Release notes

The site reads better

New

• The Leaderboard has two more boards: Gold Held and Hours Played.
• Lairs no longer start over. Go back in through the same entrance and it is the floor you left, with the rooms you cleared still clear. A lair is only wiped once its entrance is gone and nobody is inside.
• Parties do two things now. Type /warp name to appear beside a teammate, with no wait, when you are both above ground or on the same floor of a lair.
• A kill by one teammate splits its experience equally among the teammates within about a screen, the killer included.
• Friends, whispers, blocks and parties are chat commands. Type /help in the chat box for the list: /add, /remove, /friends, /w, /r, /block, /unblock, /blocked, /invite, /accept, /decline, /leave, /warp, /p.

Changed

• The Herald in Eldermyr's square has his own portrait: a man in a gold tabard with a scroll in hand.
• The Leaderboard shows each hero's own sprite beside their name.
• On phones the Leaderboard's class column is narrower, so names have room.
• The Leaderboard's Level board is gone. It stopped changing once ten heroes reached the cap.
• Text on the Field Guide, the release notes and the realm stats page is easier to read: a readable font, larger sizes and clearer titles.
• Other heroes now show their name with a small level number after it, and a party member's name is cyan. With health bars on in Settings, a bar sits under a hurt hero's feet and hides at full health.
• On phones, Settings opens as a card over the game instead of taking the whole screen.
• The party panel only appears while you are in a party, or in Eldermyr when another hero is near. A stranger walking past no longer opens a box over the world.
• The Friends card and the blocked players list are gone from Settings. Use the chat commands instead.
• On phones the hero card shows your experience as a thin strip along its bottom edge.
• Ordinary foes drop gear again: one piece in about 100 kills near Eldermyr, sliding to one in 200 at the far edge of the realm. Elites pay twice as often. The rank of the piece follows the region it fell in, from Common near Eldermyr up to Epic in the deep regions. Legendary still comes from bosses only.

Fixed

• Taking the stairs moves you and nobody else. Everyone else stays on the floor they are on until they walk down themselves.
• Besieged towns can always be freed now. Raiders that chased you out of a town used to stop where the chase ended and never come back, so the town stayed shut with nothing in it to kill.
• A siege also lifts when the last raider leaves the world any other way, and no raid can start on ground you cannot reach.
• A weapon in your pack no longer shows a red magic proficiency requirement you had already met. Rods a Mage cannot use, and staffs a Priest cannot use, now say that instead.
• The shop no longer sells you a weapon your class can never use, and the rack says so on the row. You can still buy a weapon whose proficiency you have not reached yet.
• Logging in after time away no longer makes you Exhausted. Rest now counts the days you were awake while playing, so the days that pass while you are gone do not count against you.
• The Leaderboard is wider and its tabs are easier to hit. On phones the tabs scroll sideways.
• At night on phones, your glow and every lamp sat up and to the left of where they belonged. Lights now sit where they should.
• The Invite button in the party panel did nothing on phones. Tapping it works now.

The Field Guide rebuilt, holes closed, numbers corrected

New

• The Hall of Heroes. A Herald stands in Eldermyr's square. Talk to him to see the top ten heroes by level, terrors felled, gold medals, stats maxed out and fame, this era's standings, and where you stand on each board.
• The Hall's Stats Maxed Out board counts attack, defense, health, mana, vitality, wisdom and speed at their ceiling from levels and potions. Gear does not count. The Hall reads heroes who are online the moment it opens.
• Fame. Every boss you fell earns fame, weighted by how big it is, from a floor boss to the Kraken. Fame counts from today.
• A sign stands in the western sands beside the Coilfather's lair. It is for Ezfe, who found the boss rising over and over, and it names them the top hero in the realm.
• What a hero says shows in a bubble over their head for a few seconds. Party talk shows in green.
• You can add friends. After fighting beside someone, add them from Settings. When you both add each other, you can each see when the other is in the realm.
• The Field Guide has a new page, Getting Started. It walks a new hero through the first ten minutes: the keys, the opening, the first door and where to go next.
• The Field Guide can be searched. Type a boss, an item, a skill or a section name in the sidebar and jump straight to it.

Changed

• Every hero has an attack pose now. Swords swing, bows draw, staves cast, and daggers throw, with a drawn frame for each class in every facing.
• The town square has new furniture: wells, street lamps, benches, training dummies and barrels.
• Mountains are drawn the old way again. The new rock look did not work.
• Roads match the ground they cross. On sand they read as a sandy track, not mud.
• Bridges have side beams and road timber, so a short crossing reads as a bridge. In the Frozen North and the Emberwaste they wear icy planks and charred timber.
• Medusa, the boss at the bottom of the Stonegarden, has her own artwork now. She used to borrow another boss's shape.
• Waystones got new art. A tall rune stone with a glowing heart.
• Town folk are redrawn at the hero's own pixel size. They stand at full height with the same crisp detail as your hero.
• Trade goods have pictures now. Furs, grain, spice and ore show on the shop's trade rows.
• Every picture on the Field Guide is twice as big.
• The Realm stats page has the same look as the rest of the site: heroes online right now, hours played, adventurers, the most-online record, and two charts for the last day and the last 30 days.
• Chat is turned off on phones for now.
• The message box has a Chat tab. It shows chat, party talk and whispers, and no game messages.
• The release notes page has the same look as the Field Guide, with the notes grouped under New, Changed and Fixed. Older notes were shortened, and repeats were removed.
• The Field Guide has a new look. Every page shares one layout, with the page list, a search box, an on-this-page list and a Join the Discord button down the side.
• Every enemy is on one table, all 48 of them, with what each one does and its attack, defense, health, speed, XP and gold.
• Every boss shows its portrait, level, health, ground and drops at a glance, with the fight notes and the full drop table under it.
• The Items page lists all 10 relics, the six Citadel relics included, and every carried tool from worst to best.
• The Overview shows the realm in numbers: paths, named bosses, creatures, ways down, droppable items and materials.
• The Field Guide reads plainer throughout. Shorter sentences, fewer system words, the same numbers.
• The shrine blessings are now called Shield and Strength, and the Warded elite is now called Guarded.
• Tidecaller's Aegis is now Tidecaller's Armor.
• Eight places that said HP now say Health.
• The Exhausted note now lists everything being worn out costs you, including the cut to your health pool and slower mana.
• The Field Guide now says what a shop sells, and the carried tools note shows the signature key instead of raw code.
• Selling a legendary item asks with a second tap on the same button, not a separate window. Everything else sells on one tap.
• Poison and shock weapons are no longer for sale. You can still find and forge them.
• Sea Serpents pay experience and gold to match how hard they hit.
• Sea Serpents were capped at four for the whole world. The cap is four per player now.
• The Sunbleached Husk can no longer lead a warband. It stands still too much of the time to hold a post.
• One network can hold up to twelve connections at a time.

