Snuck in some bug fixes and polish tonight ahead of tomorrow's Live patch. Also, you can now put heroes on a Reserve bench so no automatic pick ever grabs them. Hiltcrest got a lot more paint: every Surface Breach site has its own battleground, the End Week report opens on a seasonal painting of town and the War Table's marks are all hand-painted now. Be sure to take note of the recruiting change under Balance: applicants finally pay attention to the heroes you lose. All of this is live now on Beta.
FEATURES
Parties & Training
Reserve bench. Bench any hero from the right-click menu, the Party screen roster, the Dossier or the Training panel. No automatic pick chooses a benched hero: Substitute and the Commander's auto-deploy, Rebuild All, the Tower muster's "Call up the best" and "Call up the best parties", Auto-train idle, the Commander's party swap advice and the World Event muster.
Benching never pulls a hero out of a party they already sit in. You can still place or train them by hand; adding one asks "Unbench and add?" first. The Party screen shows a Reserve group, benched heroes wear a small Reserve tag and the Training panel's Reserve tab lists them for hand training. In CCL events a benched hero is only picked last, so the bench never costs you an event.
Academy
Enrolling a prospect now offers "Welcome & Set Curriculum" beside "Welcome to the Academy". It enrolls them and opens Training ▸ Youth with the new student selected. The "curriculum selection required" alert also takes you straight to that student.
Semester Plan. Plan a curriculum for every semester of a student's run. When a semester ends, the next planned curriculum locks in on its own and the Front Desk tells you so instead of raising the alert. Finished semesters show what ran against the plan and "Lock In Planned" applies the plan to the current semester.
Students have a notes box. A note you left on the prospect carries over and follows them to graduation.
Armory
Grimoire pages. The quest, raid or Tower report that finds a page now shows "Grimoire page found" with a ten-pip meter ("Page 7 of 10"). The Grimoire Vault and the Weekly Summary show the same meter.
The week ten pages bind, closing the Weekly Summary opens the Grimoire Binding scene. Click or press Space to skip. When the grimoire shelf is full, the Vault and the summary say so: the pages wait and bind once you use or sell a grimoire. Pages are never lost.
War Table
The War Table's marks are now 26 full-color painted icons just like the map, in place of the flat red stamps: a plumed helm for the Party of Heroes, a banner among tents for a raid, two peaks with a road for a mountain pass, a shield over a road for an escort and a covered wagon for a supply convoy. The compass, scale bar, The Reach, the surveyed stamp, tally ticks, waystones and your home banner are painted too.
Claimed contracts, wilderness cairns, world events, Frontier Patrol standards and cut supply roads have painted marks of their own. Creatures without their own art show a painted sigil for their family (aberration, beast, construct, dragon, elemental, fey, fiend, humanoid and undead) and count badges are painted parchment strips.
20 more creatures have painted tokens on the War Table and in battle, among them wolves, bandits, cultists, goblins, hobgoblins, ogres, skeleton archers, slimes and spiders.
Settings ▸ Appearance ▸ Artwork ▸ Classic keeps the traced board, with the new marks drawn in its style.
Map & Combat
Every Surface Breach site now fights on its own painted battleground: The Old Copper Mine, The Chapel Catacombs, The Mill Cistern, The Smelter's Throat, The Cellar on Lantern Row and The Orchard Sinkhole.
Hazard hexes on ford, cavern, ruin and dune battlefields have their own painted beds: a gravel channel at the ford, a sinkhole in caverns, a broken flagstone floor in ruins and a sand sink in the dunes.
Multiplayer
Multiplayer Tower floors, competitive and co-op, now play out in the hex battle arena like single-player floors, with Watch, formations, terrain, weak spots, Tactical Maps and draughts. In co-op the server still judges the front.
After pressing Ready you can now "Take back my turn" from the waiting banner or My League. Your orders come back to you until the league advances.
Duel replays queue up when two duels resolve in the same week and the Duels tab offers "Watch again" on your 3 most recent duels.
