The Journal, the Library, and the Man Who Keeps Them

The Journal is a book

The old Journal and the old Great Library were one component with a flag. That is why the Journal looked like a filing interface: a permanent Table of Contents tree down the left, one Chapter or one list of cards down the right, each half scrolling inside its own box, and a welcome screen that could tell you how many Fragments you had collected but never how many there were. It is its own thing now, and the thing it is is a book.

• ⇄reworked
  The book, and how it turns

  WasTwo panes side by side, a generated Table of Contents on the left and one thing on the right, each with its own inner scroller

  NowFront matter, an index, a page per Source and a page per Chapter, in a bound book that turns both leaves at once

  Below 640px there is no cover and one page, filling the screen. Between 640 and 1024 the cover is drawn and it is still one page. At desk width it opens as two leaves with a gutter, and past 1920 it becomes a larger book rather than a stretched one. Nothing scrolls inside anything: the page scrolls as a page. The left leaf is always one step back along the chain you are reading, so front matter faces a Source and a Source faces its own Chapter. The turn is one chevron either side, drawn and greyed at the ends rather than vanishing, and the address is the opening rather than the leaf, so a link you paste opens the spread you were looking at.

• ◆new
  NEW: A denominator, at every level

  The front matter says how many Fragments the whole corpus holds and how many of them are yours, with a meter under it, and lists every Topic with its own found and total written out in words rather than as a slash. An index row carries its Source's count across every Chapter, started or not. A Chapter carries its own count and a segmented bar with one notch per Fragment. Before this the only count anywhere was a Chapter's held-over-total, and the held side was how many you had rather than how many exist, so the Journal could never answer what it was you were collecting against. One query decides all of it, so the headline and the Fragments Discovered leaderboard can never disagree.

• ◆new
  NEW: The Fragments you have not found

  A Chapter you have started now shows every Fragment in it, and the ones you are missing are drawn as empty mounts: the same photo corners that hold a found letter down, with the rarity named and the words "Not found yet". No lock, no blurred text, no teaser. A Chapter you have never started appears on its Source's page too, at full strength and unlinked, saying you have not recovered anything from it yet. A Source of nine Chapters used to display as a Source of the two you had begun.

• ◆new
  NEW: A completed Chapter is claimed

  Hold every Fragment of a Chapter and a gold panel opens at the foot of it offering its Cultural Influence, naming the envoy it will go to. Two to five Fragments pays 50, six or more pays 150, and a Chapter of a single Fragment pays nothing at all because one Fragment is not a collection. Those figures are final and take no modifiers. The envoy is the one that found the most of that Chapter, falling back to your most prolific envoy if every finder has retired, and the name on the button is the name that gets paid. A Chapter can be claimed once ever, and that is worth knowing before you claim a small one: Chapters do grow as more of the corpus is written, and a Chapter claimed at three Fragments pays the small band forever, even if it later becomes a large one. The nav carries a badge counting Chapters ready to claim, the index prints a small handwritten claim beside the row, and a finished Chapter keeps a wax seal beside its title permanently, claim or no claim.

• improved
  Where a Fragment came from, under the Fragment

  Beneath each scrap, in the game's own hand rather than printed on the material: its rarity and culture value, the envoy that found it first as a portrait card, how many of your envoys are holding a copy when it is more than one, and whether it is in the Great Library yet or not yet deposited. Depositing does not take it out of your Journal. An unfound Fragment carries none of this, because there is nothing yet to say.

• ◆new
  NEW: Songs are engraved and can be played

  A handful of song Fragments in the corpus carry a recovered tune. Those are drawn as real notation on a treble staff, with beams, bar lines, ledger lines and rests, and a single play button that sounds the same note list the staff draws. Most song Fragments have no tune, and those show a bare staff and say so in the world's own voice rather than looking like a failed render. This is a rare find rather than a broad feature: only three Fragments in the whole corpus have a melody today.

• ◆new
  NEW: Fragments Discovered, the tenth leaderboard

  Ranked by distinct published Fragments found, pooled across all your envoys, so holding the same text on two envoys counts once. It counts finding, not reading. It is built from the same three filters the Journal's own headline uses, so the number on the board and the number on your front matter are the same number.