Fixed

• The Coilfather came back half a second after being killed. He now stays down like the other lair bosses, until the Legion raises him.
• Each tab of the message box keeps its own last lines now. A busy fight no longer pushes chat out of the Chat tab.
• Skill level-ups, loot and reputation messages from bow and spell hits were going to every player in the realm. They only reach the hero they belong to now.
• Another hero's signature move shook your screen from anywhere in the realm. It only does when they are on your screen.
• The group names on the release notes page were hard to read. They are white and bold now.
• Bows that fire two arrows showed one damage figure on the Items page and another on the Loot page. Both show the damage your hero deals per shot now.
• The Field Guide called the Drowned Archivist the highest-level foe in the realm. It is the Mountain Kraken, and the guide says so now.
• The Field Guide says the signature key is Space, with Z still working as a second key.
• The mountain pass to the Kraken could generate sealed shut on rare realms, with a tree standing in the way up. It always opens now.
• The desert floor no longer shows a faint checkerboard.
• Buildings no longer show faint lines between their tiles.
• Buildings are properly dark at night. Doorway lamps and lit windows still glow.
• A crafted repair request could leave a hero with no gold at all, and the loss stuck to the save. The smith checks the item slot before pricing anything now.
• A crafted warband order could pull a weapon out of your bag and hand it to nobody. Warband orders check the companion slot before acting now.
• Sign-in tries are limited. Five wrong tries in a row close the connection, and too many from one place are refused for a few minutes.
• Checking a password no longer pauses the whole realm while it runs.
• Shops, forges, hearths and hiring need you standing at the right person. Buying a health tonic from the bottom of a dungeon is no longer possible.
• Walking away from a shop, or the town falling to the Legion, closes your trade properly.
• Shops sell only items from the Field Guide, matched to the town's region. Anything you already bought is still in your bag and matches a real item page now.
• Critical hit chances on rings and gear show the real number. They were printing double what they give.
• Emberheart Armor says what it does: each kill gives +8% damage, up to +24%.
• Levelling up used to raise every other player's warband too. It only raises your own now.
• Promoting a companion to tier 2 or 3 raises their defense as well as their health and attack.
• The level-up message said one skill point. You get two, and it says so.
• The Hundredfold Quiver only refunds a shot off your own marks.
• A Priest's group heal stops at your own room instead of reaching warbands in other dungeons.
• The Priest's passive says how long its save takes to come back, and the combat message counts your own seconds.
• Trophies and lifetime counters stay with the hero who earned them.
• The wild Emberwyrm sometimes never came back after the realm was remade. It does now.
• Dungeon floor bosses' ground slam uses its intended value, a little softer than before.
• The Mage's class card no longer claims the deepest mana pool. The Priest has it, and both cards say so.
• Long event messages were cut off mid-word. They show in full now.
• Rally pings only reach the people in the same place as you.
• Changing your hero's name runs the same name check as signing up, and is limited to once every ten minutes.
• The sign-in card tells you when the server cannot reach its storage, instead of sitting blank and retrying.
• Reconnecting after a drop backs off instead of retrying every second.
• Double-tapping sign in on a slow connection could leave you stuck on "playing in another window". It cannot now.
• Cooking refuses anything that is not a real recipe.
• Actions pressed while you are down are dropped instead of all firing the moment a teammate lifts you.
• New heroes in the opening town no longer reach the real town's people by accident.
• Southreach's officer description said two or three hits would finish you. It takes about five.
• Trade cargo can only be sold at an open shop.
• The game works out its numbers the same way on every machine, so what you see on your screen and what the server sees match exactly.
• The game is about half a megabyte smaller to load.
• Blocking someone now follows their account. Changing a hero name or switching to another hero on the same account no longer gets around a block, and your blocked list shows a player's new name.
• Item names with an apostrophe are now written safely everywhere they appear in a panel.
• On phones, the black outlines around things now stay one even width everywhere.
• Gatherable items no longer wear a thick black outline in the shop, in your bag or in the Field Guide.
• You no longer get stuck against nothing beside trees and buildings. They now block only where they are drawn, not the whole square of ground under them.
• Walking into the edge of a doorway or a gap between trees now slides you into the opening instead of stopping you on the corner.
• A hero who logged out touching a wall could come back unable to walk along it. Positions are no longer rounded into walls.
• A hero whose ground turns solid under them (a lake thawing in spring) can push free and is moved to open ground, instead of being stuck until they log out.
• You no longer get stuck against nothing beside trees and buildings. They now block only where they are drawn, not the whole square of ground under them.
• Walking into the edge of a doorway or a gap between trees now slides you into the opening instead of stopping you on the corner.
• A hero who logged out touching a wall could come back unable to walk along it. Positions are no longer rounded into walls.
• A hero whose ground turns solid under them (a lake thawing in spring) can push free and is moved to open ground, instead of being stuck until they log out.
• You no longer get stuck against nothing beside trees and buildings. They now block only where they are drawn, not the whole square of ground under them.
• Walking into the edge of a doorway or a gap between trees now slides you into the opening instead of stopping you on the corner.
• A hero who logged out touching a wall could come back unable to walk along it. Positions are no longer rounded into walls.
• A hero whose ground turns solid under them (a lake thawing in spring) can push free and is moved to open ground, instead of being stuck until they log out.

A town in pictures, and a settings page

Changed

• Every town person has a real drawing: the Elder, the Merchant, the Guard, the Sellsword Captain, the Blacksmith, the War Master and the Shipwright.
• Town buildings have real art. The shop, the smithy, the lodge, the hall, the inn, the guard tower and the cottages are all drawn.
• Burnt buildings have matching art. A ruined smithy, inn and hall look like what the Legion left.
• The notice board, the waystones and the signposts wear new art too.
• The snowy trees have new art. Four kinds of snow pine grow through the northern woods.
• Trees have new pixel art. Four kinds grow mixed through the woods, with clean edges day and night.
• Every gatherable item has its own picture, on the ground, in your pack, at the shop and in the Field Guide.
• The Dire Hound and the Dark Caster have a new look when they fight for the Legion. The same creatures elsewhere in the world look as they always did.
• The quest box in the corner shows one quest at a time, the one your compass is pointing at. Press Q for the full list, finished quests included.
• Deepest depth is no longer listed as a quest. It sits at the bottom of the quest log.
• Your hero faces the way they walk again, and turns to your aim only while attacking.
• The material pictures in the Field Guide are four times bigger.
• The chat box scrolls. Roll the mouse wheel over it to read the last 20 messages.
• The cards on screen are a bit more see-through, so you can watch the fight behind them.
• Settings on a computer is a full page, with the sections listed down the left side.
• The online count lives on the minimap only now.
• The game pages have a proper browser tab icon.
• The shield from the browser tab sits beside the title on every page, and large above the headline on the front page.

Fixed

• On a computer, raising the interface size in settings grew every panel except the minimap. The minimap grows with the rest now.
• Rebinding a key did nothing. It works now.
• Your Space slot shows the tool you actually have equipped, and swaps when you change it.
• The World page says correctly whether the Mountain Kraken is stirring, based on whether every other named boss has actually fallen.

A new look, parties, and a real settings menu

New

• Sound has its own controls: Master, music, combat, ambience and interface each get a slider.
• Three new sound options: a chime when rare loot drops, silence when you switch away from the game, and a soft heartbeat when your health is low.
• There is a frame rate cap in settings.
• Damage numbers can be turned on or off.
• The minimap can be hidden.
• On phones, the thumbstick can be resized, and interact can be set to hold instead of tap.
• The game asks before you sell rare or better gear, and shows the price.
• The game warns you before you go down to a floor above your level.
• You can change your password in settings.
• You can form a party of up to 6. Click a player's name to invite them, and they accept or decline.
• Party chat is in. Type /p before a message to talk only to your party.
• You can whisper a player with /w name message, and reply with /r.
• You can block a player with /block name so they cannot whisper you, invite you or reach you in chat. Settings also lets you choose who may invite or whisper you.
• Settings can silence kinds of message on any device: loot you pick up, your warband, daily gold, war news, other players and combat lines.
• Accounts with inappropriate names can be removed or banned.

Changed

• The settings menu got a full rework. Sound, display, controls, gameplay, chat and account are all in one place.
• Phones get a settings button on screen, and each settings section opens as its own page.
• Party members' health shows next to their names.
• The party buttons are bigger on phones.
• On a computer, messages and chat share one panel with tabs: All, Party and Combat.
• The whole screen has a cleaner look: matching panels, one font, and the same style on every card.
• Your health, level and gold sit together in one card at the top left.
• Quests show small progress bars for things you can count.
• Abilities show as picture slots with their key and cooldown.
• The minimap shows who is online and your region.
• On phones a compass points at your current goal. Tap it to swap in a small map.
• Esc opens settings.
• The screen shows just two key hints, Tab and H. Press H to see all controls.
• The Field Guide shows real art for every boss and weapon that has it, instead of placeholder pictures and generic icons.
• The Field Guide's front page has a Gathering card showing four of the realm's materials.
• Wandering merchants, treasure sprites and roaming war-packs are no longer announced to the whole realm. You hear about one only if you are close enough to reach it.
• War news is shorter. Freeing a town, losing one, and the warning that the Legion is coming back say the facts and stop.
• A boss's signature drop odds show as a plain percentage.
• When the Legion attacks a town you are not defending, the outcome is decided by a real fight between your guard and their soldiers, not a hidden dice roll.
• The Mountain Kraken waits until every other named boss in the realm has been defeated before it can return.

