Return Journey, the Patron's Gold Pass, and the Road to Launch

The Patron's Gold Pass

A second way to buy gold, for a player who would rather have it arrive over a month than all at once. It is a real-money purchase like the gold packs, not something the game pays out.

• ◆new
  NEW: The Patron's Gold Pass

  $4.99 in the Gold tab, beside the packs, for 400 gold over 30 days: 100 up front, then 10 a day, the first of them on the day you buy it. Each day's gold is a card of its own in Your Claims, and a day you do not claim is never lost, not even after the pass has ended: three days away means three pass cards waiting beside the daily login card. It is not a subscription and nothing renews. Buying another while one is running queues it to start the day after the current pass's thirtieth day, up to 90 days ahead, and the card says so when you reach that limit. It is sold one at a time, by card, SOL or USDC, and takes no first-purchase bonus.

• ◆new
  NEW: Feats, and the title the Supportive

  The Supportive: "Claim all thirty days of a Patron's Gold Pass." It awards the Epic envoy title the Supportive. It sits in a new Feats category, listed last on the achievements page with the note "Feats are not counted toward your total." A Feat is never part of your achievement count, the completion percentage, the achievements leaderboard or anything else that ranks, and it opens nothing in the game that an earned achievement opens, so completing the game never asks anyone to pay. A refunded pass takes the Feat and the title back, unless another of your passes also reached its thirtieth day.

Patronage: Market Leverage out, Return Journey in

Market Leverage is removed entirely, Due Diligence goes with it, and Return Journey takes their place. Every envoy who held either card was given one rank of Return Journey for each, so Patronage holds the same number of points it did and nobody has anything to re-spend.

• ✕removed
  Market LeveragePatronage · Tier 2

  WasPay for investments in Gold instead of resources. Never for a tier your own Storehouse could not hold.

  NowRemoved

  Market Leverage let gold stand in for the resources an investment costs, which added a pay-to-win aspect to the game: whatever that stake returned was bought with money rather than produced. At its sharpest, a Seed stake paid for with 60 gold returned up to 180,000 wood that no city had ever produced. It was an experiment with putting gold inside an envoy skill, and not a direction the game is going, so it is removed entirely rather than repriced. The Gold Charter, ratified on 1 September, was drafted so nothing like it happens again. It sets hard rules on what gold can and cannot do, and puts one question to every way of spending gold: if two equally skilled players play equally long, can the paying one end up ahead on anything ranked, scarce or material? Gold may buy back time and attention, but it may never substitute for production, so no future skill will have a gold component that can buy resources. The gold price and the choice between gold and resources are gone from the Invest screen: every investment and every sponsorship is paid in resources, or in diamonds for a Venture Fund.

• ◆new
  NEW SKILL: Return JourneyPatronage · Tier 2 · 2 ranks

  Each investment your envoy makes in a city earns it one faster journey there, spent on its next trip to that city: 25% / 50% faster by rank.

  A stake in a city's Hotel, School, Market or Town Hall, a Seed Investment and a Venture each earn one charge for that envoy and that city. Rolling a Seed over continues a stake rather than making a new one, and Sponsor Expedition funds another envoy rather than the city, so neither earns a charge. A charge is spent on the envoy's next journey that ends on that city's own tile, from wherever they set out, and each journey spends one. The reduction is taken after Swift Courier, Seasoned Traveler, Endurance March and Survey Mathematics, and cannot take a journey below its minimum: at rank 2, a journey that would take three hours after those takes ninety minutes. A charge never lapses. It waits until the journey is made, however long that takes and whatever became of the stake that earned it. The investment's card in your holdings says when one is waiting ("Return Journey earned: your envoy's next trip here is 50% faster."), the travel preview lists it as a row, and a city merged into another hands its unspent charges on to the city that remains.

• ✕removed
  Due DiligencePatronage · Tier 3

  WasUNLOCKS: On the Invest screen your envoy shows an exact projected return worked out from that city's own history instead of a range, and every Hotel, School, Market or Town Hall investment it makes costs 10% less.

  NowRemoved

  It had not been offered on the skill tree since 8 August, so only envoys who learned it before then held it. The Invest screen's projections are a range for everyone. Deep Pockets is unchanged and is still the Patronage card for investing in a city's buildings for less.

• improved
  Every sponsor sees how often an envoy explores

  WasThe Sponsor Expedition picker showed an envoy's exploration rate only to a sponsor holding Due Diligence

  NowEvery sponsor sees it: "Explores 2.5 times a day, from its own record."

  It is the one figure on that picker that tells two envoys apart, and it had been behind a card nobody could learn.