Nine materials, and the six faces they are written in

A Fragment used to render as text in the interface's own font on the interface's own card, whatever it had been written on. Every Source in the corpus has always carried a material, and it was doing nothing. Now it decides the ground, the ink, the typeface, the tilt, and the one structural treatment a few of them need. Six faces were added to the game to make it true, because a ledger set in a proportional serif reads as neither a ledger nor a hand. The samples below are not screenshots: they are drawn by the same component the Journal draws a scrap with, loading the same fonts, so what you are looking at is the thing itself.

• ◆new
  NEW: A scrap is glued to the page, not printed on a card

  WasEvery Fragment rendered as interface text on an interface card, in the interface's own font

  NowEach one is a scrap of its Source's material, tilted, with an adhesive bleed along its foot

  The tilt alternates as you go down a Chapter, because three scraps all leaning the same way read as a skewed page rather than as paper laid down by hand.

• ◆new
  NEW: Four materials get a treatment of their own

  A ledger's rules are drawn from the same line height the text uses, so they track it at any size, with a red margin rule down the left. A letter is held by photo corners that overhang the scrap. Clay and metal carry a shadow that reads as pressed into the surface, lit from above like everything else in the game. A rubbing is the hardest of them: the letters are cut out of a charcoal patch so what you read is untouched paper showing through, not ink on top.

• improved
  A Source says what kind of thing it is

  A Source page now opens with a plain line built from its material and its keeper: a ledger kept by someone, a manuscript, an inscription, a song, with the year beside it. It replaces nothing, because there was nothing.

The Librarian

The game had one guide for everything, which meant the person who taught you to place a Clay Pit was also the person who explained the archive. There are two now. Emory Vance is the Librarian, and the lore surfaces are his. He introduces himself once, ever, on the Journal, the first time your envoys bring something home, and he says hello before he says his name.

• ◆new
  NEW: A tutorial can name who is speaking

  A step now carries a character as well as a pose, so a lore step is delivered by the Librarian and a city step by the guide you already know. The Librarian stands beside the content column rather than at the edge of the window, which is what stops him drifting a screen away from the thing he is talking about on a wide monitor.

• ◆new
  NEW: He hands you the Journal, and reacts when you finish a Chapter

  Four appearances in all. The greeting, the handover of the book itself, a word when your first Chapter is completed, and a speech at the Great Library. The last two read differently depending on whether the Library has actually been built, and the Library speech is delivered at the Library rather than on the Journal, which is where it used to be given.

The Great Library is a building you walk around in

The Library and the Journal used to be the same component with a flag set differently, which is why neither of them was much like the thing it was supposed to be. The Library was one long page: a pediment, a strip carrying a search box that only appeared at level three, and then a sidebar of twenty three hardcoded wings, most of them wearing a padlock and the words "Deposit fragments to unlock this wing", because the list was written out by hand rather than asked of the corpus. It is a stone shell with five tabs now, one search box shared by all of them, and an About screen for the building itself.

• ⇄reworked
  Five tabs, cut in marble

  WasOne page with a hardcoded list of 23 wings down the side, most of them locked, and a search box that appeared at level 3

  NowCatalogue, Timeline, Questions, Organisations and Authors, with one search box on the tab row and search available from level 1

  The Topics come from the corpus now rather than from a list written out by hand, so a wing can no longer exist in the interface and nowhere else. An old link carrying a Topic still works and opens that Topic's drawer. The header states the Library's level, how much of the corpus it holds, and a quiet link to About.

• ◆new
  NEW: The card catalogue

  A wooden cabinet with a drawer per Topic and an index card per Chapter, each card carrying the Chapter's title, who wrote it, the year and how much of it the world holds. A pulled drawer stays in its slot and its tray slides out beneath the whole row, so nothing else moves. The brass plate on a drawer front is a census of what exists and never changes as you type: a search that matches nothing leaves every drawer where it is and says so, rather than emptying the cabinet. It lists every published Chapter, including the ones nobody has recovered, because a catalogue records what exists.