Fixed

• Ambient sounds like birdsong and wind were missing in multiplayer. They are back.
• Roads and mountainsides no longer show a line across every tile.
• Creatures no longer cast a doubled shadow.
• Camp no longer says the same thing twice.
• The Pale Shepherd no longer announces himself leaving at dawn.
• The Field Guide loads about ten times faster.
• The game runs smoother, especially at night, in dungeons and near fire, and uses less internet.
• A stutter that dropped a frame once a second is gone.
• A wagon-built wall shows on the map and minimap right away.
• Veteran heroes no longer lose skill points every time they log in.
• The smith and the waystone close immediately if the Legion takes the town while you are inside.

A dodge goes where you press

Changed

• A dodge roll from a standstill goes the way you press, not the way your hero is looking.

Faster loading, lighter internet

Fixed

• The game downloads much faster. Files are compressed to about a third of their old size.
• Playing uses far less internet. The realm updates you receive are compressed too.
• Art no longer downloads again on every visit.
• A slow connection no longer falls further and further behind. The game skips updates it cannot deliver in time and catches you up with the newest one.

Twenty-six bosses get real art

Changed

• Every floor boss, most named world bosses, both Kraken and Malgor, all five Legion horde commanders, and the guardian at the bottom of the Broodmother's Lair have real art and walk when they move. Only the Broodmother herself and the Emberkeg keep their old art.

Put something down for somebody else

New

• You can drop an item on the ground for another player. Drag a row out of your pack onto the band at the bottom of the screen, and it lands at your feet for anyone to pick up.
• A dropped item lies there for about ten minutes, then it is gone. You cannot drop what you are wearing, the last weapon, armour or tool you own, or anything while you are underground.
• Settings has a Join the Discord row. It opens the invite where players talk about the realm, and the game keeps running behind it.
• The Notifications page has a button to send yourself a test notification.

Changed

• The Boxwood Rod's bolt is redrawn. The long shaft is gone, so it reads as a compact bolt.

Fixed

• Notifications never reached anyone, because your phone was never asked for permission. A button on the Notifications page asks now.
• The Notifications page says what is actually true. It waits until the realm has your phone before it says you are set up, and it tells you if your copy of the app is too old to set them up at all.

Every control answers a thumb

New

• The realm has been started over. Every town is back under the Legion, the calendar is back to day one, and the world is rebuilt with the fixed roads and the new woodland. Your hero, everything in your bags and all your medals are untouched.

Changed

• The countryside has trees: the odd tree and small stands in open country, thinner near home and heavier out at the frontier, and never on a road.
• Snow regions get pines, the ashlands get burnt stumps, and the desert stays bare.
• On a phone each item has its own Equip button, and the healing elixir has a Heal button. On a computer nothing changed.

Fixed

• Your bag no longer equips something when you are only reading it.
• The buttons along the edge are bigger when you hold the phone sideways. The menu, tent, signature and quick heal were all smaller than a thumb needs.
• Opening a card no longer leaves the movement stick and the action buttons showing through it. They looked live and did nothing when tapped.
• The hero chip, and the left edge of any card, no longer ignore your taps.
• The hire buttons in the companions panel fit on a narrow phone. The third one used to sit off the edge of the screen.
• On a phone a button appears when you can board a boat or get on your steed, and again to get off. Boats and steeds were keyboard only, so there was no way to use either.
• Menus on a phone are no longer covered by the message feed. The feed shrinks while a menu is open, and the menu starts below it.
• Messages no longer tell you to press a key when you are on a phone. They name the button to tap instead, and on a computer they show the key you actually have it bound to.

The war for the realm

New

• The Dread Legion holds every town but Eldermyr, and the realm is yours to take back. A named captain holds each town square with soldiers in the streets. Kill the captain and the town is free.
• A freed town is defenseless until you feed it. Walk supply wagons out from the Eldermyr gate.
• The first supply run raises a guard at the town gate. Later runs make him stronger and then raise walls, stone by stone, while you watch.
• Wagons block arrows both ways, and enemy volleys chew the carts you hide behind.
• The Legion announces the day it will come for each town, days ahead. Either your guard holds the gate or you hold the square yourselves.
• What you slay on ground you hold stays dead. What falls on Legion ground, the Legion raises.
• Townsfolk run indoors when there is fighting in their streets, and talk to you through their doors until it is over.
• Free all five towns and put down every named terror, and the Legion sends everything: one horde, five towns, one dawn, five named commanders.
• Break the horde and Malgor the Deathless comes up the east road himself.
• Kill Malgor and the realm is won. Your era joins the Leader Board, the realm is made new under his banners, and your hero keeps everything.
• The app can tell you when the realm moves while you are away: when a major enemy falls, or when a town is taken or lost. Open Settings, then Notifications, and choose which of the two you want.

Changed

• Bridges sit on the water instead of covering it. The river runs and shimmers under the deck, shallow crossings look shallow, and the planks run along the road rather than across it.
• The World page is one clean screen, kept by the War Master: your towns, their guards and supplies, the day the Legion returns, and every named foe still standing.
• The class pages state exactly what each level pays.
• Buttons answer you when you tap them on a phone. Every button, row and tab dips and brightens under your thumb, and the phone gives a short buzz.
• Bolts and arrows no longer fly faster as your proficiency rises. A shot's speed is its weapon's alone, the same for a novice and a master.
• Staff bolts fly a fifth slower through the air. They reach exactly as far as before, and attack speed is unchanged.
• Bonuses add into one pool now instead of multiplying each other. A normal hit can never exceed 3 times its base, and an ultimate can never exceed 5.
• Crits are rarer and simpler. A point of Precision buys 2.5% instead of 5%, the chance tops out at 30%, and a crit is a flat double.
• Nothing is a guaranteed crit any more, including ultimates.
• Skill rows give less per point: Hunter's Eye, Executioner, Steady Aim, Charge, Heavy Shaft, Quarry marks, kill-surge and rage were all cut, and foe weakness gives less too.

Fixed

• The Heavy Shaft skill was advertising the wrong number. It said your shot hits for far less than it really did. It prints what actually lands now.
• Buttons on a phone are bigger. Sell, Buy, Repair and the rest were about half the height they should be, so a tap that felt like a hit was sometimes a miss.
• Selling and buying say what happened. The line telling you what you sold and what you were paid used to be hidden behind the panel you were looking at.
• Rows no longer stay lit after you tap them on a phone.
• Supply caravans could get stuck for good, on trees planted in the road and mountains tight against corners. Roads keep a clear tile on either side now, and a wagon that does get pinned works itself loose.

Creatures keep their distance, and the phone layout sits straight again

New

• On desktop, press F to turn auto-fire on or off. While it is on, your hero fires toward your cursor the whole time, whether or not anything is there. It costs mana as usual, starts off, and your choice is remembered.

Changed

• Enemy shots wear real art instead of plain dots. Every bolt, arrow, spit and lobbed bomb has its own small orb in its element's colour, so burning, freezing, venomous and crackling shots each read at a glance.
• The Dread Legion's named captains and the Overlord stand three times the size of the creatures around them. Their raid soldiers stay ordinary sized.
• The Archer's Heavy Shaft is drawn at half the size. It hits exactly as it did.
• Whirlwind is no longer a button, and the R key is retired. If you have unlocked it, every third melee hit you land spins automatically, free, at full strength, and small pips by your style row count toward the next spin.
• Enemy level tags no longer float over creatures. Names and health bars stay, and the bestiary still lists every level.
• The hand that appears when something is close enough to use sits on a dark circle, the same as the interact button on your screen.
• On phones, the interact button gently pulses whenever there is something in reach to talk to, open or use, and goes quiet again when there is not.
• Wild creatures hit half as hard beyond the newcomer lands. Below level 12 nothing changed.
• Armor is weaker everywhere. Heavy armor protects half what it did, light armor tops out at 22 defense, and robes at 15.
• The Dread Legion will never raid Eldermyr itself. The outer towns remain fair game.
• Two-arrow bows deal half their old damage, split evenly between the arrows.
• Creatures appear further away from you. They used to arrive already close enough to shoot, so archers and casters were on you the moment they existed.
• Root Shamblers raise their Rootlings a quarter less often.
• Grove Tenders heal the Tree Ent every second, each on its own beat instead of all at once. The total healing per second is unchanged.

