Hey there, and welcome to life on the bleeding edge.
As someone who’s spent two decades working with bleeding-edge tech, I can say: this is the ride. I’ve done engine upgrades for teams of 20–30 people, and picking the wrong moment to upgrade can cost you and sometimes a lot.
That said, if you’re looking for solutions (and not just here to vent or dig in with “I must use this”), here’s something that might help:
I’ve been using Unreal since 4.10.x. Navigation Mesh in Unreal has always been finicky, and we knew early on that it wouldn’t meet our needs. The old-school trick is placing point markers in the world and using those for pathfinding—it’s more reliable than NavMesh and honestly still valid. But if you’re looking for something modern, robust, and surprisingly plug-and-play, I recommend:
Dynamic Surface Navigation
In action:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WX2yIjDTWc
Networked test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUDqAvA9Q3U
Also, if you’re using ISM in your levels, don’t. Foliage uses HISM for a reason. It gives you batching and proper distance culling. ISM doesn’t cull per instance and has very few real use cases.
And be careful with engine upgrades. In 5.3, they silently demoted Turing support, materials that worked in 5.2 just crash. Unreal doesn’t warn when they overhaul the pipeline for Lumen or Nanite. If you’re shipping on PC or mobile in the next couple years, tread carefully with 5.6+. Turing support looks even worse now.
Hope that helps.