Gargadusa's Tower · beta · first seen
A nice and tidy follow-up to the races and portraits beta, mostly fixes from your reports and additions from the second phase of each system. Elves, dwarves and fae can now enroll in the Academy, headhunts can ask for race and a new Humans Only switch in Custom Settings keeps every new hero human if that's the game you want (for easy editing and consistent life/career spans). Limit Break gets its own ceremony and league CCL fights now properly use the line and orders you set on the Loadout.
I also started cutting the early flavor text that said fancy things that really meant nothing, so the Front Desk, the tavern and the Astrologer now only tell you what really happened.
Elves, dwarves and fae can now enroll in the Academy. Every race studies the same number of semesters as a human of the same roll, so an elf who enrolls at 21 graduates at 25 after eight semesters. Prospect hunts now offer every people.
Long-lived peoples gain stats more slowly in the Academy: dwarves at 85% of the human rate, elves at 75% and fae at 72.5%. Orcs and goblins learn at the human rate. Halflings now learn at 97.5% (was 100%). (harder for halflings).
NOTE: This will be a bit of a moving target balance-wise due to lifespans, so keep me posted about what is feeling good/bad/weird.
Headhunts can now ask for a race. Pick any race or one people on the headhunt form, for role, class, staff, crafter and gatherer hunts alike. Youth prospect hunts list only the peoples the Academy takes.
Each refinement adds to the search's price: a gender adds a quarter of the base cost and a race adds half of it, times 1.5 for elves, orcs, goblins, dwarves and halflings and times 3 for the fae. An uncommon people adds 1 week to the search. The fae add 3 weeks and cap the shortlist at 2 candidates. An unrefined hunt costs and lasts what it did.
Targeting a race needs a Scouting Post at Tier 3, which now grants Refined Headhunting. Below that the race choice is grayed out with "Requires Scouting Post T3 to target a race". The scout row, staff card, Scouting dashboard, week summary and feed callout the refinement, for example "Healer (Female, Elf)".
The week summary now gives each finished headhunt its own line in the Scouting section, naming the scout and how many candidates it found, with a link to the free agents or the Academy prospects.
New Custom Settings switch under Roster & Talent: "Humans Only" (off by default). With it on, every new adventurer, Academy prospect and rival hero is human, with a human face, name and lifespan. Heroes who already have a race keep it, as do relatives and transfers who bring one. Leagues always play with races.
A Limit Break now plays its own ceremony in your weekly report. One brush stroke wipes in with the hero painted inside it, their name and where it happened. I may not keep this exact animation (I'm experimenting a lot), but I thought it was neat and I wanted to callout Limit Breaks because they really are a big deal (imo).
League CCL fights now properly use the line and orders you set on the Loadout, plus the owning party's Tactician orders. Before, the league fought every human guild on a preset line with no orders.
300+ more portiats join the hand-inked hero faces across humans, elves, orcs, goblins and halflings. More beards in this crop ;)
New Sage's Wisdom page under Equipment & Crafting: Material Sources. One chart covers every magical and refined good: the gatherers that bring it in (with the Guild Tier for rare finds), the building that hires each one, the crafter who refines it and the station level and Guild Tier a recipe asks for. It reads against your guild: a building you still need is named and a gatherer or crafter already on staff is marked Hired.
NOTE: A big rework to crafting and gear is coming, so I'm keeping time spent on this part of the game pretty limited until then.
Enemy traits shown on a quest (such as Ironhide or Ashborn) now take effect in the quest's battle properly. Each trait's weakness or resistance changes how hard your heroes' hits land. Before, the fight ignored them.
A Tower garrison's skirmishes now count the guards' equipped gear, so the hold fights at the Party OVR the garrison panel shows. Before, gear was ignored and guard parties the panel rated above the floor could be wiped, most often on shallow floors. A guard wearing a World Boss gift also keeps its cast.
NOTE: A couple folks called out Garrison fights being silly hard, this bug fix SHOULD fix that (and did so in my sims). Let me know if it does not.