The Guild Duel challenge screen shows your odds to win, when the challenge expires, the stakes, the rival's last five OVR and your cooldown in weeks. It keeps "Your five" on the card and warns you if one of them leaves the guild, is injured or is deployed. A watched replay adds a box score.
A finished league now offers "Continue as single-player", which leaves the league and keeps your guild, roster and gold. The same choice is on the main menu's Multiplayer screen.
A new Outbox (in My League and Markets ▸ League) lists every order waiting for your next Ready, marked Sent or Queued. Remove takes back a queued trade offer, trade answer or duel challenge before it goes. Your own pending trade offers show in Markets ▸ League until they are answered.
The league explains the wait. A paused league says the host paused it, a turn timer ("⏱ 5h 12m left") sits beside Ready and after a week resolves you're told whether everyone was in, the timer ran out or your commander covered your turns. A guild handed to an AI commander after weeks without a turn gets a Front Desk letter saying it is held for you and how to reclaim it.
Look & Feel
The End Week report now opens on a placeholder painting of Hiltcrest in the week's season: spring, summer, autumn or winter. The week's debits and credits sit on a dark plate over it.
The Underworld now has its own painted crest, a hooded figure, everywhere faction crests appear. All six factions now carry painted crests.
Arcane heroes see a painted sigil light up on the ground in their Milestone Ceremony.
BALANCE
Recruiting & Scouting
Be sure to take note of this one --> Applicants now judge your guild on its real record. The heroes you lost this year now count: a deadly year earns "I've heard your guild chews people up" and "Adventurers come home alive" is only earned after 5 quests have resolved this year. "You treat departing members well" no longer appears, since nothing measured it. Expect applicants to be cooler early in the year and after a costly one.
The Tower
World Boss fights at the Tower now count War Rations (+20% battle power, under the same +35% cap as every Tower fight) and the Tactical Maps +10 speed, like every other Tower fight.
War Table
While the War Room is damaged, a gatherer sent to a frontier region stops work: no haul and no risk. Their staff card reads "Idle until the War Room is repaired". Once it is repaired they go back to that region. "Call home" still always works and gatherers working at home are not affected.
Parties & Training
Instructor Drill Mode no longer sets a hero's Training Focus. Drills grant XP only and a drilled hero who levels up grows by the focus you set, including a Standing Focus.
Multiplayer
After a guild turns down your duel challenge you must wait 2 weeks before challenging them again. Declining stays free. A challenge blocked by a cooldown now tells you so and when you can challenge again.
QUALITY OF LIFE
Parties & Training
The Training panel:
Select several adventurers at once (checkbox, Shift-click for a range, Ctrl/Cmd-click for one) and start them all in one program from a bulk bar. It shows how many will start, the total gold and who is skipped and why, then asks to confirm.
A new "Max gold per enrollment" cap for auto-training (Any cost, or 50g up to 500g), as a guild-wide default and per adventurer. Auto-training skips any program that would cost more.
A new "Renew automatically" default turns auto-training on whenever you pick a program.
Start Training now sits right under the trainee and program, so the cost line and any reason it's disabled read first.
The one-click "Auto Train (picks best program)" button is gone. Turning Auto-Training on now locks it to the program you picked and the toggle shows what each cycle costs.
The locked Auto-Training card now says what unlocks it: "Build the Training Yard (Tier 1): 3,500g plus materials".
Academy
The Confirm Curriculum, Change Curriculum Mid-Semester and Set career track? boxes now open right under the option you picked instead of at the top of the list.
Before the first Advance Week of a semester a curriculum pick locks in on one click and you can change it for free. After that it stays locked for the semester.
Recruiting & Scouting
The Adventurers recruit board counts down to fresh applicants: "New applicants in 13 weeks" at the start of each season, down to 1.
A starred recruit a Watch scout hasn't reached yet reads "Waiting for scout" and a badge marks a scouted recruit whose verdict is Pillar of the Guild or Strong Sign.
A recruit's row menu has "Scout next", which moves them to the front of a scout's queue or makes them a Watch scout's next pick.
