Pawcraft: Adventure Workshop v0.11.1 Major Update Notes

v0.11.1 is our largest system update since v0.10.3. This release rebuilds the opening experience, companion progression, and equipment build system; introduces 300 authored companions, three-member expedition formations, workshop supervisors, regional storybooks, and chapter creations; and systematically improves desktop combat, production presentation, item icons, content sorting, and compact-window usability.

Existing accounts will be migrated automatically the first time they enter the new version. Existing combat equipment, Skill Gems, and production tools will not be deleted as part of the system replacement. Accounts affected by the equipment overhaul will also receive one-time compensation.

Companions and Three-Member Formations

• The previous opening flow, which required players to select a starting profession and manually build a profession talent tree, has been replaced by the Rookie Wanderer and authored-companion system.
• New accounts immediately receive a traitless Rookie Wanderer who can enter combat without completing a profession-selection screen.
• The game now includes 300 recruitable companions across seven expedition regions and eight combat archetypes.
• Each companion has a permanent name, rarity, base-stat profile, movement speed, signature skill, innate passive, and one to three fixed talents that never reroll.
• The first story companion is now Dawnpaw, a Common companion with exactly one Tier I talent, Salvager Eye.
• Dawnpaw appears after the tutorial battle, and this story encounter never expires.
• Amberpaw remains recruitable through later encounters in Dawnmist Wilds.
• Regular companion encounters are based on active combat time. They cannot trigger during the first 15 minutes.
• After 15 minutes, the encounter chance rises gradually from 1% and remains at 12% after 30 minutes, with no guaranteed pity encounter.
• Regular encounters remain available for eight hours.
• Owned companions cannot appear again, while dismissed companions return to their original region’s candidate pool after 72 hours.
• The three formation slots unlock at Expedition Levels 1, 30, and 60.
• Players can explicitly assign companions to the front, middle, and rear positions.
• Equipment and Skill Gems belong to the individual companion and remain equipped after standing down, changing positions, or switching the currently viewed character.

Recruitment and Roster Experience

• The recruitment screen now displays the remaining encounter time directly.
• Permanent story encounters are clearly marked as having no time limit.
• Hovering over or keyboard-focusing a companion talent displays its name, tier, category, actual stat effects, and recommended build direction.
• When an unresolved encounter appears, the Companions and Formation entry in the left navigation displays a red highlight, a pulsing notification dot, and an “Encounter Pending” label.
• The roster now places encountered and owned characters first.
• Within the same ownership state, companions are sorted from Common to Uncommon, Rare, Epic, Legendary, and Mythic.
• The roster adds name search, region and archetype information, ownership filters, pagination, detail drawers, deployment and stand-down controls, dismissal, and workshop-supervisor assignment.

Workshop Supervisors

• Formal companions can now be assigned as supervisors at all seven production stations: Pawwood Grove, Crystal Fields, Cat Tail Creek, Meow Cauldron, Pawhammer Bench, the Dismantling Bench, and the Wonderforge.
• Every companion has permanent station bonuses and specializations.
• Supervisor bonuses now participate in authoritative server settlement instead of existing only as interface descriptions.
• Supervisor bonuses are capped at 10% production speed, 8% additional output, 5% material savings, and three percentage points of increased rare-output chance.
• A companion cannot join an expedition while supervising an active station.
• Supervisors cannot be forcibly removed while production is running, preventing duplicate settlement and state conflicts.

New Prologue and Workshop Manual

• New accounts now begin with zero gold and zero materials.
• Players restore the last Pawcraft workshop through an opening storybook, a traitless tutorial battle, fixed-companion purification, ruined-workshop exploration, gathering, processing, forging, equipment replacement, and the first full expedition.
• The prologue contains 13 connected steps.
• After completing the first full expedition, players can forge the Dawnmist Wayfinding Bell, finish the mandatory route, and unlock free play.
• The starter chests themselves are account-bound, but the monster teeth, slime essence, logs, copper ore, and wooden boards obtained from them are normally tradable.
• The first full expedition always grants a Worn Leather Helm and one Route Echo.
• Visiting the elder at Cat Tail Creek grants a tradable beginner fishing rod.
• After the prologue, the Workshop Manual continues with tutorials covering production and supervisors, equipment and the market, regional bosses and Skill Gems, Holdout and the Abyss, the Wonderforge, Crystal Fields automation, and social systems.
• Tutorial progress is recorded automatically through real gameplay actions.
• Confirmed rewards are granted automatically with duplicate-claim protection.
• Accounts that completed the previous tutorial will not be forced through the entire new prologue and will not receive old rewards twice.

