Buildable Wonders, and the Great Library

The Call of the Scholars

The world unlocks the race together, out of ordinary play, with nothing to opt into.

• ◆new
  NEW: One bar for the whole world

  Four kinds of knowledge fill it, weighted: a lore fragment discovered is worth 3, a wonder investigation 2, a ruin floor cleared 2, and a deep reading 1. Every player's finds count, from every source. The Call tab on the new World Wonder page shows the bar, what each act is worth, your own contribution, and the top ten contributors by name. The target for The Great Library is 3,000 points.

• ◆new
  NEW: Founder of the Call

  Reach 25 contribution points before the bar fills and you are a Founder: 150 Cultural Influence and the Founder of the Call envoy title, awarded the moment the Call completes. It is deliberately a modest title rather than a trophy, and it is the only reward attached to the community phase. The leaderboard during the Call carries no rewards at all.

• ◆new
  NEW: An omen on the Journal page

  Before the Call goes out, the Journal carries a card called The Scholars Stir, tracking how many players have amassed enough lifetime discoveries to summon it and where your own findings sit against that. It shows nothing at all until the event is armed, and disappears once the Call itself is running.

• ◆new
  NEW: The race opens at midnight

  Filling the bar does not open the race on the spot. It schedules it for the next midnight UTC with a full world announcement, so the start line is the same moment for everybody regardless of who landed the last point.

Founding your building site

Founding is the first quest of phase 1, it is free, and it stays open until the wonder is finished. Joining a week late costs you position, never entry.

• ◆new
  NEW: Pick a city, then pick a tile

  The picker offers every tile within 3 tiles of the chosen city's own tile, wilderness included, that keeps at least one tile of clear ground between it and every city, ruin, wonder and rival site, is not already built on, and is not the Foundation plot. You do not buy the land. The site tile becomes a travel anchor of its own, the same way a discovered wonder tile is, so your envoys can reach it from the start.

• ◆new
  NEW: The site is public from the first marker

  The empty site sprite appears on the world map the instant it is founded, with a nameplate carrying the phase number and a segmented bar showing how many of that phase's quests are done. One site per player, and there is no way to abandon one.

• ⇄reworked
  The ground a site stands on goes quiet

  Founding cancels every player's scouting observations on that tile, and while the site lives there nobody explores it, no new observations land on it, and no ruin or wonder can be placed near it. All of that comes back the moment the site is gone.

Groundworks, and the phases after it

Every phase carries one resource sink and a spread of quests across the rest of the game, so no single mechanic can carry you. The targets are fixed and identical for every player: nothing scales with how much you have, and nobody is asked for anything they could not have reached before the race was announced.

• ◆new
  NEW: Phase 1, Groundworks

  Found the site, break ground with 21,000 units of wood and stone, and complete 10 explorations anywhere in the world. It is the shortest phase in the race and the one most clearly reachable by a small player.

• ◆new
  NEW: Three more phases, and we are not going to tell you what is in them

  Each of the remaining phases carries a heavier sink than the one before it and its own set of quests, and they reach across exploration, delving, lore, wonders and the world's other players in ways the checklist will explain when you get there. Working out how to meet them, and in what order, is the race.

• ◆new
  NEW: A colour of its own

  Race quests use purple and pink throughout, against the daily quests' green and gold, so a race row is never mistaken for a daily one. The checklist, the progress bars and the celebration toasts all follow it.

Supply runs and patron cities

Resources do not teleport to the site. An envoy hauls them, in a loop, from a city that has taken up your cause.

• ◆new
  NEW: Send an envoy, not a city

  You choose the envoy. They travel back to their own home city first, at normal travel speed, and then begin hauling from there, so the envoy's home city is the one that becomes a patron. The picker shows each candidate's home city and warns you when choosing them would claim a patron slot.