Scout find alerts on the Front Desk carry buttons: View in Recruitment and, for a Trading Block find, View Rival.
Heroes & Dossier
Hovering a hero's Potential in the dossier shows "How potential grows": the Grimoire of Potential, Limit Break, Sanctum Tier 3 and the Meditation Scroll (Holy Orders). Sage's Wisdom has a full "How Potential Grows" page that also covers the Academy and Spiritual Awakening.
The Dossier has a "Trade & release" button that jumps to Contract & Trade on the Intel tab.
The "In battle" block on a hero's card is laid out cleanly: Moves, Crit and Extra action in one strip, then Damage per hit beside Output stats and Less damage per hit beside Defense stats.
Reports & Rosters
The Registry has a Former members list: adventurers whose contracts lapsed in the last year, when they left and where they are now (back with the guild, free agent, signed by a named guild, retired or moved on).
The command palette (Q) now finds people by name: roster heroes, staff and recruits. A hero opens their Dossier.
Armory
Weekly Auto-Repair now also mends gear that broke while worn and puts it back on the hero who wore it when that slot is still free. Locked gear and field-locked heroes are left alone.
Crafting and Outfitter cards show a "⬆ N" chip with who a piece would upgrade. On a crafting recipe it's measured at the selected crafter's most likely quality.
War Table
Party rows show the Quest Board's risk word ("Low Risk" to "Extreme Risk") instead of a bare ratio. A busy party says why it can't go ("2 member(s) injured") and how many weeks are left.
Dragging a party coin over a quest shows that party's OVR, odds and anything blocking the deploy. Dropping it opens a small card with Deploy, Change party and Full details. Dropping it off a quest tells you why: "Drop the party on an open quest mark." or "Another party already has this quest."
An open quest in a region panel lists your ready parties right under it with their OVR, odds and a Send button. The region's holds, supply line, gatherers, outpost and patrol fold behind "Region details".
Pressing Quests while a region is open keeps that region as a filter and a row of region chips filters the Quests list by region.
The weekly card leads with the Goblin Siege ("The goblin siege has begun", "A warband reached the gates of Hiltcrest", warbands broken that week, "The siege of Hiltcrest is over") and says a party came home "with part of the job done" after a partial success.
Escape on the War Table closes the top card or panel, then leaves the map. It no longer opens Settings.
Convoys, ambush marks, control pennants, patrol shields, incidents and threats open their region when clicked. A region's hover card sits beside the pointer and stays on screen. Unexplored regions say "rumors only".
Two warbands at the gate stack under one tag and the kind filter shows five kinds plus "+N" so it no longer covers the siege legend.
A rival's material offer in the trade window shows the deal rating and how much of each requested material you have.
The painted map shows its true colors (no dusk wash or dark vignette) and creature marks wear their own painted colors. Dark and Light now apply only to the Classic board. Hiltcrest sits smaller on the bay with its docks over the water and siege hosts camp clear of the town plaque.
Map & Combat
Resting the mouse on a unit in battle shows a small card with its art, name, class, HP, OVR and Potential. The Tower formation boards use the same card.
Every unit wears a row of status badges with the rounds left (stun, burn, wither, slow, defer, shield, guard and haste) and a stun pops a "Stunned" word when it lands and on each turn it skips.
Markets & Trade
The Price history chart draws rising weeks as green candles and falling weeks as red again.
Saves & Cloud
The Load screen and the Save Slots panel can sort slots by Recent or by Slot. Your choice is remembered on this device; autosaves, quicksaves and backups keep their place.
Settings
The Name Book now holds up to 2,000 names per list (was 300) and has a new "Only use my names" option: recruits, staff applicants and rival guild members draw names only from your own lists. A list you leave empty keeps the built-in names and a list with fewer than 30 names warns that it will repeat often.
Multiplayer Leagues
In a league, Settings shows the founder's difficulty rules as locked.
Leave, Kick, give host and Force-advance now ask for a second click. Once you're Ready, the banner says changes you make now count toward next week.