• ⇄reworked
  A Chapter nobody has recovered keeps its title

  WasA lock icon and the word "Undiscovered"

  NowAn index card reading "Undiscovered Chapter" and a number, with its author and year still printed

  A title is content. Half the pleasure of a Chapter is finding out what it is called, so the catalogue withholds the name and prints everything around it: who wrote it, when, and the flat line "Nobody has recovered this yet." The card is not a link, and it does not answer a search either, because a search hit reads as "this is in the Library". The number is fixed to the Chapter's place in its Topic, so it never renumbers as the world recovers things around it.

• ◆new
  NEW: Browse by organisation, and by author

  Two sideways ways through the same catalogue, each a rack of index cards with a first letter row above it: every body the corpus credits with a text, and every named author. An organisation card counts the authors credited alongside it, an author card counts their Chapters, and opening either lays out their Chapters as the same cards the drawers hold. Organisations open at Library level 2 and Authors at level 3.

• ◆new
  NEW: The Timeline

  The whole of recorded history on one line, from the oldest year the corpus names to the one the realm is living in, opening on the present rather than the beginning. Every dated Chapter sits above the line, and the Librarian's notes hang below it as folded slips of his own letter paper, carrying the reading order in five movements. The three eras are not to scale and the line says so: the age before the Twisting is vastly the longest and would otherwise squeeze the other two into nothing, so each era is floored at a quarter of the line. It pans and zooms up to twelvefold, runs horizontally at desk width and vertically on a phone, and names how many Chapters carry no date at all rather than quietly dropping them. It opens at Library level 4.

• ◆new
  NEW: The Librarian's desk, where the world has not decided

  Three kinds of open question gathered into one place, from three systems that previously could not see each other: what a body the corpus only ever calls by a placeholder should actually be named, a question a Fragment itself asks, and a question asked at a wonder that can only be answered by going there. Two piles, still open and settled, and a badge on the tab counting the open ones. A name ballot unfolds and is answered in place, with the Chapters that body wrote laid out beside it as evidence.

• ◆new
  NEW: You answer before you are shown the answer

  Nothing about how anyone else voted crosses the wire until you have voted yourself. No counts, no shares, no total, no options ranked by popularity, and above all no distance to the threshold. The slip says so in as many words: how others have answered is shown once you have. Once you have spoken, the slip moves to Settled and the aggregate is drawn under it, with no player's name anywhere on it. Each question also carries its own participation threshold, and until enough players have answered, the world's answer does not exist to show. A question you have not answered and a question below its threshold are refused identically, so the pair cannot be used as an oracle.

• ◆new
  NEW: A bench of notes on every Chapter

  Write what you make of a Chapter, up to 400 characters, signed with one of your own envoys, and read what everyone else made of it. One note per Chapter each, and writing again rewrites yours rather than adding a second. A person reads every note before it goes on the bench, and rewriting sends it back for review, so your own pending note is visible to you and nobody else. The one control on somebody else's note says "Helped me", because the useful claim is that it helped you understand, not that you agree, and you cannot press it on your own. Notes sort by that count. A Chapter has to be fully recovered by the world before anyone may write on it.

• ⇄reworked
  Reading a Chapter is reading a book

  WasA Chapter opened inside the codex frame, beside a 240px table of contents

  NowThe whole Chapter, set as one continuous manuscript on a photographed two page book, at the width of the page

  The Fragments flow as one text rather than a stack of cards: asterisms between them, a drop cap, a folio line. The type is laid onto the photograph with a real projective transform, so it sits in the page rather than floating above it, and it is solved again whenever the bench resizes. The type scales with the bench, and the pagination is measured from the same scaled metrics, so a very wide screen holds the same amount of text per page as an ordinary one rather than a wall of it. Below 640px there is no book at all: the Chapter is printed on one sheet of letter paper running to the edges of the phone.

• ◆new
  NEW: Transcribed, or Originals

  Two small tabs on the reading surface. Transcribed is the Library doing its job, every text copied out in one fair hand. Originals lays the same Chapter out as the loose scraps it really is, each in its own material. Your choice is remembered in your own browser and never sent anywhere. The byline underneath became a colophon: written by, of, and in, each line simply absent when the corpus does not know, instead of four values joined by commas with gaps in them.

