.

One more thing

We're keeping our new map a surprise for now, but you'll be able to experience it in the full version.

Thank you again for your support and for sticking with us through Early Access. See you soon!

The Ulukayın Team