Regional Storybooks and Chapter Creations

• Seven regional chapters have been added, containing 28 pages of bilingual story content.
• Each region unlocks one page at each of four stages: arrival, frontline advancement, deeper progression, and restoration.
• Restored stories can be read by chapter and page through the new Regional Storybook reader in the Codex.
• Seven chapter creations and a dedicated workshop gallery have been added: the Dawnmist Wayfinding Bell, Moonbone Requiem Lantern, Windfang Cargo Cart, Everbright Pawforge, Newbud Seed Casket, Clear-Dream Loom, and Pawcraft Astrolabe.
• Each creation appears as locked, restorable, or restored according to its regional boss progress.
• Chapter creations remain compatible with progress already completed by existing accounts.
• Region selection, enemy-intelligence details, storybook reading, and the creation gallery now share the new regional environments and storybook artwork.

Equipment and Build Overhaul

• Battle Axes, Warhammers, and Codices have been added as three new weapon classes.
• Each class includes seven normal base items at Levels 1, 15, 30, 45, 60, 75, and 82, for a total of 21 new weapon bases.
• The Codex is a new spellcasting weapon, not the game’s collection interface.
• Codices focus on mana, aura effects, and cooldown cycling, providing a different spellcasting direction from staves and wands.
• All ten weapon classes now have clearer base identities and dedicated affix pools.
• Battle Axes focus on heavy hits, execution, and life leech.
• Warhammers focus on armor penetration, heavy hits, and ailment control.
• Codices focus on mana, auras, sustain, and cooldown cycling.
• Shields have returned to a defensive off-hand role and no longer provide near two-handed weapon damage together with excessive survivability.
• Equipment rarity no longer directly multiplies a base item’s core stats.
• Rarity now determines affix capacity, ranging from zero affixes on Common equipment to six on Mythic equipment.
• The previous targeted finished-item recipes have been retired.
• Forging now creates a normal base item for the selected level band, after which the Wonderforge handles adding and removing affixes, enhancement, tier upgrades, and rarity upgrades.
• Rarity upgrading preserves the item’s UID, base type, level, base stats, existing affixes, enhancement level, trade state, and visual identity.
• Thirty-six skills are now independent, tradable Skill Gems that can be individually enhanced to +20.
• Enhancement improves Skill Gem effects without silently changing cooldowns, mana costs, or aura reservation.
• Every region retains access to the full Skill Gem pool, with drop weights adjusted according to the region’s build themes.
• All normal boots now have a dedicated combat movement-speed affix ranging from 4% to 18%, which directly affects how quickly the party engages enemies.
• This update rebalances ten weapon classes, 850 affixes, eight official builds, and 119 Unique items.
• At Level 82, the overall power spread between complete builds has been reduced to approximately 1.29x while preserving distinct damage, tanking, sustain, healing, aura, and control roles.

Desktop Combat and Expedition Presentation

• The desktop client now embeds combat inside the main window by default.
• Players can still switch to an independent transparent overlay at any time.
• The current combat snapshot and window position are preserved during the transition.
• Characters and enemies in the independent battle overlay can now be clicked or focused directly.
• Selecting an enemy displays its target status, and defeated enemies no longer intercept interaction.
• Character movement speed, weapon range, and formation position now work together during the engagement phase.
• Kills, wave progression, and rewards remain authoritatively settled by the server.
• All 16 supported weapon-and-shield combinations now include idle, walking, attacking, hit, and defeated animations.
• Weapon clipping and insufficient animation bounds have been corrected for longswords, Battle Axes, Warhammers, longbows, and other weapon types.
• Core enemies, Abyss enemies, regional bosses, and desktop-combat animation assets have received a unified visual update.
• All 20 Steam achievements remain available.
• The early-progression, two-member-party, and full-party requirements now correspond to recruiting the first companion, deploying two members simultaneously, and deploying a complete front-middle-rear formation.