Fixed

• The Necromancer's Soul Drain is blood-red now. It used to be red on your screen and green in the world. Its healing number stays green, like every heal.
• Dodging no longer snaps your hero back behind walls you already rolled past, or through ones you were stuck on.
• The killing dark in the far northeast no longer executes travelers. It only touches heroes who have joined the fight at the Pale Shepherd's seat, by stepping into his ring or striking him. Fleeing that fight mid-way is still punished.
• Scrollbars in the settings and menus match the game instead of glowing white.
• The accidental Cast spells at your cursor switch in Settings is gone.
• On desktop, the enlarged map is back to its normal size. It had been rendering far too large.
• On phones, the enlarged map sits centred, with the same gap on the left and the right. It had been leaning right, with part of the map off the edge of the screen.
• On phones, the close button is back in the bottom right corner for the inventory, character, skills, shop and settings cards. It had drifted up into the middle of the screen. The enlarged map keeps its own close button below the map.

Tree Ents fight back, and you can delete your account

New

• Each Tree Ent keeps three Grove Tenders circling it at a distance, healing its bark. While even one tender lives, the ent heals faster than almost anyone can hurt it. Cut the tenders down first; they grow back slowly, one at a time.
• Open the hero select and choose Delete my account. It names every hero you are about to lose and asks you to type your account name back. Everything goes at once, permanently, and cannot be recovered.
• Hero and account names are checked when you create them, and offensive ones are turned away.
• There are two new pages, eldermyr.com/privacy and eldermyr.com/support, covering what the game stores about you and how to get help.
• On phones, a tent button appears when you are hurt and it is safe to rest. Tap it to make camp on the spot, and tap it again to break camp. It is there when you hold the phone sideways too.
• On phones, a quick heal button appears when you drop below half health and have a potion in your bag. Tap it to drink one.
• Settings has a camera zoom slider. Slide it down to see more of the realm around you, or up to sit closer to your hero.

Changed

• Rootlings have their own look, a little walking tangle of roots, instead of borrowing the Grave Rat's.
• On phones, auto-combat starts on. Your hero fights nearby foes on their own. Turn it off any time in Settings, and if you turned it off before, it stays off.
• On phones, the view is pulled back and you see about a quarter more of the realm around you. Enemies that attack from a distance come into sight instead of hitting you from off screen.
• The menu button looks like an ordinary backpack, with a carry loop, straps and a zip pocket.
• Every class signature button has been redrawn. Knights get a shield, archers a long arrow, assassins a dashed outline of a figure vanishing mid step, mages a ring of bolts, necromancers a skull, priests a healer's plus, freeblades crossed swords.
• On phones, every button lines the side of the screen in one column. Dodge sits in the bottom corner with interact, your signature move and the menu above it, and the heal and tent buttons join the same column when they appear.
• On phones, the minimap moved to the top of the screen and follows you. It shows the ground around your hero instead of the whole realm, so you can read it. Chat sits underneath it.
• The interact button is a hand with four fingers and a thumb, and the prompt that floats over your hero shows the same hand instead of a keyboard key you do not have.
• The sign up and log in cards look clearly different, and both have New hero and Log in tabs at the top so you can see which one you are on and switch with one tap.
• The dodge button shows a figure mid dodge.
• The enlarged map is sized to the map instead of covering the whole screen, sits in the middle of it, and its close button sits just below it. On phones it no longer runs under the notch at the top or off the bottom edge.
• Tree Ents are far tougher. One has about twenty-five times the health it had and hits five times as hard, and felling one pays about five times the experience and gold.
• Enemies in the outer lands hit softer. A creature out at the frontier does about a third less damage, and the further out you go the bigger the difference. Nothing below level 12 changed.
• The realm is less crowded. There are roughly a third fewer creatures roaming the map, in every ring.

Fixed

• The game updates the moment you reopen it. Before this, a browser or the app could keep serving you an older version of the game for a while after an update went out.
• The necromancer signature finds a target through cover. It used to open in empty ground when the nearest enemy was behind a tree, and still cost you the energy.
• Signing up no longer wipes what you typed. The sign up card used to clear your name and password every ten seconds or so.

Towns can fall, and every boss fights differently

New

• A desert has opened in the realm, the Sunscour, with five creatures of its own.
• Three Tree Ents stand in the realm, each ringed by a wall of trees with gaps to slip through. The ent moves very slowly and throws bombs that arc and land, and every bomb that lands raises a Root Shambler.
• Nine gathering materials grow in the realm, one for each region and nowhere else. Emberglass in the Cinderlands, frostpetal in the Frozen North, saltcrust in the Sunscour, tidepearl on the shores, and so on.
• Nine new recipes at any town Hearth. Four oils coat your weapon in fire, frost, poison or lightning for three minutes, one makes three Healing Elixirs, and three make the permanent Potions of Health, Attack and Mana.
• A siege you leave alone takes the town. The market shuts, a Legion garrison and a sentry hold the square, and no caravan will go there.
• Every town the Legion holds shortens the time you have to save the next one.
• Caravans run the roads between Eldermyr and the towns. Escort one and you are paid in gold and standing. Leave one under ambush and it is lost in about a minute and a half.
• Every boss in the realm fights differently from every other boss. Four of them used to share one set of moves, and one of those was also the Mountain Kraken's.
• The Frost Titan creeps and then surges instead of walking, and it heals its wounds shut whenever nobody is standing close to it.
• The Storm Roc holds its distance and circles, and it shoves everyone nearby back out. The shove does no damage, and a shield holds you where you are.
• Emberhorn charges in a straight line, and the charge explodes where it stops.
• The Tide Leviathan does not chase anyone. Its harpoon hunts whoever is furthest away, so there is no safe back rank and no safe boat.
• The Pale Shepherd gives ground while his flock is standing and closes in once it is dead.
• The nine dungeon floor bosses were one fight in nine costumes. Each of the first seven has its own now, and the first floor's is the simplest.
• Three new medals: First Hundred, Deep Draught and Trophy Taken.

Fixed

• Warband chiefs are twice the size of the creatures around them. Only three of the twenty-five kinds actually looked bigger before.
• Everyone in a room shares the same quest list. Two heroes standing together were reading different ones.
• A named warlord could quietly disappear when the realm got crowded. It cannot now.
• The last raider of a siege could disappear the same way, which handed the town back and paid the bounty for a siege nobody broke.
• A besieged town's market shuts now. It never actually did before.

Every region has its own creatures now

New

• Twenty-one new creatures roam the realm, from the Bramble Snail beside Eldermyr to the Wreck Haunt on the drowned shores. All of them are in the bestiary.
• Every region has its own creatures that live nowhere else, the sea and its shores included (the Tide Crab, the Reef Snapper and the Wreck Haunt). Walk somewhere new and you will fight something new.
• Bats fly in flocks of two to five and weave together. Orchard Crows fly alone or in pairs, swoop in smooth arcs, and hit harder.
• Bramble Snails hide in their shells when nobody is near, nearly unhittable, with an eye blinking inside. A snail comes out when you get close, and catching one mid-emerge is when it is soft.

Changed

• The new creatures walk properly. Soldiers swing their weapons with the stride, heavy things lean their whole weight side to side, and the Reef Snapper swims with its whole body.
• Almost every creature can attack from a few tiles away. Standing just out of reach is no longer safe.
• Every creature moves a little faster, and none of them stand around any more.
• Meadow Boars charge from much farther, run much farther past you, and rest longer between charges.
• Slimes live only in the Vale beside Eldermyr and the first three dungeon floors. Nowhere else.
• Every point of dexterity buys over five times the attack speed it did. A fresh hero attacks almost three times a second, and the fastest hands in the realm reach eight attacks a second.

