The Wonders Rework

Choosing an approach

Your first investigation at each wonder is untouched: it always delivers that wonder's signature experience, however many envoys you send later. From the second, the investigation opens with a choice, made before the timer starts and named again on the results card.

• ◆new
  NEW: Approaches

  Alongside the plain visit, each wonder offers its own flavour of up to three more options. Patience takes half again as long for a slim chance of a better lore fragment tier. Risk costs no extra time and improves that chance, against a slim chance of finding nothing at all. Aim steers the pass toward a named kind of find, and is only offered while more than one kind still holds something for you, so it is never a dead choice. The odds words the menus use (slim, fair, even, likely) are the game's own lexicon and are honest. No approach ever guarantees a higher tier.

• ◆new
  NEW: Offerings

  Each wonder has exactly one offering: an errand completed elsewhere in the world, such as depositing a fragment at the Great Library, completing a trade route, or earning an achievement, that lights a fourth option guaranteeing the pass finds something you have not found before. An offering that consumes something names the exact price before the click that spends it. A wonder with nothing left for you says so plainly: "There is nothing left for you to find here."

• ◆new
  NEW: The Evergrove can keep an envoy

  Keeping vigil at the Evergrove carries a slim chance the grove holds the envoy up to half again longer. The hold is decided the moment the pass starts, so the timer you are shown is the timer you get, and the results card states the extra time as a cost and pays a Cultural Influence award beside it as the gain.

What an investigation pays

Rewards are now weighted by outcome rather than attendance alone. Every figure below is a base, before the scaling factors named beside it.

• ⇄reworked
  Every investigation pays attendance

  WasAn investigation that found nothing new paid a flat 10 Cultural Influence consolation

  NowEvery investigation pays an attendance base of 15 Cultural Influence, scaled by the wonder's cooldown and the envoy's level

  Longer-cooldown wonders pay more per visit, up to 2.5 times at the seven day Evergrove. The level ramp starts around 30% at envoy level 1 and reaches full at level 25, staying flat above that.

• ◆new
  NEW: First-discovery bonuses

  The first time you uncover a given find at a wonder, it pays a bonus on top of attendance: 25 Cultural Influence for a Common up to 400 for a Legendary, before the same cooldown and level scaling. Being first in the world adds 50% and being your own first adds 25%. The results screen lists each bonus, and a world first carries the same amber WORLD FIRST DISCOVERY badge exploration uses.

• ◆new
  NEW: The first pass at a wonder pays more

  The first time anyone investigates a wonder pays double, your own first pays half again, and a given envoy's first pays a quarter more. Exactly one applies, the most significant, and it multiplies the first-discovery bonuses as well as the wonder's own awards.

The Discovery Panel and the completion bar

Once you have investigated a wonder, its page carries a Discovery Panel: one progress bar for the whole wonder, and a strip per kind of find.

• ◆new
  NEW: The Discovery Panel

  Each revealed category shows what you have found against what exists, slot by slot: a check for a find, a question mark for something still reachable, a lock for something this envoy cannot draw out yet. The bar's denominator is honest: it reads a real total only when nothing is hidden from you, and a question mark otherwise. A category you have not touched says only that something else stirs here, undiscovered, and nothing more.

• ◆new
  NEW: A completion bar on the map

  Wonder nameplates on the world map and wonder rows in the Nearby panel carry a four segment completion bar and a found count, computed by the same arithmetic as the wonder page's own bar, so the two can never disagree.

• improved
  The map popover counts your envoys, not a cooldown

  WasThe wonder popover showed one per-player cooldown, measured across the whole roster against a cooldown that is per envoy, so it could read "Cooldown: 21 hours" while an envoy stood on the tile free to walk in

  NowIt reports readiness by envoy: "Your envoy is ready", "1 of 2 envoys ready", or "Ready in 21 hours" from the soonest envoy

  A wonder where you have no envoys present shows nothing, where it used to promise an available investigation that needed an envoy sent there first.

• ⇄reworked
  The results screen, and a roster of your envoys

  WasViewing results reloaded the whole page, rewards read as a loose list, and envoys at a wonder shared one collective state

  NowResults open as a sheet in the wonder's own hue, under a banner in its voice, and close back onto the page in place, above a "Your Envoys Here" roster where each envoy is independently investigating, counting down, holding results or surveying

  Every Cultural Influence award is a labelled row in one ledger that totals to the server's own figure. Lore fragments print in full, a buff or debuff names its complete effect and duration, and the sheet ends on the wonder's completion bar with this investigation's gain drawn as its own segment, so every result says whether it moved the bar. Every badge and chip carries a real game icon, never an emoji, and every colour on the sheet clears accessibility contrast at all ten wonders.

Milestones, achievements and titles

Every wonder's bar carries three milestone pips: the first find, the halfway point of everything it truly holds, and full discovery.

