Update v58

Update v58

Sorry, the balance was bad last patch. The early game became much more brutal than intended, with sudden difficulty spikes and contracts that did not always reflect the danger involved. This update focuses on correcting those problems.

Balance

• Slower enemy scaling in the early game.
• Enemy parties now grow more smoothly in both size and quality, with fewer sudden jumps to much stronger units.
• Rebalanced bandit, mountain bandit, pillager, beast, mercenary, ronin, caravan, and clan encounters.
• Ordinary bandit groups remain lower quality for longer before introducing more experienced outlaws.
• Rebalanced clan forces around a broader core of ashigaru and clan warriors, with fewer spear-heavy groups and more varied specialists.
• Large caravans and clan convoys now invest more of their strength into guards rather than additional civilian carriers.
• Powerful bear and ghost-boar encounters can now include multiple legendary beasts.
• Talent Stars now reduce the chance of receiving a negative trait affecting the same attribute.
• Fixed character attribute rolls never reaching the listed maximum value.
• Fixed Easy difficulty's hit-chance bonus not applying.

Contracts

• Combat contracts now better reflect the strength of their target.
• Contract payments now scale with both the target's danger and the contract's star rating.
• Contracts remain tied to the party or location originally offered instead of silently changing targets.
• Invalid offers are replaced when their target is destroyed before acceptance.
• Locate and Exterminate contracts now use actual persistent locations in the world.
• Prevented multiple contracts or mercenary companies from claiming the same target.

Battle Sites and Beasts

• Added distinct tactical maps for Bandit Campsites, Bandit Stockades, Occupied Ruins, Mountain Hideouts, Wolf Dens, Hihi Caves, and Onikuma Caves.
• Sites can feature palisades, defensive approaches, high ground, terraces, camp structures, rubble, bones, and cave entrances.
• Fortified defenders now make better use of their defensive position instead of immediately rushing outside.
• The new campsite and fortified-location artwork is temporary and will be replaced in a future art pass.
• Added persistent Wolf Dens and rare Hihi and Onikuma caves.
• Wolf, macaque, and bear activity may now gather around matching nearby sites.
• Removed randomly generated Oni Lairs in preparation for more appropriate authored Oni content.
• Hihi now fight as mobile skirmishers, moving in and out of melee while throwing rocks.
• Macaques and Hihi can now evade attacks of opportunity through Macaque Agility.

Living World

• Losing humanoid parties may retreat from world-map battles after suffering casualties.
• Beasts, youkai, oni, and committed clan forces continue fighting to the end.
• Surviving non-player parties now recover between battles.
• Damaged camp patrols can combine their survivors and return home, temporarily weakening their source camp after losses.
• Mercenary companies now persist across jobs, recover from losses, and gradually become stronger.
• Expanded mercenary rosters with professional spearmen, swordsmen, archers, marksmen, veterans, captains, and rare two-handed fighters.
• Mercenary companies can take bandit-hunting, beast-hunting, camp-clearance, and caravan-escort work.
• Mercenary companies now have persistent names and preferred fighting styles.
• Increased ordinary civilian traffic and player world-map sight range.

Fixes and Improvements

• Fixed several rare battle turn-order stalls and errors.
• Fixed Daze and Stagger effects sometimes failing to expire.
• Fixed Entangle accepting invalid targets.
• Improved tactical AI movement, ranged positioning, and weapon use.
• Fixed the pause-on-focus-lost option not working correctly.
• Fixed a defeat-screen scrollbar display error.
• Improved combat-log, skill-bar, turn-order, and disabled-text readability, particularly on mobile.