Armour improvements
Armour and shields can now be improved as well. Iron Studs and Reinforcing Plates add defence to leather, cloth, wood and bone armour, the plates at the cost of 1 sneak. Fur and Padded Linings add warmth, the padding a point of defence too, and never wear out. Tallow Proofing, Fireproofing Salve and Acid-Resist Wax add 2 ice, fire or acid resistance to any piece, and an Iron Rim strengthens a wooden or bone shield on every block. An improvement guards only the parts its piece covers. Plating and proofing wear down as blows land on that piece, and a rim wears with each block. Studs, plates, linings and rims can be taken off again; proofing, sharpening and coatings cannot.
Weapon improvements
Weapons can now be improved. A Whetstone sharpens a blade for +1 to +3 strength, rising with Craftsmanship, for 6 damaging hits. Hemp, Sinew and Silk Bowstrings add ranged skill or strength to a bow or crossbow for a number of shots. Iron Spikes and a Weighted Head add strength to a club, hammer, flail or staff, the spikes with a better chance to stun and the head at 1 more stamina a swing. Each improvement is crafted, costs 1 Action Point to fit, belongs to that one weapon, and wears away with use. Strings and heads can be taken off and come back when replaced, while sharpening and coatings are lost. Manage them on the new Improvements tab of a weapon's Info screen.
Blade coatings
Burning Oil, Blade Venom and Frost Oil coat a blade for a few damaging hits. Each adds 1 point of fire, acid or ice damage and leaves Burning, Toxin or a slow behind. Burning and Toxin hurt an enemy at the start of each of its turns, even while it is stunned, and an enemy they kill counts as your kill wherever you are. A poisonous brew can be spread on a blade the same way. Against another player, Toxin and Burning cannot take them below 1 health, and a coating has no effect on NPCs.
Sound
Many more actions now make a sound. Gold coming in from a kill, a reward, a contract or a sale has its own jingle, separate from the sound of spending it. Picking something up sounds like what it is: a potion, metal gear, cloth or leather, paper, or a small object. Equipping and removing weapons, armour and jewellery, eating, drinking any potion, using a bandage, unlocking with a key, lighting a torch, setting something on fire and reaching a new level all have their own sounds, as do acid, lightning and magic missile spells. Every effect plays at a slightly different pitch and speed each time, so a repeated action no longer sounds identical.
Drag and drop
Item cards can now be dragged. Drag a loose item into the Equipment tile to collect it, onto an empty compass space to move it, onto your character to equip or use it, or into an open container to store it. Carried items and the contents of an open container can be dragged to the same places. A drag costs the same Action Points as the menu action it replaces, and storing a loose item straight into a container costs 1. Every valid destination lights up while you drag, and the menus work as before.
Mutations
Mutations change a character's body. A Heffith begins the run with one and grows another with every experience level, and the new Mutations tab on the character sheet lists them beside a tree of what could come next. They grow in six lineages, Piscine, Lupine, Avian, Serpentine, Chiropteran and Saurian, each running from a faint first change to an unmistakable one, and a lineage already started is the likeliest to deepen. Every mutation gives and takes. A first change costs more than it gives and only the deepest pay off, so mutations reward a character who commits to one animal. A mutation can shift attributes and combat stats, add elemental defence, grant a perk without its requirements, add or take away an Action Point depending on where a turn starts, or stop the body wearing a kind of gear: a tail keeps leggings off, horns a helmet, and wings body armour.
Carrying mutations
A changed body costs something every turn. Each mutation lowers Comfort by its tier, and each lineage carried beyond the first costs 5 more, so a scattered body is harder to live in than a committed one. The deepest mutations make hunger come faster, and every mutation others can see lowers Charisma. No mutation lowers a stat below 1, and a turn never has fewer than 1 Action Point.
Suppression
A Heffith can spend experience to put down a mutation that has nothing grown out of it. The price is 100 XP per tier and doubles with every suppression, a perk the mutation granted goes with it, and a suppressed mutation never returns.
Mutagens
Any character can be changed. Blight fruit carries a 1% chance of a mutation, and when it changes a character who is already mutated, one time in ten it removes a mutation instead. The Stabilized Arcane Vial can now be drunk, costs 10 Health, and carries a 10% chance of a mutation.
