Live Patch: World Events Are Here (v2.0.0-beta.4182)

Each week seems to be coming with new and exciting features that have been a long-time coming, this week's is World Events. I am trying to be smart about this particular rollout because the World Events system touches almost everything in the game. In turn, I'm releasing chunks bit-by-bit. Today, the system now exists in game with only three possible World Events (each very simple) and over the coming weeks, I will sneak a few new ones in with each patch escalating to the bigger pieces of content that are essentially novellas. This is a much longer term schedule, but there will definitely be some tweaking involved as the stories and events get bigger and more impactful.

Also! I am on the hunt for QA tester for the iPad version! If you're interested let me know in the comments or join the Discord and tag me (https://discord.gg/uWMVBgmHJ)

Let's get into the proper patch notes:

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NEW & NOTABLE
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World Events

• World Events are now live — a large, hand-authored story system with no procedural generation; every beat is written by hand. I'm launching a few to start and rolling out new ones each week, and they deepen over time into novella-sized journeys. The on/off switch lives with the Custom (Sandbox) options; non-Custom games always run with World Events on.

Bosses & the Tower

• The boss identity pass. Now that the Hex battle system is up and ripping, tower bosses are being rebuilt one at a time with unique skills and tactics — starting with the "decade bosses" on every tenth floor, and continuing chunk by chunk in the weeks ahead. This includes a pretty big rework to the Floor 100 boss this week.

• New boss mechanics land across the roster: the dragon's breath leaves its targets burning, the ancient golem's slam mires survivors, and the ancient horror's grasp withers healing. The flame elemental erupts in a room-wide flashover, the phoenix's fire feeds on already-burning targets, and two deeper tower/fiend bosses gain telegraphed binds and withering strikes. NOTE: More boss mechanics are on the way and this will impact the broader bestiary as well.

• New elemental foes. Face the Tide Elemental and Earth Elemental on quests, and their apex — The Confluence, a new Giant-Slayer boss — each with its own elemental strengths and weaknesses.

Guild & Combat Tools

• Champion's Challenge. A Vanguard-specialized guild can send its best fighter against a rival's champion in a once-per-season 1v1 duel.

• Practice Sandbox. Spar two of your own parties in a full battle — winner, remaining HP, tiebreak — tracked on a spar ladder by rating and record. Consequence-free: no XP, gold, injuries, or roster changes. The weekly sparring champion is now surfaced by name (nicknames honored).

• Compare, side by side. Weigh a scouted staff candidate against your current same-role staff (or any two on your roster), and put up to four adventurers head to head — stats, OVR, and per-category differences — launched from the roster or a dossier, measured against filtered guild-average baselines by role and potential tier.

• Saved formations. Save your own party formations as named, one-click presets beside the built-in ones — re-issue a saved line to every attached party, or keep a private copy.

• Sortable trade offers. Sort your incoming offers and the cross-guild All-Offers Ledger by value, expiry, guild, or direction.

• Frontier hold priority. When your guild rank caps how many frontiers you can hold at once, you choose which ones your people stand for.

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BALANCE
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Combat & Enemies

• Health now reflects role, not just stats — tanks carry more base HP, ranged mages are squishier. This is an ongoing effort to move the role fantasy into the numbers and you'll see more of these kind of moves.

• Critical hits are a specialist's reward: a top-finesse hero settles near 16% crit (down from ~22%), and ordinary fighters sit near the 10% floor.

• Bonus actions ("cadence") take real speed — a hero needs speed 85 to roll one at all, and even a pure speed specialist tops out near 28% (down from ~69%).

• To keep those changes honest, enemies are sturdier: bigger boss health pools, larger formations, foes that land their own criticals, and — in the tower — some lesser enemies that act twice. The apex and the deepest floors hit meaningfully harder.

• Bosses hunt your backline. Floor bosses and quest apex monsters pick targets by preference instead of always grinding the front rank: your healer pulls a boss two hexes harder than distance alone, archers one, and wounded fighters draw focus fire. Your tank's taunt forces the boss off them — while it holds, the boss must turn — and a challenge ring marks the taunting tank.

• Taunt did get a proper upgrade this week as well. Tanks are tankier and better at tanking. Tank.

