Half the tickets we get for The Isle start the same way. "My friends can't see my server." Ten minutes of back and forth, and it turns out two of them are on Legacy and the server is on Evrima, or the other way round, and nobody knew there was a choice to make. So this is the article I wish I could paste into those tickets: what the two branches are, how you switch, what's actually in each one, and why they can't see each other. If you run a server, or you're about to, read it before you do anything else.
Current as of Evrima 0.21.7xx, September 2026.
What the two branches are
The Isle launched into Steam Early Access in 2015. For years the game everyone played was what's now called Legacy: a persistent-world dinosaur survival game, one big map, a roster that grew and grew. Then the developers started over. Evrima (people type Evirma and Envirma too) is a ground-up rebuild with a new engine, new mechanics and, at first, a tiny roster. It ran alongside Legacy for a long while, and for a long while Legacy was the one with more dinosaurs.
That's over. Legacy's last update was in February 2022 and it's frozen. It still exists, it still launches, but nothing in it will ever change. Evrima is where every patch goes, every new species, every fix. Our servers run Evrima and only Evrima, and the reasons for that are in the rest of this page.
Switching branches in Steam
Both branches live inside the same Steam purchase, and Steam decides which one you have installed. The switch is in the game's properties:
- Right-click The Isle in your Steam library and choose Properties.
- Open Betas.
- Pick
evrimafrom the dropdown for Evrima. Pick None for Legacy, which is the defaultpublicbranch. - Close the window and let Steam download the change. It's a big one, because the two branches share almost nothing.
That third step is where the confusion comes from. A fresh install of The Isle with no beta selected is Legacy. New players buy the game, launch it, see a server list with almost nobody on it, and assume the game is dead. It isn't. They're looking at the wrong branch. If you're inviting someone to your Evrima server, "set the beta to evrima" is the first thing to tell them.
The rosters
This is the comparison people actually want, so here it is.
Evrima on 0.21 has 23 playable species, and it's the same list our panel shows in the Playable Classes field: Tyrannosaurus, Allosaurus, Triceratops, Kentrosaurus, Maiasaura, Baryonyx, Austroraptor, Dryosaurus, Hypsilophodon, Pachycephalosaurus, Stegosaurus, Tenontosaurus, Carnotaurus, Ceratosaurus, Deinosuchus, Diabloceratops, Omniraptor, Pteranodon, Troodon, Beipiaosaurus, Gallimimus, Dilophosaurus and Herrerasaurus. Kentrosaurus arrived in 0.21.720, and Austroraptor got its water jump in 0.21.772, which gives you a sense of the pace. Something lands every few weeks.
Legacy had a bigger roster when Evrima started, and it still has more names on paper. I'm deliberately not listing them. The Legacy roster has been rewritten so many times in community wikis that I couldn't verify a clean list, and half the names that circulate were never playable. What I can say is that Legacy's dinosaurs mostly differed by stats (speed, health, damage), while Evrima's each have their own mechanics. A Deinosuchus in Evrima owns the water in a way nothing in Legacy did. A Herrerasaurus climbs. A Pteranodon flies. That's the real gap, and the count stopped mattering a while ago.
Mutations, migration, nesting
Three systems Legacy never had, and the three that make an Evrima server feel different to run.
Mutations are traits a dinosaur can pick up at three growth points: juvenile, sub-adult and adult. Each species draws from its own pool, some are helpful, some are actively harmful, and a handful of "lifestyle" ones unlock through things you do in the game rather than luck. There are 42 in total on the current build. On our servers the Enabled Mutations field lets you switch individual ones off. The settings guide covers how that field behaves rather than repeating it here.
Migration lets a player carry a grown dinosaur from one server to another, as long as both servers allow it and the player gets there within the migration time limit. It's the reason a dino can survive a server closing. It's also the reason some owners turn it off: a server that allows migration in is a server that can receive fully grown apexes it didn't raise.
Nesting means eggs, incubation, and young that hatch in the world rather than spawning at a menu. Carnivores can raid nests. Groups build territories around them. It's slow and it's a large part of why Evrima communities last longer than Legacy ones did.
Gateway, and the other maps
Evrima's current map is Gateway. Spiro and Panjura are the older ones, and all three are still selectable on our servers (Manage > Settings > General > Map). Legacy had its own maps, and none of them exist on Evrima. So an old Legacy save, or an old Legacy screenshot of a favourite spot, means nothing on the new branch. Everyone starts again.
Why a Legacy client can't see an Evrima server
Because they don't use the same server browser, or the same anything.
Legacy lists servers the way older Steam games do: a Steam-style list, queried directly. Evrima doesn't. An Evrima server registers itself with Epic Online Services when it starts, and the in-game browser reads that list from EOS. There's no Steam query port at all. The two systems don't overlap, so a Legacy client and an Evrima server are, as far as either is concerned, running different games. Even if you somehow had the right IP, the client protocols differ, and the connection would fail before the join screen.
This has two consequences for a server owner. One, every player needs to be on evrima in Steam Betas, no exceptions. Two, a freshly started Evrima server takes two to five minutes to register with EOS and appear in the browser, and there's nothing you or we can do to hurry that. When a player says they can't see the server, the order of questions is: which branch, has the server been up for five minutes, is the whole list empty (an EOS wobble) or just your server. The troubleshooting guide walks through that.
On a LOW.MS server
Every Isle server we sell runs Evrima, installed from the evrima branch, and the panel's Update button keeps it on the current build. There's no option to run Legacy and no option to run the hordetesting test branch, because neither can be joined by a normal Evrima client and a server nobody can join is a support ticket waiting to happen. The Playable Classes and Enabled Mutations fields under Manage > Settings > Gameplay are where the roster and the mutation pool are shaped, and the settings guide goes through both. Plans are on the hosting page.
Two questions people still ask
Can you still play The Isle Legacy in 2026? Yes. It's on Steam, it launches, and setting Betas to None gets you there. What you won't get is any update, any bug fix, or any new content, because development on it stopped in February 2022. Treat it as a museum piece you can walk around in.
Are there Legacy servers in 2026? Some. A shrinking number of community servers still run it, mostly for people who prefer the older roster or never made the jump. We don't host it, and I'd be surprised if many hosts still do, so if Legacy is what you want you're probably looking at running it on your own hardware. I wouldn't start a new community on it. You'd be building on a branch whose player base only ever gets smaller.
If you're still torn
You aren't, really. If you want to run a server that people can find and join, that gets new dinosaurs and fixes, and that a host will support, it's Evrima. Legacy is for a specific kind of nostalgia, and there's nothing wrong with that, but it isn't something to build on in 2026. Once you've decided, the getting started guide takes you from a fresh server to the first player in the door, and if a mate still can't see it after all that, open a ticket and tell us which branch they're on. We'll ask anyway.