Join me or perish
An Evil or Chaotic hero who holds a claim can now press a badly beaten person into service. The demand appears once the target has less health left than a third of the maximum health of the hero making it, and succeeds on a chance of 30% plus 10 for each point of Charisma. Success takes them as a companion at a loyalty of 10, marked as forced labour, so they will not heal you until that loyalty is earned up. Failure turns them hostile. There is one attempt, and no action point is spent on it.
Drawing on someone
Attacking a person is now offered in every conversation, not only at a first meeting. Choosing it turns them into an enemy standing where they stood and ends the conversation. A companion is set down in the room first, so a room with no free space leaves nowhere to settle it.
Picking a pocket
A character with the Thief perk can now try to lift something an NPC is carrying. The choice lists what they hold and costs 1 Action Point, and the chance is the same one used against a merchant, drawn from Dexterity, Patience and stealing proficiency. A success takes the item, and lifting a weapon or armour they were wearing leaves them weaker for it. Being caught turns them hostile with everything still on them. Companions are not targets, since they hand their gear over on request.
Resistance in combat
Resistance from race, mutations and runes now counts against an enemy weapon or body attack wherever it lands. Before, those blows met only worn gear, companions and potions. Worn gear still counts only on the body parts it covers, and an affliction that lowers a resistance now lowers it in combat as well as on the character sheet.
Bone Ward
A skeleton companion with Bone Ward now adds its 3 frost resistance once. The bonus used to grow every turn and stayed after the skeleton left. A character still carrying the extra resistance loses it on their next action.
Timed resistance
A potion or spell that raises a resistance no longer lapses for an action when another timed effect on you runs out.
Torches in the pack
A lit torch put away in your pack now keeps burning for 2 turns before it goes out, so a torch picked up off the floor can still be taken in hand while it is alight. It gives no light or warmth until you hold it. A torch stored in a container or given to someone still goes out at once.
Resistance elsewhere
Putting out a fire by hand, and attacks from another player, now meet all of your resistance, including potions, spells, companions and afflictions.
Pot brewing
A Small metal pot, forged from Metal scrap and Metal Fittings at a forge, can be filled with water, packed with herbs, roots, mushrooms, food or salt, and hung over a burning campfire or stone furnace. Each turn on the fire strengthens the brew from weak through mild to potent. Every world gives its plants different hidden virtues, so the best brews are found by experiment. A brew restores Health, Stamina, Mana, thirst, hunger, Comfort or warmth, or grants a benefit for a few turns, and no brew changes a character permanently. Drink it hot for extra warmth, or pour it into an Empty Bottle to carry. Anything that is not an ingredient burns in the pot, and a pot left on the fire too long blackens, cracks and breaks.
Brew smells
A brew now smells of every ingredient steeped in it, and the smell grows as the brew does. A pot over the fire fills the room with its scent, and a pleasant one adds to Comfort. A sickly sweet or sour smell warns of a poisonous or queasy brew, and a stewed or burnt pot reeks.
Unknown mushrooms
Every mushroom species now grows in five varieties, each with its own name, colour and property: Health, Stamina or Mana restored, Hunger sated, or Health lost. The five are dealt out afresh in every world and each species is dealt separately, so one species tells you nothing about another. An unlearned variety is named for its species alone, as Unknown Fat Mushroom, and its properties are hidden. Eating one identifies that variety for that species, and the Forager perk identifies every variety on sight.
Seven new scrolls
Aura of Light burns nearby enemies over time, Poisonous Ivy punishes attackers, Stone Skin raises defence, Ice Blast strikes opposite fields, Lightning hits every enemy in the room, Veil of Shadows improves Sneak, and Magic Trap turns an empty field into an explosive seal.
NPC relationships
Living NPCs now form lasting opinions of one another. When they share a room they may chat, praise, insult, avoid, fight, or share a needed surplus item. Ill feeling fades when NPCs are kept apart, a feud ends once both sides calm down, and companions and claim residents may quarrel but never come to blows. Ask what someone makes of the others to hear their view in words, and trusted NPCs may refer you to a friend who has work.
Word of mouth
Completing a contract, helping with a practical need, or abandoning accepted work can now travel between friendly NPCs when they meet. A listener changes their opinion of that player and replaces their next ordinary greeting with an acknowledgement that names who told them.
NPC moments
Starting a conversation can now lead into a short scene: a person troubled by a nightmare, nursing a wound, shaking after a fight, or asking you to lie for them. Each reply takes an approach, such as kind, honest, blunt, or deceitful. An approach that suits the person adds dice to its test and improves the result, and a poor one does the opposite. The dice are shown, success raises loyalty, and failure lowers it. Tell me about yourself may hint at what a person values. A moment that clearly helps or slights someone travels by word of mouth.
