Gargadusa's Tower · published · build 24953975
Patch Notes: v2.0.0-beta.4029 (Live)
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FEATURES
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It feels very fancy to have a support DLC, but it's extra neat to have it in book form :)
With this update, you don't need to buy the book on Amazon, you can buy it directly on Steam and launch a book reader in-game, open PDF if the game files, or export it to your Kindle/tablet.
Pretty cool setup.
The new Tower loadout process is now up and in the Live game. This feature is still in the works, so I am 1000% looking for input, requests, and wishlist items. The in-game focus on the Tower will only grow, so I want to ensure this process is as enjoyable as possible and as clean to operate as I can make it.
Some key aspects:
The Tower's pre-descent flow is now three live screens — Survey (a chronicle with a depth "core sample" and rival-depth marker), Muster (a deck-builder with a living class-synergy web), and Loadout (the formation board for the exact floor you're facing).
The thirty adventurers you assemble in the Muster are the ones who actually descend — previously it was 6 unique parties, now it's a proper 30-main raid group all unto its own.
DESCEND stays blocked until you field a full deployable thirty that meets the floor's minimum of 2 Tanks and 4 Healers.
You can author one set of raid-wide "if/then" combat orders that applies to your whole tower party at once.
New "Scout below" expeditions reveal an uncleared floor's intel over 2–4 weeks (deeper takes longer); the escorting garrison leaves its hold weakened while the scout is down, and a full report shows what the scout found on return.
"Hold for Descent" flags a tower party to wait when a member or two is still afield, with a one-time notice the week everyone's home and ready — it never launches the fight on its own.
The tower Deepforge auto-kit now fills empty gear slots before the floor fight instead of offering the kit after the battle is already decided.
Your Aggressive/Balanced/Cautious approach pick now sticks across a reload instead of silently resetting.
Quest enemies roll their own elemental traits — a common creature can gain one added weakness or resistance, a tower boss up to four — so two of the same monster aren't identical; each trait shows as a badge under Known Opposition.
Some enemies now inflict status effects, summon reinforcements, and telegraph a heavy area attack a round before it lands (the Lich's court, the wolf king, and the petrifying basilisk are the showcase fights).
League Guild Duel replays now play out in the hex battle arena, with a "Watch the Duel" button, like the single-player Rival Challenge.
A new Bestiary tab lets you browse every creature — filter by danger, element, or location, open a per-creature dossier, see undiscovered foes as locked silhouettes, and view the top guild slayers for each family.
A new "All Offers" view in the Guilds tab lists every incoming and outgoing trade offer across all guilds on one page, sorted most-urgent-first.
New finesse off-hands can be crafted for dexterity/agility/speed builds — parrying daggers, throwing knives, chakrams, archer quivers, ranger maps — with Stormfeather Talons unlocked at Tower Floor 80.
Three new Master accessories for cartographers, diviners, and chroniclers unlock at Tower Floors 45/50/55.
(Steam) If you own and have installed the "Shield of Hiltcrest" book DLC, a main-menu button opens the book in-game, with options to send it to Apple Books or Kindle.
This was a lot of fun to make ;)
Over the last couple months, I've been collecting wishlist mod/custom gameplay ideas from Steam and Discord and took the weekend to implement a bunch of them. Check them out, have some fun, and let me know if you'd like me to cook up anything!
Key Notes:
An "Exclude Rivals from Difficulty" toggle scopes your slider changes to your own guild — the three Rival sliders grey out and the tower-floor sliders stop boosting rival tower strength.
New sandbox toggles: Immortal Roster (freeze aging), Uncap Potential / F-Tier Challenge, Guaranteed Flaws, Free Crafting, Full Intel (No Fog), Disable Party Synergy, No Party Restrictions (e.g. five healers), Static Market Prices, Sale Price Capped at Base, No Rival Trade Offers.
New sandbox sliders: recruit pool size, positive/negative trait frequency, injury recovery time, equipment sale price, academy student growth speed, and academy room-and-board cost.
A stock game is unchanged — every new setting is neutral at its default.
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BALANCE
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Staff long-term contracts are signable again — a five-year wage demand now scales by the staffer's skill instead of a flat ~1.6× for everyone, and the signing slider reaches high acceptance at your chosen term.
Crafters and gatherers whose building you own (like Cooks once you have a Mess Hall) appear on the recruit board about twice as often, and any unlocked profession missing 3+ seasons is guaranteed to show up.
Headhunting an Overseer with a top-tier scout raises the recruit's minimum potential (an A-Tier find jumps from ~3.5% to ~29%); headhunting a Scout is excluded so it can't bootstrap ever-better scouts.
The raid board now rolls easy/standard/hard raids so beatable raids still appear once your renown is high.
Bards and Enchanters now count as Healers for party composition (the vestigial "Support" role is retired).
A hero on their very first quest can no longer be forced into retirement or killed by a would-be-lethal blow — they take a survivable critical injury instead, even after sitting in the guild more than four weeks.
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BUG FIXES
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Leaving or re-entering an online league from the main menu no longer wipes your campaign save on a server hiccup — the save is dropped only on a clean leave or a confirmed "not found."
The Multiplayer menu lists every league you're tracking with its turn-state, so you can resume one you have a save for or leave a stale one that keeps nagging you for your turn.
If you joined a league on another machine, you can re-enter or leave it from the main menu instead of being locked out with "that league is full / already started."
With Full Intel (No Fog) on, recruits keep their fully-revealed exact stats permanently across reloads instead of reverting to fogged ranges after about a year.
On custom difficulties with a Death Floor set, raids no longer kill full-HP adventurers who were never hit on a clean win — raid deaths now come only from the actual fight (quests and the tower still honor the Death Floor).
