Rising Land Prices & Delve Encounters
16 October 2026
Buying land with gold now has a price that rises the faster you buy and falls back over time. In the first days after launch, a few big spenders were growing their empires far faster than anyone could through play, and every extra city is another envoy and another city to develop. Gold still buys land, and anyone claiming now and then always pays the base price, but buying a lot at once gets more and more expensive. Claim & merge, which uses up the new land, is now cheaper than a claim and recovers faster.
Thanks to everyone who gave feedback on the proposal in Discord: your suggestion is why the first gold claims you ever make always cost the base price.
Delve encounters have been reworked to make for more interesting choices. Some of the old choices were never worth taking; now they are, and many of them lead somewhere new. Leaving part of your haul behind pays off for the rest of the delve, and some choices buy a rule for the rest of the run instead of more resources, such as no dead ends, or a severe injury counting as a moderate one so the haul still comes home.
Festivals let an envoy who knows Grand Festival choose either kind, wonders and ruins are discovered at a steadier pace, two new leaderboards rank the boldest delvers and the most thorough wonder investigators, and new change logs like this one now arrive in your mailbox. Finally, the higher levels of every building now call for more metal.
Land prices
- Was100 gold for every gold claimNow100 gold for your first 3 gold claims. From your third on, each gold claim makes the next one 50 gold more, and the price drops back 50 gold every 72 hours, never below 100
Claiming twice a week or less always costs 100. Five claims in one go cost 100, 150, 200, 250 and 300 once your first three are behind you, and the price then walks back down. The drop is continuous, so there is no reset time to wait for. Gold claims made before this change count toward your first three. Land Deeds are always free and never raise the price.
While your first three gold claims last, they always cost 100 
A raised price, when it next drops, and what the next claim will cost - Was100 gold for every claim & mergeNow50 gold, plus 25 gold for each claim & merge, dropping back 25 gold every 24 hours, never below 50
It has its own price, separate from claims: a claim & merge never raises the price of a claim, and a claim never raises the price of a claim & merge. One a day always costs 50.
A kept land is a new city, so it is priced into your next claim like one, whether the claim & merge was paid with gold or a Land Deed.
The card shows the price you will pay, a countdown to the next drop, when it is back to the base price, and what your next claim will cost. While your first three gold claims last, it shows how many are left at 100.
The rules, on the Buy Land page If another tab bought first or a drop happened while the confirmation was open, the confirmation stays open with the new price. If you can no longer afford it, the confirmation closes. A confirmation opened with a Land Deed closes if the Deed is spent somewhere else, and tells you why.
When the price changes first, nothing is charged
Gameplay
- Was"Put down most of the load and swim it" and "Put down part of the load and squeeze under the sand" (40% of everything you carry): x1.5 and x1.4 resources on that floor only. "Put down part of the load and squeeze in through the gap" (20%): x1.5 on that floor onlyNowThe 40% choices: x2 at depth 7 on that floor and every floor after it, or x4 at depth 9 on that floor. The 20% choice: x1.25 at depth 5 or x1.6 at depth 7, on that floor and every floor after it
- Wasx1.15 resources on that floor for +3% chance of a minor injuryNowx1.5 resources on that floor for +3% chance of a minor injury
14 choices, among them "Take only what lies inside the doorway", "Work all of it, and quickly" and "Cut a proper way through the root".
"Swim it with the whole load still on your back" (was +8%), "Cross and work the far side before the air follows" (was +4%), "Go right in and empty every cart" (was +3%), "Go right in under the floor and clear the shed" and "Cut into the two wrong stripes" (both was +2%). Their rewards are unchanged; the risk moves to minor injuries.
New choices: "Leave your timber at the mouth of the crawl" (depths 5 and 7: all your wood, floors take 25% less time), "Work your clay into dressings for the way down" (depths 5 and 7: all your clay, minor injuries need no recovery) and "Drop everything you carry and go down through the split" (depth 3: everything you carry, no dead ends). "Cut the load down to what will not drag you under" now makes a severe injury count as a moderate one for the rest of the delve (it was 2 floors of safer odds), and takes 35% of your load at depth 5 and 20% at depths 7 and 9. "Tip out your stone and take the pack's iron bars and wedges" now buys no dead ends at depth 3 or severe-as-moderate at depths 5 and 7, taking 75% of your stone at depth 7, instead of x1.5 resources on that floor. A rule bought by leaving something behind covers the floor it was paid on; other rules start from the next floor. Severe-as-moderate is one step shared with Hardy Constitution, so the two do not add up, and floor-time cuts multiply together.