Fallen residents
A claim resident that is killed now leaves remains and stays on the claim roster marked Dead. A dead resident no longer takes up the room's capacity.
Enemy attacks
Every enemy now takes its turn with the attack budget printed on its card. Enemies that arrived through spawners, encounters, or settlement rosters, the Noxious Ooze among them, sometimes had no budget at all and never struck.
Slime fusion
When four Slimes merge into a Noxious Ooze, the ooze keeps its own acid attack, health, and weaknesses, and the merged slimes add their strength, health, and resistances on top.
New launcher
The launcher has been rebuilt. The changelog now sits beside the key art, Play becomes available as soon as the game has finished loading rather than after a fixed wait, and the opening film can be skipped by clicking it.
Grimdark Shader
The shader can now be switched on or off from the launcher before the game starts. It is the same setting as the one in the game options, and turning it off is the first thing to try if the game runs slowly.
Crafting experience
A recipe that requires a tool now counts that tool towards its reward, the same way a recipe requiring a workbench or a specific item always has. Ninety recipes across leatherworking, smithing, textiles, pottery and cooking award five more experience, and the catalogue now runs from 10 to 50.
Maximum health and mana
Gear and afflictions that raise your maximum are now respected everywhere. Salvaging a scroll, taking an event reward, resting, or using a restorative no longer trims you back to your unequipped maximum, and the character sheet shows the raised figure instead of a bar that could read past full.
Runic work
Socketing now costs an action, as repairing and enchanting always have, and it sockets the item you selected rather than testing a different one. Enchanting several items at once now resolves every target and charges a single action.
Standing production
A card that blocks production in a room now actually holds the producer, and completed progress is kept instead of being thrown away. A shared irrigation cistern wears once per turn however many producers and farms it watered.
Location presets
Authored locations keep the specific items they were built to place. A crafted component set in a preset side slot is no longer swapped out for a random find.
Location abundance
Resource-bearing location actions now have a local supply, normally five successful finds. Each find lowers later success chances in that room, and one find returns every ten world turns. Drinking, bathing, drawing water, filling containers, watering crops, and effect-only actions remain inexhaustible.
Location action chances
Fifty-six location actions could never succeed because they had no base chance. Searches of rooms, halls, libraries and houses, gathering stones, foraging, mining, sand and mineral collection, woodcutting in Overgrowth, and praying in the Cathedral now start between 10% and 50%, and proficiency still adds to them.
Location action icons
Each action in the location information card now shows the same icon as the action hints in the corner of the dungeon screen, such as searching, foraging, mining, or ritual. The icon greys out when you cannot perform that action.
Room conditions
Rooms can now appear Overgrown, Unstable, Infested, or host to a Fungal Bloom. Conditions bring their own gathering opportunities and hazards, and clearing one takes a number of tool actions equal to the room's size. Unstable rooms may collapse, infestations may produce Rats, and fungal growth may spread or leave an explorer Spored.
Regional room conditions
Mountain Edge rooms may contain Loose Scree, become Gale-Swept, or reveal an Exposed Vein. Northern Forest rooms may be Storm-Felled, Webbed, or Haunted. Each condition has suitable terrain, its own resources and hazards, and a matching border around the location card. The location information card explains the consequences while a condition is present.
Ore veins
A finished Excavated Dugout, and any Abandoned Mine room without another condition, may hold an Iron, Gold, or Silver Ore Vein. Mine Ore Vein costs 1 Action Point and 1 pickaxe durability, and a vein gives three to eight portions of its ore before it runs out.
Fresh excavations
Every Excavated Dugout created by a player begins Unstable. A hammer can shore up the new shelter before shifting stone turns it into a collapse.
Wounds and limb loss
Powerful physical enemy attacks can now leave body-part-specific Deep Wounds, Fractures, Eye Injuries, scars, or a missing arm or leg. Wounds can bleed, become infected, and impose penalties until they are stabilized and healed. The Body and Conditions screen shows each affected region, while bandages, splints, field medicine, and wound-care spells provide different forms of care.
Armour and bruising
A blow that lands on a body part covered by equipped, unbroken armour can no longer open a wound there. It leaves a Bruise instead, which reduces maximum Health by 1, 2, or 3 according to the severity of the hit and fades after 12 world turns. A body part holds one Bruise at most: a further armoured blow deepens it to the higher severity and restarts its fading. Injury penalties never reduce maximum Health below 1. Bruises do not bleed, cannot become infected, and never scar. Rings and amulets do not count as armour.