Production Presentation and Automation

• All seven logging regions now use a unified animated environment.
• Production loops display continuous chopping, and an appropriate tree-specific completion animation plays when real settlement occurs.
• Fishing now includes a waiting scene and selects the landing animation according to the actual result from 14 fish types or mystery rewards.
• Production visuals remain tied to real settlement and never reveal fabricated rewards in advance.
• Production animation now uses predecoded double buffering.
• Visual timing pauses while the application is in the background.
• The current frame remains visible if an asset fails to load, reducing white flashes and empty scenes.
• Crystal Fields scripts automatically begin the next cycle after reaching the end.
• When no instruction can be executed during a cycle, automation enters a short waiting state instead of stopping completely.
• Background progress and authoritative settlement remain active for production, dismantling, the Wonderforge, and Crystal Fields.
• The global queue entry in the top navigation is temporarily hidden while its interaction design is revised.

Item Icons and Content Sorting

• New icons have been added for Battle Axes, Warhammers, Codices, starter chests, Route Echoes, and other newly introduced items.
• A unified review was completed for all 571 item assets in the Codex.
• This pass fixes icons with uncleared backgrounds, off-center subjects, cropped weapon handles or blades, broken transparent edges, duplicated artwork, and inconsistent scale within the same item family.
• Materials in the inventory and market are now grouped by acquisition source before being sorted by visible rarity and level from low to high.
• Logs, boards, ores, fish, potions, and materials from other sources no longer appear interleaved.
• Offline rewards use the same material ordering, preventing identical reward groups from appearing in a different order across screens.
• Merchant orders now prioritize orders that can be delivered immediately.
• Orders with the highest completion percentage appear next, while completed orders appear last.
• Dismantling materials are sorted by acquisition source and rarity.
• Dismantlable equipment appears before locked equipment and is sorted from low to high by rarity, enhancement level, and required level.

Interface, Readability, and Stability

• The main interface has been reorganized into clearer Workshop, Production, Expedition, Trade, and Social groups.
• The right-side inventory and chat panels can be switched or collapsed, preserving a stable width for the main interaction area.
• Logging, Crystal Fields, alchemy, forging, fishing, dismantling, the Wonderforge, equipment, market, order, and Holdout screens have received compact-layout and information-hierarchy improvements.
• Detail drawers, loading states, retry behavior, keyboard-focus restoration, and modal background isolation have been standardized.
• These changes reduce click-through behind dialogs, lost focus after closing a window, and unexpected scroll-position changes when switching screens.
• Important text and commonly used click targets have been enlarged.
• Compact-window, low-height-window, and reduced-motion support has been improved to prevent crowded content, overflowing button labels, and uncomfortable animation.

Save Migration and Compensation

• Legacy profession characters will be migrated safely into the new companion runtime.
• Each account will retain a traitless Rookie Wanderer who can enter combat immediately.
• Existing combat equipment and equipped Skill Gems will be returned to the inventory exactly once.
• Production tools remain in their original equipment slots.
• Migration removes duplicate UIDs so the same item or Skill Gem cannot remain in both a legacy slot and the new inventory.
• Legacy equipment affected by the removal of rarity-based base-stat multipliers will generate a one-time Equipment System Adjustment Compensation Chest at the Wonderforge.
• All compensation materials are account-bound and cannot create tradable discontinued rewards.
• Starter rewards, companion encounters, dismissals, supervisor assignments, formation changes, and compensation claims now include idempotency protection.
• Network retries will not grant duplicate items or execute the same state transition twice.

Update Notice

• This release includes coordinated client, server, data-table, and asset changes.
• Players must use matching v0.11.1 client and server versions.
• After entering the new version for the first time, existing players should review Companions and Formation, the inventory, and Wonderforge compensation before confirming their deployed members, equipment, and Skill Gem setups.
• This update will not automatically sell or delete any existing tradable equipment.
• Unique equipment retains its independent drop and trading rules.

Thank you to every player who continues to craft, gather, explore, and share feedback with us. Welcome back to the restored Pawcraft workshop.