The challenge-sent message explains timing: your rival sees it after the next league week and an accepted duel is fought at the advance after that.
Guides
The Roster Management and Adventurer Transfers guides now explain when contracts end, what releasing costs and how On the Block and Untouchable work. The Tower supplies guide says the Tactical Maps speed can also sharpen a fast melee, tank or ranged hero's attacks.
BUG FIXES
Heroes & Dossier
A hero who chose "New path" at a Milestone Ceremony now fights Crown Cup, Crown Cup League and Rival Challenge bouts with that skill at the rank the dossier shows, not the rank of their level.
With Skip Celebrations on, Escape no longer seals Upgrade on a Milestone Ceremony hidden under another window. It acts on whichever window is on top.
"The guild remembers" notice no longer appears in a brand-new guild. The ceremony's choice header now reads "Choose the next step".
A hero carried into New Game Plus with the Reborn perk climbs skill ranks I to V again from the new life's milestones, instead of staying at rank I.
A hero bound to a Soul Crystal no longer walks out of a Toxic party or leaves through a Questing Uptime clause or a Release Clause and the contract warnings no longer list them as at risk.
The Service box on a retiring hero's memorial card and on the age retirement choice now shows how long they served instead of "—".
The Maverick's goal now reads "Win 10 quests as the underdog", matching Unbroken Charge.
Staff & Buildings
Injured gatherers, a Salvager hurt on a Salvage Run included, now recover with your guild's healing bonuses instead of always 1 week per week. With a level 2 Infirmary they heal 2 weeks each week. An injured gatherer shows "Injured" and "Weeks left" on the staff card.
The Guild Hall's Instigator warning now appears when an Instigator's flaw is known. It never showed before.
Recruiting & Scouting
A scout assigned to a free agent by hand can now uncover a hidden flaw, the same way a scout on Watch does.
Interface
Founding Tasks, Growth Tasks and the siege windows reopen when you press minimize again. They no longer stay stuck once minimized.
The Oath ceremony scrolls on shorter screens, so "I swear this oath" and "I need more time" are always reachable.
War Table
Gatherer screens no longer promise that every region's goods come up 3 times as often. The pitch names the +25% yield and each region says what it finds more often, or that it finds nothing more often than near the guild.
The weekly card counts critical successes and critical failures as wins and losses. After dropping a party coin, a click outside the drop card closes it and also does what you clicked.
Surface Breach
Lighting a lantern at the top of the stairs and then turning back now returns the Lantern Oil to your stores.
Quests
Crown Patrol, faction representative, legendary and faction-exclusive quests no longer change your relationship with a random client who never appeared on the quest.
Multiplayer Leagues
After you found or join a league, the Guild Duels panel, the duel buttons, host controls and Ready show right away instead of after a reload. The Guild Duel window no longer opens behind the league lobby.
A Guild Duel replay shows your own leg and ends on the real result. Both duelists now watch the same fight and stand-in fighters cast their skills at Rank II instead of Rank V.
League Crown Cup bouts follow the league's real standings: no more watching your team win a semifinal and then seeing it eliminated and the Final is always the league's top two. Guilds that didn't qualify can watch as spectators.
Heroes who survived a fight on your screen no longer vanish from the league's record and a league week no longer lands without your guild's own events (signings, gold, CCL results, trade notices).
A member who was away for a while no longer loses a whole CCL tournament's purse, wounds and placement renown. Returning to a league that moved on two or more weeks shows every missed week's reports.
Joining or re-entering a league checks the passcode and the open seat first, so a wrong passcode or a full league no longer leaves you with an unwanted solo save.
My League now loads the league fresh each time it opens instead of briefly showing an old week. A Guild Duel's wager renown now reaches your own standings, so both duelists see the same table.
Starting a league no longer shows single-player controls while it links: Advance Week reads "Linking league…" until the league is ready.
Co-op: your company's Tower fight is labeled "Your company's fight" with the coalition verdict pending and the Front Desk reports whether your assault held or was repelled. The Week 5 Tower Observation no longer runs in a league save.