Chris “Atos” Spears · Work Log

Performance

• Compared per-minute frame telemetry from chaos client build 287 with builds 276-283, matching the same player, graphics card, scene and quality level. Frame-to-frame variation rose 36% (29 of 47 matched cases worse), 1% lows fell 5% and CPU frame time rose 4%, while GPU time fell 5%, so the new stutter is on the CPU side. The jump in 5-second freezes on builds 283 and 287 came from one idle client parked in Castle Atos, not from the builds.
• Profiled chaos build 287 in the worst spots found so far, including Etceter at night in the rain (about 30 fps). The render changes from 09-26 made no difference there when switched off one at a time. The compass was re-sorting a marker for every lot in town ten times a second, placed on the strip or not; it now sorts only the markers you can see and skips the work when their order has not changed (6897c20418).
• Cut three pieces of repeated per-frame work found in the Etceter night capture: every UI window re-checking a one-time theme setting on disk (56 reads a frame), every NPC re-reading object tag names while scanning its surroundings (1,410 text conversions a frame), and town lots rebuilding their navigation id by name on each request. Together with the compass change this is roughly 1 to 1.5 ms of a 32 ms frame in a busy player town (3f667aff6e).
• Two more per-frame costs from the Etceter night capture: the post-effect stack rebuilt the whole look every frame because the brightness option was re-sent each frame, and every NPC's combat-text stack was repositioned each frame even with no number playing. Both now do the work only when something changed. Together about 1.1 ms a frame under the profiler with 50 NPCs nearby.
• Creatures and townsfolk with no player within about 45 meters, and not in a fight, now think every half second again instead of every eighth of a second. In the Etceter night capture 50 townsfolk were re-deciding 13 times a frame, most of them across the square from the only player. Anything near a player or fighting keeps the full rate.
• Creatures out of combat now think every quarter second instead of every eighth, and once a second when no player is within about 45 meters. Anything fighting keeps its full rate, and so do pets, summons and companions. At the Etceter night spot, frame time was already down from 32.8 ms to 26.4 ms with the earlier fixes; this round measures what the wider change adds.
• The old interface camera left over from before the UI Toolkit conversion now switches itself off while it has nothing to draw. In town it had been rendering an empty layer for about half a millisecond every frame; the login screen and the few older menus that still use it turn it back on when they appear.
• NPC nameplates stopped rewriting an empty chat bubble every frame for townsfolk in chat range with nothing to say.

The Herald

• The New Britannia Herald for 2026-09-26 is up: A repair rule that ran in August had taken nearly thirty-three billion unspent experience from forty-six thousand characters, and all of it comes back at the next test shard restart. The main quest was read end to end three times in one day, which found a prophecy podium that took your quest items and then asked you for them again. Also three new companion pets, a museum holding every decoration in the game, and the reason Corpse Explosion had been going off for nobody but the caster. Listen or read the transcript (16 min). Subscribe in any podcast app: /blog/podcast.xml

UI

• Added Separate Movable Buff and Debuff Bars under Options > Interface > Character & Progress. It moves your own buff and debuff icons off the player frame into two bars of their own, each dragged anywhere on screen while Lock Status Movement is off and put back by Reset Positions. Both bars follow the Buff Icon Size slider under Gameplay, up to twice the normal size. Requested by Akandriel.
• Name columns in the vendor listings and every other list now sort alphabetically without regard to case. Before, every capitalised name sorted ahead of every lower-case one (d2a2259e41).
• Chest, trunk, bag and loot windows now open beside your backpack instead of on top of it, wherever you have moved the backpack: to its right when there is room, otherwise left, below or above, and several open containers keep clear of each other. A spot you dragged a container window to is still used whenever it is free (requested by Arcuss Blackwing).
• The quest tracker now starts at text size 16 instead of 13 so new players can read it without finding the Quest Tracker Text Size slider. Players who never moved the slider get the larger size automatically; anyone who picked a size keeps it. (#9488)
• The "You are Encumbered!" help bubble now opens under the skill icons on the right, in the same spot as the damaged equipment bubble. With the minimap moved off the top right corner, the shorter encumbrance bubble had been fitting into the gap above the skill icons (Oracle report, bd19c402f3).

Audio

• Added Announce Expiring Buffs to Options, Audio: the Oracle says "Attention" and then "Shield of Air is decaying" shortly before a timed buff ends, with a Warn Before Buff Ends slider from 5 to 60 seconds (never earlier than a fifth of the buff's length). Off by default; 436 lines recorded. Requested by Akandriel.
• The gathering swing meter's center-hit and miss sounds no longer go silent after a zone change. The repeat guard on interface sounds used a clock that restarts in every scene, so a sound played late in one zone was held back in the next for as long as the player had spent in the last one. The fix covers every interface sound with that guard (#9353).
• Sounds played by Lua add-ons now follow the Master and UI volume sliders. In the released client they played through a copy of the audio mixer that no slider controls, so a DPS add-on's per-hit cue stayed audible with Master at 0 (reported by Sethanon).
• With Master volume at 0, burning damage could still pop on every tick: Immolation on a group of practice dummies did it each time. Hit effects handed out by the effect pool are now routed to the game's volume controls before they wake up, so the first fraction of a second no longer plays at full level. Effects spawned without a pool get the same routing (b89c81567a).

Community

• Filed three wishlist items from the nightly forum sweep: independent HUD scaling for chat and unit frames, a Despair/Myrkur dungeon revisit (loot tables, final chest, resurrection option), and highlighting the most/least-voted What's New entries in release notes.

Tools

• The client control harness can now switch one render tuning value off and on in a running test client, and a new perf A/B runner takes paired frame captures at fixed spots with each recent render change on and off, in alternating order, then prints per-change medians (dc6c4846de).
• A new commit check compares every stored quest marker rule with its quest, and a one-line fix brings drifted rules back in step, so a quest edit can no longer leave the map on the old rules.
• New ProfilerCaptureInclusive tool ranks game methods by the full time spent inside them, optionally within one method, so per-NPC and per-frame costs show up by owner instead of scattered across engine calls.
• The perf-ab capture harness can now run chat commands at each spot (weather, for instance), and the Etceter night-rain spot is saved as a scenario so every profiling round measures the same place.
• The perfpin measurement setting now takes effect while the game window is in the background, where the capture harness runs it. Before, it said it was pinned and changed nothing, so back-to-back captures could run at different quality levels.

Addons

• Community Addons: submitting a package that lists other packages it needs no longer fails with "manifest is invalid". The addon store was still on a build from before add-on API 14 and has been updated, and the in-game submit step now keeps the package's dependency list in the upload. When the store refuses a manifest, the message now names the field it objected to. Reported in game by Goriah Kuulas (775436b38d).

Builds

• Two profiler client builds had died partway through with the build agent reported offline. The build box was running out of virtual memory while two editors and another build job were open, and Windows closed the agent along with other processes. The cause and recovery steps are now in the build machine docs, and the profiler build is running again with memory freed.
• The profiler client build can now bundle a short list of scenes instead of all 396. The default set is about 14 busy towns plus the overworld, which should cut a full profiler build from about 4 hours to under 2; any other build refuses a partial scene list.

Options

• The Options search no longer leaves the Toggle Cursor hint line and the Skill Icons picker on screen when nothing matches. Seven other rows that show only in some states (Ultima sliders, custom pattern image, pattern scale, texture detail note and Apply button, windowed size note) follow the search the same way now. (043a316b47)

Lua Addons

• Add-on chat prints colour again: [FF0000]-style colour codes after the [Add-on: Name] tag work as they did before the tag was added, while links and other markup still show as typed. A print that spans several lines now shows each line with its own tag. (c1eabcdcdf, #9351)

World

• Fireworks over towns on the Novia overworld map are switched off for now. During certain dates they burst over Brittany and other towns every half second for anyone standing nearby, and players reported them as never stopping.
• Overworld fireworks no longer play over player-run towns (Brittany, Aerie, Harvest, Northwood, Resolute, Xenos, Darkshire Hills) or over Ardoris on the Novia map; Castle Atos keeps its dated celebration fireworks. A timing problem that could leave the dated fireworks running outside their dates was fixed too. Reported through the Oracle by Wilfred.
• Fixed the New Player Handbook floating in the air in Solace Bridge, Highvale and Blood River Outskirts (#9473). The stone plinth each book is meant to stand on had been placed about 190 m away; it now sits under the book. In Blood River Outskirts the book and plinth also moved 0.65 m away from the market tables they were clipping into.

Crafting

• A crafting station using Use lot storage now takes Coil of Rope and other materials that never wear down from marked lot containers even when an old stack carries a stale durability of 0 or was saved under an older item path; before, those stacks were skipped while the rest of the container worked. Broken tools are still left behind. (#9373, 4639a5b5c9)
• The crafting summary no longer shows "No Recipe Found" when you double-click from one recipe to another. It keeps showing the previous recipe until the station has checked the new one, then switches straight to the new details. A table that really makes nothing still says "No Recipe Found". This is the second fix; testing on chaos build 283 showed the first one was not enough, and the tester spelled out the exact sequence they saw (#7721).

Gathering

• The gathering swing meter bounces about half as far on a hit. A center hit still reacts more than a plain hit, and its shockwave and particles now stop when the next swing starts instead of playing over it (#9355).

Audio

• The Oracle's own machine hum now dips with the rest of the Oracle Temple when a conversation opens, and follows the Ambient volume slider instead of SFX. The screen arms were already on Ambient; the hum that kept playing at full volume came from the Oracle herself. The confirmatory Oracle faces got the same change. Reported by Elene Sali.

Maps

• The Castle Atos map pin on the keep doors at the top of the courtyard steps is now named Keep Entrance. As Castle Entrance it read like the town gate, and its discovery fired from the aquarium floor inside the throne room. Its trigger area shrank from 25 m to 10 m, so discovery now happens at the doors. (#9352)

Lua Addons

• Addon packages can now carry their own sound files: up to 32 .ogg or .wav cues of up to 2 MB each, loaded with ShroudLoadSound, so a buff tracker can play its own alert per buff. A package can now be up to 24 MB (it was 4 MB), and ShroudLuaApiVersion is now 15. Requested by Goriah Kuulas. (#9376)
• ShroudLoadSound now refuses a missing, empty, over-8 MB or mislabelled sound file with a log line, and all addon sounds share a 256 MB memory budget. A failed load used to leave a broken entry that stopped ShroudListSound working for every addon, and /lua reload used to load a second copy of every sound each time; both are fixed. (#9376)

Map

• Zooming out on the map now stops once the whole map fits the window. Before, the zoom went down to a fixed size, so in a 1090 by 660 map window the fully zoomed-out map was a 410 pixel square ringed by empty frame; it now fills the window height (#9315, 37aeee7232).

UI

• Buffs with a long time left now fold into one hourglass icon at the left of every buff bar (your own, target, party, companion and pet), with a count on it. Hovering it lists each grouped buff with its time left, soonest first. The cutoff is a new option, Group Buffs Lasting Longer Than (Off, 5 minutes up to 4 hours, 15 minutes by default), and buffs with no timer always keep their own icon (c54ca01706).
• New Buff Icon Size option, 75% to 200%, for the buff and debuff icons under your own health bars (c54ca01706).
• The Spawn Protection buff icon now darkens clockwise as the protection runs down, like other timed buffs. It used to stay plain for its whole 15 seconds. Reported through the in-game Oracle (#9303).
• Magic Mirror: a Done button now sits in its own panel under the appearance window. It saves and closes the Mirror from any tab, so a Random roll you like no longer needs a trip through every tab to Finish. Requested by Astirian.
• A pinned pet sheet now stays open when you change scenes and fills back in for your pet once it arrives, and a pet sheet you pinned comes back pinned whenever you reopen it, relogs included. Tester gravidy found both on the last pass (5085e44d25).
• The wagon and balloon Choose Destination list no longer leaves a town's hover panel stuck on "Loading...". The panel reads its text once, and the first hover is what starts loading the town's details, so it stayed on Loading until you moved off the row and back. It now refreshes itself while it is open, and it shows Discovered or Undiscovered above the Loading line from the start. A tester caught it on the check of the September 16 change. (c9a9b19200)

Add-Ons

• In Community Addons, My Submissions no longer shows the word "null" under What changed for a first version, and a store that has not been updated for a button yet now gets a plain "try again later" message instead of "no such endpoint". Remove From Store answered with that message on build 287 because the store had not been updated alongside the game.
• Add-ons can now replace the game's buff bar with their own: hide the game's bar, sit where it was and follow it when you move your frame, and dismiss a buff when you click its icon (only buffs the game's own bar lets you dismiss). Requested by Sethanon. Add-on API version 16.
• Add-on API 15: add-ons can now be told the result of each craft, refine, Quick Craft group and salvage, and of each resource node you harvest, as the crafting station and loot window report them, and can look up the ingredients of a recipe you know with how many you carry. Requested by that_shawn_guy.
• Add-ons can now list your friends and guild members by name with who is online and each member's guild rank, read the guild message of the day, and be told when someone comes online or goes offline. Where anyone is, when they were last online and your notes on them stay hidden from add-ons. Requested by that_shawn_guy.
• Add-on API 17: combat events now tell add-ons which rune landed each hit or heal (creature attacks and heals included), its damage type, whether it was a damage-over-time tick, how much of a heal was wasted, when it happened, and a number per creature so three with the same name stay apart. Damage meters no longer need to read combat chat text. A new Damage Meter example add-on on the Lua docs site shows damage and healing per second, top runes and targets per fight (3662cb67c2).
• In Community Addons, Submit to Community now keeps a package's internet permission and the list of sites it asks to reach. Before, the upload always dropped both, so an approved add-on that needs the internet could not reach its sites. The Submit dialog now names those sites before you upload, and a permission the store cannot grant is refused with its name before anything is sent.
• Add-on windows can be compact (add-on API 19): no title bar at rest, and the bar with the Add-on tag, title and close button slides over the top after the mouse rests on the window for a moment, so the content never moves. Compact windows take no text boxes or dropdowns because the tag is hidden most of the time. Requested by shawnbutts.
• Add-ons can read your own Vigor (add-on API 20): the percentage the bar shows and the regeneration and critical hit bonuses its tooltip quotes, plus a callback each time one of them changes. Only your own bar is readable.
• Lua add-ons on Mac and Linux can load their own sound files again. ShroudLoadSound passed the bare file path to the web loader, which treated it as an address on the local machine, so every add-on sound failed to load outside Windows (reported by shawnbutts).

Towns

• The town directory (/towns) stopped listing towns that are gone. The Barren Shores was removed from Mistrendur and its hex given to Vesper, but it stayed in the list, along with 26 template placeholder rows named "A POT template". The list now keeps only towns a teleport scroll can reach, which leaves 408 (#9333).

Combat

• When Purify or Douse removes a burn, the flames on the character now go out within about a second. The looping fire from each burn tick used to keep playing for several seconds, and a fire spell blocked by a Douse charge could leave flames on the target for up to 30 seconds with no damage behind them. Reported through the in-game Oracle. (#9365)
• Liches and self-rising zombies stay down once they have used their rise. A late raise from a nearby mage could give a lich that had just stood up a second instant rise, or stand one up again after its kill had paid, so its next death paid experience a second time. Every creature now pays its kill experience once. Reported through the Oracle (104ff37ad0).
• Stuns, knockbacks and knockdowns now land on Ancient Undead, such as the Guard Drones in Despair, at about three tenths of their usual chance. They carried the same crowd-control resistance twice and the game added the two together, so Body Slam and every other stun never worked on them (#9363).
• Coup de Grace now turns you to face the creature you have selected and keeps you on it through the swing, like the other Blades attacks. Before, a target off to one side or stepping aside let the blow land on a healthier creature nearby for plain weapon damage, so the execute bonus never fired. Reported by Akandriel (7462c17881, #9307).
• A stun is now resisted by the higher of the target's stun resistance and its crowd control resistance, and the two are no longer added together. Knockbacks and knockdowns follow the same rule. Frost giants can now be stunned, and a player stacking Hard Headed with Bolster Balance is protected as much as the stronger of the two.
• Combat cards now have one name: runes. The deck builder, hotbar, tooltips, options, key bindings, skill descriptions, loading tips, help text, handbooks and the tutorial NPCs used to say "glyph", while the Oracles guides mixed both words. Other languages keep their current translations. Requested by Akandriel (c7fc127444, c111cf4159).

Oracle

• Reordered the Oracle's instructions so the part every player shares comes first and the per-player details come last. The prompt cache at the model provider can now reuse about 7,900 tokens of each request across all players, up from about 1,500, which shortens the wait before an answer starts. Each question now also logs its token counts and cache hits. (9f3a5146c6)
• The Oracle can now answer where to get Tiny Squid bait, where marlin are caught (there is no Golden Marlin), how boss trophies such as the Temna Trophy are earned, that there is no Supreme Marshal title, how to uncover all of a family's Animal Lore, how to summon the guide wisp with /guide, where F11 screenshots are saved, how many lots you can claim in an NPC town, and that the moon tower and the Tesla Tower are the same thing (eaab0b766b).

Vendors

• All Zones vendor search category filters now include listings of items that were moved in the game files, such as most basement deeds and many artifact rings and instruments. Deed & House with basement had shown about 40 of roughly 210 listings, and a search for Ring of the Sun missed almost 300. About 6,800 listings now carry their proper category and name (de99e6399c, #9305). Reported by Scanphor.
• Stat minimums in the vendor listings ("Strength at least 10") now leave out items below the number. Enchanted and masterworked gear had counted its stats about seven times too high, so gear with 3 Strength passed a minimum of 10 (8d186bcecb, 35c537cd4e).
• The All Zones vendor search fix for moved items is now live on chaos. After the reindex, every one of the 283,932 listings carries its category, down from 6,767 without one, and all 184 basement deeds for sale show under Deed & House. (de99e6399c)

Companions

• In offline single player, Fiona FitzOwen now sings every two minutes or so instead of about once a minute, and she knows six new songs, taking her from eight to fourteen, all voiced. Requested by Cederick. The song timing she was written with had never been applied to companions.
• In offline single player, the music merchants in Eastmarch and Aerie now sell Song Sheets, eight songs in all. Show one to Fiona FitzOwen through her new "new songs" topic and she learns the song, uses up the sheet, and adds it to what she sings on the road for that character. Requested by Cederick.

Engine

• Fixed the game's JSON reader misreading any number with ten or more decimal places. The tenth digit overflowed a counter, so 0.0160000324 read as 0.113 and longer numbers could come out negative. It sat under every JSON message the client and servers parse (8d186bcecb).

Build

• The addon store and the Oracle now update themselves with each chaos release, forward only, before the game server moves; the community site joins after its next update. A game feature that needs one of them can no longer reach players ahead of the service it talks to, which is how Remove From Store answered "no such endpoint" on build 287. Each service now reports which commit it is running, and the release checks that every addon store address the game calls exists in the store before it builds.
• The release pipeline now turns one Windows build into two clients: the player client and a separate GM client for staff and testers. Each one is signed and packaged on its own. A problem with the GM build marks the release unstable, and the player client still ships.
• The deploy step now sets the GM client aside before it reads anything, sends only the player client to the player patch channels, and refuses a build with no player client or with GM tools in its player client. The old step picked the first package by name, which would have been the GM one.
• One Windows build run now makes both clients: the player client first, then the staff client, with the asset bundles built once and copied into both. The old Live builds split the same way, which keeps the second client from doubling the build time.
• Fixed two problems that only show up in a client built without the staff tools: a specialization fix from last week stopped it compiling, and the old clean-build path changed a matchmaking setting, which would have put players and staff into different instances of the same zone.

Dungeons

• The wooden walkway around the Stone Dungeon Mine Room (The Fall) now joins up. Four planks stopped short of their neighbours or sloped down where they should have sloped up, so one doorway could not be reached on foot and another only one way. Monsters and pets could not get between any of the three doorways. The planks now meet, and every doorway reaches the others and the ladder to the cave floor. (#9334)
• Three side doorways of the Volcanic Stone Room - Lava Lake Grotto now meet their shore properly. Two of their halls stood 0.65 m and 0.79 m above the ground outside, so players could step out but not back in without jumping, and the third opened onto a slope too steep and narrow for monsters and pets. Low invisible ramps now join all three, and a lava chimney that narrowed one path moved against the rock wall. The lake itself still divides the grotto into three shores. Doorway islands in the room went from 7 to the intended 4. (#9334)
• The remaining three split rooms the doorway test found are split on purpose: two doorways facing each other across a pool you swim, and two halls joined only by player-only teleport traps. The test now records each with its reason. The same run caught that the Challenge Dungeon 03 room with spawns had lost its walking map after a file rename, so its creatures could not move; that is restored. (#9334, #8111)
• Newly placed dungeon pieces now show the right Location in the Decoration Palette straight away. On dungeons whose layout does not sit at the world origin the column used to put a new piece in the wrong part of the dungeon until you left and came back (1f9348f54f).
• Owners of player-built dungeons can now publish after clearing them in Adventure Mode. Opening a chest inside the dungeon no longer wipes the recorded clear or takes a published dungeon off public, and a fast clear of a large dungeon is no longer thrown out as too quick. The dungeon entrance window now tells the owner when the dungeon is ready to publish. (24467b5f0c)
• The treasure room at the end of Despair and Myrkur has a resurrection ankh. A player who died there after the lich fight reset used to stay a ghost behind the closed prison doors; the new ankh brings them back beside the ankh past the green barrier. Requested by Spinok.
• Loot at the end of Despair now matches the zone. The elves beside the dragon room and in the last cave were rolling tables from much easier areas and now also roll the tier 15 elf and artifact tables (Myrkur too). Ancient Undead fighters, guards and Sherden each drop two pieces of Acara's Defiance plate, and the treasure room chest has its own table with Epic and Rare Acara pieces. Requested by Spinok.

Oracle

• The Oracles guides, the skill proposal pages, the skill usage page and Whats New now call combat cards runes, and the Oracle understands "glyph" as the older name for the same card (e2eca61164).

Tests

• A minimap wiring test went red after the map's zoom-out fix added a block at the top of the method it checks. The test only read the first 400 characters of that method. It now reads the whole method, and the check itself is unchanged.

Tests

• Brought the login window-restore test back in line with the new map-on-login code; it had been failing on the old wording since Thursday (327797d44a).

Vendors

• Renaming a player vendor now reaches the Vendor Listings in Zone window. A vendor loaded nearby shows its new name as soon as the window reopens, and the vendor search index picks up a rename within about ten minutes, so All Zones results and far-off vendors follow. Before this the old name stayed through a relog and a pickup-and-replace. (0596bf441d)
• The Vendor Listings in Zone stat filter now counts stats an item gets from its own base type and from the ingredients it was crafted with, as well as enchantments, masterwork and gems. A Boar Headdress gets +2 Strength from its boar head, and a "Strength at least 2" search used to leave all of them out; the 167 listed on the test shard now match. (29cac23ae2)

Website

• What's New page: two new sorts, Most up votes (raw up-vote count, so a popular but divisive entry still ranks high) and Least wanted by players (up votes minus down votes, lowest first). Requested by Barugon. (bffd08b1fd)

Images

Quests

• Quest markers on the overland map follow the current Path of the Oracle rules again: the eight prophecy page locations light up only once the Oracle sends you after the pages, and the Vermillion Lens shard locations no longer wait for a visit to Grannus. Twelve stored marker rules had kept the old conditions after the main quest pass on 2026-09-26.
• Leaving the kobold camp north of Estgard with the cage key still in hand now leaves a marker pointing back to Sir Patrick.

Images

• Images:

Localization

• Repaired the English item text file after a merge dropped one closing tag from the Goat Decoration Pet entry. The file stopped loading, which blocked the translation backlog check and the translation export. Both run again, and the backlog stands at 83 lines per language, the oldest 2 days old (dde8f9d8a9).
• All eight translated languages caught up with this week's English: the Koala, Fox and Goat decoration pets and their summon skills, eight song sheets, the Wizard Tower (City) home, the new font options and the pet sheet labels, 83 lines per language. A second review pass checked each new line against the names the game already uses. The same pass corrected older text: 98 French lines and 21 Portuguese lines had named pets with the word for stroking an animal, and Spanish had turned the blacksmith Pip into "pepita" and misspelled FitzOwen. The translation glossary no longer hands a one-off word like the petting emote to every pet line (f4c86e12b1).
• The string export for translators had stopped for about 20 hours because one file passed its translator notes in a form the export could not read. It runs again, and 160 new lines of English that had been waiting in that time, including the Decoration Museum filter labels, are now in the translation queue (33baeef7ce).

Housing

• The eight kobold weather and time machines now appear in the Decoration Museum. They failed to load in any zone without an open sky, which also covered indoor dungeons and basements. Entering the museum no longer logs a missing-continent error, and its map no longer offers a World Map button. (4cdc600410)
• Staff can now mark the account of a player who has died as a memorial. While it is marked, that player's lots in player-owned towns no longer lapse for inactivity or unpaid tax, and the lot sign reads "In memory of" the owner in place of "Claimed by". Decorating permissions stay as the owner left them. Proposed on the Player Wishlist (d33bc39e72).
• Dragon totems now fit the Ancient Stone Troll Room with Spawns as well as The Rise Shaft, requested by Wishdragon. A dragon totem there spawns one dragon and no trolls, a troll totem still spawns only trolls, and the slot hover text and "Totem accepted" tooltip name both. (4d498b92fc)
• Added Decorating Guides, an optional aid while you hold a decoration: two gold see-through walls on the lot's center lines, a patch of the Grid Snap grid on the ground under the item, and its distance to each lot edge and to the lot center shown beside it. Off until you press Ctrl+G or the new # button on the decorating bar. Requested by chrisjwhite (69928dc3e5).

Maps

• Added Scene map charts: every town, zone and dungeon with fog of war now has a "Chart of" item for it (297 in all, one per player-run town). Reading one uncovers every floor of that map for every character on the account, from anywhere. Charts drop from creatures and treasure chests in their own zone, 1 in 250. A chart for a map you have already uncovered stays in your bag.
• Added the craftable Surveyor's Chart (Alchemy 40, 10 Wood Pulp and 2 Black Pearl). It uncovers the whole map of the zone you are standing in.
• Added the Scroll of the Wayfinder's Eye (Alchemy 30: 5 Wood Pulp, 7 Black Pearl, 3 Mandrake Root, 4 Cotton). For 15 minutes the fog of war clears twice as far around you, 100 m instead of 50 m outdoors and 60 m instead of 30 m in dungeons. Both recipes are sold by the merchants who sell the Recall Scroll recipe.
• Checked on the Spyglass: the item and its zoom emote are in the game, but on live it is only granted by old offers and is not sold, dropped or crafted anywhere.

Map

• The Find town box on the world map returned nothing on recent builds, and the Oracle could not mark a town or adventure area on the map either. Both broke on adventure areas with no quest variant, which is most of them. Fixed, with a regression test that builds the place list from the real scene registry.

Titles

• New era titles: every character created before the October 1 move to the new servers now has the Old World title, and every character created after it gets Child of Chaos. The title follows each character, so an account with an older and a newer character shows a different one on each. Both are listed under Events in the Titles tab and can be worn like any other title.

NPCs

• Placed three Crown Exchange clerks so players can buy Crowns for gold: Selwyn the Coinwright in the Central Brittany bank, Garrick Tolliver in the Ardoris bank and Aldous Fenwick in the Aerie bank. Talking to one brings up an Exchange button that opens the storefront. All three sell from the same shelf of 100-Crown bundles, and the gold paid is destroyed.
• Each clerk has his own conversation built on his town's usual topics, so the Ardoris and Aerie clerks answer about their own towns. Their lines are English-only for now. The clerks reach the Chaos shard with its next build.

Rendering

• Hair keeps the colour you picked on both of its layers. The softer second layer of most hair styles lost the player's hair colour at every fade-in, camera dither or glow since August 10 and fell back to a pale blonde, which made grey and dark hair look like it had a ghost copy around it (#7837). Eye colour had the same fault.
• Most hair styles are drawn as two layers over the same strands: a solid layer and a see-through copy sitting between a tenth of a millimetre and 3 mm to one side of it. Which of the two showed was left to the depth test across that gap, so on strands seen from behind the see-through copy painted over the solid one, and the two flickered against each other at a distance, far from the centre of a zone and with Temporal antialiasing on. The see-through layer now only fills the gaps the solid strands leave, so the two never cover the same spot, and it no longer casts solid rectangular shadows (#7837).
• Switching Antialiasing away from Temporal no longer leaves see-through things drawn with the last Temporal frame's view. After a Field Of View change or a window resize, glass, water, smoke and the see-through layer of hair slid off the surfaces they sit on until the next zone change.

Conversations

• Talking to NPCs no longer needs a dismount. Clicking an NPC or pressing interact while riding opens the conversation, keywords work from the saddle, and banks and shops open as usual. You stay mounted throughout. Characters that players place on their lots with their own written story still ask you to dismount first (270e0babc7, ee8fbe2b0c). Requested by Elene Sali.

Server

• Sending lot storage to the bank, changing plot options, moving a house and listing a lot now wait until any crafting pull from that lot's storage chests has finished. This closes the last open part of a pre-launch audit item on item storage.

Lua add-ons

• Lua add-ons now read the real countdown for the moon indicator and the Light of the Eight celebration buff. Both have no timer of their own, so ShroudGetBuffTimeRemaining and the buff tables reported 0 seconds for them; they now return the same time the buff bar tooltip shows, and ShroudGetBuffTooltip carries the countdown line too.
• Fixed the Avatar's Companion add-on switching itself off after a pop-up note faded with nothing queued behind it. The game's table.remove now returns nil at the end of a list as standard Lua 5.3 does, and the sample checks for an empty queue first so older clients are covered too. Reported by Goriah Kuulas. (#9440)

Lua

• Add-ons get their gold, health, focus and position values again right after an add-on reload; before, a value that had not changed since the reload stayed empty, which broke the Session Window example every frame until it switched itself off (reported by Goriah Kuulas). The example itself, now 1.0.1, also waits for those values on older clients.

Docs

• Documented the launch client split for the team: one Windows release run now builds the player client with the GM and tester tools compiled out, plus a separate staff client. The runbooks cover the cutover steps before launch day, why a rollback never goes back past the cutover, and how staff and testers install the staff client.

Security

• Added a second compile pass to the commit checks. Game code is now also built as the player client, with the GM and tester tools compiled out, so a change that only builds with those tools present is refused before it can break a release. The pre-release security check was updated to match and now expects every player download channel to serve the player client.

Release

• The patch publisher and the channel switch now check which client a build is before anything moves. The player download channels take only the player client, after a scan for staff tools, and the staff client goes to its own private channel. Publishing the other client under a build number that is already out is refused, and the Steam upload refuses the staff client on every platform.
• Releases and promotions now move the staff client's channel right after the player channels, and the staff copy shares its unchanged game files with the player copy on the patch server, so only the files that differ are uploaded. The nightly cleanup of old builds keeps a build for both clients while either one still needs it, so a rollback can move both together.

Client

• The player client no longer carries the GM tool windows or the tester tools. Their chat commands are treated like any other unknown word, and the /? list leaves them out. Staff and testers keep all of it in the staff client. The old rule that reloaded an idle player's zone after 10 minutes stays off in both clients for launch.

Build health

• A profiler build made from the newest code logged into chaos while the shard still ran the previous build. A new character stat added that day had shifted how player state is laid out, so that client and players near it misread each other and their logs filled with errors. It was shut down, and the profiler build job now refuses to build code whose network layout differs from what chaos is running.
• Profiler builds can now be pointed at the QA server, which gets each night's build before chaos does, so a profiler client made from the newest code can be tested without waiting for chaos to catch up.
• Promoting build 288 to chaos was refused. The new player and staff client split had started turning away every staff-flavored build the moment its code shipped, while chaos itself still ran one, so no existing build could move. The split now takes effect on each channel when the first player build reaches it, and ends any exception at launch. The Builds page shows the same verdict before the Promote button is pressed, and a commit check stops the page and the promote job from disagreeing about what will be refused.
• The first release that builds both clients now warns in its first minute when the staff client has nowhere to be published, and says when the release switches a channel to the player client.

Infrastructure

• Set up the new dedicated logging server: a 6-core machine with 64 GB of memory in the same datacenter as the test server, running the log search engine and its dashboards with the same index layouts, retention policy and read-only accounts as before. It is not receiving logs yet; that switch comes once the private network link between the two machines is in place.
• Connected the test server and the new logging server over a private network link and started sending every log line to both, while the last two weeks of logs are copied across. The dashboards and tools that read the logs move over once the two copies match.
• Moved the test server's log search onto its own machine. Two weeks of logs (about 7.4 million entries) were copied across with every day's count matching, and the dashboards, the server health panel, the web portal's chat history, the password-guessing watch, the nightly archive copy and the log tools now read from the new server. While checking the move, found that the nightly combat balance summary had failed every night since August 28 because one damage field was stored as text; it is fixed and the last 13 days were summarized again.
• Finished pointing every tool at the new logging server: the dashboard import and export tools, the build-comparison report, the web server setup script and the log-triage instructions still named the old one. Also stopped the nightly deploy from restarting the old log search engine on the test server as a side effect of stamping the build number.

Combat

• Being stunned or knocked down no longer blacks out the screen. The stun effect had been tuned so dark that everything outside a small circle went solid black, which looked like a zone change. The screen edges now dim and ease back while the middle stays clear, and a ring of twinkling stars circles the middle of the screen until the stun ends. Reported through the in-game Oracle (1fc591f6f3).
• The Body Slam stun line in the skill tooltip now says the stun scales with Heavy Armor Specialization. The stun length never read Body Slam's own level, so the current and next-level columns showed the same number and looked broken. Charge (Shield Specialization) and Torpor (Earth Magic Specialization) carry the same note. Reported through the Oracle (#9168).
• Fixed Corpse Explosion only exploding on the caster’s screen since build 276: every other player in the scene dropped the blast, and when another player was running the creatures the enemies near the corpse took no damage from it. The cast data now always carries a field that was being left out, which had shifted everything after it (#8817).
• Pressing Z while auto-attacking something that stands still, such as a Practice Dummy, now puts the weapon away. The key held auto-attack off for one second while a two-handed swing runs up to 2.3 seconds, so the next swing started before the sheathe could play and the weapon stayed out. The sheathe now waits for the current swing to end, and using an attack skill right after pressing Z keeps the weapon drawn. (#9298)
• Looked into a report (#9188) that the character sheet undercounts physical critical chance. The number is correct: the crafted crit bonus on a weapon multiplies the skill and weapon crit total instead of adding to it, Dexterity adds its own share, and the first figure on the row is the chance per swing against a practice dummy, with the raw total in brackets. Added tests that pin the reported case and fixed a strategy doc that described the skill modifier as multiplicative.
• Undead summoned by a GM or a player now pay kill experience when they lie waiting to rise and then fail to get up; before, those kills paid nothing. Looting such a waiting body also works now instead of failing after five seconds. (e9f011f263)

The Herald

• The New Britannia Herald for 2026-09-25 is up: Player dungeons now build real stone connectors wherever two mismatched doorway shapes dock, and a purpose-built gap hunter took 380 doorway sides from 115 leaks down to none. The Isle of Storms tutorial can be ended at any lesson, new characters finally arrive as the gender you chose, and a read of all 892 flag-gated NPC lines found 29 doing the opposite of what their author meant. Add-ons can build real game windows now, and elementals have stopped being immune to themselves. Listen or read the transcript (19 min). Subscribe in any podcast app: /blog/podcast.xml

Performance

• Finished a deep dive into what else costs render time in player towns with heavy decoration counts. The benchmark behind the last three decoration passes summed its render timer across threads, so it read higher than the whole frame, and every run used a level-of-detail setting about a third of what players get by default. The review also found an ocean pass that redrew every visible object for a texture nothing used, lamps spawned after the player arrived escaping the shadow budget, and a twice-a-second pass that rewrote every decoration in town. Fixes for those follow; the changes players would see ship switched off until a capture in a real town prices them.
• Player towns with sea or lake water in view no longer draw every visible object twice per frame. The ocean asked the camera for a depth-and-normals image on every frame it was on screen, which makes the engine redraw the whole scene with a second shader, and nothing used the result because the water already reads that information from the first pass. It affected 22 of the town maps.
• Lamps, torches and lanterns that loaded after you arrived in a town skipped the limit on how many lamps cast shadows at once. They kept casting shadows at any distance, and each one made the game redraw everything near it six times a frame. They now join the same limit as every other lamp, so only the few closest to you cast shadows. The engine also logs a warning when a town runs out of distance-culling slots instead of failing without a trace.
• The check that hides decorations inside other players' houses ran twice a second and rewrote every decoration in town each time, even when nothing had changed, which showed up as a small regular stutter in heavily decorated towns. It now only touches decorations whose visibility actually changes, with a full refresh every ten seconds as a safety net. Its time-slicing, which skipped every lot one tick in five and sliced nothing, is gone too.
• Grass in the grassland player towns now ends at about 80 metres like every other town, instead of 250. Those two maps drew roughly ten times as much grass area as the rest, and the grass shader draws again for each nearby light at night. Town maps also gained a ceiling on terrain tree distance, which stays switched off for now; the mountain map draws its trees to 2,000 metres against about 300 to 500 elsewhere.
• When a busy town drops the frame rate, the game now also switches distant objects to their simpler versions a little sooner, which it was always meant to do alongside shortening shadows and dimming lamps. The level-of-detail slider always won over the automatic adjustment, so that part never took effect. On a machine that keeps up nothing changes. A cap on level of detail in towns was added switched off, to be priced by a capture in a real town first.
• The Oculus Mirror of True Reflection no longer redraws everything around it, out to a kilometre and with shadows, from six directions in one frame every few frames. It now updates one direction per frame and reflects what is within about 30 metres, without shadows, which removes a regular stutter near it on the higher graphics settings.
• Corrected two older decoration performance write-ups: their Camera.Render figures summed every thread (so they read higher than the whole frame), the benches ran at a third of the players' LOD distances, and SpeedTree wind is live again, so stripping tree components is off the table.
• Fixed the render measurement tools for the town performance work: Camera.Render now reads the main thread only (it had been adding in the render thread and reading longer than the whole frame), benchmarks run at the LOD distance players actually use, and the frame-rate heartbeat reads draw-call counters that exist in Unity 6, so it reports draw calls and main-thread versus render-thread time for the first time.
• Added capture tools: per-camera render timing (camtimes), a lightweight stats capture (perfcapture), a way to hold the performance autotuner still during a test (perfpin), and a scripted camera pose for repeatable screenshots and timings.
• Counted placed decorations across the test shard to pick which towns to measure: 1.23 million placed items, with the densest towns holding around 29,000 each. Plants and planters are the largest group, followed by books and storage furniture.

Quests

• Main quest hand-ins now save your progress on the server in the same step that takes the items: the eight prophecy pages and three lenses at the Confluence, Samael's ring for Sequanna, Mara's warrant, Demig's baton, Essen's writ, the black iron ore, the Skrekk letter and offering, and Gawain's amulet. A disconnect right after handing them over no longer leaves the step unrecorded with the items gone (17a144f97c).
• On the Path of Courage, hearing Korabar's terms now ends the quest version of the Caverns of Skrekk. Walking out instead of answering "go now" no longer brings Lord Demig back to life for his trial on every visit, and "go now" no longer sends a character who has finished the path back to the throne room before the ending (383f244b5e).
• The Path of Love now has a journal task, "Travel to Ardoris", between Solace Bridge and the City of Love. Before, the journal went quiet after Stanley's report in Soltown. Stanley also thanks you once his notes reach Guard-Captain Cugel instead of asking for them again, and the Outskirts tasks finish once you reach Ardoris (efb206cb6a).
• Ardoris now keeps a journal task for every step around Minister Min Liang Tan on the Path of Love. Asking Min about only the writ or only the ring adds a task naming the ruler who knows the other half, "Mention Writ to Min" no longer appears already finished, and after Min falls a new task sends you to the Peladjar Inn to hire a spirit-talker. The journal also stops telling you to wait for the new moon (03ce69f57a).
• The Next Steps panel names a place for a task only while that step is still live for your character. "Travel to Highvale" no longer points at the Isle of Storms after you have left it (518a4c20f2).
• "Reset Quest State" used on a new character who had already used the Magic Mirror now keeps that character on the Isle of Storms to replay the island. Before, the reset dropped them onto the world map at the spot where the previously played character last stood (65ed306b38).
• Every quest hand-in now records its quest progress before the thank-you messages play, and still records it if the conversation closes or the NPC is gone before the server answers. A hand-in the server accepted can no longer show the refusal line instead. Reporting Min Liang Tan's death to Siranto or Khasi at night also answers on the first greeting (c808aa14ae).
• Fixes in the middle of the Path of Love: a player who hired Kardan Marbane is now always offered Samael's services in Spite instead of reaching Malice with no spirit-talker, Samael in Brookside always mentions his keepsake, players travelling with Samael get a task to ask Miles Shepherd about Malice in the Crypt of the Avatar, the ring repair task stays open until the ring is returned, and "Explore the Ruins of Midras" now names the crypt and the underground passage around the open PvP ruins (66614def82).
• Path of Courage fixes: asking Brigid about the royal family no longer closes the amulet task early, her greetings now match your progress, Valhold's guards stop celebrating the end of the war on your first visit, the palace guard and Estgard's gatekeeper say what to do before Sir Patrick is freed, the Estgard gate opens when your aid is accepted, and Korabar receives you after you accept Krishach's note. Story item exchanges with Brigid, Essen, Grannus and Hephaestus now record your progress only when the exchange goes through (0bfe876c65).
• Path of Truth fixes: Captain Steel in Etceter gives her passage task only to characters carrying the Bonesteel Dagger, the Etceter tasks close once Notus lets you into the Halls of Artifice even if you took the dock boat, greeting Kyle Behrand no longer silences Robert Villines on a later escort, Edvard hands over the Blood River gate key on your first greeting when Robert is with you, and the Blood River bridge tasks are no longer written already finished (ae638c26ae).
• After you free Sequanna, "Speak with Sequanna" stays in the journal until you ask about your next steps. The Confluence speakers now name the ending the temple will show, Notus and Kyle Behrand grant their virtue once, Samael's "leave" lowers his barrier, and main quest tasks in dangerous areas show a difficulty line (ae638c26ae).
• Anapa's barrier in Malice now stays down after a relog, Blood River tips no longer repeat for characters who did the Solace Bridge tutorial and only one Robert Villines appears there, and the Midras door to the Necropolis follows your spirit-talker like the other entrances (148bf88a4a, 5ddf84c22f, a0741585b0).
• Path of Love follow-ups: a character who starts Love in Ardoris without visiting Edvard now gets the Midras, Spite and Malice quest markers, and Samael in Spite always gives them his progress line. Edvard in ruined Solace Bridge writes "Travel to Ardoris" only for characters on his errand. After Min Liang Tan falls the journal lists one spirit-talker task instead of two, and Samael and Kardan show a marker for it. The Brookside ring, Etceter ore and Stanley report hand-ins save their progress with the exchange (e5dcb94d5c).
• Solace Bridge fixes: Edvard now finishes the battle every time you reach him with Charlotte out of sight (before, half his greetings asked where she was and closed the window). "Use the Boat" finishes however you leave. Captain Kinsey no longer promises a row lot deed to characters whose account already has one, Bancroft introduces himself on an alt's first visit, and the Outskirts trainers list the handbook topic until it is read (32708dc087).
• Act III and finale fixes: the finale Oracle now always hands over the Shroud of the Avatar, including to characters who finished without it. The podium no longer leaves "Read the Dirae Prophecy of Evard" open, Arabella points to the Oracle Temple after the podium and speaks of Lord British after the finale, and the podium, the Epitaph shard and the Hilt forge have quest markers. The journal now names Nightshade Pass, the coal for the forge, the Shrine of Love's hours and Paladis Shardfall (6c84889d1e).
• Named enemies now say only the death line that fits your story. They used to say every line they had, so the bandit leader near Etceter shouted about the ore deal at players who never made it, and Mongo the shock monkey said his line twice. In the Battle of Highvale, leaving the battle now also clears "Speak with Wounded Knight" (c30311c1e2).
• Blood River and Highvale Outskirts: Alberic, Phineas and Captain Burnes list the deed topic when they would hand over the free row lot deed, Phineas still pays a player who helped both sides, the Banner of Truth and Esmeralda's reward pay once, Captain Bearfield replaces a lost warrant straight away, and Marcus lowers Truth only once for a lie. The journal and Alberic now give the right directions to the vigilante camp, Captain Bearfield and Aerie (6d9f9287f9).
• Quest hand-ins now save the reward before recording that it was given, and a reward meant to be given once is never given again (440fcc0c0f).
• Path of Courage fixes: Grannus now offers answer buttons when he demands Brigid's amulet, Mara and Chamberlain Essen take Aurel's letters only as a pair and pay once (Essen can be asked again after a closed trade window), Commander Kormag accepts "I will fight", and the kobold arena no longer pays its virtue again on every rerun. Lost cage keys, Kardan's caller and Gawain's key are replaced at once, and the throne room steps have journal hints (44980d5cd3).
• Path of Truth fixes: Blood River now treats travellers from the other paths as travellers (the scavenger stops calling everyone a mage and Edvard recognizes people he has met), map marks that marked nothing now point at the elder's house, the Elven Camp and Castle Aerie, and Dion, Kyle Behrand and Robert Villines have lines for after the path. Etceter townsfolk answer "where is" for five more people, and a stray comma no longer prints in chat at the end of the Blood River bridge (ffa157995f).
• Path of Love fixes: after Min Liang Tan falls, Siranto and Khasi give the news once and then answer questions again, and after the path Kardan, Samael and the rulers stop repeating one greeting. Pintar and Damai stop warning of an undead attack once it is over, Sequanna no longer says Boreas was freed, and lines in Spite, Midras and ruined Solace Bridge now fit whichever route you took. Arabella stops calling players over when she has nothing to say, and a batch of journal and dialogue typos is fixed (72db835cc0).
• Seven main-quest lines that closed the conversation after 3 or 4 seconds now stay open long enough to read, including Edvard's key reminder in Highvale and the Valhold palace guard's welcome (c87c2842cb).
• In the last part of the main quest, the compass and Next Steps now lead to the Prophecy pages and the Confluence Chamber through the underground passages (The Rise, the Graff Gem Mines, the Midmaer Passage, K'rawl and the Serpent's Spine Mines) instead of through the open-PvP ruins, and the journal names each passage (ba7b52311a).
• Scene fixes along the main quest: the gate guards at Resolute and Estgard now speak to arriving travellers, and Edvard in Highvale and Eilliana in the Blood River Outskirts greet you once instead of on every visit. The Etceter boat to Xenos now counts as booking passage, and using a Lunar Rift no longer erases a Love finisher's "Travel to Highvale". Quest markers now lead to Kyle Behrand in Aerie, to Siranto, Khasi and Min Liang Tan on the road to the Tower of the Shuttered Eye, and to the right people in Valhold's throne room, and the Vermillion Lens counts when crafted from either Hilt entrance (7d59c44150).
• Finishing a virtue path now points the way to the next one: the world map, the Lunar Rift and Next Steps highlight Blood River, Highvale or Solace Bridge for the new task. Players guided by Samael now get the same Midras reward as those guided by Kardan, and Leonard in the Highvale Outskirts no longer claims most trainers can unlock the utility hotbar (c553596423).
• A Summon Party Scroll can no longer be used inside a solo story area. The scroll now refuses with a chat message and stays in your bag, and a party member offered a summon into such an area stays where they are. Three main-quest finale conversations also check that the path leading to them was finished.
• Third main quest audit pass, first fixes: Estgard's gate guards stop you with "Halt!" once instead of at every gate on every visit, and never after the kobold camp has vouched for you. Samael in Spite now offers his services to a Path of Love player who has no spirit-talker, and several people on all three paths stopped repeating lines about steps you already finished.
• A lost key to the gate at the Blood River massacre can be asked for again: Edvard hands over a new key. Edvard at Solace Bridge counts Charlotte as rescued while she walks beside you, Alberic keeps his house deeds from anyone who poisoned the elven food supply, and the journal gives the Shrine of Love's real opening time, just after noon.
• The start of the game on the Isle of Storms guides better: touching the Ankh now finishes its task and adds "Find the Oracle", with a compass marker on the Ankh; Arabella lists the "manifestation" topic her guidance hinges on; Anaïs's help matches the lesson you are on and her farewell points to the lunar rift; the first task's tooltip no longer swaps S and D.
• After a quest reset on the Isle of Storms, the lunar rift now waits until the Oracle has asked her questions again, so a reset character can no longer walk through it with no path chosen.
• The items that call back a story companion (Charlotte Gray, Robert Villines and the three Samael calls) can no longer be destroyed. A companion leaves when you die and returns only through its item, and nothing hands out a second one, so destroying it could leave the story stuck.
• The three pieces of the Vermillion Lens can now be found in any order, and the journal names the Hilt entrance to use and what to bring (5 coal and a smithing hammer). Saying "book" at the Confluence podium outside the hunt no longer changes your ending, Arabella's help describes the hunt while you are on it, and the finale Oracle's greeting names the word to say next.
• Clearer guidance across the main quest: the Oracle on the Isle of Storms now says your first path is one of three, the Oracle in Brittany hands out the prophecy task from her page list and recaps it when you return, many task tooltips name the person or word to use, Titan hand-offs no longer leave a duplicate "Travel to" task, and Captain Steel in Etceter points you to Avitas.
• Four people could pick the wrong greeting the first time you met them: Edvard at the bridge in Solace Bridge could say "Welcome again" instead of sending you and Charlotte to the boat, and Captain Cugel, Bancroft the blacksmith and Anaïs in the Confluence Chamber had similar mix-ups. A new automated check now plays every main quest greeting through 214 stages of the story and flags any that race or fall silent.
• Story characters who have died stay gone: Lady Mara no longer stands beside Grannus in Valhold Palace after her death, and Lord Demig no longer waits at his battle camp after he falls in Skrekk. In Malice the barrier Samael lowers stays down once he is freed, and when Thanatos or Nyx will not talk without a spirit talker, the message says which item calls your talker back.
• Robert Villines's "Follow me to the boat!" at the Blood River massacre now stays on screen for about seven seconds instead of closing after three, long enough to read.

