Gargadusa's Tower · build 25049920 · published
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FEATURES
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World Events are now live. This is a very large system that touches everything and has a lot of infrastructure, so I am just launching a few simple World Events to start to ensure they hit. I'll then role out new Events each week over the next few months. Note: these get pretty deep and eventually evolve into Novella-sized journeys, so laying the groundwork safely is key. Extra sauce, no World Event is procedural. Each aspect is a story or moment I want to tell that adds up to special lore things, so it's all by hand without procedural help.
NOTE: The World Events on/off setting now lives with the other Custom (Sandbox) options; games that aren't Custom always run with World Events on.
Compare staff side by side: weigh a scouted candidate against your current same-role staff (or any two on your roster) in one overlay, from the hire screen or the staff panel. If this works and feels good, I'll add this for adventurers.
Spar your own crews against each other in the Practice Sandbox — pick two of your parties and watch a full battle with a winner, remaining HP, and tiebreak. A spar ladder tracks each party's rating and record. Sparring is consequence-free: no XP, gold, injuries, or roster changes.
The weekly sparring champion is now surfaced by name (honoring nicknames), so you can finally see who won in the pits.
New Sage's Wisdom FAQ entry explains set-item bonuses (2/3/4-piece stacking, and that crafted sets are indestructible too).
New explain-the-number tooltips across the game clarify what a value actually means — Fame, Underworld Heat, season Pace, per-week training injury risk, Weekly Net and treasury health, the rival-interest warning badge, trade value ratios, and more, each written to match the mechanic.
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BUG FIXES
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Rival Challenge and Proving Ladder results no longer show a winning HP line under a "Defeat" banner. The verdict, the HP summary, the arena, and the rewards are all read from the same leg of the fight, so the outcome you see matches the scoreboard.
A hero killed by a last-moment setback while still at full health now reads "falls in the fighting" instead of "succumbs to wounds," and their damage-taken box reflects the real damage recorded during the battle.
Moderate injuries are now announced as moderate rather than minor, and cost a matching amount of morale.
A staged Tower descent that got stuck (thirty adventurers locked in, "Challenge Floor" doing nothing) can now be recalled with a new Recall Force from Tower button, and stuck saves repair themselves on load. Recalling a stalled ascent no longer instantly loses your front floor.
The "Challenge Floor" button now tells you why it's blocked (guild tier requirement, blockade, tower already conquered, or no force staged) instead of silently doing nothing.
Rival re-challenge cooldowns that were frozen for years (stuck at counts like 83 or 160 weeks) now clear correctly; affected saves are healed on load, so your beatable rivals are challengeable again.
The week you settle a rivalry through a Diplomatic Summit, you no longer receive a second, duplicate summit quest for the same rivalry.
On Academy Only runs you no longer get "a rival signed your recruit" alerts — you can't recruit from the pool on that mode, so the alert was pure noise.
A Hall of Fame legend whose contract lapsed no longer shows "records lost to time" — their career record is preserved and displayed.
Crafted set gear is now genuinely indestructible: it never loses durability, never asks to be repaired, and shows the indestructible bar — matching loot sets and the Sage's answer on set items.
Lore consistency pass: District Overseer Aldric's tenure now reads as six centuries throughout, and the tower's depth-record canon is harmonized (no guild ever descended past Floor 50; a lone adventurer once reached Floor 97).
Several tooltips that described the wrong thing are corrected: a clean Tower clear is now correctly described as safe (heroes no longer die on a flawless win); the performance (+/−) column tooltip now describes win/loss differential instead of stat changes; the Treasurer unlock hint now says Tier 1; and the sell-price estimate explains the real trade spread and that it already includes your spread.
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BALANCE
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This is actually a big one: the HP algo has been updated to know reflect role in addition to stats. Tanks now have more base HP, ranged mages are now squishy. This will be an on-going balancing effort, but I'm excited to finally migrate this aspect of the role fantasy into the game.
Surviving a fight after dipping low no longer guarantees a wound. Instead, a survivor who dipped below 50% of their HP has about a 45% chance of a minor injury; below 30%, about 65% (moderate); below 15%, about 95% (major). A near-death plunge now costs a longer recovery than a shallow dip, and overall you'll pick up fewer wounds per clear than before.
Several zodiac Drives that asked for a number of quests now count weeks spent questing, so taking a string of short jobs no longer advances them faster than long expeditions. Week targets are set to match. A Drive you were part-way through may show adjusted progress after the update; it fills back in as you keep questing (a Drive you had already completed is unaffected).
Rotating a fresh, rested company onto a garrison wall now eases that post's fatigue (by 30, once per week) instead of inheriting the tired garrison's exhaustion — so rotation is a real relief valve, not a trap.
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QUALITY OF LIFE
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The Workshop's "Buy all missing materials" button is now batch-aware: pick "Buy for" 1/2/3/5/Max and stock every missing material for that many crafts in one press — you can buy ahead before you can queue.
The weekly Scouting Complete report now badges where each scouted adventurer came from (Guild Block · guild name, or Trading Block), and the Guild Block badge jumps straight to that rival's roster and rings the target row so you can actually find them.
The two party OVR numbers on the quest menu are now explained on hover (your party's base rating vs. its rating recomputed for the selected quest), and the pre-deploy risk meter now uses that quest-adjusted rating — so a party well-suited to a quest reads as safer.
Hover hints across the game now render as clean, readable styled tooltips (keyboard- and touch-friendly) instead of the browser's plain text boxes.
An advisor line at the deploy screen shows which of the selected party members' active ambitions the quest would advance.