• ⇄reworked
  The Library levels on what it holds, not on how often it was given

  Was0, 50, 100, 200 and 500 deposits, counting every deposit including duplicates of a text it already had

  Now0, 100, 250, 400 and 600 distinct Fragments held

  Ten players depositing the same text used to move the Library ten steps closer to a level. The Library is an archive, and an archive that holds a text holds it once. Duplicate deposits still pay the depositor exactly as before, they simply no longer raise the building. Because the two are counted differently, the one Library in the world moved down a level when this landed while gaining a capability, since search now comes free at level 1 rather than waiting for level 3.

• ⇄reworked
  Every rung says something true

  WasBasic Codex browsable, First wing opens, Search functionality unlocked, Cross-reference links enabled, Full encyclopedia with a global Cultural Influence bonus

  NowSearch, Browse by organisation, Browse by author, Read the Timeline, and Cross-references marked as not yet built

  Two of the old five described things that did not happen: no wing ever opened at level 2, because wings were a hardcoded list. Cross-references between Chapters genuinely do not exist yet, so the top rung says Not yet built rather than Locked, which is a promise the building cannot keep. The server names each rung's capability and the client holds no map of its own, so the ladder cannot drift from what the Library actually does.

• ✕removed
  The level 5 global Cultural Influence bonus

  WasThe Library's fifth level granted an unspecified global Cultural Influence bonus

  NowRemoved

  It was never designed, never specified anywhere, and would have been an uncapped influence faucet attached to a building the whole world contributes to. No Library has ever reached the old level 5, so nobody has lost a bonus they were holding.

Giving your texts to the Library

Depositing used to be a gold button on the Library's header that opened a list and then closed silently on success, and it took the Fragment out of your Journal to do it. All of that has changed. There is a counter by the door that tells you what is possible right now, a result screen that shows what you earned and how, and your envoys keep everything they found.

• improved
  Giving a text copies it, it does not spend it

  WasDepositing a Fragment removed it from the envoy that found it

  NowThe Library takes a copy and your envoy keeps theirs

  This is the single largest change to how contributing feels. Handing your best find to the archive used to mean losing it out of your own Journal, which put the Library and your own collection in direct competition. The result screen says it outright: your envoys keep every text they found, and the Library now holds a copy.

• ⇄reworked
  Three a day in person, and three more by courier

  WasNo daily limit, and a courier that charged 50 wood and 25 stone for each fragment it carried

  Now3 deposits per envoy per day at the Library itself, and a separate 3 per envoy per day by courier for an Archivist

  Two allowances rather than one pool, so spending a courier trip never costs you a hand delivery. Everyone gets the three in person ones; they cost a journey, because depositing in person means the envoy is standing on the Library's own tile. The courier's three are what the Archivist skill buys, they work from anywhere in the world, and they no longer cost materials. A fully equipped archivist moves six texts a day and only has to walk for three of them.

• ⇄reworked
  The courier travels

  WasA courier deposit landed in the same instant it was sent

  NowIt walks, taking exactly as long as the Archivist who sent it would take to walk the same route

  It is drawn on the map like any other journey, with its route, its remaining time and a plate naming whose courier it is. It deliberately does not look like an envoy: a square marker instead of a round one, in its own colour, carrying the Library's deposit mark rather than a portrait. Only your own couriers are drawn, because a rival's parcel would give away their Library timing. The sending envoy is not occupied while it travels, so they can go on training, visiting or delving. The Fragments aboard are held until it lands, so the same text cannot also be carried in by hand.

• ◆new
  NEW: The returns counter

  The way in to depositing, and it states the actual situation rather than a button. An envoy at the Library with something to give and allowance left offers the deposit. An envoy at the Library that has spent today's three says so and points at the courier if you have one. Nobody at the Library but an Archivist in the field offers to send the courier and makes Travel to the Library the main action. Nothing to give says that too, and explains what will appear here. With several envoys at the desk it speaks for all of them and lists each one's remaining deposits.

• ◆new
  NEW: A deposit tells you what you earned and how

  WasThe deposit dialog closed on success and nothing else happened

  NowA result screen naming the envoy, their portrait, their level before and after, and every text with the bonuses it paid

  The envoy is named because on a courier deposit the influence goes to the Archivist who sent it rather than to whoever found the text, and that was impossible to work out. Each row is washed in that text's rarity and carries its tier. The notable rows come first: first in the world, and anything that completed a Chapter. The foot adds up base influence, the first in the world bonus and the Library Curator doubling as separate lines, and states the server's own total rather than the client's sum of it.