Casualties & Injuries

• Surviving a fight after dropping low no longer guarantees a wound. It's a roll graded by how far a hero fell: below 50% HP, about a 45% chance of a minor injury; below 30%, about 65% (moderate); below 15%, about 95% (major). The worse the plunge, the longer the recovery — and you'll pick up fewer wounds per clear overall, ending the old "injury drought" where a comfortable win produced none. Moderate injuries are now announced as moderate and cost matching morale.

Progression

• S-Tier adventurers now have a genuine stat spread — high focus stats and honestly lower off-stats — instead of reading near-max in every category. Lower and mid tiers are unchanged.

• Zodiac Drives that asked for a number of quests now count weeks spent questing, so a string of short jobs no longer outruns long expeditions. A Drive mid-progress may re-fill as you keep questing (completed Drives are unaffected).

• Rotating a fresh, rested company onto a garrison wall eases that post's fatigue (by 30, once per week) instead of inheriting its exhaustion — so rotation is a real relief valve, not a trap.

Economy & the Guild

• Chartering a new supply line now costs the charter fee plus the first week's upkeep up front, so a fresh line can always make its opening payment.

• The sworn Trade Empire tithe is now taken from your quest earnings every week, as the oath intends — it used to slip on most weeks.

• The Temple Sanctuary won't take in the wounded you can't pay to keep, and on a week you can't cover its upkeep it releases its patients rather than dragging your treasury below zero.

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BUG FIXES
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No Damage Death Bug

• Okay this no-damage bug has been a tough one, but I am not seeing it anymore and hopefully it is truly squashed forever.

Factions & the Great Houses

• World-event decisions and story-arc outcomes now change the faction standing you actually see — reward and penalty effects used to land on a hidden counter, so they were invisible and any world-event choice gated on faction standing could never unlock. Loading an existing save reconciles standing you'd already earned but couldn't see.

• The great houses write to you again when the week earns it: the Temple after heavy losses, the Consortium after a big profit, Military Command after a run of victories, the Noble Houses after a surge in renown, and the Underworld after a week where every quest failed. These letters read the week's real results now, so five reactions that almost never fired do.

• A faction whose apprentice you elevate through a successful shadow operation now trains a replacement, instead of leaving the seat empty forever and slowly going silent.

• Faction correspondence — blessings, dispatches, contract offers, favor unlocks, alliance overtures, bulk-purchase receipts — now shows up in the Hearth Tavern feed. Eight of these were being quietly dropped before they reached you.

• Replying to a letter with a paid response you can't afford no longer reports "Response sent" while silently doing nothing — the option is greyed with a "not enough gold" note.

• A scout already out on a letter dispatch can no longer be sent a second time onto a contract or a shadow operation.

• "Warn Target" on a shadow operation is now a one-time act, not a repeatable way to farm standing.

• Vendor stock with no valid target — a nemesis sabotage with no nemesis, a quest-speed boon with no quests, a cooldown-clear with nothing on cooldown — no longer charges you gold for nothing.

• Reactive service actions offered in a letter no longer burn the letter when the action is rejected for gold, standing, or cooldown.

• Cancelling a faction service contract now asks for confirmation and shows the true penalty — a lighter hit under Crown Diplomatic Immunity, the full hit otherwise — instead of always quoting the full number.

Combat, Casualties & the Watch Board

• Hex Battles now run on multiplayer quests properly, matching raids and single-player.

• Rival Challenge and Proving Ladder results no longer show a winning HP line under a "Defeat" banner — the verdict, HP summary, arena, and rewards all read from the same leg of the fight.

• After a catastrophic tower defeat, a hero the sim spares by turning a kill into an injury can no longer also skip that injury in a famous party.

• After a catastrophic defeat in a shared (co-op or league) descent, casualties reflect the real per-hero rolls instead of being wrongly capped and desyncing the shared front.

The Tower

• A staged descent that got stuck (thirty adventurers locked in, "Challenge Floor" doing nothing) can now be recalled with the new Recall Force from Tower button, and stuck saves repair themselves on load; recalling a stalled ascent no longer instantly loses your front floor.

• The "Challenge Floor" button now tells you why it's blocked — guild-tier requirement, blockade, tower already conquered, or no force staged.

Season, Standings & Multiplayer

• End-of-season division and Nemesis results are decided on the season that just finished, not the new season's opening week — the division winner is paid the champion reward (2,000g, 50 renown, and +50 standing with the division's patron faction) instead of second place's.

• Standings stop accruing renown once the Crown Cup is decided, so the final table matches the one that set the bracket.

