The Evergrove Rework

Five hours, not seven days

The Evergrove earned about five Cultural Influence per envoy per day. Every other wonder in the game earned between twenty three and ninety. That gap is closed.

• improved
  The wait between investigations

  Was7 days

  Now5 hours

  An envoy can now work the grove the way they work anywhere else. Five hours rather than four is deliberate: the Foundation Stone stays the most frequent wonder in the game, and the Evergrove settles just under it.

• ⇄reworked
  The Grove's Gift keeps its own week

  The grove's blessing is still weekly, on a timer of its own that no longer holds the whole wonder to it. What changes is what happens on the visits in between: the blessing used to win three visits in four, and on the other visits you got a fragment. Now, while the blessing is resting, the grove speaks instead. In practice the Evergrove is a lore wonder on nearly every visit, and one visit in each week, the first after the blessing comes back, carries the old three-in-four chance of the Gift.

The Thirteen

The grove's own lore opens with the line "Thirteen trees stand in a ring at the heart of the oldest forest in the New World". Those thirteen now speak, one fragment each, and each is one tree talking.

• ◆new
  NEW: Thirteen new fragments, in four groups

  The Outer Ring is four trees who notice your envoy and are not impressed. The Inner Ring is four who address them directly, each with one preoccupation they keep returning to. Those That Remember is four who lived through the Twisting, and it is where the grove's welcome starts to tighten. The Elder is one, and the Elder speaks about the world rather than about the grove.

• ◆new
  NEW: An envoy climbs the ring in order

  Your envoy draws from one group at a time and opens the next only once they hold every tree in the group they are on. Within a group the order is random and no tree repeats, so four visits at the outer ring is four different trees. There is no way to skip ahead and no way to be handed the same tree twice.

• ◆new
  NEW: Each rung is worth more than the last

  The four groups are Uncommon, Rare, Epic and Legendary finds, and at a wonder the rarity of a find is the reward. A world first, on your first investigation here, with the envoy at level 25, pays 127, 240, 465 and 915 Cultural Influence as they climb, after the world first and first investigation multipliers and before any Cultural Influence bonus of your own. Everything in the grove comes to 4,048 all told, alongside Messenger's Rest at 3,825, for content that costs thirteen gated visits in an order you do not choose.

• ◆new
  NEW: Each envoy starts again

  A second envoy begins at the outer ring however far your first one climbed. That is the mechanic rather than an oversight: it is the one place in the game where staying with one envoy is worth more than sending a fresh one. Your own discovery bar is unaffected, and fills the first time any of your envoys meets a tree.

• improved
  What the Evergrove holds

  Was6 finds

  Now19 finds

  Thirteen trees, the four fragments that were always here, the Grove's Gift, and the Planting. Everyone's bar moves: it gains fourteen slots and loses the keepsake's one. The wonder's halfway perk and its hundred percent achievement, Part of the Grove, are reachable for the first time.

• ⇄reworked
  Risk never comes back empty here

  Stepping inside the ring still prefers a voice none of your envoys has brought back, but it can no longer miss. A miss would burn a place on the ladder for nothing, and the wonder whose whole character is welcome should not carry the harshest gamble in the game. Patience no longer promises a better tier here either, because the ring decides what you hear, not a roll.

The vigil

Patience at the Evergrove is no longer half again as long. It is a full day and a night, and it is priced against what else that envoy could have done with the day.

• ⇄reworked
  Rest beneath the Thirteen

  Was40 minutes, for a better chance at a rarer find

  Now24 hours, for two of the Thirteen and 250 Cultural Influence

  Two trees speak instead of one, and if the first completes a group the second comes from the group it just opened. Finishing Those That Remember and hearing the Elder in the same result is the best moment this wonder has. The 250 is flat, is paid for the whole of the wait on top of the usual attendance, and is named on the results ledger as its own line rather than folded into anything else.