Fixed

• After about two days without a restart, new creatures stopped appearing across the realm, worst right outside Eldermyr. The realm retires far-off forgotten creatures when it gets too crowded now, so fresh ones keep arriving, and the land right around you always refills to its minimum even when the realm as a whole is full.

Attacks slow down, medals arrive

New

• A Medals section lives on your hero card, the one that opens when you click your name. Twenty medals, most in Bronze, Silver and Gold tiers.
• Medals count feats like enemies felled, potions drunk, fish landed, dodges rolled, tiles travelled and friends revived. Deeds already done (named terrors felled, your deepest delve, Realm-stones read, the tamed wyrm) hang on the wall from your first look; the counting medals start counting today.
• Reaching a new medal tier tells you privately, and a Gold is announced to the whole realm.
• An Interface size slider sits at the top of Settings and makes the text and panels up to twice as big. It applies as you drag and never changes how much of the realm you can see.
• Until their first delve, new players get a compass pointer to a Dungeon Key and then to the dungeon itself.
• A public stats page at /stats shows how alive the realm is: heroes online now, hours played, and the last 30 days. Totals only, never who plays or when.
• Realm progress is shared. Discovered Realm-stones and slain terrors count for the whole realm, and the path to the Kraken opens for everyone at the same moment. Your own first read of a stone still pays its bonus.

Changed

• Little red fireflies drift over the volcanic ash after dark, and gold pollen drifts over the grasslands.
• Chat messages stay at full colour for a whole minute before they fade.
• Your hero card is rebuilt: your portrait, name and level on one clean plate, and a Medals page with a bar showing progress toward each next tier.
• Bulwark is called Pain Tolerance.
• Inner Light is on V.
• The character page shows each stat with its bonuses in green, and Shield Line in gold while it is live.
• The class picker fits on one screen, phones included.
• The item stat card opens on the character page too.
• Health and mana both grow every level (mana never grew at all for four of the seven classes). A Knight reaches 680 health and 195 mana at level 25, a Priest 450 and 285, everyone else between.
• Every class opens with a bigger health and mana pool: Knight 200 health, Assassin and Archer 150, Priest 125 with the deepest mana, casters 100 with 150 mana.
• Existing heroes are set onto the new health and mana curves on next login, with everything they drank kept.
• Entrances dropped by bosses stay open ten minutes for everyone, then vanish. They no longer seal behind the first group in. The Trench under the Kraken never closes, as before.
• Every attack in the realm is about half its old speed. Heroes were simply shooting far too fast.
• Attack speed comes from dexterity alone. Thirty dexterity is the same rate of attack on every class and every weapon, sword, bow or rod alike, and each point you gain buys a little more speed, forever.
• The shrine's haste blessing grants +15 Dexterity, shown on your sheet, and one fifth quicker steps while it lasts.
• Every town shop stocks one weapon of each kind: a sword, a dagger, a bow, a rod and a staff. Before, half the towns never carried a dagger or a rod.
• Enemy drops are even across all five weapon kinds.
• Defense starts at 0 (the Knight at 1) and grows very slowly. Armor and potions are what protect you.
• Overworld creatures hit twice as hard and every enemy shot flies 20 percent faster. Dungeons and bosses are unchanged, and the practice slime stands at 25 health.
• New heroes start with real catalog gear (Copper Sword, Copper Bow or Ash Staff), Assassins open in leather, and old Rusty items trade themselves for the real thing on next login.
• Every class skill board holds exactly 75 points of options, so points keep mattering to the cap.
• Levels pay 2 skill points again, for every class. Bounty boards pay bonus gold instead of points, and each hero is set once to what a career can earn.
• Battle Focus belongs to the Priest alone, as Inner Light. Everyone else gets those points back.
• Thornmail returns up to 10 percent of a blow.
• Dexterity is a real ladder. Every class starts between 21 and 28 (6 more than before, existing heroes included on next login) and grows to its own top between 50 and 75.
• Every knight skill has twice the ranks at half the step, so a maxed knight is strong, not invincible.
• The Knight's shield bash sweeps about 40 percent faster and a little bigger.
• The three pattern weapons (Twinfang Rod, Prismscatter Staff, Voidpiercer Rod) hit three times harder, count as Unique, and only drop from Pinnacle Bosses, far more rarely.

Fixed

• You can no longer dismount a steed over mountains or water. Entering a dungeon while flying sets you down on open ground first.
• A new hero already holding a Dungeon Key was being told to go rest in town. The compass sends them to the dungeon now.
• The faint gridlines that showed on sand and snow are gone.
• Arrows and bolts leave from your hero's hands. They were being drawn where the server first noticed them, up to a tile downrange, and blinking out on short shots.
• The green bonus on the character page always shows your own gear now, not a stale value.
• The compass suggestion to visit town goes quiet once you arrive.
• Rifts no longer open inside towns.
• The intro slime can no longer be knocked through the town wall.

Skill points buy powers now

New

• The skill tree was rebuilt. Points buy powers from your own class board now, not plain stats: reflecting melee blows, a chance to crit your opening strike, extra bow range while standing still, slight homing on your bolts, and stronger ultimates.
• Deeper ranks cost more points, and no hero can afford a whole board, so two heroes of the same class end up different. Every hero gets a full respec: your spent points come back the next time you log in.
• The Necromancer's ultimate is Soul Drain. Point at a spot and life is pulled straight out of every enemy standing there, streaming back to you as healing. A better Grave Idol widens the reach and raises the damage.

Changed

• Weapon cards read damage as a range, like 38 - 44.
• Bow cards note their long range crit bonus.
• The bag is cleaner. Each item is one line with its name and its damage or defense, and pointing at an item (or tapping it on a phone) opens the full stat card.
• Robes grant Wisdom, 1 per tier, so casters in cloth refill mana faster. A Damask Robe gives 3 Wisdom and the finest robes give 13 and 14.
• The overworld eases up. Enemies out in the world have a quarter less health and there are about a fifth fewer of them. Dungeons and bosses are unchanged.
• Every point of Speed carries you about 10 percent farther, so quick heroes feel quick.
• Rod bolts fly at their older speed again, with unchanged range.

Fixed

• The three legendary casting weapons (the Twinfang Rod, Prismscatter Staff and Voidpiercer Rod) say the number they actually hit for.
• Sell all duplicates never sells a tempered or fused copy.
• Fused weapons no longer grow stronger on their own after you log back in.
• New heroes start with full health and mana.
• Warband fighters can hurt heavily armored foes again.
• Enemy healers keep moving in a fight instead of standing still, so they actually heal their allies, and packs with a healer put up a longer fight.
• The endgame compass starts fresh for everyone when the world is reborn.

Gear is rare again, and the realm hits harder

New

• The Necromancer was reworked. The dead rise on their own, with no button to press.
• The Grave Idol shapes how long your dead stand, how tough they are and how many you command.
• Phones have an ultimate button for every class.
• The compass knows how the story ends. Finish everything in the realm and it points you at the Vigil, then the Kraken, then his dungeon, and then it rests.

Changed

• The world no longer rains equipment. Chests in the wild are scarce and hold common or uncommon gear at best, and ordinary enemies drop gear about once in two hundred kills.
• Legendary drops from bosses are twice as rare, and bosses are still the only source of legendaries.
• Enemies out in the world have roughly twice the health, and the Mountain Kraken and the Broodmother have twice theirs. The Kraken wears level 360.
• Every basic staff and rod attack costs half the mana it used to.
• Healing Potions restore 30 health instead of 15.
• Everyone moves about 15 percent faster.
• Tempering costs more and adds durability along with damage. Fusing costs 15000 gold.

Fixed

• Killing blows show their damage number.

A proper welcome

New

• New heroes start on the road outside town with a short guided intro: walk, fight a practice slime, and unleash your Ultimate on a small pack. One prompt at a time, skippable any time, in your own private copy of the world.

