The Swordmaster, and the tower gets its teeth
This is a big one. Two updates' worth of work landing together: a new saga, the Nine Heavens above the summit finally have names and rules of their own, the deep climb fights back for the first time since Early Access opened, and your companions get stories that grow out of fighting beside you.
The Swordmaster
A new cast member joins the roster: the Swordmaster, a master swordsman you meet on the climb and are drawn into a five-beat saga with. It ends three different ways depending on how you played it, and the rarest ending is one you have to earn, not roll for. Alongside it: a new curio set built around the Swordmaster's Ledger, and origin choice moved to the moment of rebirth, so who you were last life can shape who you choose to be next.
The Nine Heavens
Past the summit, the Nine Boundless Heavens are no longer just harder numbers. Each of the first eight now carries its own Law, a structural twist to how the climb plays:
- Momentum that drains on quiet floors and has to be re-earned in a fight.
- Air that thins, costing more qi to do anything and healing less of what you lose.
- A heart-demon that can steal from you even at rest, if you let your guard down.
- A toll at the gate that taxes what you draft.
- Wounds that stop closing on their own once you climb high enough.
- A forbidden root that starves your strongest element and feeds the rest.
- The full weight of every affix, teeth bared, no easing off.
- A choice, finally: when the tower demands a relic, you say which one it takes.
The Ninth carries no twist of its own. It carries all of them at once. It is the wall before the true summit, and it plays like one.
Every Heaven now has a named warden with a voice of their own, guarding a chapter that teaches its Law before it tests you on it. Nine wardens, nine chapters, no two of them alike. The Ninth's warden, The Last, is the tower's own voice given shape, and speaks like it. Each Heaven also carries its own authored arc, and woven through all nine is a quieter thread of bond-gated lines from Moye, wherever your bond with her runs deep enough to hear them. Cross the door at the true summit at high enough bond, and there is a capstone beat waiting that the base climb never shows you.
The deep climb fights back
The core rework of this update, and the one most worth reading if you climb past band 3:
- Past band 3, defense now mitigates proportionally instead of being outscaled into nothing.
- Core Release runs on a charge that recharges as you climb, and the recharge itself scales with your realm: a rare, saved-up finisher in the early realms that settles to a fast, reliable burst by the Boundless. It is a resource you manage, not a button you mash.
- Iron Body gives you a real defense purchase for the first time.
- Tribulation lightning carries its full weight at full band strength.
- The stats panel tells the truth about all of it. No more numbers that quietly stopped meaning what they said.
Allies who fight beside you climb into your story
Companions and co-located allies who fight and win beside you now build real standing with you, and each of eight named companions carries their own five-beat arc that fires at rests and on the climb as that standing grows. No meter to watch: it is quiet and it is earned, an ally who shows up more in your life the more you actually rely on them in a fight.
Fixes and quality of life
- Combat readouts tell the truth. A won fight no longer flashes your health at zero, mirror-boned rebounds no longer look like they wiped you out (they leave you at the same 15% your run actually carries), and the log always shows the right side taking each blow.
- Auto-climb can be stopped or resumed from anywhere. A stop/continue control now rides on screen through every card and playback, so a runaway auto-climb is one click to halt, not a wait for an empty floor.
- The panel reads cleaner. Your realm, path, and root show once, beside your portrait, and spirit stones now have a clear home on the panel.
- A companion who betrays you or falls in battle leaves your party then and there, instead of climbing on at your shoulder.
- A story beat lost to a failed gate now comes back on the re-climb instead of vanishing for good.
- Reroll legibility, larger text options, auto-close on finished fights, and the companion tab has its own home now.
- Auto waits for lore instead of racing past it, and replays choices you have actually made instead of picking blind.
- The quarantine banner now says plainly when a save is simply newer than your build, instead of implying it is broken.
- Small reported fixes: a border clip at 1080p, ally labels made consistent across panels, missing element rows restored, and credits moved into settings.
Thank you
A good number of the fixes here started as reports from people actually climbing the tower and writing back, the spirit-stone panel, the combat readouts, the story-budget refund on a failed gate among them. That is exactly how this is supposed to work. Hope you enjoy this update!