How to Get Core Keeper's New Mounts, Hookshot and Moss Biome Before the Sale Ends
Core Keeper's Riders of the Underground update added saddled mounts, a Hookshot and a hidden Moss biome. Here's how to get into it all before the sale ends October 22.
Core Keeper's biggest content drop of the year has been live for almost a month, but this week is the one that actually matters if you have been putting off a trip back underground. Pugstorm's Riders of the Underground update shipped September 21 as a free patch for every owner of the 1-8 player mining sandbox, and the Core Keeper Steam page is still running the 40% discount that came with it, down to $11.99 through October 22. A run of stability hotfixes since launch, the last landing October 9, has also quietly ironed out the patch's early bugs. Here is what 1.3 actually adds and how to get into the new content fastest, whether you are a returning explorer or picked the game up during its first-ever Free Weekend earlier this month.
What Riders of the Underground Actually Changes
The headline feature is simple: every single type of cattle in the game can now be saddled and ridden. Pugstorm paired that with a new grappling tool called the Hookshot, a lush sub-biome called Moss tucked inside the Forgotten Ruins, three new tameable pets, a new Warlock-style Scepter weapon line, ten armor pieces, 15 rings, 15 necklaces, new loot chests tied to the game's three Titan bosses, and a long list of quality-of-life changes including gear comparison tooltips and a key bind to cycle loadouts. None of it is paid DLC. If you already own Core Keeper, it downloaded the next time you launched the game.
The update is also the first of three planned drops under Pugstorm's "Road to the Maw" roadmap, so treat Riders of the Underground as a foundation rather than the whole story; 1.4 and 1.5 are still coming.
How to Turn Any Cow Into a Mount
Mounts do not require a quest, a boss kill or a recipe grind to unlock. The system runs on a single new item called the Saddle, craftable early at the Tailoring Bench. Walk up to any cattle in the game, whether it is one you have raised on your farm or a wild one roaming a biome, with the Saddle equipped and use it on the animal. That is the whole process.
- Once saddled, open the new Saddle UI to rename your mount and set its behavior to stay put, roam freely, or follow you when you are on foot.
- Riding roughly doubles your move speed compared to walking, which matters most in the Clay Caves and Forgotten Ruins, where distances between points of interest are largest.
- Removing the Saddle instantly reverts the animal to ordinary cattle, so there is no permanent commitment to a specific mount.
- A Racing Saddle variant pushes speed further for players who have already found one through drops or crafting upgrades.
Because literally every cattle breed qualifies, the fastest way to get your first mount is to check your own base. If you have been keeping cows for milk, you already have a ready-made steed standing in a pen.
Grappling Across Pits With the Hookshot
The second new traversal tool, the Hookshot, works more like a utility item than a weapon. Equip it in an off-hand slot and aim at a solid wall or ledge across a pit, lava gap or stretch of water; the Hookshot latches on and pulls you across. Pugstorm has shipped two tiers so far, a standard Hookshot and an upgraded Gilded Hookshot, both crafted rather than found as rare drops.
It will not replace bridges entirely, since it needs a valid anchor point to fire at, but it cuts out a lot of the backtracking that used to come with exploring the Forgotten Ruins' broken walkways. Pair it with a mount and the combination is close to how fast a fully kitted-out late-game character used to move before 1.3.
Finding the Moss Sub-Biome and the Orex
Moss is the update's new sub-biome, hidden inside pockets of the existing Forgotten Ruins rather than occupying its own map ring. Pugstorm describes it as a dark, humid patch of greenery with no natural predators, though stray Cavelings do still wander in from the surrounding ruins. It is the only place to find the Orex, a raptor-shaped but entirely docile new cattle breed that eats insects and Moorshrooms instead of hunting.
There is no map marker for Moss; the practical approach is to keep exploring Forgotten Ruins tunnels you have not cleared yet; the sub-biome tends to appear as a visibly brighter, plant-covered pocket breaking up the ruin's grey stonework. Catching an Orex works the same way as any other cattle: approach it with an empty hand to begin taming, then saddle it once it is calm.
New Scepters, Armor and Titan Loot
Players focused on combat and gearing have just as much reason to log back in. The update adds Scepters, a new weapon category built for the Warlock playstyle, with seven variants currently available including one Legendary-rarity drop. Mages gain two new staves, the Corrosion Staff and Blizzard Staff, and Summoners get a full rework: minions now persist indefinitely instead of expiring, players can despawn them on command, and two new Summoning talents replace the old expiration-based skills.
Beyond the new weapon types, 1.3 adds ten armor pieces, 15 rings and 15 necklaces, plus dedicated new loot chests dropped by all three Titan bosses, Azeos the Sky Titan, Omoroth the Sea Titan and Ra-Akar the Sand Titan. Existing armor sets also picked up new drop sources: Moldweb armor now drops from Large Mold Vessels, and Gemstone armor now drops from Sun Crystals as well as its original sources, both useful shortcuts if you already know those bosses.
Why This Week Is a Good Time to Jump Back In
Riders of the Underground launched alongside a wave of hotfixes, 1.3.0.2 through 1.3.0.6, addressing stability issues that are typical of a major content patch; the most recent, on October 9, fixed a bug stopping players from entering a world during the game's first-ever Steam Free Weekend. That trial run, which let anyone play the full game including multiplayer from October 8 through 12, has already ended, but the accompanying 40% discount runs through October 22, and progress made during the free trial carries over if you buy in before then.
For lapsed players, that combination of a settled patch, a stacked content update and a closing sale window makes this a better entry point than launch week was. New players get the same deal: everything above is live right now, with no separate purchase required once you own the base game.
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Sam writes about small studios and the games they ship against the odds, and turns the hardest parts of them into guides that get to the point.