Changed

• Twenty more creatures walk instead of sliding, from the meadow boar to the Frost Titan.
• Warlords and the Overlord wear new armored captain art, and the Tide Leviathan has its finished look.
• Ultimates are unlocked for everyone from level 1. The Skills point that used to unlock one makes it stronger instead.
• Health and mana come back faster on their own.
• Dexterity was rescaled, so the old top attack speed sits at 70 points instead of 40.
• Rod bolts hit 10 harder.
• Daggers throw 5.5 tiles.
• Every class gains some speed as it levels.
• Every overworld boss has double the health.
• Boars walk twice as fast.

Fixed

• Magic bolts were landing about 40 percent high. They hit what they should now.
• Big fires at night no longer wash out the screen.

Handcrafted dungeons and a smarter hunt

New

• Every dungeon floor is handcrafted: bone-rack chambers, burial galleries, forge floors pooling with lava, and boss arenas built around their fights. The Sunken Caverns and the Citadel are twice as spacious, with more foes to fill the bigger floors.
• Enemies hunt properly. Packs fan out and come at you from all sides, wolves circle wide, bandits work in pairs, and boars overshoot their missed charges. The walking dead still come straight at you.

Changed

• Real beaches ring the whole Sundered Sea.
• New animated looks for the Emberwyrm (wild and tamed), the cave bat, the Dark Caster, the sea serpent, the Dire Hound and the warren spiders.
• The event feed only speaks when it matters: boss kills, freed towns, hero deaths. It no longer announces your own abilities or routine kills.
• The Game saved toast is gone. Your hero has been safe on the server all along.
• There are more enemies past the Vale.

Fixed

• Archer damage was landing about four times what it should, from a hidden permanent crit.
• Weapon cards show damage as your own hero wields it, so the number you read is the number that lands.
• Legendary gear drops only from real bosses. Two quiet leaks through chiefs and ordinary foes are closed.

A new damage engine and a wilder wild

New

• Eleven new creatures roam the realm: boars, bandits, thicket spiders, frost wolves, ice shades, cinder imps, ash ghouls, torchbearers, grave brutes and drowned shorewalkers. Each fights its own way.
• The home town was rebuilt from the ground up: stone walls with two road gates, a cobbled plaza with a well, real buildings to walk around, and lamps that light at night. You still spawn in the plaza, and town is exactly as safe as before.
• A Screen effects switch in Settings holds the screen still if you prefer.

Changed

• Hitting things has impact. Blows land with a thud and a flash, and kills send the gold arcing to your pocket.
• Make camp is back on C, with the Character screen on N.
• Damage works differently. Your weapon sets the damage and your Attack multiplies it, and weapons carry real numbers (swords climb to 250 at the top). Everything you already own converts upward on your next login.
• Defense blocks at most 90 percent, so no hit lands for nothing.

Fixed

• Walls no longer grab and drag you.
• Fights in one hero's dungeon can no longer hurt heroes in a different one.
• Mages start with a staff.
• The last uncataloged items became real gear with real art.

Chiefs walk the wilds

New

• Named chiefs patrol the lands beyond the Vale, each a grown version of a local foe with a banner overhead and an escort of three to five. They hit hard, they pay better than the elites around them, and the band breaks and runs when the chief falls.
• Lifesteal is a skill for every class.

Changed

• Levelling is steadier. Each level grants a smaller jump, and Attack and Defense grow with your level and gear instead of being bought with points. Every point already spent keeps its full value.
• Heroes below level 5 keep all their gold when they die.
• The permanent health purchase became Bone Setting, a service from the healer. The first few visits are cheap, then the price climbs steeply.

A Character screen and plainer words everywhere

New

• A Character screen: your worn gear and all ten stats on one page, in plain words.
• The Hunt Master stands in every town now.
• You can sell rings at the shop, and a button sells duplicates while keeping one of each.

Changed

• The menu is down to three tabs, and every panel shares one clean header.
• Items say what they do. Specialty items list real specs instead of a paragraph, numbers turn green when a piece beats what you carry, rings and stat potions say their stat plainly (Ring of Defense, Potion of Attack), and elements state their real effect.
• The Mountain Kraken and the Trenchmaw are far tougher. The Kraken fights in a much larger arena, and the Trenchmaw calls up waves of its own brood mid fight.

Fixed

• Stat and skill potions no longer drink themselves the moment you touch them. They arrive in a golden chest and wait in your bag until you choose.
• Enemies across the realm walk real paths instead of circling in place.
• Several ways of feeding the game bad input are closed, including one that could touch a hero's gold. Normal play is unchanged.

Thrown daggers and honest gear

New

• Daggers are thrown. A dagger attack flicks a real blade four tiles along your aim and stops on the first foe it hits.
• Every weapon in the realm is a real, named catalog item. Randomly generated arms are gone from shops, chests and rewards, and older gear converts to its nearest real counterpart on login.
• Armor has weight. Heavy armor slows you a little and can make casts fizzle, light armor less, robes barely at all.
• Every class spawns with its own weapon. A new Assassin opens with a Copper Dagger that throws from the first press, a new Priest with an Olivewood Rod.

Changed

• Melee swings follow your mouse.
• The bag reads clean, with stats in plain words: green when a piece beats what you wear, red when it loses.
• The Field Guide was rewritten in plain words, with a table for every weapon, armor and ring family, pixel art for every item, and odds that always read as 1 in N.
• Group Heal climbs from 40 health up to 220 on the last tome.

Fixed

• Rod bolts fly nose first.
• The melee mastery skills work for thrown daggers too.

Aim with your mouse

New

• On desktop, your shots and signature moves go where your cursor points, not where you are walking. Click to attack, kite backwards and fire behind you.
• A new stat, Dexterity: how quickly you attack with every weapon, bought in the skills panel.
• The Mage signature is Detonate. Press it and twenty bolts explode outward from your cursor, instantly. Your orb decides how hard every bolt hits.

Changed

• Every shield sweeps in its own metal, from pitted copper up to titan gold, so the bash always matches the shield that threw it.
• Space is the signature move now (Z still works), and every key can be changed in Settings.
• On a phone, or on the keyboard alone, the game aims at the nearest foe it can see.
• Swift buys movement speed only. Any attack speed you already earned from it stays yours.
• Strong staffs sip mana instead of gulping it. A top staff costs about 24 mana a bolt instead of 47, and starter wands barely change.
• Priests refill mana faster and walk quicker in their light robes.

Fixed

• A run of shield bash bugs is closed: one press is one cast, the volley draws once, the phantom second wave is gone, and each crescent stops at the first foe it hits.
• Signature effects show again for every class.
• Projectiles glide instead of hopping.
• Using a shield no longer fills the event feed with lines about what you can already see.

A realm that keeps you busy

New

• The world keeps a minimum number of foes near you. Clear a field and it fills back in within a second or two. The Vale stays quiet, and the outer lands keep more.
• Kill five different named bosses and the Overlord of the Dread Legion stops waiting in his corner of the map. He hunts you on the open roads, and he grows stronger every time he beats you. Towns and the quiet lands near home stay safe, and a dungeon shakes him off.

Changed

• The last flat item drawings became pixel art.
• It is called healing everywhere now, never mending.
• The compass says why it is pointing at a town.
• No signature move has a cooldown any more. Each is limited by its mana cost alone, and a press that refuses costs nothing.
• Ordinary shields slam and shove instead of dragging foes onto you, and the bash is a fan of five crescents.
• Bulwark works from the smallest hits upward.
• Specialty items drop from ordinary foes, about one in a hundred.
• Every boss can drop the permanent stat potions, with better odds the tougher the boss.
• All nine rings are twice as strong.
• Common gear stops dropping once you are past the Marches.

Fixed

• The message when a second window takes your hero stays on screen.
• The Priest's group heal can be cast just before a blow lands.

Every weapon fires its own shot

New

• Steady Aim does something you can feel. Once you are fully planted, your arrows seek the nearest foe you can see. Move, or take the shot early, and you aim it yourself as before.

Changed

• Ninety six projectiles were drawn for this game, one per weapon, and none of them had ever been put on screen. They all fly now: a copper arrow is copper, an Abyssal Longbow looses something cold and blue, a rod lobs a heavy glob, and each one faces the way it travels.
• Projectile sizes are drawn true, so nothing looks like a boulder.