The Steward can be switched off

Some players would rather complete their envoys' finished work by hand. The Steward is bought once, and until now it was always on.

• ◆new
  NEW: Settle finished work for me

  A switch on your profile page, in a Steward card between Live Preview and Active Sessions, shown only if you own the Steward. Switched off, the Steward treats you exactly as a player who does not own it: finished arrivals, explorations, investigations, decodes, lectures and trade routes wait for you to complete them, nothing is written to the Steward's Report, and a diamond strike or an investment's skim reaches you as an ordinary notification. The Steward leaves the menu and the map until you switch it back on, and envoy rows stop saying "The Steward will complete this automatically." Nothing is refunded and nothing is lost. You still own it, and the first sweep after you switch it back on settles everything that finished in the meantime.

• improved
  The Steward's Report after Mark all as seen

  WasMark all read made the sheet longer: it listed every earlier entry at once, went on showing the haul and envoy bars it had just marked read, and filed a reveal you had not opened among everything else

  NowOne line, "All recent events have been seen", with Show older entries beneath it

  The button is Mark all as seen now, and the haul and the envoy bars clear with it. An unopened held reveal, such as a diamond strike or a rare Fragment, stays pinned under Held for you until you open it, and only then moves to the older entries. Show older entries lists what has already been seen, without the haul, which only ever describes what is new.

The Merchant's Hall

• ⇄reworked
  The purchase screen

  WasA 448px confirm box with a 240px thumbnail of the item, which on a phone had to be scrolled to reach its buttons

  NowOne full-height screen: the item's name and rarity, its art as large as the screen allows, the description beside the price, and Cancel and Purchase pinned to the bottom

  The item is what you came to look at, so it gets the screen. Features and cosmetics share it, and a skin pack lays out its portrait with all seventeen of its action icons beside it. The art comes from larger versions made from the original paintings, never an enlarged card picture, and your browser fetches the size your screen needs. On a 360 by 640 phone both buttons are on screen without scrolling. A feature you already own opens the same screen to look at, marked Owned and with a Close button, and the Features tab's cards now fill the width of the shop.

• improved
  Short of gold is never a dead end

  WasPurchase greyed out, over "You don't have enough Gold to purchase this item."

  Now"You need 250 more Gold", and the button becomes Get Gold

  Get Gold closes the screen and opens the Gold tab with the item named, and brings you back to it once you have bought. Diamonds cannot be bought, so an item priced in diamonds says how many more you need and stops there.

• ◆new
  NEW: Claim all

  Whenever two or more cards are waiting in Your Claims, Claim all takes every one of them: the daily login gold, each Patron's Gold Pass day, cosmetics, titles and a land deed that is ready. A deed that cannot be claimed yet is left where it is and not counted. The button says how many it will take, "Claim all (4)". The claims land one after another, one that fails is reported while the rest still go through, and the whole haul is summed into one toast.

• improved
  Each claim button shows what it claims

  WasEvery button in Your Claims wore the Claim Land flag, at 24px

  NowThe coin for gold, the deed for a deed, a nameplate for a title and a brush for any other cosmetic, at 48px

  On a narrow card the button drops below its text instead of squeezing the name into a column one word wide.

The Evergrove: what a grown tree gave

A tree takes a fortnight to grow, and claiming one used to show nothing at all. The reward was paid, and the screen the whole wait builds towards never opened.

• ◆new
  NEW: A grown tree opens what it gave

  Claiming a tree opens the same results sheet an investigation does, with the grown tree and Tree Matured over its name and a line saying what it gave. A Witness shows its Fragment in full, with a link to it in the Journal. A Deep Register shows its buff card, with the explorations it has left and how it renews, and its description now leads with what it gives: lore found is far more likely to be Uncommon or better, but exploration takes three times as long. A Named shows its line exactly as the Roll of the Grove prints it, and its reward line now says plainly that every envoy who plants one is immortalised on the Roll. Trees are claimed one at a time, so a quick tap on a second ripe tree waits until the first result is on screen rather than replacing it before you have read it.

• improved
  A Heartgrove asks before it fills

  WasA warning box that said it fills "the home city of the envoy who planted it", and told a player near their storage ceiling to spend first without saying where

  NowAn offer on the same sheet, naming that city with its banner as a link, with today's figures and a Not yet

  A Heartgrove fills that city with wood to the top of its storage, so what it is worth depends on how much room you leave it. The offer names the city so you can go and spend first, asks for fresh figures every time it opens, and turns into the result when you choose Fill. A refusal stays on the offer, in the game's own words.

Messages

The only sign of a new message used to be the unread badge, which checked every five minutes.