Scars
A healed injury that leaves a permanent scar is now recorded as closed. It keeps none of the combat penalties of the original wound and cannot bleed or become infected, but it costs 1 maximum Health while it remains, and a scar on the face costs 1 Charisma as well. Scars stack, and Charisma never drops below 1. Scars in existing saves are corrected on load.
Scar remedies
Bandages, antiseptics, splints, and healing care no longer ask to treat a scar and are no longer spent on one. A scar is removed by the new Soothing Root Salve, crafted from Trolls Blood and Blood root essence with a Mortar and Pestle, or by a Potion of Restoration or Scroll of Rejuvenation. A remedy that also treats open injuries treats the wound first; select the scar on the Body and Conditions screen to target it directly.
Healing stabilization
Healing magic and healing potions now stabilize one Deep Wound or amputation as they restore Health. They stop the bleeding tied to that injury but do not add healing progress.
Clerical wound care
Lay Hands now restores Health and stabilizes bleeding. Regeneration advances wound recovery, Cure Illness purges wound infection, and Mend Bone secures fractures. Bone Shaping remains the stronger necromantic fracture treatment because it also advances healing.
Witch rods
The Dowsing Rod and Divining Rod can each be crafted from a Stick and a dream by a character with the Witch perk. A Pleasant Dream makes the dowsing rod to mark the exit toward water, while a Beautiful Dream makes the divining rod to mark the exit toward enchanted or special cards. The marked exit burns violet on the travel rosette.
Rag cleaning and empty bottles
Locations offering a bathing action now also allow a Dirty Rag to be washed clean. Items tagged as bottled provide an Empty action in their context menu to pour out their contents and retain an Empty Bottle.
Journal entries and notices
Journal notes now display portraits and images tied to their source events and tags. Unread notes are marked with an attention badge, which also appears on the character button until viewed.
Trade post interface
The merchant screen now features dedicated category filters, affordability indicators, and direct keyboard shortcuts (1 to 9 to trade, Tab to cycle tabs, Esc to leave).
Floors and walls
Improvements can now raise a floor in a room and a wall across a passage. Built interiors, ruins, mines and dry caves support them, no claim is needed, and the room must be clear of living enemies. A Wooden Floor takes 4 timber and adds 2 room insulation, a Stone Floor takes 4 masonry, and either wall takes 3 of its own material and blocks the passage it stands in.
Structural projects
A project holds the exact resources deposited into it until the work is finished. Starting, depositing and withdrawing cost nothing, completion costs 1 Action Point, and cancelling returns every card. The materials belong to the character who began the project until that character dies, after which anyone may finish it or recover them.
Breaking through
A working equipped pickaxe demolishes a finished structure from either side of a wall, even during combat. Each hit costs 1 Action Point, the pickaxe stamina and one durability. Wooden structures take 3 hits and stone 6, they yield nothing when they fall, and a damaged wall blocks as well as a whole one.
Restless dead
The Apparition, the Wraith and the Arcane Wraith now roam their dungeons instead of waiting in one room.
Wandering fix
Fourteen creatures were built to wander but never took a step, among them the Skeleton Guard, the Giant Ants, the Mole rat, the Undead Raven and the Nestling Wasp, along with the scholars and skeletons of the Undead Laboratory. All of them now roam as intended.
Enemy speed
Twenty-one creatures carried a speed of zero, which claims no turn at all. Every enemy now has a speed of at least one. Among them are the Mimic, the Noxious Ooze, the Runic Golem and most of the city rabble.
Sealed passages
Walls stop seekers and wandering enemies alike, and sealing a claimed room off from the rest of your base suspends its connected benefits until the route is opened again. Some dungeons now generate with floors and walls already standing, never in a way that cuts off a room that could otherwise be reached.
Hidden doors
A wall that stands between you and a skeleton key you need is now a hidden stone door, and other hidden doors appear in dungeons too. Walking into one reveals uneven stonework. Examine Walls on the location card costs 1 Action Point and finds the loose stone on a d6 roll equal to or below your Perception plus 1, and a failed search can be tried again. Push Stone then costs 1 Action Point and opens the passage.
Keys and walls
A skeleton key no longer opens a lock on the far side of a wall. The key is kept and no Action Point is spent.