Fixed

• The realm always keeps a dungeon key in it. The first hero used to be able to take the only one, leaving no way through the dungeon door for anyone after. Claim the key near town and another is laid for whoever comes next.

Every weapon and every piece of armour in the game is new

New

• The whole gear list was rebuilt: 115 items across eight kinds, fourteen rungs each, exactly one item on every rung, on a ladder of seventy materials named for the places and bosses they belong to, and every one with its own picture. Nothing in your bag was thrown away; anything that no longer exists was renamed onto the closest new rung at the same power.
• Grudgeglass Armor is new. It sends part of every hit back at whatever landed it.

Changed

• The Field Guide shows the gear instead of just naming it, all 91 items on the Items and Relics page, and lists what each armour set actually pays.
• Weapons feel different from each other, not just stronger or weaker. A dagger strikes twice as often as a sword for about two thirds the damage, a staff throws two bolts at once, and a rod is slow but drives clean through two bodies.
• Venom can hurt you now as well.

Fixed

• Four armour sets that never paid anything reward you for wearing the pieces together.
• No item asks for a level you cannot reach.

Your tools change what your move does

New

• The six carried tools no longer just make your signature bigger. At the top rungs they change the move itself: your venom arms extra strikes, your orb fuses more than one foe, your tome pulses more than once, and the best shields cover your whole party.
• Seven unique items came off the ladder entirely and do their own thing, like The Unbroken doubling your armour.
• The Archer's ordinary shots mark whatever they hit, on their own, while you fight. The button looses one heavy arrow along the way you are facing, and the best quivers drive it clean through a whole line.

Changed

• Eight bosses wear hand-drawn art, so the delve floor bosses stopped being one hooded silhouette in two colours.
• Levelling stops at 25, and gear requirements came down to match.
• A town raid no longer pays boss loot.

Fixed

• The Potion of Vitality and the Potion of Wisdom, which had never done anything at all, both work.
• The Drowned King fights back against boats.
• The Dread Legion stopped ambushing every seven seconds.

The Broodmother keeps a lair

New

• Kill the Broodmother and she opens her lair: three floors of cave pockets crawling with spiders, egg sacs that hatch when touched and set off their neighbours, and The Thousand-Eyed waiting at the bottom, with a unique shield of her own.
• Your warband is revived and healed free whenever you walk into a town.

Changed

• All fifty-four legendaries are drawn properly. Fifteen had no picture at all.
• Shields and other carried tools drop from elites, and far more often from bosses.
• Your weapon only wears when it hits an enemy, never for swinging at air or being struck.
• The big named bosses have half again the health, and ordinary dungeon floor bosses twice.

Fixed

• A dungeon boss opens a way back to the surface where it falls. Most floors had no exit at all before, and the Sunken Citadel had none even after the Archivist fell, so the only way out was to die.
• Dungeon keys are findable again, and arrive at the same rate the realm places vault doors.

Seven heroes, drawn as themselves

New

• Every dungeon is your own. Kill the same boss twice and you get two separate dungeons, a friend can still follow you into yours, and you climb out into the main town instead of a distant gate.
• Two new stats, Vitality and Wisdom: health and mana come back on their own, gently, each class at its own pace.
• Rings have a slot of their own, eight kinds to find, and the best of them stay worth hunting.

Changed

• All seven classes are drawn as pixel art, and the class screen shows the actual hero, drawn large beside its description. Your armour still shows through on the Knight, Assassin, Archer and Freeblade.
• Phones can move the thumbstick to the right hand side in Settings.
• The overworld has enemies in it again, roughly three times as many on screen, and they drift about while they wait instead of standing perfectly still.
• No drop is guaranteed any more except the Sunless Trench reward.
• Dungeon floor bosses are much harder and pay well over double.

Fixed

• Necromancers can raise the dead underground. It had been switched off in every dungeon and trial.
• Poison works on everything. The undead simply take half.

Everything looks like itself

Changed

• All sixteen bosses were redrawn from scratch, so a Frost Titan and a Drowned King are no longer the same creature painted twice, and each boss's attack warnings are drawn in its own style.
• Every weapon, piece of armour and carried item has its own art, 193 drawings, where seven icons used to cover all of them.
• Fast travel is a Waystone you walk up to, standing in every town and rebuilt outpost.
• Energy is called Mana now, and it is blue.

Fixed

• Dungeon walls no longer trap you until a page reload.
• Auto attack fires your hero's actual class move instead of only ever working for Freeblades.

Choose who you are

New

• Heroes have classes: Knight, Assassin, Archer, Mage, Necromancer and Priest, plus the Freeblade for anyone who would rather learn everything. You pick a class when you make a hero and it is permanent.
• Every hero you already have gets one choice on next login: take a class, or stay a Freeblade.
• Each class has a move only it can do, on Z. The Knight shoves the crowd back with his shield and eats the hits, the Assassin vanishes and returns with one enormous strike, and the Priest can heal other people, which nothing in the game could do before.
• A signature move grows from a tool you carry (a shield, a quiver, a tome), so it gets stronger by finding gear.
• Nine new skills, and the skill screen only shows what your class can actually take. Casters finally have things to spend points on.
• Boss kills can drop the tool your class carries.

Changed

• A trophy belongs to whoever did the most damage in the kill, one hero per kill, and solo always counts.

Beat the deepest dungeon and the world starts over

New

• Clear the Sunless Trench and the realm regenerates: new land, new towns, new dungeons, new gates to find. Your hero keeps everything (level, gear, gold, skills, quests). Only the land changes.
• Loot was rebuilt from the ground up. Every item is a real, named piece with fixed stats, each enemy carries its own drop list, quality follows the kill (ordinary foes drop common, elites up to rare, epic and legendary belong to bosses), and your chance at a drop is your share of the damage done.
• Legendaries roll a named bonus on the spot (fire, frost, lifesteal and rarer things), so two of the same blade are never quite the same.
• The Field Guide grew into a full wiki, generated straight from the game itself, so it can never say one thing while the game does another.

Changed

• Phones got a real pass: tidier menus, an auto-combat button that also heals and fires your ultimate when a foe is close, and touch controls on the how-to-play card.
• Rare things got rarer across the board.
• The Frostbrand hits far harder and rolls a grade when claimed.

Fixed

• Razed villages are back out on the frontier.

Playable on a phone, and four new dungeons

New

• The game is playable on a phone, with a thumbstick and buttons for attack, dodge, interact and the menu.
• Four new dungeons, one behind each of the great bosses, each built around the boss that dropped it. The Kraken's is the deepest thing in the game and the only place that hands out Elixirs, which raise one of your stats permanently.
• There is a settings menu, and quests have their own page.

Changed

• Your health is where you are looking: an optional ring around your hero, and screen edges that glow red and pulse as you get low.
• The map is much quieter.
• Every named boss has twice the health, so the big fights last longer without hitting harder.

Fixed

• The great beasts stay in their own regions.

Movement fixed at the root, and a pass over 41 old bugs

New

• The whole lower left of the map is open sea with a natural coastline.
• The Mountain Kraken lives in the mountains, up a winding pass. He appears only once all nine Realm-stones have been read and every great beast and boss brought down, tracked on a board at the Trophy Wall.
• Party frames, a boss health bar, and an arrow pointing at whatever hit you from off screen.

Changed

• Mountain ranges are broad country instead of thin lines across the map, with snow in the north and scorched rock in the Emberwaste.

Fixed

• Heroes no longer run off on their own or freeze until a reload. The cause was a dropped connection the game never noticed.
• The game spots a lost connection within a couple of seconds, reconnects on its own, and puts you back where you were standing instead of sending you home. Movement stops the instant your connection does.
• A long pass closed 41 old bugs, most of them things that never worked at all: the Tab menu, fast travel, thrall raids that never returned, the sealed vault door, sixteen shop items that could never be stocked, and multiplayer systems that keyed off whoever joined first.
• Things that were hurting you invisibly now show: burning ground, chain lightning, town sieges, allies dying, and other players' weapons.

