Update Watch

Hypixel SkyBlock 0.27.0 Preview: Torrhus Canyon & Critter Safari

Last verified August 3, 2026 · Patch 0.27.0

Hypixel SkyBlock 0.27.0, "Torrhus Canyon & Critter Safari," is expected to go live on August 4, 2026 during an announced 8 AM–2 PM EDT maintenance window. It ships two new islands at once for the first time in SkyBlock: a second Foraging island with a reorganized Heart of the Forest, and a Pokémon-inspired safari zone built around a brand-new Hunting progression loop. This guide covers what's confirmed from the Release Candidate, what alpha testers observed (clearly flagged as unconfirmed and likely to move), and what to actually prepare before the maintenance window opens.

Aerial view of Torrhus Canyon's red forest islands and waterfalls

Release status: not live yet.

0.27.0 has not shipped as of this guide. Hypixel’s announced window is August 4, 2026, 8 AM–2 PM EDT, per the forum posts cited by YouTuber Derailious. Maintenance windows for major SkyBlock updates have slipped before, so treat the date as expected, not guaranteed. Everything below marked “alpha” or “RC” comes from Hypixel’s public alpha/Release Candidate testing (last RC thread: July 29, 2026) and can still change — including being reverted — before the live build ships. Don’t make large purchases off alpha/RC numbers alone.

The short version

0.27.0 is unusually large: it adds two new islands in a single patch, something SkyBlock hasn’t done before.

Torrhus Canyon is the second Foraging island of the Galatea region, reached from Moonglade Marsh once you have Foraging XII and Heart of the Forest IV. It brings a reorganized Heart of the Forest with a new Tier 8, three new collections (Helix Log, Ruby Veil Shroom, Honeycomb), and a new tree-toughness/respawn balance after a large alpha nerf.
Critter Safari is a separate instanced zone reached through Torrhus Canyon using Safari Tickets. It’s the entry point for an entirely new Hunting skill loop: catch critters with Critter Capsules, fuse them into Attribute Shards, and grind Safari Belt milestones across four biomes.
Derailious, who covers Hypixel SkyBlock update news, called it “probably bigger than the first island of Galatea by a very large margin” after testing the alpha and RC builds.

If you’re only reading one section, read “What to prepare before August 4” further down — it’s built from ThePureBleach’s alpha-period stockpiling notes, explicitly caveated as alpha snapshots.

Torrhus Canyon: the second Foraging island

Torrhus Canyon unlocks after Foraging XII and Heart of the Forest IV, launched from Moonglade Marsh; the two islands connect by blimp. Once there, an NPC named Helia hands out 63 tasks across 7 chapters that structure your progression through the island. There are 12 Fairy Souls on Torrhus Canyon itself, plus 4 more inside the Critter Safari.

The island has three sub-areas:

Spring Path and Torrhus Heights — the main traversal and foraging areas.
Torrhus Springs — a pressure-gated dive area reached deeper into the island, with an underwater temple puzzle that rewards +25% speed to black holes and hunt traps, plus 2x Hunting Fortune from a will bonus.

Helix Trees and the mid-alpha nerf

Helix Trees are the only tree type on Galatea. During alpha testing, players were reportedly NPC-selling Helix wood fast enough to generate roughly 80 million coins/hour, which triggered a balance response before the RC: tree toughness dropped from 200 to 150, but respawn time was doubled to compensate. NPC sell prices in testing were Fig 8 coins, Mangrove 14 coins, and Helix 20 coins per log — flag these explicitly as alpha/RC numbers that may not hold at launch, especially since they were already adjusted once in response to abuse.

Don't plan around the 80M/hr number.

That 80M/hr figure was the alpha’s broken state, not a target. Hypixel already nerfed toughness and doubled respawn once in response to it. Treat any pre-launch Helix Log profitability estimate as a snapshot of a build Hypixel was actively rebalancing, not a live-day promise.