• improved
  The picker makes the best choice obvious

  The list is ordered by what is worth most: never deposited anywhere in the world first, then rarity, then culture value. Selection is capped at what you have left today, and Select all takes the best of them rather than the first of them. A pick that would complete a Chapter is flagged as such before you commit.

• ◆new
  NEW: The Satchel

  One screen listing every envoy and the texts they are carrying, with how much of today's allowance each has left, reachable from the Journal's front matter and from the deposit screen. Until now there was no way to see what was in an envoy's pack short of walking it somewhere and trying to give something away.

• ◆new
  NEW: The Library is somewhere an envoy can be sent

  The finished monument is a walkable tile. An envoy standing on it gets a Deposit action in its popover, an Archivist gets Send Courier from wherever they are, and the Library's own header can send you to the map with the travel drawer already open on its tile. The travel picker says, per envoy, how many texts they are carrying and how many deposits they have left today, and sorts the ones that can actually do something to the top.

The race is over, and your contribution is waiting

The race to build the Great Library paid its Cultural Influence silently, mid-race, onto one arbitrarily chosen envoy, with nothing on any screen to say it had happened. A number moved and no sentence explained it. Every phase's reward is now held until the race concludes and handed over on a screen of its own, which says what each of your envoys did to earn its share. The claim is one action covering every phase at once, it can be reopened until you take it, and the badge on the navigation cannot be dismissed.

• improved
  What a phase pays

  Was400, 700 and 1,100 Cultural Influence for phases one to three, and no reward block at all for The Founding

  Now400, 900, 2,000 and 4,500, with world first paying a further 200, 450, 1,000 and 2,250

  A full sweep is 7,800 across the four phases, and 11,700 for a player who is first in the world to every one of them. Phase four alone now pays more than the first three together, which is the shape the race's own difficulty has. This pot is your own site's, not a pool shared with rival racers: everybody who completes phase three is paid for completing phase three.

• improved
  A phase you reached but did not finish now pays

  WasAn incomplete phase paid nothing whatever you had done in it

  NowIt pays its quest completion out of 80% of the pot, with the last fifth kept for actually finishing

  Five of The Founding's six quests is 3,000 of its 4,500. The phase block lists the real quest names with ticks against the ones you finished, and says plainly that this is credit for what you completed before the race ended. It is not an invitation to finish the rest: the offer freezes when the race does.

• ◆new
  NEW: Your envoys are paid for what they actually did

  Every quest credit during the race was recorded against the envoy that earned it, per phase and per kind of work. A phase's pot is then divided across those envoys. The weights are normalised against each quest's own target first, so finishing a whole quest counts the same whether the quest asked for ten pledges or a hundred and eighty eight thousand units of cargo. Without that step a hauler took essentially the entire pot and a player who secured every pledge in the phase was paid nothing. Each envoy's row names the work in words, a bar shows where that envoy's level sits and what claiming will add, and the rounding remainder goes to the largest contributor so the parts always sum to the whole.

• ◆new
  NEW: A Fragment for every phase you completed

  An Account of the Great Library is a five part record of the race, written by a Historical Society journalist who was present, dated to the year the race ended, and shown as a handwritten letter with its byline beneath it. Phases one to four each pay their part. It is not a template with holes in it: the facts of your race are substituted into it, and whole passages are chosen based on what actually happened, including whether the journalist's own prediction turned out to be right. The fifth part covers the inauguration and belongs to the Library rather than to any racer.

• improved
  Every player who finishes The Founding is paid gold, not just the winner

  Was100 gold to the single winner of the ceremony, and nothing to anybody else who finished

  Now25 gold to every player who completes all six of The Founding's quests, and 75 gold to the winner on top

  The winner still ends on the same 100 gold, because they finish phase four too. The change is that finishing the hardest phase in the game and losing the ceremony by an hour is no longer worth nothing. This is a deliberate widening of one of the game's very few gold faucets, and it is capped by the phase being finishable once per player per race.

• ◆new
  NEW: The Founding's Grace

  Cultural Influence from lore fragments discovered anywhere is increased by 25%, for 24 hours.