Sieges

• A besieged town's market and tavern chatter now fades out over about fifteen seconds as its townsfolk flee, and fades back in when the town is freed. Before this, the square in Aerie went on chattering to empty streets. Fountains, running water and wind keep playing through a siege. (#9171, ac7e14a668)
• Logging in to a town that is under siege now warns you first. Pressing Resume on the character screen names the town and the Cabalist holding it, then offers three choices: start on the overworld outside the town, enter the town anyway, or go back. The same question appears on the screen shown while a character is still leaving the game. Before this, a player who logged out in a town that later came under siege logged back in to the middle of the fighting. (tester task #9293, 1cbca90e84)

Migration

• Fixed a data migration step that removed unspent adventurer and producer experience from characters that had trained skills with the shared daily bonus pool or used pooled experience items. It ran when live characters were copied to the chaos shard in August and took 15.7 billion adventurer and 17.1 billion producer experience from 46,474 characters. All of it is added back at the next chaos server restart, and the launch-day move of the live database now keeps it (#9172).

Oracle

• Report a Problem on a quest (right-click it in the on-screen task list, or the button in the Journal) now opens the Oracle on that quest. She names it, asks what went wrong, and files a bug report with the quest and your current journal step attached. The old problem-type form sent its reports to a staff chat channel, and they never reached the bug tracker.
• The Oracle can now answer fifteen questions players asked her this week and got no answer to: where Tiger Sharks and Yellow Tang are caught, which player-owned towns exist and where Hometown is, how long Riposte takes to reach 6 charges and why its parry window is shorter than a full charge, what slows an enemy's attack speed, which creatures Gust cannot push, where Aetheric Feedback is taught, how to earn the General title, and whether a chat tab can be cleared. She also now quotes the current 2 second Riposte parry window in place of the old 5 second figure.
• The Oracle now says where to get Blood Leech bait. A player asked her which merchant sells it and she had no answer. No NPC merchant carries it, and she now says so and points to fishing in fetid water, the Odd Container (Flotsam) and player vendors. She can also name the towns, swamps, sewers and mines that have fetid water to fish in, and she knows the only ordinary baits merchants sell are Red Worms, Minnows and their jars. When no merchant stocks something, she now checks her guides for how else to get it before offering to file a request.

Server

• Reviewed the game server stack ahead of launch and wrote up the fixes it called for as a prioritized list of work that starts landing today (49c51e1f50).
• Made the game servers more resilient to unexpected errors: a failure inside one room, timer or connection is now logged and contained instead of stopping that whole server process, and character progress saves retry after a failed database write instead of being skipped (2ad9d9d732).
• Server shutdowns now wait for every logged-in player's progress to finish saving, and for each zone to finish removing its players, before the process exits (195a024415).
• The server now refuses item moves when the storage they touch has changed underneath them, instead of finishing half of the move; crafting holding areas used between a masterwork or enchanting attempt and your effect choice are now handled only by the crafting steps themselves. On a production shard, tester accounts no longer have the tester item, gold and experience tools, and every staff grant is recorded (d38ed1961e).
• Player-to-player trades are now checked in full before anything is saved, and saved in an order that can never leave the same item with both players. Both clients are told the trade went through only once it has been saved (a70c725b89).
• The experience repair that runs when live data moves to the new servers now only trims pooled experience that could never have been earned, using the same limit the game server applies, and keeps a record of every change it makes. Before, it could have wiped the unspent pool of characters whose starting skills were never counted as earned experience (8f3e56970e).
• The login server can now limit staff powers to a named staff list kept on the server itself, and limit automated test logins to known machines. Both become mandatory once a shard is marked as production (474b1c323a).
• Put limits on three kinds of data a game client can make the server hold on to: item lists sent in several parts, events saved for players who join a zone later, and bug-report history (f1a56072e8).
• Tightened the login server: linking a Steam account to an existing account now allows only a few attempts per connection, a disputed install check no longer blocks logins, the minimum client version can no longer be pushed up by what clients report, and one address can no longer take up every connection slot on a server (ccc79b92fd).
• Added a server-side check on crafting requests. It starts in a watch-only mode and is switched on once a trial period confirms it (27d5660ae9).
• A game client that stops acknowledging what the server sends is now disconnected once too much is waiting for it, instead of the server holding all of it in memory (333f530f08).
• The server's per-request timing statistics can no longer be grown without limit by requests that name operations that do not exist (b4c96bf861).
• Repeated failed password logins from one place or against one account are now counted by the login server, the same way reconnect checks already were (cab7ee8112).
• Server restarts on the test shard now give each server process up to 60 seconds to save everyone who is online before shutting down. Before this, every stop cut the processes off after one second without those saves. A process that crashes stays down until the next start, and its logs from before the crash are kept (cc68a31caf).
• The data-restore and migration scripts used for the move to the new servers now refuse to run on the production server once it has hosted players, and need an explicit host-named confirmation before then (5a79979315).
• Added a read-only database check for the move to the new servers that lists any house, basement or dungeon still standing without its deed (ce27d4f8ab).
• The Property Manager list now loads one request at a time for each player, and the Vendor Listings in Zone window streams its results in smaller batches and releases its database searches when you close or replace them (7c972adbec).
• The game servers now close connections that complete no working session within 10 seconds, so half-open connections no longer hold player slots. This finishes the login and admission hardening from the pre-launch server audit (72c8af6bb3).

Chat

• A chat tab can now be cleared without closing it: its options popup has a Clear Tab button beside Delete Tab, and /clear clears the tab you are on. The other tabs keep their lines, and new lines still arrive in the cleared tab. Requested by Akandriel.

Community

• Filed three tracker items from the overnight forum sweep: a claimed-lot marker for NPC towns so bought lots stop showing the same For Sale sign (requested by Cora Cuz'avich), more attunement for shield-spell specialists (requested by Barugon), and a pooled-experience drop reported after a QA server sync from live (Barugon).
• Built Stream Desk, our own tool for the Shroud of the Avatar Twitch channel. It keeps a prize list of followers who are in chat during a stream (10 minutes minimum by default), runs prize draws that store the full eligible list and rules for later checking, and supports rerolls.
• Stream Desk sends each chat message to Claude Haiku, which pulls out viewer questions for the host and flags toxic messages with a category, severity and reason for a moderator to review. Nothing is deleted or timed out automatically. Chat, questions, flags, attendance and draws are kept after each stream, with full-text search and a per-viewer history. Not deployed yet.
• Stream Desk is now running on our web server behind the staff login. It is waiting for the Twitch app credentials and the bot account before it can join the channel.
• Fixed the Stream Desk Connect buttons, which did nothing in Chrome. The browser blocked the second redirect on the way to the Twitch sign-in page. Connect is now a plain link.
• Added a Stream Desk card to the developer portal under Public & Community.

Localization

• About 3,700 NPC lines are translated again in all eight languages. The September spelling, spacing and gesture passes changed the English slightly, and each line's translation stopped matching it. Lines with no translation in any language went from 3,992 to 308, and in the main quest from 1,573 to 53. A new convo_loc_carry tool moves a translation to its reworded line, and its check fails if a future edit leaves one behind (ef50746f00, 82b6c54864).
• In the eight translated clients, the word a quest step tells you to mention now works when typed: Korabar's rod, Krishach's escort, Min Liang Tan's writ, the keystone, the spirit-talker guide and the bonesteel dagger among them. Bonesteel and the Shroud of the Avatar now have one name per language, and the Chinese journal names the Necropolis and Vertas the way the map does (7b2e96c1bc).

Add-Ons

• Add-on readings now match what the game shows you: a creature's numbers beyond health and focus follow your Animal Lore reading of it, buff calls list only the buffs on your buff bar with amounts that hold steady, and effect events cover effects near you on characters you can see.
• Chat lines an add-on prints now start with the add-on's name and show color codes as typed, and a full memory clean-up asked for by add-ons runs at most once every 30 seconds.
• Add-ons can now read your skills as the skills window lists them (the level on each tile, the level your experience bought, and crafting levels with your gear bonus), your adventurer and producer progress from the character sheet, and the resurrect countdown, and can be told when your skills change or you die.
• Add-ons can now read your active quests as the journal lists them, the recipes in your Recipe Book, your achievement rows, and the titles you own, and can be told when any of them change. Nothing reaches past what those windows show.
• Add-ons can now read the counts behind your notification icons and a summary of your guild and friend list (your guild, rank, guild message, and how many guildmates and friends are online). These are counts only and never name or locate another player.
• Add-ons can now read the scene you are in (its kind, rules and caps), the weather, wind and moon phase as the compass shows them, the directions of the markers on your compass, and your client's language, build number, ping and play time, so add-ons can translate their own text (requested by John Markus).
• Add-ons can now be told when items arrive in your bags, counted by kind with the same rule as the Recently Looted category (loot, purchases, crafting, mail and trades count; moving your own things does not), and when your combat chat shows a hit, heal or death involving you, your party or your pet, with the names, number and skill the line prints.
• Add-on timers can now call a function passed in directly, and each add-on keeps its own timer names, so two add-ons that both use a timer called "tick" no longer replace each other's. Timers an add-on starts while loading now stop when it is turned off.
• Add-ons can now open and close the game windows a key already toggles (map, bags, character sheet, journal, skills and the like), but only while answering your own click, Enter, toggle, pick or typed command, never on their own or outside normal play.
• Add-ons can now add their own chat commands. The game's commands and emotes always come first, names one typo away from a chat channel such as /guild are refused so a mistyped message never reaches an add-on, and /? lists add-on commands last with the add-on that owns each.
• Add-ons can now offer actions you press a key for, and you set those keys on the add-on's row in the add-on manager. The game always comes first: an add-on never gets a key the game uses, a suggested key applies only while nothing else has it, and add-on keys stay quiet while you type.
• Add-on packages can now say which other packages they need. The game loads those first, holds an add-on while something it needs is turned off (the add-on manager says what it is waiting for), and the Community Addons store only accepts dependencies it lists, showing them on a Requires line (requested by Tirrag).
• Add-on API 14 is complete: the game reports version 14 to add-ons, the store accepts packages that ask for it, and the Avatar's Companion sample now shows the new calls (a key and a chat command for its window, level progress, active tasks and what you gained).

Housing

• Changing the house on a lot now always leaves the building matching the house deed the lot holds: no deed means no building, and a building the deed does not allow is replaced by one it does (13fba51fe2).
• Lot permissions now cover every way a visitor can reach a container: changing what is stored needs the same permission as taking it, and a player banned from a lot can no longer use its containers (875ea415f8).
• House pets can now nap. The koala on your lot sits down between wanders for a snack and a sleep, then gets up and wanders again, and visitors see it nap at the same moments you do. Sitting had been switched off for house pets for years, because only the owner could see it.
• A player who opens a chest or other container on someone else's lot and leaves the window open now loses the hold on it after 30 minutes, so the lot owner is no longer blocked from rearranging, banking or changing permissions. How many items one character can hold open at once is also capped (da4afdd14e).
• Started the Deco Showcase, a museum scene that will show every decoration in the game, with a filter for free, paid and reward items and for furniture versus small items. The first piece is the catalog behind it: all 6,841 decorations are now sorted into twelve kinds (furniture, small items, lighting, plants, structures, signs, trophies and more) and tagged with every way to get them, from crafting, vendors, drops and quests to the Crown Store, pledge and event rewards, achievements, and login and subscriber rewards.
• The Property Manager storage list now loads each storage's house data and item totals in two batched reads instead of two reads per storage, so players with many storages or house offers get their list faster (26ded32033).
• Built the Deco Showcase museum: a new test zone, the Decoration Museum, lays out all 6,841 decorations in 34 gallery rooms and 27 open-air yards, one wing per kind, and brings in the pieces near you as you walk. Typing /showcase there opens a panel that filters the museum to free, paid or reward items, to furniture or small items, or by name, moves the matches to the front of each wing, and shows a card for each piece listing every way to get it. It reaches the chaos shard with the next build.
• Built the Wizard Tower (City) model procedurally in Blender: a five-storey tower under a leaning witch hat, a smaller stair tower, a two-storey entrance hall, a sky-bridge, a wraparound balcony with two turret rooms and 14 floating stepping stones, 29 by 49 metres and 47 metres tall. Stairs reach every floor, and the build refuses to export unless both a pet-sized and a player-sized walker can reach all 18 rooms and landings from the front of the lot. (8850daa825)
• Added the WizardTowerCityHouseBuilder Editor tool, which turns that model into the house prefab: collision layers, distance detail levels, six doors, the portal pads from the village tower, five candle chandeliers that cast shadows so their light stays in the room, and ambient sound. (0d137a9d3d)
• The Wizard Tower (City) is now a home you can place on City, Keep and Castle lots: six doors, portal pads between the ground floor and the observatory, five candle chandeliers, and pet pathing for every floor, both turrets, the balcony and the bridge. For now the deed is testers only, created from the tester panel. (348abd5128)
• Fixed the Wizard Tower prefab builder. It now removes the extra detail-level group the model importer added, which had hidden every wall and floor from the pet pathing bake, and it no longer builds inside whatever scene is open in the Editor. (596c9af77e)

Launcher

• Pressing Repair in the launcher now shows it started at once: the status line says it is repairing, the progress bar sweeps until the file check has a percentage, and the button greys out while it runs. The window also no longer goes "Not responding" during a repair; per-file progress updates are now merged before they reach the screen, and the running-game check moved off the window thread. Reported by Akandriel.

Voice

• Caesonia, the elf bounty hunter who can arrive after an overland encounter's greater threat falls, now appears as a woman. All 96 of her spawn points had her in a male archer's body while she spoke with a woman's voice. She keeps the same brown archer outfit and her bow.
• The spawner voice audit now judges creature bodies that carry no sex of their own by the mesh they wear. That check found Caesonia and moved seven more NPCs onto the voice of their body: the Courage Club challenger, a Krampus child, four Well of Aldur zombies and a Castle Atos resident. 29 remaining cases are listed for a per-character decision.

Books

• The deck-building guide says "note that you can jump" again; a doubled word had come back with the clickable-links pass (8fd07c2d70).

UI

• The location title under the compass now shows the name an owner gave their player dungeon or basement, followed by the mode and the owner. Named dungeons used to read "Player Dungeon - Adventure Mode" regardless of their name. Unnamed ones keep the old title.
• Typing /? no longer sometimes opens the Oracle window scrolled to the top of the conversation. The command list now always opens at its first line. The same fix steadies long Oracle answers and NPC conversation replies, which also open at their first line. Found by a chaos tester.
• The damaged equipment hint in the top-right corner used to print over the skill advancement icons, and over the quest tracker when a player had moved it to that side of the screen. It now sits below the skill icons, steps down past a tracker parked there, and has a dark backing plate. The low ammo and encumbrance hints share the same spot.
• School icons on the left rail of the Skills window now sit at three-quarter brightness when they are not selected, up from half, so the rail can be read without hovering each icon. The selected school is still the brightest icon and hovering still warms an icon to cream. Requested through the Oracle.
• The "Click for Help" bubble now sits in the window title bar, left of the help button. On crafting stations it had been showing up as an extra column that pushed the recipe, station and inventory panes to the right and ran the inventory list off the window. Reported by Astirian. (6e7af62722)
• The minimap covered the quest tracker for players who had moved the tracker to the top right before the minimap arrived, hiding its tasks and tips. The tracker now draws just to the left of the minimap at the height the player chose, and goes back to its own spot when the minimap is turned off or moved away.
• Planned the move of the character appearance editor (the Magic Mirror and New You screen) to the new interface, the second-to-last screen still on the old UI library. The planning read found that the eye height and eye spacing sliders have been creeping toward their middle position every time the editor opens; the new screen fixes that as it lands.
• The character sheet's Stats tab splits critical hit damage reduction into two lines, Melee/Ranged Crit Reduct and Spell Crit Reduct, each with its own hover. The old Crit Reduct line showed only the melee and ranged value, and the spell value that Bolster Balance grants with Arcane Defense had no line at all. Melee and ranged share a line because the game uses one value for both. Crit Defense moved to a line of its own below them. Requested by Sethanon.
• Paragraph text (chat, tooltips, the quest tracker and journal, NPC conversation, help pages) now uses PT Serif by default. The plain sans-serif face stays available as Shroud Classic, a new Paragraph Font choice in Options, Themes tab. It is saved per player and applies under every theme, including one that sets its own paragraph font. Requested by Astirian.
• The character appearance editor move got its rules layer: which parts of the screen each opener shows, the tab-by-tab footer, the 37 face and body sliders and their colour and marking lists now live in one tested place the new screen will draw from. It includes the fix for the eye height and eye spacing sliders creeping toward the middle each time the editor opened.
• New setting Show Other Players' Effects on Target Frame (Options, Interface tab, Nameplates & Chat Bubbles). Unticked, the target frame shows no buff or debuff icons while another player is targeted; your own buff icons and a targeted creature's icons stay. On by default, so nothing changes unless you untick it (81f2733b49, #9300). Requested by Akandriel through the in-game Oracle.
• Built the new-interface version of the character appearance editor: the options panel with a padlock on each tab to keep Random off it, colour swatches, marking lists that open on your current choice, the face and body sliders, and the mirror with your character in it. It is not switched on yet; the next step swaps it in for the old screen.
• Skill tooltips now say when a bonus needs a specialization you do not have. The critical damage bonus on Berserker's Stance only applies with Tactics Specialization, and the game never gave it to anyone else, but the tooltip listed it as +25% with no condition. Lines like that now end with "Requires Tactics Specialization" (or the matching school) until you specialize. Riders that are off for other reasons, such as Riposte right after a parry, get no note. The same fix covers Knight's Grace, Dig In, Blinding Shot and six more skills. Reported by Akandriel as #9179.
• The Magic Mirror and New You appearance screen now runs on the new interface. Same layout as before: the options on the left, now as named tabs with a padlock on each that keeps Random off that tab, and your character in the ornate mirror on the right, drawn inside the same oval. The colour squares, marking lists, sliders and Female/Male choice all work as they did.
• Fixed the Eye Height and Eye Spacing sliders moving a character's eyes a little toward the middle setting on every visit to the Magic Mirror or a New You shop, even when nothing was changed. They now open where you left them.
• Fixed the offline Save window listing each save's date under File and leaving Last Saved empty. Names now sit under File and dates under Last Saved.
• The old interface's copy of the appearance screen is gone from the game files. Opening the Magic Mirror on the Isle of Storms no longer builds about 430 unused old interface pieces before the screen appears.

Oracle

• The Oracle now knows the eight PvP rank titles from The Obsidian Trial, Corporal up to General, what each costs in Obsidian Medallions and how medallions are won. A player asked about the General title and she had no record of it.

Tooling

• The work blog now always opens each day with its Headlines box. A day whose first work section and headlines shared a position put the headlines second (3e3f519edb).
• Committed the Unity 6 Editor re-save of 55 monster, NPC and pet prefabs plus the regenerated rune, item-name and pet indexes, which now list the koala (ed0fcac330). Finished an origin merge that had been left half-done in the shared checkout.
• Wrote a guide to adding a new player house, from the Blender model to the navigation bake, and corrected the art pipeline page, which had the Blender front direction mirrored on import. (24587be11d)
• The chaos release that failed on 2026-09-26 was finished without rebuilding. All three client builds were done, but the deploy stopped on a database note that only applies to the future live cutover. The note now carries a cutover marker the deploy understands, and the release preflight runs the same migration check before the four-hour builds start instead of after them.

Chat

• The server now limits how fast one player can send chat lines, with a tighter limit on Universe, Trade and Noble, and it now enforces a GM devoice itself. Normal conversation is unaffected (24da7cd139).

Quests

• The three Lost Vale "Relive" tasks in Fading Memories (Siege of Opalis, Rescue of the Grand Artificer, Fall of the Epitaph) no longer stay on the map and compass after you hand them in. The Lost Vale marker used to stay blue and list all three forever because the Spirit removes the flag those tasks were waiting on. They now also count as done once you hold the memory fragment, matching the journal.

Images

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• Furniture gallerySmall Items room
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• New You screenEyes tab
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Maps

• Fixed town sign post markers that read "Local Destinations" on the map. The Supply Cart sign in Brittany Estates and the Castle Aerie sign now have their own arrival points, so other signs can send players there. The Brittany Estates Docks sign is named Docks. A sign without its own arrival point no longer hides a far gate from its destination list. An audit of all 281 town signs found the same fault in one Novia village and the Central sign of two player town layouts, and those are fixed too. (#6744)
• Player-owned towns no longer have fog of war. Their maps show in full on arrival, for every player town template plus Castle Atos and Fishing Expedition; player-run villages and NPC towns keep their fog. 25 maps came out of the fog set, leaving 290 of 339 covered, and the player towns no longer earn map area toward the Exploration ladder.

Tests

• The Akita Inu test fence still looked for the dog clips in the folder the pack occupied before the art folders were reorganized, so it failed on every animation slot. It now checks the new location, and all 27 Akita checks pass (674a4fb1a6).
• Added 21 automated checks for the Wizard Tower (City). A player-sized walker and the pet navigation both reach all 18 rooms and landings from the front of the lot, a character climbs every flight, rain stays out of every room, and decorations sit flush on every floor. (f6f913d4eb)

Pets

• Moved the new koala model pack in with the other purchased art packs, keeping every asset reference intact, and removed the parts of it that only work in a different render pipeline: its sample scene, skybox, demo scripts and render settings (563359985c).
• Added the koala, a new companion pet. Used from your backpack it follows you, and placed on a lot it lives there as a house pet. When you stop for a while it sits down, eats a leaf, nods off and naps, and walking into it gets a toss of the head and a grumpy bellow.
• The koala's model pack came with no dance, so its dance was built in the Editor on top of its own idle animation: paw taps, a rear-up with both arms in the air, a hip shimmy, and a crouch into a hopping twirl that lands on the beat. Its sit routine joins the pack's sitting, eating and sleeping animations into one 25 second loop. The tool that builds both is kept with the project, so the next pet pack without a dance can get one the same way.
• Pets now dance along with you. Start any dance emote and every pet you have out that knows how to dance joins in, then stops when your dance ends. A pet told to stay or patrol keeps doing that, and a pet in a fight keeps fighting.
• Added /pet dance and /pet sit, the right-click pet emotes as chat commands. Until now both words played your own Pet emote at a player named Dance or Sit. The /pet help line now lists startattack and stopattack, the names the command accepts.
• The character sheet's Pet tab now shows your pet's critical hit chance, split into physical and spell crit, and Examine shows the same split. Each pet lists only the crit its attacks use, so elementals show spell crit, skeletons physical and daemons both; Examine used to show only the physical figure, which a fire elemental never rolls. Requested by Sethanon through the in-game Oracle.
• Two new companion pets, the fox and the goat, are in the Crown Store at 1,000 crowns each. Summon one from your backpack to follow you, or place it on your lot as a house pet. Both lie down, rest and fall asleep when you stop, nap between wanders as house pets, and each has a dance of its own: the fox play-bows, hops, rears up batting its paws and spins; the goat stamps, rears up tossing its head, skips side to side and leaps into a spin.
• Both pets are built from a purchased animal model pack by one Editor generator that sets up the model import, materials, animations, sounds, prefabs, summon runes, items and store listings, with a 32-case test that pins every link. The fox follows at 0.54 m tall and the goat at 0.97 m.

Tools

• Built the tooling to move the team's internal chat from Mattermost to a Discord server. A read-only exporter pulls the chosen channels, a secret scan masks keys and passwords before anything is posted, and an importer replays each channel under its original authors with reply threads, attachments, reactions and pins. It resumes after any stop and never pings anyone. A small mirror keeps new Mattermost posts flowing into Discord until the switch.
• Added a team Discord bot. It relays the game server's staff feeds, posts pushes, tracker status changes and chaos deploy results, and answers /status, /issue and /ask. It also has a role picker and an audit log. The feeds that show player account names sit in staff-only channels.
• The team Discord bot is running on the team server. It builds its own channels and roles on deploy, carries the game's staff feeds from Mattermost into staff-only channels, and posts to #deploys whenever the chaos or QA build changes, including hand publishes and rollbacks.
• Started moving seven years of the team's Mattermost history into the new team Discord: nine channels and about 200,000 messages, replayed under each original author's name and picture with reply threads, attachments and reactions. Emoji codes now turn into real emoji, and posts holding passwords or keys were left out after a review. The largest channel takes about a day and a half to finish.
• Repository tidy-up: the settings files the editor upgraded for 108 Portuguese and Russian conversation files, when their restored translations were imported, are now committed, and one gameplay script is stored with consistent line endings, so neither shows up as a pending change any more.
• Added the botter-actions channel to the Mattermost history move, and the importer can now re-apply pins after the fact.
• The Mattermost history move stalled after an hour on Discords limit of 1,000 open threads per server. The importer now closes each thread as soon as its last reply is in and makes room when the limit is reached. It picked up where it stopped, and the #art and #botter-actions history is complete.

UI

• In other languages, quest names on the compass and in location tooltips now appear in your language instead of English. With "Show repeatable tasks" on, the journal lists only tasks that really come back, once each (6a7486d2b1).

Interface

• The Community Addons window now lines its column headings up with the list, shows full dates in the Updated column, and puts the Run checkbox beside its label. Reported by Elene Sali.

Stability

• Fixed three client errors from the latest chaos build: add-on text too long for one text element is now cut to fit, the inventory re-check after failed item moves stops when you log out, and creatures that are hit while still loading keep that aggro.

NPC Voices

• Another 29 NPCs whose voice did not match their body were fixed. The female zombies at Solace Bridge and the Blood River strike team members in women's armour now bark in women's voices. Albia in Longfall Woods and the Envious Pilgrims in Xenos had records marked with the wrong sex and were recast. Veteru in Solania Catacombs, who calls himself an old man, and the crafting trainer Zosimus now stand in men's bodies in the same outfits.

Store

• Added the Koala Decoration Pet to the Crown Store at 1,000 crowns, listed under Pets and under Recently Added.

Creatures

• Trolls now have a solid body. Players can no longer walk through a troll: running into one stops at its body, moving at an angle slides around it, and a troll that walks into a player shoves them aside. Dead trolls, pets and decoration trolls can still be walked through. Other creatures are unchanged for now.
• Monsters and pets no longer spin slowly on the spot before walking home from the edge of a room. A creature now turns on the spot only when where it is heading is at least a metre away, keeps the direction it picked while turning, and waits 1.5 seconds before it will turn on the spot again. A pet catching up with you now walks straight off after you. Found by testers in player dungeon lava grottos.
• Creatures with a constant body effect (Fire and Air Elementals, shadow wolves and bears, Cabalists, ghosts, liches) now let it fade out when they die. Before, the flames or smoke kept running on the corpse for as long as it lay there. The death switch for these effects dated from the Perforce era but could never be filled in; it now finds them on the creature when it spawns. Covers 101 creature models, with a live off switch (9f58472ca8, #8380).

Crafting

• The server now records any craft of a seasonal or location-bound recipe made outside its season or place. No recipe uses those limits yet, and nothing is refused (aada4f5544).

Community Addons

• Addon authors can now cancel a submission that is still waiting for review, and take an approved addon off the store, from the My Submissions tab of the Community Addons window. Removing an addon delists every version of it, and players who already installed it keep their copy. Requested by Goriah Kuulas.

Security

• Followed up a server launch audit finding (#9288): disabled recipes, including the 26 reshape patterns and the trophy fish and mounted head recipes, were already refused by the recipe lookup every craft action uses. No change was needed; regression tests now pin that lookup so a later refactor cannot reopen it.

Art

• Moved the updated Animals Full Pack (African, Birds, Farm, Forest and Ocean packs, 1,900 files) into the third-party art folder. The Fox the game already uses kept its asset IDs, so existing creature prefabs still resolve. Dropped the 30 demo scenes and switched the pack's 38 URP materials to the project's standard shader so they no longer render pink. (44551f1a7f)
• Committed 19 materials and 30 wolf animation files that were sitting untracked in the older Animals Full Pack folders, so every machine now has the same copy. (6a8423872e)

Audio

• Alchemy stations in town shops now bubble quietly under their fire, the decorative Arrow Trap and the Dart Wall dungeon trap piece make a bow release sound when they fire, and the four small cascades inside Lost Vale now carry running water. Each of these pointed at a sound file that went missing years ago and played nothing.
• A new automated check keeps those objects, plus every spawner, trap piece, trap decoration and map ambience prefab, from pointing at a missing sound again. Mimic barrels were on the same list, but their lost sound only plays when a barrel breaks and a mimic wakes up instead, so it was matched to the ordinary barrel without changing what players hear.

Next Steps

• When both experience pools are full, the Next Steps panel now shows one line naming both adventuring and producing experience. Before, it named only the bigger pool, so established characters never saw the producing line. New characters on the Isle of Storms still see neither.

Dungeons

• Monsters and pets can walk through the broken breakaway wall in the Stone Dungeon Room (Undead Ravensmoor). It was the one breakaway wall the earlier fix left shut. The room has two doorway frames stacked in that opening, and the collision of the permanent one pinched the gap to 1.43 m, too narrow for the walking map. That frame now has a simpler collision shape that follows its visible stone, and the room looks the same as before. (#8473)
• Monsters and pets can now reach every doorway of the Stone Dungeon Rotunda, whose upper arch was too narrow for the navigation bake, and walk the whole top floor of The Rise Library, where the ceiling of the floor below cancelled out the upper cross walks. A new bake-only carve fixes both without changing player collision. A new test now checks every dungeon kit room and found five more split rooms, which are filed for follow-up.
• Rooms placed by the Random Dungeon Generator Chest no longer lose their torches. When a leftover preview of the same room was still in the scene, the placed room had its interactive pieces switched off, and one Random Encounter 3 room came up with all sixteen blue-fire torches missing. The placed room now keeps them, and the generator clears any previews a build leaves behind. The room file name typo "WithSpawwns" was also corrected. (#8111)

Audio

• Seven more Hidden Vale zones now have ambience. Wyntons Folly, Wyrmsands, Plains of Righ Inis, Northmarsh, Southmarsh, Greymark Forest and South Valeway used to play only music, so the Ambient slider had nothing to control. They got 180 day/night ambience beds: birds in the forests and plains, marsh sounds in the swamps, and a new all-hours desert wind. A test checks all 538 exits, discovery points and resource nodes at every hour (#8642).

Gathering

• Items left behind in a gathering node's loot window no longer carry over to the next harvest after the node despawns and grows back. Each regrown node now starts with an empty loot window, and the harvest summary in chat counts only that harvest. (#8369)

Client

• On macOS, chat logs, sheet music, Lua add-ons, decoration layouts and other saved files now live under Library/Application Support/Catnip Games instead of a hidden folder the Finder does not show. The first launch copies existing files across and leaves the originals in place. Windows and Linux are unchanged. (dc58117102)

Sieges

• Built Vitium's new fight behind a switch: the Hollow Court circle grows while called-back Cabalists stand; a blast at the centre seat alternates with eight turning thrones; and The Mask Answers hurts Vitium's target while leaving Vitium open to more damage. In the stronghold, the lieutenants, the call-back and the army now follow the siege meter, and the other Cabalists' throne pulses take turns on one shared beat. Requested by Spinok.
• Added a line under the siege power meter saying that killing the army weakens the Cabalist. A preview of how much more a full-strength kill pays is built behind the Cabalist reward switch, still off. Also gave Turned Kindness, Two Faces and the Ward of Debt their own icons on the buff bar, fixed Nefario's spelling of "deign", and wrote the Oracle's guide to all nine Cabalists, held back until the new fights go live.
• Added logging of Cabalist fights: how long each fight takes at each siege meter level and party size, how it ends, and what kills players nearby, so the new fights can be tuned from real play.
• Vitium's army at the Cabalist Stronghold now stands outside the throne court. The two outer rings were laid out as a spiral that filled inward, which put a few creatures within 5 to 7 m of Vitium; every seat now keeps clear of the court and of the ring inside it, even when it has to be moved off bad ground. Town sieges are unchanged.
• The stronghold's throne court was still the forest camp the map was copied from. The tents, bedrolls, chests and palisades that stood in it are gone, and each of the eight Cabalist seats now has a stone throne behind it.
• The siege camp on the stronghold's overworld hex no longer floats. Its catapults and burning wagon hung 1 to 2.5 m over the hollow the hex sits in; siege camps now settle onto the ground when they appear. Every other town's camp was checked and none of them moves.

The Herald

• The New Britannia Herald for 2026-09-24 is up: Thursday went to the siege Cabalists, who have been fighting wrong since launch and now have fists, breakable weapons, and a full redesign under way. The dragons got a colour and sound pass across six hundred files, and the first player into Ardoris stopped waiting on the server counting houses one at a time. Also the camera went for a swim, which was our fault, and is out again. Listen or read the transcript (15 min). Subscribe in any podcast app: /blog/podcast.xml

Community

• Filed four items from the community forums: a neighbor's ghost NPC wandering onto a player's lot, a clipped launcher language dropdown, a request to round out weapon enchantments, and a dragon-totem placement/variety idea.
• New public What's New page at /blog/whats-new/ with the most relevant changes between the old live game and the new version: 1,551 entries in three lists, with many smaller fixes left out. The Bug Fixes list holds only problems that existed on the old live servers (1,029 of them); the other two lists hold 418 new features and improvements and 104 changes to skills, combat, gathering, crafting and other rules.
• Every entry on the What's New page has an importance score from 1 to 10 and up and down vote buttons, one vote per person per entry. The list can be grouped by system or sorted by importance, by date or by Most wanted by players, and the blog header now links to it.

Oracle

• The Oracle can now say where the pit dragons live, including the Green Pit Dragon at Grunvald Shardfall, and where each aquarium fish is caught: the Green Wrasse and Blue Tang in any salt water, the Cardinal and Yellow Tang only in tropical salt water. Asked whether chat commands have to be memorized, she now points to /?, which lists every command, and to the channel button on the chat bar. Players asked all three this week.
• The Oracle now finds bosses that carry a name of their own when a player asks for them by what they are. "Where is the Green Pit Dragon?" gets Hem-Sareed Ghairmute at Grunvald Shardfall, and the same goes for the Ancient White Dragon, the Tempest Elemental and the Daemons. She also says roughly where 262 of the 346 player-owned towns are: the region and the nearest NPC town with a compass direction (Tortuga is in North Paladis, north-east of Northwood).
• The Oracle now names the Cabalist holding each besieged town when you ask which towns are under siege. She used to list the towns alone, which left players nothing to match against the town's own siege dialog (#9134).

Onboarding

• Anaïs on the Isle of Storms now offers to end the tutorial at any of her First Steps lessons. The End the tutorial topic asks you to confirm, then sends you straight to your path's start in Highvale, Blood River or Solace Bridge, with the starter weapons and potions from the first-meeting skip if you had not finished the Combat lesson. Asking her "Can I leave?" in the first lesson room now points you at it.
• The name screen for a new character gained a Gender row beside the name fields. Before, every spirit arrived on the Isle of Storms as male until the Magic Mirror; it now arrives as the gender picked, and the mirror opens with that gender selected. It can still be changed at the mirror the first time.
• Props that drift on their own, such as the Magic Mirror on the Isle of Storms and the floating islands, can be brought to rest and set drifting again without a jump. Groundwork for the Magic Mirror changing a character's looks where they stand, with no loading screen.
• The character appearance editor now lives in one piece the game can open anywhere; before, it existed only inside its own scene. The New You shop and the Magic Mirror look and behave as they did.
• Once a character has a body, the Magic Mirror on the Isle of Storms keeps its gender fixed on later visits; the Gender row is greyed out. A second visit could switch it before, and the next login then threw the new look away. The editor can now also open over the world, at the mirror itself; nothing uses that yet.
• Two pieces the in-place Magic Mirror needs are in: a new character's spirit can now step into its body where it stands, with no scene reload, and the conversation camera can be told how far away to focus. Nothing calls either yet.
• The game server can now save a character's appearance on its own, which the in-place Magic Mirror on the Isle of Storms will use to save a new look without the player leaving the game. It is free and allowed only for a first body or inside the mirror's own scene, and a later save that would change a character's gender is refused. Nothing uses it yet.
• The Magic Mirror on the Isle of Storms can now edit a new character's looks where they stand. The camera holds on the island's own mirror, the mirror stops drifting, the appearance editor opens over the world with the preview showing in the glass, and Finish puts the spirit into its new body with no scene load. Before, the mirror loaded a separate editor scene and then reloaded the whole island. It ships switched off until it has been checked on the test server; until then the mirror works as before.
• Closing the in-place Magic Mirror no longer leaves name plates and chat bubbles pointing at the editor's preview camera, which had filled the log with errors for a few seconds after every edit. Found in the first playtest on the Isle of Storms, before the mirror has been switched on anywhere.
• Review fixes to the in-place Magic Mirror, which is still switched off. A save that is refused or never answered now tells the player so and leaves Cancel working; before, the editor could wait forever with Cancel dead. A new body now also updates the mirror's map pin, the lunar rift and Next Steps straight away, a body can no longer be given twice, and a re-edit of an existing body reaches other players the way a zone change would.
• Ending Anaïs's lessons early on the Isle of Storms is now recorded the same way as leaving through the lunar rift, so later scenes treat the two alike. Before, a mage who ended the lessons early was greeted by Edvard at Blood River with directions to a spare sword on his weapon rack, a line meant only for players who never took the Isle's lessons.
• New characters now start with the Blades deck equipped, which is what Anaïs says in her combat decks lesson on the Isle of Storms. They had been starting on Ranged. The Combat Decks window now lists Blades, Ranged and Magic in that order, and the sword fight at the start of the combat lesson happens on the deck built for a sword (53077e6e84).
• Talking to Arabella straight from the Isle of Storms spawn point now completes her Double-click Woman to Talk task. Before, the task appeared afterwards as still open, along with a late hint to double-click her. (#9008)
• On the Isle of Storms, the Next Steps tips, the "N more tips" line and the Getting started checklist now fade in together with the task list when the list of what to do next appears. Before, the tips could pop in at full brightness in one frame while the tasks above them faded in. (#9005)

Dungeons

• Player-dungeon pieces now close the gap where two different doorway shapes meet. When two pieces dock, the game builds a stone connector for that pair of shapes: the larger doorway is walled in with its own stone, set back a little, with the smaller opening carried through it, a fitted square or arched frame where there is room, a step where one floor is higher, and a collider, so you can no longer step into the gap beside a narrow door. 377 of the 380 pairings of the 20 shapes build one (the other three already meet exactly); the flat patch from #8699 now only covers a doorway with no recorded shape (#8927).
• Each connector also closes whatever the piece's end cap covered behind its own stone, so docking never shows more than the closed doorway did. That hid two holes in the pieces themselves: the Ancient Stone Stairs ceiling stops short of its lower doorway, and one of the arched Dungeon Stone halls left a hairline crack along its floor at the doorway.
• Added a doorway showcase test scene with all 190 pairings of doorway shapes docked side by side, and Find Doorway Gaps, a tool that looks at every doorway in it from up to 48 places on each side, from the floor to over the arch, and counts every line of sight that gets past the neighbouring piece's opening. The first check, from eye height only, missed the gaps above the arches.
• Fixed the doorway connectors stopping short. Many pieces are open behind the stone that seals an unused doorway, above the arch up to the ceiling, and each connector only closed out as far as the smallest seal among pieces of the same doorway shape. From the Ancient Stone Stairs, for example, the band above the arch showed straight into the next room. Each connector now closes everything its own pieces seal covered. The step up to a higher floor also had a gap at its corners, now closed. Across all 190 pairings, Find Doorway Gaps went from 115 of 380 doorway sides with a gap to none (#8927).
• Pressure plate traps no longer stay pressed after a monster dies on them. A creature killed on a plate counted as standing on it until its body despawned five minutes later, so the next player to step on got nothing. The Hilt Fortress fire arrow trap north of the entry rotunda sits on a kobold patrol and was stuck this way after most fights there, and the lich room plate that shuts off the floor flames had the same problem. The change covers every pressure plate trap in the game. (#6236)
• The Hilt Fortress flame trap on the way down from the entry level had been placed inside the stone under a corridor floor, where nobody could step on it. It now sits on the stair landing, with its jet coming off the landing's end wall onto the plate. (#6236)
• The breakaway rock walls in Etceter Crag Mines can no longer be knocked down by auto-attack, arrows or spells. Walls that need a mining pick are dug through with the pick; crates and barrels still smash in combat. (#9088, reported via the Oracle)

Quests

• At the end of the Battle of Solace Bridge, Charlotte Gray no longer speaks her thank-you lines when she is not beside Edvard. A player who reached him with Charlotte dismissed saw her talking in chat from nowhere. Edvard now thanks you on his own in that case, with the same reward, virtue and boat out. With Charlotte beside him the scene plays as before (#6636).
• Sergeant Sedgewick in Solace Bridge Outskirts now starts the iron ore task every time after the maple wood hand-in, and saying "ore" starts it as well. Before, "help" answered with his worry about Private Preston about half the time and the task never appeared. The Preston line now comes after the feathers step.
• The Journal's Completed Tasks tab lists each finished quest once, showing the last step reached. It used to show one row per quest step, all with the same title, and a quest back in progress could leave old steps behind on the tab.
• The first task on the Isle of Storms is now titled "Talk to the Mysterious Woman" instead of "Double-click Woman to Talk", in English and all eight translations. The pop-up and tooltip still explain how to start the conversation.
• Robert Villines in Blood River Massacre now finishes his reply when you ask him to join you. The conversation window used to close and his voice cut off the moment he started, because his standing copy left the scene as soon as his whistle was handed over. That copy now waits until the conversation ends. The fix covers the other story companions who hand over their whistle in person. (db5aea7fb0)
• The quest audit tool can now check every journal task baked into the scene contents against its current quest data, and the rebake tool can add missing quest stages and fix NPC names on baked tasks. The current bake has no drifted tasks.
• An account that earned its first virtue score or its free lot deed on a long-played character now keeps it. Since September 20 the server had turned those first saves away, because the game numbered account-wide flags after the character's own list instead of the account's (c265317ef5).
• The Episode 1 finale now follows the prophecy the Confluence Podium gives you. Every player used to be set on the virtue finale when the Oracle handed out the prophecy hunt, so one of the three finales could never appear and another came up at random on each visit to the Oracle Temple. High-level players whose virtues were strong except Courage also got a prophecy book meant for someone else (1e270dbb45).
• Early main quest tasks now finish on the step they ask for. "Bring Dagger to Aerie Blacksmith", "Unlock the Gate" in Blood River and "Investigate the Undead Mystery!" used to drop off the journal and tracker at the next zone change, and "Enter the Lunar Rift" stayed open until Valhold. Jenna's rumors in Jaanaford no longer skip her hand-off to Kiln, the Oracle's page tasks now name the town for each page, and seven journal typos are fixed. (a281039278)
• Three Path of Courage conversations checked the wrong thing. The Estgard gatekeeper now recognizes Brigid's Amulet of Testimony, Grannus confirms the warrant Mara hands you, and the Knights of Norgard in Resolute offer Resolute as a topic to Courage players. A new test reads every conversation and fails on item checks that name no item. (a281039278)
• The eight Pages of the Dire Prophecy, the Xanthous Lens and the three Vermillion Lens shards can no longer be destroyed from the inventory, like the other two lenses. The finale needs every one of them and nothing gives a lost one back. (ef4080ee87)
• The end of the Path of Courage in the Valhold throne room now has journal steps: ask Mara about Essen, tell Essen your news, mention dealings and the fourth baton, ask Lord Ferig what needs to be done, then speak with Grannus. Finishing Truth or Courage now also adds a task toward each path you have left, as finishing Love already did. (2596d3ccf7)
• The tracker now leads the way for "Return to Valhold", "Book Passage from Etceter to Xenos" and the trip to Spite, and Mara, Captain Steel and Samael show quest markers for them. The Etceter and Spite tasks now finish when you book passage or find Samael, where they used to stay open until the whole path was done. (7abc61e505)
• Two fixes to how quest progress is saved. A daily quest flag that expired under an active task no longer stops the journal from closing finished tasks when you change zones. If the game fails to load your quest progress at login, it no longer writes that session's progress over your saved progress, and a once-per-account reward is held back until the next login. (e8f7ae86d8)
• Wrote up the Episode 1 main quest audit: what the eight fixes changed, the decisions taken along the way, and the findings left for the teams that own them. The main quest guide now matches the game, including how the Oracle Temple picks your finale. (49aa9cec40)
• The Shrine of Love at the Sequanna Colossus now holds only the Xanthous Lens for the Path of the Oracle. It restocks every 30 seconds so nobody is raced out of the lens, and it had been paying gold and a rare treasure roll with every restock as well (549c090bc4).
• The lock choice in the Halls of Artifice on the Path of Truth now counts once: whichever lock you use first decides it, and the prison door no longer raises Love again every time you walk back to it after using the trap lock (13a7aecc6b).

Tools

• The Live Tunables page now lists the Night Vision darkness setting added on 24 September. Its row was missing from the page's catalog, so the page could not show or change it, and the catalog's consistency test had been failing since.
• The tester verification sweep now treats a VERDICT: fixed report as partial when any checked line is marked FAIL. One such report had closed a task as fixed while a pet in Castle Atos still could not be petted; the failing line now reopens the original issue for follow-up. (#8940)

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Localization

• Translated every Cabalist ability, circle message and new battle line from the Cabalist pass into German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese and Simplified Chinese.
• Translated the Sun skill Judgment and the Death skill Revenant Stance into Chinese. Both had shown their English name and description to Chinese-language clients since they were added on 2026-08-30, because the translation pass that would have covered them had already run a month earlier.
• Five weeks of new English is now translated into all eight languages: about 2,050 lines per language, including the Shield, Sun and Death skill additions, dragon and elf abilities, the 40 Legendary titles, recent journal entries, loading tips and interface messages. Chinese players had been seeing Answering Blow and Arcane Defense in English. A full second read corrected 1,533 of the 16,324 new lines (9.4%), mostly places where a term differed from what the game already uses. Coverage is 99.5 to 99.8% in every language, with only books left.
• The new World Map / Local Map button on the region map, its tooltip, and the Teleport window line saying no tournaments are running are now translated into all eight languages. Their English had never reached the translation source, so no pass could pick them up.
• Added a nightly translation backlog check. For each of the eight languages it counts the English lines still waiting for a translation, split into new lines and lines whose English changed since they were translated, along with how many days the oldest has waited. The build farm flags it past 300 lines or 7 days, and the morning pass reports it. The first run counted about 2,050 lines per language, built up since August 21.
• The translation fill can now show what it would pick up without writing anything. After each run it also compares punctuation in the new lines against the lines already shipped in that language. Its first flag: recent Chinese lines use 「」 quotation marks where the rest of the Chinese text uses “”.
• Fixed the Spanish copy of St. Godric and the Stag, which showed the code " in four places where quotation marks belong. The backlog check now looks for this in every language file.
• Fixed spelling in eight main quest dialogue lines (Isabel Spalding, Macsen, Damai, the Oracle in Ardoris, Arabella, Min Liang Tan, Grannus and Almeric) and moved each line's translations to its new key so other languages keep them. The Confluence Podium no longer carries a leftover developer note, and the journal now spells the Scepter of Dread the way the item does. (50148d48fb)

Docs

• The Isle of Storms plan now records how the in-place Magic Mirror works, what the first playtest found, and what is left before it is switched on. The server build guide explains how to regenerate the network code for a new operation by hand, and marks its old note about generated files as out of date.
• The Isle of Storms plan now records the review of the early-exit topic and the in-place Magic Mirror: what was fixed, and the calls made on the rest (the skip kit's gate and the step reminders).