New collections and gear

Honeycomb collection (to 50,000): unlocks the Honeycomb Talisman, Ring, Artifact and Necklace, a Honey Badger shard, a Queen Bee shard, and Bee Saliva — a consumable granting a permanent +1 Foraging Fortune, usable up to 5 times.
Helix Log collection: unlocks Helix armor, the Lumberjack Artifact (-15% axe cooldown), and +1 Helix Fortune per digit of the collection (capped at 10M) via a Hawk shard.
Ruby Veil Shroom collection: gathered by fishing in underwater caves at Torrhus Springs. The old shroom caves from Moonglade Marsh became Pangolin Hideouts instead.
Heart of the Forest Tier 8: the Heart of the Forest tree is reorganized, and Forest Strength and Forest Speed — two widely used perks — were pushed back to tier 8. Derailious specifically criticized this as bad gating and argued they belonged at tier 6 instead, since it delays perks a lot of players already rely on.

The island also introduces the Tree Protection Order, run by NPC Honey: some trees are marked as protected, and chopping one costs a 1,000-coin fine. Instead, players are meant to smear a honeycomb pot on the marked tree, which spawns huntable critters rather than yielding wood. Derailious flagged this as a likely new-player confusion point since nothing in the base game trains players to expect a chopping penalty.

Other NPCs worth knowing: Mriia runs a Starland-style contest that also drops Safari Tickets on uncommon-or-better rewards (your route into the Safari), Sanger runs an Evasive Shop where evasive mobs like Titanoboa now drop shards on kill, and Maxim sells Booster Upgrades for Figstone, Mancore and Helix tools. Freddy, stationed near the Safari entrance, gives hunting hints.

Smaller Foraging-adjacent changes

The Moonglade Belt (+1 Sweep, +5 Foraging Fortune, +5% Starland Contest points) is succeeded by the Torrhus Belt (+2 Sweep, +10 Foraging Fortune, +10% contest points), crafted from Ruby Veilshroom and Bottled Mischief bought from an NPC named “Pucks.”
Daily Wishes raise the Helix Log threshold from 40K to 80K desert whispers.
Sloth Claws and Frog Treats become unsoulbound. The Sloth pet’s base Sweep rises from 15 to 25, and the Frog pet gains a base Sweep of 10 for the first time.
Alpha testers noted hints of an “occultist cult circle” area under the island that isn’t part of any confirmed chapter yet — likely setup for future content, not something to plan around now.

Critter Safari: a new Hunting loop

The Critter Safari is a separate instanced zone accessed from Torrhus Canyon using Safari Tickets, earned mainly from Mriia’s contest. It was renamed from “Safari Zone” during the RC. Once inside, only your Safari Belt comes with you — inventory, potions and attribute bonuses are disabled for the instance, so the run is about the catches and floor drops, not gear flexing.

Tickets and catching

Four ticket tiers exist — Basic, Economy, Premium and First Class — with higher tiers granting more Critter Capsules, bonus Safari Essence, and (for First Class) a random Quest Item. There’s a Ticket Exchange for upgrading tickets: 1 Economy = 1 Basic + 250 Forest Essence; 1 Premium = 1 Economy + 500; 1 First Class = 1 Premium + 1,000.

Critters are caught with Critter Capsules, and catch chance depends on the critter shard’s rarity: Common 100%, Uncommon 75%, Rare 50%, Epic 25%, Legendary 10%. A Masterful Critter Capsule always catches, regardless of rarity.

A capture attempt reads roughly like this in chat, based on RC testing:

You threw a Critter Capsule at the Areita!
The Areita escaped your Critter Capsule!
You threw a Critter Capsule at the Areita!
CAPTURE! You caught a Areita and gained a Areita Shard!

Rare-tier critters can escape more than once before you land the catch — testers saw a Fluffling (a Rare) escape twice before being caught.

Four biomes, four different builds

The Safari spans four biomes with roughly nine catchable critters each:

Cavern: Cavernfish, Chuckwalla, Driftling, Gemzie, Rockmite, Scrappy, Shyworm, Snoozle, Flitter
Forest: Foxtrot, Bluebird, Honeybug, Treefrog, Woodchucker, Fluffling, Hideonfloor, Parakeet, Macaw
Haunted: Areita, Bloodbat, Duplico, Gazer, Litterbug, Solsnatcher, Gimmiegold, Hideonwall, Hideyho
Icy: Billygoat, Mantis Shrimp, Nozzlenose, Polaris, Shuddersquid, Strongarm, Tepid, Troodon, Wumpa

The Icy biome has its own mechanic: a ❄ Cold meter builds up while you’re there and lowers your Speed as it climbs. In-game, the warning reads:

BRRR! You'll start gaining ❄ Cold while in the Icy Biome. As you get colder,
your Speed will decrease. You can use campfires scattered around the biome
to keep warm!