  Legendary, 24 hours, granted to every envoy you own the moment your site meets all six of The Founding's requirements. It reaches the same six discovery moments The Hearer's Ear does, and holding both gives you one 25% bonus rather than two. It never appears in a random buff pool. Along with it come two achievements that could be earned by nobody until now: The Founding, for completing phase four on your own site, and First to the Founding, for being the first player in the world to do it.

• improved
  A concluded race stops asking things of you

  Outstanding backing visits are abandoned, founding deposit trips are cancelled and release the Fragments they were escrowing, and supply runs everywhere in the world are recalled home in one sweep. A site that is no longer racing refuses every race action rather than offering it and failing, and the map stops putting Survey and Delve on a monument that has already been raised. The Great Library's own map marker now declares itself built, which is how the Nearby panel can list it.

• improved
  A retired envoy costs you nothing

  WasNothing said what happened to the share of an envoy that had since retired

  NowIts weight is dropped and the phase's whole pot is divided among the envoys still with you

  The split is computed twice on purpose, once for display and again at the moment you claim, because the screen stays open for days and an envoy can retire in between. What is frozen is the phase total, not which envoy it lands on. A phase whose every contributor has retired says so in words rather than paying silently into nothing, and a phase that never had an envoy in context at all, which several quests legitimately do not, pays its whole pot to your attributed envoy instead of claiming everybody retired.

Scholarship, retuned

The Journal gave the tree something to point at, and most of Scholarship was not pointing at it. Two cards are new, the capstone is rebuilt, four rank ladders moved, and one card stopped charging a resource cost it had no reason to charge. Where a rank was taken away the point was refunded. Where the refunded point could legally go onto the card that replaced it, it was moved for you; where it could not, it was left unspent rather than forced into a tree state the game's own rules forbid.

• ◆new
  NEW SKILL: LectureScholarship · Tier 3 · 2 ranks

  UNLOCKS: While your envoy is visiting another player's city, they may attend a lecture at their School. A lecture takes 2 hours and pays around 200 Cultural Influence. It also has a 25% / 40% chance of leaving your envoy with a text that player has given to the Great Library and you do not yet hold. One lecture per envoy per day.

  A lecture is a training shaped action and it borrows training's rules: the envoy has to be standing on the School's own tile, the School has to belong to somebody else, and it takes one of that School's enrolment seats for its two hours, so a high level School cannot bank host influence from ten visitors a day for free. The daily limit is a rolling twenty four hours rather than a calendar day, so it never depends on a timezone nobody chose. The offer tells you before you commit whether that host actually holds anything you are missing.

• ◆new
  NEW SKILL: IndexScholarship · Tier 4 · 3 ranks

  Your envoy reads what you have already gathered, and it shows in the field. For every Chapter your journal has completed, they are more likely to turn up lore while exploring or delving: +1% / +2% / +3% for each, to a maximum of +10% / +15% / +20%.

  It is a multiplier on the chance you already had, applied after every other modifier, so at its ceiling a 50% chance becomes 60% rather than 70%. That also makes it behave the same whatever else your envoy is carrying. It is scoped to exploring and ruin delving on purpose: collecting and wonder visits each already have a card whose whole job is that source, and wonder lore belongs to Deep Reading.

• ⇄reworked
  Master ArchivistScholarship · Tier 5 · capstone

  Your envoy names one Chapter your journal has begun and not finished as their line of inquiry. While it stands, 75% of the lore draws your envoys make are narrowed to that Chapter, whenever it still holds a Fragment they could find. Your envoy may change it once a day. When the Chapter is finished, this envoy is paid the usual claim plus the whole of its culture value. Wonders ignore a line of inquiry, and a Chapter whose Fragments can only be found at a wonder cannot be named. Requires: Great Library.

  WasWhen 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.

  NowYour envoy names one unfinished Chapter, and your lore draws are steered into it until it is done

  The old capstone paid on a condition you did not control and mostly could not see: it counted every player's deposits toward an entry, so its 2x could fire because somebody else finished the work, or never fire at all. The new one is a thing you decide and then pursue. It narrows the draw rather than overriding any eligibility rule, so it can never hand you a Fragment you were not allowed to find, and it goes quiet the moment the Chapter can no longer supply one. The payout stacks on the ordinary claim rather than replacing it, and it all goes to the envoy that named it.

