Delve Preparation, and Investments on Your City Page

Delve preparation spends what you are carrying

Preparation was described everywhere as spending a percentage of what you had gathered so far in a run. It never did that. It reduced the reward of the floor you were about to enter, so buying Full preparation meant the next floor paid nothing while the haul you were already carrying went untouched. Paying for Full over and over cost you almost nothing, because there was nothing real to pay with.

• ⇄reworked
  What preparation charges

  WasA share of the reward the next floor was about to pay

  NowA share of the resources and Cultural Influence gathered so far in the run, taken proportionally

  Lore fragments are never spent. The charge is taken from the bank you saw on the "Continue Deeper?" screen, and an encounter toll on the same floor is charged after it, against the reduced bank.

• ⇄reworked
  The three preparation tiers

  WasLight 33% / Medium 67% / Full 100% of a full kit, buying +3 / +6 / +10 points of a safe outcome

  NowLight 3% / Medium 7% / Full 12% of your haul, buying +5 / +12 / +20 points

  The percentages are before Insured Cargo and the bonus is before Thorough Preparation. The prices sit just under what the odds justify while there is still run left to play, and just above it on a shallow ruin's last floor, so preparation is a read of how much run remains rather than a purchase you make on autopilot. The bonus still moves probability out of the three injury outcomes into safe, proportionally, and leaves dead end alone.

• reduced
  Preparation and sending a runner home are one choice per floor

  WasYou could do both on the same floor

  NowOne or the other

  A runner banks your haul early and empties what the delve is carrying. Because preparation charges that same haul, the two combined into a hole: send the runner, then buy any tier for nothing. A runner sent on an earlier floor is unaffected.

• ⇄reworked
  Insured CargoCommerce · Tier 3

  Your envoy prepares a delve for less: Light costs 2% of your haul instead of 3%, Medium 5% instead of 7%, and Full 9% instead of 12%.

  WasLight 20% of a full kit instead of 33%, Medium 50% instead of 67%, Full 80% instead of 100%

  NowLight 2% of your haul instead of 3%, Medium 5% instead of 7%, Full 9% instead of 12%

  The old wording was a percentage of a kit price that was never what the game charged.

• improved
  Thorough PreparationExploration · Tier 3 · 2 ranks

  Preparing before a delve normally raises your envoy's chance of a safe outcome by 5% to 20%, depending on how much you buy. Each rank multiplies what that preparation is worth: 1.5x / 2x.

  WasThe card quoted a 3% to 10% range

  Now5% to 20%, the range the tiers now buy

  The multiplier is unchanged at 1.5x and 2x. Insured Cargo discounts the cost, Thorough Preparation raises the bonus, and neither touches the other.

• improved
  The tier cards show your own numbers

  Was33 / 67 / 100 regardless of your skills, with an outcome bar that ignored Thorough Preparation entirely

  NowThe cost this envoy will actually be charged, against your current haul, and the odds the descent will actually roll

  All four tiers arrive in one payload from the server, so the numbers on the card are the numbers the charge uses rather than a second calculation done in the browser.

Investments on your city page

Investment is something other players do to your city, and the city page treated it as an afterthought. It now reaches the city page the way the Temporary Embassy does.

• ◆new
  NEW:A Patronage row in the building list

  It sits above the built buildings with a "READY TO CLAIM" count while something is waiting, and below them with an active count when everything is claimed. Only the city's owner sees it. A visitor sees no Investments row.

• ◆new
  NEW:Every investment in your city, itemised

  Each card leads with the investor's envoy the way the Hotel and School panels do, portrait, name, level and home city, with the owning player's nameplate under it, then the path and tier. Below that, what you get, what they get and how long the term has left. The rates are read from the game's own tuning rather than written into the panel, so a balance change cannot leave it quoting a rate the game no longer pays.

• improved
  The claim panel is readable

  WasStyled for a dark surface and rendered on the light city page, so labels sat at 1.2:1 against their background

  NowA light surface, with each row carrying the real building art

  It also drew its icons from a four entry map of generic glyphs, so a Silent Partner investment in a Market showed a shopping bag.

