THE PLAINS NOW GO UP TO T5. Three new steps in the portal, each one calibrated against the Legendary of the previous tier: T3 is meant for whoever finished T2's Legendary, and so on. Every tier has its own item art, and what drops there is stamped with that tier.
TOUGHNESS AND SPEED NO LONGER MOVE TOGETHER. Raising enemy health on a higher tier used to make them faster and hit harder as a side effect. Each one now has its own scale: T5 is far tougher to kill without the horde ever outrunning you. The tier's damage applies once, at the moment you take the hit.
MARKET, SHOP AND FORGE HAVE NEW SCREENS. The three city stations now share the same iron-and-bronze frame, with each thing next to what it does. The rules did not change: what changed is being able to see what you are doing before confirming.
THE MARKET FILTERS BY SLOT, TIER, RARITY AND MATERIAL. Filters stay on when the list refreshes and apply to selling too. A search returns up to 50 offers, cheapest first, and the screen states that limit instead of pretending the shelf ran out.
THE MARKET EXPLAINS THE PURCHASE BEFORE CHARGING. The review states what the match guarantees (type, tier, rarity and material) and what is only a reference (that offer's affixes), honouring the ceiling you authorised. Pulling one of your own listings now asks for confirmation as well.
THE SHOP SHOWS WHAT THE NEXT LEVEL ADDS. Search by name and by category, and every upgrade opens with its current level, the effect it already grants, the gain of the next step and its cost. Selling a level still returns what you paid for it.
THE FORGE NOW ASKS YOU TO HOLD. Both pieces sit on the anvil with a preview of the result, and the fusion only goes through if you hold the action for 1.5 seconds: letting go earlier puts out the ember and costs nothing. Picking a piece no longer sends a fusion by itself.
EVERY ITEM ICON CARRIES ITS TIER.T1, T2... shows in the top corner of every piece, with or without art, in the collection, the market, the forge and the doll. The comparison arrows sit in the opposite corner.
BOOTS GRANT SPEED BY TIER.+1% move speed at T1 and one more point per step, up to +5% at T5, independent of rarity and on top of the affixes they already had. It applies to the boots you already own, and shows in details, comparison and character sheet.
EVERY TIER IS A DIFFERENT PLACE NOW. The portal is no longer five Plains with numbers: it is the Plains at T1, the Crypt at T2, the Desert at T3, the Depths at T4 and the Volcano at T5, each with its own setting, creatures and boss. Twenty new creatures are spread across them: spiders and wraiths in the Crypt, archers and sand golems in the Desert, draconics in the Depths, and what lives in the Volcano you will find out there.
EVERY TIER HAS ITS OWN GUARDIAN. From T2 to T5 the end of the run is no longer the same repeated boss: each step has its own, with its own attacks and the struck area drawn on the ground before it lands.
THE TIER YOU OPENED STAYS OPEN. Clearing a step unlocks the next, and that is now kept in the vault under your account: it survives closing the game and changing machines. The portal checks what you unlocked before opening the run, and in a group it checks the whole group.
TWELVE NEW ABILITIES. Space gained Part the Ranks, Spirit Passage and Arcane Swap; Q gained Stone Shackles, Mark of Rupture and Seed of Life; E gained Oathguard, Mark of the Harvest and Glacial Prison; and the ultimate gained March of the Colossus, Wandering Sanctuary and Singularity. They arrive through the grimoire like the others, so what decides whether you have them is the piece that printed the slot.
FOUR NEW RITUALS, and one of them is a bet. The Tribute asks for kills on the altar; the Heart asks you to break the chains binding it; the Procession asks you to escort a spirit to its grave. And the Pact runs in rounds: each round completed piles up gems and asks whether the group wants to risk one more or stop and take what it gathered. In a group that answer is a VOTE, and nobody gambles everyone's prize alone.
ABILITIES GOT ICONS, AND CARDS GOT ARTWORK. Thirty-six ability icons, weapon cards drawn after what the weapon actually does, and the eight scrolls standardised in the same line. The animated grimoire previews cover the new abilities too.
Balance
DROPS DOUBLED. The boss now grants two guaranteed pieces of your class (was one) and a 30% roll for six more (was three). Elites went from 10% of one piece to 30% of two, and chests from 10% to 30%.
KEEPING A CARD NOW KEEPS ITS RARITY. The card returns on the next table with the same rarity it had when you kept it, legendary included. Before, only the card came back and the rarity was rolled again.
THE HORDE NO LONGER RUNS FASTER BECAUSE OF THE TIER. Enemy speed is now the usual curve plus 1% per tier (T5 moves 5% faster than T1). High tiers are still hard to kill; what they stopped being is impossible to shake off.
ELITES PAY ONE PIECE PER PERSON. Every participant gets their own 30% roll: at worst nobody takes anything, at best one item drops for each of the four, and whoever rolled it owns it exclusively. Before, an elite could hand two pieces to the same person in one kill, including two for the same slot.
Fixes
NOTHING SPAWNS INSIDE ROCK ANY MORE. Chest, rituals and orbs now share one routine for finding free ground, and the clearance is the one of whoever will use the spot: a chest must fit the body of whoever will hit it. When nothing fits, the arena centre is used. Before, each one rolled its own way, and the chest's never looked at a pillar at all.
THE ORACLE'S VISION STOPS SPENDING ITS PROMISE FOR NOTHING. The legendary guarantee is only consumed when it actually paints a card on the table.
THE BOSS PAYS AGAIN. There is a per-run ceiling on pieces, and with the new drop it was being hit by elites and chests BEFORE the boss died: the boss, whose item is guaranteed, delivered zero and said nothing. Two runs in a row ended that way. The boss now has its own count and is no longer cut short by what dropped earlier.
SIX SOUNDS HAD GONE SILENT. The button click, the back sound, opening and closing the collection, the city ambience and the portal all stopped playing when the audio files were reorganised. They are all back. The campfire and the torch were in the same state, but would only have gone quiet for people who downloaded the game.
ABILITIES AND CREATURES FOUND THEIR VOICE. Twelve abilities now sound when you use them. The warlock has its projectile, the fat demon roars before charging, the eye bursts with a bang, and the goat and the King's summons make noise as they walk. Elites shout as they appear; common creatures stay quiet on purpose, because at the rate they die in a run that would just be noise.