• Division brackets and mid-season wildcard opponents are drawn from a stable seed, so reloading at the year boundary can't re-roll you into an easier group.

• In online leagues, the shared League standings show your own renown in step with the Division and Crown Cup view, so a late-season preview no longer under-ranks you against your real finish.

• When a rival outbids you for a free agent, the recruit leaves your pool immediately and the loss report says so — no more phantom re-bids that quietly fail.

• The league Academy enrollment claim now reports what happened — "Academy Full," "Premium Unaffordable," or "Enrollment Claim Expired" — and Esc or clicking away cancels a claim without charging you.

• On Academy Only runs you no longer get "a rival signed your recruit" alerts.

Rivals & Scouting

• Rival re-challenge cooldowns frozen for years (stuck at counts like 83 or 160 weeks) now clear correctly, and affected saves heal on load.

• Settling a rivalry through a Diplomatic Summit no longer also spawns a duplicate summit quest for the same rivalry.

• Scouted rival members no longer show "null" for their stats — an unknown value reads 0 or ???.

• League scouting shows a rival's full roster, and the misleading "+N more on their bench" line is gone.

• Your Guild Block per-guild filter — including "All Guilds" — sticks across tab visits and reloads instead of snapping back to your top rival.

• The Compare Staff overlay no longer leaks an unscouted or expired-intel candidate's real stats — the column is fogged (silhouette, ??? tier / skill / potential), now on the Signing screen too.

Trade & Economy

• Confirming a large "Buy All" of a portfolio material now completes the purchase instead of silently doing nothing when the order routes through a caravan.

• When a full warehouse can't take part of an incoming caravan's cargo, the refund for the rejected units matches exactly what you paid.

• A rival guild member who used to be in your guild now shows their correct estimated trade value instead of a stale, far-too-low wage.

Crafting

• The Experimental crafting technique no longer pushes the Quality Forecast past 100%; its quality shift moves real probability mass and genuinely helps at high skill.

• Crafted set gear is genuinely indestructible now: no durability loss, no repair prompts, and it shows the indestructible bar — matching loot sets and the Sage's answer on set items.

Roster, Staff & Records

• A Tactician shows one consistent skill number across the staff list, mini-dossier, and Tactician card, even during a retirement transition.

• The "foretold talent has arrived" notice names the hero's class instead of a raw placeholder, and a Shining Star always arrives as a proper adventurer.

• A Hall of Fame legend whose contract lapsed keeps their career record instead of showing "records lost to time."

• Saving a formation with an empty board no longer wipes your stored line and blanks every party using it.

Parties & Automation

• With "Deployable only" on, one-click party call-up no longer fills your 30 descent slots with ineligible away members.

• Editing an orders template no longer quietly switches auto-deploy back on for parties you'd disabled, and hand-editing a party's orders detaches it from later template pushes.

• Auto-training intensity survives save and reload, changing a window mid-run no longer re-enrolls members you turned off, and a new training window starts from your guild defaults instead of the previous window's settings.

Academy & Correspondence

• In single-player, the Academy enrollment screen shows a prospect's real potential tier, and an unscouted prospect no longer gets a "low potential" jab.

• Scout field reports in the Front Desk show the scout as the sender instead of Ser Aldric, and aren't auto-filed when their surveyed floor is re-cleared.

Supply Lines & Frontier

• The weekly convoy-upkeep line now appears in the Week Summary every week upkeep is charged, not only on weeks a delivery lands.

• A convoy turned away from a full warehouse no longer also claims it "passed unharmed" in the same breath.

• A rival whose home frontier changes hands several times in one season now takes the trust penalty once per season, not once per flip — the grudge letter still arrives on every genuine flip.

• A frontier you're garrisoning is no longer described as "untouched" on the map and region panel.

Lore

• Consistency pass: District Overseer Aldric's tenure now reads as six centuries throughout, and the tower's depth-record canon is harmonized (no guild ever descended past Floor 50; a lone adventurer once reached Floor 97, I wonder who that was and how that happened).

Interface

• The High Contrast Text setting now survives a reload.

• The Quartermaster bulk-ops toolbar wraps instead of squashing its buttons after "Optimize All," and long guild names on weekly scouting rows no longer overlap the OVR column.

• The gambit rule editor's number fields commit when you leave the field instead of stuttering on every keystroke.

• A gathering haul on the final week of the year is booked into the correct (ending) year.