• improved
  A Venture Fund's boost to your own city is visible

  WasApplied silently

  NowStated on the venture's card

  Every active venture in your city raises your production of the funded resource by 5%, stacking. That has been true all along with nothing on screen saying where it came from. The dividend the investor draws comes out of their own stake, not your storehouse, and the panel now says so for every path.

• ◆new
  NEW:You are told when an investment arrives

  WasA live notification only, so being offline meant never being told

  NowRecorded when the transfer commits and delivered next time you open the game
• improved
  The Empire badge counts cities with something to claim

  WasCities with a ready extractor

  NowCities with a ready extractor or an unclaimed investment

  A city that is both counts once, because the badge counts places you have to visit. A storage-full city still counts when an investment is waiting, and the panel warns you about overflow before you claim. The label reads "N cities need attention".

• improved
  City Sponsor's resource picker moved to the Investments panel

  WasIn the Town Hall

  NowOn the City Sponsor card, with every other investment in the city

  The Town Hall row keeps its sponsor count as a signpost.

Patronage

• ◆new
  NEW SKILL:Patron's WelcomePatronage · Tier 4 · 2 ranks

  Your envoy earns more Cultural Influence on arrival at any city where it holds an active investment: +15% / +30%.

  It takes the two points City Sponsor gave up, so the Patron fork still offers 11. It is the one Patronage skill whose worth is not decided on the Invest screen, so it is reported on travel with the other arrival skills.

• improved
  City SponsorPatronage · Tier 4

  UNLOCKS: You receive a share of everything a city collects, sent to your home city, and its production of one resource rises by that same share, once your envoy invests in its Town Hall: 3% / 6% / 10% by tier. Your envoy stays at that city until the term ends.

  Was3 ranks

  Now1 rank

  Every figure it pays is set by the tier of the stake, not by the rank, so ranks 2 and 3 cost a point each and bought nothing. The same benefit now costs one point.

Envoys

• ◆new
  NEW:Any envoy's skill tree is readable

  WasThe skills panel on a player's profile was an empty box that read as "this envoy has no skills"

  NowThe whole tree, with the ranks that envoy has learned

  Learned ranks were already public. Only the owner can learn anything, and nothing on the panel offers a non-owner a button.

• improved
  The Impressive Envoys board shows portraits

  Each entry carries its envoy's portrait beside the name, on the summary card and the full board.

• improved
  Homesick

  WasBlocked exploration, and measured range from wherever the envoy stood, so an envoy that had chained outward through several cities had no legal move at all short of Emergency Recall

  NowAn envoy can always travel home, however far that is, and can still explore

  The debuff never expires on its own, so an envoy with no legal move stayed that way.

Your envoy at a Hotel or School

Both screens revealed the payout only at the moment of commitment: the hotel's Cultural Influence did not exist on screen until you pressed Check Out, and the school's until you pressed Complete Training. In both cases the number is the thing you are deciding about.

• improved
  The hotel stay card leads, and states what the stay has earned

  WasYour envoy was rendered twice, and its earnings appeared only on checkout

  NowOne card above Current Effects, with the rate per hour and what has accrued so far
• improved
  Your own envoy leaves the public guest roster

  It has its own card above the list now. The Guests count still counts everyone, because capacity is a fact about the building.

• improved
  The school leads with your envoy

  WasYour envoy sat below a list it had been excluded from

  NowAn azure card at the top of the panel, carrying the training payout
• improved
  The Guests and Students bars count places

  WasA single measured fill

  NowOne segment per room or per desk

  Past 20 places the segments would be thinner than the gaps between them, so the bar falls back to a continuous fill.

• improved
  An envoy's name and home city stop being cropped

  WasBoth truncated on the envoy title card

  NowThree lines: name, home city, then its badges

One card for what your skills do

Nine action screens stacked three bordered boxes where there was one thought: a balance ledger, a list of the skills that apply, and the resolved total. On five of them the block's heading was parchment text painted on parchment, so it could not be seen at all.

• ⇄reworked
  Action summaries

  WasThree boxes, one of them invisible, each restated by a neighbour

  NowOne card, with the ledger, your skills and the resolved total as zones inside it

  On the NPC exchange you were told the amount you would receive three times, in two visual languages, inside 120 vertical pixels. It says it once now. When nothing applies, the card is absent rather than an apparently blank gap.

