The kill is not the meal

Until this week, killing a chicken and eating it were the same act: it fell over, meat popped out, the body sank through the floor. Now the body stays, and the meat is inside it. The kill is the hunt. The butchering is the meal.

Butchering

A dead animal is a carcass. You open it with an edge, drawing the blade along the body, and what's inside comes out one piece at a time. A chicken gives two feathers first and then its meat, so the thing you want is the last thing out.

Only an edge works. A fist or a rock does nothing to a body, and nothing tells you so.
A body lies there for 45 seconds, and the clock stops while a blade is working on it. Walk away and you can lose it; you can't lose one out from under your own hands.
Something that burned to death gives roast meat.
There's a stone dagger in the cove. It's the first thing in the game with a handle: grab it anywhere and it turns round into your palm by the grip.

Dead chickens act dead now, too. They go limp when carried, fall onto their side, and fly when thrown.

Fishing actually fishes

The fish that took your hook is now the one that comes up the line, not a stand-in, and the pond is ready for the next bite afterwards.

The hook hovers about half a meter down, with slack in the line. Move the rod far enough and the hook is towed after you.
A landed fish hangs off the line by its mouth, and you take it off the hook with your hand.
Out of the water it goes limp. As it cooks it firms up, and once it's done it holds its shape.

A fish is also worth what kind of fish it is. Minnows are a mouthful, 8 to 11 hunger. An ordinary catch is 15 to 21, about a cooked chicken. A tuna or a shark is 30 to 40, and you've eaten for the afternoon.

Accounts, and a shop made of stone

Argos has accounts now. Your name, level, XP, Shells and Amber live on a server, so they're still there after you take the headset off, and nothing on your headset can edit them. The server decides; the game only asks.

You get paid for playing: 250 Shells the first time you log in, and 100 more each day you come back.
XP arrives as you do things, 20 for a fish to start with. A small panel swells up in front of you with the number and your progress, then shrinks away. Level up and it just says LEVEL UP.
Shells are earned. Amber is the currency you buy.

The shop is a cairn, a heap of stones at the spawn where everybody walks past, with things hanging off it on cords. Every item is tied on with sinew and sealed with a disc of clay stamped with its price. To buy, you grip the clay and pull a hand's width until the cord gives. There's no menu and no confirm button, and it can't happen by accident: empty hand, real grip, a real pull against a taut cord. Let go early and nothing happens.

Can't afford it, and the cord holds. The seal snaps back, the controller buzzes, and the stone says "Not enough."
Everyone sees you buy. The cairn flares and the goods arc across the map to you.
Cosmetics go straight onto your body, across six slots from head to waist, not into an inventory.

Nothing was on sale yet that week. The cairn hung there reading NOT YET.

Numbers you can read

You have 100 health, and everything is quoted against that. A chicken has 60, a cave spider 240. A punch does 1 or 2, a rock 5, the crude tool and pickaxe 8, an axe 12, a sword 20. Mining didn't change.

Dying

You ragdoll now, with real weight and real joints, and the body keeps its speed. Die falling off a rock and you tumble and land across the cave. Die in water and you sink slowly, rolling as you go.

Smaller changes

A worn backpack stays closed. Carry anything behind your head and let go, and it goes straight in.
Nothing that was ever alive fits in the bag. Carry the fish home; the meat can ride in the pack.
Animals won't walk into a lit campfire.

Bring a sharp stone.