The Slayer and The Champion Callings can now be finished by their damage, protection or healing roads as readily as by the top-performer road. The Slayer's damage dealt drops from 69,500 to 32,500. The Champion's damage dealt drops from 102,000 to 46,500, damage prevented from 182,500 to 83,000 and healing done from 123,000 to 56,000. Progress already made is kept.
The Renowned's Calling asks less on its role roads: 74,000 damage dealt on quests (was 83,000), 132,500 damage prevented (was 149,000) or 89,500 healing done (was 100,500). The 18-MVP road is unchanged. [NOTE?: why the Calling roads came down]
Career Transition (retiring a hero into a staff post) now follows each people's lifespan instead of a flat age of 35. An orc qualifies at 30, a goblin at 29, a halfling at 39, a dwarf at 72, an elf at 116 and a fae at 140. Humans still qualify at 35. The roster assessment and the rival intel's aging-veteran line read age the same way.
Rival news at the Front Desk now reports one of a rival's real quest or raid results from that week, brought in by your Receptionist, instead of made-up wins, setbacks, celebrations and Tower floors. A better Receptionist brings it more often. The Receptionist's random rival-and-material rumors are gone, as is the rival "raid group returns victorious" line that fired even on lost raids.
Tavern rumors now say only what is true about your guild: injuries, training, veterans, gold, your Tower floor, expiring quests, the top free agent, renown and a stronger rival. The stock rumors and made-up lines are gone. A week with nothing true to say posts no rumor.
The Astrologer's weekly readings now say only what the stars really do. A quest reading appears only when a hero on that quest was born under the week's ruling sign. The random "challenging house", rival star, party pairing and "I warned you" lines are gone.
The Great Sage's weekly advice now speaks only about your Crown charter: when you're ready to apply for the next tier and a kind word after a denial. Gold, infirmary and party-gap warnings stay with the Guild Commander.
The Live Feed no longer posts tavern atmosphere lines (adventurer chatter, bartender observations and the visiting stranger), a filler line on quiet weeks or "N% through training" lines. Lore fragments now share the weekly feed space like other news.
Factions no longer send "Word on the Street" gossip letters or seasonal letters. Faction news comes from their regular, crisis and event letters. Letters already in your inbox still open.
The Quartermaster's Upgrade advice gains a Party filter and a "Group by party" toggle. Grouped, each party gets a header with "N empty · N to improve" and any empty slot with no fix reads "no fix in storage or the workshop". The Armory hero list and the Quartermaster's gear rows show each hero's party.
The Craft button on a Quartermaster gear row now opens the hero's advised craft for that slot and hides when no free crafter can start it or the workshop tier is too low.
With a hero selected in the Armory, storage pieces their class can't wear are dimmed.
Gear Demand rows now label each gain "in battle" or "fit" and name the item's stats that count in that hero's fight, such as "counts in battle: DEFENSE/ENDURANCE".
Each crafting station's upgrade panel and Upgrade Roadmap now list the refining each level unlocks with any Guild Tier requirement beside it. For example, Jeweler's Bench level 2 shows Polish Gems and Refine Silver.
The Recruit tab's seasonal tip now states the real guarantee: each season brings at least one applicant for every unlocked staff role plus at least one crafter and one gatherer. A crafter or gatherer type you can hire that hasn't shown up for 3 seasons is sent your way.
The gatherer Est. Output figure notes that it is before season and guild bonuses and that each week's haul rounds down to whole units.
Following a link out of the week summary (such as Open building) now takes you straight there. The expiring-contract, members-at-risk and festival-squad notices no longer pop up over the page you chose. They wait in the summary's "things need you" list with where to find them and Continue still shows them in order.
The game opens sooner: it starts loading its main code and stylesheet the moment the page opens instead of waiting for your language to download.
The Chemistry tab's Companions list and the signing screen's Preferred Companions now show which party each companion is in.
A quest that answers an open promise to a Townsfolk now carries a "Promised · N weeks left" tag on the quest board card and in the quest details. The tag turns gold when 2 weeks or fewer are left.