Next Steps

• The First Steps tip in the Next Steps list now waits until the New Player Handbook is in your inventory. Established characters without the book were being told to open it. Reported by Patosh through the in-game Oracle (#8977).
• A new-player tip in Next Steps now leaves the quest tracker as soon as you do what it says. Pressing K for the skills tip, Y for the deck tip, or asking the Oracle any question for an Oracle tip retires it; before, only clicking the tip did. Only the tip on screen goes, and a lesson not yet due is never cancelled early. (#9080)
• New characters on the Isle of Storms no longer see Next Steps tell them to spend adventuring experience. Every character starts with 25,000 in each experience pool, and neither experience line appears anywhere on the Isle now, including after the first fights there. Once the character reaches Novia with the pool still unspent, the adventuring line returns. Reported through the in-game Oracle (#9007).

Server

• A security pass over the test shard and the team's web tools. Some admin services on the test shard got an extra layer of access control. The automated security check now covers the services added over the last few weeks, including the guild and town portal.
• A second round of hardening on the team's web services. Several internal tools now need a personal login instead of a shared one, a few more services are reachable only from the machine they run on, and the code host is on its latest release.
• Zoning into a town now checks the lots the game client names against the lots that town has. Lots the town does not have are skipped, and a list longer than any town could need is turned away. The day before, the check only logged; the first 15 hours of logs (206 zone-ins, 47 towns loaded) showed no real client tripping it. (f4f20bb44c)

Conversations

• Checked all 892 NPC lines that hide themselves behind a list of quest flags against the rules the game uses to read those lists, and fixed the 29 that did the opposite of what their author meant. Lord Marshal Declan Robinson no longer repeats his full welcome on every visit, Byron stops introducing himself again in Crooked Shank, and the devotional caretakers' reminder to defeat all four cabalists no longer vanishes after the first kill.

Housing

• A patrolling Conversationalist now checks the lot's property line before it picks a spot to walk to, and refuses anywhere on a neighbouring lot. This adds to last week's fix that kept them on their own lot's ground, after a Conversationalist Ghost was reported patrolling a neighbour's lot in Brittany Estates (reported by Retlaw).
• A Bonfire no longer goes dark when you walk into a building full of lamps and candles beside it (reported by Patosh). Player towns keep only so many placed lights on at once, and the game used to choose them by distance alone, so a building's small lamps a few steps closer pushed a 20 m Bonfire past the limit. Lights are now ranked by how close their glow reaches you, and the limit itself is unchanged (#8992, 64fcafe376).
• Rough Stone building blocks sit exactly on top of each other when stacked. Their collision was 5 cm smaller than the stone on every side, so each block sank about 10 cm into the one below and two short blocks stacked beside a tall one came out short. Ice and Black Ice blocks had the same fault, and two Ice sizes had collision on their bottom layer only. Reported by Joe Z (#6738).
• Rough Stone, Dark Rough Stone, Ice and Black Ice blocks no longer show daylight through their joints. The stone faces are rounded, so blocks placed flush touched only at their high points. Each block now has a thin dark backing down its middle that meets its neighbour edge to edge, and the stones are slightly larger. Checked by casting rays through every joint: about a quarter of them passed through a joint before, none now.
• Grid Snap grows with the held item: a block resized to 1.30X snaps on a grid 1.30 times larger, so resized blocks of the same size line up flush. The Grid Snap line shows the grid size in use.
• On the Round Tower (Village Home), the gaps between the battlements no longer hold you up at the height of the stone blocks beside them. You now drop onto the stone in each gap, and decorations can be placed there. Rain still stops at the roof. (#9093)

Launcher

• Launcher 47: the Graphics, Server, Display and Language drop-downs now fit inside the launcher window. On Linux, where all four show, the Language drop-down ran past the right edge. Each picker now has its name above it and the drop-downs share the window width (reported by Barugon).

Quests

• Fixed 15 quest data errors found in the same pass. Seven Save Mildryd lines in Middle Downs had their flag lists cut off at 255 characters, so a player who threatened Mildryd could still take a second ending; the Port Harmony news hawkers could be praised twice; and lines in Highvale Outskirts, Ardoris and Jaanaford waited on misspelled flags that nothing sets. A new test catches lists cut off at that length.

Decorations

• The Ornate Wine Press no longer shows up solid pink. Its five parts had lost their wood and iron materials on the way over from the old version-control server, so the game drew each one in its error colour. The press also fades out at long distance again, like other decorations. Reported through the in-game Oracle.
• An audit of the old server's partly imported changes turned up eight decoration and item edits that never came across and were not on the to-do list. Two are the wine press fix above. Five are filed to redo: the corkscrew's textures, the Simple Wine Press distance cull, tavern counters that deco pets should not walk on, the bota bag's value and resting pose, and tailors stocking the dyeable Small Canvas Bag recipe. The eighth is a small material tweak on a wood texture.
• Decoration pets walk around the Ornate Tavern Counter and Ornate Tavern Counter B again instead of climbing onto the counter top. The other four tavern counters already kept pets off; these two had missed the change during the move from Perforce.
• The Leather Bota Bag now lies on its side when placed on a floor or the ground, and its value goes from 10 to 120. The update was made in Perforce but never reached the game. The Hanging Leather Bota Bag is still the wall version. (#8997)
• The Corkscrew decoration shows its metal texture again. Its material had kept the old shader and three texture files that had since been replaced, so it drew as a plain grey shape (#8994, a6e1058ab1).
• The Simple Wine Press now fades out at long distance like the Ornate Wine Press, and placement reads its base as the footprint. Both edits had been made in Perforce and never reached the git tree (#8995, 6b7da437f4).
• The Disco Ball Chandelier no longer scatters its dots on the floor of the room below. Its light used to reach 20 to 50 m and passed through floors whenever it had no shadow. It now reaches about one room (8, 10 and 12 m for the three sizes) and is brighter, so the dots in its own room look the same. (#8988)
• The Large Windmill Power Generator, Wind Power Generator and Kobold Wind Power Generator decorations, the Harvest wind farm turbines and the sails on the Windmill (Village Home) now turn their blades into the wind. All six had the blades on the downwind side of the mast, pointing the opposite way from the pennants beside them. A test now checks at five wind headings that every windmill head puts its blades upwind (#8979).
• The Dungeon Waygate can be placed again. Every placement had reported "Something is already in the way" because the pad carried a solid collider that reached below the floor.
• Furniture someone is using can no longer be moved or taken. Chairs, benches, beds and the Grand Piano refuse a drag, Take Item, a stow to the palette or an undo while a player sits on, lies in or plays them, including another player. The old check only looked at the top-level part of the piece, and on almost every seat the seat is a sub-part, so the Grand Piano could be dragged away mid-song. (#9139)
• Furniture can no longer be dropped onto a player. The placement check only tested the space at each player's feet, so a table top, bed or chair seat could be dropped through someone and pop them up on top of it. It now tests the whole body. (#9139)

Maps

• The minimap no longer zooms out past the edge of a zone's map. In smaller zones such as East Perennial Trail, the widest zoom shrank the whole map into a square inside the ring with dark space around it. The minimap now stops at the widest zoom where the map still fills the ring, and its - and + buttons grey out at either end. Larger zones still zoom out as far as before, and your chosen zoom comes back when you return to one. Reported by Elene Sali. (90ed17f6e2)
• The map keys changed. M now opens and closes the big map and nothing else. The round minimap is on by default and has its own key, Ctrl+M, which shows or hides it. Closing the big map returns to the minimap while it is on. The old three-step M cycle and the "Keep Minimap Up" option are gone; Options > Interface has a "Show Minimap" checkbox in its place, and the new key can be rebound under Controls.
• Fog of war now covers every map except the Isle of Storms and the three starter scenes (Solace Bridge, Highvale and Blood River). 188 more maps start covered, including every town and city, the player town templates, the zones below tier 5 and the Novia, Hidden Vale and Mistrendur overworlds. 315 of 339 maps now have fog, up from 127.

Project

• Moved five third-party art packs (Castle Valley Collection, Dinosaur & Dragon Collection, Infinity PBR, NatureManufacture, Tyrannosaurus Rex Sue) under Art/3rdPartyAssets to tidy the Unity project root. No asset changes.

Harvesting

• Pressing Space while your character kneels down to start a harvest now cancels it. The character used to stand up while the harvest ran on behind them, with the swing meter coming up and the skinning pose stuck on. Once the meter is showing, Space is still the swing key. Reported through the Oracle. (#8963)

UI

• Options checkboxes keep their normal text color after a click. The caption used to go dim once the mouse left the row and stayed that way until something else was clicked (reported by Chadwyck).
• New Show Deck Builder Glyph Tooltips setting under Options, Interface, Hotbar. Unticking it stops glyph cards popping up while you arrange a combat deck; empty-slot help and the cannot-be-drawn warning still show. Requested by Akandriel.
• The merchant shop window's Price column is wider on the Buy, Sell and Exchange lists, so a 100,000 gold pet no longer reads as "10..." (#8952, 6f0f80f07e).
• PT Serif is now in every font list: the Conversation & Journal Font option and the Theme Editor's Body, Title and Paragraph fonts. It is a readable book serif, added after the existing five so saved font picks stay as they were. Requested by Astirian. (089515de5c)
• Books and letters now show the "Click to turn the page" and "Click to return to the table of contents" hints only when that button is on screen. After a hint reset, a vendor sale letter pointed at a Contents button it does not have (#8935).
• Fixed the Options window's All tab reading as cramped compared to the other tabs (#9019).
• Added a World Map button to the map window. Click it from any town or dungeon to see the continent map, then click Local Map to return to where you were.
• The chat window now opens 25% wider by default (775 pixels, up from 620) for new players and after Reset Window Layout. The NPC conversation window opens further right and slightly narrower so the two still sit side by side on a 1366-wide screen. Saved layouts are unchanged. (#9017)
• The skill advancement icons on the right edge of the screen no longer overlap the minimap. They now follow the height of the top-right corner and move down when the minimap is made larger. The window buttons also have a little more room above the minimap.
• The quest tracker's Getting started link now has a line of its own under the more tips and more tasks links, and clicking it opens the new player checklist below it. Before, it shared a line with the tips link, and the checklist opened above both links (#9011, #9014).
• The pinned tooltip and the amount picker for splitting stacks had their close button pressed against the top edge of the frame, and the pinned tooltip put it in the top-left corner. Both now have the same space above the close button as a titled window, and the pinned tooltip's sits top-right. Any window with a blank title keeps its full titlebar height. (#9037)
• Fixed the character window sometimes opening with no character in it (reported on the Mistrendur world map, seen in towns and dungeons too). It now puts your figure back each time it opens, and logs what it had to fix so the cause can be traced.
• The Select Zone window's Sort Tournament(s) At Top checkbox is now greyed out while no tournament is running, with a tooltip saying so. No tournaments have been scheduled since 2022, so it looked clickable and did nothing (#9067).
• Pinned tooltips now show the whole card. Pinning a recipe from the Recipe Book used to open a window cut off after the name and tier line; the window now sizes to the full recipe, ingredients and material bonuses included, and a card taller than the screen scrolls (#9039).
• The damaged and broken gear warning icons in the top-right corner grew from 32 to 48 pixels, and the row now sits 8 pixels clear of the toolbar buttons instead of flush under them. The encumbrance and low experience pool marks share the row and grew with them. Requested by Astirian (#9010, d923b8412a).
• Added Gathering Meter Style to Options, Interface tab. Themed is the new skill decoration and the default; Classic is the ring exactly as it was.
• Players can take an item back out of their side of a trade by double-clicking it or choosing Remove from Trade from its right-click menu. Removing an item clears both players' acceptance, so each has to accept the changed trade again.
• After Exit to Menu with the logout countdown skipped, the "still in the game" character screen now has a Select Avatar button. It used to offer only Resume and Log Out, so switching to another character meant logging out and typing the password again; the session now carries over. The name screen also says "Waiting on your character to leave the game..." during that wait instead of printing an error code, and re-enables Create by itself once the old character has left.
• Buff and debuff icons under an enemy's name no longer climb onto its health bar when a fifth effect lands. The first row of four stays put and extra icons start a second row underneath, so the health and cast bars stay readable (#8986).
• Quest markers on the compass are easier to see. Every compass marker has a thin dark outline, active task markers stay at 85% opacity and 24 px or more when far away (they faded to 55% and 18 px before), and the quest blue is lighter. The map window markers are unchanged. (#9083)

Combat

• Stacked bleeds, burns and poisons no longer rattle off a hit sound five times a second. Each stack ticks on its own timer, so the tick sound now plays at most once a second per target while damage numbers still show on every tick (#8965).
• A stunned or knocked-down creature no longer takes glancing blows from weapon hits. Stun already stopped it dodging, but its armor could still turn a sword aside while it stood helpless. Spells can still be partially resisted. (#8962)
• A creature that is stunned or knocked down part-way through an attack no longer lands that attack a moment later. A Shadow Spider hit by Body Slam mid-swing could still hit the player while shown as stunned, which read as a glancing blow against heavy armor. Stun chance and length are unchanged.
• The bard song lockout after fighting is now 10 seconds, down from 20. Dealing damage or using a non-bard combat skill still starts it, and being hit still does not. Requested by Fifi Brindacie (7fbaeef8f9).
• Bolster Balance now plays a casting animation. The skill worked before but the character stood still with only a glow on the hands; it now uses the same self-cast as Deflect, and it still fires instantly and can be used on the move (#9076).
• Elementals now resist their own element at 50% instead of being immune to it. A summoned Water or Ice Elemental takes half damage from water, and fire does half damage to wild Fire Elementals, lava golems, Pyre and Spawn of Pele. Fire Elementals standing in lava are still unharmed by it. A tester had soloed Brign, Lord of Water, by letting a summoned Water Elemental take his hits for free.
• Bolster Balance now also reduces the damage of spell critical hits you take, as long as you have trained Arcane Defense, and the reduction grows with your Arcane Defense level. At Bolster Balance 100 and Arcane Defense 100, a spell crit that would have hit for twice normal damage lands at about 1.65 times; at Arcane Defense 200 the spell reduction matches the weapon one. The skill description now names both reductions. Our shield notes had said the weapon half lowers the chance of being crit; it lowers crit damage, and always has. Requested by Sethanon. (46ad19961b)
• Breakable walls that need a mining pick, such as those in Etceter Crag Mines, can no longer be targeted or broken by auto-attack or spells. Crates and barrels still smash in combat.
• Discharge and Chain Lightning always lowered the air resistance of what they hit, but the debuff icon on the target only showed the stun. The icon now lists the air resistance reduction too, and the Air Magic Specialization description says plainly that the earth resistance it lowers is your own. (#9135)
• Knocking down or stunning a creature while it casts now stops the spell. The cast bar turned red but the bolt, heal or buff still landed, because the creature AI stopped watching for interrupts about 0.15 seconds into a two-second cast. The same gap had switched off the rule that lets one heavy hit interrupt a creature cast; that works again too. Melee creatures still move off the moment their blow lands (#9133).

Quest Tracker

• Hint lines in the quest tracker now start with the quest they belong to, for example "Mention Valve to Minister: Find the Minister of Defense...". These lines fill in when a player has more quests than the tracker shows, and they used to read like a quest with the wrong name. A quest you untrack no longer comes back as a hint line. Reported by Chadwyck through the in-game Oracle (#8969).

Chat

• The channel button beside the chat box now lists Whisper when the chat tab has Whisper ticked. Whisper... starts a /w in the box for you to type a name, and Reply to switches straight to whispering the last player who whispered you. Before, /w was the only way in. Reported by Akandriel through the in-game Oracle (#8958).
• Chat and NPC conversation timestamps show the time set on the player's own computer. Some machines showed UTC, most likely Linux and Linux running the Windows client through Proton. The game now asks the operating system for the time zone. /time, the saved chat log and guild event times use the same clock. Reported by gravidy. (#7868)

Community Addons

• Addon reviewers can now send a message to the author, and the author reads it in the Community Addons window under My Submissions: the row shows a hint and selecting it shows the whole message. The review scan drafts the message (missing files, manifest mismatches, undeclared hosts) and an admin edits it before sending.
• A delisted addon now shows Removed from store in My Submissions instead of "Waiting for review", and an old review note no longer carries over when a submission changes state.

Add-Ons

• New add-on call ShroudGetPlayerCompassHeading() (API version 10) returns the direction your character faces as the HUD compass names it, 0 for N through 270 for W, in every zone including dungeons and mines. The documented heading formula built from ShroudGetCurrentSceneOrientation() read 90 degrees low and now carries the missing 90 (36578e1a3a, #8961).
• Add-on key checks (ShroudGetKeyDown, ShroudGetOnKeyDown, ShroudGetOnKeyUp) now answer false while you type in chat or any other text field, so an add-on cannot read what you type and a hotkey no longer fires as you type its letter.
• A one-time add-on timer from ShroudRegisterPeriodic now fires once. When another timer was queued it used to stop that timer and keep repeating itself. Timers also stop when their add-on is turned off.
• The add-on time limit now also covers a callback that runs inside another callback and turning an add-on on from the manager, and debug.debug() is no longer available. ShroudOnStart gets the 5 second limit the docs described.
• Add-on packages that need a newer game client are skipped at load with a chat line naming the version they need, and the Community Addons window shows Needs a newer client in place of the Install button.
• Shroud.UI (add-on API 11): Lua add-ons can now build real game windows. An add-on describes a window as rows, columns, labels, buttons, images and bars, and gets the game's own frame, dragging, resizing, snapping, saved position, skin and window opacity with no extra code.
• Add-on windows sit on their own layer behind every game window, carry an Add-on tag and the add-on's name that the title cannot hide, and show text exactly as written. /lua hideui or a button in the add-on manager hides them all, and the manager lists each add-on's windows so a closed one can be opened again.
• A click on an add-on window now reaches only the add-on that made it, and everything an add-on built is removed when it is turned off. The older widget calls, where every click went to every add-on, keep working for existing add-ons.
• The add-on reference has a new Windows chapter and a Session Window example add-on. The Community Addons store accepts packages that need API 11, and its automated review now lists every window title and button caption a package shows and flags ones that ask for passwords or account details.
• Add-on windows can now hold text boxes, check boxes, sliders, drop-down lists, scrolling lists and grids (add-on API 12), and any part of one can show the game's own hover tooltip. Typing into an add-on text box stops movement and hotbar keys the same way the chat box does.
• Add-ons can draw HUD frames: frameless strips that sit behind the game's own HUD, move by a small grip, hide the grip when Lock Status Movement is on, and go back to their start with Reset Positions. A HUD frame cannot hold a text box or a drop-down list, and one add-on's frames can cover at most 35% of the screen.
• /lua show lists every add-on window, and /lua show <id> opens one again after you closed it.
• Reviewed the new Shroud.UI add-on window toolkit and tightened it: the X on an add-on window always closes it, a closed window cannot be forced back open for 3 seconds even by rebuilding it, HUD strip grips stay on top of their content and strips stay on screen, hiding a text box hands the keyboard back to the game, faded rows can no longer hide working buttons, and tooltips, placeholders and drop-down entries now count toward each add-ons text limit.
• The Community Addons store now accepts packages that ship their own art: up to 12 PNG or JPEG images per addon, each up to 256 KiB and 1024 pixels a side. The store checks every image header, and reviewers see each picture on the review page before approving.
• Add-ons packaged for the store can now carry their own PNG and JPEG art, and the Submit to Community upload includes it. The game reads each picture's size from its header before loading it and refuses files that claim to be larger than 4096 pixels a side.
• Pictures in add-on windows can now be tinted with a colour or a theme colour that follows your skin, cut from one frame of a sprite sheet, and rotated, so an add-on can animate an icon strip or turn a compass needle.
• Add-on API 13: add-ons can show the icon of every item in your bags and on your character, and can react when your target changes, a buff starts or ends, you enter or leave combat, or your bags change, instead of checking every frame.
• ShroudGetEquipments no longer fails when an equipment slot is empty, which was the case for nearly every character. Add-ons split across several files can now build on an earlier file's tables at the top of a later file without that file failing to load.
• New add-on calls ShroudGetInventoryItems and ShroudGetEquipmentItems return each item with its quantity, weight, value, durability, crafter and icon. The older ShroudGetInventory turned out to return only item names, not the fields its documentation listed; it keeps working as before and the documentation now says so.
• Avatar's Companion is a new sample add-on for authors to read and copy. It shows a character sheet, a bag browser with item icons, search and sorting, your effects with timers, and a journal, all in one game-styled window, plus a HUD compass and pop-up notes, using its own art. Each of its ten files covers one part of the add-on API.
• The add-on documentation site has a new Examples page: each sample add-on has its own page with its notes, every file, and a zip to download. The examples the guide linked to were never published before.
• The Add-Ons window now titles an add-on made of several Lua files by its own name. It used to append the name of whichever file loaded first, which was rarely the file that mattered. Single-file add-ons still show their file name. (#9132)

Art

• Fallow Granite building blocks now show their stone grain at full detail. The shared granite texture had been drawn at half resolution with heavy compression, which made every Fallow Granite block look blurry next to marble and wood. The granite ore deposits use the same texture and got sharper too. Reported through the Oracle.
• The stone stairs in Castle Atos now load their textures at 2048 instead of 1024 and without crunch compression, so the steps look sharp up close again (4d380a825c).

Infrastructure

• Measured the log cluster against 100 times today's player count: about 10 GB of logs a day and 140 GB for the two-week window. The server can hold that volume, but wide dashboard queries would compete with the game servers for CPU and push the game database out of cache, so the recommendation is to move logging to its own machine before player counts reach about 40 times today's. Also prepared a CPU cap for the log search engine and a snapshot policy that stops keeping monthly copies of logs that are deleted after two weeks.
• Corrected the documentation that still described the test server as Photon running inside a Windows virtual machine. That setup was retired on July 9; about 25 pages, several config comments and the project instructions now describe the native Linux server that replaced it, and procedures that only applied to the old machine are marked as retired. Also fixed a teardown step that would have deleted the current server and its database if anyone had followed it.
• Priced hosted alternatives to a dedicated logging server for 100 times today's player count, about 700 GB of logs a month. A dedicated server in the same datacenter came to $164 a month; the managed search services that keep our existing dashboards and tools working ran $290 to $360; per-gigabyte log services started around $130 but would mean rewriting every dashboard and tool that reads the logs.
• Cut the logs the test server sends to its search cluster by about 60%. Every client log line had been stored twice, server metrics were recorded every 10 seconds instead of every minute, and four messages repeated far more than they needed to: a combat check that logged every call over its limit, the web portal's status polling, a friends-list sync, and a teleporter warning that fired about 100 times per play session. Also fixed the nightly combat balance summary, which had been counting every cast, hit and experience award twice.

World

• Removed two trees growing through the stone and wood house in East Perennial Trail. Their branches had been showing through the ground floor walls and the roof over the upstairs crafting stations. Reported by Elene Sali. A new editor test fails if any tree near the house reaches inside it again.
• Rebuilt the monster pathing in Blackblade Pass, The Rookery, the Well of Aldur interior and the Events Arena keep basement. The barred prison doors in Blackblade Pass no longer cut the walkable ground at their doorways, so creatures can follow a path through an open one (d4064abfe5).

Achievements

• New Exploration ladder for the square meters of map an account has uncovered from fog of war: Pathfinder (100,000), Scout (1,000,000), Surveyor (10,000,000), Cartographer (25,000,000) and Mapmaker (50,000,000). The server counts each newly revealed cell at its real size, which ranges from 1 m² in small dungeons to about 990 m² on Jotungrund. Ground explored before the ladder existed counts from the first new reveal. The tester Clear Fog button earns nothing.
• Each map floor's cell size is now baked from the map registry into a new server report table (312 maps), refreshed by the nightly report job whenever a map is recaptured.

Emotes

• Seated CryBlood, Breathe Pink Hearts and Breathe Leaves now start their effect at the character's face and keep it there for the whole emote. A seated character's head was lowered onto the chair only after that frame's particles had been placed, so they came out at standing head height; the head is now lowered first. This replaces the earlier fix that a tester found failing on build 282 (#8801, #8884, 9d5ba6ca1b).

Inventory

• Dropping a container that still holds items into a bag you are carrying works: the game moves the contents in first and keeps them grouped under the container. A tester on chaos build 276 reported this against a test step that expected a refusal. The step was wrong, and the write-up now says so, with 3 new tests over the order the game does it in (b25af63a1f).

Website

• The public roadmap caught up with two months of work: the Done list now covers the creature and siege rebuilds, player dungeons, housing sales, the bard rework, offline play and more, and the launch timeline says which safeguards are finished and which are still to come before October 1.
• Crash alerts moved to the Done list on the public roadmap: reports are grouped and scored as they arrive, and a spike in a new crash pages the team. Player support basics (self-service password reset and tracked support requests) moved to the Roadmap tab, planned for the first quarter of 2027.

Audio

• The Oracle's line at the Ankh on the Isle of Storms can no longer be spammed: touching the Ankh again replays the voice and on-screen text only after the previous line has finished (about 6 seconds). The Oracle's door still opens on every touch. (#9016)
• Creature combat sounds fade out with distance again. Hits, grunts and bleed ticks from a fight far across the zone had stayed at about a fifth of full volume at any range; they now go silent past the range each creature was authored with, usually 35 to 50 metres (#9129).

Voice

• Anaïs no longer skips words in her combat decks lesson on the Isle of Storms. The recording said "Ranged puts Thrust" where the text reads "Ranged puts Aimed Shot, and Blades puts Thrust". Both versions of the line were re-voiced with small punctuation changes that kept every word in 12 of 12 test takes (3459af6e20).

Mail

• Fixed the mailbox showing the right count with an empty list after a zone change. Mail that was loading when you changed zones used to stay unloaded for the rest of the session. It now finishes loading in the new zone, and the loading indicator clears. (#6243)

NPC Voices

• Anaïs, the child who hosts the Lost Vale temple, now speaks with the same voice she uses at every First Steps stop on the Isle of Storms. The temple conversation had never been added to the list that pins her voice, so it had drawn a different, squeakier child voice and she sounded like another girl. Her name stays as written: Andred outside the temple is the one who tells you it. (2e0cc54d03)

Economy

• A gold item worth nothing could not be taken, and every Take All on the corpse, chest or mail holding it failed. Taking one now removes it and pays nothing, and vendor sale and refund letters no longer carry a gold item when the payout is zero (#8983).

Platform

• Added Steam uploads for the new client. Every chaos build now goes to a private Steam test branch, so Steam installs stay on the version the shard accepts, and the public Steam branch switches to the new client at the October 1 go-live.
• The Steam upload account now logs in with one command that also checks the login keeps working unattended, which every automatic upload depends on.
• Paused the automatic Steam uploads. Adding their Jenkins job needed an admin approval nobody had given, so the build jobs could not be regenerated and the afternoon chaos release stopped at its first check. The release check now says when a job change is waiting on that approval.
• Corrected the Steam runbook to name the Steamworks field that limits a launch option to one branch (Beta Branch), found while setting up the private test branch.

Nameplates

• The name labels over the storehouse supply crates in Ardoris and the other towns float above the crates again. A change earlier this week that lowered creature name plates read the invisible helper behind each crate as zero height and pulled its label down inside the crate (#8990).

Store

• Players who start the game from Steam now buy Crowns through the web store like everyone else. A test build launched from Steam sent the Buy button to a Steam checkout that is not built yet, and nothing happened.

Gathering

• The gathering swing meter now wears the skill you are gathering with: quartz crystals for Mining, an oak twig with acorns for Forestry, a sage sprig with a violet flower for Foraging and a deer antler for Field Dressing, painted at the two lower sides of the ring over a dark band tinted to match. Requested by Ceal Astra.
• The meter also reacts to the swing. The orange centre band glows softly while it can pay a bonus, a hit pulses the ring, a perfect hit sends a white ring outward with a small burst of crystal chips, leaves or sparkles and a glint on the ornaments, and a miss or a sweep left to run out dims the decoration until the next swing. The timing, the zones and the ring's own colours are unchanged, and the ornaments stay clear of the track, the callout and the Swing button at every size.

Vendors

• Ticking Sell individually on a player vendor listing no longer refuses the price it fills in. The box showed 1 gold each, but the dialog had read the new "Price Each:" caption as a typed price of 0, so it warned that the stack came to too little and kept List It greyed out until the price was retyped. The same fix covers Accept partial fills on vendor orders. (#8943)

Crafting

• Tailors now sell the Small Canvas Bag recipe next to the Small Leather Bag recipe, as the patch that added the dyeable bag promised. The listing was one of the Perforce edits the git import had held back.
• At a crafting station, the Your Inventory list greys items that belong to a different kind of station again and lists the station's own items first, so the Salvageable category shows what can be salvaged at that table. The colouring was lost when the crafting window moved to UI Toolkit. Requested by Ceal Astra (#9128).

Lua Addons

• The Lua addon guide now explains how to build a multi-file addon as a package before its first submission, what a package may contain (flat .lua files, an icon and a README, no subfolders or data files), and how to replace runtime loading of sibling files with the manifest file list. Questions from addon authors prompted it (5e5de21c97).
• An addon folder that fails to load now says why in chat after /lua reload (a reserved or mismatched slug, a loose file with the same name, a bad manifest field, a missing file). Before, the reason went only to the log file and the folder just never appeared. Reported by Peace-n-Love (2348be6ac8).
• New /lua check command lists everything that would stop an addon from loading or from being submitted to Community Addons, all at once, with notes on files the upload leaves out and on runtime code loading (2348be6ac8).
• Community Addons has a Make Package button on each single-file addon (also /lua package). It builds a package folder and manifest from the file, keeps its settings and enabled state, and renames the original to .bak, so authors can split an addon into several files and test it before submitting (2348be6ac8).

The Breach

• The four Elemental Lords now fight with their second-pass abilities on chaos. Gael shelters players in the Eye of the Storm, Wrauk throws a Burden of Stone the group must share, Pyre marks a player with Kindle who must run clear of the group, and Brign casts Wellspring, a heal that only several players stunning it together can stop.

Scenes

• The taverns in Northwood and The Fall each have a Corkscrew out to steal again, on a counter in Northwood and a shelf in The Fall. The placements were made in Perforce last month and both scenes had been held back from the git import (#9103, 060825ca62).

Client

• Hovering an object whose tooltip source had just been destroyed (a looted corpse, a removed component) no longer throws an error that skipped the rest of that frame's UI update. The tooltip cache now drops dead sources and looks again (f34517cbc3, #8985).
• Fixed the QA builds 284 and 285 stopping at "Loading 100%" before the title screen. A front-end window file had been saved with the login screen and 13 other front-end windows switched off, so the login flow never started. They ship switched on again, and a new test fails if that window file loses them again. The fix goes out with the next QA build (#9159).

Book Narration

• The Read Aloud narrator will now say "bonesteel" as "bone steel" every time. It had read the word two different ways within one Blood River Massacre letter. The 35 letters and prophecy books that use the word get new recordings with the next re-bake. Reported through the in-game Oracle.

Rewards

• Fixed the Rewards window sometimes leaving the "new rewards" highlight lit after it finished loading. If the reward counter moved backwards during a long load (for example after switching accounts without restarting), the load stopped before marking the rewards as seen; it now marks them against the current counter, and the window reloads on any counter change. (#8984, 1822024)

Books

• Two lines in the New Player Handbook were reworded. The advice for new players now points at a Hospitaller or the forums for what other players have planned, and the chat command list names the animation /sit plays.
• Rebuilding every book's shipped pages from its source files reverts 20 proofreading corrections, which were made to the shipped pages and never copied back into the sources. The handbook change was applied to that book's entry alone. The stale source files still need the corrections carried back into them.

Creatures

• Wrauk, Lord of Earth in The Breach, gained a second-pass kit that ships switched off. With it on, Burden of Stone throws a boulder whose damage is split among the players standing by its target (twice your health alone, a third each at six or more), Rockfall leaves slowing rubble below half health, and Worldbreaker asks the whole group to stand together below a quarter.
• Wrauk's Earthquake now winds up for 2 seconds with a 10 m ring you can walk out of (it gave 1.1 seconds on 14 m before), his Ground Pound stuns every 8 seconds instead of every 2, and his kit carries physical damage at every stage of the fight, so an Earth summon can no longer tank him unharmed. All of it stays behind a switch until the new fight is tested.
• Pyre, Lord of Fire in The Breach, gained a second-pass kit that ships switched off. With it on, Kindle marks a player with a flame that burns everyone near them for a fifth of their health per person caught, so the marked player has to run clear of the group, the opposite of Wrauk's Burden of Stone.
• Pyre's new Ring of Fire and, below a quarter health, Firestorm leave burning ground with a physical edge that Fire summons feel too. Consume Servant takes 40% of a pet's health in an interruptible cast, and Magma Lance hits players who stand where Pyre cannot reach. Drain Focus and the old enrage are gone while the switch is on.
• Creatures whose spells are turned on and off by live settings (elves, dragons, the Breach Lords) now judge how far they can reach using only the spells they can cast right now. A switched-off long-range spell no longer extends that reach. The Animal Lore damage list and the GM possession bar also leave out switched-off spells.
• Brign, Lord of Water, got its second-pass kit for The Breach, shipped switched off: Wellspring, a 7 second heal that damage cannot stop and only crowd control from several players landing together can break, plus High Tide, Crashing Tide, Undertow and a harder Ice Field whose physical half reaches water summons.
• Spawn of Pele, the finale of The Breach, has a new kit that ships switched off: a Magma Brand that makes its target take more damage with each swing, Magma Vents that stay open and slowly cover the arena floor, a thrown Magma Lob for players who perch out of reach, the Caldera, an arena-wide eruption the players share that Pele cannot call while every shard lies broken, and a Molten Fury that Break Armor cannot strip. With the switch off Pele fights exactly as it did.
• The Breach: Pyre, Brign and the Spawn of Pele now swap to their heavier second-pass weapons whenever their new kits are switched on, and back when they are switched off, even in the middle of a fight. The Spawn of Pele gets its Magma Fist this way. Ships switched off.
• The Breach: with the royale pass switched on, the Spawn of Pele's kill pays every group that did at least a tenth of the damage and stood within 40 m, the rule the Elemental Convocation uses, instead of only the top group within 20 m. The game now also records whether Brign's Wellspring and High Tide and Pele's Caldera landed or were stopped, and by how many players, for tuning. Both ship switched off.
• Breach bosses whose weapon follows a live switch now also change the auto-attack they actually swing when that switch flips mid-fight, and Spawn of Pele's shared kill credit falls back to the ordinary kill reward if it cannot name anyone. Ships switched off.
• The Breach: a corner Lord that re-forms through the Elemental Convocation now comes back with its long abilities ready, instead of carrying ten-minute cooldowns through its wait. Ships switched off.
• The Breach royale now keeps track of a slain Spawn of Pele and of fallen arena Lords when the host client changes mid-run, so the shards no longer re-arm after the finale and Bequest no longer weakens. With the royale pass on, the Death Power Shards have 12,000 health (5,000 today). Ships switched off.
• The Breach: with his second-pass kit switched on, Wrauk keeps the reach and line-of-sight rules he ships with, and the rubble his Rockfall leaves behind can no longer land a critical hit. Ships switched off.
• Clockwork dragons now answer a bleed with Flammable Oil, as their new kit intended; its shipped Oil Spray, retired by that kit, had been blocking it, so a bleed on a clockwork drew no response at all.
• Creatures whose heal, buff, raise, stealth or death ability is switched off by a family switch no longer act on it: they stop looking for allies to heal or buff with an ability they cannot cast, and a fallen ally no longer waits for a raise that cannot come. No change with the switches at their defaults.
• Creatures that move a player by magic, such as Cabalist Indigno's throw and the large daemons' teleport pull, no longer snap the player's camera, no longer move a player who is protected after resurrecting, and land the player on real ground. The landing spot is picked once by the player's own game, so other players see the landing where it happened.
• A wounded creature now has a 1 in 10 chance to break and run as it drops below half health, and gets its usual check again near a fifth of its health (6 in 10 for animals, 4 in 10 for bandits, elves and kobolds). A tester reported the Tartarus satyr guards walking away from fights after 10 to 15 seconds. Satyrs count as animals for this check, and build 273 gave them a 6 in 10 chance to run at half health. A new Early nerve tweak sets the half-health odds.
• Began a new aura engine for bosses: the boss is the source of its aura, effects end a few seconds after a player steps out of the circle, and every client agrees on when a boss pulse lands. Nothing uses it yet.
• The new boss aura engine can now draw a boss's circle on the ground, with a dashed warning ring before a pulse that looks different from the army's own attack warnings, and it follows the town siege as it moves from march to shrine. It stays switched off until the Cabalists move onto it.
• Fauns and children now have their own rules for breaking and running. A faun has a 2 in 10 chance to run as it drops below half health and always runs below a fifth of its health. Satyrs stay at 1 in 10. A child has a 5 in 10 chance at half health and always runs below a fifth. Bandit children follow the bandit rules and undead children never run. Six new Child and Faun nerve tweaks set the odds.

Sieges

• Four Cabalist weapons now land as ordinary weapon blows. Avara's flail and the halberd Indigno and Vitium carry had been resolving as spells, with no parry, no block and no swing sound, and Fastus's spear could not be blocked. Dolus lost a 15-second area stun that could repeat every second below a quarter of health, and Corpus, Nefario and Nefas lost a low-health cast that reached nobody.
• Planned a full pass on the siege Cabalists after an audit found their curses broken almost everywhere: an invisible 52-metre field that reached through floors and lingered for up to a minute, one curse that never applied and one that stealthed the players. Each Cabalist is to carry a visible coloured circle and a signature pulse with a warning, the siege meter becomes the difficulty dial, and a kill at full strength will pay more. Indigno will throw marked players into the sky, and Corpus will strip worn gear until the fight ends. Requested in part by Spinok.
• Corpus fought with no weapon at all, so every blow did one or two points of damage whatever the siege meter said. Corpus now has bare fists that hit like the other Cabalists' weapons: about 160 per blow, 288 at a full meter.
• Stuns, knockbacks and knockdowns now land on the siege Cabalists at about half their usual chance; before, they never landed at all while one player could keep a Cabalist mesmerized. Each Cabalist now needs four controls within about three seconds to hold it (Vitium six), and no Cabalist runs away at low health any more.
• The siege-power settings for Cabalist health, damage and regeneration had been overridden by fixed values in the client, so changing them did nothing. They now take effect live. A new difficulty curve for the siege Cabalists is built behind a switch, still off: a drained Cabalist becomes a hard fight for one or two players and a full-strength one needs a group, with regeneration the same in and out of combat.
• Fixed a Cabalist killed in a second copy of a besieged town paying no experience when another group had cleared the town moments before. Also built, behind a switch that is still off: a Cabalist killed at full strength pays up to four times the experience and extra rolls of its own loot, so draining the siege meter first becomes a choice. Requested by Spinok.
• Built the shared pieces the new Cabalist fights need, still switched off: warnings that mark one player at a time, a Cabalist that stands still while it winds up a big move, named warning lines spoken as each move starts, and curse circles that only reach players actually fighting a Cabalist once it is pulled away from its shrine.
• Vitium's quarter-health throw now carries players well away from his throne. The landing spot was drawn from anywhere in the Cabalist Stronghold, and the crowded ground around the throne came up far more often than its size deserves: on chaos build 267 a tester standing beside him was thrown only about 29 metres and barely noticed it. A thrown player now always lands at least 40 metres from him. The same tester's fight also confirmed from the server logs that the four Cabalists he calls back at half health pay experience when killed.
• Replaced every Cabalist's invisible 50-metre curse field with a coloured ground circle whose effects are named for the Cabalist, built behind a switch. The circles stay off until a two-client check on the test shard, so until then the Cabalists carry no curse at all. Dolus's circle will be the only one that reverses movement keys, always the same mirror layout, a few seconds at a time.
• Built Dolus's new fight behind a switch: Doublespeak blasts that alternate every 30 seconds between a circle at Dolus's feet and a wide ring with a safe centre, key reversal locked to that beat and never during a warning, and Two Faces, a false copy of Dolus that halves the damage Dolus takes until the copy is struck down. Requested by Spinok.
• Siege attackers now arrive in a thick cloud of purple smoke under the existing burst, after testers found the burst hard to see in a lit street (#6610).
• Built Temna's new fight behind a switch: inside Temna's circle, heals from other players are cut and the lost healing restores Temna; Scorn blasts hit harder the more players stand together; and Turncoat Bolt makes the struck player refuse heals from others for 6 seconds, biting the first healer who tries. Requested by Spinok.
• Built Nefario's new fight behind a switch: inside Nefario's circle players take more damage except right at Nefario's feet; a Rout every 24 seconds strikes fighters who hang back within 35 metres; a group standing close makes Nefario lose nerve and leap away; Craven Cut and the Hunt punish wounded players who stray; and near death a Cornered Lash strikes everyone close. Requested by Spinok.
• Built Nefas's new fight behind a switch: the Court of Injustice circle stays, and every 24 seconds Nefas names one player with a gold ring. Three seconds later the Verdict strikes that player and everyone within 4.5 metres for 20% to 30% of their health. Below half health Nefas names two players, and below a quarter a Summons pulls everyone fighting outside the circle in just before each Verdict. Requested by Spinok.
• Built Avara's new fight behind a switch: inside Avara's circle every point of focus spent costs health; Collection fills the circle every 24 seconds and hits harder the more focus a player has spent; and the Ward of Debt cuts the damage Avara takes to a quarter until one player stands in a pale circle and pays in health, or heals Avara if no one does. Avara also gains a Lash against players beyond 12 metres, Scourging below a quarter health and a last burst on death that cannot kill. Requested by Spinok.
• Built Indigno's new fight behind a switch: Fall from Grace marks players fighting Indigno with a white ring and a 4 second warning, and throws any who ignore every answer 35 to 50 metres into the air. A player can answer by standing in the pale sanctuary at Indigno's feet, sharing the ring with another fighter, or breaking Indigno's line of sight. Requested by Spinok.
• Built Corpus's new fight behind a switch: fighters inside Corpus's circle lose one worn piece of gear every 3 to 8 seconds, weapons included once the fight is well under way, and cannot put stripped pieces back on until the fight ends, when they go back on automatically. Nothing leaves the pack, so no item can be lost. Corpus also gains Cold Stone, Out of That Plate, Bared Flesh and Carnal Grasp. Requested by Spinok.
• Built Fastus's new fight behind a switch: Look Upon Me flares from a red sun circle and freezes players whose camera faces Fastus for up to 3 seconds; below half health, gold moon circles punish looking away; and Look Closer dashes Fastus at a distant fighter unless a wall, distance or a root stops it. Requested by Spinok.

Build

• Last night's chaos release failed because the Unity license on the Linux build machine had expired. It lasts 30 days and has to be renewed by hand. The release now checks the license before anything else and stops in seconds with the fix named, before players get the "new build coming" message or a build number is used up. Five days before the license runs out, the nightly build turns yellow as a warning (c893543571).
• The Linux build machine now renews its own Unity license. A daily job renews the 30-day license once 10 days or fewer are left, so it no longer expires and takes down the nightly chaos build (0f8f30ef3a).
• The next chaos release stopped at the same memory check, and so did one started right after it. The check counted only the memory the build machine had already set aside, not the room its pagefile still had to grow, and that ceiling rose by 5 GB while the second run waited. The check has been removed from the Windows build. The machine's larger fixed pagefile, live at its next restart, is what gives the build room now.

The Herald

• The New Britannia Herald for 2026-09-23 is up: Wednesday was the day the monsters of New Britannia were rebuilt. Dragons got a sky phase that actually plays, skeletons can be shattered past any mage's power to raise them, and trolls discovered they can be stunned after all. Along the way we found a resurrection spell that seventy-seven creatures have been casting on themselves for years, and a banker's trophy list that took the whole server down. Listen or read the transcript (17 min). Subscribe in any podcast app: /blog/podcast.xml

Combat

• Review fixes to Pyre's reworked kit, which is still switched off: Kindle's range dropped from 40 m to 30 m, matching the Fireball, so Magma Lance still answers players who stay out of reach, and the burning ground can no longer land a critical hit.
• A stunned, knocked-down or mesmerized creature no longer speaks. Skeletons and liches used to keep taunting through a stun; now a line already playing is cut when the stun lands, and they start taunting again once it wears off (#8800).
• Blades: Double Slash and Whirling Blades now let you act again after 1 second instead of 1.33, and every hit still lands. Double Slash cooldown dropped from 8 to 6 seconds, Coup de Grace from 10 to 8, and Coup de Grace costs 20% less focus (37 instead of 46 at skill 100). Thrust, Riposte and Rend are unchanged.
• A player kill now adds one to the Slayer achievement count. Since late August each PvP kill on chaos had counted twice. Live counts were never affected.
• Extended the new boss aura engine for the Cabalist pass so it can draw its ground circles and read the siege state: a glowing band in each boss's colour, a warning ring whose fill turns red only when the pulse deals damage, and a cap on how many rings draw at once. No creature uses it yet.
• Shadow bears, wolves, spiders and scorpions in Spindelskog now resist 50% of magic and poison damage, down from 75%. Summoned elementals and single-school casters hit them for half their normal damage instead of a quarter. Weapon damage is unchanged. Reported by ai_dude on the forum.
• Casting Sacrifice on yourself during Revenant Stance is now refused with a combat-chat message, before any focus, cooldown or health is spent. The stance blocks all healing, so the self-heal did nothing while the half-health price still landed and killed the caster. Sacrifice on other players works as before. Reported through the Oracle.
• Dodges now always make a sound: when the attacker's weapon has no dodge sound of its own (every weapon but the long bow), its miss swing plays instead. Parry, block and dodge sounds also play at 1.5 times their previous volume so they carry over a busy fight (#6775).
• Hostile spells in every school scale less steeply with attunement: the final power on the attunement curve dropped from 1.75 to 1.5. A caster at 200 net attunement now deals about 16% less spell damage, at 400 about 22% less; casters with little attunement are unchanged. Prompted by chaos mages taking down dragons in about 30 seconds.
• Added regression tests pinning the shadow creature magic and poison resistance at 50% (#6076).

Community

• Logged two player forum suggestions to the tracker: giving experienced players tougher tiered fights in the Courage Club, and a visual cleanup pass on the double-size cursor's colorized outline. Also noted a live report confirming a neighbor NPC lot-crossing bug already fixed on chaos, pending release.

Localization

• Chinese: the Flechier Tapestry Formal set now uses one name, 弗莱奇尔, on every piece and pattern. The jacket, leggings, boots and several patterns had used two other spellings, so searching the set name found only part of it.
• The Chinese name of the Golden Clockwork chestpiece now uses the same set name (黄金发条) as the helmet, boots, gauntlets and leggings, so a search for the set finds every piece. Reported by PoPo QiQi.
• Chinese: the Virtue Flame boots, armor set and all five Eternal patterns now use 火焰 for "Flame", matching the helmet, gloves, leggings and chest piece. The patterns also share one word for "pattern" (永恒图样). Reported by PoPo QiQi.
• Chinese client: every Silver Clockwork item, pattern, pet and pet summon now reads 银质发条. The line had used five spellings, so a store search for the set missed most of it (reported by PoPo QiQi).
• The Vendor Listings in Zone window now shows its category and stat-filter dropdowns in the game language instead of English. The stat names now match the item tooltips, and Max Focus has its own translated name so it no longer reads the same as Focus. Reported through the in-game Oracle on a Chinese client (#8809).
• Chinese client: the Golden Clockwork chestpiece now reads 黄金发条 like the rest of the set, so searching the set name finds it. The Golden Clockwork cat, dog, baby dragon, mounted dragon and their summon skills use the same name now too (#8811, reported by PoPo QiQi).
• Regenerated the translation source records for the newest interface strings, including the player frame fade option, so they reach the next translation pass.