• ◆new
  NEW: Milestone crossings

  Crossing a pip plays a short story beat in the wonder's own voice, dismissable and never repeated. What crossing the halfway point grants is particular to each wonder and stays veiled until its pip lights; the pip names its perk only once earned.

• ◆new
  NEW: Ten completion achievements, each paying a title

  Fully uncovering a wonder earns an achievement in the new Wonders category, and each one's reward is an envoy title rather than gold. An achievement stays hidden until you have been to its wonder yourself, so the list never spoils a wonder you have not found. A title is worn by one envoy at a time: equip it from the envoy's Customize dialog, and a title one of your other envoys is wearing says "Worn by" whom, since equipping it moves it.

• improved
  Everything you had already found counts

  Finds, milestone crossings and completions from before the panel existed were backfilled from the records the game already kept, so nobody restarts a wonder they had already worked.

Leaving your mark

• ◆new
  NEW: Names Upon the Summit

  The Apex of Achievement's offering earns the right to carve up to 100 characters onto the summit, once per earned offering. A carving passes through moderation before anyone reads it, and the wall at the wonder shows every approved carving with its author and year.

• ◆new
  NEW: The letters of the Messenger's Rest

  The Rest's offering opens a composer of letter templates, each naming real players, cities and envoys drawn from the tops of the leaderboards at the moment of writing. A letter speaks of its ranks in the past tense, because it remembers the standings as they were that day. You may leave each letter once, and the shelves are read by anyone who has investigated the Rest, with every name shown as a linked identity rather than plain text. A letter that cannot be filled honestly from the current boards is simply not offered.

• ◆new
  NEW: Wonders that ask

  Some wonders will, once you have gone deep enough, put a question to you directly. Each asks once, your answer is permanent, and the surface states in plain language what the answer touches before you give it, alongside the request that you answer from the perspective of your envoy.

The Lens

• ⇄reworked
  Deep ReadingScholarship · Tier 5

  UNLOCKS: Your envoy makes a second investigation at any wonder, once the standard one is on cooldown, revealing what the wonder still conceals and what would be needed to draw it out. It takes half again as long as a standard investigation and carries its own 24 hour cooldown.

  WasThe survey reported bare counts: how many lore fragments and corrupted fragments remained undiscovered

  NowThe Lens says what the wonder still holds back, grouped by what it would need of an envoy; whether its offering stands ready; and which of the envoy's skills the wonder answers to

  The Lens says less rather than lying or leaking: anything a wonder means you to discover by playing is never listed, and a requirement it names is one you can actually meet.

The Foundation Stone's blessing

• improved
  Foundation Resonance does something

  Was"Discovery quality +10%.", an effect that was never implemented, so the Stone's blessing did nothing at all for as long as it has existed

  Now"For a while, the Stone offers this envoy a second chance at a poor result."

  While the blessing runs, a poor exploration find is re-rolled once away from the poorest results, a below par delve influence roll is re-rolled once, a delve haul is likelier to carry two resource types, and a found fragment gets one extra chance to come up a tier better. The old promise is retired from every screen that made it.

City merges and the retiring envoy

Merging a city sacrifices it and retires its home envoy. This is a full pass over everything that deserved better than to vanish with them.

• improved
  Investments in a merged city move with you

  WasThe confirm dialog said other players "lose investments here", and the truth was differently wrong: their stakes survived on the abandoned land, where nobody could ever collect them

  NowEvery live stake other players hold at the sacrificed city is re-addressed to the surviving city and keeps running there, and the dialog now reads "players' investments move with you"

  A matured stake that has not been collected moves too; only stakes already paid out stay behind as the old city's history. The merge still asks for acknowledgement, because the same stake against a different city is a different deal for the player who made it.

• improved
  The retiring envoy's stakes pass to the surviving city's envoy

  WasStakes the retiring envoy held in other players' cities were stranded forever: every collect path refused with "This envoy has been retired"

  NowLive stakes are handed to the envoy of the receiving city, who can collect or withdraw them as their own. If the receiving city has no envoy, the stakes are cancelled instead, with no refund

  An inherited stake can put the receiving envoy over the per-city ceiling; every stake they hold still draws on the Invest screen and can be resolved, they simply cannot open another there until back under it. An expedition sponsorship whose sponsor or host retires is cancelled from either side, and the sponsor's payment is forfeit.

• ⇄reworked
  Retirement settles the envoy's unfinished business

  WasA retired envoy kept their tile, their room in a stranger's Hotel, their seat in a stranger's School, their place on the envoy level leaderboard and in every list, and their unfinished work sat live for the game's timers to act on, one path delivering a runner's resources into the razed city

  NowRetirement checks the envoy out of everything: the room and the seat are freed, journeys, training, investigations, decodes and circuits are cancelled, unclaimed rewards are closed out, and retired envoys no longer appear in counts, rosters or leaderboards

  The confirm dialog already warns that what the envoy holds ends with the city. Every deed stays done: their name, level, skills, journal, records and rankings survive, and an achievement earned through a retired envoy is never withdrawn.