• ◆new
  NEW: Three patron cities per phase

  The first three cities to send supplies in a phase lock in as that phase's patrons, one active run each, and the first send from any city raises an explicit confirmation before it does. Between phases you are free to change them. This cap is the same for everyone, which is what stops a group of players funnelling resources through one champion: the intake rate is three lanes no matter how much anyone owns.

• ◆new
  NEW: Every trip takes an hour, wherever the city is

  A round trip is 60 minutes for every player, regardless of how far the patron city lies from the site. The caravan still animates along the real path. What a trip carries scales with the hauling envoy's level and nothing else, at 300 units plus 20 per level, so no skill and no building makes a haul heavier.

• ◆new
  NEW: Nothing is lost in transit

  Cargo leaves the patron city's storehouse when the trip starts and lands at the site when it arrives. Recall a run mid-trip and the cargo goes back where it came from. An envoy on a supply run cannot be retired or sent elsewhere until it is stopped, and runs are recalled automatically when the phase is met or the race ends.

The race clock, and what a phase pays

The race is deliberately bunched. Being first through a phase is worth something, but it does not let you run away with the event.

• ◆new
  NEW: A phase opens for the whole world at once

  When the first player anywhere completes phase N, phase N+1 opens for everybody at the next midnight UTC, announced with the hours remaining. If that first completion lands within 6 hours of midnight the gate waits for the following one instead, so the catch up window is never trivially short. Players behind the gate move from phase to phase with no personal wait at all: the clock only ever throttles the front of the field.

• ◆new
  NEW: Every phase pays, however late you finish it

  Completing a phase pays Cultural Influence that grows with each one, a commemorative buff granted to every envoy you own at that moment, and a one time achievement carrying gold. None of it is reserved for the leaders: finish a phase a week behind the front of the race and it pays you exactly the same. The first player in the world to complete each phase takes extra Cultural Influence on top, and an achievement nobody else can ever hold.

• ◆new
  NEW: Foundations Laid

  Building construction and upgrade costs reduced by 10%, account-wide across every city you own, for 24 hours.

  Groundworks pays this one. It is account wide rather than tied to the envoy carrying it, and it does not stack with the referral build cost discount: whichever is larger applies, and the discounted price is what the upgrade actually charges. The later phases carry commemoratives of their own. No phase commemorative can ever be rolled from the random buff pool, because a Great Library keepsake should not land on a player who never touched the race.

• ◆new
  NEW: Ten new achievements

  Seven belong to the race: one per phase completed, one per phase completed first in the world, and Builder of the Great Library for the player who finishes it. That last one pays 100 Gold, the largest single achievement award in the game and the only one above the usual ceiling, because it resolves once for one player for the lifetime of the world. Wayfarer, the Bold and Lorekeeper make up the rest, and are covered below. The achievement list now runs to 95.

What the winner keeps

• ◆new
  NEW: The name on it is theirs

  The founder chooses the monument's name at the completion ceremony, from a short list of authored forms, some of which carry their own player name. The choice is made once and is permanent, and a name carrying a player name resolves live, so a later rename moves the monument with it. The separate founder line always shows, whatever they chose.

• ◆new
  NEW: The Great Library reaches the map

  It has never had a place on the world map before. The finished wonder is drawn at the winner's site tile with its own sprite and its resolved name, and it cannot be lost to a plot merge. It is not a discovered wonder: it joins no discovery pool, no visit flow and no wonder ranking.

• ◆new
  NEW: The Library itself belongs to everyone

  The winner takes the achievement, the gold, an envoy title that will never be granted again, and the founder line. What they do not take is exclusive use of the building. The Library's page, its deposits and its skills open for the whole world the moment it stands, which is what makes the race legitimate rather than something to dread losing.

Losing, and salvage

The moment somebody wins, every other site freezes. Nothing already earned is ever taken back.

• ◆new
  NEW: Half of everything you hauled comes back

  50% of every resource delivered into your site is returned as salvage, claimable across a 7 day window into the cities that supplied the site, and each claim fills only as much as that city's storehouse has room for so nothing is force fed into an overflow. Every reward, achievement and title the race paid you along the way is simply yours.

