Until now the six paths were barebones. You picked one at the start, and after that it changed how fast your numbers grew and very little else. This update gives each path its own way of fighting, and its own thing to do when nobody is fighting.
Ten arts that do something, not just damage
Arts used to differ only in how much they hit for and what they cost. Now they have shapes:
Linger: the effect keeps unfolding over the next few exchanges instead of landing all at once.
Pierce: ignores part of what the foe is hiding behind.
Execute: hits far harder once the foe is already hurt past a threshold.
Siphon: gives some breath back when it lands.
Bloodpay: costs health instead of qi, and refuses to fire when you cannot afford it.
Riposte: a guard that answers the blow it takes.
Ten arts carry these shapes, spread so each path fights differently rather than faster. Four signature arts that had never once fired in testing were repriced until they did.
You can say when an art fires
The art priority list said what order to try things in. It could not say when. Now each art can carry a trigger: hold it until you are hurt, until the foe is, until you have the qi to spare. The default behaviour is unchanged, so an existing soul plays exactly as it did until you touch it.
Six paths, six things to do at a waystation
Each path now has one action at a sanctuary that no other path can take. It is free, and you get one per visit.
Sword, Never Sheathed: rest fully without losing the momentum you built.
Body, Temper: spend the blood you are carrying to make the vessel that carries it larger.
Qi Dao, Retune: reshape one art to a different element for the rest of the climb.
Demonic, Devour: consume one of your own treasures. What it was becomes what you are.
Alchemy, Brew: for a stretch of floors you take no wounds and foes come plain.
Formation, Set the Array: hold back the depth itself, so your heart reaches further at the next gate.
They are deliberately not comparable to each other. Tempo, elements, attrition, capacity, power and the gate are not the same kind of thing, and the paths should not want the same things.
Curios have a door out
The peddler at a waystation will now unbind a curio you regret and take it off your hands for spirit stones. The price climbs with each one you shed. Keystones are bound too deep to give back.
Alongside it, the kit screen finally says what each piece does and what a keystone costs you, instead of leaving you to infer it.
The Boundless has texture now
Past the summit the Nine Heavens had rules but no furniture. Now each Heaven has its own rest, and its own find left behind by the very few who came that way, and there are six new trials for what got that far and stopped being anybody. Moye has more to say up there, and three of the rests are funny, which that stretch of the climb needed.
You asked for these
Four items from the launch threads.
The stats panel now says what the elemental edge is actually worth. An art whose element overcomes the foe's hits for 25% more; one the foe's element overcomes lands 20% lighter. Those numbers had never appeared anywhere.
A wish sealed at the summit can be read again. Records has a Wishes Sealed section for your living soul, not only the Hall of the Ascended for past lives.
The Demon-Heart Furnace states its price as a price. It is a keystone that can end a climb, and its cost used to sit mid-sentence in the same body copy as every other curio. It now gets its own line on the draft card. The keystone still cannot be unmade; you can just see that coming now.
Guards and heals already explained themselves in the priority editor, and you can already set an art to fire strictly in order. If you asked about either and did not find it, that is our fault for not saying so.
Interface
A pass over the screens you look at most.
Twelve tabs are now six. The strip keeps what you touch during a climb. Everything that is a lookup, including Last Fight, lives behind one Codex button with its own tabs inside, and the lookups sit apart from the page tabs so it is clear which ones open a panel and which change the page under them.
Stats reads like a page instead of a wall. The numbers are grouped by what reads them, in a fight, on the climb, and elements, and the explanations no longer run the full width of the screen. It also finally tells you what the elemental edge is worth.
The Codex uses the whole panel. Entries lay out in columns rather than one long single-file list, which roughly halves the scroll through a hundred and eight curios.
The World tab leads with your sagas. Fated threads come first, then your destiny and the world's omen, and the roster of other cultivators follows instead of opening the tab.
The climb sidebar no longer narrates the rival and the wanderer between encounters. That is four lines back on the left. You still meet both exactly as before, and the race is still run; it just stops reporting itself while nothing is happening.
The Tips panel folds away from your first floor. It used to become foldable only after a soul had climbed past floor 200, which meant the player most likely to want the advice out of the way, the one who had just read it, was the one who could not put it away. Veterans still get it folded by default.
Tab labels are no longer very slightly clipped. An old tab style I stopped using was still trimming a corner off every one of them.
Fixes
A new soul no longer inherits a summit it never climbed. Saves carrying a borrowed one give it back on load.
Resting no longer stockpiles heart-demon resistance without limit across a band. What a rest steadies now fades as you climb away from it.
Thank you to everyone who is playing this game, it means more than you know. Appreciate everyone who has reviewed the game, I am so glad it is landing well with everyone so far! Let me know if there are any issues and have fun!