Oracle

• The Oracle can now answer what counts as a Rare Creature, what the Enable Chat Audio option does, whether you can set an in-game alarm or reminder (you cannot), where Ribbit the Frog King is, how town and guild prestige is earned, and how an add-on can look up a skill icon by name. She also stopped describing Voice Training as a live bard skill; it was retired and refunded on September 19.

Leaderboards

• The Creatures leaderboard no longer lists a creature twice when a player on a translated client dies to it. Tiered creatures such as "Lich Sharpshooter (T4)" were recorded under their Japanese name for Japanese players, making a second row; deaths now count on the English row. Older translated rows drop off the 7 and 30 day boards as they age out. Reported in game by Joe (#8796).

Pets

• Summoned creatures show the collar, toy and accessory slots on their Examine sheet again, so pet gear can be taken off while only a summon is out. A fix last week hid those slots on the belief that summons ignore pet gear, but the gear does buff summons, and a summoner with no tamed pet had no way to remove it.
• Train Summoned Pet Resistance now raises how much of a physical hit a summoned pet can take off: 12% at skill 40, 15% at 100 and 20% at 200 (#5667, requested by Garfunkel Humperdinck through the in-game Oracle). Summons wear no armour, so every summon had been held to the base 10% of each physical hit, and past about skill 20 the skill only added magic resistance. Specialization does not change the new limit. Tamed pets already had a much higher one and are unchanged.
• A big melee pet, such as a tamed wolf, told to attack a large creature no longer bites once and then stands idle beside it. It used to stop just out of reach and give up the chase; it now walks in close enough to keep biting (#6821).

UI

• The Quit and Exit to Menu confirmation now closes with one Escape press and brings the Options window back, the same as its Cancel button. Before, the first press hid the confirmation and left the game unresponsive until a second press. Found by Elene Sali (#8803).
• The Click for Help bubble in the Bank no longer sits on top of the search box and its help button; it has its own line at the top of the window. Each window now keeps its own bubble, so dismissing it in the Skills window no longer removes it from the Bank, crafting stations, books and lot signs too (#8721).
• Typing /? in chat now opens the Oracle window with the slash command list, one heading per group and one line per command. It used to fill chat with a long run of text, and /? typed in an NPC conversation window showed nothing. /help and /commands do the same, and /? in the Oracle question box answers without asking the server. (#8019)
• The hotbar now starts at 125% size. Anyone who never saved their own Hotbar Size gets the larger bar, and a size a player picked stays as set (#8821).
• Fixed an error that stopped the mouse cursor from being set when Cursor Size was anything other than 1.0x. It showed up mostly during zone loads and while the interface was being closed. A cursor with no picture now falls back to the normal system pointer. (#8818)
• The Report Player comment box now starts typing at the top left, wraps long lines at the edge of the box and scrolls up and down only. It used to put the cursor halfway down, write on the bottom line and scroll sideways. Report and rename windows also no longer reopen by themselves, without their player name, after a logout or crash. (#5208)
• The Custom NPC Editor Open Source Folder button and the add-on folder buttons now open the folder on Linux and macOS. The Custom NPC button used a Windows-only call and failed on both, and the add-on buttons broke on folder paths with spaces or brackets.
• Options > Themes has a new Highlight Intensity slider that dims the hover and selection backgrounds in windows and the glow that pulses across themed windows. 0% turns them off, and a selected row keeps a faint background so the selection still shows. Default 100% leaves the current look unchanged. (#5658)
• Selecting yourself, your pet, a companion or a party member now outlines just the health, focus and fatigue bars on that status frame. The outline used to box the whole frame, title, name, guild line and effect icons included. A frame with no bars showing, such as a dead party member's row, outlines the name instead. (#5973)
• Fixed the vendor quantity prompt opening without a cursor when the shopkeeper's name box had been clicked first. Typed numbers fired non-combat hotbar cards instead of setting the amount. The prompt now takes the keyboard for its amount box whatever had it before, and number keys stay off the hotbar while it is open (#5970).
• Settled #7295: the chat window stays put away while you talk to an NPC, as it always has, and comes back when the conversation ends. The conversation window still opens to the right of the chat window for the case where a whisper or party message brings chat back mid-conversation, and a new tester check (#8899) covers that case.
• Added a Pin Tooltip key binding, unbound until a player picks a key in Options. Pressed over a tooltip, it keeps that card on screen as a small window with a close button; up to eight can be open, and Escape or Close All Windows clears them. Requested by Gravidy.
• A new character on the Isle of Storms now sees only the talk task and the Conversation lesson in the list on the left until the "brief list" hint appears after the first talk with Arabella; the rest of the list then fades in. Two versions of this change had been built in parallel, and the one that waits for the hint is kept.
• Added the Fade Player Frame at Full Health and Focus option (Options, Interface tab, off by default). With full health and focus, the top-left player frame fades out after three seconds and comes back on any loss or when the mouse is over it.
• Searching the Options window's All tab for something no keybinding matches no longer leaves the keybinding filter box and a large empty gap on the page with no Controls heading above them. The keybinding list now shrinks to its matches and keeps its Keybindings heading. Reported through the in-game Oracle.

Oracle

• Asked who a person is, the Oracle answered that the world data did not place them whenever that person stood nowhere in the world, and never read her People guide. A lookup that finds nobody now sends her to the guide section that names them, and a who-is question goes to the guides first. Her answer about Vitium now stops at who he leads and that his stronghold has not opened (#8728).
• The Oracle no longer prints a line of program text where an answer has a word in angle brackets, such as /roll <number>. (#8019)

Spells

• Fixed Night Vision covering clear-weather areas in fog after the reach change two days earlier: casting it left you seeing less far than before (#8795). The spell now adds no fog where an area has none, and in foggy areas its fade never closes in nearer than the area's own fog.
• Changed the Night Vision fix from this morning (#8795). Clear areas had lost the spell's reach, so it brightened everything out to the horizon. The reach is back in every area: past it, a clear area now fades into a dark shade of the night sky, the grey fog wall stays gone, and the fade eases out toward dawn with none in full daylight. Areas with their own fog keep it as before.

World

• The Dirae Prophecy on the lower shelf of the candle niche in the Oracle's shrine on the Isle of Storms now lies flat. It had been tipped 4.6 degrees, which pushed one corner of its cover 4.3 cm into the wooden shelf (#8787).
• Wooden edges that showed their planks turned sideways now show one board with the grain running along it: the upper floor edge in Charlotte Grays house in the Battle of Solace Bridge (the same model is the Rustic 3-Story Village House), the matching floor edges in four other rustic village buildings including the Rustic 3-Story Village Water Home, and the four shelf fronts in the Oracle building on the Isle of Storms. The texture coordinates were turned inside the model files, so nothing else about the buildings changed. An audit found the same fault on about 20 more models, listed for a closer look.
• The Helpful Automaton at the Blood River Outskirts camp can be talked to again. It stood inside the invisible collision shape of the birch tree beside it, so clicking it or pressing interact picked the tree and nothing happened. It now stands a few steps clear of the tree. (#8912)

Housing

• The gates on the Gated Ornate Rusted Iron Fence and the Gated Gold Plated Iron Fence open again. A recent change that lets the mouse click through the ornate fence panels had also made the gate itself unclickable. Reported by Scanphor (#8733).
• The chimneys on the twelve Village Tudor homes (Shingle-Roof and Wood & Plaster, from the Two-Story to the Three-Story Open Plan) had a flat stone cap across the top. The cap is gone: each chimney now opens into a stone-lined flue about a metre deep, like the Town versions. Reported in game by Christ Pallid (#8755).
• While moving a house, pressing F to mirror it no longer opens the Social window as well, and Alt+F no longer opens Looking For Group. R, which puts the house back on its original spot, no longer starts a glyph combo either. The move mode now keeps the keys it uses until it closes. Reported through the in-game Oracle (#8815).
• Fixed the placed observatory telescopes showing their own body in the magnified view when you looked through them from the eyepiece end. The telescope was hidden when you started looking, then the regular pass that shows and hides decorations inside houses switched it back on within half a second. That pass now leaves a telescope in use hidden until you walk away (#2904).
• Fixed paid lot-deed upgrades that could wait forever. The once-a-minute pass that finishes an upgrade after a dropped connection now reads only its own town's orders, so 16 older upgrades waiting in other towns can no longer crowd it out (#8889).

Loot

• Removed two leftover metadata files for Sundered Blade music drops that were retired earlier (477d42d2b6).

Lua Addons

• The Lua addon documentation site now updates itself with each chaos release, so the API reference matches the build players are running. It had been updated by hand and still described API version 4; it now covers version 9, including the beacon functions. The docs build also refuses to run if the pages state a different API version than the client. Requested by Goriah Kuulas.

Addons

• Fixed community addon uploads that never started when the optional reviewer note (or the changelog, which a first submission does not ask for) was left empty. The progress bar sat still and every later try said an addon was already uploading until a restart; blank fields are now left out of the upload and a failed upload always frees the slot. Reported through the in-game Oracle (#8754).

Dragons

• Dragon breaths now look like their element. The Green breathes a venom-green cone, the Black a dark purple one, the Yellow pale gold, the Purple magenta and the White an icy blue cone, and the young dragons' colour spits match. A glow gathers at the mouth while a dragon winds up, and the breath roars while it flows.
• The bolts a flying dragon fires, and the bursts where they land, take the colour of its breath. A dragon's dive and its landing now shake the camera for anyone close by. Only the fiery breaths still burn: the Green breath poisons and the White chills.
• Ancient dragons have eyes that glow in their colour, a soft glow around the head and a coloured edge light on the body. The White Ancient stands in a ring of frost.
• Each wyvern size now has a body that fits it: small wyverns fly lower with their name closer to them, and Huge ones take up more room. Dragons and wyverns tilt into their turns, wyverns follow you with their heads, and a dragon killed on the ground collapses where it stands.
• Dragon sounds: the bite played a roar or a fire burst four times in five and now bites, hurt sounds use the dragon's own scale hits in place of human ones, hits too small to make a sound now make one, and young dragons and tamed young dragons have their own higher voice.

Images

Bard

• Tidied the bard bar test suite: the check that every bard rune sits on the bar now names Solo Stance as the one retired rune left off it, and a new test fails if the bar holds anything other than the bard runes on disk less that one (#4501).

Crafting

• When a craft cannot raise a crafting skill, the craft message now says why: the skill is not set to Training, or the school has not been learned from a trainer yet. The note shows once per skill per session. Reported by Takotora, whose Tanning never moved; the tanning path itself was working.

UI

• The on-screen quest tracker has a text size setting, requested by Chadwyck: Quest Tracker Text Size under Options, Interface, Hints runs from 10 to 22 (13 is the old fixed size), resizes the task lines and Next Steps tips live, and widens the tracker at larger sizes so titles are not cut shorter.
• A new character on the Isle of Storms now arrives to a nearly empty task list. Until the tutorial message pointing at the list appears, it shows only the "Double-click Woman to Talk" task and the Conversation lesson tip; when that message shows, the other lines fade in. Requested by Astirian's Kindred.
• The coloured cursors (the green, blue and red arrows, the yellow decoration arrow and the weapon-drawn swords) no longer have a thin bright line of their own colour outside the picture. The black outline added for snow in July had turned their soft glow into a solid line, which showed as an extra ring at double Cursor Size. Requested by Barugon (#8805).

Quests

• The /dig emote now digs up the Vikland buried treasure chests. Stand on the sand spot with its letter and an Explorer's Shovel equipped, and a couple of seconds of digging raises the chest the same way clicking the sand does, with the same letter and quest checks. The character keeps digging while the chest comes up (#8715).
• On the Path of Truth, the Artifice marker on the Novia overland now turns blue once Notus in Xenos sends you to the Halls of Artifice, and so does the Halls entrance inside Artifice. The journal hint now says to leave Xenos for the overland, where Artifice lies in the hills a short walk away. Reported by KnightRider.
• An audit found 154 more quest tasks that light up only inside their own zone and have no marker pointing to them from outside. They are queued for a rebake of the zone data.
• Reset Quest State now also closes the solo areas the character was just in. Before, walking back into the Halls of Artifice within a few minutes of a reset put you in the same copy of the area with the doors you had unlocked still open; the next visit now loads a fresh copy with every door back in place (#6560).
• Overland nameplates and zone exits now turn blue for about 140 more journal tasks that sent you somewhere without a marker, among them "Ask About Bonesteel in Kiln" and "Find Document in Longfall Woods". The markers only follow tasks recorded in each zone's baked quest list, and most zones had not been re-baked since that list learned to read quests off search areas. The bake also dropped a task whenever a sibling quest step had the same conditions; it now tells them apart (#8904).

Vendors

• Removed the two retired vendor search indexes from the test shard, a month after search moved to the current one. Vendor search now runs on a single index; nothing changes for players.

World

• The barred south arch in the tutorial Battle of Highvale can no longer be climbed out of. Players could go up a brazier or the log piles beside the arch onto the palisade, drop outside the fence and run off the edge of the map. An invisible wall now runs along the fence for about 12 meters either side of the arch, behind the planks and above the palisade (c1febb10cf, #8097).

Audio

• Fitz Gaeaf, the traveller by the Aerie entrance, now speaks in a male voice. Correcting his gender last month did not change the voice he had already been cast with, so a tester still heard a soft female voice. He is now pinned to a male voice, and his 94 recorded lines went out on the voice server, so chaos players hear it without a patch.

Rewards

• Claiming rewards in offline play works again. The claim had been sent to a retired test copy of the rewards service, which answered every request with an error, so players saw a "500 Internal Server Error" popup after signing in. It now uses the same rewards service as online play. (#7873)
• On the chaos shard, the monthly Subscriber Reward Bundle now goes only to accounts with an active subscription. Since chaos started giving every tester subscriber perks on 21 September, every login had also been receiving the bundle. (#8926)

Server

• The server now refuses an oversized request to lock, check in or move placed items on a lot: 500 items per request for the planter locks, 100 for decoration moves. Three days of logging on chaos had not seen a single request over those limits (#8129).
• Fixed the uniqueness rule on player-written books so it can be built over a copy of the live database. The August rule allowed one book per author per text, but live holds 3,067 distinct books that share their text with another of the same author's books and differ by title. The rule now also covers the title, author name and font, so no player book has to be merged or deleted.

Build

• This morning's chaos release stopped at the new memory check before the Windows build started: open Unity Editors on the build machine had left 16 GB of room where a build needs 60 GB. The machine now has a fixed 192 GB pagefile, raising its memory ceiling from about 233 GB to 320 GB once it restarts, set by a new script so the change can be repeated.

Farming

• Batch harvest and batch sow now split a very large farm into several requests the same way batch watering already did, so every plant in reach is still handled in one use. Resizing a decoration with more than 99 items resting on it, and tidying up decorations left floating when their base was removed, also send in pieces now (#8129).

Skills

• The Skills window's Tree view lines its group headings up: Strategy's heading no longer sits indented from Combat and Magic, every heading underline is the same length on both tabs, and the lines between groups are now all half that length and centred. A tester found the three mismatches on the first pass (#7870).
• The three Crown Store Akita Inu summons now sort with the other pet summons. Before this, each one logged a client error the first time it was summoned in a session (#8819).

Emotes

• Fixed eight emotes that played the wrong animation while seated. BreatheFireSpiral, the four bartending emotes, CalmDown and Hustle rolled dice, and BreatheLeaves breathed hearts; each now plays its own animation, and the looping ones keep looping while seated. Male and female characters both had it. Reported through the in-game Oracle (#8694, #8802).

Images

Next Steps

• A new character on the Isle of Storms is no longer warned that the place is meant for level 10. The warning also stays quiet in the first areas after the Isle, where there is nowhere easier to go; harder areas still warn. (#8858)
• New characters on the Isle of Storms no longer see Next Steps tell them to spend producing experience they never earned. Every character starts with a producing pool, and the panel now waits until the character has gathered or crafted something before mentioning it. (#8854)
• On the Isle of Storms, the Next Steps list no longer suggests the Combat lesson before Anais has brought up combat. Off the Isle it shows as before. (#8855)

Audio

• Background music now drops while a nearby NPC speaks a voiced line, including parting advice after a conversation closes, and after a long line it fades back in over about four and a half seconds. Before, it only dropped while the conversation window was open, and was back at full volume within a second (#8850).

Emotes

• Seated CryBlood and Breathe Pink Hearts now start their blood tears and hearts at the face. Before, they came from standing head height, in the air above and in front of anyone in a chair or on a bench. Reported by Elene Sali. Breathe Hearts already worked seated and is unchanged.

Launcher

• Added a publish script for the launcher's Server list that signs it once and puts the same copy on the Windows, Mac and Linux download roots. The Mac and Linux copies had been published without QA, so those launchers offered Chaos only; they get QA as soon as the corrected list is published.
• Checked that the Linux launcher can switch to the QA server. Its server list is signed and lists Chaos and QA on Windows, Mac and Linux, and the Linux QA build it downloads passes its signature check. A new launcher test on Linux confirms the game receives the chosen server settings. A nightly check now compares the published server list on all three platforms, after Mac and Linux spent two weeks offering Chaos only.

Onboarding

• On the Isle of Storms, the hint that points new players at the task list on the left of the screen now waits until they close their first conversation with Arabella, instead of arriving on top of the movement and camera hints the moment they spawn. Requested through the in-game Oracle (#8859).
• A new character on the Isle of Storms now starts with two lines in the task list on the left: the task to talk to Arabella and the Conversation lesson. The rest of the list fades in when the message pointing at that list appears. Requested through the in-game Oracle (#8845).
• The New Player Handbook is back on the blue-flame pedestal in the Battle of Solace Bridge, glowing as before. It came off with the repeated controls lessons two days ago; those lessons stay removed. (#8941)

Performance

• The first player into an empty Ardoris, Brittany or Celestis waited 0.8 to 1 second at the loading screen while the server read each lot from the database one lot at a time. The server now logs how long that load takes and how long its once-a-minute deed check takes in every town and city, and the client logs how long the loading screen waited for the lot information, so the fix that follows can be measured against it (#8864).
• Loading a town's lots for the first player to arrive took 5 database reads per empty lot and 15 per owned lot, one lot at a time: about 2,600 reads for Ardoris. Those reads are now a few queries for the whole town: deeds, sale listings, auctions, town lot records, owners, and each owned lot's house records, storage and interaction log. The once-a-minute deed check in every loaded town reads the same way, down from about 890 reads a minute in Ardoris to about fifteen. A shard switch, housing.lotPrefetchEnabled, turns it back to the old reads without a build (#8864).
• The server now starts loading a town's lots as soon as the town is reserved for an arriving player, a second or two before the player's client asks for them, and it no longer builds lot updates for a town that nobody has entered yet (#8864).

Voice

• Arabella now pauses after each "or" when she reads the Conversation help list, so "How can I help or help" no longer runs together. The new recording ships with the next help narration publish.
• Re-recorded four voiced lines that still said the city of Etceter as "et cetera", after a tester heard it from Yen in Ardoris. A phoneme check of all 593 clips from the 19 September pronunciation refresh found 4 of 372 Etceter takes with the extra syllable, each with the city inside a list of towns: Yen's patron cities and shrines answers, Chen's shrines answer, and Gerd's lunar rift destinations. Chen's voice said "et cetera" in 30 of 30 takes of the list-ending "and Etceter", and none of ten alternative spellings fixed it reliably, so a clean audition take was chosen for that clip. The new phoneme_scan tool now measures every pronunciation refresh before it is published.

Images

Terrain

• The snow covering most of Jotungrund no longer breaks up into a grid of white and grey squares. That snow layer was stretched to one repeat every 80 m, about six times coarser than the other snow in the region, so its bumpy surface detail showed as squares about 30 cm across. It now tiles at the same scale as the neighbouring snow. Memory and download size are unchanged. An earlier fix sharpened the snow texture and did not touch the squares; this one does (#4737).

Stability

• Cleared the last live items from the 19 August log triage (#5361). A crown store item with a broken component no longer blanks the store detail pane. Three kinds of expected server refusal that were logged as errors now log as warnings, so real errors are easier to spot.

Tutorial

• On the Isle of Storms, the inventory Anais no longer calls out "We need to talk!" after her lesson is finished. It showed most after logging back in beside her. The virtue Anais, which had the same mistake, now calls players over until her lesson is done.
• On the Isle of Storms, Anaïs now repeats what you still have to do at every step of her lessons, every 5 to 15 seconds while you stand near her: jump the rubble, drag the potion of health into your hotbar, lock your gear, pick up the sword, switch combat decks, step into the lunar rift. Each reminder stops as soon as its step is done and stays quiet while her chat window is open. The 47 new lines are translated into all eight languages (tester task #8953).
• The Lock Your Gear step now tells you to press C to open your character sheet, in the popup, the journal task and Anaïs's reminder. Players in other languages get that task in their own language again: its translations were still filed under the journal entries it used before it was renumbered on September 1, which also showed the Helpful Automaton task as "Lock your gear". Both tasks are translated now.

Items

• Traced the green "Unknown Item" from bug #5803 to the Lord British 65 wine bottle decoration. The bottle was brought across from Perforce three days after the report, in chaos build 152, so the item now loads under its real name and moves normally. The stored item was intact the whole time and needed no data repair. Also wrote an internal guide for tracing the next Unknown Item report back to the item behind it.
• The eleven Dark Rough Stone building blocks have their own inventory icons now. Since the Perforce import they had shown the plain Rough Stone icon for each size, so the two sets looked the same in a bag. The new icons are rendered from the dark blocks themselves, and a regression test checks that no dark block points at a plain icon.

Music

• Written songs now play triplets and other tuplets in time, including the long form such as (3:2:4. Chords hold up to eight notes (was six), and songs can use octaves 0 to 9. Notes past what an instrument was recorded with are its nearest recording pitched up or down. Requested in-game by Joe.
• Fixed very low and very high notes playing in the wrong octave. On the harp, recorder, lute, accordion and bagpipes the lowest octaves had sounded the same as the octave above, and the top octave of most instruments had sounded an octave low. A missing closing quote on a chord name no longer stops a song from loading.

Dungeons

• Remeasured every decoration spot in the Stone Dungeon Rotunda, The Rise Shaft, the Stone Dungeon Dog Run, the Stone Dungeon The Rise Library, the Sword of Midras Library and the Lord of the Isle Aquarium Room against the stone players see. In these six pieces, ceiling spots were cut into smaller pieces that each follow their own part of the vault, and floor spots over the open shaft were trimmed back to the bridges. Decorations already placed stay where they are (#7454).
• Dungeon hall ceilings got the same remeasure. In the Stone Dungeon Hall with Secret Door (T intersection), the marble halls and the other stone hall crossings, a chandelier now hangs near the top of the vault instead of as much as 1.4 m below it, and spots past the edges of floors and walls were trimmed back. In the Secret Door hall, the wall that closes a doorway used to keep its decoration spot after another piece was docked there, so a painting could hang in the open doorway; that spot now goes away with the wall (#7454).
• The remeasure also covered the stone cellar rooms, the Hilt Basement spider rooms, the Duke throne room, the Owlshead sewer and the other encounter rooms, where wall spots now follow stone that steps in and out. The Stone Dungeon Room (Undead Ravensmoor) ceiling spot sat just above the ceiling, so chandeliers only attached over a few open patches; it now sits against the stone and the ceiling takes them (#7454).
• Added a dungeon decoration check that remeasures every dungeon piece against the stone on each test run, so a new piece, or a new decoration spot in an old one, cannot float away from the stone unnoticed. The pieces left as they were, such as the middle slope of the Rotunda dome, are listed by name and the list can only shrink (#7454).
• Measured every doorway in the player-dungeon kit and the six starting areas (349 in all) and sorted them into 18 doorway shapes, from the Stone Dungeon Halls 4 m vault to the prison cells 1.3 m doors. That gives 153 possible pairings, each needing a proper connector where the shapes differ; the connectors themselves follow (#8927).
• The Stone Dungeon Rotunda dome takes chandeliers close under the stone across its lower slope: 477 narrow ring surfaces replace the three wide bands that left a chandelier hanging 1.1 to 1.5 m below the dome (typical gap now 0.15 m). The Fall mine floor takes floor decorations for the first time; its only floor surface had been sitting 9 m outside the room. New MarkerPlateAuthor editor tool lays the surfaces. (#8910)
• Every doorway on the 126 player-dungeon pieces and every starting-area socket now records which of the 18 doorway shapes it is, which is what the game will use to pick the connector where two different shapes meet (#8927).
• Wrote the shape builder for the player-dungeon doorway connectors: from two measured doorway outlines it builds a wall set back into the larger doorway, a reveal carrying the smaller opening through it, and a lintel or arched frame with plinths and a keystone where there is room, plus a flush step where the neighbouring floor sits higher. The cave ramp heads and the cave transition ends became their own doorway shapes so every shapes floor agrees to within 4 cm (#8927).

Maps

• Town teleporter sign posts now show on the map as blue signpost markers, each named after the part of town it stands in. Signposts placed in player-owned towns get a marker named after the item. The markers are map-only and do not appear on the compass. (#6744)

Chat

• Added a test that keeps Show Chat Timestamps off by default for new players. Nothing changed in game: new players already start with no timestamps in chat or NPC dialogue.

Interface

• New Combat Text Size slider under Options, Interface, Gameplay scales the floating damage numbers and the Miss, Dodged, Parried and Blocked words from 75% to 200%, leaving the rest of the interface alone (#6775).

Achievements

• Bestiary counts in the Achievements journal no longer dip and then jump back up while you hunt. A tester saw a Wolf Hunter count read 4, then 3, then 6 inside a minute; every kill had been recorded, and the journal had briefly taken an older number from the server (#8772).
• Fixed kill and boss achievement counts that could be set back when a counter the game keeps for you, such as a zone visited for the first time or a landmark found, was saved just after a zone change. Those saves now write only the counter that moved (#8772).
• Mylo, the miniature greyhound in Castle Atos, now spawns on open ground near the shrine, well clear of the courtyard lot. He used to wander onto the lot, where players could not select him or get credit for petting him toward Pet Every Dog!

Tools

• Fixed an Editor test that left five blank grey windows over the Unity menus every time it ran. The end-of-run cleanup now closes empty test popups as well, and a new check fails any test that tears its window down this way.

Infra

• The chaos reseed now runs the catchphrase account-ownership migration automatically before indexes are built, so a fresh copy of live data comes up with the account-wide phrase library intact. The reseed report also flags any old per-character index left behind.

Magic

• Douse's skill description now mentions the charge it leaves behind: while its fire resistance lasts, the next harmful fire effect on the target is blocked, two with Water Magic Specialization. The spell was unchanged; only the text had fallen behind (#6590).

Art

• The cliff rock around the Solace Bridge Outskirts arrival archway no longer smears when you stand against it. Its terrain layer was stretched to one texture repeat every 33 m (31 texels per metre); it now repeats every 17 m, doubling the close-up detail while the cliffs still read as large rock faces from a distance. The nearby boulders also dropped the lossy crunch compression they kept after the 19 September resolution fix, which costs no video memory. Reported through the Oracle (#6538).

Gathering

• The harvest swing meter has a Swing button under the ring that you can click instead of pressing a key. It only shows while a swing is running, and its label names your swing key. Harvest Swing also has default keys now, L and the mouse Back side button. No other action uses either key by default, so no existing binding changes. A key you already bound to Harvest Swing is kept. (#6515)

Graphics

• Fixed the fallen leaves on the Isle of Storms marble floors rendering as solid black. The leaf decals were set up as fully metallic, which left them no color of their own under the new renderer; they now show their blue-green leaf color.

Migration

• Built the restore path that moves the live game database onto the new server at launch. It classifies every collection first and refuses to start if one is unaccounted for, clears out test-era records (auctions, tip jars, trade escrow, siege and prestige progress) so none of them attach to restored characters, moves the store and vault rotation state onto the new server, runs the full list of data migrations in order, and checks the result before anything starts. Test reseeds also stop deleting vendor buy orders, which hold the posting player's gold.
• The rehearsal showed where launch-day downtime would go: three data migrations each read every item in the game on a single processor core, taking 43, 28 and 27 minutes. They now run as one pass split across eight processes, and the same work finished in under 8 minutes, with a check that every record was visited exactly once.
• Ran the first full rehearsal of the launch-day move of the live game database, on the internal test shard. A copy of the live database from this morning was restored with 8,864,683 records and no failures, brought forward with every data migration, and checked before the servers started on it. The run found and fixed one problem that would have stopped launch day, and every step is written up with its timing for the second rehearsal.
• Ran a second rehearsal of the launch-day database move on the internal test shard, start to finish without a pause. The servers were down for 45 minutes, against about 2 hours 25 minutes in the first rehearsal, and the data migrations took 33 minutes instead of about 1 hour 49 minutes.
• The second rehearsal showed three more slow spots, now rebuilt. The item migrations are handed out as 33 smaller pieces to whichever processor core is free, which took the full pass on the same data from 24 minutes to under 12 with the same 97,978 records changed. The restore also counts the records while it unpacks them, where it used to read 16 GB back afterwards.
• Ran a third rehearsal on the same copy of the live database with the rebuilt steps, so the two runs compare directly. The time from starting the restore to servers running went from 52 to 36 minutes, the servers were down for 34 minutes instead of 45, and the item migrations changed the same 97,978 records as before.

Rendering

• Facing a low sun, its haze used to be painted over every wall, gate and tree in front of you, even with the sun hidden behind them (#8920). The haze now gathers along each line of sight up to 32 m and respects the shadows on the way, so at the reported Isle of Storms gate the glow on the pillars fell by 90% while open sky kept its glow.

Books

• The two books every new character starts with, ~ Known Issues ~ and ~ Player Events ~, now show their web addresses as named links you can click. The Helpful Guides, ~ Places to Live ~, the Player Instructions note and the Crowns of the Obsidians note got the same change, and old http addresses now point to the current https pages.
• Book narration no longer reads web addresses aloud letter by letter. Twelve narrated books were re-recorded so the narrator says the link words, and ~ Known Issues ~ is read aloud for the first time.

Camera

• The camera no longer gets stuck under the water while you swim or wade. Since the low-ceiling camera fix on the 23rd it could sink below the surface in most water, where the water does not show from underneath, and no zoom or turn brought it back up. Reported at the Solace Bridge river (#8948) and the Ruined Keep swamp. Water surfaces now keep the camera out from above only.

Crafting

• The Select Bonus Effect window for masterwork and enchanting shows the item tooltip again when you hover the item or its name, so you can look the item over before picking an effect. The tooltip had been missing since the window moved to the new UI. (a8f302817e)
• Each craft now shows the producer experience it paid at the end of its chat line. Exceptional crafts pay five times a normal one and repeated crafts of a recipe pay less until they level off, and without a number on screen that read as experience going missing. Reported by Strider Green.
• Crafting with a count of 2 or more pays what the live shard paid again for a familiar recipe: from about thirty crafts of it, each craft pays the same as crafting one at a time. Since August chaos had paid half, for example 2,500 in place of 5,000 per Teleport to Zone Scroll (Batch of 12).
• Recall Scroll (Batch of 12) pays a base of 7,500 experience, up from 1,200, in line with the other two twelve-scroll batch recipes. It had paid barely more than one Recall Scroll, and less than one when crafted in multiples.
• In the Recipe Book, an ingredient you know a recipe for is now underlined. Clicking it turns the book to every recipe you know that makes it, so Iron Ingot shows both the ore and the metal scrap recipes, and a Back button returns to the page you were reading one step at a time. Requested by Barugon (009d64e691, #8532).
• Batch crafting with Use lot storage now replaces a table tool that wears out partway through, such as the Ingot Mold at a Smelting Station, from the lot's crafting chests and keeps going. Before, a 110-ingot batch stopped at "Crafted 100 of 110. You ran out of materials." when the first mold wore out, with 56 spare molds in the chest. Worn-out molds left in a crafting chest no longer count toward the "+N lot" number and are never pulled as replacements. Reported by Chadwyck (1f2176122e, #8685).
• A Quick Craft batch now shows the progress bar for the whole run, with a running count such as "Crafting - 37 / 110" and a Cancel button that stops it. Before, a Quick Craft batch showed no progress and only Escape could stop it. Requested by Chadwyck (1f2176122e, #8685).
• The Recipe Book reopens on the page it was closed on, including the first open after logging in, and resizing the window keeps the page you were reading. It used to remember only a page number, and the number of recipes on a page depends on the window height, so a shorter window on the Blacksmithing page could jump to a page of Butchery recipes. The book now remembers which page it was on and finds it again (9af7e83c43, #8060).

Emotes

• Breathe Pink Hearts now breathes pink hearts on female characters. They had been getting the red hearts from Breathe Hearts, because the female version of the emote was wired to the plain hearts animation, and the two emotes looked the same. Male characters already had pink. A new test checks every female animation that swaps in for a male one and flags any that spawns a different effect. (#8272)

Navigation

• Rebuilt the walkable maps for 305 zones overnight, the oldest last baked in 2017. The run took five hours and each map was kept only where a tile-by-tile comparison showed no ground lost. 69 came back with real differences against the map they replace and are held for review rather than shipped, and one scene has no navigation data at all.
• Promoted 54 more rebuilt walkable maps that had been held back by a bad check. The check compared polygon counts, which fall when a map covers the same ground with fewer, larger pieces; Mud lost a third of its polygons and 2.7 percent of its walkable ground. It now compares walkable area, and re-reading the held maps took seconds because none of them needed rebuilding.

Skills

• The Change... button beside Specializations in the Skills window now works whenever you stand next to a skill trainer. It used to count the trainer only when the trainer had opened the window for you, so a player talking to one, or opening Skills themselves beside one, got a greyed-out button telling them to visit a trainer. The List view's "Specialize in this school" is greyed out with the reason away from a trainer or an Oracle Confirmatory, and a specialization change now updates glyph counts and decks straight away (#8275).
• A trainer that cannot teach a skill now says where it is taught. Clicking or hovering a Bard skill at a Novia trainer names Vikland and Ruins of Utheim, marked Episode 2 for players without access, and a skill another trainer in the same town teaches says so. Every school is covered except Tactics, Fire, Sun and Taming, which follow once their scenes are re-surveyed. (#7744)

Camera

• Standing on something tall under a low ceiling, like the rubble pile in a Hilt Fortress hallway, no longer pushes the camera up through the ceiling to show the floor above. The camera now stays under the ceiling and pulls in close behind you. Ceilings with normal headroom are unchanged. (dba73c6abd)

Housing

• The Mirror Flip Decoration key now works on 1,464 more kinds of item: armour and clothing displays, hats and masks, instruments, fish trophies, tools, food, the Statues of Virtue and more rugs. The July pass that set up mirroring only looked at the decorations folder; this one checked all 14,666 placeable items, and 3,024 can now be mirrored, up from 1,560 (#8499).
• The POT Terrain Levellers can be rotated while placing them, like other decorations. They used to be locked to one angle because the game levelled an unturned square around the pad; the levelled ground now follows the turned square, and the placement check measures that same square. Lot markers still level as before (#8509).
• The message that explains why a decoration cannot be placed is larger. It shows under the held item and in the strip above the decoration bar, and both were drawn at 10 to 11 pixels; both are now 14. The report came from a Terrain Leveller refused on a steep slope, and the change covers every placement message, including the grid snap line (#8511).
• Another 518 kinds of decoration can now be mirrored with the Mirror Flip Decoration key, among them cloaks on display, tulip patches, potted plants, feeder troughs, trophies and wall shields. These are built from pieces set at angles, which the first pass could not mirror. The seven supply bundle sacks used to turn upside down on the key and now mirror the right way up. 3,542 of the 14,666 placeable kinds of item can be mirrored (#8499).
• Decorations that use up one of a lot's light slots now say so before they are placed. The item tooltip shows Light Source, holding control adds that it counts toward the lot's indoor or outdoor light limit, and the backpack search understands is:light. 467 decorations are marked; lit ones the lot counts as something else, such as a phonograph, are left out. The Deco Palette already lists lights that are placed under its Lights category. Requested by Elier deRoque.
• A placed Planting Area no longer vanishes the moment it is set down. Its outline now stays visible, with Show Decoration Indicators left off, to anyone who can sow, water and harvest in it. Visitors still need that option to see it, and tree removers and terrain levellers still hide once placed unless the option is on (#7137).
• The deep third-floor window in both Gothic Mansions w/ Widow's Walk now takes decorations across its whole ledge and in the deep window box behind the glass. Before, most of that window answered "Outside your lot" (4bdd658d31, #6876, #6940).
• A pet inside a placed Upscale Stables now follows its owner out through a doorway. The stable's shut doors had been blocking their doorways for pets, which cannot open doors, so a pet was sealed inside and cut through the stall dividers toward its owner instead (5122c401a4, #6854).
• The Dungeon Waygate now takes every dungeon entrance pattern at the smelter's Reshape Dungeon Entrance recipe, so a waygate can look like the Dragon entrance, the stone arch, a dungeon door or any of the others. It keeps its name, placement rules and travel, and no longer reads as a dungeon entrance once patterned (2a9bc51d8a).
• Fixed Tighter Fit never shortening the Long Rug (Red), the Long Rug (Ornate) and the other cloth rugs from the same set along their length. Those rugs are modelled standing and laid flat, so the aid narrowed their width and thickness and left the length whole: a long rug laid toward a wall stopped where it always had, while a smaller rug beside it tucked 15 to 30 cm closer. A tester caught it in the Edelmann Benefactor village house (#8125). Both floor dimensions of those rugs now shrink, and furniture and other upright items are unchanged.
• A report of falling through the map after picking up a lot marker on a slope was the same bug the terrain-levelling fix from earlier today covers: picking the marker up restores the slope under you, and that fix now lifts you onto it. The report came from a build cut shortly before the fix, which arrives with the next chaos build. A new test locks in the order the pickup applies its terrain changes, which is what lets the lift happen the same frame (9734cc385e).
• A property marker placed against another lot on different ground no longer levels into it. The newer lot's levelled ground used to run a few meters past its own edge and bury planters and other decorations along the neighbour's edge. The ground inside each lot now belongs to that lot, including lots too steep to level and water lots; open ground around lots still blends as before. (2ece8a0e35, #8693)
• Torch and fireplace light no longer shines through the walls of player houses. The wall torches built into the Kobold homes now cast shadows, so the Kobold row homes stop lighting the ground outside and the house next door, and the fireplace used in 47 houses (Tudor, Viking, Shogun, Stucco, Elven and Kobold row homes among them) now casts a full shadow where it used to let a fifth of its light through the walls (#8691, 6637d757aa).
• The POT Terrain Leveller Bundle is now sold in the in-game Crown Store for 500 Crowns of the Obsidians: five each of the 8x8, 16x16 and 32x32 Terrain Levellers, under Town Improvements beside the tree removers and in Recently Added. The levellers shipped in July with nothing that granted them, so a governor asking the Oracle where to get one had no answer. The Oracle now explains where levellers and grass and tree removers come from (fcaeff4aa0, #8689).
• The two deeds of each mirrored row home now say which house they are: "Kobold Three-Story w/ Left Alcove (Row Home)" and "... w/ Right Alcove (Row Home)" for all nine Kobold, Elven and Stucco pairs, in every client language. The inventory and the crown store choose-one bag had listed both deeds under one name, and each deed now previews its own house. Either deed still builds either version (#8691, cf992dddf7).
• The Wall Torch now hangs on the medium wooden, stone and hedge fences. The placement check wanted fence behind the whole 1.46 m torch, taller than any of those fences (1.31 to 1.46 m), when only its bracket and the end of the handle touch the wall. It now checks those parts, which span 1.04 m, the same as the sconces that already hung there (5f337ced77, #8083).
• Pets set to Patrol no longer walk through the walls of the Red Barn Two-Story (village). The house navigation baker measured the barn from where its prefab was saved, 100 m up, so every lot-size bake of the barn came out as an empty lot. The baker now syncs physics after placing a house, and the barn plus five more houses with the same empty bake (Viking Great Hall, Baron Founder frigate, Kobold Four-Story Great Hall and two four-story row houses) were rebaked. The barn also gets its real 17 x 22 m footprint, so Move House now works for it on Town and larger lots. Reported by Retlaw (#8104).
• Invisible decoration placement boards in 11 houses stopped acting as walls, ledges and ceilings. About 240 of them, in the Kobold Great Halls, Gothic Mansions, Small Old Keep, Viking Great Hall, the Stucco row homes and others, plus the Storehouse Shelter and the dungeon totem pedestals, now let players walk through them the way dungeon ones already did; decorations still land on them as before. A few in the Kobold Great Halls that hung over open air were removed (61d4e0a219, #7454).
• The Gothic Mansion Three-Story got the deep third-floor window fix the two Widow's Walk mansions got earlier today: decorations now sit across the whole ledge and in the window box behind the glass (f16e94c069, #6876).

Images

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• A recipe card in the Recipe Book: Iron Ingot is underlined because a recipe you know makes it, while the coal and the axe head mold, which are not crafted, stay plain.
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• The troll enrage roar
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World

• The bats flying over North Quel Way held their wings still most of the time, drifting across the sky in a fixed pose and beating their wings only in short bursts. The flock was still running the values it shipped with, where 44% of its behaviour rolls picked a glide and another 38% picked a dive, and both stop the wing animation. Those are now 8% and 15%, so a bat flaps almost continuously and glides for a second or two at a time.
• Two further faults kept the bats gliding. A dive played the gliding pose but was never marked as gliding, so the timer that hands a bird back to flapping skipped it and the wings stayed still until the bat reached its target point. And the bat model has a second, shorter flight animation that was wired into a list slot one past the end of the list, so it never loaded and could not be played. It now loads and drives the wing beat, at a speed scaled down to suit the shorter clip. Five tests guard the wiring.
• The same bat flock is placed in eight other zones, so all of them change: Despair, Myrkur, Grusk Factory, Crooked Shank, K'rawl, Lost Whiteguard Silver Mine, Broken Echoes Silver Mine and the dragon dungeon.

Combat

• Ice Field shows its ice on every cast again. A spell visual last seen out of range, such as another player's or a creature's cast, stayed switched off when the game reused it for yours, so the ice came and went. Visuals now check distance again when reused and while they play, which also fixes Gust, Banish Undead, Death Shield and other spells built the same way.
• The Shock Weapon, Frost Weapon and Ignite Weapon buff icons now show the damage each weapon hit adds. Shock Weapon had read 18 Air Damage while hits added 3 to 5. Weapon poisons had the same mismatch and now show their damage over time. Damage itself is unchanged.
• Water spell tooltips now say when their rain and water bonus is running: the "more while it rains or you stand in water" line ends with "(active now)" while you are wet, and the damage range stays at the dry value. Before, the line read the same in and out of the water.
• Ice Field now slows as far as its tooltip says. Ground fields had been reading their attunement from a hidden helper effect with no school, so the caster's Water, Fire, Air or Sun attunement counted on the tooltip and not in play. Ice Field's slow and its duration, and the damage of Ring of Fire, Immolation, Meteor Shower, Lightning Storm and Elysian Illumination, now grow with the caster's school attunement: 1.54 times at 50 attunement, 2.11 at 100, 2.70 at 150 (was 1.00 at any level). At 150 Water attunement the Ice Field slow goes from 33% to 45%. The target's resistance to that school now reduces these fields the same way it reduces the school's other spells (#8700).
• Light and Night Vision can be cast while swimming. The hotbar now stays on screen in deep water with every other glyph grayed out, where before it vanished and left a player who fell in at night unable to see (requested by Chadwyck).
• Skeleton mages, liches, Lepus Zombies and the Pumpkin Head now raise their fallen. Until now the raise never worked for any of the 77 creatures that carry it: a body at zero health never counted as a raise target, and the spell landed on the caster. A raiser now walks to a waiting body and stands it up at full health; looting the body first stops it, and experience comes once, when the creature stays down. A creature that falls with no raiser nearby now pays its experience at once instead of after 20 to 30 seconds. It sits behind a live switch, on by default (475f2a44be, #8668).
• Creature abilities can now tell a pet from a player in their damage formulas, which the reworked Breach Lords will use to hit pets harder with some attacks and to give pets their own share of a split blast. Nothing uses it yet.
• Cone of Cold costs 42% less focus: 99 instead of 170 at skill 95. It had the lowest damage per point of focus of any area spell (0.175 against 0.27 to 0.33 for Death Field, Solar Flare and Fireball); it now sits at 0.30. Cooldown, damage and its chill effects are unchanged. Requested by Estroma Tólito.
• A creature ability can now set the size of its red ground warning separately from how far it reaches, which the reworked Breach Lord Gael needs to show the safe eye of its storm instead of the whole area. Every existing warning ring is unchanged.
• Taunt, Body Slam, Provoking Shout and the extra threat from a tamed pet's attacks now work for every member of a group. Before, that threat only counted for the first player into the zone; the caster's client now sends it to whichever player is running the creatures, with a shard switch to turn it back off (#8043).
• Added two buffs for The Breach royale, switched off: Obsidian Carapace, which lets Spawn of Pele shrug off damage for each Death Power Shard still standing, and Bequest, which makes the arena Lords hit harder as their siblings fall. Nothing casts them yet; they ship dark behind the royale switch.
• The Breach's four Elemental Lords and Spawn of Pele can now meet a pooled control wall: stuns, knockdowns and mesmerizes all count against one wall, it breaks only when controls from at least three different players land together (a pet counts as its owner), and a break stops the boss's uninterruptible signature cast. Shipped switched off; with it off every boss keeps its current control wall.
• Added health dials for the Lords and Spawn of Pele that scale their maximum health and keep their health fraction when changed, and an undermanned floor that gives a corner Lord Unchallenged while fewer than a set number of players are fighting it. A player counts if they damaged the Lord in the last 20 seconds and stand within 40 meters. Both ship switched off and change nothing until set.

Rendering

• Spike trap holes no longer draw as glaring white discs on Mac. The black hole discs in the pressure plate spike trap had been scaled flat to zero, which breaks lighting on Mac the same way the white ivy in Lamech's Bazaar did. The trap and its copies in Kas Ruins, Middle Downs and twelve other areas now keep a sliver of height and look the same everywhere. The same fix went into the Ravalox Darkshire Painting's backing and two walls in the Lava Fishing Grotto dungeon rooms. (#8519)
• Towns and the overworld are a quarter stop brighter at the default Brightness setting (21a7a063f4). The lift is applied as exposure before the tonemapper, so sunlit ground, shadow and sky brighten together and scenes get lighter without the flat look more ambient light gives. Dungeons, sewers, mines and basements keep their old exposure. The green bulbs on holiday light strands were turned down to match, so they render the same colour as before.