• ◆new
  NEW: A toast when a message arrives

  "New message:" and its title, the moment it arrives, anywhere except the Messages page itself. Tapping it opens the message. Anything that arrived while you were away gets one toast on your next visit, "You have 3 new messages" when there is more than one. A toast waits for the guide to finish, and a message that has a moment of its own, such as a cosmetic unlock, does not raise a second one.

• improved
  What a message can hold

  Headings, and pictures drawn from the game's own art. A long message folds behind a fade and Show more, and opening it marks it read. A message's button is a real link now, so it can be long-pressed and copied. A link can point straight at one message, which scrolls into view and is picked out for a moment. The date shown is the day it was published, and an announcement meant for a limited time leaves your mailbox when its time is up.

Getting in, and keeping in touch

• improved
  Signing in from inside another app

  WasA link opened inside TikTok, Instagram, Facebook or X led to Google's "Error 403: disallowed_useragent" page, and on Android there was no working way in at all

  NowThe Google button is replaced by a notice that says what is wrong and gives you a link to open in Safari or Chrome, with a button to copy it

  Those apps open links in a browser of their own, and Google refuses to sign anyone in there. The link carries what the next browser would not otherwise know: the invitation code you arrived with and the page you were heading to. Apple and wallet sign-in are untouched, and Try Google sign-in anyway stays within reach in case the game has misread your browser. A web app added to your home screen is not treated as one of these.

• ◆new
  NEW: Email updates

  At some point while you play, once your city has grown a little, the city page asks once: "Your city is growing. Want an email when it needs you?" One answer covers both kinds of email: word when something you started has finished while you are away or your login streak is about to end, and now and then news about Nandonia, including what is new in the shop. The question waits for a quiet moment and never lands in the middle of a walkthrough, and an account signed in with a wallet, which gives the game no address, is never asked. You are not asked again once you have answered, and the Email updates switch on your profile page changes the answer at any time. No email is being sent yet: the question comes first. The Privacy Policy now says what is kept, which is your current answer and a record of each answer with the wording you were shown, and how to withdraw.

• ◆new
  NEW: Nandonia's channels in the footer

  Discord, YouTube, TikTok and X, as icons in the footer's bottom row, in the game and on the public pages alike, each opening in a new tab.

The Journal and the Library

• ◆new
  NEW: A map Chapter is put back together

  Some Chapters are a map cut into pieces, and each piece is found on its own. The Journal now draws such a Chapter as its map, with every piece you have found set back in its place, rather than as a column of captions. The Library draws it the same way in both Transcribed and Originals. The piece-by-piece list is still there behind Show each piece, and a link to one piece opens that list with the piece on screen.

• improved
  The Library's naming desk shows each text as it was written

  WasThe Fragments beside a naming ballot were printed as plain cream paragraphs

  NowEach is drawn on its own material, the way the Journal draws it, and a map Chapter is drawn put back together

  A Fragment that is only a picture used to be left off the desk for having no text. It is shown now, with its caption.

• improved
  Long text under a picture reads as prose

  WasThe text under every picture Fragment was set as a centred italic caption, including passages thousands of characters long

  NowA line of up to 160 characters stays a caption; anything longer is set like any other Fragment on that material
• improved
  The courier has its own line on the Library band

  WasDeposit by courier was offered in only some of the band's states, and never while an envoy at the desk could still deposit in person

  NowWhenever you have an Archivist, the band carries a courier line in every state: which Archivist, "2 of 3 courier deposits left today", and a Deposit by courier button

  The courier is a separate allowance, held by a different envoy standing somewhere else, so it had no reason to hide while the desk was open, and its own count was never shown at all. A courier carries only its own Archivist's finds, so the line counts that Archivist's satchel and names whichever Archivist can send the most. The map's Send Courier reads the allowance of the Archivist you tapped. Send a courier has left the in-person deposit window, where it was a second door into the same thing. With no Archivist, the band says nothing about couriers.

The map, your envoys, and the wonders

• improved
  The envoy list reaches every envoy

  WasFive rows, and a second page that always held envoys six to ten, so an eleventh envoy could not be reached from the map; incoming envoys stopped at five

  NowOne list, about five and a half rows tall, that scrolls through all of them

  Your own and incoming envoys still take turns behind the toggle once there are more than five between them. The mouse wheel scrolls the list while it has somewhere to go, rather than zooming the map underneath. Every envoy with something ready is sorted to the top, a ready trade route, delve or investigation as well as an arrival or finished lessons, which is what the action count beside it was already counting.