A hero you release to the league's shared pool who never gets an answer from the league now writes a "No Word from the League" report instead of vanishing without a word.
The Tower read's "A death", Injury and Success numbers now come from measured fights at your party's power ratio and the floor's difficulty. A party that far outpowers a floor no longer reads about a 35% chance of a death and a party at 1.0x to 1.29x of the floor no longer reads 78% Success where it clears about 99% of the time. Deep floors account for weaker healing.
Fixed an odd screenshot during hero conversations.
The level milestone ceremony no longer offers the skill a hero already wields as its "New path" card. Reawaken no longer rolls the skill the hero already has, so it no longer wastes a charge.
Uploaded hero, staff and guild portraits now keep up to 512 by 512 pixels, the same size as the ink faces, instead of being shrunk to 128 and stretched. Portraits you uploaded before stay as they were until you upload them again. Hall of Fame, Memorial and year-end records no longer store a second copy of each uploaded portrait, so saves stay smaller.
A staff member who ages into an older life stage on their birthday now shows the older face right away. A staffer reporting in the Live Feed shows the same face as on their staff card, at their current age.
On desktop, a hero who retires into a staff or instructor role keeps the face you picked for them. Opening the Portrait tab no longer marks a file in your art folder as taken.
Links into the Guild Block now open on the target's own guild with the role and class filters set to All, so a remembered filter no longer hides the hero you jumped to.
A Watch-mode scout that drops a Guild Block or Trading Block target now drops its half-done report too, so other scouts can scout that hero again.
An Unwoven recruit's asking wage is now priced on the stats they actually have.
Dismissing several recruits at once or an end-of-week cull now also removes them from your custom shortlists.
Stop Auto-Refine in the Workshop no longer wipes your hand-set "Auto to" targets. Stop now saves them and a new "Resume Auto-Refine" button puts them back. The "Auto to" box now holds the 9,999 that Auto-Refine All fills in.
A faction vendor's Epic or Legendary piece now says "No hero of a class that can wear it" when no one on your roster has a fitting class, instead of blaming a stat.
A repeat Crown denial letter now counts only your earlier applications for that same tier.
A once-per-save Special Raid that expires on the board without being sent now comes back later. It only counts as used once you deploy it.
The Prospects tab now scrolls as one when Training Commissions and Academy Faculty are both open. The "lost their mentor" notice no longer fires for a trainee who was already dismissed.
The Week Ledger's wax seal no longer gets cut off at the letter's corner on windows narrower than 1,360 pixels.
A repeating reminder whose card you closed without Done now rings again on its next repeat.
The Alerts help page now says the Digest preset still opens big fights, as it does in play.
On Cloud, autosaving a very large save on a slow computer no longer gives up partway. The save now gets more time the bigger it is, with at least 5 minutes.
In a league's CCL festival, a reserve who stepped in now appears on the lineup card properly..
Tower Visitation creatures are now named in your language everywhere: the battle screen, feed lines, the Tower report, the Memorial and Week Summary death lines, a hero's strongest-foe record and the Hall of Fame. All 83 bestiary creatures have translated names.
Death causes on Memorial cards and Movement Log rows (story arcs, the Severance, the Grimoire, a Siege Strike, joint jobs and Surface Breaches) now read in your language and follow a language switch.
Crown certification letters and screens now show their denial reasons, probation terms, probation cleared and revoked letters, refund line and repeat-application line in your language. Faction and Crown letters an older load froze in English read in your language again.
Headhunt targets, the headhunt restarted and stopped lines and the target list now read in your language and the list sorts in your language's order.
More text is translated: quest milestone lines in the feed, the faction vendor's purchase button, the Guild Hall's gatherer chips and permit line, the Rival Challenge member tooltip, the Commander's operations count, Callum's Unfinished Contract and the amends pledge row in the ledger.
Japanese, Russian and Korean players whose device reports a regional language now see hero names and possessives in their own script. In Turkish, stat names keep their dotted İ in capitals.
| Depot | New manifest | Previous manifest |
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