"Back out and wait for the air to turn": x0.75 on that floor (was x0.5) and minor injuries need no recovery. "Pull the powder out and leave the level safe behind you": x0.75 for the rest of the delve (was x0.85) and a severe injury counts as a moderate one. "Work from the wall for the rest of the delve": x0.85 and floors take 25% less time. "Dig out the service path and walk it": x0.75 on that floor and floors take 20% less time. "Go out and round through the collapsed porch": x0.9 at depth 3 or x1 at depth 5 (was x0.75), and no dead ends, with a dead end becoming a minor injury instead.
They stay visible, marked as locked: "Your runner is carrying this floor's haul home, so there is nothing here to leave behind. A runner and a toll are one choice per floor."
- WasOne kind at a time, priced at the city's Sawmill upgrade cost for its Town Hall level, for example 17,500 wood, 8,300 stone and 1,850 clay at Town Hall 10NowFestival at Town Hall 10: 4,300 wood, 4,100 stone, 2,300 clay and 475 metal. Grand Festival at Town Hall 10: 17,200 wood, 13,800 stone, 6,900 clay and 850 metal
The Festivals pane shows both side by side, with Grand Festival marked "Skill needed" until your envoy knows it, and the city list row is now called Festivals. Prices are before Cultural Landmark's 25% off. From Town Hall 10 a Festival costs far less than before; at Town Hall 8 and below it costs more stone and clay. At Town Hall 20 a Festival is 15,500 wood, 12,400 stone, 6,200 clay and 1,550 metal, and a Grand Festival 62,000, 49,500, 24,750 and 6,200 (it was 74,400 wood, 29,800 stone, 5,950 clay and 1,500 metal for either).
Base costs, before discounts. Sawmill and Quarry x1.6 (Sawmill level 20 metal 1,500 to 2,400), Storehouse x1.5, Market x1.35 from level 7, Clay Pit from level 6 (level 15 metal 1,100 to 1,750), School from level 7, Homestead from level 4, Hotel from level 10, Foundry from level 3, and Town Hall from level 16 (level 20 metal 10,000 to 13,000). Wood, stone and clay are unchanged.
A trade your envoy makes with another player loses nothing in transit, instead of 5%. A trade with your own city, or a linked account's, loses 10% instead of 20%.
WasA trade your envoy makes with another player loses nothing in transit, down from 10%.NowA trade your envoy makes with another player loses nothing in transit, instead of 5%. A trade with your own city, or a linked account's, loses 10% instead of 20%.Trades with other players are unaffected. The warning on a trade with your own city now shows on every such trade, with the real figure.
Your envoy trades at 3:1 at the NPC exchange, and a trade it makes with another player loses 5% in transit instead of 10%.
Was5% on a trade with your own city or a linked account'sNow20% on a trade with your own city or a linked account's- WasNo limit on how quickly wonders and ruins could be foundNowEach wonder found in the current Age lengthens the wait before the next one can be found anywhere, starting at 1 day. Exploration finds at most one ruin every 12 hours across the whole world
This keeps an Age's wonders from all being found in its first weeks. Ruins from the wonder race's excavations are not limited. While a wait is running, the odds shown for that discovery read 0%.
Leaderboards
Each ruin counts once, and only when its deepest floor is cleared. Ruins from the wonder race's private excavations do not count.
Outcomes are counted the same way as each wonder's completion bar, so the board always agrees with the bars it adds up.
Interface
If you have not opened it after 48 hours it counts as read, leaving your unread count, and stays in your mailbox.
- reworked: Envoy menu on the map: "Return" is now "Walk Home", and "Recall" is now "Instant Recall"
- improved: Change log: screenshots now sit under the change they show, as thumbnails that open full size
Fixes
The cooldown that is running now keeps its length, and the new level's cooldown starts with the next collection. Collect, Auto-Collect and Rush Order agree, and so do the countdowns, the Collect All count and the navigation badge.
The roll already used the changed odds; the bar now shows them too, and shows a severe injury that will count as a moderate one as moderate.
Mastery badges now share one height and bottom edge, on the city page, the empire list and the Embassy credentials.
- The envoy menu on the map could draw past its box near the edge of the screen
An envoy on a delve now stays on everyone's map for as long as the delve is open, and an envoy whose investigation or exploration has finished stays on that tile until they move on, as they already did on their owner's own map.
Changing a city's banner now shows the new one everywhere straight away.
The tab now reloads once to fetch the new patch.