Build 0.743 Patch Notes
This update covers the work completed after the previous Build 0.741 Steam upload.
Party Movement and Exploration
- Reworked long-distance expedition movement so the party measures actual exploration and route progress, rather than treating any back-and-forth movement as success.
- Greatly reduced repeated backtracking, circling, and wandering through already-cleared areas.
- Fixed several cases where characters could remain visibly active while failing to advance along their expedition route.
- Corrected a travel-flow direction error that could point the party back toward territory it had already crossed.
- Improved route consistency around trees, mining nodes, buildings, water, bridges, and other solid scenery.
- Added better recovery for repeated direction reversals and short movement loops.
- Productive travel is no longer abandoned simply because it has continued for a long time.
- Hunting parties now retain their hunt correctly while prey moves, flees, tires, or temporarily changes position.
- Fixed an orphaned skinning job that could leave characters waiting without completing the carcass.
- Fixed a route look-ahead problem that could let characters move without advancing toward their real destination.
- Companions can now use valid routes around scenery to support gathering, skinning, chest opening, loot collection, care, and revival activities instead of standing at a distant anchor.
Formation and Body Blocking
- Party members now cooperate more naturally when crossing one another’s paths.
- A character with the right of way can continue moving while the blocking companion steps aside.
- Added protection against the same two characters repeatedly recreating the same stop-and-yield conflict.
- Reduced constant starting, stopping, zigzagging, spinning, and formation-slot congestion during ordinary travel.
- Companions return to formation after yielding instead of permanently abandoning their intended position.
- Emergency friendly passage remains available after a genuine prolonged obstruction, preventing narrow bridges and one-body passages from becoming permanent traps.
- Friendly passage never allows characters to cross terrain, scenery, enemies, wildlife, hazards, or expedition boundaries.
Combat Movement
- Fixed the reported Greenveil bridge deadlock in which surviving ranged characters could block each other while an unreachable enemy kept the party trapped in combat.
- Ranged characters and enemies now confirm that a projectile can actually cross the terrain before treating an attack as executable.
- Projectile collision and attack planning now use the same terrain rules.
- Homing projectiles will no longer steer themselves into blocked terrain after being launched along a valid path.
- An encounter that cannot produce movement, attacks, abilities, or damage will eventually disengage instead of remaining active forever.
- Characters can then regroup, revive fallen allies, or continue exploring without immediately reopening the same impossible encounter.
- Manual revival remains unavailable during active combat.
- Enemies retain valid wandering destinations through brief obstructions instead of repeatedly choosing new destinations and spinning in place.
- Enemies, wildlife, and pets now anticipate moving bodies earlier and prefer open side lanes.
Party Reserve and Solo Play
- The existing roster arrows can now move recruits between the active expedition party and Reserve.
- Moving a non-main character below the active-party divider places that character in Reserve.
- Moving a reserve character above the divider returns that character to the active party.
- Parties may now contain from one to six active characters, allowing true solo expeditions.
- The main character may be reordered within the active party but cannot be placed in Reserve.
- Newly hired recruits enter Reserve instead of automatically increasing the active party size.
- Dismissing or losing an active recruit no longer automatically promotes a reserve character.
- Reserve characters remain safely in Town. They do not spawn, fight, gather, gain expedition progress, die, or increase expedition party-size modifiers.
- An ordinary party wipe removes only the recruits who were actively deployed. Reserve recruits and their equipment remain safe.
- Characters may be exchanged while preserving the party size of an already-open expedition. Changing that expedition’s party size requires closing and reopening its portal so its enemy population remains consistent.
Saving, Loading, and Closing
- Fixed the expedition autosave race that could report: “The campaign changed while it was being saved.”
- Campaign saves now pass through one coordinated save system instead of allowing overlapping save operations.
- Multiple save requests safely join the active save rather than starting competing writes.
- Expedition simulation and campaign-changing commands briefly pause while a save snapshot is prepared.
- Save failures now distinguish campaign-state conflicts from storage or database problems.
- The previous valid campaign save and its recovery copies remain protected if a save cannot complete.
- Closing the window or selecting Quit now waits for the current save to finish instead of starting duplicate saves during shutdown.
- Fixed freezes and inconsistent behavior when closing the game during or shortly after an autosave.
- Fixed a native engine crash that could occur after leaving one expedition and entering another in the same session.
- Expedition preparation is now divided into responsive loading steps with visible progress.
- Older campaigns with an invalid in-progress expedition can safely close that expedition and load the rest of the campaign in Town.
- Existing Build 0.741 campaigns migrate automatically.
Inventory and Town Performance
- Equipment can now be unequipped directly into a chosen Inventory position as one atomic action.
- Fixed cases where an equipped, unequipped, or moved item could remain visually present in its old position until the interface was refreshed.
- Failed inventory actions now reconcile the visible inventory instead of leaving stale item controls behind.
- Party Inventory, Town Stash, Outfitter, and Workshop now update the affected controls instead of rebuilding their entire storage interface after every small action.
- Improved repeated transfers, sorting, inventory expansion, purchases, stack movement, and equipment handling.
- Reduced the presentation cost of permanent Outfitter purchases without changing stock, prices, rolls, or reroll behavior.
- Reduced temporary allocations in enemy targeting and wandering behavior.
- Improved cleanup of terrain, structures, textures, materials, and streamed world resources during expedition transitions and long play sessions.
Visual Improvements
- Added mipmaps and improved distance filtering for animated field sprites.
- Reduced distant shimmering and unstable pixel artifacts on player characters, enemies, Pinnacle bosses, wildlife, ambient creatures, NPCs, and pets.
- Inventory and other flat interface artwork retains its existing crisp presentation.
- Installed complete revised animation sets for Korr Female, Korr Male, Elyran Female, Elyran Male, and Threxian Male.
- Korr Male now uses the complete corrected idle, walking, resting, combat, casting, ranged, damage, downed, death, recovery, chopping, mining, and interaction set.
- Human Female chopping, mining, and melee animations were replaced with their corrected versions.
- Calling an ordinary or Pinnacle return portal now uses the casting animation rather than the interaction animation.
Pet Movement Corrections
- Equipped pets now keep pace with the main character’s normal movement speed and all positive movement bonuses.
- Personal penalties affecting the main character, such as encumbrance or harmful slowing effects, no longer incorrectly slow the pet.
- Pet catch-up speed now scales from the pet’s current matching pace, allowing it to keep up as the character becomes faster.
- Pet follow positions rotate with the main character’s heading instead of remaining fixed to world directions.
- Pets remain nonblocking and cannot pin party members or enemies.
- Pet experience remains tied to loot personally collected by that pet, as intended.