• ◆new
  NEW: A site comes down in public

  The map shows the teardown rather than blanking the tile: scaffolding coming down first, then the salvage still waiting to be collected, with the nameplate following the sprite. Once the site is gone the ground returns to normal, and observations, exploration and discovery resume on it.

Where the race lives

• ◆new
  NEW: The World Wonder page

  A tabbed page at /world-wonder with The Call, The Race and My Site. The Race groups every founded site in the world by the phase it has reached, with its quest segments. Exact progress inside a rival's current phase is private unless you have surveyed their site in the last 24 hours; the phase and the segment count are public to everybody.

• ⇄reworked
  The nav swaps Leaderboards for World Wonder

  WasLeaderboards

  NowWorld Wonder, while a race is live and for 7 days after it ends

  It is a slot takeover rather than an extra entry, and it carries a badge when a phase opens. /leaderboards keeps working as a URL the whole time. After the linger window the race's results stay permanently reachable by clicking the founder line on the Library.

• ◆new
  NEW: A permanent results page

  Written once at completion and never queried again: the winner, the final standings grouped by the phase each site reached, who was first through each phase, the founders of the Call, and the timeline. It is public, so a signed out reader following the Library's founder line gets the whole page. A phase nobody ever completed is stated as exactly that rather than left blank.

• ◆new
  NEW: The race announces itself

  The Call going out, the race opening, every world first phase completion with the hours until the next gate, and the finish itself are all pushed live and kept as durable announcements, so an evening away does not mean missing what happened.

Four skills now wait for the Library

Three of these cards have always said Requires: Great Library in their own text. Nothing enforced it, so all four were purchasable, and Thesis was usable, in a world with no Library standing. They are now locked until one is built, and the skill tree says why.

• reduced
  ThesisScholarship · Tier 3

  UNLOCKS: Your envoy studies a lore fragment from your journal for Cultural Influence based on its rarity, from 100 for a Common up to 500 for a Legendary. Studying does not consume the fragment. Each fragment can be studied once and deposited at the Great Library once, in either order.

  WasLearnable and usable with no Library in the world

  NowRequires the Great Library

  Envoys who already learned it keep the card, but the study action itself now refuses until a Library exists, which is the whole population the rule is about.

• reduced
  Library CuratorScholarship · Tier 4

  Your envoy earns 2x Cultural Influence for every lore fragment you deposit at the Great Library. Requires: Great Library.

  WasPurchasable with no Library in the world

  NowRequires the Great Library
• reduced
  ArchivistScholarship · Tier 4

  UNLOCKS: Your envoy sends lore to the Great Library by courier instead of travelling there, for 50 wood and 25 stone per fragment. Requires: Great Library.

  WasPurchasable with no Library in the world

  NowRequires the Great Library
• reduced
  Master ArchivistScholarship · Tier 5 · capstone

  When a deposit of yours completes a lore entry at the Great Library, your envoy earns bonus Cultural Influence worth 2x everything that entry's fragments are worth. The Library counts every player's deposits towards an entry, not only yours. Requires: Great Library.

  WasPurchasable with no Library in the world

  NowRequires the Great Library
• improved
  The tree now says so

  The lock reads Requires the Great Library on the card itself, sitting below the max rank line. Fragment Affinity sits on the same row as two of these and is deliberately not affected: fragment rarity has nothing to do with the Library.

Three titles you now earn

Wayfarer, the Bold and Lorekeeper used to arrive at envoy level 5, 9 and 17. A title that turns up for existing long enough says nothing about the envoy wearing it, so each is now an achievement earned by doing the thing it claims. All three pay the title and no gold.