• improved
  The travel drawer has one clock

  WasTwo boxes 40 pixels apart with the same label, one counting permanent skills only and the other counting skills and temporary buffs, with nothing to say which the envoy would run

  NowOne card, with each buff as a row beside the skills, marked Temporary and priced by what it does to the journey
• improved
  The travel time reads as a heading

  It is the number the whole screen is about and it wore the same 10 pixel micro label as every other row. Cultural Influence is spelled out rather than abbreviated, and the envoy's travel art sits beside the clock.

• improved
  The journey row fits a narrow screen

  WasStacked into three full width blocks for every destination, about 370 pixels before a single fact about the trip appeared

  NowOne horizontal row, about 200 pixels, with a city destination taking a second row for its name and its owner
• improved
  Begin Travel stays on screen

  The button sat inside the drawer's scrolling area and could be scrolled out of reach.

• improved
  Envoy action buttons use game art

  Was"Visit the Market" and "Host a Festival" drew flat pictograms

  NowThe same art as everything else on the board

Market and trading

• improved
  My Offers finds a listing you put up in another player's Market

  WasThe tab dropped every offer whose selling city was not the one on screen, so a listing made through a foreign Market was missing from the one place you could cancel it

  NowThe tab lists what this city has standing, wherever it was listed from

  Your other cities sell from their own storehouses and have their own copy of this tab, so their rows are not this Market's business. In a Market you do not own, the selling city is named on its own line.

• improved
  A listing says how you may accept it

  WasThe browser decided for itself, using a completed trade route as the only rule, so a Free Trade Agreement offer or a brokered one showed "No route" where the button goes

  NowDirect route, free trade or broker, answered by the same code that runs the trade

  A part taken offer now also shows what is left of it and what was originally listed, so you can see it is part taken before committing.

• improved
  An exchange that will not fit is refused before it costs you anything

  WasThe input was deducted and the daily trade or the 12 hour cooldown spent, then the output was trimmed to whatever fitted

  NowRefused outright, with the reason on the button

  This covers both the NPC exchange and Artisan conversion. Neither can push a store past its ceiling any more either.

Lore and discoveries

Four faults in one rule, the one that picks which fragment an exploration awards.

• improved
  A Legendary find is a fragment again

  WasThe Great Library's assembled map, complete with the raw tag marking where a caption belonged, because it was the only thing in the Legendary pool

  NowReveal assets are never awarded, and a tier with nothing left to give steps down to the next one

  The two real Legendary pieces are wonder gated and the Sea of Auriel piece is Foundation Stone gated, which left the pool with nothing else in it. Previously the rarest outcome could also produce a "Lore Fragment Discovered!" result with no fragment, no text and no Cultural Influence at all.

• improved
  A fragment belongs to its terrain

  WasThe 32 Old World continent pieces state their terrain as a condition rather than a column, and only the column was honoured, so a piece of the mountain continent could turn up in a swamp

  NowThe condition is enforced

  The Sea of Auriel piece, which sits behind a world wide cooperative unlock, was also reachable from one ordinary exploration of the map centre. An unrecognised condition now fails closed.

• improved
  The discovery result names the rarity you were handed

  WasThe badge read the tier that was rolled, so it could announce a Legendary find and then hand over an Epic fragment

  NowThe tier of the fragment actually awarded

Notifications

• ◆new
  NEW:Notifications persist

  WasA single live push. If you were not connected when it happened, it was delivered to nobody and there was no record it had happened at all

  NowWritten down and delivered the next time you open the game

  This is what made the skills whose payoff lands while you are elsewhere invisible: a brokerage cut, a Prospector's Cut, an auto rolled reinvestment, a standing order reposting itself.

• improved
  The map stops greeting a new player with the world's history

  Discoveries made before you arrived are no longer announced as though they had just happened.