Three heroes to an account, and fights you can read

New

• Your account holds up to three heroes, each with their own name, gear, coin, questline and warband. Switch from the hero panel whenever you like, and retire one when you are done with it.
• Every boss melee attack winds up before it lands. The boss plants itself and flares a red ring, and the blow only lands if you are still standing there.
• Rivers are no longer walls. You wade across at about two thirds speed, they freeze in winter, and enemies and companions wade too, so a ford is a chokepoint worth fighting over.
• Your summons, thralls and Vigil guards can be hurt and killed. They bleed for you, they can body-block a shot meant for you, and Vigil guards grow in strength with you.
• Gear drops land in a container coloured by rarity, from a plain pouch up to a gilded strongbox, and anything better than common is yours alone for two minutes before it opens to everyone.

Changed

• The drowning water at the sea bosses is drawn on the ground, with shallows that slow you first as a warning.

A real login, five mini-bosses, and a land worth mapping

New

• Your hero has a proper login. Create it with a name and a password and play from any device or browser. Recovery codes are retired, so there is nothing to write down and lose.
• Five named mini-bosses hold fixed lairs across the realm: the Hierophant, the Broodmother, the Emberkeg, the Hexbinder and the Colossus. Each is a real duel with a tell and an answer, each guards its own named legendary, and each stirs again a couple of days after it falls.

Changed

• The land reads like somewhere a mapmaker could name: mountain ranges you can follow, forests with dense hearts and ragged edges, and rivers that wind down to a coastline of coves.
• The townsfolk, the Vigil, your warband and the houses got the same art pass the monsters had.
• Enemies burst apart when they die, in their own colour, and how they go matches how they died. Levelling up spins green light around you where your whole party can see it.
• You can spend skill points anywhere, including deep in a dungeon.
• The first dungeon floor is a beginner floor, with the way down a steady climb instead of a wall.

Fixed

• Your hero stops where you let go, with no more sliding or walking on its own.

The realm rebuilt for co-op, with a new finale and a new dungeon

New

• The Mountain Kraken wakes beyond the western peaks. Break it and it rises again, stronger and richer.
• The Sunken Citadel opens behind a black glass gate once a pinnacle boss falls: three drowned tiers, the Drowned Archivist at level 200, and five relics for the deepest delvers.
• Companions come in three tiers on a daily wage.

Changed

• A foe's strength is set by where it stands rather than by your level, so home stays safe forever and the frontier stays frightening.
• Defence matters now, and fighting far from home pays proper experience and gold.

Fixed

• Your boat, your questline, your faction standing, the towns you have found and the lore you have read belong to your hero rather than to one shared pool, and they survive the realm sleeping and waking.
• Resting in a town truly rests you, two heroes can trade at one merchant, and each hero earns the finale for themselves.
• Your own actions are drawn the instant you take them. Dodges, shots and swings used to arrive a beat late and lurch the camera. Everything else in the world glides between server updates instead of stepping.

Pinnacle bosses, chase relics, and a style of your own

New

• Two apex fights you go looking for: the Drowned King on a shipwreck isle, and the Pale Shepherd in the Frozen Wastes, at night only. Both have telegraphed attacks, shrinking safe ground, and adds that rise again if killed out of order, and each guards two build-defining relics.
• A Trophy Wall at the Hunt Master tracks what you have felled.
• Every combat style carries its own resource: melee builds Momentum, ranged stacks Marks, and magic runs Heat as a passive elemental aura that strikes nearby foes.
• Elite enemies can roll dangerous new affixes: Shielded, Vampiric, Splitting and Warded.
• The overworld grew by about half again on each side.

Changed

• All eleven creatures were redrawn with real shading and honest colours.
• Difficulty has a shape: a gentle ride out of the starter vale into a genuinely brutal frontier, instead of a sudden wall.

Fixed

• The game got faster by not drawing creatures nobody can see.
• Your quests, depth and bounties are yours per hero instead of shared with the whole realm.

Rifts, Temper, and real fishing

New

• Rifts tear open out in the wild for thirty seconds. Breach one with a key for a deep dungeon run: a purple rift is a solo plunge, a blue one pulls the whole party in.
• Your warband can follow you down into ordinary dungeons too.
• Weapon upgrading became Temper at the blacksmith, with a cap set by the weapon's rarity.
• Dominate became a late-game magic art that binds elite foes to your side.
• Fishing is a real cast, wait and bite that can reel up gear and gold.
• Make camp with C to heal.

Changed

• Heroes wear a living cape that trails and billows as you run.
• The Legion and the Great Hunts scale with your party and how far you have pushed from home.

Fixed

• Quests and shared dungeons work in co-op.
• Around thirty other bugs went in one pass.

Co-op arrives

New

• Realms of Eldermyr goes co-op, with the whole world run on the server so nobody can drift out of step.
• Friends join the same living realm from a single link.

Mastery, the Forge, and towns worth the name

New

• Combat style mastery perks unlock at proficiency 8, 16 and 22: cleave, ricochet, twin-bolt and more.
• Dungeon key vaults to crack open.
• Reforge and Fuse at the blacksmith.
• Music and ambience shift with the region you are in.
• Towns feel fuller and more alive.

Changed

• A full terrain and character art revamp, with hero walk cycles, boss auras and brick dungeon walls.

Fixed

• The Overlord answers at his seat, and the wyrm stays home instead of wandering off.
• Conversations end, companions are not stranded, and quest targets are fairer.

The Great Widening

New

• The world map doubled in size, with intentional forests and real isles to explore.
• Nine Realm-stones to discover, each carrying a piece of lore.
• Dungeon floors gain modifiers: gilded, swarming, cursed, or a vault.

Changed

• Region banners and an eased, per-region mood tint.
• A wayfinding arrow always points at your current objective.

Territory and companions

New

• Liberate, rebuild and own three frontier outposts, with fast travel, vendors and daily tribute.
• Recruit a three-strong warband (knight, ranger, mage) that levels with you and can be revived when downed.
• Garrison a companion to repel sieges, and arm your warband with spare gear.

World rings and the frontier war

New

• The world became concentric rings, from a safe Vale at the heart out to a deadly Frontier.
• Frontier points of interest: war-camps, ruined keeps and razed villages.
• The Legion War main questline, from the Elder's call to the Overlord finale.

Changed

• HUD and inventory polish, with sorting and a Sell all junk button.
• Warlords are confined to the frontier, and enemies leash to their own ground.

The UI overhaul

Changed

• A compact, readable HUD and a gently faded event log.
• A corner minimap plus a full-screen world map.
• A Tab menu hub that ties the whole interface together.

Seasons and a living economy

New

• Seasons arrive. Deep winter can freeze the sea solid enough to walk across.
• The quiet life: forage, fish and cook for food buffs, warming up at town Hearths.
• A dynamic trade economy with regional and seasonal prices, so you can buy low and sell high.

Set sail, and the Great Hunts

New

• Take to the water and sail the Sundered Sea, with islands, sea serpents and shipwreck loot.
• The Great Hunts: four legendary world-beasts, a Hunt Master to answer to, and unique trophies.

Factions and the Dread Legion

New

• Factions and reputation you can earn or lose.
• The Dread Legion, a nemesis hierarchy that grows stronger every time it beats you.
• Dominate defeated foes into loyal thralls.
• Faction war with town sieges, patrols and stampedes.
• Command your own warband: promote, bodyguard and raid, and weather the occasional betrayal.

The great expansion

New

• An adaptive Ultimate and a dash-strike, capped off with capstone talents.
• Dungeon 2.0 with themed floors.
• Shrines, bounties and hidden caches scattered across the world.

Changed

• A broad pass of combat balancing.

Combat 2.0

New

• A depth overhaul built on dodge-rolling and stamina.
• Build paths for crit, lifesteal, berserk and evasion, supported by gear affixes.
• Elemental bullets, enemy telegraphs, roaming monster packs, and fast-travel.

Realms of Eldermyr

New

• The first public release: an open fantasy world to wander. Fight, level up, loot, and delve the dungeon.