• improved
  Deep ReadingScholarship · Tier 5 · capstone

  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. It also pays Cultural Influence of its own, with a one in three chance of turning up a Fragment the wonder could have given a standard investigation.

  WasA survey of what the wonder still conceals, and nothing else

  NowThe same survey, plus 120 Cultural Influence every time and a one in three chance of a Fragment

  It was a capstone that paid in information alone, and information you had already largely inferred by the time you could afford it. It still cannot be farmed: it is only ever offered while the standard investigation is on cooldown, and it then has a 24 hour cooldown of its own on top of that.

• improved
  ArchivistScholarship · Tier 4

  UNLOCKS: Your envoy sends texts to the Great Library by courier instead of carrying them there. The courier has an allowance of 3 a day of its own, on top of the 3 your envoy may give in person at the Library. Requires: Great Library.

  WasSends lore to the Great Library by courier instead of travelling there, for 50 wood and 25 stone per fragment

  NowSends texts by courier at no resource cost, on an allowance of 3 a day separate from the 3 you may give in person

  Charging wood and stone to send a letter was a rounding error on any account that could afford the card, so it gated nothing and simply made the action feel like a purchase. The real limit is the allowance, and the courier's is its own: a fully equipped archivist can move six texts a day rather than three.

• improved
  Keen ReaderScholarship · Tier 2 · 2 ranks

  When your envoy finds a lore Fragment, they have a 10% / 15% chance to turn up a related one from the same place, one rarity below the find.

  WasOne rank, a flat 15%

  NowTwo ranks, 10% then 15%

  Rank one is weaker than the old single rank and rank two restores it, which is the trade for the card having somewhere to go. Every point freed by the ladders below is offered here first.

• improved
  Guild LedgersScholarship · Tier 3 · 2 ranks

  Collecting from an extractor in your home city has a 6% / 12% chance to turn up a lore Fragment related to the resource you collected or to your city's biome.

  WasOne rank, a flat 8%

  NowTwo ranks, 6% then 12%

  Same trade as Keen Reader: a slightly weaker first rank buys a second that is half again as good as the old ceiling.

• reduced
  Quick StudyScholarship · Tier 1 · 2 ranks

  Your envoy trains at a School in less time: -15% / -25%.

  WasThree ranks, -15% / -20% / -25%

  NowTwo ranks, -15% / -25%

  The ceiling is unchanged and it is reached a point earlier. Anyone holding rank three had that point refunded and offered to Keen Reader; where an envoy could not legally hold Keen Reader the point was left unspent for you to place.

• reduced
  StudiousScholarship · Tier 3 · 2 ranks

  Your envoy earns more Cultural Influence for training at another player's School: +50% / +100%.

  WasThree ranks, +50% / +75% / +100%

  NowTwo ranks, +50% / +100%

  Same treatment. The ceiling is unchanged, the middle rung is gone, and a refunded third point was offered to Lecture, which sits on the same fork.

• ⇄reworked
  Fragment Affinity moves forkScholarship · Tier 4 · 3 ranks

  Lore Fragments your envoy finds while exploring have a 5% / 10% / 15% chance to come out one rarity higher.

  WasTier 4 of the Lore Scholar fork

  NowTier 4 of the Academic fork

  Its numbers are untouched. It swaps places with Index, which takes the Lore Scholar slot it vacated.

Elsewhere

• ◆new
  NEW: The Satchel

  One screen listing every envoy and the texts they are carrying, reachable from the Journal's front matter. Until now there was no way to see what was in an envoy's pack short of walking it somewhere and trying to give something away.

• improved
  A built monument gets a row in Nearby

  The Great Library was excluded from the map's Nearby panel because a raised monument has no wonder record behind it, so its row would have sat beside a loading placeholder forever. It is its own kind of row now, built from the marker and your satchel, with its own filter chip, and it offers travel to a tile where there is now something to do.

• improved
  A locked feature says what it is

  WasA small popover under the button showing a price and your balance

  NowA modal carrying the feature's art, the Shop's own description, its benefit lines and a button that names the price

  Four of the six buttons that opened it never passed a description at all, so a player who had not been to the Shop learned what a feature cost and never what it did. All of that copy now comes from the Shop itself, so there is one description of a feature rather than three that disagreed. City Collect All is a real entry in the Shop's own list now rather than a card the client invented.