Delving

Follow-ups to the 17 August rework, now that the new influence curve is live underneath it.

• reduced
  Delve influence is priced against a frozen curve

  WasA floor's Cultural Influence was a share of your next level's cost, so when levels 31 to 50 became far dearer on the 17th, the same delve started paying many times more raw influence, and a single depth 10 clear could pay most of a level

  NowThe share is taken against a frozen copy of the old curve, the same thresholds the 17 August patch retired, ending at 41,620

  Raw influence per delve is exactly what a delve paid before the curve change, and the number of delves a level takes now rises with the real curve, which is the point of having one.

• improved
  The endgame taper is gone

  WasFrom level 41 the reward band tapered away, so that by level 50 a floor paid between a sixth and roughly a third of what the same floor paid at level 40

  NowThe level 31 to 40 band simply holds from there up, so a stronger envoy never earns less raw influence for the same floor

  The taper existed to stop delving trivialising the final levels back when the curve was nearly flat. The exponential curve does that job properly now, and tapering as well made the reward drop as an envoy got stronger, which read as a bug to whoever crossed it.

• reduced
  Preparation charges lore fragments too

  Was"Lore fragments are never spent on it", which priced the tiers against a basis that excluded most of a lore heavy run's value, so full preparation on such a run cost far less than the 90% it claimed

  NowEach tier's percentage applies to the fragments the run has banked as well, always rounded down, and the preparation panel names them in the price

  Rounding down is the design, not a detail: a run holding one fragment loses nothing at any tier, and the lowest tiers are struck first, so if something must go it is never the legendary that made the run worth finishing.

• improved
  Awaiting Runner

  WasAn envoy that sent their haul home with a runner sat between floors reading Idle on the roster, the map tracker and the nameplate, and counted toward the attention badge as if they needed you

  NowThey read Awaiting Runner, with a live countdown on all three surfaces, and stop counting toward the badge while the runner is out

  A running descent, a finished floor result or an injury recovery still outranks the runner on the status line, since you can delve on while it travels.

The Goals hub

• improved
  Each Goals tab has its own address

  WasOne route, /achievements, always opened on the Quests tab whichever tab you wanted, and switching tabs left no trace in the browser

  Now/goals, /achievements and /daily each open their own tab, tab clicks navigate so back and forward walk between them, and old links with a tab in the address keep working

Fixes

• Envoy titles can actually be worn.

  The Customize dialog decided ownership from gold purchases alone, and titles are never bought with gold, so every title a player had ever earned rendered permanently locked. Both entry points, the envoy row and the map popover, now read real ownership, an unowned title is no longer listed as a dead end, and the dialog announces itself to screen readers as a dialog.

• "Wayfarer", "the Bold" and "Lorekeeper" reach the picker.

  The catalog the title picker read from silently excluded the three level titles, so a player who earned one could not see or equip it in any state. The picker now reads the full cosmetics list, and the title section stays visible while an envoy wears one even if the picker's list is otherwise empty, so a worn title can always be taken off.

• Level titles are granted by number, not by spelling.

  The grant compared levels as text, so level 5 could be handed the level 17 title while level 100 earned nothing at all, because "17" sorts below "5" and "3" sorts above "100". Grants now compare numerically in both directions.

• An achievement that pays a title previews the title.

  The achievement card and dialog treated every cosmetic reward as an image, so a title, which is text, rendered as a broken picture, and the dialog pointed at a profile page titles are never equipped from. Both now show the title as text and name the envoy Customize dialog.

• The investigation window fits the screen, and every wonder fits its frame.

  The framed window rendered at one fixed size on every desktop, whatever the display, which crushed the summary column until the envoy, the skills that fire and the resolved time were unreadable, cut the Cancel button on some frames, and showed three of four approaches at common sizes. It now scales to the screen with its art undistorted, the approach list scrolls in its own port when it must, a resolved figure sits under its label instead of colliding with it, and the three wonders whose frame art leaves the least room, the Watering Hole of Memory, the Messenger's Rest and the Apex of Achievement, get layouts cut to their own openings.

• The wonder page reports the real failure.

  Any error at all rendered as "Wonder not found.", including rate limits, telling a player a wonder they had investigated ten times did not exist. Not found still says so; a rate limit asks you to wait a moment; anything else reports a fault and offers a retry.

• The envoy not-found screen says they, never it.

  The screen a retired envoy's old link lands on called the envoy "it". Envoys are never "it".