UI

• Glyph tooltips on the Combat Hotbar now show how much of a locked glyph's focus cost comes from using it again while its copies are still cooling down, for example "71 Focus (19 + 52 from recent use)". The bar used to show only the raised number, so a glyph that read 19 Focus in the Skills window could read 71 on the bar with nothing saying why. Glyphs on the Utility Hotbar never pay that extra, and their tooltip no longer quotes it while they cool down (#8271).
• The Tomato, Potato, Onion and Roll bag icons were redrawn from the models the world uses, so they show the smooth item that sits on your table instead of a blocky, flat-shaded shape (#8274, reported by Elene Sali through the in-game Oracle). The icon renderer also stopped drawing that shared produce material as solid white.
• Right-clicking an empty gear slot on your Character Sheet now lists every item in your backpack that can be worn there, including items inside bags, and one click puts it on in that slot. A filled slot has Swap From Backpack at the top of its right-click menu for the same list. Rows show durability and compare against what you are wearing when hovered (633c215b0f, #7573, requested by Pravidian through the in-game Oracle).
• The party leader star no longer sits on your health frame when nobody else is in your party. Posting an open party, an unanswered invitation, and the half-minute after the last member leaves all left you leading a party of one, and the star showed for it (#6199).
• Books in the Immersive 3D Book Reading view now open straight into their final size. The book used to shrink a little on the last frame of the opening animation, because the camera was framed for the closed cover and only pulled back for the wider open spread once the animation had finished (#7062).
• The window a Teleport to Zone Scroll opens now says "Zone" throughout: the title reads "Select Zone", the list column "Zone" and the count "Zones Discovered:", replacing a mix of Destination, Location and Scene(s). (ec0a956828)
• The character sheet's Stats tab has a Magic Block line under Block and Parry once Arcane Defense is trained and a shield is equipped. It shows the chance to block a spell from the front and the damage one block stops. Before, that figure appeared only inside the Block hover. Requested by Sethanon (15369af1d7, #8127).
• Hotbar skill tooltips and Skill Progress HUD tooltips are now the same width. Each is a single 360-unit column that grows taller to fit its text. Before, a skill with a lot of text spread its tooltip across two or three columns, and the HUD tooltip came out wider than the hotbar one (9e8ebf44eb, #8695).
• Glyph tooltips on the combat bar and the Utility Hotbar stay in the lower third of the screen. The card is narrower (308 wide, down from 360), its text is smaller (13px, down from 16px) and its icon is 40px instead of 64px. A card with more to say takes a second column beside the first instead of growing up the screen. A new Hotbar Tooltip Delay setting under Options, Interface waits half a second by default, and a glyph you click stays without its card until the pointer leaves the slot. The Skills and Edit Deck windows keep the full-size card. Reported by KnightRider (937663efc4, #8727).
• The Journal Active Tasks list shows task names under Title and dates under Date again. Adding the per-task checkbox had shifted every row one column left, so the date sat under Title and the name was missing (reported by Joe Z on chaos build 276). (02a8942239, #8385)
• Options, Themes has a new Conversation & Journal Font setting. NPC conversation text and quest journal text can be read in any font the Theme Editor offers (Vinque, Cinzel, Grenze Gotisch, Leelawadee or Attractive), while chat, tooltips and task names keep the plain reading font. Default leaves everything as it was, and the choice stays put when you switch themes. Requested by Astirian (#8639, a7e1bd09a7).
• The Double Cursor Size checkbox in Options is now a Cursor Size slider on the Controls tab, from 0.5x to 2x with a notch at the normal size. Enlarged cursors now point from their true centre, and item tooltips move out from under a large cursor. Players who had the old checkbox on start at 2x.
• Typing in the Keybindings Filter box on the Options Controls tab no longer drops the list's scroll bar. The list had been growing past the bottom of the window, so a filter that left fewer than about 115 actions hid the bar with the rest clipped out of sight; it now fits the tab at any filter length (#8101).
• A bag banked in one town now opens from the Bank window in any other town. Before, double-clicking it said the container was stored at a different bank location and could not be opened here, and its right-click menu had no Open Container entry. You can take items out of a bag banked elsewhere; items can still only go into it at the bank where it was deposited, and a drop anywhere else now says so. Reported by Scanphor (#8251).
• A pinned item preview window now stays open when you change zones. Before, it disappeared at the loading screen but the game still counted it as open. The item preview and the character sheet now check their 3D view just after they open, and log the cause if it comes up empty. This follows a report of a blank Crown Shop preview right after entering a player town (#8128).
• The first search in the Vendor Listings in Zone window after arriving in a big market no longer runs at about 10 fps for several seconds and then freezes for a second when the results land (a 13,000-listing town took 7 to 9 s that way). The item details now load while the pages download, the rows are built a few milliseconds per frame, and the finished list is sorted once where it was sorted five times (90adc43f9f, f82139ccd1).
• The vendor listings window shows a loading panel over the table while a search runs: a turning ring, the Loading line and a bar that fills as the listings arrive and are prepared. It stays up until the rows appear.
• Sortable lists across the client read each row's sort text once per sort instead of on every comparison, and the vendor table formats only the rows on screen.
• The Theme Editor has a third font setting, Paragraph font, beside Body font and Title font. It sets the font for chat, NPC conversation, the quest tracker and journal, and tooltips, which have kept a plain font whatever the body font since earlier this week. Preset default keeps them plain; Vinque in both Body and Paragraph brings back the all-Vinque look. The choice travels in theme codes. Requested by Scanphor.

Achievements

• Hovering a row in the banker's Trophies window showed "AchievementStrings+RawText". The tooltip now names the achievement and says what it asks, such as "Defeat the Ancient Purple Dragon." The chat line that announces a trophy placed in your bank had the same fault and now names the achievement too. Reported by Chadwyck (#8266).

Crafting

• A Fishing Rod or Lava Fishing Rod dragged onto a crafting station lands on the table. It used to ask whether to equip the rod and never place it, so the only way onto the table was the recipe double-click, which could not pick between two rods and left salvage untestable (9aa3cf3bd6, #8267).
• A successful fishing rod masterwork costs 5 maximum durability, the way weapon and armor masterworks cost 10 to 30. Five masterworks take a rod from 100 to 75. The rod effects had shipped with no cost, copied from the instrument effects (1b96a3d191, #8267).

Towns

• A bonfire or other light placed on town ground now keeps the color the Town Console gave it when it is moved. Before, moving it put it back to its built color, and applying the same color again did nothing until a different color had gone on first. Lights already colored the old way keep their color until someone changes it. Right-clicking a placed light also shows one Light Settings entry instead of two. Tester task #8545. (96655c31b5)

Localization

• The Japanese client wrote the Row lot size as 行, which means a row in a table, so the Row deed read 権利書、行. Row deeds, homes, lots, property markers and basements now say 連棟住宅 (row house) in all 226 strings that used 行 or one of four other words for it, and Peddler's Row reads ペドラーズ・ロウ everywhere. Reported by Neokun (#8535).
• Players using another language had seen the devotional caretakers' Banner of Spirituality answers and Matheson Bateau's greeting in English since a September 8 spelling fix to "New Britannia". Those lines show in the player's language again (#8561).
• German, French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese had copied the misspelling "Brittania" into 160 places. Each now uses that language's usual spelling, such as "Nouvelle-Britannia" in French and "Nova Britânia" in Portuguese.
• Anaïs is now spelled with the diaeresis in the dialogue that still read "Anais": the Oracle's and Arabella's answers about her, Andred's line in Lost Vale, her own greeting and the topic label. The German, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese versions of those lines stay translated and use the same spelling, and the lines were voiced again (a40906c786, #8553).
• Typed NPC topic words now work in every town in the translated clients. 2,675 topic word lists across all eight languages had stayed in English in some scenes while other scenes had the translation, so typing the translated word did nothing there. Each one now uses a form another scene already ships, checked first so it never steals another topic's word (0176a6f079, #8648).
• NPC topic words in the Japanese, Chinese and Portuguese clients now match what the line means. The glossary had forced one word per topic onto every line, so "please don't be mad" read as insanity, binding to a recall point read as tying someone up, and "I hail from Kingsport" read as a greeting. A judge pass found 167 topic words used in more than one sense and 1,159 lines were re-worded link by link (3e7b04fd68, #8648).
• The same pass covered the Russian, Spanish, French, German and Italian clients: 890 more lines where one fixed topic word read wrong for the sentence. Examples: the Foreign Minister had turned into a name in French, the verb "love" showed as the noun amor in Spanish, a carved wooden duck was a live mallard in German, and the farmer was "the farm" in Italian (f87cd72470, #8648).
• With the game set to Chinese, Japanese or Russian, paragraph text on the Air theme, or on a custom theme with Attractive or Leelawadee as its body font, uses the font made for that language again. Since the 2026-09-21 reading-text change it had been asking for a Latin-only font there, so the characters came from a substitute system font (a7e1bd09a7).

Tools

• The stranded navmesh report no longer stops partway through a full sweep when it reaches a scene that still uses the older A* 3.x navmesh format. The two scenes baked that way are listed as unreadable and the sweep runs to the end.
• Added PropIconRenderer, an Editor tool that renders an item's bag icon from the prop it places in the world, at full model and texture detail with clean transparent edges. It is the groundwork for replacing the faceted Tomato, Potato and Roll icons.
• The Next Steps scene catalog check and the item catalog check now run on the Mac. Both read the committed catalog through a Windows-only command, so on a Mac they refused every change to a covered scene or a new item without naming one, and the only way through was to skip the check (182dfdc650).
• Re-analyzed Aerie for the Next Steps panel after the fix to its market awning poles moved the scene on. It was the last of the 26 catalogued scenes out of date. No trainer, crafting station, gatherable or landmark changed (5eab98cc33).
• The balance audit no longer counts a tamed pet's Attack Speed twice. Tamed basic attacks already divide their cooldown by Attack Speed, and the audit divided again, so a lion with +10% Attack Speed was modelled swinging every 1.65 s where the game swings every 1.82 s, and every tamed family's DPS row read high. The creature audit had the same line and got the same fix (2da39de956).
• The balance audit now finds the basic attacks of the Skeleton Fighter, Lich Fighter, Earth and Water Elementals and the Daemon. Their attack runes are not in the player skill list, so the audit had assumed a 2 s swing for all five. The Skeleton Fighter, Water Elemental and Daemon actually swing every 3 s, and their DPS rows had read 1.5x too high (28edeaa127).
• The notes for re-baking a scene in the shared Editor now cover an Editor whose delayed callbacks never run, which held up the Kiln re-bake for #8587, and how to put the Editor back when its only open scene is untitled.
• The Oracle deploy notes now say to ship from the committed code only, so a guide that is still being written can never go live by accident.
• The commit check that catches code referring to uncommitted files no longer refuses game code over a name that only exists in someone else's unfinished editor tool (4e48db8f87).
• Wrote up the surface shader review for the team: what is now skipped, the material census behind it, and the bigger follow-up still open (every opaque draw carries a discard, which costs early depth testing on all GPUs and hidden-surface removal on Mac). The render-target shader fence also works on Windows Editors now; a path separator mismatch had it reporting all three of its anchors missing. (cb7cd83415, 78b6f79d93, 3b2d2c5e1d)
• The commit check for code that refers to uncommitted files no longer trips over a name that is only nested inside someone else's unfinished tool, such as a Mode setting; it now needs the tool's own name too. (aaa1865e79)

UI

• Hovering a shortened Durability, Quantity, Weight or Value number in the backpack, bank, containers or crafting lists now shows the plain full value (for example 100/100). Coloured values used to show a stray colour code in front of the number.
• The world map help window ("The World of New Britannia") spelled the name "Brittania" in its first paragraph, and Arabella read it aloud as "Brit-AY-nia". The text now says Britannia, the Italian version was corrected the same way, and the narration was recorded again (#8319, reported through the in-game Oracle).

Build

• Last night's chaos release failed because Windows Update restarted the Windows build machine four minutes into its client build. That machine now installs updates without restarting while it is signed in, and every Windows client build checks for a pending update restart before it starts, so the same failure stops in minutes instead of partway through a two-hour build.
• The per-push unity-tests-push job is now switched off in the build farm's job definitions. Turning it off in the Jenkins page only lasted until the next automatic reseed, which rewrote the job as enabled (82be0a0e0b).
• This morning's chaos release built all three clients, then failed at the deploy step: the build server's automatic updates replaced Java 23 seconds before the deploy started, and the build tools could not launch anything until Java was restarted. The finished build 276 went out with a deploy-only rerun instead of a four-hour rebuild. Java updates on the build server now wait until nothing is building, a release refuses to start if that protection is missing, and a release that fails after its clients are built now prints the command to deploy them.
• The nightly chaos release failed when the Windows build ran out of memory an hour in: the build machine is also a workstation, and two open Unity Editors left it without room. Each Windows client build now checks for free memory before it starts and waits, or fails with the list of Editors to close, instead of crashing mid-build (20aa7e7323).

Housing

• Placing a POT Terrain Leveller while standing inside its square dropped the character under the map, and a governor could do the same to anyone else standing on the pad. Ground that a leveller, lot marker or house raises under a player now lifts that player on top of it, ground that drops away brings them down with it, and a player who logged out on a spot that was raised later logs back in on top of the pad. Reported through the Oracle (a9f84e6bec, #8501).
• The Town Console Lights tab now recolors the Large Ornate Elysian Brazier. Its flame light sat outside the part of the brazier the console searched, so it was missing from the town light count and kept its orange glow. Other decorations built the same way are fixed too. Reported by Chadwyck. (60ec5f0985)

Onboarding

• The First Steps hints on the Isle of Storms now spell Anaïs with the accent, matching her nameplate and journal. Testers found four hints still reading "Anais"; all nineteen hints that name her were corrected, along with the Quest Reset Token description and the German, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese versions of both (#8531).

Creatures

• Name plates over wild creatures came down to sit a short way above them. Spiders, crocodiles and the larger slimes stand their plate on an invisible shape sized to the body's width, so it floated 0.6 to 2.1 m over creatures that stand knee high; they now sit about 0.35 m above. The Lich Fighter's plate went from 1.3 m to 0.47 m over its hunched idle, the Spider Wolf Queen's from 1.59 m to 0.34 m, and the Oracle's from 4.6 m to 0.35 m over her head. Across 1,131 creature models, plates more than half a metre up went from 330 to 166, and none ended up inside a creature. Creatures lying down or asleep keep the old height until they stand.
• Liches in player dungeons now roll to stay down when they die, like liches everywhere else. Before, every dungeon lich left a body another lich could raise and held its kill experience back for 20 to 30 seconds. Also added a shard switch for the lich rise that lands with the lich abilities, and a lich killed with Sun or Life magic will always stay down.
• Fixed a batch of lich bugs. Lich area spells (Burning, Death Nova, Root, Stun) only reach about 5 meters, but liches cast them from anywhere, so a Lich Mage fighting you from range often hit nothing; they now save those spells for when you are close. The Lich Mages and Sharpshooters from Level 5 and 6 Lich Totems in player dungeons were carrying a fighter's axe and fought in melee; they now have their spells and a new tier bow. The Elder Lich Warrior Cleanser no longer opens every fight berserk, and the most common Lich Fighter no longer introduces itself as the Malefic Lich Lord.
• Rebalanced liches. Lich Stun and Root still last 6 seconds but now come back every 20 seconds instead of every 7, so a Lich Mage can no longer keep a player locked down for most of a fight. Blinding Shot wears off before it comes around again, Crushing Blow comes half as often, and Piercing Shot now ignores armor. The T12 Lich Mage and Sharpshooter were weaker than the T10s below them and now sit above them, the Obsidian Lich Lord is at least as strong as an ordinary lich, and the Elder Lich Cleanser pays 12,000 experience like the rest of its wave instead of 10.
• Elrin Nayer, the named lich of The Rise, was also standing in for 25 ordinary lich mages, so Mistrendur Gloom alone had ten of her. Those are now called Elder Lich, and Elrin Nayer is back to being one lich, in The Rise and beside Skelrin Nayer in Dragon Bone Crypt.
• Liches have abilities of their own. They can get back up: a lich killed with a weapon has about an even chance to stand again 20 to 30 seconds later at full health, once, but a killing blow of Sun or Life magic always keeps it down. Lich Mages and archers no longer stand still once you reach them; they strike with their close-range spells and teleport back out to range. Lich Mages cast Soul Siphon and the melee liches cast Drain Life, both of which heal the lich. The named liches, from the Malefic Lich Lord to Razox Dread, now mesmerize everyone near them at half health and make a last stand at a quarter.
• Creatures can now summon. Until now a creature casting a summoning spell got nothing, which is why the lich summons in the game never worked. Lich Mages and the named liches now raise up to two skeletons when they fall to half health; the skeletons fight beside them for a minute, give no experience or loot, and crumble when their master dies. This ships switched off and will be turned on for a tester pass first.
• Undead creatures that can be raised (skeletons, zombies, liches and ghosts) paid their kill experience twice whenever the roll to get back up kept them down, which happened on about half of weapon kills and nine in ten spell kills. Every kill now pays once, so experience from these creatures drops to the amount it was always meant to be.
• Skeleton fixes. Hurt Bloodbone Mages recast a borrowed player shield every few seconds; they now ward themselves once a fight and cast Death Field in place of Death Ray. The Ichor Witch and Cap'n Markus Darkfeather carried a second magic wall and shrugged off nearly every spell; spells now hurt them like other skeletons of their level. Bloodbone Archers below half health push you back every 12 seconds (it was every 3), and Skeletal Remains hit like the level 19 skeletons they are.
• Skeleton numbers that sat off their own ladders were brought back in line. The level 19 Skeleton Mage had 30 health and now has 55; the level 40 Skeleton Mage now casts Drain Life like every other skeleton mage; the Large Skeleton carries its own weaker two-handed sword, where it had been swinging the one from the tier above; a pirate Elite Skeleton Archer with half its twin's health and Strength now matches it; and the Episode 2 skeleton mages, which had more health than the warriors beside them, now have a little less. The skeleton archers in the Battle of Solace Bridge pay their experience the moment they die.
• Inside the Tower of the Shuttered Eye, eight spots built for Large Skeletons and Skeleton Footmen had been spawning the level 3 Skeleton from the starting areas. They now spawn the skeletons they were built for.
• Skeletons now shatter. A skeleton finished by a mace or hammer (including Crushing Blow and Break Armor) or by Sun or Life magic breaks apart in a burst of bone: no Skeleton Mage can raise it, and its body can be looted at once. Killed any other way, a skeleton can still be raised by a mage nearby. Weapon enchantments do not count; the weapon itself decides.
• Every skeleton name got a kit of its own. Two-handed sword skeletons from the Large Skeleton Footman up use Whirling Blades on everyone around them; mace and hammer skeletons use Break Armor, whose armor debuff now wears off before it can be cast again; Elite Skeleton Footmen and Skeleton Warriors go berserk once at a quarter health; shield-bearing Skeleton Footmen block some blows from the front. Hardened and Elite Skeleton Mages teleport attackers away from them, the pirate skeleton footmen pull players in from range, Burned Skeletons burst into flame when they die, and Skeletal Remains lie as bone piles until someone walks past.
• Sun and Life magic now hurt skeletons. Skeletons were meant to be weak to both, but their general resistance to magic cancelled the weakness: Sun landed at 0.50 of normal and Life at 0.31 to 0.65. Both now land at about 1.21 at every level, before the caster's attunement, while Fire, Moon, Death and the other schools still meet the wall. Burned Skeletons stay immune to fire and now take extra from Water, Sun and Life, and they take half damage from piercing and extra from maces and hammers like the rest of the family.
• Skeleton Archmages are ready to raise skeletal warriors at half health, on the creature summoning built for the liches today. It stays switched off until testers get a pass at it; the servants will pay no experience and drop no loot.
• Added two shard switches ahead of the kobold abilities: one keeps kobold fighters from running away when they are losing, the other makes kobold archers and gunners step back out of melee instead of shooting at point-blank range. Either can be switched off from the tunables page without a client patch. Creatures that buff their allies also stop replacing a buff an ally already has from another caster with one that does the same thing. Nothing changes in the game until the kobold abilities themselves land (dcb98ab482).
• The Undead ambush on the Forest Road, Plains Road, Plains and Swamp Road encounters now ends with tier 8 Ancient Undead. Its last wave used to roll level 108 Ancient Undead drones in a Tier 3 area, and they beat level 100 characters. Four new tier 8 drones at level 86 take their place, with about half the health and tier 8 weapons and loot, and the Lich Mage on that spot is the tier 8 one too. The tier 10 drones in Despair, the Grusk Factory and the Rookery are unchanged. A player reported it through the Oracle.
• Kobold fighters now fight to the end instead of running away when they are losing; kobold archers, mages and gunners still break and run back to them. From the Kobold Fighter up, a fighter that drops to half its health becomes Enraged, once per fight. A fighter's second special attack now suits its weapon: fighters with a hammer use Crushing Blow, a hit that stuns for two seconds, and fighters with a sword or axe use Rend, which makes you bleed. The other special shows as Heavy Blow in the combat log (a0117ff355).
• Kobold camps have leaders and healers. Elder and Ancient Elite Kobold Fighters and Elite Kobold Fire Fighters open a fight with Rallying Cry, which makes up to six kobolds around them stronger for 30 seconds. Kobold mages from Capable up heal wounded kobolds, and stunning the mage stops the cast. A leader's rally and a mage's Strength buff no longer keep replacing each other on the same kobold (a0117ff355).
• Kobold archers and gunners step back out of melee most of the time instead of shooting at point-blank range. Archers from the Kobold Archer in Naryad Woods up throw a Shock Net that roots you for three seconds, and Blinding Shot now scales with the archer's level instead of taking 10 Dexterity at every level. Kobold Gunners, which had no abilities, now use Disabling Shot with a crossbow, Chain Lightning with a tesla rifle and Concussive Shot with a cloud cannon (a0117ff355).
• Clockwork kobolds: a Kobold Brawler that drops to a quarter of its health winds up for about a second and then Overloads, an electric burst that can stun everyone around it, once per fight. Kobold Grenadiers throw a Fire Pot that leaves four metres of burning ground, and the stronger grenadiers also fire Concussive Shot. The Kobold Brawlers that held a one-handed sword now swing a two-handed electric axe (a0117ff355).
• Kobold hammers now deal crushing damage instead of cutting damage, so armour against crushing blows counts against them. Kobold Piercing Shot now ignores armour (a0117ff355).
• Planned the elf family pass: the Vertas elves, the Obsidian Eye elves, their Elite Guard, the Simulacrum elves of The Rise and the Underdweller elves each get their own set of abilities, unlocked as they rise in rank, with every new ability behind a switch that puts the old one back. The same pass fixes seven elf data mistakes and gives the high-level Obsidian elves names that no longer match the level-1 ones. Nothing changes in the game yet (393f4c86d0).
• K'Racket the Exiled, the kobold boss in Mysterious Swamp, is now a boss fight at the level of his swamp. He was level 19 with no abilities and gave no experience; he is now level 120 and gives 25,000. He opens with Rallying Cry over the kobolds around him, casts Chain Lightning and Discharge, Blinks away, becomes Enraged at 40% health and Overloads at a quarter, and it takes two stuns landing together to hold him (3cfdc2a184).
• The Logging Camp Foreman in South Boundless Forest now fits its zone: level 35 instead of 99, about 500 health instead of 3,500, and 1,400 experience. It swings a two-handed hammer, rallies the kobolds around it and becomes Enraged at half health (3cfdc2a184).
• Added the switches the elf pass will use: each changed elf lists which of its abilities follow a switch, so turning a switch off on the tunables page puts back the abilities that elf had before, without a client patch. Three of them start off, for the abilities that need a two-player test first. Nothing changes in the game yet (dece5dcb49).
• Fixed a set of elves that looked, sounded or were named wrong. The Obsidian elf fighters in Crag Foothills are named Hardened Obsidian Elf Fighter instead of the name of the Vertas elves they fight, and the control point guards in Lost Vale and Despair are named Hardened Obsidian Elf Guard. 27 female elves in Myrkur and in player-built dungeons have the female elf voice instead of a man's. The Elite Obsidian Elf Mage at the Superstition Canyon control point is dressed as a mage instead of a sword fighter, and the one exit from the Verdantis Mines into The Rise that sent out an archer now sends out the mage its three sibling exits do (88a4270860).
• The Elf Fighters in Tartarus drop the loot of their own level instead of the level 29 loot, the level 19 elf archers carry the bow of their rank and hit about 40% less hard than before, and the Obsidian elf mages of two ranks give the same experience as their Vertas equivalents (1,400 to 2,000 and 2,600 to 3,000) (88a4270860).
• The strongest Obsidian elves no longer share names with the weakest. The level 119 elves that fill The Obsidian Panopticon were named Obsidian Elf Fighter, like the level 1 elves near Highvale; the top ranks now read Obsidian Elf Warrior, Sharpshooter or Archmage, then Hardened Obsidian Elf Warrior, Sharpshooter or Archmage, then Elite Obsidian Elf Warrior, Sharpshooter or Archmage (003caebd2b).
• The Obsidian elf fighters get worse the longer you fight them. Up to the Obsidian Elf Warriors they cast Weakened Blows, which makes your weapon hit for less for 30 seconds; from the Warrior rank they become Enraged at half health; and the Hardened and Elite Obsidian Elf Warriors open the Eye at a quarter health, mesmerizing everyone within a few steps for 3 seconds, or 6 while the moon is up (c0836092d7).
• Weakened Blows now needs its caster in melee range. The Petrified Zombies used to cast it from 15 metres away, where a player on a ledge could hit them without being reached; they now walk up to you first (c0836092d7).
• Built Raise the Fallen for the Obsidian elf mages, switched off for now: a mage that reaches a fallen Obsidian elf in time casts for two seconds and stands it back up once, and a body with no mage near it dies as it always did. It turns on after a two-player test on chaos (c0836092d7).
• The Vertas elf archers control the distance. From the level 3 Elf Archers up they fire Pinning Shot, a short root they can use even when you are standing next to them, in place of Disabling Shot; from level 39 they step back to shooting range more often instead of firing point-blank. Hardened Elf Archers knock you back with Concussive Shot, Elite Elf Archers fire Volley, a ring of arrows around their target, and Elf Sharpshooters can Blink away (5b4ee5eb66).
• The Obsidian elf archers mark you for their pack: Mark of the Eye makes you take more damage from everything for 10 seconds, and it replaces their Blinding Shot. The Elite ones also fire Sapping Shot, which lowers your Strength. The stronger Obsidian elf mages cast Gaze of the Eye, a mesmerize that lasts twice as long under the moon, and the strongest pull you toward them with Void Pull. The Hardened Obsidian Elf Guards open a fight with Rallying Cry (5b4ee5eb66).
• The Simulacrum elves of The Rise have names of their own, Simulacrum Elf Fighter, Archer, Mage and Elite Guard, instead of borrowing the Obsidian and Vertas names. Their mages confuse you with Confuse and Twinkle in place of Death Field and Torpid Torment (5b4ee5eb66).
• The Vertas elf mages hold the field. From the Elf Mages of Crooked Shank up they cast Root from range; from the Hardened rank they cast Cleansing Light on a hurt ally that is bleeding, burning or poisoned, taking those off and healing it a little; and the control point mages and Archmages cast Light of Truth, a burst of sunlight that leaves everyone it hits easier to hit squarely for 10 seconds, in place of Discharge (45badcaf14).
• The Underdweller elves stopped only punching. They claw you with Claw Rend Attack, the strongest pounce from a few metres away, the strongest become Enraged at half health, and every one lets out a Death Shriek as it dies, draining the focus of everyone within 5 metres (45badcaf14).
• The Vertas elf fighters duel. From level 19 up, an elf fighter that parries your blow answers within about two seconds with Counterstroke, a hard hit. From level 39 up it raises its guard with En Garde at half health, and the Elite Elf Fighters add Leg Sweep, a knockdown for up to three people in front of them (e7eb98b3dd).
• Elf Warriors call Hold the Line early in a fight, raising the parry of up to six elves around them for two minutes, and no longer become Enraged at half health. The Elf Fighters of Verdantis Mines throw rocks at anyone who climbs out of their reach (e7eb98b3dd).
• Built Guardian's Ward for the Hardened Obsidian Elf Guards, switched off for now: the guard wards one ally and takes a third of every hit on it for 30 seconds. It turns on after a two-player check on chaos. Valiant Warden works as before (a08e745e05).
• Built Mirror Images for the Simulacrum elves of The Rise, switched off for now: a wounded Simulacrum splits off one or two copies of itself that die to one hit, hit for half, and fade after 12 seconds. They are worth no experience, loot or kill credit. It turns on after a two-player check on chaos (5ba050daba).
• Vikland's two fish schools were swimming up out of the sea and could be seen in the air above the waves. Each fish aims at a waypoint inside the volume it was placed in, but nothing held it there, so it arrived still climbing and carried on several metres past. Fish are now held inside that volume, which sits three to four metres under the waterline.
• Planned the troll family pass. Trolls could never be stunned, because their crowd-control resistance was counted twice, and their own stuns outlasted their cooldowns. The plan makes them stunnable, shortens their holds, makes Fire and Sun real weaknesses, and gives the family regeneration that fire stops. It also writes their backstory into the game (de240f029c).
• Stuns, knockbacks and knockdowns can land on trolls. Each troll's crowd-control resistance was counted twice, which kept Body Slam, Stone Fist, Charge and Leg Sweep from ever landing on one; it now counts once, so they land about four times in ten, and the boss wall still asks a group for two to four controls together on the bigger trolls. The Oracle's combat guide was rewritten to match and goes live with her next update (6831890bcc, #7328).
• Trolls no longer keep you down for longer than their own attacks take to come back. Swipe stuns for 3 seconds and comes round every 12 (it was 10 seconds every 6), and the ground pound knocks you down for 2 seconds every 10 with no confusion afterwards (it was 5 seconds every 3, then 15 seconds of scrambled movement). The Shock Monkeys and frost giants keep their own pound as it was (fde6373f36).
• A dying troll now falls on whoever stays under it: the hit lands about two seconds after death, when the body hits the ground, as a physical blow that armour reduces, and a ring on the ground shows where. Creature attacks cast on death now keep their warning ring after the creature dies (fde6373f36).
• Every player near a dying creature sees the same warning ring: the ring is now matched to its attack the same way on every screen. Besides the falling troll, this covers the red mushrooms' dying spores and the Underdweller elves' Death Shriek, whose rings stay until the burst lands (81e8cd05df).
• Planned a pass on dragons and wyverns. Dragons get a sky phase that works (take-off and landing that play, a short take-off run, a sortie of three to five bolts, a dive and a landing shockwave), a breath and a new attack for every colour, young that the parent defends, and Ancients with a roar and a second life. Wild wyverns become airborne hunters, and every dragon and wyvern goes to the balance curve.
• Magic hurts trolls now. Their resistance to magic was high enough that Air, Earth, Water, Life and Moon spells did almost nothing to any troll and Death did about a sixteenth of its damage; those six schools now do roughly a third to a half of full damage before attunement, and Fire and Sun, the family weakness that used to cancel out to ordinary damage, do about 1.2 times full damage to every troll at every level (702875f422).
• Goruk Mansmasher no longer carries a spellcaster's extra magic resistance, school attunements and dodge, so he takes Fire and Sun the way the rest of his family does (702875f422).
• Trolls no longer turn and run up to 45 m away in the middle of a fight. The part of their fighting routine that fled now throws a boulder (Rock Throw), usually from arm's length when you are close, and when the throw is not ready the troll swings again. (3235b697fc)
• A troll that becomes Enraged at half or a quarter health now roars. It used to play its Ground Pound stamp at that moment, a pound tell with no pound behind it; the real Ground Pound looks the same as before. (3235b697fc)
• Underdweller Trolls fight with the full troll kit: boulders, both enrage buffs and the same toughness against weapons as other trolls. The Elite Obsidian Trolls of the Lost Vale finale now enrage at half and at a quarter health like their kin. (3235b697fc)
• Troll sounds: a grunt before about half their kicks, an impact sound when a troll's blow lands (it used to play a miss swoosh), and the chain rattle when a troll is knocked down. (3235b697fc)
• First round of dragon fixes. Clockwork dragons enrage at 30% again and Shock Monkey Gamma goes berserk at half health again (a data edit last month had left both without their ability). The Green Pit Dragon's Venom Bite now poisons you instead of stunning you for up to 30 seconds, the K'rul clockwork dragon's Lightning Breath now stuns and loses strength down the chain, and the take-off downdraft only knocks you back. Blue and Purple dragons are now weak to Earth. Seventeen dragon and wyvern attacks now show their names in the combat log, dragons play their heavy-hit and critical-hit sounds, and tamed young dragons can be studied with Animal Lore.
• The Creature Balance data snapshot was rebaked with the elf family pass: every elf set now lists its new abilities, the Obsidian mages carry their corrected experience, and the seven Simulacrum images appear as their own Illusions family. 1,565 creatures across 69 families, up from 1,556. (f17e513623, #8654)
• Planned a second pass on the Breach Elemental Lords after kill records showed Brign and Pyre farmed solo on chaos and live. Each corner Lord becomes a group fight with one signature skill, and a fallen Lord re-forms unless all four fall within five minutes of each other. Everything lands switched off first.
• The Leather Collar of Giant Slaying now adds its pet damage bonus against every troll. It used to count only on 9 of the 23 kinds of troll, missing the Obsidian, Underdweller and player-dungeon trolls; slayer bonuses now follow what a creature is, and the Leather Ball of Elf Slaying no longer counts on Obsidian Trolls. (e814025e3c)
• The Elite Obsidian Trolls of the Lost Vale finale stand with the Obsidian elves, as the ordinary Obsidian Trolls always did, so leftover elves and the last wave no longer fight each other. Satyrs now leave trolls alone as well; before, only the trolls kept the peace. (e814025e3c)
• The imp that bursts out of a gargoyle statue on North Quel Way now counts as an imp: its kills go toward Imp Hunter and the other Imp achievements, and it is a demon like the rest of its kin, so it no longer turns and runs when badly hurt. Both problems date from before the port (#8627).
• Set aside the ability numbers the second Breach Elemental Lords pass will use, with a test that keeps other work out of that block. No new ability exists yet, and each will ship switched off.
• Dragon pass, part 3: a creature's cone attack now warns with a wedge the width of the cone instead of a full circle, and a stunned creature on the shared monster rig plays a stun pose instead of standing in its idle (dragons and wyverns shudder in place). The stun animation state was misspelled, so no creature on that rig could reach it. Creature cones can now also be turned to hit behind (for tail sweeps) and can require line of sight, and a creature's knockback now tosses its victim up; each rule sits behind a live switch.
• Added the Breach settings group to the live tunables page: switches for the Convocation, each Lords new kit and the royale changes, health dials, and the encounters log lines. Every switch ships off, so the Breach plays as it does today until one is turned on.
• Dragon pass, part 4 (no visible change yet): the groundwork for dragon behaviour went in switched off. Nine new Live Tunables in a Dragons group cover the sky phase, the take-off run, brood reactions, the Ancients' second life and wyvern flight, and no dragon is flagged to read them until its kit lands. Kin deaths, a rise that comes back after a leash, and a taming level that survives a relevel are wired and fenced.
• Wrote the log lines the Breach encounter will report: each Lords death and what fought it, each royale wave and run, and whether a big heal or blast was stopped. They are how the second pass gets tuned from real fights, and nothing writes them until the encounter code lands.
• Dragon pass, part 5 (still switched off): a flagged dragon now holds its take-off crouch and its landing long enough for both animations and height curves to play, which never happened before because the waits had been compiled out. Root, Trip and the other ground-only controls land during the crouch and after touchdown. A dragon standing in melee reach with a melee attack ready no longer picks a fireball and hops into the air, and a new tree node lets an airborne dragon wait a moment for its next bolt.
• A creatures ability switches can now apply only at certain spawn points or health levels, so a Breach Lord can keep a signature for its corner fight without also using it in the royale arena. Existing creatures behave exactly as before.
• Taught creature AI who the upcoming Breach Lord signatures may target: the Lords charm only takes tamed animals, and a burning mark or a shared blow aimed at a pet goes to its owner instead, so a parked pet cannot soak it. No creature uses these yet.
• Dragon pass, part 6 (still switched off): the dragon behaviour graph gained a sky-phase branch in front of the one that shipped, which stays exactly as it was. When a dragon is flagged and the switch is on, it takes off after a short run, fires three to five bolts, then dives and lands. Wyverns got a behaviour graph of their own that sends them up for two or three swoops one fight cycle in three and otherwise fights on the ground as before.
• Dragon pass, part 7: adult dragons now fight with a real sky phase. They run a short way before taking off instead of about 144 m, the take-off and landing play out, a flight fires three to five fire bolts and ends with Dive Slam and a Landing Shockwave. Tail Sweep replaces Tail Bash and hits behind the dragon with a 2.5 s knockdown (it was 8 s, in front). Dragon's Wrath replaces the old enrage and no longer lifts the dragon off the ground to cast, Downdraft pulls in a player the dragon cannot reach, and Kin Fury turns a dragon on whoever killed its kin. Every change sits behind a live switch.
• Dragon pass, part 8: every adult dragon colour now breathes its own element below half health, as a cone that catches up to eight players (the old breath was the same single-target fire on every colour). Red breathes Inferno Breath, Orange Magma Breath, Yellow Searing Breath, Blue the repaired Lightning Breath, White Frost Breath, Green Venom Breath, Black Withering Breath and Purple Chaos Breath, each with its own after-effect. A dragon's fire bolt now leaves 8 seconds of burning ground instead of a minute-long fire field, and Frost Bite moved from the Blue dragon to the White.
• Dragon pass, part 9: each adult colour gained an attack of its own. Red lunges (Wrathful Lunge), Orange makes the ground erupt under a player (Eruption), Yellow casts a mesmerizing Blinding Flash that can be interrupted, White roots whoever stays in its Rime Snare, Blue calls down a Lightning Rod on a player's spot, Green lowers armour with Acid Spray, Black drags a player in with Grave Pull, and Purple opens a confusing Chaos Rift. Each one is warned by a ground ring, a cast bar or the dragon needing to see you.
• Dragon pass, part 10: adult dragons shoot bolts of their own element from the air (Sun, Storm, Venom, Frost and Void; Red, Orange and Purple keep fire), and their numbers now follow the creature curve. Each tier swings its own weapon, so the mean hit rises from 127 at the smallest adults to 179 at the largest (it was 188, 156, 169 and 175, inverted above the smallest). Health comes down by up to 22% and Strength sits at 215, 255, 315 and 390 by tier. The Ferocious dragon in The Rise now enrages at half health. Kill experience drops by about half, which reaches players with a later server update.
• Added an encounter director to The Breach royale, switched off for now. Once on, the Death Power Shards re-form 40 seconds after they break unless they all fall together, Spawn of Pele takes less damage for every shard still standing, the arena Lords grow stronger as their siblings fall, wave 1 stops repeating for experience, the daemons are tougher and the wave-3 obsidian golems stand guard at the shards. It also logs each royale run for tuning.
• Dragon pass, part 11: the Ancient dragons became a two-part fight. At the first fall an Ancient lets out Death Throes, then rises at full health about ten seconds later with Ancient Wrath and five minutes of harder, faster attacks. Each Ancient casts Dragonfear (interruptible; it mesmerizes and weakens anyone in sight who is close), fights with its colour's breath and signature, and unleashes a cataclysm when badly hurt: Firestorm, Caldera Eruption, Sunburst, Glacial Tomb, Tempest, Petrifying Exhale, Obsidian Resurgence or Void Collapse. Health per life came down so the two lives together match the boss curve.
• Dragon pass, part 12: the Episode 2 dragons were far tougher than any other dragon of their level (health set at 55 times the level scale). The Myrkur Black Ancient, the Episode 2 Red dragon and the Aether dragon's twin now scale with their zone on the same curve as the rest, and the Black Ancient fights like the other Ancients, with a second life and its colour's kit. The Aether dragon gained Comet Strike, a ring under a player that a comet hits two and a half seconds later.
• Dragon pass, part 13: the clockwork dragons in K'rul, Blood Bay and The Breach had up to twice the effective health of other dragons at their level and paid about half the experience per point of it. They now sit on the same curve, and each line fights differently. All seven share Overclock (a spark ring and a minute of faster attacks when they enrage), Flammable Oil (bleeding one gets you oiled, and oil lowers your fire and air resistance before its lightning breath) and the repaired lightning breath. Each line also has its own move: Harpoon Claw in K'rul, Overheat Vent in Blood Bay (a scald that leaves the dragon open for 10 seconds), and Soot Cloud, Seismic Stomp and Gilded Beam in The Breach, where the Gold beam hits harder the farther away you stand.
• Dragon pass, part 14: baby dragons had one ranged spit and nothing else, so in a fight they always counted as flying and ignored Root, Trip, Knockdown and every other ground-only effect. Young and Juvenile dragons now bite, claw, flick their tail behind them and spit their colour (fire, magma, sun, frost, storm, venom, withering or chaos, each with its own effect), and they stay on the ground while you are in reach. Juveniles dropped from level 139 to 102, below the adults they guard, with experience to match (26,000 to 8,400); taming one is as hard as before. Juveniles pounce and shriek a Brood Rally when hurt, and adults will call hatchlings (Brood Call) once creature summoning is switched on.
• The Breach's four corner Elemental Lords gained the Elemental Convocation, switched off for now: a fallen Lord lies as a glowing body nobody can loot and re-forms at full health five minutes later, unless all four fall inside that window. Then each Lord pays its experience and loot once, the arena battle opens for ten minutes, and the four return together.
• A Convocation Lord pays everyone whose group did at least a tenth of its damage and stood within 40 m when it fell, rather than only the top group within 20 m, and a re-formed Lord starts with a clean slate of who hit it.
• Dragon pass, part 15: wild wyverns had not been changed in years. All eight colours fought the same way on the ground, stunned on every bite and knocked players down every two seconds. Now a bite stuns a quarter of the time and the tail lash comes every ten seconds, aimed behind them. Wyverns take to the air and Swoop on players who back away, spit their colour, and go into Kin Fury when one of the flock dies. Large and Huge wyverns rake with Rending Talons and Frenzy at 30% health, and Huge ones take off, dive and land like dragons. Small wyverns now hit like their level and pay 5,000 experience (was 7,500); Large ones pay 28,750 (was 13,500) and Huge ones 50,500 (was 17,500).
• Dragon pass, part 16: four War Wyverns (White, Blue, Purple and Orange) for the Dragon clan's handlers. They fight like wild wyverns with a trampling Harness Charge, and they fly into Kin Fury when their handler falls. They are not placed yet; they replace the clan's war beasts in Ulfheim and the barbarian wyvern groups in a later update.
• Dragon pass, part 18: the Aether dragon's death is now announced to the whole shard with the same celebration as an Ancient's, and field dressing it gives the Serpent Scales, carcasses, neck bone and dragon bones every other great dragon gives (it gave almost none). A Huge White wyvern's second carcass now drops as often as the other colours' (50% to 95%). The Purple pit dragon's careful field dressing gave a higher tier of leather than the Black one's by mistake and now matches it. A Red War Wyvern joins the other four.
• Dragon pass, part 19: where dragons appear. Myrkur could stand five Black Ancient Dragons at its start; now at most two, returning every hour. The Ancient Yellow on Blackblade Pass's dragon beach appears far less often (weight 25 to 5, every 15 minutes instead of 4), so its shard celebration no longer repeats all evening. The Aether dragon turns up in about one dragon encounter in twenty instead of one in three. Grunvald Shardfall's nest holds three hatchlings. At the Well of Aldur most of the small Purple wyverns are now the zone's larger kind and the final wave can bring the Huge Black Wyvern. Ulfheim's war beasts are War Wyverns that go into Kin Fury when a clansman falls, and the barbarian riders on the roads ride them too.
• Added Unchallenged, a buff an Elemental Lord in The Breach can wear when too few players are fighting it: a quarter more weapon damage and 15% less damage taken for each missing player. It ships switched off and nothing casts it until the undermanned floor is turned on.
• Dragon pass, part 20: a knocked-down dragon played its death animation; it now flinches and staggers. Swoop and Dive Slam have a diving animation (they had none), dragons roar when they spot you, and the jog, which had no dragon animation, uses the walk. The White dragon's Frost Breath looks like frost and the Red and Orange breaths use the stronger fire. Spits show their effect as they hit instead of a second later. Adults and wyverns show a large splash and young dragons a small one, and every dragon had carried a 50 meter echo on all nearby sound, which is now off.
• Dragon pass, part 21: the Oracle's guide to dragons was rewritten for the new fights: where each kind lives, what every colour breathes, how to survive an Ancient's second life, the clockwork lines, the brood, wyverns and taming. It reaches the Oracle with its next update after these changes arrive on the test server.
• Gael, Lord of Air, has a new kit for The Breach, shipped switched off: Eye of the Storm (a storm round Gael whose calm eye shrinks as it weakens; stand inside or lose most of your health), Hurricane, Squall, Downdraft and Gale Force. Turning it on retires Chain Lightning, the inert Chaos Bomb and the 60-second enrage.
• Three runes the four Elemental Lords will share are in place, also switched off: two enrages that last the whole fight and Beguile, which turns a tamed animal against its owner for 8 seconds.
• Fixed the creature attack picker choosing a melee ability that the creature's kit switch had turned off, which made it walk in for an attack it could not use. Gael's new kit, still switched off, also moved Squall to melee range so its ring reaches his far side, and Downdraft is now used only on targets far enough away to pull.

Localization

• Japanese: the Row lot size was translated as 行, which means a line of text, so Row deeds read 「権利書、行（PA、課税）」. 218 lines across deed names, row homes, lot markers, basements, lot descriptions and the property lists now use 連棟住宅, 連棟区画 and 連棟サイズ, the term most of the game already used. Row street names such as Peddler's Row now read in katakana. Reported in-game by Neokun.
• Japanese: 21 town crier and housing lines said 自由 ("freedom") where the English said "lots" or "houses", because one conversation link covers all three words. They now say 区画, 家 or 連棟住宅, and the translation pipeline no longer forces a single word onto a link whose English wording varies.

Localization pipeline

• The localization guide now covers correcting the English of a string that several scenes share without the regen tool giving it a new id, which would send every translation back to English. It also covers the form Unity saves accented text in, so a later scene save does not rewrite the line.

Twitch Drops

• The game server can now hand out Twitch Drops rewards through its own reward queue. Each claimed drop lands once in the Rewards window as an untradeable item worth no gold, and the whole path stays switched off until the first campaign. Requested by necronut.
• The Twitch Drops reward queue got stricter checks: a drop can no longer carry currency, crowns, or items that open, grow or break down into other goods, and every drop has to arrive whole. It also recovers from interrupted deliveries without handing anything out twice. Requested by necronut.
• The planned Twitch Drops rewards were changed so none of them can be traded, packaged for trade or salvaged, as Twitch requires. The dye pack now holds a green cloth dye in place of the black one, and the third reward is a Shogun Lightstring house decoration in place of the Livestreamer cloak. A new data check holds every Twitch reward bundle to the same rule the server uses before it hands a reward over. Requested by necronut.

UI

• The chat entry box went from 18 to 26 pixels tall at the default chat font (the old box was 25), with the same room around the text at every font size. The arrow beside it and the Lua entry in its channel menu now have hover text, and the Lua one explains that what you type there stays in your own chat window.

Voice

• Anaïs on the Isle of Storms no longer shouts the end of her hotbar lesson. The closing "you use that thing! Easier than equipping gear!" played about 8 dB louder than the rest of her reply. All three versions of the reply were re-recorded at an even level and are live now (#8310).
• Ten more NPCs whose voice did not match how they look were fixed. Sergeant Liam and Corporal Riegel in Lord British's Castle now wear men's armour, and the Brittany Fields pet merchant, two Obsidian Panopticon prisoners and a Castle Atos child now speak with a voice that matches them (#8594).
• When the player hands Gawain's Amulet of Testimony to Knight-Captain Brigid in Resolute, the knight's recorded message now plays in his own voice, the wounded-knight voice he has in Highvale, and the chat log credits those words to Gawain. Brigid's voice used to read the whole reply (requested by rumors). The reply's translations moved with it in all eight languages, and the Russian text, which had the amulet speaking to Gawain, now has it speaking for him.
• Esmeralda in Highvale Outskirts no longer spells out the hush in her ghostly echo reply. She read "SSSHHH!" as the letters S S S H H H and now says "Shh!". A sweep for the same all-caps problem found three more lines and re-recorded them: "GAHK! BFFT!" from two creatures in Blood River Outskirts and the "HM!" in the Grusk blacksmith's disambiguator line. All four are live now. Reported by rumors (#8135).

Audio

• Sixty townsfolk spoke with the voice of the opposite sex because their spawn point handed them the wrong copy of their dialogue record: guards on the Port Graff waterfront, residents of Brittany Alleys, prisoners and guards in The Clink, and defenders at the road sieges among them. Each now gets the copy that matches how they look, with no change to what they say (#8322).
• The remaining 91 mismatches are settled too. Where the name decided it, the body changed: nine Aerie guards with men's names wore women's armour and six with women's names wore men's, and The Clink's riot put Captain Hamtooth, Patrick and Walter in women's bodies. Where it did not, the voice follows the body: Cai Lau and Parker in Ardoris, Beatriz and Tacey in Port Harmony and 21 others are recast, and women running florist, baker, waitress and crafting supply shops get a woman's voice. The new voices go out with the next voice update (#8517).
• A new check reads every scene and fails when a spawn point pairs a body with a dialogue record of the other sex. It found 11 more inside prefab wrappers it cannot read yet; one is fixed and the rest are filed as #8594.
• The stream in Brittany Estates plays at a quarter of its old volume. Its fourteen water loops were set ten times louder than the same river anywhere else, and now match Aerie. Reported by Retlaw.
• Walking under the wooden bridge over the Brittany Estates stream no longer silences the water. The bridge was being treated as a roof, so the game switched to its indoor sound mix. The same fix went to bridges in Brittany Wharfs and Dysborg.