• improved
  A world announcement stops covering the header

  The Foundation Stone unlocking and the Old World Map completing both drew as a fixed strip across the top of the window, in the site header's own space, painting over the logo and the navigation and hiding them outright on a phone. Both are ordinary parchment banners in the discovery stack now, taking the width of their own text and queueing with everything else. The Old World Map's banner links to the Library's About screen, where the finished map is drawn.

• improved
  A player with no name is called the same thing everywhere

  The leaderboards showed a truncated account identifier, a city breadcrumb showed a bare number, the map said Player #46, and the Shop and empire heading both called them Adventurer. It is Player 46 everywhere now, and there is no longer any way to hand a name field an account identifier, which is what makes this the last time.

• improved
  Nothing about how you found us is stored on your device

  WasTwo keys held in your browser recording where you arrived from, and nothing recorded at all in the EU, the EEA or the UK

  NowThe page holds it in memory while the tab is open and sends it only if you sign in, the same way everywhere

  Memory held by a running page is not storage on your equipment, so there is no region where this works differently and the two browser keys are gone. The privacy policy has been rewritten to match, and it also now names the two anonymous events the site records about its own signup funnel, because that is new collection and it should be written down rather than discovered.

• improved
  The site has nine pages a search engine can read

  Every route without its own prerendered document was served the homepage: the homepage's body, the homepage's title, and a canonical tag pointing at the homepage. So Privacy, Terms and Leaderboards were four URLs sharing one document, each telling a crawler to index something else instead of itself. Three real signups in the first week of September landed on the privacy policy from a search engine because it was ranking as a near duplicate of the front page. Each now has a document of its own, and the sitemap is generated rather than hand maintained.

• improved
  Two pages stopped making a false claim about gold

  Was"Gold cannot buy a position on any board, and no game mechanic generates Gold"

  NowAn accurate statement of which two boards money can move, and where gold is minted

  Both halves were false and the game is more honest without them. Land claims and merges can be bought, and they feed Land Ownership and Merge Masters, openly and by design. Gold is minted, by the daily login reward and by a capped achievement table, and the same page quoted that table's total further down. It contradicted itself inside one document.

Fixes

• "Great Library" a Chapter the world has recovered reads in full, for everybody

  The reading surface sealed a passage whenever the reader had not personally found it, which is the Journal's rule applied in the one place it is wrong. A Chapter the world held complete opened with three passages marked Undiscovered for anyone who was not the player who deposited them, which is exactly the reader a library is for.

• "Map" leaving the map during a Founding Ceremony no longer takes the whole app down

  Navigating away from the map while a ceremony was running threw out of React's commit phase, above the destination page's own guard, so the root boundary replaced the entire application with Something Went Wrong and only a reload recovered. The ceremony ring's pulse was being torn down after the renderer it was registered on.

• "Leaderboards" the board stops failing to load at random

  The leaderboard response is cached for a minute at the edge, and the cache key left out which site had asked for it, while the response itself names the asker. So whichever request happened to fill the cache decided whether every browser for the next minute got a usable response. An uptime check or a crawler filling it meant a minute of failures for real players.

• "Nearby" a row's name and tile stop being cut off at 320px

  The identity column is the narrowest part of the row on a phone and it was spending that budget truncating the two fields the row is identified by, so The Messenger's Rest and The Storyteller's Chair were the same eight characters on screen. Names wrap now, and the coordinates stay one unbroken token.

• "Navigation" the Library dropdown is no longer trapped behind the page

  It was opening underneath the surrounding chrome, so the Journal underneath it could not be reached from the menu that listed it.

• "Account" a session the server has definitively refused is ended, not retried forever

  A failed renewal was treated as an ordinary no, so a tab left open overnight kept retrying a dead session every fifty minutes and never told you it had stopped working. A refusal now signs you out so you can sign back in.

• "Everywhere" the www address agrees with the plain one

  Reached without the usual edge in front of it, the site would serve the whole application on the www address and then have every one of its own requests blocked by the browser: a game that rendered and did nothing, which is much harder to recognise than a page that simply fails.