Buffs and debuffs

• improved
  Explorer's Vigor

  WasAdvertised a 10% better chance of a lore find on three screens and enforced it nowhere

  NowIt applies, and compounds with Keen Senses to 1.32x
• improved
  Frostbitten and Heatstroke

  WasThe travel guard read Swamp Fever's rule onto all three, so a Frostbitten envoy could not walk past a mountain

  NowFrostbitten and Heatstroke block that terrain as a destination. Only Swamp Fever blocks crossing it

  Swamp Fever's preview also checked the destination alone while dispatch walked the whole route, so it offered journeys the server was about to refuse. Both walk the route now, and both exempt the tile your envoy is standing on, so an envoy in a swamp can still leave it.

• improved
  The three hotel rest tiers each state their own numbers

  WasOne sentence with no numbers in it, shared across a span from +6% Cultural Influence and -5% travel time to +40% and -50%

  NowEach tier states its own range

The Change Log

• ◆new
  NEW:This page

  Linked from the footer. Every patch has its own address you can send to someone, and the history goes back to 27 July, which is as far back as these notes have been written.

Terms of Service

Section 9 and section 10 have changed. The Terms prohibited automation but gave us no remedy between a warning and a suspension, and no standard for choosing one.

• ⇄reworked
  A measure that limits what an account earns

  Added to the list of things we may do about a breach, between reversing an unfair advantage and restricting access. It is aimed at breaches that work by accumulating more than fair play allows. You keep the account and every feature in it, and what changes is the rate at which unfair gains accrue.

• ⇄reworked
  Proportionality, and what we act on

  We pick the step we reasonably consider proportionate to what happened, on the evidence we have. Automation shows up as a pattern across days rather than as a single action, so we may act on evidence of that kind, and we keep the measure to what that evidence supports. Section 9 now also says plainly that we look for it.

• ⇄reworked
  A measure is time limited and reviewed

  It runs for a limited period and is renewed only while it is still warranted. If the behaviour has stopped, the measure is not renewed and lapses shortly afterwards.

• ⇄reworked
  Gold you have bought is never touched

  A measure that limits what an account earns never affects Gold you have paid for or what that Gold bought you. The single exception is an account closed for a serious breach, which the Terms already covered.

Fixes

• The delve summary's Total now includes what preparation cost you.

  The charge sat in the same columns as the reward rows and read as a subtraction, but the Total ignored it. It is now a labelled red row that the Total nets, in the final summary and in the mid run haul panel.

• Encounter tolls appear in the delve summary at all.

  They had rendered as an empty row since tolls first shipped, so a toll you paid was invisible.

• A prepared floor is no longer marked amber in the delve summary.

  It read as though something had gone wrong on it. A safely cleared floor is green even when you paid to prepare it first.

• Picking a preparation tier and then sending a runner no longer blocks the descent.

  The refusal was reported as "you cannot descend at all" and disabled Continue Deeper. It now says preparation specifically is unavailable, and still refuses to sell you a tier the runner has taken off the floor.

• A preparation card no longer quotes odds an encounter has already changed.

  An encounter at depth 7 or 9 can arm a modifier that is still live at 8 and 10, so a card could advertise a safe chance five points off the one the descent would roll.

• "Swift Journey" can no longer be bought while "Expedition Stride" is running.

  Stride applies instead of it, so the diamond bought nothing. Buying Stride while Swift Journey runs is still allowed, because that is an upgrade.

• "Hold a Festival" no longer offers what the declaration will refuse.

  The button tested your skill, the running festival and the cooldown. Declaring also refused for four more reasons, most often a cost the city could not pay, so the button enabled itself and the request came back an error with nothing on screen to explain it.

• An envoy committed to a Temporary Embassy is no longer offered a hotel room.

  The residency already pays for the room. All three surfaces offered the button and let you find the rule out as an error. The button now reads "In Residence".

• A trade's fair value is quoted in the same direction as the offer.

  The create panel stated the rate one way round and the fair value the other, so offering Metal for Wood quoted a fair value of 0.10x against a headline of 10x. The browse rows now also lead with the verdict in words and carry the fair rate beside the one being charged.

• A visiting trader's Max button reads their own storehouse, not the host's.

  It mixed the vault tier and Storehouse citizens of one city with the level and mastery bonus of another, so it could offer a trade the server would refuse.

• The market's exchange rows fit a 320 pixel screen.

  The Give, Receive and after trade rows sized their fields in fixed widths with nothing able to yield: 23 pixels of overflow inside the building detail panel before, none now.