Pressure Cooker — a new Cook ability that plants a pot in the enemy area. Re-cast it to crank the pressure a stage: it rattles harder, steams more often, and bursts for 10/25/50 fire damage on every adjacent enemy when destroyed. Maxed out, the ability locks off until the pot is gone
Rallies and party knockouts are tracked as post-battle stats, with new banter for every class when they happen
Changed
Wild Strike now lands 8 strikes at half damage — 12 when charged — for the same total across a full 3x3
Cookout's pot no longer pays out food per hit. Each hit scalds all eight neighbouring tiles for 5, and the third blow cracks it open for the boil-over plus a ham leg
Resonant Pulse now strains the pillar that fires it for 10 — 30 across the charged version's three waves — so a big cascade spends the board that built it
The post-battle tally shows only records you actually broke: gold, gems, and "NEW!" rows, nothing else
The overworld act is longer and forks earlier — nearly every opening node branches, and the late rows funnel back together
Unreachable overworld paths read more clearly, and the chaos witch has a new icon
The selection cursor is now mitered corner brackets welded to the tile border instead of a ground texture
Battlefield effects drop to 25% opacity during frozen chain and counter windows so you can read what's happening
Poison, burn and regen ticks hold a beat at the start of your turn instead of firing on top of the enemy's action
Less dead air before loot pickup, on the first gem/food/gold tutorials, and before the main menu fades up
The in-game menu drops New Game and Quit — returning to the main menu (which saves first) is the only exit; the desktop exit stays on the window close button
The spike-trap intro room no longer appears in the dungeon's special-room pool
Fixed
An ability held over from one dungeon room no longer resolves on a meaningless tile in the next one
Returning to the main menu mid-run no longer leaves the battle HUD, ability menu and dungeon mini-map drawn over it
Fights whose top stat had no authored line now end with commentary instead of silence