Campfires scattered through the Icy biome reduce Cold, and the Cold Resistance stat — granted by the Icy Safari Belt milestone — mitigates it directly, so that milestone is worth prioritizing if you plan to spend real time in the Icy biome.

NPCs and trading

Several NPCs run their own trade loops inside the Safari: Hunter Harry (Haunted biome) and Huntress Melissa trade random Attribute Shards for items you’ll pick up as floor drops, Hunter Tobias tracks your Critter Deck, Hunter Archie salvages spare critters or shards into Safari Essence, Andrea manages Safari Belt milestones, and Rusty reissues a lost Safari Belt. A couple of representative trade exchanges from testing:

Hunter Harry: Glad to find someone else out here - this place is scary!
[offers a Hideonwall Shard for a Purple Gem]
Hunter Harry: Sweet, 'ppreciate it!
You have been given a Hideonwall!

Huntress Melissa: Do you want this Gemzie Shard? I already maxed that
Attribute... How about I give you it in exchange for, say, a Soothing Incense?

Floor drops, Safari Belt milestones, and Safari Essence

Wandering the Safari produces steady floor drops — Safari Essence, Shining Coin, Soothing Incense, Yogi Berry, Bag of Seeds, Wriggleworm, Purple Gem, plus biome-specific quest items. Soothing Incense used on Haunted-biome ritual candles can summon a legendary critter; Yogi Berry and seeds used at the Forest Bird Feeder lure a catchable bird. A typical drop sequence reads like:

FLOOR DROP! You found Shining Coin on the ground!
Safari Essence x12
+346 Hunting Experience on the ground!

Milestones fire per biome as you rack up catches — roughly every 1,500 catches per tier band — each granting a different stat: Cavern grants Hunting Wisdom, Haunted grants Hunting Fortune (up to +5 at max), and Icy grants Cold Resistance. The Forest biome’s reward changed during the RC: it was originally going to grant Sweep, but was switched to Foraging Fortune before release. Milestone and attribute-shard progress pop up in chat like:

MILESTONES! You have reached Milestone I for the Haunted Biome!
DAVID: You reached Milestone 13 in Attribute Menu! You gained +3 Sweep

Safari Essence per catch scales with rarity under the RC’s buffed values: Common 2, Uncommon 4, Rare 8, Epic 16, Legendary 32.

Hunting XP is a known weak point — for now.

Derailious flagged Hunting XP from floor drops and hunts as too low relative to the skill’s level cap — roughly 30–35k XP per expedition against a Hunting cap of 50. Most of your real Hunting XP will come from fusing shards, not from the catching loop itself. If that’s still true at launch, plan your first sessions around shard fusing rather than expecting floor-drop XP to carry you — SkyCofl’s fusion page shows which fusions are worth the inputs.

Attribute Shards and crafting

The Safari adds roughly 321 new Attribute Shards in total — the dossier behind this guide doesn’t enumerate the full list, so don’t treat any partial list (including this one) as complete. A few examples that surfaced in testing: double tree-gift loot, bonus Magic Find against Arthropods, bonus Dungeon score on a bat kill, +1% dye find chance, a Slayer quest discount, faster greenhouse growth, Cold Resistance on tree-chop, and the Rainbow Feather — a consumable that grants a permanent +1 pet level.

Roughly 321 new shards entering the fusion system at once is the single biggest economy event of this update. Every new shard is a potential fusion input or output, and launch-week pricing on both will be chaotic before it settles. Once the update is live, scan SkyCofl fusion flips for curated profitable fusions with input cost, output value and daily volume, or BazaarPro’s fusion flips to sweep live margins across all shard pairs — the same tools that paid off in the weeks after shards debuted with 0.25 Lotus Atoll.