Creatures

• Where walkable ground is stacked, such as a pier deck over the sea floor, a bridge over a road, an upper storey or the Jotungrund ice crevasse, a creature could keep using the level above or below it and get stopped by walls that were not on its own level. The game remembered the last piece of navmesh it found for each creature and only checked its map position, never its height. It now checks the height too, and a creature that steps off an edge still falls to the ground below as before. Across every baked scene, a third of the navmesh sits over or under another layer.

Player Dungeons

• Hilt Spider Room: every spider in "Stone Dungeon Room (Hilt Spider Room with Spawns)" can now reach you when you come in through one of its upper doorways (#8456). Rubble piles blocked the lower gallery from wall to railing on two sides, which cut the far galleries, the spiral stair and the boss pit off from the doorways, so 13 of the room's 33 spiders stood still where they spawned and could be killed from range. The two piles and a smaller heap beside one of them now sit against the outer wall, leaving a walkway about 2 metres wide along the railing. The Debris Deco version of the room got the same change, so a pet can follow you past them. Monsters still cannot get from the galleries to the ground-floor doorways; that is tracked as #8457.
• Kobolds placed in player dungeons fight like the kobolds in the world at their tier: fighters hold their ground and rally, archers step back and throw Shock Net, mages heal, brawlers Overload and grenadiers throw Fire Pots. Their weapons now get stronger as their tier rises (every fighter and archer used to carry the same one), their names follow the world's kobolds instead of calling four mage tiers "LuRK, KRul Scout", and the higher grenadiers drop grenadier loot instead of gunner loot (3cfdc2a184).

Community

• Filed five items from the overnight forum sweep: an optional grid/center-line overlay for decorating, customizable button and drop-list hover colors, crafting from a container stashed in the bank, a bundle of overland-encounter asks (timed world bosses, harder variants, more quest hooks), and a Night Vision rim-light visual report.

Pets

• The descriptions of Pet Speed Training, Pet Strength Training and Pet Taunting Training now say that charging the glyph lengthens its cooldown as well as the command, by the same share, in all nine languages. A fully charged Speed or Strength command runs 40 seconds on a 60 second cooldown, where the tooltip shows the uncharged 30. The behavior is unchanged. Redmine #7778.
• Pets now follow you up all 68 ladders in Halls of Artifice, up from 44. The last 24 climb to the small bookshelf balconies in the library halls, where the bookshelf left too little floor for the pathing bake: 8 balconies had no walkable ground recorded and on 16 more it stopped short of the ladder. The bookshelves are now left out of the bake and stay where they were, and 77% of the balcony floor can be reached from below, up from 64%. A plain rebake reproduced the 2022 pathing data almost exactly, and the unbaked lower level the bug report described is not there.
• Calling a pet to you no longer puts it inside a wall, a rock or tree roots: each spot around you now needs a clear line from you and room for the pet's body. Testers had found it in a Nightshade Pass ruin and in Tanglemire (43e4c338ec).
• Dragon pass, part 17: a tamed young dragon used to hover through every fight and spit from up to 25 meters, so Root and Trip never landed on it. It now stays on the ground, spits its colour (the same eight spits the wild ones use), and its weapon hits harder (base damage 4 to 6). Tamed wyverns gained a Pounce. The sixteen S-tier young dragons and wyverns had the Obsidian bear's stats and now match the Obsidian big cats: more health, Strength and Dexterity at every Taming mastery.

Sieges

• After a town siege, the bodies of the Cabalist's army stayed on the ground for as long as you stayed in the town. Only the creatures standing when you arrived cleared away, which is why his own body left on time and most of his army did not. Every body from the fight now dissolves and disappears on its own about five minutes after it fell, and stays lootable until then (#7378).
• The Cabalist power meter no longer disappears for the rest of a session after a trip to the character select screen. The on-screen instrument keyboard and the bard Inspiration readout had the same fault and are fixed too. Reported through the Oracle.

Client

• Groundwork for the minimap: a window that has more than two states can now move one state along when its hotkey, Escape or a zone change would otherwise hide it. Nothing uses it yet, so every window behaves as before.
• The minimaps rules are settled and tested ahead of the wiring: which state the map opens in, when Escape or a zone change sends the full map back to the disc, and that the disc never takes the mouse cursor. A shard switch, map.minimapEnabled, puts the map key back to a plain open and close if the disc ever needs taking down.
• The minimap disc learned how to behave on screen: a click opens the full map, a drag moves the disc and it remembers where it was put, and it sits under the window buttons in the top-right corner, with notifications moving down to make room for it. Its hit area is round, so clicks just past the rim reach the world. Switching the full map back from the disc no longer risks drawing it under its own controls.
• The map has a round minimap, requested by Alice Coope. The map key now steps through three states: a small disc in the top-right corner that stays up while you walk, then the full map window, then hidden. The disc keeps north up and you in the middle, zooms with the mouse wheel or its + and - buttons, opens the full map on a click, and moves with a drag. Places you are heading for, such as a /beacon, stay on its edge in their direction when they are off the disc. Escape and zone changes leave it alone, and it does not take the mouse cursor.
• Three minimap settings under Options, Interface, Map & Navigation: Keep Minimap Up makes the map key switch between the minimap and the full map without ever hiding it, Minimap Size sets how big it is, and Minimap Opacity picks Full, Dimmed or Faint. Searching the options for "minimap" or "mini-map" finds all three.
• Players who had faded out of view at a distance (about 90 meters and beyond) were still drawn in full, shadows included, every frame. The client now stops drawing them once the fade finishes and starts again as they fade back in, so players spread across a busy town no longer cost a full draw each while invisible. Nothing looks different. (13a89b8cdf, #8730)
• The shared surface shader behind most characters, armor, buildings and decorations stopped doing work that could not change the picture. It read the dissolve texture on every character and item even when nothing was dissolving, read texture slots most materials leave empty (83% have no occlusion map), and fetched glow maps for glow set to black. A material without extras now reads 2 textures per pixel instead of 3, and one with glow and detail maps 4 instead of 8. On Mac, which also ran the dye math on undyed gear, the same materials drop from 5 to 2 and from 10 to 4. Everything looks the same. (cb7cd83415, #8731)
• Materials with no normal map, a quarter of them, also stopped reading the default flat normal texture on every pixel. A plain material now reads 1 texture per pixel where it read 3 this morning (5 on Mac). Lighting on those surfaces moves by at most 2 levels out of 255, because the default flat normal leaned about 0.3 degrees off the surface. (d9fd149de8, #8731)

Audio

• Braemar now has background sound in the village. Its seven ambient loops were all placed out of earshot: the forest birds sat on the edges of the map, the market chatter was shut inside the inn with an 8 metre reach, and the tavern loop was switched off. The town was silent, and the Ambient volume slider seemed to do nothing because there was nothing for it to turn up. The market chatter now fills the square by the bank, the tavern loop plays inside the inn, and two forest bird beds and a night insect bed sit just outside the village, so something is audible at every hour (#7686).

Items

• The older Faerie Belt that most long-time owners have no longer loses durability. It used to wear down in combat and on death, could not be repaired, and stopped shrinking its wearer once it reached zero. It now matches the store belt, which has no durability, and belts that had already worn out work again.
• Items that can be placed on a lot but are also something else now say so. The Odd Container (Flotsam), the Supply Bundles and the lot deed raffle tickets gained the same "Decoration" tooltip line ordinary decorations have; before, nothing on them said they could be placed, and a tester took the Odd Container for a plain loot box. About 230 items are covered. Double-clicking a bundle still opens it. (65f86ef538, #8692)
• Removed two leftover loot files from the Sundered Blade drop move that shared their ids with the moved drops (9acda10d19).

Books

• The Stone Dragon, Book One, chapter six and a Brittany bank note spelled Britannia wrong. Both are corrected, and their read-aloud narration was recorded again.

Docs

• The map system notes gained a section on the minimap: how one map window carries three states, why the minimap is left alone by Escape and zone changes, where its settings are kept, and the traps met building it.

Combat

• With Chaos Magic Specialization, the hide from Chaotic Clone now ends as soon as the caster attacks, with a basic swing from any weapon or a spell that breaks stealth. Until now it lasted its full 15 seconds while you fought, so a Chaos specialist could attack another player without being seen. Being targeted or hit while hidden still leaves you hidden, and the smoke from Obfuscate is unchanged. Redmine #7708.
• Walking still ends Dig In with Prevent Movement While Casting on. Your other skills stay locked while the stance is up, so moving is the only way to leave it early. That behavior is now the settled design, and a test keeps it in place (#6953, 408b17c618).

Mounts

• Pressing Jump on a horse that is standing still, with no movement key held, now makes the horse toss its head and whinny. It used to hop in place. Holding a direction and pressing Jump still jumps. Suggested through the in-game Oracle. (#7724)
• Galloping for a couple of seconds and then letting go of the keys can make your horse rear up on its hind legs and neigh, and you stay in the saddle through it. This happens on about half of those hard stops, and at most once every 20 seconds. Both movements are animations the wild horses already had, cut to fit a saddled horse. Stags, reindeer, big cats and chickens are unchanged. (#7724)
• A cloak worn while riding could end up hanging down one side of the mount and stay there until you got off. Any time the cloak restarted while you sat in the saddle (another rider leaving your view and coming back, the Cloth Simulation option, a cloak put on mid-ride), it began with its hem inside the mount's back and got pushed down the flank. It now lifts clear for half a second and settles over the mount's back. (#8280)
• The same report said jumping on a cat mount made the cloak worse. That came from the cat jump animations in build 273, where the cat's back rose up through the rider. Yesterday's saddle fix already stopped it, and jumps on the current build leave the cloak where it lies.
• Zoning while mounted no longer replays the mount-up. The Automatic Remount now puts you back in the saddle a moment after arrival with the animal already visible and no three-second movement lock; mounting by hand still plays the full climb and fade (#8114, 2578f6e408).
• Every horse, stag, reindeer and big cat mount showed a wolf's head on the hotbar, on the grey frame that normally marks a passive skill. Each mount now shows its own animal on a blue frame in both the Classic and Modern skill icon sets: a horse head for all horses and unicorns, an antlered stag for stags and reindeer, and a lion for the four cat mounts. Reported by Jack SinAssist (#8696).

Graphics

• The lily pads in the moat outside the Castle Atos gate no longer flicker. They sat about a centimetre above the water, close enough that the water surface kept drawing over them from one frame to the next; all seven now sit 5 cm up (#7613).
• Trees, bushes and tall grass bend about as far in the wind as they did on live. Build 267 gave them the full wind strength the compass shows, which bent trees over in a light wind (#8096) and left Westend's trees and grass looking out of line (#8115). In a heavy wind, lean dropped from 1.7% to 0.6% of height on a Scots Pine and from 3.4% to 1.9% on tall grass. Windmills, chimney smoke, clouds and the compass reading are unchanged, and the tree strength can now be tuned live without a patch. (103a1bfe30)
• The camera close-up when you talk to an NPC focuses on the two of you again. Since the move to the new post-effect stack it had been focusing about 15 m past you, which blurred both characters, made light hair look doubled with a see-through copy in front of the face, and smeared a guard's torch flame off the top of the torch. Hair and torch flames now blur by their own distance as well. The spyglass and photo camera are back on their original focus distances too (aba4fd9731, #8640).

World

• Arriving at Riverside Landing in Blood River Outskirts now puts you on the grass. The arrival point sat half a millimetre under the ground, and on build 255 the game skipped the ground and put you on the river bed underneath it, stuck in place with your hotbars hidden because the game read you as swimming. The point now sits just above the ground, and every arrival direction was checked to land on the landing. This is where the boat at the end of the Blood River intro drops you. (#7711)
• The upright ankh coffins and their broken twins in the Hilt Fortress crypt halls now block movement, and click-to-move paths around them. Two coffin variants in the crypt hall kit had been drawn without collision; the same fix reaches every dungeon built from that kit. (#8265)
• Two candle stools in the Hilt Fortress lower barracks faced the rock wall, and sitting on either one and standing up left players stuck inside the wall. Both now face the room. Standing up from any seat also returns you to where you stood before sitting down after the seat had to place you directly on it (acc14b9edb, #8254).
• Six chairs at the Hilt Fortress dining tables could not seat anyone, and using one broke the interaction. They now seat you like the chairs beside them. Twelve chairs lying on their sides around the same tables are decoration and are no longer offered as seats, and neither are the two lower-barracks stools that hold a candle and drinks. A seat with no place to put you is now refused in every zone instead of failing (#8662, 9041ca9a2a).
• The decoy gargoyle statues on North Quel Way are back. They had stopped rendering at all, so the only statue a player could see in each ambush spot was the one about to burst into an imp. The 14 decoys now use the same stone statue as the live ones, so the guessing game works again (#8628).
• The barred north arch in the tutorial Battle of Highvale can no longer be climbed into. Players could go up a brazier and the side of the arch, drop over the planks and land in a gap they could not get back out of. An invisible wall now fills that gap from head height up, so anyone already caught there can still walk around and use /stuck (f6a1e1959d, #8095).

Sieges

• Freed towns on chaos are now replaced within about two hours. Chaos was set to a two-hour wait on September 12 and the siege board showed two hours, but the server only read that setting when its built-in number was zero, which it never is, so every freed town waited the shipped eighteen hours. The server now uses the shard's own setting whenever the tunables page leaves the number alone. With the Cabalist Stronghold on, the two-hour refill applies until the fifth town of a cycle is freed.
• Besieged towns now sit at the top of the Teleport To Zone list, below only pinned zones and event advertisements, and a besieged town is listed and reachable even if your character has never been there. The list used to show only towns your character had already visited, which is why a tester who hunted sieges for two days never saw more than two of the five.

Chat

• Parties can be linked in chat. Right-click a party in Looking For Group and pick Link Party In Chat, and it goes into your chat line as [Aldric's party], ready to send on any channel or in a whisper. Clicking the link opens Looking For Group with that party selected, where its Join button works as usual. A link to a party that has stopped recruiting says so. Requested by Joe.
• The chat moderator now removes flagged messages from Universe, Trade and Noble chat on the chaos shard, after running in record-only mode since 21 September. The sender gets one system line saying the message was removed. Guild, town, party and whisper chat are still checked but nothing there is removed.
• The chat moderator had no rule for adult content, so a message that was only a porn-site link stayed up in Universe chat. Its policy now has a sexual-content category covering explicit messages, sexual solicitation and links to adult sites, including spelled-out addresses. Role-play romance and ordinary links (YouTube, Discord, wikis) are listed as allowed. Before the change went live, 17 test messages all came back as intended. The new rule is active on the chaos shard now.

Community Hub

• The game client is switched on for the Community Hub: with the next build, the in-game Community window, theme install and deck import connect to the live site.

Maps

• The map window now stops at the edge of the map. Dragging used to let the map slide until its edge reached the middle of the window, so up to half the window could show nothing. With Follow on near the edge of a zone, the map stops at its edge and your arrow moves toward that side. Zoomed out far enough that the map is smaller than the window, it sits in the middle. The minimap still stays centred on you.

Books

• The Immersive 3D Book Reading view now draws a thin ink line down the fold between the two open pages, marking the spine, so the pages no longer run into each other. The line is part of each page, so it stays on the fold while a page turns. A player asked for it through the Oracle.

Leaderboards

• Every board in the Leaderboards window now says what it shows, in a line under the timeframe and Rank By controls and as a tooltip on its name in the list, after a player asked the Oracle what each board displays. The Achievements board opens ranked by Earned. It used to open on Points, which no achievement carries yet, so every row tied (#7156).

Map

• Devotionals on the town map got a second pass. Each shrine in a town like Ardoris now has one pin: the old Devotional of ... landmark no longer adds a second pin with the same name once discovered, and no longer puts the shrine on the compass. In player-owned towns, placed devotionals now show on the map, and one you walk up to gets its pin straight away (7bd96b4124, #6862).
• The world map has a new Find town box under Show location. Typing part of a name lists matching towns, and choosing one pans the map to the town, circles it and sets a beacon on it. Only towns the character has been inside are offered, player towns included (#6806).

Infra

• Added an hourly scene census job for the chaos shard, the same pass live runs, so devotional positions for the map and for town sieges stop going stale after a placement or a data refresh. It starts once it is installed on the server (b4e2ce6cd6).

Oracle

• The Oracle has a leaderboards guide: all 24 boards and what each column means, what the 1, 7 and 30 day timeframes count, which boards are lifetime totals, and how to keep your name off the boards. She answers from it once her knowledge is next refreshed (#7156).
• The Oracle can now suggest adventure areas that suit a character's level and say where any area or town is: its region, its world map, the nearest town and which way, and the place a dungeon is entered from. She reads a new list of 211 adventure areas and 39 towns built from the game's own scene data, and sorts suggestions into a good fit and a step up for a group using the same Tier x 10 comparison the map colours use (#6808).
• A beacon asked for on a named town or adventure area now waits when you are somewhere else. Ask the Oracle from inside a town and the beacon appears on your map and compass when you step onto that world map. A town is marked only once your character has been inside it, and a dungeon entered from inside another place is marked at that place's entrance (#6808, #6806).
• Read through the Oracle's log of questions she could not answer: 1,736 entries since June, about 430 of them real questions once bug-report replies were set aside. Most asked where things are, about lore and people, about changing appearance, or how virtue works.
• Built a world atlas the Oracle can look up: 637 places, 559 creatures and 1,595 NPCs from the game's own scene data. She can say where a creature lives and at what level, where a named person stands, whether a town has a town crier, and what a place holds and leads to.
• The world lookup matches whole words and plurals: asking for elves finds every kind of elf, and asking for deer finds does and stags.
• The Oracle can tell you how many players are online on the Chaos shard, from the same counter as this blog's online pill.
• Four new Oracle guides: Changing Your Appearance (the New You salons in Central Brittany, Ardoris, Aerie and Port Harmony), The History of New Britannia, People of New Britannia and Where to Adventure at Your Level.
• Her existing guides gained answers on the deeds that raise and lower Truth, Love and Courage, the runic monoliths, the Price of the Oracle ransom window, the order an attack is checked in, why trolls resist stuns, and skill-mastery titles such as Geokineticist.
• Corrected the Water Magic guide, which said no spell counts as melee for the chill bonus. The fist spells and Shield Bash do.
• Questions answered correctly from the Oracle's shop, recipe or world data no longer land in her unanswered-questions log, so it shows real gaps. All of this reaches her with the next Oracle update.
• The Oracle's two new place lookups, built the same morning, now split the work: one says which areas suit your level and where a place is on the map, the other what lives there, who stands there and what services it has.
• The Oracle's map guide now answers "can you mark a town or a dungeon for me?" and "how do I find a town on the world map?", and calls the map's coordinate box by the name it shows, Show location (#6808, #6806).
• The Oracle can now tell you which towns are under siege. She reads the live list from the game: the town, its landmass, the Cabalist holding it, how long he has held it and how much of his strength is left.
• A new control points guide for the Oracle covers what a control point is, where the six are, how taking and holding the flag works, and what a Mage of Mystery charges for passage. She cannot see which control points are being fought over, and says so.
• The Oracle now puts a beacon only on a town or adventure area your character has already been inside. Adventure areas used to be marked whether you had found them or not. This half arrives with the next chaos build.
• The Oracle service update also put this morning's work live: where creatures, people and places are, how many players are online, and the new guides on appearance, history, people and virtue deeds.
• The Oracle has a kobolds guide: who the kobolds are and their part in building her, the war with Valhold, where the friendly kobolds live, where to fight them from the starting lands to the Mysterious Swamp, how each kind fights, and what they drop. She answers from it once her knowledge is next refreshed (#8256).
• The daily morning pass now includes the Oracle: each morning it collects the questions she could not answer the day before, filters out the bug-report chatter, researches the real questions into her knowledge base, and puts the update live the same morning.

Skills

• Changing specializations works at an Oracle Confirmatory placed in a player-owned town, the same as at the Confirmatories in NPC towns. The Oracle inside the town building was never counted, so the Change... button stayed disabled beside it.

Localization

• About 4,500 Japanese NPC lines now show topic words that match what the English says in that line. The translation had used one Japanese word for every use of a topic, so Wellington the dog was called 犬 (dog), shops and merchants read as the verb 買う (buy), and the virtue Courage carried the name of the Titan Grannus. (af73924079)
• Chinese: 15 lines about the Obsidians now name the people (黑曜石人) where they used to name the rock (黑曜石). (af73924079)
• In Estgard, Etceter, Kiln and Owl's Head the Japanese housing-lot topic now answers to 空き, 区画 and 空き家. Those four towns still had the English words in it. (af73924079)
• New translation tooling finds conversation topics whose English wording varies, repairs their links line by line, and patches single records into the game files without a full redeploy. (80bee460c8)

Vendors

• The player vendor window has a Reclaim All button on the My Listings tab. It takes back every listing the Listed for Sale list shows (a filter narrows it) after one confirmation that states the count. Listings that do not fit in the backpack now get one summary message instead of one per item. Requested by Lazarus Long. (08bba48c3a)

Audio

• Kiln, Bramble, Vertas and Yew play wind in the trees from the edge of town again, and eight Novia forest zones get their forest wind back. All of them pointed at a sound file that no longer existed, so they played nothing; the forest emitter had also been set to play once instead of looping. (#8587)
• The four Ravenswood forests (West, North, South and Deep) had no ambience apart from the music. They now carry birds by day, a dawn chorus, dusk crickets and night sounds across the whole map, 37 beds in all, plus the forest wind at every hour. A new test checks that every exit, camp, fishing spot and resource node hears all four times of day. (#8587)

Guide

• Clicking a town map marker now sends the guide wisp to lead you there. Before, every marker flashed a magic sigil over your head and nothing else: the wisp borrowed the Summon Wisp spell's cast effect, which ends itself after four seconds, and its route came back empty for most destinations. It is now a blue orb that stays out, and a marker it cannot walk right up to, such as a shop keeper behind a closed door, gets a route to the closest point it can reach. When no route exists at all, the client log records why. (#8612)

Lore

• Researched gargoyles across the game's books, dialogue, scenes and art. In Shroud they have only ever been carved stone, and the one that comes alive, in North Quel Way, is an imp disguised as a statue. Two faults in that ambush are now filed (#8627, #8628), and the write-up lays out ways to give gargoyles a larger part in the world.

Lua

• Addons can now set, read and clear the map and compass beacon with ShroudSetBeacon, ShroudGetBeacon and ShroudClearBeacon, the same marker /beacon places. Requested by Goriah Kuulas. The Lua API version is now 9.

Music

• Three Songs of the Sundered Blade cylinders were out of reach for established characters, so the Reliquarian title could not be finished. The Destiny Pool moved from the Isle of Storms to a cupboard beside the fallen Oracle head in Savrenoc Timberland, The Bearer moved from the unreachable Ruined Keep to the Obsidian elves of The Rise, and the Crypt of the Avatar coffin that holds An Epilogue now refills in private and party instances. The book notes follow the moves. (#8245)

Tooling

• The kobold GM spawn aliases all reach real creatures again: koboldarcher4 pointed at an archer that does not exist, and koboldwarrior1 to 5 now work spelled correctly. The tester creature-personality settings now say they only affect companions for now, which is what they do (12a2071a2e).

Content

• The closed wooden door in the west stone gatehouse at Blood River Massacre now blocks movement. It had no collision, so players could walk or jump through it from either side. Elene Sali walked the gate and pinned down which piece was missing it. (#8126)

Tests

• A crafting station test that had been failing since the station messages moved below the Craft controls now checks the new layout (53d7a849c5).
• The bat flock test fence did not compile: its bare Animation bound to one of our own namespaces instead of Unity's, which failed the whole editor test assembly and blocked every EditMode test on the branch. Qualified at the use site.

Inventory

• The Options panel in the bank, chests, loot and bags now greys out Show Quest Items, Show Dread Artifacts and Shroud and Show Equipped Tools. They only ever filtered the main backpack, so ticking one in the bank changed the backpack instead (#8684, 660c8c8421).

NPCs

• Talking to a Ghostly Echo in Highvale Outskirts before finding all four echoes opened the conversation window and closed it with nothing to read. The echo's line now shows in the window and the chat log whatever angle you talk to it from, and a greeting that ends the conversation now always closes the window afterwards (a5052b5e4a, #8138).

Dungeons

• Adventure Mode now locks the settings of decorations already placed in a player dungeon. Light color, dye, waygate name, destination and arrival rules, and trap wiring can no longer be changed while the dungeon is in Adventure Mode, by anyone including the owner; switching back to Decoration Mode brings them back. The scene server enforces the same rule. (ff0afd4185, #8697)
• Player dungeons: where two pieces with different doorway shapes meet, the larger doorway now closes the gap in its own stone. The gap used to show the empty space around the dungeon and the outside of the next piece, so the pieces looked see-through. The dungeon entrance arch with a Stone Dungeon Hall docked to it was the common case. Walking through is unchanged (#8699, 112bb5f598).

Server

• Asking a banker about trophies could crash the game server on chaos. The trophy roll grew past the largest message the game can send when the bronze, silver and gold framed boss trophies went in, and a failed reply took the whole server down, so every zone load stopped at 52% with "ServerFull". The roll now always fits one message, the game fills in any trophy the server leaves off the list, and a reply that is too large is logged and answered with an error instead of stopping the server. The fixed server has been live on chaos since 19:24 UTC (#8702).

Database

• The nightly item-conservation audit's first finding on chaos was two Backer Tombstones on two different players' lots on Blue Rose Isle sharing one item id, carried in from the old data. Neither was removed: the later-engraved one has an id of its own now, and a re-runnable repair script keeps it that way after each reseed (#8136).

Loot

• Fixed breakable crates and barrels refusing to open "while in combat" after being smashed with a weapon. Kicking a crate open already worked with a weapon drawn; smashing one now does too. Regular treasure chests still ask you to leave combat first.

Characters

• Character names are now capped at 20 letters for the first name and 24 for the last, down from 36 each. A 73-character name used to overflow the nameplate and the chat window. Characters with longer names keep them, and those names now show cut short with an ellipsis over their heads, on the status bar and in chat.
• Resurrecting after quitting to the menu or logging out while dead no longer leaves your weapon drawn in your hand. It used to stay there in passive stance as well as combat stance, and sheathing did nothing until you changed scene. After a resume the character was still reading its stance from the ghost it had been, which resurrecting switches off; it now reads the living body again (#4155).

Housing

• A book placed on a Book Display Stand now rests against the stand’s back post instead of standing half inside it. The stand’s slot marks where a book’s pivot goes, and books carry that pivot in the middle of their own thickness, so The Dirae Prophecy, 10.6 cm thick, reached 5.3 cm into the post. 236 upright books now seat their back cover on the post at any thickness and any size, on the rough stand as well as the standard one; the 442 letters and notes, which lie flat on the stand, are unchanged.
• The Lot Deeds window column is now Time Left and shows days, hours and minutes when under two days remain, updating every 30 seconds while open. The lot sign claim line adds minutes under two days too. A newly claimed taxed lot used to read "1" day for four hours and the sign changed once an hour, which testers kept reporting as a frozen countdown (tracker #1134).
• Chaos Shard lots now keep their pledge-tier time through server rebuilds: the server start now sets each pledge bonus month to 30 days, and the servers will not start if that setting is missing. The shard had been giving every tier a flat 120 days because it ran the development value of one hour per bonus month (a Duke got 120 days and 8 hours instead of 360). The shard was corrected by hand on Aug 31; this change stops it from reverting. Reported by Lazarus Long on the forum (tracker #6491).
• A small decoration set down in a Basket, a Box Crate or a Wood Serving Bowl still goes anywhere inside it, and can no longer be pushed through its walls. The August fix let a container stop blocking wherever the cursor touched it, which left apples stuck halfway out of a crate's side and let a crate sink into a basket (tester report on chaos build 178). Now a hollow container allows an item to brush the inside of its wall and nothing more, and solid ones such as the other bowls, the plates and building blocks block like any other decoration. On a test grid an apple fits in 89 of 141 spots on the basket floor, up from 69 with no allowance.
• Five Rough Stone building block sizes (1Wx1Hx2L, 1Wx2Hx2L, 1Wx4Hx1L, 1Wx4Hx2L and 1Wx4Hx4L, in both colours) are assembled from smaller stones, and those stones had been set up to 1.9 degrees off square, so one end of a course reached up to 12 mm further than the other. A block turned end for end beside its neighbour could show a thin line of daylight through the joint. Every stone now sits square on the 0.75 m block size, and an automated test measures each assembled block course by course. Blocks of different lengths line up flush with Grid Snap at 0.125 m; same-length runs line up at 0.5 m.
• Wall torches, sconces and other hanging decorations placed on a Hedge Archway pillar now sit against the leaves. They used to hang 0.2 to 0.3 m out in the air, because two invisible boxes that keep pets out of the pillars were deeper than the hedge and caught the placement cursor. Placement now ignores those boxes, which also lets an archway go back between hedges that were pushed right up against it. Pets still walk around the pillars. The White Floral Box Hedge Archway got the same fix. Reported by Isabel Ayin.
• Claiming a water lot in a player town no longer raises the ground under it into a square of dirt. Water lots placed at the shoreline or on a dock near shore were being levelled like land lots, which buried the water and sank the water home placed on them. Affected lots show water again once the next client build is installed. (Tracker #8433)
• The Property Manager now shows the house that was actually built on a stored house's card. The Elven Hut and Elven Peaked-Roof village deeds can each place either Elven home, and the card used to show the deed's own home whichever one was built; 21 houses on the test server were built from the other deed. Raised by Allium Oop.
• The Flip House button stays on the lot sign when a decoration is still on the house, and clicking it says the house has to be empty first. It used to vanish with no explanation. Reported by lord-stein (#8296).
• The Mirror Flip Decoration key (N) now says "This decoration cannot be mirrored." when the held decoration has no mirrored form. It used to do nothing on those items, which read as a broken key (#8499).

The Herald

• The New Britannia Herald for 2026-09-21 is up: Monday went to the things this world had been getting wrong about names, voices and ghosts. Every book in New Britannia now reads itself aloud in a living voice, thirty-five thousand characters were on record as being called "exclamation mark", and nine Frostgeists in a ruined steeple were found to be registered as shopkeepers. Mounts lean for every rider you can see, and boss trophies that were never built have finally been delivered. Listen or read the transcript (18 min). Subscribe in any podcast app: /blog/podcast.xml

Community

• Filed two forum-sourced tracker items from the nightly sweep: a wishlist ask to let players remove socketed gems from armor without destroying the piece (requested by Royou), and a bug report that players can walk through the wall at the Storm's Reach Underground Gold Mine entrance (requested by Brickbat).

Images

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• BeforeAfter
• A cloak on a character enlarged by growth potions, before the fix on the left and after it on the right.
• Judgment, four seconds in
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• Hedge Archway wall torch, before and after
• Judgment, charge full
• Poison dart frog, mid-hop
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• Community Hub home
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• Antique shop roof, beforeAntique shop roof, after
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• Boss trophy tiers
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UI

• The Next Steps panel no longer suggests the First Steps lesson to a new character on the Isle of Storms before the Oracles questions. That lesson points at the New Player Handbook, which the character does not have yet at that point. (#8286)
• The sort caret on a column heading in the shared list windows (social and guild rosters, leaderboards, vendor and merchant lists, item search and the rest) now sits just past the heading text. It used to be drawn at the far right of the column, so on a wide Player Name column in the guild roster it sat against Role and read as belonging to that column. The backpack and the other inventory tables now draw the same caret art where they showed the letters ^ and v. From a tester report on the earlier caret check; testing task #8376.
• The effect icons under a creature’s floating name no longer shimmer or break up while the camera moves. They were drawing 128-pixel skill art at about 12 pixels, so every small movement showed different pixels of the art. They now draw a smaller, smoothed copy built once per icon when the game runs. The icon art files and the other icon bars are unchanged. Fixes the last open part of #5872 (tester-verify #8386).
• Glyph tooltips on the combat bar sit in the lower part of the screen again, as they did on the live game. Since August a tooltip that ran out of room below the cursor jumped to sit entirely above it, which put a skill card in the middle of the fight. It now slides up until its bottom edge rests on the bottom of the screen, and the deck swap card still stays clear of its button. Reported by Knightrider.
• The mailbox now has an Open Folder button, and discarding mail adds one line to chat naming the folder the copy was saved to. The game has always written discarded mail to a text file, but the window never said where it went, and on Mac that folder sits inside a directory the Finder hides by default.
• A failed write of that file used to switch the whole feature off until the game was restarted, with nothing said and nothing logged, so one moment with the file open in a text editor cost every later save that session. Only the write that failed is affected now, the reason is logged, and the player is told once.
• Name plates over pets now sit clear of the pet's head. The fix in August only reached spell summons whose model carries a particular bone, which is almost none of them, so tamed animals, item pets and most summons still wore the plate on their heads. Reported by KnightRider.
• Measured across the pet roster before and after: the summoned daemon's plate sat 0.70 m inside its model, the skeleton mage 0.16 m, the fire elemental 0.07 m, and tamed pets from the Darkstarr scorpion to the unicorn and stag between 0.02 m and 0.20 m inside. All of them now clear the model by 0.10 m, and no plate moved down.
• The quest tracker keeps to eight lines now, one line per entry, each starting with a small coloured mark: gold for a quest, blue for something to learn, orange for a warning such as being overloaded, green for something to do where you are standing. A line that runs long ends in an ellipsis and shows in full when you hover it. Requested by joescorpio.
• Every line in the tracker leads somewhere when clicked: a quest opens the journal at that quest, a suggestion opens what it is about, and one with nowhere else to go opens the Next Steps window with that suggestion selected. The three separate count lines under the list became one, and a suggestion that only repeated the hint of a quest already listed above it is no longer drawn twice.
• The Languard Gemstrike teletype mini-game prints on its paper again. The game had been running, but its black text was landing on the dark window background because the window lost the teletype picture when it moved to the new interface, so testers saw an empty window. The window now shows the teletype machine with the game printed on its tan paper, laid out where the old window had it. Fixes #5206 (testing task #8438).
• The Vendor Listings in Zone search now updates as you type. In your own zone the list narrows a moment after you stop typing, with no reload, and emptying the box brings every listing back at once. With All Zones ticked the search runs by itself after a short pause once three characters are in the box, without the too-short message or the "showing the first N" notice popping up at every pause. A search with several words finds items whose name holds all of them, so "bone armor" finds a Bone Chest Armor (f0af454d7d).
• Pressing Enter in a single-line text box no longer also opens the main chat line. It happened in the vendor listings search, the Recipe Book filter and every other box that was not the chat box itself (f0af454d7d).
• Pressing Escape on the Save Settings to File dialog closes the dialog and leaves the Options window open; the next Escape closes Options. It used to close both at once (#8420, reported by Barugon through the in-game Oracle). The same goes for Load Settings from File, Configure Data Path and the gear menu, and Escape while typing a file name now leaves the name box instead of doing nothing. Tester task #8471.
• With Double Cursor Size on, every cursor was drawn darker than at normal size, and the pickaxe and sickle harvesting cursors came out close to black. Large cursors now match the normal colours and are a sharp doubling of the picture.
• The Journal's Active Tasks list has a checkbox on every task row. Ticking or clearing it shows or hides that task in the on-screen task list, without selecting the row and pressing Track. Rows no longer move to the bottom of the list when a task is hidden. Requested by Joe.
• The Next Steps suggestion for the world map lesson now reads "You have not read about travelling the World of New Britannia yet. The map opens with M." It used to name the lesson title, which read like a lore book, and said the world opens with M.
• The Combat lesson offered by the suggestions list no longer opens with "You are in combat! Defend yourself!" when nothing is fighting you. It now opens "If something attacks you, defend yourself!" in all nine languages, and the spoken English version was re-recorded to match (#8303).
• Asking for directions to a player vendor while already standing next to it no longer breaks the compass. The arrival message showed, but the finished marker was still handed to the compass and the map, which kept trying to place it and threw an error on every compass update for the rest of the session. A marker that ends on its very first check is now dropped before either of them sees it (#8291).
• A new character on the Isle of Storms was told by the Next Steps list that someone there had work they had not taken up, before anyone on the island had any. The step pointing at Anaïs counted as on offer from the moment of arrival, although she only appears after the Oracle. It now waits until she is on the island, so the line stays away until then and shows up only while she is waiting to be found.

Audio

• Room ambience now drops by about 9 dB while an NPC conversation window is open, then fades back over a second after it closes. In the Oracle Temple the room hum had been burying the Ultima Futura Automaton's voice lines; before this only the music stepped aside for a conversation.
• Quieted the two teletypes in Lord British's Castle. The Encoded Safe had been reading "Ready. Enter command." and every reply aloud in a human voice. It went on the do-not-voice list, the updated voice map is live, and it answers in text only from your next session. The Languard Gemstrike teletype no longer opens the "Playing Music" notice on a first sit, which help narration had begun reading aloud for about a minute. Real instruments still show that notice once.
• Quieted the two teletypes in Lord British's Castle. The Encoded Safe had been reading "Ready. Enter command." and every reply aloud in a human voice. It went on the do-not-voice list and answers in text only once the updated voice map is published. The Languard Gemstrike teletype no longer opens the "Playing Music" notice on a first sit, which help narration had begun reading aloud for about a minute. Real instruments still show that notice once.
• The Rude Drunk in Blood Bay writes her hiccups and belches between dashes. Her voice stopped reading them out as words three weeks ago, but the words on either side still ran together, so the short break the writing implies was missing. Her speech now pauses where the noise was. Four of her lines were re-recorded and are on the voice server. If you heard the old reading, press Clear next to the voice cache line on the Audio tab of Options.
• The New Player Handbook narration was re-recorded to match the new text: 12 clips in Arabella's voice, published to the voice CDN. The morning rewrite had left the old recording out of step with the pages, so the book read nothing aloud.
• Repaired the regression test that guards the first NPC voice line of a session, which had gone red after zone-wide voice lines added an argument to the call it checked. It now also checks that a zone-wide line held while the voice list loads still plays zone-wide once it arrives. (#8326)

Launcher

• The launcher no longer stops updating after the game closes on its own. An update that arrived mid-game used to wait for the Close game & update button, and quitting from the game menu instead left the launcher skipping every later game build, launcher update and Server switch until Repair. A launcher left on QA now also updates itself. Ships with the next launcher update.
• Launcher 46 is out on Windows, Mac and Linux. The Windows launcher is signed with the new code-signing certificate for the first time, so Windows names its publisher instead of calling it an unknown program; the Mac launcher is signed and notarized by Apple. The release scripts now refuse to publish a launcher that is not properly signed.
• Launchers set to the QA server were stuck on build 44 because no QA update pointer had ever been published. The QA pointer now names launcher 46 on Windows, Mac and Linux, and every launcher release publishes it alongside the chaos one.

UI

• The conversation window now says when its topic list is hidden and how to bring it back. The button that hides the topics sits beside the arrow that pages through them, so it was being pressed by mistake, and the setting is remembered between sessions, which left later conversations with no topics and nothing explaining why. A line now appears where the topics were, and clicking it shows them again. It shows once and goes away after you read it or close it, and the Reset Hints button on the Interface tab of Options brings it back. Reported in game by rumors.
• The four small arrows around the conversation topic list answer on hover now, naming which one pages left, which pages right, which hides the topics and which brings them back. All four are the same 18 pixel arrow at the same size on the same row, and none of them carried hover text before.
• Measured the two drop down menus on the Dungeon Builder Build tab in a running client. The piece type menu opens at 135 pixels where its widest row needs 133, and the set menu at 200 where its widest row needs 199, so every entry reads on one line. The report this follows up came from build 190, which does carry that sizing work, so testers have a task to re-check it on the live shard.
• Added tests for the drop down sizing path that nothing covered before: a gesture arrives, a handler watching the panel sees it, the field opens its menu, and a scheduled pass measures that menu and widens it. The older tests all called the measuring step directly, which is how four fixes shipped with every test green. The new ones also run at a real interface scale and with skin fonts attached, which is where the test setup had drifted away from the client.
• A drop down menu that opens with a single word split in half now reports itself once, carrying the widths it measured, the width it asked for and the width it got. A menu that opens correctly reports nothing, and an entry that wraps between two words is left alone, since long sentences are meant to wrap there.

Creatures

• Creatures that can flee now hold their ground until they drop below 20% health. A nerve check at half health was making animals like the Spindelskog shadow spiders break off around 40% and run laps of their spawn point.
• Arena wave battles no longer remove creatures that cannot reach a player. Before this, wave creatures that could not get to anyone were removed after about forty seconds and the wave counted as cleared without the kills. They now stay until killed, and a stuck or runaway creature is still brought back or removed so the battle can finish. This covers The Breach and the 72 other scenes with an arena wave battle (#6163).
• Lich archers no longer trail a cloud of dark smoke. The archer body was carrying a shared effects group that was never tuned for it: three copies of the same smoke emitter stacked at one point on the spine, two wisp emitters, a glow and a two-and-a-half metre black shadow puff, all looping from the moment the creature appeared until it died. That is about 180 smoke billboards a second, which is why the archer read as floating on a dark patch while the lich mage and lich fighter looked normal. The group is switched off on all three archer bodies, covering 19 creature types from Lich Archer up to the Malefic Vagabond boss, plus the overworld lich and the lich archer decoration NPC. The lich fighter keeps its short puff of smoke on arrival and the Aether Lich keeps its own permanent smoke, and a new test pins both so a later change cannot take them by accident. Reported in game by Allium Oop.
• Added two shard switches for the upcoming zombie abilities: one lets zombies get back up after they fall, the other turns on the zombie plague. Either can be switched off from the tunables page without a client patch. Nothing in the game changes until the abilities themselves land; the plague switch starts off.
• Wild frogs hop when they move. The poison dart frogs, the frog goliaths and Ribbit, The Frog King had only ever played a small crawl, slowed to between an eighth and half speed, so they appeared to slide along the ground toward a player they were attacking. They now hop at the same pace as tamed frog pets, and how fast they travel is unchanged.
• Zombies can now get back up. About half of the zombies killed with a weapon stand up again 20 to 30 seconds later at full health, once; a kill with magic usually keeps them down, and the experience still arrives once, when the zombie stays down. The first zombies in the game never rise and the ones in Solace Bridge rarely do. The zombie death burst now plays on every kill; before, it played on about half of them.
• Every kind of zombie has abilities of its own. Zombies from Rhun Ruins upward add a heavier two-part blow, Crushing Maul. Petrified Zombies release a cloud of damage and focus drain when they fall to a quarter of their health. Lepus Zombies raise fallen warren-mates unless the body is looted first, and the Decaying Lepus Zombie casts Rust on your gear. Bogmen cast Death Field around themselves and now bite like the rest of the family. The small zombies are now called Zombie Child and grab at your ankles to root you in place. Naughty Brats will cast Torpid Torment when they return for the winter event.
• Petrified Zombies now cast Weakened Blows, which cuts your weapon damage by about a third for 30 seconds unless you interrupt its 2.4 second cast; it comes back no sooner than every 45 seconds. The Lepus Zombie Alpha in Spectral Mines opens its fights with a Rallying Cry that makes the Lepus zombies around it hit harder for 30 seconds.
• The fast Petrified Zombies that fill Despair, Myrkur and the dragon dungeon were a lower level than everything around them. They are now level 99 like their neighbours, with about 60 percent more health. Petrified Zombies also no longer dodge more than other zombies, and they resist air damage like the rest of their family.
• The zombie plague is built. A zombie bite now infects you for 90 seconds; while it lasts you take a little disease damage every 15 seconds, and so do party members standing close to you, though they cannot pass it on. Purify or a Cure Plague potion cures the bite, and the effect shows on your effects bar as Plague. It ships switched off and will be turned on for testing first. Building it also fixed an old data slip: the bite had been checking the wrong stat to see whether you were immune.

Combat

• Skill tooltips now label the cooldown Fixed (locked slot) or Dynamic (drawn from the deck). Most skills run double the cooldown in Dynamic, and the Skills window used to show only that number with no label, so it read as twice what the hotbar ran. The Skills window now lists both, and a glyph on the bar shows the one its slot uses. Raised on Discord by Estroma Tólito and Joe.
• The skill charge bar now shows uses still on cooldown as a dark locked section with a light cap marker. Before, it shaded them red next to the orange charges, so a Rend charged to five of six looked full. The bar also gets one divider for every charge, even when a skill is stacked more than five deep.
• The summoned daemon now follows the same stat rules as the other magic summons: its level divides by 4 like the lich, phoenix and wisp (it came out at twice their level before), Chaos mastery now scales only the Summoned Health part of its health (no change for casters without Chaos mastery), and its elemental attunement is Chaos instead of Fire. Movement speed is unchanged.
• Opponents in the Courage Club arena can no longer be placed inside a sealed alcove when a round spreads its fighters out. The first fix kept them in the same pathfinding region as their start point, but the doors link every alcove into that region once the game is running, so it did nothing on chaos. Each opponent now has to be reachable in a straight line across the floor, and the new test replays the case the testers hit with The Iron Jarl.
• Breaking free from a stun, root or knockdown with Space now costs 5% of your current focus per try, with no cap. It used to cost 2.5%, never more than 5 points, so mashing Space was almost free. At 400 focus each try now costs 20. Normal jumps cost the same as before.
• Combat decks can now be shared as text. Share Deck in a deck's menu copies a code for that deck to the clipboard, and the new Import Deck button in the Combat Decks window turns a pasted code into a new deck and opens it for editing. A code holds the deck's name, its cards and how its hand slots are locked or assigned; linked equipment and the inventory ids on consumable cards stay with the original. Cards the importing character does not have are left out, and chat says how many. A full 23-card deck with every hand slot set up comes to about 270 characters, so it fits in one chat line.
• Charged combat skills no longer fire when the mouse moves off the glyph being charged. The charge continues wherever the pointer goes, and the skill casts when the button is released. An August fix covered small movements that stayed on the glyph, and a tester found that leaving the glyph still cast early.
• A flesh flayer at Midras Ruins could not be damaged by anything while it went on hitting back for 10 a swing. A creature rooted to one spot checks it has a clear line to whoever is attacking it before it accepts damage, and that check was aimed 8.58m above the creature's feet on a creature 5.2m tall. The crystal shard floating over that spawn point sat exactly there, and a five second unreachable mark re-stamped every second kept the refusal from ever clearing. The check now aims at the creature's own head.
• The same aim feeds creature detection everywhere, so rooted creatures across the shardfall zones were reading the world through a line drawn over their own heads. The sight check now also respects props authored as see-through for creature vision, which it had never done while the creature's own eyes always had.
• The Light spell's orb glow now grows with your training on every cast. The wide light around you was already picking up new training, but the glow immediately around the orb kept whatever size an earlier cast had given it, so recasting Light after training brightened the area for a moment and then dropped back to the smaller glow. Both lights now read your current Light and Sun Magic Specialization levels every time you cast.
• Judgment's closing burst was healing what it hit. The beam banked the physical damage your allies landed on your target, then handed that total to the damage pipeline with the wrong sign, so the burst restored health to the target and to anything standing beside it. The more your group focused the target, the more the spell healed it. The burst now deals that damage.
• Judgment also pays a caster who holds the beam alone. A clean finish with nobody helping used to produce a flash and no damage at all, so the end of a channel up to twelve seconds long was worth nothing. The burst is now half of what the beam itself dealt, with whatever your allies banked added on top.
• Rainbow Blast and Chaos Bomb now speak proper words of power. Both used to say "It takes sunshine and rain to make a rainbow", one placeholder line the two skills shared between them. Rainbow Blast says Solis-Vatu-Asen after its parents Douse and Solar Flare, and Chaos Bomb says Kaus-Motus-Gaus. Requested by John Markus.
• The three powerups that appear on the floor of the two special PVP arenas now grant their buffs. Swiftness, Wrath and Vigor all shipped with an empty amount field on 27 August, so for the last three weeks a player could take one, hear the announcement, watch the buff appear on the buff bar with its timer, and get nothing at all from it.
• The five zone effect runes, which let a scene put a buff on everyone who walks into it, now read as what they do. All five printed their internal name on the buff bar, so the buff was called Zone_Grow, and all five carried the same description copied from an unrelated teleport skill telling the player they had entered a sewer vault. The movement one also granted no speed at all.
• A zone buff now ends when you leave the zone. The runes are written to last 72 hours so the effect outlasts any visit, but nothing took it off on the way out, so a speed buff picked up in one scene would have followed the player across the whole world until they logged out.
• The test that covers the arena powerups checked their channel, their skill ids, their stat ids and their display names, and never checked that an amount was present, which is how three empty powerups shipped green. It checks now. The matching rule for skill descriptions already existed and would have caught the zone runes, but it only looks at skills that belong to a school, and all five of these belong to none.
• Judgment's beam now stays drawn for the whole channel. It used Searing Ray's beam, which is built to show for half a second, so the beam vanished while the spell kept ticking for up to twelve seconds and read as a short Searing Ray that left a damage-over-time behind. It has its own beam now, and Searing Ray keeps its short one.
• The caster also holds their arms out toward the target for as long as Judgment's beam runs, and lets go the moment it ends, whether it finished, was cashed out with a second cast, or was broken by a step or a hit. Before this the arms came down about two seconds in.
• Moon Beams rarely mesmerized anything at the caster's level, although its tooltip promised a 100% chance. The land chance subtracted the enemy's full level on top of its dexterity and intelligence, so without Moon attunement a level 79 Brown Spider could not be mesmerized at all. Moon Beams now uses the land chance of its Sun counterpart, Dazzling Rays: a quarter is fixed, the rest shrinks against agile or clever enemies, and enemy level no longer counts. Against the four Brown Spider tiers from level 45 to 149 the chance went from 32%, 0, 0 and 0 to 78%, 55%, 44% and 32%.
• Wild elementals can hurt a summoned elemental of their own element again. Since early August both halves of a wild elemental's swing counted as elemental damage, so the Obsidian Golems in The Breach could not take a single point off a summoned Earth Elemental. The punch half is physical again, as it was on live, and the same holds for wild fire, water and ice elementals against their summoned counterparts. (#6417)
• Judgment's closing burst now has its own line in the combat log and the word Judgment over its damage number. It used to print the same line as every tick of the beam, so there was no way to tell whether it had gone off. A tester asked for this while reporting the burst.
• Every successful Judgment cast kept its spell record in memory until you logged out, because nothing ever marked a finished beam as done. A finished channel now releases it. Nothing on screen changes.
• Melee Damage Reflection now answers melee area attacks from creatures. The reflected hit used to be dropped unless the wearer's own game was running that creature.
• Judgment's beam now shows the charge your group is feeding it. Each weapon hit another player lands on the target flares where the beam meets it, and the beam grows wider and brighter as the stored charge fills. Players watching now see the burst at the end too; until today only the caster did.
• A Gust stun on a creature now runs its full length when other players are in the scene. It could end at about half its length and let the creature walk off while it still looked stunned to the caster (#6702).
• A boar, big cat or daemon stunned, knocked down or rooted in the middle of its charge now stops where it was caught and does not land the hit. It used to slide the rest of the way to its target under the stun and strike on arrival (#6702).
• When one player stuns or knocks down a creature, every player in the scene now sees the same result. A creature could look stunned to the player who hit it while it walked on to wherever it was going. If the creature shrugged the stun off, it now gets back up on that screen within about a second and shows Resisted (#6702).
• Crafted polearms land bigger critical hits. The Spear, Obsidian Spear, Trident and Halberd, their extra-durability versions, and the Sol Halberd and Daemon Trident artifacts had a critical damage multiplier of 1.75, the only player weapons below the 2.0 of swords, axes and maces. Every other polearm was already at 2.25, and now all of them are. Polearms players already own change with the update. How often a polearm lands a critical hit is unchanged (5ed9c284b5).
• Bosses that only appear some of the time, as one of several creatures a spawn point can pick, now count as themselves when killed. Before, the kill counted as whatever creature the spot normally holds, so Xoach the Spider King, the Clockwork and Ancient dragons, Aether Corpion and about two dozen others never awarded their achievement or trophy (#8167).
• The Flesh Flayer plant's grab now lands at the 8 metres it is thrown from. It used to connect only within about 3 metres, so from further out the plant played the grab and nothing happened. It now poisons you and drags you in to about 2 metres, and it needs a clear line of sight to do it. (#8383)
• Creatures now judge whether they can reach a large enemy by its body as well as its centre. A big creature standing with its centre on a rock or other ground creatures cannot walk on used to count as out of reach to a pet walking up to it, even when the pet could get right next to its body. The pet then dropped the fight for five seconds at a time, and the big creature's blows on it were thrown away as out of reach. (#8382, 0ee9aaa70c)

Rendering

• Fixed distant trees flickering while Night Vision is up (#8284). The spell's reach is now drawn as night fog that closes in past the caster's range. It used to be a screen pass that subtracted the spell's light pixel by pixel, which foliage broke. The spell never clears fog a scene already has closer in, and the moon and stars stay clear.