• ✕removed
  The grove holding an envoy

  WasA 20% chance of being kept half again longer, paid off with 25 Cultural Influence

  NowRemoved

  It existed to apologise for a wait with nothing behind it. The vigil is the same idea chosen freely, with two trees at the end of it. Investigations you have already finished still read as held in your history, because they were.

The planting

Arrive at the Evergrove having kept a full vigil since your last offering, and the offering opens. What it pays is a tree of your envoy's own.

• ✕removed
  The keepsake

  WasAn offering asked which of five possessions your envoy would leave among the roots, and recorded the answer

  NowRemoved

  The five options were arbitrary beside what the offering does now: leaving something living among the roots rather than choosing which possession to give up. If you left a keepsake, that slot disappears from your Evergrove bar along with the prompt, and its answer is not kept. The Cultural Influence it paid you is yours and is not taken back.

• ◆new
  NEW: Plant a tree, one per envoy

  The tree is planted the moment you claim the offering's results, so there is nothing to remember to do afterwards. It takes fourteen days to grow, it never fails and it never expires, and once it has grown it waits for you as long as you like. Each envoy may plant exactly one, ever, and the tree stays in the grove after you claim it.

• ◆new
  NEW: Four kinds, and you can see which one you got

  The Heartgrove fills the home city of the envoy who planted it with wood, to the top of its storage. The Witness gives up one memory of the grove that no investigation can reach, and pays Cultural Influence at that memory's own rarity. The Deep Register grants a lasting change to how that envoy explores. The Named enters that envoy on the public roll of the grove for as long as the grove stands.

• ◆new
  NEW: The grove shows you what is growing, and not what it is

  Your tree appears on the wonder page from the day it is planted and changes shape four times as it grows, so the shape tells you which kind took root long before you can claim it. Its name and what it pays are withheld until you claim it. Only the first stage of each kind is shown above, and which shape belongs to which kind is not published anywhere. Veterans will learn to read the silhouettes; the game will not spoil it for them.

• ◆new
  NEW: The roll of the grove

  A public, browsable list of every envoy whose Named tree has been claimed, searchable, and readable by anyone who has investigated the Evergrove. Envoy names appear only once approved; no player names are published at all.

• ◆new
  NEW: A badge when your tree is ready

  The Evergrove's nameplate on the map, and its row in the Nearby panel, carry a badge while any of your trees is growing and a different one the moment one is ready to claim. The two share a single slot and swap, so you never see both at once: a growing tree is worth a glance, not an errand. The badge stops once you have been.

The Deep Register

• ◆new
  NEW: Deep Register

  Seven charges, with no clock on them at all, so they wait for you and you choose when to spend them. Each charge makes one exploration take three times as long, and makes the lore that exploration finds far more likely to be Uncommon or better. It never changes how often you find lore, only which tier it is, and it never guarantees anything.

• ◆new
  NEW: And it comes back

  It is the one reward in the grove an envoy can collect more than once. Bring the envoy who planted that tree back to the Evergrove for an ordinary investigation, one that is not itself spending a charge, with none of their charges left, and the grove restores them. It resets to full rather than topping up, it is that envoy and their own tree only, and there is no clock on the renewal either: it fires whenever they arrive empty, however long that takes. The results screen draws its own card for it, beside Effect Gained, naming the effect and how many charges came back.

Fixes

• Choosing a vigil now shows you what you are agreeing to

  When the approach you select is a step change in length rather than a nudge, the duration goes bold and pulses once. Clicking down the Evergrove's rows otherwise read "40 minutes, 40 minutes, a day", and the third could be read straight past. It is one pulse rather than a loop, and it stops entirely if you have asked your system for reduced motion.

• An old held pass no longer shows an empty card

  A finished investigation the grove had held could render The Grove Held On as a titled card with nothing inside it. Investigations from before the hold was removed still read correctly, and the Cultural Influence they paid is still in your ledger.