v0.17.0: Permanent Pills, Rebuilt Equipment Curve & Map Progression

🐛 FIXED: The First Battle Was Unwinnable

A fresh character fought the starter-village hare and could not win: under the subtractive damage system the hare's defense (51) met or beat a level-1 player's attack (~43-51), so every player hit dealt the 1-damage floor while the hare chewed through you in 7 turns. Teaching-map enemies are now scaled ×0.55 — a bare new character clears the hare in about 11 turns and takes at most trivial damage. A dedicated "opening experience" guard test now keeps this from ever regressing.

💊 Permanent Alchemy Pills (Mortal Tier)

A new permanent-growth line enters the alchemy page: three mortal-tier pills — Peiyuan, Guben and Cuiti — one per stat family.

• Consuming one permanently adds 0.4% of your CURRENT realm's baseline stat (snapshotted at consumption — as you ascend, the share dilutes, encouraging fresh pills at higher realms).
• Cap: 10 pills per line per tier; hitting the cap refuses politely and does not consume the pill.
• The bonus survives rebirth — your permanent progress carries across lifetimes.
• Recipes are owned by everyone from the start; materials are the real gate. Existing saves receive the three recipes automatically on load.

🗺️ Equipment Curve & Map Progression Rebuilt

• Maps now unlock by realm: one map per major realm, unlock levels rescaled from broken monster-scale numbers to player levels (village 1 / forest 10 / … / ruins 8100). Breakthrough = new map.
• Droppable and shop gear is recalculated from realm baselines: weapons, armor and trinkets each scale by part, with level requirements to equip.
• Enemy loot gained level ranges — low-level maps no longer drop far-overleveled gear.

💬 FIXED: Dialogue Without AI Looped One Line

Players without a configured AI model were routed into the AI chat path by a always-true check, where prompt assembly crashed instantly — so every reply was the same filler line ("sorry, I was distracted..."). Two fixes: the routing check now follows your actual AI configuration (no AI = the built-in script dialogues with proper choices), and the prompt assembly no longer crashes for players who DO have AI configured.

🩹 Other Fixes

• Earned alchemy recipes were lost on restart — recipes now persist in the save (v47, auto-migrated).
• Regression tests locked for one-click best-equipment and gear level requirements.

Save format v46 → v47: old saves migrate automatically on load (recipe collection enters the save; the three mortal recipes are granted retroactively; permanent pill bonuses start at zero, equivalent to never having taken one). No action needed.