The headline crafted item is the Gigantic Fishing Net: 110 pull strength and +10 Hunting Fortune on water shards. It’s built from a Turbo Net, Sublime Silk, Enchanted Sea Loomies, Reinforced Netting (a Giant Isopod drop), and Flex Bones. New sea creatures also appear at Torrhus Springs, including Giant Isopod and Silk Breeze — their legendary-tier loot hadn’t been fully verified as of the RC.

Every critter also gets its own Bestiary entry that grants Hunting Fortune on progress, and testers described it as easy to fully max out. Sparkling Critters — a shiny variant with a big Emerald Dye chance bonus — were buffed from a 1/8,192 to a 1/4,096 spawn rate between alpha and RC. Hunter Lennard, who appears once you complete the Critterdex, is tied to that chase. One tester’s Safari session also turned up a Fairy Soul, which ties into the “Lost Soul” and “Soul Hunter” achievements.

Balance changes shipped in the RC

A few systemwide changes rode along with 0.27.0 in the Release Candidate, independent of the two new islands:

Bestiary kill requirements dropped substantially: Wolves 10,000 → 3,000, Spider Jockeys 3,000 → 1,000, Dragons 1,000 → 250, plus reductions across several Mythological and Catacombs mobs. Queen Ant moves to Bracket 2, Tier 5.
Paragon Shards were reworked into a flat drop from Slayers (0.25% at T4, 0.5% at T5) plus a new pity mechanic: a 250,000 Slayer XP RNG meter. This change was widely praised by testers as a straightforward quality-of-life win.
Hunting tools were standardized by tier for Hunting Fortune — for example the Gigantic net gives +10, Turbo +5, Medium +2.5, and Basic +0 — with the same tiering logic applied to lassos and black holes.
One flagged regression: the Daedalus Blade’s Magic Find scaling weakened as a side effect of the Bestiary tier changes, which wasn’t clearly called out in patch notes.
Alpha testing also surfaced unexplained Farming “shadow nerfs” — Pest Hunter Philip’s pest requirement went up, and the Harvesting enchant’s Foraging Fortune dropped to 30 — that never appeared in official patch notes. These are unconfirmed and may be reverted before the live build; don’t assume they’ll survive launch.

What to prepare before August 4

The following is ThePureBleach’s stockpiling advice from alpha-period testing, explicitly attributed and caveated: these are prices and demand patterns from an unfinished, actively-rebalanced build, and both prices and mechanics can move sharply once the update goes live and the wider playerbase pushes on the new systems.

ThePureBleach's alpha stockpiling notes (unconfirmed, alpha-period prices):

Flex Bones spiked to roughly 1–2M coins during alpha as a required Gigantic Fishing Net ingredient — worth watching for a launch-week repeat spike given the net’s utility for Hunting Fortune.
Enchanted Eggs moved from roughly 4.5K to 7K coins during alpha, driven by demand for shard-fusing recipes.
Consider holding any unclaimed Heart of the Forest contest rewards rather than cashing them in, since they’re needed to reach the new Tier 8.
Dodo Shards traded around 1.5M in alpha; the Dodo pet reportedly now grants Tracking XP, which is a new use case for it.
Build out Abyssal armor and Respiration/Pressure Resistance gear ahead of time for Torrhus Springs, since it’s a pressure-gated underwater area.
Assemble a dedicated hunting kit before launch: Everstretch Lasso, Gigantic Fishing Net, a Black Hole, and Newt/Tiamat/Cayman/Sea Serpent/Megalith shards.

All of the above are alpha-period snapshots from one creator’s testing, not confirmed launch-day prices or mechanics. Treat them as a shortlist to research further, not a buy order.

Beyond the specific items above, the more durable prep move is the same one that applies to every major SkyBlock content patch: check actual live demand and volume before buying into any pre-launch spike. SkyCofl’s top movers and BazaarTracker’s demand page are both useful for separating real launch-week demand from noise once the update actually ships, and Skyblock.bz’s crash risk tool is worth a check before holding anything through the maintenance window.

Everything above the fold on release day is still speculative.

Nothing in this section is a confirmed live-day price or drop rate. The Helix wood economy alone was already rebalanced once between alpha and RC, and Hypixel has said it remains open to further adjustments. Treat this guide as prep reading, not a shopping list, until the patch is actually live and you can check current bazaar/AH data yourself.