• ⇄reworked
  Wayfarer

  WasGranted at envoy level 5

  NowPave 50 roads with a single envoy

  Counted per envoy, never pooled across your roster: two envoys on 49 roads each is 98 roads and no title for either. Roads are laid by the Pathmaker skill, so this one asks for a path taken as well as the distance walked.

• ⇄reworked
  The Bold

  WasGranted at envoy level 9

  NowDelve 10 different ruins with a single envoy

  Ten different ruins, not ten floors: taking one ruin to depth 10 does not buy it.

• ⇄reworked
  Lorekeeper

  WasGranted at envoy level 17

  NowComplete 15 lore sections of two or more fragments

  The one of the three scoped to you rather than to a single envoy, because a section is assembled out of whatever the whole roster brings home. Sections that hold a single fragment do not count towards it: 40 of the published sections are that short, and counting them would put a brand new player a third of the way there before reading anything.

• improved
  All three are trackable, and pay the instant you earn them

  Each has a real progress bar on the Achievements page, reading the same counter the award itself reads, and each is granted at the moment the road is laid, the ruin is finished or the section completes. The unlock notice now names the claim step at the Merchant before the equip step, because an achievement cosmetic arrives claimable rather than owned.

The Goals badge, and the weekly bonus

• improved
  The badge counts work, not novelty

  WasCounted unseen quests and cleared the moment you opened the hub

  NowCounts outstanding work and only goes quiet once you have looked

  Unfinished quests, your current Founder's Path step, a Land Deed waiting to be taken, a claimable weekly bonus and ready referral rewards all count. It is crimson while something is new or claimable, warm stone once merely seen, and gone only when the work is actually done. Opening the board no longer spends your one reminder.

• improved
  The weekly bonus is claimed, not paid out silently

  WasThe fifth weekly completion pushed 40 points into the Land Deed meter on its own

  NowIt banks, and you press Claim on the weekly row

  Bonuses accumulate on a counter rather than a flag, so one earned late in the week survives the rollover and two unclaimed weeks stack. The claim pays only whole bonuses the Deed meter has room for and tells you when none of them fit, rather than quietly awarding nothing. Taking a Land Deed this way now fires the same celebration it does everywhere else.

Encounters say which floors they mean

A choice's numbers were framed by a small grey caption that never changed between options, so the figures under it read as a promise about the floor you were about to enter. Most of the time they were not.

• improved
  One headed pane per span

  WasA grey caption above the figures reading THE REST OF THIS DELVE

  NowA bordered pane per span, headed with the floors it covers

  "This level, Depth 7" and "After it, Depths 8 to 10" are now containers rather than captions, and every choice in an encounter shows the same panes, so an option that changes nothing after this floor says Unchanged in the pane where the change would have been. A ruin whose bottom nobody has reached reads "Depth 8 onward" rather than inventing one.

• improved
  The odds bar and the haul box are labelled with their depth

  Both only ever describe the floor being entered, which is why they sat still no matter which option was pressed: a choice whose whole consequence is a modifier for later floors genuinely does not move them. They now say so.

• improved
  The choices are readable again

  Every unselected option's title on the encounter screen was drawing dark oak ink on the modal's dark parchment panel. They have their light ink back, along with the rows' own tinting.

Envoys act where they stand

• reduced
  An unclaimed arrival stops everything

  WasAn envoy counted as standing on the tile they departed from, for the whole journey and the whole Arrived! window after it

  NowAn envoy in transit stands nowhere until you take the arrival

  An envoy who had walked from the Obsidian Mirror to the Watering Hole, and was sitting on the map at the Watering Hole, could start an investigation back at the Mirror. Investigate, deep read, decode, delve and the Apex carving now all refuse an envoy who is not standing where the action is, and two of those had no location check at all: any ruin in the world was reachable from anywhere. The wonder page's roster and its Investigate buttons follow the same rule, so the client no longer offers what the server will decline.

• improved
  The Foundation Stone opens

  Walking to the Stone is a field arrival, which sets an envoy's location to home, while the Stone required them to be visiting, a state that tile can never produce. Examining the Stone and investigating it both asked for it. Both now ask whether the envoy is standing there.

