Heartbeat Patch 3 — five of your reports, fixed (and two new toys)

Heartbeat Patch 3 — five of your reports, fixed

Every line in this patch traces back to something one of you told me. Keep it up.

💎 Your Influence and Aether finally have somewhere to go

"Nothing to spend them on late-game" — heard, twice over.

• Emergency Session (Factions → Senate): convene one to grease every lane — +10% to speed, yield, XP and credits for 4 hours. Repeatable forever; the cost scales with your account level so it stays a real decision.
• Weave Infusion (Overview → Temporal Reservoir): weave surplus Aether Cells straight into banked Chronitons — 60 seconds of reservoir time per cell tier, cheapest cells first so combat keeps the good ones. Bounded by the reservoir cap.

🏺 Relic hunting no longer takes a geological age

One of you was stuck at a third of one relic with the Standing Orders chapter blocked. The math agreed: completing your first set averaged ~28 successful expeditions. Three changes: fragment chance is now 2-in-5 per successful expedition (was ~1-in-3), a dry streak never lasts past two (the third success in a row always digs one up), and finds now favor sets you've already started — each piece you hold makes its set's remaining pieces far more likely. First restored set now lands in roughly 8–10 successful runs, and a partly-collected set finishes fast.

🐧 Linux & Steam Deck: dropdowns work now

Native dropdown menus are broken at the Proton/Wine layer (arrow keys only — as reported). Every dropdown in the game is now a custom, in-game menu instead: mouse, touch, keyboard and controller all work, everywhere, and honestly they look better too.

🧭 The game now shows you WHERE things live

"Go ›" used to teleport you into the Bounty Board or Expeditions without ever showing how to get back there. Now, whenever a shortcut opens a panel, the button that owns it pulses in the top bar (or the ☰ Menu tab on small screens) — while the panel is open and again when you close it — plus a one-time note naming the spot.

🔧 Also in this patch

• The Big Drift now takes your grow-bay down with the hull — plants no longer outlive a scuttled ship (your strain knowledge and auto-harvest setting survive; starter seeds re-grant as you level).
• If you haven't found Auto-Charter yet (auto-expeditions, shipped in Patch 2), the Expeditions panel now points you at it.

The lane lights stay green. — KptKittyBucket