• Tooltip accuracy: a clean Tower clear is now described as safe, the performance (+/−) column tooltip describes win/loss differential, the Treasurer unlock hint says Tier 1, and the sell-price estimate explains the real trade spread (and that it already includes your spread).

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QUALITY OF LIFE
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Tooltips & Sage's Wisdom

• If you're hanging out much in the Discord, you'll know I went a little wild this week on tooltips. I no joke rebuilt how tooltips work game-wide and they look and feel much better. Still a work in progress, so let me know if you see any tooltips that look weird OR (even better) let me know if there is a spot that NEEDS a tooltip that doesn't.

• New explain-the-number tooltips clarify what a value actually means — Fame, Underworld Heat, season Pace, per-week training injury risk, Weekly Net and treasury health, the rival-interest warning badge, trade value ratios, and more.

• Hover hints across the game render as clean, readable, keyboard- and touch-friendly styled tooltips instead of the browser's plain text boxes.

• New Sage's Wisdom entries explain set-item bonuses (2/3/4-piece stacking, and that crafted sets are indestructible), and XP and leveling with concrete numbers — the level curve (100 × level^1.65, up to level 200), what a training program grants, and how each intensity trades XP against time and injury risk.

Rosters, Dossiers & Scouting

• The tower Muster board shows each placed unit's OVR badge, formation tokens reveal an OVR / potential / level / age tooltip on hover, and every adventurer's dossier gains a Career Timeline.

• An adventurer's dossier now shows their effective rating — gear, optimization, and class bonuses included — matching every other place their power is displayed.

• Party roster rows show the full ambition cue — Proving-ready, at a Crossroads, or worth bringing along — with a "Needs Action" sort that floats those heroes to the top.

• The staff comparison overlay shows each candidate's potential-rank ceiling and their work/social characteristics (scouting fog respected).

• The weekly Scouting Complete report badges where each scouted adventurer came from (Guild Block · guild name, or Trading Block), and the Guild Block badge jumps straight to that rival's roster and rings the target row.

Deploy & Quests

• The two party OVR numbers on the quest menu are explained on hover (your party's base rating vs. its rating recomputed for the selected quest), and the pre-deploy risk meter uses that quest-adjusted rating — so a party well-suited to a quest reads as safer.

• An advisor line at the deploy screen shows which of the selected party members' active ambitions the quest would advance.

• The "clear 5 different quest categories" deed now shows a ✓/○ checklist of exactly which categories a hero has already cleared.

Workshop & Gathering

• The Workshop's "Buy all missing materials" is now batch-aware: pick "Buy for" 1/2/3/5/Max and stock every missing material for that many crafts in one press — you can buy ahead before you can queue.

• A gatherer's panel shows "Gathered This Year" beside the lifetime total, and the weekly report shows a year-to-date materials line.

Raids, Supply & Frontier

• The week before a raid reaches its objective, a feed line and a "Next week" note in the Week Summary tell you the company fights on arrival.

• Supply lines read their own status plainly — "waiting on reserves" when the treasury can't cover upkeep, "turned away: warehouse full" when a delivery arrives with nowhere to go — across the map, the region panel, the hover, and a convoy strip in the Week Summary.

• Frontier holds that change hands now appear in the Week Summary, not just as a passing feed line and a map pennant.

• Whisper-chain secrets now reveal one fragment a week, at the intended pace.

Ascension & Automation

• The ascension cinematic gains a per-stat before→after growth graph; a new "On a Path" tag and one-click roster filter surface heroes mid-Calling; Compare columns are roomier; the treasurer price-floor shows the resolved gold-per-unit as you type; and a gambit "Take a quest" now inherits your Commander Order's length and faction preferences.

Multiplayer

• The shared "League standings" panel is now collapsible and appears only on the Standings tab, so it no longer duplicates the division standings on the Crown Cup landing.

• The Proving Ladder tab now reads "Entry fee from Ng" to reflect that the fee scales, rather than implying one flat amount.

Accessibility & Themes

• A new "High Contrast Text" toggle in Display settings brightens the dimmest text across every theme, inactive building tabs are easier to read, and the faintest gray text is lifted a step for everyone.

• The CleanOS theme now recolors the entire interface consistently (the classic look is unchanged, to the pixel).

• PVP and league screens are retinted to the rivalry accent for a consistent visual identity.

Platform

• Several dropdowns — party orders and gambit templates, the training resist picker, and formation selectors — now use the in-game dropdown that renders correctly on Linux.