Incorporeal enemies
Ghosts and other incorporeal creatures drift through built walls when they move, and reach through one to displace an object. Fourteen of them now carry the ability, among them the Apparition, Ghost Templar, Wraith, Arcane Wraith, Rime Wraith, Aurora Spirit, Barrow Wisp and Restless Brute. A locked room, deep water, or a room with no space left still stops them, and the wall takes no damage.
Aimed attacks
Bats and snakes now have their own body parts in the targeting view instead of borrowing humanoid ones, and bat wings, bat tails, and snake tails can be severed. Hovering any part on any creature shows its hit chance, its damage, and what severing it costs the enemy.
Traps
A trap you throw yourself clear of still costs the move, and the log now says so instead of reporting that it caught you. The log also writes each turn in one pass, so entries from two moves no longer interleave.
Right-click menu
Right-clicking a card now selects it before the menu opens, so the highlight always marks the card the menu acts on and any other card showing its back is turned face up. Long option names shrink to fit.
Custom heroes
A custom hero now receives the same racial bonuses as a dealt hero, and the deity chosen on the form is kept with piety starting at 0. Custom heroes previously lost both and always began unclaimed.
Custom hero form
The custom hero form has been redrawn in the style of hero selection. Its stat preview includes the racial bonus, hovering a Measure lights the stats it feeds, the starting items are listed with pictures, and every Measure, stat, proficiency, race, class, and trait carries a tooltip. A Measure holds at most 5, and Create names what it is still waiting for.
Level up
Levelling up now opens its own window from the level-up emblem on the character card. Up to three paths sit side by side with the trait each brings and the paths it leads to, and a table compares Health, Mana, Melee, Ranged, Dodge, carry weight, the raised attribute, and Action Points before and after. Pick with a click or 1 to 3 and confirm with Enter. Decide Later keeps the level, and the same paths and traits are waiting when you return.
Interludes
Interludes now respond to fresh injuries, a new level, a companion at your side, hunger, thirst, and long quiet stretches, and each dungeon has a handful of its own. When something has just happened the interlude speaks to it rather than drawing a general reflection, and the same interlude does not return while it is one of the last three. Some shift piety, grant experience, write a journal note, or are remembered by the place and recalled on a later visit.
Memories
The Journal tab now keeps a Memories section with the 40 most recent moments of your story. Passing sounds from nearby rooms are no longer recorded, so they cannot push out the moments worth keeping.
Location upgrade panel
The Location Upgrade panel now docks under the top row of the board, so the Equipment tile stays in reach. Each position shows the card it needs and how many you carry, and clicking an empty position finds that card in your Equipment and opens its Drop option.
Dungeon map
The dungeon map has been repainted. Swamps gain muddy islands, roots, reeds, and lily pads, larger areas can hold a landmark such as a rock formation, a flooded pool, or a sarcophagus, and ancient ruins and crypts have stonework of their own. Up to two props drawn from the cards you can see mark what a room holds. Man-made rooms such as halls, libraries, chapels, and workshops keep square walls and worked stone floors, while caves stay organic.
Map overview
Zoomed out to the full map, loot and campfires in a merged area gather into one summary and area names are shown by default. Players, enemies, traps, quests, and locks are always shown individually, and zooming in restores every room marker.
Loading scenes
Loading scenes now drift with the mouse like the start menu, share its vignette, and use the Ethernalis typeface. Continue waits at the foot of the scene, and a click anywhere or any key moves on.
Sour Paste
Sour Paste clears an active infection from a wound and greatly reduces its infection risk, but leaves you Diseased.
Diseased
Diseased now makes hunger build half again as fast and thirst twice as fast. Before, it slowed both. Eating a Rotspore Toadstool also makes you Diseased.
Action Points
Using a card costs 1 Action Point, and how hard a weapon is to use comes from its stamina cost. Many enemies attack two or three times on their own turn. An attack of opportunity or a counter attack is always a single attack. Disarming a trap costs 1 to 3 Action Points, depending on the trap.
Spoilage
Goods that cannot spoil no longer rot. Pine Resin, Bog Resin, Goat Hide, Coal, Copper Ore, Pit Timber, Salvaged Metal, linen, Flour Sacks, Loose Coins, Charged Dust and similar materials keep indefinitely. Raw Game Meat, Large Meat Portions, bat wings and Crispy Rat Pieces now start fresh.
The Lake
You can bathe at the Lake and wash a Dirty Rag there.
Bridges
The Ancient Stone Bridge and the Hanging Bridge no longer join the areas on either side of them into one.