• ⇄reworked
  Scouting clusters appear from 150% zoom

  WasZoomed out to take in the continent, the yellow numbered scouting badges covered the whole world

  NowThey draw from 150% zoom; a single lead still draws as its own marker at any zoom

  A count seen from that far out is nothing you can act on without zooming in anyway.

• improved
  Wonder buffs show on the envoy who holds them

  WasVerdant Blessing and the other buffs a wonder grants were named on the results screen and then shown nowhere for as long as they ran

  NowThe envoy's effect badges and Active Effects list them, in their own art, with the wonder's own description and the time left

  A wonder buff's own art also replaces the generic arrow on every other card that names it: Effect Gained on the results screen, the renewal card, the nearby wonder row and the arrival card on the travel screen.

• improved
  A diary entry says whose it is

  Was"Recorded by" and a name on the discovery screen, which led nowhere and kept showing a name that moderation had since removed

  NowThe author's name, look and level, of their home city with its banner, and the city links to its page

  An author the game can no longer find keeps the name that was stored when the entry was written.

• improved
  Investigation History shows the newest three

  WasEvery pass you had ever made at that wonder, so its page grew with each one

  NowThe newest three, then Load more with the number still older, adding ten a tap

Smaller changes

• improved
  The profile page uses the whole width

  WasHeld to a 896px column in the middle of a wide screen

  NowAs wide as the Empire, map and wonder pages, and from 1536px the nameplate lists run in two columns
• improved
  Wonderful, on Your cities grew

  WasA gold button with a 24px fireworks icon whose colours vanished against it

  NowThe header's own brown, with the icon at 48px and centred on its label

  It closes the screen rather than asking you to do anything, so it no longer dresses as a call to action.

Fixes

• "Messages" a link to another site opens it

  The Discord invite in the latest announcement led to nandonia.com/messages/https:/discord.gg/..., a Page Not Found, because the mailbox treated every link as a page inside the game. A link to another site opens in a new tab now, and a link to a page inside the game opens in the same tab instead of starting a second copy of the game.

• "School" Expanded Curriculum opens the other path for everything in its own schedule

  A Lore Scholar envoy with Expanded Curriculum and Lecture in one schedule was refused with "Already chose lore_scholar path", although the course picker had let both in. A schedule is checked card by card from the lowest tier up, and Expanded Curriculum sits above every card on either path, so it was always checked last and could never open the path for anything learned alongside it. It now opens the other path for every card in its schedule. Tier requirements, prerequisites and the capstone rule are unchanged, and a schedule is still refused whole if any card in it cannot be learned.

• "Exploration" a variant passage found while exploring prints your answer

  A {{variant:}} passage in a Fragment found by exploring showed [...] on the discovery screen whatever you had voted, because the screen was never told which Fragment it was showing.

• "Exploration" Explore is offered on open ground only

  An envoy standing at the finished Great Library, or on a claimed plot whose town hall was not built yet, was offered Explore, which the server then refused. Neither is offered now. The server also refuses an ordinary exploration aimed at any city, wonder or ruin, including your own town square and the Foundation Stone's own tile. Before, only the screen kept envoys off them, so a stale screen could send one exploring there. Delves and wonder visits are unchanged.

• "Travel" the Great Library no longer shows a reward stuck on "..."

  Sending an envoy to the finished Great Library showed an Investigation Reward card and a strip beneath it, both loading forever. A finished monument has nothing to investigate, so the travel screen shows no arrival block for it.

• "Wonders" the discoveries panel can be read on every wonder page

  Its bar, tiles, dots and caption were painted in the wonder's button colour, which is chosen for the dark investigation overlay. On the six light wonder pages that put a light colour on a light card: the worst measured 1.02 to 1, near white on near white, and the other five were all under 3 to 1. Light pages now use each wonder's own text colour, and all ten pages are measured by a test.

• "City" a phone's resource row fits on one line

  At 320px wide, the collapsed row of five resource figures needed about 274px and had 256, so "225.0K" ran into the stone icon beside it. The row drops a trailing .0 (225K) and its icons are sized to the figures, so a full city fits, and a figure that still does not fit moves to a second line rather than overlapping.

• "Temporary Embassy" the card says what its rate is compared against

  It said each term pays "a better rate than the equivalent hours in a Hotel". It now says "than the host Hotel's base rate for the same hours", which is what the payout has always been measured against, and the line on the Envoys page that reports what the card is worth says the same. The payout has not changed.

• "Invest" the own-city notice says what is true

  Opening an investment in your own city said funding it "moves resources out of your own storehouse, burns the brokerage, and hands the rest back to you", which the game does not do: an envoy cannot invest in their owner's cities at all, and the notice now says so. A Seed Investment is refused in your own city too, as every other investment already was.