Mounts

• When a cat mount jumps, the rider now stays in the saddle. Yesterday's cat leap lifted the cat's body by up to 0.7 m on its own, so the cat rose up around the rider and seemed to hit an invisible ceiling. The leap now keeps the saddle at seat height, and the jump itself provides the lift. Reported by Joe Z on the chaos test (#3316).
• The chicken mount no longer freezes after a jump. It used to hold a standing pose and slide along the ground for about six seconds after takeoff and another six after landing, and it stood still for eight seconds after being summoned. It now keeps its legs running through the jump, goes back to running or standing about a third of a second after landing, and walks as soon as the summon finishes (three seconds, the same as the horse and stag). The big cats had the same freeze and were fixed yesterday. A new test measures how long every mount holds its summon and jump poses, so a mount copied from the chicken cannot bring it back. (#6817)

Weather

• Storm lightning now varies from strike to strike. Distant strikes flash dim and their thunder follows up to 4 seconds later, a little quieter; the strongest strikes flash brighter and blue-white with the thunderclap almost on top of the flash. Requested by Astirian.

Books

• Rewrote the New Player Handbook as a primer the Hospitallers hand to new arrivals. Its key list was checked against the game's current default keys and outdated sections were removed.
• Website addresses in authored books are now named links that open in your browser, in both the flat book window and the immersive 3D book. Player-written books still show addresses as plain text.
• Books that read themselves aloud can now be paused and picked up again. The window button reads Read Aloud, then Pause Reading, then Resume Reading, and resuming carries on from the second it stopped rather than the first page. Pausing hands the speech floor and the music back straight away.
• A paused reading survives the book closing, and one that another book interrupts is kept until logout, so reopening it offers Resume Reading instead of starting over. The 3D book got the same button on its bar.
• The New Player Handbook went silent when it was rewritten yesterday, because the recorded audio no longer matched the page. It was recorded again: 13 chapters, 14.5 minutes, 12 new clips.
• The New Player Handbook, the book the Oracle gives every new Avatar, was reviewed against the current game and rewritten so its first eight chapters stay inside the world: getting about, speaking with folk, banks and criers, gear and crafting, skills and decks, advice for the newly arrived, and the Hospitallers. Keys, windows, chat commands, Online and Offline play and help outside the game moved into four labelled chapters at the back. Corrections: townsfolk answer to "rumors", the conversation buttons are Buy/Sell and Train Skills, the deck builder button is Link What I Am Wearing, Oracle Confirmatories stand in 14 towns rather than in every region, Control Points are now described as no place for a newcomer, and the companion paragraph came out until hiring works. Added CTRL+1 to 0 to discard a glyph and the /oracle, /who, /me, /roll, /reportplayer and /findmystuff commands. Tester task #8414.
• The Knights of Norgard letters stopped spelling out their capitals when read aloud: "TO EACH DAY" had come out as "tee oh each day" and "WE HOLD" as "double-u ee hold". Words written in capitals are now read as words across the narrated library, with real abbreviations and roman numerals left alone, and 169 notes and books were re-recorded. Reported by Gravidy.

World

• Closed off the open end of the left-hand passage in the Understorm Gold Mine entrance tunnel in Storm's Reach, which let players step out behind the tunnel walls. Reported by Brickbat.
• The ruined city wall beside the Battle of Solace Bridge gatehouse no longer shows grass through its last stone block. The stones at the broken end had outward faces only, so from the walkway you looked straight through them. They now have inner faces as well, and the fix covers every scene that uses this ruined wall piece, including the dark version at Obsidian Keep. Reported through the in-game Oracle.
• The Rustic Antique Shop in Central Brittany no longer has a second stone chimney cap poking through its roof beside the real chimney. The stone column that rises from the fireplace inside the shop was a little too tall and sat about a metre off the chimney, so it now stops inside the roof. The fireplace and its column look the same from inside the shop. This follows the wall shelf removed from the same chimney earlier (#632).
• Fixed the flickering wall corner in the Highvale Outskirts building where the refugees shelter (#8470). The building is made of stone sections that each bring their own corner pillars. Where two sections met, both pillars stood in the same spot, so their brickwork swapped back and forth as the camera turned. Five doubled pillars in the Highvale monastery buildings are now single pillars.
• Palm fronds now flex and flap in the wind on their own. Before, heavy wind swayed the trunk while every frond stayed rigid and rode along with it. The movement grows with the wind, from almost none in calm air to the most in storms, the frond shadows move with them, and the same applies to the leaves of other tropical plants drawn the same way, such as broad-leaf bushes, ferns and banana plants. Roots stay still. Reported through the in-game Oracle.
• Two market awnings in Aerie had their wooden support poles squashed flat during scene editing, so from most angles the poles looked paper-thin or disappeared and the awning corners seemed to hang in the air. On Mac the flat poles could also draw bright white, the same fault as the hanging ivy fixed earlier today. The poles are round again. A cage in Mariah Overlook that was built without a working keyhole now hides that keyhole by switching it off, and a new check stops scenes in both zones from squashing a prop flat again. That cage still cannot be opened, and the other cages there are unchanged.

Combat

• Killing a creature that was summoned rather than placed in the world used to award nothing at all: no experience, no creature kill credit, no kill statistics, and no message saying why. Those kills now pay what the creature is worth. Loot and skinning are unchanged, so a summon from a game master still leaves no body loot and cannot be skinned.
• A kill is credited against the spot that placed the creature, and a summoned creature has no such spot, so the client stopped before it ever reported the kill. It now sends the creature identity and the server turns that back into the creature through the kill map it already loads. Summoned kills stay out of the realm wide boss announcement and have no effect on a town siege, and a new knob on the Live Tunables page switches the whole thing off.
• A kill that still cannot be identified now logs one line naming which kind of spawner it came from. The warning it replaces said only that there was no id, so a pet, a creature whose spawner link failed, and a hand placed spot carrying a zero id all read identically. That is why the report sat unanswered for a month.

Housing

• Player-owned town governors and their Stewards can now block named players from claiming or buying a lot in their town. The list sits on the Town Console Citizens tab. A blocked player can still visit the town and keeps any lot they already hold; only new claims and purchases are refused, with a message naming the governor's block. Up to 100 players per town.

Images

Content

• The unlit crystals in the Blessing of Atos shrine pool now stay dark next to lit ones. A tester reported that light from each lit crystal spilled onto its neighbours and made the count hard to read. Unlit crystals now turn a dark matte purple that does not pick up that light, and each crystal's light sits directly above it instead of off to one side. Layout, brightness and light-up order are unchanged.
• The hanged bodies at Blood River Outskirts and Libris now hang straight down from their ropes. They were tipped over at an angle, so the rope reached the neck while the legs swung most of a metre to one side and the body read as floating beside it. The spine now sits 5.7 degrees off vertical rather than 16.1, and the furthest bone from the rope came in from 0.878 m to 0.370 m. An August change had moved the bodies sideways onto their ropes without correcting the angle, which is what a tester reported back as no improvement.
• Etceter Crag Mines: the cave walls and the rock formations lining the mine shaft look sharp again (#6255, reported by Olivia Rohan through the in-game Oracle). The rounded stone of the cave halls had been switched to a heavier compression in the August texture memory pass, and it smeared the stone. That setting only ever saved download size, so taking it off costs no video memory. The big rocks along the shaft walls were loading at a quarter of their painted size. Each rock set now loads at the size it needs up close, which adds about 54 MB of streamed texture when all of them are on screen. The same cave stone and rock sets are used in other caves and dungeons, so those look sharper too.
• The Dungeon Waygate is now a small stone teleport pad with a teal orb floating above it, about 2.4 metres across and under 3 metres tall. The ring of standing stones it replaced was about 9 metres across and would not fit in a 4 metre dungeon hallway even at its smallest size. The pad fits a standard hallway with room to walk past on either side, and still fits at the largest resize. Naming, attuning and travel work as before, and arrivals now land a couple of metres in front of the pad. Requested by Allium Oop.
• The waygate's bag icon and its Crown Store tile and picture were re-rendered from the new pad, and the store description no longer calls it a standing rift.
• The four Kobold Steel & Stone Fence pieces have new inventory pictures showing their dark stone blocks, riveted iron band and cross straps. The previous pictures drew the stone as flat pale grey sheets because the renderer could not light the fence's stone the way the game does.

Skills

• The Obsidian Item of Greater Unlearning resets a skill tree instead of emptying it. Every skill in the tree drops to its lowest allowed level and stays learned, so the refunded experience goes straight back into the same school with no trainer visit: a Fire tree at 100/80/40 hands back 17,537,647 experience and keeps 771,579 across twelve skills that are all still trained. For the last few builds the item removed the skills outright, which left the tree greyed out and buyable back only one skill at a time at a trainer. Reported in game by Revenant.
• The confirmation for that item quotes what it actually pays back. It used to total each skill’s whole experience, which was what the old full unlearn returned, and it counted elixir skills the sweep leaves alone. The dialog and the write now read one shared figure.
• Only the two schools you specialize in can train their Specialization skill now, and any number of Specialization skills can be set to Maintaining (#6679). In the skills list, a Specialization skill's right-click menu offers Maintaining and shows Training greyed out with the reason. Train All and specialization swaps follow the same rule: a school you give up stops training and is set to maintain. Characters that had more than two training get the extras set to maintain at their next login, with every level kept.
• Every Specialization skill description now states the current rule: two specialized schools can train, any number can maintain, and changing specializations at a trainer or an Oracle Confirmatory costs no experience. The descriptions had still described the one-training, one-maintaining limit from before August. The Oracle's skills guide was updated to match.

Build

• Windows code signing: the new code-signing certificate, held on a hardware security key in the Windows build machine, signed its first test file. Windows reports the signature as valid and timestamped, and the release server check that verifies who signed a client accepted it. Signing sets up in one script, which refuses a wrong-looking PIN before the key can lock itself. Turning it on for real game builds and the launcher is the next step.
• Windows code signing: the Windows build machine signed a full game client for the first time. The game executable, the Unity player, the game code library and the crash handler all carry a valid, timestamped signature. The first two attempts failed because the build system ran the signing scripts under an older PowerShell that misreads them; they now run under PowerShell 7.
• Repository: removed the legacy Unity 5.6.5 launcher project (about 3,100 files, 509 MB) from the Unity 6 branch. Chaos players already use the new launcher; the old one keeps serving the live game from its original source control, which the sync tooling now leaves untouched in both directions.
• Measured whether the editor can stand in for a full cold build when checking shaders against other graphics drivers. It cannot: the API that compiles a shader for a named driver hands back cached results, so deliberately broken code still reported clean, and two of the four drivers return neither compiled output nor errors. Written up so the next attempt does not spend a day rediscovering it.
• A build note had pointed at a shader cache location that does not exist anywhere in the project, and that wrong location had been quoted for a month as the reason a shader fix could not be verified. Corrected to the real per-machine locations.
• Decided that on Mac only the launcher carries the Apple Developer ID signature and notarization. The game itself is installed and patched by the launcher and never downloaded directly, so it keeps its local signature.

Pets

• A tamed pet set to follow now holds a steady place behind you. It used to stop and start at the same distance, so it set off again every time you took a stride and stopped again at once; it now waits until you are properly clear before moving.
• A following pet keeps the side it is on. Its standing spot could jump between your shoulders several times a second, which swung the pet sideways across your path for no reason you could see. It now keeps the spot it picked, and picks the one behind you.
• A following pet aims where you are rather than where you will be in a second. The old lead was a full second of your travel, which swung it wide on corners and lurched it back whenever you stopped. Chasing an enemy still uses the long lead.
• Pets follow you up and down ladders now. The route markers that tell a pet a ladder can be walked were sitting a few centimetres above the floor instead of on it, so no ladder anywhere in the game had ever been registered as passable, in any of the 79 scenes that use them. A pet on Follow stopped at the bottom and waited for the leash to drag it to you.
• Summons and tamed pets no longer end up hanging in the sky after a Floor Turbine, High Power throw. The high jump takes a player about 29 metres up, past the 20 metre range the pathfinding will search from, and every way a pet is put next to its owner was reading that airborne point as a place to stand. A pet is now never moved to a spot the pathing cannot vouch for, it waits on the ground while its owner is in the air and joins them when they land, and one that does end up airborne is set down on the ground below it within a few seconds. Third fix on this report; the first two covered the recall and the leash timeout, and a test pass on build 188 showed the throw itself was still doing it.
• Big cats and frogs built no threat when they attacked. Ten of the fourteen tamed pet families pay a per-swing share of threat that grows with the level of the pet, four paid nothing, and a blank entry is skipped rather than counted as zero. Big cats now carry 0.3 of a level, frogs 0.2, unicorns and nightmares 0.5.
• Three pet attacks paid a flat 50 threat that Pet Taunting Training and Tame Taunt Power gear could not raise, and paid it in full even on a miss. Both unicorn rainbow attacks and the ranged attack on the nightmare now halve on a miss and scale with the taunt.
• Four more tamed attacks were blank as well and now pay what their siblings pay: Big Cat Pounce and Frog Poison Attack at 15, both Hoof Smash attacks at 20. A tamed frog had been building no threat from anything it did, since its basic attack and its only special were both empty.
• Unicorns and nightmares have never used their own basic attack. Both weapons point at the attack the stag uses, so the two unicorn entries have sat unread since they were written. They were filled in anyway and the wiring was left alone, because their own version swings on a fixed 2 second timer where the stag version scales with Attack Speed. Filed on its own.
• A new test pins the threat share of each tamed family by name and fails if any tamed basic attack is blank. The existing pet test could not catch this, because it skipped blank entries before reading them.
• Added the Akita Inu, a new dog pet in red, sesame and fawn coats. Like the other dogs it follows you when used from your backpack and lives on your lot as a house pet when placed there. It is the first player dog on its own skeleton, so it has its own walk, trot, run, sit, bark, scratch and play-bow animations, and it stands between the Rottweiler and the Great Dane in size.
• New Summoned Pets page on the Tester Hub: level, health, damage per second, focus held and lifetime for all 11 spell summons, for any mix of summon skill, specialization, pet gear, food and buffs, with a compare view, a plan-one-pet view and scaling charts.
• Its numbers come from an Editor tool that runs the game's own summon formulas; the page's calculator has to reproduce all 1,286 of that tool's reference points, and the page checks this itself when it loads.
• What it shows so far: specializing in a pet's school multiplies its damage by about 1.9 to 3.2 at grandmaster, pet gear worn by the owner is the next biggest damage lever, and Train Summoned Pet Resistance stops helping once it takes a tenth off each physical hit.
• Tamed big cats, frogs and wyverns now attack faster with Attack Speed. Their basic attack ran on a fixed timer, so the Leather Ball of Haste, Rabbit Pate, Pet Speed Training and bard haste songs never sped them up while every other tamed family did. With no Attack Speed they swing exactly as before.
• Three tamed family bonuses that were made and never attached are now in place. Lions and lionesses hold attention 25% better than other big cats, wyverns hold it twice as well, and the Nightmare now has the extra magic resistance and lower physical resistance that had been sitting on the Light Unicorn, which now matches the Dark Unicorn.
• Unicorns and Nightmares keep the basic attack they have always used. Their own unused versions, a two-target sweep copied from the wild unicorn, were removed so nobody mistakes them for a missing hookup.
• Name plates over pets now come down to sit a short way above the pet. On 242 of 530 pets the plate had floated more than half a metre up: the Miniature Earth Elemental's went from 1.41 m to 0.35 m above it, the Raven's from 1.04 m to 0.36 m, and the summoned Lich Fighter's from 0.99 m to 0.47 m over its hunched idle. The plate settles about two seconds after the pet appears. Tamed wyverns and young dragons still sit about a metre up.

Art

• Rebuilt the tall alien pod plant that grows in Grunvald, Verdantis and Paladis Shardfall and in Quel, in response to a player report that it looked blurry with a line down its cap. The new version has a smooth outline in place of flat facets, a 2048 pixel skin with lumps, pits and glowing bulbs (the old painting was 512 pixels), and no seam. Size, colours and footprint are unchanged. It is built by a Blender script that re-bakes the plant from the original painting and adds procedural detail.

Dungeons

• The Fall Lich Room, one of the encounter pieces you can place in a player dungeon, had no walkable ground data at all, so creatures inside it stood where they spawned and ground targeting read red across the whole floor. Its navmesh went from 0 nodes to 620.
• The dungeon navmesh baker forced every room into a 256 m box centred on the piece anchor. A room built away from its own anchor fell outside that box and baked nothing, which is what happened to the Lich Room. The box now grows to cover the room wherever it was built.
• Five stone dungeon corridor pieces, the straight hall, the L, T and X intersections and the stairs, have had no navmesh since a file rename on 21 August left their movement data under the old names. Creatures and pets could not path along corridors built from them. All five were rebaked, each matching its pre-rename node count.
• Halls of Artifice: the upper balconies are reachable again. They were never missing from the pathing data, which is how the bug had read for five weeks. They sat in 23 separate regions with only 7.3% of the balcony surface joined to the floor below, and the pathfinder refuses a route between two regions before it even searches. With the ladders working that goes to 40.8%.
• Two parallel fixes for dungeon rooms that baked an empty navmesh met in a merge. The one kept grows the bake box along each axis to cover geometry authored outside the standard 256 m cube, and measures the room from its own colliders instead of rasterizing the whole builder scene for an answer it then discards. Both sets of checks stayed: one reads the node count out of each bake file, the other loads every bake through the runtime loader.
• Blue and Green Marble Stairs now match the marble hallways they join. Before, their walls were lower than a marble hallway and their ceiling was a curved stone vault. They now have full height marble walls, columns on the steps and a flat marble ceiling that follows the slope. Reported through the in-game Oracle (#5420).
• Monsters and pets in player dungeons can walk through a breakaway wall once it is broken. Each room's walking map was built with whatever wall pieces the room happened to be saved with, so the far side stayed cut off: the fire elementals behind the wall in the Cave Stone lava grotto attacked through the opening but never came out, and pets would not follow in. The same split sat behind the breakaway wall in the Ancient Stone, Blue Marble and Green Marble T intersection halls. Rooms now map every breakaway wall in its broken state, and a small rock that half filled the grotto doorway was moved against the hall wall beside it (#877).
• Six of the eleven fire elementals in the Ancient Stone Lava Fishing Grotto now start on the floor you walk in on. Two stood on a shelf, one on a ledge and one across the lava, where none of them could come after you, and two had been placed inside the rock and the lava bed. A new check covers every room in the dungeon kit, so a spawn point no doorway leads to fails before it ships (#877).
• Ancient Stone Stairs now match the Ancient Stone hallways they join. Their curved stone ceiling left a black gap above the opening at both ends; they now have the hallway’s walls, columns and wall mouldings, with a flat ceiling that follows the slope. The grey stone wall torch is gone, and the stairs carry the same wall candle as the hallway. Found in tester verification of the original request from the in-game Oracle (#3912).
• Blue Marble, Green Marble and Ancient Stone Stairs close an end that has nothing attached with a solid wall, the way hallways do. The marble stairs rework earlier today had left an unattached end open, so a player could walk out of the top of an unfinished staircase into empty space. Their pathing data was rebuilt to match (#3912).

Fishing

• In reticle mode the fishing lure marker now follows the crosshair. On Mac it could stay red on the bank next to the player, so casting into water failed. Farming and ground-aimed spell markers got the same fix (#5695).

Crafting

• The Select Bonus Effect window now explains the Base Weapon Damage masterwork: it adds four fifths of its percent to the weapon's own base damage and does not scale material or Strength damage, so +9% on a two-handed sword is worth about one point. Weapon damage is unchanged; the tooltip range was already accurate (#5721).
• Crafted obsidian gear returns its obsidian parts when salvaged. Obsidian plate and obsidian shields can give back Obsidian Sheets, obsidian chainmail can give back Coils of Obsidian Wire, and the Obsidian Sword, Hand Axe, War Hammer and Spear can give back their obsidian blade or head. Those salvage slots had paid metal scrap every time. The odds of a part coming back are unchanged, and obsidian parts still cannot stand in for iron or copper in ordinary sheet and wire recipes (#8440).
• The Salvage Components list in an item tooltip stops promising parts the game never pays. A slot the item's crafting history could not fill read as a line like "Metal Sheet (a random one) 3 - 7", while salvaging it paid 25 to 50 metal scrap. The list now counts that scrap in the Metal Scrap line with the amounts that really arrive (#8440).

Images

Isle of Storms

• The New Player Handbook is off the podium on the Isle of Storms. Taking it was the tutorial step that taught you to drag an object from the world onto your own character, which the game never asks for again, and the book respawned behind you a minute or two later. Touching the Ankh on that podium is what opens the Oracle way now.
• The Oracle speaks at the Ankh. Touch it as a new character and she says one line in her own voice, with the words on screen: Choose your path, Outlander. I will be watching. Requested by Astirian.
• Using /stuck on the Isle of Storms leaves your tutorial tasks in place, as intended: it moves you within the zone you are in and never takes you off the island. A tester checklist line and three code comments that said it cleared the tasks were corrected.

Audio

• The Aether Vibration Device radio no longer depends on the FMOD audio library, which never had an Apple Silicon build and left the radio silent on M-series Macs. Stations now stream and decode inside the game (MP3 and Ogg), play through the normal game audio, and follow the Mute When Not Focused option. AAC stations are not supported.

Outskirts

• The handbook now waits where it is useful. Solace Bridge, Highvale and Blood River Outskirts each keep a copy on a stone plinth beside their trainer, and Lieutenant Corliss, Leonard and Zosimus will point you at it if you ask about the handbook. Reading it closes the task. The Oracle still gives you your own copy on the island.

Store

• The Obsidian Potion of Reclamation Crown Shop description now says subscribers get +75 Salvage and Repair, and that extra salvage skill only improves results up to the best salvage outcome each item offers. A player report asked why the potion did not change salvage chances on a weapon they had already maxed; salvage works as designed, so the text now explains it. Updated in all eight game languages (#4808).
• Added the Sesame Akita Inu and the Fawn Akita Inu to the Crown Store at 1,000 crowns each, listed under Pets and under Recently Added. The red coat stays exclusive to Pet Every Dog.

Audio

• Chased down a report that the Ardoris castle guard Margaery mispronounced "confirmatory". Her voice change had been sitting in the game unheard: the new recordings were on the server since late August, but the list the game reads to pick each character's voice still named her old voice until a later rebuild corrected it. She speaks in the new voice now.
• Settled the pronunciation complaint by measuring rather than guessing. One short line, "oracle confirmatory", is spoken by 135 different character voices with identical wording, so sixteen of those recordings were pulled and transcribed. All sixteen say the word correctly, and Margaery's reading sits fifth of sixteen on length against a 0.74 to 1.32 second spread. No pronunciation rule was added, which saved rerecording 1,200 lines across 148 voices.
• Checked every recording the Oracle can ask for, 550 of them across all seven of her conversations, against the voice library. All 550 are there, so the silent greeting and the runs of silent keyword answers reported in August are gone.
• The Oracle had no voice on her answer about unlearning your skills. The line was reworded last week and a reworded line needs its own recording; that recording had been made but never published. It is live now.
• The three Outskirts trainers had no voice on their new handbook lines. Lieutenant Corliss, Leonard and Zosimus each gained two lines last week, pointing you at the book and answering once you have read it, and none of the six had recordings. All six are live now.

Platform

• Updated the Steam integration from the 2014 Steamworks.NET 5.0 to Steamworks.NET 2025.164.1 (Steamworks SDK 1.64). Its Mac library runs natively on Apple Silicon, so Steam login and Steam Crown purchases can work on M-series Macs. Windows behaviour is unchanged.

Items

• Moving the green "Unknown Item" stand-in (a stored item the game could not load) no longer tells the player to try again in a moment. It now says the item could not be loaded and asks them to report it to a GM (#5803).
• Cloaks and growth potions: a cloak now stays the right size while a growth or shrink effect is active (#6179, reported by Joe through the in-game Oracle). After six Potions of Green Growth a character stood 1.9 times taller while the cloak grew only about a fifth, so it ended above the knees. The client had been restarting the cloth simulation on every frame of the resize, and measuring it in the Editor showed that restart never rescales a cloth. While a size effect is active the cloak now follows the body without cloth motion and keeps its full length, then flows again when the effect ends. The same change covers the Faerie Belt. It also fixes a smaller bug where growing or shrinking switched cloak movement back on for a moment even with Cloth Simulation turned off in the options.

Performance

• Weapons and shields shown as decorations on a lot now fetch their pattern art in the background before they are built. That art was loaded mid-frame, and those items logged 100-300 ms each on chaos while the decoration build itself took under 1 ms. The decoration hitch warning now also reports item parse, the work around the build, and how much of the time was blocking asset loads.
• Game client builds now ask Unity for the memory manager the client ran before the Unity 6.6 update. Left on the 6.6 default, the client held about 1 GB more memory with nothing more loaded: 877 MB more at the title screen, and 0.9 to 1.0 GB more process memory in every zone of the same test route. Frame rate and zone load times showed no measurable change. Ships with the next chaos client build (#7248).
• The memory the client gains as you travel was split out and measured separately: about 1.1 GB over three zone changes on a PC with the decoration memory saver off, held by the cache that keeps decorations ready for a return visit. That cache added about 1,000 entries over those three trips and evicted none (#8443).
• Moving an item into or out of a very full backpack, bag or bank no longer freezes the pointer. After every move the window re-sorted all of its rows and read each item's sort details again on every comparison; it now reads them once per item and compares names only between the distinct ones. One re-sort after a move in a 7,000-row backpack of one item went from 160 ms to 19 ms in the Editor, and 290-345 ms to 34-36 ms for 7,000 rows of 300 kinds. The order on screen is the same as before (#5966).
• Town decorations stop piling up in memory as you travel. Every lot you walked past kept its decorations, patterns and house models loaded for the rest of the session, so three zone changes held about 1.2 GB more in the same town. The game now keeps only the 256 it used most recently when you change zones and lets the rest go, which is about 300 MB at most. Computers with the decoration memory saver on (the default on 16 GB machines and 4 GB cards) were mostly spared this already. The item tooltip was also holding on to every item you hovered and its model for the session; it no longer does.
• The two memory budgets behind that decoration fix can now be changed without a new client. They are on the Tunables page for the whole shard, and testers can set them on their own client with /tweak memory.bundleCache.zoneMaxEntries. That lets one tester run the same route with the budget off and then low, and confirm the memory it frees.

Tools

• New voice coverage audit works out every recording a cast can ask for and checks each one against the voice library, reporting anything missing and anything that is a placeholder sitting where a real clip should be. Nothing measured that before, so a missing recording was only ever found by a player standing in front of the NPC.
• New offline report lists walkable ground that nothing can reach, read straight out of the baked pathing data for a scene with no Editor running. It is the opposite sweep to the existing one, which looks for pathing that should not be there. Across the twelve dungeons built from the shared room kit it found 107,332 square metres stranded in The Fall, 42,736 in the Grusk Factory and 24,967 in The Rise.
• A new commit gate compares the fields the vendor indexer can write against the fields the search index declares, and the data maps it reads against the maps the deploy ships. Those two sides had drifted apart twice, once freezing 859 listings at a stale name and price for three weeks, once leaving a category filter matching nothing for a month.
• The unattended bug loop no longer picks up bugs marked Needs-Verify, where the fix has landed and a tester task is out. It had been taking them, finding them already fixed and parking them in Feedback, which erased the marker that a tester report was pending (the Anais "bow" line and the Mac shader errors, the second re-deferred eight times). Both are back at Needs-Verify.
• The automated bug loop now checks whether a report was already fixed before it defers one. A report names the build it came from, and a fix that landed afterwards reads from today's code just like a bug that was never reproducible, so stale reports were drawing a fresh pass every time they came up. One had taken six passes over three weeks; its fix shipped the day after it was filed.
• A new commit check refuses a prefab or scene whose particle effect draws from a mesh without that copy, and a nightly scan covers the 4,592 files in the project that hold particle systems.
• The Next Steps scene catalog check now reads the commit being made. It used to read the one before it, so the change that moved a covered scene passed and whoever touched one next was refused, and four outskirts and town rows went out of date behind one-off bypasses. Each scene analysis now records exactly which version of the scene it read, the catalog copies that version, and the catalog asset the client ships is checked against the file it was built from. (#8409)
• The bug loop now parks bugs about legacy content for a person to triage before it changes anything: an item with no current way to get it, or something that looks like placeholder work, goes to Allium Oop with the diagnosis attached, and she approves the work by moving it back to New. The loop also refuses to close an issue while a note from her is the newest on it, names a player on Discord only if they are in that server, and must send testers to a real zone in its testing steps.
• Re-analyzed Solace Bridge Outskirts, Highvale Outskirts, Blood River Outskirts and Brittany for the Next Steps panel and rebuilt the scene catalog the client ships, which had fallen behind on three rows and still listed a skill the bard trainer no longer teaches. No trainer, crafting station or gathering spot changed in those four scenes. (#8409)
• The boss trophy generator now paints each portrait from the boss's own creature model at its idle pose, so all 85 registry bosses have trophies (up from 66) and a new boss needs no art.
• Re-analyzed Highvale Outskirts, Blood River Outskirts, Central Brittany and the Battle of Solace Bridge again for the Next Steps panel. The earlier pass had described older versions of three of them, so the scene catalog check kept refusing changes to those scenes. No trainer, crafting station, gatherable or landmark changed in any of the four.
• The main working copy had been unable to pull other machines' work since an evening merge stopped on a conflict and was never finished. It is back in sync, and the shared-tree guide now covers the recovery: it cleared 103 stale entries without losing anyone's edits (8821303f4d).

Crafting

• The crafting station now tells you when Use lot storage finds nothing to use, instead of leaving the option ticked with every material reading as missing. Chests with "Use this container for crafting" ticked that hold materials are what it counts. The scene server now also logs every change to that setting, so the next report of lot storage not working can be traced to one specific chest.
• The Select Bonus Effect window now says which skill unlocks the next enchant tier. Major enchants on armor need Armor Enchantment 100 (Weapon Enchantment on weapons), and the general Enchanting skill does not count toward it. A player at Enchanting 200 had reported Major Intelligence missing; the data was fine, the game just never said which skill mattered.

Creatures

• Creatures watched from a distance in Jotungrund no longer bounce on the spot. On steep ground the game could decide that a creature standing exactly where it should be had fallen through the world, lift it back onto the navmesh, and then let it slide down again, about six times a second. It now looks for solid ground under the feet before lifting anything, and a creature that really has fallen through is still rescued the way it always was.
• A creature that spawned while a scene was still loading could keep the default 90 metre simulation range for the rest of its life. It stood frozen at a distance where the creature beside it carried on wandering, and could not be attacked until somebody walked close. The range is now worked out on the first update instead of at spawn, and rechecked if the scene under the creature changes.
• Jotungrund was the only scene in the game set to keep every creature in it simulated at once, across 4.2 km of map. It now stops simulating creatures past 300 metres, the way every other outdoor scene stops at 90. That still covers the whole distance band the bouncing was reported from.

Inventory

• Supply Bundles and other grab-bag packs that can drop items from more than three categories now appear only under All Items in inventory, container and merchant filters. Before, a Supply Bundle showed up under nearly every category, including Music & Instrument. Packs with one theme, such as armor sets, dyes and decorations, still sort under what is inside them.
• Added a Show Dread Artifacts and Shroud checkbox to the backpack Options panel. The Scepter of Dread, Heart of Sorrows, Bonesteel Crown and Shroud of the Avatar ignored Show Quest Items on purpose and could not be hidden at all; the new box hides them, and it starts ticked, so nothing changes for anyone who leaves it alone. Requested by Barugon.
• Search All My Stuff now shows the real used count on container rows in offline play too. The #7148 fix had only reached the online server, so offline container rows still read "(0/limit)" whatever was inside them.
• Ticking or unticking Show Objects in Containers in the backpack options no longer leaves the item list half redrawn. Each bag, chest or bank window closed earlier in the session had left a hidden copy of its item view behind, and the option tried to redraw those too and stopped at the first one. Closed container windows now clean up after themselves (#8290).

World

• Hanging ivy in Lamech's Bazaar, Elysium Mines and South Midmaer Way rendered as a bright white shape instead of green leaves. 37 of the props had been flattened to zero thickness during scene editing, which broke the way light was calculated on them, and restoring their shape fixed all three scenes.

Vendor search

• Searching All Zones for Decoration or Container now returns the same kinds of item the matching tab in your own bags shows. The cross-zone search had been matching only items whose type is a decoration or a container, so a book or a crafted chair you can place in a house never appeared under Decoration. On the chaos shard that category went from 20,203 listings to 80,200, and Container from 217 to 2,691.

Graphics

• The check that guards against a family of Mac-only shader compile failures was matching single-line declarations only, and only inside shader files. It has been rewritten to read whole declarations and struct outputs across both shader and include files, covering 1,196 files and the 42 multi-output fragments in them. It found one case the old check could not see: a hair shader mixing numbered and unnumbered render targets, which would have drawn as flat magenta on Mac if the project ever moved to the newer render pipeline.
• The tall falls at Solace Bridge draw their falling water again. The spray at the top and the mist at the foot showed, but the water between them was missing on players’ clients: the particle mesh it is built from shipped without the copy the game reads to draw it, which the editor never shows. Paladis Shardfall, Castle Atos, the Well of Aldur, the Isle of Storms and the Novia overworld falls use the same mesh and are fixed too.
• The same problem had emptied 39 other effects, all fixed: the Flame Fist and Ice Fist projectiles, the Gust spiral, the Healing Ray and summoning sigils, the potion bottle and wine goblet in your hand while drinking, the wooden pieces from a broken barrel, and the spikes laid by Caltrops.
• The two torches on the stone exit arch in the Plains Road Encounter no longer light, go dark and light again as you walk toward them. The torch flame sits under an effect that draws nothing itself, and the distance check read a size of about 13 m for it before it switched on and 1 m after, which pushed it straight back out of range. That effect now always counts as 1 m, so each torch lights once at about 50 m and stays lit (f9d8f1726f).
• Both torches on the ruined stone exit archway now burn the same steady wood flame. When the archway was rebuilt from nested parts in 2021 only one of its two torches kept the archway's light settings, so on every copy of the archway in the world the other torch burned a brighter, flickering orange flame that lit half as far. The Plains Road Encounter archways also had their torch IDs pointed back at the right torches, and settings left over from the old layout that the engine had been ignoring were cleared out (#8455).

Client

• Switching the Matchmaking Preference from Private or Party to Open no longer creates a fresh instance when no open one is running. The reload now puts you back in the instance you were in and opens it to other players, so flipping the setting no longer respawns an area's enemies and loot. A populated open instance still takes you in as before (#5962).
• A cloak could still come back folded after a death, the August fix for it did not hold, and a tester showed why. While the body lay on the ground its cloak kept swinging, so the hem fell through the floor and wrapped around the legs, and the character stood back up with it caught there. Cloaks now stop swinging while you are dead and while you get back up, and start again once you are standing. A size effect running out around the same time could also switch the cloak simulation back on while the Cloth Simulation option was off; it no longer does. Reported by Joe Z. Verify task #8423.

Gathering

• A missed swing on the gathering mini-game no longer ends the node. The missed pass still pays nothing, and then Meticulous Collection rolls for whether the node carries on, which is the roll a gatherer already got for letting the meter run out. Landing the swing still continues the node on its own.
• Late in a chain the target zone is down to about a tenth of a second, so ending the node on a miss made taking your hand off the key the better way to play, and the more Meticulous Collection a gatherer wore the more that paid. Swinging is now always at least as good as ignoring the meter.
• The harvest bar shows how deep a node can go. It reads Meticulous Collection x3/7: three bonus harvests paid, out of the seven that gatherer has Meticulous Collection for. The count no longer includes passes whose swing was missed, so it matches what the node handed over.
• Rewrote the four Meticulous Collection skill descriptions. They still described only the chance not to use up a node, which stopped being the whole of the skill once the pass limit started scaling with it.
• Taking water at a large fountain now walks your character around to the near edge instead of drifting through the middle of it. The fountains author the kneeling spot 4.107 m out from their centre, but the walkable ground around them does not resume until 4.41 m at Castle Atos, 4.46 m at The Outlaws Run and 4.86 m at Grusk, so the spot the walk aimed at had nothing under it. The destination was then snapped to the nearest patch of ground, which near a fountain can be the basin floor: that bakes as walkable but is sealed off from the square around it, so the walk was given somewhere it could never arrive and stopped wherever it gave up. It now steps outward along the same bearing until it finds ground the player can actually reach. Wells were already fixed in August and are untouched.
• The bucket is back in your hands while you fill it. A 1.5 second blend into the gathering pose was gated on a test that is only true while you are actively holding a movement or cancel key, so it fell through on its first frame every ordinary time and the pose arrived with nothing to blend from. It read as water appearing with no bucket, and other players saw it too. The same line sat in the code behind mining, chopping and plant harvesting, so those play their opening animation again as well. Yields and gathering times are unchanged.

Gathering

• A gathering node whose harvest was interrupted before anything was gathered, for example by a hit while walking up to it, no longer gets stuck: it used to keep its full look, refuse to be harvested and open an empty loot window for up to five minutes. It now stays ready to harvest, and a node already stuck that way goes away when clicked instead of showing an empty window. Reported through the in-game Oracle.

Catchphrases

• Creating a phrase no longer moves the My Catchphrases list. A library big enough that the server sends it in several parts is now put into the window in one step, once every part has arrived, so a redraw partway through a load can no longer show half of it and drag the scrollbar up with it. The earlier fix for this stopped the window being told about a half-loaded library, but the window also redraws on its own when a purchase finishes and when you sort a column, and those reads could still land mid-load. Reported by Joescorpio.

Community Hub

• Planned the Community Hub: one site where players share UI themes and combat decks, rate them from 1 to 5 stars and comment, with a direct link from the game to publish, try on, install and import. Sign-in comes from the game itself, so nobody types a password on the site, and public pages only ever show character names.
• Pinned the sign-in ticket format the game server and the Community Hub share, with one set of test vectors that both the server code and the hub check, so the two sides cannot drift apart.
• Laid down the Community Hub service skeleton for sharing UI themes and combat decks: the full database schema (characters, sessions, themes and decks with staged revisions, ratings, comments, reports and a search index), strict security headers, and a production start-up check that refuses to run with a missing secret or the public test key.
• Added the game-server side of Community Hub sign-in: a character in the world can ask for a signed ticket that lasts five minutes, which the hub exchanges for a session. The ticket names the character, carries the account's in-game mute so a muted player cannot comment on the hub either, and only ever travels over the encrypted connection. It stays switched off on every shard until the hub goes live.
• Added sign-in to the Community Hub service: it checks the game server's signed one-time ticket and gives the game client a 30-minute token, the in-game Open on web link opens a "Continue as your character" page that always waits for a click, and a second device can link with an 8-character pairing code confirmed in game. Public pages only ever show the character name.
• Built the image pipeline for the Community Hub: an uploaded theme background is re-encoded before anything is stored, so only PNG, JPEG and WebP get through, animated files are turned away, camera orientation is applied and the rest of the metadata is dropped. The game gets a copy capped at 2048 pixels and 8 MB, the site gets a WebP and a 480 pixel thumbnail, and identical uploads share one stored copy.
• Added the Community Hub image check. Every image is reviewed on three renderings, over black, over white, and its transparency on its own, because a picture drawn only into transparency looks blank over one backdrop and still shows in game. An image is published only when all three come back clean; a refusal, an unclear answer or readable text in the picture leaves it waiting for a person, and nothing is ever published on a partial pass.
• Added the Community Hub text check for titles, descriptions, the name saved inside a shared theme or deck, and comments. Text is visible as soon as it is posted and is taken down afterwards if flagged. Each batch holds one author only, and every entry is passed in as marked-off data under a random id, so nobody can write a comment that steers the review of someone else’s work.
• Editing a published Community Hub theme with a new background now stages the change: the version already up keeps being served until the new image passes, a refused image drops the staged edit and leaves the old one alone, and taking an image down pulls every theme that shares it.
• Custom UI themes can now carry their own background image. The Theme Editor has a Background image picker under Decoration that lists the pictures in your UIPatterns folder, and the picture you pick is saved with the theme, so switching themes switches the picture. While the file is there it shows in place of the theme's backing pattern, and the pattern comes back if the file goes missing. Copy Code leaves your own picture out of the code, so the file name on your computer is never shared.
• Shared deck codes now strip the characters < > [ and ] from a deck name, so an imported deck name always reads as plain text in chat and in dialogs.
• Ported the theme and deck share codes to the Community Hub service, so the site reads a shared theme or deck exactly as the game does. Deck codes are checked against a generated list of 168 player-learnable combat glyphs and 223 consumables, and the theme preview now draws from the eight built-in presets exported straight from the game's skin sheets.
• Pinned the Community Hub share-code ports to the game with 128 cross-checked code samples: each one is read by the game's own theme and deck code in the Editor and by the site, and both must agree, including the odd cases such as out-of-range values, duplicate colours and malformed codes.
• The Community Hub service gained its game-facing API: browsing and searching themes and decks, publishing with a background image upload, editing and removing your own items, star ratings (one per account), comments, reports and install counts. Top rated uses a weighted average so a single five-star vote cannot outrank a well-reviewed item, and trending counts the last seven days.
• An hourly maintenance pass now clears expired sign-ins and old install records, refreshes the rating averages and puts stuck moderation jobs back in the queue; a nightly pass recounts every rating, comment and install total. Test data for the website comes from a new seed script with fictional characters.
• Wrote the deploy and server setup for the Community Hub, ready for when it goes live: its own hardened web service, rate limits that answer the game client in the same error format as the hub, security headers on every response, a holding page until the site has its certificate, the staff console kept on a separate address behind a named admin sign-in, and nightly backups kept for two weeks. Nothing is deployed yet; each outward step waits for a go-ahead.
• The Community Hub website got its page frame and theme preview engine: parchment light and dark styles, a colour scheme toggle that works without scripts, and a mock game window that draws a theme the way the game does, with Window, List, Buttons, Popup and Nameplates views, window opacity and pattern sliders, and frame art tinted on the server. All eight built-in presets match their in-game colours. Pages carry no inline scripts or styles, so the site keeps a strict content policy.
• Built the staff console for the Community Hub: queues for held background images, reports, flagged comments and moderation jobs, with approve, reject, hide, restore, remove, feature, comment lock, ban, sign-out-everywhere and content purge. Every action needs a same-site form token and lands in the audit log, and the console lives on the staff portal rather than on the public hub site.
• Built the Community Hub theme and deck pages at community.catnipgames.net (not public yet): browse grids with search, sort and filters (base preset, background image, tone, font; schools, consumables, size), removable filter chips and 24 per page. A theme page shows the theme in a mock game window with five views and window opacity and pattern sliders, the colours it changes grouped by kind, all 78 colours, its settings, its background image, and a copy-code box with the /themes command.
• A deck page lays out the ten hand slots (locked, assigned or open), the glyphs grouped by school with a pip for every copy and the skill level each copy needs (the last one needs the school mastery), consumables with their five-copy limit, glyphs the game has since retired, and a school mix bar. A combined search page shows the best six themes and six decks with the matching words marked. The preview backdrops are now painted meadow, town and crypt scenes.
• The Community Hub site gained its social and sign-in pages: star ratings and comments that work with or without JavaScript, a report form with ten reasons, a home page with the month's top themes and decks, a public page for each character, a /me page to edit or unpublish your own work, and about, rules and privacy pages. The privacy page says that posted text, character names and images go to Anthropic for the automatic check.
• Shared hub links now get a drawn preview card (a theme's window colours and swatches, or a deck's glyph icons), plus a sitemap and search-engine rules. A browser check found that the pairing and sign-in-from-game buttons were refused as expired forms in every real browser; they work now, and a test pins it.
• The game client gained its side of the Community Hub connection: signing in with a short-lived ticket from the game server instead of a password, browsing, rating, comments, reports, publishing themes and decks, and downloading a theme's background image with its checksum verified. It stays switched off until the hub goes live, and 61 new tests check it against real answers recorded from the hub.
• The Community Hub went live at community.catnipgames.net. Anyone can browse the Themes and Decks pages, read the rules and privacy pages, and get a pairing code to sign in from a phone. It starts empty: publishing, rating and commenting come through the in-game Community window, which reaches chaos with a later build.
• The first deploy of the hub fixed two problems it found in its own tooling: the install script could not read its settings as the service account, and the health check left out whether the moderation and cleanup workers were running. The security preflight now checks the hub too.
• Added the in-game Community Hub window (/community) with Themes, Decks and My Publications tabs: search and sort, star ratings, comments, reports, and an Open on web button that signs the website in as the playing character. /themes and /decks open a tab, or an item when given its id.
• Hub themes can be tried on before installing. An install saves the theme under a name that never clashes with your own or a built-in one, replaces an older copy of the same hub theme, and downloads its background image. The Theme Editor gained Publish... and Browse Themes buttons.
• Shared decks import with a confirmation that lists the glyphs your character does not have before anything is added. The deck window gained Browse Decks and the deck menu Publish to Community Hub. /community link with a code from the website signs in a browser on another device. All of it stays switched off until the hub goes live.