Fleeing low-HP units no longer walk into a lethal bog, and in PvP bouts they no longer flee straight into two enemies and kill themselves.
Battle MVP crowns now match the visible damage/tanked/healing columns instead of landing on a 0/0/0 unit.
Enemy swarms show each creature's own HP on the focus card instead of the whole pool's total.
Under the F-Tier Challenge toggle, developed heroes no longer lose stats each aging tick or on signing/mentoring bonuses.
Immortal Roster no longer loses over-age veterans when their contracts come up for auto-renewal.
Retired heroes' full career dossiers now open from the Hall of Fame and the feed's "view adventurer" button, instead of a "records lost to time" placeholder.
The Hall of Fame no longer re-inducts the same hero every week or drops two legends who share a name.
Pressing Enter on a graduate's Release button no longer accidentally signs them.
The staff-hire "Staff Signed" celebration no longer soft-locks when hiring a building-gated role (like a gatherer) before its building exists.
Bulk-selling or salvaging gear now skips your vaulted, unique, and relic legendaries, so Select-All can't destroy them, and the bulk-sell gold estimate matches what the treasury actually receives.
Enhancing gear no longer stacks the same improvement multiple times from rapid clicks.
Sealed opportunity crates (like the Consortium Trade Fair) no longer reveal their exact loot before you pay.
A deployed party on a Military faction contract or joint op now satisfies the War Machine oath, and a broken oath shows how many weeks of compliance restore it.
The Great Sage stops nagging you to advance your guild while a council application is pending or during the lockout after a denial.
The "benched too long" departure-risk warning clears the moment you add that adventurer to any party, including a raid.
A raid reservation is released back to standing orders (with a heads-up when you reserve) if a held party can't free up before the bounty expires; the Front Desk now marks a deployed contract party "On Contract" instead of "Ready."
In multiplayer, the refugee/skilled-worker event no longer shows up promising workers who never actually arrive.
A Noble faction favor now reads "sabotage their faction standing," matching the game's terminology.
In fullscreen at below-1080p resolutions, long pages (like the Recruit lists) scroll instead of having their bottoms clipped.
The Tower Survey no longer reveals a deeper boss's name from sparse charted intel.
Re-stationing or recalling a garrison no longer keeps its scout escort's decay reprieve for free, and a garrison whose front falls mid-survey falls back with the line instead of earning renown on lost floors.
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QUALITY OF LIFE
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Your battle playback speed now sticks across fights and sessions instead of resetting to 1×, and the boss name-plate shrinks and fades when the camera zooms in.
A "Reduce Battle Motion" setting collapses battle animations to a faster static presentation, and a "Reduce interface effects" setting stops the interface's perpetual glow/pulse/blur.
You can switch the battle board between angled 3D and flat top-down mid-fight with a new Flat/3D button next to the camera controls.
Battle reports now name which standing order drove each action, how many times each fired, and flag orders carried three fights without firing as dormant.
Ability cards show an area-of-effect shape and a small honeycomb diagram, and the recharge timer is spelled out in weeks.
The Parties tab's "Deployable only" filter now also hides adventurers in training or on a construction crew.
You can pin a permanent Standing Focus on an adventurer's stats that keeps steering their growth forever, even while deployed, with a roster status summary and a one-click "keep focus fresh."
The Salvage screen gains a Salvage/Sell toggle, so you can bulk-sell gear through the same readable grid (with the +10% bonus at 3+ items).
When two or more adventurers break their limit in the same week, each gets its own celebration, the moment plays as a bigger cinematic, and a permanent ⚡ counter appears on their dossier.
A repeatable Temple Crystal Purification service (with an auto-purify-to-threshold option) cleanses the tower-tainted hoard to lower breach risk.
The Week-48 contract auto-renewal report now shows each renewed member's role, party, old→new wage with the percent raise, and new term.
Trade auto-balance gains a persistent "Gold only" option, the quest board remembers your sort, Space/Enter advance construction alerts and the hiring/graduation modals, and the trainee picker gains a persistent "Hide maxed" filter.
The custom-difficulty screen is redesigned so control names no longer truncate, descriptions appear in a styled tooltip, controls group into category cards with "N changed" badges, and Apply stays pinned.
In a Rival Challenge you can pick your starting formation (or leave it Auto) so your healer isn't stranded on the flank.
You can swap a fresh company onto a garrison in one step without the outpost briefly dropping and letting decay resume; the Garrison tab gains a depth rail and fatigue explanations that change with how worn the company is.
The enlarged class-synergy web becomes a full pan-and-zoom star map with labels, a search box that flies to any class or synergy, and pulses on synergies you're one class from completing.
The crafting compendium adds a By-Type view with weight tags and a "best craftable of its type" pointer.
The Hall of Fame gains an "Inducted year·week" line, a 50-year era filter, a by-era timeline, and new "toughest foe / hardest quest / most damage taken" records; the CCL Declare button confirms before spending its fee, a read-only Proving Ladder tab shows live Elo, and the exhibition splash shows your division, Elo, and crest.
Screen-clarity fixes: Academy Faculty shows an "X / Y assigned" count, the Registry gains a one-click Awakening filter, the Front Desk gets a Compact toggle and calmer defaults, and the rival Guild Block opens on the top rival instead of loading every guild.
War Table formation tokens show each unit's OVR, and swapping a party member auto-fills the vacated slot with a same-role replacement.
Repair-All gains a "repair only at/above this rarity" floor and a tooltip on broken gear; enemy ability rows gain hover descriptions; and clicking a Historian "most slain" tile opens the Bestiary pre-filtered to that monster type.