• improved
  A stranger's envoy no longer locks a tile

  WasOne player exploring a tile made it unavailable to everybody in the world

  NowA tile is exclusive to you, and only against your own envoys

  The rule was never designed: it made the world first exploration bonus unwinnable by anyone but the first mover, let a player park an envoy to lock the world out of a tile, and walked the auto explore planner off a tile because a stranger was standing on it. Two players finishing the same uncharted tile in the same instant now resolve in order rather than both banking the first find.

Fixes

• "The Obsidian Mirror" now names what every visit paid, not only the first

  A second envoy of a pole you already held saw a title, a Cultural Influence figure and a progress bar, with no card, no reading, and no mention of the seven day Mirror's Boldness the visit had just granted. Every paying visit now draws its reading. The newly unsealed badge and the Reflection grid still belong to first finds alone. Mirror visits already claimed were backfilled, so an old results screen reads correctly too.

• "The Evergrove" shows both trees a vigil drew

  A vigil takes two draws from the ladder and the results screen rendered only the first, so the second tree's Cultural Influence had no row of its own and was absorbed into the ledger's residual as an "Additional award". Each draw now gets its own card, its own rarity badge and its own named ledger row.

• "The Evergrove" shows the tree you planted

  An offering's whole outcome, earned across a vigil, an errand and about thirty hours, lived only on the grove's own panel and the results screen closed on a number. It gets a card with the tree's sprite. It still names no species: the sprite is the only tell until you claim it a fortnight later, and that is the point of the wait.

• "The Foundation Stone" lets you buy Patience and Risk again

  Both were greyed out permanently on the premise that the Stone always suppresses its lore roll. It only does that while its seven day buff is on cooldown. Inside the window the Stone draws lore like any other wonder, which is exactly the draw those two options move, and they were unbuyable for up to forty visits per cycle in which they worked.

• "Travel" no longer throws away an arrival you did not open

  Sending an envoy onward while a finished journey was still waiting to be claimed silently discarded its Cultural Influence, its visit record, the host's share, its Travel Report and its grand tour progress. Travelling on now refuses until the arrival is taken.

• "My Envoys" lines the Level column up

  Level started at a different position on every row, drifting by 139 pixels across six rows at desktop width, because the unspent points pill sat inline and only some rows have one, and the name column sized itself to its own row's name. The pill has a line of its own now and the name column is one shared width for the whole list, which also stops long city names truncating.

• "Wonders" name every envoy the same way

  The investigation progress rows drew a portrait beside a plain name, losing the envoy's earned title and their skin, while the idle rows directly above used the full card. Both now use the same treatment. Envoy and player names on the wonder pages also had their ink resolved per wonder: the name was effectively invisible on the Glass Desert and the earned title on the Apex of Achievement.

• "Merchant's Hall" equip button and title collection

  The equip button in the purchase success modal did not centre and used a hand drawn glyph. Equipping a title now also names the title the envoy is currently wearing and says it will be replaced, since a title slot holds one at a time and the row used to show nothing about it. Envoy titles were missing from the collections meters entirely and now count as a set. The nav entry reads Merchant, matching what the surface is called everywhere else.

• "Onboarding" nine fixes from a real phone playthrough

  The guide could sit on top of the very thing she was pointing at, twice, because the mobile placement never tested the bubble against the highlight. The Town Hall chain stalled after the Town Hall was built, with no sign at 320 pixels that the rest of the city was one tap behind. Two notifications arrived for the same achievement. Tutorials now queue every match for an action instead of keeping whichever was written first, and one whose target does not exist on this layout is dropped rather than left waiting.

• "Achievements" award as they happen

  The three envoy title achievements shipped with only the daily sweep behind them, so a bar could read 50 of 50 beside a locked title for up to a day with no notice at all. Each now awards at the moment the action completes.