Interface

• In camera mode the mouse pointer is held inside the game window so the camera can keep turning past the edge. That hold was being lost partway through some sessions, and the pointer then wandered onto a second monitor while staying invisible, so the character stopped turning with nothing on screen to explain it. The game now takes the hold back on the next frame, and the Hold Cursor Toggle setting no longer skips re-taking it after a zone change.

Onboarding

• New characters learn the controls on the Isle of Storms, so the Battle of Solace Bridge has stopped teaching them a second time. The prompts for the movement keys, the camera, jumping and the journal key are out of that scene, along with the fallen log they asked you to jump over.
• The jump lesson had been firing for the players it was written to skip. Its condition was an OR, so finishing the jump on the Isle switched the Solace Bridge copy on rather than off.
• The second copy of the New Player Handbook is gone from its lit pedestal in the Battle of Solace Bridge. The Oracle still hands one over on the Isle, and another waits on a plinth beside the trainer in each of the three Outskirts.
• The prompt telling you to double-click the boat out was kept and re-homed rather than removed with the rest. It is the only thing in that scene that tells you how to leave.

Chat

• The chat moderator can now remove a message it flags from Universe, Trade and Noble chat a few seconds after it posts. The sender sees one system line saying the message was removed; everyone else just sees the line disappear. Guild, town and party chat and whispers are still checked but never removed. Reaches the chaos shard with the next server release and stays in watch-only mode until it is switched on.

Localization

• Two wine bottle decorations shared one name entry, so every translated client showed the Lord British Celebratory Vintage 65 Wine Bottle under the Vintage Wine Cabinet bottle's name. The Lord British bottle now has its own entry and its own translation in all eight languages. English was never affected, which is why this sat unnoticed.
• A new test sweeps all 33,227 item assets for a name id claimed by two different items, the check that would have caught the wine bottles. It found ten more collisions, among them two Bug Brigade anniversary cloaks, a bench and a pew, and nine subscriber reward bundles still sharing a placeholder name. Those are filed and the test holds them as a list that can only shrink.
• Wrote down how to repair one of these name collisions without regenerating the whole tree, including a way to prove a hand edit is exactly what the next full regeneration would produce. Also recorded that the asset name generator cannot run on macOS at all, which had not been noticed.
• Twelve items that shared a name entry with a different item now have their own name in all eight translated languages. Outside English the Toy Row Boat read as a Floating Water Lantern, the Baroque Mirror as an Ornate Wall Mirror and both Baroque Rugs as a Leather Bota Bag. The Pew, Small Canvas Bag, Dyeable Fan, Baroque Rug (Choose One), the 2026 Bug Brigade cloak and pattern, and the descriptions of subscriber reward bundles R152 and R153 had the same problem. English was never affected.
• The Small Leather Bag's translations still said "Small Bag" from before the leather and canvas bags were split, and now name the leather bag. The twelve renamed items were also missing from the item-name table that item search uses for things you own but have not loaded, so they can now be found by name in any language.
• The check that catches two items sharing one name entry now reads text the way the game does, ignoring where a long line was wrapped in the asset file. A balance change earlier today re-wrapped seven artifact descriptions and the check had started reporting them as clashes.

Server

• Fixed friend notes disappearing when you wrote a note on a player and then added them as a friend in the same session. The server saved the note, then overwrote it with a blank record. The next copy of live data onto the chaos shard will also keep the notes players wrote on live, which earlier copies left out (#6369).

Sieges

• Siege creatures now follow you onto housing lots. Stepping over a fence used to end the fight: every target on a lot read as out of reach, so the Cabalist and his army broke off, healed on the way home, and forgot you. They now cross the lot line and come through an open doorway after you.
• A closed house door still stops them. Siege creatures gather at the door and wait about half a minute, keeping their grudge, and take the fight back up the moment you step out. Shutting the door reads as open for a second every few seconds while they try it, so the wait measures from the first refusal rather than restarting on each try.
• Holding a lot loaded for the fight is the other half of it. A lot only carries navigation on a client while something there needs it, and a player on a lot is somebody else's avatar to the machine running the creatures, so a fight across town from that machine met every lot as solid rock. The siege now asks for the lots its targets are standing on, four at a time, and lets them go twenty seconds after the last need.
• Followers now walk back to their own place in the ring instead of onto the Cabalist. Their tether still rides him, so how far they can be dragged is unchanged, but a creature that breaks off returns to the spot it spawned on rather than to his feet, which is what turned the three rings into a heap after every chase.
• Siege followers no longer spawn in Northwood's harbour. The outer ring of a siege reaches out over the water, and some of its followers were placed on the harbour floor, where they kept dropping out of the sky and falling back in. A place in the ring now checks for water first and moves anything more than knee deep in toward dry ground. On Northwood's map the outer ring had put up to 8 of its 40 followers in the water depending on where the Cabalist held; now it puts none there. The same check covers every town whose water uses the standard water setup.
• Dolus fights back in besieged towns and at control points. His basic attack is a bolt that will not fire at anything closer than five metres, and his wand, a copy of the Cabalist mace, reached three, so there was nowhere he could stand and use it. He paced around whoever was hitting him and only ever used his two low-health abilities: one player took him from full health to dead without taking a basic hit. The wand now reaches twenty metres like the other creature casters, and a new check over all 1,235 weapons with a fixed attack range found no other attack in that state.
• Siege followers keep up with the Cabalist on a long walk. They follow him on a leash, and a follower that fell behind walked back more slowly than he walks, so it caught up only when the leash timed out and moved it onto his feet. Followers now run to catch up, and one still on its way when he reaches the shrine keeps walking until it arrives, even with no player near it, so none are left standing in the street between the town edge and the shrine.

NPCs

• When an NPC ends a conversation on its own line, the window now stays open long enough to read it, and the line floats above the speaker even when it is too long for a single speech bubble. Before, a self-closing line over 196 characters floated nothing at all, so the window flashed and vanished. Twelve lines in the game were affected, four of them greetings that fire the moment you click the character. Saying goodbye yourself still closes the window straight away. (#6187)
• An NPC that greets newcomers on its own now waits while you are talking to someone else. In Highvale Outskirts, Horatio used to cut in a second after you started talking to Floyd and take over the conversation window when close-ups were turned off; he now greets you once that window closes.
• An NPC with a task for you now gets your attention with a wave only. It used to wave and then point at itself, and the gesture ran for about 8 seconds; it now lasts under 4 seconds, standing or seated, and stops as soon as you start talking to the NPC (#8321, 9280475bbc).

Travel

• /stuck now moves you to clear ground within about 20 metres that you can see and walk to, and sends you to the zone's starting point only when there is none. It had been finding a nearby spot, moving you there, then sending you to the zone start anyway, every time since the Perforce import.

Achievements

• The achievement banner for a boss kill, a creature family rung, a tame or a harvest now shows a few seconds after it happens. Before, those unlocked quietly and the banner waited for the next time you opened the Achievements window or logged in (#6216).
• The trophy roll at the banker now shows where each boss trophy you have received actually is: in your bank, on a lot, in your backpack, carried by another of your characters, or missing. Replace is only offered for a trophy that is gone from your whole account, and it can no longer be bought again for a trophy you still have (#8191).
• Boss kill trophies are now framed portraits of the boss. They used to be copies of the crafted mounted heads, which made a rare head drop pointless to farm (reported by Rinaldi). Each boss now has three trophies: a small bronze-framed portrait for the first kill, a silver one for ten kills and a large gold one for a hundred, each with its own achievement.
• Trophies players already own switch to the bronze portrait with the next build, including ones hanging on a wall. Anyone whose kill count on a boss already passes 10 or 100 is owed the silver or gold trophy, delivered to the bank at login or by asking any banker about trophies.

Tester Tools

• Gear made with the Create Item tester tool now carries the fixed crafting materials its recipe uses. A created Obsidian Plate chest shows +8% Melee Damage Reflection like a crafted one; created pieces used to come out without their obsidian, which read as reflection being broken.
• The Ladder links reach the floor tester switch now says in its help text that it changes every creature in the world. (0ee9aaa70c)

Achievements

• Pet Every Dog now rewards a red Akita Inu, delivered to your bank. Players who already earned the achievement receive one after their next login or zone change, and any banker asked about trophies hands it over at once. The reward Akita cannot be traded, and a banker sells a replacement if it is lost.

Server

• Replaced the failed drive in the two-disk OS mirror on the backup and moderation server and rebuilt the mirror, which had run on one disk since September 17. A test reboot from the new drive came up cleanly, and chat moderation, the log archive and the backup jobs all came back without manual steps.
• The disk replacement runbook now covers reformatting a replacement to 4 KiB blocks, copying the partition layout with fresh partition IDs, raising the resync speed cap (about 60 minutes down to 15), and a one-time boot test that does not need a drive pulled.

Editor tooling

• Set the Unity project back to the legacy Hierarchy window, which restores alphabetical sorting for everyone on the Unity 6 branch. The replacement hierarchy in Unity 6 carries no sorting at all, which is why the Enable Alphanumeric Sorting preference read as checked and grayed out while the list stayed in scene order. Going back costs the per-row Visibility, Picking, Tag, Layer and Static columns.

Lua Addons

• Signing in to the Community Addons store from the game is now one Sign in button with no password. The game server vouches for the playing character, so every account works, Steam included. The old form put an internal account id in a read-only field and turned down every password, so no player could submit an addon.
• The addon store now accepts addons that declare Lua API version 7 or 8. Its cap had stayed at 6 while the game moved to 8, so an addon written for the newest functions was refused at upload.

Taming

• Studying a beast with Animal Lore now trains the skill. Each fresh study pays from the adventurer pool like any other skill use; studying the same beast again pays nothing until its taming aid wears off. Before this, studying never raised the skill at all. (b992e4cbde)

Tooling

• A commit that changes one copy of the code the game client and server share without changing the other is now refused. The check for those paired files used to run only by hand, and two pairs had drifted again since August; both are back in step. The sync table also stopped mapping the networking plugin from the test-bot client onto the game client, a sync that would have replaced seven current client files with their 2018 versions (#4166).

Character Sheet

• Sending unspent experience to another character from the XP tab now goes through when you send the whole pool. The Amount box opens on everything you have, and pressing Send on that prefilled number did nothing and showed no message. Lowering it by a single point was the only way through (#8346).

Twitch Drops

• The Twitch Drops plan was revised so drops are delivered through the game's own reward queue, which keeps working after the move to the new servers, and account linking moves into the Community Hub; requested by necronut.
• The Twitch Drops delivery worker was rebuilt to hand each claimed drop to the game's own reward queue instead of the old website database. It marks a drop as delivered on Twitch only after the game confirms the items reached the player's Rewards window, and it stops itself if its records and the game database ever disagree; requested by necronut.
• The Community Hub gained a Twitch account-link page. Players sign in with any of their characters, link their game account to Twitch once, and can unlink or ask for missing drops to be checked again. It stays switched off until the first campaign. Requested by necronut.
• The old standalone Twitch link page, which was never put live, was removed. Linking now lives only in the Community Hub, so it needs no game password and works for Steam accounts.
• The server health page and the pre-deploy security check gained checks for the Twitch Drops delivery worker: its last run, stops, open alerts and grants waiting on staff, its file permissions, and that it has no container access. The health tile stays hidden until the worker is installed, and the worker's ledger was added to the backup list without its cached Twitch token.
• The Twitch Drops operations guide now describes the server health tiles and the pre-deploy security check that watch the delivery worker.
• Twitch Drops: players who linked Twitch can now see and remove that link on the hub even after linking closes at the end of a campaign, and the privacy page keeps its Twitch section while any link is stored. Missing-drop rechecks also survive the 30-day cleanup, and the account-swap confirmation link stays out of the web server logs. Linking is still off until the first campaign (requested by necronut).
• The Twitch Drops delivery worker and the community site's Twitch link service were run against each other for the first time, covering paging, unlinks, relinks, de-authorizations and recheck requests. The worker also gained a links resync command for after a community site backup restore, so a restored site can no longer leave the worker holding stale links or a link number that now belongs to another account.

Unity client

• Converted the Azure Dragon cavern and the ConvoSphere test scene to the Unity 6 scene format, and removed two placeholder objects Unity had left behind in the cavern for prefab references it could not resolve.
• Rebaked both scenes' navmeshes into the Unity 6 format. The cavern's file went from 3,778,421 bytes to 1,754,484, and the much smaller ConvoSphere one from 1,782 to 2,575.

Voice

• Checked a report that ordinary Daemons still speak in a human woman's voice (#8307). Every Daemon enemy in the game uses the Greater Daemon's lines and has had its deep demonic voice since the September 21 voice update. The female-voiced Daemon lines are not attached to any creature, so nothing needed recasting. The tester task for the Greater Daemons now covers ordinary Daemons too.

Navigation

• Built an unattended pass that rebakes every scene walkable map older than 180 days, 380 of them, the oldest baked in 2017. Each scene is baked in its own batch Unity run and the result is only kept if a tile-by-tile comparison says it did not lose ground; the scene file itself is never touched. Calibrated on three scenes at about 33 seconds each.

Vendors

• Vendor listing searches now find crafted gear by its material. A piece tailored from Carapacian cloth reads Carapacian Epic Cloth Chest Armor on the row, but searching Carapacian returned only the Beetle Carapace ingredient and the cloth recipes, and the same held for Iron, Bronze, Maple and every other crafting material. The vendor search indexer now writes the material word each crafted item is named with (197 ingredients), and leaves it off the 692 items whose name already says the material or never changes with crafting.

Voice

• Anaïs on the Isle of Storms now says her potion of health line in one breath. She used to stop for most of a second after "save your life", as if "one day" began a new sentence. All three versions of the line were re-recorded and are live now (#8309).
• Eleven of Gawain's lines in the Battle of Highvale had no voice after his text changed from "mine amulet" to "my amulet". They are recorded in his wounded voice and live now.

Help

• The First Steps help page no longer says "the New Player Handbook book", which Arabella read aloud as "New Player Handbookbook". It now names the Handbook once and says you picked it up on the Isle of Storms, and its narration was re-recorded to match. Reported by Astirian's Shadow.

Maps

• The 3D dungeon map now draws every level of a dungeon, including a room that sits directly above another room (#8361). The map kept only the lowest floor at each spot, so an upper room was drawn as the room beneath it and the player marker floated in the air above that floor. In The Rise this left a quarter of the walkable floor off the map, and in most dungeons between 5% and 60%. All 60 dungeon maps were redrawn, and on every map drawn at full detail less than 2% is now missing.
• Where a staircase joined a lower hall to a floor above it, the 3D map drew the edge of the hall as a slope climbing to the upper floor. A drop inside a dungeon now stays a drop on the map, and real ramps still show as slopes. The large outdoor-scale maps are drawn on a coarser grid and still miss some upper floors (3% to 37%, down from 16% to 61%).
• The map bake now saves only the map it is writing. It used to save every changed file in the editor, which rewrote terrain files it had only opened.

Player-owned towns

• A town's facing could lock up after a burst of changes. Past ten saves in five minutes the Town Console showed an error on every try, and each try restarted the five-minute wait. Saving now works again five minutes after the first of those ten changes, however often the governor tries in between, and the refusal says the facing was changed too often. The town message of the day had the same lockout and now follows the same rule.

The Herald

• The New Britannia Herald for 2026-09-20 is up: Sunday went to the things the world had been doing wrong quietly. Ladders now send you to the end you are not standing at, and a hundred and seven of them became visible to the townspeople who walk past them. Standing in a fire finally hurts out loud, the Battle of Highvale got its map, its escort and its dying knights put right, and a graphics setting that froze the client for up to sixteen seconds no longer does. Listen or read the transcript (18 min). Subscribe in any podcast app: /blog/podcast.xml

Tools

• Committed the Unity MCP editor plugin upgrade this machine had already installed: the plugin to 0.91.0, and the three libraries under it to 8.4.0, 8.4.0 and 5.4.1. It had been sitting as an uncommitted local change and was blocking pulls, because the upgrade rewrites a project settings file that other work also touches.
• The unattended bug loop no longer picks up a bug it has already parked for more information until someone replies on it. One stuck-in-the-wall report had been picked up and put back five times over three weeks for the same missing detail.

Books

• Every authored note, letter and book in the game is now recorded: 683 texts, 1,116 clips, 32 hours of audio. Twenty are left silent on purpose, eighteen of them cipher pages whose puzzles are meant to be worked out rather than read aloud.
• Fourteen letters are read by the NPC who signed them rather than by Arabella, picked out by matching the signature at the foot of a short letter against the existing voice casting.
• Read Aloud now says "hugs and kisses" at the end of the letter from Emily to Quincy. Before, it spelled out the xoxoxoxoxo sign-off a letter at a time. The letter was re-recorded, and the narration tool now handles that kind of sign-off in any book.
• Two lost letters can now be found. Flynn LeClot's Penmawr Island Map showed only placeholder words. It now shows its hand-drawn map with the red X and drops from the pirates on Penmawr Island. Arabella's farewell letter drops on the Isle of Storms, where she is no longer waiting.
• Settled the last five books the obtainability audit could not place. Two were placed, two placeholder copies were retired, and the Stone Dragon prologue stays a hand-given reward as its author intended, now with its series icon. The audit now reports 0 of 724 books unreachable.

Community

• Filed a wishlist suggestion from the forum: elf mage NPCs getting a distinct voice, requested by Barugon.

Server

• The guild directory on the guild and town portal shows real member counts again, and each guild page shows the real roster. Some older guilds carried a leftover marker on their member records that made the portal mistake them for load-test bots and skip them, so guilds like The Cult of Elene and NBNN News read as zero members and their roster came back empty. A signed-in visitor to a guild they are not a member of now sees a short note that the roster is for members, instead of nothing.
• The chat moderation model moved off the build server's graphics card onto a second server's Tesla T4. It uses 12.7 of the card's 15 GB and answers in 2 to 3 seconds per message, about the same as before, and the build server's card is free for builds again. The NPC persona check, catchphrase screening and the guild board now all use the new host.
• Added a Chat Moderation page to the dev portal. It lists every chat message the moderation model flagged, with its category, the model's reason and whether the message was removed or left up, and each one can be marked confirmed or a false positive. A second tab ranks players by how many of their messages were flagged; false positives are not counted. The server now records one structured line per flagged message to feed it.
• Chat moderation is running again on the chaos shard, in shadow mode: every message on the social channels is checked and flags are logged for review, but nothing is removed yet. The model now reloads by itself after its server restarts, so moderation does not lapse after a reboot.
• Chat moderation can now be switched from the Live Tunables page without restarting the shard: on or off, shadow or enforce, party chat, admin exemption, how long the model thinks and how long it may take. The Group servers now read the same live settings the game servers do, and the moderation rules reload when their file changes. Ships with the next chaos build.

Combat

• Chaotic Shield's bonus to Chaos Bolt damage went back to its earlier, lower value. The 14 August change that raised it had made the bonus four times larger; it is now a quarter of that. The shield's other effects did not change.
• A summoned pet with a stored wound now comes back at the share of health it was put away with. A pet dismissed at half its bar used to come back at roughly a quarter, and one dismissed below half came back dead on the ground.
• With a shield equipped and a weapon drawn, the shield arm now stays raised behind the shield while strafing, moving backward or moving on a diagonal. Those directions used to play the ordinary combat run and walk, whose arm swing pushed the forearm through the front of the shield; it showed most on the Ancient Xenossian Round Shield and happened with every shield. They now use the same shield pose as standing still.
• Fixed picking another player with the mouse. The cursor targeting check was reading the wrong one of two hit lists the client builds each frame, so pointing at the same player from the same spot would sometimes select them and sometimes do nothing, shifting as you turned and moved. Targeting creatures, looting bodies and clicking objects were never affected.
• Knight's Grace's description now says its Heavy Armor Specialization buff raises Heavy Armor Mastery for 30 seconds, which increases the resistance of worn chain and plate. A player had read the +25% effect line as a 25% jump in their Resist rating and reported the smaller real gain as a regression. The buff strength is unchanged.
• Chaos now treats every account as a subscriber, so testers get the full 48 combat decks. Live subscribers had been showing up with 24 because the test login service does not carry current subscriptions.
• The Combat Decks window no longer deletes decks past your allowance when it opens. Before, a lapsed subscription permanently cost every deck past 24. The allowance now only stops you making new ones, and the server lists decks in the order they were created.

UI

• In a player-owned town whose governor has picked an orientation, the wind arrow on the compass now names the same direction the letter beneath it does. The tooltip used to name the world-space cardinal while the strip letters followed the turned town, so a wind blowing town-north would read as blowing east.
• The eleven Poison Weapon coating glyphs now all read Poison Weapon, <flavor> in the tooltip title. Four had strayed: Shadow Poison, Aether Corpion Potion, the plain Poison Potion, and the dash-separated Poison Potion- Distilled Dark Unicorn Blood. The reagent line lower in each tooltip and the item name on the potion in your bag are unchanged.
• Typing /? in chat now prints one line per command with the group headings on their own lines. The previous fix packed each group into a single chat entry with embedded newlines and chat rendering flattened them into an unreadable paragraph. /help and /commands do the same.
• Buff and debuff icons under a creature's or tamed pet's floating name no longer blink in and out. The icons hung low enough that the creature's own head moved through them as it animated; floating names now test against the scene a metre nearer the camera, so walls still hide them. Reported by Ceal Astra.
• Mailbox rows show their second line in full again. The subject and its Gold or Items marker were cut through the middle, and both lines now sit centred in the row (#7589).
• Fixed chat text selection working only some of the time. A chat line whose mouse release went missing (a link opening the browser, or a menu opened from chat) kept hold of the pointer and took every later click, so other lines would not select and it got worse over a session. Lines now let go on the next mouse move. Hovering a link no longer redraws a line mid-selection, and the chat log holds still while a line is pressed so double- and triple-clicks stay on one line.
• Clicking a line in the chat window no longer leaves the arrow keys paging the log: Up and Down used to scroll the scrollback a page per press and stop it following new messages, and Left or Right could move the focus off the line and drop its highlight. The NPC conversation window gets the same fix. (#8231)
• The inventory setting "Compare Items With Equipped" is now called Show Inventory Tooltips With Equipped Comparison and sits directly under Show Inventory Tooltips in Options. Turning it off gives a tooltip that shows only the hovered item, which players could not find under the old name. Saved choices carry over. Reported by Olivia Rohan.

Build

• The nightly release failed a second time on the packaging error fixed the day before. The fix was committed, but the build jobs still ran their old copy of the pipeline, because they only pick up pipeline changes when someone reseeds them. A new reseed-on-push job now reseeds them after any push that changes the pipeline, and the release refuses to start in its first minutes if any job is behind the commit it is about to build.

Client

• Searching a big market vendor list no longer freezes the client while the results build. The client used to lock up for seconds to a minute on a broad search in a busy town while every result row was constructed on the main thread. The build is now spread across frames, so the window keeps ticking and other UI still answers input while the list fills in.
• Second pass on the nameplate name-label errors from the 18th: build 269 still threw the same error 13 times in one session, once inside the decoration loader. The face was present that time; what was missing was the material the label draws it with, and the text engine dereferences both. The check now covers everything it reads, a plate with a dead material takes the face's own material or the fallback face instead of staying broken for the session, the party/normal material swap can no longer store a null, and one log line per session names which reference was null, destroyed or live. NameplateNameFontGuardTests grew from 6 to 16 tests.
• Fixed the macOS client counting an operating-system pause (App Nap, occlusion, machine sleep) as one enormous game frame. The frame time chart and the internal freeze watchdog now ignore the interval a suspend spans, so the log stops carrying 30 to 1050 second "hitches" that were the process just being paused and resumed.
• Merged the upstream branch: 618 commits, including a signed and notarized Mac launcher, boss trophies paid out to players who earned them before the trophies existed, a re-summoned pet coming back at the wound it was dismissed at, and 24 shipped surface maps recaptured. The one conflict was the roadmap, where each of two rows had been edited on both sides; kept the newer half of each.

Combat

• When a nearby creature was killed by another player, your selected target sometimes stayed pinned to the corpse and quest or achievement counters missed the kill. The death signal now fires the moment the creature dies, so target selection, nameplate colour and kill counters all clear right away.

Maps

• Redrew the area maps for Brisach Maple Forest, North Majestic Forest and South Hulenholt. The rock walls had come out as bright white shapes and a blue band ran round every edge; the rocks now read as grey stone and the maps run to the edge of the zone.
• Redrew the remaining 24 Novia area maps with the current map tool, from North Quel Woods and Graff Island to Port Mirren and Manor of Mystery. Bright rock and stone no longer glare white, Northern Grunvald Barrens and Snowy Tundra Encounter lost the black notches along their edges, and eleven maps now end at the zone edge with the position marker realigned to match.
• Added /beacon (also /waypoint). /beacon x y z [name] marks a spot on your compass and your map. Nothing is placed in the world. It takes the numbers /loc prints, just x and z, or a whole pasted /loc line. It shows through unexplored fog and clears when you reach it, leave the area, or type /beacon clear.

Images

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• Shogun Town Home top floor door before the fix, crossbars showing through the wall to the right of the frame:
• Floppy Hat brim mid-run, shipped tuning on the left and the retuned brim on the right.
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UI

• The encumbrance warning in the top-right corner no longer writes an error to the client log each time the skill icon set is changed while the character is over-encumbered. The icon kept drawing correctly; only the log line was wrong.

Emotes

• Twelve emotes that non-player characters have never been able to perform (including Victory Float, Rainbow and the breathe-hearts emotes) no longer appear in the NPC emote list. They still work for players. A new test checks that every emote offered to NPCs has an animation on the NPC rig.
• Nineteen dialogue lines that describe a gesture now play the matching animation: Louis the Cook laughs, Julia the Alchemist leans in to whisper, and the gaoler in the Clink yawns. Four more candidates were left alone where the writer had picked an animation by character rather than by the word, as with the zombie lines that carry Zombie and PukeBlood for the same text.

Performance

• Windows clients now report how much graphics card memory the game is using and how much Windows allows it, once a minute, in every build. Until now that figure only came from development builds, so nobody could tell how close 4 GB cards run to full. A warning line also fires the first time a zone pushes a card past its allowance. This is the data needed to decide whether 4 GB cards need lower settings in busy towns (#7956).

Content

• On the Isle of Storms, the Oracle no longer dismisses the personality test if you take a long break between the first question and your answer. Clicking an answer button after the pause now advances the test instead of falling back to default topics with the swirl still running (#8181).
• A swamp tree in North Celestial Wetlands that was growing straight up through a large boulder near the middle of the map is gone. The other trees on that ridge are untouched.
• A Bald Cypress in South Celestial Wetlands loaded a soft blur where the trunk and leaves should be; both build at their painted resolution now, and every Bald Cypress in Novia gets the sharper bark and foliage.
• Fixed the size tier recorded for the player-owned town Cold Haven. It was filed as a Holdfast, the smallest tier, so the Town Directory reported the wrong size for it and sorted it below towns it outranks. It now reads as a Hamlet.

Launcher

• Switching the Server picker to a shard on the same build now ends at Ready. It used to stay on "Switching to Chaos..." until Repair was pressed. Ships with the next launcher update.
• Launcher 44 published for Windows, Linux and Mac. It carries the Ready status after a same-build server switch.
• The Mac launcher is now signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple, starting with launcher 44. A copy downloaded in a browser opens without the Gatekeeper warning.
• Released Mac launcher 45. Launcher 44 for macOS was built without one of its libraries, so it showed "Update failed" and could not patch the game or update itself. Mac players on 44 need to download the launcher again. Both release scripts now check each launcher build for the libraries it needs before it can be published.

Achievements

• Boss trophies that had been written off are now delivered. Players who defeated a boss on the build that carried achievement rewards but not yet the trophies never got theirs; those trophies now reach the bank at the next login, up to three per login.
• Boss kills from before achievement unlocks were recorded (27 August) are now caught up at login, so their trophies follow the same way.
• A trophy placed in the bank now comes with a chat line and a banner naming it, or a message at the next login if the player was offline. Before this the trophy arrived with no notice and looked lost.
• Added a trophy roll to every banker. Saying "trophies" to a banker places any boss trophy the player earned but never received into their bank, then opens a Trophies window listing each boss trophy as In your bank, On its way to your bank, or Not yet earned.
• A trophy already received can be replaced from that window for 5,000 gold. The copy goes to the bank and cannot be traded or sold.
• The Songs of the Sundered Blade collection now counts only cylinders you find yourself, taken from a corpse, chest or container (Dozer's axe deal counts too). Cylinders that arrive by trade, mail, vendor or bank no longer advance it, and a second copy of a song you already found adds nothing. Counts earned before the change were kept.

Dev Portal

• The developer portal background is now pinned in place, so the gradient stays still while the page scrolls instead of sliding with the cards. The blog, roadmap and skills pages already worked this way.

Tools

• Fixed the new castle terrain failing to load in the Editor. Git had stripped 1,198 bytes from the binary terrain file when it was committed as text; the original was restored and the file now goes through Git LFS.

Help

• The Conversations help page no longer opens with "You are now talking with an NPC", which read wrong when opened from the Next Steps panel. It now starts "When talking with an NPC", and its narration was re-recorded to match. Reported by Kheldar.

Site

• Pinned the background on the four remaining pages that still scrolled it: the tester hub, the gear enhancement reference, the Lord British audience page and the birthday audience page. They now match the portal, blog and roadmap.

Skills

• The Oracle's offer to unmake all of your training no longer says your masteries would remain. Masteries became ordinary skills on Aug 30 and the wipe has refunded them since then; the offer and its confirmation now say so, and that specializations and elixir skills are kept.

Dialogue

• NPC gestures written between asterisks, like Torvold Leafturn's "glares coldly as he nods his head" in Braemar, now show in the chat log and speech bubbles in italics in the emote colour, without the asterisks. A single stressed word inside a sentence shows as plain italics. Reported through the Oracle.

Mounts

• The movement lean is staying. It has been on the chaos shard since build 189, it was ridden and approved today, and it keeps the values it shipped with: mounts nose into a gallop, rock back on a stop and bank through turns, with the rider's legs going along and the upper body held closer to upright.
• Checked which mounts the lean actually covers, and it is all of them. Nothing in the code asks what you are riding, so all 29 mounts tilt, from the 15 horses to the four reindeer, the chicken and the big cats, plus the coconut halves. A new test now fails if anyone narrows that to some mounts, because the coverage is the absence of a rule and would otherwise vanish quietly.
• Worked out how to make other players' mounts lean, which is the known gap today. The pieces are already on the wire: a rider's movement direction and their current speed both replicate, and the speed already arrives as a smooth ramp. Reading those instead of watching where other players end up avoids the jitter that comes from position correction.
• Mounts leaning into starts, stops and turns is now a setting. It is in Settings, Interface tab, under Gameplay, reading "Mounts Lean Into Movement", and it is on unless you turn it off. Off holds the mount and rider level, and it takes effect while you are still in the saddle.
• The switch is saved per install rather than per character, so every character you play on that machine rides the same way. Searching the settings window for "tilt", "bank" or "horse" finds the row.
• Other players' mounts lean now. Until today only your own mount tilted into starts, stops and turns while everyone around you rode level, which was the known gap when the lean first went out to testers.
• The lean for another rider is built from what they mean to do rather than from watching where they end up: their movement direction and their current speed, both of which the game already sends. Watching their position instead would have turned every network correction into a twitch. Distance keeps it cheap, with far-off riders tilting as one piece and riders the client has stopped animating not tilting at all.

World

• The Human Battle Encampment east exit marker now fires. The earlier fix had put it in front of the tree line, south of the only opening players can walk through, so it was never reached. It now sits across the opening, and the north exit marker was widened to cover the east end of its path out.
• The Human Battle Encampment's south-east way out now has a Southeast Exit to Novia marker on the compass and map. It was the last of the camp's exits to Novia with no marker.
• The wooden shelf sticking out of the Rustic Antique Shop chimney in Central Brittany is gone. The chimney there is a stack of separate stone chimney pieces, and the top one carried its own shelf above the roof; it now uses the same piece without a shelf.

Localization

• A player reported the Journal help line "Select a specific task to see it's details." The English source text now reads "its details", and a new editor test pins the wording in both the localization database and the rebuilt Journal window.

Rendering

• Fixed Night Vision making the world darker. Since the September 18 update the spell gave only a weak boost up close, and past its reach it dimmed everything below normal night, moonlight and torches included. It now clearly brightens the area around the caster and fades back to ordinary night beyond its reach, taking back only the light the spell itself added.

Voice

• Re-recorded 165 NPC voice lines that were still reading multi-word gestures out loud, such as Torvold Leafturn's goodbye. The new clips are live now on every build.
• At the Battle of Solace Bridge, Edvard the Wanderer's lines to Charlotte Gray played in an automaton's voice. A copied prefab carried Edvard's name in a leftover field and claimed his relayed lines. The voice tool now trusts an NPC's displayed name over that field, and the four affected lines were re-recorded in Edvard's own voice (#8214).
• The Avallon town crier now says the town's name the way the banker does, stressed on the first syllable. The crier's greeting had moved the stress to the middle. Eight voice lines were re-recorded, including Hippolyte DeThartas in Xenos, and are live now (#8207).

Conversations

• Edvard the Wanderer's greeting at Solace Bridge was silent while every reply after it was spoken (reported by KnightRider). The recording was fine. The character's record held Edvard's memory of their name as a lone exclamation mark, so the greeting read "Sequanna, !!" on screen, and the spoken line is matched to the words on screen. That mark is written whenever an NPC asks what you are called and you click a conversation button instead of typing: the click was taken as the answer and stored as your name. 35,717 such names exist across characters on chaos, some written this month. Now a button click stores nothing, the NPC keeps its own word for a stranger until you type a name, and a stored mark reads as no name given. Fixed in cc4c889b26, verify task #8211.
• NPC gestures now follow one rule across the dialogue: asterisks mark a gesture, and a sound the character makes is plain text. The client already showed an asterisk gesture in italics in the gesture colour, so the 154 gestures that were written in brackets or hyphens were reaching players as words. Ted in Kingsport answered "(looks you up and down) Not your problem, stranger." with the brackets showing, and the drunk in Blood Bay hiccupped as "-hic-". Her ambient barks had it both ways in one pool, one hiccup styled and the next one spelled out, so those match now too.
• Animal calls went the other way. A horse whinnying and a cat meowing are the animal talking, not gesturing, so 205 of those lost their asterisks and read as plain text, matching how the bear, the boar and the mimic were already written. The shared horse dialogue had been carrying both styles in the same file.
• The dialogue lines edited in the gesture pass are silent on chaos until their voice clips are made again: 123 lines, because the spoken audio is looked up by the exact words on screen and re-punctuating a gesture changes the lookup. Those are being left for the regeneration that comes with the voiceover accent work rather than run on their own.

Crafting

• The crafting equipment catalog now lists the weapons and armor that recipes actually produce. It had been showing the plain base versions, so every durability figure was 50 too low (a crafted Longsword has 165, not 115). The catalog now also names the equipment no recipe makes, such as the Satyr Bardiche and the round and triangle shields. Found by the weapons deep-dive audit.
• Use lot storage no longer stops working for the rest of a visit when a reply from the server goes missing. After 15 seconds the pull gives up, says so in chat, and the next try works; containers claimed by a late reply are handed straight back. A pull that takes nothing now leaves a server log line saying why.

Pets

• An Aggressive pet no longer lets go of the enemy beside it while its swing finishes, which had left it standing idle or walking back to its owner mid-fight. On hilly ground a fighting pet may now be twice as far above or below its owner, 16 meters, before it breaks off. Wild creatures get the same fix. /verbose pet now says when a pet drops a live target and why.

User Interface

• Reading text across the client now stays in the plain font whichever Body font a theme sets. The Theme Editor offers five body faces and three of them are decorative, so picking one turned chat, task descriptions, store blurbs and tooltips into blackletter. Those surfaces keep the plain face now; headings, window titles and buttons still take the theme's choice.

Audio

• Wind is audible again in windy weather. Heavy Winds under a clear sky was authored so quiet it was easy to miss, and wind under light clouds, rain and storms never faded in at all. Levels are raised, a changed weather no longer leaves the old wind looping underneath, and the wind and rain sounds keep playing when a player town's weather machine takes over. Reported by Astirian.
• Quiet loading screens. Loading into Far Hinterlands played crickets, an owl and the night ambience loop under the loading image from a few seconds into the load until the picture appeared, at any game hour. In a built client every scene ships with its own copy of the sound mixer, and the 16 forest sounds placed loose in that scene were wired to the scene's copy, which the loading screen never muted; they were only moved onto the real, muted mixer near the very end of the load. Scene sounds now move onto the real mixer the moment the scene activates. The same loose-object setup exists in 119 of the 209 scenes with placed sounds, so the fix covers all of them. Two earlier automated passes had read the load as silent because the Editor only ever has one mixer. Tracker #1530, tester task #8225.

Gathering

• Pointing at a cotton bush, ore vein, tree or creature body from too far away now shows that node's own harvesting tool picture, greyed out and faded, which turns full colour once you are in reach. The shared green out-of-range arrow it showed before read as a plain pointer to testers. Doors, chests and other objects keep the green arrow.
• Settled a tester question on gathering speed: with the gathering mini-game turned off, nodes keep the classic gathering timer, so playing the mini-game stays the faster way to gather.

Mounts

• Cat mounts (lion, black panther, jaguar, snow leopard) now leap when you jump. Before, the cat froze in its standing pose through the jump and could stay stuck for several seconds after landing with no step sounds. Their step sounds were also moved onto the frames where each paw touches the ground: an even four-beat walk, a two-beat trot, and a gallop with its short airborne pause.

NPCs

• Player vendors and merchants now get a proper collision size. Their visuals use a box collider, which the NPC setup code did not read, so their collision radius was zero. A box is now sized as the upright capsule it stands in for. The same audit had also listed the Inky dragons and trolls as box-collider NPCs; that came from a bug in the audit tool, and their body capsule was already the one the game uses.

Fishing

• The Reel! prompt that appears when a fish bites is now large, bold and amber on a dark backing, centred just under the crosshair. It was 18px white text off to the right of the meter, and chaos testers reported it as faint and sometimes missing. It also appears at full strength the moment the bobber dips instead of fading in during a 1.2 to 2 second window.
• Hiding the HUD in the middle of a cast no longer hides the reel meter while the hook-set window or the fight is still running.

Housing

• Fixed the Move House key list staying on screen after house moving ended. It now clears on cancel, on a confirmed move, and when you walk away from the lot (#8218).
• The top floor sliding door in the Shogun Four-Story Palace (Town Home) no longer shows its crossbars through the wall when open. The earlier seam flicker fix had set one panel 6 mm too far into the room; that panel now keeps its old track and is made 6% thinner instead, which still stops the flicker. (#8164)
• The sliding doors in the Shogun Four-Story Palace (Town Home) now move in a straight line. They used to bow up to 5 cm off their track mid-slide, which put a second floor door through the wall while it moved. (#8164)
• The three butcher sausage decorations (Sausage, Large Sausage, Sausage Links) now rest on top of floors, tables and ground and can be hung on walls again. Their art hung below its placement point, which buried each one in the floor; Sausage Links went so deep that it could not be placed at all.

Gameplay

• Breakable objects now show their own name on the progress bar while you break them ("Barrel", "Vase", "Crate", "Auto-Ballista") instead of the generic "Breaking things up..." that almost every one of them used. Objects with their own label, such as the cave breakaway walls, keep it. (#7049)

Graphics

• The new lava castle scene moved its stone, glass and torch fire off the asset pack's shaders and onto the game's own. Portalarium/Standard can now read its main textures from a mesh's third UV set, which is where 47 of the castle's stone materials tile. The lava keeps its original shaders.
• The lava castle's walls got their brickwork back after the move to the game shaders. The brick and mortar detail sits in a per-piece bake that the first conversion dropped; it is now the main layer, with the tiled stone texture layered over it. Portalarium/Standard can also put its detail layer on a mesh's third UV set.
• The lava castle scene file went from 1.35 GB to 1.01 GB. 1,850 stone pieces had their own painted copy of their mesh stored in the scene; the game shaders they now use ignore that paint, so they point back at the shared model files. The lava pieces and the individually bent stairs keep their copies.
• The lava castle scene file is down to 280 MB, from 1.35 GB this morning. Its 2,877 painted lava pieces each stored a full copy of their mesh just to hold the paint. A new VertexPaintStream component keeps only the paint and reapplies it when the scene loads, so the lava looks the same.

Items

• Floppy Hat: the crown no longer floats off the head with hair showing through, and the brim no longer shakes while you move (#678, reported by Garfunkel Humperdinck through the in-game Oracle). The engine upgrade had scrambled the order of the hat's cloth constraints, which the August 25 cloth remap already undid; the brim itself was then retuned for the 60 Hz physics step, since its damping and world coupling were authored against the old 0.1 s step. Measured at a full run, brim jerk went from 65 mm per frame to 20 mm and peak excursion from 18 cm to 8 cm, and the brim now settles back to shape after you stop instead of staying crumpled. A fence guards both the pin layout and the tuning.

Documentation

• The cloth remap page now carries the in-Editor recipe for measuring how a worn cloth piece moves (equip it, autorun, sample the simulated particles every frame), with the two traps met on the way: the particle positions are expressed in the root bone's frame, and a render issued mid-frame shows the hat off the head while the numbers say it sits.

Sieges

• During a town siege, the Cabalist's followers now walk with him to the shrine even when no player is nearby. Before, they stayed at the edge of town. He no longer jumps far ahead on long walks, and in player-owned towns he now finds the shrine instead of settling in the middle of the lots (#8239).

Dungeons

• Player dungeon spawners that find no navigation mesh at all now log that plainly, replacing a message that read "Infinitym off the navmesh". The lava fishing grotto report behind it (#7124) was the first-entry-after-login navigation fix from 15 September, with no repeats since.
• Creatures and pets can move through the basic Stone Dungeon halls, intersections and stairs again in Adventure Mode. A file rename in August left those five pieces without walkable ground, so pets stopped at them and creatures could not chase along them. The Lich (The Fall) encounter room also has walkable ground for the first time. It is built far from its own placement point and the navigation baker only looked near that point (#8241).

NPC Voices

• Wrote down the standard for NPC voiceover accents: fifteen cultural accents drawn from an NPC's species and from eleven world regions, plus four modifiers - undead, solid elemental, fluid elemental, demonic - that stack on top of whichever accent a character already has.
• Checked the standard against the voice catalog we actually have. Of the 140 English voices, nine of the fifteen accents have no voice at all - Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, Nordic, Greek, Italian, Romanian and Celtic are all at zero - and one of those nine is the accent every human falls back to. Three accents are well covered: General American, British and the neutral pool.
• The audio filters that give trolls, skeletons and kobolds their sound cannot supply an accent. They change the timbre of a voice, not the way it pronounces words. So the plan splits every culture in two: the pitch-and-texture half can be built now on the mechanism that already exists, and the accent half waits on finding a source of accents.
• Read the standard back against the regions and found eight things to settle, including two regions claimed by two different accents each, four place names used in the accent rules that the region list does not contain, and what to do about Ardoris, whose hand-made pilot cast of 17,016 clips would be recast under the rule as written.
• Settled the first of the accent standard's region questions: the Hidden Vale splits. Kingsport and Owl's Head in the north take the British-and-Celtic accent, Braemar in the south takes the American one. The two accents had both claimed the north.
• All four Mistrendur regions now take the same accent, the Nordic one, so the continent reads as one culture from end to end. Port Harmony stays the exception as a melting pot. Two accents had previously each claimed a piece of Mistrendur, and Vikland, Lord British's Castle and the Outlaws' Run had no accent assigned at all.
• Ardoris moves onto the standard accents. Its people are part of the Perennial Coast and did not come from an Asian-themed location, so the pilot cast that gave them East Asian voices is retired rather than kept as an exception.
• Added the spending rules to the accent plan: nothing gets regenerated until the plan is locked in, and the cost has to be stated whenever a regeneration is proposed or carried out, read from the cost report rather than from memory. Regenerating every voiced line in the game runs about \$100.
• An NPC that already has a voice on the live server keeps it. Changing one now takes an explicit decision rather than a re-run. The check that would enforce it does not exist yet, because there is a single voice library serving every build and nothing in it marks which voices players have already heard.
• Automaton voices are to be androgynous as well as clockwork.
• Quest-giving NPCs now come first when voices are handed out. Characters who set quest flags, write journal entries or complete tasks get their pick of a scene's voices ahead of the guards and townsfolk. About a quarter of speaking characters qualify.
• The world region list in the accent plan is now kept as a master list, canonical for other design work to reference rather than an accent lookup. A region stays on it whether or not its people have an accent of their own.
• Ardoris takes the General American accent, following the Perennial Coast it sits on. An earlier note here named the wrong one of the two regional accents.
• Gathering the accent plan's open questions turned up four it had missed. The biggest: the undead, elementals, demons and oozes all get a voice treatment that is meant to sit on top of a regional accent, and none of them has a regional accent to sit on. Forty-five of them are already cast and speaking.
• The accent plan picked up Novia's own region numbering, R1 Perennial Coast through R11 Elysium, and gained a general rule for reading the whole document: a more specific rule wins. A rule naming one character beats a scene, a scene beats a subregion, a subregion beats a region.
• Creatures with no culture of their own - the undead, elementals, demons, imps and oozes - speak with a British Received Pronunciation accent. That is the accent our voice catalog has most of, so roughly fifty characters stop waiting on the harder accent work and can be cast now.
• Children speak with their region's accent where the voices allow it, and an NPC keeps one accent everywhere it appears. Where the rules disagree, a developer decides; otherwise the first place you meet a character settles where they are from.
• Dragon voices and the do-not-voice list are both held for review before anything touches them. The do-not-voice list is the only record we keep of which characters do not speak at all, and it currently mixes genuinely mute characters in with animals whose lines are noises.
• NPC voiceover reaches the live server with the next major release, which gives the accent standard about a month. Until then any voice can still change; after it, an NPC keeps the voice players know except to fix a problem.
• Our text-to-speech provider turns out to offer voices built from a written description, accent included, rather than only a fixed catalog to pick from. If it sounds right, the nine accents we have no voice for become nine descriptions to write. It is a research preview, so the first step is generating real dialogue with one and listening to it.
• The catalog's Eastern European voice will stand in wherever the accent standard asks for German or Russian, and for now Icelandic too. It only goes so far: there is one such voice in the whole catalog and she is female, so the men of those regions keep what they have and are recorded as waiting rather than quietly cast as something else.

Docs

• The designer plan index is now kept current after any edit to a plan, not just when a plan changes status or picks up a new future improvement.
• Replaced the word "spike" throughout the accent plan. It is programmer jargon for a short throwaway experiment, and it reads like cancelling something to everyone else.

Oracle

• The Oracle can set your beacon now. Ask for coordinates, or for a spot relative to you like "50 metres north of me" or "30 metres ahead". The game works out relative spots from your own position and facing, and you can ask her to remove the beacon too.

Lua Addons

• The ShroudPlayEmoteText addon function now accepts a %target% marker that is replaced with the full name of the character the emote is aimed at, so an addon emote can name its target in chat. Emotes without the marker read the same as before, and ShroudLuaApiVersion is now 8. (#6270)

Spawns

• A new character's first Battle of Solace Bridge could come up nearly empty after the lunar rift: the Helpful Automaton and most zombies never appeared until the player exited and came back. NPC spawning now always measures from where the player actually is, and a slow creature load can no longer hold up every other NPC in the scene (#6257).